An Absence of Principal

by Jimmy Patterson

  But she chose not to move. She hoped somebody back in Midland had by now begun to put it all together, and that law enforcement in Taylor County was setting up on the place. Nothing had happened to give her that reassurance yet. But she tried to keep a positive attitude.

  “Alex,” Pierce said slowly. “It’s been too long.”

  “What’s happening to Carly? What’s he doing to her?” Alex demanded to know.

  “Carly is fine. Just relax, my sweet.”

  She sat back and said nothing. She was helpless to do anything at this point. She and her daughter could easily die. She knew Juan Roberto had been given instructions to kill the girl if anything went wrong.

  “I’ve missed you so,” Pierce lied. “How have you been?”

  Alex maintained her silence and Pierce let out a dark smile.

  “When you first left, I want you to know how much I admired you for your efforts to try to singlehandedly bring an end to the serious drug problem we have in this country. I admired you for your courage and I tried to protect you at every turn. I was unhappy with you, of course, but I did what I could to make sure you remained alive. I have contacts, as you know, pretty much everywhere in South America. And Mexico. And Central America. You did notice that, no? Your smart car, the SUV I left for you that was impenetrable. The men who raped you? You don’t know this, my dear, but I caught wind of their indiscretions sometime after the unfortunate train ride of yours. They are all dead now. Maybe you saw them killed in Juarez, at the old abandoned gas station, I don’t know. Anyway, I could not bear the thought of someone hurting you, my Alex, as much as I despised you by this point. If I couldn’t have you, I didn’t want you being anywhere else.”

  Her husband had become a sadistic killer, Alex thought. He didn’t care about her. He was concerned simply with killing as many people as he could in the name of what he called her protection, or his sport. It was all a game to him.

  “Don’t lie to me, you sick bastard,” she said. “You don’t care about me. You never have!”

  “Oh, but that’s not true. I can prove that to you.”

  Alex waited, afraid there would be another disturbing revelation.

  “Please accept my condolences on the death of your friend Maria and her family,” Pierce said.

  Alex had never thought that her husband’s reach extended so far. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say next.

  “Those men who saw to it that Maria and her boys were … in the way, shall we say … they were ready to take you out, my love. In fact they were behind you all the way until they caught up to Maria and – well, you know the rest.”

  Pierce took a sip of whiskey in a small glass on the table in front of him.

  “They followed you for I don’t know how far after Maria and her boys were dead. They so wanted to do the same thing to you. For me, Alex. That’s how much my men respect me. Fear me. But I warned them if anything happened to you, that would be their end. They protected you for so long afterward. Isn’t that right, Juan Roberto?” Pierce asked his cohort who had come into the kitchen for a drink of water for Carly.

  “Si, senor,” Juan Roberto replied. A wave of nausea overcame Alex as she began putting more pieces together. For a fleeting moment, Alex thought his face might have even looked familiar from that day in the sugar fields in Argentina. Or in the streets of Valparaiso.

  “You and your killers, you were there all along,” Alex said, as it dawned on her.

  “Yes, my dear. We wouldn’t have missed it.”

  “I …”

  “Shhhh!” Pierce said. “There’s nothing to say. You should have never walked out on me and our little girl. It’s something I can never forget. And it’s something I will never let you forget, my sweet.”

  Alex remembered hating it when Pierce had called her ‘my sweet’ even when things were good.

  Garrison tried to piece together the meaning of the suicide note left by Coogan Goodley as Judge Halfmann broke the news about the two-bit drug dealer taking his own life.

  “Seems odd someone like Goodley would kill himself. He doesn’t really fit the profile of a suicide, you think?”

  “I was thinking the same thing, yeah,” Halfmann said. “It certainly seems to validate the notion that Nail has nothing to do with Walker’s murder.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “The usual,” Halfmann said. “Nothing revealing. Said good-bye to his family. Said he loved them and not to worry about him. Told them they had nothing to do with it.”

  Halfmann handed him the note. It didn’t add up. Trask thought for a moment.

  “Goodley had no family,” Trask said. “It never came up in testimony because it had no bearing. But I had Alex research his background. His mother, father and two brothers were killed in a car accident several years ago coming home from one of his ball games in Lubbock.”

  “You think someone killed Goodley?”

  “I do. And I think I know who killed him, judge,” Trask said. “We need to call Sheriff Trainor, tell him to get his men on the way to Taylor County. I think our man is Pierce Wallace, Alex’s husband. I think he’s probably killed often. And I think if we don’t get some help to Alex, she and her daughter will be next on his list.”

  Trask conveyed what he knew to Halfmann who picked up the phone and called Trainor and then dialed his brother, Cecil Halfmann, the captain of the Texas Rangers’ Big Sky Division in Abilene.

  “Know just where it is,” Cecil told his brother. “We set up on it every now and then. Haven’t been able to figure anything out yet, but I’m not surprised to hear the news.”

  “You’re the only one who seems to know where this El Bolero place is,” the judge said.

  “Your honor,” Cecil said, “we’re the Texas Rangers. We know everything.

  Ten minutes later, the Rangers, DPS, Taylor County Sheriff and the FBI had descended on the highway outside Pierce Wallace’s huge spread north of Abilene.

  “We ready to move in, Captain?” the sheriff’s chief deputy asked.

  “Not quite yet, Norm. Let’s hold up just a few.”

  Captain Halfmann glanced down at his iPad. The other law enforcement officers at the scene thought it odd that he had chosen such a time to take note of the weather. It was the fall. It would be like any other day this time of year, mild to cool, dry and windy. Like much of the rest of Texas it was the middle of a drought year. The wind had kicked up more dirt this year than at any time since the 1950s. Halfmann knew. Nobody else did.

  “Let’s give it about 10 minutes,” Captain Halfmann said.

  The other officers were busily grouped in small numbers discussing strategies for how they would descend on El Bolero. Their elaborate plans would not be necessary.

  Off in the distance, above the horizon, Captain Halfmann could see what no one else had yet. A large brown mass that hung low in the sky. Ten minutes from now, it would take over the entire sky to the north. By then the other officers would see it.

  “What’s the hold up, Captain?” the FBI agent said. “Don’t you think we oughta be moving on this? We got a woman and child in there who may be running out of time.”

  Halfmann nudged his cowboy hat up with his index finger, finished picking at what was left between his teeth from his Billy’s Better Burger lunch, and gave Mr. FBI a nod to the north.

  The agent turned and looked toward Oklahoma.

  “You’re not from here are you, agent?” Halfmann asked.

  The FBI man shook his head no. He couldn’t take his eyes off the growing brown mass. Nothing in his training had prepared him for whatever it was. And by now it was big.

  “All right men, gather around,” Captain Halfmann said. “In five minutes we’re gonna get a little dirty and it’s gonna get a little chilly. We’re gonna be so smothered w
ith dust and dirt and whatever else God decides to blow our way, we’ll be able to walk to the ranch house without even having to bend over and hide ourselves. Anybody who’s ever been out here during one of these knows what’s coming. And anyone who’s ever made a surprise visit serving a warrant or an arrest during one of these big storms knows that while most Texans either hate these things or marvel at ’em, they are our best friends. Gear up. And get ready to go on my command.”

  Ninety seconds later it was as if the sun had bowed out of the sky for good even though it was early afternoon. The descending layer of dust and dirt from the mammoth sandstorm was impressive. Thirty seconds later with the wind at what would later be clocked at seventy miles an hour, eighteen law enforcement agents from Taylor County and the surrounding area circled the house undetected. The men inside, being from Fort Worth, wondered what was going on just enough to take a quick peek from behind the curtains toward the north. When they saw the storm they thought nothing of it, but realized they were having to yell at each other just to hear. Moments earlier it had been perfectly still and quiet.

  Two county deputies broke out the windows of the back bedrooms at the ranch house, muffling the shatter with thick towels dug out of the trunk of their squad cars and wrapped around the boot end of their shotguns. Moments later, the front door of El Bolero swung open with force, putting a scare into Pierce and Juan Roberto. The sound and the wind also scared Carly, and she began crying for Alex, running from her kidnapper in the kitchen into her arms.

  “Juan, go secure the doors in the back of the house,” Pierce yelled to him.

  Pierce walked to the front door and pushed it shut, unable to secure the lock. He wedged it shut and hoped it would stay closed in the storm.

  When he turned around and walked back toward Alex and the young girl, the door flew open again. Halfmann was on him in a split second, before he had time to even realize this time the door was not blown open by the wind. Just like the first time.

  Halfmann grabbed Wallace by the arm. It snapped, and Wallace let out a shriek in pain as Halfmann threw him to the wooden floor. Taylor County’s finest drove him off and would book him as soon as they completed the 45-minute trip downtown. Juan and the other two henchmen who had worked with Wallace for the last several years were taken without incident or bloodshed.

  Alex held Carly tightly, both of them weeping with fear. Alex was relieved that maybe her long nightmare was finally over.

  “I just have to know one thing,” Trask asked Ben Doggett as the attorney wrapped up loose ends on his case. “The gun. Why did you have a gun and why did you leave it at your mother’s house?”

  “You ever been depressed before?” Doggett asked.

  Trask shook his head, no.

  “Most people who take their lives are suffering from depression. Detected or undetected. Depression was just the beginning of my problems, Mr. Trask. But it was the spark for all of my problems. Even my little gambling habit.”

  Doggett wiped his mouth with his forearm as he continued to come to grips with what he had done to his life in the last several months.

  “I didn’t want to do something stupid to myself and not live to regret it,” Doggett told him. “I was miserable with who I was when I went to Fredericksburg, but I knew I didn’t want to kill myself. So I tucked the gun in my old chest of drawers at my mom’s.”

  “There’ll be gun charges that you’ll have to answer to, you know that, Mr. Doggett?” Trask said. “You’ll never teach again.”

  The former principal and educator of the year headed for the door. As he walked out, Tony Nail was walking in. The two passed with an awkward glance. Doggett paused as if he was going to say something but turned and continued to walk away.

  “Mr. Doggett,” Nail finally said before the principal rounded the building. “It’s all right. I forgive you.”

  Doggett mustered a half smile and a weak thank you before he turned and left. There was only one other place he had to go.

  EPILOGUE

  Ben walked to the front door and knocked softly.

  When she opened the door, there was a half-smile on her face that told him things may be improved, but not like they were before. They never would be like they were before, Ben supposed.

  He brought no flowers. Only a pounding heart and sweaty palms this time. At this point, Ben knew flowers, or anything else material, would mean little. Not after all he had done.

  “I want to thank you,” Ben began. “More than anything, just thank you for not giving up on me. That’s not something I expected after all I did. I ruined a lot of lives.”

  Angela had been by Ben’s side through his lowest moment. She was still far from happy again, but she knew people make mistakes.

  There were moments of silence unbroken only by Angela’s soft sniffles.

  “We are technically still married, you know that, Ben?” Angela finally said.

  He said nothing.

  “I never went through with it. I couldn’t go through with most of it since you weren’t there, but on paper we’re still us, whatever ‘us’ is nowadays.”

  Ben thought he heard some movement in another room of the house, but his eyes stayed trained on Angela, not knowing where she was going with this.

  “People deserve second chances, Ben, I still believe that. I don’t know what happened to you but I’m not sure you had any control over it. And I know in any marriage when there are difficulties, it’s never just a one-sided story. Both of us had a role in this.”

  “No, Angela, you didn’t do anything,” Ben insisted.

  “Yes. Something I did or didn’t do along the way made you stray. Don’t get me wrong, you did something you shouldn’t have done. But I can’t leave you, Ben. I swore to you, and I made a promise to God. I can’t break that promise. Especially the one I made to God.”

  “We have a lot of work ahead of us,” Ben said.

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Will the kids forgive me?” Ben asked Angela.

  She teared up again.

  “Why don’t you ask them?”

  Tawny and Britton walked into the room. They both gave their father the hug he hadn’t had in months. When Tawny broke the embrace she had with her father, she left the room abruptly. Ben figured it was too much too soon.

  “I’m sorry, Britton,” Ben said to his son. “I’ll make it up to you. To all of you.”

  “I forgive you, Dad. I’m glad you’re back. I mean, really back.”

  Doggett looked over and saw Tawny walk into the living room of the home the family had shared since they moved to Midland a lifetime ago.

  “Here’s your granddaughter, Daddy. She’s been wanting to meet you.”

  Tawny reached out and set the newborn child in her father’s extended arms.

  “Thank you; for letting me back in, back home, and for giving me another chance. You won’t regret it. I promise. I’ll be the husband and father — and the grandfather — I should have been before.”

  Angela walked over to him and wiped her husband’s face.

  “We’re a family,” Angela finally said. “We stick together in good times and bad. Welcome home.”