The Next Time You Die

by Harry Hunsicker

  THE NEXT

  TIME

  YOU DIE

  Also by Harry Hunsicker

  Still River

  THE NEXT

  TIME

  YOU DIE

  HARRY HUNSICKER

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS

  ST. MARTIN’S MINOTAUR

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  THE NEXT TIME YOU DIE. Copyright © 2006 by Harry Hunsicker. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hunsicker, Harry.

  The next time you die / by Harry Hunsicker.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-34850-2

  ISBN-10: 0-312-34850-9

  1. Private investigators—Texas—Dallas—Fiction. 2. Clergy—Fiction. 3. Theft—Fiction. 4. Dallas (Tex.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.U566 N48 2006

  813'.6—dc22

  2006041123

  First Edition: July 2006

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Scott Broyles

  April 13, 1966-October 21, 1993

  Acknowledgments

  Publishing a book is a team effort, and the final product you now hold is the result of a myriad of professionals. To that end I would like to thank Sean Desmond and everyone at St. Martin’s Press, St. Martin’s Minotaur, and Thomas Dunne Books for their dedication, professionalism, and support, as well Richard Abate for his help in all parts of the process.

  Also, I am proud to be associated with a group of exceptionally talented writers, all of whom contributed to this book in more ways than they can imagine. I owe much to the guidance and support I’ve received from Erika Barr, Jan Blankenship, Amy Bourret, Victoria Calder, Will Clarke, Alan Duff, Fanchon Knott, David Norman, Brooke Malouf, and Max Wright. Special thanks to Amy Bourret for her last-minute help and to Patti Nunn for all that she does behind the scenes.

  Finally, very special thanks to my wife, Alison, for her love, support, and patience, especially during those long days at the end.

  THE NEXT

  TIME

  YOU DIE

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ChapterThirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  CHAPTER ONE

  Billy Barringer snapped the guard’s neck as if it were a piece of rotten firewood. The noise echoed against the cinder-block walls and tin roof of the maintenance shed. The dead man dropped to the floor and was completely still, the front of his khaki pants darkened with urine.

  One down. One to go.

  A small-framed man named Charity stood just inside the doorway, wearing regulation prison whites that matched Billy’s clothing. Charity gulped several times and stared at the body crumpled on the floor.

  Billy snapped his fingers and pointed to the door, indicating for him to keep watch. Charity licked his lips and squinted at Billy, his eyes dull and watery. Sweat dappled his forehead even though the thick walls kept the building relatively cool in the South Texas sunshine.

  “Keep your eyes open, for chrissakes.” Billy jabbed a finger at the entrance.

  Charity blinked and seemed to emerge from his trance. He turned to the door and stared outside.

  Billy grabbed the arms of the corpse and dragged the man behind the workbench, near where the lawn mowers were chained together. He tried to control his breathing. The guard had arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule. Although minor, it was the first break in the routine since Billy had started work at the maintenance building eight months earlier, the assignment a result of his good behavior and an assistant warden with a taste for preteen girls that Billy’s people on the outside had discovered.

  Billy didn’t like surprises, not when escaping from a maximum-security unit of the Texas Department of Corrections.

  He mentally ran through the next few steps. Lunchtime on court day. The number of guards was lower than at any time during the week. Two sets of noninmate clothing for the two escapees. A key and combination to the employee parking lot, only a few hundred yards from the maintenance shed.

  “Billy.” Charity’s high-pitched voice sounded frightened, as always. The second guard must be approaching. Billy grabbed a short length of two-by-four. He slid from behind the workbench and pressed himself against the wall next to the doorway.

  The guard entered. He stopped after a couple of feet and blinked, the light in the dusty building dim after the June sun. He walked a few more paces and swiveled his head from one side to the other.

  Billy stepped out of the shadows. The muscles in his shoulders and arms corded and strained against the thin cotton of his jumpsuit as he swung the chunk of pine at the guard’s head.

  The impact sounded like a cantaloupe hitting a kitchen floor.

  The man fell in the exact same spot as the first guard. He started twitching. Billy rushed to pull off his pants in order to avoid the urine problem. Two minutes later he was dressed in the guard’s uniform. The length was fine but the clothes hung loose on his frame. Eleven months of weights in the yard had turned him into all sinew and muscle, lean and sleek.

  “Put that guy’s stuff on.” Billy pointed to the other guard.

  Charity stared at the fully clothed dead man. “No way. Guy’s pissed in his pants.”

  “Put on the clothes.” Billy tried to keep his voice even.

  “But—”

  “Get changed. Now.” Billy grabbed the inmate by his arm and felt the thin muscles, weak and slack like those only a man unfortunate enough to be named Charity would have. The smaller man began slowly pulling the clothes off the corpse.

&
nbsp; Billy found the key and a piece of paper with the combination taped on the bottom of a gas can. He wondered how the two items came to be there but decided not to expend too much energy dwelling on such things.

  “You didn’t have to kill them, did you?” Charity threw his prison whites on the floor.

  “Not taking any chances,” Billy said. “Don’t want to stay on the inside. Do you?”

  “No.” The smaller man slipped on the guard’s shirt and shuddered. “Ain’t never going back.”

  Billy chuckled to himself. Prison was a bad place for people like Charity, a cell-block lay preacher following a muddled family tradition of piety and minor criminal activity.

  When they were both dressed, the two men stood in the doorway. Billy looked at the parking lot, a shimmering acre of asphalt less than a half mile away. He ran a finger over the teeth of the key as if it were a talisman. Maybe five minutes to walk across the prison yard. Another thirty seconds to open the first gate with the key and then work the push-button combination lock on the second entrance.

  The next step was tricky.

  A green pickup was supposed to be waiting in the lot, keys on the floorboard. Somewhere in the second row. But how long was that row going to be? And would other guards be in the lot? Odds were in their favor since it wasn’t time for a shift change. But there was still a risk, however small.

  Billy pulled the shirt tight against his shoulders in an effort to make the garment look like it fit. He swelled his chest and tried to project himself as a prison guard. He stepped into the hot sun, Charity by his side. Together they walked toward the parking lot.

  Billy was no stranger to betrayal. Betrayal by one of his closest friends had sent him to prison on a twenty-five-to-life sentence. Betrayal had earned Billy his living before prison. Betrayal was a way of life, a family tradition. Betrayal had also brought Billy a chance to escape.

  A man with skin the color of buttermilk, wearing linen pants and a yellow silk shirt, stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at Billy. He said, “It’s about time.”

  His name was Jesus Rundell, and he was a third-string fix-it man in the Houston branch of one of the border cartels. Billy, Charity, and Jesus were standing in the shade of a withered palm tree behind a boarded-up Esso station on a stretch of road ten miles west of Dilley, Texas, about halfway between Laredo and San Antonio.

  “I went the speed limit,” Billy said. “Didn’t want to get stopped.”

  The plan had worked. They had walked out. Strolled past the towers with the guards, through the gate in the razor wire surrounding the parking lot, and into the waiting pickup. The next car, a four-year-old Crown Victoria, was behind the service station where it was supposed to be, along with new clothes in the backseat.

  “You wouldn’t had no trouble.” Jesus pinched the crease of his pants between a thumb and forefinger. His shaved head gleamed in the sunlight.

  Billy pulled on a pair of blue jeans and a white button-down shirt, both new-from-the-store fresh. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and breathed in the creosote and stale fuel of the old gas station. Nothing was visible anywhere except palm trees and prickly pear cactus and thorny mesquite and the endless South Texas landscape, sandy and flat all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The cloudless sky was the color of hot chrome.

  Billy squinted in the sunlight and stared at the man he had hoped he would never encounter again in this life or any other. Charity was a few feet away, changing also, the scared look still plastered on his face. The man in the linen pants hadn’t started in on him. Yet.

  “I told you the police wouldn’t be a problem.” Jesus grabbed his crotch in what appeared to be an unconscious gesture.

  “What happens next?” Billy tucked in his shirt.

  “I never much liked you.” Jesus was massaging his groin now, deep caresses to his genitals through the thin material of the pants. “Fucking Barringers always thought they were better than everybody else.”

  “Each his own, I suppose.” Billy flexed his fingers and kept his hands loose at his sides.

  Jesus turned around and faced Charity. He spoke to Billy with his back turned. “So this is your cellmate. Pretty little thing, ain’t he?”

  Charity’s face turned white. His teeth chattered even though the temperature was in the triple digits.

  “The plan . . .” Billy said. “Where do we go from here?”

  “We’re all going to hell.” Rundell walked to where Charity stood shivering. “It’s just a matter of when.”

  “I t-t-thought we . . . weregonnagohome.”Charity’s voice quivered.

  Rundell placed one hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “What’s the going rate for a blow job on the inside these days?”

  Billy stepped between the two men. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

  Jesus removed his hand from Charity’s shoulder and caressed his cheek before turning to Billy. “What was the guy’s name? The one that busted you.”

  “Oswald. Like the guy that killed Kennedy. Lee Henry Oswald.” Billy tried not to sound exasperated. This was old news. The bust and all the details had been heavily covered by the media at the time.

  “Bet you spent most of the last year thinking about what it would feel like to wrap your hands around Mr. Oswald’s throat and give it a big old squeeze.”

  Billy shrugged.

  “Wonder what it would feel like to wrap my hands around your throat?”

  Billy didn’t say anything. Charity’s breathing was raspy in the still air.

  After a few moments, Jesus relaxed and smiled. “You owe me, in case you forgot. For getting your ass out of the pokey.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” Billy willed his face to remain impassive. He stretched his arms behind him and walked away from Jesus, looking for something to use as a weapon.

  Jesus went to the trunk of the Ford and removed a one-gallon gasoline container.

  Billy spied an empty quart bottle of Corona.

  “Tell me what I need to know.” Jesus’s voice was low and throaty now, a sure sign he was about to lose control.

  Billy scooped up the beer bottle and turned around.

  Jesus had a pistol in one hand, the container of fuel in the other.

  Billy felt cold. His stomach fluttered. He smelled the gasoline.

  Betrayal. Again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My workload came from one of several distinct groups, a pattern I figured was typical for any moderately successful private investigator in a major metropolitan area.

  Most PIs thought of the first group as their best clients. The business was steady and they paid well and on time. They were lawyers in all their various shades and flavors. What could be more recession-proof than litigation and the ancillary investigations required?

  Next came the people missing something of value. An inheritance. A loved one. A spouse’s sexual attention. The company’s checkbook. Et cetera. This was a diverse group and paid in a diverse manner. Still, work was work.

  Finally, there was the miscellaneous category. These were the people who walked on the dark side of the street. The half-bent cops. The occasional call girl with a dead politician stinking up a hotel room somewhere.

  And my personal favorites: the dimwit wise guys who had screwed, stolen, or ingested something that didn’t exactly belong to them and needed help, off the books and pronto. If they didn’t try to kill you, this group always paid, no questions asked.

  The tires of my Chevy Tahoe crunched in the gravel parking lot as I came to a stop in front of a stone and brick building nestled under two old hackberry trees. I slid the gearshift into park, turned off the ignition, and listened to the motor tick. Two guys who looked like out-of-work musicians or maybe the creative team at a small ad agency sat at a picnic table and watched me as they drank from longneck bottles of beer. I watched back for a moment and then opened the door of my truck, steeling myself against the wave of heat and humidity typical of mid-September in Texas.

 
My concern was that the person who had requested this meeting didn’t fall into any of the usual categories, or so it seemed, based on our initial, cryptic phone conversation. He’d said his name was Lucas Linville and he was a preacher of the Baptist persuasion, and wanting to meet in a drinking establishment. If that wasn’t enough to give a body pause, I didn’t know what was.

  I walked across the gravel and dirt yard in front of Lee Harvey’s, a bar located a few blocks south of the new Dallas police headquarters in a part of town a friend of mine refers to as the corner of Gun and Knife streets. I pushed open the front door and welcomed the dim light as a relief from the afternoon sun. The air-conditioning was set somewhere between the Arctic Circle and Iceland. The place smelled like beer and burgers and stale smoke.

  Originally a house a century or so back, the bar occupied what had once been the living/dining area. It split the room in two, running parallel to the front wall, and had seating on either side. The bedrooms were to the left and had been converted into one big area that now contained a pool table. The kitchen was to the right.

  I picked a stool on the opposite side, facing the front door. Nothing behind me except empty room, no other access points. The guy next to me had a portable oxygen tank slung over his shoulder, a cigarette in one hand and a draft beer in the other. He was dressed in a rumpled tuxedo, no tie. He looked to be somewhere between fifty and ninety years old, give or take.