by George Wier
ARROWMOON
A Bill Travis Mystery
GEORGE WIER
Copyright © 2011 by George Wier
Published by
Flagstone Books
Arrowmoon―A Bill Travis Mystery
1st Kindle Edition
June 2012
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes written in connection with reviews written specifically for a magazine or newspaper.
The Bill Travis Mysteries
(in chronological and publication order):
The Last Call
Capitol Offense
Longnecks & Twisted Hearts
The Devil To Pay
Death On The Pedernales
Slow Falling
Caddo Cold
Arrowmoon
and coming soon:
After The Fire
(Prologue at the end of this book)
DEDICATION
For Sallie. Of course.
PROLOGUE
The gray light of dawn stretches westward over farms and fields and small towns. The night retreats and what was hidden by the night is revealed.
A lone building, a tin-roofed and aging barn with its weathered skeleton showing in broad swatches where the wind has peeled back its metal skin now glows in the growing light.
A single shaft of untainted golden light penetrates horizontally into the interior through one of these swatches where a flap of corrugated tin creaks with each sigh of the wind. The light pierces like a medieval lance between two tall stacks of square-baled hay that stand less than a half a foot apart and gleams off of a cold steel wheel about the size of a man’s hand.
It is the combination wheel for a steel safe. Out of sight. Out of mind. Forgotten.
The hay itself is nearly ancient and rotting. Were you to press your face against it, you would breathe in the sickly-sweet odor of mold and mouse droppings. The rotting hay is evidence of old chores left forever undone and of the sloughed-off dreams of farm and ranch life, the dreamer gone now, taken off for parts unknown.
Were you to push aside the stacks of hay and allow them to topple, before you would stand a four and a half-foot tall black case.
Had you the proper combination you could, with some effort, turn the dial and hear long-unused tumblers click into place. With a strong-armed tug on the cold handle below the combination wheel, the door would swing open on hinges greased before the First World War.
And inside?
Inside: a .45 caliber Navy Colt revolver, its bluing still perfect and its oil still clean, sitting on top of an old tanned leather journal wrapped with a leather draw string.
Were you to reach inside and pick it up, the revolver would feel heavy in your hands and the coldness of the steel would bite at your palm and fingers. It is what some old-timer might call a hog-leg. Were you to thumb the catch that holds the cylinder in place, it would fall outward from its housing and stop. The six perfectly round chambers inside would contain six cartridges; six silvery casings tipped with rounded lead.
But the leather journal is there, still untouched.
Were you to lay aside the heavy revolver and heft the journal it would feel smooth and cool in your hand. The smell of the tannic acid used to cure its cover is already working its way into your nose, calling up images perhaps of old buggy whips or razor strops. The string holding it together is itself a rawhide thong, attached to the journal cover and looped around the old book and back through itself.
The thong loosens with a creak and dangles in the cool and musty morning air inside the barn.
Motes of hay, mold and old animal dander dance in the near horizontal sunbeams around you as you open the book.
Here is the first leaf, cream-colored and yet somehow very new, or rather perfectly preserved. There is spidery writing on it, with the thick loops and blobs of a quilled ink pen and a style of cursive freehand writing now nearly vanished from the Earth.
It is German. Deutsche.
But here, set off by itself near the bottom of the page, are four Arabic numerals. It is a date: 1899.
Thumbing the leaves, you note that the pages contain a narrative of some kind and it encompasses almost the entirety of the book.
But here, what’s this near the end?
Here are photographs. Old tintypes. There are three of these, each sandwiched between its own set of journal pages. The tintypes are sepia-toned, a dismal cream color.
The first photograph is an old chair of some kind, black and solid and sitting on a concrete floor. It does not look at all comfortable. And here about the room in the picture are bars of black shadow across the floor. Here is a window through which can be seen a lone puff of cloud. But now here: these thin traces of black shadow must be wires connected to the chair. And here, manacles for the wrists and ankles, unless the photo is somehow a fakery.
But there are more pictures to see.
This next one: what is this?
From the architecture it is some sort of church, all crumbling stone. Nothing remarkable here. Except... here is a face in a black window on the second floor. There is no glass in the window and only darkness behind and inside, but for the elfin, pale, almost wraith-like face. It is a small face, its features blurred by the exposure. Either a small woman or a child. Possibly the church with the window and the ghostly, almost featureless face would give you a slight shudder.
Now, here, stuck fast between two more pages is another picture.
It is a man, posing. He is looking over your left shoulder and showing you his prominent cheekbones and his piercing eyes and the seriousness of his mouth. He is clean-shaven. His hair must be either silver or gray.
Not a kind man. Not the grandfatherly type.
Near the end here, after the tintypes, there are other entries. A column of numbers; possibly they are ages as measured in years, next to which are a list of names with a column between them in the formal style: last name, first name. Scanning the “Ages” column we see 7, 5, 11, 14, 6, all random.
An inquisitive mind, a solution-oriented person, might begin to fit these things ― these old objects, these images, these blobs of ink and this old safe inside of this old barn ― together into some sort of reality where they all fit. The prospect of it, however, may seem disturbing.
But here, let’s put these things away now. Let’s draw the thong tight around the journal and lay it back where it belongs, place the too-heavy revolver back on top of it and close the black steel door until it clicks firmly into place. Let’s give the combination wheel a good spin, step back and, with some effort, re-stack the hay where it belongs.
The things are all safe now. Out of sight and mind and away from life and living. They are locked away in darkness behind old tumblers for which the combination is no closer to the touch than the combination for the upcoming winning lottery ticket.
Let’s move back from the barn a safe distance and let time and gravity and mold do its busy work while it can.
Let’s, for a moment, forget what’s behind a steel black door hidden behind two moldy stacks of hay in a forgotten shell of a barn; a barn that sits on a piece of land that was long ago fenced off from the remainder of the world.
We look and find that even the lane that leads to the barn has been abandoned and is overgrown with trees and brush. Here and there it has been sliced cleanly in places with large crevasses, gullies-in-the-making, as the land itself has slowly change
d with the passage of time.
But drawing back farther and now up the high hill not far away, we look back. And what is this new thing?
It is a long, narrow strip of something tapering off over the horizon beyond the barn and the forest that hides it. It is a scar of some kind. A scar on the land itself.
We stand steady, squinting into the distance.
There are men there, working men, determined about some task. It is a road-in-the-building. A broad thing, cutting through hills and forests and pasture lands. Yellow caterpillar tractors are pushing at the earth, moving it, smoothing it. It the distance there is the black smoke of diesel engines carrying loads of gravel.
If you were to take the distant ribbon of road where it meets the horizon far away and draw a line downward through the center of it, continue it on through the working men and machines, draw it still closer through the woods and across where it bisects another narrower unpaved road, draw it still further through the fence line and through the woods, you would see that the line intersects perfectly with the now completely dark hole in the side of the barn where not long ago a shaft of light penetrated neatly between two stacks of rotting hay.
But... the day passes on and the sun dips inevitably toward its rendezvous with the horizon. The Half Moon already limned in crimson inches up higher into the growing purplish darkness.
The light retreats and shadows lengthen and join together to become the union of shadow that is night.
And what lies forgotten waits again in the coolness and the damp and the dark.
CHAPTER ONE
The name’s Bill Travis. No relation.
Well, maybe some relation. Who knows? I’ve been too busy to try and track it down and there are few relatives outside of my immediate family that I’m close to enough to ask about it.
The other Bill Travis, defender (and loser) of the Alamo, that’s another guy entirely.
Me? I do well to defend myself from the family dog, who once in awhile will be so over-stressed as to forget that my leg is not a bitch in heat.
When Julie sees it starting, she laughs. I don’t kick him too hard.
Julie? That’s my wife.
I met her in the not-usual way. By way of saying that I didn’t up and ask her out to a movie or something during some kind of conference, nor bump into her at the grocery store. She was a client of mine.
Which brings me to what I do.
I manage money.
That’s what I was doing when I got word that I was needed in East Texas: managing money, or rather making sure the money already invested was making money. Which was why I was two hundred feet in the air looking out over a sheer drop to the street below when Jack Pierce yelled at my back and startled me. I’d been thinking about our dog, Franklin, humping my leg. I was doing anything I could, actually, to try and not think about the height.
Normally, I like heights, but every once in awhile I can feel the side effects.
“Travis!”
I started. Suddenly the distance below me yawned wide. I backed away, groping for ground with my heels.
Jack Pierce was the head contractor for the new Ranchers and Merchants Bank building that was going up downtown. Jack needed about fifty million in start-up money and that’s where my contacts and I came in.
I heard laughter behind me.
Jack was somewhat of a joker. He loved scaring the bejesus out of his men whenever he got the chance. I guess he thought he knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t punch his lights out. What he didn’t know was how close he came to just that.
“Wha’samatter, Bill?” He chuckled.
“Nothin’, Jack.” I turned to him. “Why do you do that?” I asked.
“What?”
“Why do you try to scare people like that?”
“Bill, you’re an okay sort of fellow. Except for one thing.”
“What’s that, Jack?”
“I’ll tell you later,” he said, and grinned. “You got a call in the shack.” He motioned behind him. “It’s your secretary.”
“Penny?”
“Yeah. You should carry a cell phone,” he said, and turned back toward the elevator.
We were seventeen stories up. Fifteen more stories and four months to go. Jack’s company was ahead of schedule. The investors, my investors, would be happy about that, if I didn’t kill the boss before he was finished.
I took the long ride down with Jack on the temporary outside service elevator. There’s no glass, little room, plenty of wind, and the ride isn’t nearly as smooth as your given luxury tower elevator. We didn’t say much. When I got out at the street level in downtown Austin my stomach was no longer in my throat.
The shack was across the yard from the building site and was actually a trailer home that looked to be about twenty years old. Someone sure was cutting corners. Not that I blamed him.
Inside there was an old steel office desk sitting on a stringy and frayed blue shag carpet. I used to see such things in the oil patch back home. That’s East Texas.
Behind the desk was Jack’s daughter, Libby.
“Hi, Bill,” she said, and smiled. All of Jack’s daughters were raving red-haired, lightly freckled, green-eyed beauties. Also, I’d known them since they were little kids, so they didn’t bother with the formal last name and simply called me Bill. Hell, I kind of liked it.
She pushed the phone toward me.
I picked it up and pushed the flashing green button.
“Penny?” I asked.
“Mr. Travis. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“So I gathered. What is it?”
“Lief Prescott called.”
“What about?” I asked. I felt like I needed a drink of something. Preferably something a little stronger than water. I was looking at Libby Pierce. She was sitting in one of those leather executive chairs and wearing a University of Texas T-shirt and very short shorts. She crossed her legs and then smiled sweetly, showing me her even, white teeth. Libby was all of twenty-one years old.
I turned away. It was tough, but I did it.
I looked at Jack, standing there and waiting. He rolled his eyes.
“He says he can’t go any further with his highway.”
“Why the hell not. He’s got eminent domain behind him.”
“Something about a temporary injunction and fourteen days. He said that fourteen days translates somehow into two months and he can’t wait two months for a check from the Department of Transportation.”
“I know he can’t. Wait a minute, Penny.” I pressed the phone into my chest. “Jack, I gotta go.”
“Fine by me,” he said.
“You’ll bring the check by tomorrow, right?”
Jack looked over at his daughter.
I turned toward her. “Tell him to bring me the check tomorrow, Libby. Okay?”
She frowned.
“She’ll remind me,” Jack said. Jack was middle-aged and beginning to show his years. His neck was sun-reddened and seamed and crosshatched with wrinkled skin and his reddish crop of hair was beginning to gray at the temples. Jack was the kind of guy you either liked or loathed. I guess he was alright by me. Most of the time.
“Okay, Penny. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said.
“Fine, sir.”
I hung up.
I stepped out the door and into the too-bright Texas summer sunshine.
I stopped and turned back to Libby.
“Bye, Libby,” I said. “Nice T-shirt.”
She grinned back at me.
*****
My office is on the western fringe of downtown. That’s where they keep all of the professional people who feel they have to have hardwood floors to walk on and park their cars underneath the spreading branches of old oak, pecan and cottonwood trees. People like
me.
It’s just my office now, although the name outside says Bierstone and Travis. Nate Bierstone is now an in-law of sorts. My wife’s uncle. Also, he’s the Lieutenant Governor, which means he’s usually somewhere else banging a gavel, or making political deals behind the scenes and pushing or derailing legislation. The old Democrat loves it, too.
“Hello, Penny,” I said once inside.
Penny was going through some kind of phase. She’d changed her hair and was wearing classier clothes and was all dolled up with makeup. Maybe she had a new boyfriend.
“Mr. Travis, Mr. Prescott called again. You really need to talk to him. He said something about some Big Shot is flying in on a Lear Jet. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was talking about.”
“I’ll handle Lief,” I told her.
At that moment the phone rang again.
“Bierstone and Travis,” Penny answered.
“He’s right here, Mr. Prescott.” She held the phone out toward me and her eyes pleaded for me to take it. I could hear Lief’s voice talking to the air.
I motioned to my office.
Once inside with the door closed I picked up the receiver and hit the flashing button.
Lief Prescott was still talking:
“... And if Travis thinks I’m going to talk with some goddamned lawyer, he’s got another thing―”
“‘Mornin’, Lief,” I cut him off.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve got an entire road crew that can’t road. I’ve got Peterson’s paving people about to catch up to me and there’s this asshole Jockovitch supposed to be flying in―”
“Simmer down, Lief. Just simmer down a minute. What is this all about?”