The Devil's Country [Kindle in Motion]

by Harry Hunsicker

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  “That’s not how this works. I’m the one who asks the questions.”

  He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. Except for the fact that he was Vietnamese, he looked like the crooked sheriff in a bad seventies crime movie, the redneck lawman who’d just busted an innocent coed.

  I waited, hands folded in front of me.

  The sheriff said, “Tell me what you did last night.”

  “You mean after you saw me go to my motel room?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I read for a couple of hours and then went to sleep. By myself. This morning I got up and had breakfast, then headed back to my motel. Which is where you came in.”

  “Did you have contact with anyone during that period?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  He jotted some notes on a yellow pad. Then: “One of my men found the body of a Caucasian female at 3:07 this morning.” He paused. “The corpse was still warm.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “She was in the alley behind the bar where you were yesterday.”

  I stared at a bulletin board on the far wall, at a flyer for the upcoming Fourth of July parade. I wondered where I would be in July. Hopefully not in Piedra Springs.

  The sheriff opened a file. He pulled out a sheet of paper, slid it across the table. “Is this the person you were asking about?”

  The picture had been taken with a camera phone, reproduced on a color office printer.

  The woman named Molly, the one who’d been so fearful of being killed, lay on her back in a puddle of water, unseeing eyes staring at the camera. The water had a reddish tint from the blood. The blood came from the gaping wound across Molly’s throat.

  “Yes. That’s her.”

  I wanted to know about her children but didn’t ask. These were tricky waters, and it was best to let the sheriff guide the conversation for the time being.

  He flicked on a small digital recorder. “Can you account for where you were between two and three this morning?”

  “I was in my room, alone.” I pointed to the recorder. “You should have had that on from the start.”

  During my last two years with the Texas Rangers, I’d been a homicide investigator, called into places like Piedra Springs, small jurisdictions that couldn’t afford a dedicated crimes-against-persons division. Locals always did stuff like forgetting to turn on the recorder or contaminating the crime scene. Or worse, railroading a suspect.

  He left the recorder running, walked across the room. He poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “I’m good, thanks,” I said. “Had enough at breakfast.”

  “You have a history of violence.” He spoke without turning around. “You show up in town, and a few hours later there’s a murder. You can see how this is gonna play out.”

  Anger boiled in my stomach. Memories from nine months before that would never go away.

  “You don’t know anything about my history,” I said. “Don’t act like you do.”

  He stirred sugar into his cup but didn’t say anything.

  “I have a history of being falsely accused,” I said. “They tried to stick me with the murder of the men who killed my wife and children. Tried and failed.”

  “Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one.” His voice was soft.

  I took several deep breaths, tried to control the fury.

  Images of my family flashed in my head, our last Christmas together mixed with three coffins in a row, the result of the evil that had come into our lives.

  “You have children, Sheriff? You know what it’s like to lose a loved one to violence?”

  He returned to the table and sat down, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “My father was a GI. Big ranching family over in the next county.” He took a sip of coffee. “My mother was Vietnamese, worked for the Americans in Saigon. She died in a reeducation camp when I was five.”

  Score a point for Sheriff Quang Marsh in our undeclared game of who’d endured more pain and suffering.

  We were silent for a moment.

  “Any witnesses?” I asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss the case with a person of interest.”

  Translation: no. If there’d been witnesses, he would have led with that.

  “You planning to charge me?”

  I didn’t see how he could. There wasn’t even circumstantial evidence linking me to the death. But this was a small town that hadn’t seen a crime like this in years. A man just off the bus with no ties to anybody would make a perfect suspect. A nice, neat package, albeit one unburdened with bothersome details like facts or evidence.

  He took another sip of coffee but didn’t say anything.

  “What about her children?” I asked.

  A blank stare.

  I described the boy and the girl. “Any sign of them?”

  “She was found alone. Don’t know anything about any kids.” He shuffled some papers, read a few lines. “You said her name was Molly.”

  “That’s what one of the cowboys called her.”

  “One of the people you assaulted?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Do you know her last name?”

  I shook my head. “She was afraid of those two guys, the ones you don’t care for. You should look at them and their friends.”

  “You telling me how to do my job?”

  I shrugged. “Just offering a suggestion.”

  A moment passed. Then he chuckled. “You are a piece of work. That’s for sure.”

  “Did you check her prints?”

  He nodded. “Nothing came up.”

  That was an odd turn of events. Just about everyone’s prints are on file somewhere.

  The FBI’s database had records for more than 120 million people, 40 million of them with no criminal history. In addition, the State of Texas captured the thumbprints of anyone who had ever applied for a driver’s license or an ID card.

  “So she’s not from Texas,” I said. “And she’s never been arrested. Maybe when you run her picture on the local news, you’ll get a hit.”

  “I’m gonna need the blade you keep in your waistband.” He pointed to my right hip.

  “You are planning to contact the media, right?” I removed my Spyderco, slid it across the table. “That’s standard procedure in a Jane Doe case.”

  He used a pencil to maneuver the knife into an evidence bag. Then he sealed the bag and marked it with his initials.

  “Maybe you could just put her description in the local paper,” I said.

  “The Piedra Springs Gazette shut down ten years ago.”

  “How about the papers in Midland or Odessa?”

  “That’s the big city. You know what an ad up there costs?”

  I didn’t say anything. The price of advertising shouldn’t be part of the equation. The murder of an unidentified woman was a news story, free coverage. His subtext was clear. He didn’t particularly care to find out who the woman was.

  He slid the evidence bag into the file and then looked at the door leading to the hallway like he was making sure it was closed. He leaned across the table.

  “There’s still time to catch the bus to Pecos.”

  I didn’t say anything, running over in my mind the possibilities of a trap. I thought about the guys in the hospital in Odessa, the ones who were after Molly. Whoever they represented seemed like the most logical suspects. Unfortunately, no one had seen them with Molly but me.

  “For your own good,” he said. “You need to be on that bus.”

  I wondered about his sudden concer
n for my well-being.

  What’s the worst that could happen? He’d smear the victim’s blood on my knife? Then put out a statewide BOLO on me? That was pretty bad, but somehow it didn’t seem like Sheriff Quang Marsh’s way of doing things.

  I shook my head. “I’m not leaving until I find out what happened to the children.”

  He nodded slowly, like that was the answer he’d been expecting. “Then I bet we’ll meet again.”

  “Who was Molly?”

  He stood. Stuck the file that contained my knife under his arm.

  “The guys in the parking lot,” I said. “What do they have on you?”

  He left the room, and I was alone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I poured a cup of coffee and then sat back down in the empty conference room to formulate a plan.

  My goal was simple—find the two children who had been with Molly. Make sure they were safe. They’d been as scared as she, the boy wounded.

  Molly had been found by herself, throat slit. That meant one of three things.

  One, her kids were killed somewhere else.

  Two, the killer had taken them.

  Three, they’d escaped.

  My best educated guess was either two or three.

  If the killer had wanted to murder them, he would have done so in the alley, along with the mother. For some reason, the person responsible struck me as a pro, better than the two guys I’d taken out. A pro wouldn’t want to leave behind two crime scenes, double the chances of a forensics land mine exploding in his face.

  So the odds were good that the children were still alive. Which meant someone had to find them, i.e., me.

  This was an investigation, my wheelhouse. I didn’t have a badge, but that almost seemed like a plus in this instance. Sometimes rules got in the way.

  I made a mental list—interview potential witnesses, check out the crime scene, do a door-to-door. The basics of any case. Run down leads. Build a narrative.

  A deputy entered the room, a heavyset guy in his twenties with red hair and a thick mustache.

  “You need to vámonos,” he said. “This ain’t no Applebee’s. You can’t just sit here all day.”

  “How about I finish my coffee?”

  The deputy looked at the cup in my hand—marked Piedra Springs Sheriff’s Department—and the coffee urn on the far wall.

  “Where’d you get that?” he said.

  “There’s still half a pot. Don’t worry.”

  He squinted at me for a moment. Then: “We’re fixing to have a meeting about the murder.” He pointed to the door. “You need to git.”

  “Did you know the victim?” I remained sitting. “Ever see her around town?”

  He frowned, obviously unsure of how to act with someone who looked like a cop and might or might not be a suspect. After a moment, he shook his head.

  “What about her children?” I described the boy and the girl.

  “Nobody knows anything about any children.” He looked again at the coffee urn. “She was a damn drifter. We’re probably never even gonna find out her name.”

  The official version was being constructed, piece by piece.

  Molly was going to be described as a homeless person, a vagrant.

  That meant nobody would notice if she went missing, so why expend too much energy trying to find out who she really was? As for her kids, well, there was only one person who claimed to have seen them, a guy from out of town whom no one knew, technically homeless, too.

  If he caught the next bus, and the official record didn’t mention the presence of the children, then pretty soon it would be like they didn’t even exist.

  Noise in the hallway, feet shuffling, people talking. Officers gathering for their big meeting about the murder of Jane Doe.

  I drank the last of my coffee. “Has Sheriff Marsh called the Rangers yet?”

  Right about now, Marsh should be on the phone with the Texas Rangers, putting in a request for help with the murder, talking to the major in charge of Company E in El Paso. The major would begin the process, sending a message to the nearest substation, an office in Midland.

  Midland would send an investigator, someone like me, a seasoned law enforcement officer who would look at everything with fresh eyes but without the prejudices of the locals.

  The only prejudices he would have would be toward the solitary person of interest, a euphemism for suspect, a former Texas Ranger who’d brought shame upon the division when he’d been accused of murdering three police officers.

  “Why would we get them involved?” the deputy said.

  “Oh, I dunno . . . maybe to find out who killed the woman?”

  The deputy crossed his arms. “You finished with your coffee yet?”

  It was a little before nine in the morning. Outside the courthouse, the air was still and cool, the sun not yet hitting town with its full intensity.

  I headed east toward Jimmy and Dale’s and the parking lot where I’d last seen the woman named Molly. There was a fair amount of traffic on Main Street, a half dozen pickups, double that of sedans. All of them American made. Rush hour.

  That’s what made the Bentley stand out, an expensive import in a pond of domestic vehicles. The automobile was the color of onyx, polished to a high gleam. It drove sedately down the street and then parked in front of the bank.

  I slowed, stopping in front of the Dollar General Store across the street. After a few moments, when no one got out of the Bentley, I continued on.

  A few hundred feet later, in front of a vacant store that had at one time been the local pharmacy, I stopped again.

  A Toyota Prius, another out-of-place vehicle, was parked in front of the closed drugstore. The automobile had a small bar-code tag on the rear window, indicating it was a rental.

  The driver’s door opened and a woman exited.

  She was in her midthirties, lean like a runner. She wore expensive-looking jeans that had been faded and ripped at the factory, a beige sport coat over a white T-shirt, and lime-green Chuck Taylor shoes.

  An astute observer, such as a former investigator like myself, might surmise that she was from out of town.

  “Hey. How you doing?” She spoke without smiling. Like small talk didn’t come easily.

  I stared at her, trying to figure out what a woman in designer jeans and hipster shoes was doing in Piedra Springs.

  She stared back, unblinking. Her eyes had a way of looking at you like they were peering deep inside your head, a light shining in the dark corners you’d rather not have exposed.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “How are you?”

  She pulled a small backpack from the passenger seat, slung it over her shoulder. “You know where the local appraisal district office is?” Her accent indicated she’d grown up a long way from Texas, somewhere in the northeast.

  “No, sorry. I’m new in town.”

  In Texas, every piece of real estate was recorded and tracked by the county appraisal district for tax purposes. Owner’s name, property location, value, that sort of thing. The appraisal district office seemed like a perfectly normal place for a woman from the East Coast to be asking about. She was probably researching a cattle ranch to buy.

  Out-of-state Rancher Lady in her green Chuck Taylors and I stared at each other for a few moments.

  “Where do you eat around here?” she said. “You been in town long enough to know that?”

  “Earl’s. Try the enchiladas.” I headed toward the bar where I’d last seen Molly and her children.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Before I got to the bar, I stopped at the feed store and bought a new knife.

  They had a good selection, kept in a glass counter
between GPS tracking devices for livestock and the bovine antibiotics.

  Gerbers and Bucks. Bone-handled Case XXs for the traditionalist. A handful of Spydercos and Benchmades.

  I selected a Spyderco Endura with a 2.75-inch blade, half-serrated, half-plain-edged, and paid the elderly man behind the counter in cash.

  “Heard you had some excitement last night.” I stuck the knife in my waistband.

  “Will there be anything else?” The old man wore overalls and a perpetual scowl.

  “In the alley,” I said. “Police must have been everywhere.”

  No response, just a blank stare.

  I wanted to get the old man talking, to ask if he’d seen anything amiss in the area behind his store. I decided to try another avenue.

  “Nice place you’ve got here.” I smiled, tried to look nonthreatening.

  The store was small but well stocked. On one side of the room were sacks of cattle feed next to big green blocks of salt and plastic barrels of deworming solution. The other side was devoted to items that might be needed by a working ranch or a busy dominatrix. Ropes and riding crops. Bridles and saddles. Rolls of barbed wire.

  His scowl deepened, lips like two worms mashed together. “If there’s not anything else,” he said, “I’ve got inventory to tend to.”

  “Do you know a woman named Molly?” I described the victim and her two children.

  Dead silence.

  “She was killed behind your store last night.”

  More silence. Then: “You got any idea how old I am?”

  I shook my head.

  “Seventy-eight this last March.”

  I didn’t reply. No sense rushing the man. I figured if you’re pushing the big eight-oh, you’ve earned the right to take your time getting to the point.

  “Best lesson I’ve learned in all that time is to mind my own business.”