The Devil's Country [Kindle in Motion]

by Harry Hunsicker

  “I don’t.”

  Hannah was silent for a moment. Then: “They watched me undress.”

  I nodded but didn’t speak.

  The sense of violation was real; I felt it, too. Even though Piedra Springs was dying, this was a pleasant little town. Silas and Felix, the murdered woman named Molly, the starving apostates—none of these people meshed with what this place should be.

  “You go first.” I sat in an easy chair by the front door.

  Hannah walked to the bathroom. Halfway there, she stopped and turned around. “Everything that happened today . . . thanks for looking out for me.”

  I shrugged, not sure how to respond. I hadn’t had many real conversations lately.

  “I’m not used to people doing that.”

  “A little kindness keeps everybody on an even keel,” I said.

  The phrase was one my father used to say. I didn’t tell her that.

  She nodded and smiled, a shy expression on her face. Then she disappeared into the bathroom. Ten minutes later, she came out, damp from the shower, wearing fresh clothes, a pair of jeans and a peach-colored blouse.

  Ten minutes after that, I emerged from the bathroom, too, wearing a clean T-shirt and Levi’s, my hair wet but combed.

  Hannah stood by the window, peering through the blinds. She turned and looked at me.

  “The guys in the gray pickup,” she said. “They’re here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I peeked between the blinds of the room we’d commandeered.

  An extended-cab gray Chevrolet pickup was parked by the unit where I was registered.

  Mr. Goatee, the man who killed Chigger, stood by the front of the truck, his partner next to him. They wore the same hats, the Stetsons with the Tom Mix creases.

  The guy with the goatee walked to the back of the truck. He reached into the bed and pulled out a black tube about six inches in diameter and three feet long. The tube had handles at the midpoint and at one end. By the way he hefted it, you could tell the tube weighed a lot.

  “What is that?” Hannah asked.

  “A battering ram.”

  The other guy removed a short-barreled shotgun from the cab of the truck. He jacked a round into the chamber and nodded to his partner.

  Mr. Goatee approached my room from the side. Because of the angle, I couldn’t see what happened next. But I could hear it.

  WHUMP.

  The battering ram struck the door, probably just above the lock.

  Footsteps, the scrape of shoe leather on concrete as the two men moved along the sidewalk outside the room.

  Silence as they entered.

  A few seconds later, they reappeared. They stood in the parking lot for a moment and talked. Then they repeated their break-in routine on Hannah’s door.

  While they were in her room, I made sure all the lights in the suite were off. I pointed to a spot in the corner, told Hannah to crouch there.

  She complied.

  I peered out the window.

  The two men were finished with Hannah’s room. They stood by their pickup and looked in either direction, talking with each other.

  After a few minutes, they got in the pickup. The vehicle backed out of the spot by my room, turned, headed toward Main Street. It stopped by our borrowed Crown Victoria, idling there for a few seconds. Then it left.

  I let the blinds drop. “They’re gone.”

  Hannah didn’t move.

  I pulled her up.

  She hugged herself like the room was cold, teeth chattering.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “We’re safe.”

  She stared at my eyes but didn’t speak.

  “Take deep breaths.” I held her hand. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  She drew in a big lungful of air, let it out slowly.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Before they come back.”

  For whatever reason, most little towns in Texas have a Chinese restaurant, usually run by first- or second-generation Chinese Americans.

  Maybe this was because small towns seemed like good locations for immigrants to establish their beachhead on the American dream. Maybe it was because there were a lot of Chinese on the run from something back home, and they figured dinky little towns were good places to hide out. Maybe they were laundering money for the triads or smuggling rhinoceros horns.

  Who’s to say?

  The Chinese restaurant in Piedra Springs was named Mr. Wong’s.

  It was located in an old Pizza Hut building on the outskirts of town, between a used-car lot that was out of business and a convenience store called Smitty’s QuickPak. The latter had an illuminated marquee sign in front that read play the lotto here! and wic cards accepted!

  Hannah parked between a Cadillac and a Ford pickup. The Ford was hitched to a trailer full of welding equipment. The lot was about a third full, maybe a dozen vehicles, including a three-quarter-ton black Suburban parked across from us, nose out.

  I recognized the Suburban, realized our timing had worked.

  If you’ve been part of an organization long enough—one as small as the Texas Rangers, anyway—you’ll pick up on your colleagues’ quirks and idiosyncrasies.

  Such as the Ranger in South Texas who was a vegetarian. Or the guy in the Panhandle who couldn’t go more than a week without finding a poker game.

  Or the fact that Aloysius Throckmorton always ate Chinese food on his first night in any town.

  Hannah and I stepped inside Mr. Wong’s. Beads hung from the ceiling and formed an entryway, directing traffic to a hostess stand where an Asian woman in her forties stood.

  “We’re meeting somebody.” I breezed past her before she could speak. Hannah followed.

  The interior was dimly lit, decorated with silk lanterns, purple holiday lights, and an acrylic painting of Bruce Lee on one wall.

  Throckmorton was in a booth in the corner, sitting next to a Latina woman in her forties with bleached blonde hair and lipstick as red as rubies.

  Another quirk about my former colleague—despite a wife back home in Mesquite, Texas, he had a thing for Mexican women, the trashier the better.

  He looked up as I approached. His jaw dropped open.

  I directed Hannah to the opposite side of the booth. I slid in after her.

  “What the shit are you doing here?” Throckmorton said.

  “May we join you?” I asked.

  “No. You most certainly may not.” He looked at Hannah. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a reporter.” With her phone, she took a picture of him and the woman. “That just went to my Twitter feed.”

  He frowned. “Your twit-what?”

  “No peectures.” The Latina shook her head and looked at Throckmorton. “Si mi marido me ve, estoy en un gran problema.” If my husband sees that, I’ll be in big trouble.

  He elbowed the woman, pointed to the door. “Wait in the car . . . Esperar en el coche.”

  She jabbered at him in Spanish and gestured to her plate of General Tso’s chicken.

  Throckmorton sighed and indicated a table across the room. The woman grumbled but picked up her food and moved.

  A waiter came over and asked if everything was OK. Before Throckmorton could speak, I told him that Hannah and I would like two orders of beef with snow peas, egg rolls to start, hold the MSG.

  When the waiter left, Throckmorton glared at me. “I’m gonna kick your ass so hard, you’ll be shitting out of your mouth for a month.”

  “The Sky of Zion,” I said. “They have a compound south of town. What do you know about them?”

  He didn’t reply, a quizzical expression
on his face.

  “They’re a religious cult,” I said. “And I think they’re involved with the two murders.”

  Throckmorton was a bully and an asshole, but he was also a good cop, the three characteristics not always mutually exclusive. He tried to enforce the law to the best of his abilities, working to see that justice was done, just so long as that didn’t interfere with a plate of good Chinese food and getting a little strange on the side.

  “You’re the suspect in those killings.” He took a sip of iced tea. “And you lay the blame on a God Squad that keeps to themselves and doesn’t bother anybody?”

  “How do you know they keep to themselves and don’t bother anybody?” I asked.

  His lips tightened.

  After a moment, he said, “It’s awful convenient, is all I mean.”

  “Does that mean you know who they are?” Hannah asked.

  “I don’t talk to reporters.” Throckmorton squinted at me. “What happened to your head?”

  “I fell down.”

  “This town ain’t been good for you, has it?” he said. “You shoulda stayed on the bus. The road’s only your friend so long as you keep moving.”

  Wisdom comes from the strangest of places, like a philandering Texas Ranger in a Chinese restaurant a hundred miles past the exit for the middle of nowhere. Bubba Confucius.

  “I think the woman who was killed last night was part of the Sky of Zion,” I said. “I think she was trying to get away.”

  “So?”

  “So investigate,” Hannah said.

  Throckmorton shot her a look. “Funny how you keep talking. It’s almost like you think I’m listening.”

  “Quit being an asshat,” I said. “It’s worth a trip out to the compound, and you know it.”

  Throckmorton held up three fingers and folded them down, one by one. “Número uno, the dead woman’s got no ID. Two, her prints aren’t on file anywhere. And three, there’re no witnesses or real suspects, as much as I’d like to nail the suspect part on you.”

  “What about Chigger, then?” I said.

  “And the imaginary men in the gray truck?” He arched an eyebrow.

  “They’re not imaginary.” Hannah related what had happened at the motel.

  Throckmorton didn’t interrupt. When she was finished, he drummed his fingers on the table and stared at the painting of Bruce Lee.

  “There’s more.” I told him about the neighborhood of apostates, gave him a brief rundown of my encounters with Silas McPherson and his stubby friend, Felix. I held off on the part at the high school for the moment.

  When I was finished, I said, “The woman who died, she was dressed like a member of that organization.”

  He turned away from Bruce Lee. “So this guy in the Bentley, he’s looking for the children, too?”

  Hannah nodded. “Isn’t that worth a little shoe leather on your part?”

  Throckmorton ignored her and focused his attention on me.

  “The woman in the alley is one of those cases that ain’t never gonna be solved.” He paused. “You hear what I’m saying?”

  I didn’t reply. There were certain situations where it just didn’t make sense to keep pouring good resources after bad. Example: when the crime scene included an unidentified murder victim and no leads.

  “But I’m giving you new information,” I said. “Silas and the Sky of Zion. This is something you can use, an angle to pursue.”

  He was silent, and I wondered how new my information really was.

  “You looked around this town?” he asked. “Seen how bad things are?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “These Zion people, they seem to have a lot of money and property,” he said. “Hard to get much traction against somebody who owns half the town.”

  Hannah opened her backpack, pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Actually, it’s not quite half yet, at least according to the appraisal district.”

  “What are you talking about?” Throckmorton said.

  “The amount of the town they own.” She spread out the papers.

  “I was speaking metaphorically,” he said.

  “I wasn’t.” She pointed to the papers.

  Throckmorton and I scanned the documents, ownership records sorted by location. Home after home after home, all with the same owner—Piedra Springs Housing Corporation, LLC, mailing address a street in Midland. Also, several blocks of downtown, including the bar where I’d stopped the night before, were owned by the same entity.

  “I stopped counting at three hundred,” she said. “That’s roughly a third of the homes in the city.”

  “Did you look up the address in Midland?” I asked. “This housing corporation?”

  She nodded, gave me her phone.

  The browser was open to the Midland County Appraisal District’s website, the search results for the address of the Piedra Springs Housing Corporation.

  The owner was ZL Enterprises, the same entity associated with the phone number on Silas McPherson’s business card. That meant a third of the town appeared to be connected to the enigmatic man in the Bentley, if not owned outright.

  Throckmorton tapped the papers. “Are all these houses occupied?”

  Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “If they are,” Throckmorton said, “then that’s a pretty big block of voters.”

  No wonder Sheriff Marsh was running scared. He was on the verge of losing his job unless he played ball with the dominant power in the county.

  We were all silent for a moment. The waiter brought our egg rolls. I took a bite and then pushed away the plate. I was famished, but the food instantly soured my stomach.

  “I saw the boy. His name is Caleb.” I related briefly what had happened at the abandoned high school. “His sister’s name is Mary.”

  Throckmorton stared at me, a vaguely sad look in his eyes. I could only imagine what he was thinking—the guy who’d lost his kids was now seeing imaginary children.

  An image of Sheriff Quang Marsh in the front window of his house flashed in my mind. Again I wondered if I was losing touch with reality. I touched the bump on my head. The pain was real.

  “I saw the boy, too,” Hannah said. “He was running from Felix.”

  “That’s the fellow who got stabbed by a spear?” Throckmorton asked. “But somehow managed to get away?”

  Neither Hannah nor I spoke.

  Throckmorton pulled out his phone and typed a text, grumbling as he did so. “Fine. I’ll send a trooper over to the high school.”

  I felt a moment of satisfaction. He was interested enough to at least make the most cursory of efforts to follow the leads we had presented him.

  “I want you to run a name for me,” I said.

  “Let me guess. Silas McPherson. The guy in the Bentley.”

  I nodded. Ate another bite of my egg roll. It tasted like sawdust.

  “You’re bound and determined to swat this hornet’s nest, aren’t you?” Throckmorton said.

  I shrugged.

  He sighed. “What else do you have on this guy?”

  I relayed a description and an estimate of Silas’s age.

  He tapped out a message.

  The waiter brought our food as the Latina wandered back to the table, finished with her meal. Throckmorton told her to go wait in his Suburban.

  I forced myself to eat, needing the fuel. Hannah and I were halfway finished with our food when Throckmorton’s phone dinged.

  “Huh.” He read the screen, a thoughtful expression on his face.

  I looked up. “Huh, what?”

  “Silas McPherson is clean. In fact, he’s so clean, he doesn’t
even exist.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-THREE

  Throckmorton stuck me with the tab.

  I paid, put down a good tip. Then Hannah and I left the restaurant.

  The sky was deep into dusk, a pale-yellow horizon streaked with clouds the color of eggplant. The air smelled like dust and hot asphalt mixed with hay and livestock, the latter from a cattle trailer parked near the exit of the parking lot.

  I stared at the clouds and wondered what the divine message was for this evening. Overcast with a chance of brimstone? Across the parking lot, Throckmorton stood by his Suburban, silhouetted against the western sky, a mythic figure in a cowboy hat and khaki shirt.

  A mythic figure who was talking to himself.

  After a moment, I realized he was using an earpiece hooked up to his phone. He ended the call and motioned me over.

  Hannah and I approached.

  “What do you know about Chigger?” he asked.

  “Not much,” I said. “Other than he was a skinhead loser.”

  “Apparently he had a flag in his jacket. Made the feds all hot and bothered when they heard he got popped.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He was some kinda tech guy. Did contract work for a crew on the East Coast.”

  “A Russian crew?” Hannah said.

  Throckmorton stared at her for a moment and then nodded. “He screwed ’em over somehow, which is a bad thing to do if you want to keep on breathing.”

  “The guy who shot Chigger wasn’t Russian,” I said. “He was just at our motel, knocking in doors. He’s part of the same group that was after the woman.”

  “The guys in the hats?”

  I nodded.

  “And they’re part of this Sky of Zion thing? You’re sure?”

  I nodded again.

  He rubbed his eyes, tired-looking all of a sudden. “You know what religion makes up the largest percentage of FBI agents?”

  I looked at Hannah. She shook her head.