Bone Dry (Blanco County Mysteries)

by Ben Rehder

  Vinnie had swum to shore in the chilly water, hopped in his car, then crushed the LoJack and scattered it along the roadside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “It’s your own fault, ya know. You’re always pissing people off with your smart mouth. Why ya have to piss people off like that?”

  Angela had been going on like that for about ten minutes. Or maybe it just seemed that way—who the hell knew? Sal was so stoned on painkillers, he really didn’t give a fuck about Angela, the doctors, the hospital, or his damn broken leg. The only thing he really felt—the one emotion that was eating away at the tattered edge of his slippery consciousness—was rage. That fucking tree-hugger. Smart-ass little bastard thought he was gonna shut Sal Mameli down? That’d be the day. Son of a bitch was lucky Sal hadn’t gotten a good hold of him. Goddamn cop—what was he, a game warden or some shit?—had stuck his nose in the middle of it.

  Where the hell did that little tree-hugging jamook come from, anyway?—and that blonde broad, the one stirring up all the trouble. What a pain in the ass those two were. How’s a man supposed to go about his business with people like that breaking your balls all the time?

  “You listening to me?” Angela whined. “Can you even hear me, Sal? Sal?” She leaned over his hospital bed to peer into his half-open eyes.

  Well, if they wanted to play hardball, then Sal’d show ’em the heat, the ninety-mile-per-hour fastball right under their chins. Nobody fucks with Roberto Ragusa... oh, wait, that’s not the right name. Sal something. Boy, these drugs really sneak up on ya. Sal Mameli, that’s it. Nobody fucks with Sal Mameli and gets away with it. That old rancher—Emmett something—he had tried, and look where it got him.

  “Are you asleep? Because if you’re asleep, I’m going home.”

  Christ, why won’t she shut the hell up? Let a guy have a little peace and quiet for once. Sal had important things to figure out and he had to concentrate. What had he been thinking about? Yeah, the old man. Sal had taken care of that little problem, him and Vinnie. Vinnie was a good boy. Learning quick. It was a good thing, too, because Vinnie would have to take care of this situation, too.

  “Okay, I’m going home.” Angela stood and grabbed her purse off the floor. In a surprisingly gentle voice, she said, “You get some rest now, Sal. The doctors’ll take good care of ya.” She leaned and gave Sal a light kiss on the forehead, then left the room.

  Yeah, Vinnie was turning into quite a soldier. Sal would have a long talk with him tomorrow, when he had a clearer head. Vinnie could handle it.

  Marlin must have dozed off for a few minutes, and now something was nagging at him, telling him to wake up. He lifted his heavy eyelids and looked around in a daze, wondering why his bedroom looked so much like his living room. The phone rang again, and he pulled himself out of the chair in front of the television. He noticed that KHIL was still broadcasting live from the courthouse. Apparently, the standoff was ongoing, and Marlin figured it might be Bobby Garza calling.

  “This is Marlin.”

  It wasn’t the sheriff. It was a man who lived off Sandy Road, a photographer who had bought a couple hundred acres west of Johnson City a few years ago. According to the man, there had been half a dozen shots in the last half hour on the place east of his. He suspected poachers and wanted Marlin to check it out. Marlin glanced at his watch. Two-seventeen A.M. He told the caller he was on his way.

  Normally, Marlin wasn’t thrilled with middle-of-the-night phone calls. Half the time, there was a reasonable explanation for the gunfire: someone shooting raccoons or scaring a fox away from their chickens. The rest of the time, the shooters were gone before Marlin arrived.

  But tonight, Marlin was kind of glad the call had come in. This was just a plain old “shots fired” call, no dead bodies lying in cedar thickets, no suspected murderers to negotiate with. Now he could forget about the Jack Corey mess and get back to business as usual.

  Ten minutes later, he was pulling through an open gate off Sandy Road. He quickly came to a large pasture, where he saw a truck with its tailgate down, three men standing behind it. Marlin gave the truck a quick blast with his spotlight, letting the hunters know who he was, then bounced across the pasture toward the truck.

  As he parked, he aimed his headlights at the three men: all locals, men he recognized, each with a beer in hand.

  Marlin climbed out and said, “’Evenin’, Joe.”

  The owner of the property was Joe Biggs—a tall, slender man with black hair, an insurance agent in Johnson City. Joe said, “Hey, John. Soon as I saw your truck, I figured somebody musta called in.”

  “One of your neighbors.”

  Joe grimaced. “Sorry about that. We woulda called and let you know we were huntin’, but it was kinda late and it was a spur-of-the-moment kind of deal.”

  Marlin played his flashlight across the truck bed. Three dead hogs lay inside. Due to their devastating impact on the environment, feral hogs could be legally hunted at night in Texas, but hunters were encouraged to contact the game warden first and make their intentions known.

  “No big deal. Looks like you had some luck.”

  “Hell yeah. I been seeing about a dozen every night. Figured it was time to thin ’em out a little. They been runnin’ all the deer away from my feeders.”

  The men chatted for a few minutes about the current deer season. One of the men had taken a ten-point on opening day.

  “All right, then,” Marlin said. “Guess you’re done for the night? I’m sure your neighbors could use a break.”

  Joe gave an embarrassed smile. “Yeah, sorry ’bout that. Didn’t think the shots’d bother ’em. We’re all done.”

  Marlin waved and turned to leave.

  “Hey,” Joe called out. “Heard you were the big hero tonight.”

  Marlin was always amazed at how fast news traveled through the county. “I wouldn’t say ‘hero’ is the right word,” Marlin replied.

  “Well, hell, you walked right in there with Corey holding a gun. Pretty damn brave, if you ask me. So what do you think, John? Think Corey done it? Killed Bert?”

  “Can’t really talk about that, Joe.” Marlin said, opening the door to his cruiser. “He’ll get his day in court”

  “Well, tell me this, then: Have the deputies figured out where Bert got all that cash?”

  Marlin paused for a moment, then closed his truck door and walked back over to Joe.

  “What cash are you talking about?”

  Marlin and Joe were in the cab of the cruiser now, out of earshot of the other two hunters.

  Joe’s eyes were wide. “I figured y’all knew all about that. You hadn’t heard?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Joe rubbed his chin. “Well, I didn’t know Bert real well, but he was a friend of Virgil Talkington’s, and Virgil is a friend of mine. Virgil has this poker game every Friday night, and Bert would sometimes show up over there. Anyway, he was always a penny-ante kind of guy. Never brought much money with him, usually just a big jar of change, and he’d fold every hand unless he knew for sure he had a winner. Man, I’ve seen him throw away three of kind, if you can believe it. To hear Virgil tell it, Bert didn’t have much money to spare. Barely made his mortgage.”

  “When did he first join the game?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Coupla years ago. And he didn’t play every time, maybe once every month or two. But then, maybe a year ago, he started showing up with a lot more cash. He’d pull out this big roll of bills and flash it all around, and man, would that get our attention! See, he wasn’t that good of a player and, well...”

  Marlin smiled. “Y’all would try to separate him from his money.”

  “Well, yeah. He seemed to have plenty of it all of a sudden. Brought expensive cigars for everybody, too. Lots of liquor.”

  This didn’t sound like much to Marlin. Maybe Bert got a raise, or an inheritance, or won a few bucks on scratch-off lottery cards. Could be anything.

  “But then here’
s the other thing,” Joe continued. “One day I was over at Kyle’s place”—Kyle Parker owned a small car lot next to Joe’s office—“and Bert comes in to pick up that Explorer he’s been driving for the last eight or ten months. So I’m sitting there eating lunch, shootin’ the shit with Kyle, while Bert fills out the paperwork. Finally, Bert gets done with the forms, Kyle totals up the price on the car, and—get this—Bert hands it all over in cash. Kyle didn’t even bat an eye, like they had already talked about it or something. Sure, that Explorer was three or four years old, but the price was still something like twelve grand. I mean, shee-yit. You know anybody who carries around that kind of cash?”

  Marlin agreed that he didn’t—but, thinking it through, he wasn’t sure it meant anything. Some people have strange saving habits, tucking cash away in a Mason jar or, literally, under the mattress. He’d heard about one little old lady in Blanco who lived as if she were one step above the poorhouse. Then the lady died and the heirs discovered she had been a millionaire, hiding huge sums of cash in coffee cans in her attic.

  “Did Bert ever say anything about the money—like where he got it? I mean, you’re all sitting around, drinking a few cold ones, somebody’s bound to ask, right?”

  Joe nodded his head vigorously. “Damn right, we asked, but he was all tight-lipped about it. One time, he said he made it on one of those dot-com companies, but he wouldn’t never name which one. None of us believed him. Shoot, Bert didn’t know nothing about no stock that wasn’t runnin’ around on four legs.”

  Marlin sat in silence for moment, pondering this new information. Joe tipped his beer can and sucked out the last few drops. “Think that’ll help you any?” he asked.

  Marlin had no idea. “I don’t know, Joe. I really don’t know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Marlin headed back to Johnson City, his dashboard clock telling him it was nearly four A.M. Driving through the cool night air, his window down, Marlin contemplated what Joe Biggs had told him.

  Okay, so Bert Gammel had been throwing a lot of money around. Big deal. Didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the murder. And if it did, it didn’t rule out Jack Corey. Hell, it might implicate him even more. Corey was already at odds with Gammel. The cash could have pushed him over the edge. On the other hand, if Corey had been after the money, why would he ambush Gammel out at the deer lease? Didn’t make a lot of sense. In fact, why even murder him? It seemed only natural that Corey would have tried breaking into Gammel’s house to find the cash.

  Another strange thing: Wylie hadn’t said anything about Gammel’s surplus of cash—or if he had, word hadn’t reached Marlin. The likely answer was that Wylie had been so focused on investigating Corey, he hadn’t done much digging into Gammel’s affairs. Wylie had seemed convinced of Corey’s guilt from the beginning, so he probably hadn’t questioned enough people in Gammel’s circles. The spotlight had been on Corey right from the beginning—because of Lester Higgs’s account of the troubles between Corey and Gammel. Something like that could easily send an overzealous detective off in the wrong direction.

  The long and short of it: Marlin wanted to talk to Garza about Joe’s story. Maybe Garza and the deputies already knew about the cash and had followed that trail to a logical conclusion. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. Marlin was wide-awake now, so he figured he might as well swing by the sheriff’s office and see what was going on. Maybe Corey had come to his senses by now. Or he could have fallen asleep, allowing Wylie to sneak out. This thing couldn’t go on forever.

  Marlin tuned his stereo to an all-news AM station out of Austin.

  “... at a press conference earlier this evening outside the sheriff’s office. Blanco County sheriff Bobby Garza cautioned local citizens not to expect a quick resolution to the standoff.”

  Marlin recognized Garza’s voice:

  “We’re doing everything we can to ensure the safety of the officer involved, but the truth is, this could take some time. It’s a delicate situation and we intend to handle it with the greatest of care.”

  The reporter continued:

  “At this point, the man involved in the standoff has been identified as Jack Albert Corey, a resident of Johnson City arrested yesterday evening for assaulting the very officer now held hostage. Stay tuned to KNOW for further updates.”

  Marlin found Sheriff Bobby Garza sitting in his patrol car, eyes closed, a cup of steaming coffee perched on the dashboard.

  Marlin looked through the passenger-side window. “Wake up, cowboy.”

  Garza swiveled his head Marlin’s way. “Wake up, my ass. I’ve got a headache that would floor a mule.”

  “And eyes like two pissholes in a snowbank.” Marlin said. “You know, I hear four out of five doctors recommend Excedrin for hostage situations.” He climbed inside and nodded toward the squat building forty yards away. “What’s the latest?”

  Garza shook his head and took a sip of coffee. “Corey told Darrell to get the hell out about an hour ago.” Darrell Bridges was the dispatcher who had remained inside the sheriff’s office. “That was fine with me,” Garza said, “because by then I had a couple of the phone guys tapping into the lines from outside. So now we can take calls without interrupting nine-one-one service. And we don’t really need the radio at this point. We can still talk car to car.”

  “So Corey has the run of the entire office now?”

  “Yep, and he’s covered up all the windows so we can’t see inside. Pretty smart move, really. But at least he’s talking to us now.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve got Tatum acting as negotiator. He’s doing a pretty fair job. Taking things one step at a time.” Bill Tatum was one of the deputies—a man Marlin liked and respected. Hopefully, Jack Corey felt the same way. “Corey damn sure isn’t talkin’ about coming out yet, though. All Tatum’s managed to do is twist his arm a little. Corey wants some food in there but we’re refusing it until he gives us something in return.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, we know he ain’t gonna give up Wylie, so I asked him for Wylie’s gun belt. I want to take away that extra ammo. Later on, he’ll want something else, and I’ll ask for a bullet out of the gun. You just keep picking away at what they’ve got. I’ve read that sometimes you can get them down to just a bullet or two that way.”

  Marlin grinned. “Pretty smart. But why is Tatum negotiating instead of you?”

  “For starters, he’s taken a couple of courses on hostage situations. I’ve only taken one. Never thought I’d need it. I mean, how often do we come up against something like this? Shit like this just doesn’t happen out here. It’d be like asking the folks in Kansas to have emergency plans for a hurricane.

  “And the other thing; one of the few things I do know—the top cop is never supposed to be the negotiator. Otherwise, Corey would expect immediate answers to his demands. He’d be like, ‘Why can’t you do this for me? You’re the sheriff.’ This way, Tatum can string things along, tell Corey he needs to check with me and get back to him.”

  “Not to be ignorant, but what does that accomplish?” Garza stopped for a moment to listen to some radio traffic. One of the deputies at the door wanted a bathroom break.

  “You’re supposed to drag these things out as long as you can,” he said. “Supposedly, the longer it lasts, the less chance there is of someone getting hurt. The perp is supposed to come to his senses, so they tell you to stall all you can. Unless someone’s in immediate danger. Then all bets are off.”

  The men sat in silence for a moment, and Marlin noticed the scene was eerily quiet. It was amazing, really. The better part of the Blanco County Sheriff’s Department was figuratively handcuffed, held at bay by the whims of the hapless redneck inside.

  Marlin spoke up: “What about the DNA test? Can’t the lab speed it up, let us know if Corey’s a match or not?”

  “You’d think so, but I guess they got cops all over the state asking for rush jobs. That’s just business
as usual. They told me six days.”

  Marlin sighed in frustration. “But, Christ, we’ve got a real situation here.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. Oh, speaking of test results, did you hear? The blood all over Emmett Slaton’s house wasn’t human.”

  Marlin had forgotten—for the last few hours anyway—about the disappearance of the old rancher. “Then what the hell was it?”

  “Animal of some sort, but the tests don’t tell us which. They just show that the blood’s not human.”

  “What do you make of that?”

  Garza made a passive, palms-up gesture. “Got me. But I’m taking it as a good sign, for now. We never found his dog, so maybe it ran off injured and Slaton’s been looking for it. ’Course, that doesn’t explain Slaton’s truck at the Save-Mart. Anyway, we’ll see what the boys can come up with. All the deputies who aren’t here are either working on Slaton or looking for your boy Peabody.”