“Although you can’t remember everything right now, your basic personality is probably the same. You’re kind—you tried to protect me when I was in danger.” She hesitated, wanting very much to believe in his goodness, but even he couldn’t provide that reassurance. “I know dealers, like anyone else, can be quite personable, but they don’t protect people. They prey on other people’s weaknesses.”
He walked up behind her. “And you think I could have been involved in drugs. I saw it in your eyes.”
Fighting the doubts that plagued her, she turned to face him. They had been over this last night. “I don’t know if you were or not.” She watched the muscles in his jaw tense while she tried to explain her mixed-up feelings. She, too, was troubled by her uncertainties. Finally, she waved her hand toward him. “Jonathan, I can’t reconcile all of your different....” she struggled for a word “...your different sides. There’s the man I’ve gotten to know and then there’s the person you don’t remember. A person who’s been accused of several crimes.”
“And there’s the problem.” John fidgeted before a wry half smile echoed his inner pain. “The sad thing is, I could be guilty. So recovering my memory may not be what I really want. But I do want to know something.” He licked his lips and then, copying Lauren’s earlier actions, looked out the window at the landing strip.
“What do you want to know, Jon?”
“About drugs. About drug smuggling. Anything you can tell me that’s gone on around here.” Give me a link, build me a bridge. Help me know who I am.
As though she was trying to decide how best to explain it, Lauren paused before saying, “Most of the contraband smuggled across the Texas-Mexico border is marijuana, but we are seeing more cocaine because it’s more profitable. That’s what Van Rooten suspected you were trafficking. Usually smugglers around here fly it in under radar, then they have some system in place to distribute it in El Paso or San Antonio.”
“This cocaine—what does it look like and what does it do?” John knew only something of excessive value was worth smuggling. Why was cocaine in that category?
“It’s a white powder and it gives the user a real high—almost euphoric—but it doesn’t last long and the user wants more.”
“Why would he need more?” He wondered if this drug was like alcohol. He knew several men who couldn’t leave the bottle alone.
“It’s psychologically addictive. It causes the brain to play tricks on a person. The user wants or needs increasing amounts, doing about anything to get the money to buy it.”
Hearing her description of cocaine, John didn’t know what to think, what to feel, what to ask. What if he’d been one of those users who’d do anything to get more? Had this deceptive white powder played with his brain? God, he hated having questions and no one to answer them.
Across the counter sat his only hope. But as much as he longed for an end to his confusion, he didn’t want to endanger her. Few women had made much of an impression on him in his life. The thought startled him. Which women had impressed him? He tried to conjure up an image of his wife, his Annie, but only a faded image in a coppery lithograph appeared. A still image, nothing vibrant. Nothing like the shiny-nosed, tousle-haired woman who’d stirred his emotions and now waited patiently while he tried to deal with his inner turmoil. “Would I be able to tell if I had used it in the past?”
“I think it depends on how long it’s been since you used it.” Her voice was low, as though she realized the concern that was building in him.
“That’s not much help.”
She reached across the countertop and laid her hand on his, providing warmth where none existed. “Jon, are you wondering if your loss of memory is due to cocaine?”
He nodded.
“I guess you could have a drug test, but—again, I’m speaking as an attorney—I don’t advise it. The D.A. has decided not to pursue the drug angle. Why, I’m not sure, unless they don’t think they have enough evidence to make it stick. And right now, all they’ve got is Van Rooten’s supposed hunch, which is pretty lame. The rain wiped out all the evidence, if there ever was any. Until we get the murder charge taken care of, I don’t think we need to add any fuel to the fire. They can go after capital murder and the death penalty if they can prove you killed Saul in the process of a drug deal.”
He sighed. Somewhere out there was the answer to this mix-up of identities. He just had to find it, but it looked like he’d have to wait a while longer. As a ranger, he had always been a man of action and facts. He didn’t believe in spirits or ghosts or any of that newfangled science stuff that claimed a man could travel through time.
He wanted to tell Lauren that he was John McCain, not Jonathan. Not the brother of that woman Helena who’d come to see him. Not the son of whoever those people were who’d paid his bail. Not the owner of this ranch. And she’d figure he was as crazy as a pony that had eaten locoweed.
Besides, the similarity of names was too bizarre to be a coincidence. Jonathan and John McCain. Something was going on whether it was Jules Verne or demons or...no! The one thing he sensed keenly was that regardless of the time frame, he was a man of the law—a Texas Ranger, not a common smuggler and murderer. But he didn’t know about this man named Jonathan.
While Jon was lost in his own world, Lauren looked at her watch. She wanted to talk more, but it was almost seven-thirty. “I’ve got to go. Robert will have a posse out looking for me if I don’t show up for work. Do you think you’ll be okay here?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “You just go do what you can to get this misunderstanding cleared up.”
She noted the false bravado in his voice. He was more concerned about his fate than he wanted her to know, but she answered in kind. “It won’t be long. Then you’ll be a free man.”
“I have faith in you, counselor.” He briefly brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers.
“I’ll come back as soon as I have some news. Take care of yourself, and I’ll call to see how you’re doing.”
As she once again drove down the muddy road that led away from Jon, she went over the same scenario she had sixteen hours earlier. How could she allow her feelings for Jonathan McCain to interfere with her professional judgment? Unfortunately, Lauren was finding it quite easy, so easy that she discovered she even had to concentrate on driving.
Only the residual effects of mud and a few puddles remained in the arroyo as a reminder of last night’s treacherous flash flood. She carefully drove across the rock bottom and had started to climb the other side when she noticed tire tracks leading to the arroyo, turning around and going back toward the highway. Someone had driven out this far after the rain last night and been unable to continue on to the ranch. The thought sent a shiver down her spine.
She stopped her car and got out to study the track pattern. From the distance between tires, she guessed it was a car rather than a pickup. And the zigzag pattern was not the mark of heavy-duty tires.
Concerned that whoever it had been would come back, she called Jonathan as soon as she got to her house.
After four rings he answered. “Yes.”
“Jonathan, someone came out as far as the arroyo last night but had to turn around and go back to the highway. I don’t know who it was or what is going on, but please be careful. The person could return today now that it’s drier.”
“I will.” John didn’t know what was going on, either, but he’d be damned if he was just going to sit around and wait to be convicted of a murder he didn’t think he’d committed. So after he hung up, he began to check things out. The five slots in the gun case were empty. He remembered Van Rooten had said that he’d confiscated four rifles from McCain’s house and had recovered the fifth rifle “used in the cold-blooded murder of Saul Rodriquez” in the desert.
Wondering what else Van Rooten and the deputies had hauled out of the house, John looked around, not knowing what should or should not be there. But he did know he shouldn’t stick around here. Not if someon
e was coming for him. So he grabbed the butcher knife and headed to the barns.
Keeping his eye out for the old tomcat that had scared Lauren the evening before, he slid open the door to the metal barn. He didn’t much care for the cold, hollow feeling of the large space inside, so he closed the door and strolled to an old weathered barn. It would have looked like every other barn he’d ever seen it if hadn’t been falling down. A sense of loss and sadness settled over him as he surveyed the empty hayloft and stalls.
Trying to shake his melancholy mood, he walked over to what he assumed was the bunkhouse. Three doors opened into the long adobe building. Testing the first door, John wasn’t surprised to find it unlocked. He stepped inside to discover, not a shared bunk area, but instead something that was set up like an apartment. The first two rooms, covered with dust, showed no sign of recent occupation.
John remembered the sheriff saying he’d searched the place and Saul’s family had come for his personal belongings, so John doubted he’d discover much in the third room, either. With trepidation, he pushed open the door, hoping that in this room he’d find something about himself by discovering something about Saul.
A few old dishes were in the cupboards and some magazines were scattered on the small wooden table. A mattress with striped ticking rested on the metal bed frame. Nothing was left to identify Saul as a person.
Disheartened, John sat down on the edge of the bed and opened the drawer of the bedside table, surprised to see a Bible. He picked up the leather volume and ran his fingers over the edges of the pages. Annie had read the Good Book every day, he remembered, but he couldn’t recall the last time he’d read it. Maybe it was time.
He turned to the Psalms. “What...?” There in a cutout square lay a clear bag of white powder. Was it cocaine? As he learned more and more about the man he was suppose to be, John lost some of his confidence. This bag could mean Saul and Jonathan smuggled drugs. And if they’d smuggled drugs, he might have killed Saul regardless of what Lauren had said.
John’s throat tightened when he realized an unknown accomplice of his could have chased the sheriff through Diablo Canyon. And it could have been that same person who’d shot at Lauren. And the same person who’d tried to come out to the ranch last night.
John buried his head in his hands and considered the real possibility that he was both John and Jonathan McCain. If that was the case then the man whose body he inhabited might truly be a criminal who deserved to die for his sins. And he was falling in love with a woman who had vowed to help him. What if he was guilty? Then he would drag her down with him. He couldn’t do that.
John walked out in the hills, and with the heel of his boot, dug a hole. Squatting, he dumped the contents of the bag into the hole and stirred it with a stick until the brown dirt hid any trace of white. Tearing the sack into tiny pieces, he added it to the hole, covered it and walked back to the bunkhouse to wait. He didn’t know if he’d done right or not, but no one was going to catch him with anything that could cause him more grief or justify Lauren’s doubts.
No one disturbed John’s solitude all the rest of Saturday, and so by Sunday morning he decided Lauren had to have been mistaken about a visitor. From his hiding spot in the bunkhouse he’d seen nothing except the rolling prairie and the looming mountains.
He’d decided he wanted something to eat other than the eggs he’d made the night before and had thought about going down to the main house when he saw dust kicking up in the distance. Stepping back from the window, John watched a gray car come to a stop in front of the house. While he was too far away to recognize anyone, he could tell it wasn’t Robert and it wasn’t the sheriff.
Something about the way the man walked struck a chord. John closed his eyes, then looked again, but by that time, the man was out of view. If he was the person who had tried to come during the rainstorm, he wasn’t secretive.
Even from this distance, John could hear the him calling out, “Jonathan, you in there?” The man circled around the house and began pounding on the back door, then went in. John licked his lips, pulled the knife out of his boot and waited.
In less than five minutes, he saw the man get back in his car and leave. Relieved but curious, John wondered what he had done inside. Since this must be the person Lauren had warned him about, he waited an hour to be sure the guy didn’t come back. Then John headed down the hill to the house.
He was disappointed to find that nothing inside had been disturbed. Thinking maybe a note had been tacked to the front door, he stepped out on the porch. Again he found nothing. Maybe Lauren’s fears had been exaggerated. He stared at the road and remembered her fading image. Already, he wanted her back with him.
A scraping noise around the side of the house alerted his senses. He crept across the porch and peered around the corner just as the wild tomcat made a dash back to the barn. John sighed and let out a nervous laugh, feeling foolish for having been spooked.
He squinted toward the horizon where the road vanished. No dust, no motion. Even so, John thought he ought to get back to the bunkhouse, where he had a better view of the road leading up to the main house. Whoever had been in that gray car might decide to pay another visit. Deciding to take the photographs Lauren had brought him from his parents’ and a little grub back with him, John stepped inside the house again and began gathering things together.
After he’d looked around, he stuck a few magazines in a sack with the pictures and went to the kitchen for food. As he scrounged in the refrigerator, he heard another scraping noise on the back porch. Figuring the cat had come back, Jonathan closed the refrigerator door and started outside. He froze when he heard a voice.
“McCain?”
“Damn!” John muttered softly, recognizing the sheriffs voice. Where had he come from? Had he been let out a ways back by the person in the car? Or had he come on his own and hiked cross-country?
“You in there, boy? Get your ass out here ’cause I wanna talk to you.”
Talk, hell, John thought. If he’d ever known anything, John knew Van Rooten didn’t want to talk. If he’d wanted to have a conversation he’d have knocked on the front door instead of sneaking around to the back. John could see the setting sun glint off the metal surface of a gun as the sheriff stepped off the porch. John dropped to the floor so he couldn’t be seen if the sheriff looked through the windows. He suspected Van Rooten planned to kill him.
“McCain. You coming out or do I have to come in and get you?”
John looked around. His only weapon was the knife, and it was no match for a gun. Maybe he could hide behind the door and surprise the sheriff if he came in. Then he thought of how it would look if he, a man out on bail for murder, stabbed the local sheriff. Lauren wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing for him.
He had to run.
He crawled down the hallway to a bedroom, then stopped to listen. He heard the back door burst open and footsteps in the kitchen. John hastily pushed open a window, and when it emitted a screeching sound, he feared Van Rooten must have heard it.
John had to get out fast He inched the window up as quickly as he could, holding his breath, praying for silence.
He scrambled out the window and glanced around for a place to run, then took off in a crouch toward the old wooden barn. When he entered the rickety structure, he slid around the corner and leaned against the rough wall, breathing hard from the sprint. and hoping he hadn’t been seen.
He eyed the house through a crack in the wood and saw Van Rooten step back outside on the porch, gun drawn. Knowing he had to hide before the sheriff came looking for him, John stumbled into a stall and squeezed behind a stack of rotting lumber.
With every ounce of his energy focused on listening, John heard Van Rooten outside the barn, his footsteps a faint skitter on the hard-packed dirt. Clutching the knife tightly in one hand, John waited until the sound receded.
As the sheriff headed away from the barn, John’s head began to swirl and his knees turned to rubber. Trying to
restore his equilibrium, he dropped the knife and grabbed the stall railing, but the dizziness got worse. Just before he knelt on the floor, an image of Van Rooten holding a rifle flashed through his mind. The sheriff was bragging about the highfalutin people he was tied up with.
John clutched his head with both hands. He remembered Van Rooten saying, as clear as day, “I ain’t got nothing to worry about because my lawyer buddy will keep me looking clean.”
And then John’s mind went blank as he collapsed into darkness.
Chapter 9
The ringing telephone startled Lauren. She’d spent most of Sunday working in her too-quiet office. Pulling her eyes away from her computer screen, she answered the call with her usual greeting. “Jordan and Hamilton. May I help you?”
“I certainly hope you can. This is Chester.”
Lauren looked at the ceiling and forced pleasantness into her voice. “How’re you doing, Sheriff?”
“This isn’t exactly a social call, so I’ll get right to the point. I drove out to McCain’s ranch this afternoon and guess what?” Without waiting for a response, he continued, “He was nowhere to be found. Where do you reckon he went?”
“He has to be out there, Chester. Maybe he was asleep and didn’t hear you.” Or most likely, he was smart enough to avoid you.
“I don’t think so, missy. I knocked, I hollered and I honked my car horn. I woke every coyote in a two-mile range, but your Mr. Jonathan McCain didn’t show hide nor hair of hisself. Considering the restrictions on his bail, I’m just a little bitty bit more than concerned.” Chester sniffed. “You don’t reckon he’s skipped, do you?”
Hearing the hidden threat in Van Rooten’s words, Lauren was a little concerned, too. Not that Jonathan hadn’t shown his face, but that the sheriff had already paid him a visit. “No, I don’t think he’s skipped, Chester. But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll check on him right now.”
McCain's Memories Page 11