Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3)

by Trey R. Barker

  “Judge?” Her voice was quiet, focused, her eyes on both of them but mostly on the gun hanging between the two men.

  Tommy-Blue looked at Bean, disgust writ large across his shrunken face. “You nasty son of a bitch. You that far down?”

  Bean stared, uncomprehending. “What?” Then he knew and wondered if this was the look Bassi saw in his eyes when they looked at each other. “No, she’s not—”

  “I don’t care who you lay pipe with, Judge, just get it the hell outta my shop.”

  Bean snatched the gun, swung it hard, and landed a solid blow on Tommy-Blue’s temple. Tommy-Blue’s surprise melted when he crumpled to the floor.

  “Who shot my wife?” Bean bellowed. He swung again, connected with the top of the man’s head again.

  Tommy-Blue whimpered and waved his hands. “Stop. Stop it.”

  “Who shot—”

  “I don’t know, damnit, I don’t know!”

  “Bullshit. You were there.”

  “No, I wasn’t.” Tommy-Blue’s voice leaked, like weak blood, into the air. He cried, wiped away a tear and stared at the floor. “No, I wasn’t. Hard to see when you’re outside pissing yourself.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  Jeremiah, listen to me, it doesn’t matter who shot me.

  “I was at the cantina, but when we got there, it was empty.”

  Bean frowned. Empty? The newspaper accounts all said the place was full. Mariana?

  “The newspapers lied, they bought what JD sold them. The place was empty, Judge. Nobody. We knew instantly we’d been set up. JD’s informant had gotten over on us.” Tommy-Blue rolled over to his hands and knees, slowly stood up. “I got scared. I’d never been in a gunfight. I’d never even been in a fight, even as a state trooper. Never even a tussle. Judge, I was scared to death.”

  “But why? If there was no one there.”

  “Because if a busy cantina is suddenly empty, if we were set up, then there had to be a reason why. And the only reason to set up cops, especially Texas Rangers who are dogging the cartels, is to kill those Rangers.”

  “Holy shit.”

  What Tommy-Blue said was nothing like what Mariana had said, nothing like what the newspapers and TV stations had reported.

  “I got scared,” he said. “I didn’t want to die.”

  “He ran.” Faith’s quiet words hung in the hot afternoon, an accusation heavy with meaning for a Texas Ranger.

  Sweat hung on the tip of Bean’s nose. Tommy-Blue looked from Faith to Bean, took a deep breath, and nodded. “I said something...I don’t remember what...checking the perimeter or some crap...and went outside. I never went back. I got outside and a truck came up out of that steamy rain. Came out of nowhere, Judge, like a flash of lightning. I wanted to go back in, go warn them what was going on, but those guys got out of the truck so fast.”

  Tommy-Blue’s face went slack. “Four goons...and Zapata. I couldn’t go back in, don’t you understand? I was scared to death. I could barely move. I was lucky they hadn’t seen me. Shadows or maybe they were concentrating on getting inside, I don’t know, but I—”

  “You were a Ranger,” Bean said.

  “Rangers can’t be scared? I’m still human, ass.”

  “Mariana was never scared.”

  “Judge,” Faith said.

  I was scared, Jeremiah. I was always scared. I just never told you.

  No, you weren’t. You were strong and tough and decisive and—

  Scared, Jeremiah. Being a cop is a scary damned job, babe, and being a Ranger is being a cop on steroids.

  Tommy-Blue wiped some of the blood from his head. Stumbling a little, he sat heavily on one of his stools. “I didn’t sign up to be a cowboy.”

  “Cowboy JD,” Bean said.

  Tommy-Blue nodded. “Every foul up we had after he came along was because none of us had the courage to tell him to stuff it back in his pants. That night? We never should’a been there. Should’a never been caught short by JD’s junkie informant.”

  Bean wanted to berate the man, to scream and yell at him, to punch him in the face until he wore a mask of blood. Because maybe, if Tommy-Blue had stayed inside, or had gone back inside, the odds would have evened up just enough to keep Mariana from getting shot. Keeping that bullet out of her leg might have changed something else which lead to some other change that might have kept her alive.

  Because if a butterfly flaps its wings in a rainforest in Brazil...Mariana stays alive in Texas? Horseshit.

  But the blackened taste of fear he understood. The blazing redness with which it tinged his vision, the sulfuric stench it kept constant in his nose. For Bean, fear wasn’t a concept poets sang about with lazy rivers of words and images, it was something tangible and forceful and unstoppable.

  Try as he might, therapy then booze then drugs and finally violence, fear had been his life’s constant, the thing he’d never been able to rid from himself. From the first time Daddy showed some slippage and Mama had tried to explain the madness that ran in Bean’s family, fear had been his driving factor.

  “When the shooting...I’d never been shot at. I ran into the fields.”

  “Why?” Bean asked.

  “It was dark. The cantina was lit up like a carnival but out there it was dark. If they came shooting for me, they weren’t going to see me.”

  “So then what?”

  “Then what? There was nothing else. I assumed they were all dead. So I circled around back over the border and hitched a pile of rides back to Barefield. Got there at seven the next morning. Had a message from JD to come to the PD. When I got there, the media was there, supervisors were everywhere, Mariana was at the hospital with a bullet in her leg and everyone was calling us heroes. They kept asking me how it felt to actually chase one of the soldiers into the darkness. That was how JD explained it.”

  “He didn’t hang you out,” Faith said. “He made you part of the team.”

  “Part of the lie,” Tommy-Blue said. “I never asked him, or any of them, what really happened. What did I know? The beginning wasn’t what they said but I never saw the rest so maybe...”

  “That how you rationalized it?” Bean asked.

  Tommy-Blue rubbed a finger across his lower lip, then spit. “Yes. Spent years crying about it, too. I hated myself, probably still do if I care to look closely enough, because I failed. Because I was a coward.”

  Bean said gently, “We’ve all been there, Tommy, all of us. It’s not a failing, it’s human.”

  Tommy-Blue snorted. “Don’t fix me up. I’ve learned to live with it.”

  Bean nodded. “I’m sorry, Tommy-Blue. Is there anything I can do?”

  “You can get out, like I asked a half-hour ago.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry for all this.”

  Tommy-Blue shook his head. “No, you’re not, but I don’t care.”

  Following Faith, Bean left. Out the door and into the SUV. He used a towel left in the backseat to wipe as much of Tommy-Blue’s blood off his arm as he could. When he started the motor, he noticed the college boy with the sombrero was gone.

  “Mine a little under the weather.”

  “Weather got better,” Bean said, easing the SUV out of the lot.

  The SUV roared and Bean eased it out of the lot.

  15

  “Don’t mean shit to me,” Echo said, his hands carefully on the top of his desk. “Had guns in my face before.”

  “Yeah? From somebody as crazy as me?”

  “You ain’t showed me crazy yet, bitch. Couldn’t keep up with my crazy even if you tried, yo.”

  “Think so?”

  Hammer cocked, a solid metallic thump in the quiet afternoon. “Tell me this, then, bitch, when the distance of the sun closes, how long do you think you’ll be in deep freeze...gangsta?”

  Echo laughed. “‘Gangsta?’ You got me all wrong, yo. Ain’t no gangsta. No way, no how. That shit’ll get you sent to the cut.”

  “The what?”


  Echo frowned. “Prison?”

  “Where he sent his friends...his best friends.”

  “Uh...okay.” When Echo leaned backward, the chair tipping back on two legs, his hands fell from the desk to his lap.

  “I eat darkies for dinner.”

  “And I shit honkies.” Echo winked. “How’s that? So we’re both tough. Why’n’t you tell me why you here, leaning on my desk and waving a gun in my face.” Echo leaned forward, all four legs on the floor again. “Let’s get down to it, see can we business, yo.”

  “Business this.”

  The shot was a ball-peen hammer to Echo’s ears. Shooter danced to his side of the desk immediately, grabbed his hair and yanked him to the floor.

  “Keep your fucking hands off that shotgun.”

  Echo made no move. His breath was short and scared in his chest. The shotgun, hanging from a thin wire on the underside of the desktop, was a trick he’d learned from Bean a long time ago. “The fuck you know about that?”

  “William Howard Taft, you dumbass.” The gun jammed against Echo’s throat. “I’m looking for a man.”

  Echo raised his hands peacefully. “You tell me what you need and I’ll get it done. No more shotguns. You need strong backs? Strong cocks? Muscle and debt collection?”

  “No, no,” talking soft, head shaking. “A specific man.”

  “Who?”

  “A judge.”

  Silence, the air as securely quiet as a whore with a ball-gag stuffed her face, hit them hard.

  Echo licked his lips. “Don’t know no judges.”

  “Ain’t what I heard.”

  “Somebody lying in your ears, shooter. I’m a simple business man, move a little smoke, a few other things here and there. I keep my ass away from judges...from cops...from all manner of law enforcement.” He jerked his head toward the window. “Especially today, yo. Whole town’s gone crazy as shit. Gun fight at a barbeque place. Guess a truck caught fire. All the law in town probably busy.”

  “Law is rewritten as the wind blows foul from charnel houses.”

  Echo sucked his lips. “Arbitrary, you saying? I get’cha there.”

  Shooter sniffed. “Foul wind smells like weed.”

  “Might’a had a little oversmoke earlier.” Slowly, Echo moved to sit up, though he stayed on the floor. “My boys got a little exuberant.”

  “Hence the blood...near the conveyor belt...that runs to the fires.” A pause. “The Pope descended from the fires.”

  “Well...okay...that’s good and all.”

  “Judge Royy...Bean...the second...with two ‘y’s’.”

  Echo grinned. “The cowboy judge? From the old west? Dude probably dead and buried by now, don’t you think?”

  The gun, still cocked, a finger hard inside the trigger guard, gently caressed Echo’s forehead. “Easy, nigger, or I’ll soufflé your brains.”

  “Always end there, don’t we?” Echo spoke softly, kept his body language easy. “Always gotta toss out the ‘N’ word.”

  “Don’t gimme no civil rights bullshit. Where the fuck is Bean? I need him.”

  “We all got needs.” Echo nodded. “I need him myself.”

  A sharp intake of breath. “Why?”

  “’Cause he killed one of my guys...today.”

  “Today? He was here?”

  “Yeah, and if I knew where he was, I’d kill him myself.”

  “Line forms here, nig—Excuse me...Echo. Where’d he go?”

  Echo stood, very slowly. “Who gave you my name?”

  “Why? Wanna little revenge?”

  “Nooooo no, I don’t do revenge. But I do likes to watch me some reckoning.”

  “Tough to do...she’s dead.”

  Echo considered. “She, huh? Dead?”

  “As the Kennedy boys.” The gun came to Echo’s chest. “Where. Is. The. Judge?”

  “If I knew, I’d spout up. I ain’t looking for what you gave her...how I can do business dead? Trust me...if I knew, I’d tell you.”

  A sigh, frustrated and weary. “Not the answer I wanted, Gracie.”

  Julio stood in the garage. “I heard a few things.”

  “Heard my gun. I killed your boss.”

  “Not what I meant and I ain’t so concerned about that noways. He was an asshole. Stole twenty percent of everything I did. Learned it from the Judge.”

  “Judge Bean?”

  Julio, moving slowly, approached the shooter. “He was here this morning. Had a truck full of dope. It was on fire so he brought it here. Something happened at the barbeque place. He came here. We saved his dope. He hired me to deliver what didn’t burn to Amarillo. I drove out, waited until he was gone, and came back.”

  “That where he went? Amarillo?”

  Julio shook his head. “No idea, but look, I got my own crew, my own ambitions. All I’m needing is to get you what you need so I can take what I need.”

  “I’m just looking to find the Judge.”

  “So we good? Got an understanding?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “He had an envelope with a fucking finger in it, if you can believe that.”

  “He had the package? You saw the finger?”

  “Fuck yeah. Cain’t decide if it was cool or creepy. He said something about the Texas Rangers, said he was going to see some cat named Tommy-Blue.”

  “Where?”

  Julio shrugged. “Got no idee.”

  “Damnit, you were doing so well. Wrong answer, Gracie.”

  16

  Ten minutes later, on the outskirts of Rankin, standing next to a stunned salesman, Bean counted out exactly twenty-one hundred dollars. A couple of the hundreds came out of his badge wallet and the man’s eyes stayed on that tin even as his hand shook out a signature on the receipt and then the title. Bean quickly scrawled a counter-signature across the title.

  “Is...uh...is there anything else, Officer?”

  “We good?” Bean asked.

  “Yes...uh...yes, sir.”

  The SUV, snatched from Echo’s lot, sat near the back fence. Bean had parked it there specifically because it was mostly out of view of anyone passing on the street.

  The missing sombrero man from the Sip’N’Tan’s parking lot had dug deeply into Bean’s skull with frightening speed. Within blocks of the joint, Bean had spun wildly disconcerting scenarios that had those men working for the DEA, the FBI, ICE, Homeland Security, even fucking Interpol.

  He was there, Bean thought, asking about my wheels. Then he was gone. What are the odds?

  Gone like a wish in the west Texas wind, blown with the dust into whatever existed miles down the road.

  As he and Faith climbed into the car, he glanced at her. Following her, maybe? Was she something more than a young girl Bassi had stolen?

  Stupid, he thought. You’re being paranoid.

  Maybe, but paranoia—and Digger—had kept him alive and out of jail. So when his neck hair started tickling, he paid attention. That meant he stopped at this shitty little car lot and bought this shitty little car; this too-expensive, beat-up Camry whose best years had been years ago. It was worlds different from the SUV and so it was the choice.

  Cash, sign the title, and go see another Ranger.

  See if that little fucker had all ten fingers.

  17

  “You’re a police officer?” she asked.

  Rankin was a little less than an hour behind them, empty road ahead of them. Brown still swirled around them. There had been a time, with Mariana alive and pregnant and the future brilliantly painted, that Bean would not only have appreciated the beauty in the landscape, but would have stopped the car to breathe it in. There had been times, too, with Mariana dead but their beautiful daughter at Bean’s side, that he had stopped to enjoy Mariana’s landscape.

  The second stop was the middle of nowhere, off State Route 349, headed west on Ranch Road 2400. Then straight south on a barely visible cattle track, down into the gullies and culverts carved by the heavy hand of w
ater millions of years earlier. Eventually there would be a single tree.

  And then a ranch house.

  Call it an hour fifteen south of Rankin. In a part of the state the Judge had always considered “drive-thru” at best. Once, driving to the Texas coast on a vacation, the summer before Mariana got pregnant, they’d stopped. A few hours visiting a man she’d known in the academy and who’d gotten promoted to the Rangers just a month or so after her. Soon enough the guy had been based outta Zachary City, just like Mariana, and Bean had seen him all the time.

  A giant green sign rolled up and announced Ranch Road 2400, two miles.

  Bean’s balls tightened.

  He’d been on 349 a million times and had seen the RR 2400 turn off almost every time. It had never been just another turn off, never been just another ranch road. There had always been knowledge of who lived down that road, but he’d never needed to pay a visit and be sociable.

  Now it was different. He’d take the turn, drive the drive, see the man.

  Get some answers.

  From north of RR 2400 he could see most of the other ranch roads winding out south from 349 like rattlers slithering through the desert.

  “I don’t think you are,” Faith said.

  “Are what?”

  “A police officer.”

  Bean said nothing. Of course he wasn’t a cop. His thing had been the other end of law enforcement...black robes and gavel, attorneys arguing back and forth.

  “Because you killed him.”

  “Killed who?”

  “Bassi.”

  Bean snorted. “Where have you been? Cops kill people all the time.”

  She shook her head. “Sure they do. And they cover it up and lie about it and everything else. And most of those, at least the ones I know, get off on it.”

  Bean frowned. The ones she knew? What was going on with this girl? How’d she know any cops who might have slipped over the line?

  “You ain’t like that...don’t seem to be, anyway. You ain’t comfortable with it...the violence, I mean.”

  “More comfortable than you know.”