“So now what?” she asked.
“What’s your name?”
Instead of turning away, as she’d done so many times during the day, she kept her eyes steady on him. “Chelle. Chelle Fulton.”
He nodded. “Well, Chelle Fulton, I want to get you home.”
“I want to go home.”
A few minutes later, Digger stood on the bar’s wide front steps with Bean. Chelle was a few feet away. “Tell him everything, answer all his questions. The more he knows about you, the faster he can get you home.”
Hesitation marched across her face.
She’s scared, Jeremiah.
“My wife says you’re scared.”
“You’re wife’s pretty smart.”
“For a dead woman?”
“Probably while she was alive, too.”
Bean nodded. “You were in my dream. Not you, but a girl. Mariana told me I couldn’t go see her until I got a girl home to her mother. That’s you.” He grinned. “A crazy dream, though. My wife had a mustache. No fucking clue why.”
His laugh spiraled gently into the air but Chelle stared at him with deeply furrowed eyes. “So now you can kill yourself?”
Bean said nothing but eventually, he nodded. Yeah, you’re safe so now I can be, too. “Get her home, Digger. That’s it. We’ll deal with everything else later. Just get Chelle home.”
“Thought her name was Faith.”
Chelle’s lip curled. “That was his name. What he called me.”
Digger eyed the dress.
“His, too.” She held out the skirt as though curtsying, but her face was rock hard, angry. “It was white once.”
“Not so much anymore.”
“Dirt.” Bean shrugged. “Blood.”
“We’ve got some clothes around here, Chelle.”
“This is just fine. A reminder.”
“Of Bassi?” Bean asked.
“All of them.”
Bean swallowed into a sandpaper-dry throat. “How many?” Then he shook his head. “No, I don’t want to know. Digger, find out who stole her in the first place.”
“And then?” Digger said.
“Kill him.”
Digger froze. “What’d you say?”
“Kill him.” Bean’s hands clenched. “You ain’t got the balls for it, bring him here and I’ll kill him.”
“Uh...Judge? Maybe we should talk—”
“And then find whoever he passed her to and kill that son of a bitch. And kill the next one and the next and the next until you get to Bassi.”
“Yeah, maybe this ain’t the best conversation to have in front of her.”
Her dark eyes flashed in the early evening light and her jaw clenched with a strength Bean knew he didn’t have. At that moment, he didn’t give a shit about taking care with his language or who heard what. At that moment, he only wanted to turn the clock back to when Chelle was at home with her parents, going to high school and wondering if a certain boy would ask her to the homecoming dance.
Fuck that...even further...
To when he could have turned down the campaign cash and the judge’s job and every second of bullshit that flowed from those two things.
Further, Jeremiah...
To when Mariana was still alive, when she was full of their child and both of them giggled like junior high school kids.
Chelle laughed hard. “Dude, he and I’ve been down this road already. Don’t gotta sweat me.”
Digger’s gaze hardened. “I sweat everything. That’s how I keep him alive.”
She let a long silence play out and Bean wondered if she expected him to fill it.
“He and I have killed together. You don’t have to sweat me. And ease up on that fucking attitude or I’ll goat you.”
“You’ll what?”
“Goat you! Like we did the goats at Andy’s place. You understand that?”
Silence again. Eventually, grinning, Digger said, “Hungry?”
She glared at him, then cracked a tight smile and nodded. “Yeah. Thank you.”
“No goat-burgers but I bet we can find something.” He nodded toward the bar. “Ask the guy behind the bar. Tell him I said to feed you.”
She looked at Bean and he might have seen a tear in her eye. Hell, it could have been a bit of dust. Without another word, she went into the bar.
“This ain’t nothing but ugly, Judge.”
On the far side of the lot, a minivan parked. A woman and two men sat inside. She spoke, looked the bar over, then spotted Digger and Bean. She stared at them, said something—her lips moving like a silent movie actor—and the two men looked Bean’s way.
“Damn,” he said.
Digger looked. “Louisiana plates.”
“Recognize them?”
“No. New customers?”
Bean shook his head. “Fuck. I don’t really have time.”
Or interest.
Digger said, “No time for twenty percent?”
Don’t need the money...not anymore. I’m cashing out.
“I’m sorry to dump Chelle in your lap. But...” He shrugged. “You’re my guy. Always have been.”
Digger looked pained. “I know, Judge. You’re my guy, too. Always have been.”
Bean nodded. “Listen, you know where I’m headed, right? Not today and probably not tomorrow or even next week, but eventually. I’m tired and I want to see my wife and daughter.”
“Yeah.” Digger looked away. “Yeah, and I think it’s bullshit.”
“Well...okay...but you know you have nothing to worry about, right? Financially, I mean. There’s a will, extra-legal though it is, and it leaves damn near everything to you. This property and all the cash. Take it and get out. Run to the Bahamas or Caymans or somewhere. Just get out of Texas and leave all this shit behind.”
Digger looked at the judge, his gaze tight. “This shit is all I know.”
“Time to know something else. Timmy, maybe?”
“Yeah,” Digger said, his voice thick. “Maybe.”
“I don’t trust anyone else with Chelle. Get her home. Figure out who the hell she is and get her home. End her nightmare.”
“And then?”
We find Mariana’s badge, he wanted to say, but he knew it was long gone. Kurston had told him as much. Chasing it had been a fool’s errand, an attempt to clean up a particular shit mess. He wasn’t going to find it and that was going to have to be okay. Hell, he probably shouldn’t have ever looked in the first place.
Now, Jeremiah, if you hadn’t looked, you’d already be dead. And if you’d already been dead, you wouldn’t have been able to help Chelle get home.
So chalk up one good deed against all the bad.
There is that, baby. You done good, but you’re not—”
I hope you aren’t sporting that ’stache when I see you.
He imagined her laugh, as sweet as peach cobbler. Still ’stached up, baby, but you’re not coming to see me, Jeremiah. Not yet.
“What?” Bean said. “What are you talking about?”
Digger eyed him.
Jeremiah, you done good getting Chelle home.
“But?”
“She’s not the one.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
There’s another girl. And you gotta save her, too.
28
The minivan’s door slammed, a crash in the still desert air.
“Looking for Judge Bean.” The woman was loud, her voice full of years’ worth of nicotine.
Bean stared at the trio, let his hand rest comfortably on the empty holster. The .380 was at his back, easy reach if he needed it.
“Judge?” Digger whispered from the side of his mouth. “What’s up?”
“The shooter?” Bean asked.
“Three of them?”
“I’m so fucking paranoid...who knows.”
“Fuck.” Digger took a deep breath, clapped Bean on the back, and said loudly, “Gotta get me some hooch! Been a dry day. See you
later.” He headed toward the bar, slipped up and inside the swinging doors.
“Judge?” she said. “I’d like a hearing.”
“Court’s not in session.”
The men stayed by the van but the woman came straight at him. Not fast, not with a threat of violence. Instead, she moved easy, full of comfortable confidence, stopping about ten feet away. “Can I convince you otherwise?”
“Not interested. I have other commitments.”
“This particular problem involves a few dollars.”
“I can’t be bought.” It was a lie but one he had no problem throwing out.
“I wasn’t suggesting you could, but I also know that a man in your position probably has a healthy interest in both justice and liquidity. If you give me one, I can give you the other.”
Bean headed toward the bar. “Not interested.”
“Judge...I need you. Please.”
Still he kept moving, Mariana’s words banging around in his skull, fighting for space against the thought these might be the killers. Another girl? Then what? Another and then another and still she hadn’t told him the truth about that night and then—
“Your Honor...I’ll make a call...if I have to.”
Bean stopped. “Is that a threat?”
Her face changed, gone from rock hard to something softer, maybe regretful. “I apologize, Your Honor. Please...I need you.”
“Why?”
She took a deep breath and her voice choked. “I have cancer. A simple melanoma, but it got into a lymph node. Automatic Stage 3. I have a year of chemo ahead of me and a twenty percent chance of survival over the next five years.” She looked away, brushed her cheek clean of tears that had suddenly appeared. “I have no money.”
“But I’ll bet sure as shit there are some warrants, though, right? And maybe a conviction or two?”
“Your Honor, I don’t—”
“Maybe some extra names, too. Probably all dirty so there’s no way you can get any government help. Damned NCIC computer.”
She swallowed. “I put together a job with those two men. One is my husband, the other is an...an acquaintance.”
The men stood well apart from each other, tense and watchful.
“And the acquaintance wants more than you want to give him.”
She nodded.
“Fuck you.” Bean said it flat.
“What?” She looked as though Bean had punched her in the gut.
“I don’t deal with liars.”
“I didn’t—”
“You snatched some cash and you want to stiff him on his share, or part of his share. I don’t need a bullshit cancer story.”
Her jaw flexed and she stared at him. “It’s not bullshit, it’s—”
“Get outta here. Before I shoot you.”
She sighed. “This isn’t working.”
In that sigh, Bean realized everything was off. Whoever she was, she wasn’t some simple cancer patient. Nor was she a thief who wanted to stiff one of her partners. There was something else entirely going on. It was as though she were an actor, changing from one role to another. Her body tightened, her shoulders rose from their stoop. Her eyes brightened but more with the glint of steel than sun. She was suddenly a different woman, not a cancer patient but a woman accustomed to being in command, to retaining control.
It was exactly what he’d seen so many times on the bench, except in reverse. Shitbags came before him, always in control and masters of their pathetic universe and as soon as he started talking, began laying out for them what they could face for that dime bag they got caught with or for the two broken-down motorcycles they stole, they fell apart. They slumped, they drooled, they stuttered, their eyes sharpened in fear.
Shitbags went from controlled to pathetic. This woman went from pathetic to controlled.
Who is she? What the fuck is going on here?
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” She looked directly at Bean. Her dark eyes blazed, tiny fires inside an angled face topped by bottle-blond hair. “You’re going to get your ass in that cheap bar, get your fucking bench set up, and bang that dusty gavel you use to rip people off.”
Bean stepped up to her, less than a foot away. “Get the fuck outta—”
The two men yanked guns from their waistbands.
“Ease up, gentlemen,” Digger said, strolling around from the back side of the bar.
They didn’t look, just dropped their guns and raised their hands in a single motion.
“Synchronized surrender, baby,” Digger said. “That’s what I like.”
Bean craned his head, giving her an ear, as though listening very hard. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. What was that you said about getting a hearing?”
When she smiled at him, her canine teeth staring at him like fangs. “You’re going to give us a hearing.”
Bean edged toward her, his breath like hot like burned gunpowder in his lungs. “How are you going to get that done?”
The smile, a dangerous knife edge, never left as she toyed with her cell phone. “Jim Dell Perkins.”
Bean’s breath stopped.
“Son of a bitch,” Digger said.
“There it is,” she said. She sniffed the air. “I love smelling that fear. Obviously, you remember Jim Dell. That’s good because he remembers you, too. Very clearly. For a man with so many resources at his disposal, I was surprised to find he hadn’t the foggiest notion where you were. Especially when I discovered it so easily. Well, not so easily, there were considerations.” She winked and let her tongue play across her lips. “Jim Dell would very much like to know where you are. Something about unfinished business, Your Honor?”
Bean’s gut tightened. JD, Jim Dell Perkins, was the last of the Quartet.
He shot her.
Bean pasted an ill-fitting grin on his face and tried to sound casual. “Thought he was dead.”
The woman smiled as if she were dealing with a particularly stupid child. “Funny, he said the same thing about you. He’d heard you had just a little bit of a problem and then you disappeared. Thought maybe it had gotten the better of you and you were off to the great courtroom in the sky.”
All day long, everything had come back to JD. It hadn’t mattered because Bean thought the man dead. Now he knew differently. Now he knew what his next step was.
No, Jeremiah. You’re next step is to get the girl home. Both of them. Then you come home to me. Don’t worry over JD.
Both of them? I don’t even know who the other girl is. And JD and I have a few things to discuss.
Jeremiah, don’t—
I want to discuss that night with the man who shot you.
He didn’t shoot me, Jeremiah.
Then who did?
But she was gone, disappeared back into whatever bit of imagination or cosmos he conjured her from.
“Jim Dell Perkins is head of the Governor’s Protective Detail now, running his little errands for the political heavyweights in Austin, traveling with the Governor wherever the man goes.” The woman smiled.
Gubernatorial security surprised Bean. Jim Dell had been headed for Washington and Bean had assumed that, if Jim Dell had lived, he’d have hooked his star to Homeland Security.
“I told him I might have an idea or two as to your location. If I have nothing else to occupy my evening, I’ll give him a call, talk about old times. Or...if it’s a good evening I’ll probably forget to call.”
Jim Dell Perkins; better than six feet tall, popping at about two hundred and twenty-five pounds, none of it fat, at least the last time Bean had seen him. The man had always worn the creases in his jeans as sharp as his Ranger ambition had been, his shirts as pressed and perfect as his teeth. Did time as a Zachary County deputy before moving with lightning speed to the highway patrol and then onto the Rangers list and then into the Rangers.
Soon after the night of promotions, Jim Dell Perkins had been sent to Austin to work some task force, and then hooked to a Federal task force out of New
Orleans, and then one out of Los Angeles, and then Washington. By the time JD was wheels down in D.C., Bean was nose first in an endless supply of bottles and veins riding the big white horse.
Everyone had been offered promotions and Andy had taken one, to commander of a different company, but Mariana and Tommy-Blue never had. It had been something that until the last twelve hours or so Bean had never understood. Both of them could have taken command or sub-command just about where ever they wanted. But now, with the note and the finger and the blood but most importantly the admissions, Bean suddenly understood it. Tommy-Blue and Mariana hadn’t wanted to get promoted from lies.
Bean looked at Digger. The man had the good sense not to say anything but worry and anxiety were clear on his face, had wormed across it. Bean tried to reassure him from this distance but wasn’t sure the message got through.
“What was it, Your Honor?” she asked. “What could have possibly made Jim Dell’s face so red? What could have made him squeeze the shot glass so tight it broke?” She unlocked her phone.
I have no fucking clue...but I’d love to have him in front of me. Well...in front of the sights on my .380.
Bean smiled. With a flick of his head, Digger took his gun off the men. They did not retrieve their weapons. “Anything that’s between me and JD is between me and JD. However, if you feel the need to call him, then call him. Actually, I’d love to see him again. Catch up on old times.”
Uncertainty flitted across her face. Her eyes darted from Bean to the two men she’d arrived with. One of them shrugged.
“Go ahead,” Bean said, his voice soft and soothing. “It’s been such a long while. Jim Dell and I will split a bottle of tequila and reminisce.”
Grinding her jaw visibly, the woman closed her phone.
“I assess a judicial fee of twenty percent. You’ll pay that.”
“Of course,” she said, the barest hint of a smile on her face.
“And you’ll give me his information.”
The smile disappeared. “What?”
“His information. Jim Dell Perkins. Phone number...personal cell not duty phone. His location...residence not the DPS barracks. Anything and everything I need to track him down.”
She started to shake her head, then looked at her watch. After a moment, she nodded. “Fine. Twenty percent and information.”
Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3) Page 17