Gold Dust

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  “Nope. We weren’t involved. Just heard about it. Say, is there some connection between the two of you?”

  “Not that I know of.” She rose and went to the nurses’ station.

  A young woman who looked to be barely out of her teens was writing on a pad. Her cap and uniform were snow white. She popped her gum. “That’s gonna be a nice shiner. Help you?”

  “I’m Deputy Sheriff Anna Sloan. Those officers over there told me a body came in that was D.O.A. a few days ago.”

  “So?”

  “Were you working then?”

  “Who’d you say you were?”

  “Deputy Sloan.”

  The woman’s eyes roamed Anna’s features, taking in her boots, jeans, and western shirt. “Where’s your badge, Deputy?”

  Her right eye and cheek throbbing, Anna slapped the ice bag on the counter and dug in her pocket. She hammered the badge beside it. “It’s right here, and in about two seconds I’m gonna make a phone call and slap you with a warrant to look through your purse, or even wherever it is that you live. You look to me like one of those dope-smoking potheads that spends their nights stoned on grass, or the pills you snitch during the day.”

  The nurse’s eyes flicked toward the cops, then down to the counter. “Hey, chill out, man! I was only asking.”

  Anna felt the officers move up behind her. “Were you working last Friday morning a week ago when they brought that body in instead of taking it to the morgue?”

  The nurse’s eyes went loose in their sockets, trying to find somewhere to rest. “I wasn’t, but Ethyl was.”

  “She here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go get her.”

  The nurse’s gaze finally settled over Anna’s shoulder. Apparently one of the officers nodded and she stood. “Okay, okay. Just be cool, man.”

  Chapter Forty-six

  Mr. Brown adjusted his overcoat and watched the numbers above the St. Joseph Hospital’s elevator door. The two passengers in the car with him were nuns who waited with their hands clasped, eyes on the floor. The door opened and one of the women held out a hand. “This is the intensive care, sir. Is that where you want to get off?”

  He glanced out at a cluster of tables in a small, three-walled waiting room across hallway. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right, then. God bless, and son?”

  “Yes ma’am, uh, Sister?”

  She smiled. “You’d better get yourself a hat. You’ll catch your death of pneumonia with that bare head uncovered in this weather.”

  “I’ll be fine.” He stepped out and the elevator closed behind him, rattling upward to the next floor.

  A complete stranger to those in the waiting room, Mr. Brown chose a seat in the corner, away from the family that he hoped were the Parkers. Most of those in the waiting area smiled at the unusually dressed stranger. He felt the sheriff’s eyes on him, evaluating his overcoat and the suit beneath. Glancing down at his glossy lace-up shoes, he realized that no one else wore anything even resembling his clothes.

  Mr. Brown smiled a hello, picked up a magazine, and settled into a vinyl-covered chair. Just another family member or friend waiting on a patient.

  An elderly woman with a bun held in place on the back of her neck raised a worn Bible in one hand. “Praise the Lord, they’re lettin’ Top come home tomorrow.”

  The sheriff nodded and returned to the conversation, leaving Mr. Brown to soak up everything they knew about the bacteria and Gold Dust.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Ethyl Grimes sat at a flimsy table across from Deputy Anna Sloan in the Brackenridge Hospital’s break room and lit a cigarette. She took a sip of the sludge they’d found in the coffeepot. Her two-pack-a-day voice was pure gravel.

  “I was there when he came in. Those dumbasses shoulda took him to the morgue instead of here. We keep people alive, not bring them back from the dead.” She held out a crushed pack of Kools and shook one up.

  Anna grinned at the crusty old nurse who’d seen thirty years of Austin’s emergencies. She shook her head at the offer of a cigarette. “Don’t smoke.”

  Ethyl shrugged and tapped the cigarette back into the pack with a forefinger. “I shouldn’t. I know these things’ll kill you, but it’s harder’n hell to quit.” She took a long drag and let it out through her nose. The smoke drifted over her white cap. “I really shouldn’t be doing this. Dr. Fenning’ll shoot me if he hears I’m talking out of school. You ought to talk to him.”

  “I’d rather talk to women.” Anna cut her eyes toward the door. “Men usually turn the conversation around on me, if you know what I mean.”

  Ethyl squared her shoulders, pushing her chest out. “They talk to these, too.”

  They laughed and Anna nodded. “And I’m tired of talking to their foreheads.”

  “Fenning’s forehead goes all the way back to here.” She chopped the side of her hand against the back of her head. “So we’re usually talking to a cueball.”

  They laughed again. Bonded.

  Ethyl took another drag, leaving lipstick on the filter. “Look, honey, I don’t know how much I can help you.”

  “That little girl at the desk says the dead guy came in a week ago today was from Chisum. How’d she know that?”

  “Linda? She’s barely one step up from a candy striper.”

  Anna repeated her question. “How’d she know where he’s from?”

  “There was a motel receipt in one of his pockets.”

  “He was dressed when he came in, then?”

  “No. He was nekked as a jaybird, but somebody’d rolled his clothes up and stuffed ’em in a pillowcase. I was trying to find some ID and the receipt was in there.”

  “Any ID? A drivers license?”

  “Nothing. He had a Zippo, a pocketknife, two packs of Camels, and a wad of cash.”

  “A wad?”

  “Over a thousand dollars stuffed into the toe of his shoe.”

  “Why’d you check there? Most people would have stopped with the pockets.”

  “I had a sorry ex-husband that squirreled cash away in his shoes. He picked up the habit of doing that when he shacked up with them old whores he went home with, to keep ’em from rolling him.”

  Anna couldn’t help herself. “You knew he was sleeping around and stayed with him?”

  “Honey,” Ethyl tapped the ash off her cigarette in a metal ashtray, “he was so good you’d have stayed with him too.”

  They shared a laugh before Anna held up a hand. “I’d have run him off the first time.”

  “Oh, I did, after about the tenth hussy.” Ethyl patted her bun into place under her white cap. “After he came home with something that needed a butt-load of penicillin.”

  “Let’s get back on track here. You checked the toe of the dead guy’s shoe and found cash.”

  “Yep. Like I said, he reminded me of my old man and looked like the kind of guy who had something to hide. Gave the cash to the guys at the morgue, too, when they finally came to collect the body. I don’t know what happened to it after that.”

  “Did you get a receipt for it?”

  “Sure did.”

  Anything else you can tell me about him?”

  “He had a couple of purty tattoos.”

  “Military?”

  “One was a Navy tattoo. Another was different. It was the outline of Vietnam under a mushroom cloud. That man had hell before he died. Coughed his lungs out. Literally. There was tissue on his chest, mixed in with all the blood.”

  “Did you keep any records here of a diagnosis, or death certificate?”

  “I can get you something.”

  “Fine. Anything else you can recall?”

  “One thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  Ethyl leaned forward, waved Anna closer, and whispered in
a conspiratory tone. “I wish I’d have known him when he was alive, if you know what I mean.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Ned felt light as a feather after seeing Top sitting up in bed, eating soft foods, and breathing without the aid of an oxygen tent. After visiting with his grandson for a while and spreading the good word, Ned met John Washington the next day in Frenchie’s rear booth.

  He got to the café first and sat with his back to the rear to keep an eye on the front door. The smell of frying onions, old grease, and hamburgers made his stomach grumble, reminding him that he hadn’t been eating well.

  Not surprising, John came in through the rear entrance. His people ate in the back, and he often visited with friends and family where they didn’t have to suffer the stares and glares of the café’s white patrons. It didn’t make any difference this time, the café was empty.

  John touched Ned lightly on the shoulder as he passed and slid into the opposite seat. “Glad to hear Top’s better.”

  “So are we.” Ned’s voice caught, surprising them both. John reached across and patted his friend’s hand. Ned clasped his on top. “How’s Bass?”

  “Tolerable well.” John stopped when Ned’s eyes flicked over his shoulder.

  Tom Bell and Judge O.C. Rains came in and joined them. Ned and John slid toward the wall to make room. O.C. laced his fingers on the scarred table beside Ned. “Boys.”

  Cody arrived and spoke to Frenchie. She nodded and locked the front door, then flipped the sign in the window to read “Closed.” Cody took the pedestal seat at the end of the booth. “I miss anything?”

  “We’re just talking about that area code John got from his sister.” O.C. wiped his palm across the table, collecting grains of salt. He shook them onto the dark floorboards. “It’s for Washington D.C.”

  “That fits.” The muscles in Ned’s jaw flexed. “The feller that called me said the CIA’s behind all this. That area code fer sure puts them right ’chere in Chisum, and with this Mr. Brown’s name, we have a start.”

  Cody crossed his arms. “It doesn’t give us everything we need. Now we know it was the government who sprayed that crap all over Center Springs. It’s killed more than we thought. Anna called from Austin last night and told me about another guy down there who most likely died from the spray. Interesting thing is, she can’t find anything about him. Just a wadded motel receipt that ties him to the Holiday Inn here in Chisum. I checked the registration, ran the name, and I believe it’s bogus.”

  Ned dug a thumbnail into the soft finish of the table. “That bollixes things up. We don’t know if it has anything to do with Pat’s murder or this disease that’s killin’ folks, or cattle rustlin’, ’ner nothin’ else. What’s to happen if I was to call them people and ask who was in charge of sprayin’ that stuff down here, or if that feller that died was one of theirs?”

  O.C. shrugged. “For one thing, I doubt the CIA is listed in the phone book, and even if you did manage to get a number, they’ll deny it or have an alibi ready.”

  “Alibi.” Ned leaned back. “Here’s what I think I’m gonna do. I’m going to Washington and find that place and make somebody talk to me.”

  O.C. rapped his knuckles on the table. “Nobody’s gonna talk to you there. They’ll just say they don’t know nothing about it and show you the door. And who you have in mind in the first place? You don’t have nothing but an area code.”

  John’s deep voice cut in. “Maybe not.’

  They waited while he pulled a thin pad from his shirt pocket. “My sister called me last night and said she might have something else for me. She takes these used pads out of the motel rooms when folks check out. She’s supposed to throw ’em away, but she gives ’em to her kids to draw on. She remembered she’d put some in her purse and forgot ’em. When she went back to look, she believes this one came from them government men’s room.”

  He held the black pad up. “They’s nothing wrote on here, but if you turn it to the light, there’s a phone number dug in the top page with that same area code and the X with three more numbers after that. I called it, and a lady answered Bureau of Public Roads.

  “When I told her who I was, she said I had the wrong number and hung up. I don’t believe them fellers from Washington had anything to do with our roads down in here.”

  “Well-well.” Ned took the pad and angled it to the light. “Looks like we know who to talk to.”

  “You still can’t go off half-cocked!”

  “O.C. I’m not just gonna sit here and do nothin’. Somebody needs killin’ for this.”

  “You ought to at least try to arrest ’em first, if you find who you’re looking for.” O.C. used his judge’s voice. “Your jurisdiction don’t exactly extend to the East Coast.”

  “Mine does. I’m not a U.S. Marshal, but I can guarantee you that if I showed up there, somebody’ll take notice of this here cinco peso on my chest.”

  Cody shifted to make more room. “That don’t mean anything. Just like Ned, you can’t go walking in and demand to see whoever was in charge of spraying poison in our county.”

  “You know, I’ve seen Ned work. Even when he doesn’t have all the pieces of a puzzle, he noodles around until other pieces shake loose, right?” Tom Bell ran a finger under his mustache to smooth the clipped ends. “Maybe that’s what we need to do. Those people up there feel pretty safe, right? All us rubes are down here. What if a couple of Texas lawmen show up and start asking questions? Making themselves known. Somebody might get nervous enough for a piece of the puzzle to come loose.”

  “Y’all’ll most likely get hurt and that’s all.”

  “I’ve been hurt before.” Tom Bell’s statement floated in the air without response.

  Ned drummed his fingers on the table. “So me and you drive up there, because I ain’t flyin’, and make ourselves known.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “No.”

  Cody drew a deep sigh. “I know there ain’t no use in trying to talk you two hard-headed old coots out of it. Y’all go ahead on, but check in and let us know what you’re finding out. I need to get all this wrapped up here.”

  “What’s today, Wednesday?” Tom Bell counted on his fingers. “We can be there in three days of hard driving.”

  “It’s a good long piece over there. We leave before daylight in the morning.” Ned pulled at his ear, thinking. “Cody, you need to do something for me while we’re gone. Bill Preston’s bein’ a real butthole. He was down with a bulldozer a ways from where they’re working, getting fill dirt for the foundation. Merle Spahn saw them digging close to a spring and he got all riled up, hollering that half the springs in this county are drying up and here they are, maybe killing another’n. Y’all keep an eye out on what Preston’s doin’ before that blows up, too.”

  “That sounds like something we need to worry about later.”

  “You’ll worry about it if they get crossways and start fightin’ one another.”

  The pained look on Cody’s face was enough for Ned to give him one more nudge. “You’ve got another case you need to close, too.”

  The Lamar County sheriff sighed. “What’s that?”

  “You’re gonna have to stop whoever’s digging holes all over my precinct in that gold rush Pepper’s started.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, a whisper of a thought crossed Ned’s mind. He grasped at it like a floating soap bubble, but it escaped, leaving a maddening sense that it was important.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Mr. Gray fidgeted across the desk from his superior, wishing he could light his pipe. A veteran in covert operations, Gray spent his entire career doing what he was told, but making sure that he was covered in every way. He’d been in that office dozens of times, but this was the most uncomfortable debrief he’d ever experienced.

  The spacious corner office and large mahogany desk be
spoke of the well-dressed man’s status in the organization. Thick carpet, paneled walls, and valuable art made the office seem more like the cushy lair of a CEO than a government employee.

  Resembling a college campus built in the 1950s, the 1.4-million-foot building in the middle of nearly two-hundred-fifty wooded acres eight miles from D.C. housed dozens of departments that mostly worked independent of each.

  The tiled hallway outside was full of art donated from a local elementary school, an attempt to humanize the building full of people dedicated to working in gray areas beyond the ken of the average citizen. Beyond that bit of humanization, the inhabitants worked in a world of compartmentalization that insulated them from the rest.

  After Agent Gray finished his report, the Supervisor checked his Rolex. His soft blue tailor-made suit cost more than Mr. Gray’s salary for a month. The man’s mouth pinched in concentration. “You say this isn’t your fault.”

  “We did our jobs.” Agent Gray saw the man had missed a small triangle of whiskers on his chin when he shaved that morning and it made him feel a little better. He folded his arms across his chest and quickly reversed the move. His supervisor would notice the defensive body language and use it against him. Instead, he removed the cold pipe from his teeth and cupped it in his hand. “I believe it was mechanical failure. The sprayers malfunctioned.”

  “You think that’s what killed your agent?”

  “Yessir. The…Gold Dust…was on the bottle and sprayers. I think my man came in contact with the material.”

  “What about the other one? The civilian pilot?”

  “Same thing. We’re learning that pre-existing medical conditions allows the bacteria to cause damage to those with lowered immune systems. The information I’m receiving from the research team back in Chisum says that healthy people are unaffected by it.”