by Rex Burns
“Who did what?”
“The raft. Who made it sink?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Wager studied the youth’s dark eyes. The announcer began trading jokes with the clowns as they dashed toward the fence and let the bull run in a slow, heavy trot toward the tunnel and the pens waiting outside. Wager and James watched the animal, light-footed and sinewy despite its size, run beneath them. “Three nights ago. We were at the campground. John came in and saw us.”
“Well, he’s supposed to—that’s part of the rounds, to collect the fees at the campground. We take turns; I make rounds one night, he makes them the next. We check on the plots and chase off the deer. And make sure the damn rafters ain’t camping where they shouldn’t.”
“He didn’t tell you he saw us?”
“No. But I reckon he must have shit when he did.”
“Why?”
“Because we still thought you had that goddam overlay. We knew damn well you were looking for something, being a cop and all.”
“You left Wednesday night?”
“Yeah. We wanted to be here yesterday for the first draw. Why? What’s the matter now?”
“You didn’t hear about two people being drowned?”
“No. Who got drowned?”
“The kid rowing the raft—Sidney.”
“Sid? Aw, damn!”
“Y mi mujer.”
In Spanish, the phrase held a lot more echoes, and James blinked as he translated it. “Your woman? The one who was with you at the ranch?”
“Yes.”
“I’m real sorry …” The eyes widened. “No—Johnny wouldn’t do that! You got that wrong—Johnny wouldn’t go killing no woman!”
“They’re dead. My woman is dead.”
“No, you can’t blame him for that!”
“The raft was shot. He did it. He killed her.”
James stood up, still staring at Wager, his head wagging from side to side. “He didn’t … I’m not going to let you …” The fist was quick and knotty and landed solidly beside Wager’s eye to blind him for an instant in pain and blossoming explosions of silent light. “No!”
He heard the thump of boot heels against the concrete steps as James pulled out of Wager’s grip. Blinking the shock from his vision, Wager stumbled after him, his knees snagging on the seats that filled the row. Below, he saw James leap two and three steps at a time down the aisle on the far side of the announcer’s booth. Wager lunged after him, wiping the water from his stinging eye and trying to follow the dark head as it tangled among the throng of spectators and cowboys behind the chutes.
There—pushing his way toward the center chute; Wager sprinted around the upper edge of the arena past the organist’s platform.
James dodged between cowboys and climbed up the fencing to the figure hunched above the waiting bull. John’s face, a pale oval, turned toward the stands and swung along the rows of seats until he saw Wager running down the aisle toward them. Then the face turned back to James, and they drew together, James saying something urgently to his brother.
Wager elbowed his way through the people standing in the aisle and clogging the narrow stairway to the arena floor. He reached the contestants’ area just as the gate slapped open and John, head down tightly against his chest and loose arm snapping high, burst into the arena on the snorting, hooking bull. The crowd cheered as the bull flung itself first one way, then the other, long strings of glistening saliva whipping from its muzzle. Then it plunged hard toward the barrier to send the arena hands scrambling up the fence. A spray of sandy dirt peppered the boards as the announcer’s voice rose to a shout and the bull spun and bucked all four feet clear of the ground and landed with a vicious hook at the loosely wagging man on its back. Jaw tight-clenched against the bull’s jolting speed, John swayed left, then right, and raked his spurs hard against the sagging gray hide, and the bull once more tossed its head and twisted in a tight circle to gore the rider. The eight-second horn buzzed almost unheard through the shouts and cheers of the crowd, and the clowns came forward to draw the bull away. The rider, slipping his hand from the gummy rope, swung away from the bull’s wide back and leaped clear to land on hands and knees in the dirt.
The cheers and applause of the crowd were loud, and the announcer had to shout the score—“An eighty-three for that ride, ladies and gentlemen! The top score so far, and that puts Johnny Sanchez in the lead for the money”—and the yells and clapping and whistles grew noisier. John glanced at the gate, and Wager saw his eyes as they caught his face, and the man turned from the opening to sprint down the animal chute toward the pens outside the arena.
Wager pushed toward the fencing, his arm grabbed by a pair of hands and James’s voice at his ear through the still-cheering crowd. “He didn’t mean it, Mr. Wager! He was after you, not her—he wanted to keep you off the ranch!”
Wager yanked his arm free and clambered over the fence, swinging his leg high as the bull from the arena lumbered in an agile trot down the narrow alley. Behind him, a voice shouted, “Hey, get the hell off there!” and two or three faces popped up on the other side of the fence to stare at him with wide eyes. Ahead, beyond the bobbing rump of the animal, Wager saw John run toward the white boards. The bull saw him, too; it paused, hesitated, then leaped catlike at the reaching figure.
For a moment, Wager could see nothing but the massive and bunched muscles of the charging animal. Then he saw John rise above the gray hump, arced backward against the motley glare of spotlights shining down on the pen of suddenly stirring animals and nervously tossing horns. For a long instant, the figure hung outlined by the dark sky, head curved back almost against its heels and face turned toward Wager with the eyes open wide and staring at him. Then the figure dropped into the dirt and, glimpsed between the shuffling legs of the animals, crawled and fought its way toward the fence. The white-ringed eye of the bull feinted quickly at Wager, backing him against the boards; but his real interest was in front. John’s face was glimpsed for a moment, still gazing at Wager, and his arm reached out, hand open and pleading. Wager punched at the bull’s solid flank with both fists, but the warm, hairy side jiggled slightly and closed against the planks to pinch Johnny out of sight. Then the busy spread of the bull’s torso twisted and kicked, and Wager heard men shouting as the other animals bunched toward the spot on the ground and the gray bull rose high and jabbed stiffly with its front legs.
“Get out of there, goddam you now!” a red face screamed at Wager, and through the fence three or four men began jabbing cattle prods to drive the animals from the thing that lay mangled and wet in the mud and manure of the pen. As Wager climbed over the boards, a long hook reached out to snag John’s belt and drag him toward the fence, where two men leaped quickly down to hoist him over the barrier and clamber out before the bulls could turn.
CHAPTER 14
“THAT TOOK A lot of guts, Gabe.” Max poured a second cup of coffee for them and typed another line into the report. “I’ve seen those bulls—they scare the hell out of me.”
The telephone finally stopped its ringing as most of the reporters quickly filed their stories, stirred by the knowledge that wire services might pick up their words because of the novelty of the death. Max warned Wager that Internal Affairs would have to look into it even though it was an accident, because a police officer was involved. But there shouldn’t be any problem about it.
Wager finished his own letter to Sheriff’s Detective Charles Allen and enclosed Riggs’s driver’s license. It was only a matter of time before the police networks located him and Latta. And with James Sanchez turning state’s evidence, there was even a good chance of convicting them.
Max rested his large hands on the typewriter and looked at Wager, his eyes baggy and tired and flat. “You know, partner—if it had been me, I’m not sure I would have tried to rescue that bastard.”
Like the others, Max assumed that was why Wager went after him—to save him from the an
imals. In a way it was, but for a different reason. Wager had wanted him. He had wanted him all to himself, but the animals had cheated him of that, too. He sipped at the familiar bitter coffee and tossed Allen’s letter on the desk with the one to Sheriff Akridge. Let him notify the DEA and get credit for the drug bust. Wager didn’t want any more to do with any of it.
“You got anything you want to add to this?” Max held up his report on the death of John Sanchez.
“I’ve made my statement.”
“Right. Well, come on—I’ll walk you down to the parking lot.”
“I can find my own way, Max. By myself.”
The big man sank back into his chair. “Sure, Gabe. I’ll see you next week. We’ve got the day shift.”
“All right.”
He went down the short hallway past the office of the bomb unit and the workroom, and on toward the night desk. Goldman, his sport coat open to show a brightly checkered shirt and solid blue tie, lifted a hand to him from the coffee machine. “Gabe—if you’re interested, I’ve got a psychologist friend who specializes in trauma retrieval. It’s really effective—what you do is go through it with him, sort of relive it, you know? It helps you to … Gabe? Gabe?”
Waiting for him at the sergeant’s desk in the lobby was Gargan, his familiar black turtleneck shirt twisted slightly to show damp patches under his armpits. “Wager—hey, Wager, hold up a minute, will you?”
He slowed.
“Listen—ah—about that Molly White Horse story—”
“What about it?”
“I found out from Doyle that it was the DA’s office that was pushing for the murder charge.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I was blaming you for a vendetta against her. You and Max both. I owe you an apology, but you’ve been on vacation, so I didn’t get a chance.” He held out a hand on the end of its bony arm. “It hurts like hell to say this, but I’m sorry.”
“Fine.” Wager turned away.
Behind him, he heard Gargan’s voice complain to the desk sergeant, “You see that? I just about kiss his ass and he doesn’t even shake hands! The guy’s a goddam zombie—he’s got a tin badge for a heart!”
Turn the page to continue reading from the Gabe Wager Novels
CHAPTER 1
THURSDAY, 12 JUNE, 1640 Hours
Jo was drowning. Wager knew it even as he fought to reach her outstretched hand and felt himself pushed and tumbled by the river’s violent and careless tumult. Behind her, a crest of foaming water plunged upstream into the glassy slickness of the suckhole’s current, drawing the raft’s debris: a splintered oar, a plastic jug, a shred of canvas, and Jo. She stared at him, her eyes wide with terror and unvoiced plea; and Wager, the current twisting his legs against themselves as he tried to kick, saw the wavering lip of the crest dip toward her even as he lunged for her hand. Then she was gone, a glimmer of orange life vest in the white foam, a flash of grasping hand, a final wide-eyed stare into the center of his screaming soul before blackness closed out the scene.
Detective Gabriel Wager stared at the Homicide office’s wall and blinked. The vision of Josephine Fabrizio’s death thinned to reveal the equally familiar paint, the scattered notices and calendars, the news photo of William Devine under the headline OFFICER SLAYS SUSPECT and the scrawled note, “Look Out Hoods, Devine’s Back on the Street.” He took a deep breath and held his gaze on the torn news clipping. Nine months since Jo had drowned and the nightmare memory still haunted him, bringing the same knotted anger and self-disgust that had drenched him as had the river. That feeling wouldn’t go away, and he didn’t want it to: He had earned it when unthinkingly he led her into the danger that claimed her. And God damn his eyes, he would take what he deserved.
Vaguely, he heard the steady pulse of telephones jingle in the office and saw the moving shades of men as they weaved between the desks. Somewhere at the edge of consciousness he heard Stubbs’s voice and noted a quick alertness in the man’s words. But his mind—his feelings—still lingered on the image that had risen in his imagination with even more intensity than the event itself. Then, he had struggled to stay afloat, and the shock of what was happening was cushioned by the effort to prevent it. Now, he knew it had not been prevented. Even if the stab of memory didn’t come as often as it used to, it remained as sharp. Instead of welling up only in those tossing sleepless hours between each midnight and dawn, it had begun to attack him randomly during the waking times. Summoned by some vague odor or phrase, by a half-familiar voice or even by the initials on a license plate, it came inevitably like a wave of nausea. He had learned to let it wash through him at its own pace, bowing to the justice of it and giving it the freedom to conquer the moment. Then it would ebb; and, trying to hide the involuntary shudder at what he had seen of himself, Wager would hunch tighter over his work and use that as a barrier against the emotional debris from the last assault and the threat of the next.
The memory tugged at him; the work anchored him. With an effort he held the two in a kind of equilibrium that allowed him to cling to a bit of self-respect for the job he did as a homicide detective. He did good work. He made certain that he did good work. And he even began to welcome the summonses that came pinched and nasal through the small speaker of the portable radio: “Any homicide detective … any homicide detective.”
“Wager—Wager!” Lester Stubbs, the new man, leaned down in front of Wager’s eyes and called his name, his breath a puff of perfume across Wager’s face. “We got a call, man, this fucking late! Can you believe it? Fifteen minutes before the end of the tour, I get my first meat call!”
“Where to?”
“East side. Twenty-fifth Avenue. Fifteen goddamn minutes!”
“You’ll get comp time for it, Stubbs.”
“Yeah. Compensatory time instead of overtime pay. Big fucking deal.”
It was better than nothing, but Wager would have done it for that; a call this late kept him that much longer away from his silent and accusing apartment. “Let’s go, Stubbs. You wanted to be a detective—now you can earn the rank.”
They ran without lights or siren through downtown and its afternoon traffic that filled the summer streets with a hot flow of automobiles and buses. A sudden snarl of brakes and signal lights, trying to pinch into fewer lanes, told them they were getting near, and Wager lit the flashers and thumped the siren to cut through the knots of traffic. At the curb, a line of police vehicles, their glinting roof lights almost invisible in the sun’s glare, marked the weedy and deserted lot where the body had been found. Across the street on the boxy porches of a line of row houses, a crowd of black faces peered toward the excitement. It was a familiar neighborhood, a familiar scene, and a familiar reason for Wager to be there. Stubbs looked around at the gazing faces. “God, any more jigs and we’d have to get the riot squad out.”
Wager led Stubbs under a yellow tape that said DENVER POLICE DO NOT CROSS LINE, and in Spanish, LA POLICIA DE DENVER NO CRUCES LA LINEA. The overgrown corner was one of those forgotten plots sprinkled around every city. It was the kind of place bums ferreted into for cardboard refuge, and neighborhood kids prowled through, seeking adventure. Sandy trails tunneled beneath the growth with that vague ominousness of leading to places where people did things they didn’t want others to see. This time what someone had not wanted seen was a corpse.
Blue-clad figures of the uniformed division finished stretching the tape around the rear of the crime scene, looping it over the branches of scrawny shrubs and hackberry; Wager told Stubbs to step where he did and to be careful to avoid the already marked paths of freshly crushed grass that led to the center of the cordon. Then he circled toward a lumpy darkness almost as high as the knee-deep weeds.
Stubbs looked down at the dark bulges humming with flies. “Jesus. Do you ever get used to this?”
Wager, too, stared. What you got was interested. It wasn’t something you got used to, exactly, but after a while what you saw wasn’t a person but a problem:
How did the victim die? How long ago? How did he get here? What evidence might tell who did it? Wager started to tell that to Stubbs, but the man had turned to lean against a stunted tree and vomit.
What was left of the victim’s face bent back over his shoulder toward the sky: a black male in his mid-to-late thirties, medium build, nattily dressed in a three-piece gray suit. As Wager gazed the features under the wilting Afro seemed to fill in around the sun-dried, erupted pulp that had been the left eye and forehead; and as the glint of a fly suddenly buzzed away from the flesh Wager knew the face: “Councilman Green!”
Horace Green, city councilman from the predominantly black northeast corner of Denver. On the television a lot lately, as part of a coalition to end bussing while maintaining equal quality in the city’s schools. Also one of the loudest opponents of the mayor’s plan to redevelop the northern quadrant of the core city into another tourist center with its combination of specialty shops, restaurants, and hotels. It was a nice idea that would bring far greater revenue to the city than the existing blocks of run-down housing like that across the street. But Councilman Green had worried publicly about the tenants who would be pushed out of that housing. He had complained openly about the family neighborhoods that would be lost to more commerce. He had warned in the press against turning another area of Denver into a twelve-hour city. He had worried so loudly, in fact, that he’d been accused of starting his campaign for mayor in the upcoming elections. An accusation he answered only with a smile. Now he wasn’t running for anything.
Stubbs spit a little something from his teeth and shoved a stick of gum into his mouth. “I think we better give Lieutenant Wolfard a call.”
“Yeah.” Wager began filling out a Crime Scene Information sheet. “Give him a chance to crap his pants.”
Wolfard, too, was new to Homicide. The department had been restructured from four divisions to five in an effort to put more manpower on the streets. But the real effect was to create more supervisory positions, which was all right because a large number of recent promotions had given the department more administrators than there were openings. “People,” the argument went, “who had served the department long and well deserved to be rewarded.” Wolfard had never served in the detective division at all, but, with Chief Doyle on leave, there had been a temporary slot for one of the shiny new gold shields. Now he was supposed to tell Wager how to run a homicide investigation.