by George Wier
“I don’t blame him,” I said. “Is he mad as hell?”
“He is, and he’s not going to take it any more.”
“All right. Let’s be done with the former Sheriff before he gets here. I want to be able to give him a full and complete report.”
Hank nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Here goes nothing.”
*****
Three of us—Hank Sterling, Amos Kepner, and I—walked into the holding cell block of the Atchison County Criminal Justice Center, each with his own cloud of questions following close behind. For my part, I wanted to know everything the Sheriff knew about the supposed and alleged attempted murder of the Congressman, why the Sheriff’s wife had bailed out the accused assailant, what Abner, his nephew was so afraid of that he felt he had to assault a Texas Ranger to get himself to safety, what, exactly, had transpired behind the scenes at the storage lot a few hours before, and what the hell nearly five million dollars in outdated thousand dollar bills was doing in a double-bagged paper grocery sack in the center of a padlocked storage locker. To begin with.
As Amos unlocked Paul Simon’s cell, I had my doubts that any single one of those questions would be answered.
“Well,” Simon said. “It’s about time.”
“You’re free to go,” I said, “if you can answer a few questions to my satisfaction.”
“The big man,” he said. “I did some checking on you, Travis. First of all, you’re a businessman, not a law man. You run a money laundering business over in Austin. I don’t know how you came by that Ranger’s badge, and I don’t really care. But you’re not a professional law man, and I think anything you do while you’re here is suspect.”
Hank laughed.
“What’s so damned funny?” Paul Simon asked. “And Amos, what the hell are you doing in here with them?”
“I’m the Acting Sheriff, is what I’m doing in here,” Amos said.
“In a pig’s eye.”
“Judge Wild just swore me in,” Amos said. “It’s official. And right now I’m cooperating with the Ranger Service. Anything they want or need, I aim to make sure they get it, and that starts with your big white ass, Mr. Simon. It’s time you tell them anything they want to know, because if you don’t, I’m personally gonna make your life a living hell while you’re in my jail.”
“Your jail? You don’t talk to me that way,” Simon said.
“I think he just did,” Hank replied for the other man.
“Simon,” I said, keeping my voice nice and even, “you’re an opinionated, blustering idiot on the best of days. I’m not trying to be insulting, but those are the facts. Right now, everybody but you is holding all the cards. You can be dealt in if you answer what’s asked without any bullshit. Got it?”
I’d been watching his face since the moment we’d entered as it shifted through half the colors of the spectrum, going from pink to scarlet, down to the end of the rainbow to purple, then phased back again to white as the blood slowly drained away from his face. I know of few men who wouldn’t have blown a gasket and either fallen to the ground from a heart attack, or immediately started raining random blows with his fists. That he did neither, and thus neither forced us to call an ambulance nor caused Hank to spring into action, was to his credit. Instead, he deflated.
“I reckon...I reckon I’ve got no choice.”
“I’m curious about something,” I said. “You’re right about me in one respect. I’m not much of a law man. I’d prefer anything to putting on a badge and a gun. Why did you ever want to be a Sheriff in the first place?”
“I had to. My daddy was a Sheriff back where I came from. His daddy before him was the toughest Texas Ranger to ever come down the pike. Being law is in my blood.”
“I can understand that. It’s hard living up to the mantle of our forebears. But if your father and your grandfather were successful lawmen, I’m almost certain they knew how to keep their temper. And how to treat other people.”
“Maybe they did,” Simon said. His shoulders slumped, his big round face fell an inch and he studied his feet.
“You don’t belong in this cage,” I said. “Let’s go to your office and sit down and talk like decent people.”
“I would like that,” he said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
T he four of us sat in Paul Simon’s office. Amos sat in the highbacked leather chair at his predecessor’s desk while Hank, Paul, and I took the regular chairs.
“You going to charge me with something?” Paul asked.
“Probably not,” I replied. “I’d like to know everything you know about what’s going on. That would be for starters.”
“Then what?”
“Well, after that, since you’re not being charged with anything, you’d be free to go. But you’d have to make a few promises, and then you’d have to live up to them.”
“What would those promises be?”
I looked at Hank and he looked back. I nodded to him, giving him the go-ahead.
“First of all,” Hank said, “you’d have to not foment any more trouble. No ambushes, no shooting at anyone unless they were shooting at you first.”
“That’s easy. I wouldn’t do either of those things anyway,” Simon said.
“Second,” Hank continued, “you’d agree to support Sheriff Kepner, at least until the results of a runoff election. Truthfully, he’ll probably need your help just to keep everyone under him in line.”
“Yeah, he’s going to seriously need that. Okay. What else?”
Hank looked at me and shrugged.
“I guess that’s about it,” I said. “Except for one other thing. If it’s in your power, you have to deliver up Abner. He assaulted—” I looked up as the front door to the office area banged open, and Ranger Gray Holland came into the Sheriff’s Office, as inexorable as a storm. “Him.”
“Shit,” Simon stated.
He came into the office. A moment later, like the mouse coming in behind the lion, Bee entered the outer office and carefully closed the door behind her.
Hank stared at her through the plate glass window of Paul Simon’s office, then she noticed us there and gave a tiny, apologetic wave, as if everything going on was somehow her fault. Hank got up and motioned for Gray to take his seat.
“How’s your head?” I asked.
“It’s been better. My hat sits funny on my head, but they gave me some pretty powerful stuff. That lady friend of Mr. Sterling drove me here because I didn’t fully trust myself. Where the hell is my gun?”
“Abner has it. He apparently hit you on the head pretty hard, then took your revolver.”
“Where is he? You got him in custody?”
“No,” I said. “But former Sheriff Simon is going to help us.”
Gray looked up at Simon quizzically. “That right?”
Simon nodded.
“What is the jailer doing sitting behind the Sheriff’s desk? Oh. Former?” Gray asked.
“It’s because I’m the Acting Sheriff, now,” Amos said.
I looked outside the room where Hank was holding both of Bee’s hands as the two stood very close to each other, whispering away. I’d never seen such a look on Hank’s face before.
“How’d that happen?” Gray asked.
“It’s my fault,” I said, returning my attention to back inside the office. “Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding, but I did what I did when I did it, and there’s no turning back now. The former Sheriff just spent a few hours in one of his own cells, and now he’s willing to fully—and I do mean fully—cooperate. Isn’t that right, Paul?”
“Yes. That’s right,” the man said, sheepishly.
Gray settled back in his chair and brought his cowboy boots up and propped them on the desk. “Well,” he said. “That’s more like it. Any idea where we can find Lil’ Abner?”
“That was the next topic of conversation,” I said. “Right before he explains about the ambush at the storage facility, the shots he fired at me, and the four million,
seven hundred fifty thousand dollars that Amos just put under key lock in the evidence room.”
“Shit,” Gray said. “You’ve been busy. Both of you.”
“Yes,” I said. “We have.”
“Well. What about it?”
All eyes turned to Paul Simon.
“Abner...I was once able to control him. But then he went to work for Senator Carswell, and ever since then, uh uh. He could do anything he wanted, and I couldn’t say anything about it. The Senator owns this County, not me. I’ve had to carry Carswell’s water for a long time, and he’s had Abner keeping tabs on me the whole time, just in case I was to get out of line. There’s been a hell of a lot of money floating through this county for the past ten years.”
“Abner told us a story about how you were a killer,” Gray intoned.
Simon hung his head. A change came over him, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was. Then I pegged it. It was shame—the outward show of self-blame that has been uncovered for the world to see.
“What?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s true. I killed a man once. In the line of duty. I took off for a whole month after it happened. It was a bad traffic stop. The guy was crazy. The coroner said he was hopped up on methamphetamines. He just wouldn’t stop, and I had to...I had to—” Paul Simon covered his face with his hands and sobbed, silently. It was real and it was ugly, and I so hate to see a grown man cry.
“No,” I said. “I’m not talking about anything like that, Paul. Abner told us that you went out of your way to kill people. That you murdered them and buried their bodies. He even told us that you killed Tanya’s husband, Billy, in cold blood. Now I know it was a lie. In fact, I think everything he said from the start was a complete line of utter bullshit.”
It took a long minute for Paul Simon to recover, and when he did—and for the first time since I’d met the man in the restaurant the day before—it was apparent there was a real person there in the room with us instead of the big, blustering bully I’d encountered.
“No,” he said. “Only the one time. And only then because I had to. I’m not a bad man, Mr. Travis. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you, Paul, now that I see who you are. Now that you’ve let me see. Would you tell us what’s going on? Take all the time you need.”
Hank and Bee entered the office, stood side by side and listened.
“I think,” Paul Simon began, “this begins with three women,” and launched into the story.
*****
“I think this begins with three women. There’s my wife, Loraine, there’s Tanya Tasker, although she was re-married for a short time to a fellow named Holdridge, but he’s gone now, and then there’s Mildred Carswell. I’ve known all three of them since they came back from college.
“They all went off to college together in San Antonio—Trinity, I think it was. When they get together, they always talk about their college days. But these girls, they’re...there’s a word for what they are, but I forget it. All I’m trying to say is that you don’t want to cross them. You don’t want to get crossways to them, because they’re...they sort of rule the roost in this town.
“People talk about Billy Tasker like he was a bad man or something, but he wasn’t. I don’t think he ever did anything but that he was asked or told to do it by Tanya. That Smudge Pot joint was her idea, just like re-opening it again is her idea. She says she doesn’t want to run illegal gambling and prostitution there anymore once it’s open, but it’ll be too easy for all that shit to get started up again. The old man, Carswell, wouldn’t have run for Congress unless Millie wanted him to do it. Demanded he do it. That man’s got real power, now. Scary kind of power, here and in Washington, D.C. I never wanted anything like that, myself. All I ever wanted was to be a lawman, but my wife has been on to me for years to become Carswell’s sidekick, but I wouldn’t do it. She’s threatening me with divorce. We’ve been on the brink for a long time. I keep expecting her to run off with somebody, but she ain’t done it yet.
“Long about twelve years ago, there was this big write-up in the local paper about Carswell. About how he was the newest member of a military committee in Congress. It was right after that we had a some big explosions out on his ranch outside of town. Me and the boys went out there, but we were stopped at the gate by some military guys, all armed to the teeth. They turned us around right quick, but I know every inch of this county. I’ve lived here straight on from when I was eight years old and we moved from West Texas, out San Angelo way. Anyway, I knew there was a back way in to the place. It’s a five thousand acre ranch, you see, and the back part of it is down on Kickapoo Creek. There’s a county road runs along the back of the property, so I sent the boys back to the station and I went down there all by myself. I parked my cruiser, took a couple of extra guns and went beneath the barbed wire right down in the creek itself. I got a little muddy, but I got through. I walked for a mile back in there and came up over this ridge. There were three helicopters parked there, and while I was watching, a fourth one comes in and lands, and about twenty people pour out. It was one of them big helicopters that could pick up a house.
“I watched and waited as something big was loaded on to the ‘copter. Then they all took off together. And ever since that night, there’s been military trucks and guns and armaments coming through this town, like there was a big military fort here, instead of a quarter horse ranch.
“And about Abner. About two years back, he starts working for Carswell. I watch him come and go out to the Carswell ranch, even when Carswell himself was in Washington. When Carswell is back home, he still goes out there. So, to my mind, he’s taking orders from Millie Carswell. One day he takes my Mustang out of the garage and is driving it around. I blew up on him about it, and he threatened me. He told me he was going to drive it until the wheels fell off of it and that if I said anything about it, I’d likely find myself buried back down on Kickapoo Creek. One night I woke up and the little bastard had a gun to my head. He whispered to me that he was getting an itching feeling about me. This was a night right after I’d gone down and come in the back way to the Carswell Ranch, poking around to see what was going on. All I can figure was that they knew I was there. They had electronic countermeasures or some stupid shit. Anyway, I very nearly pissed myself.
“Since then, Abner has been hotrodding up and down in my Mustang, and I’ve had no control over the situation. I feel like my whole life has been slipping away.
“And you probably want to know about the ambush.
“Loraine called me up last night. My own wife. She told me that Abner had hit one of the Texas Rangers over the head, took his gun and escaped. She also told me to get set up down at Millie Carswell’s storage lot and wait for you. That she and Tanya would lead you in there and that I was to shoot and kill you as you were coming out. It was a setup from the word ‘Go.’ I did shoot at you, but I purposefully missed. I wasn’t about to kill no Texas Ranger. And as far as that sack of money is concerned, I have no idea what that’s about. I swear it.
“I don’t know where Abner is, other than that he’s probably at the Carswell ranch. That’s the only place I know of where he’d be able to go to ground. Right about the time I was heading down to the storage lot, I got the word from a friend of mine—a nurse down at the hospital—that Carswell was being released. That Millie was taking him home.
“So that’s where we are. You can pile up a hundred Bibles right here and I would put my hand on the whole stack and swear what I’ve told you is the truth. And God Himself would give me the nod.”
A long silence ensued. Paul Simon was done speaking.
“Well,” I said to Gray Holland, Hank and Bee, and the newly-minted Sheriff Amos Kepner, “it looks as though we have an open invitation to visit the Carswell ranch.”
The silence deepened for a moment, and then Paul spoke once again. “I passed my wife on the way in here. You left one of the most dangerous people in this county sitting in a chair in the book
ing room.”
Hank cleared his throat. “We could’ve thrown her in a holding cell, but we didn’t out of deference to you, I’m thinking.”
“Paul,” I said, “There are a couple of things you can do to start setting things right. I’ll give you back your badge and your gun, but you’re not the Sheriff, you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good. You can put on your badge and your gun, go out into the front lobby and talk to the reporter. Tell them that you have voluntarily stepped down as Sheriff during the course of an investigation into the county government. Tell them that Amos Kepner is Acting Sheriff during this time, and that you fully support him and are cooperating with the Texas Rangers. Make no other statement, no matter what questions they give you.”
“I know how to handle the press,” he said.
“Good. Go handle them.” I gestured to Amos and he opened the desk drawer and pulled out Paul Simon’s badge, holster, belt and gun, and handed them to him.
Simon’s whole body changed when he put on the badge and cinched up the belt around his big belly. A smile crept in at the corners of his mouth.
“I’m back,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
S imon put on his boots and his hat and went out to handle the press, while Hank and Bee, Gray, Amos, and I went back to talk to Loraine and Tanya. The others left it up to me to start in with them.
“Tanya, Loraine. We have reason to believe that Abner is out at the Carswell ranch.”
“No shit,” Loraine said, as if I had stated the most obvious thing in the world.
“Your husband has his badge and gun back, and he’s going to help us. Right now he’s out front talking to the press.”
“If you haven’t noticed,” Tanya said, “it’s dawn outside, nearly daylight, and we’re both hungry. I had to stop Loraine from leaving a few times there, so what about getting us some breakfast?”