Dead Man's Badge

by Robert E. Dunn

  “What?” I watched Hector tilt up his can and take another long drink. “Him being dead? Me being alive?”

  He shook his head with the can still at his lips. When he lowered the beer from his mouth, he used the back of his hand to wipe away a drip. Then he said, “No. How do you feel about who he was?”

  I must have looked oblivious because he had to spell it out.

  “With me.” Hector lifted a finger from the can and pointed it at his own chest.

  “Who am I to judge anyone for anything?”

  “There’s no need to judge. But you gotta feel something, right? I mean, you didn’t know. He wasn’t the person you thought he was. Paris was someone important to you. You have to feel something.”

  “Do you think people can change?”

  Hector opened his second beer. It spit when the top popped, and he had to hold it out over the dirt to dribble foam before he could take the first drink. As he watched the froth bubble up and fall, he seemed to be thinking. “People are who they are, I believe.”

  I nodded.

  “But what they know and what they believe changes. Maybe they aren’t different, but they do different. Does that make sense?”

  “Maybe,” I conceded.

  “I don’t know,” Hector said. “I hope it’s a way people can change. If not, this world is fucked.”

  I opened a fresh can, and we clinked our beers together. “I’ve seen some things,” I said. “And I’ve learned some things. There is a lot to not like about the man I was before…”

  “Before what?”

  “Before Paris died.” I raised my can and used it to make a circle in the air that included nothing and everything. “Before all of this.”

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  I heard him take a swallow from his can. “Hell if I know.” My answer was aimed at the dirt. “I still don’t know which of us someone wanted dead. It looks like we were both good targets for someone. Something is going on here in Lansdale too.”

  “You have to ask yourself if the answers are worth what you have to pay.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” I lifted my head and can to take a long drink. “But I have the feeling that being here—being Paris—may be the only thing keeping me alive.”

  We kept talking and drinking until the beer was down to the last two and the sun was down to a muted yellow spreading out from the Big Bend National Park. Golden hour in Texas.

  Driving back was out of the question. I might have tried it, but Hector had better sense than me. Besides I was still new at the responsible life. He put in a radio call to Gutiérrez, who came with another officer to pick us up.

  I don’t know how it got divvied, but the other officer drove Hector in car number four. Bronwyn Gutiérrez drove me back to the motel in her cruiser.

  “My truck’s at the station,” I told her.

  “It’ll keep until tomorrow.”

  It was best that I didn’t drive since I was drunk enough that it never occurred to me I should be concerned about the $1.5 million under the spare tire of that truck.

  She hardly said anything the whole drive over. It was a surprise when she parked and asked me, “Is this the kind of cop you are, Chief Tindall?”

  I thought it over long enough that she shut off the engine while she waited. “Pretty much,” I answered.

  “Just like your father.”

  “What?”

  “You’re just like your father. Lazy and drunk.”

  “I’m not nearly as mean as he is. Buick would have probably punched you already.”

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “Give me time.” It was supposed to be a joke. I don’t think it came out that way. “How do you know Buick, anyway?”

  “Mostly by very sad reputation. And he was here in Lansdale about nine months ago.”

  “Why was he here?”

  “He was helping the old chief, Wilcox. Something about grants.”

  That made sense. Buick had a lot of experience as a Ranger working with other departments. Years ago, he got off the road and into the homeland security business. He knew everything there was to know about squeezing blood out of paperwork. Better than that, he knew all the people he needed to know.

  “You ran a check on me, didn’t you?”

  “I did that the moment your name came in from the DOJ. What didn’t come up was how they bent your arm to take the job.”

  “They didn’t. I asked for it.”

  “Really?”

  “Apparently.”

  She shook her head, and a strand of blond hair fell from her tight braid. It was an end-of-the-day look. “I don’t get it.”

  “Sometimes you find yourself between a fire and an open window.”

  “Whatever.” She dismissed my explanation. “If you jumped, you better be able to fly. I don’t see that anyone is waiting to catch you.”

  “Why, Officer Bronwyn Gutiérrez—I didn’t know you cared.”

  “I don’t. I’m just afraid you’re going to get someone killed.”

  “Like the last two people who took this job?”

  “Not like them. They had the good grace to die alone. I’m afraid you’ll take someone with you.”

  My head was a bit off balance. It wasn’t drunk spinning, more like the feeling of standing in a boat when a surprise wave comes through. I hadn’t eaten, and I didn’t want to have this conversation. It didn’t seem to matter; everyone else wanted to talk.

  Outside the car something moved. I didn’t see it. My eyes simply caught the motion and the color pink at the edge of the still-burning headlights.

  “Turn off your lights,” I told Gutiérrez.

  “Why?”

  “I need to see something.”

  “Won’t you see better with the lights on?”

  “Just turn them off.”

  She did, but gave me the kind of look women reserve for drunks and fools.

  I focused my attention—and slightly swimming vision—on the dark concrete cavern at the end of the motel row. Where last night Hector had jumped me, something was again moving. The new darkness brought it forward. It was a man.

  “What are you looking for—”

  I held up a hand to quiet her, keeping my gaze on the figure in the shadows. “I think someone is watching us,” I told Gutiérrez, using my still-raised hand to point.

  At that instant, fresh light—a pair of dim and yellowed headlights—swept the length of the motel. Along with the light came the noise of tires crunching on gravel and brakes squealing to a stop. The same man who had visited me at my room with Bascom Wood was momentarily caught in the headlights.

  “There.” I pointed again.

  But Gutiérrez had turned away to watch the passing car. “What?”

  I’d only seen a glimpse of the man. It was enough. He’d been wearing a black suit this time with a summer-weight straw hat. It could have been anyone if not for the pink silk shirt and pointy-toed boots long enough to curl at the tips. When the light had run over him, he’d frozen, but once it had past, he was gone. He had become one of the shadows.

  I pushed open the car door and stepped out into the heat and hanging gravel dust. Gutiérrez came out of the car as well. When she stepped around the open door, I noticed her hand on the butt of her service weapon. She was reacting to my tension more than suspicions of her own.

  I felt better having her there.

  She turned to look at the quiet parking lot and scan the empty highway out front. I followed her eyes in darting glances, keeping my attention on the shadows in the cove. Putting my hand on my own pistol, I took a step toward the dark recesses of the concessions nook. As soon as I stepped from gravel to concrete, the overhead lights came on quickly, followed by the illuminated fronts of the soda and candy machines.

  Lenore was standing alone among the machines, wiping her hands on a rag and looking me in the eyes. “Someone keeps shooting my soda machine,” she said. “You wouldn’t know anything about t
hat, would you?”

  “Where’d your friend go?” I asked.

  “Which friend is that?” Her eyes were hard to read, but the motion of her hands in the dirty cloth seemed angry.

  “The one that was back there with you,” I said.

  “No one back here but this chicken, Chief.”

  Maybe I was wrong. Anger and fear can often look the same. “Do you need help?” I hoped the question carried more than a casual offer. If someone else was listening, if she was in danger, I didn’t want to make things worse. I hoped she understood.

  “Aren’t you the gentleman?” She grinned at me in a way that made me feel that she had not quite decided yet if she was insulting me. Lenore tossed the rag on top of the soda machine and sauntered out onto the sidewalk.

  Women have a way of wrapping your hopes in tangles tighter than Christmas lights and then ignoring them completely.

  She nodded at Gutiérrez, who had moved back to the open door of her cruiser. “Bron.”

  “Lenore.” Gutiérrez nodded back.

  I watched Lenore walk away, heading for the office door.

  Gutiérrez watched me. “I don’t like what you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “It’s not a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “You want details? I don’t have them. But she knows all the wrong people, and she knows them too well.”

  I thought of the conversation I’d had with Lenore about visitors. “You think she’s dangerous?”

  “Hell yes. I just don’t know how.”

  Staring down the row of motel doors, I saw a small light bloom in the office window. A printed glass saint’s candle sat on the sill.

  “I’m going to bed,” I said.

  “Alone,” Gutiérrez stressed.

  “Alone,” I agreed. But I kept my eye on the office as I climbed the stairs, hoping the door would open. It didn’t.

  I entered my dark room and got an instant sense of claustrophobia. The air conditioner was off. The room was hot and stale. More than that, it felt unwelcoming. It was probably my imagination or the situation I’d found myself in, but the little room felt like a trap waiting to spring shut.

  I flicked the light switch and then moved quickly away from the door. I left it open, but didn’t want to be standing framed like a target. After I checked behind the bed and in the bath, I closed the outer door. The little safety flip latch was missing. I couldn’t recall for sure if it had been there before, but the screw holes where it was supposed to be mounted were there.

  I crossed the room and opened my side of adjoining doors. Then I knocked on the far side door. Not too loudly. Not quietly either. I gave five seconds to hear something and then hit it with my shoulder. The exterior door was metal clad. Those inner doors were cheap manufactured wood with vinyl coating. It only took the one lunge to break the latch from the door.

  That room was dark with no air-conditioning as well. I left it that way.

  In my registered room, I did the old movie trick of putting pillows under my blankets. I turned the air conditioner up full and turned out the lights.

  I put myself to bed in the adjoining room, stripping down to my underwear and keeping my .45 right beside me.

  There was no drifting off. I fell into slumber like a sinner into hell. My dreams were dark and frightening but unable to shake me from a sleep that would have looked like death to anyone watching. I know because I didn’t move. When the door to the other room was kicked open, I woke in the same facedown, back-aching sprawl into which I’d settled.

  There was no jumping up and catching the intruder. I rolled away from the door between the rooms and dropped behind my bed. At the same time as my body hit the floor, three quick shots barked out. The shooter ran. That was when I got to my feet and charged out to the balcony. Someone was running hard down the far stairs. There was a truck idling in the lot with its lights off. I didn’t have a line on the runner, but I put two in the truck’s hood as he jumped in the open passenger door.

  Before I turned away, I caught a bit of bright color from below. The single candle on the ledge of the office had turned into a little shrine. Lenore had added more candles, a statue, and a bunch of flowers.

  Returning to my secondary room, I emptied the phone and SIM from my pants pocket. Before I put them together, I changed my mind. I didn’t feel like talking. I left the pieces on the bed. Still dressed only in my undershorts, I stood at the balcony railing and looked at the sky. To the west were darkness and starlight. To the east was a growing glow of pink and gold at the horizon.

  I kept an eye out on the highway in both directions. No lights. No sirens. I’m not sure I’d ever felt as alone in my life.

  There was no point in trying to go back to sleep. I pushed chairs against each exterior door. After that I pulled the plastic bag from the wastebasket and tied the .45 into it. My pistol stayed with me in the shower.

  Cleaned and shaved, I dressed in my last clean clothes—khaki pants, and a white cotton shirt. I added my badge before walking out the door.

  It wasn’t until I was on the balcony staring down at the parking lot that I recalled leaving my truck at the station and why. Paris’s phone was back together in my pocket. I pulled it and then realized I didn’t know the number for the police department.

  “Screw it,” I told myself before dialing 911.

  The woman at the desk didn’t seem impressed with my need to be picked up. I thought about apologizing but not long. I told her to send one of the daytime officers out and said it like I owned the place. At least I was learning to sound like a cop.

  A black woman officer arrived to pick me up. She was short and small. Her face was stone, and there was no doubting I was the reason. We rode in silence.

  I spent that day making enemies. It seems to be about my best talent. I didn’t tell anyone what I was looking for or why. I started blindly digging into file cabinets. I wasn’t exactly sure what I expected to find, but Gutiérrez had mentioned my father and grants. Buick was an old hand at sniffing out federal money. I didn’t know a lot about grants myself, but I did know they left paperwork behind.

  I ignored everyone else in the office as I savaged the files. If they thought their new chief was crazy, they didn’t say it. I doubted they would. Everyone in the department knew I was a DOJ insert. They did give me some hard looks though.

  After I’d been at it for a couple of hours, Detective Walker showed up. He was wearing a different seersucker suit. It fit him about as well as the last one.

  “You wanna tell me what you’re looking for?” He asked the question like a man who had the right to know. Then he pulled back slightly. “Maybe I can help. Or set you off in the right direction.”

  “I’m sure you have plenty of your own work to do,” I answered, without looking away from my pile of files. “No need to worry about mine.”

  “Someone’s gonna have to clean up that mess.”

  “You volunteering?”

  “I’m just sayin’—”

  “Well, don’t.”

  Walker puffed up and rocked on the balls of his feet. “Your daddy said you were a straight-arrow cop.”

  I’d had him pegged right from the start. Walker was the kind of man who liked to speak at angles instead of head-on. He liked to have deniability. He called me a straight arrow without quite suggesting it was an insult. It was interesting that he brought my father into it.

  “You know Buick?”

  “Met him a few times. We had drinks. He’s a good cop.”

  I heard two things in that last statement. Walker admired Buick. And I wasn’t his idea of a good cop. I didn’t care about either one. The two of them were the same model of man, like they had rolled off the same southern-cop assembly line. The difference was that my father, for all his faults, was good at his work. Buick didn’t mind corruption, but he hated incompetence and weaseling. I doubted he would have much good to say about Walker.

  “D
uring your advanced firearms training?” I asked.

  He stopped rocking, and the smug look dropped off his face. “What?”

  “Advanced firearms training.” The blank look on his face told me all I needed to know. I dug a little deeper though. “The military urban-combat training for close-quarters automatic weapons use.”

  “I haven’t had that.”

  “How can that be?” I tried to sound surprised. “Buick was here working up grants for the department, wasn’t he?”

  Walker shrugged. It was an uncomfortable motion. “I guess. Something like that.” He looked away like someone who was about to suddenly remember something important he had to do.

  “That’s usually one of the first things he puts in for.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “What would you know about?”

  “Huh?”

  “What would you know about? What grants? What training development.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, already backing away. “I think all of that worked through the DEA.”

  “Why the DEA? These are development grants for local police.”

  “How would I know? Anyway, you can’t work down here at the border and not work with the DEA. It’s just the way it is.”

  “Yeah.” I looked around the office before leaning in to Walker. “Tell you the truth? That’s something bothering me.”

  He moved back, trying to create more distance. “What?”

  “I’ve been asking everyone, so don’t feel picked on.”

  “Asking what?”

  “About the relationship between this police force and the DEA. I think we’re getting the splintered end of that stick. You have any ideas how we can change that?”

  “No, I don’t.” His answer was quick and terminal. “I’ve got work to take care of.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.”

  He didn’t.

  I left the mess of files for someone else to put away. I’d found nothing about grants or federal funds in the paperwork. After talking with Walker, I was certain that I wouldn’t either. He was on the phone as I went back to my office.