Dead Man's Badge

by Robert E. Dunn

  I picked up the cane pole from the truck bed and handed it over to her. “Like sometimes you need to go fishing more than you need to catch fish.”

  “Maybe.” She handled the pole with no trepidation at all. “I don’t know. That whole thing—those feds—that pisses all of us off.”

  “Then do what you need to do. Unless you need me to bait your hook?”

  “I can bait my own hook. And I can take the fish off the line too. Even clean them and cook them. My daddy didn’t raise no prissy girl.”

  “I don’t doubt that at all, Officer Sunny.”

  * * * *

  I didn’t get to go fishing again. I didn’t get any weekend at all. The rest of that day and the following Sunday kept me busy. It was routine stuff and a lot of phone calls. The machineries of murder were remarkably mundane. And it was murder. I had been concerned that Bascom Wood might have killed himself. Officer Sunny Johnson set that to rest when she found the gun tossed into weeds ten feet from the car. It wasn’t rusted and had recently been fired—not much chance it was anything but the murder weapon. It was a drop piece. It wouldn’t lead us anywhere unless someone had been dumb enough to leave a fat fingerprint on it.

  Early Sunday morning we finished the onsite investigation. That didn’t mean we stopped. Bascom’s car was towed back to our vehicle impound. I had it locked into the garage and then set two officers to dismantling the interior. They were guys with a lot of experience pulling apart drug cars. It wouldn’t be much of a car when they were finished. But if there was anything to be found, they would search it out.

  We tracked Baron Wood down to another river hangout. He was with his girlfriend and friends. They were wading and splashing in shallow water and sunning on towels spread over the dirty sand shore. I went to talk with him.

  When I arrived, the kids tried to hide their beer. Some called warnings. Everyone stopped their fun to see what the cop wanted. Baron watched me from a knee-deep pool. Without stopping at the waterline, I walked right into the river and to the boy. He nodded at his girlfriend as I approached, and she angled away from us and took up position on a sandbank.

  “Are you coming to drag me home again?” Baron asked me. “Is my dad freaking out again?”

  “Not this time,” I said. I stood with him in the same pool of water. The water was the temperature of a bath that had sat too long.

  “You should go looking for him. He’s the one who didn’t come home last night. Or is he blaming that on me too?”

  “No.” I shook my head and tried to think of what to say. “He’s not blaming you for anything.”

  “That’s a first. My father—”

  I don’t know if he saw something in my face, but I saw the world shift in his. Baron swallowed hard. He looked around at his friends, who were staring back. Then he looked back at me.

  “That’s why you’re here,” he said. “Because he didn’t come home.”

  “I’m sorry, Baron.”

  “Was he drinking?”

  “Drinking?”

  “Sometimes he has a few beers. When he gets caught, the cops would let him off because of his job.”

  “Baron.” I held his gaze and hated every word I could think to say. “It wasn’t a car accident. I’m sorry. Someone killed your father.”

  His face broke first. Then the strength in his legs gave. I caught him by the arms and forced him back so he could sit on the shallow edge of the pool.

  “Why?”

  “We’re trying to find that out.” I waved the girlfriend over. “Louisa’s going to sit with you.” Her eyes were huge with worry, but she had the good sense not to ask questions. She settled into the water beside Baron. “Do you know anything about your father’s work?” I asked.

  Baron shook his head staring into the murky water. “No. He talked about it a lot. I never listened.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Now I wish I had.”

  “I know. He wished he could talk to you better too.”

  “Really?” Baron looked up from the dark water to me. “How do you know?”

  “Because he talked about you. He was sad he couldn’t make things perfect for you.”

  He nodded and looked back to the water. “He liked things perfect.”

  “He said you were going to be in a play.”

  “That pissed him off.”

  “I get it. I bet he would have come to the show anyway. What do you think?”

  Baron nodded again, and I saw something drip from his face into the river. “Yeah. He would.”

  “Some fathers want their sons to do different things. Some want different sons. Maybe you were luckier than you thought.”

  He was crying openly. Silver tears fell into brownish-green water and disappeared. “Maybe,” he said. His voice was thick, and he wiped his running nose with the back of his wrist.

  “I have to ask you: Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt your father?”

  He shook his head and wiped his nose again. “No. He was just a guy. Nothing special. Just my dad.”

  “I understand.”

  “What do I do now?”

  “Do you have family that can come be with you?”

  “My uncle and aunt.”

  “We’ll get you home and stay with you until they can come.”

  “Do I have to go with you? I have a ride.”

  Baron’s head was still down facing the dirty water. Louisa looked at me though. She had the same question.

  “That’ll be okay, I guess. Someone will be waiting for you at home. Don’t take long.” I left the pair huddled together and sloshed my way back to shore. From there I went right to the beer that had been hidden when I arrived.

  “Hey,” someone shouted when I lifted the cooler.

  “Shut up,” I snapped without knowing which one I was warning. “If I come back and find more, it won’t just be the beer I take in.”

  I tossed the cooler in the back of the truck and left the river, feeling like a man with battery acid in his gut. The rest of the weekend wasn’t any better. I called and got hold of Milo. He didn’t have information for me, or at least not any he chose to share. I told him about the latest run-in with Stackhouse. It didn’t make him happier with me. I also told him what I suspected about the team—that there was someone unaccounted for.

  When I got into the station Monday morning—late again—I was still filled with anger and acid but almost felt good about the job. I decided to share my mood with the police department of Lansdale, Texas. The first thing I did was to call Gutiérrez into the station to promote her. It’s not as stupid as it sounds. I knew squat about being a cop, let alone being chief of police. And surprisingly enough that was starting to bother me. Gutiérrez, I was convinced, knew everything necessary and more besides. Making her the assistant chief solved the problem of running a department and giving her additional duties made it that much harder for her to get in my way. At least that was my thinking. I still didn’t know what side she was working for. Keeping her busy for me was the best solution until I figured it out.

  Officer Bronwyn Gutiérrez was not happy about the promotion.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” It was, I think, the third time she’d asked the question.

  “It’s a promotion.”

  “It’s a trap.”

  “In what way?” I smiled as I asked the question.

  “I don’t work for you.”

  “You want to put that to the test?”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  I smiled a little broader.

  “Are you trying to make my life impossible?”

  “Not me. I’m taking advantage of an officer’s valuable experience.”

  “You’re impeding a federal investigation.”

  “What federal agency?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “What are you investigating?”

  “Again—I can’t tell you. Isn’t it enough that we�
�re on the same side?”

  “Are we?”

  Her answer was the kind of look that, from some people, would contain daggers. In her eyes, I saw something more like dull and rusty mower blades.

  “I noticed that Detective Walker hasn’t reported for duty this morning,” I said. “We need a detective, don’t we?”

  “Walker is over in old Mex, either drunk or dead. If he’s drunk, it just means they haven’t bothered to kill him yet. You put him in that situation.”

  “Nope. His choices. His ending.”

  “It’s on you.” Her voice was as cold and flat as a Kansas Christmas.

  “What about Hector?”

  “Hector?”

  “In the detective position.”

  “He’s not ready.”

  “That’s why you’re going to be his supervisor.”

  “I thought I was the assistant chief, whatever that is.”

  “You’re that. And supervising detective and the official lead on investigating the murder of Bascom Wood.”

  “Hire from outside.”

  “Nope.”

  “What are you trying to do?” She flapped her arms in an exasperated display.

  “I’m trying not to leave behind a mess for once in my life. You’re going to help with that, like it or not.”

  I’d made Gutiérrez the official lead investigating the murder of Bascom Wood. I didn’t tell her I was putting my own heavy emphasis on the word “official.” I was going to do some work of my own in that direction because I was sure it had everything to do with everything else I had found. The place to start, I decided, was the councilman’s office in city hall.

  Outside, the 125-year-old building was solid limestone. Inside, it was a ghost with polished brass. There were records offices open, the business license, building permits, and city tax windows all serviced by one blue-haired lady. Everything else was closed, and the lights were out. I climbed broad marble stairs to the second level.

  All the doors were closed and the lights behind their pebbled glass dark. I stuck my head into the mayor’s office. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. I crossed the hall to Councilman Wood’s office. I needn’t have seen the order of his home to know that the councilman had not left his office in such disarray. On the floor were binders pulled from bookshelves. Loose pages were scattered. Every drawer and cabinet door stood open. Someone had been looking for something.

  I spent a few minutes digging through the mess before I noticed that one of the desk drawers was splintered where it had been pried. The paperwork spilling out of it was all bank related, mostly statements and cancelled checks. Heading the pages were the names of two banks. One was Bank of the Republic. It was a Texas institution that had been around for forever. Bank of the Republic was the kind of place a city would keep its funds. Those pages were still in piles on the carpet. Other papers, scattered widely and crumpled, were all topped by the name Bank of Lansdale. I didn’t need a road map to tell me the Bank of Lansdale had a shiny new building outside of city limits and directly across the road from the Gun Hills Hunting Lodge and Private Club.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” The question came with the flash of lights coming on. It was asked by the frail-looking old man at the door.

  From behind the old man’s shoulder, the blue-haired lady peeked. “Tell him we’re calling the police,” she said in what she might have thought was a whisper.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “You’re the one where he’s not supposed to be,” the old man said defiantly. “You answer my questions.”

  The lady punched him in the ribs. I couldn’t tell if it was to say “good job” or “shut up.” Not that it mattered. He ignored the jab.

  “I’m Paris Tindall,” I told him. The name still felt like a rock in my mouth. “The new chief of police.”

  “Well, it’s about time,” he said. The old gentleman held out his hand and advanced. “I’m Spencer Toomey. Last of the city council.” We shook, and he nodded over at the woman. “This is Mrs. Toomey, my wife. She’s city manager.”

  “What are you going to do about this?” Mrs. Toomey asked, coming out from behind her husband. She pointed around the room. “This. This mess and destruction.”

  “I’m working on it, ma’am.”

  “My wife gets excited, Chief,” Mr. Toomey said. “It is not a good time for city government in Lansdale.”

  “It’s a criminal time,” she corrected him.

  He shook his head thoughtfully. “We found the mess this morning. It must have been okay when that lady officer was here, or she would have said something.”

  “Lady officer?”

  “The tall blonde with the muscles.”

  “Spencer likes her,” Mrs. Toomey said. “Thinks she’s feisty.”

  “Please, Norma,” he said. He’d gotten that teasing a few times before.

  “When was the lady officer here?”

  “Day before yesterday. The same day poor Mr. Wood was found,” he answered.

  “She’s the one told us he was dead,” she added.

  “Family business?” I asked.

  “Family burden, you ask me.” Mrs. Toomey nudged a pile of paper with her sensible slip-on shoe.

  “What my wife means is that we’re it for city government. Between deaths and resignations, we’re the last holdouts.”

  “We know who did it,” Mrs. Toomey said, almost gleefully.

  “Now, Norma.”

  “Everyone knows,” Mrs. Toomey said boldly.

  “Not specifically,” Mr. Toomey said. “But you can bet it was someone sent by the Machados.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s a theme around here. You have ideas why?”

  “Why they are eating our town alive or why they are getting away with it?” the Mrs. asked.

  Mr. Toomey shook his head. “Power. That’s what evil people always want, isn’t it?”

  “Power?”

  “Look at the town.” Mr. Toomey gestured around as though the town were in the room. “Mexico on one side. Big Bend on the other. Nothing but farm roads and county blacktop north for a hundred miles. The nearest city is Del Rio. That’s about eighty miles across Mexico and desert. Twice that on a road.”

  “If you wanted to take over a place and have no one care”—Mrs. Toomey pointed a bony finger at me—“Lansdale is the one you would choose.”

  I nodded. I looked back at the torn-up room, and something niggled at the back of my mind. “When was Gutiérrez here?”

  The pair looked at me with four raised and questioning eyebrows.

  “The lady cop with the muscles,” I said.

  “Saturday.” Mr. Toomey looked at his wife. “It was probably about five?”

  “About,” she said. “We were just ready for dinner when she came.”

  “City hall is open that late on Saturday?”

  “No,” he said. “But we were here catching up on things.”

  “There’s a lot of work backing up,” she added. “Business licenses, health certificates—things don’t stop because there’s no politicians.”

  “And you keep things going? All the important papers?”

  “The Mrs. is a notary.” Mr. Toomey sounded proud of the fact.

  “Councilman Wood had some important papers. They were what someone broke in to take. We need them to help us find his killer.”

  “Mr. Wood was a careful man,” Mrs. Toomey said.

  “Yes, he was,” I said. “Too careful to leave anything that important in a desk drawer.”

  She grinned with excitement. “Oh, no. All the important stuff is in the safe.”

  The safe was a green steel box. It was old and worn to the point all the lettering was rubbed from the face and the combination dial was almost solid black. Mrs. Toomey didn’t seem to need the numbers to twist out the right sequence. The heavy door swung open on oiled hinges. It was a great first step. The second one was on the bottom shelf. It was a metal fire box
with an alphanumeric combination pad that looked like the keys of a phone.

  “That’s his,” Mr. Toomey said pointing at the box.

  I pulled it out and onto the service counter. Science fiction movies weren’t going to help that time. But even without pop-culture obsessions, people are generally predictable. There’s a reason that “Password” is the most common password. I thought about Bascom Wood. I didn’t know much. There was one thing—Baron. The man was probably corrupt, and he might have been an unsympathetic father, but he loved his boy. I punched the name in, and the display lit up in red letters.

  Nothing.

  I felt a huge letdown. I had thought it would be easy. And I didn’t have any other ideas.

  Mrs. Toomey did. She opened a drawer and pulled out a claw hammer. “How about a key?” she asked, grinning.

  I grinned right back at her as I took the tool. On the first try, the display went dark. Two more, and the top popped right open.

  It was one thing to believe the worst of your father. It was a steel-toe kick in the balls to get actual confirmation. Buick’s name was all over the documentation in the box.

  Buick Tindall had consulted on and filled out paperwork for at least four homeland grants. They included money for border-security manpower, rapid-response training, and armaments to combat drug trafficking, antiterrorism task-forces and equipment, and the cake topper, a commercial transportation-security screening facility. From what I could tell, that was $22 million for basically a big truck x-ray machine and bomb sniffer. There were no major highways and no border crossings in Lansdale. What could that be for?

  There was more. I found economic-development grants as well as refugee support and resettlement grants. None of that made sense. Buick didn’t know anything about stuff like that. He had signed many of them, though—even the ones he hadn’t signed looked like his. On several pages, I saw the exact same language as if entire segments had been cut and pasted from other documents. I found other signatures too: the dead chiefs, Wilcox and Sawyer; Bascom Woods; and the kicker—Darian Stackhouse.

  As I pawed through the stack of papers that represented millions of dollars stolen from the government, my phone rang. It was Milo.

  “Hang on,” I told him and then set the phone down on the table while I scooped pages back into the fire box. The safest thing I could think to do with everything was to put it right back where I’d found it.