“Hey, Bobby. Thanks for coming.” Delgado smiled. “This is Piper. She’s a friend.”
The old man squinted at me. “And why the hell are you here?”
“Have you heard from Hannah?” Raul asked.
Bobby McKee shook his head. “Why you asking?”
No response.
The old man said, “Is something wrong?”
“What’s your daughter doing in West Dallas?” I asked.
McKee looked at me and then Piper, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Apparently, she’s MIA,” I said. “Not answering her phone.”
“She shouldn’t be in that part of town,” Bobby said. “Not if she’s by herself.”
No one spoke for a few moments. Then:
“The little creek that runs through your ranch,” Delgado said. “I wonder if it feeds into the Trinity. What do you think?”
The old man frowned but didn’t say anything.
Raul pointed to the water. “Everything’s connected, Bobby. Somehow, some way. You can’t get away from what you are.”
The old man looked like he was going to say something but didn’t.
A helicopter flew overhead.
I watched it bank far to the south and come back for another pass. “Raul, give me your phone.”
Delgado ignored me. “Do you believe in divine retribution, Bobby?”
“What the hell are you talking about? Where’s my daughter?”
Delgado continued. “What if something’s happened to her because of what you and I did?”
The helicopter swung around, and I wondered who had been paging me. If it had been Theo Goldberg and he thought I was in a jam, we might have a problem.
“Either one of you,” I said. “I really need a phone. If my boss gets it in his head that I’m in trouble, it’s not going to be pretty.”
The old man glanced at me and then turned his attention back to Raul. “Listen, son. I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but let’s don’t talk about it now.”
A second helicopter appeared in the north. It hovered, maybe a thousand yards away.
Theo Goldberg had the attorney general, the director of the FBI, and the secretary of defense on speed dial. He would drain an ocean to get one of his people out of harm’s way if they were there due to law firm business.
This was not out of loyalty. He was deathly afraid of the liability. He once arranged for a drone strike in Somalia because a junior associate had strayed across the Ethiopian border and gotten himself kidnapped. The associate had been released unharmed an hour later.
“My people will track Delgado’s cell phone from our last known location,” I said. “Then they’ll rewind satellite coverage like it’s a DVR.”
Bobby said, “What’s he talking about, Raul?”
I continued. “They’ll send a team to get us. To get me. Probably from Homeland Security. Maybe the FBI.”
As if on cue, the sound of footsteps crunching through undergrowth.
“Are you packing?” I looked at Bobby.
He nodded after a moment of hesitation.
“Put it on the ground,” I said. “That will make everybody less nervous.”
More movement from the underbrush.
“It’s okay,” Delgado said. “He’s right.”
Bobby hesitated for a moment and then pulled a gun from his waistband, a Glock.
“Old-school guy like you,” I said to Bobby, “carrying a plastic gun?”
Law-enforcement officers of a certain age didn’t trust Glocks or their knockoff cousins.
“I gave my old backup revolver to Jun—to Hannah,” the old man said. “Besides, change is good for a body.”
“That’s the kind of gun being used by the vigilante killer,” I said.
The old man didn’t respond. He stared at me, a blank expression on his face.
“You, too, Raul,” I said. “I’d put your gun down before whoever’s out there gets too close.”
Raul pulled his piece, another Glock, but didn’t drop it.
“Whatever happened to Wayne’s family?” Delgado stared at the old man. “Do you think they know how it all played out?”
Bobby’s eyes grew wide, his face pale. He flexed his left hand.
“The guns,” I said. “Seriously. I’d put them down.”
Piper said, “Who’s Wayne? What are you talking about?”
Bobby’s breathing was ragged, face ashen. “Let’s not get into that, Raul.”
“You okay?” I took a step toward the old man. “You’re not looking too good.”
He dropped his gun and clutched his chest with both hands, looked at Raul. “Where’s my daughter?” he said. “What have you done to her?”
Raul didn’t appear to notice the older man’s distress. “Can you imagine what it’s like, never to find out what happened to your child?”
Piper spoke to me. “I think he’s having a coronary.”
“Bobby.” I touched his arm. “Sit down and we’ll call an ambulance.”
The old cop didn’t move. He looked at his gun on the ground, his face white, mouth open, gulping for air.
“Wayne’s parents,” Raul said. “They had a right to know.”
The old man held up one hand like he was trying to deflect Delgado’s words.
Raul shook his head. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just wanted him to get off of Junie.”
The old man fell to his knees as the first FBI agent burst through the underbrush, a submachine gun aimed our way.
“Drop your weapon.” The agent aimed at Delgado.
Raul hesitated. Then he pitched his weapon in front of him. The gun fell on top of Bobby’s firearm.
More agents followed the first.
Piper and I raised our hands.
“B-Bobby?” Raul Delgado seemed to snap back to reality, realizing something was wrong with the old man.
I spoke to the lead agent. “He’s having a heart attack. We need a medical team.”
“Bobby!” Delgado knelt beside the old man.
High above us, the sound of a helicopter. On the marshy dirt by the river, Deputy Chief Raul Delgado began to weep.
- CHAPTER FORTY-SIX -
They medevaced Bobby out, taking him to Parkland Hospital.
The FBI agents choppered us out, too, a very short trip, setting down in the parking lot of Sam Browne’s, Bobby’s bar, which was at the base of the levee.
Before the rotors of the helicopter stopped spinning, several Dallas police squad cars squealed into the bar’s parking lot, followed by the same number of black SUVs full of feds.
Everyone congregated on the hot asphalt until someone pointed out there was a nice cool bar a few steps away.
Piper and I stood a little ways apart from the group, and, without talking about it, began to ease away, heading toward the street, putting distance between ourselves and the strange, uneasy mix of cops and feds. I wanted to regroup, call Theo Goldberg, and continue the search for Tremont Washington.
No such luck.
An agent flanked us and held up one hand. Then he pointed toward the bar. “They want to debrief you.”
“What if we don’t want to be debriefed?” I asked.
“It’s hot out here and I’m sweating my nuts off,” he said. “Let’s don’t make this hard, okay? Just go inside.”
Piper and I looked at each other and then followed a dozen or so FBI agents and about the same number of DPD officers into Sam Browne’s. Raul Delgado, who’d pulled himself together, was at the head of the group.
I sat in the same booth we’d been in a few days before and decided to order an iced tea and a cheeseburger while I waited for whatever was coming next. Piper moved to the rear to confer with the lead FBI agent and several senior staff from DPD h
eadquarters.
Halfway through the burger, I noticed Lieutenant Hopper, the chief’s assistant, milling about by the dartboard. He glanced at me several times but didn’t approach.
A few minutes later, the waitress took my empty plate and refilled my glass of tea.
I was worried about a repeat of the near-riot earlier that day at the building in North Dallas, but this time apparently everybody decided to play nice.
Another ten minutes went by before Piper came over and told me why.
“The two Glocks at the scene.” She slid into the booth. “Feds have this new ballistics system. Fits in the back of a panel van.”
“Yeah?”
“They ran a preliminary test on both guns. Got a ninety percent match that one of them was the weapon used in the vigilante killings.”
“Which one?” I asked. “Bobby McKee and Delgado both were carrying the same kind of gun.”
A moment passed.
Piper said, “They don’t know.”
I tried not to raise my voice. “What the hell do you mean they don’t know?”
“They were found next to each other. Neoprene grips. No usable prints.”
I tried to remember the details of what had gone down only an hour or so before.
Bobby had finally dropped his weapon when his heart attack began, and Delgado had tossed his when the FBI agents arrived. It had fallen on top of Bobby’s. Everything had occurred in a relatively small area behind the SUV.
“So what does Delgado say?” I asked. “Which one was he carrying?”
Piper glanced from side to side, then leaned close. “Nobody knows where he is.”
“What?” I looked around. “He was just here.”
“He’s a deputy chief. Apparently, he just walked off and nobody stopped him.”
I took a moment to process that information. “What about serial numbers?”
“They’re working on that now,” she said.
It didn’t really matter at this point. One of the men—a retired captain or an active-duty deputy chief—would be held responsible for the killings. The feds possessed the evidence, so of course the DPD was playing nice. They had laundry they needed to clean.
Before I could say anything else, the front door to the bar opened and a whirlwind of activity entered, causing a momentary lull in the crowd noise.
At the head of the whirlwind was a man about five foot five. He moved awkwardly in pointy-toed snakeskin boots that appeared to be out-of-the-box new. He was in his late forties, wearing an oversized cowboy hat with a huge feather band and a shirt that looked like something Porter Wagoner might have owned, but not as tasteful.
Behind him were several people in blue Windbreakers—federal agents—and two men I recognized as being attorneys from the Dallas office of Goldberg, Finkelman, and Clark.
The man in the cowboy hat looked around the room and then made a beeline to my booth.
“Who’s the rhinestone cowboy?” Piper asked.
The man bounded over and held out his arms to me.
“Jonathan Cantrell. We finally meet.” He leaned over and gave me a big hug. “It’s me. Theo Goldberg.”
“Welcome to Dallas, Theo.” I shook his hand. “The wardrobe department from Urban Cowboy called. They want their clothes back.”
“You like, huh?” He ran a finger around the brim of his hat. “I went to a mall in McLean, told them I needed some duds for a trip to Dallas. Told them I needed to, you know, fit in.”
“You look great.” I smiled. “Like a native.”
“I have a meeting with the mayor tomorrow.” He beamed. “I want to make a good impression.”
His entourage fanned out, the attorneys huddling with a group of feds. One of the FBI agents appeared to be a high muckety-muck from DC, so there was much genuflecting from everyone with a federal badge.
I settled back in the booth. “What brings you to the provinces, Theo?”
“And this must be Sergeant Westlake.” He touched Piper’s elbow. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Charmed, I’m sure.” Piper held out her hand.
“Pictures don’t do you justice, my dear.” Theo kissed her fingers and slid into the booth next to me. “You are a rose of exceptional beauty, blossoming on the plains of the Lone Star state.”
In spite of herself, Piper blushed a little.
“We needed to do a little cleanup in regards to the mess with the shipment,” Theo said. “Flew down this morning on the assistant director’s Gulfstream.”
Little-known fact. The largest consumer of private jets—Gulfstreams, Lears, Citations, et cetera—was the US government.
“So, Jonathan.” Theo turned toward me, nearly hitting me in the eye with his oversized Stetson. “You’ve had a busy day.”
“An understatement of epic proportions,” I said. “How did you find us?”
“Things were obviously going downhill,” he said. “So I asked a friend at the State Department to activate Snoopy on Delgado’s phone.”
“Of course. Snoopy.” I smacked my forehead. “And you ‘asked a friend.’ ”
Theo shrugged innocently. “I had to ask, Jonathan. As a civilian, I certainly wouldn’t have access to such an invasive program as Snoopy.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Piper. “What’s Snoopy?”
I explained briefly.
At the request of the State Department, a Northern California technology company, one who shall remain nameless, had developed a program that allowed a telco to remotely access a phone’s camera and microphone even if the device was turned off. Neither the owner of the phone nor anyone in the vicinity would have the slightest idea what was going on.
The State Department wanted the software in order to track kidnapping victims. Obviously, it didn’t take long for some of the other alphabet agencies to see the benefit of this particular technology. The official name of the program was so complicated that no one remembered it. Everybody called it Snoopy.
“Hence.” I finished my story. “Why I never carry a cell phone.”
“That’s really scary,” Piper said. “Isn’t there a law against that?”
“Probably.” I shrugged. “But that’s never stopped them before.”
“Hey.” Theo pointed a finger at her. “Do you want the terrorists to win?”
Piper rolled her eyes.
“Do you still have access to Delgado’s phone?” I asked.
Theo shook his head. “He threw it in the river.”
“Maybe he’s been micro-chipped?” Piper said. “You know, like a dog?”
“Are you trying to be funny?” Theo looked at me. “Is she trying to be funny, Jonathan?”
“She’s asking if you know any other way to find him,” I said. “Apparently, he’s gone missing.”
“Oh yes. The thing with the ballistics match and the vigilante killer.”
I nodded.
Theo didn’t respond.
After a moment, I said, “So . . . any ideas where he might be?”
Theo frowned. “Why would I care about some schmuck in Dallas?”
I tried not to sound exasperated. “Because you wanted me to keep track of him. Remember?”
Theo nodded. “Yes. But that was before we found out he was bat-shit crazy.”
I sighed, tired all of a sudden.
“What do I want with a crazy politician, Jonathan? We have enough of those already in DC.”
This point, I had to concede.
“I’m here to meet with the mayor and the district attorney,” Theo said. “Smooth things over after the problem with that shipment.”
“Problem?” Piper said.
“Best not to ask.” I shook my head.
“I don’t care about Raul Delgado anymore,” Theo said. “I never really di
d that much in the first place. He just seemed like a good person to have in your back pocket, you know what I mean?”
“Like a comb?” I asked.
“You’re funny, Jonathan.” Theo slapped my cheek lightly. “That’s why I like you.”
I smiled.
Theo continued. “That’s also why it causes me great pain to have to fire you.”
I cocked my head. “Say what, cowboy?”
Piper smirked. “Dogs and fleas, Jon. Lie down with one, get the other.”
“The shipment,” Theo said. “I have to sacrifice someone on the mayor’s altar tomorrow.”
“You’re firing me?” I tried not to sound incredulous.
“Poor choice of words on my part. We are allowing you to resign. The HR department will work out a generous severance package.”
I didn’t reply. The idea of being away from the nine-to-five grind as well as the unseemly nature of the contracting business was not unappealing.
A figure crept into my peripheral vision, oozing across the room like mist from a witch’s cauldron.
Lieutenant Hopper, the chief’s assistant, approached our booth. He cleared his throat and stared at Theo.
“I don’t believe we’ve met. Who are you?”
Theo sighed dramatically and said his name. “I am a lawyer, and I represent the United States, specifically, the Department of Homeland Security.”
“What about the US attorney?” Hopper asked. “Where’s he?”
“I had breakfast with the attorney general in DC this morning. That would be the local guy’s boss.” Theo paused. “Told him I would handle things.”
Hopper nodded and then looked at Piper. “Sergeant Westlake. I need to have a word with you.”
Piper stared at Hopper for a few moments longer than necessary and then slid out of the booth. They walked to a corner of the room. Ninety seconds later, she returned.
“I got shit-canned, too.” She slid back into her side of the booth.
“I’m sorry.” I patted her hand.
“Not like I didn’t see it coming,” she said.
Theo clucked his tongue. “What a horrible thing. You should come work for the law firm. We have an opening.”
“Shut up, Theo.” She shook her head. “You’re starting to annoy me.”
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