Randy was a handsome man by anybody’s standards, and had a magnetic personality to boot. He was a man people wanted to get to know, and that was especially true of young women.
There were many times in his life when that was an unwanted burden.
But sometimes it played to Randy’s benefit.
On this particular late afternoon, as Randy struggled to navigate the message boards, a friendly young student appeared out of nowhere and offered to help him.
And it wasn’t Randy who finally hit pay dirt, but rather his volunteer helper.
“Is this it?” she called out after lifting up a huge heart-shaped message written on red construction paper.
Randy went immediately to her side and said, “Yes! Yes, that’s it. Thank you!”
The girl might have been a bit disappointed, for she’d shot down any chance she had of keeping the strapping cowboy for herself by helping him find the girl he was looking for.
But she’d brought joy to the man and that was good enough for her.
“Don’t mention it,” she answered. “I’m glad to help. And good luck.”
As the girl disappeared into the crowd to find something else to do, Randy reviewed the message.
Sarah Anna SPEER. I hope you remember me. I’m the Ranger from the Bar None. We met the night before the blackout. I’d like to see you if you’re interested. If you are, write your address on the bottom of this card. I’ll check back in a few days.
-Randy Maloney-
In the rapidly diminishing light, he could barely make out a reply at the bottom of the card:
5705 91st Street
The address was followed by a tiny heart.
Randy’s own heart seemed to skip a beat and he grinned a Texas-sized grin.
He’d finally found her.
He found Trigger, who’d been munching on some nearby grass, and mounted up just in time to see the last vestiges of the sun as it set over the western part of the city.
He was three miles from his apartment. But the evening was crisp, the moon was full and a wide expanse of stars twinkled overhead.
He was on the best horse in all of Texas, and he had a sense of satisfaction in his heart.
The satisfaction of knowing he was doing good for the city and the people he loved.
And that he’d soon have the answer he was looking for… whether Sarah felt the same feelings for him that he felt for her.
He hoped the little heart she’d drawn after the address was a clue.
Chapter 24
As Randy and Trigger walked along 19th Street, past a barely-functioning hospital, he heard a scream half a block ahead of him. It was followed almost immediately by a gunshot. Then another a few seconds later, followed by sheer silence.
A gunshot followed by silence was never a good thing.
It wasn’t the first time he’d happened upon a crime scene, and he’d learned a couple of things from past experience.
When someone was robbed or assaulted and fired shots at a fleeing assailant, the shots were almost always accompanied by shouting. Either “Stop, thief” or something akin to it. Or by cursing at whoever had tried to assault the victim.
Gunshots followed by silence, however, usually meant that a victim lay dead or mortally wounded.
Randy got a feeling of dread, but had no time to dwell on it.
For out of the darkness came a man, running directly toward him, looking back over his shoulder and with a gun still in his hand.
As the two drew near to each other Randy had a split decision to make. Should he pass the man by to attend to the victim, or should he stop the gunman first?
The lawman in him won out and he intentionally pulled Trigger’s reins into the man’s path, causing him to collide with the big horse and to go sprawling to the pavement.
The gunman wasn’t sure what hit him in the darkness and was dazed. By the time he saw the big chestnut horse standing over him, Randy was there also, aiming his own gun at the man’s chest.
Randy knew time was of the essence, if the shooting victim was still alive and could be saved.
He therefore had no time for frivolities or questions.
“Roll over,” he commanded before bothering to ask whether the man was a victim or the aggressor.
The man did as he was told. He really had no choice, with the Ranger’s .45 aimed directly at his chest.
Randy went down, driving his knee into the center of the man’s back. His left hand found the man’s left wrist and pulled it behind him. He lifted his knee just long enough to place the man’s palm beneath it, then reached for a pair of handcuffs on the back of his belt.
It was only when the left hand was cuffed that Randy holstered his weapon and grabbed his right wrist as well.
Randy helped the cuffed man to his feet and led him by the elbow, back to where the gunshot had come from.
The man finally found his tongue and started to protest.
“No, you’ve got it all wrong, officer. He came at me. He tried to rob me. He said to give him all my gold and silver or he was going to kill me, I swear.”
Randy ignored the pleas, keeping a firm grip on the man’s elbow and prodding.
“Who was screaming? I heard a man scream.”
“That was me, officer. I swear, I thought I was going to die.”
The pair came across a man’s body, lying in the street.
The dead man had a ski mask pulled over his face. A gun was still gripped tightly in his hand. His chest was covered in crimson blood, which was still oozing. A great pool of it had formed beneath his body.
“If he had his gun on you, how’d you manage to shoot him instead?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was just lucky. I pretended to see someone coming and screamed to get their attention. He turned his head toward where I was looking, and it gave me time to get my own gun out from under my jacket. I only got one shot as he was turning back. I fired and ran.”
Randy released the man’s arm and knelt beside the body. He lifted the ski mask from the man’s neck and felt for a carotid pulse.
There wasn’t one. He knew that, but felt a need to confirm it.
Beside the man’s body was a backpack. Randy opened it up to find it full of gold and silver jewelry and watches.
He pulled the gun from the dead man’s hand and placed it into the backpack, then threw the pack over his shoulder.
He’d turn it in to Lt. Davis at the next muster.
“Okay. I pegged you as the aggressor, but what you’re saying checks out. I apologize, sir.”
“It’s okay, officer. You heard a scream and a shot and I was running away. I understand.”
As Randy was removing the man’s handcuffs he whistled.
He knew that Trigger had followed them and was somewhere nearby. But he could no longer see him in the dark.
Sure enough, though, at the whistle the big horse came trotting and was at his side within seconds.
Randy returned the cuffs to the holder on the back of his belt and said, “Do you live far away?”
“Just a couple of blocks. I was on my way to the supermarket to see if there was any food left.”
“You might want to visit the market in the daytime. It’s safer then. I have a couple of cans of chili in my saddlebag if it’ll get you through the night.”
“Thank you, officer. That would be great. And I’ll take your advice.”
Randy hooked the backpack over his saddle horn and gave the citizen the last cans of chili he had.
That was too bad. He’d planned to heat one up after he got home.
As the man stole away into the night Randy assessed the situation. He couldn’t bury the robber at this time of night, nor did he want to burn him and have to watch the flames for a full hour.
He decided to just call it in and let the city crews take care of him.
“Ranger Control, this is Maloney.”
“Go ahead.”
“Please make note of a body, male
, thirty to forty, at the intersection of 19th and Nashville Avenue.”
“Ten-four. I’ll pass it on to body retrieval. You okay?”
“Yep.”
“Good night Randy. You be careful out there, you hear?”
“Roger.”
“Come on, boy,” Randy said to Trigger as he mounted up.
“Let’s go home. It’s been a long day.”
The big horse huffed in agreement.
Sometimes Randy thought Trigger understood every word he said.
Chapter 25
Joey Galloway felt the walls closing in on him, though he couldn’t point to anything specific. He’d heard there were a couple of cowboys going door to door across that part of Lubbock looking for a white man on a Palomino horse.
The men were claiming to be Texas Rangers, but Joey knew that was a load of crap.
Horse theft was still a crime in Texas, sure.
But it was no longer punished by hanging and the Texas Rangers sure wouldn’t have sent two Rangers all the way from Austin to catch a horse thief.
And everybody knew there was no Ranger detachment in Lubbock.
Joey wasn’t exactly a rocket scientist. He never even finished grade school. His mama said he shouldn’t have to. She told him since his daddy was in prison he was the man of the house. She’d dropped out herself in middle school. So had her husband. And they’d done all right for themselves.
Of course, “doing all right” was a relative term.
By societal standards, Roberta and Stan were colossal failures, both as parents and as citizens.
Roberta and Stan, though, saw it differently.
They lived in subsidized housing, received welfare payments and food stamps. They drove a ten year old clunker they’d bought at a predatory car lot which stayed in business by selling cars to people who had no credit. Both the buyer and the seller knew damn well the car would be repossessed. But it was win/win. The buyer would have a car to drive for two, three, maybe four months before the repo agent found wherever he’d hidden it and took it back to the dealer.
And the dealer would get to keep the buyer’s down payment, and maybe even a payment or two, before selling the same car to another poor soul who had no job and no credit.
And no prospects for a future.
Stan was in prison again, but not for dealing drugs this time.
This time it was for leaving the scene of an accident. That was a new charge for him.
Oh, he’d left the scene of accidents before. Twice, in fact. Both times because he didn’t have the liability insurance the State of Texas required him to have, and because he didn’t want to be cited for it.
It was much easier for him to leave the scene and run to the nearest phone, to call the police and report that his car had been stolen an hour before.
He got away with it the first two times.
The third time was different, both because someone used their cell phone video to record him leaving the scene.
And because a six month old baby was critically injured.
The baby almost died. If she had, he’d likely have been charged with vehicular homicide, and spent twelve years in prison.
Or a lesser charge of vehicular manslaughter might have sent him away for five years.
But the baby survived, and that was lucky for Stan.
She would be paralyzed for life. She’d be fed through a tube until her last breath. She’d never enjoy the small things, like walking through a park and feeding the pigeons. Or playing with the children she’d never have.
Or even combing her own hair.
But Stan was happy.
Stan was lucky, for now the most they could charge him with was leaving the scene.
The judge gave him the maximum sentence.
Fourteen months.
So now, several months into Stan’s sentence, it was up to Joey to be the family’s breadwinner.
“Breadwinner,” of course, was a generous term. For Joey wasn’t going to work each day, working an honest job to put food on the table.
The food stamps took care of that before the power went out. Pilfering food from supermarkets or abandoned Walmart trailers filled the bill these days.
No, the breadwinning Joey did these days was to get the things the supermarkets and trailers no longer supplied.
Like, for example, the two grams of crack cocaine his mother went through each and every day.
Or the liter bottle of whiskey Joey and his buddies passed around each night.
Both the dope and the booze were still available if one knew where to go.
But they weren’t cheap.
They could only be purchased with gold, silver or hardware these days, hardware the new street term for handguns.
That was why Joey and his buddies happened to be in that Walmart on that particular day when the guy with the big mouth walked up behind them.
The jewelry counter had already been picked through at least once before. The glass cases were mostly shattered and the jewelry within them in major disarray.
But they were hoping to score some of the good stuff the original looters had accidentally left behind with the costume jewelry.
They’d split up on that particular day. Joey had peeled off to go to the sporting goods section. He wanted to see if there was any ammunition to be had.
There wasn’t. It was all taken with the guns during the first wave of looting in the early hours of the blackout.
When he’d returned to the jewelry department to see how Mikey and Paul were coming, he’d walked up on a loud-mouthed guy in a leather jacket and cowboy hat.
The guy had implied he was a cop but never showed a badge. As far as Joey was concerned, he was just a creep looking to chase off his friends so he could take their find.
Joey had no qualms in pointing his gun at the back of the creep’s head and pulling the trigger.
When they left the abandoned store half an hour later, a few silver bracelets and a gold watch in hand, they stumbled across the cowboy’s horse, tethered to the rear view mirror of a dusty Ford Mustang.
Joey considered it a bonus and climbed aboard the beast.
A lot had changed since the day Joey blew away the insolent cowboy.
Paul was shot dead by a homeowner who didn’t take kindly to his breaking into her home and trying to steal her jewelry.
He had a falling out with Mikey when Mikey had a grand idea.
“Why keep risking our frickin’ lives finding gold and jewelry so we can trade it to the dealers for dope? Why not just save ourselves some trouble and rob the dealers instead?”
Even Joey, who in no form or fashion would ever be considered a Mensa candidate and in fact couldn’t even spell Mensa, knew that was a bad idea.
But Mikey was driven by the prospect of what he saw as an easy score and his drug-addled mind kept him from seeing the risk of his plan.
He forged ahead and took twenty ounces of weed and forty grams of cocaine from a connected dealer and now was on the run.
Word on the street was that one of the Mexican cartels was after him.
Word was that Mikey’s head would soon be placed on a stake in the center of a Lubbock park, as a warning to anyone else stupid enough to try to repeat his mistake.
Joey hadn’t seen Mikey in a couple of weeks now, and likely never would again.
At least not his torso.
As for the Palomino, Joey got rid of it.
His reason had absolutely nothing to do with the fact the Rangers were scouring the city looking for it.
But the effect was the same.
Chapter 26
Ranger Bill Medley and Ranger Bill Wise were a rather odd pair. Known among their cohorts simply as “the Bills,” they were tasked to find Tom Cohen’s killer or killers and to bring them to justice.
If they put up a fight and got killed, that was okay too.
It would save everyone the trouble of taking them to trial and justice would still be served.
Medley, the oldest and more experienced of “the Bills,” was a book guy. Everything he did was by the book and followed the strictest letter of the law.
Wise was eighteen years his junior, and was of a different generation. A generation which was a bit more insolent, a bit less worried about crossing the Ts and dotting the Is.
Wise was a fine Ranger with a great record for solving his cases. He cut some corners, sure.
But he almost always got his man.
On this particular day the Bills were canvassing the houses along 91st Street, asking the usual questions:
“Do you know anything about a Texas Ranger being shot at the Walmart on 55th near Raleigh?”
“Have you seen a white man riding a Palomino horse? Specifically a Palomino with a black diamond just beneath his left eye?
“Have you heard anyone bragging about being a cop killer?”
Thugs on the street, especially gang bangers, sometimes wore their murders as a badge of honor. And killing a cop placed them in a special status of very high regard.
The Bills weren’t having much luck, and were getting way more shrugged shoulders and head shakes than usable information.
Then someone mentioned a dead horse.
And they finally had a lead.
“I need medication for my daughter,” a man explained. “She needs it to survive. I’ve been to every drug store, every pharmacy within fifteen miles trying to find it.
“The drug addicts have cleaned them all out. I have no choice now but to go door to door looking for it.
“Most people don’t answer their doors anymore. Not even when I call out to them that I mean them no harm. That I’m only looking for particular drugs. And that I’m willing to purchase any extra they might have.
“It’s easy to tell the death houses from the others. The stench coming from the decaying bodies is almost overpowering. It permeates your clothing, and you come home each day smelling of death.
“But I cannot bring myself to pass those houses by. I know that somewhere in that house, on a kitchen counter or a night table or a medicine chest, there might be the medication my daughter needs to live a few months longer.
Death Comes Calling (Ranger Book 3) Page 8