“Excellent. Thank you for volunteering. Did the city representative explain what we’d be doing here today?”
“No. Are those water hoses you have in the back of your wagon?”
He waved at the women watching them from the wagon. They waved back, and he turned to his wife.
“Honey, I’ll take care of this. Why don’t you ask those young ladies if they want to come in to get a drink or whatever else they need to do?”
He turned back to Brandy and apologized for the distraction.
“No problem, sir, and thank you for your generosity.”
“We take care of those who help take care of us. Now what exactly are we doing with the hoses?”
“We’re going to connect them together and stretch them from the last house you plan to garden, all the way to the intersection across the street from the park.
“We’ll leave you enough slack coiled up at the end of the street to run to the middle of the intersection so you can attach it to one end of a water pump.
“Directly across the street we’ll run another line of strung hoses that will go from the intersection and into the water of the playa lake.
“We’ll leave a water pump with you, and you’ll be responsible for sharing it with the other block leaders whose blocks also run adjacent to the park.”
“Share it how, exactly?”
“The city has determined that one hour of pump time every other day will be sufficient to keep your plants alive, even in periods of drought conditions. Since you manage two city blocks, you’ll get twice that much time.
“The water pump is on wheels. Every other day, on even calendar days, you have the city’s permission to roll the pump into the middle of the street and to hook up the ends of both hose lines to it. Then you’ll run it for two hours, while all your residents use the water to irrigate their crops.
“At the end of two hours you’ll be expected to stop the pump and disconnect it. Then you’ll roll it over to the block leader on 41st Street and he’ll have his turn.
“There are exactly twenty three blocks which surround K. N. Clapp Park. Half of them, like you, will have a permit to pump on even calendar days. The other half will have permits to pump on odd-numbered days, not including the 31st day of the month.
“The pump will be passed around from block to block. When you pass it on to 41st Street on a Tuesday morning you won’t see it again for awhile. But sometime on Wednesday afternoon the leader of the 2300 block of 40th Street will return it to you after he’s finished.
“You’ll hang onto it until Thursday when it’s your turn to water again. And then you’ll repeat the process.
“Any questions?”
“Nope. Sounds simple enough. Did you bring any seeds with you?”
“No sir. The seeds won’t be delivered until springtime, when the city determines the chance for a late freeze has passed. They don’t want anybody to plant their seeds too early and lose everything if Mother Nature gives us one last taste of winter. You’ll get your seed ration probably about the middle of March.
“I know that’s a long time to wait, but the city would like for you to spend the next few months moving all your abandoned cars out of your streets and driveways and to the nearest commercial parking lot. If you need some help, let me know next time we come around, and I’ll get some of Tech’s bored students over here to help you.
“Once your street and driveways are cleared the city will sign you out a chain saw. They’ll ask your men to cut down all your trees and to stack the wood in the street in font of your homes.
“The city knows that not all the houses have fireplaces. Those people who do not have fireplaces should take over an abandoned house that does have one. Or move in with a family who has a fireplace at least for the winter.
“The trees you cut down and place in the street should fill everyone’s firewood requirements for two or three winters. By that time the city hopes to have limited power restored.
“The city asked me to remind you that next year there won’t be any old produce in the supermarkets to harvest seeds from. That makes it doubly important for your people to save their own seeds for the following year’s crop.”
“Makes sense. Okay, I’ll make sure we save plenty of seeds. Now then, how many hoses do you figure it’ll take to run to the end of the next block?”
“We’ve crunched the numbers and figured an average of twenty six hoses for each block.”
“That’s a lot of hoses.”
“Yes, sir. You’ll see us a lot in the days ahead. It’ll take us four more loads just to get all your neighbors fixed up.”
“I’ll tell you what, Brandy. That’s gonna take a lot of manpower too. Why don’t you have your crew start tossing them down and I’ll go knock on some doors and scare up some help.”
He padded away and Randy asked, “Is this the kind of cooperation you’re getting everywhere?”
“For the most part,” Brandy replied. “The people of Lubbock are coming together and realizing that teamwork and helping one another is the best way to ensure everyone survives.”
Rolling the hoses out wasn’t the easiest task, since they were tightly curled and would straighten only when someone stepped on them or placed heavy bricks along their entire course.
But with a little bit of effort and a whole lot of cursing they were finally able to get the hoses into place, all strung together and reaching to the end of the second block.
“Can I ask a silly question?” one man said to Brandy.
“Sure.”
“How come you brought the hoses so early,” he said, “if we’re not going to be using them until springtime?”
“Because it’s a big city. We had to get an early start in doing this. You’re the first of the neighborhoods to get the hoses. By the time we do the last neighborhood it’ll be almost planting time.”
Chapter 37
Steve Peters’ war on the Texas Rangers wasn’t something he could rush into. It wasn’t something he could play by ear or figure out as he went. It had to be carefully thought out. Carefully planned. Carefully executed.
He knew they knew about him. It was the only reason they’d come knocking at his door.
And if they knew about him, knew where he was, it was only a matter of time before they’d be back.
When they did come back, of course, they’d come in force. They’d fire tear gas canisters though the windows and wait for him to come running out.
When he didn’t they’d wait for the smoke to clear a bit, then don gas masks and enter the house.
At first they’d curse their bad luck, and assume Steve had outsmarted them. Had left just before they’d arrived. Had departed to parts unknown.
But then, almost certainly, they’d discover the secret door to his basement hidden behind the heavy oak bookcase.
They’d rip the books from their shelves and see the heads of the bolts hidden behind the books and fastened to the basement door behind the shelf.
They’d use battering rams to break the bookcase into pieces, then the same with the door.
And they’d fire tear gas into the basement.
Steve had a gas mask. It was a military grade M-17-1A mask he’d purchased, along with a dozen filter canisters, at an on-line military surplus store.
But he’d surrender at that point anyway.
At the point the tear gas got fired down upon him, even when he was so equipped, the gig would be up. It would just be a matter of time before they’d storm the basement with guns drawn.
And Steve, in a close quarter gun battle, couldn’t take all of them out before they got him.
In Steve’s damaged mind, that was the only possible scenario, should he not make the effort to go on the offensive.
He simply considered no other options.
That was why he’d take the war to the Rangers, instead of waiting for hell to rain down upon him.
Chapter 38
Steve Peters’ personal plans f
or war notwithstanding, Rangers Castro and Sondrini were modifying their own tactics.
They’d spent days going from house to house to every structure within a square mile of Shultz’s murder scene.
They were confident the killer lived close by, because he was able to escape so quickly after his evil deed.
But they were hampered by the fact that few people were opening their doors to them. And none of the people who were willing to speak professed to knowing anything.
“You know, I’ve been giving this some thought,” Sondrini said.
“Nobody wants to open their doors to two big burly guys in cowboy hats. There’s just too much fear and uncertainty and too many bad men going around.”
“Well, if you want to start wearing dresses and ladies scarves forget it. You’re on your own. I’d rather be a burly scary looking dude.”
“No. Well, maybe. But probably no. What I’m thinking is that this guy, whoever he is, probably had a grudge against Major Shultz. I mean, if he was a thrill killer, he could have just sat in his perch and waited for the first person to come walking down the street. He could have just shot them.
“Instead, he went through all the trouble of setting up Major Shultz specifically. Have you wondered why?”
“No. I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Think about it. Why would somebody hate a law enforcement officer enough to kill him?”
“You may be on to something. That requires a lot of hate. Maybe Shultz sent him to prison once upon a time.”
“My thinking exactly.”
“Well, the major was here for many years. If that’s the case, then the killer probably processed into the Lubbock County Jail after his arrest.”
“Yep.”
“And it might take some digging, but they’ve probably still got his mug shot on file.”
“Yeah. But they’ve been computerized for years. They would have been fried when all the other computers were.”
“Maybe not. Do you know Dan Moore?”
“No.”
“He’s a retired cop I go fishing with on my day off. He told me that the IT guys at the sheriff’s office have been swapping out fried circuits and diodes and whatever the heck else computers are made of, with good ones. He said the data on the hard drives was typically all lost, but they’ve actually got a couple of stripped down computers and one of their laptops working again.”
“What good are they if all the data was lost?”
“They still read disks and thumb drives. Those things had no electronic components, so the EMPs didn’t damage them.”
“Do you think Booking saved any disks with mug shots on them?”
“I don’t know. But I would have if I was in charge. Just in case the system ever crashed.”
“We’ve got muster tomorrow. We’ll be downtown anyway. Let’s ride over to the sheriff’s office after muster and talk to them.”
The following day the pair visited the office of the Lubbock County Sheriff, whose deputies were responsible for running the jail.
“We’ve got a backup drive that wasn’t damaged,” the deputy in charge of Booking and Processing told them.
“But they’re in alphabetical order. You have to have a name to punch in to call them up. Sorry.”
Castro and Sondrini were back to square one.
They were growing more and more desperate by the day, and asked several of their fellow Rangers for ideas.
One of the men they asked happened to be Randy. And he happened to have one.
“Go to the city library. I know you guys don’t read much, so you’ve probably never been there. But it’s easy to find. It’s on 10th Street and Avenue K.”
“Okay. And what do we do when we get there?”
“Go in the main door and turn right. Walk about fifty feet and look to your left. That’s about where they keep the city directories.”
“What in heck is a city directory?”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like. Picture the phone book, but for everybody in the city. Not just the ones who have a telephone.
And it cross-references. First it lists every address in the city and who lived in that house in that particular year. Then it takes the names and puts them in alphabetical order. You can research by address or by name.”
“You said, ‘that particular year.’ Does that mean there’s a new volume published each year?”
“Yes. Dating back to 1928.”
“I don’t think our killer is that old.”
“Just sayin’.”
Castro was a bit skeptical.
“Okay, so there’s a list of names. And a cross-referenced list of addresses. But how does that help us find our guy?”
“Go into our office. To our file cabinet. We kept a limited amount of paper records even after we got automated. Basically just the face sheets and charge sheets. Just in case our system ever crashed so badly we had to reconstitute everything.
“Go through the files. They should include every case we ever opened locally and what happened. It’ll also include charge sheets for anyone we arrested.
“At the bottom of the charge sheets it’ll have the name of the arresting officer…”
The light finally came on in Castro’s head.
He picked up where Randy left off.
“…So we go through all those records and make a list of everybody the major arrested over the years. Then we take that list to the library and get the most recent copy of the city directory…”
“Exactly. You’re looking for anybody he arrested who lives within, say, a mile of him.
“Then you highlight those names and take them to the sheriff’s office. Look up those names and make copies of their mug shots.”
“They can’t make copies, Randy. They haven’t been able to get any of their copiers fixed.”
“Okay, then. You said they got one of their laptops working again. Put the mug shots in question on a thumb drive and load them onto the laptop. Take the laptop to the boy witness. Show him the mug shots and see if he can identify anybody.”
“I don’t know, Randy. If the sheriff’s office only has one working laptop, there’s no way they’re gong to loan it to us.”
“To help catch a cop killer they will.”
Chapter 39
Randy was right. They did.
No law enforcement agency in the world would refuse another agency’s request to help catch a cop killer. They were all members of the same brotherhood, and an attack on one was an attack on all.
It wasn’t an easy process.
It turned out that Major John Shultz had been a very prolific investigator before his hair went gray and he slowed down, then had to resign himself to administrative work.
Since he’d been assigned to Company C, he’d slapped the cuffs on over four hundred bad guys.
First, Castro and Sondrini made a rough list of names, case numbers and charges.
That took four full days.
Then they put all that information into a semblance of order by alphabetizing it.
Another full day.
Then came the tricky part.
The Lubbock County Correctional Facility, formerly the Lubbock County Jail, processed an average of sixty two arrestees each and every day.
Even more on Friday and Saturday nights, and whenever there was a full moon.
It was a daunting task, with Castro sitting at a desk calling out each name on their list.
Sondrini sat at an adjacent desk, typing their names into a laptop computer which kept overheating and had to be shut down for forty five minutes of every hour.
Three more days.
It was mind-numbing, slow and monotonous. But both officers felt it would be more productive over the long term than to go back to the same houses and having their knocks ignored again.
At the end of the process they had a list of seven men Shultz had arrested and who lived within a mile of him when he died.
They were hoping aga
inst hope that their perp didn’t somehow slip through their screening.
Or that they were wasting their time and barking up the wrong tree.
They copied the seven mug shots onto the working laptop and set out to talk to Tommy Tuttle and his mom at their safe house in west Lubbock.
They almost waited until the next day. By the time they arrived at the house the sky was starting to darken a bit.
But any policeman will attest that when he’s on a tough case and he gets a good lead, all other things get pushed to the background.
This was quite possibly the biggest case of Castro’s and Sondrini’s careers.
Yes, they could have gone home for the night and visited their witness the following morning.
But they wouldn’t get a wink of sleep. Neither one of them.
At least this way, although they wouldn’t get to bed for a couple more hours, they’d close their eyes with the answer they’d been striving for.
Or the disappointing knowledge they were back at square one again.
“Are you absolutely sure, son?”
Castro wanted desperately for the boy to change his mind. To stare at a picture until his mind told him yes. That’s the man who shot the Ranger.
But Sondrini knew that wasn’t a good idea.
“It’s okay, son. Take another look. But we want you to be sure. Don’t guess. If the man we’re looking for isn’t in there, then tell us so. We don’t want to go after the wrong man because we pressured you into giving us the wrong answer.”
To Tommy’s credit, he didn’t do the easy thing.
The easy thing would have been for him to identify one of the men to pacify the Rangers in front of him. To give them an answer they so desperately wanted, even if it was the wrong answer.
Tommy was only nine.
Many other boys in a similar situation would have been tempted.
Many adults would as well.
But Tommy was a good kid. He’d been losing a lot of sleep because he was feeling responsible for Major Shultz’s death.
He knew right from wrong, and knew he’d feel even worse if he identified the wrong man.
Yes, it would make his new Ranger friends happy.
Death Comes Calling (Ranger Book 3) Page 12