Death Comes Calling (Ranger Book 3)

by Darrell Maloney

  He wished the man luck and told him he hoped he did well.

  Well enough, he hoped, to encourage others to pursue their own ventures.

  What Randy was left with was a mostly smooth-edged, slightly lopsided coin.

  He handed it over to Medley, who combined it with a gold chain he’d pulled out of his own pocket.

  He dangled both in front of Rachel’s face.

  Her eyes widened and she licked her dry parched lips.

  “Okay,” she said. “Who goes first?”

  “All we want today is information,” Medley said.

  Her look turned to one of suspicion. The fix she’d seemed so close to getting might be slipping away.

  “Information ‘bout what?”

  “We’re looking for Joey.”

  Chapter 53

  “What the hell you want that lyin’ bastard for?”

  “Relax. We’re not gonna kill him. We just want to make a deal with him, that’s all.”

  “Shoot. I don’t care if you kill him or not. He deserves to die.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. Probably in that house behind Tony’s Burgers on Quaker. That’s where he holes up since he busted his damn foot.”

  “How’d he break his foot?”

  “He said a horse stepped on it.”

  Medley couldn’t help but smile a bit.

  He was a big believer in karma.

  Randy asked, “How come you’re mad at him?”

  “Before he broke his damn foot he used to hustle. Now he don’t get out so much. Now I have to hustle twice as hard, for both of us. It’s wearin’ me down. I’m tired, man.”

  “Now understand, you’d better not be playing us. If we go to that house and find Joey there, we’ll come back and pay you. But if he’s not there, you’ll never see us again.”

  “I ain’t playin’ you man. If he ain’t there, he ain’t gone far. He can’t get around without limpin’ and he’s in a lot of pain. Serves him right for letting some stupid horse stomp on him.”

  “Where’s the horse?”

  “He shot him. That’s another reason I’m mad. We could have sold the damn thing for big money. He’s stupid, man. Just plain stupid.

  “Hey, how do I know you’re gonna come back and pay me?”

  “Because we’re honorable men. We always do what we say.”

  She suddenly laughed.

  Actually, it sounded more like an ancient witch’s cackle.

  “Ain’t no such thing as an honorable man. Ain’t no such thing as a man who tells the truth either.”

  “Maybe not the men you’ve been hanging around lately,” Randy said. “But we’ll honor our word.”

  She was skeptical.

  But there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Are you going to be here when we come back?”

  She pointed to an abandoned motel with most of its windows broken out.

  “If I’m not here I’ll be over there. Room 110.”

  They didn’t have to ask what she’d be doing there.

  “One last thing I’d like for you to do for me,” Randy said.

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  Randy took a bottle of water from his saddlebag and handed it to her.

  “Drink this.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s going to be hot today. You need it.”

  She opened the bottle and sipped at it.

  “Promise me you’ll drink the whole thing.”

  “Yeah, okay. If you’re sure you’re coming back.”

  “We’ll be back. We said we would.”

  She sipped again.

  As soon as the pair rode off she put the bottle in her backpack.

  Randy and Medley rode slowly toward the house where they hoped to find Joey.

  They weren’t in any hurry. And they had to plan their tactics.

  But first, Medley was curious.

  “Why the water?”

  “Her lips were cracked and bleeding. She’d severely dehydrated, on top of everything else.”

  “That’s the least of her problems, Randy. She’s a hopeless meth-head.”

  “The meth won’t kill her. The dehydration will. Meth heads will deprive themselves of food and water until they collapse from weakness. Simply because it never occurs to them to eat or drink. They’ll collapse and if they’re out in the open on a hot day they’ll succumb to exposure. I’ve seen it happen.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Look, Randy. I know you’re a goody-two-shoes and all. But you can’t save the whole world. Some people just aren’t worth saving.”

  “Everybody’s worth saving.”

  “Oh, don’t be so naïve, Randy. If she was worth saving she’d make the effort to help save herself. She’s obviously not putting out much effort on her own.”

  Randy fell silent. Part of him had to admit Medley’s thought had merit.

  But part of him… the larger part… knew there were a lot of reasons people turned to drugs. Many sought solace or comfort. Many were afraid. Many were desperate.

  One thing was beyond dispute.

  People like Rachel would never get away from drugs unless somebody went on a limb to help them. When they were constantly surrounded by other users… users whose answer to everything was more dope, they’d never even have a chance.

  He changed the subject.

  “So, have you given any thought to what we do when we get there?”

  “Well, we could call for backup. But that might take awhile. And more likely or not it’s a wild goose case.

  “Or we can split up. Me on the front door, you on the back.”

  “We’re not splitting up. If Tom and I hadn’t split up he’d still be alive.”

  Medley started to argue the point, but sensed a festering wound it was probably best not to mess with.

  “Okay. I suppose if he’s as bad off as she says he is he can’t outrun us.”

  There was only one house directly behind Tony’s Burger House. It was once a nice middle class home, but had obviously fallen upon hard times in recent years. It was probably rented out to a series of unsavory tenants who felt no need to maintain it or even keep it clean.

  It looked like the crack house in every bad drug movie ever made.

  Chapter 54

  The front porch was littered with an assortment of fast food wrappers, empty beer cans and broken beer bottles.

  Several empty cans of gold spray paint, left behind by huffers, joined a single can of black paint, its cap still attached.

  What was odd about the single can of black paint was that it was upside down, resting on its cap.

  In its recessed base was a dried film of… something.

  Medley picked it up to examine it.

  “Tweakers do that to liquefy their meth,” Randy explained. “They need a clean unpainted surface that’ll hold water. They’ll put some crystal meth into the upside down can, add a bit of water, and use something to crush the dope and dissolve it into the water. Then they’ll draw it into a needle using a piece of a cotton ball to filter it.”

  Medley looked around. As though to back up Randy’s theory, there was no shortage of used hypodermic needles and cotton balls lying amid the other litter.

  “I thought they smoked meth with a glass pipe,” Medley said.

  “Some do. Others snort it through a long pipe that’s heated on one end to turn it into gas. Others crush it into powder and snort it dry.

  “The hard core tweakers, though, liquefy it and shoot it into their veins.”

  “I’d consider this probable cause to break the door down and search the place. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Probably. But let’s try a more subtle approach first, shall we?”

  “Okay, partner. Right behind you.”

  Randy knocked on the door.

  There was no answer.

  He knocked a bit louder.

  Still no answer, but somebody was home.

  The window blinds in
side the front window were broken and some of the slats were missing.

  It was impossible to see inside the darkened house.

  But easy to see the blinds moving. By someone on the inside peeking out.

  On the inside of the house Joey Shriver dragged his injured foot over filthy brown shag carpet to see who was outside.

  The interior of the house was no better than the front porch. It reeked of an odd mixture of cat urine, unwashed human bodies and cigarette smoke.

  There were only a few pieces of furniture. A ratty old couch, stained with a thousand putrid things. In one bedroom, a double mattress covered with urine stains.

  In another bedroom, another mattress covered with dried blood. Neither mattress had either a frame or a box spring, and each lay haphazardly on the floor.

  Sheetless and disgusting.

  Humans shared the house with a variety of creatures, from bed bugs to roaches to rats.

  The floor actually had two layers. Besides the filthy carpet there was a covering of trash of every sort: half-eaten containers of food, hundreds of empty beer and soda cans. An occasional empty water bottle.

  There were more cigarette butts than could possibly be counted, dozens of empty dope baggies which had been ripped apart and licked clean by a junkie desperate for a high. Spent cigarette lighters shared space with empty cigarette packs. Hypodermic needles, once sold in drug store pharmacies a dozen to a pack. Manufactures for diabetics and misused by dopers.

  It was a place few people would venture into, much less live.

  But junkies didn’t care much where they crashed.

  In junkie world, anyplace they could do their poison safe from the cops was tolerable.

  A dilapidated coffee table directly in front of the couch was actually the cleanest place in the joint. For it was where the junkies did their business.

  It was adorned with just a few items.

  A crack pipe and an oil burner, both stained black. Three spoons stained similarly, and two lengths of soft rubber hose. Two cigarette lighters and a single candle.

  The candle was essential, for even in the daytime the house was very dark. The front windows were covered with closed blinds. Most of the others had sheets or heavy blankets nailed over them.

  The walls were adorned with nothing but dirty handprints and spray-painted graffiti, save one item.

  The item seemed very out of place, for it gave a hint this house was at one time a home.

  It was a framed photo of a young woman of twenty five or so, holding a baby and standing next to a girl of about five.

  She was a pretty woman, with a bright smile and perfectly coifed hair.

  One would have had to examine her closely to gain a hint she was the same girl standing on a street corner several blocks away selling her body for drugs.

  This was the Rachel of another life, another world.

  A clean world, long before the drugs took her mind and her life.

  The house was occupied by up to five people on some days, and devoid of human life on others.

  On this particular day only Joey was there.

  Joey, whose foot was badly broken and who was in horrific pain.

  Joey, who’d suffered a compound fracture when an unhappy horse crushed his foot.

  Joey, who was too stupid and too high to realize the small bone protruding from the side of his foot was likely to get infected.

  Especially when he lived in such a filthy environment.

  The foot was swollen to twice its normal size now, and ugly red streaks extended halfway up his calf. It was oozing an ugly orange-colored pus and hurt so bad he couldn’t stand it.

  The only way he could deal with it was to use even more dope.

  The others had run away. They were tired of hearing Joey’s pained curses and tired of his begging them to share their dope.

  They were just tired.

  Joey was tired too. Tired of hurting. Tired of so-called “friends” who deserted him when he needed them the most.

  He was in no mood for company.

  Especially company who didn’t bring him the drugs he needed to ease his pain.

  They’d left him with only one weapon, those so-called friends of his. Actually, they were hoping he’d do the honorable thing and shoot himself with it.

  For they were tired of him, too.

  But Joey wouldn’t do the honorable thing.

  The cop killer, the one who’d ended Tom Cohen’s life, wouldn’t end his own. He wouldn’t save the Texas Rangers the trouble of dragging him downtown and putting him on trial.

  He wouldn’t shoot himself to make the world a little bit better place.

  Instead he lifted his gun and fired it through the front door, at whoever it was who’d had the gall to come bother him.

  The Rangers on his front porch should have expected such an assault.

  It was a dumb mistake. For there was always a certain element of danger when going after a brutal killer.

  No one wanted to go to jail.

  Especially a cop killer. For although once in the system they were viewed with a certain amount of respect by other cons, they were also the subject of much brutality by the guards.

  No, cop killers especially were likely to put up a fight to avoid being taken into custody.

  Randy and Medley dove for cover, off the front porch and around the corner.

  Medley did what he probably should have done to begin with.

  He called for backup.

  “All Rangers in the vicinity on Tony’s Burger House on Quaker Avenue please respond. Officers under fire. Suspect is believed to be the man who killed Ranger Cohen. He’s holed up in a house behind the restaurant.”

  Lt. Davis was on the radio within seconds.

  “Hold your position. Don’t assault the house until you get backup. All other Rangers who can be there within twenty minutes, report your ETAs.”

  The Lubbock Police Department, who used a different radio frequency but who monitored the Rangers’ frequency as a matter of routine, sent their own distress call at the same time. So did the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office.

  Nobody likes a cop killer.

  Especially other cops.

  All over the western half of the city, the cavalry came running.

  Most on horseback.

  Some on go-carts.

  A couple on bicycles.

  It would take awhile to arrive, for the days of fast cars with noisy sirens were gone.

  If not forever, at least for awhile.

  By they were coming.

  Within half an hour seven men would join Randy and Medley outside the dilapidated old house.

  Inside, Joey had fired the shots, assumed he’d scared away his visitors, and gone back to what he’d been doing before they interrupted him: scouting the dirty carpet, hoping to find a piece of a rock of crack cocaine.

  Or a dropped shard of crystal meth.

  Anything to ease his pain.

  He hadn’t a clue that his last stand was soon to start.

  *************************

  Thank you for reading

  RANGER, Book 3:

  Death Comes Calling

  Please enjoy this preview of

  The next installment in the series,

  RANGER, Book 4:

  Joey’s Last Stand

  *************************

  “I know this is a bad time for you,” Randy told her. “We wanted to take him alive so we could question him. We wanted to make sure he was the right man. But he didn’t leave us any choice.”

  He was desperate to know whether Joey was really the one who’d gunned Tom Cohen down in cold blood. Indications were that he was.

  But indications were worthless in a court of law. Convicting a man required hard evidence. Eye witnesses or better. Perhaps DNA or fingerprint evidence.

  In Randy’s mind, convicting a man after his death shouldn’t require a lesser standard.

  “He was the one you were looking for, i
f you’re looking for the man who shot the cowboy.”

  Randy hadn’t mentioned the crime his suspect had committed. Hadn’t said whether the victim was a cowboy, an Indian or a candlestick maker.

  Still, he tread lightly.

  He asked Rachel, “Did he tell you he shot a cowboy?”

  “Yeah. He was proud of it. He said he came up behind the guy in Walmart. The guy was hassling his friends for taking jewelry. He said he was a cop but never showed a badge.

  “Joey said he wasn’t no damn cop. He was just another fool that thought he could push him and his friends around. A cop don’t dress kind no country and western singer. A cop dresses like a damn cop, he said.”

  Randy swallowed hard.

  “Is that the only reason he shot him? Because he tried to stop his buddies from stealing jewelry?”

  “Hell, ain’t that enough, man? That jewelry is how we get our food, our water. It’s mostly how we get our junk. Nobody takes cash any more. That’s too damn bad, because there’s cash all over the place. All they want is gold and silver, silver and gold…

  “Did he say where he got the horse?”

  “Yeah. He was tied to a car in the Walmart parking lot. Joey said the horse must have belonged to the same cowboy. I mean, there wasn’t anybody else around dressed like Hoss Cartwright, he said.”

  Randy winced at the frivolity in which she referred to his good friend.

  “That Hoss Cartwright was my good friend, and he was a far better man than Joey ever was.”

  “Hey, Joey was the one who called him that, not me. But you’re probably right. Joey was a dirt bag. But he was my dirt bag.”

  “Joey’s friends… were they involved in the murder?”

  “No. Joey said they ran after he shot the cowboy. They were worried he might have some friends nearby.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “Joey never said.”

  “Do you know where I can find them?”

  “No. I got mad at him. He was supposed to go get some dope for us and instead he brought back a damn horse. I told him he was a stupid ass. I told him I can’t shoot up a damn horse.