An American Outlaw (3 page)

The lieutenant nods. “A handgun registered to James was recovered at the bank, and we know the guy we've got in the morgue isn't him. But James may not be the guy that fled the robbery.”

Whicher throws the lieutenant a look.

“Whether he was or not, Marshal, we're looking to get a hold of him.”

“Riding down here this morning,” says Whicher, “how come I seen so many units out on the road?”

“There's a lot of resource assigned on this.” The lieutenant clicks the pen twice in quick succession. “There's us. Brewster County Sheriff's Department. Likewise, Presidio County, Jeff Davis, Terrell.”

“Border Patrol?”

“All units on alert...”

“ATF?”

“Arriving later, out of Houston.”

“Y'all telling me every available law enforcement agency is already on this. That about it?”

“That's about it.”

“God damn,” says Whicher.

“Sir?”

“What in the hell do you need me for?”

The lieutenant stares at him. 

“Rhetorical, son. Don't answer that...”

“ATF are linking this thing with the robbery of a cash shipment in Lafayette, Marshal.”

“In Louisiana?” 

“The Regional Airport, three days back. Word is it could be part of a serial robbery spree.” 

“Nobody said nothing about no spree.”

The lieutenant dips his head. “I don't know, sir. All I know is what I heard. But it sure looks like somebody doesn't want a bunch of Louisiana hoodlums rampaging into Texas.”

“Somebody like who?”

“Marshal, all I know is we've got the resource—we're supposed to use it; come down hard. There hasn't been a robbery like this in a long time, not in rural west Texas. We've got serious crime, including robbery, down to one quarter the national average...”

“Well, this one's hot off the shovel,” says Whicher.

“It's hot?” 

“Department of Public Safety, via the Governor's Office. I think you might have something with that theory of yours. Somebody put a rocket up my boss' ass. Guess where it ends up next?”

“Copy that.”

“You want to run me what happened?”

The lieutenant sits up in his chair. “Yesterday afternoon around three pm there's a shooting incident at a supermarket.”

“A supermarket?”

“Win-Dixie, downtown. Some guy shooting up the ceiling, generally pissing off the folks in the express aisle.”

“We talking about a diversion?”

“It sure looks that way. Nothing got stolen,” the lieutenant says. “But first word of a shooter, the dispatcher sent all available units. Everybody we had was tied up there.”

“Okay.”

“Straight after, it looks like they headed across town to the Farmer's Bank...”

“How long before it got hit?”

“Less than ten minutes. Two of them tried to hold it up. Say, you want to take a ride down there?”

“You got people there?”

“Sure.”

“That guy y'all shot? He still dead?”

“Uh. Yes,” says the lieutenant.

“Let's stay here.”

“Right.” The lieutenant clears his throat. “Well, sir, the bank staff hit the alarm, but we had all units out at the first incident. There was a little confusion, to be honest—two major incidents; the dispatcher's screen lighting up.”

“No great Monday...”

“We pulled half the units, sent them to the bank. I guess we got our people there faster than they thought we would. Or else something delayed them.”

Whicher frowns.

“The guy shot dead was attempting to leave the bank. The one that actually made it out is believed injured. One of my officers thinks he hit him.”

“How come he still made it out?”

“I have a patrol sergeant reckons he was using tactical movement.”

Whicher leans his head a fraction to the side.

“My sergeant's a former infantry specialist. Said the guy was moving and shooting like a trained soldier.”

Whicher stares at the lieutenant's desk. He crosses a western boot over the knee of his suit. “You want to know my end of the deal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I get into work this morning there's a new guy top of the 15.”

“The 15?”

“US Marshals Service 15-most-wanted. Know something else? That's fast. In with a bullet.”

“Well, Marshal, ATF identified the gun from the bank as a military designation Beretta 9mm. Marine Corps side-arm. Registered to a Gilman James. We got his name, we got an address, law enforcement hit the place in Louisiana. Nobody there.” 

The lieutenant takes a sheet of printed paper from a pile on his desk. He pushes it towards the marshal.

Whicher scans it. The copy of a ticket on a Ford F150. “This his. Y'all looking for it?”

“That's the vehicle registered to him. At the address in Lafayette...”

“Anybody seen him there—in Louisiana?”

“Neighbors haven't seen him for days.”

“Any record? Ever been on the yard?”

“No, sir.”

“Honorable discharge?”

The lieutenant shakes his head. “We've got nothing on him.”

“This link ATF are making? This airport robbery—in Lafayette?”

“They think there's evidence it's the same guys hit both there and here.”

“What evidence?”

“ATF recovered an empty Beretta clip at that airport. A clip and a bunch of spent rounds. They say they're Marine Corps issue. Like we got here at the bank.”

“The same gun?”

“No, sir, not the same. Two distinct weapons. They don't yet have a full ID on the gun used at the airport in Lafayette. But two Marine Corps weapons?”

Whicher leans back in his seat.

“According to ATF,” the lieutenant says, “that's a highly unusual confluence. Statistically speaking.”

“No shit.” 

Whicher scowls. Runs a hand across his jawbone. 

“Y'all know why I get this?”

“This case?”

“Yeah. Tell you why. I'm a criminal investigator.”

 “Yes, sir, Marshal.”

“No, I mean, the pay grade's 25 per cent higher.”

The lieutenant puts his pen down on the desk. “Okay.”

“That's what's goin' on. You're going to learn that. Thing of it is, I'm pretty good at it, like to get my man.”

“Everybody's pulling for that.”

“Y'all have some serious resource, but we've got one big ass problem—west Texas. Nobody's seen this guy, nobody knows where he's at, nobody knows nothin'. That about it?”

“He'll break cover some place.”

“You think the guy that escaped from the bank is Gilman James, Lieutenant?”

“I don't know. My sergeant said the guy was blond. The record we saw on James says he's dark.”

“You think there's two of 'em out there?”

“My guess would be two.”

“Know what I don't like?”

“What's that Marshal.” 

“If this is some bunch of ex-service boys, they get workin' on something, they get a head of steam, somebody's goin' to end up cooked. It ain't like Joe Hood. They start shooting, they ain't going to miss.”

“So, how do you want to approach it?”

“Fight fire with fire.”

CHAPTER 5

The Solitario, TX.

The fuel gauge was low—way low, the needle down. And sweat running off my skin, like water. 

Odometer in the dash made it less than thirty miles since Terlingua. I steered the truck across the raw scrub, tires kicking up a cloud of dust. 

The dirt track from the highway had disappeared. It'd reached an old farmstead—and just stopped. 

I'd checked the place, but it was abandoned—an old stone-built house, nothing more than a ruin. Barns, tin shacks, their sides hanging off. There'd been nothing I could use, nothing to take, no sign of any life.

I'd picked a way forward in the truck since then, searching out any path north, any kind of route. Crossing drifts of deep sand, working, sweating not to get an axle stuck. Climbing banks of gravel and shale under the hammering sun.

The truck was ready to quit. I knew. Running on fumes.

Ahead, the land was scrub covered mountain, and bare caliche. Tracts of Spanish bayonet, clumps of tangle-head and sotol. 

I glanced at the map on the seat. I reckoned it still another thirty miles, maybe more, to Michael, up in Marfa. 

The cell on the passenger seat was stone dead—no signal. Nate's M9 beside it, butting up against the seat back. 

I thought of my own gun. That Steven died with. They must've had to prise it from his hand. 

I pushed the image from my mind.

When I left the Corps, I requested to keep my side-arm. Nate'd done the same. We bought 'em—both bought our pistols; a mark, what it was, on a day in Iraq. A day we couldn't ever forget. 

9mm Beretta. A symbol, a weapon of last resort. 

Marine carries a pistol, it's not a fighting gun, but for self-defense. Bringing that thing on a robbery was my way of making sure I'd never use it. I never would have.

Steven wanted to carry Nate's. What was I going to tell him? 

I stared out the windshield at the ground ahead, rising sharp.

That day in Iraq changed our lives. Nothing would ever be the same.

Steven had to carry his brother's gun.

I flicked a gear down. Steered a way up a pile of loose rock and scree. Engine whining, the truck slipping and baulking, tires spitting stones. Then it cut on me. It died, caught again—and lurched forward. 

I hit the brake. 

I glanced behind, to the foot of the slope below, the motor hunting. 

There was an overhang of rock—a stand of evergreen sumac.

I stuck her into neutral. Rolled back down. Nothing to do but try to hide the truck as best I could under the thin grown trees. The motor cut a last time. I switched off and pulled out the keys.

Waves of heat blasted off the desert scrub. I jumped out, climbed in back, unlocked the tool chest, sun biting into my skin. 

Inside the tool chest were two full water bottles—desert habit I never break. There was a back pack—I ripped it open, stuffed in the water bottles, extra clothing, a jacket. 

From the cab I took Nate’s gun, the cell phone, my road map. 

Nothing else for it. On foot I could make myself a son-of-a-bitch to find. I reckoned Marfa at thirty to forty miles north. How long it'd take to reach would depend on the lie of the land. I'd have to pace it.

I scrambled my way up the pile of scree. At the top, I took a bearing north, the best I could. 

I could see I'd have to deviate plenty. It was bad ground, covered in dense spine of cactus and creosote bush. 

I felt the sweat lifting from my skin. Made myself walk slow and easy. I set out across a dried up arroyo full of loose rock and stone. 

Tried not to think on the temperature rising.

Late afternoon. A deep canyon. Squatting in the shade of a north facing wall. 

The wind moved through on a low moan. Across the rock floor were potholes, some with rainwater still in 'em. I cupped my hands, got some in me. I drunk worse.

Two hours. Two hours tracking through a canyon, running east the whole time—east, instead of north. But no way around it, in the sapping heat. 

Marfa was too far, now. No way of making it, before nightfall. Michael was up there, somewhere. Some motel. With a gunshot wound. But I couldn't see well enough—not near enough, I'd never find my way. 

I'd have to overnight. There'd be places; ruined places the silver miners built a hundred years and more ago. Some just a few broken walls, others with roofs and timber still intact. I'd find food. Chihuahuan desert I knew there were jack-rabbits, every kind of bird, roadrunner, javelina. More life, more water than any regular desert I'd seen.

I sat against the canyon wall, waiting on the temperature to drop. Took Nate's gun apart, cleaned it with a strip of cloth. 

I broke it down, six main pieces. Put it on back together. Touched all fifteen rounds in the magazine.

I thought of Jesse. 

I know he used to hide out in Texas—in the war. 

What I know of Jesse and Frank James, their daddy was a preacher, the Second Great Awakening. But he was dead long before the first shot. 

They came home from the war with nothing. 

Jesse took a ball in the lung, the last days of fighting—not expected to live. Union forces put him on a boat up the Missouri River, to Rulo, Nebraska. To die, with his Momma. Exiles in their own land.

Our side came down from his daughter—if it all was true. 

She had three sons, one of 'em my Grandaddy, it was said. 

My own mother was illegit—the fifties. Raised by the Daughters of Charity.
'Father unknown'
marked on her birth certificate. Mother a Creole dancing girl, in New Orleans. 

She was given up to Saint Elizabeth's. Somebody at the orphanage gave her the name of James. And told her—that her line went on back. I don't know. 

Mostly, I figured it for a story. To make her feel like somebody. Much good it did.

I put away the gun. Behind the mountains to the west, the sun was almost gone, the sting of heat drawn from the day. I needed to move.

I kept the pistol loaded; ready in my jacket. Pack tight across my back. Around my lower legs I wrapped extra clothing, a shirt on one leg, tee-shirt on the other. Once the sun went down, there'd be a bunch of snake and scorpion. Tarantula, too. 

I walked heavy, kicking stones and dirt with my feet to run 'em off.

I stopped often, looking for movement; listening for any sound. 

Out of habit, I made a couple of random direction changes and threw in a fish-hook, where you sort of swing around back on yourself—in case there was anyone behind me. There was no-one. 

By now, I could feel the hunger starting to kick in. I could’ve used a couple of ration packs. At least I had enough water.

I worked my way across a high plateau full of salt grass and cane cholla. 

At the edge of a boulder field, in a shallow-sided valley, the stone walls of a miner’s house stood bare. 

A section of the roof was gone. I didn't figure anyone could be in there. I slipped loose the Beretta, just the same.

I got low to my haunches, watching. The ground gave no sign. It looked like nobody used it. I started to move in slow, in the gathering dark.