An American Outlaw (30 page)

Whicher takes out his cell phone. He dials the number for Agent Cornell.

It's ringing. 

He watches the woman in the suit step towards the two approaching deputies. A short exchange. Whicher watches her brash smile. Her eyes travel up the courthouse path to the single step where he's standing.

Cornell picks up. 

“Hey, Marshal.”

“Y'all heard yet?”

“I heard...”

“There's a God damn camera crew here already.”

Cornell's silent on the end of the line.

“I need you to find the widow. Orla Childress.”

“What for?”

“Just find her. Anyway you can...”

“Suzanne Kaufman. For KENS 5 out of San Antonio.”

“Deputy Marshal John Whicher.”

She turns to the sound guy, “Alex, are we good?”

He nods, staring at a meter slung from his neck.

“Lee? Get a two shot of this...”

“Stand on the step,” the camera guy calls. “Better yet, can the interview step down—and you step up?”

“Marshal?” The brash smile again.

Whicher screws the Resistol a notch further onto his head. “Ma'am, I'm on have to make this quick.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Rolling,” the camera guy calls.

“Marshal, can you comment on reports linking this robbery to a robbery in Tom Green County yesterday? A violent robbery at a cattle auction?”

“There's a possibility they're linked.”

“Could this be the same Louisiana gang that attempted armed robbery at a bank in Alpine? Five days ago?”

“Ma'am, we're working on it...”

“According to some reports this is the same gang that also robbed a gas station on I-10 in west Texas on Wednesday?”

“No comment.”

“What do you say to suggestions former service personnel may be involved?”

“Where did you get that?”

“Are you confirming that, Marshal?”

Whicher clears his throat. He stares quickly across the square. “No,” he says, “that's not confirmed.”

“Many viewers may have concerns about their safety, Marshal. How concerned are you—given four separate incidents in less than a week? What about the shoot-out in Kerrville last night? Was it the same gang?”

“Ma'am I can't comment further...”

He steps out of shot and heads for the Silverado.

A hot wind scours across the square.

As Whicher dials the number for Division Marshal Reuben Scruggs.

Edwards County.

Ranch land, dust baked fields. A creek bed, between dirt tracks. I drove the Ford pick-up under a stand of prairie sumac. Scanning left and right, on the horizon.

We dumped the route, bailed on it, straight off. 

Rocksprings was a shooting gallery. We had to roll out hot. The route we planned on taking was fast; farm roads, county roads, but rule one evasion was no visual.

Michael watched out the windshield looking for any movement. Sweeping back and forth. “Whatever Connie gave me, it's wearing off...”

The GPS in the pick-up showed us on a blank space—heading west.

“Forty miles more,” I says. “Hang tight.”

I steered along the creek bank, the pick-up in shadow. 

Rocksprings was barely behind us, we'd covered maybe twenty miles. The savanna spread in all directions—a farm truck, a ranch hand, that's all it would take—anybody saw us, it was over.

Michael was pale, weakening. Blue eyes hooded.

“What do you think made him do it?” he says.

I eased the pick-up out of the tree line. “What're you talking about?”

“Steven...”

Everything was meant to be different. 

The moment he ran in that bank, in Alpine, the world turned, white to black. It shifted too far to catch. The Childress family lost both its sons.

Michael held his wounded arm. “I could use a drink...”

I looked at him. “Take it easy.”

Tennille would be long gone. 

Five hours, her and Joe, they would've made it. All the back roads, the trails. All the way south.

She'd find her daughter, Maria. Make ready, wait for night to fall, cross the river. That was all she wanted.

Orla was no different. 

She didn't pick up any gun but every other way they were the same. Both trying to hold on. In a landslide. Get through another day.

“Gil? You remember that day in Girard Park?”

I glanced at him. His head was flopped on the seat back.

“Steven was like, ten years old. We must've been Fourteen. Fifteen...”

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

“He had some Little League competition.”

“Yeah?”

“We took a bat out in the park. You were throwing him a bunch of changeups, trying to get him to hit 'em.”

A summer's day. Nate, Michael. And Orla. Steven tagging along. Family I never had. How many days had there been? I couldn't count 'em, they were the days of my life.

“He finally gets one,” Michael says. “Hits a liner. Straight in the lake.”

I remembered. It cracked, like a bullet. Steven's face, lit up under the trees.

“Nate ups and jumps in there, he actually swam in and got it.”

I thought of him. Catching hold of it, raising it in the air.

“You believe they're both gone...”

I steered towards the light at the horizon.

“Orla said it should have been you.”

Rocksprings.

Through the shot-up door of the truck, Whicher sees the black speck approaching—high in the air.

The truck's parked south of town, a DPS cruiser alongside it. The marshal thinks of the circus in the courthouse square.

The A-Star helicopter drifts off its course in the gathering southerly.

Reuben Scruggs' voice crackles on the radio; “It should be with y'all any minute.”

“I'm looking at it, sir.”

The trees around a four-legged water tower dip and sway in the prairie wind. In the yard of a one-floor house, plastic chairs tumble end over end.

Less than one hour. How far could they have got?

“Department of public safety just got through lighting up my phone,” says Scruggs. “I told 'em if the state's so damn on fire, why don't they back it up?”

The helicopter starts its descent—tail rotor kicking up as the nose dips.

“DPS pulled a scheduled operation, for us to have this.”

The marshal stares into the sky at the north west. A flick of nerves in his stomach, watching the helo coming on. 

The splinter in the Silverado windshield shines; a lightning fork caught in the sun.

“We're four-and-oh,” Scruggs says. “I hear the TV people are climbing on this? Don't be antagonizing them, John.”

The helicopter's white and black livery is visible now. The noise of its engine reaches Whicher, despite the wind.

“Y'all have any idea which way they could've went?”

“I'd guess west.”

“You don't know?”

“No, sir. How would I?”

“You know why I put y'all on this?"

Whicher doesn't reply.

“You got a knack,” says Scruggs. “Making the right call...”

Whicher thinks of Cornell in Houston. Captain Black at Brooke. Standing in the rain by a ford at the river in Kerrville, the night before. Always a step behind.

“If anybody on the ground sees 'em, y'all can be there faster than they can disappear.”

“Alright, sir.”

“There's one wrinkle in this. Weather conditions, later in the day.”

“It's pretty windy here,” says Whicher. “Visibility's okay.”

“They say there's a dust storm coming up from the south.”

The DPS trooper is out of his cruiser. He runs forward, waving the helicopter in.

“Grandaddy's time,” says Scruggs, “they used to get 'em a bunch. Used to say the Lord sent 'em. Forever studying on the Good Book, he was.”

“Sir, I've got to run...”

“Old Testament is my Bible, John, y'all know that. A vengeful God. Cut 'em down, to fall like ripe corn...”

Whicher stares at the flickering blades of the helo. Black-painted scythes.

The radio crackles; “Y'all hear me?”

The marshal clicks it off. 

He pushes the butt of the Ruger revolver down into the shoulder holster. Climbs from the truck.

The helicopter's touching down on a patch of scorched grass. Whicher clamps the Resistol to his head. He runs forward, the clatter of rotor blades pummeling the air.

The trooper leans in close to Whicher. “On board there's a Tactical Flight Officer...”

Whicher mouths the word, “Okay.”

“He's going to give you his place—get you hooked in.”

Whicher screws up his eyes as the rotor wash churns up a cloud of dust. 

A man climbs from the helo, wearing an olive flight-suit. He signals Whicher forward, shows the marshal where to climb on the skid plate.

Whicher takes the rearward seat. 

He straps himself in, behind the pilot. 

A flight helmet hangs from a ceiling rack, radio comm wires trailing from it. The TFO gestures at him to put it on. 

Whicher snatches off the Resistol. 

The TFO retreats.

The marshal breathes the scent of fuel as the rotor blades spin up. They lift into the air. Turning, climbing.

“Where to, sir?” the pilot's voice in his ear.

In the pit of his stomach he feels a wave of nausea. Not motion sickness, not the vertical climb.

Spread out on the land below is every available vehicle law enforcement have. 

Less than one hour since they robbed the bank.

Nobody's seen them.

CHAPTER 31

Devil's River, Val Verde County.

The place Orla Childress took her children didn't exist on any map. It was down at the end of a sand track, eight miles from the nearest road. 

Gray oak and soapbush. Salt grass stretching like a sea in all directions. A hundred years back, goats had walked it, before the owners gave it up and moved north to Jackson Fork—the chance of something better. 

A shack. Rough-sawn board on iron hard stumps of footing. A front porch, an outhouse—barns of stone and battered tin. Jesse could've stabled a horse, not a thing would've been different.

It was off-grid, no connection of any kind. Hand-pumped spring, no running water. In all the generations that came and went, nothing changed. Shine on the handle of the pump was maybe deeper; duller. Grass longer. Shingle roof sagged on its beams. 

It was primitive, unformed, clinging to the vast land. The place she chose, in her grief.

Michael and I'd seen it only once before, two weeks after Nate died. After the funeral. 

I told her she couldn't stay there, two kids, no facilities, no schooling. It being summer, she was safe for a while. She couldn't be around in Lafayette, what she told me, even if her family were there. 

She upped and left. To a half-forgotten property by the Devil's River, south of Juno. A worthless piece of land, all it was. That stayed in the family, all that time.

She told me her and Nate spent a summer there, before the kids were born. A last summer.

I told her not to go.

She told me she'd been grieving for Nate for years—ever since the day he came back. She couldn't cry when folks expected her to cry, other times she couldn't stop, when she ought.

She held Nate's funeral, in Lafayette. The families and the friends all came; and tried to hide their shock, their despair. Somewhere running through it all, a feeling, something close to shame. Michael and Steven and me in a mute daze. Near as we could be to her. 

Three nights later she packed the kids in a Jeep Cherokee, drove out of Lafayette, into Texas—where they'd tried to make it. Last place Nate was truly golden.

The kids ran wild in the day, king of the mountains, lords of the fields. Wondering when their daddy was coming back from going up to see God.

At night, she got 'em fed, got 'em falling down tired, put 'em to bed. And sat out on the rough porch under the sweep of stars. And talked to him, she told me. Until she felt like she'd lose her mind.

The night after the funeral, I drove around to her parents’ house before she left the last time. To see her, me alone. 

I faced a lot of things. But I couldn't look her in the eye, the girl I met in second grade. Freckles and the chestnut hair. If every bone in her body had gone, she couldn't have looked more broken. Crushed.

She told me she could sit on that porch, not a soul could see her—not a soul could hear her ask the world why it took everything. The boy she loved from eight years old.

The father she'd tried to save.

*

Orla stood in the door frame. She wore a snap-button shirt, white cotton, too big. One of Nate's. She squinted at the green Ford pick-up—an unfamiliar truck bouncing up the track across her land.

She recognized me, at the wheel. Touched the chestnut hair tied back off her face. Eyes turning to search for Michael—seeing him, searching for Steven in turn.

I steered away from the shack towards a tin roofed barn. 

She came forward to stand out on the porch. Eyes following us, lines in her brow.

I parked the truck inside the barn, cut the engine. 

“I'll do it. Let me talk to her...”

Michael dragged himself straight. “We can't be here long.”

“Get the kids. Take them outside.”

Two miles east, we'd driven across a patch of melon and corn by a wood-frame farmhouse. Both of us with the same feeling; somebody'd seen us.

“Just give her the money,” he says. “Don't explain.”

We climbed out. 

I took the flight case, grabbed the envelopes. 

Michael hitched up his arm in the sling. He ran his good hand through his blond hair. Fixed a smile onto his face. “Make this fast.”

We stepped from the barn and crossed to the shack. A fierce wind, blowing from the south, sky yellow with the dust in the air. 

Little Josh was standing on the porch, now. He stood by his mother, the image of Nate. 

He waved, jumped down. Ran towards a twisted oak, a rope swing hanging from its branches.