El Gavilan (12 page)

Thinking all that in an instant, Tell stopped reaching for his gun and instead drove his boot’s toe deep and hard into the fat man’s crotch. As Enrique doubled over, gasping, Tell got a handful of hair and drove his knee up into the man’s face once, twice, a third time. Each time, Tell heard bones or cartilage crunch.

Gawking passers-by kept moving; knew better than to get dragged into
this
scene.

Tell bent over the unconscious man, took his wallet out and grabbed a couple of cards that carried their attacker’s name. He slid those in his pocket, then got out plastic handcuffs and secured the man’s wrists around a rusting, old iron light fixture.

Marita was still wide-eyed. She said, “He might have killed us!”

“Don’t think he’d have given it much thought otherwise,” Tell admitted. “Are you okay?”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Marita said. She took his hand and pulled him up to her.

* * *

She was still shaking when they reached the lobby of her hotel. “I think I need a last drink,” Marita said.

Tell looked toward the hotel lounge. A woman was closing out the register; a waiter was setting chairs up on tables to clear the floor for the cleaners. It was past midnight. It was raining.

“Looks like we just missed last call,” he said.

“Why God invented room service,” Marita said, studying his face. “Do you have an early day tomorrow, Tell?”

“It’s my day off,” he said softly. “That’s why I was able to drink earlier this evening.”

Marita nodded slowly, then reached for his hand. “Let’s talk more upstairs.”

FOURTEEN

Wednesday morning. Tell logged off Able Hawk’s blog. He said, “Damn. Why not just post a bounty on the bastard’s head for Thalia Ruiz’s murder? I had no idea that Hawk was running his own blog.”

Patricia shut down her computer. “This entry is relatively tame in some ways,” she said. “Hawk’s usually much more political. More divisive. So, Chief Lyon, when are you going to launch your blog?”

“Never.” He accepted her offered cup of black coffee. “I can’t conceive of doing what Hawk and I do and writing a blog.”

“Too bad about your ankle,” she said. “I feel stir crazy.”

Tell had wrenched his leg running with Patricia. Patricia said, “Any news yet on Thalia Ruiz’s murder?”

He was about to answer when his cell phone rang. Tell checked the caller ID panel: the coroner’s office. Tell flipped open the phone and said, “Casey? You have something for me?”

“You called me, Chief, if this comes up later, you got that? If it becomes an issue, I’m saying. You pressed me for these results. Are we agreed on that point?”

“We are, Doc. But hell, I’m
owed
those results.”

“There are two county sheriffs who’d strongly beg to differ. At least in terms of you getting first peek.”

Tell held up a finger at Patricia and limped out into the common hall of their apartment complex. “What’s this cryptic stuff about, Doc?”

“Able Hawk has pressed me for first word on the DNA results,” Parks said. “I’m going to follow his instructions to the letter. The business day doesn’t start for a few more minutes. I’m giving you
that
much head start, Chief. You should also know that I released the victim’s name to the press late last night—I did that well past print deadlines.”

Tell said, “Much appreciated—this ‘head start,’ Casey. What have you found?”

“The semen is from one man. But we also found traces of condom lubricant and latex in her mouth, vagina and rectum. As to which came first, the naked shooter or the one wearing the rubber, I can’t definitively say. Oh, and someone slipped her some flunitrazepam.”

“Help me out, Doc. What the hell is
that
?”

“Trade name is Rohypnol. You know, the date rape drug.”

“That name I know. Okay. So to the DNA match—that’s fast matching. Who is it?”

“Crazy thing,” the old doctor said. “This guy was doing a story on DNA and talked your predecessor and me into typing him for background to his piece. Only way he’s in the system. You know us with stuff like that—we never throw it away. We logged the luckless bastard—filed him with CODIS.”

“So who the hell is he, Doc?”

“The reporter—editor—of the
New Austin Recorder
, Shawn O’Hara.”

Tell nearly fell back against the wall.
Jesus!
Of all people—
Jesus Christ!

Tell could just duck his head back inside Patricia’s apartment and ask for Shawn’s address. But that would likely spiral in so many potentially treacherous directions that he couldn’t tally them all. He said, “Don’t suppose you know where O’Hara lives?”

“Anticipated that,” the coroner said. “I have it.”

Tell scribbled down Shawn’s address on his service notepad. He checked his watch. Getting closer to “start of business day.” Normally, Tell would already be in the office, but he’d accepted Patricia’s invitation for breakfast.

He said, “Thanks very much for the heads-up, Doc. I’ll remember this. And I owe you.”

Tell closed his phone and slipped back through Patricia’s door, red-faced and uncomfortable. “Something’s come up and I’m really racing the clock,” he said.

Patricia kissed him. He kissed her back, then dipped his head, ashamed. She maybe confused his shame for shyness, because she tipped his head up, pressing her closed fist to his chin and handing him a brown paper bag with the other hand.

“Made you lunch, Tell. In case you don’t have time to get something later.”

“Thanks very much. It does look like that kind of day.” She kissed him again and he felt his body responding. He said, “A man could get used to this.”

“A man better,” Patricia said, leaning in for a last kiss.

Tell wondered if they’d still be talking by day’s end.

FIFTEEN

An emphatic banging on his door startled him.

The only people who ever knocked on Shawn’s door were his women.

But Shawn was between bedmates. No way was it going to be Patricia.

And it sure wasn’t going to be Thalia Ruiz. Her ruined face dogged his dreams.

The journalist pulled back the mini-blind from his storm door’s window and slid straight into panic.

There he stood: Tell Lyon, looming outside, grim-faced in his black uniform. Tell said loudly through the glass, “I’m giving you a break, Shawn. Come away with me now, just us, and tell me about Thalia Ruiz. Otherwise, in about fifteen minutes, a mountain of grief is going to fall on you, and I won’t be in any position to maybe help you anymore.”

* * *

Shawn’s stomach churned and his hands and legs were shaking. Tell stopped for two coffees at the Tim Horton’s on the edge of town and thrust a cup into Shawn’s trembling hands. When Shawn tried to talk, the New Austin chief of police simply cut him off. “Not yet.”

They drove in silence to the southern border of New Austin, out into the undeveloped wooded area where the New Austin Police Department’s shooting range was located. Shawn slid closer to panic as the chief turned onto the rough-cut road back into the dense woods.

“Stay here,” Tell said.

The cop got out of his SUV and opened the padlock securing the chain that bound two tubular-steel fence arms. Tell pushed back the metal gate halves, got back into his truck and drove through the gate. Then he got out and locked up behind himself.

They bumped along perhaps two hundred yards into the woods before they came to a clearing. The ground was littered with shining and rusted metal jacket casings. In the distance, Shawn saw wooden boards, some with bullet-riddled paper silhouettes of men still secured to them.

Now Shawn was truly close to losing it. If the police chief shot Shawn and buried him out here, Shawn figured he’d never be found. He fidgeted with a cigarette pack—finally stressed enough to break down and buy his own smokes.

Shawn was near manic. Tell said, “Shawn, you’re not going to believe it, but right now, I’m about the best friend you have on earth.”

Tell shut off the engine and they got out of the truck with their coffees. He told Shawn to go ahead and light one up if it might calm him. Tell held the journalist’s coffee while Shawn fired up a cigarette with trembling hands.

They leaned against the front of Tell’s truck, staring off across the shooting range at the bullet-pocked paper silhouettes. “Before this day is over, you’re going to end up arrested and probably charged for rape and murder, Shawn,” Tell said. “There’s no way around that.” Tell looked at him, measuring his reaction. Shawn looked like he might throw up at any second.

“No way to gloss this,” Tell continued. “The county coroner’s office has a positive match on your DNA. The murder victim’s name is Thalia Ruiz—a friend of Able Hawk’s. They found your semen in Thalia’s vagina, rectum and mouth. Coroner asserts you came at least three times inside Thalia.
Once
is more than enough to take you down all the way, depending on who ends up with you and how hard they press it. And Able? He’s bent on seeking the death penalty for Thalia’s killer. Hell, you heard that straight from Able’s mouth.”

“My DNA?” Shawn was stricken. “How do they know it’s mine? I haven’t given any samples to check against.”

“Actually, you have done just that, Shawn. You can’t get out from under the DNA evidence. A while back, you wrote a story about DNA and its uses in criminal investigations. For your sidebar you let them sample your own. Stuff like that gets in the hands of investigative officials, well, they’re real zealous about keeping it on file. They put you in the CODIS database, Shawn. And that story and your archived sample led straight back to you.”

Shawn was furious. He could feel the heat in his cheeks. His head hurt from the pounding and his jaws were starting to hurt already from gritting his teeth. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered over and over. After a while he said, “Why aren’t we downtown now, Chief? Why aren’t you and your people booking me?”

“Because I have my own questions first, Shawn. And because there is a lot of friction and angling going on behind the scenes regarding jurisdictions and who owns this crime scene and the eventual collar. Able Hawk was friends with this dead woman. He’s hell-bent for leather on a death penalty collar. This other sheriff in Vale County, Pierce, he strikes me as even more bloodthirsty. And there’s a third sheriff, Denton—he could as easily as make claims on you because of where the body was found. Only thing stopping Denton, near as I can tell, is a lack of ambition. I’m not looking to kill anyone, Shawn. But I’m dubious I end up being the one who gets to arrest you or charge you on the murder. All this jockeying to claim the crime scene sets off all kinds of alarms in my head. And it should worry the hell out of you, particularly, Shawn. I’m telling you, you’ll get your fairest shake from me.”

“That DNA evidence,” Shawn said. “You think I’m guilty too. You have to. That being so, how can you arresting me be better than someone else doing it?”

“Oh, you had yourself quite a time with Thalia, Shawn. No denying that. But the coroner also found Rohypnol in her system. Did you slip her the Rope, Shawn?”

“Fuck no! I don’t need that stuff. We were both drunk. Me maybe most of all to sleep with
that
—reason I didn’t wear a rubber and took her up the ass like that.”

Tell narrowed his eyes.

Shawn sensed Tell’s skepticism and said, “We were all over each other, Chief. Obviously you know that from the coroner. But it was all consensual. I didn’t drug her.” He cast down his cigarette butt, stamped it out, then fired up another. “Fuck, you hadn’t gotten between me and Patricia, I wouldn’t have been there with Thalia. I’d have gone home with my girl.”

Shawn didn’t like the look on Tell Lyon’s face after that admission. The journalist said, “Look, Chief, I’m sorry. Patricia and me were at Fusion and things got … prickly. So I picked up this other woman. Truth is, I had the sense even before you two hit if off that Patty and me weren’t going to last. Had the sense she was getting ready to dump me anyway. You just made it easier for her, more enticing to do it now.” He shook his head. “Too bad it was that night, is all. Fuck me harder, huh?”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Tell said. “This is about you and that dead woman. You were at the club together, drinking for a while?”

“With her and her roommate, Carmelita, yeah.”

“So there are witnesses who will testify you were drinking together,” Tell said. “Thalia’s drunkenness can be made to look like the effects of the Rope by an attorney. That means DNA and likely the Rohypnol will go against you with a jury. Did you know Thalia Ruiz before the night you met and bedded her?”

Shawn looked at his feet. “No. Like I said, I met her, and her friend. I really wanted the other woman. The girls had come over in Thalia’s car and both were too drunk to drive. We all went back to this apartment in my car. I left her there the next morning, still asleep.”

“Real nice, kid. You took her in every orifice, then slipped off on Thalia without talking, without even a goodbye?”

Shawn looked away from Tell, said raw-voiced, “Yeah. I did that.”

Tell said, “You sure she was alive when you left her, Shawn? After her night with you she hadn’t choked on her own vomit or something?”

Shawn’s eyes flared. “She was fucking fine.”

“Her friend see you leave?”

“No.”

Tell nodded. “That checks with what she told my people,” he said. “She said she never saw you leave. Bad news is, she also didn’t see Thalia leave. For all this Carmelita knows, you and Thalia left together. Few hours later, Thalia’s dead. So you see, you’re an easy lock to buy this one, all the way up, Shawn. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.”

Shawn snarled, “Jesus, shouldn’t I have a lawyer here for this?”

“Actually, I’m the one should have a lawyer here,” Tell said. “I’m taking some real risks here for you.” He shook his head, sipped some more coffee. “You will need a lawyer eventually. Say, by lunchtime. But we’re not having this conversation now, Shawn. This is off the record. We didn’t ever see each other this morning.”

Shawn scowled. “You’re kicking me loose?”

“Not the gift it sounds,” Tell said. “And don’t get stupid ideas about running. A couple of sheriffs who want Thalia’s killer’s collar, they could fall on you big time. And they might issue shoot-to-kill orders if you make them. With the DNA stuff standing against you, and Thalia’s friend’s testimony, bringing you in dead saves court costs. I’m pretty sure Walt Pierce would see it that way.”