Hog Heaven (23 page)

“Sure thing, Grady,” Garza said. “Go ahead and send him out. We’ll sit tight.”

“Back away from the door.”

“No problem. Give us a minute.”

“Look who it is,” Dylan Bryant said after they’d exited the restaurant.

Dustin looked to his right and saw the rancher, Phil Colby. He was headed straight for them again, just as he had at the café the day before. Walking with purpose. Like he had a score to settle, which, of course, he did.

“Jeez, I might have to kick this guy’s ass,” Gilbert said.

The three of them stopped and waited. Colby kept coming, now less than ten yards away.

Gilbert put on his fake smile and said, “Fancy seeing you again. Did you get my letter in your mailbox?”

Colby was five yards away. Then three. Then he was front and center, and without saying a word, he drove his fist into the center of Gilbert’s face. It was a massive right-hand blow, delivered with the full thrust of Colby’s pivoting torso, and it produced the sickening thud of knuckles against flesh and cartilage.

Gilbert grunted in pain and fell backward onto his ass, with his long legs splayed out in front of him. Blood immediately began to gush from his nose. He cupped his face with both hands, saying something at the same time, but the words were unintelligible.

Colby leaned over him, his fist drawn back, as if preparing to strike another blow. Gilbert flinched. Dustin was having a hard time keeping the smile off his face. This was downright awesome.

Now Colby pointed a finger at Gilbert. “Stay away from my place, you hear me? You come back and this will be the least of it. I promise you do not want to test me. I won’t tell you again. And if you go near my friend or his wife, you might as well cash in your chips. You understand what I’m saying?”

Gilbert didn’t respond. His wrists and forearms were slick with blood, and it was dripping onto his shirt and jeans.

“You understand?” Colby said, more firmly this time.

Gilbert gave a very small nod.

Colby straightened up and looked at Dustin. “Everything I just said applies to you and your brother, too.”

Dustin held his hands up.
No problem.

Garza and Tatum withdrew from the immediate vicinity around the doorway to the coach’s office, as Grady Beech had demanded. Better to comply. If the door opened and the first thing Beech saw was a uniform, he might panic.

“Okay,” Garza called out. “All clear.”

No response. Nothing happened for ten seconds. Was Beech having second thoughts?

Then Garza heard the deadbolt lock slide out of the door frame. The door swung open slowly and Kurt Milstead emerged, looking haggard and terrified, but otherwise unharmed. Tatum quickly frisked him—standard procedure—then directed him down the hallway, and Milstead scurried away as quickly as possible. There was a pair of deputies stationed at each exit door—preventing anyone from entering the building—and one of them would take Milstead directly to the sheriff’s office for an interview, assuming he didn’t request any sort of medical attention.

The door to the coach’s office had already closed again, and Garza heard the deadbolt lock sliding back into place.

“Ten minutes,” Grady Beech called out.

Garza was willing to give him that, and quite a bit more. Once a hostage is released and out of danger, there’s far less reason to put pressure on someone who is holed up alone.

All was quiet. Garza heard nothing from the coach’s office. He looked at Tatum, who shrugged. Twelve minutes later, Grady Beech said, “I’m coming out!”

“Wait a second, Grady,” Garza said. “I need to give you some very specific instructions—for your own safety.”

Grady Beech followed them to the letter.

Dusk was settling in. Most of the vehicles passing by on Highway 281 now had their headlights on. No sign of the dog runners yet. But a lifetime of waiting in deer blinds had honed Red’s patience to a fine edge.

Earlier, Red had kept watch while Billy Don had gone into the Super S for supplies. Now they were both gnawing on jerky and enjoying a cold Keystone Light. It wasn’t unlike their normal hunting routine, except this time they were seeking a different kind of prey.

“Soon as it gets all the way dark,” Billy Don said, talking with his mouth full, which was one of his bad habits, “they’re likely to head out huntin’.”

That was both encouraging and discouraging. On the one hand, if the dog runners were holed up in a motel room somewhere, nightfall would get them up and moving again. On the other hand, there were so many different places they might go hunting, the odds were slim that—

And that’s when Red realized they’d been overlooking the most obvious way to track the redhead down. Maybe not a foolproof method, but Red figured it had better odds for success than staking out the highway. Hell, they could stake out the highway
while
trying
this other method.

“Goddamn it,” Red said.

“What?”

“Know what we should’ve done from the start?”

“What?”

“Instead of looking in motels and restaurants and bars, we shoulda gone straight to the landowners. Them boys gotta be day-leasing a place, right? And how do you think they went about it? They’re not from around here, so they probably called some of the phone numbers on all them little flyers posted all over town.”

Billy Don stopped chewing. “You know what, Red? That’s real smart of you. I never woulda thought of that.”

Red was a sucker for a compliment, even from a source as dubious as Billy Don. “Run back over there to the Super S and pull a bunch of them flyers off the bulletin board.”

Billy Don did as he was asked, and a few minutes later he was back with a fistful of flyers. He picked one at random and dialed the number on his cell phone. Red listened as Billy Don said, “This here’s Billy Don Craddock. You got a big redheaded sumbitch hunting over there? I’m looking to kick his ass.”

“Jesus,” Red said, shaking his head.

Apparently the landowner said no, because Billy Don hung up.

Red said, “Think maybe you oughta be a little more subtle?”

“Like how?”

“You announce straight out why you’re looking for the guy, nobody’s gonna want any trouble like that. So make something up. Say he’s your cousin, but you lost his cell phone number. You need to get in touch with him.”

“Oh, that’s good. You’re on a roll tonight.”

Billy Don dialed another number. Said exactly what Red had told him to say. No luck. Then he dialed another, and another, and another. He was on the phone for nearly twenty minutes, and now the sun had set fully.

On the twenty-third phone call, Billy Don hit pay dirt.

Marlin was making good time on Highway 281, anxious to get back to Johnson City. Bobby Garza had called a few minutes earlier to say that Grady had released Kurt Milstead unharmed, and a few minutes later, Grady had emerged from Milstead’s office and allowed himself to be taken into custody. That was the latest. They still didn’t know how Grady had learned that Milstead had given Sammy a cash payoff.

Garza had offered to hold off on questioning Milstead or Grady Beech until Marlin got back to Johnson City—which was a nice courtesy—but Marlin had told him to go ahead. Maybe everything would be wrapped up soon.

Now Marlin called Nicole to make sure everything was quiet around the house, and then he updated her on all that had happened, both in Dallas and at the high school.

When he was done, she said, “Wow. Milstead is a first-rate scumbag.”

“Appears that way. Now I’m thinking about the things Milstead told me when I first talked to him. He said I needed to look outside Blanco County, and he fed me all that stuff about street agents and hostesses—trying to throw me off the trail.”

“But even if he gave Sammy money, that doesn’t mean he was the one chasing him. He might’ve wanted to throw you off solely because of the money he gave Sammy. That would’ve been enough to end his career, right?”

“Absolutely, but I also think it makes him the leading suspect in Sammy’s death.”

“Oh, I agree, but it sounds like you’re gonna need more. Maybe a confession.”

She was right, of course. Milstead had motive, but that didn’t mean he was guilty. Marlin said, “A confession or more evidence.”

“Maybe Grady can fill in the holes,” she said.

“I hope so. Pretty good chance he knows something we don’t.”

“Well, all this excitement explains why I haven’t heard back from Bobby or Bill.”

“About what?”

“Armando Salazar’s memory is coming back. He says he’s ready to see a photo line-up.”

“Oh, that’s great.” Marlin always tried not to let his personal feelings influence his on-the-job attitudes, but he couldn’t help being thrilled that Gilbert Weems might yet face justice.

“And he’ll be getting out of the hospital tomorrow,” Nicole added.

“Excellent.”

He had the cruise control set at seventy-five. Traffic was sparse—there was no other vehicle within a hundred yards of him—but a deer or a pig could dart from the darkness into his path at any time. In his big Dodge truck, that wouldn’t be a problem, as long as he didn’t swerve.

“You be careful,” she said, as if she’d known what had just crossed his mind.

“Will do.”

“You’re going straight to the sheriff’s office?”

“Maybe. Depends on what happens between now and then. I’ll call you when I get closer to home.”

“Please do. Hey, wait a minute. How was she?”

“Who?”

“This Babikova woman. How did she look in person?”

Giving him a hard time. Teasing.

“Hideous,” he said. “Sunken eyes. Couple of missing teeth. Had a unibrow. I think some of those pictures on the Internet were Photoshopped.”

“Yeah, right. That’s why she can bend young men to her will so easily. Because she’s an old hag.”

“In all honesty, if the two of you were standing side by side, nine out of ten men wouldn’t even notice she was there.”

“Liar.”

“Never. But I have to ask—why are we, as a society, so hung up on looks anyway? Can’t we get past that?”

She laughed. “I’ll see you later tonight.”

“Yeah, he’s hunting here,” the landowner said. “Him and two other guys—twin brothers. Near as I can tell, they’ve been getting here around nine or ten every night. Stupid, driving in after dark like that, ’cause them pigs are liable to come to the feed right after sundown.”

Now Red and Billy Don knew exactly where to find the redhead. The dog runners had leased a place on McCall Creek Road, not far from Grady Beech’s place, and even closer to the Kringelheimer Ranch, where Red and Billy Don had seen that small brown-and-white pig—possibly the bounty pig—two days earlier.

Red started the engine and pulled out of the Super S parking lot.

“Only problem I can see,” he said, “is that we’ll be dealing with some brain-damaged half-wits who’ll also be heavily armed. You figured out how you’re gonna go about it?”

“Go about what?”

“What do you think? Kicking this dude’s ass without either of us getting shot.”

“Not really.”

“Well, you’d better start coming up with a plan.”

It was a curious situation, and Bobby Garza wasn’t sure where to begin. Coach Kurt Milstead was both the victim of a crime and the suspect in another crime. Should he interview Milstead about the crime committed against him, or interrogate him about the crime he allegedly committed? That’s what he’d been contemplating earlier—until Milstead took the decision out of his hands by refusing to talk about any of it.

Immediately after Grady Beech had freed him, Milstead had ridden with one of the deputies to the sheriff’s office. But there he balked. Decided he didn’t want to answer questions of any kind. In a bit of arm-twisting, the deputy warned Milstead that the possession and discharge of a gun on school grounds was a serious crime, and that until they determined exactly what had happened in that office, well, they couldn’t rule out the possibility that Milstead was the one who’d fired the weapon. They could probably even get an arrest warrant for him. It would be better if Milstead would go on the record and state what had happened. But he wouldn’t budge. He called his wife and had her pick him up. Garza could only imagine the story Milstead had told her.

That left Grady Beech.

He’d been Mirandized, and he hadn’t asked for an attorney, which was a good sign. Garza had offered to hold off on questioning until Marlin returned, because Marlin had worked hard on this case and dug up some valuable information from Aleksandra Babikova. But Marlin had declined. Told him to go ahead and get started.

Would Grady Beech be willing to talk? He hadn’t said a word on the ride over from the high school—but he’d had an odd grin on his face. A satisfied smirk. Garza wondered what that was about. It almost certainly had something to do with those few minutes when Beech was alone in Milstead’s office, but what had he been doing?

It was time to find out, because Bill Tatum had just finished with the booking process—fingerprinting, mug shots, an inventory of Beech’s personal property. Beech stayed silent through it all. Now he was waiting in the interview room.

Garza was just rising from his chair when Ernie Turpin, one of the deputies, appeared in the office doorway holding a small radio. “Bobby, you’ve gotta hear this. Friend of mine just called and told me about it.”

Turpin turned up the volume and Garza heard what sounded like a couple of DJs hosting a sports talk show.

“... you missed it earlier, there’s an absolutely incredible story coming into the newsroom from central Texas tonight, and it’s already getting some coverage on ESPN. You might remember a football player out of Johnson City named Sammy Beech, who died in a motorcycle wreck a few months ago.”

“Incredible halfback. You ever see his highlight reel?”

“I did, and I have no doubt he would’ve shattered all kinds of NCAA records. The kid was a phenom, no doubt about it. And then he died, and it was of course a tragic loss. Then we heard the strange twist just a few days ago that someone had actually been chasing this poor kid and firing a gun at him, or at least firing a gun to scare him, right before he wrecked his motorcycle.”