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“No, I fear yours is the violent road and, on this occasion, it is the road less traveled which I need you to take. Follow him. Take pictures. Make notes. Call me every few hours and tell me what he’s doing, who he’s talking to, where he’s eating. I want a file on this little rat that’s thick enough to choke him with.”
Curt rose and waited for the usual envelope of cash, which arrived from Vincent’s inside jacket pocket. “And Curt, do me a favor. Leave the shooters with me. The last thing we want is this thing going nuclear when it’s just a simple misunderstanding.” With unconcealed reluctance, Curt unloaded his two pistols and laid them on Vincent’s table. “I appreciate that, Curt. Now, go and build that file. And keep your distance. This is a fish to be reeled inslowly.”
Outside Stanton, TX
Sunday morning
They had been bound,gagged, and shot in the head, just like the others.
The coroner was taking photos and notes as Corbett Lindstrom arrived in his unmarked car, coffee in hand, and made his way under the yellow police tape. Not that any prying eyes had shown up. This spot, ‘just outside of the middle of nowhere,’ as his Captain had put it, was as innocuous as they came, the service roads of a tiny airport used almost exclusively for flying in agricultural supplies. It was, therefore, the ideal place to carry out a pair of executions and dump the bodies.
“Thirty-six hours at the most,” the coroner said. “We’ve got sufficient residual spatter to indicate they were shot right here.” One of the first facts to be established was whether the killers had done the deed elsewhere and transported the bodies here for dumping, or whether this had been where these two men had met their end. Not that it made very much difference to the victims.
“Can anyone say, ‘gangland style execution’?” Corbett asked rhetorically. “Who are we dealing with, Bob?” His photographic survey finished, the coroner helped Corbett turn the two men over.
“One male Latino, maybe thirty-five years old, two hundred pounds, heavily tattooed. I’d say an ex-convict, judging by the quality of these ones here,” he said, pointing out two clumsy, thick-lined tattoos made with ersatz prison materials. “The other guy is younger, not older than twenty-three, I’d say. White, good teeth, no marks inside his elbows,” the coroner added, establishing that the deceased had not been a habitual heroin user. “Not exactly peas in a pod, are they?”
Corbett took notes, partly in writing and partly in a voice recognition program, called two colleagues at the crime lab and then took his usual slow walk around the area. It was flat, nondescript farmland of the kind found all over Texas. The airfield was silent, with one very obviously broken aircraft sitting forlornly at the end of the runway. There were seed storage buildings across the highway, and a couple of temporary huts housing offices for a produce market, probably the only people who had noticed the area was now cordoned off. For all he could tell, it was a random, quiet spot for a bit of late-night murder before heading into San Antonio for a beer.
“You ready to move these two?” he asked. The coroner nodded and his small team began the process of transferring the unfortunate pair to their truck for the journey to the morgue. Corbett sat in his car and continued his notes. He had resisted the urgings of younger colleagues and insisted on hand-writing nearly everything, rather than ‘outsourcing his brain,’ as he had called it. He was the same about his coffee; black, unvarnished, no damnedpumpkinorcinnamon. Some things in this crazy world, he had concluded, needed to stay the same. His gleaming Harley, awaiting the weekend patiently in his garage, was to Corbett a powerful symbol of that belief.
He considered the two dead men, now being loaded into the coroner’s van. It was always the same pair of questions: how did you come to be here, and how did you come to be dead? Somebody obviously felt that it was worth risking the death penalty in order to entirely remove these two human beings from the population. Ergo, they must have done something so irritating, or unwelcome, or costly, that such a risk became reasonable. What could that have been?
Neither had been, as far as Corbett knew, an informant. Neither was known to be on the west Texas distribution scene, although thedramatis personaeof local dealers and pushers was in constant flux. Still, that remained the most likely reason: a territorial dispute which had escalated. Corbett could readily imagine the sequence of events, beginning with initial warnings, moving on to direct threats, and then a sudden smashing down of their door, the disorienting bag over the head, the terrifying claustrophobia of the trunk of a car. Then the brief, one-sided conversation with whoever had ordered their execution, a calm explanation of the rules of the business and the inevitability of moments such as these. Perhaps they were even told that it wasn’t personal.
Corbett had just finished his notes when his phone rang.
“Corbett, it’s Ridge Dawson. You got a minute?”
Pendale, TX
Drawncurtains on such a sunny morning were a strange way to greet the day, Corbett felt as he pulled up outside Ridge’s house. Pendale was almost entirely deserted; those who weren’t asleep were at church or tending their garden. He knocked on the door, making sure his badge and gun were hidden away, at least until he knew more about what Ridge needed from him.
“Hey, buddy, thanks for coming over so quick.” Corbett hugged his former SEAL comrade with the back-slaps of men too long kept apart by busy schedules. “We got something here I know you’ll be able to help with.”
Corbett took a seat on the couch and gratefully received a glass of cold water before being introduced to Raven. “Miss Raven Samuelson, I want you to meet Corbett Lindstrom, formerly Chief Petty Officer and member of a certain world-class SEAL team. We’ve done things together that his momma should never know about.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Lindstrom,” Raven said shyly, angling her face so that he might not see her bruises.
“And you, Miss. Samuelson. I’ll do you a deal,” he said. “You call me Corbett, and I’ll call you Raven, and how’s about you show me what happened to your face there?”
Corbett began taking notes, an act as habituated as any in his life. He was an excellent listener and transcribed the conversation in a quick shorthand. Ridge made sure Raven left nothing out.
“And where do you think he is now?” Corbett asked. “Could he be staying somewhere local?”
“I’m not sure,” she confessed. “He had his car, so I guess he drove all the way down from Chicago. But I don’t want you to arrest him, not for this or anything.”
Corbett closed his notebook. “It’s entirely your choice whether to press assault charges, Raven. That would be a matter for the local police anyway.”
Ridge interjected. “I think Raven just wants to keep this small, to draw as little attention as possible. You know?”
“I get it,” Corbett replied, nodding. “Stirring things up might bring bad people to your little town, here.” Raven and Ridge were both relieved that Corbett quickly caught on, despite the complexity of the situation. “Now, tell me about this car.” Raven gave him the license plate number as best she remembered it. “Thanks. Unless he’s sleeping in it, he’ll have stayed in a hotel last night. That’s where we start. Now, you said he felt he was in danger?”
“He was convinced he would be hurt... or killed, maybe, if he didn’t do what they wanted.” Raven was still shaken by events, and her face throbbed annoyingly, but she took regular, deep breaths as Ridge had advised. Having him there made everything easier.
“Who do you think these people might be?” Corbett asked, resuming his notetaking.
She shrugged. “Drug people in Chicago, that’s all I know. He worked for them for a while.”
