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Chapter Forty-four
Alex paced on the shoulder of the highway, waiting for the EMT to finish working on Jill Davis. Deborah stood on the other side, interviewing the farmer who’d stopped to help the SRS caseworkers after seeing the van leaving the scene. Cooper and Baker examined Dodge’s pickup truck, complete with Ezra Dodge’s body in the back under a blue tarp.
Mrs. Davis’ eyes were swollen and one cheek bore an ugly bruise. She’d burst into tears the minute he’d approached her. The other worker was unconscious, apparently from a blow to the back of her head from the butt of a gun. So far the details were scanty, but they involved a truck stopped in the middle of the road and a man flagging them down. He’d claimed engine trouble and asked to borrow her cell phone.
The paramedic affixed a bandage to the cut under her eye and patted her shoulder. “We’ll take you into Abilene to the hospital so we can get an x-ray of your shoulder. You’ll be fine, ma’am.”
Davis looked up at Alex from her seat on the bumper of the ambulance. “Which is more than I can say for those kids.” Fresh tears threatened. “They were so scared. Dom tried to run and that man grabbed him and wrapped his arm around the child’s neck, I thought he’d strangle the poor boy right there in front of me. I should’ve done something to stop him.”
“Ma’am, Chavez had a gun. The most important thing at that moment was to keep anyone from getting killed.” Killed like Ezra Dodge or Nina Chavez. “Do you feel up to telling me exactly what happened?”
Davis sniffed and held an ice pack to her bruised cheek. “It all happened so fast. I saw the truck in the road. He was standing next to it, waving at me with one arm, so I stopped. I shouldn’t have stopped, but around here . . . .”
Around here, in rural middle America, people still did the neighborly thing. Alex understood that. “Go on.”
“As soon as I rolled the window down, he stuck the gun in my face and opened the door. He was grinning like a crazy man. He kept saying something in Spanish, I don’t know much, but I did catchhijasand the girls’ names. He said to get out or he’d kill me.” Her voice shook. “I got out. The kids were screaming. Dom opened his door and threw himself out of the van. He tried to run. The man—you think he’s their dad? How could he be? He fired a shot in the air. Dom threw himself on the ground. The man grabbed me and marched me over to the boy. He told him if he tried that again, he’d shoot me and then he would start on the other kids.”
She was crying again. “How did you and Mrs. Lyons get your injuries?”
She sighed. “We were responsible for them. We couldn’t just let him take them, even if he had a gun.”
“So you tried to stop him?”
She dropped the ice pack onto the floor of the ambulance and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. Alex sat down next to her and touched her arm. “Mrs. Davis, I’m sure you did everything you could. He’s a cold, vicious, hardened criminal, and he was armed.”
She raised her head. “When he lifted the gun as if to hit Dom, I stepped in front of him. He hit me. By then Sarah was out of the van and she ran at him, trying to keep him from hurting me. He let her have it with the gun.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you instead.”
“I got the impression he would’ve, but for some reason, he didn’t want to do it in front of the kids.”
“A little late for a conscience.”
“Yes.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and shivered in the cold evening air. The sun had retreated behind clouds on the horizon and dusk had begun to gather. Alex zipped up his jacket as he waited for her to find the words to finish. “A little late. I’ll never forget the looks on those kids’ faces when he got in the van and drove away. I don’t know what I was doing. I guess I was crazy with fear and anger. I ran after the van, and I could see them looking back at me. Crying.”
“You aren’t to blame for this, Mrs. Davis. You just sit here and relax. I’ll be back.” He rose and stomped on frozen feet to where Deborah and the good Samaritan stood.
She glanced at Alex, her face emotionless. “Mr. Whittaker says the van headed south. The description matches Tómas Chavez.” She held out her hand. Whittaker shook it. “Thank you, sir. We’ll get back to you if we need anything further.”
The man’s face crumpled in a rueful frown. “If I’d known what was going on, I’d have gone after him. At least followed him.”
“The man is armed and dangerous. It’s better that you didn’t, sir. Thanks again.” Deborah turned her back and started toward the pickup truck.
Alex nodded at Whittaker and took off after her. “Deborah! What?”
“We told those kids we’d keep them safe. And we handed them over to a baby killer.” Anger flashed in her eyes. Her mouth tightened. “We might as well have killed them ourselves.”
“I don’t think he plans to kill them. I think he wants to be their father.” It was just a theory, but one that had been growing in his mind. “He missed all those years of being a father because of what he did to Nina. Maybe in some twisted way, he’s decided he wants to be a family again. He might’ve killed Clarisse, but not the kids. Otherwise, he would’ve killed these two women when they resisted. He must’ve been watching the farm. When he saw us drive in, he backed off and waited for his chance.”
“And we handed it to him on a silver platter.”
“My bet is he’ll try to get to Mexico.” Alex grabbed her arm. She jerked away. “This isn’t your fault.”
“No. It’s yours for insisting that we turn them over to SRS or whatever they call it here. They would have been safer with us. We have the firepower to protect them.”
“We had no way of knowing—”
“Right.” She snorted and turned her back on him. “What’s the deal, Detective Baker?”
