Southtown tn-5 Read online

  I could hear Chuck flipping pages in his master directory. “Thing is, Mr. Navarre, that is Mr. Vespers’ car. He does have a kid, Alec, in Jem’s grade. Alec’s in summer art class. Mr. Vespers waits on the street over there all the time.”

  “Call anyway.”

  Chuck said okay, but I got the feeling my request had just been bumped down to low priority, and I didn’t insist it was an emergency.

  I’d have plenty of time to kick myself about that later.

  It would be almost a week, long after the worst had happened, before the police would find the silver BMW abandoned in a sorghum field in the north part of the county, the body of the real Jerry Vespers curled in the trunk. His death would become a mere sidebar to the story of the Floresville Five, a life cut short merely because it served Will Stirman’s purpose to assume another identity for a few minutes.

  But that afternoon, driving Jem back to his mother’s house, I was slow to process the obvious.

  Nothing can prepare you for the moment a child you care about is threatened. Doesn’t matter if you’re a cop or a social worker or a private eye.

  My upper brain functions shut down. My senses went feral. I was a cat under attack, crouching and blinking, smelling my own blood, thinking of nothing beyond my claws.

  We were halfway to Erainya’s before I realized who I’d been talking to, how close I’d come to dying.

  Jem curled up in the cab of the truck, put his head on my lap like he used to in kindergarten.

  “That isn’t safe, kiddo,” I told him. “We’re driving.”

  But he was already asleep, his body trying to absorb a trauma bigger than he was.

  I turned on Nacogdoches to avoid the flooding on Loop 410, but that proved a mistake. The low-water crossing by the YMCA field had become a river, black water cresting at the tops of the speed limit signs. A house was floating across the road.

  Dozens of people had left their cars. They stood with umbrellas by the waterside, watching the prefab model sail slowly over the bridge. The house had white aluminum siding, a gray-shingled roof, blue curtains and a sign in the window that read, NO MONEY DOWN!!!

  I should have backed up, but I sat in my truck, watching the spectacle, my hand on Jem’s feverish forehead.

  I had failed to recognize Will Stirman, even though his disguise had been nothing more than a pair of glasses and the fact that he had appeared out of any context I would’ve anticipated.

  I had failed to take him down when I had the chance. I told myself I could have taken him.

  But the truth was: Jem and I were alive for only one reason. Will Stirman had let us go to deliver a message.

  Tell your mother you saw me. She knows what I want.

  The prefab house snagged on something, made a grinding noise as the current bent its walls. It careened sideways and continued its stately journey.

  Will Stirman had tried to take Jem. He had dared to step into a little boy’s world.

  I promised myself I would get the bastard for that.

  I watched the house bob past the line of silent spectators with umbrellas, an American flag fluttering bravely on the doorpost as the building slipped off the bridge and glided downriver.

  7

  Erainya held the line for ten minutes before Dimebox Ortiz’s brother-in-law came on.

  “He’s a no-show,” the brother-in-law said, clearly reluctant to share the information. “Hearing was set for ten o’clock.”

  Erainya swore. “You fronted bail for him again? The judge went for it?”

  “Well… you know. It’s just Dimebox. He’s got a good lawyer. Besides, he’s not exactly a serious threat…”

  “Ike, he sets people on fire.”

  “That’s never been proven.”

  “Jesus Christ.” But Erainya couldn’t help feeling a little relieved. Ever since she’d turned over Dimebox to the police, two days ago, she kept remembering what he’d said about her signing his death warrant. “Listen, Ike. I’ve got to talk to him. On the off chance he’s stupid enough to call you-”

  “Hey, Erainya, don’t stress it, right? It’s another day’s work for you. I’ll be happy to pay the regular bounty.”

  “You’re a lunatic, Ike.”

  “He’s my wife’s brother, okay? I’ll give you a bonus. Probably just staying with Lalu and Kiko again.”

  “Lalu and Kiko are nowhere,” Erainya said. “I’ve checked. They haven’t been seen in at least twenty-four.”

  A pause. “Should I be worried?”

  “Nah,” Erainya said, sarcastically. “It’s just Will Stirman on the loose. He’s not exactly a serious threat.”

  “Oh, shit-you don’t think-”

  Erainya hung up the phone. Ike and Dimebox were only related by marriage, but they seemed like blood brothers when it came to stupidity.

  She turned back to the television. Constant flood coverage was giving her a headache. She kept waiting for news on Will Stirman-anything that would confirm he had really gone north. All she got were pictures of livestock standing belly-deep in water, people riding a boat down a street in New Braunfels.

  Her nerves were frayed. She’d had two hang-up phone calls in the middle of the night, both from blocked numbers. She’d yelled at Jem that morning for something stupid-leaving his cereal bowl where she could trip over it. The memory of his shocked expression made her sick with guilt.

  Taking him to soccer practice, she’d almost convinced herself she was being followed. She came very close to not letting Jem go. Then she decided she was being paranoid. Missing practice would crush the poor kid. Besides, Tres would be there the whole time. She couldn’t ask for better protection than that.

  Now… Sam Barrera was ten minutes late. For all his other faults, Sam was never late.

  Erainya’s mind raced with wild possibilities of what might’ve happened to him. If he did show up, what would she tell him? How far was she willing to go to save herself?

  Sooner or later, Will Stirman would contact her. She knew it. She wanted desperately to believe he would just disappear, or if he did go after Barrera, at least leave her alone, but she knew better.

  She remembered last spring, when her best friend Helen Malski lay dying of lymphoma. Erainya had been with her in the hospital, holding her hand, as Helen labored to speak. “You can’t keep silent forever, Irene. You can’t.”

  Helen had been one of the last people who remembered Erainya as Irene, who dared to call her by the meek, Anglicized, failure-laden name of her marriage.

  “I know,” Erainya had said. “I’ll come clean.”

  And Helen smiled, the grip of her hand loosening as she drifted off to sleep.

  Erainya had lied to her best friend. She had no intention of telling anyone the truth.

  She opened her desk drawer, stared at her Colt. 45.

  It won’t come to that, she thought. Not this time.

  She picked up the photo of her dead husband. It was the only photo of Fred she kept in the house, and she kept it right under the gun-to remind her.

  The picture showed a very young Fred Barrow, just after he’d left the Border Patrol to become a PI. His nose was broken from his days as an amateur boxer. His black hair was parted in the middle and feathered in that wretched late-seventies style. His smile had not yet gone sour, nor had he started drinking heavily, so it was possible to think he looked confident rather than bullheaded, strong rather than brutal-the way Erainya had thought of him when they first met.

  She’d been a shy, nervous college girl, working part-time in the county records office. Fred’s flirtations overwhelmed her whenever he came in to see a land deed or a tax record. He’d complimented her efficiency, her jewelry, her clothes and her eyes. A real private investigator-paying attention to her. The fourth time he visited, he sat at the corner of her desk and picked up her letter opener. As he talked, he kept testing the blade. Years later, Erainya would wonder if he’d been making a subconscious threat, or even trying to warn her.
/>   He said he needed a good helper. His PI business was booming. He needed somebody who could double as a secretary and a life partner. The proposal made her dizzy. She found herself spilling her dreams to him. She wanted children, the kind of big family she’d been denied, growing up. She told him about her parents, first-generation immigrants who’d been killed by a hit-and-run driver when Erainya was seven. She told him about the cold godparents who’d raised her, renamed her Irene, spent years trying to erase everything un-American and unladylike from her character. Fred listened sympathetically. He didn’t say no to a big family. She convinced herself he would make a good father. They were married two months later.

  At first, the partnership had gone well. Erainya had been prepared to take the back seat to a man. Her foster parents had prepared her for that ever since she was a child.

  Then Erainya made two startling discoveries. The first was that she liked investigations. Informants trusted her. They would tell her things they’d never tell Fred. She involved herself more in the cases. She was sure if she showed Fred what she could do, he would eventually see that it made sense to give her more responsibility.

  The more she did this, the more irritated Fred became. He began accusing her of butting in, messing up his business. And the more irritated he became, the more determined she was to try harder, and prove him wrong.

  The second discovery was worse. After three years of trying, she was still not pregnant. Fred didn’t want to talk about it. He began drinking, and yelling. Finally, the doctor assured Erainya that the fertility problem was not hers. Erainya’s friend Helen told her she really had to speak to Fred. It took Erainya a month to get up her nerve, but finally she broached the subject.

  That was the first night Fred ever hit her. It wasn’t the last. Erainya was slow, painfully slow, to realize her marriage and her dreams were incompatible.

  She slipped Fred’s photo carefully back under the. 45.

  She looked at the clock. Sam Barrera was now twenty-two minutes late.

  She cursed herself for putting the old case files into storage, leaving Tres a key. Of course he would go through them. That was his nature. It had been stupid of her to leave him that opening.

  There wasn’t much he could find, unless he knew what to look for. But he was smart. Damn smart. She had to hope he wouldn’t look at the case from the right angle to see what was wrong about it.

  The doorbell rang.

  Sam at last. Or what if…

  Erainya reached for her gun.

  Fred’s picture stared up at her from so many years ago-a reminder of how quickly things could go wrong, how reckless Erainya could get when it came to protecting her secrets.

  She left the gun where it was, and closed the drawer.

  She went to answer the door, convincing herself she could handle whatever came without violence. As long as she was safe, and Jem was safe, nothing else mattered.

  8

  “Dios mio,” Ana DeLeon said when she came on the phone. “Thought the operator was kidding me.”

  “Long time,” I said. “How’s it going, Sergeant?”

  Ana hesitated, tacitly acknowledging the mention of her new rank. I hadn’t seen her in over a year, hadn’t called to congratulate her on the promotion, or any of the other news I’d heard.

  “Business is brisk,” she said. “Flood washed up some interesting corpses. Had one float out of somebody’s basement last night.”

  I pinched the cell phone to my ear, turned my pickup onto Erainya’s street. “So who’s handling the Floresville Five?”

  “Ugh. Not us, thank God. Department of Criminal Justice. Fugitive Task Force. They’ve got a command post here, though with the Oklahoma City shooting yesterday, the search has gone federal. Most of the manpower has pulled out and headed north. Why do you ask?”

  “What happened in Oklahoma City?”

  She told me about the sporting goods store manager and the off-duty cop murdered; a positive ID on two of the fugitives; fairly good evidence that Will Stirman led the robbery.

  “With a cop down,” she said, “you know how it goes. FBI, U.S. Marshals-everybody wants a piece of this now. What’s your interest?”

  “Stirman isn’t in Oklahoma.”

  “No,” she agreed. “He’s heading north. They’re setting up roadblocks on every highway in the Midwest. Problem is: The shit-bag specialized in human trafficking. He’s got contacts everywhere. Knows how to hide and move.”

  “Stirman’s here in town.”

  Next to me on the bench seat, Jem sighed. He turned over in his sleep.

  I was halfway down the block before DeLeon spoke again.

  “Okay,” she said warily. “Aside from the fact that San Antonio would be a very stupid place for Stirman to be, seeing how many people know him here-and aside from the fact that every law enforcement agency in the country places him as about halfway to Canada… Why are you telling me this?”

  I pulled in front of Erainya’s house. Two unwelcome surprises were waiting for me in the driveway-her boyfriend’s Lexus and an older BMW so god-awful yellow it could only belong to Sam Barrera.

  “Tres?” DeLeon asked.

  It had taken me a mile of driving to decide to call DeLeon, one of my few friends in law enforcement. I had to tell somebody about Stirman. It couldn’t wait until I spoke to Erainya.

  I stared at the cars.

  When I’d called Erainya from San Marcos that morning, she’d encouraged me to take Jem out to lunch after soccer, let her catch up on some paperwork. She wouldn’t be expecting us for another hour at least. She’d said nothing about a meeting with Barrera.

  “I’m still here,” I told DeLeon. “How much do you know about Stirman’s arrest eight years ago?”

  There was a long pause. “Since the jailbreak, the old-timers won’t stop gabbing about it. Fred Barrow-your boss’s dead husband-he was involved. Erainya must’ve told you the story.”

  “Pretend she hasn’t.”

  I could almost hear DeLeon’s mental gears turning, trying to figure my angle, deciding how much she wanted to tell me.

  “All right,” she said. “A rancher named McCurdy tortured and murdered six illegal alien women over the course of about a year. The women were supplied as slave labor by Will Stirman. Would-be victim number seven managed to escape. She got the county sheriff to believe her. When the deputies closed in, McCurdy killed himself. National media came in, started looking into allegations that the county knew about McCurdy’s slave ranch for months, had previous complaints about mistreatment, even returned one woman to his place when she tried to run away. The county needed a scapegoat before their asses got fried in federal probes and lawsuits, so they decided to find the guy who supplied the slaves. Sam Barrera and Fred Barrow both worked the case-Barrera for the county, Barrow for some of the victims’ families. Folks were laying bets the two would strangle each other before they found anything, but they ended up working together. They lined up three solid material witnesses who tied Stirman to the rancher-the illegal who survived and two members of Stirman’s smuggling ring who agreed to turn on their boss. The PIs delivered statements to the police, gave the district attorney more than enough for an indictment.”

  “You sound like you don’t approve.”

  Another pause, like she was censoring herself. “There are rumors Barrera and Barrow got their results by doing what the cops couldn’t. They bent rules, used bribery, threats, whatever it took.”

  “But the case stood up in court.”

  “Stirman was scum. The jury would’ve handed him a death sentence if that was an option.”

  “What about the arrest itself?” I asked. “Fred Barrow’s notes on the case-he makes it sound like he apprehended Stirman personally.”

  “He did. Would’ve been late April ’95. Will Stirman got tipped off things were going against him. He made plans to flee the country. Barrow and Barrera got word of this, like, the night he was planning to leave. Instead of telling the
police, the two of them decide to play cowboy and show up at Stirman’s apartment with guns blazing. Just the kind of cool, methodical detective work you’d appreciate. A woman was killed in the crossfire-one of Stirman’s prostitutes. Stirman was critically wounded. He just about bled to death before the police and paramedics arrived. There were some other… irregularities about that night.”

  “Irregularities.”

  “That’s all you get for free,” she told me. “How do you know Stirman is in town?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Look, Tres-I get the revenge angle. The Task Force has considered it. I know SAPD called Erainya and Sam Barrera, along with the attorneys who prosecuted the Stirman case. They were all offered protection.”

  “They were?”

  “And they declined. The point is-Stirman isn’t stupid. He wouldn’t hang around here. Unless you have evidence that would change my mind. ..”

  I stared at Sam Barrera’s yellow BMW. “Can I come by tonight?”

  “I’ll be at the office until six. Or you can come by the house.”

  “I can make the office by six.”

  An uneasy pause, the wipers going back and forth across my windshield. Ana said, “Ralph would love to see you, Tres.”

  “Same,” I said. “It’s just… I don’t want to barge in, with the baby and all.”

  “You wouldn’t be barging in.”

  I said nothing.

  “Okay then,” she said. “So…”

  “By six,” I told her. “Count on it.”

  I folded up the phone.

  I waited for a break in the rain before gathering Jem in my arms and carrying him to the front door.

  Inside, the television was going. Live footage of drizzle, as if there wasn’t enough of it right outside. The weatherman warned that three area dams were already over capacity.

  A leather briefcase sat next to Erainya’s living room couch. Spread out on the coffee table was a picnic lunch-a checkered cloth, bouquet of wildflowers, bottle of wine, cheese, baguette, kalamata olives.