Above The Law

CHAPTER 11

CHIEF GAGE BACKED HIS CRUISER UP TO THE MOTEL DOOR AND dragged Teuch's body out. He unfolded a thick plastic tarp inside his trunk and dumped the body in, slamming the trunk closed and dusting his hands as he scanned the empty parking lot and the pockets of wan light spilling from cheap fixtures up and down the row of doors. He moved with the confidence of a man who'd been a law unto himself for nearly twenty years.

He was only a deputy fresh out of community college when the senator's old man died and the senator took over the ranch, bumping his older sister and her no-good husband to a beach house in Galveston. It was a deflowered high school cheerleader who gave Gage the first opportunity to distinguish himself with the senator, who was then just a young lawyer at the attorney general's office in the city. When she awoke in a ditch with her skirt hiked up over her boobs she called 911 from a pay phone outside of town, gibbering so that the dispatcher couldn't understand her.

They sent Gage out to pick her up and when he saw the black eye and realized where the whole thing was headed, he told her to shut up and drove her straight back out to the ranch. Gage showed his stuff by offering the girl the chance to make up with Chase or be taken in for possession of a small bag of cocaine he removed from his sock and tucked into the low-cut neckline of her rumpled dress and beneath the double-D cup of her bra. The senator never forgot that, and together they had ruled their own little slice of heaven in this forgotten corner of Dallas County ever since.

Inside the motel room, Gage knelt down beside the bloodstained carpet and mopped it as best he could, putting his back to the flimsy bureau, moving it along the wall toward the bathroom to hide the vast bulk of the mess. He clucked his tongue, satisfied with the camouflage of stains from other bygone accidents and crimes. The towel went into the trunk with Teuch's things, and Gage drove off into the night, tires roaring over the still-warm asphalt.

Out on Route 45, about twenty minutes and two counties to the south, Gage pulled off at a picnic area. He got out of his cruiser and rousted the lone trucker, who was stripped to his underwear and pulled over for the night, telling him he'd have to move on to the truck stop down in Corsicana. The running lights of the big rig hadn't even disappeared over the next rise before Gage had Teuch's body out on the curb. He dragged the young gangbanger by the armpits out into the scrub a ways where no one had any business being and flopped him down in the parched dirt.

Somewhere in the distance a coyote sniggered and then wailed in a high-pitched scream, the sound rolling endlessly across the flat land. A chill jiggered Gage's spine, only to be warmed by the metal curve of the hammer on the big pistol at his waist. They'd do a good job on the Mexican, the coyotes would. Gage took only one cursory glance around before drawing the pistol and taking aim at the center of the Mexican's forehead, standing well away so as not to spatter his pants with gore. Orange flame burst from the gun's barrel and the deafening roar rolled right back out across the same flat land, truncating the coyote's call. A hairy divot from the top of Teuch's head took off like a flushed snipe, disappearing into the shadows and drawing a chuckle up from Gage's belly.

The police chief returned to his car, whipping it around, gravel singing in a cloud of dust, and accelerating on down the highway. He gripped the wheel and let the surge push him back into the seat as the needle pegged 120. Gage was in no particular hurry to get away.

He just liked to drive fast.