Act of Deceit

Chapter 25

T he burglar wasn’t after money.

Donnally recognized that the moment he stepped into Mauricio’s office. The petty cash tin lay open with the same fifty dollars inside that had been there since Mauricio checked himself into the hospital. Someone was either looking for something more valuable or trying to send a message, or both.

The voice on the blinking answering machine gave Donnally the answer.

“Interesting thing, Harlan,” Deputy Pipkins said on the recording. “I checked DMV and birth records and the only Mauricio Aguilera born in California on January 14, 1956, died on January 15, 1956. What do you make of that, Detective?” Pipkins chuckled. “Oh, yeah, there’s one other thing. Strictly speaking, can you call them wetbacks if they snuck in across the desert?”

The next voice he heard was Will’s, but coming from within his own head:

Deputy Asshole.

Donnally extracted the tape and slipped it into his shirt pocket. He didn’t put in a new one. Mauricio was done receiving messages.

While he straightened the papers on the desk, Donnally wondered what difference it made whether Pipkins found out the truth about Mauricio. Maybe he’d been resisting not because the truth would hurt anybody, but simply because Pipkins was Pipkins, or maybe because Pipkins was his father’s son.

By the time he’d stepped back and uprighted a chair, he realized that it made a difference for the same reason that promises made to the dying did.

And it sure as hell wasn’t because the dead cared afterward.

It was because the living had to live with themselves.

Donnally checked the rear door and each of the rooms until he found where Deputy Pipkins had broken in. Scuff marks showed that he had climbed through a bedroom window that was concealed from the cafe parking lot by an overgrown pyracantha.

After retrieving a flashlight from the kitchen, Donnally leaned over the sill and shined the beam toward the ground and among the intertwined and leaf-cluttered branches.

A glint of silver flashed back.

He swept the beam past the same spot a second time.

Another flash.

He locked on it and squinted until he could make out the outline of a basket-woven rectangular square of leather with a chrome clasp: Deputy Asshole’s ticket book.

A metallic pop and a “Jesus fucking Christ!” startled Donnally awake as he lay in Mauricio’s bed at 2 A.M.

Branches thrashed against the glass and the wood siding as Pipkins flailed, each yank on the badger trap onto which Donnally had tied the ticket book driving the jaws deeper into the deputy’s wrist.

Donnally grabbed his shotgun and racked it.

He heard an “Oh shit,” then the crunching of Pipkins fighting his way toward the ground, deeper among the thorns and out of the line of fire.

“Don’t shoot, you son of a bitch,” Pipkins yelled.

“Give me a good reason.”

Pipkins didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his department or make him appear even more pitiful than he already was, and they both knew it.

Donnally reached for his cell phone, located a number, and pressed “send.”

“This is Donnally. I’m at Mauricio’s. Come get your idiot kid.”