Illegal

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The mention of Garcia's name sent a bolt of lightning up Payne's spine. "You're fucking with me, right? Mind games."

"If that's what you want to believe." Rutledge kept riding toward the barn, forcing Payne to catch up.

"Where is he?" Payne demanded.

No answer. Just the clop of hooves and the distant putter of a tractor. Payne brought the Appaloosa so close the two men's legs nearly touched. "How the hell did you find Garcia?"

"Not hard to do. Not with my connections."

"Is he here? In the valley?"

Rutledge patted the stallion's neck. "Took a new name, got a job working for a friend of mine down by Corcoran."

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"You can pay Garcia a visit after dinner, do what you gotta do. You'll be back in time to catch Leno. But once I tell you where he is, we got a deal. No more of your fussing about that Mexican woman."

Payne had more questions, but Rutledge dug his heels into the stallion, which took off at a gallop. The best Payne's horse could manage was a school-zone canter. By the time Payne reached the corral, Rutledge had hopped off the stallion and turned it over to a stable hand. Payne dismounted and painfully stretched, his bad leg throbbing. He hurried to catch up with Rutledge, who strode up a path lined with orange-andwhite impatiens. The path wound up a ridge and curled behind his sprawling country home.

When Payne came abreast of Rutledge, he said, "What makes you think I want to kill Garcia?"

"A year ago, you opened your big mouth to half the homicide detectives in L.A."

Javier Cardenas, Payne thought. The police chief had made some calls. "I didn't mean it. It was all talk."

"Bullcrap. You got yourself a primal urge. It's what I would do if someone murdered my son."

"How do you know? You don't have any children."

The older man shrugged. "Hell, if someone killed Javie, I'd gut the bastard like a hog."

"And you think I'm like you?"

Rutledge's smile was as thin as the brim of his Stet-son. "More than you know."

They stopped on a rise behind the farmhouse, a three-story structure with wide porches, green shutters, and Southern plantation white pillars. From this elevation, they looked over thousands of acres, blooming with fruits and vegetables.

"C'mon, Payne. You never even met the Perez woman. She's nothing to you. But the bastard who killed your son? Jesus! He stuck a knife in your heart."

Payne fought off the urge for vengeance. Ever since Adam's death, he had felt it as a searing heat, a torrent of molten steel. He had yearned to do what the law couldn't. Kill the man and settle the score.

"C'mere, Payne. I want to show you something."

Rutledge walked toward three gnarly and shrunken peach trees, Payne trailing. Two feet of sandy loam formed a berm around each trunk, as if someone had lovingly tucked the trees to sleep under a blanket of rich soil.

"Before I was born, my granddaddy planted four hundred Elbertas on this ridge. They're my roots, my family's sweat and tears. No way any of them should still be alive." He ran a callused hand over a tree trunk. "But look here. Three Elbertas, still growing, still bearing fruit. Like the three generations of Rutledge men."

Rutledge reached for a peach-a soft golden orb blushing with red-from the nearest tree. "Watch now. Just a gentle turn of the wrist so the stem doesn't tear out of the socket. The older I get, the more I learn that brute force is seldom the answer to life's problems."

He twisted the peach off its stem and bit into it, juice oozing from his mouth and onto his bristly mustache. He radiated a feral bliss as he polished off the fruit.

"Go ahead, Payne. Take one."

Payne shook his head, thinking of the snake and the forbidden fruit. He didn't quite picture himself as Eve- but Rutledge as a serpent, no problem with the imagery there.

Rutledge moved a few steps toward an enclosure made of railroad ties. Inside was a pile of manure so ripe it steamed in the midday sun. He tossed several handfuls into a bucket, which he carried to the nearest tree. Crouching on his haunches, he used his bare hands to shape a mound of manure around the tree trunk. Clearly, Payne thought, not a man afraid of getting his hands dirty.

"These trees will outlive me," Rutledge told him. "The way a son is supposed to outlive his father. So the father can pass on what's his. Knowledge. Property. Tradition. A father who's deprived of that, well, he's got a right to seek justice. Hell, he's got a duty to."

"I get your point."

"Last chance, Payne. Are you man enough to do what has to be done?"

Payne's thoughts turned to that misty morning on the Pacific Coast Highway. Pictured Adam, just moments before the crash. Animated, talkative, innocent. Heard the thunderclap as the pickup truck broadsided them, Adam's body crushed against his own. A moment later, the man's head appearing through the driver's window. The tang of liquor on his breath.

Now Payne inhaled the pungent aroma of the manure. He looked at the old trees, listened to the breeze tickle their leaves. He thought of his promises made. To Sharon. To Tino. And to himself.

But every thought returned to Adam and to the endless pain of losing him. His son's baseball bat was in the trunk of the Mustang. If Payne closed his eyes, he could see himself crushing Garcia's skull, could hear the bones splinter, could feel the warm stickiness of his blood.

"Tell me how I can find Garcia," Payne said. "I'll do it tonight and be gone by tomorrow."