Sudden Death

CHAPTER TEN

“What was with the questions? Do you know something?” Jack asked Padre as they drove to Carlos’s house outside of the city limits. If Hidalgo had a pricey area, this would be it. Everyone had a small yard that they watered and kept green behind chain-link fences and broken sidewalks. Carlos had three cars when his brother couldn’t afford even one. Oh, yeah, he was dirty. Jack would take care of him later.

“I had a visitor last night at the church as I was locking up. A woman. White. But … I don’t see the connection.”

“What did she look like?”

“Long dark hair. Medium height, maybe five foot five. Pretty, but a little thin.”

“How old was she?”

“Forty, forty-five. I’m not as good with ages. Clean appearance, clean clothing. Dark slacks and a white blouse. A dark windbreaker.”

“And?”

“She wanted to confess.”

“You take confessions at midnight?”

“If someone needs it. If you came to me at three a.m., I’d listen.”

“Don’t wait up for me,” Jack said, but he was thinking. Picturing Scout dead on the floor, hamstrings cut, bullet to the back of the head. Not a female touch, but they say the sexes are getting closer.

“Was she driving?”

“On foot.”

“Then she had to have a place to stay.”

“Or a car parked elsewhere.”

“The church is a good two miles from El Gato. A white woman isn’t going to walk through town at midnight, alone or not. She was alone?”

“I believe so. I didn’t see or hear anyone else. She didn’t act like anyone was waiting for her. But, well, she didn’t confess.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I brought her into the church, she wanted to pray, and I gave her privacy. Then she left.”

“Did you check the silver? You’re not a softie, Padre. You left a stranger alone in the church?”

“I was in the chapel, waiting for her. And yes, I walked through the church. Nothing was taken or vandalized. The prayer candles were extinguished. I sensed that she’d been walking, saw the church, saw me locking up, and thought it was a good time to confess, but then got nervous. People don’t like to talk about their mistakes.” Padre glanced at Jack. “Do they?”

“What mistakes?” Jack got out of the truck and strode up to Carlos’s front door. Two pit bulls, chained to a lone tree, barked ferociously at the men. Padre approached more cautiously.

Jack pounded on the door. “Carlos! Open up. It’s Jack Kincaid and we need to talk.” He heard shuffling inside. “Now, Carlos.”

A minute later a young woman-if she was eighteen, Jack would eat his hat-answered the door. The security screen was still locked, but through it Jack could see she wore a bra and shorts and nothing else.

A distraction.

Before Jack even heard the car start, he was running across the lawn full speed. Carlos put the car in drive at the same time Jack grabbed a chunk of his hair through the open window and pulled. Carlos tried to drive, but Jack held tight and Carlos slammed on the brakes as Jack pulled open the door. He yanked Carlos from the driver’s seat. The car rolled forward and Jack barely noticed Padre jump in and put the car in park before it rolled into the street.

Jack pushed Carlos to the dirt and straddled him, slamming his palm against the side of his head. “What are you running from, asshole?”

In rapid Spanish, Carlos said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kincaid. I was just going to the store for my girl and-”

Jack pulled him up by his black T-shirt and slammed him back down. “Don’t fuck with me, Hernandez. Scout is dead and I want to know what you know.”

“Scout? Dead?” He tried to sound like he hadn’t heard, but Jack wasn’t buying it.

“I said don’t fuck with me.”

“I’m not! I swear I’m not!”

The girl from the house came running out, pulling on a T-shirt. “Let him go! Let him go!”

Then she saw Padre and her eyes widened. “Father Francis, I-”

He stared at her with narrowed eyes. “Emilia. I am sure your mother doesn’t know you are skipping school, does she?”

“I-no, I-” She turned and ran back into the house.

Jack silently thanked the power of Catholic guilt and focused his attention on Carlos Hernandez.

“Tell me about the boys from San Antonio.”

“I don’t know-” But he looked Jack in the face. “Look, it was nothing, a onetime sale, just-”

“They’re your mules, aren’t they?”

“I don’t- You’re fucking with the wrong person, Kincaid. You think you’re a saint? You think you’re the morality cop of Hidalgo? You’re an outsider, no matter how much money you throw around or how many kids you send to college. Your money is a drop in the bucket. Just because you got the priest on your side don’t think you’re indispensable. Or him.”

Jack changed his position, pinning Carlos with a knee firmly planted in his groin. Carlos twisted in pain, but the more he moved the more it hurt.

“Do not threaten me, puta. Tell me about Scout. Now.”

“I didn’t do nothing to him. I don’t know nothing about it. I swear to God, in front of your fucking priest, I don’t know nothing that happened to him.”

“Did you talk to a woman in the bar last night? Gringo? Thirties, wearing a ball cap?”

“Maybe-” Jack pushed his knee higher, and Carlos’s voice rose a pitch. “Yeah!” He was breathing faster. “Just passing through.”

“What did you tell her?”

“About what? It was chitchat. About owning a bar, shit like that.”

“Did she ask about Scout?”

“Naw, she didn’t ask questions, maybe how’s it going and crap. She bummed a cigarette off Enrique Roscoe. Yeah, right before she left. I swear he holds those cigs in tight fists, so she must have winked at him or something. Maybe he knows something. I don’t know, I just didn’t say nothing about no one, and you’d better get off me or I’ll call Perez and have you thrown in jail. And if you think I can’t, you’re a fool.”

Jack suspected Carlos was blowing smoke, but he didn’t want to test it. Perez would be livid when he learned Jack was asking questions about Scout’s murder. Delaying that revelation as long as possible was to Jack’s advantage.

He pushed off Carlos, who scrambled up and moved away while adjusting his aching dick. “Keep your bitch in line, Padre,” he said as he got back in his car and sped away.

“Jack-” Padre said.

Jack walked off his anger. Carlos Hernandez wasn’t worth it, but the asshole was messing with the wrong people if he thought he could be a major player in the drug trade. The kings down in Mexico would eat Carlos for breakfast. Jack could care less about the jerk, but he feared collateral damage. Naive girls like Emilia.

“You might want to turn up the fire and brimstone in your homilies,” Jack said. “Too many people are turning the other cheek-for the wrong people.”

Jack got back in the truck. “Let’s find Enrique. Maybe he can give us more information about this wayward Catholic brunette.”

* * *

It was after six that evening when Detective Vasquez drove Megan and Hans to Duane Johnson’s house.

Hans walked around the house alone while Megan stood in the garage and tried to put herself in the killers’ shoes. Waiting for their target to come home. It took a patient killer. Someone who planned. Three murders, no evidence yet that pointed to any specific suspect. Generalities only-likely someone affiliated with the military- current or in the past. Someone with a grudge against the army specifically, and possibly Duane Johnson and the others individually. Someone who had access to information about the veterans and where they lived, worked, their schedules.

The killers had to have stalked Johnson before killing him. And Dennis Perry. How had they traveled? Plane? Car? She could pull flight records for specific flights, but to pull multiple flight records without knowing the specific airline, both the destination and the origin, or the date of travel … it would be virtually impossible to find out if an UNSUB had been on flights to Austin, Las Vegas, and Sacramento. If Megan had only a name, they could get the information, but it would still take time.

It bothered her more than she’d let on to Hans and her boss, Bob Richardson, about receiving Price’s dog tag at her apartment. The killers had to have been watching the crime scene, otherwise how could they have identified her? She wasn’t a spokesperson for the department, though she’d had her moments in the limelight. Last year the Sacramento Bee had done a huge article on the serial killer she’d killed who buried his victims alive. Richardson had thought it had been a great idea for her to do an interview with the press; she had hated every minute of it. Her brother Matt, the district attorney, handled the press much better than she did. But it had been good P.R. and Richardson was all about the image of the bureau. And that led to the television interview and that would have led to a national spot, except Megan told her boss no more. She couldn’t do her job if she was too high profile, and she didn’t want to be the public information officer.

Vasquez joined her in the garage and said, “Find anything?” in a tone that said he thought being at the crime scene two months after the murder was a waste of time.

Megan walked over to where the garage floor looked bleached. “Is this where the paint can spilled during the scuffle? Where Johnson was hamstrung?”

“Yes, and I know what you’re thinking.”

“You do?”

“That the killer stepped in the paint and left nice footprints to identify. The killer may have done just that, but they scrubbed the floor before leaving.”

“Scrubbed?”

“There may have been footprints, but someone came in and used Johnson’s shirt to rub the paint over any possible prints.”

Megan frowned. “I didn’t see that in the report.”

“If it wasn’t there, I forgot. But it didn’t give us anything, except that the killers tried to clean up.”

She stared at the door. “The house was cleaned.”

“Of course.”

“There still might be-” She opened the garage door and called out for Hans.

He came from the back of the house. “Find something?”

“I don’t know. But the killer stepped in the paint. It could have been tracked all over the house, maybe invisible to the naked eye.”

“The house has since been cleaned by a biological clean-up company,” Vasquez said.

Megan sighed. Good biohazard companies wouldn’t have let anything slip by. “It was worth a try.”

“I’ll call the crime scene supervisor. Tell him what you’re thinking and see if he has any ideas.”

“We appreciate it,” Megan said. She was grasping at straws. She wanted a break, something that pointed to a suspect. She’d worked hundreds of murder investigations over her fifteen-year FBI career, so many that her boss in D.C. had suggested she get a job with local law enforcement. “Violent crime isn’t our priority,” he’d said in 2002. “You may be happier in a different agency.”

But she loved working in the FBI, and she thrived in the Violent Crimes Squad. She didn’t want to do anything else. It had taken her three more years before she was transferred into a supervisory role and moved to Sacramento.

“Agent Davis said something about friends of Johnson who were in the military with him. Veterans?” Hans asked.

Vasquez nodded. “They had a weekly poker game over at the VFW Hall. I’ll take you there. They didn’t have anything to add to the investigation.” He glanced at his watch. “Happy hour is just ending. I don’t know if you’ll get anything useful from them, but honestly, I don’t think they know anything.”

* * *

It took Jack until the dinner hour to find Enrique Roscoe. Seemed he’d “just missed him” at his four regular hangouts. Padre had to go to church for Mass. Jack knew his friend was worried, but he couldn’t think about that right now. Jack wasn’t going to do anything stupid, and he was relieved when Padre was no longer riding shotgun.

Jack returned to El Gato at seven that night, circling back to the first place he looked for Enrique. There he sat, a beer belly at twenty-five. Jack slid onto the bar stool next to him.

“Tell me about the pretty gringo you talked to yesterday,” Jack said, voice low. He ignored Pablo whose gesture asked if Jack wanted his usual.

“Fuck off.”

Jack grabbed Enrique by the collar. The kid smelled of beer and marijuana. His red eyes blinked rapidly, and he worked his mouth without speaking.

“Carlos told me you had a nice chat with her. I want to know what you said, what she said.”

“Let him go,” Pablo said. “I don’t want trouble. Please, Senor Jack, just talk.”

Jack let go of Enrique’s shirt. “Spill it.”

Enrique shrugged, rolled his shoulders, picked up his beer. “She bummed a cigarette off me.”

“I want the pack.”

Enrique barked out a laugh. “That was two packs ago. Check the landfill.”

“Did she use your lighter?”

“She had her own. She lit mine.” Enrique reached under his waistband and did an elaborate show of adjusting his dick.

“Name?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Carlos says you chatted her up.”

Enrique shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Did Scout talk to her?”

“Dunno.”

Jack’s fists clenched. He resisted the urge to deck the bastard. “Did she talk about Scout? Friends or family in town?”

“Why? You think she killed him?”

Jack didn’t answer. He stared at Enrique.

Enrique shrugged again, drained the rest of his beer, and motioned for another.

“She didn’t ask anything. Just talked about how much she liked traveling and sitting in local bars. I asked her to dance, she said no, that was it.”

Jack didn’t know what to make of the information, and he knew there was more to it than small talk. “Carlos said you talked to her for quite some time.”

“Fuck Carlos, he’s a liar. He came up when I was just about to get a peek down at her tits. She had these nice”-he cupped his hands-”C cups. Smaller than I like, but her shirt was cut to here”-he touched his chest-”and there was this nice tan line.”

“What color shirt?”

“White. She was too skinny for me; I like some meat on my women.” He made a motion like he was grabbing ass. Jack bit back a comment, and asked, “Hair? Eyes?”

“Dunno. Two?” He laughed at his own pathetic joke.

This was going nowhere. “Carlos talked to her?”

“He came over and hit on her. Told me to scram. I told him to fuck off, then went to take a piss. Came back and Carlos was gone. She was there, paying. I went over, she said she had to go. Early appointment or some such garbage. I thought she might be meeting up to screw Carlos, but ten minutes after she left, Carlos comes back in with his boys.” Enrique leaned over and said in a stage whisper, “I think he was just feeling her out to see if she was a cop.”

“Cop?” Jack raised his eyebrow. “You thought she was a cop?”

“Hell no, but you know how paranoid Carlos is.”

“Shut the fuck up, you drunk fool.”

Jack pivoted on his barstool. Carlos stood behind them with two of his punks-both bigger than the youngest Hernandez.

“You told me you didn’t talk to the woman.” Jack slowly rose from the seat.

“I don’t have to tell you anything, you fucking half-breed.”

Jack stood his ground. “How long was this woman around here?”

“She left. Early. Long before your drunk gringo comrade.”

Jack stepped forward, wanting too much to slam his fist in Carlos Hernandez’s nose. “If I find out you’re lying to me, Hernandez …”

“You going to tell the priest on me?” he mimicked. “He your boyfriend?”

The three laughed. Jack started to walk out. He was too close to letting loose. Too close to letting the demons out. And Carlos wouldn’t survive.

Art Perez walked into the bar, a deputy at his side. Could the chief of police not go anywhere alone? Jack stopped when Perez blocked his path.

“I hear you’ve been sticking your nose into my investigation,” Perez said.

“I’m not interfering with your investigation.”

“You dragged Pablo Hernandez out of bed, then beat up his little brother in the middle of the street.”

“Damn straight,” Carlos said from the bar. “Arrest him, Officer!” He laughed and everyone around him joined in.

Jack said, “Scout was one of my men. I will find out what happened.”

“Maybe you brought trouble back with you from Guatemala.” Perez glared. “Yeah, I know all about you and the other soldiers of fortune here. I also know a bit about your good friend Frank Cardenas. You might want to think about that, Kincaid. Frank’s history may not go over well with some of the people here, and if enough of them flood the diocese with complaints- well, let’s just say he may find a nice post in the cold Alaska diocese after I’m done.”

Jack had always known that Perez was a bastard, but this was low even for him. The police chief was baiting him, waiting for Jack to throw a punch so he could arrest him. Waiting for him to react. Jack froze. He would do Scout no good in jail.

“Stay out of police business. I know how to do my job.” Perez stepped forward, toe to toe. Jack didn’t budge. He barely breathed. “And leave Carlos Hernandez alone, or it’s war. Ten years living here is nothing, Kincaid. You’re still the outsider, and I’m still the hometown boy made good.”

Perez left. Carlos and his two cronies followed. Jack turned back, glared at Enrique, and slapped his hand on the bar, rattling every glass underneath.

Pablo slid a Tecate over to him. “On me. Sorry about Scout, Senor Jack. Really.” He ambled off down the bar.

Jack breathed out slowly. He took a long swallow of the beer, tasting nothing. He glanced up at the television. There was no sound, but the tag on a photo of some capitol building read “THREE DEAD SOLDIERS.”

“Pablo!” he shouted. “Turn up the TV!”

Pablo obliged, and the ancient Zenith TV behind the bar blasted into life. The fuzzy channel at least had clear sound.

The reporter was saying, “So far, three men in three different states, all U.S. Army veterans, have been found dead-execution style.” Pictures of three soldiers in uniform flashed on the screen, but the images weren’t clear enough for Jack to make them out. He could tell, however, that Scout wasn’t one of them.

“According to the Austin Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken an active role in the case, sending two agents from Washington, D.C., to assist local authorities in tracking who may be the first serial killer targeting our armed forces….”

Serial killer? Scout? Jack didn’t want to believe it, but he couldn’t deny that Scout was killed execution style. Except the report said nothing about hamstringing. Jack knew the police routinely didn’t share all details of a crime with the public.

The reporter continued. “If anyone has information about these crimes, please contact Detective Jose Vasquez with the Austin Police Department at …”

Jack left. Austin P.D. be damned. He was going straight to the top.

He sat in his truck and called Washington, D.C. His brother Dillon was living with a fed. And dammit, Jack would pull every string and make any promise if it led to justice for Scout.

For the first time since he’d seen Scout’s body, Jack believed he had a decent shot at finding his friend’s killer.