Starr County Line Read online

  STARR COUNTY LINE

  By Chris Gilbreath

  Copyright © 2012

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission.

  This book is dedicated to Mom and Dad

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  SOUTH TEXAS, 1995

  He stood in front of the old marker for a long time. His men waited in the car, the AC cranked against the heat. He could feel their curious stares and just a little bit inside himself he liked making them sit there while he stood in front of a cracked tombstone and talked to ghosts.

  It was a simple stone. Far too simple for the man beneath it, or at least that was his opinion. Every time he came to visit, he told himself one day he would switch it out and make it right. He frowned at the weeds and the graffiti and the way things had gone to seed. No one would approve. Of course, there wasn’t really anyone around to approve anymore.

  He’d been making the journey now for almost twenty years. Those who questioned it only did so until they heard the story. Regardless of his schedule or assignment he would slot the days on his calendar and make the long flight then the equally long drive to stand in front of the grave. He might have missed the anniversary once or twice, but he never failed to make the trip. Nor did the woman standing beside him. She held his hand tightly and leaned against him for support.

  He bent and picked a stone out of the red dirt and hummed it. True to the aim, it banged off an old trash barrel and he listened to the sound with a smile. Like a gunshot. Everything around him began to melt away. There was life in the streets of the old town. Something to live for and fight for. He was once again a man in his prime on the border in South Texas.

  1975

  The phone rang and that feeling in his gut twitched up. He looked at the clock on the wall. Almost one in the afternoon.

  “Sheriff, I’m over at Boles’ place on Bowie. You need to get over here,” the voice said.

  He held the receiver for a moment then hung it up.

  She turned an ear towards him, not taking her eyes off the grilled cheese in the skillet. He didn’t say a word and she didn’t turn around. He palmed his Stetson and took his gunbelt off the hat rack.

  “Hey,” she called from the kitchen in that soft voice.

  He stopped in the hallway and smiled to himself.

  “See you,” he told her, and then he walked out the door. He fired up the Blazer and let it choke down before shifting into reverse and backing down the gravel drive.

  The body had been in the house for a day, Roe figured. He liked to have these kinds of answers when the sheriff arrived, so he tried to figure it best he could.

  Rigor and some bloat. Eight ball eyes. Just one day? Yeah, one. Poor Boles. He smelled awful. And damn if it wasn’t hot as blazes with the AC off. He’d been shot, once in the chest. Powder marks on his t-shirt. Close up. He’d answered the door, taken one, no, maybe two steps back and bang.

  He gave the handcuffed young Mexican sitting on the couch a nasty look. He could hear the brakes whistle on the sheriff’s Blazer at the end of Boles’ driveway. He’d go slow over the potholes. Two minutes, he thought to himself and looked at his watch.

  “Sheriff’s here,” he told the Mexican.

  He could see the cuffs were biting into the man’s wrists, but he didn’t care. He studied him for a minute. Pencil-thin vato mustache, wife beater, dirty Levi’s, bare feet. Roe guessed he was maybe twenty-five years old. He wore a look of calm that spoke more of confidence than cockiness.

  “You need to start talkin,” he told him. “Sheriff keeps rattlesnakes in the back of his Blazer. He’ll throw you in with them and then we’ll see what you say.”

  The Blazer slowed to a halt and the door opened. A tall, lean, older man in a white Stetson with a Magnum on his right hip got out and ambled up the steps and appeared in the doorway. Roe looked at his watch again and smiled. One minute, forty five seconds.

  The sheriff seemed to have a half grin on his face almost all the time. It gave him an affable appearance, but Roe knew he could be mean as hell and he could probably whip the sonofabitch out of most men down here on the border. He’d lived through Iwo Jima and two marriages. If there was a tougher hombre in Starr County than Sheriff JD McKinnon, Roe Robinson hadn’t met him.

  “Roe,” JD said.

  “Sheriff,” Roe replied.

  He opened the screen door and JD entered the house. He stopped in the threshold as he came in, first to look at the body and then at his boots on the carpet. He stepped back and examined his own bootprint for a moment.

  “What happened here, Roe?” JD asked.

  “I got a call from Hodge,” Roe started. “Said he seen someone snoopin around Boles’ front yard yesterday. I come over, opened the door, found this one settin here on the couch. Best I can tell, Sheriff, looks like Boles opened the door, took a step back or two when he seen this old boy trying to come in and bang, one to the chest. Powder burns on his shirt in the blood, pretty plain. Found the slug in the wall over there, .45 caliber. He had the gun on him. Sheriff, he had ten thousand dollars in his pocket.”

  JD smacked his cheeks against his teeth and made a little noise with his mouth. He turned to the Mexican sitting on the couch.

  “Why’d you kill him, boy?” JD asked. “My day off’s ruint. I need some answers. We best start hashin this out.”

  The Mexican said nothing.

  “He ain’t said a word since I got here, Sheriff,” Roe said.

  “He got any ID on him?” JD asked.

  “Nope, just the gun and the ten grand,” Roe answered.

  “Let me see the money, Roe,” JD ordered, extending his hand without taking his eyes from the man on the couch. Roe pulled the wad of cash from his pocket and handed it over.

  “Listen,” JD began, “I know this ain’t your money, boy. I’m guessin from the way you’re lookin at me you understand English pretty plain. Now you can tell me what the score is, or I’ll figure it out myself sooner or later. You’ll be settin in the jail either way so I guess it don’t matter much, but I’m old and if I can get out of doin that work I’m all for it. You comprende?”

  The Mexican said nothing. JD sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets along with the money.

  “All right, Roe,” JD said. “Take him in, run his prints and get a picture of him out on the wire. We’ll see what comes back. “

  He looked at the suspect again.

  “You hear that? We’re gonna run you and I’ll bet you all that money you had in your pocket somebody knows who you are.”

  JD waited outside while the county coroner took Boles out to the dusty white van. Then he set about rolling yellow tape around the porch. Satisfied he’d made it fairly obvious something horrible had happened here, he walked out onto the driveway.

  “Thanks, Flores,” he told the coroner. “Give Sadie the bill.”

  “Si, de nada,” Flores said. “Poor Boles.”

  “Poor Boles is right,” he said to himself, “now let’s go see what poor old Boles was doin that got him killed.”

  He ducked under the crisscrossed tape and walked back inside and took a look around. The 15 was circled on the Winston cigarettes calendar. Two days away. He flipped forward and back a couple of months. Notes about this or that, but no other circled dates. He stuck his finger in the bullet hole in the wall. He blew the dust from his index finger and bent to the carpet. He ran his hand over the top of the flattened fibers.

  He could see footprints in the carpet outside of the wel
l-worn paths Boles took to and from his bedroom and the bathroom. He followed them and found himself beneath the attic door. He pulled the string and immediately caught a familiar odor. He brought the ladder down and climbed up. Next to the ducts in the back, underneath the apex, were three large, black trash bags. He crouched and duckwalked over to one, cut the tie with his pocket knife and pulled out a brick of Mexican dirt weed.

  “Well, Boles,” he whispered, “this throws a monkey into it now don’t it.”

  He dragged the bags to the attic door and dropped them into the hallway. Back down in the living room, he took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. This wasn’t the first local he’d caught trying to move drugs for the Gulf Cartel, but it was the first one who’d got himself killed doing it. Or, at least it looked that way.

  He searched the bedrooms and the bathroom but found nothing out of the ordinary. He stopped in the hallway and looked at the picture of Boles and his family. His kids were gone who knows where, and his wife had been dead for over ten years.

  He removed the large bags of marijuana one by one from the house and stuffed them in the rear of the Blazer. He locked the front door after one last look in Boles’ house and stood on the front porch for a minute before he got in the truck.

  “Roe,” he called on the radio. “He said anything yet?”

  “Not a word, Sheriff,” Roe answered.

  He started the engine and turned around and headed into Pinto.

  The town had changed over the last five years and not for the better. Buildings and houses on the outskirts rundown or shuttered altogether. Abject poverty starting to creep in like necrosis. Gangs of kids roaming the streets. Doperunners and illegals everywhere. It hadn’t been long ago that Pinto became a census-designated place. The rate it was going, there wouldn’t be anybody to take census of.

  He sat at the blinking stoplight on Main for a minute and looked around downtown. Four or five of the locals recently laid off from the mill had pitched a makeshift tent near City Hall. He drove over and slowed and rolled down his window. One of the vagrants gave him a defiant look.

  “Y’all don’t wanna sleep in the jailhouse,” JD threatened, “you better pack that tent and be gone by the time I get back.”

  The man spat on the sidewalk.

  “We’re protestin, Sheriff,” he said.

  “Willard,” JD asked, “what on Earth are you protestin?”

  “We heard the city could lose its whatyoucallit…incorporation status,” Willard told him.

  “Is that right,” JD said.

  “That’s what old Bergis is sayin over at the mill,” Willard told him. “He says that’s why the mill is closin.”

  JD rolled his eyes.

  “Lord, Willard,” JD said, “one ain’t got nothin to do with the other. We don’t know the mill’s closin. They’re layin off on account of the drought burnin up all the corn. And the town ain’t gonna lose its incorporation status. You don’t even know what that means and most days neither do I. Now y’all get your asses outta here.”

  He rolled on down Main, shaking his head. The Tinsel was closed and it wasn’t even four in the afternoon. Everybody’s already seen Jaws, he thought. He could see Hollis the manager over at the Burger Spot, baking in the afternoon sun at the picnic table on the sidewalk. He honked as he passed and Hollis nodded his head.

  Jeannie Pruitt was standing in one of the parking spaces talking to some long-haired boy in a hot-rodded Camaro. A group of mill workers ate their burgers in the shade of the awning. Matt the cashier was standing outside smoking a cigarette. Business booming as usual. He drove on down and parked at the station house and walked inside.

  “Sheriff, we ain’t got nothin back on his prints or his picture,” Roe said.

  “Might take a while, Roe,” he told him. “In the meantime, why don’t you go get them three bags of weed out the back of my truck and lock em up.”

  “Weed?” Roe asked.

  “Found em up in Boles’ attic,” JD said. “I’m goin to go talk to our boy back there about that very thing.”

  He walked back down the hall and through the door to the holding area. He stood in front of the jail cell and watched the young man pretending to sleep on the hard cot.

  “Wake up,” he said.

  The prisoner stirred and opened one eye.

  “You knew I was standin here, but you’re tryin to play it cool,” JD said. The young man said nothing. JD squatted in front of the cell and stared at the wall.

  “Let’s talk,” JD said. “About old Boles, that money, the gun and the dope I found up in his attic.”

  The Mexican swatted at a fly buzzing around his pillow. He craned his neck back into his pillow but said nothing.

  “I can help you,” JD began. “But to do that, I gotta know the whole story. What I see don’t make no sense. If Boles was holdin for you, then I get why you killed him instead of payin him what you owed him, I do. What don’t add up is you just settin there on the couch like you was waitin to get caught.”

  The Mexican said nothing.

  “Don’t guess it really matters,” JD went on. “They’ll get you on capital murder – that’s intentional murder in the course of committin or attemptin to commit a felony offense – and they’ll put you to death.”

  The Mexican sighed and closed his eyes.

  “I got a friend,” JD said, “down at Border Patrol and he’s got a friend at the DEA. They’re gonna be real interested in you. I reckon I’ll go give him a call right quick.”

  He picked up the phone back at his desk to call Albert. Albert had been with the Border Patrol for ten years now, and like everyone else was trying to stay atop the escalation. Border jumpers had become doperunners and coyotes armed mercenaries. Drugs were becoming big business and big money.

  “Albert,” he said when the voice answered, “how are ya? Oh, I’m fair to middlin, you know how it goes. She’s fine. She still puts up with me, so I try not to lean on her too much. Listen, I got a boy here, shot one of my people dead a couple days ago in his house looks like. Had ten grand on him and a .45 auto. I found three city trash bags full of Mexican dirt weed up in the attic.”

  He listened for a moment.

  “Well, I figure this boy was pickin up his merchandise and tryin to doublecross the holder when we got him.”

  He listened again.

  “Yeah, he ain’t said nothin to us. Got no idea who he was gonna take that dope to. How much you figure it’s worth, Albert? Can you ballpark it?”

  He listened again.

  “You don’t say. Well. That’d be a game changin transaction for anyone who could pull it off, I guess.”

  He looked back down the hall towards the holding cell.

  “Yep, I’ll do it, Albert. Have it over to you in just a bit. Maybe your friend at the DEA could take a look. Yep. I’ll be careful. You, too.”

  He put the receiver in the cradle.

  “Roe,” JD said, “send everything we got on over to Albert. Maybe he’ll recognize this boy.”

  Roe stopped single finger typing the report for a moment.

  “All right, Sheriff,” he said, “I’ll do it. Where you gonna be?”

  “I’m gonna head back over to Boles’ house,” JD told him, “I wanna have another look around.”

  “What for?” Roe asked.

  “I got a hunch someone’s comin to get that dope,” JD told him.

  “Holy shit, Sheriff,” Roe exclaimed.

  “Watch your cussin, Roe,” JD reminded. “Call Hodge. Tell him to meet me at his place. Tell him county’ll pay for his lost hour.”

  “I’ll do it,” Roe said. “See you later.”

  “Call me if our boy says somethin,” JD hollered back.

  “I’ll do it,” Roe said. “You want me to feed him?”

  JD thought about that for a second.

  “Yeah, go on and give him somethin,” JD said.

  “All right, I’ll do it,” Roe said.

  JD w
alked out and closed the door.

  Twenty minutes later, he idled the Blazer in front of Hodge’s house. Most of the houses in Alamo Heights were built by the same contractor in the 1950’s, so they were almost identical. Asphalt shingles. Front porches with three support beams. Kitchen in the rear, backdoor right next to a toolshed. Peeling paint and window units.

  He thought about Willard and the vagrants and the mill. The mill was laying off because the corn had burned up. But, the louder the whispers grew about the city’s incorporation status, the more likely they were to just pull up stakes. Boles had been employed at the mill same as Hodge, but had quit after he hurt his back and went on disability. Hodge was a foreman now. Seven years going. He watched in the rearview as he pulled up in his old Ford and cut the engine.

  “Sheriff,” he said as he got out.

  “Hodge,” JD called as he opened the door, “thanks for comin.”

  “No problem, Sheriff,” Hodge said. “We was shut for the afternoon anyway, so you ain’t gotta pay me. We had an accident on site and we all got sent home.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” JD told him. “Hope it wasn’t nothin bad.”

  “Nah,” Hodge replied. “Well, I guess I don’t rightly know, but we didn’t hear nothin and we usually do if it’s somethin bad. This about Boles and that boy I seen walkin round in his yard?”

  JD pushed his hat back on his head.

  “Boles is dead, Hodge. That boy shot him in his living room, looks like.”

  Hodge frowned and looked at his worn work boots.

  “Damn,” he said. “Shot him?”

  “Pop right through the heart,” JD told him. “There’s somethin else, Hodge. I found a few trash bags up in Boles’ attic. Mexican marijuana and a lot of it. You seen Boles up to anything lately? Last couple weeks?”

  Hodge thought it over.

  “Somebody come up a week or so ago, drivin his wife’s old car. I seen it when I come home for lunch one day. He’d told me a few weeks back he was finally sellin it. I thought they musta had some kinda problem or somethin. But when my shift was over it was gone.”