Starr County Line Page 4

  She ran a small hand through his graying hair.

  “Times are changin down here, JD. People are changin right along with em. Poor people here are gettin desperate. Two years now some of these farmers has lost their crops. Mill’s lettin folks go every other month. They got no work, nothin else to turn to. You’ve seen this comin, baby, haven’t you?”

  He thought about the man who shot at him at Boles’ house and whoever had been sleeping in Lyle’s daughter’s bed. Shadow players not yet revealed. He set the bottle down on the floor and looked up at her. She was just as pretty as when he’d first seen her, ten years ago.

  “I was thinkin we ought to get married,” he said.

  She almost fell off the chair as she jumped back to stand up.

  “What?” she asked incredulously.

  “I said, I think we ought to get married,” he repeated.

  “I heard that part, JD,” she said. “Why now? Why all of a sudden after nine years do you want to get married? You ain’t said nothin about it, not word one, since we been livin together.”

  He dropped his head.

  “Well, if I was to get killed, you’d get my pension. It’d be a good bit of money.”

  She stepped back from him and her face turned dark. He’d seen that look before and knew no good would come from it. She was as likely to pick up a skillet as she was to pack a bag and neither prospect was appealing. He could see tears were in her eyes and beginning to stream down her cheeks. He reached out for her, his hand shaking as he did. She regarded it for a moment, and then turned to walk down the hall to the bedroom. She shut the door and locked it.

  He managed to drive to the station house in his half-drunken state and parked, one of the Blazer’s tires resting on the curb. He staggered in and found Roe still at his desk, reading Johnny Cash’s autobiography.

  “Sheriff,” Roe asked, “what are you doin here?”

  He almost fell down when he opened the door. His speech was slurred.

  “Can’t sleep on that old divan at the house. Figure I might as well sleep here.”

  He plopped down on the couch and almost immediately passed out.

  He woke the next morning to find Sadie holding a cup of coffee near his nose. He blinked back the sleep and gave her a mean look.

  “You don’t scare me, JD,” she said.

  She was an old woman, no one knew how old, rail thin with her long gray hair pulled back in a bun. Someone once joked she was eighty, but she could still climb stairs two at a time. She’d come to work for JD’s predecessor Von Franklin after she’d buried her second husband. For ten years now, she and JD had celebrated New Year’s Day with a cigar and a shot of fine Kentucky bourbon.

  “What are you doin sleepin here,” she asked.

  “I asked Ange to marry me,” he told her.

  She got up and walked to her desk, leaving the coffee cup on the couch threatening to spill if he moved too fast.

  “That turned out well,” she cracked. “Maybe after ten years she’s had enough of your sparkling personality, JD. Way I heard it told was, you said you ought to get married so she could have your pension if you was to get killed.”

  He grabbed the cup of coffee and sat up slowly. He wiped his mouth with his hand and scratched his head.

  “So?” he said.

  She gave him the same look she gave everyone when she was convinced she knew more about what they were talking about than they did.

  “That ain’t the way you do those things, JD,” she told him. “A woman don’t want to be told marriage is some kinda solution to a problem, even if the solution might help her.”

  His head hurt. He grabbed his hat and pulled it down low.

  “Sadie,” he said, “I do things the only way I know how. Now, if you’re done lecturin me on my love life, is there anything on the teletype this mornin?”

  She walked over with three sheets of paper and handed them to him. She stood there a moment, then lifted his hat and kissed him on the top of the head. He read the overnights as she walked back to her desk.

  “Roe,” he said, “Border Patrol’s reportin two separate crossin incidents last night. They lost both vehicles. One of em was a Suburban. Other one, maybe a Bronco or a Ramcharger. Keep your eyes peeled when you’re out today.”

  “Will do, Sheriff,” Roe said.

  “I’m gonna go across the street and see Ange” he said, rising stiffly from the couch.

  He walked in the front door of the Wagon Wheel and the little bells jingled on the leather strap. He gave them an annoying look and picked up a copy of the Examiner and sat down at the worn green counter. It was early and the old restaurant was still empty. He turned over his coffee cup and flipped to a story about trophy bass in Falcon Lake.

  She walked by him without saying a word. He frowned and opened his mouth to say something, but stopped. She came back with a pot of coffee and filled his cup.

  “Ange,” he said.

  She walked back and set the coffee pot on the warmer. She stood there and looked at him for a moment. She’d memorized the lines in his face and knew his expressions. She knew he was hurting inside and that he was scared, even though he’d never admit to anyone that he was.

  She’d heard stories about the wives of war veterans waking up in the middle of the night with their husbands’ hands on their throats, stark raving mad in some flashback nightmare, but JD had never done anything like that. She’d often laid awake and listened to him sob in his sleep and mumble something about a boy named John Evan. He’d curl up into a ball and she tried to imagine what it must have been like for him back then on that island, thinking he’d never get home alive.

  He mouthed the words, “I’m sorry” and she laughed at him. She sighed and shook her head.

  “You want some breakfast?” she asked.

  He smiled for the first time that morning.

  “Yeah, that’d be great,” he told her.

  The bells on the door jingled again and he looked back over his shoulder. He was hoping it was Scotty from the Examiner, coming over to get some biscuits. He wanted to ask him about the bass in Falcon Lake. But it wasn’t Scotty.

  A man in a black leather blazer walked in, with longish dishwater blonde hair pulled back over his ears. He wore mirror sunglasses and black jeans with black cowboy boots. Lots of silver rings. Wallet on a chain. Bulge under the jacket.

  Ange looked up from the counter where she was filling napkin holders. “Mornin,” she said to him.

  “Mornin, ma’am,” the man said.

  He took the seat at the counter right next to JD. He drummed his fingers on the old Formica.

  “Mornin, Sheriff,” he said.

  Something caught JD’s attention. The same smell from Lyle’s house. Cologne. Sweat. The hairs on the back of his neck rose up just a little.

  “Mornin,” JD uttered without looking. He flipped the newspaper page.

  “Say, Sheriff,” the man said, “I’m wonderin if you could tell me somethin.”

  JD didn’t look at him. “Depends,” he said.

  “Well,” the man began, “I’m lookin for a fella. Lyle Forsythe. You seen him around?”

  “Ain’t seen Lyle,” JD lied. He thought about the fishing story in the paper. “Sometimes he goes fishin on Falcon Lake. Might be out there right now.”

  The stranger laughed a little.

  “Well,” he went on, “I don’t think he’s gone fishin. I think you seen him just yesterday.”

  He rested his left hand on the counter. Knuckle scars. Skull ring. Tattoo creeping out beneath his dirty shirt sleeve. JD turned his head to look at him. The mirror sunglasses were down on his nose and JD could see he had a dead left eye.

  “Let’s cut the bullshit, son,” JD told him. “You know where Lyle is. He’s down with John Flores at the coroner’s office on Main, on a slab in the back with his head blowed off.”

  The man nodded his head, a look of mock sadness on his face.

  “That’s horrible
to hear, Sheriff,” he said. “What happened?”

  “You know what happened,” JD told him. “You was at Lyle’s house. Probably yesterday when I was there.”

  The man laughed again.

  “Maybe I was,” he said. “Maybe you ought to be thinkin about how I had you dead to rights and let you walk outta there.”

  Ange walked over with JD’s breakfast and set it down.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked the stranger.

  “I don’t ever eat breakfast,” he told her. She gave him a strange look and turned to walk away. JD watched her for a moment. He felt the barrel of the gun from the man’s jacket poke into his ribs.

  “Sheriff,” the man whispered, “I’m here to get what’s mine. I ain’t gonna leave without it. I’ll kill you and any redneck shitbird that gets in my way. I’ll kill you dead right here and kill your waitress girlfriend and kill your deputy and that little old lady you got workin for you, you understand?”

  JD wanted to grab the gun and take his chances. Maybe take a bullet, maybe not. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d locked horns with a con. Maybe he could break the man’s neck and watch him strangle on the black and white tile. Instead, he slowly nodded his head in acknowledgement, his lips tight and thin.

  “Now,” the stranger went on, “the way I see we avoid that is, you give me what you got in your evidence locker and I’ll be on my way. Otherwise, I’ll kill you and all your friends.”

  The phone rang behind the counter and Ange picked it up. JD glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, but she didn’t look over at him.

  “Skip your breakfast,” the stranger said, “and let’s go get my product.”

  JD got up slowly and took a big swallow of his coffee. The stranger rose and looked around at the grimy old restaurant, keeping his gunhand concealed beneath his jacket. JD could see pretty clear from the long white scar now visible on his neck that someone had once tried to cut this man’s throat.

  “You know,” the man said, “I don’t know how you can stand livin in this dump of a town.”

  “It wasn’t so bad til pieces of shit like you started showin up,” JD replied. He lashed a fierce backhand to side of the man’s face, the coffee cup shattering and breaking the sunglasses and knocking him backwards. He ripped the Magnum from the holster and trained it on him.

  “Go on, convict. Get that .45 outta your jacket. Set it on the floor.”

  The man just stood there with coffee dripping down his face and JD knew he’d kill him or not kill him based on some thirty year old equation he’d worked out in his mind. He tried to not look at the dead eye, milky white and staring at him blankly. The other was just as dead, simple coal black and lifeless. The man snarled back at him through blackened, rotten teeth.

  “Ange,” JD called out, “go get in the back. Don’t come out til I tell you.”

  He heard her footsteps as she retreated to the stockroom. He thumbed the hammer back on the Magnum, the ease of the action again calming his nerves.

  “I’ll tell you one more time, boy,” JD said, “to set that gun on the floor. You ain’t got but one way to leave here alive.”

  The man grinned back at him, his hand still beneath the jacket.

  “You ain’t gonna be the first law I’ve killed, old man,” he spat.

  “No, I see that,” JD said, “but I reckon I’ll be the last.”

  He knew the gun would come out and he knew when it did, he would pull the trigger and kill him. He was as ready as he’d get for what seemed inevitable.

  The stranger laughed and JD stared at the one good eye. The hand jerked from beneath the jacket and the .45 came out. He managed to get it almost clear of the fancy blazer before JD’s Magnum blew a hole in him and sent him staggering back through the plate glass in the door and onto the sidewalk.

  He gurgled on the sidewalk, eyes bulging, blood spilling from the sides of his mouth. He tried to raise the .45, but he could not. JD walked out through the broken door and looked down at him. The smell of cordite drifted out into the air. He kicked the gun away. It skittered on the sidewalk.

  “Got anything you want to say, son?” he asked him.

  The man choked on his own blood and died on the sidewalk.

  Roe and Sadie watched as Flores pushed the gurney into the back of the van.

  “That’s three,” Sadie said. “Flores’ little wiener’s probably hard.”

  “Sadie!” Roe said.

  “Oh, lighten up, Roe,” she said, slapping him on the back.

  JD walked across the street to them with Ange under his right arm.

  “Sadie, why don’t you see her home for me,” he told her.

  “Of course, JD,” Sadie replied. “Come on, honey, let’s get you out of here.”

  The two men watched them walk to Sadie’s old Chevy sedan and get in and pull out. JD took a deep breath and let it out. He shook his head slowly and looked up and down Main Street. A gathering crowd at an ugly scene, the kind of scene he hoped he’d never have in Pinto. Kids trying for a better view of the pool of blackening blood on the sidewalk. Old folks shaking their heads.

  “What was that all about, Sheriff?” Roe asked.

  “That,” JD said, “was a man here to meet Lyle.”

  “Lyle Forsythe?” Roe asked.

  “The very same,” JD replied.

  “He told you that?” Roe asked.

  “Yes, he did,” JD answered.

  Roe scratched his head.

  “That don’t figure, Sheriff,” Roe told him.

  “No, Roe, it don’t,” JD said flatly. “But none of the last few days do, so I reckon I’ll just stop tryin to calculate it.”

  “He pulled on you?” Roe asked.

  “Yep,” JD said as he walked into the sheriff’s office. Roe just stood there and watched him walk away.

  He typed out his statement. He looked at the man’s ID on his desk. William Bertram Bannon. Midland, TX. Born in 1946. Died in 1975. He picked it up and flipped it over and set it beside the .45 auto. Splashes of blood on the grip. He ejected the round from the chamber and eyeballed it. The man had cut an X into the tip, like he was trying to make a dum-dum bullet.

  He locked the gun in a small cabinet and placed the man’s meager belongings in a plastic bag and taped it closed. Forty-three dollars, some loose change, and a matchbook from a strip joint in San Antonio. He could think of better ways to go meet your maker than with proof you’d been in the company of lewd women. He put them in an accordion file marked Next of Kin and shoved it back beneath his desk.

  He went out and stood on the sidewalk and watched Dodd trying to scrub the blood from the pavestones in front of the Wagon Wheel. He knew that what had happened today would touch the entire town. The restaurant would probably close. Ange would be out of work. The town would suffer. All because he’d been forced to kill a man.

  He thought about a boy he knew in high school. He got bit on the leg by a brown recluse spider. The poison started to rapidly necrotize the flesh on his calf. Once it got started, the doctors could hardly stop it.

  He filled up his tank at King’s Market and drove to the outskirts of Pinto. He sat in the Blazer on the decrepit asphalt with the window down. The disc jockey on the radio played Saginaw, Michigan by Lefty Frizzell and talked after the song had finished about how “they” lost Lefty back in July. He didn’t know who “they” was.

  He watched a malnourished cow as it meandered across a burned pasture. He counted its ribs. It stopped under a tree. Taking shelter from the blazing sun. Locusts on the haystalks so thick in places they sagged towards the ground. He got out and leaned against the fender for a long while and thought about life.

  He drove the fencelines on the county line for a few miles until he finally found the marker he was looking for. It was a small metal pole with a red rag tied to it at the entrance to a long, straight, white gravel drive. When he saw it, he slowed down and turned in.

  He stood on the porch of the old house for a l
ong time, his hand raised to knock. He peered through the screendoor into the dim living room. He could hear a fan running. He cupped his hand to his eyes so he could see better.

  An old man sat in the corner of the small room, sinking into an old recliner. He couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep, alive or dead.

  “Why don’t you come in and get out the heat,” a raspy voice from inside called. He pulled back on the screen and removed his hat.

  “How you doin, Franklin?” he asked as he entered the old house. The house smelled like thousands of cigarettes had been smoked in there over the years.

  “I ain’t dead yet, JD, if that’s what you mean,” Franklin told him. “You come out to check on me?”

  He tried to laugh.

  “Well, you know I like to see how you’re comin along,” he said.

  The old man stubbed out a cigarette in the tall ashtray next to him and lit another. He looked over at the console TV. A soap opera was on. The coat hanger antenna fixed to the back didn’t get very good reception.

  “Why don’t you let me fix that antenna for you,” JD offered.

  “You a TV repairman now?” Franklin asked.

  “You ain’t gettin no friendlier,” JD told him.

  “Hell, JD, I’m just funnin you,” Franklin cracked. He took a long pull from the cigarette and blew the smoke up, watching it swirl in the vortex created by the fan.

  “I heard what happened today,” he told JD.

  “Oh yeah?” JD asked. Franklin tapped the Motorola desktop dispatch radio next to his recliner. It was just like the one JD had next to his desk at the office.

  “That’s county property, you know,” he joked.