Bad Country: A Novel (15 page)

How’s Annabeth, Tank?

The wife’s all right. Tank redirected the conversation quickly. How’s your people? Your crazy preacher uncle and all them? How’s that old dog of yours? He still got a motor on him?

My people are the same as usual. The clan in the Whites are still crazy. I heard my daddy is in West Texas living in sin with somebody new. Rodeo sipped his beer. But the dog is still running. Underfoot here.

Tank Hage tapped a finger on the bar in departure. First one’s on the house, buddy. I gotta run now. Dad duty calls. But I’ll get the new girl to take care of you. Don’t be a stranger. Tank seemed in a hurry as he held out his beefy hand again and Rodeo shook it again. Good to see you, Rodeo.

Tell Annabeth I said howdy, Tank.

Rodeo’s former high school teammate grunted and exited out the back bar space through the kitchen as a pretty woman entered it, the middle-aged bar owner and the young bartender scrupulously avoiding eye contact. The “new girl” had an obvious baby bump. She wiped the wood in front of Rodeo with a clean bar towel.

Rodeo scanned the pails hanging from the ceiling and found that his old “rodeo”-themed pail was missing, though his ex-wife’s pail still hung seductively. Deb Mabry had not been in the saloon or even lived in Tucson in many years but her bar bucket remained hanging and though her cheerleading décolletage under the découpage was faded hers was still one of the best of the lot.

Rodeo looked at the bartender and then looked at the bottles arrayed behind her.

Deb Mabry had always been a Top Shelf type who would not drink well brands or ever settle for second best at anything if she had any choice. So she had stayed with him when he was on top but then dumped Rodeo when he wasn’t. Her one perfect year, Deb’s dream season had come when she was an Arizona Cardinals’ cheerleader and her then-husband, Rodeo Grace Garnet, had celebrated a full stellar season on the pro rodeo circuit and won his PRCA World Champion buckle. But when Rodeo had broken his back later that season his wife had moved to another high shelf and Rodeo’s life had moved on too, more or less.

You need something? the new bartender asked.

He ordered a Steak Special “well-done-burnt” to get something solid into his system. The bartender, who introduced herself as “Barbi-with-only-the ‘I’ in it” and looked exactly like that, took his order and moved back to the kitchen. Rodeo nursed his beer as he examined the bar buckets and waited for his steak.

Sirena’s bucket was right beside Deb Mabry’s for some reason and was clearly the sexiest if not the most artistic bucket on the ceiling, highlighting as it did Sirena’s many years of professional pole dancing and erotic photo shoots.

*   *   *

As Rodeo’s steak appeared, a man removed the textbooks from his barstool and reoccupied the seat at the end of the bar in front of the legal pad.

He and Rodeo exchanged a look and the man raised an eyebrow.

I know you, the man said. He advanced toward Rodeo over a barstool. I am seeing a study group filled with freshmen and one cowboy.

You were in the Anthropology Department at the U, Rodeo said. I think you ran a study group in Native American Studies I was taking last year.

Tinley Burke, the man said. I was a graduate student at the U and then I was an adjunct professor there for a while. Must have been that.

Rodeo Grace Garnet.

When the men shook hands Rodeo noticed the tremor in the man’s grip. Burke then fumbled with a pill bottle on the bar, obviously struggling with the childproof cap. Rodeo reached over and offered his hand, twisted the bottle open. The professor nodded his thanks and tilted the contents of the bottle onto the bartop, sorted through a wide variety of pills and selected two. There were many well-known prescription medications in that single bottle with several deadly combinations potentiating. Burke stood up on his barstool and deposited the pill bottle in his own bucket that was customized with postcards from exotic locales and Polaroid photos of what looked to be ancient Indian artifacts and human bones, mementoes of travel and death.

The professor sat back down on his barstool and seemed to drift as his medicine took effect. He stared at his notes on the legal pad. Rodeo ignored the man politely, finished his steak in ten minutes and pushed the plate back, waved at the bartender for his bill. Barbi came over and slipped a handwritten note in front of Rodeo, said nothing and just walked away.

“Still sorry about your dog, Ro. Your tab’s on me tonight. Remember the Copper Queen!?” The note was unsigned but obviously from Sirena. Rodeo folded it into his shirt pocket. He stood, whistled up his dog and nodded at his nearest barmate in parting.

Can you give me a lift home? Tinley Burke was leaning off his barstool almost horizontally. As a favor? From a former student to a former teacher?

Do you live at Eryn Hage’s place now? On Convent? Rodeo asked the professor.

The man raised an eyebrow. How do you know where I live?

I recognized the Land Cruiser outside, Rodeo said. I saw it parked in front of Eryn’s rent place recently and thought you might be connected to it.

Yes, the man said. I am connected to it as you say. You headed that direction? I’m drunk and need a ride home. Did I say that already?

Rodeo nodded. Tinley Burke put a twenty on the bar, put his car keys into his personal bucket, packed up his textbooks and notes under his arm and the men left the saloon together.

*   *   *

Neither man said much on the fifteen-minute drive but when they arrived at Burke’s apartment on Convent Avenue the man invited Rodeo inside for a drink.

Not to say anything, Professor, but it may be that you had enough for one night.

You sound like my old therapist, Burke said. Or my sister. He fell out of the truck as he exited and Rodeo hurried around to help his old teacher and his books into the apartment.

The rental apartment was an adobe shotgun shack with the front room a booklined study, the middle room a bedroom with a kitchen and a bathroom in the back. Burke moved unsteadily toward the back of the house. Rodeo did not follow him but examined the small front room. The books on the shelves were arranged by category. Most concerned Native American culture, death and dying or the history of crime or psychopathology. There were a number of Indian artifacts arrayed on the shelves as well. A desk against a wall was empty but for an old Apple laptop with a thick manuscript atop it, as if there to keep the lid of the computer from flying up.
Paths of Death: A Serial Killer Thriller
by Tinley Burke was printed on the cover page. As Rodeo pondered this title, the author retched loudly from the rear of the apartment, so Rodeo saw himself out.

*   *   *

The next morning Rodeo skipped his usual visit to the motel lobby because he hadn’t paid his room bill yet. He drove to the Kettle, left the sleeping dog in the truck and established himself in a corner booth from which he could keep an eye on the whole of the restaurant and on his truck. His waitress was efficient and minimalistic with her service. “Rose” was easy to spot as she flirted with the men she served and paid little attention to the women.

Rodeo ate his breakfast slowly and studied the placemat, a cartoon map of Southwestern America, recognizing most of the highlighted spots as venues he had worked back in his rodeoing days or fun places he had road-tripped to with Deb or Sirena. He had an extra cup of coffee, which he didn’t need, and drank two glasses of water with two packets of BC analgesic powder which he did need. When the waitress appeared with his check he asked her if she had had a busy morning.

Yep, she said.

You always work morning shift?

Yep.

Lots of girls on mornings? asked Rodeo.

Three of us, the waitress said. She jerked her head around the room like he could have seen that for himself.

I hated morning shift myself, said Rodeo. Not exactly a morning person.

Takes all kinds, said the waitress.

Four to noon never suited me. Rodeo’s “winning smile” bounced off the waitress.

Well, we get off this shift at ten, so it’s not too bad.

All right then, said Rodeo. You have a good one.

You have one too, mister.

Rodeo left a small tip, paid cash and got a receipt from the cashier. He returned to his truck and sat in it for a few minutes thinking. Then he drove the long block back to the parallel park alongside the Santa Cruz and the public parking lot and restrooms there. Billy was not in obvious residence in that vicinity, so Rodeo returned to the place on the hillside where the dog had taken him the day before. He continued his drive north on Mission and turned off into Barrio Hollywood, wound his way through several residential streets and to the A-Mountain Road.

There were no vehicles in the parking lot but his. Rodeo parked and left the dog in the truck, headed down the southeastern side of the big hill to the “sniper’s nest” where Rodeo glassed the surrounding hillside and the plain below with his big Leica binoculars. On the other side of the river workers toiled in the indigenous plant nursery in straw coolie hats. In the small corral beside that nursery a pair of miserable-looking horses stood stock still, side by side in the shade of the cobbled-together ramada. Another horse lay on its side in the dust seeming to be dead since nothing alive in the world looks as dead as a sleeping horse. In the fountain area a Goth kid sat in the heat staring at the riverbed under the bridge. Billy was still nowhere in sight. An unmuffled motorcycle sped down Mission Road and cut left on Starr Pass Road but otherwise there was no traffic for a long minute. Rodeo could not read the brand of the dirt bike as it passed.

Across Starr Pass Road, due south on Ajo Way was the Pima County Juvenile Detention Center where Samuel Esau Rocha had spent his incarceration for selling marijuana to high school and middle school students.

Rodeo analyzed the scene. The chain-link fence with razor wire coils atop would make it hard to hit targets inside the prison barrier. But the yard of the Juvenile Detention Center might be a tempting target for some random long rifle shots. Construction was ongoing on the west wing of the prison but should be completed shortly since the “grand opening” of the wing was planned for early autumn. For several minutes Rodeo watched dump trucks moving into and out of the fenced yard, young men in orange jumpsuits milling in the exercise area.

Rodeo looked back up the hill behind him. He could not see the parking lot, so he was out of sight of that space. Though this spot on the hillside was not as good a vantage point as the parking lot above, it did provide good sightlines east and southeast, as well as a significantly shorter and easier shot at Mission Road and Starr Pass Road traffic than from the Overlook and also provided more cover.

From where he stood there was good visibility of Mission Road for a quarter-mile stretch and Starr Pass Road for twice that distance with the bridge occupying a hundred of that eight hundred yards in the farthest left quadrant of the half mile of Starr Pass Road that was within rifle range. Rodeo guesstimated the shot from where he stood to the middle of the bridge to be in the quarter- to half-mile range. From that angle it would not be difficult for any decent marksman to hit a vehicle but to hit a pedestrian walking across Starr Pass Road bridge, especially in gloomy light, would require a professional.

From the reports in the paper and from TPD Detective Overman, Rodeo knew the kid had been discovered by a horseback rider under some brush near the west bank of the river. Since horses and ATVs were regularly ridden in the common community property of the dry riverbed, police investigators had not been able to identify exactly where Sam had fallen nor had they been able to discover amidst all the hoof and tire tracks how Sam had gotten from under the bridge to his final resting place under the creosote bushes at least twenty-five yards away from any possible landing spot.

Rodeo sidled between cholla and teddy bear cactuses to the edge of the packed dirt circle where he had stood the day before.

The sniper’s nest had been swept clean. No trash was left, not even a cigarette butt. The shell casing was gone and some care had been made to clear the area of rocks and pebbles.

Rodeo returned to the Overlook and sat on that edge of the bench seat with his legs stretched out beyond the open door using the warm dog as a backrest. He extracted his note pad and pen and wrote—

     1. Sam fell off bridge—himself—or was pushed?

     2. shot up close and personal in a drive-by—gang—was Sam ganged-up?

     3. long-range assassination—uncle, expert marksman, Gulf sniper estb. maybe Sam was squealing on different planned hit by RR and RR killed him to keep him quiet?

Rodeo aimed his binoculars at the bridge again and watched the traffic for a while. Four vehicles sped across the bridge, a couple going east and a couple going west, and then the bridge completely cleared. He counted Mississippis to seventeen and a solo car crossed going west and then slowed and stopped at the traffic light where Starr Pass Road intersected with Mission. Another twenty Mississippis passed before the bridge was occupied again, traffic going both ways meeting on the bridge. At one point the bridge was vacant for over thirty seconds.

Rodeo’s cell phone buzzed in his shirt pocket and he answered it.

Is this the Garnet boy I hired? I was just calling the number you gave me to call. The one on the card you left on my table when you stole my money.

Yes ma’am, Mrs. Rocha. This is Rodeo Garnet, Rodeo said. And I left you a receipt for what we agreed would be my minimum day’s rate plus minimal expenses.

You stole from me.

It’s all in the contract you signed, Mrs. Rocha. Rodeo sounded businesslike.

Aren’t you Buck Garnet’s son?

The woman seemed and sounded drunk or confused or both.

Yes ma’am. Are you calling from your home phone, Mrs. Rocha?

No. I’m on this cell thing that he used. It still has time on it and I’m going to use it.

You’re using Sam’s cell phone? Could I have access to that phone, Mrs. Rocha?