Con Law (13 page)

‘Maybe,’ Jimmy John said. ‘Maybe not. This is Texas, Professor.’

‘I told him to keep quiet about it,’ Brenda said.

‘Why?’

‘Because if he went public, he’d either be out of a job or dead. He sent you that letter, and now he’s dead. That seem like a coincidence to you, Professor?’ She fought back tears. ‘They killed him. Billy Bob’s men.’

‘Why?’

‘Money.’ She pointed at the floor. ‘That gas down there is worth billions.’

Jimmy John put his free hand on Brenda’s shoulder.

‘It was an accident. Billy Bob, he’s already rich.’

‘People like him, they never have enough money.’

She could no longer fight the tears.

‘They followed me home.’

Jimmy John shook his head. ‘Nathan had her so scared she was seeing ghosts. Look, Professor, I loved Nathan like a brother. I miss him every minute. But it was just an accident. He was driving back from Midland late, and he fell asleep at the wheel.’

‘That’s what he said,’ Brenda said.

‘Who?’ Book said.

‘The sheriff.’

When they said their goodbyes, Brenda Jones
gave Book a hug and whispered, ‘Professor, you were his hero. Be his hero now. Give him justice. Find his truth. It wasn’t an accident.’

He and Nadine walked outside and climbed on the Harley, but Book did not start the engine. Instead, he stared at the stars above them. He had pursued truth and justice—or as close thereto as the law allows—on enough occasions now to know that justice was more crushed car art than an act certain—in the eye of the beholder rather than an eye for an eye—and truth was found in one’s heart rather than one’s head. Maybe Justice Kennedy was correct: perhaps we are each entitled to define our own existence, our own meaning, our own truth. So he would not search for the truth, but for Nathan’s truth. He owed him that much.

‘What did we learn today, Ms. Honeywell?’

‘I don’t like riding six hours on a Harley.’

‘About Nathan Jones’s death.’

‘A, official cause of death was accidental.’

‘And?’

‘B, Billy Bob Barnett is the client in his letter who is allegedly contaminating the groundwater.’

‘And?’

‘C, he didn’t show his proof to either his wife or his best friend.’

‘Very good.’

‘And D, he was gay.’

‘
Who?
Jimmy John?’

‘Nathan Jones.’

Border Patrol Agent Wesley Crum yelled back to
his partner: ‘Angel, you run like a goddamn queer! Hurry, they’re getting away!’

It was after midnight, and Wesley and Angel were chasing wets through the desert again. Wesley wore night-vision goggles which allowed him to spot the wets running through the brush—not as good as the Predator’s ‘eyes in the sky,’ but the goggles gave him an on-the-ground advantage over the wets. He was after two males and two females, no doubt a mom-and-pop operation who brought the kids with them for a lifetime in America. A chance at the American Dream: free education, free healthcare, free welfare, free this, free that, free everything, living at the expense of hard-working, tax-paying Americans. What a deal. First thing they do is get pregnant and punch out a baby in America—an American citizen with exactly the same rights as Wesley Crum—which guarantees them an extended stay in the U.S. of A. Consequently, Wesley viewed his job as deficit reduction: every Mexican he caught and deported back across the river equaled four or five Mexican babies the federal government wouldn’t have to support. Hell, if he caught enough wets, he could
single-handedly balance the fucking budget.

Wesley Crum was thirty years old and had been on the job twelve years. He had grown up in Marfa and wanted to stay in Marfa, but there were no jobs in Marfa. Most of his high school buddies had moved away to Odessa to work the oil fields. Wesley hired on with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, now part of the Department of Homeland Security. That was back when agents didn’t have to speak Spanish to get hired. Now Border Patrol hired Hispanics like Angel.

His partner was an odd duck. Read books. Listened to Marfa Public Radio. Knew stuff. Liked art and the artists. Three years younger than Wesley, Angel had grown up in Presidio and went to college at Texas A&M. Graduated, but he came back to work the border. They were as different as night and day—or Anglo and Hispanic—but they had forged a partnership that had lasted Angel’s entire five years on the job, which was five years longer than any other relationship in Wesley’s adult life. Of course, everyone liked Angel Acosta. He was that kind of guy. They worked the Big Bend Sector, which covered 165,000 square miles including seventy-seven counties in Texas and all of Oklahoma and 510 miles of the Rio Grande. Which pretty much guaranteed that they would chase wets every night. But Wesley liked the desert at night. He stopped and waited for his partner to catch up. Angel arrived; he was breathing hard. They addressed each other through the night-vision goggles.

‘Let them go, Wesley. They just want to work.’

‘Are you having one of them eccentric crises I heard about on TV?’

‘Existential. You watching Dr. Phil again?’

‘Are you?’

‘You’ve got to do something else during the day when we work the night shift.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, you could try reading.’

‘
Reading?
’

As if Angel had said ‘yoga.’

‘I just don’t see why we chase these people when they just
want to work.’

‘So we can keep working. So we keep our jobs, that’s why we chase wets. Angel, there ain’t no other jobs in Presidio County for guys like us, especially me. We either chase wets or collect unemployment.’

‘We could work the frack rigs.’

‘Man, chasing wets is a hell of a lot easier than that. And the federal government’s benefit plan is much better than anything in the private sector.’

Angel shrugged. ‘That’s true.’

‘Okay. You got your head on straight?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘Good. They’re hunkered down about a hundred yards due north. You circle around east, I’ll go west. We’ll trap these wets and deport their Mexican butts back to Chihuahua.’

They ran into the dark desert.

‘Saw you out running this morning,’ Presidio County Sheriff Brady Munn said from the other side of his man-sized desk.
‘Dawn in the desert’s nice, ain’t it?’

Nadine eyed Book through her black glasses. ‘You ran at dawn? What is that, like, eight
A.M.
?’

‘Six. I always run at dawn.’

‘I sleep at dawn.’

‘You folks want a cup of coffee?’

‘No, thanks,’ Book said.

‘Sure,’ his intern said. ‘With cream. The real stuff, not the powdered.’

The sheriff cracked a little smile. ‘I’ll get the jail chef right on it.’ Instead, he called out through the open door: ‘Rosa, two coffees. With real cream.’

A hearty laugh came back. Then a voice with a Spanish accent.

‘Real cream? Are you serious?’

‘Run across the street to SqueezeMarfa, they’ll have some.’

Now Spanish words came back, which turned the sheriff’s smile into a chuckle.

‘You folks speak Spanish?’

‘No,’ Book said.

‘Nunh-huh,’ Nadine said.

‘Good.’

It was nine the next morning, and they sat in
the sheriff’s office in the county jail across the street from the Presidio County Courthouse. They had arrived without an appointment, but the sheriff had agreed to see them. He greeted them in the lobby then escorted them to his office. When he turned his back, Nadine had whispered to Book, ‘Not gay.’ Her San Francisco skills were not required to render that verdict in Presidio County. Sheriff Munn stood well over six feet tall and outweighed Book by at least fifty pounds; his body appeared as solid as an oak tree, even in middle age. He had thick hair with gray streaks and wore a Western-style uniform, tan cowboy boots, a massive handgun on his hip, and a droopy mustache. He smelled like leather and looked like Wyatt Earp; he called everyone ‘podna.’

‘So, podna, you figure you can do my job better than me?’ the sheriff said.

‘Pardon me?’

The sheriff tossed a newspaper onto the desk in front of Book. It was the latest edition of
The Times of Marfa
, just out that morning. On the front page was the photo of Book that Sam Walker had taken the day before. The sheriff pointed a gnarly finger at the newspaper.

‘Says you’re a famous law professor, come to Marfa to figure out what happened to the lawyer. Says his death might have something to do with fracking.’

Book had already read the article. The desk clerk at the Paisano had handed the newspaper to Book on his way back up to his room after his morning run, when Book had advised him that they would be staying another night. (He hadn’t yet broken the news to his intern.) His hunch had played out; Sam Walker couldn’t resist a better front-page story than the roller derby. But he picked up the paper anyway and
read the article as if for the first time. He then folded the paper and set it on the desk. He looked at the sheriff.

‘Nathan was my student intern four years ago. He wrote me a letter six days ago.’

Book handed Nathan’s letter across the desk to the sheriff just as a Hispanic woman entered with two cups of coffee on a little tray with sugars and real cream. She placed the tray on the desk but eyed Book with suspicion. He held his hands up in mock surrender then pointed at Nadine, who practically dove for the coffee.

The sheriff said, ‘
Gracias
, Rosa,’ without diverting his eyes from the envelope. He checked the postmark then removed the letter and stroked his mustache and randomly grunted as he read. The sheriff’s office was spacious and manly and filled with weapons. Modern military-style rifles stood in a glass case; vintage Western-style rifles were mounted on the walls next to photos of the sheriff on horseback in calf-roping competitions. A police radio sat on a table behind the sheriff; voices of law enforcement personnel came over sporadically. The sheriff finally looked up from the letter.

‘Pretty serious accusation.’

Book nodded.

‘I reckon he meant Billy Bob Barnett.’

‘Nathan’s only client.’

‘You talk to him? Billy Bob?’

‘I will.’

‘You figure what the lawyer says in this letter might be a motive for murder? Someone who didn’t want that proof made public?’

‘It’s a developing theory.’

‘You got any facts to back it up?’

‘Not yet.’

The sheriff grunted again then eyed the envelope again. ‘Postmarked same day he died.’

‘How do you feel about coincidences?’
Nadine asked.

‘Reckon they happen.’

‘Good.’ She turned to Book. ‘Can we go home now?’

She had been packed and ready to roll when he returned from his run.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘
Tomorrow?
I’ve got to study for my Crim Law final.’

‘You’re learning criminal law in the real world, Ms. Honeywell.’

‘I feel safer in a classroom.’

The sheriff took his coffee, poured sugar and cream, and sipped. He addressed Nadine.

‘Good call on the cream.’

Static then a loud voice came across the radio; the sheriff cocked his head that way.

‘Rosa, tell the sheriff we got us a dead Mexican out Ninety past the Aerostat. Looks like he was walking north barefooted, got bit by a rattler. Leg’s swollen up like a damn balloon.’

‘Rosa doubles as the dispatcher,’ the sheriff said.

He reached back and grabbed the mike. He clicked a button.

‘Rusty, I’m in an important meeting with a couple of folks from Austin. I can’t come running out there for a dead Mexican. Rosa’s gonna call Border Patrol, get them to handle it. Their jurisdiction—“Securing America’s Borders,” like their motto says.’

The sheriff smiled, as if at an inside joke.

‘Reporters?’ Rusty said over the radio.

‘What?’ the sheriff said.

‘That
Vanity Fair
reporter back in town? She’s a cutie.’

‘
Vanity Fair
reporter? Rusty, get your head out your butt and get to work. After the Border Patrol takes over there, get over to the Randolph spread, see about their rustling complaint. Probably just lost count and not cows.’

The sheriff clicked the button on the mike and exhaled.

‘County pay don’t attract Ph.D.s for deputies.’

He replaced the mike on the table and turned
back to Book.

‘I agree the timing’s a mite suspicious, Professor, but we don’t do murder in Marfa. We get calls on dead Mexicans, stranded motorists, stoned artists riding bicycles naked, that sort of thing. Our big crimes are drug busts, shipments coming north across the border—Presidio County stretches all the way south to the Rio Grande. But we don’t get violent crimes like in the cities.’

‘Did you know Nathan Jones?’ Book asked.

‘Nope.’

‘You were at his funeral.’

‘He was a Marfan. One of us. That’s why I was there. That’s why I cared.’

He sipped his coffee.

‘What about you, Professor? Why do you care so much about Nathan Jones?’

‘I owe him.’

The sheriff grunted. ‘Well, I never crossed paths with him. Must not have done criminal defense work.’

‘Oil and gas. Mostly gas.’

‘Lot of that going around these days.’

He drank his coffee.

‘I worked up the accident scene myself, Professor. No signs of foul play. Everything I saw said it was just an accident. So that was my official cause of death: accidental. We get half a dozen of these car crashes every year, main cause of death in Presidio County, right after old age and boredom.’

‘Sheriff, have you ever heard anything about fracking contaminating the groundwater?’

‘Nope. No brown water, no one’s been lighting their tap water on fire like I seen on TV. We still drink the water, don’t need to pay extra to have it served in a bottle.’

He held up his cup of coffee.

‘Tap water.’

Nadine frowned at her coffee cup. The sheriff
noticed and half smiled.

‘But environmentalists been crawling all over West Texas, trying to prove up contamination, which would be a pretty serious matter around here.’