Con Law (27 page)

‘Has there been any violence?’

Jimmy John snorted. ‘We ain’t worried about a buncha queers beating us up, Professor.’

‘
Against
the artists?’

‘Oh. Not yet. But they keep it up, they’re gonna understand why not many folks live in this desert. It can be a hard life.’

‘Do you know Carla Kent?’

‘Everyone knows Carla. She come down here from Santa Fe, organized the artists to protest the fracking, then they got stories in the New York papers about fracking—they hate it up there. She’s a good-looking gal, so the boys are what you call conflicted about her.’

‘How?’

‘They don’t know what they want to do most, screw her or beat the hell outta her.’

Jimmy John grinned. Book didn’t.

‘Reminds me.
Thanks for the help at Padre’s the other night.’

‘Didn’t figure you needed any, not with Babe Ruth watching your back.’

‘I hit him hard, didn’t I?’ Nadine said.

‘Real hard. You’re pretty good with a beer bottle.’

Jimmy John abruptly grimaced as if a bullet had just bored through his brain.

‘Are the headaches getting worse?’ Book asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘How are the nosebleeds?’

‘Regular.’

‘Better see a doctor.’

He turned to Brenda Jones. She sat in her chair; her belly looked as if it might explode. Her expression said it felt that way.

‘Nathan was murdered,’ he said.

Brenda Jones regarded Book from across the coffee table.

‘What are you going to do about it, Professor?’

Book saw in her eyes the desperation of a young woman, pregnant with her first child, whose husband had been taken from her.

‘I’m going to find Nathan’s truth. Give him justice.’

Brenda pushed herself out of the chair; Jimmy John helped her up. She came to Book; he stood. She hugged him.

‘Thank you, Professor. But be careful. They follow us. They know everything. Where we go. What we do. Who we see. Who we talk to. They’re always watching.’

Book blew out a breath. This sad young woman needed more help than a law professor could provide. But finding the truth, bringing her husband’s killer to justice, that he could do. That he would do. He took her by the shoulders.

‘Brenda, listen, I’m
going to find out who killed Nathan, I promise you. But you need to stay strong. Mentally strong. Getting paranoid about things, thinking people are following you, watching you, that won’t help you. Or your health. Or your baby. Okay?’

The phone rang. Brenda put one hand on the side of her belly as if to hold it in place then walked over to the landline hung on the kitchen wall. She answered. After a moment, she held the phone out to Book.

‘It’s
for you.’

There was no traffic on Highway 67 north, the road to Midland. Tom Dunn had called Book at Nathan’s house and said he had important information that could not wait until tomorrow. So Book and Nadine were riding the Harley to Midland late in the day.

But how did Tom Dunn know that Book was at Nathan’s house?

Book glanced in the rearview. A black pickup truck followed behind them a distance. As it had since they had left Marfa. As it still did when they hit Interstate 20 an hour later. The truck exited the highway behind them when they arrived in Midland. Book beat them through a red light and cut around the west side of downtown. He found a spot a block down from the Dunn Building and waited.

‘What are we doing?’ Nadine asked.

‘Waiting.’

‘For what?’

‘For them.’

The black pickup
truck parked in front of the Dunn Building. The two men inside did not get out.

‘Stay here.’

Book got off the Harley and walked up to the pickup. He stayed out of their mirror angle—there was an Aggie sticker on the rear bumper—then he went around to the driver’s side. The window was down.

‘Are you following us?’

The man jumped—‘Shit!’—then quickly gathered himself when he saw Book. ‘It’s a free country.’

Both of the men were shaved bald in the fashion of pro athletes, and both were large enough to have played pro football.

‘A week in the hospital isn’t. Free.’

‘You threatening us?’

‘Yes. Don’t follow us anymore. And tell Billy Bob I know he killed Nathan Jones. Tell him I’m coming for him.’

‘You’ll have to come through us.’

‘I’d enjoy that.’

The man snorted. ‘Fuckin’ kung fu Injun … that shit don’t scare me, Professor.’

‘Taekwondo. And I’m part Comanche. You know, the Comanche once roamed this land on horseback—’

‘What, and you roam it on a Harley?’

He laughed and shared a fist-bump with his buddy.

‘Where’s your bow and arrow, Sacagawea?’ the buddy said.

‘Sack a shit,’ the driver said.

They again laughed. They clearly weren’t history buffs, so Book stuck his hand into his pants pocket and pulled out his pearl-handled pocketknife.

‘I don’t have a bow and arrow. All I’ve got is this little knife.’

He opened the blade and stepped to the rear of the truck. He leaned down and jammed the blade into the tire.

‘And you’ve got a flat tire.’

Book turned away and saw Nadine standing there.

‘I was too scared to stay over there by myself,’ she said.

‘It’s broad
daylight in downtown Midland.’

The men jumped out of the truck. Book grabbed her arm and pulled her across the street and into the Dunn Building.

‘Do you?’ she asked.

‘Do I what?’

‘Know Billy Bob did it?’

‘No. But he had the most to lose.’

Once inside, he looked back at the men. They were not happy. The driver held a cell phone to his ear.

Book’s cell phone rang. He checked the number. The dean.

‘Hello, Roscoe.’

‘Book, you’re pissing off important people in West Texas.’

‘Well, I’ve pissed off important people in South Texas and East Texas, why not West Texas?’

‘True. But Tom Dunn’s a donor.’

‘He may be an aider and abettor in a criminal conspiracy.’

‘Why do you say stuff like that? He pledged five million to the school. Called me up, said he was going to revoke his pledge if you didn’t get off his back. And his client’s back.’

‘Roscoe, I haven’t even gotten
on
their backs yet.’

‘Book, come home. Teach your Con Law class. Stop calling people murderers on the radio.’

‘Dunn’s murderer client is an Aggie.’

‘Really?’ The dean got a kick out of that. ‘He’s also Tom’s biggest client.’

‘I’m in the lobby of his building in Midland right now. I’m heading up to see him.’

‘Book, try to have a cordial conversation.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

Roscoe exhaled into the phone.

‘Well … then get a haircut.’

‘Hell of a radio interview, Professor,’ Tom Dunn said. ‘But you might be jumping the gun.’

‘How’d you
know I was at Nathan’s house?’

Dunn responded with a wry smile. ‘My country club’s got more members than Marfa’s got people. Small town. Everyone knows everything.’

Book and Nadine sat in Tom Dunn’s corner office in Midland again. The sun was setting in the western sky. He held out a small baggie containing a green leafy substance.

‘We were cleaning out Nathan’s office and found this.’

‘Marijuana?’

‘It ain’t lettuce.’

‘You’re saying Nathan Jones smoked dope?’

‘I’m saying we found this in his office. Maybe he smoked it, maybe he was holding it for a friend. Maybe he was high driving home that night. Maybe he passed out and ran off the road.’

‘That’s a convenient theory, Mr. Dunn, since the sheriff couldn’t have an autopsy performed because his body was so badly burned.’

‘I’m just giving you information, Professor.’ He tossed the baggie to Book. ‘You can take it.’

Perhaps it was because the Koontz case was fresh on his mind, but Book couldn’t help but wonder if he were being set up to be pulled over by a county sheriff on a dark road between Midland and Marfa, searched, and found to be carrying marijuana. A drug bust might constitute cause to revoke his tenure; of course, many professors were children of the sixties, so perhaps not. But Book saw no reason to take the chance.

‘You keep it.’

‘Suit yourself.’

‘Where would he get marijuana?’

Dunn laughed. ‘Where not? Marfa is only sixty miles from the border, Professor. Marijuana shipments come north as regular as the U.S. mail.’

It was after ten,
and the highway was dark and deserted. Book recalled Billy Bob’s words: ‘You want to live in the light or in the dark?’ Driving a country road at night makes you appreciate electricity. When the sun goes down in the city, there’s still light. Streetlights and neon lights and store lights and building lights. But night in the country defines dark. They were in a black hole, only the moon offering any light, and the moon that night was only a sliver of white in the black sky. Both sides of the highway lay in pitch black. Book could see only the fifty feet of asphalt illuminated by the Harley’s headlight.

So he throttled back.

There was no other traffic to contend with, but a collision with a deer crossing the road could be dangerous. When driving a country road in a three-ton pickup truck or SUV at night and suddenly encountering a deer in your headlights, the rule was simple: hit the deer. Most people veer to miss the deer, lose control of their vehicle, run off the road, and roll over. The deer survives, but the humans often do not. So hit the deer and live to feel bad about it.

But the rule didn’t apply to motorcycles.

The night air had turned cool, so Nadine wore Book’s leather jacket as well as the goggles and crash helmet. They were about thirty miles outside Marfa when he saw headlights in the side mirrors. The lights came closer, fast. No doubt a local running with his pedal to the metal. Book slowed and steered to the edge of the highway to allow the vehicle clear passage, just in case the driver was working on his second six-pack of the night. The lights were soon on them. And stayed on them, high enough above the road that it had to be a pickup truck. He waved for the truck to pass, but it stayed behind them. Close behind them.

Then it got closer.

‘Professor!’

The truck was
too close. Book turned the throttle hard, and the Harley shot ahead. They got a distance ahead of the lights. He thought he had outrun the truck, but the lights appeared in the mirrors again. Book gunned the Harley, but the lights came closer. And got brighter; the driver had hit his bright lights. Book didn’t know the road well enough to put the Harley wide open, but he was about to take the chance when the lights finally came around to pass. Book steered far to the right, onto the rumble strip. He fought to hold the Harley steady. Then the truck steered to the right—and into them.

Nadine
screamed.

‘Someone sure don’t like you, Professor.’

Sheriff Brady Munn stood by the door of the hospital room at the Big Bend Regional Medical Center in Alpine just north of the U.S. Courthouse and Detention Center. Alpine is the county seat of Brewster County and twenty-one miles east of Marfa, but there is no hospital in Marfa. They had been run off the road in Presidio County, so Sheriff Munn had jurisdiction over the investigation.

‘Billy Bob Barnett.’

‘Well, hell, podna, I wouldn’t like you either, if you all but called me a murderer on the only radio station in town. That tends to piss people off.’

‘Sheriff, Nathan Jones was murdered. By Billy Bob.’

The sheriff grunted. ‘I reckon you’re right—about the murder. Billy Bob’s still an open question.’

‘Two of his goons followed us to Midland in a black pickup truck. I confronted them.’

‘I take it that didn’t go well.’

‘It was less than cordial.’

The sheriff
chuckled. ‘I bet it was. Less than cordial.’

‘And a dark pickup truck ran us off
the road three hours later. It had to be them.’

The truck had forced Book off the road. He managed to keep the Harley upright through the prairie grass, until they hit a railroad track embankment. The bike stopped; they didn’t. They both went flying. Book landed in a barbed-wire fence; he required only a tetanus shot, bandages, and a dozen stitches in his forehead. Nadine flew over the fence, crashed through a mesquite bush, and landed hard in the desert; she broke her left arm and right leg and suffered lacerations on her legs and possibly a concussion. The crash helmet protected her head, the goggles her glasses and eyes, and the leather jacket her arms and torso from further cuts; but Book had not protected her as he had promised. It was just after eight the next morning, and she lay in the bed, medicated and asleep, with casts on her arm and leg and a white bandage wrapped around her head; she looked like a child. A monitor beeped with each beat of her heart. Book sat next to the bed, close enough to touch her face. The Harley now sat in the back of a Presidio County Sheriff’s Department four-wheel-drive pickup truck in the parking lot at the sheriff’s office.

‘Mexican name of Pedro, got a shop south of the tracks, fixes cars,’ the sheriff said. ‘Knows motorbikes, too. You want Shirley to drop your Harley over there?’

‘I’ll go with her. Before I leave my Harley with a stranger, I want to check him out.’

The sheriff grunted. ‘Way my wife used to be with baby-sitters. So you got nothing on the truck? No make or model?’

‘The bright lights blinded me. But it was them.’

‘Well, that ain’t exactly a positive ID, Professor. I need evidence. I can’t go around kung-fu-ing everyone I meet. I’m the law. I gotta play by the rules.’

‘It’s tae—… Never mind.’

Nadine stirred and tried to move. Her eyes blinked open … and focused on the white casts covering her arm and leg … then moved around the
hospital room … the IV connected to her good arm … the beeping monitors … the sheriff … and finally settled on Book. The realization came over her face. Tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

‘Oh, Professor.’

Book wiped the tears from her face.

‘Where am I?’