Shadow Boys (24 page)

“I looked at the financials.” Raul pointed to a file. “It’s obvious there’s money being used inappropriately. Last week, what was the cash withdrawal for?”

Tremont put the game down and stared at them, eyes wide. He always seemed to have a sense of when they were brewing up to have a big fight.

“I needed a new dress.” Junie’s voice was soft. “For the Crystal Charity Ball.”

“Of course.” Raul tried not to sound too sarcastic. “Everyone needs a new dress for the Crystal Charity Ball.”

She shook her head, an angry expression on her face. From the desk she grabbed a nicotine cartridge and fiddled with her e-cig.

“Who’d you take to the ball?” Raul said.

“What’s it to you?”

“It’s just a question.”

“Sounds more like an interrogation. Always does with you.” Her voice rose. “Because you’re a cop and that’s the way you roll.”

“So you don’t like cops now. You tell your dad that yet?”

“Shut up, Raul.” She rubbed her eyes. “Just shut up.”

From the couch, Tremont began to breathe hard, one hand scratching a leg continually, his usual reaction when they fought.

“The charity ball. Let me guess,” Raul said. “You took the twentysomething douchebag.”

“And you’re living in a monastery these days?” She looked up, voice angry.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I hear the stories,” she said. “If it’s got a pulse and votes Democrat, you’ve mounted it.”

Tremont jumped up. He rushed over to Junie, pulled on her arm. “Stop it. P-please. Stop f-f-fighting.”

She pushed him away.

“How much do you need?” Raul asked. “What’s it gonna cost this month?”

“How much do you have?” Her face was flushed with anger.

He wanted to tell her that he wouldn’t bail her out anymore, but they both knew this would be a lie. He was always there when Junie needed something. Always had been, always would be.

He realized that at one point he had been in love with her, but he wasn’t anymore. He felt bound to Junie, however, a twin to her suffering for reasons he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, articulate. A dark secret that was buried in the black loamy soil of Bobby’s ranch nearly thirty years ago. A secret that ate at him every day.

“I’ll pay you back.” She undid the top button of her blouse. “Maybe we can figure out a trade.”

Her words were icy, movements and demeanor anything but enticing.

Tremont opened the back door and went outside. He usually wandered off when they fought. Today was no different.

No one spoke for a moment. Then:

“Why are you so angry?” Raul’s voice was soft. He wished he could just hold her.

She didn’t respond. Her breathing was labored. Eyes welling with emotion.

“You’re so pretty,” he said. “You have so much going for you. I just don’t understand.”

“Why?”
She clenched her fists. Tears streamed down her face. “You are asking me
why
?”

He took a step toward her, held his arms out. After a moment she accepted the embrace.

They stood together like that for a while, the fight and the anger draining out of both of them.

“Doesn’t it ever get to you?” Her voice was small against his chest. “What we’ve done. Who we are.”

“Shh.” He knew that she was referring to Wayne. “We don’t talk about that.”

She pushed herself away. “Why?”

“Because we don’t.”

She shook her head, expression flat and empty.

“You came to my rescue, Raul. My knight in shining armor.”

He didn’t respond. They stared into each other’s eyes for a period of time, long enough for more tears to trickle down her face.

She said, “But did you ever consider that maybe I wasn’t being raped?”

- CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE -

The Trinity River ran along the west side of downtown Dallas, splitting the city in two. The muddy ribbon shadowed Stemmons Freeway for a few miles, the highway where moments before I found myself traveling in the back of Raul Delgado’s police Suburban.

Levees kept the flood waters at bay, forming a large channel with the river itself in the middle.

In many parts of Dallas County, the land between the levees was much like it had been for millennia—overgrown with post oaks and saw grass and honeysuckle. Swampy, guarded by a furry militia of beaver, nutria, and raccoons.

In the middle of a major metropolitan area, the geographical center of nearly six million people, the Trinity River and accompanying lowlands were wilderness, remote yet easily accessible to the rest of the city if you knew the right roads to take.

Which clearly Deputy Chief Raul Delgado did.

I was still in the back, Piper in the front passenger seat.

Delgado headed south on Inwood past a warehouse district that was slowly being gentrified as development pushed outward from downtown.

The street ran across a four-lane bridge that spanned the river, headed toward West Dallas.

Delgado stopped before getting to the bridge, pulling onto a dirt road that ran behind a warehouse, an alley of sorts, nearly invisible unless you were looking for it.

The rear of the warehouse abutted the levee, and a gate blocked the dirt road.

Delgado exited the SUV, unlocked the gate, and then drove us through. Once past, he got back out and secured the gate.

Then he followed the road through a small grove of trees, and a few minutes later we emerged on the top of the levee, elevated above the city by about sixty feet.

The river lay to our right, downtown to the left.

No trees grew here. The mounded earth formed a small man-made mountain in a city known for its flatness, offering a particular view that few had ever seen.

Delgado drove south on the elevated dirt track that ran atop the levee. He passed the jail and the courthouse, several blocks away and lower. A few hundred yards later he stopped.

Below us, at the foot of the levee, sat the cop bar, Sam Browne’s, between a strip club and a bail bondsman’s office.

A chain-link fence ran along the base of the levee to keep people out.

Beyond the cop bar and Riverfront Boulevard, the buildings of downtown were visible. From our position the dominant structure was American Airlines Center, the original location of Little Mexico and the deserted field where the police killed Raul Delgado’s brother years before.

Delgado stared at the view for a long while, the car idling.

“Sam Browne’s,” I said. “You know the guy that owns that place, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” He spoke without turning around, voice flat. “I know him.”

An ex-cop, the bartender I’d smarted off to a few days before, when I met Piper there. His name wasn’t really Sam, though everyone called him that. There was a thread between the owner and Delgado that eluded me for the moment.

“Bobby, that’s his real name, right?” Piper said. “He’s the guy that took care of you after your brother died.”

No one spoke.

“I remember the stories now,” Piper said. “I just never made that connection between that guy and Sam Browne’s before.”

Delgado ignored her. He turned down a narrow track that led off the levee, toward the river. The SUV bumped and swayed over the uneven surface.

“Bobby McKee,” she said. “That’s his real name. Retired as a captain, oh, maybe fifteen years ago.”

McKee,
I thought. The name mentioned by Mason Burnett in the back of the chopper.

The road, if it could be called that, was canopied by hackberry trees, meshed together with a thicket of poison ivy and stinging nettles. Branches and thorns scratched at the side of the SUV.

After a hundred yards or so, he cut back on a slightly wider path that paralleled the river. Vegetation on the side opposite the water was as thick as a wall, impenetrable.

The Suburban bounced along for a minute or two as the brush gradually became less dense. At a clearing by the river about the size of a tennis court, he slowed down to a crawl.

“McKee?” I remembered where else I’d heard the name before. “Is he any relation to the woman who runs the Helping Place?”

“Hannah J. McKee,” Delgado said. “The
J
stands for June.”

He parked by an ash-filled fire pit and exited the SUV. He walked to the river and stared into the flowing water. The surface was brown and choppy. After a moment, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and appeared to make a call.

Piper and I got out as well. The air smelled like dead fish, cut grass, and old ashes.

Raul ended his call and walked back to where we stood by the Suburban.

“Hannah’s missing,” he said. “Not at her home or office. Her cell phone’s turned off.”

We stood in a loose circle near the back of the SUV.

“She’s important to me,” he said. “I need to find her.”

Piper cocked her head. “She’s more important than Tremont?”

Raul didn’t answer.

“What’s her connection to all this?” Piper said. “And to you?”

“She’s like a sister to me,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Chug-chug-chug
.

From down the road we’d just traveled came the sound of a sputtering exhaust, a vehicle years past its prime.

A moment later, an elderly Ford pickup appeared out of the vegetation.

“Speak of the Devil,” I said.

The bartender from Sam Browne’s sat behind the wheel. Bobby McKee, known to most as Sam.

The truck stopped behind Delgado’s SUV, and the older man got out.

He wore khaki work pants, Roper boots, and a faded denim shirt.

At first he appeared surprised by what he saw. Then wary.

“What’s going on here, Raul?” He pointed to Piper. “What are you doing with her?”

“Hey, Bobby. Thanks for coming.” Delgado smiled. “This is Piper. She’s a friend.”

The old man squinted at me. “And why the hell are you here?”

“Have you heard from Hannah?” Raul asked.

Bobby McKee shook his head. “Why you asking?”

No response.

The old man said, “Is something wrong?”

“What’s your daughter doing in West Dallas?” I asked.

McKee looked at me and then Piper, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Apparently, she’s MIA,” I said. “Not answering her phone.”

“She shouldn’t be in that part of town,” Bobby said. “Not if she’s by herself.”

No one spoke for a few moments. Then:

“The little creek that runs through your ranch,” Delgado said. “I wonder if it feeds into the Trinity. What do you think?”

The old man frowned but didn’t say anything.

Raul pointed to the water. “Everything’s connected, Bobby. Somehow, some way. You can’t get away from what you are.”

The old man looked like he was going to say something but didn’t.

A helicopter flew overhead.

I watched it bank far to the south and come back for another pass. “Raul, give me your phone.”

Delgado ignored me. “Do you believe in divine retribution, Bobby?”

“What the hell are you talking about? Where’s my daughter?”

Delgado continued. “What if something’s happened to her because of what you and I did?”

The helicopter swung around, and I wondered who had been paging me. If it had been Theo Goldberg and he thought I was in a jam, we might have a problem.

“Either one of you,” I said. “I really need a phone. If my boss gets it in his head that I’m in trouble, it’s not going to be pretty.”

The old man glanced at me and then turned his attention back to Raul. “Listen, son. I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but let’s don’t talk about it now.”

A second helicopter appeared in the north. It hovered, maybe a thousand yards away.

Theo Goldberg had the attorney general, the director of the FBI, and the secretary of defense on speed dial. He would drain an ocean to get one of his people out of harm’s way if they were there due to law firm business.

This was not out of loyalty. He was deathly afraid of the liability. He once arranged for a drone strike in Somalia because a junior associate had strayed across the Ethiopian border and gotten himself kidnapped. The associate had been released unharmed an hour later.

“My people will track Delgado’s cell phone from our last known location,” I said. “Then they’ll rewind satellite coverage like it’s a DVR.”

Bobby said, “What’s he talking about, Raul?”

I continued. “They’ll send a team to get us. To get me. Probably from Homeland Security. Maybe the FBI.”

As if on cue, the sound of footsteps crunching through undergrowth.

“Are you packing?” I looked at Bobby.

He nodded after a moment of hesitation.

“Put it on the ground,” I said. “That will make everybody less nervous.”

More movement from the underbrush.

“It’s okay,” Delgado said. “He’s right.”

Bobby hesitated for a moment and then pulled a gun from his waistband, a Glock.

“Old-school guy like you,” I said to Bobby, “carrying a plastic gun?”

Law-enforcement officers of a certain age didn’t trust Glocks or their knockoff cousins.

“I gave my old backup revolver to Jun—to Hannah,” the old man said. “Besides, change is good for a body.”

“That’s the kind of gun being used by the vigilante killer,” I said.

The old man didn’t respond. He stared at me, a blank expression on his face.

“You, too, Raul,” I said. “I’d put your gun down before whoever’s out there gets too close.”

Raul pulled his piece, another Glock, but didn’t drop it.

“Whatever happened to Wayne’s family?” Delgado stared at the old man. “Do you think they know how it all played out?”

Bobby’s eyes grew wide, his face pale. He flexed his left hand.

“The guns,” I said. “Seriously. I’d put them down.”

Piper said, “Who’s Wayne? What are you talking about?”

Bobby’s breathing was ragged, face ashen. “Let’s not get into that, Raul.”

“You okay?” I took a step toward the old man. “You’re not looking too good.”

He dropped his gun and clutched his chest with both hands, looked at Raul. “Where’s my daughter?” he said. “What have you done to her?”

Raul didn’t appear to notice the older man’s distress. “Can you imagine what it’s like, never to find out what happened to your child?”

Piper spoke to me. “I think he’s having a coronary.”

“Bobby.” I touched his arm. “Sit down and we’ll call an ambulance.”

The old cop didn’t move. He looked at his gun on the ground, his face white, mouth open, gulping for air.

“Wayne’s parents,” Raul said. “They had a right to know.”

The old man held up one hand like he was trying to deflect Delgado’s words.

Raul shook his head. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just wanted him to get off of Junie.”

The old man fell to his knees as the first FBI agent burst through the underbrush, a submachine gun aimed our way.

“Drop your weapon.” The agent aimed at Delgado.

Raul hesitated. Then he pitched his weapon in front of him. The gun fell on top of Bobby’s firearm.

More agents followed the first.

Piper and I raised our hands.

“B-Bobby?” Raul Delgado seemed to snap back to reality, realizing something was wrong with the old man.

I spoke to the lead agent. “He’s having a heart attack. We need a medical team.”

“Bobby!”
Delgado knelt beside the old man.

High above us, the sound of a helicopter. On the marshy dirt by the river, Deputy Chief Raul Delgado began to weep.