Don paused, then nodded. “He does.”
That, Will thought, explained a lot of Shel’s strange behavior of late. “Where can I find Shel?”
“He’s inside. In Daddy’s room. Straight on back.”
›› 1055 Hours (Central Time Zone)
Will found Shel in the bedroom. The big Marine had a high-definition digital camera in hand and was capturing images of the broken window with slow deliberation. He glanced up and nodded at Will.
“You got here fast,” Shel commented.
“You asked me to come.” Will gazed around at the crime scene. It had been expertly marked off. Spent brass lay on the floor with markers beside the casings. He noticed immediately that no bullet holes adorned the walls.
“I hated to ask,” Shel said. He captured another image. “I know you’ve got a full plate with everything back at Camp Lejeune. The last thing you needed was this.”
“This,” Will said with deliberation, knowing that getting around to the subject of Tyrel McHenry was going to be difficult, “is connected to part of what I’ve got on my plate. Victor Gant is unfinished business.”
Shel nodded.
Will peered over the windowsill and down at the ground. Two dead bikers lay there.
“I told them they couldn’t move the bodies till after Nita got here,” Shel said. “She came, didn’t she?”
“She did,” Will said.
“I owe her one.”
“She doesn’t keep count. None of us do.” Will glanced around the room again. “I don’t see any bullet holes.”
“They never got a shot off,” Shel said with a hint of pride. “Daddy sat in that corner there-” he pointed-“and took out the first man as he was coming through the window. The headshot. Then he crossed the room and took out the second. After that, he made his way to the barn and took off on his horse. He left another body.”
“Sounds like your father knows how to handle himself,” Will said.
Shel nodded. “More than I thought he did.”
“The sheriff told me he had a chopper in the air searching.”
A look of quiet contemplation filled Shel’s face. “Daddy don’t want to be found. He knows all that hardscrabble country out there like the back of his hand. He won’t be located till he’s good and ready to be located.”
“I thought maybe that was the case,” Will said.
Shel looked at him for a long moment. “You ran into Don out front, didn’t you? He told you what Victor Gant said about Daddy.”
Will didn’t hesitate. In all the years he’d dealt with Shel, there was no other way to handle the gunnery sergeant than in a straight-ahead fashion.
“Yeah,” Will said. “Don did.”
“I would have told you,” Shel said quietly. “But there’s no proof that anything Victor Gant said about my daddy is true.”
“Do you think it is?”
Angrily Shel took in a deep breath and let it out. “I do, Will. I looked into Daddy’s eyes and I saw the guilt there the way I’ve seen it dozens of times when we’ve had people in the interview rooms back at headquarters.”
Will accepted that. Shel was good at reading people. Will trusted the man’s instinct. “All right. The question remains, what are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
Seeing the pain in Shel’s eyes and in the uncomfortable way he held his shoulders, Will softened his voice. “It’s hard to prosecute someone for murder when you don’t know who it is that he’s supposed to have killed.”
“I know. But I think I know who it was.” Shel walked over to the closet and lifted a small box from inside a recessed area. “I found this while I was poking around in here. It’s stuff Daddy must have brought back from Vietnam.” He took a picture out of the box and showed it to Will.
Will took the picture and studied the young man in it. “Do you know who this is?”
“His name’s Dennis Hinton. Private first class. Regular army. He was nineteen years old in that picture.”
“How do you know that?”
“His name’s on the back. That’s also how I know this is the man Daddy killed.”
Will turned the picture over and read the messy handwriting on the back.
Below it was another line of words that had been heavily underlined.
“It’s not exactly a confession,” Shel said hoarsely, “but it’s close enough. If we get testimony from Victor Gant.”
Will handed the picture back to Shel without saying anything.
“I’m hosed, Will,” Shel said in a tight voice. “If we don’t catch Victor Gant, maybe he keeps trying to kill me and gets lucky. Or now that Daddy’s gone, maybe he’ll try to get Don and his family. I’m not going to allow that, but I can’t protect Don’s family the way I need to if Victor Gant stays loose. So I’m going to bring him in.”
“And when Victor Gant is brought in, he’s going to testify against your father.”
“You see how it is,” Shel whispered.
“I do.”
“So I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m supposed to hope that Daddy is gone and I never see him again. Or if I’m supposed to help turn him over to the military court.” Shel paused. “Either way, my family loses.”
Will thought about everything that was put before them. Their cases often got complicated. Violence wasn’t neat. Not from the perpetrator’s point of view and not from the investigator’s.
But this…
Will didn’t even have the words for it.
“All my life,” Shel said, “I’ve always gone after the W. I always wanted the win. If I came up short, I was okay with that. I just pushed myself harder the next time.” He was silent for a moment. “But there’s no win here. No do-over. No matter what I do, I lose something.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said and wished he had more to give his friend than that. “Look, we’ve got the team here. Let’s see if we can find a room and talk. Figure out what we’re going to do. Then we’ll break this down just like we do everything else. One step at a time.”
“Sure,” Shel said. “But I got to tell you, Will, I’ll give you everything I’ve got, but my heart ain’t in this.”
“I know. But I’ll take you with whatever you can give.”
47
›› Rafter M Ranch
›› Outside Fort Davis, Texas
›› 1329 Hours (Central Time Zone)
“Hey, sweetie,” Estrella said, speaking her native Spanish. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, Mama,” her son, Nicky, said, replying in the same language. “Joe just brought us back from the ocean. It was really cool.”
A chill ghosted through Estrella when she thought about Nicky out on a boat in the open ocean. Even with Joe Tomlinson, who had practically grown up on water, it was a scary thing. That wasn’t a day trip she’d have planned for the two of them. She wasn’t a fan of deep water anyway.
During her time in the service she’d served aboard an antiaircraft carrier. The ship had been so big that most of the time there was none of the normal pitch and roll of smaller craft. Still, the first few weeks aboard the ship had left her weak and nauseous despite the medication the ship’s medic had signed off for her.
“I was wearing a life vest,” Nicky went on. He had a put-upon air. “I didn’t like it. It made me feel like a wimp. But Joe made me wear it.”
Estrella relaxed a little. She sat at the small desk that Shel had said he had done homework on throughout his childhood.
“Did Joe wear his vest?” Estrella asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, see? If Joe thinks the vest is important enough to wear one himself, then it must be.”
“Are you coming to get me today, Mama?”
Estrella stared at the two wide-screen computer monitors that split the work she was doing as they talked. “Not today. I’m sorry.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Joe has agreed to let you stay there a little longer. If that’s okay with you.”
“Sure. I like it here. Joe’s a lot of fun.”
That declaration hurt Estrella. Nicky was growing up without a father and there was nothing she could do about that. Worst of all, he was getting to the age where he wanted time with a father. Even when Estrella tried to do “dad” things with him, like fishing and camping and throwing a baseball in the park, Nicky was still aware of her being a “girl” when he felt he was supposed to be with a man.