“Damn it, I was trying to keep us all alive. This gets out, that I know this stuff, and… and we're all dead, all of us…” He looked long and hard into Meredyth's eyes.
Meredyth tugged at Lucas's slinged arm. Lucas relented.
Randy sounded convincing, sincere, and Lucas cursed himself for being unable to trust in anyone anymore.
“We've got to get help, tell someone,” Meredyth told the other two. 'This just has become to big for us to handle alone.”
“Bullock and Price?” he suggested. “The FBI?”
“I tried to get them earlier, but I got a strange response.”
“Strange?”
“Just a foul-up, I'm sure-a secretary who didn't know anything, had never heard of Tim Bullock and Stu Price.”
His eyes danced with hers in a slow waltz of measured confusion. “Bullock and Price didn't exist?”
“But then why would they warn us?”
“Maybe someone likes sporting events to be sporting. I don't know.”
“I'm sure it was just a mistake. I'll call the FBI here, ask them to patch us through to wherever Bullock and Price might be.” She got on the phone and attempted to reach the elusive FBI men, but again she was told there were no agents matching the description or the names given.
“They were sent in to find out how much we knew,” he offered.
“And to keep a tail on us,” she agreed.
“Damn… damn,” muttered Randy, distraught now, locating beers for them all from his refrigerator, weakly joking, “We may's well empty out the fridge so nothing 'U spoil after I'm killed dead.”
“Who do we take it to?” Meredyth asked.
“Commander Bryce,” replied Lucas, “and we have to do it now, tonight.”
The three exchanged glances, agreeing to make their move.
Commander Andrew Bryce could only be reached at his home, a sprawling horse ranch he owned just outside Houston. There had been a heated controversy when he'd become a chief in the Houston Police Department that he give up living outside the city lines and move his family into the city proper, that a city police chief had to live in the city he swore to serve and protect. It was the kind of nonsense that Lucas had no patience for, and he had heard that the now Commander Bryce had continued to fight the ancient ordinance in court.
Bryce was receptive to the idea that Aguilar could not possibly have been working alone. In fact, he had said over the phone that the more time away from that night when Aguilar was gunned down, the more he had pondered the possibilities, and the more he had felt a definite pat hand had been dealt them all by Captain Phillip Lawrence, Pardee, and Amelford. He didn't need much prodding once Lucas opened up about his misgivings with respect to what he feared were perhaps the dirtiest cops he had ever run across.
“We'll need conclusive proof, though, Stonecoat, you realize, before anything can be moved on. Can you give me anything more than your suppositions?”
“We can, sir. We can.”
“You and Meredyth Sanger, you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why don't the two of you drive out to my place? It's the only private place I know of where we won't be bothered. Then we'll talk this thing through over coffee or a drink, perhaps? If you're certain of your facts, and if you've really got the goods, Stonecoat, we'll bring in the D.A.
Lucas intentionally left Randy Oglesby out of it. “Yes, sir. We'll be there as soon as we can, sir.” Lucas took down the address, a map of landmarks, actually, and the name of the ranch: the Rocking B.
Nightfall painted the deserted, dust-laden landscape outside Houston where tall cacti stood sentinel to time and comings and goings of men in machines as cars hurtled along the superhighways. Lucas and Meredyth pulled off the Interstate onto narrow County Road 341, occasional houselights like fallen stars here. Small roads led deeper into the desert area west of the city, which had disappeared in the distance behind them like the setting of the moon. Storm clouds scudded about, harmlessly dispersing, but in the distance, great streaking lightning bolts split the darkness with a laser display, like a scalpel tearing at the dark folds of the sky, the world tonight like so much leftover fabric being incised. In the distance, quietly sloping hills lay like sleeping camels, disturbed only by the intermittent light display. The occasional trailer home in the middle of nowhere rose and fell behind them as they drove on toward the Rocking B.
In a moment, they began to see signs for the ranch, fences leading them now, guiding them to the great, wide, tree lined drive. It was thirty minutes out of the city, but it may as well have been days, the place was so remote.
Commander Bryce welcomed them from a brightly lit wraparound porch, the front porch quite a showplace in itself. The house was elegantly done up, rivaling any ranch house in the country, Lucas thought, its warm log frame both richly textured and inviting. Noisy cicadas chirped all around them as they exited Lucas's car. The night air was crisp, a breeze playing its fingers over Lucas's brow and playing a lilting tune on a collection of wind chimes all about the expansive porch. Lucas stared appreciatively at the chimes.
“My wife's collection,” Bryce noted. “She loves the sounds they make. Me, sometimes it drives me nuts.” He gave a full-throated laugh. “Come on inside where we can get comfortable.”
On entering the beautifully kept house, nothing aside from books and newspapers out of place, Lucas was struck by the number of photos lining the walls and each mantel and table, pictures of children and grandchildren.
Meredyth noticed, too, asking Bryce how many grandchildren he had. He laughed, his face beaming. “I stopped counting at sixteen!”
'Then you must have had quite a few children of your own,” she continued with the small talk.
“Seven, two daughters and five sons, but who's counting?
Can I get you two coffee, a drink, anything?”
“We wouldn't want to impose on Mrs. Bryce,” replied Meredyth.
“Who said anything 'bout Mrs. Bryce? No, no, she's off to her sister's place for a week, and as you see, all my children have grown and have families of their own now. I gave them each a parcel of land here, kinda as a bribe, to keep them all nearby, you see. Now, what about that drink?”
“I could use a whiskey, scotch if you have it,” confessed Lucas, looking about, seeing several mounted hunting trophies on the wall, an enormous elk, a Rocky Mountain longhorn goat, and even a buffalo, which Lucas's eyes lingered over.
“Purchased that one,” confessed Bryce, a bit sheepishly. “Against the law to actually kill a buffalo nowadays, you know. Found it at a place that sold all sorts of Indian artifacts and antiques in Carson City, Wyoming. The wife and me, we both thought it would set off the place, give it the kind of rustic look we were looking for.”
There were hawks and stuffed eagles in the corners as well, their long-dead eyes as piercing and sharp in death as in life.
“White wine,” Meredyth suggested for herself.
“Coming right up. Make yourselves at home.”
“Beautiful surroundings,” Meredyth said, taking a seat, but feeling a bit uneasy under the gaze of so many deadeyes.
Lucas nodded and pointed at a Remington painting of several trail-weary soldiers circa 1870 on horseback, just returning from what appeared a failed Indian campaign, one of their number slung across a saddle. He then stepped over to admire Bryce's impressive gun case and collection of rifles. “Invested well, wouldn't you say?”