“Before Pete Larsen was killed?” April asked him.
Kinsky froze, stared at her with horror in his eyes. “You don’t think…”
Nodding, April said, “And Joe Tenny, too.”
“Oh my god,” Kinsky groaned.
The sheriff looked very interested. “Well, was it before those deaths or afterward?”
“After,” Kinsky said immediately. “I’m sure it was after. I would’ve never had anything to do with him if I thought… I mean, I wouldn’t. I just wouldn’t.” He sank his head in his hands. April thought he was going to cry.
Eamons looked tired when she arrived, having driven halfway to Houston and back again. She asked to see April alone.
“Are you okay?” the FBI agent asked, once the sheriff had led Kinsky and his deputies out of the room.
“I’m all right,” April said. “I was sure scared, though, until the police showed up:”
“That was damned smart of you, turning on your cell phone. I couldn’t hear much, but it was enough for me to call the sheriff’s office and turn around and head back here.”
“You might have saved our lives.”
Agent Chavez arrived around two A.M. Kinsky was in the next room, still babbling his story to a pair of deputies and a stenographer. From what April could determine from the sheriff, Roberto had remained silent as a clam.
“Roberto Rodriguez. He’s got a rap sheet in California,” the sheriff told Chavez. “But he’s served his time and he’s clean now. There’s really nothing we can hold him on, except Kinsky’s claim that he broke into his apartment and held him and Miss Simmonds, here, against their will. Any two-cent lawyer’ll get him out on bail soon’s the county court opens in the morning.”
Chavez turned to April. “Did he break into the apartment?”
Glancing at Eamons, April nodded. “You can check the front door. The lock’s broken.”
The sheriff nodded.
“Let me talk to the man,” Chavez said to the sheriff. “Maybe he’ll say more in Spanish.”
“Hasn’t said diddly-squat in English. Hasn’t even asked for a lawyer.”
Before Chavez could leave the room, April said, “He was calling somebody overseas. He tried several times, and whoever he talked to said the person would call him back.”
The sheriff looked at Chavez. “We got his cell phone in my office, along with everything else in his pockets.”
They headed for the sheriff’s office, with April and Eamons trailing behind. The contents of Roberto’s pockets were strewn on the sheriff’s desk: a thin wad of folding money, some change, keys, a pack of tissues, a Swiss army knife. And the cell phone.
Sweeping the phone up from his desk, the sheriff asked the deputy sitting just outside his office, “Has this thing gone off?”
“Yes, sir, it surely did. ’Bout an hour ago.”
“You answered it?”
“Yes, sir, I surely did.”
“And?”
“Some foreign fella, sounded like. I asked him who he was and he hung up.”
The sheriff’s face flared into an angry red, but Chavez laid a hand on his shoulder. “We can trace it, I think.”
“An overseas call?”
Chavez said quietly, “I think so. With a little luck.”
Lamar, Texas
As dawn was breaking, April dozed in Eamons’s car while the FBI agent drove her back to her place. Once they were parked behind the apartment building, April roused herself.
“I’ve got to get to the office,” she said drowsily. It took her two tries to get out of the car.
Eamons slipped an arm around her waist and led her into the building. “You go get yourself some sleep. You’ve been through a lot Forget the office for today.”
“But Dan—”
“I’ll phone Dan,” Eamons insisted as they stepped into the empty elevator. “You get some sleep. That’s an order.”
April smiled weakly at the FBI agent Eamons saw her to her front door, hesitated a moment, then went back downstairs to the parking lot. Chavez had parked his gleaming black Chrysler next to her rental and was sitting on its hood, waiting for her. Once he saw her, he got down and ducked back into his car. Eamons opened the passenger-side door and slipped in beside him.
“Still smells new,” she said.
Chavez smiled at her. “This is the first time I’ve driven her out of the Houston metro area. Didn’t have time to requisition an agency car.”
“You can put in for mileage.”
“Yeah.” Chavez glanced up at the apartment building. “She okay?”
“I think so. She was pretty scared by that Rodriguez character, and she’s been up all night—”
“Who hasn’t?”
Eamons nodded, a little groggily. “Yeah, some sleep would be a good idea.”
“So what have we got here?” Chavez asked.
“You get anything out of Rodriguez?”
“Nada. He wound up asking for a lawyer.”
“What about that phone call from overseas?”
“The office is working on it.”
Yawning, Eamons asked, “So where do we stand?”
“Rodriguez will be arraigned for breaking and entering, maybe assault, too, as soon as the county court opens. He’ll be out on bail thirty seconds later.”
“We should put a tail on him. Monitor his phone calls, too. He’s our only link to anything.”
“Anything?” Chavez snorted. “What anything? All we’ve got on him is smoke and mirrors. Not a shred of proof.”
“But if we keep a watch on him he’ll lead us to whoever killed those two men and sabotaged Astro’s plane.”
“Try telling that to the boss.”
“We can’t let him get away! He’s our only lead.”
Chavez looked away from her. “The office isn’t going to pay for a watch on him, not unless we can connect him to the rest of it.”
“But we can’t connect him to anything until we learn more about him: who he’s talking to, who he’s working for.”
“Catch-22,” Chavez said, with some distaste.
“I’ll tail him,” Eamons said. “He hasn’t seen me.”
Chavez started to shake his head. Eamons said stubbornly, “If the office won’t pay for it, then I’ll take my vacation time.”
“And do it without backup, without electronic surveillance? Who d’you think you are, James Bond?”
Eamons slumped down in the car seat. Chavez thought she looked like a disappointed kid.
“Listen,” he said to her, “we know Rodriguez works for a limo service. In Houston. We can check their trip logs and see who he’s been driving. That might give us something.”
“Check his phone calls, too,” Eamons said grudgingly. “We can do that from the office.”
Nodding, Chavez turned on the ignition. The Chrysler purred to life. “Let’s turn your rental in. Then I’ll drive you back to Houston.”
“Aren’t you sleepy?”
“You sleep and I’ll drive. After a couple hours we’ll switch off.”
Eamons nodded. He’s a good partner, she thought Nacho is smart and dependable. Too damned cautious, but he’s got a family to worry about. I can thumb my nose at the suits upstairs if I have to. He won’t But that’s okay. He can play organization man and I’m the loose cannon. We make a good team.
Senator Thornton scrupulously avoided using taxpayers’ money for her private purposes. Hiring a private jet and pilot to fly to Oklahoma cost a small fortune, but she paid for it with her own credit card. As soon as she got to the ranch she phoned the airstrip and asked for the pilot who usually flew her to Austin.
He showed up at the house half an hour later, while Jane was up in her room, using her desktop computer to check on the afternoon’s rollcall votes in the Senate. She had paired her vote with Bob Quill’s, so as far as the official record was concerned, she was present and voting.