Blanco County 04 - Guilt Trip (3 page)

The rancher didn’t smirk or leer or make sophomoric comments, as Herzog expected, but rather seemed to be contemplating the implications. “Not your wife?” he asked.

“Uh, no.” It pained Herzog deeply to admit that to another human being.

Hamm nodded as if he understood completely. “Just one woman?”

Herzog emitted an exasperated breath. “Well, yeah, what else?”
Jesus, what does this guy take me for?

Hamm grinned, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “Some guys, you know, they like a coupla gals at a time. You oughta try it.”

Herzog fought hard not to form a mental picture of Chuck Hamm in a threesome. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no, it was only one.” He was already revealing far more than he had intended to.

“And what? They caught you coming out of a hotel room? Playing a little grab-ass at her car door?”

Herzog closed his eyes and said, “It’s worse than that.”

Hamm laughed unexpectedly, a big booming rumble that made Herzog’s cheek twitch. “Shit, don’t tell me. Are you nekkid in the pictures, Herzog? Is that it?”

Nearly,
Herzog thought. “I…I fail to see why that’s funny.”

Hamm continued in a merry chuckle, and Herzog was beginning to get angry.

Hamm said, “Hell, son, when you decided to have yourself a scandal, you dove in head first, huh? Just went straight for the big leagues.”

Herzog was not amused.
If I ever get out of this,
he swore to himself,
I’ll never again do business with a man like Chuck Hamm. I don’t care how large his campaign contributions are.

The rancher finally regained his composure. “Tell me this. Was she a hooker?”

Now Herzog had to wonder if Hamm was merely having a little fun at his expense. “No, she was
not
a prostitute.”

“Porn star? Titty dancer?”

Herzog refused to dignify that line of questioning with an answer.

A look of sudden panic creased Hamm’s leathery face, and he set his bourbon glass down deliberately. “For fuck’s sake, we are talking about a white woman, ain’t we?”

Herzog wanted to lecture Hamm on the racist undertones of that remark, but he simply nodded instead.

“Well, Christ, why’re you getting so damn uptight?” Hamm asked. “She sounds like a perfect angel.”

THERE’S AN OLD saying in Texas: If you don’t like the weather, just hang around a few minutes; it’ll change. And while Texas weather is notorious for its unpredictability, the natives know that its sheer intensity is a force to be reckoned with, as well.

The infamous Galveston hurricane of 1900 decimated the island and took with it more than eight thousand lives—the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Texas is plagued by more tornadoes than any other state, and in one year alone, 1967, suffered through 232, more than half of those coming in a single month. In the early fifties, the state was gripped by a drought so severe and unrelenting, most of Texas was classified as a disaster area. When it finally ended, the pendulum swung wildly in the other direction and the rains came hard.

Tucked between the state’s coastal plains and the southern rim of the Edwards Plateau is the Hill Country, with its limestone and granite peaks, box canyons, and spring-fed rivers and creeks. The area includes Blanco County, and all of it is prone to flash flooding, more so in the springtime than other times of the year.

So when John Marlin woke in the middle of the night to the heavy roar of rain on his metal roof, he was naturally concerned. It had been pouring all evening—which had been a boon to the firefighters at Lucas Burnette’s house—but now it was really coming down. The kind of storm that can quickly swell waterways to three or four times their normal width.

Marlin’s dog, Geist, a pit bull who was terrified of thunderstorms, had sought refuge under the bed hours ago. Marlin could hear her panting nervously.

Marlin flipped his bedroom TV to the weather radar channel and saw a massive storm stretching from Waco to Uvalde, shaped like a boomerang as it struggled to move eastward. The problem was, this damn storm was lingering in place, rebuilding upon itself. For Marlin, this was cause for alarm.

In addition to enforcing hunting and fishing laws, game wardens are often tasked with leading water-rescue and victim-recovery operations on Texas lakes and waterways.

And Marlin had been on the job long enough to know: The water would rise, and somewhere in the county, for some reason, some half-wit would try to drive through it.

“Think we oughta chance it?” Red O’Brien asked, staring through the windshield of his old Ford truck. The wipers were having a tough time keeping up with the amount of rain coming down. Hell, his headlights could hardly penetrate the curtain of water.

His longtime friend and poaching partner, Billy Don Craddock, gave him a look. “You plumb outta your mind? This ain’t no submarine you’re driving. The road’s gotta be four feet under.”

That’s about what Red had expected. Billy Don was a huge, scary-looking ol’ boy, but he had no gumption at all. Never willing to take risks.

“I’ll just back it up and get a running start,” Red offered. “We’ll scoot across like we’re on damn water skis.”

“Yeah, water skis made from two tons of steel.”

Red tried to reason with him. “Planes weigh a bunch, too, but they can fly, can’t they? Hell, the principle’s the same here. There’s all kinds of complicated formulas and variances involved, but I’m telling you, it would work. I saw something just like it in
Popular Mechanics.”

“Include me out.”

At this point, Red was thinking he ought to leave Billy Don behind to fend for himself. “You know what’s gonna happen if we get caught again?” he asked.

Billy Don didn’t answer.

“Do ya?” Red repeated.

“No, what?”

Red snorted. “Well, now, I ain’t exactly sure, but it won’t be pretty, I’ll tell ya that much.”

“I say we stay right here till the river goes down. If that means we gotta ditch them hogs later, well, we’ll just ditch the damn things.”

Red was stunned. That was crazy talk, plain and simple. Here they’d just spent the better part of the night poaching wild pigs, popping them behind the ear with a quiet little .222, and now Billy Don was prepared to just leave them all behind.

“You know how much time I spent putting this operation together?” Red was angry, feeling unappreciated. Why, he had even bought a new set of bolt cutters for this little excursion. Earlier in the day, he’d overheard a rancher at the cafe saying he’d be spending the night in Austin—and when God lays an opportunity like that at your feet, you don’t let it pass you by. If they could just get off the damn ranch, they’d have enough pork to last a year. But now the weather had gone and made things all complicated. Red could never get a break.

The thing that made him nervous was, they didn’t know when the rancher would be back. Might be first thing in the morning. By the time the water dropped, the rancher might be waiting on the other side, wondering who in the hell was on his ranch.

Both men sat in silence, Red trying to find something decent on the radio. He was wishing his eight-track player still worked.

After a few minutes, Billy Don said, “Lord, it is
raining.
I mean it is really coming down.”

“I can see that, Al Roker.”

“Red, if I was ever drownt, would you give me mouth-to-mouth?”

“Jeez, you gotta be kidding.” The dumb questions this guy asked. It gave Red the heebie-jeebies, the thought of his lips anywhere near Billy Don’s cavernous mouth.

“Some kinda friend you are,” Billy Don huffed.

“Hell, Billy Don, half the time your breath smells like Vienna sausages.”

“On account of that, you’d just let me die?”

“Can you think of a better reason?” Red was tired of this conversation already. He couldn’t imagine sitting here all night. “Do me a favor, will ya? Just shine the spotlight down there and let’s get a good look. See what we’re dealing with.”

“I think that’s a fine idea,” Billy Don grumbled, rolling down his window, letting the rain gush in. “Then you’ll ree-lize what kinda fruitcake you are.”

He grabbed the spotlight, with its intense million-candlepower beam, and stuck his massive arm out the window. The light cut a swath through the rain—and the men saw that the narrow, shallow river they had crossed earlier was now a raging torrent of whitewater. The surface was littered with tree limbs and branches and other debris. Red even saw a cow carcass whiz past.

“There now, you happy?” Billy Don hollered, his face soaked with rainwater.

As Billy Don pulled the spotlight back into the window, Red saw something else floating downstream. Just a quick glimpse—but this particular item was so large it convinced Red, absolutely and without question, to stay on high ground. Billy Don was too busy glaring at Red to have seen it.

“Shine it downstream, Billy Don!”

“What?”

“Right there!”

Billy Don swung the spotlight to his right, and then he saw it, too. The object looked so odd and out of place, getting pushed along by millions of gallons of rushing water, that neither man spoke for a moment.

“Jesus, ain’t that a Ford Explorer?” Billy Don finally said with awe.

“Yep,” Red replied. “Eddie Bauer edition, if I ain’t mistaken.”

“We ran the plate,” Senior Deputy Bill Tatum said the next morning. “Owner’s name is Vance Scofield.” Behind him, a group of deputies and rescue volunteers were donning rain gear, preparing for a search. Several had brought four-wheelers, and a couple of volunteers were on horseback. Across the river, a similar crowd had gathered, awaiting instructions via handheld radio. The TV news crews hadn’t shown up yet, but it was only a matter of time.

“That’s Phil Colby’s neighbor,” Marlin replied. Scofield was a local real estate agent who owned a small ranch to the east of Colby’s place.

Tatum snapped his fingers. “I thought I knew the name. The Wallhangers Club. The big lawsuit.”

Marlin nodded as he studied the black SUV beached on the bank of the Pedernales River, half a mile down from the Mucho Loco subdivision. The Explorer was lying on its side, every window broken, the interior filled with muck and sediment.

It was ten o’clock Monday morning. Twenty minutes earlier—just as Marlin had decided that the rainfall wasn’t going to be a problem after all—he had received a phone call from the dispatcher.
Vehicle in the river, John.

The bulk of the storm had moved on an hour ago, but it was raining lightly, and most of the creeks and river crossings in Blanco County were still impassable. The water was high and moving fast, though beginning to recede. The phone call to the sheriff’s department had come in from a landowner who had walked down to the river to see how high it had risen.

Tatum said, “Ernie drove the long way around to Scofield’s place, but nobody was home. From what we can gather, he lives by himself. We got hold of his father, but he wasn’t any help. Couldn’t remember when he’d seen Scofield last. About half senile, I think. No other family members.”

“The father lives alone?”

“Yeah
.
He’s got a nurse that checks on him. She couldn’t tell us anything, either.”

“What about Scofield’s friends?”

“We’re working on it.”

Marlin stepped over to his truck and began removing several items from the backseat of the extended cab. A rain poncho, neon orange surveyor’s tape, binoculars, a small camera. Tatum stayed with him, waiting for Marlin to form a plan. As he gathered his equipment, Marlin asked, “What’s the latest on Lucas?”

“The state fire marshal is sending a team to overhaul the house tomorrow,” Tatum said, referring to the slow, methodical removal of debris during an investigation. “But no sign of Lucas. None of his friends or family have a line on him. Nicole is pulling his phone records.”

Nicole Brooks, the new deputy, had joined the department just six weeks ago, coming from the Mason County sheriff’s office. She’d replaced Rachel Cowan, who had signed on with the Austin police department. Cowan had been an outstanding deputy, and the sheriff, Bobby Garza, had tried to convince her to stay. But Cowan had an interest in crimes involving computers and the Internet, and that sort of thing was seldom seen in Blanco County. Marlin could understand Rachel’s decision; he considered the Austin police force to be one of the finest in the nation. Cowan had called Garza just last week, excited, describing how her unit had nailed a pedophile trolling for teens online. They were all happy for her.

The good news was, Brooks had stepped right in and filled the void seamlessly. She was knowledgeable and friendly, excellent at dealing with the public, worked well with the other deputies. A great addition to the department. But there was one thing about Nicole Brooks that could have been a problem, especially among a sheriff’s staff that was largely male. She was gorgeous. In a double-take kind of way. Thick auburn hair that she wore in a braid while on patrol, curves that her khaki uniform couldn’t quite conceal. The sort of looks that made the locals crack jokes about getting speeding tickets on purpose. So far, the other deputies, to their credit, had behaved like gentlemen. Marlin had heard no improper remarks, no locker-room innuendo. It was like ignoring an elephant in the coffee room.

“So we still don’t know if he was in there or not?” Marlin asked, referring to Lucas.

“Nope.” Tatum lowered his voice. “It’s looking like arson, John. Ernie said he smelled gas real strong when he first got there. And some of the guys smelled ammonia.”

“You’re kidding me. As in
anhydrous?”

“Yeah.” Tatum leaned in closer. “We’re thinking he was running a lab.”

Marlin shook his head in disgust.
That damn Lucas.
“Well, that’s just great.” He had more questions, but they’d have to wait. It wasn’t his case, anyway.

Marlin closed the truck door and nodded toward the river. “No chance of getting out on that water.” He had brought a small flat-bottomed outboard on a trailer, but navigating the river right now was just short of impossible. He’d be swamped in seconds.

“I don’t guess so,” Tatum said.

“We’ll treat it as a rescue,” Marlin said quietly, “but at this point, I think we’re looking at recovery.”

Tatum nodded.

It was obvious to both men: Given the conditions, they’d likely be searching for a body rather than a survivor. But they could be wrong. Scofield could be stumbling along the banks, disoriented, or in the middle of the river, clinging to a tree.

Marlin lifted his handheld unit. “Ernie?”

“I’m here.”

Turpin was now on the other side of the river after visiting Scofield’s home.

“Here’s how we’ll tackle this thing. I want your group to split into two smaller groups. One searches upstream, one downstream. The nearest crossing is the low-water bridge into Mucho Loco, and that’s the same road to Scofield’s ranch. For the time being, well assume that’s where the SUV went in. So your upstream searchers don’t need to look any further than that. Tell everyone to work in pairs—no solo efforts. Tell ‘em to find a buddy and stick with him. If anyone sees something in the water, tell ‘em not to grab it unless they can reach it from the bank. I want everyone clear on that. Nobody is to enter the water. Just mark the spot. Are you with me?”

“Ten-four.”

Marlin continued. “We’ve got a DPS chopper coming, but it’ll be an hour or so. We don’t know how many people were in the vehicle, and we don’t know when it happened. Any questions?”

“No, we’re all set, John.”

“Let’s get after it.”

Marlin and Tatum approached the crowd on their side of the river. Marlin recognized most of the faces—chiefly lifelong county residents, but a handful of newcomers as well, each of them waiting eagerly for instructions. The crowd quieted down as Marlin and Tatum neared.

Marlin spoke loudly. “Okay, folks, here’s what we’re gonna do.”

“I suppose y’all have heard about Scofield,” Chuck Hamm said.

It was seven in the evening. He was seated behind the desk in his den, a generous glass of Crown Royal in front of him. Filling the room—some seated, some standing—were the other seven board members of the Wallhangers Club. All of the men were Blanco County residents, and they had gathered because Hamm, the club’s president, had called an emergency meeting.