The Grid (3 page)

- CHAPTER FIVE -

As Sarah touches the handle of the motel room door, the lights flicker off again.

The AC rattles to a stop, and there’s no noise anywhere. Nothing but the ringing in her ears from the Python—lessening bit by bit—and the thump of her heart.

The silence is stronger than the darkness.

A minute or more passes, fear paralyzing her. Finally, she opens the door and steps into the gloom of the hallway.

From the direction of the lobby, raised voices. From the rear exit, nothing.

She walks away from the lobby, purse on one shoulder. She moves with purpose but not fast. Confidence, that’s the key. She has somewhere to go, but she is not afraid.

As the exit draws near, she reaches for her sunglasses, finds them resting against the Python in her purse. She pushes the door open with one hand, slides on the shades with the other.

The sun is fierce, the heat more oppressive than before, especially under the shapeless plastic raincoat. She is grateful not to be wearing the wig, though, and even more grateful to have not seen anyone.

A sense of euphoria washes over her. She’s going to make it.

Then the police car squeals to a stop behind RockyRoad’s pickup, which is still parked about twenty feet from the rear exit of the motel.

Twenty feet from her.

The euphoria disappears. She hesitates for a moment—like any normal person would, she tells herself—and continues walking, heading down the steps that lead to the parking lot. The direction will take her right past the front of the squad car.

There’s no other choice. To deviate now would attract attention. She concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other.

She has nothing to fear. She’s just a traveler, anxious to be on her way. She didn’t even take the time to dry her hair. Just tucked it under a ball cap.

The door to the squad car opens, and a man in a cowboy hat and mirrored sunglasses gets out. A sheriff. He’s wearing jeans and a starched khaki shirt with a gold badge on the breast.

He’s somewhere in his forties. He’s fit, with broad shoulders, muscular arms. Good-looking, too—a thin nose, strong chin.

Despite what she’d left behind in room 139, what she’d . . .
done
in that room, Sarah slows just a little.

From the dark places in her mind, the thoughts come without warning. Images splatter across the screen in her brain like paint flung by a child.

Naked bodies, skin coated in sweat, mattress springs squeaking.

She imagines an encounter with this man.

Sex, an anonymous coupling like the kind advertised on the sites where she arranges her meetings. Afterward, she robs him, a deviation in her usual pattern, which up to now has not allowed for any physical contact with the horndogs.

Those thighs between hers, their lips pressed together as her hands pull on that ass. The Python rests on the nightstand, next to a half-empty bottle of wine.

The images start coming faster, like they always do with a person she’s attracted to—an out-of-kilter blur, a movie reel that’s jumped its sprockets. Flesh against flesh. Tangled bedsheets.

In her imagination, the danger and the sex and the gun all ball up into one throbbing sensation that settles in the pit of her stomach until she feels faint and aroused at the same time.

“Ma’am? You all right?” The sheriff cocks his head.

Sarah realizes he’s talking to her, that’s she’s been daydreaming the whole encounter. The reality is that she’s standing in front of the squad car, sweating, wobbly on her feet.

She takes a deep breath. “I’m fine. The heat, it gets to you when you first walk outside.”

He chuckles, a sound full of warmth and caring. The sound a man might make while standing around a barbecue in his backyard, playing with his kids.

“I grew up around here,” he says. “Every year, I think it’s gonna be different. But it never is.”

She smiles, a small moment between two people who have no other connection except a few seconds of banter about the weather. Then she imagines the sheriff’s warm voice growing cold, whispering in her ear about how hard he is going to fuck her.

Her thighs tremble with pleasure, skin sensitive to the texture of her clothes.

She pushes the thoughts back to the dark corners of her mind. She’s a traveler again, anxious to get home to her family.

She heads to her car. “Take it easy, Sheriff.”

He pinches the brim of the hat with his thumb and forefinger, a gesture reminiscent of her grandfather. “You too, ma’am. Be safe now.”

She strides across the parking lot. The LaCrosse is where she left it, parked by the Dumpster near the property line between the motel and the Walmart.

The interior of the vehicle is as hot as a steam bath.

She cranks the ignition, turns the AC to high, and looks across the parking lot.

The sheriff is standing by the back entrance, staring at her car.

At her.

- CHAPTER SIX -

I was pretty sure Irving Patel had never seen a dead body up close and personal. I based this hypothesis on the fact that as soon as he peered around my shoulder into room 139, he vomited.

I’ve seen a lot of death in my time, the results of natural causes and otherwise.
Lots
of otherwise. What always strikes me is the utter stillness of the deceased.

An anatomically correct doll left lying where some oversized child had dropped it, tired of playing for the day. An empty vessel—the spark that made us more than just a slab of meat never to return.

My deputy’s corpse was sprawled at the foot of the king-sized bed, a bullet hole in his chest. His jeans were unzipped, pulled down around his hips like he was trying to get them off but got stopped.

The room smelled like vomit, blood, urine, and that hot, soapy aroma that comes after someone takes a shower.

I shoved Irving toward the door. “You’re contaminating the crime scene.”

He stumbled to the hallway, wiping his mouth. “What should I do?”

“Wait for me in your office. Don’t do anything until I get there.”

“But—”

“Go.”
I pointed toward the lobby.

He stared at me for a moment, a worried expression on his face, then trotted away.

After he disappeared from view, I called Jerry, relaying the information to him as quickly as possible.

Our deputy had been murdered. There was evidence of drug use. The main suspect was a woman with red hair—age and a more detailed physical description to be determined after I’d secured the crime scene. Jerry started to say something, but I hung up.

My next call was to the Department of Public Safety in Austin, the statewide police agency and parent organization to the venerable Texas Rangers, the special forces of law enforcement.

Peterson County had a population of about twenty-five thousand, not counting the inmates in the penitentiary by the Brazos River.

Like many rural areas, the population was getting smaller every year and couldn’t support the law-enforcement infrastructure that a larger county could. So there were no
CSI
-style crime labs or homicide squads waiting to spring into action. There was only me, my remaining deputies—ten total—and several woefully understaffed police departments in the larger towns of the county.

In cases like this, the protocol was to contact the Texas Rangers, tasked by the DPS to handle crime scenes and murder investigations in areas where the local authorities were unable to proceed, for whatever reason.

I spoke to a man who handed me off to a woman who was the officer on duty at the Texas Rangers’ desk. I gave her my name and title and callback number, as well as the situation. She repeated everything, told me to sit tight. Help was ten minutes out—several DPS officers, the closest resources available.

While I waited, I took photos of the crime scene with my phone, dozens of them.

The deputy’s body. The sleeping area, the bathroom, the short hallway leading to the door. I got several shots of the white powdery residue on the Bible, as well as the Glock, which appeared to be the deputy’s service weapon.

Even though an official photographer would come along later and do exactly the same thing, an extra set wouldn’t hurt.

Nine minutes later, a group of DPS troopers—big burly men in khaki uniforms and polished black boots—marched through the rear door of the motel.

I had one secure room 139 with crime-scene tape and asked the others to start doing door-to-doors. The hotel was mostly vacant, but we had to make sure every avenue was covered.

After that, I went to find Irving.

The manager’s office was behind the front desk, a windowless room about twelve feet by twelve, crammed with a particleboard desk and credenza, several cheap chairs, and a copier.

The air smelled like print toner, stale coffee, and Irving’s aftershave: Old Spice.

“This is a problem.” Irving held his head in his hands, staring at the surface of the desk. “A very, very big problem.”

“Yes it is, Irving. For now, I need everything you’ve got on the person who rented room one three nine.”

He nodded, took several deep breaths, and went to work.

To his credit, he had a lot of information on the unknown woman who’d used the name Mildred Johnson. He had a home address in Austin, her method of securing the room—a prepaid Visa card that could be bought in any grocery store—and a description of her car, a Buick LaCrosse, license plate number 512-AML, the number undoubtedly a fake since the car I’d seen had dealer tags.

I called the DPS again, got the same woman on the Ranger desk, gave her the license plate info. I also told her about the LaCrosse and the person in the sunglasses and Dallas Cowboys ball cap who’d been leaving as I was parking in the rear.

About a minute passed before the woman came back on the line. “That license plate doesn’t exist.”

There was a shocker.

“Can you check an address for me?” I recited the information that the woman had given to Irving Patel. A house on Lamar Boulevard, a street that ran through much of central Austin.

She stayed on the line this time, keyboard clacking in the background. “That’s not a residence; looks like a vacant lot.” More keyboard noises. “You have a TDL?”

I glanced at Irving. “What about her driver’s license?”

Irving looked away. He stared at a picture on the far wall, a dark-skinned woman in a sari standing behind several children, Irving next to her.

I said to the Ranger, “Let’s do a BOLO on a late-model Buick LaCrosse, color gray, dealer tags. Female driver between thirty and forty years of age. Caucasian, five foot six. Wearing a Dallas Cowboys ball cap and oversized sunglasses.”

The Texas Ranger read it all back to me, while Irving rubbed his head with one hand, looking like he was going to be sick again.

I ended the call.

Irving stared at the picture of his family. “She did not have a driver’s license.”

“What about an ID card?”

A moment of silence.

Then he said, “She told me her purse had been stolen.”

“Her wallet or her purse?” I remembered the woman in the ball cap. She’d been carrying a large handbag.

“Her wallet, not her purse. That is what she said.”

“And you let her check in without a valid ID?”

Irving crossed his arms. “It was late at night. I took pity on her. She seemed nice and harmless.”

Not getting a photo ID was a big no-no according to franchise rules, state law, and common sense.

“I’m not blaming you, Irving. I just need to know the facts.”

He nodded, a glum look on his face.

Sirens sounded outside. More troopers were arriving, hopefully a medical examiner from Waco, too.

“The guy that died,” I said. “He worked for me. For what it’s worth, he was going to come to a bad end one way or the other. Either here or in some other motel or bar.”

My cell rang, a number I didn’t recognize, area code Dallas. I sent the call to voice mail.

“I shall be fired, of course,” Irving said. “My employer is my uncle. I have caused a rift in the family, dishonored the name Patel. This is very, very bad.”

“Nobody’s getting fired.” I shook my head. “Have your uncle call me. I’ll tell him Mildred gave you a fake ID.”

Irving looked up, a faint expression of hope on his face. “Thank you, Sheriff. Thank you very much.”

“In the meantime, get me a list of every woman who’s checked in here in the past week.” I told him briefly about the person in the Cowboys cap.

He nodded, started tapping on a keyboard.

Then his desk phone rang. He stared at it for a moment before answering. His expression went from fearful to confused. He pressed the receiver to his chest and looked at me.

“It’s for you.”

My cell buzzed; Jerry’s number appeared on the screen. I sent him to voice mail, too.

Irving said, “Do you know a man named Price Anderson?”

A thousand lifetimes ago, an alley in Kuwait City filled with dust and heat and the stench of rotting flesh. Price Anderson had saved my life.

Irving pointed to the phone. “He needs to talk to you.”

An insurgent with an AK-47, barely old enough to shave. The muzzle of the rifle pointed at my face.

The end of everything I’d ever been or ever would be, peering into my eyes.

Price Anderson fired at the insurgent, and I was still alive.

The memories were strong. The smell of the alley filled my nose.

Irving said, “Sheriff Cantrell? Are you all right?”