An Absence of Principal (26 page)

“I decided I would stop at nothing to get it all back,” Trask said.

CHAPTER 21
 

F
rom his office in downtown Fort Worth, Pierce Wallace picked up the phone and with a couple of words, increased his stock riches threefold. Wall Street was up, particularly tech stocks, and news of the death of an icon of the tech world would, while momentarily causing a letdown in the price of a share, bullet upward. The now late CEO of the world’s most powerful tech stock left behind a gift for his adoring public. Pierce knew about the announcement hours before it came. When news of his passing and the subsequent invention that would revolutionize smart phones was announced, shares skyrocketed.

Wallace had acquired three thousand shares of the stock the day before, when he first knew the CEO was on his death bed, and an additional five thousand shares when a late night phone call from an always reliable source told him about the announcement that would be on the evening news of the CEO’s death.

When Tuesday came, Wallace’s Wall Street portfolio had blown through the roof, temporarily making him one of the richest men in Fort Worth. Certainly the most reviled of Fort Worth’s wealthy.

Pierce Wallace considered his Wall Street profits his play money, and with the windfall he recorded upon news of the untimely passing of an American technology genius, he would be able to do some real psychological damage to the object of his latest game.

Pierce and Alex had been married five years and even had a child together before Alex had decided she would take her cocaine discovery journey. When she fool heartedly left her daughter and husband, Pierce resented her for the decision. They remained married simply because a divorce was something Alex didn’t have time for before she left the country, and Pierce, too busy to play daddy, left their daughter with Alex’s mother in Dallas. Alex made repeated attempts to call Pierce in the early stages, but after six weeks worth of nothing but voice mails, she gave up any attempt at contacting him. She would just deal with him, and their crumbling relationship, when she was finished with her work.

When Alex’s calls stopped, what little feeling and caring Pierce had had for her disappeared completely. Even though he had never picked up the phone to talk to Alex, it had at least felt like she had a shred of decency left in her; maybe they still had a chance to save their marriage? But when her calls stopped, Wallace’s rules changed.

Pierce had always teetered on the edge of decency and integrity even before the marriage went sour. Through the years he would become involved in integrity-pushing plans that bordered on schemes. They called him “The Boa” behind his back in Fort Worth financial circles, because he would stop at nothing to slither his way up whatever ladder was nearby and squeeze the life out of whomever was in the way. He didn’t care who he had to kiss to get there if it meant more power, and, ultimately, more money.

Pierce had a secretary and an advisor he kept at arm’s length; a money man who would fill him in on insider secrets. He paid the man well. McTeague was a man of British ancestry, and he could smell a deal a mile away. Pierce would give him a high percentage of every good stock transaction he made possible.

When his marriage went bad, Pierce became the kind of ruthless villain everyone in his inner sanctum knew he was capable of being.

It was a musty day in September in Fort Worth with the wind kicking up not just the dirt that was blowing in from West Texas, but the cow manure that was ever present in Fort Worth.

“Amigo, que pasa?”
Pierce spoke into his cell phone and then paused as the voice on the other end spoke to him. “Good, good news. You’ve just earned your Christmas bonus for the year, my good man.”

Sinister laughter filled the office as Pierce listened to the latest escapades of his men on the border.

The man driving the truck carrying Alex Wallace that would cross the border into the United States turned his Bluetooth on. He was slightly hearing impaired, and trying to make out what Pierce was telling him through the tinny reception of a cell phone in the middle of the Chihuahuan borderlands was difficult. He could make no mistake on this part of the trip. He knew that.

“Simple,” Pierce said. “I want the body. Drive across our friendly border checkpoint west of Juarez, put a bullet or two in her and push her out the door at mile marker 57, two miles outside of Tornillo. That’s my ranchland, amigo, you remember? I want her body picked over by the vultures while it rests on my land.
Comprende, amigo?”

“Si, senor
,” the Mexican man said. He was nervous. Sweating. Shaking.

“Oh, and Manuel,” Pierce added. “You screw this one up, my man, and you won’t be needing a Christmas bonus. I’ll be spending that money on a pine box for you.
Comprende, amigo?”

Manuel shook his head nervously, so scared he didn’t realize a head nod didn’t communicate well over a Bluetooth.

“You got that, man?” Pierce repeated.

“Si, senor
,” Jamie said.

Alex had regained consciousness in the back of the truck in time to hear the conversation between her captor –
was there one or two this time?
– and her husband about being rescued. The uncertainty of whether it was his voice was completely removed when she heard
Comprende, senor
in his lousy and condescending Spanish accent. He had said it to any number of business acquaintances that she knew about in Fort Worth, where he frequently conducted business over the phone from their upscale, two-million-dollar Fossil Creek mansion. Pierce had used the phrase flippantly, sarcastically. When she heard his tone over her captor’s Bluetooth it not only removed all doubt, it also answered plenty of questions.

It had become clear to Alex that the farther she went into her journey, the mysterious presence that had at first seemed to help her had became less helpful and more dangerous. It had seemed to start when she had been raped repeatedly in the boxcar rolling across the interior of Colombia. She realized she was no longer being accompanied by a guardian angel but by a devilish force who cared nothing about her well being, yet didn’t quite want her dead yet. The presence that accompanied her through the journey knew every step she took. And she was just now beginning to understand it was Pierce.

Alex had always been aware of, and even impressed by, the power her husband wielded. She considered herself equally adept at information procurement, but despite her position with DEA, she was never able to crack through and learn all there was to know about her husband and his standing. It had always bothered her. She knew there was something not right about him. She felt that way even at the height of the romance in their marriage. Now she wondered if there had ever been, or if he had married just to make inroads into the narco community in Northern Mexico.

She screamed inside knowing she couldn’t make a discernible sound over the noise of the grinding transmission of the antique truck that rolled her closer and closer to her death. She began to cry as her thoughts turned to Carly. She suddenly found herself consumed with the thought of her daughter’s well being — and the sudden thought that danger was very near.

Was Carly even alive now? Or had Pierce ordered some amoral narco-terrorist to kill her and push her out into the desert, too? Nothing was impossible with Pierce, she knew.

Alex wiped the tears from her eyes, realizing she was running out of time. In the dim, almost non-existent light, her eyes fixed on a box in the far corner of the truck. It was the size of box used to carry whiskey by the case. She crawled across the truck and pulled out her key chain, turning on the pen light she always carried. Stamped on the side,
La Familia de Puente,
Aguileres, Argentina.

Alex opened the lid. Inside she found two kilograms of top-shelf South American cocaine.

The bastard was probably watching her every move right now.

When Doggett paused in his confession, Trask stepped out and found Midkiff. The prosecutor’s office would need to listen to all that was coming. Midkiff slid in the door and sat down at the only remaining metal chair in the room. He knew who Doggett was, but otherwise had no clue about what he was doing here or why he had been called in.

“That was money that belonged to my kids for their education,” Doggett continued, spilling everything to Trask, Nail, the sheriff, and now Midkiff in the interrogation room. “I had to get it back, and I didn’t care how.”

“So, what’d you do Ben?”

“I hooked up with a kid, Coogan something,” Ben remembered. “He’d been a student of mine several years earlier. He was always so stoned I figured he wouldn’t remember me. I’d been following his exploits in the newspaper. He’d been a big star football player at high school, but after graduation he just gave up on any hope of a future and buried himself in the drug world. I knew he could get his hands on some good stuff, and I knew he could get rid of it, turn a profit for me, and help get me out of debt.”

The sheriff and Trask looked at each other. If Doggett didn’t kill Walker, he at least set up a chain of events that led to his death.

“I figured if I stiffed his supplier it would come back on Coogan, not me. I’d tell Coogan to keep his mouth shut or it would be bad. I’d just use the money to get back on my feet and everything would go away. I’d get my life back, pay all the online dealers back, and everything would get back to normal. I figured all I needed was a little time between what had happened and when I could sit back and enjoy being named Administrator of the Year. I never really had an opportunity to enjoy all that. All this started right about the same time. I was sick about it.”

“That’s a real shame, Mr. Doggett,” Midkiff said suddenly. “Now, suppose you tell us what all you know about the death of Junior Walker.”

Doggett didn’t immediately answer, but he knew there was only one thing he could say for sure.

“The only thing —
only
thing — I know for sure is that Tony had nothing to do with it.”

“But you don’t know Junior Walker?

“No,” Doggett said.

“Then how come you’re so sure that Nail didn’t do it?”

“I’ve known Tony a long time. Long time. He is one of the most sincere people I’ve ever known in my life. They say we’re all capable of going bad and in a moment of passion taking another life. Not Tony. No way.”

Nail was trying without much success to keep his emotions bottled up inside during the questioning of his former boss. Whatever emotions he had inside wanted out. All of them at the same time. Mostly he was angry. As angry as he had ever been at another human being for putting him through this.

“You should release this man right now,” Doggett said.

“But why implicate him if you knew he was innocent, Mr. Doggett?” Trask asked.

“I knew Tony had had some drug issues in his past,” Doggett said. “I was desperate to get out from under the suspicion of murder. I knew coming clean like this today everything would point to me. But I didn’t kill him. Neither did Tony.”

Doggett took a breath and collected his thoughts.

“I knew Tony didn’t make enough money to afford himself a decent defense attorney. He didn’t have enough connections in the community to get him adequate representation. I was jealous of him. He had his life together. The kids loved him. He had God. And he didn’t seem to have any problems in life. My life was blowing up round me.”

“So, you thought you would give Tony some trouble, just because he didn’t have any?” Trask asked, incredulously. “Model citizen, you.”

“I wasn’t thinking right,” Doggett said. “I was wrong.”

“Did you kill Junior Walker?” Midkiff asked.

“No. I told you I don’t even know who Junior Walker is aside from what I read about him in the newspaper.”

“Because your actions would certainly point to a man who was trying to frame someone else for his own crime. You do know that’s what this looks like don’t you, Mr. Doggett?”

“I do,” Doggett said.

“What kind of car do you drive, Mr. Doggett?” the sheriff suddenly chimed in.

“Silver Honda Accord, 2008,” Doggett said.

“You do know that a silver Honda was seen driving away from the scene of the crime on the night of Junior Walker’s murder. A silver Honda, just like Tony Nail’s silver Honda?”

“I … no, I didn’t know that,” Doggett stumbled.

“Mr. Doggett, what you are telling us here today should be enough for a mistrial but it sure doesn’t do much for your own freedom,” the sheriff said.

“I had nothing to do with this murder, sheriff. I assure you. I am telling you this today only to make sure everyone knows Tony Nail is not responsible.”

“Mr. Doggett, I’m afraid I’m going to have to place you under arrest for the murder of Junior Walker,” the sheriff said.

“But I didn’t do it,” Doggett pleaded.

“Come with me, Ben,” the sheriff insisted.

Doggett was led away. He went without incident but he continued to be insistent of his own innocence. So much had gone wrong over the last six months of his life that he only wanted to do whatever was necessary to restore his reputation. If that meant spending a few days in jail while authorities sorted out who the real killer was, Ben Doggett supposed he could handle that.