An Absence of Principal (29 page)

“Alex, your story, leaving your daughter, your husband, your life, to chase some cocaine around the most dangerous parts of the world, only to end up in my office to help me in a case that it’s increasingly apparent that you knew about all along … I’m having some trouble with all this. I hope you can clear up my confusion.”

“My husband is a bad man, Garrison. And I don’t blame you for having suspicions about me,” Alex said, holding up the cell phone for Trask to see. “He just texted me on this phone that I guess he had someone leave when my apartment was broken into. Now I know why he left it. He knew I would be without one, if by chance I survived, but he still wanted to have contact with me.”

Garrison had by now become as skeptical as he could be.

“He’s taken our daughter to one of his ranch estates.
El Bolero
, he calls it. It’s in Taylor County somewhere near Abilene. When I get back, I’ll explain everything to you. I’m not sure if everything is clear to me even, but I will do my best to sort this all out for you and for the authorities.”

Alex was shaking as she gave Trask the information. She had barely been back in Midland for an hour.

“We have a lot of resources available to us. Whatever you need—”

Trask’s cell phone rang and he looked down to see the call was coming from Judge Halfmann’s office.

“I have to take this, hold on; we’ll figure this out,” he turned to the phone. “Hello?”

“Garrison, Judge Halfmann here,” he said. “Just got a phone call from Midland police. They just found a suicide note in Coogan Goodley’s apartment.”

CHAPTER 25
 

“W
e have to get some law enforcement help to Taylor County. Fast,” Trask said, the note of urgency in his voice obvious.

“What do you have for me?” Sheriff Trainor asked.

“Alex just got a phone call,” Trask said. “Pierce Wallace has taken their daughter to one of his ranch houses, a place they named
El Bolero
, in Taylor County. She didn’t say any more, just left. I’m sure she’s headed there now.”

“I’ll make a couple of calls, see if we can find out where Wallace’s place is. That’s big country. Lots of ranchers. But good law enforcement people. They’ll know something.”

Two hours later, Alex pulled off the Anson Highway north of Abilene and made the 15-mile trek down the dirt road to
El Bolero
. It was as remote a location as anything she had seen this side of the border. That’s the way Pierce wanted it. Alex figured the farther out he thought he was, the longer it would take law enforcement to find him. It would give him that much more time to fortify his surroundings in case of a threat.

She shut the car door and walked to the front of the house slowly. Alone. Just like Pierce had demanded in his text. The one he sent with the video of Carly being loaded inside one of his helicopters.

Suddenly, the front door flew open and out ran her daughter.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” the girl screamed. It had been too long since the two had seen each other.

Pierce followed the little girl out the door. He did not exhibit nearly the same level of excitement when he saw Alex. The look on his face said it all.

“Welcome,” he said, bitterness hanging from his voice. “Please, come in.”

Alex thought momentarily about turning and running away with her Carly and driving to safety. The two of them could be in the car in seconds. But Alex knew safety wasn’t that easy. Pierce was probably armed and he had the place covered with his narco-terrorist killers who were trained down on her, awaiting their boss’s nod. The only choice with which she was left was to go inside the house as he welcomed her.

It just appeared that Pierce was the only other person at
El Bolero
that day. But Alex knew he wasn’t. He wouldn’t be so careless. She was armed with a service revolver and he knew that. There were men at the ranch house hiding. Inside and out.

Pierce snapped his fingers and out walked one of his men. He was a big, bronze-skinned man, and he stood at the ready.

“Take the child, will you Juan Roberto? Put her in her playroom, and keep an eye on her. If she needs anything, get it. If I need anything from you, I’ll let you know.”

It was all Alex could do to not jump up out of her chair. She was mortified at the thought that one of her husband’s amoral thugs was with her daughter.

But she chose not to move. She hoped somebody back in Midland had by now begun to put it all together, and that law enforcement in Taylor County was setting up on the place. Nothing had happened to give her that reassurance yet. But she tried to keep a positive attitude.

“Alex,” Pierce said slowly. “It’s been too long.”

“What’s happening to Carly? What’s he doing to her?” Alex demanded to know.

“Carly is fine. Just relax, my sweet.”

She sat back and said nothing. She was helpless to do anything at this point. She and her daughter could easily die. She knew Juan Roberto had been given instructions to kill the girl if anything went wrong.

“I’ve missed you so,” Pierce lied. “How have you been?”

Alex maintained her silence and Pierce let out a dark smile.

“When you first left, I want you to know how much I admired you for your efforts to try to singlehandedly bring an end to the serious drug problem we have in this country. I admired you for your courage and I tried to protect you at every turn. I was unhappy with you, of course, but I did what I could to make sure you remained alive. I have contacts, as you know, pretty much everywhere in South America. And Mexico. And Central America. You did notice that, no? Your smart car, the SUV I left for you that was impenetrable. The men who raped you? You don’t know this, my dear, but I caught wind of their indiscretions sometime after the unfortunate train ride of yours. They are all dead now. Maybe you saw them killed in Juarez, at the old abandoned gas station, I don’t know. Anyway, I could not bear the thought of someone hurting you, my Alex, as much as I despised you by this point. If I couldn’t have you, I didn’t want you being anywhere else.”

Her husband had become a sadistic killer, Alex thought. He didn’t care about her. He was concerned simply with killing as many people as he could in the name of what he called her protection, or his sport. It was all a game to him.

“Don’t lie to me, you sick bastard,” she said. “You don’t care about me. You never have!”

“Oh, but that’s not true. I can prove that to you.”

Alex waited, afraid there would be another disturbing revelation.

“Please accept my condolences on the death of your friend Maria and her family,” Pierce said.

Alex had never thought that her husband’s reach extended so far. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say next.

“Those men who saw to it that Maria and her boys were … in the way, shall we say … they were ready to take you out, my love. In fact they were behind you all the way until they caught up to Maria and – well, you know the rest.”

Pierce took a sip of whiskey in a small glass on the table in front of him.

“They followed you for I don’t know how far after Maria and her boys were dead. They so wanted to do the same thing to you. For me, Alex. That’s how much my men respect me. Fear me. But I warned them if anything happened to you, that would be their end. They protected you for so long afterward. Isn’t that right, Juan Roberto?” Pierce asked his cohort who had come into the kitchen for a drink of water for Carly.

“Si, senor,”
Juan Roberto replied. A wave of nausea overcame Alex as she began putting more pieces together. For a fleeting moment, Alex thought his face might have even looked familiar from that day in the sugar fields in Argentina. Or in the streets of Valparaiso.

“You and your killers, you were there all along,” Alex said, as it dawned on her.

“Yes, my dear. We wouldn’t have missed it.”

“I …”

“Shhhh!” Pierce said. “There’s nothing to say. You should have never walked out on me and our little girl. It’s something I can never forget. And it’s something I will never let you forget, my sweet.”

Alex remembered hating it when Pierce had called her ‘my sweet’ even when things were good.

Garrison tried to piece together the meaning of the suicide note left by Coogan Goodley as Judge Halfmann broke the news about the two-bit drug dealer taking his own life.

“Seems odd someone like Goodley would kill himself. He doesn’t really fit the profile of a suicide, you think?”

“I was thinking the same thing, yeah,” Halfmann said. “It certainly seems to validate the notion that Nail has nothing to do with Walker’s murder.”

“What did the note say?”

“The usual,” Halfmann said. “Nothing revealing. Said good-bye to his family. Said he loved them and not to worry about him. Told them they had nothing to do with it.”

Halfmann handed him the note. It didn’t add up. Trask thought for a moment.

“Goodley had no family,” Trask said. “It never came up in testimony because it had no bearing. But I had Alex research his background. His mother, father and two brothers were killed in a car accident several years ago coming home from one of his ball games in Lubbock.”

“You think someone killed Goodley?”

“I do. And I think I know who killed him, judge,” Trask said. “We need to call Sheriff Trainor, tell him to get his men on the way to Taylor County. I think our man is Pierce Wallace, Alex’s husband. I think he’s probably killed often. And I think if we don’t get some help to Alex, she and her daughter will be next on his list.”

Trask conveyed what he knew to Halfmann who picked up the phone and called Trainor and then dialed his brother, Cecil Halfmann, the captain of the Texas Rangers’ Big Sky Division in Abilene.

“Know just where it is,” Cecil told his brother. “We set up on it every now and then. Haven’t been able to figure anything out yet, but I’m not surprised to hear the news.”

“You’re the only one who seems to know where this
El Bolero
place is,” the judge said.

“Your honor,” Cecil said, “we’re the Texas Rangers. We know everything.

Ten minutes later, the Rangers, DPS, Taylor County Sheriff and the FBI had descended on the highway outside Pierce Wallace’s huge spread north of Abilene.

“We ready to move in, Captain?” the sheriff’s chief deputy asked.

“Not quite yet, Norm. Let’s hold up just a few.”

Captain Halfmann glanced down at his iPad. The other law enforcement officers at the scene thought it odd that he had chosen such a time to take note of the weather. It was the fall. It would be like any other day this time of year, mild to cool, dry and windy. Like much of the rest of Texas it was the middle of a drought year. The wind had kicked up more dirt this year than at any time since the 1950s. Halfmann knew. Nobody else did.

“Let’s give it about 10 minutes,” Captain Halfmann said.

The other officers were busily grouped in small numbers discussing strategies for how they would descend on
El Bolero
. Their elaborate plans would not be necessary.

Off in the distance, above the horizon, Captain Halfmann could see what no one else had yet. A large brown mass that hung low in the sky. Ten minutes from now, it would take over the entire sky to the north. By then the other officers would see it.

“What’s the hold up, Captain?” the FBI agent said. “Don’t you think we oughta be moving on this? We got a woman and child in there who may be running out of time.”

Halfmann nudged his cowboy hat up with his index finger, finished picking at what was left between his teeth from his Billy’s Better Burger lunch, and gave Mr. FBI a nod to the north.

The agent turned and looked toward Oklahoma.

“You’re not from here are you, agent?” Halfmann asked.

The FBI man shook his head no. He couldn’t take his eyes off the growing brown mass. Nothing in his training had prepared him for whatever it was. And by now it was big.

“All right men, gather around,” Captain Halfmann said. “In five minutes we’re gonna get a little dirty and it’s gonna get a little chilly. We’re gonna be so smothered with dust and dirt and whatever else God decides to blow our way, we’ll be able to walk to the ranch house without even having to bend over and hide ourselves. Anybody who’s ever been out here during one of these knows what’s coming. And anyone who’s ever made a surprise visit serving a warrant or an arrest during one of these big storms knows that while most Texans either hate these things or marvel at ’em, they are our best friends. Gear up. And get ready to go on my command.”