Lone Heart Pass (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Thatcher
Jones
February 23

T
HATCHER
J
ONES
RACED
down the neglected dirt road as if he was an IndyCar race driver and not still too young to get his license. A rusty old sign marked the beginning of a ranch called Lone Heart. What had once been a heart-shaped brand hung lopsided on the marker.

He eased his boot off the gas a bit. He and his 1963 Ford pickup just might make this run before the rain hit. No one was at the ranch anymore; it should be easy to get in and out without anyone noticing.

Thatcher had been keeping an eye on a nest of rattlesnakes under the back cattle guard on this ranch for four months. Now there were new folks moving in near the pass and he was about to lose two hundred dollars if he didn't act fast. To add hell to fury, a storm was blowing in from the north even though the day was hot for February.

The sheriff's cruiser pulled out in front of him from nowhere. Thatcher cussed a streak of swear words.

He slammed on the brakes, leaned out the window and yelled, “Hell, Sheriff, get out of the way. My brakes are no good.”

Sheriff Dan Brigman didn't budge and, judging from Thatcher's experience with the law, he knew that Brigman wouldn't change or move no matter how much he yelled.

He pushed on the brakes with both feet but had to pull off into the bar ditch to avoid a collision.

Once the beat-up old Ford finally clanked to a stop, Thatcher piled out of his truck with a stranglehold on the top of a grain sack.

“You trying to kill us both, Sheriff?” Thatcher shouted, challenging the lawman, even if he barely came up to Brigman's shoulder. “I ain't lived fourteen years just to die in a fiery crash with a cop.”

The sheriff crossed his arms and said calmly, “What you got in the sack, kid?”

Thatcher had been told a dozen times not to hunt snakes off his own land, but listening wasn't one of his talents. Neither was honesty. “I got cow chips. The Boy Scouts are doing a demonstration down in the canyon about how folks used to burn the dry ones so they could keep warm in the winter. This ain't nothing but fuel for their fire.”

Brigman glanced at the bag and Thatcher prayed it didn't start wiggling.

“I've told you, son, hunting rattlers is not something for a kid to be doing.”

“It's cow shit, Sheriff. I swear.”

Brigman shook his head. “It's shit all right. Tie that bag off and put it in the bed of your pickup. You're not old enough to drive, and you're out here in the middle of nowhere hunting rattlers in an old truck that might not even make it back to your place. I can think of a dozen ways I might find you dead.”

“I'm old enough to drive. I don't have to sit on the blanket anymore to see out, and hunting ain't dangerous. I've been doing it since I was ten. You just got to jitter when you reach for them so you're a blur to the snake and not a solid target.”

“Who told you that?”

“My grandpa. He was a jittering fool, he'd been bit so many times.” Thatcher winked, giving away his lie.

“Get in the cruiser.” Brigman didn't crack a smile. “I'm taking you home. But Thatcher Jones, I swear this better be the last time I see you on any road in this county.”

The boy walked toward the officer's car. “You said I could drive the back roads out past County Road 111.”

“Yeah, but I'm guessing you had to cross at least four other county roads and one highway to get this far from your place.”

“You ain't got no proof of that, Sheriff.” He knotted the sack, tossed it in the pickup bed and climbed into the front passenger seat of the cruiser, hating that it was starting to feel familiar. “You can't arrest me unless you see me do somethin'.”

“That's why I'm taking you home.”

Thatcher ran his dirty fingers through even dirtier brown hair. He hadn't even made it to the Hamilton ranch. Hell, the snakes would probably be six feet long before he could get back. He sighed, knowing Brigman wouldn't change his mind. “We stopping at the Dairy Queen before you drop me off back home, Sheriff?”

“It's standard police procedure, kid. Double meat, double cheese.” Brigman started his car. “How's your mom?”

“She died again last week.”

Brigman glared at him but didn't say anything.

“She was at the tent revival over the Red into Oklahoma. Preacher pays her a hundred dollars every service to keel over and let the Holy Spirit save her. Not a bad gig. She only gets twenty-five for talking in tongues and fifty for coming in on crutches.”

The sheriff frowned.

“It ain't against the law, Sheriff.” Thatcher saw it more as a sideshow and his mom did the entertaining. He changed the subject before the sheriff started asking more questions about his mom. “If somebody steals my truck, Sheriff, I'll have you to blame.”

Brigman smiled. “If they do they won't be hard to find. They'll be dead on the road after they open that sack you got in the pickup bed. Bitten by cow chips is an odd way to die.”

They drove in silence all the way to Crossroads. Thatcher figured if he said anything the sheriff would start another lecture. Brigman could lecture the wheels off the fiery chariot.

Just as the lady handed them burgers through the drive-up window, lightning flashed bright and thunder rolled in on the wind. “Storm's coming in early,” Thatcher said more to himself than the sheriff. He, like most farm folks, lived his life by the weather. It always surprised him that town kids woke up like chickens and headed outside without knowing or caring what was happening in the sky above. If rain or snow started, they took it personally, as if it was their individual plague and not the way of things.

“How about we eat these in my office, son?” Brigman turned toward Main Street.

“Not a bad idea, Sheriff. I seen the way you drive in the rain.”

A few minutes later, they raced the storm to make it into the county offices before they were both soaked.

They moved past Pearly Day's front desk in the wide foyer to Brigman's two-room office. Pearly'd gone home and apparently left her candy bowl unguarded.

She was the receptionist for all the offices housed in the two-story building and also passed as the dispatcher in Crossroads. When she left at five she patched all 911 calls to her cell. If anyone had an emergency they didn't yell “call 911,” they yelled “call Pearly.”

Brigman cleaned off a corner of his desk for Thatcher and set the food in front of him. “I need to check my messages. Go ahead and eat.”

Thatcher attacked his hamburger while the sheriff listened to his messages. Nothing much of interest. A lady's voice shouted that her dog was missing and she thought someone had stolen it while she was at bingo. A man left a message that he thought the bridge south of Interstate 40 exit near Bailey might flood if it rained more than two inches. Some guy called saying he'd locked his keys in his car and complained that the only locksmith in town wasn't answering either his office number or his cell.

One call sounded official; it was about drug traffic suspected on the interstate. That was no big news, Thatcher thought, there was drug traffic going on in the back hills where he lived. Folks called the rocky land that snaked along between the canyons and flat farmlands the Breaks. The ground was too uneven to farm more than small plots, too barren to ranch in most spots. But deer and wild sheep lived there along with wild pigs and turkey. And, Thatcher decided, every crazy person in Texas who didn't want to be bothered. Outlaws had once claimed the place, but now it was populated by deadbeats, old hippies and druggies. If the sheriff even knocked on trailer and cabin doors in his neighborhood he'd need a bus to bring in the wanted.

Thatcher watched the sheriff making notes as he finished his burger. Rain pounded the tin porch beyond the office windows, making a tapping sound that was almost musical.

He saw the sheriff open a letter, then smile. It couldn't have had much written on the one sheet of paper because after a few seconds Brigman folded it up, unlocked his bottom drawer and shoved the letter inside.

Thatcher decided it must be some kind of love note because if it had been a death threat then Brigman wouldn't have smiled. Only who'd write a man like him a love note?

The sheriff was single and would probably be considered good-looking in a boring, law-abiding kind of way, but Thatcher still didn't think the note was a love letter. Sheriffs and teachers in a little town were like the royal family. Everyone kept up with them. So maybe the note was a coupon or something.

Brigman glanced up as if he just remembered Thatcher was there. “Your mother will be worried about you. Wish she had a phone.”

Thatcher nodded, but he knew she wouldn't be worried. His ma had a rule. The minute the first raindrop fell, she started drinking. When he got home, she'd either be passed out or gone. One of her boyfriends worked road construction, so any time it rained was party time for him.

While the sheriff made a few more calls, Thatcher unwrapped the second double-meat, double-cheese burger. After all, greasy hamburgers were no good cold. He'd be doing the sheriff a favor by eating it while it was still warm.

About the time he swallowed the last bite, the main door in the lobby flew open. Thatcher leaned back in his chair far enough to see a man and three kids rushing in past Pearly's desk.

Brigman stood and stepped out of his office, but Thatcher just kept leaning back, sipping his Coke and watching.

“Sheriff,” the man said, his voice shaking from cold or fright, Thatcher couldn't tell which. “We're here to report a murder.”

The three kids, all wet, nodded. One was a boy about eight or ten, the other two were girls, one close to Thatcher's age.

“Bring the blankets from behind my desk,” the sheriff yelled toward his office.

Thatcher looked around as if Brigman might be ordering someone else into action, but no such luck. He let the front legs of his chair hit the hardwood floor and followed orders.

By the time he got the blankets and made it to the lobby, the man was rattling off a story about how he and his kids were walking the canyon at sunset and came across a body wrapped in what looked like old burlap feed bags.

Thatcher grew wide-eyed when Brigman glanced at him. “Don't look at me,” he said in a voice so high Thatcher barely recognized his own words. “I'm just collecting cow chips. I didn't kill nobody.”

The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Pass out the blankets, kid.”

While the man kept talking, Thatcher handed every dripping visitor a blanket. The last one, he opened up and put over the girl who was probably the oldest. She was so wet he could see the outline of her bra.

He tried his best not to look, but failed miserably. Her breasts might be small, but she was definitely old enough to fill out a bra.

“Thank you,” she said when the blanket and his arm went around her.

“You're welcome,” he answered as he raised his gaze to the most beautiful green eyes he'd ever seen.

Until that moment, if you'd asked Thatcher Jones if he liked girls, he would have sworn he never would as long as he lived. When you're the poorest and dumbest kid in school, no one has anything nice to say to you and most girls don't even look your direction. During grade school he'd been kicked out several times for fighting, but now, since he was no longer in grade school, he'd decided to ignore everyone and skip as many classes as possible.

But this girl just kept smiling at him like nothing was wrong with him.

He didn't want to move away. “Did you see the body?” he whispered.

She shook her head. “I saw the sack. It had brown spots on it. Blood, I think. My dad didn't let us get too close.”

Thatcher thought of all the blood he'd seen in his life. He'd killed animals for food since he was six or seven. He'd washed his mother up a few times when one of her “friends” beat her. He'd watched his own blood pour out with every heartbeat once when he'd tumbled out of a tree, but none of that mattered right now.

“I'm sorry you had to see such a thing,” he whispered to the green-eyed girl.

“He was murdered,” she said so low only he could have heard her.

“How do you know? He could have committed suicide. Folks have done that before, or died in accidents down there in the canyon.”

Her eyes swam in tears. “Do people who die from suicide or accident stuff themselves into sacks?”

Thatcher nodded. “Good point.”

Then the strangest thing happened. Right in the middle of the sheriff calling in backup and Pearly coming in to take statements, and the storm pounding so hard against the north windows that he feared they'd break...right in the middle of it all, the girl reached out and held his hand.

As if she needed
him
.

As if in all the chaos he was her rock.

* * *

A
N
HOUR
LATER
, Thatcher stood in the drizzle and watched the sheriff working the crime scene. He'd been told, since he'd insisted on coming along, that he had to hold a big light down the trail toward where they found the body. Nothing else. Just hold the light, as though he was nothing more than a lamppost.

The county coroner had come in from Lubbock County to pronounce the dead guy dead. Which Thatcher thought was a bit of overkill. He stood thirty feet away and he could tell the guy was dead.

“I'm going to list the cause of death as undetermined,” the coroner shouted loud enough for Thatcher to hear him.

He thought of yelling down that the huge dent in the burlapped man's head should be a pretty good hint as to how he died. What was left of his face looked more like the Elephant Man than anyone Thatcher had ever seen.

“Get back in the cruiser,” Brigman yelled as he started up the path.