The Grid (2 page)

- CHAPTER TWO -

The badge felt heavy on my chest, tugging at the starched khaki shirt that made my neck itch.

A six-pointed star. Hammered tin, electroplated with a gold coating that was only a few microns thick. A wisp of metal that weighed four or five ounces shouldn’t feel burdensome. But this one did.

In the center, in a circle of red enamel, were the words State of Texas—Sheriff—Peterson County.

That’s me: Sheriff Jonathan Cantrell. Back in the family business, so to speak, quite a surprise to everyone.

Jerry, the county commissioner who served as my boss, sat across from me in the other side of the booth. We were in a diner about the size of a Greyhound bus, a blue-plate-special kind of place that smelled like coffee and bacon.

The diner was located in Peterson County, a few miles from a private, for-profit prison situated on the banks of the Brazos River, just south of Waco and not far from Interstate 35, the highway that served as Main Street for the entire state, running from Laredo in the south all the way up to Oklahoma.

Jerry peered at me over the top of his coffee cup. “You’re gonna have to kill him. You know that, don’t you?”

The diner was full of cattlemen, oil-field workers, and prison guards, in reverse order the three biggest forms of employment in the county.

“I’m not a hit man,” I said.

“You ever killed anybody?” Jerry asked.

I sprinkled some Tabasco on my eggs but didn’t answer.

Jerry was in his seventies, thirty years my senior, and a veteran of the Vietnam War—no stranger to the ways of violence. He lived a block away from the courthouse in a rambling brick home, an impressive structure that had been in his family since Teddy Roosevelt had been president.

“Sorry it’s come to this,” he said. “You being new on the job and all.”

“I’m going to arrest him, Jerry. Not kill him.”

We were talking about my deputy, a man who’d run his life into the weeds several months ago after he’d discovered the seductive but deadly pleasure of cocaine.

His wife was in the hospital in Waco, recovering from two broken ribs and a cracked orbital socket. CPS had taken his kids. Money was missing from one of the official accounts to which he had access.

“He’s not gonna go without a fight,” Jerry said. “You need to be careful.”

“I’ve handled worse than a coked-up redneck.” I paused. “But I’ll do what’s necessary.”

Jerry nodded, an expression of approval on his face, and I wondered if my ability to “do what’s necessary” was the main reason I’d been offered the job of sheriff.

My curriculum vitae was, how shall I put it,
checkered
.

After a couple of tours in Kuwait and Iraq during Gulf War I, I’d been a Dallas police officer. After that I worked as a federal law-enforcement contractor, a freelance DEA agent paid on a commission basis—the so-called eat what you kill method of compensation.

My last position was as a fix-it man for a DC law firm that specialized in handling federal contracts. Due to circumstances beyond my control, my boss at the firm had needed someone to fall on a sword, and with my record I’d been the perfect fallee.

As a way of compensating me for the metaphorical sword wounds, he’d used some Homeland Security grant money to arrange for this job, an emergency fill-in for the elected sheriff, who had died suddenly from a coronary. Normally, the deputy would have moved into the sheriff’s slot, but Jerry and the other commissioners had seen trouble brewing on the horizon.

“Did you study Plato when you were in school?” Jerry fanned himself with the menu.

“Can’t say that I did. What’s your point?”

“That deputy, he only sees with his eyes. You and me, we see things from a higher plane.”

Several of the roughnecks, heavyset men in dirty work shirts, stinking of sweat and diesel, clomped out of the diner, allowing a blast of heat inside as the door swung open.

I hoped my higher plane wasn’t as hot and smelly.

The waitress brought the bill.

“He’s bad seed.” Jerry picked up the check. “His end is not going to be peaceful or quiet. He doesn’t see that, of course, but you and me, we understand the situation.”

I glanced at my phone resting by the Tabasco.

The Texas Department of Public Safety had issued a BOLO—be on the lookout—for the deputy’s pickup, a late-model Ford. They’d find the vehicle, sooner rather than later. When they did, they would send me a text, and I’d go arrest the man.

Odds were good he was still in the county. People like that rarely stray far from home.

Jerry unfolded a cracked leather wallet, then counted out several bills and laid them on the check. He looked out the window, whistling softly.

The view was unremarkable. A convenience store that sold beer and fishing supplies was next door, sharing the gravel parking lot with the diner. Both were on a two-lane asphalt road. The other side of the road was overgrown with post oaks, Mexican sycamores, and stinging nettles. Everything baking in the sun.

“Something else on your mind, Jerry?”

Two months in Peterson County, and I knew the whistling meant another topic was weighing the man down.

“Have you heard from her?” He handed the money to the waitress.

I’d arrived in Peterson County with a woman and an infant. Now I was alone.

I rubbed my eyes, an ache suddenly developing in the back of my head.

Disappearing was her way. You either accepted that or not. She’d been my partner back when we’d both worked for the same DEA contractor. We were chipped from the same piece of flint, able to operate as a single unit. But with a closeness like we had, there came a certain amount of animosity, at least on her end. I missed them both terribly, however.

My phone chirped before I could answer him.

A text message:
Ford pickup, TX license 027-HQR located at the TravelTimes Inn Express, FM 1876, McLennan County.

“They found him,” I said. “I need to go.”

“You’re a nice fellow.” Jerry slid out of the booth. “I know a couple of women who—”

The lights flickered. Conversation petered out. People looked around. A few seconds later, the ambient noise of the AC clattered to a stop as the lights went dark. The air in the restaurant seemed to get instantly warmer—or perhaps that was my imagination.

Jerry looked at the manager standing by the cash register. “Y’all forget to pay the electric bill?”

The manager pointed outside. “Lights are off at the place next door, too.”

Jerry and I looked where the man indicated.

The sign over the convenience store was dark. The neon beer advertisements in the windows were out as well.

“They got backup generators at the prison, don’t they?” Jerry looked at me.

“Hope so.” I stood. “Wish me luck. I’m gonna go arrest a fellow law officer.”

- CHAPTER THREE -

Sarah shakes her head, swallows several times. She desperately wants the ringing in her ears to stop.

The motel room is still dark. What vision she gained after the lights went out has been destroyed by the muzzle flash from the Python, which has also done a number on her hearing.

She can still use her nose, though. And what she smells—the copper tang of blood, an ammonia stench of urine—tells her she better get moving.

The Python is in one hand. Her jeans are around her thighs. Her bra is torn, shirt buttonless.

Panties. Dear God, where are her panties? She remembers them being ripped from her body like they were made of so much paper.

She pats the carpet with her free hand, searching by touch.

Squish.

A puddle of liquid against her palm. Warm and thick, like syrup.

The smell of blood grows stronger.

She tries to quell the nausea but can’t. She leans to one side, vomits, stomach heaving, bile dangling from her lips.

Tears fill her eyes, run down her cheeks.

The weeping makes her angrier than anything that has occurred in the crappy motel room. SarahSmiles does not cry. Ever.

A few seconds go by. The ringing in her ears lessens slightly.

Then, the desk light comes back on, and the AC begins to rumble.

Sarah blinks, looks around the room.

Rocky is on his back a few feet away, dead, a bloody hole in the middle of his shirt where his sternum is. His bladder has opened. There’s a damp spot on the floor, separate and distinct from the blood.

One of his ears has an imprint of Sarah’s teeth, where she bit down before shoving him off and retrieving the Python. He’d been pressing against her throat with one hand while the other tried to get her jeans off so he could—

Dear God. This animal almost raped her.

Another wave of nausea ripples through her stomach. Her teeth chatter, skin clammy.

How long has the electricity been off? Five minutes? Ten?

She finds her panties. They are unwearable, of course, resting by her purse. Both items are under the desk, the top of which contains Rocky’s drugs and pistol.

Blood coats her hand from the puddle by the dead man’s body. Blood that is tainted by cocaine and who knows what else. She stares at her palm, imagining the diseases burrowing under her skin.

She struggles to her feet, starts to walk to the bathroom. The jeans trip her. She falls to her knees, head banging against the wall.

Groggy. Double vision. Wig askew. Tears dripping on the carpet. Hysteria slithering its way up her spine.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

Outside the door. Soft, then loud. Then soft again. A person running down the hall.

How long before somebody comes to investigate the sound of a gunshot? She tells herself it will take a while to pinpoint this particular room, especially with the confusion of the power outage.

She gets up again, pulls her jeans on her hips, staggers into the bathroom. There, she yanks off the wig, turns on the hot water in the sink, and scrubs her hands.

The porcelain grows red from the blood, droplets staining the counter as well—a forensic clusterfuck, especially when combined with the mess in the bedroom.

Sarah looks at herself in the mirror. She’s wearing a blouse with no buttons and a ripped bra dangling off one shoulder. Her ribs on the right side throb; a bruise is forming there. Somehow, her face is speckled with Rocky’s blood. Her hair is, too, even though it had been covered by the wig.

She closes her eyes, and this time instead of hearing her grandfather’s words of strength, her father appears, drunk, standing on the balcony of the house in Bowie County. He’s looking out over the field where the cotton used to grow. He is waiting for Sarah’s grandfather to return, an unpleasant meeting.

Sarah feels small and helpless at the memory.

It’s the 1980s, and her father has lost more money than most people will ever see in a lifetime, the old man’s money, gone in a swirl of headlines as the oil bust and savings-and-loan crisis in Texas deepened.

Two things her grandfather hated more than anything: losing money and headlines.

Sarah opens her eyes. Steam fills the bathroom.

Make that three. The old man hated her father, his only son. Thought him weak and ineffectual, a simpering drunk. Which he was, up until the day he died in an alley behind that gay bar in Dallas.

Sarah realizes the stench filling her nostrils now is from her own body—sweat and fear and more sweat. She shuts off the hot water in the sink and turns on both taps in the bath. Then she removes what’s left of her clothes and takes a hurried shower, scrubbing herself raw with soap, shampooing her hair.

Four minutes later, she’s putting on her jeans and blouse, underwear balled up in her purse. The blouse won’t fasten, so she finds a lightweight plastic jacket in her handbag, an oversized, shapeless raincoat type of thing you can buy at a dollar store, something that folds to a compact size and is kept for emergencies.

Sarah always has one handy in case she needs to change her appearance after an encounter with a horndog. She puts the coat on, zips it up to just below her throat.

The garment reaches to her thighs and completely hides her shape. She could be anorexic or morbidly obese.

Satisfied with her appearance, she wipes down the sink and counter with toilet paper and flushes the sodden ball. Then she gingerly steps into the bedroom, avoiding Rocky’s blood and her vomit.

Outside, the sound of car doors slamming, people talking.

The wig has been torn somehow. She jams it in the purse and removes a Dallas Cowboys ball cap. With the cap on her wet hair, oversized sunglasses, and the jacket, she’s unidentifiable, unless a close friend is doing the looking, which is highly unlikely since SarahSmiles doesn’t have many of those.

There’s nothing she can do about the mess she’s leaving behind, though.

The thought gives her pause, but only for a moment.

More movement from the hallway.

She takes a deep breath, stares at the door, wonders what’s on the other side.

Are the police waiting for her?

A lungful of air catches in her throat, makes her gasp. Fear paralyzes her limbs.

Her grandfather’s words reverberate in her head:
Don’t be like your daddy, Sarah. Don’t be a fucking pussy.

- CHAPTER FOUR -

I parked my squad car by the front entrance of the TravelTimes Inn, underneath the porte cochere. The deputy’s pickup was in the back, along with a half-dozen other vehicles. A slow day at the inn.

My phone dinged with a text message at the same time as the car’s two-way radio squawked. Both communications were about the power outage, which apparently had involved several counties, a pretty big swath of Central Texas in the dead of summer.

Fortunately that was someone else’s problem.

I got out, left the car and AC running, and went inside.

A clerk stood behind the front desk, watching me as I crossed the lobby.

He was short and scrawny. His skin was the color of cinnamon, and he wore a name tag that read,
I
RVING
P
ATEL,
A
SSISTANT
M
ANAGER
.

I stand a little over six feet, about ten inches taller than he was. A Stetson rested on my head, mirrored Ray-Bans perched on my nose, a pistol on my hip.

Irving Patel smiled. “What may I do for you, officer?” He spoke with a thick Indian accent.

I took off my glasses, tried to look less intimidating. “I need to see your register.”

Irving’s mildly puzzled expression disappeared from his face, replaced by a frown.

“That is not possible, officer.”

“I’m the sheriff, Irving. Not an officer.”

He nodded but didn’t speak.

“Your guest list. I need to know who’s staying in what room.”

“I am sorry”—he squinted at my name tag—“Sheriff Cantrell. This I cannot do.”

I sighed.

Stupid TV. Everybody’d seen a zillion episodes of
Law & Order
and thought they knew how to be tough with the po-po. Based on our limited interaction, Irving Patel seemed like an all-right guy, as assistant managers go, and I hated to bring the hammer down. But I had an armed, coked-up deputy somewhere on the premises. That trumped being nice.

I pointed in the direction of the interstate. “You know the truck stop up the road?”

No reply.

“The one with the girls hustling tricks in the parking lot?”

Irving frowned but didn’t speak.

“Maybe you know the guy named Wally who hangs out in the coffee shop there.”

Silence. After a moment, he licked his lips.

“I’m sure you know Wally,” I said. “He sells Mexican crank to the truckers when he’s not pimping out the girls.”

Irving rearranged some pens in a coffee cup. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “We do not allow Mr. Wally on the premises anymore.”

“That’s swell, Irving. We all have to do our part to keep crime in check.” I paused. “Say . . . did you ever tell anybody at the home office about Wally?”

Irving chewed on his lip, stared off into the distance.

“What I hear, the franchisee rules are pretty strict,” I said. “Be a shame for the home office to yank your logo.”

Roadside motels live and die by their brand, the goodwill associated with a particular chain as well as their vast reservation system. If a motel owner lost his logo, then the rack rate went down. If the rack rate went down, then people like Wally would be back, and pretty soon what started out as a nice, clean family hotel would end up a flophouse with HBO.

We were both silent for a few moments. Then Irving said, “Do you know why I cannot show you the register, Sheriff Cantrell?”

I shook my head. “Tell me, Irving.”

“The electricity was cut off,” he said. “And the server hasn’t rebooted yet.”

I rubbed my eyes. “You coulda mentioned that on the front side.”

“You didn’t ask.”

My walkie-talkie dinged, another call about the power outage.

“Let’s try this from a different angle.” I turned down the volume. “I need to know who’s checked in here in the last day or so. Can you do that without the server?”

“Perhaps this I can help you with.” Irving smiled again. “Who are you looking for?”

“A man about my size,” I said. “Caucasian, a few years younger than me. Drives that Ford pickup out back.”

“No man has checked in.” Irving shook his head.

Silence. I waited. Irving smiled expectantly.

I tried not to sound exasperated. “Has a
woman
checked in sometime during the last twenty-four hours?”

“Oh yes.” Irving nodded. “A woman arrived last night while I was on duty.”

“What room?”

He consulted a slip of paper. “Number one three nine.”

“What’d she look like?”

“She was white. I could not tell her age. Somewhere between forty and, I do not know, sixty perhaps.”

A heavyset guy in Dockers and a golf shirt, a traveling salesman probably, emerged from the elevator. He waddled over and asked about breakfast.

Irving said, “I am sorry, sir. Coffee only this morning because of the power outage.”

The man looked like he was about to argue but shook his head instead, muttering under his breath. He wandered over to the coffee bar.

I spoke to Irving. “Was she closer to forty or sixty? Give it your best shot.”

The ageless woman was probably nothing, a traveler stopping for the night, but since she was the only person who’d checked in during the past twenty-four hours, I decided to find out what I could about her.

“Her name. Would that help?” Irving consulted his paper again. “Mildred Johnson.”

“Mildred . . . So closer to sixty,” I said. “Or older, maybe?”

“Perhaps.” Irving smiled nervously. “Forgive me, Sheriff. But all of you people look the same to me. I do remember that she had red hair, lots of it, and much makeup.”

Swell. He just described Sylvester Stallone’s mother, Jackie.

“Where’s room 139?” I asked.

“Ground floor. At the other side of the property.”

“Is the rear exit unlocked? I’m gonna drive around back.”

I could have just as easily walked through the corridors, but I wanted to block the deputy’s pickup in case he tried to flee the scene.

Irving nodded as the salesman appeared at the front desk again, coffee in hand. He looked at me and said, “Are you here about the gunshot?”

Before I could answer, the power went out again.