Shake and Bake, page 22
part #6 of Roy Ballard Mystery Series
Caleb was not a beneficiary on the policy covering Shaw, and since there was no evidence his father Frankie had anything to do with the murder, there was no fraud involved. Heidi had known this was a possibility from the start.
That evening, Mia finally asked me to tell her what happened at the cabin, so I did, and I left nothing out. I kept it short and factual. I didn’t gloss over the danger. When I was done, Mia stood up, kissed me on the forehead, and went about her day without another word about it.
The next day, Ruelas called just before noon. Sometimes, after a case like this, he would treat me with grudging respect and even share some information. It usually lasted a week or two, then he was back to his usual douchebag self.
“This is all between me and you for now,” he said. “We’ll be talking to the media soon.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not kidding around. It goes no further.”
“You’ve got my word.” And I meant it.
The Travis County Sheriff’s Office had been working closely with the Austin Police Department, the Blanco County Sheriff’s Office, and the Llano County Sheriff’s Office to nail down the facts of the multiple cases surrounding Caleb Dimmick and his crew of miscreants.
Ruelas said, “These three guys were idiots, but they ran a fairly tight ship. They used Snapchat, so all their messages got deleted as soon as they viewed them. We got hundreds of phone calls between the three of them, but so what? That doesn’t help, either, and they never left any voicemails worth a damn. We’ve got a bunch of calls between JD and some numbers that can’t be identified, so we’re talking burner phones. We haven’t identified any of those and I doubt we will, but you can bet most of those are his customers, the street-level dealers.”
That, of course, was why the cops were putting so much effort into investigating the dead men—to identify their buyers and attempt to make some arrests. I’m sure it was frustrating for Ruelas and the other investigators involved to hit this dead end.
“Have you searched the ranch in Llano?”
“Of course, and you know what we found?”
“The head of Alfredo Garcia?”
“Nothing. Apparently everything was in the RV, and that burned like a damn Roman candle. Hell, I don’t need to tell you. I mean, sure, we can prove it was a meth lab, but beyond that, we don’t know where they got the ingredients or who their buyers were. We can’t pull fingerprints or DNA to try to figure out who else might’ve been in there, if anybody.”
“Daughdril had a lot of game cameras hidden around the place,” I said.
“Yep, and if you like seeing a bunch of deer and raccoons, you’re in luck. Otherwise, it’s just the three of them, and none of the cameras were aimed at the lab itself. They weren’t that stupid. And they certainly weren’t dumb enough to do any dealing at the ranch itself.”
I could hear Mia in the kitchen preparing lunch. But she was preparing more than that. She was preparing herself for the conversation we needed to have. Based on the nonverbal cues I’d picked up this morning, it was coming soon. Maybe tonight, or tomorrow, or later this week. I wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to say, but I had a hunch, and my heart ached just thinking about it.
“What about their homes?”
“Okay, that’s where we had some luck. We found a suitcase in Caleb Dimmick’s attic with forty-seven thousand bucks in it. Weldon Daughdril had a hidden compartment in his closet with about fifty grand tucked away, and JD had about twenty-four thousand stashed in his freezer.”
“Cold cash,” I said.
“Hilarious. We found some documents in Dimmick’s place that told us he was trying to buy a bar out on Lake Travis.”
“To launder the money.”
“That’d be my guess. We’re about to start digging deeper into their financial records, so we’ll see where that goes.”
Caleb, Weldon, and JD had probably realized pretty quickly it was difficult to spend abundant quantities of cash without being able to explain where you got it.
“Where does Erielle stand?” I asked.
Last I knew, she had refused all interviews through her attorney, hired by Tasha, just as she’d promised. Everyone—including a pathological liar—deserves a competent defense. However, that hadn’t stopped Tasha from giving a full statement to the police, just as I had, right after the lab explosion. She wanted her sister to have good representation, but she wasn’t willing to hamper the police investigation by remaining silent. Too many people had died. The truth needed to come out.
“She still isn’t talking, so we’ve basically got nothing on her. We can’t prove she saw JD get killed, or that she knew JD stole the lab, or that she was extorting Caleb to give it back. All we got is you and Tasha telling us what Erielle said, but her lawyer says she recants all of it. Says Erielle was just making stuff up to get you off her back. She was scared, not in her right mind, blah, blah, blah.”
“Did Erielle call Caleb a couple of hours before the explosion?” I asked.
The cynical part of me was wondering if any of this mattered. Everyone involved, except for Erielle, was dead. Even if Erielle was willing to repeat everything to the police, that wouldn’t help them build a case against anyone who bought meth from Caleb and his crew.
“She did.”
“Did she text him a photo of the RV shortly after that?”
“Yep.”
“Do you believe everything she told Tasha and me is true?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe, it matters what we can prove.”
“Come on—live a little. What does your gut tell you?”
“I’d say most of her account sounds about right, except she wasn’t there when Malcolm got killed, so that’s all secondhand from JD—and that brings us to Landon Coyt.”
“What about him?”
“I saved that for last because I figure you deserve a little good news about that.”
“I agree. You got some?”
42
AFTER MIA AND I had finished a quiet lunch on the patio, we stayed in our chairs for a few minutes, enjoying a beautiful day.
I said, “Ruelas gave me some good news earlier...if you want to hear it.”
“Of course I do.”
“That Taurus thirty-eight Landon Coyt was carrying in Zilker? The owner finally realized it had been stolen out of his truck and he reported it. That allowed both Ruelas and Randy Wolfe to get a search warrant for Coyt’s apartment. The nice thing is, Coyt is still in a rehab hospital, so he hasn’t had a chance to go home and get rid of anything. They found another stolen gun hidden under his bed—a Smith and Wesson ten-millimeter revolver. Not a very common gun—but the same kind that was used to kill Malcolm Shaw.”
Mia looked at me and arched an eyebrow hopefully.
I said, “They did some tests and it matched up. That was the murder weapon. They also found a pair of leather riding pants with tiny little blood droplets on them. Same blood type as Shaw—O negative—so they’re doing some DNA testing. They’ll know for sure in a couple of weeks.”
Now Mia was shaking her head. “If Coyt killed Shaw, why did JD tell Erielle he did it?”
“We can only guess. Maybe he was trying to impress her. At one point, talking to me, she referred to JD as a pussy. If she talked that way to his face, maybe he was trying to regain her respect. Show her he was a tough guy.”
“Okay, so how did JD know that Malcolm Shaw raped Shauna Goodwin?”
“Ruelas thinks Caleb might’ve tried to get JD to kill Malcolm, just as Erielle said, so he told JD about the rape to get him stoked up. Maybe JD agreed at first, but then he balked. So then Caleb got his old pal Landon to do it instead, which explains the meeting at Home Depot two days before Malcolm was killed. They also found nine thousand dollars and change in Coyt’s apartment. Ruelas thinks that was payment from Caleb.”
It was possible some of that cash was up-front payment for killing Erielle and me, but we’d probably never know.
After Ruelas had told me about these developments with Coyt, I’d asked him about Shauna Goodwin. The day after the lab explosion, I’d given him a copy of the secret video from my visit to the dealership.
Ruelas had said, “She ain’t talking, either. Nobody else is talking, except Raine Turner, and she’s helpful, but she only knows so much. If Malcolm Shaw raped Shauna, well, there’s not a lot we can do about it now, is there? Can’t arrest a dead guy. Shauna doesn’t have anything to gain by talking about it, except maybe an ex-husband, because he’d hear about her thing with Caleb.”
“You agree she didn’t know anything about the drug ring or the murders?”
“Based on your recording, yeah, and the interview she gave after Shaw was killed.”
“And you agree that the rape was the reason Caleb shot Malcolm the first time, and why he got Coyt to finish the job?”
“Sure looks that way. We’ve got no evidence of any other motive.”
Now, to Mia, I said, “Ruelas said Coyt isn’t talking. He might, when he hears everything they have on him—especially if the DNA on those leather riding pants comes back to Malcolm Shaw.”
“I’m glad it’s over,” Mia said, and that’s all.
“Me, too,” I said.
The sun had moved past an oak limb and was now bathing us in its warm rays.
We sat quietly for several minutes, and I wondered when we’d have the conversation. In a few minutes? Tonight? Next week?
It was coming soon—and I think I knew where it would take us.
She couldn’t handle it anymore, and I couldn’t blame her. Look what I had brought into her life. How could I expect her to live like this?
She would say we needed to postpone the wedding.
Then she would tell me, oh so gently, that she needed space. Time to think. And it wouldn’t be an excuse. It would be the truth. She did need those things. She deserved them, and I would give them to her, because I loved her.
So I would move out of her house.
As the days and weeks passed, she would realize that even though she loved me, she couldn’t stay with me.
She would take a piece of me with her, but I would wish her well. I would wish her love and happiness and peace of mind.
It would be the hardest thing I’d ever done, but I would do it, and after a hell of a long time, I would begin to heal.
I turned to look at her—to take her in—and the idea that she might not always be here, right beside me, was like a dagger piercing my heart.
She felt me looking and turned toward me.
“You okay?” she said.
“Do we need to talk?” I asked, my voice husky with emotion. I didn’t want her to put it off just to spare me the pain.
“About what?”
“Anything,” I said.
She smiled. A moment passed.
“No,” she said. “Not right now.”
She put her hand out, so I clasped it in mine, then turned my face toward the sun.
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BUCK FEVER
BUCK FEVER
CHAPTER 1
BY THE TIME Red O’Brien finished his thirteenth beer, he could hardly see through his rifle scope. Worse yet, his partner, Billy Don Craddock, was doing a lousy job with the spotlight.
“Dammit, Billy Don, we ain’t hunting raccoons,” Red barked. “Get that light out of the trees and shine it out in the pastures where it will do me some good.”
Billy Don mumbled something unintelligible, kicked some empty beer cans around on the floorboard of Red's old Ford truck, and then belched loudly from way down deep in his three-hundred-pound frame. That was his standard rebuttal anytime Red got a little short with him. The spotlight, meanwhile, continued to illuminate the canopy of a forty-foot Spanish oak.
Red cussed him again and pulled the rifle back in the window. Every time they went on one of these poaching excursions, Red had no idea how he managed to get a clean shot. After all, poaching white-tailed deer was serious business. It called for stealth and grace, wits and guile. It had been apparent to Red for years that Billy Don came up short in all of these departments.
“Turn that friggin’ light off and hand me a beer,” Red said.
“Don't know what we’re doing out here on a night like this anyhow,” Billy Don replied as he dug into the ice chest for two fresh Keystones. “Moon ain’t up yet. All the big ones will be bedded down till it rises. Any moron knows that.”
Red started to say that Billy Don was an excellent reference for gauging what a moron may or may not know. But he thought better of it, being that Billy Don weighed roughly twice what Red did. Not to mention that Billy Don had quite a quick temper after his first twelve-pack.
“Billy Don, let me ask you something. Someone walked into your bedroom shining a light as bright as the sun in your face, what’s the first thing you’d do?”
“Guess I’d wag my pecker at ’em,” Billy Don said, smiling. He considered himself quite glib.
“Okay,” Red said patiently, “then what’s the second thing you’d do?”
“I’d get up and see what the hell’s going on.”
“Damn right!” Red said triumphantly. “Don’t matter if the bucks are bedded down or not. Just roust ’em with that light and we’ll get a shot. But remember, we won’t find any deer up in the treetops.”
Billy Don gave a short snort in reply.
Red popped the top on his new beer, revved the Ford, and started on a slow crawl down the quiet county road. Billy Don grabbed the spotlight and leaned out the window, putting some serious strain on the buttons of his overalls, as he shined the light back over the hood of the Ford to Red’s left. They had gone about half a mile when Billy Don stirred.
“Over there!”
Red stomped the brakes, causing his Keystone to spill and run down into his crotch. He didn’t even notice. Billy Don was spotlighting an oat field a hundred yards away, where two dozen deer grazed. Among them, one of the largest white-tailed bucks either of them had ever seen. “Fuck me nekkid,” Red whispered.
“Jesus, Red! Look at that monster.”
Red clumsily stuck the .270 Winchester out the window, banging the door frame and the rearview mirror in the process. The deer didn’t even look their way. Red raised the rifle and tried to sight in on the trophy buck, but the deer had other things in mind.
While all the other deer were grazing in place, the buck was loping around the oat field in fits and starts, running in circles. He bounced, he jumped, he spun. Red and Billy Don had never seen such peculiar behavior.
“Somethin’s wrong with that deer,” Billy Don said, using his keen knowledge of animal behavioral patterns.
“Bastard won’t hold still! Keep the light on him!” Red said.
“I’ve got him. Just shoot. Shoot!”
Red was about to risk a wild shot when the buck finally seemed to calm down. Rather than skipping around, it was now walking fast, with its nose low to the ground. The buck approached a large doe partially obscured behind a small cedar tree and, with little ceremony, began to mount her.
Billy Don giggled, the kind of laugh you’d expect from a schoolgirl, not a flannel-clad six-foot-six cedar-chopper. “Why, I do believe it’s true love.”
Red sensed his chance, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle bellowed as orange flame leapt out of the muzzle and licked the night, and then all was quiet.
The buck, and the doe of his affections, crumpled to the ground while the other deer scattered into the brush. Seconds passed. And then, to the chagrin of the drunken poachers, the huge buck climbed to his hooves, snorted twice, and took off. The doe remained on the ground.
“Dammit, Red! You missed.”
“No way! It was a lung shot. I bet it went all the way through. Grab your wirecutters.”
Knowing that a wounded deer can run several hundred yards or more, both men staggered out of the truck, cut their way through the eight-foot deerproof fence, and proceeded over to the oat field.
Each man had a flashlight and was looking feverishly for traces of blood, when they heard a noise.
“What the hell was that?” Billy Don asked.
“Shhh.”
Then another sound. A moaning, from the wounded doe lying on the ground.
Billy Don was spooked. “That’s weird, Red. Let’s get outta here.”
Red shined his light on the wounded animal twenty yards away. “Hold on a second. What the hell’s wrong with its hide? It looks all loose and...” He was about to approach the deer when they both heard something they’d never forget.
The doe clearly said, “Help me.”
Without saying a word, both men scrambled back toward the fence. For the first time in his life, Billy Don Craddock actually outran somebody.
Seconds later, the man in the crudely tailored deer costume could hear the tires squealing as the truck sped away.
~
Just as Red and Billy Don were sprinting like boot-clad track stars, a powerful man was in the middle of a phone call. Unfortunately for the man, Roy Swank, it was hard to judge his importance by looking at him. In fact, he looked a lot like your average pond frog. Round, squat body. Large, glassy eyes. Bulbous lips in front of a thick tongue. And, of course, the neck—or rather, the lack of one. It was as if his head sat directly on his sloping shoulders. His voice was his best feature, deep and charismatic.
Roy Swank had relocated to a large ranch southwest of Johnson City, Texas, five years ago, after a successful (although intentionally anonymous) career lobbying legislators in Austin. The locals who knew or cared what a lobbyist was never really figured out what Swank lobbied for. Few people ever had, because Swank was the type of lobbyist who always conducted business in the shadows of a back room, rarely putting anything down on paper. But he and the entities he represented had the kind of resources and resourcefulness that could sway votes or help introduce new legislation. So when the rumors spread about Swank’s retirement, the entire state political system took notice—although there were as many people relieved as disappointed.
