new Crown Vic Interceptor, barreling up the deeply rutted road at about fifty, kicking up a big rooster tail of dust behind him.
Franklin looked up at the cloudless blue sky, any prayer of a quiet Sunday afternoon sliding away from his mind. He walked out of the barn just as the deputy skidded to a stop between the barn and the house.
“Easy, Homer, no fire out here, son.”
Franklin walked over to the car wondering what was so all-fired important on a Sunday. It had been nine days since the incident at the Wagon Wheel. Homer had been beat up pretty bad. Still and all, he’d been back on the job for three days now and, mercifully, things had been quiet since all the hoopla of the week preceding. He’d even had a few afternoons to finish correcting all the errors in that Texas border presentation he was set to give down there in Florida in a week’s time.
Mostly it was quiet because Rawls and a few bike riders had been locked up down at the courthouse. He’d put them there for a few days until everything cooled down. He’d let most of them go. He’d wanted to hold Rawls longer, based on a tip he’d gotten about six months ago.
A paid informant had told the Laredo PD that Rawls was suspected of involvement with some kind of border smuggling operation. Drugs, guns, and even automobiles coming through tunnels under the border. According to the snitch, Rawls was in bed with corrupt Federales and narcotrafficantes and had been for a long time.
But, they couldn’t prove it yet. Franklin just didn’t have enough to hold him. So he’d released Rawls on his own recognizance, as June called it.
Homer climbed out of the car and put his hat on, shading his eyes from the sun.
“Sorry to bother you, Sheriff, I been calling you on the phone.”
“When they get the kinks out of those cell phones, maybe I’ll get one. How can I help you, son? I’ve been out here in the barn all morning. Daisy went to church services and then to her prayer group lunch right after. I was just going inside to make a ham sandwich and some ice tea. You want to join me?”
Franklin started for the house and Homer followed.
He said, “What I’ve been calling you about? Somebody’s fixing to get their selves lynched here later on today.”
“Lynched? Who?”
“I don’t know their names. Three Mexican boys, is what I hear.”
“Come on over here on the porch and set in the shade, Homer.”
Franklin was tired. He stepped up on to the porch and went over to the far end and sat in his rocker. There was a tupelo tree at that end of the porch. He and Daisy had planted it as a sapling when they first bought the place. It gave off pretty nice shade this time of day. He pulled out his bandanna and wiped all the sweat off his face. There was a pitcher of lemonade with all the ice melted sitting on the table and he poured two glasses. Then he leaned back against the old rocker and started rocking, scuffing his boot heels across the dusty floorboards.
He said, “Start at the beginning and tell me.”
Homer took off his hat, tilted his head back, and drained his glass. “Like I say, it’s three Mexican kids.”
“Kids?”
“Teenagers, I’m pretty sure. The banditos apparently broke into Sadie Brotherwood’s place last night, looking for liquor in the ranch house. She came home and surprised them.”
“She lives over there on the river, right? What’s it called?”
“The Lazy B. She stayed on the place when Woody died last spring. She didn’t call anybody about the break- in. She got the drop on the boys, put a shotgun on them, and locked them up overnight out in the tool shed. This morning, here about an hour ago, she didn’t hear any noise coming from the shed and she called her brother-in-law, old Ed Parks. Ed apparently came over with a couple of his boys and told Sadie not to call you, said they’d take care of this themselves.”
“These Mexicans are local boys?”
“No, sir. Illegals. Roy Steerman went over there to Brotherwoods with Ed originally, but didn’t want anything to do with it after he got there and left. Been out there in the desert a while seems like. Skin is burned black, Roy said. All of them dehydrated and probably dizzy from drinking their own urine out there. He said when they got there one of them was swimming in the dirt like he thought it was a stream. Like his brain was baked in his brain pan, Roy told me.”
Dixon looked away. How many times in his life would he have to hear this same sad story? The law was the law. But children locked in a shed and dying of thirst was a painful way to enforce it.
“Maybe they weren’t looking for liquor, Homer. Maybe they were just looking for water.”
“That’s just what I told Roy Steers here not half an hour ago. He said, ‘Nobody over at Sadie’s cares two hoots in hell about that. These damn kids are here illegally, broke into a woman’s house to steal her property, and they’re going to string ’em up.’ That’s a direct quotation.”
Franklin got up without a word and went inside the house. A minute later the screen door opened and he came out with his hat on. “Let’s go, Homer,” he said.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER they turned off on the state road that led to the Brotherwood ranch. Homer took a right on to an unpaved stretch and they drove another two miles of barbed wire on either side before they came to the Lazy B. There was a heavy aluminum gate at the entrance to the drive and somebody had closed it and locked it with a length of chain. Homer pulled over on the shoulder across from the gate and got out of the car. He looked both ways and then crossed the baking asphalt to open the gate.
Franklin saw he was having trouble with the lock and started to climb out of the car. That’s when the two big fellas stepped out from inside a dense stand of pecans just inside the gate.
“Hey,” one of them said. Franklin recognized him as one of the boys from the Wagon Wheel he’d locked up. Had the same sleeveless leather vest and the prison tats covering both arms. If he remembered the arrest record correctly, these two gentlemen’s names were Hambone and Zorro. William Bonner, Hambone, and Bernie Katz, Zorro represented a whole lot more trouble than they were worth.
“Howdy, Hambone,” Franklin said to Bonner. He saw that the gate was padlocked with a big Master lock.
“Can we help you?” Bonner asked.
“You can open that gate.”
“No can do, Sheriff. Private party.”
“Homer,” Franklin said, “take your sidearm out and shoot that lock off, will you please?”
“Yes, sir.”
Homer removed his weapon and fired two rounds into the heavy padlock. The thing blew apart, wide open, which surprised Franklin because he’d seen an old commercial where a slow motion bullet goes right through a padlock without any effect. He reached over and pulled the chain out of the gate rungs and dropped it to the ground. Then he started to swing the right gate inward. Hambone stepped into the path of the gate and crossed his lodgepole arms over his chest.
“Like I say, it’s private.”
“Mr. Bonner, you boys just got out of my jail. If one of those Mexican boys is harmed, you’re going back. If one of them dies, you’re going back inside the system for twenty years as an accessory to murder. How do you want to handle this?”
“It ain’t murder to kill no illegal alien.”
“Murder is murder, Mr. Bonner.”
Bonner didn’t respond. Just looked over his shoulder and spat on the ground.
“C’mon, Billy,” the one named Katz said. “Let it go. We don’t need any more shit from this particular asshole.”
Bonner looked at Dixon and did his best impression of a man staring daggers into somebody’s eyes for a couple a seconds and then he kicked the ground and walked away from the gate.
“Where are your bikes located, Bonner?” Franklin said to the man’s back.
“Over there in the pecan grove,” Katz said, pointing at the trees. You could see pinpoints of chrome back in there among the dark trunks.
