Melissa Cutler - Cowboy Justice

Meyer stared after him with an expression of utter despair. Vaughn turned forward again and sprinted to the exit. Rachel, I’m coming for you.

* * *

The crumbling Laundromat in which Rachel sat, her wrists tied behind the chair back, was coated in a thick layer of yellowish dust, most likely from the shredded insulation spilling from the ceiling. The dust swirled through the air like toxic snowflakes as her captor paced. She recognized him as one of the four who’d shot at her—Elias Baltierra.

Hard to say what part of her hurt the worst. Her skull throbbed. Her arm was wet with blood. Somewhere along the line, the scab from her bullet wound had ripped clean off. And her heart ached so bad she couldn’t see how it was still beating. Amy might well be dead. Kellan, Sloane, and Ben too. With a house as old as theirs, who knew how fast the frame and roof would burn? At least Jenna and Tommy lived far enough away to escape the blaze. That is, if Baltierra hadn’t paid them a visit first.

“Oh, Christ,” Baltierra muttered. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with you? Oh, hell.”

Rachel twisted her arms and slipped her thumb into the knot of the rope around her wrists. She’d had her wrists bound enough times to know when a knot would hold, and this one was as unsophisticated as they came.

Hope, wild and ridiculous, sizzled through her. If Baltierra left the room, she’d have herself free in seconds. Maybe she could find a phone and call to get help to the farm before it was too late. But scrambled as her brain was after the battering she’d endured, coming up with a plan to get him out of the room wasn’t revealing itself easily to her.

“I’ve got an ATM card in the wallet in my back pocket. If you need cash, I’ll tell you the code. There’s got to be an ATM around here.” Every word clawed at the inside of her parched throat.

“Nice try, bitch. But the money I need is a lot more than I can take out of your bank account.”

“Is that what you were looking for at my house? Drug money? Is that the reason for the graffiti too? You wanted us out of the way of your drug operation?”

He whirled around and pounced on her, his hands on the chair back, his body odor flooding around her like a fog, his funky breath on her face. “What do you know about that?”

“I know my dad was cooking meth. Were you one of his customers or his business partner?”

He pulled back, his body tense, hands fisted. Rachel braced herself for a punch, but instead he resumed his agitated pace. “Gerry cashed out of our arrangement before we was ready to let him. Junior got mad. He don’t like to be told no. We was still cooking in Gerry’s lab until the oil people came around, and then your stupid, fuckin’ dude ranch screwed everything up.”

She grew cold all over. Her father was murdered. “Junior’s your leader?”

“Was. Didn’t have no choice at the time. Junior was the only one who knew how to cook meth. He and Gerry had it all worked out. But it’s changed now. I’m in charge.”

“What about Shawn Henigin? Is he still your partner?”

He offered a wheezy laugh and rubbed the knuckles of his right hand as he prowled. “Shawn’s not doing nothing anymore. He was getting twitchy, was going to turn himself in and blab to the police. But from now on, I’m El Diente, and there ain’t nothing him or Junior can do about it. I saw to Shawn, and I guess I have you to thank for taking care of Junior.”

Rachel had never heard the name El Diente before. Didn’t much care who he was, or what Baltierra had done to Shawn Henigin, as long as they weren’t a threat to her family. “How about you thank me by letting me go?”

“Naw, naw. That’s no good. You could lead the police to me, easy. Or worse, the Burque dealer waiting on the payment we owe. Maybe I could trade you to him instead.”

Raw, real fear for herself seized a hold of her gut. She’d rather die than be passed as a consolation prize to another drug dealer—probably a bigger dealer than Baltierra if he was based in Albuquerque, probably even more deadly too.

“That’s just passing trouble to the other dealer,” she said, trying to sound logical. “People will be looking for me. I’m dating the sheriff. He’s not going to take kindly to it if I’m hurt.”

“Shut up. I’m trying to think.” He pressed his palms to his temples and strode to one of the windows, peeling the yellowed newspaper away to gaze outside.

It was a gamble to admit her connection to Vaughn, but she couldn’t see any other choice, even though it disgusted her to feel so helpless that her best chance of survival was to throw a man’s name around and wait for him to rescue her. Then again, maybe Vaughn had been right—she was no damsel in distress. She’d learned the hard way that no one was going to save her, or her family, but herself. She didn’t need a man.

What she needed was a weapon.

She scanned the room. Every space was jammed with a rusted washer or dryer. To her left was a sagging hanger rod on one of those rolling baskets. It wasn’t a sure bet that it would pull off easily, but she didn’t like the way Baltierra was nervously petting his gun.

A tug, then another, and the rope fell away. Sucking in a breath, she stood. Baltierra didn’t turn around. Three silent steps to the side and she was at the rolling basket. Carefully, carefully, she gripped the rod. It didn’t budge at her light touch. She’d have to yank, which would make a sound. But any second, Baltierra would turn around and see her standing there. Instinct told her he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.

She took a moment to send her love out to her sisters and Tommy, along with a prayer that they be taken care of if she died. Then she sent her love out to Vaughn, for all that was worth. Even if she did make it out of this room alive, she knew their relationship was over for good. Wasn’t sure she’d ever open her heart to a man again, after all the disappointment and hurt she’d been dealt. Then she tightened her grip on the rod.

“I know what I need to do with you. You and I are going to go for a drive,” Baltierra said in a louder voice. He looked over his shoulder at her. “You ever see the view from Hoja Pass?”

Rachel yanked the rod down with her as she ducked behind a washing machine. It gave way from the rolling basket. But she was too late. Baltierra opened fire.

The Sorentinos’ string of four beige oil derricks sat in a valley near an old, dry irrigation canal, each pumping at the same rate, but out of sync with each other. Vaughn’s first thought on seeing them was that it was a good thing he hadn’t brought Deputy Reyes along. The lingering symptoms of his post-traumatic stress disorder wouldn’t have handled the lack of synchronicity well. He would’ve managed, but his blood pressure would’ve shot through the roof.

A crude road ran parallel to the canal and the derricks. Nathan Binderman stood behind the squad truck, his evidence kit spread across the open tailgate along with copies of photographs Rachel had taken of the graffiti.

He handed Disco off to Rachel to tend and sidled up to Binderman. “Find anything of interest yet? Prints, I hope?”

“The graffiti was painted over, so there weren’t any prints to get.”

Annoyed, he kept his focus on Binderman when Rachel offered a sheepish “Sorry.”

“But I did find some older tire tracks preserved in dried mud, smaller than a vehicle or ATV tires. Looks like dirt bikes.”

Odd. He opened his mouth to ask Rachel about the tracks, when she volunteered, “The morning I found the graffiti, the ground was covered with dirt bike tracks, but we don’t keep dirt bikes.”

“Damn it, Rachel. I wish to God you would’ve called me when you found those. We’ll be lucky if we end up with a single piece of valid evidence out of this day.”

She bristled. “Not fair, Sheriff. This is rural country. We don’t go crying to the police every time someone trespasses on our property any more than we report every case of missing livestock on the chance that someone’s stealing from us. That’s not our code, and you know it.”

She was right, but it still ticked him off something fierce how she’d handled it. “I’ll give you a pass on the first couple, but when you decided to start carrying a firearm around to scare the vandals away, that should’ve been your first clue to get my department involved.”

“I can’t change my past mistakes any more than you can, Sheriff.”

That shut him up. Well, that along with the searing glare she drilled him with.

“Did you find similar tire tracks at the other vandalism sites?” Binderman asked.

She squinted, thinking. “Not the one on the backside of the barn, but the rest, yes. Not only around the vandalism areas, but all over this west end. I figured illegal immigrants were making use of the land as a trail north.”

Binderman shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s a reasonable assessment, with all due respect. On illegal immigrant trails, there’s a lot more debris. Food wrappers, water bottles, dirty socks, smashed-up prepaid cell phones, used diapers. Nasty stuff. In Chaves County, where I worked before I transferred to Quay, we called them Trash Trails. You could pick them out in a helicopter.”

Binderman was right. Vaughn had dealt with a lot of scuffles between immigrants and the ranchers whose land they crossed through, and the trash stuck in most property owners’ craws more than anything else. “Immigrants on the move don’t usually use dirt bikes, either,” Vaughn added. Drug runners did, but he wasn’t prepared to open the idea up to Rachel until his department had more evidence to back up that theory.

“Was the canal shut off from water because of the derrick placement?” Binderman asked Rachel.

Vaughn cringed. The drying up of the fields due to her father’s mismanagement was a prickly topic for her.

“No,” she said, frowning. “That one was already dry. It’s the same canal the second graffiti message was written on, about a mile south. This whole part of our alfalfa operation was the first to go. The flow vents between the canal sections broke and we didn’t have the money to fix them. We do now, and we hired a foreman this week, so this’ll be the first field we plant come fall. I know this whole area is a crime scene, but the foreman, Ben, and I were planning on coming out this way tomorrow morning, to assess the plumbing and take inventory of what we need to fix.”

“I don’t see a problem with that. We’ll be done gathering evidence today,” Vaughn said as his phone rang. It was Stratis. “What’d you find?”

“Henigin stayed overnight at the property two months ago, March 15th through the 17th, under an alias, paid cash. Jenna Sorentino recognized him in the photograph. Looks like the girlfriend used an alias too. No DMV records. Jenna had a picture of the two of them for the inn’s photo album, so I put out an APB on the girl, then dusted the room they’d stayed in for prints. Got a few. The biggest surprise came when I searched the rest of the house. The lock to the storage under the house’s raised foundation had been jimmied open. The storage had been tossed up pretty good, like someone was in a big hurry to find something. The ground’s dug up in a half-dozen places. I’m down there now, dusting for prints. I’ll upload the photos to your phone.”

Times like these, Vaughn wished he could clone himself. “Good work.”

“I’m checking the rest of the property now, with an eye for broken locks or hasty searches.”

“Keep me posted.” He replaced the phone on his utility belt. “Rachel, what do you and your sisters keep in storage under the house?”

She blinked, surprised. “Nothing but old, broken farm equipment and Christmas decorations. Why?”

“Stratis found proof that Henigin was on your land, and it looks like he searched your storage area. When was the last time any one of you were down there?”

Covering her mouth, she stumbled back and braced her hand on the squad truck. “He was going through our stuff?”

His arms twitched with the need to hold her. He hitched his thumbs on his belt, fighting the feeling. “I can imagine how violated you must feel right now, but you and your sisters were lucky. Obviously he wasn’t there to harm you, and we can all be thankful for that.”

Hugging herself, she looked into the distance as if gathering strength from the land. “January. Me and Jenna were down there in January putting away the holiday decorations. What was he looking for?”

“We don’t know yet. But we’re going to keep looking until we have the answers.” He directed his attention to Binderman. “On that note, we need to get on down to that second site. Do you need anything else from either Rachel or me?”