Chapter 1

Helen had been the Sheriff's secretary for nigh on 40 Years, ever since she'd graduated from typing school in 1966. Not just for Fiddler, of course, she'd worked for seven different Sheriff's in that time. Some of them good, some of them not so good. On the bad days, Helen just reminded herself that she worked for the county, not the man. She'd told herself that quite a bit since Owen Fiddler had gotten himself somehow elected to the job.

She was doing routine paperwork, not that there was much of any other kind in West Abilene County, when Helen found a folder that Fiddler had left sitting on his desk. It was the Sheriff's personal case file on the Thomas girl who'd gone missing a few days earlier. The Sheriff's files weren't the official ones; they usually had little bits that didn't belong in any official report. Personal notes and observations, for example. They were supposed to be kept locked tight simply because it was the Sheriff's own business and nobody else's.

Helen shook her head, thinking about that poor girl. It was terrible the way the kids just up and left these days, without even so much as fare-thee-well. Ethan had mentioned it to her over dinner the night before, but only briefly. There weren't a whole lot of men in this town for a 61-year-old woman to pick from, but Ethan Moore was a good man, if a little slow at romancing. They had dinner once or twice a week and generally just talked, enjoying some company away from work. She knew the college president well enough to tell that the missing student worried him greatly. He was such a sweet man and coming so quickly after Barbara Welch's death...

Helen found her key for the Sheriff's personal files and went to put that folder where it belonged. Fiddler didn't know Helen had her own key to his small filing cabinet. He'd never asked and she'd never told him, it just hadn't occurred to her. She was the one who really ran the office and every one of those six previous sheriffs had known it. Owen Fiddler had been Sheriff less than a year and he was learning it too, only much slower than any of his predecessors, being the sort of man he was.

One of the secrets to being a good secretary is having a good memory. Helen didn't have much of one for numbers, nor did faces or names stick out much when she needed them. What she did remember was exactly where everything was. If she saw a piece of scrap paper with an address on it stuck in some dusty file, well by some strange machination of the mind, a decade later if someone asked about that scrap of paper she could just go right to it. This came in handy around the Sheriff's Department a lot more than you might think. Helen's favorite Sheriff, the late Waldo Reed, had liked to call her the 'Little Old Lady In Charge' and when she saw something new or out of place in her office, it stuck out like a sore thumb.

That's precisely what the thin file with the yellow tag did. It was in the top drawer, the one you had to open first if you wanted to open either of the two the lower ones. The folder had the name 'Barbara Welch' handwritten on it and that too struck Helen oddly. Because there was another file, another Sheriff's Personal File, on Barbara Welch, one with a plastic label that Helen had made herself on the department's only label maker. Helen opened the third drawer and found it, holding the two files in her hands as if weighing them, the Thomas girl all but forgotten for the moment. Neither of them was the official file, of course, but why two separate private files?

The one Helen was familiar with, the one she'd found in the bottom drawer, was very thin with some handwritten notes about how there was nothing suspicious about Barbara's death. No witnesses. No evidence except the body. It had a rough draft of the statement Helen herself had typed up for the press release. A couple photos of her naked body that hadn't gone into the official file. It was pretty straightforward.

The other file, the new one, Helen read much more slowly. Twice. Feeling her body grow tired and seem to shrink with every sentence. This file also contained photographs, but not like the other ones. Helen, who had seen most nearly everything in her 42 years working for the county, now told herself that she had indeed seen it all. She tucked the file under her arm, locked the Sheriff's filing cabinet, and drove over to see Ethan. He would know what to do, she hoped, because there was nobody else she could trust now.

Ethan was not feeling happy at the moment. He'd spent the afternoon with Emily Thomas who had come to find out about her sister's disappearance and get Lisa's things from the college. That was bad enough. It was worse suffering through Deputy Hansen's inept questioning of the woman in the college president's office. The boy was new, that was a fact, and for some unknown reason he'd focused on the missing girl's sexuality as a point of motive for disappearing. Ethan wondered if Hansen was naturally obsessive or if Sheriff Fiddler had pointed the boy down that road on purpose, finding some juvenile humor in it.

Emily Thomas had been every bit as pretty as her younger sister, and Deputy Hansen had stuttered and stammered his nervous way through questioning her without having once looked the woman in the eyes. Mostly he watched the slow rise and fall of her breasts, sometimes her long legs, wishing she'd do that Sharon Stone thing and uncross them, just once.

"Did, uh, your sister have any, um ... boyfriends?"

"No. Lisa didn't like boys, Deputy."

"Uh ... oh."

"I don't like boys either, Deputy."

"Um, right ... so, did she, uh ... was she seeing some uh, person?"

"My sister was living with her swim coach. Barbara Welch? Didn't you know that?"

"Uh, yeah, we ... I mean ... yeah, I heard..."

"And so I think it's safe to say that they were seeing each other."

"Uh, seeing each ... other?"

"You know, romantically?"

"Oh."

"Lisa was out with me, but I doubt she told anyone around here. I suppose you people burn lesbians at the stake in this town." Emily glared at the young man. "A big night for you is probably doing a little cow-tipping, huh Deputy?"

"Uh ... oh boy. I don't, uh..."

"She only stayed because she was in love. Lisa called me after Barbara died, the day she found out. I asked her if I could come get her. She said no, she wanted to stay." Emily looked like she wanted to cry; despite the toughness she was trying so hard to project. Ethan had dug his handkerchief out and handed to her. "I should have come. I should have driven down and gotten her."

Emily did cry then, finally. Perhaps because she had known her sister so well. "After our parents ... died ... Lisa, she didn't take it very well." Emily looked at the deputy and shook her head. "You won't find her. She was in love and she'd already lost so much."

She dropped the handkerchief on Ethan's desk and left with the deputy's hungry eyes following her every step of the way.

Emily had taken a room at the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge, paying in advance for a full three days, but Ethan had a feeling she'd be leaving soon. Especially if she really believed her sister was gone for good. Ethan would feel a lot better once the woman was out of town. She reminded him too much of Lisa.

Ethan had watched the deputy leave without a word, happily rid of the fool and knowing Hansen would go straight to Fiddler with whatever the boy had thought he'd learned. That wouldn't be much. And then the old professor poured himself a big drink. Laura popped in to say she was going home and Ethan gave his secretary a tired wave and nod. He'd already decided to get drunk.

There was a knock on the outer office door and Ethan ignored it at first. "Ethan? Are you there? It's me, Helen." Ethan had just started the bottle of Wild Turkey and he wished he could finish it in peace. He just wanted some sleep. This business with Barbara's death and Lisa's sudden disappearance so soon after, and now the girl's sister looking for answers ... it was all bad and Helen trying to cheer him up wasn't what he needed.

But he sighed as the woman knocked again and Ethan moved slowly through his secretary's office to unlock the door. He greeted Helen somewhat perfunctorily and let her follow him into his own office without protest. He poured himself another drink and looked at the woman, tipping the bottle in her direction.

"Yes, I believe I will have a sip," she surprised him. Ethan imagined that Helen would have been quite happy if West Abilene were still a dry county. He poured a bit more than half a shot into a glass for her and slid it across his desk.

"What brings you out here, Helen?" He sipped his whiskey and watched Helen swallow her drink with one gulp, grimacing slightly and shaking her gray head. Helen's cheeks flushed, but her eyes remained clear and steady and Ethan was uncomfortable beneath them.

"What if I told you that Barbara Welch had been murdered?" She watched Ethan's face as it drained of color.

"What?"

"I found ... this." Helen lifted the thin folder she'd been carrying, putting it on Ethan's desk. He took it slowly, not wanting to touch it and dreading what he might find. But Helen was watching, and somewhere else perhaps, Barbara and Lisa were watching too, waiting to see what he would do. His heart burned with guilt.

"Barbara Welch," the man sighed. He looked through the folder silently for a moment before finally lowering his head, dropping his cheek onto his folded arms and lying on his desk like a schoolboy. Ethan was so tired. So weary of it all. He closed his eyes.

"That Floyd Peterson and Sheriff Fiddler are covering it up," Helen said. "There was no proper investigation at all. They might as well have killed that poor woman themselves. She didn't drown by accident. Even I can see that much. She was raped, Ethan, raped and then murdered and the coroner and the sheriff are covering it up."

Ethan wished Helen would just be quiet. He needed to think. His stomach churned and he felt the alcohol rising sour in the back of his throat. He'd done so much wrong in just a few days. A lifetime of trying to be good, thrown away. And for what? To protect Fiddler and Peterson, the County Coroner? To protect Coach Riles and some of his football players ... A few young men who had murdered a woman for the sport of it? To protect the college? Or merely to protect himself? That was his real fear, that underneath it all, he'd only been trying to save his own skin.

"What are we going to do, Ethan?" Helen was asking.

We do what I should have done the minute they found Barbara floating face down in that swimming pool, Ethan decided. He didn't say that, but he did say, "Do you know anyone with the Rangers, Helen?"

After 40 years working in a west Texas sheriff's office, that was akin to asking if George Patton had known anyone in the Pentagon. Helen knew just who to call, but she'd wanted someone she trusted to tell her it was okay. That her old mind wasn't finally getting up to playing tricks on her. Ethan had found just enough strength to do that.

"Rosie? Hi, it's Helen ... Yes, I'm just fine. How're you? ... Oh! Pooh! You are not! ... Now listen, sweetie ... I got some papers to send you ... Uh-huh ... You got your fax turned on? ... Okay..."

Helen started sending the file over the telephone wires to Austin.

" ... They're coming ... Now, how's that handsome young man of yours, anyway? ... Uh-huh ... Is that right? Well sweetie ... Uh-huh ... Eight of them ... Now Rosie ... You know my little Geena is still lookin' for a beau ... Oh! Don't I know it! ... You did not! ... And what did she say? ... Oh, Rosie, she did not! ... Okay ... That's all the pages..."

Helen put the file back together and dropped the little fax receipt her machine generated into her shredder.

" ... No! I will not give you my recipe for Rhubarb Twist! No ma'am ... Not until you send me that recipe for Sweet Louisiana Chili ... Uh-huh ... Okay, look Rosie, you get those pages to Patsy now, you hear? Okay ... You're a sweetie ... Uh-huh! ... Bye-bye, darlin!"

Helen locked the file in her own little fireproof safe under her desk, a good one that none of the Sheriffs had ever known the combination to. None of them had ever bothered to ask for it and most of them had forgotten it was even there.

Rosie was the secretary to Captain Patrick Mahoney, who ran the Sexual Crimes Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety, more commonly known as the Texas Rangers. It wasn't but five minutes after Helen had hung up her phone that the barrel-chested, red-haired Texan was looking through the faxes and taking his own set of notes. If there was one thing that Mahoney, who had 3 sisters, 4 daughters, and 9 granddaughters, hated more than sex crimes it was a dirty cop who tried to cover one up.

Mahoney's mandate came from the Governor of the great state of Texas. He needed to find West Abilene on a map, not because he didn't know if it was his or not, his jurisdiction started at the state line and didn't end until it reached another one, but because he needed a good investigator and he needed that person there fast. Evidence had a way of disappearing quickly and they'd gotten a big break, but he knew it wouldn't last. He needed someone tough and ruthless and not afraid of getting in a dust-up with a dirty sheriff in his own dirty town. "One riot, one Ranger" was the Rangers motto and the one Ranger Mahoney had in mind was one of the best.

Santina Maria Pacifica Salinas Wellington Vasquez was her full name. The Wellington part, along with her piercing green eyes, had come from her great-grandfather who had been an English cattleman. The rest of her was delightfully Spanish-Mexican. From her dark, copper skin to the thick black hair falling around something more than just a pretty face, Tina Vasquez radiated confidence and a strength of character to complement her sleek, athletic form.