Chapter 7

"Why'd you do it?" Tina asked, looking at Floyd Peterson's reflection in her rearview mirror.

The older man didn't say anything, his lined face drawn into a scowl as he looked out the window.

"McKinnen's talking," she shrugged. "Moore's going to roll over. I'll have a State Prosecutor here in the morning, a couple unfriendlies to drive you down to San Antonio..."

"Hmph," Floyd shook his head.

"Old as you are," Tina sighed, "you're looking at life, Floyd. You know that?"

The man shifted uncomfortably and the stainless steel around his wrists rubbed together with a metallic sound.

"A little cooperation and you might get to see the sun again," Tina continued and then shrugged. "It doesn't really matter though; it'll all come out soon enough. It always does, Floyd."

Peterson pursed his lips and watched his town go by slowly. There wasn't anything to say and the Ranger was right. It would all come out anyway, but he was getting old.

"Money," the coroner said and Tina looked at him in the mirror, arching her eyebrows. "I didn't have anything to do with Barbara getting killed."

"But you covered it up," Tina said, inviting him to continue. Once caught, most people just had to confess. Whether out of guilt or pride didn't much matter in Tina's experience, but human nature did tend to make her job easier.

Early Saturday evening, on the day Barbara Welch was discovered floating face down in the college swimming pool, Coach Riles was at the Silver Corral. He'd bought a couple Lone Stars for Floyd Peterson, the County Coroner, and Owen Fiddler, the County Sheriff. They were the two men most responsible for finding out what had happened to Barbara and why.

"You gonna call it, Floyd?" Riles looked at the coroner and they'd know each other a lot of years.

"Accidental?" Doctor Peterson was slightly older, in his 50's, and he had a thin white beard over his gaunt face that he liked to scratch at when he was unhappy. He was scratching now and looking at Sheriff Fiddler.

"All I got on my desk is death by drowning." Owen took a drink.

The sheriff was the youngest of them, but not by much. A large, florid man in his forties, Fiddler was a bully and therefore something of a coward, in Floyd's opinion. He couldn't do anything without the official Coroner's Finding and that was a fact that relieved him greatly. He was going to do whatever was easy.

Floyd looked at Riles. "I don't like it. I don't like it one tiny bit, you understand me? This ain't fixing some little drug test for one of your boys, this here's a body." He took a drink and looked around, lowering his voice. "A goddamn body on my table and she sure as shit didn't die of a heart attack!"

"Says drowning on my desk," Fiddler repeated, just because it made him feel better. Like every time he said it, he was washing his hands a little cleaner.

"Shut up, Owen. This here's man talk," Peterson said, ignoring Fiddler's frown as he stared back at Riles. "I'll bury this, bury it goddamn deeper 'n Davy Crocket, but you fuck me and I'll bury you too. I'll bury you and your boys, and your whole goddamn program."

Coach Riles nodded. "Ain't nobody gonna fuck you on this one. You just make sure you and Owen sell it. Ethan ain't stupid." He paused and looked down at his beer, spinning the bottle in his fingers. "How much?"

"Ten thousand," Floyd said. "And that ain't negotiable, Coach."

"I have to make some calls for that," Riles frowned.

"What about me?" Fiddler wondered, looking between the two men.

"You'll get yours," Peterson looked at the Sheriff. "What did you do with that report?"

"Yours? It's on my desk," Fiddler shrugged. "Why?"

"Burn it," Peterson said, and he was scratching his beard again, knowing he should have held onto his findings.

It was a thin file, but detailed with the Doctor's notes and photographs from his examination of Barbara's body. Whatever else he might have been, Floyd was a competent pathologist and in this instance he'd been a little too efficient, but he hadn't been expecting Riles to call him up either. There was plenty of evidence in there to prove the woman had been raped for certain, and probably murdered during or just after that cruel experience.

"Sure," Fiddler agreed. "I'll take care of it, but I'm going to need something to say..."

"Don't worry," Floyd said. "I'll write up another one, nobody will know the difference."

"Riles approached you then?" Vasquez asked and Peterson nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "What else was he going to do? The woman..."

Floyd drew a heavy breath and let it out slowly while Tina waited.

"You didn't see what they did to her," the man finally said. "I don't know who or how many, but it was more than one or two."

"And you covered it up," Tina said and she had seen the pictures from the file Peterson thought had been destroyed. "For ten thousand dollars?"

"It's wasn't just the money," Floyd said. "That was just ... punishment. Give Riles something to worry about."

"I don't understand," Vasquez said.

"It's my town," Peterson explained in a dull voice. "All we have is that college out there. Something like this would close it down, you see? The people living here, they don't have anything else."

"Right," Tina nodded, finding the man's rationale hardly sympathetic. "So Riles paid you?"

"Huh? Oh..." Floyd shrugged. "I got call later from some people in Houston, you know. The people who own the college and they wanted to make sure what they were buying."

"These people have a name?"

"George Burdett," Peterson said. "He's on the board, one of the trustees. He's the one I talked to."

"In Houston," Tina nodded. "And he's the one you called when Lisa Thomas was found?"

"Yeah," the coroner nodded. "He didn't trust Moore to take care of ... things."

"Okay."

"You don't seem awfully surprised by any of this," Peterson observed. "You knew she was raped?"

"I had my suspicions," Tina said, pulling into the Sheriff's Department parking lot.

"You got the file," Floyd narrowed his eyes and he'd been wondering what the detective had on him, now he knew. It was the only thing that made sense.

"I got the file," Tina agreed with a sigh, parking the car and turning off the engine.

"I thought Coach said we were supposed to disappear for awhile," Roy said as he peeled the plastic off a Slim Jim.

"Yeah," Mike nodded, watching the pink and blue neon lights of the Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge flicker to garish life.

"So..." Roy stuffed the roll of greasy meat into his mouth and talked while he chewed. "What are we doin' here?"

"Waitin' on that blonde chick," Mike said patiently. "She's gonna disappear too, remember?"

"Oh yeah!" Roy grinned and then narrowed his eyes. "What about Coach though?"

"Hey," Mike looked at his big, black friend. "Coach ain't gotta know anything about this, right? Long as we're out of town for the weekend, that's all he cares about."

"Why?" Roy wondered.

"Why what?" Mike asked, shaking his head as Roy dug another Slim Jim out of his pocket.

"Why do we gotta get out of town?" the man asked reasonably.

"I dunno," Mike shrugged. "Somebody's askin' around he said."

"About..." Roy frowned and the other boy nodded.

"Yeah," Mike nodded. "He asked me if anybody had talked to me about it."

"Shit," Roy looked at his half-unwrapped Slim Jim and threw it on the dash. "I thought you said we weren't gonna get caught. Coach was fixin' it for us. That's what you said."

"I know what I said," Mike said, starting to get annoyed. " We ain't gonna get caught. There ain't even a body anymore, okay? Coach just wants us out of town so he can make sure."

"Make sure," Roy said slowly. "That don't sound too good to me, man."

"You worry too much," Mike snorted. "Just relax. After it gets dark, we'll grab this bitch and get her out to the canyon. Coach is gonna take care of business here."

"You think she's up there?" Roy asked, looking through the windshield towards the upper floor of the two story motel.

"Yeah," Mike smiled. "Where else is she gonna be?"

"She was fine as hell too," Roy was smiling again.

"Hey, grab a couple beers out of the back," Mike said with a jerk of his head.

They had a big cooler full of beer and the other guys would be bringing even more, and a lot of food too. Enough to last them until Monday, maybe, Mike thought. He hoped so anyway because it was going to be a long, hot weekend and gang raping that Emily bitch was going to be thirsty work.

"Hey Floyd, uh ... Oh!" Deputy Hansen blinked as he realized the County Coroner was wearing a pair of handcuffs behind his back.

"Is the Sheriff here?" Tina asked and she was holding Floyd by the left elbow.

"Hey, er ... I mean, no ma'am," the young man scratched his head. "He's out someplace, I don't know where, but ... Do you want me to find him?"

"I need a holding cell for Doctor Peterson," Vasquez said.

"What, uh ... What for?" Hansen asked.

"Covering up the murder of Barbara Welch," Tina looked at the deputy. "Where's your keys?"

"Keys? Oh! Yeah, um ... Here..." Deputy Hansen started moving slowly out from behind the dispatch desk where he'd spent most of the day. "We only got two holding cells, uh..."

"All I need is one, Deputy," Tina said. "Let's go."

"Maybe I should call..." Hansen looked at the radio and frowned. "Does the Sheriff know about this?"

"Not yet," Tina said humorlessly. "Is anyone else here?"

"No ma'am," the young man shook his head. "Helen left about half an hour ago and..."

"Okay," Vasquez nodded. "Let's get the Doctor into a cell. I need to make some phone calls."

"Alright," Hansen agreed, frowning beneath Floyd's unhappy glare.

The old man hadn't said a word and Hansen didn't know what was going on, but the woman was a Texas Ranger and he was smart enough to know that gave her jurisdiction over everyone else, including himself and Sheriff Fiddler, if it came down to it. But Hansen wasn't happy about none of this, being out of the ordinary like it was. Anything different was bad, in his opinion, and it wasn't an uncommon sentiment in the town of West Abilene.

"Working late," Tina smiled for the first time all afternoon as she spoke to Captain Mahoney.

"Yeah, no rest for the wicked," the man chuckled tiredly. "What have you got for me?"

Tina retrieved her notebook from her open purse and the Captain listened for five uninterrupted minutes while Tina recounted her long day. At the end of it she'd requested two uniformed state troopers and a state prosecutor from the Attorney General's office. There were going to be at least four more arrests made, namely Fiddler, Riles, Moore, and McKinnen, whom Tina had warned not to leave town. The funeral director knew what was coming and he was eager to clear his conscience.

"What about the perps?" Mahoney asked. "You have any ID on who did it?"

"Not yet," Tina admitted. "Riles knows who it was though. I just need a few minutes with him, Captain. This whole mess is ready to come down with one good kick."

"Yeah," Mahoney said. "Sounds like it. I'll get somebody on that connection with Houston, that's gonna be a can of worms."

"You know Burdett?" Tina asked, because the name hadn't meant anything to her.

"Burdett," Mahoney said. "I think so. Some old oil money there. A lot of political connections, we'll need that college president as soon as you can find him."

"Right," Tina agreed. "I'll see if I can..."

"Vasquez?" Mahoney asked when the woman didn't finish her thought. "Tina ... You there?"

"Yeah," she answered slowly. "Sheriff Fiddler is pointing his weapon at me."

"What?"

"Put the phone down," Fiddler said, licking his lips and pointing his Ruger at the Ranger from less than a dozen feet away.

"You're already in a lot of trouble, Sheriff," Tina said calmly, replacing the telephone receiver in its cradle. "You don't want to make it worse."

"Shut-up," he breathed and his red face was damp with sweat. "You think you know it all, huh?"

"No sir," Tina said, keeping her eyes on Fiddler's. "I don't know anything yet. Why don't you put the gun away and explain it to me?"

"Come waltzin' into my town," Fiddler breathed. "Got that big car and that big Texas Ranger badge of yours and you think I'm just gonna get down and kiss your brown ass..."

"Sheriff..." Tina started to stand up slowly, using the movement as an excuse to move her left hand closer to her open purse.

"You lied to me, you fuckin' whore," Fiddler pulled the hammer back with his thumb. "You think I'm going down? Not until they bury you, bitch..."

"Put your gun down, Sheriff!" Hansen's shaky voice surprised Vasquez and Fiddler both, but neither of them looked away from each other.

"Stay outta this, boy!" Fiddler said and his face was a mask of hatred, his glazed eyes fixed on the woman in front of him.

"N-No sir," Hanson cleared his throat. "Put your gun down or else..."

"Or else what?" Fiddler turned his head, just for an instant to look at his deputy and that gave Tina as much time as she needed.

"Drop your weapon!" Vasquez ordered crisply even as she brought her nine millimeter up from the desk.

"Fuck!" Fiddler jerked with confused surprise and the .357 went off with a roar in his hand.

BLAM!! BLAM!!

Vasquez pulled the trigger twice, putting two bullets center mass, and the sheriff staggered for a heartbeat and then crumpled to the floor like both of his legs had been broken. A second later the detective was kicking the revolver away from the fallen man's limp fingers. Fiddler was laboring to breathe and his shirt was awash with blood.

"Shit," Hansen stood dumb and immobile, still pointing his own pistol at the place where the Sheriff had been standing a few seconds before.

"Get Peterson out here!" Vasquez told him.

"You shot him," the deputy said.

"Hansen! We need a doctor!"

Tina was ripping Fiddler's shirt open, knowing it was too late. She'd hit him in the lungs, both of them probably, and there was a crimson froth bubbling from the Sheriff's pale lips. By the time Hansen had unlocked the holding cell and hurried the coroner to Fiddler's side it was almost over.

"I can't do anything for him here," Peterson frowned, wiping at Fiddler's chest and clearing away just enough blood to find the two bullet entry wounds with his fingertips.

"Ambulance is coming," Hansen yelled from the dispatch desk.

"Huhhh eh hmmm..." the Sheriff's mouth opened and his chest fell slowly like a tire going flat.

"No hurry," the doctor pulled Fiddler's eyelids down with his bloody fingers and leaned close to whisper in the dead man's ear. "Shoulda burned that file like I told ya to, Owen."

"First time?" Hansen wondered, setting a Coke down in front of Vasquez and the woman was shaking noticeably.

The ambulance had taken Fiddler's body away, leaving nothing but a large bloodstain behind. Peterson was back in his cell. And now, fifteen minutes after killing a man, Tina was feeling it. The adrenaline was overwhelming, as was the sadness inside her. Somewhere in the far wall was the bullet Fiddler had fired, accidentally Tina believed, but at the time it happened, when she'd seen the flash and heard the sound of that gun going off ... She'd done the right thing. She knew that, but that didn't make her feel any better.

"First time I killed somebody," Tina nodded. "Yeah."

"I didn't ever draw my gun before," Hansen said softly.

"You did okay," Tina looked at him. "Thank you."

"Yeah," Hansen said, but he didn't know what to say or even to feel right then.

When he'd looked into the main office and saw that the sheriff was holding a gun on the Texas Ranger, he hadn't really considered that someone could die. It was all a misunderstanding or something, that's what the deputy had been thinking. He wasn't ever going to shoot the man, Hansen realized. When Fiddler's revolver had gone off, Hansen hadn't even had his finger on the trigger. But this woman had shot him twice, without thinking about it. She'd just done it and the deputy got up without another word.