Ranger: Book 1: A Humble Beginning Read online

  Randy holstered his weapon, then stuck his head over the counter.

  “It’s clear. You folks can come out now.”

  Out from under desks behind the counter, several tellers and other bank employees emerged.

  The Austin PD officers introduced themselves to Randy.

  Their sergeant came up and patted Randy on the back.

  “Good work, Ranger. We’ve been trying to catch this guy for weeks. He’s been hitting convenience stores every time he needed a fix. At the last one, the clerk pulled a gun on him. I guess he decided to up his game and thought banks might be a safer bet.”

  “Glad to help.”

  The hapless crook was led to the street and placed in the back of a patrol car.

  The officers busied themselves inside the bank, taking witness statements, while the sergeant stood on the sidewalk watching the prisoner and smoking a cigarette.

  Randy asked Tony to wait for him.

  “Hey Sergeant, do you mind if I talk to him for just a minute?”

  “Don’t know why you would, but it doesn’t matter to me.”

  Randy opened the front passenger door and sat on the seat, his feet resting on the curb outside.

  In the same calm and soothing voice he’d used before Randy asked, “What’s your name, partner?”

  “Jason. Jason Martinez.”

  “Jason, what are you using that makes you hurt so bad you’d risk your life to get it?”

  “Ice. Crystal meth.”

  “How much are you using?”

  “Three grams a day when I can get it.”

  Randy let out a low whistle.

  “You got a record, Jason?”

  “Yes, sir. Eighteen months for aggravated robbery, then six months for assault.”

  “You know you’re going away for several years this time, right?”

  “Maybe that’s what I need. Maybe this will finally be my chance to get clean. I can’t do it on my own. I’ve tried. It’s just too damn hard.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Jason. I’m going to give my card to this sergeant here. I’ll ask him to make sure it goes into your record at booking and that your attorney gets it. You tell your attorney to tell me the disposition of your case. And to let me know if you need anything while you’re locked up. I won’t make you any promises, but I’ll see if I can make things a little easier on you and your family while you’re away.”

  “Okay. But why?”

  “Because I read people very well, Jason. I can sense that you’re a good kid who just got caught up in something bad.

  “I think you can be that good kid again.

  “And I believe in second chances.”

  Randy wished the man well and closed the car door. He took a business card from his pocket and handed it to the sergeant.

  “You’re making a mistake,” the sergeant said. “Kids like that, all they know how to do is take from people. First strangers. Then their families, and then their friends. After all their friends and families disappear, they go back to stealing from strangers until they get caught. I’ve seen it more times than I can count.”

  “Maybe there’s a better way,” Randy said. “Maybe if we stay in touch with them after they get out we can help keep them out.”

  “Have you passed out your card to many arrestees?”

  “No. Actually, this is the first time.”

  “Good luck with your theory, Ranger. I hope it works out for you.”

  As Randy walked away, the sergeant opened the car door again.

  “Consider yourself lucky, man. I think you just met the first Ranger with a heart.”

  Chapter 4

  The life of a Texas Ranger is a noble one. But it’s not a life which makes one rich.

  Randy grew up in a home that was modest by anyone’s standard, the smallest house on the block in the center of a neighborhood struggling to achieve middle class status.

  His early years were unremarkable, in that Randy was average in almost every way. His C average grades certainly did nothing to impress his elementary school teachers, and the school’s athletic coaches weren’t beating a path to his door to sign him up.

  But then again, Randy wasn’t trying to impress anyone. His philosophy in those years was to have good clean fun and to let the overachievers overachieve.

  For Randy wasn’t planning to be a rocket scientist, or a Wall Street banker, or a doctor or a lawyer.

  Randy knew, from the time he could walk, that he would be just like his father.

  When he was a tiny tot of two years Randy’s father Jacob went through the house, tossing sofa cushions here and there and upturning furniture.

  “Jake,” his wife exclaimed, “What on earth are you looking for?”

  “My badge. I can’t find my badge. I can’t go in without it.”

  The badge was gold in color, with the word TEXAS engraved across the top of a circular band.

  RANGER was emblazoned across the bottom, and in the center of the band was a Texas five-point star.

  The badge was nothing special to look at. Its luster had worn off long before, and it was nicked and pitted. If one were to look closely they’d have noticed that it was slightly bent, and that the pin had been soldered slightly off-center on the back.

  It was not perfect by any means, and to anyone not named Maloney it was nothing special.

  But in Jacob’s house it was very special indeed.

  It was the badge passed down from Wilford P. Maloney. He was the first of five Rangers in the Maloney family. And the first to wear this particular badge.

  It was worn and pitted and lacking of luster, sure. But so is pretty much everything that’s more than a hundred years old. That’s outlived four of its wearers. That’s struck fear into the hearts of many bad men and brought relief to many of those oppressed.

  On this day, Jacob was fit to be tied.

  He had other badges he could have worn to work. Shiny badges that were cranked out by machine instead of by hand. Badges that had no pits or scars or imperfections.

  Or character.

  Sure, he could have worn another badge to work on this day and continued his search later.

  But the badge, to Jacob, was much more than a piece of metal.

  It was a family tradition. A display of a proud heritage. A good luck charm of sorts.

  It was a reminder that all four of the Maloney men who’d worn the badge had lived through hell and had survived. Wilford P. was stabbed by a Comanche warrior and lived. He later had his horse shot out from under him on the prairie outside of Lubbock. The horse fell atop his leg and broke it in two places. Yet the wily Ranger somehow managed to send the shooter to meet his maker, then got himself two miles to the nearest doctor to have his leg set.

  Wilford P.’s son and Randy’s great grandfather Silas was shot on the back. An ambush down San Antonio way. He spent two months in the hospital, the badge pinned on his bed pillow. He always said it was the badge’s mojo which kept him from dying.

  Silas was the very last Texas Ranger forced to retire at ten years, before the Rangers did away with the policy.

  Silas had but one child, Bill, who became a Ranger five years after Silas put the badge in a drawer for safekeeping.

  Bill vowed to be the first Ranger Maloney in three generations to finish out his career without being shot or stabbed or abused in any other way by outlaws or evildoers.

  He was shot on three different occasions, a total of seven wounds, during his twenty-one year career.

  Bill tried to dissuade Jacob from signing up.

  “I was lucky,” he told his son. “I put your mother through hell each and every night. She cringed every time the phone rang. I probably shorted her life. It was wrong of me to do that, son. I had no right to. You can learn from my mistake. You can put this whole legacy thing to rest. You can get a normal job. A truck driver. A store clerk. Something where you can go to work each day with a reasonable expectation of coming home again. Something that doesn
’t make your wife worry about the day she becomes a widow and her kids become fatherless. You can stop the madness, Jake.”

  Jake didn’t stop the madness. He signed up to be a Ranger on his eighteenth birthday.

  When his father pinned the badge on his chest he whispered in his son’s ear.

  “I’m proud of you, boy. But damn it, I wish you’d have listened to me. I will pray to God every day that He keep you safe.”

  God was apparently listening that day. Jacob had never suffered as much as a scratch at the hands of a bad man. He didn’t attribute it to God’s blessing, though. For Jacob was a superstitious sort by nature. He believed that the badge was a powerful talisman, capable of magical powers of protection. He thought it was the badge, and not God or circumstance, which had kept each successive Ranger in the family from being killed.

  And now that badge was missing.

  He fumed and tore his house apart searching, before Randy’s mother Minnie thought to ask her son.

  “Randy, have you seen your daddy’s badge?”

  Randy sheepishly waddled, pigeon-toed and unsteady, to his bedroom and retrieved the badge from his bed where he’d been playing with it.

  He ran back into the living room and handed it over to his father.

  “I like,” he proudly announced. “It shiny.”

  Even then, before he knew what a Ranger was or did, Randy wanted the badge for his very own.

  Chapter 5

  Randy attended Texas Tech University. By then he’d grown into a strapping young man, and people told him constantly he was a spitting image of James Arness.

  The first time he’d heard the observation he’d asked, “Who?”

  “The guy who played Marshal Dillon on Gunsmoke.”

  “Gunsmoke? Is that a movie?”

  Randy didn’t watch a lot of television as a child. He was always outside with his friends playing cops and robbers.

  Besides growing into a handsome young man, he also matured a bit emotionally. So did his study habits and he received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice after just three years.

  On his twenty-first birthday.

  Most of his fellow graduates went on benders. But not Randy. Randy was a teetotaler. Not because he considered himself better or more responsible than others. He’d tried alcohol. And cigarettes too. He just didn’t like either one of them.

  So on his twenty-first birthday, when he went out with his friends to celebrate both his becoming a man and graduating from college, Randy was the designated driver.

  By four a.m. he got the last of his drunken buddies to their houses and tucked safely inside.

  Then he went home and started packing.

  Two days later he was in Austin, his head shaved clean and undergoing a grueling five mile run.

  It was Day 1 of Ranger Academy.

  He was three months away from getting his badge.

  He would carry on a family tradition.

  Another tradition, though, would go unfulfilled. Jacob would not be there when Randy graduated to hang that tarnished and well worn badge on his son.

  Jacob died the previous year of colon cancer.

  Minnie, an introvert in every sense of the word, hated being the center of attention. She hated being on any stage at any time and for any reason. The mere thought of a large group of people watching her made her shiver.

  But she would take Jacob’s place. She would pin that badge on her son’s chest. It was what Jacob would have wanted.

  Secretly, Minnie hoped that Randy would wash out of the Ranger Academy. The family’s luck had lasted too long, she believed. Had been stretched too thin. Every winning streak eventually comes to an end. She knew in her heart as long as the Maloneys kept wearing that damn badge, that luck was going to run out on one of them. One of them was going on watch one day and wasn’t coming back home.

  She didn’t consider herself a selfish woman by any means. But she didn’t want to be the mother who accepted that American flag and had to listen to her son’s eulogy. About how he was a gallant hero in the eyes of Texas.

  She didn’t want to watch her future daughter-in-law accept the flag for her grandson’s sacrifice either.

  She was hoping that Randy would wash out of the Academy. So he could do something safe. Like be an accountant. A stockbroker. Hell, she’d even let him be a fireman and rescue people from burning buildings.

  As long as her only child didn’t wear that damn badge. Didn’t go to work each and every day knowing that he’d be around people who hated him enough to kill him. Or who hated the badge and what it represented.

  Minnie needn’t have worried about Randy. She should have worried about herself.

  Two years to the day after she pinned that damned star on Randy’s chest he called her to invite her to dinner.

  “I want to take out the sweetest, most beautifulest mom in the whole State of Texas. And probably the universe as well.”

  “Um, Randy… I don’t think there’s such a word as beautifulest.”

  “There has to be. No other word describes you adequately. I’ll call the dictionary people tomorrow and have them add it, with your photo just above it.”

  That was Randy. He always had a kind word to say about everyone, and even when the flattery was false it still made people smile.

  He wasn’t smiling when he went to pick her up and found her dead on the kitchen floor.

  Heart failure, the medical examiner said in the autopsy report. Due to a congenital heart defect that had gone undiagnosed for all of her forty five years.

  Randy saw something else in the autopsy report as well. Contributing factor: hypertension.

  High blood pressure. Caused, no doubt, from being a Ranger’s wife. Maybe not entirely. For many years Minnie had been extremely introverted, almost afraid to speak with strangers. She kept inside herself, kept her problems and troubles bottled up as well.

  Holding one’s feelings within themselves so firmly did terrible things to the human body.

  So did biting one’s tongue when she wanted to scream at her husband to find a new line of work.

  A line of work that wouldn’t cause her to cry herself to sleep each night, wondering if that was the night her husband wouldn’t come home.

  If that was the night a police chaplain would rap on the door at three a.m., causing her to sit bolt upright in bed, knowing.

  Randy couldn’t do anything to bring his mother back, or to take back the hell that her life must have been.

  The next best thing, the only thing he could do in tribute to his beloved mother, was to end the legacy.

  The Rangers still offered a ten year retirement plan. The early out, they called it. It was a plan which offered few benefits other than an increased life expectancy. But that was okay. He could do something else.

  Randy decided to end his career after ten years. He’d have plenty of time to do what he’d always dreamed of doing. Plenty of time to help right the wrongs in his beloved State of Texas.

  He’d retire at thirty one. Still young enough to date. Still young enough to fall in love. Still young enough to have a family.

  But his son, if he had one, would never see him go off to work with a badge on his chest and a gun on his hip.

  His son, if he had one, would never hear his mother crying late at night and begging God to just let Randy be late. Not to let him be lying dead in a street somewhere.

  His son would not grow up the son of a lawman. He’d grow up the son of an accountant. Or a banker. Or a real estate agent.

  He’d never be the hero to his son that Jacob was to Randy.

  But hopefully his son would have his mother for more than twenty three short years.

  With no family left and no girlfriend to hold him back, Randy poured himself into his career. He wanted to be the best Ranger that Texas ever had. He wanted to work his last shift after ten years and visit the grave of his great great grandfather, old Wilford P. Maloney himself.

  He planned
to thank old W.P. for the fine example he’d set for the Maloney family. For leading the way and for starting a legacy that five generations fulfilled.

  But he’d say it was time for the legacy to come to a close. That the Maloney women had suffered too much over the years and it was time to put an end to it.

  He’d bury that shield in the ground over W.P.’s grave. He’d return it to its original owner.

  “Thank you for the opportunity to serve my Texas,” he’d tell the old man.

  “But now it’s somebody else’s turn.”

  Chapter 6

  Randy quickly became a rising star in the agency. His quiet demeanor won him a lot of cases. His calm and calculated way of doing his job helped gain the trust of the people he came in contact with. Whether they were frightened victims of violent crime or confidential informants on the dredges of society, they seemed to trust Randy and to take him at his word.

  And that trust was well founded, for Randy was a man of impeccable integrity.

  The foiled bank robbery put Randy into the media’s spotlight as well. He’d been interviewed by a doll of a reporter for one of Austin’s local television stations the day after the event.

  He didn’t want to do it, but the publicity officer told him he had to.

  “Law enforcement usually gets a bad rap in the news media,” he’d said. “The public complains that we don’t do enough to serve them and the bad guys claim we go out of our way to be rough on them. We can’t win. Well, every once in a while we get the chance to show the public the good things we do with something heroic and noncontroversial. You will report to KAUS-TV and you will do the interview and you will enjoy it. That’s an order, Ranger.”

  Randy wasn’t one to watch the evening news. He was usually at the gym working out or reading. So he’d never seen Melissa Rey before he walked into Studio 2.

  He was instantly infatuated with her.

  “What was going through your mind when you realized the man at the bank was going to rob it?”

  “Well, I realized I had to stop it.”

  “And had you formulated a plan to do that?”