Death Comes Calling (Ranger Book 3) Page 4

  “Yes sir.”

  “Okay. You two search the front of each of those houses, all the way to the center of the street. If you see anything at all that might be tied to our shooter, don’t touch it. Come and find me.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Hanson… Marlowe…”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Go door to door. Canvass the block. Ask the neighbors how many shots they heard, and where they came from. Ask if they’ve seen anyone out of place the last few days.

  “Ask if they knew of anyone who might have wanted to harm the major. Ask if there are any residents of this block or the neighborhood who are unstable or capable of doing something like this.

  “And be careful. Be mindful that one of the people you’ll be talking to might be our shooter. Watch for the usual signs. Nervousness. Twitching. Lack of eye contact. Yawning. Looking at the ground. If you see any of that, consider that person a suspect and bring him to me.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Warner… Maloney…”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Our shooter might not have fired from a distance. He might have walked up behind the major and caught him off guard. Search this yard and the yard on each side of it. Look primarily for shell casings, and for anything else that looks fresh. Go all the way to the center of the street.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Lt. Davis turned back to the only man left.

  “Smith, I’m going over to talk to Cathy. I want you to stand guard over the major. He shouldn’t be left alone.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Davis walked down the steps feeling ten years older than he had just a couple of hours before.

  It wasn’t just the weight of his new position as Company C Commander.

  It was despair. About what had happened to the world. What had happened to society.

  What would cause someone to perform such a despicable and cowardly act.

  He’d never been particularly close to Cathy Shultz. He’d always considered her prim and proper, like the “church ladies” he saw huddled together after church services on Sunday mornings.

  So it surprised him when the new widow collapsed crying in his arms, then whispered in his ear.

  “Please… find the bastards who did this and make them pay.”

  Chapter 10

  The grass in Mrs. Greeley’s front yard was ankle high and unkempt.

  She, like most of her neighbors, had lost all desire to maintain her yard after the blackout hit.

  Although most of the lawnmowers still worked, their simple engines having no electronic parts, it just no longer made sense exerting the time and energy.

  Not when that time and energy was better devoted to finding food or other essential things.

  Randy was on his hands and knees, searching through the high grass for shell casings or other signs someone had simply walked up behind Major Shultz and pulled the trigger.

  He’d divided the yard into a grid, only visible in his mind’s eye. He swept first one way, one square yard at a time, until he worked his way all the way across the yard. Then he advanced a yard closer to the street and started sweeping the other way. It was a slow process. But it was a very thorough method.

  After an hour he was just better than halfway through the yard when he heard a shout.

  It came from the back yard of the house directly across from Mrs. Greeley’s. Lt. Davis went running, but Randy stood his ground.

  Whatever they’d found, he’d hear about it soon enough. In the meantime, he still had his own mission to complete.

  Lt. Davis entered the back yard of the house across the street, passing within inches of the tree Steve had struggled up to gain access to the roof.

  He met Ranger Martinez, who was standing over a .556 shell casing.

  It hadn’t been there for long. Its shiny brass glinted in the sunlight. It had no time to tarnish or get coated with the fine west Texas dust.

  Further, it was light, once shed of its powder and shell.

  Light enough to sit more or less atop the tall grass.

  Given a few days, the wind would have helped it work its way through the grass and to the ground. Given a few weeks it would begin to show the signs of weathering.

  But none of that had happened yet.

  It was plain to see, even to one with no investigations experience, that this had been here for just a very short time.

  “Is anyone in the house?”

  “No sir. It’s vacant. We cleared it before we came out here.”

  “Nothing up here at all.”

  Davis and Martinez turned and looked upward, to see the face of Ranger Swain peering down from the roof.

  He’d scrambled up the same tree Steve had used, but had a much easier time of it.

  “Is there a clear view of the house from up there?”

  “Yes, sir. From here he had a good clean shot.”

  Davis squatted down and examined the casing further without touching it.

  “Okay. We’ll search the rest of the yard just to be sure. But it looks like one man, one shot, from this roof. From what we’ve heard of the neighbors so far, that jives. No one reported hearing a second shot.

  “Martinez, go knock on doors. Find me a zip-lock plastic bag. I don’t know if LPD has any fingerprint experts left, but we need to preserve them just in case.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Martinez left the yard and Swain hopped down from the roof.

  “Sir…”

  “Yeah?”

  “What are we gonna do when we find this guy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the courts aren’t working anymore. There isn’t even a district attorney anymore. They’ve shut down their offices and gone home to be with their families.

  “LPD isn’t even investigating homicides anymore. All they’re doing is burying the victims and moving on…”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I just don’t want to find this guy and watch him walk because the justice system is permanently broken, sir. If we find this guy…”

  “What? What if we find this guy?”

  Davis was getting a bit agitated.

  “I’m just saying, sir, that if we find this guy… let me deal with him. That’s all. Let me deal with him, and you and everybody else can just stay out of it. That way nobody could be implicated except me.”

  Davis didn’t know Swain well. He’d only been assigned to Company C for a year or so. He did know, however, that Swain had worked for Major Shultz for several years.

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that for now, Swain. You knew the major longer than anyone. Were you close?”

  “He was like a father to me, sir.”

  Davis knew enough about human nature to know Swain was speaking from his heart and not his head. It was the “anger” part of the grieving process.

  And to be honest, Davis was feeling the same feelings of anger. The same hatred for the animal who did this thing.

  But he wouldn’t let himself get carried away as Swain had.

  “We’ll find this guy. And with God as my witness, I swear to you he will pay. But we’ll do it the Ranger way. The honorable way.

  “We won’t dirty Major Shultz’s good name by acting as vigilantes to avenge his death. It’s not what he would have wanted and it’s not what we do.

  “We are Texas Rangers. We’re better than that.”

  Swain looked at his feet.

  “Yes sir,” he sheepishly said.

  “This conversation never happened, Swain. Understand?”

  It was the lieutenant’s way of assuring Swain that no action would be taken for his suggestion. That emotions were running high for everyone, and his feelings were understandable. But at the same time further outbursts would not be tolerated.

  “Let’s be sure we don’t miss anything. Start a grid search of the rest of the yard. If there are more casings or anything else associated with the shooting, we need to find
them.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Chapter 11

  Steve Peters was in bad shape.

  After he shot the major down and lost sight of the boy he’d scrambled back down the tree and come down hard on his left ankle.

  It wasn’t broken but was badly sprained. Enough to make him hobble across the back yard of the vacant house.

  He had to climb over three fences to get to the next street and each time he did he had to jump down on that same ankle.

  Each time he did, he did more damage to it.

  It took him a full ten minutes to make his way to the house behind his own home. It was obviously vacant, its front windows broken out, and in little chance of being ransacked or utilized.

  By anyone other than himself, that is. For Steve utilized it in several ways. He had dried food, water and ammunition hidden in the attic air conditioning ducts.

  Just in case he ever had to evacuate his own house and hide out there temporarily.

  He planned to use the back yard, with an eight foot privacy fence he’d installed himself, to grow fourteen rows of corn and twenty rows of wheat come springtime.

  And he used the house to cover his coming and going, so no one would see him leave his own house one street over.

  Once he was sure no one was watching he entered the vacant house, then made his way through it to the back yard.

  He went directly to the back fence, where he’d fashioned a secret trap door through the fence and into his own yard.

  As he crawled through the trap door one of his rabbits passed him by, seeing an opportunity to escape.

  Under other circumstances Steve might have chased him.

  But he was in too much agony.

  And losing one rabbit wouldn’t hurt him much. He still had five left. Three females and two males.

  Between them they’d still produce more meat than he could possibly consume. He’d planned to convert the excess to jerky, to barter with later on.

  In all likelihood the rabbit would be dead by the end of the day. He’d be hopping down his little bunny trail and somebody would blow him away with an AK or an AR-15. It was way too much firepower to use on a little rabbit, but nobody carried .22 rifles anymore.

  Once again Steve felt a flush of superiority.

  Nobody thought about catching the rabbits and breeding them so they could have protein on a regular basis. Somebody would shoot the rabbit and have a good meal, sure. But then a few hours later they’d be hungry again.

  Only Steve was smart enough to breed rabbits as his main source of protein. Only Steve was smart enough to look ahead, to plan for the long term.

  Only Steve was smart enough to survive the onslaught from the heavens.

  Steve had many bad habits, but one of the worst was his selective memory.

  This was the man who set out to shoot an unarmed and completely innocent victim. To gun him down in cold blood. To use a high powered rifle to shoot him from a distance of only two hundred feet or so, from a fixed position in a hidden sniper’s nest.

  It should have been the easiest murder ever.

  But he’d bungled it almost from the beginning. He didn’t think the plan through. He didn’t consider all the variables. He had no backup plan or alternate escape route. He’d shot for the head, a sucker’s shot.

  Worst of all, he’d left a witness.

  Yet he was feeling superior because he once read in the prepper’s Bible that breeding rabbits was a great idea.

  He felt superior because he’d stolen and implemented somebody else’s idea.

  It wasn’t until he’d crawled through the hidden hole in the fence and made his way into his basement sanctuary that he relived the whole operation in his mind.

  It was then he realized how badly he’d messed everything up.

  How lucky he was to even get off the shot.

  And luckier still that the bullet found its target.

  He was lucky he didn’t miss. That the Ranger hadn’t been alerted to his location by the sound of the gunshot.

  He was lucky the Ranger didn’t scamper after him, for Steve really sucked at hitting a moving target. Especially under pressure.

  He was lucky the major didn’t catch him in his injured condition and shoot him down like a dog.

  It was only then, when he was back in his basement and safe once again, that Steve realized how lucky he was to be alive.

  Chapter 12

  John Shultz could have been buried with full honors. The mayor of Lubbock offered up a plot at the city cemetery, near Buddy Holly’s grave.

  But Cathy wanted him closer to home.

  She wanted him close enough so that even after she grew old and gray she could still visit him daily. Still pluck the dandelions from his grave, still place flowers upon it.

  Still tell him how much she missed him.

  Cathy and John’s back yard was fairly large by Lubbock standards, almost a quarter of an acre.

  The day after his death, when they’d buried him under the pecan tree in the center of the yard, it was standing room only.

  John had been a popular guy, both in Lubbock’s social circles and in the neighborhood. He counted as friends the entire city council, the social elite, and many of the beat cops in the LPD and Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office.

  It was testament to his popularity that almost two hundred people saw fit to walk to his home for the funeral. Or ride their bikes or horses.

  Or, in the case of the LPD officers who were off duty, the noisy little go-carts they’d converted into police cruisers.

  Twelve of them were lined up in a neat row in front of Shultz’s house.

  One person who wasn’t there for the funeral was Steve Peters.

  He was a sniveling coward.

  He thought himself big and bad and superior to all others around him, yet his crowning achievement in the aftermath of the blackout was to shoot a man in the back of the head.

  And then he was too cowardly to attend the man’s funeral. To make sure he was really dead.

  The Texas Ranger detachment didn’t have an official chaplain. It was simply too small.

  Luckily the minister at John and Cathy’s church was found. He lived some miles away, and never rode a horse in his life, but thought enough of John Shultz to wrap his arms around the torso of a Ranger and hang on for dear life as they galloped through the streets together.

  After the service the minister told the Ranger he’d just walk back. No offense and thank you very much, but he was more comfortable on solid ground.

  It was a beautiful service. Someone had gone to the church and lugged back a hundred song books, and the good minister led the group in some of John’s favorites: Rock of Ages, How Great Thou Art, We Will Meet at the Shores.

  Several of the neighborhood children gathered on the roof of John’s house to watch the event. Even those kids who didn’t know the dead Ranger came to watch. For in a world with no electricity, there honestly wasn’t much else to do.

  Flowers were hard to come by, since all of the neighborhood women agreed to stop watering their flower gardens in light of the water crisis.

  One of the more determined neighbors, though, had walked to a large field a mile away and had gathered a large bouquet of late-season wildflowers.

  Cathy was grateful to have flowers to place upon his grave.

  As for John, he didn’t know a tulip from a turnip. The type of flowers wouldn’t have concerned him any more than where they’d come from.

  But he’d have been pleased they comforted Cathy a bit.

  There was no gathering after the service, as was the custom in west Texas. One by one the friends and neighbors said their condolences to Cathy and wandered away.

  The exceptions were several of the Rangers, including Randy, and a few of her closest friends.

  And the neighborhood kids, who having nothing better to do sat around and watched as the LPD officers sped away one at a time on their go-carts.

  One of the Rang
ers walked rather stealthily into the den, where Cathy and some of her friends were tearfully discussing better times.

  He went directly to Lieutenant Mark Davis and whispered something in his ear.

  Cathy Shultz saw the transaction but thought nothing of it.

  Not even when the lieutenant quietly excused himself.

  Davis was taken to the front yard, where he was introduced to a tussle-haired boy.

  “Tommy, tell the lieutenant what you told me.”

  “I think I know who killed your friend. I…”

  Tommy looked at the ground, as though supremely ashamed.

  “… I think I might have helped him.”

  Davis went to one knee so he was eye level with the boy and said, “Go on, Tommy. Tell me all about it.”

  “He gave me a piece of candy. He said I could have the whole bag if I did something for him. He even showed me the bag so I knew he really had it.

  “I almost didn’t at first, on account of they used to tell us in school never to take candy or money from strangers. But he seemed okay, so I listened to what he wanted, and it didn’t seem bad.

  “All he wanted me to do was to go fetch the Ranger and to tell him a little old lady needed him and then to take him to her house.

  “That’s all I was supposed to do, I swear. I didn’t know the guy was going to shoot him or anything.”

  He looked at Lt. Davis with puppy dog eyes.

  “Am I gonna go to jail?”

  “No, son. You’re not going to jail. But are you sure the man with the candy was the one who shot Ranger Shultz?”

  “I’m pretty sure. He was carrying a rifle on his shoulder and when he left me there he went over to the house across the street. And I heard some of the cops saying that’s where the shot came from.”

  “Did you see the candy man again after you heard the shot? Did he ever bring you your candy?”

  “No, sir. When I heard the shot and saw… saw the Ranger fall down, I ran like hell.”

  Chapter 13

  “Tommy, would you wait for me just a minute?”

  “Okay.”

  Davis took the Ranger who’d introduced him to Tommy aside.