Play Dirty

CHAPTER 36

HERE’S THE THING, RODARTE TOLD HIMSELF. GRIFF BURKETT had successfully (a) lured or (b) kidnapped Laura Speakman from the hotel. He had escaped arrest at her mansion. He was driving an unknown vehicle. Basically, he was in pretty good shape to elude capture for a while longer, maybe even enough to get far away.

So why had he used the Speakman broad’s cell phone to call him, knowing that Rodarte would be able to track the call and mark their location? Sure, Burkett had been smart enough to leave the phone in that theater parking lot, but why take such a risk in the first place?

Burkett wouldn’t. Not unless he had something to say that was mighty important, something that he felt would get him off the hook completely.

Rodarte sat in his car on the shoulder of the interstate and smoked half a pack-fuck quitting-before determining that Burkett hadn’t been playacting. He’d sounded excited and definitive. Burkett believed that Lavaca Road in Itasca was a link to Manuelo Ruiz, whom he claimed had killed Speakman accidentally. Meaning Burkett was innocent.

It must be true. If Ruiz had witnessed Burkett murdering Speakman, Burkett would be racing down to Itasca to silence the man, not calling Rodarte and telling him where to find him.

Conclusion: Manuelo Ruiz was no longer a footnote in the case. He’d been bumped up to a principal player. His new status called for action.

Rodarte used the redial button on his cell phone. It rang only once before being answered. “Itasca PD.”

“This is Rodarte again. Put Chief Marion on.”

A few clicks, then, “Detective Rodarte?”

“Anything?”

“Nothing. I got two men still watching the house, though.”

“Call them back and cancel the APB on Manuelo Ruiz.”

Rodarte sensed Marion’s surprise. “Why’s that?”

“Somebody screwed up,” Rodarte said, faking exasperation. “Dumb computer geeks. Looking for a house address and came up with a route number instead. Got y’all hyped up for nothing. I hope to God they never issue those guys guns.”

The other cop chuckled. “Thanks for the call, Detective. I’ll pull everybody in, including the sheriff’s office. My officers will be disappointed. They thought they were going to get in on something big.”

“Not tonight.”

“What about Burkett?”

“Still at large.”

“Big guy like him, you’d think he’d be easy to spot.”

“You’d think.”

“Well, we’ll keep an eye out.”

Rodarte apologized again for the mix-up, said he hoped he hadn’t kept Marion and his officers up too late, and told him good-bye. He flicked his cigarette butt out the window, then, smiling, pulled his car onto the interstate and headed toward Itasca.

When he saw the Millers, Griff thought, The surprises just keep on coming.

Both had on sandals, shorts, and florid Hawaiian-print shirts. Ellie was wearing a straw hat. A wilted lei drooped from her neck. She looked flummoxed. Coach, in spite of his ridiculous attire, was seething.

Hoping to defuse the impending explosion, Griff said, “Coach, Ellie, this is Laura Speakman.”

Coach nudged Ellie aside and bore down on Griff. “The widow? Yeah, we know who she is. We read about Foster Speakman’s murder in The Wall Street Journal while we were in Hawaii.” He shot Laura a look, then his hard gaze swung back to Griff. “Next thing I know, I’m getting a call from a Dallas detective, apologizing for bothering me while I was on vacation, but it was important, he said.”

“Rodarte?”

“That’s right. Stanley Rodarte. He asked if we knew where you were. Had we had any contact with you? Would we know where he should start looking for you? Why? I asked. Did this have to do with Bill Bandy? Oh no, he said. That’s old news. He’s looking for you in connection with the Speakman murder. Your fingerprints were on the murder weapon.”

“Joe, your blood pressure,” Ellie said quietly.

“I told him I didn’t know anything about you, what you were doing, where you were, and I didn’t want to know. Now I come home and find you all cozy in bed with the late millionaire’s wife. And it doesn’t look to me like she’s in mourning.”

“Well, you’re wrong!” Griff shouted, going toe-to-toe with Coach’s anger. “She’s mourning the loss of her baby. My baby,” he said, thumping his chest. “She miscarried it tonight there in your bathroom.”

Ellie made a sorrowful, wounded sound.

“Laura was pregnant by me, but I didn’t kill her husband.” Griff looked beyond Coach at Ellie. “You’ve got to believe that.” To Coach he said, “It’s up to Laura how much she confides in you, but she can tell you that I did not commit murder. I’m on my way now to find the only man who knows that for certain and can keep Rodarte from putting me on death row.”

Griff moved toward the door, but Coach planted his hands firmly on Griff’s chest, stopping him. “You’re not going anywhere. I’m turning you in.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Oh yeah?” Coach shoved him backward.

“He has to go, Mr. Miller.” Laura swung her feet to the floor and got off the bed. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know. But Griff didn’t kill Foster. In order to prove it, he must leave now.”

The older man divided a look between her and Ellie, whose expression indicated that, this once, she had sided against him. He came back around to Griff, who could tell Coach was warring with himself for reasons he believed to be right and just. “If you’re innocent-”

“I am.”

“Then turn yourself in.”

“I can’t. While I’m wading through the formalities, Rodarte might eliminate this other guy.”

“Eliminate? What do you mean?”

“Exactly what you think I mean.”

“Who is this other guy?”

“Speakman’s aide, who’s been missing. Coach, there’s no time to explain it all now. I’ve got to go.”

Coach stepped back and raised both his hands. “Dig yourself in deeper. See if I care. I wash my hands of you.”

“You already did, five years ago.”

“Long before that!”

The words hurt, but Griff couldn’t dwell on them now. He picked up Manuelo’s duffel bag. When he looked back at Laura, he didn’t say anything, but he hoped she knew what he felt.

Then he brushed past Coach and left the house in a dead run.

Rodarte located the abandoned farmhouse while dawn was still several hours away. As described, it was the only structure he’d seen since he left town central, and it was practically falling down. He hadn’t passed any patrol cars, and none were in sight. Chief Marion, good as his word, had called back the posse.

Rodarte slid his nine-millimeter from his shoulder holster and chambered a bullet, took a flashlight from his glove box, then cautiously got out of his car. He made a circuit around the house, shining the flashlight on the unstable piers holding up the structure and onto the roof, which not only sagged but had large holes. Most of the windows had been broken out. The place was a shambles.

It was surrounded by fallow cotton fields, the earth as flat and black as a griddle. The air was hot and still, and so quiet he could have heard a gnat fart. Neither the approach of his car nor his prowling had flushed out Ruiz or anybody else who might have been hiding inside. He didn’t get the feeling that he was being watched through one of the busted windows, either, and his instinct for that kind of thing was excellent.

Minding his step for fear of falling through the rotted planks, he walked across the porch and tried the front door. It swung open on rusted hinges that squeaked. Standing on the threshold, pistol in his right hand, he shone the flashlight around the interior. It stank of mice, living and dead.

There was one main room, with a fireplace full of litter and old ash. Opening off this room were several doorways. He crept to them one by one. Bedrooms. One bathroom. A kitchen. All vacant. No sign of occupancy for at least a decade.

“Fucking waste of time,” he muttered. So Burkett had been yanking his chain after all, sending him on a wild-goose chase while he was hustling the widow down to Mexico for some R amp;R, romance and rutting.

He switched off the flashlight, sat down on a windowsill, and lit a cigarette to smoke while he ruminated on his next move. He blew a plume of smoke through the vacant window frame. Without any wind, the smoke hovered in the air like a ghost. Rodarte stared through it across a yard of hard-packed, parched earth.

There was a pen that probably had been home to a hog, a goat maybe. Too small for a horse. The posts of a barbed-wire fence either were listing or had already toppled. The wire lay in rusty coils on the ground. Thirty yards or so beyond the fallen fence was a barn that appeared in even worse condition than the house.

The barn.

Rodarte stuck the cigarette between his lips and squinted through the smoke rising off it. He checked his flashlight to see how the battery was holding out. Getting dimmer, but still working. He dropped the cigarette onto the bare wood floor and ground it out.

Outside, he could see well enough without the flashlight. But he kept it in one hand, his pistol in the other, as he went around the house to the back. The yard was an obstacle course. An abandoned wheelbarrow lay on its side. A tree stump obviously used as a chopping block still had the hatchet embedded in it. The shadowed hulk under an attached lean-to turned out to be a disemboweled tractor.

He stepped over the fence, carefully avoiding the lines of barbed wire, and walked toward the barn. The double doors were closed but held together only by a wooden latch that pivoted on a nail. He flipped it up and pushed the door open just wide enough for him to peer inside. The darkness was penetrating. The stifling air smelled of manure and soured hay.

Sensing no movement or sound, he opened the door wider and slipped inside. He switched the flashlight on and shone it around. His knowledge of barns was limited to what he’d seen in movies, but in his uneducated opinion, this one was fairly standard. A loft running the length of one side. Horse stalls. Tack and farm implements.

And Manuelo Ruiz.

Or somebody.

Instinctually, Rodarte knew he wasn’t alone. And for one split second, he felt a pang of fear. It could be Burkett. Burkett might have set him up. Burkett might have sent him here to be ambushed. Had he been outsmarted by that cagey son of a bitch?

Before Rodarte could complete the thought, he sensed movement behind him. As he turned, a hard blow landed on his shoulder, numbing his arm and hand. He dropped the flashlight. With his other arm, he swung a wide arc that ended abruptly when his palmed pistol connected with the side of his attacker’s head.

It wasn’t Burkett. Too short, too dark, too thick through the middle. And Rodarte hated himself for the relief that came from knowing that.

But he still had a fight on his hands. The man was stunned and staggering but not downed. He ducked his head and lunged toward Rodarte. The detective got a knee up in time to catch the man beneath his chin and practically shoved it up his nostrils. Rodarte heard teeth clack together and figured that some of them had broken. With a grunt of pain, the man fell to the earthen floor.

Rodarte, his momentary fear now replaced by anger, grabbed the flashlight and shone it down, directly into the man’s face. It was swarthy, broad, the features flat. The eyes blinking against the beam of light were inky black. They widened marginally when they saw the barrel of Rodarte’s pistol aimed directly at them.

“Hola, Man-u-el-o.”

The man showed a flicker of surprise.

“Yeah, I know your name. We’ve got a mutual friend. Griff Burkett.”

At that, Ruiz rattled off a barrage of Spanish.

“Shut up!” Rodarte barked. Ruiz fell silent. “I’m not interested in anything you have to say. Anyhow, you should save your strength for the job you’ve got coming up.”

Reaching down, he grabbed the man’s shirtfront and hauled him to his feet. “See that shovel over there?” He directed the flashlight’s beam at the pile of tools he’d spotted earlier. “Get it.” Ruiz just stood there looking at him vacantly. “Don’t pull that no comprendo bullshit on me.” He hefted the pistol and clearly enunciated, “Go and get the fucking shovel.”

Ruiz’s obsidian eyes glittered in the flashlight’s beam, but he did as he was told. “Don’t even think of trying to clobber me with it,” Rodarte said when Ruiz turned with the shovel’s handle gripped in both hands. “I’ll shoot you right now if you do.”

He motioned for Ruiz to go ahead of him through the barn door. Rodarte followed at a cautious distance, the nine-millimeter aimed at the man’s spine.

The eastern horizon was turning gray. “Get a move on, Manuelo.” Planting his foot against the other man’s buttocks, Rodarte pushed him hard enough to cause him to stumble and fall.

Ruiz rolled over onto his back and glared up at Rodarte in a way that made the detective glad he had a gun trained on him. “We’ll see how feisty you’re feeling after you’ve put that shovel to good use.” Ruiz looked at the shovel, then back at Rodarte, seeming puzzled. “What?” Rodarte asked around a chuckle. “You didn’t expect me to dig your grave, did you?”