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  "There was no it," Casey said. "Are you kidding? We had dinner, talked shop, and said good night."

  "No kiss?"

  "You watch too much TV. Anyone ever tell you that?"

  "I would've kissed him," Stacy said. "He's gorgeous, and you probably ran for your car, didn't invite him over for a drink, a walk, a talk, nothing. What about Saturday?"

  "He had plans with his daughter," Casey said. "I don't know, I think he's just being nice."

  "You've got to be more aggressive. He's hot for you. What? You think he's hanging around here, shagging deadbeat dads and disappearing witnesses for the fun of it? Tina? She baited her hook the other day with that dress and the push-up bra and he didn't even look twice. He's gaga for you."

  "Okay, seriously, that's enough," Casey said.

  Stacy shrugged. "What do you need him for now, then?"

  "Forget it," Casey said. "Nothing I can't do myself, anyway."

  "Don't be so touchy."

  Casey disappeared into her office, gently closing the door. She tried Jose again, then headed out the back and got into the Benz. She didn't want to give the Wilmer police chief time to prepare for her, so instead of making a phone call, she headed to the southeast corner of the county.

  The drive to Wilmer south on 45 took less than half an hour. After announcing herself to a young woman behind the desk, Casey waited in a chair by the door. The receptionist glanced up at her often enough that Casey began to brace herself for a Movie of the Week comment. None came.

  When Chief Gage emerged from the back, he was so tall the crew cut on his bullet head nearly chafed the doorframe. Casey felt the same one-way familiarity that she presumed the receptionist had with her.

  She'd seen Gage's face on TV when Senator Chase's hunting accident filled the first block of almost every newscast for three days. Gage issued the official statement closing the case as an accident. He'd done the press conference in a hat proportional to his own height, and still it was his face that Casey remembered well, the black caterpillar eyebrows, the lantern jaw, and the icy blue eyes of a Siberian husky.

  Casey shook his skillet-size hand, and he led her down a short hall to a large windowed office looking out on the full bloom of a pecan tree. A thick sheet of glass raised up by four elephant tusks served as his desk, and the heads of other trophy animals graced the high walls: a panther, a bison, a warthog, and an elk, among others. Framed eight-by-ten pictures of the chief with numerous celebrities made a complete ring around the office, one next to the other breaking only for the window: Clint Eastwood, George W. Bush, Sylvester Stallone, Billy Ray Cyrus. Antique handguns and their corresponding bullets hung in an oak case beneath a Dahl ram's head, and a cabinet of rifles stood in the corner. Beneath Casey's high-heeled shoes, the skin of a zebra covered the wood plank floorboards.

  Casey sat down across from the chief in a wooden chair with a cane seat that rasped and creaked under every shift. She surveyed the room one last time, quickly, and noticed an absence of books. When she returned her eyes she found the chief staring intently.

  "How can I help you, Ms. Jordan?" the chief said. He picked a bayonet up off a pile of papers on his desk and leaned back, turning it over slowly in his fingers.

  "I'm interested in Senator Chase's accident," she said.

  "Terrible thing," he said, fingering the tip of the blade as if to test its sharpness.

  "I'm wondering how you knew it was an accident," Casey said.

  Gage curled his lips, picked at his teeth with the bayonet, and said, "That's old news."

  "Unless you represent the victim's widow," Casey said. "That's me. Strangely, the government is in a rush to get her out of Dodge."

  "Maybe the government finally got tired of paying for their kids to go to our schools," Gage said. "But that ain't my business. My business is keeping this town quiet, things running smooth. What's your business, miss?"

  Casey cleared her throat and said, "Your investigation of Elijandro Torres's death. How it was conducted."

  Gage ridged his brow and considered her for a minute before pursing his lips to choke back a snicker and saying, "No, miss, that's not your business."

  "I'd like to see the police report," Casey said. "And the coroner's."

  Gage stood up and pointed the bayonet at the door. "People in this town pay me to keep them safe, miss. I got work to do."

  "Your records are public information."

  "And you can submit your request in writing," Gage said, waggling the bayonet at the door.

  Casey got up and the chief followed her all the way out through the reception area, standing in the doorway with his arms folded across the broad expanse of his chest.

  Casey had her cell phone going before she even got onto the highway, but hadn't gone a mile on 45 before she saw flashing lights in her rearview mirror.

  "I've got to go," she said to Stacy, "just get that request going. I want these people to have that fax in their hands before I get back to the office, and call Jessica Teal at the coroner's. Tell her I need a copy of Elijandro's autopsy."

  Casey pulled over and watched in her side mirror as Gage emerged from the police cruiser and fixed the big hat on his head. He wore mirrored sunglasses. At the back corner of the car he stopped, raised up a booted foot, and heel-kicked the taillight, rocking her car.

  "Christ," Casey said, shaking her head as the chief ambled alongside her. She rolled down her window and gripped the wheel, her palms slick now with sweat in spite of the blowing AC.

  Gage pointed at a green rectangular sign fifty yards up the road.

  "You see that?" he asked.

  It read wilmer city limit.

  "Yes," Casey said through clenched teeth.

  "Good," Gage said. "I noticed you got a brake light out. I'm gonna let you go this time. We're awful friendly here in Wilmer. Just a quiet little place in the corner of the county. I aim to keep it as such. You have a good day now, miss."

  The chief tipped his hat and walked away.

  CHAPTER 19

  WHEN SHE GOT BACK TO HER OFFICE, CASEY FOUND JOSe sitting behind her desk.

  "Hi," he said.

  "Where the hell have you been?" she asked. "What are you doing at my desk? You look like a thug."

  Jose rubbed at the stubble on his cheek and stood up. His baggy jeans sagged toward the floor, barely clinging to his hips by a thick leather belt. His flannel shirt had no sleeves, exposing bronze cannonball arms wrapped in barbed-wire tattoos.

  "Nice to see you, too," he said, yanking the bandana off his head, rounding the desk, and reaching for the door.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "Wait."

  He did. They sat down and she told him about Isodora's court appearance, the ICE lawyer, and Gage, leaving out the part about the taillight. As she explained, his face relaxed.

  "You should have let me do that," he said.

  "I tried you."

  "I was doing a favor for a friend on the force," he said, looking down at his street garb as an explanation. "I had to leave everything in the truck. Not the kind of people you want to get hold of your cell phone."

  "I should have waited, but Jesus," she said, "they held her baby hostage. An all-time low, even for the US government. It's all tied up in Chase's accident, which I'm starting to feel pretty certain wasn't an accident."

  "Gage isn't the type of guy who'd react well to your questions whether he's hiding something or not."

  "Cop talk?"

  "I'm not defending him," Jose said, massaging his thick arm. "I'm not saying Chase didn't kill the man and Gage didn't cover it up. Hey, I think the Cubans got Kennedy. I'm just saying, he's not the type to pander to a woman lawyer who tangles up the justice system to spare a couple of muchachas from a beating."

  "But he'd relate to you," she said skeptically.

  "He'd react differently," Jose said. "Let me at least try to talk to him and get a feel for it."

  "Fine."

  "You're not mad," he said.

  "M
aybe at myself," she said with a sigh. "You're right. I shouldn't have gone down there. All I did was give him a chance to cover everything up."

  "He'll have to give you the police report. Meantime, let me play good cop and see if I can get something out of him," Jose said, rising from his chair and reaching for the door.

  "Jose," she said, "this guy's an asshole."

  He turned and winked at her. "I've never met one of those."

  He left and closed the door. She stared, listening to the sound of the big diesel engine whirring to life, until her intercom beeped and Stacy told her she had a call from Jessica Teal, her contact in the coroner's office.

  "We didn't do an autopsy," Jessica said without a greeting.

  "You had to have," Casey said, "it was in Dallas County."

  "Not always," Jessica said. "It's up to the police. We can't do an autopsy on everyone who dies. If they determine the cause of death is accidental and a doctor signs the death certificate, that's it. We wouldn't see it."

  "Didn't you hear about it?" Casey asked.

  "I did, but I assumed it must have been pretty obvious if the police were calling it an accident without us, a high-profile thing like that. Everyone here figured they were trying to minimize the impact on the senator. Bad enough the guy was an illegal, after the senator's tirades about them. Press has been amazingly quiet on that, though. Either they bought the story about the guy not being a regular around the ranch or the senator called in some serious markers."

  "Can we dig him up?" Casey asked.

  Jessica was silent for a moment before she asked, "Do you have a reason?"

  "The wife thinks it wasn't an accident," Casey said.

  "I didn't see anything about a wife in the news," Jessica said.

  "She's an illegal, too," Casey said. "They're putting her on a plane in about an hour. It's a long story, but the ICE got rid of her faster than a Colombian drug dealer."

  "What's ICE?"

  "Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It's part of Homeland Security."

  "So we're safe now that this Mexican widow will be back on the other side of the border," Jessica said.

  "Your tax dollars at work."

  "We'll need the wife to exhume the body. That and a court order."

  "Is there a form or something for the wife?" Casey asked.

  "I can get you one."

  Casey looked at her watch and said, "Can you fax it right now?"

  "Sure."

  Casey hung up. She told Stacy to get the fax to her as soon as it came in and dialed Jose.

  "If you had to get to the airport at this time of day in less than an hour, what would you do?" she asked him.

  "Book a later flight."

  "If you had to."

  "I'd call my buddy who I just dipped down into the barrio for and have him send a couple motorcycle cops to meet you at the on-ramp."

  "Can you?"

  "For you?" he said. "You only have to ask once. I practically feel a rash coming on."

  "God."

  "I'll have them there before you hit the ramp at Stemmons," Jose said. "Keep your phone on."

  "How will they know it's me?" she asked.

  "They're not gonna miss that fancy ride. Get going."

  She ducked into the other room and watched Stacy pulling the coroner's fax from the machine, grabbed it, and dashed out to her Mercedes.

  CHAPTER 20

  TEUCH CRACKED AN EYE. THROUGH THE COVER OF HIS LASHES he watched a man in a white lab coat clip an X-ray up onto the large light box before stepping back to address a semicircle of younger people, also in lab coats. They crowded around him like the chicks of a hen. Teuch thought he saw the name stephen on a brass nameplate pinned to his coat.

  "Dr. Noton," one of the chicks asked, "is there any damage to the premotor area?"

  Teuch's eyes flickered, causing him to lose focus for a moment.

  "We cauterized only the prefrontal," the doctor called Noton said.

  "Have you ever seen damage to that area that didn't scramble the personality?"

  Noton pushed up the plastic glasses on his nose with his thumb and said, "Mostly scrambled. Sometimes over easy, though. Sometimes it's an altered personality, or just an amplified one. It's tough to know with a John Doe. We don't have any reference points."

  "The police don't know anything?"

  Noton shook his head.

  "But he'll be functional?" the same person asked. "Walking. Talking."

  "Eventually," Noton said. "I've seen people with massive frontal lobe damage walk out of the hospital in less than a week. Others? It can take years before they're functional enough to live on their own."

  Teuch flexed his fingers and toes under the sheet and smiled inwardly, knowing from the clarity of his thoughts that he'd be one of the ones walking out in less than a week.

  Noton reached for a tray and lifted a shiny half-dome up for all to see. "Anyway, who wouldn't want a titanium skull?"

  A couple of them chuckled politely.

  "Doctor," another one asked, "I thought you had to wait at least three days after a thoracic surgery to patch a skull."

  "The bullet went right through the chest," Noton said, looking up and scratching his cheek. "They opened him up and got right out. Dr. Kilkoyne did the surgery if you want to talk with her about it. Said she never saw anything like it. Bullet hit at just the right angle, ran along the rib, and out under the arm. Human armor."

  "Lucky guy, right?"

  "Very," Noton said. "Whoever he is."

  "Will the police be back?" someone asked.

  Noton shrugged. "When he comes to, they will."

  Teuch let his lids settle closed. He thought about opossums and how they survived. These doctors would grow careless. And then, when the time was right, John Doe would be gone.

  He had work to do.

  CHAPTER 21

  AFTER HE LINED UP CASEY'S MOTORCYCLE ESCORT, JOSe PAID A visit to Ken Trent, his former captain. Jose was hoping for a connection to Gage that might put him in a favorable light with the big chief.

  "Guy's a grade A flaming asshole," Ken said, leaning back in his chair.

  "Tell me what you really think," Jose said.

  "The two of you'll get along swell."

  "Seriously, someone must know him," Jose said. "Even assholes have friends."

  "Tell you who might be able to help," Ken said. "Dave Wayson, you know him?"

  "The narco guy who got into the Secret Service?" Jose asked.

  "He got the detail out on the senator's ranch when the first lady came for that square dance fund-raiser they did for some Bible group. Mention my name to Wayson. My wife's brother was the one who helped him get into the Secret Service. He'll help you."

  Ken jotted down Dave's number and handed it across his desk to Jose.

  "Did he get to know Gage?" Jose asked, sticking the number into his pocket.

  "Podunk cops like Gage fall in love with the Secret Service guys. Makes them feel like they're on the inside."

  "What kind of bullshit is that?"

  "I don't know," Ken said, "I'm making it up as I go, but it's the only thing I can come up with."

  Jose laughed and stood to go.

  "That poker game is still running every Tuesday," Ken said, walking him to the door. "You should get there."

  "I know," Jose said, shaking his old friend's hand. "I keep saying I will and one day I'll surprise you."

  "How's things on the home front?"

  "Cold and deep as the Titanic."

  "Not her, your little girl," Ken said.

  Jose turned and smiled. "Honestly? I'd be married to that two-timing bitch ten more years if it got me another little girl like Kenna. She's the silver lining. Platinum, really."

  "Good," Ken said.

  Jose wanted to get home to change his clothes before seeing Gage. On the way he dialed Wayson, who answered his phone on the first ring, out of breath, as if he had been expecting someone important. He sounded disappointed a
t the sound of Jose's voice until Jose mentioned Ken's name. Then Wayson perked right up.

  "Cold fish, that guy," Wayson said in reference to Gage. "I actually went down there after the whole first-lady visit to help him out with some protocols for the senator."

  "Gage is protecting the senator?" Jose asked. "From who?"

  "You know how some of these politicians get," Wayson said. "The people around them kiss their ass so hard half of them think their next stop is the White House. Makes 'em feel important to have a couple guys running around with earpieces when they sit down at a restaurant."

  "Would you mind giving him a call?" Jose asked. "Ken said I could count on you. What I'd really like is if you could tell him there's some noise about the whole hunting accident, this woman defense lawyer bugging people about it. Tell him that her investigator, me, is a good shit, ex-Dallas PD, one of the guys, and the best way to get everyone home by dinner is to be nice and help me out a little. Tell him I think the whole thing is crap. Can you do that?"

  "I'll tell him you're Santa Claus if you want," Wayson said. "Once I got down there-on my day off, I might add-the guy acted like I was lucky to be helping him. A weird cat. Big as a redwood, too, with that creepy old Frankenstein head. I was nice, though. Figured I was there, anyway."

  Jose had a one-bedroom in a downtown building that had seen better days. He parked the truck in his lot across the street, then ran up to change. When he opened the door, he bumped into the couch, forgetting that he'd left the living room a mess from his daughter's visit two days before. They'd shuffled the furniture and draped blankets over everything, pinning them down with unopened soup cans to construct an extensive fort. Several different tunnels led to the main room of the fort, where the two of them had eaten hamburgers and French fries and where they'd watched Air Bud from a nest of pillows, ultimately falling asleep.

  At Kenna's request, Jose had left the whole mess intact and moved his personal base of operations to the bedroom, where clothes and paperwork made up a soup of dishevelment. The gang clothes came off and went into the pile in the corner by the window. He sniffed the air, thinking the smell came from the clothes, but realizing the culprit lurked somewhere out in the little galley kitchen. He found his regular jeans on the bed and tucked in his T-shirt, wondering at the extra flesh that had been accumulating around his middle.