Above The Law Read online

  "Can he do that?"

  "He just did."

  "But can he win?"

  "Of course he can't win."

  "Then tear it up, honey," Paige said.

  Casey didn't reply. Then she said, "I don't think, anyway."

  "You're the lawyer."

  "Not a First Amendment lawyer. I told them he didn't say some of the crap they put in there. How can I be liable for that?" she asked.

  "You're the lawyer."

  "Thanks. You keep saying that."

  "Look, I'm at dinner right now," Paige said, "and they just put a big hot steak in front of Luddy and he's giving me the hairy eyeball. Want to meet us after for a drink?"

  "No, I'm sorry," Casey said. "I just wanted to vent. You should have seen the creep who served me."

  "Served what?"

  "The papers," Casey said. "The lawsuit. They have to give it to you in person. So you can't say you didn't get it. I have to respond to the goddamn court."

  "You want me to leave, honey? Come over there?"

  "No, you have your dinner."

  "'Cause I can. I mean it."

  "You're sweet. Tell Luddy I said hi."

  "I'll do that."

  "Paige?"

  "What, honey?"

  "I'm sorry to keep bothering you, but do you know Senator Chase at all?"

  "Little rooster," she said. "Drinks too much when he can. Nothing like his father, who my daddy always said was a prince. Oh, Luddy, you stop that and eat already."

  "How about the wife?" Casey asked.

  "Mandy? A little too good for the rest of us, I've heard. Don't know her that well."

  "Could you introduce me?"

  Paige laughed and said, "She used to be an actress, that's what they say, so I can't imagine she wouldn't want to meet you with your own Lifetime original. What does that have to do with you getting sued?"

  "Nothing," Casey said. "It's a whole other story. I'll tell you when I see you."

  "How about I ask her to our little fund-raising tea tomorrow?" Paige asked. "Sissy James's husband is one of the senator's biggest supporters. I'll have her ask. If she can, I'm sure she'll come for Sissy. The little rooster will make her."

  "Perfect," Casey said.

  CHAPTER 25

  NELLY MOVED QUIETLY THROUGH THE UPPER HALL TO HER mistress's dressing room with an armful of clean clothes before plunging into the darkness of the closet. Tiffany lamps sprang to life, exposing rack after rack of dresses, pantsuits, skirts, tops, and gowns. The scent of cedar-an undercurrent in the dark-seemed to fade. Nelly drank in the sight. Mahogany shoe cubbies filled the back wall. A ladder on brass tracks ran the length of the room. The entire village where Nelly had been born could have been dressed thrice over by the clothes in this closet.

  Silently she returned the silk undergarments to their drawers, two skirts to their hangers, a cashmere sweater to its shelf, and a lace teddy to its dainty hook. Mrs. Chase liked her clothes replaced by the end of the day and she liked the work to be done while she dined. Nelly suspected that that way it seemed as though a fairy revived the soiled clothes magically, and not that dirty Mexicans like her had touched the pretty things.

  Nelly checked the plastic watch she wore on the inside of her wrist, almost seven-thirty and the end of her fourteen-hour day. Still, she was grateful to be inside the house where the broad tile roof, the thick wood beams, and two AC units the size of small cars kept the place cool and comfortable. Also, she'd last worked in the household of a woman who made Mrs. Chase look like a saint.

  On her way through the dressing room she froze and cocked her head, straining for sounds from the bedroom. The tick of an expanding vent sent her scampering for the hall. She'd been skittish since the night of the argument, the night after the ranch hand died. That evening she'd been putting away her mistress's clothes when she heard shouting from the bedroom. Instead of sprinting away, as she did now, she'd frozen inside the closet, only to be frightened more when the lights went out.

  The fight between the senator and his wife moved from the bedroom into her dressing room, with him haunting her, deriding her, his words slurring from drink. Nelly heard the things he'd said about Ellie, the hand who had died. She heard her mistress turn on the senator with venom in her voice. The bickering escalated into a torrent of screams and the smack of his palm on her cheek.

  That's when her mistress darted into the closet, flipping on the light and exposing Nelly, who covered her face, cowering at the sight of the senator's bulging eyes and the flash of his teeth.

  "Get out, you little Mexican sneak!" he'd shouted, stabbing his finger toward the door and raising the bottle in his other hand as if he might strike her with it.

  "Leave her," the wife said, "she doesn't even understand."

  That's what her mistress had said, and she scurried out, bumping her knee on the doorframe, yanking the door closed behind her so that it slammed, and sprinting out of the house and down the path that led to her own little place in the rows of shacks.

  That's what her mistress said, but she and Nelly both knew that wasn't true. Nelly spoke some English, and understood even more than she spoke. She played along, though. She'd never been one to do much talking anyway. But then Bill Ells, the ranch foreman, appeared in the basement laundry room; he knew enough about Nelly from the others not to believe her ignorance of the language. He spoke soothingly to her, though, and even made her smile. She hadn't minded admitting to him, just between the two of them, that the senator had said some bad things about the hand who had died.

  Then, of course, she told him she would never speak about it to anyone.

  Now she descended the back stairs, past the kitchen with its commotion of banging pots, jabbering cooks and servers, and the smells of grilling meat, fresh bread, and spices. She trudged outside into the hot night and followed the flagstone walkway around the garages and stables toward the dirt path that led to the low rows of shacks. When she rounded the stables she saw a police cruiser that made her pause. The chief's car wasn't a strange sight, but he usually parked it in the guest parking lot beneath the three towering oaks on the other side of the big house.

  The darkened stable door burned in an orange glow and she saw his face, big as a pumpkin beneath the towering hat. The chief touched his cigarette to the flame, blew out the match, then walked her way. She stood fixed in her spot, her eyes searching for meaning in his, but the faint glow of the orange ember gave nothing away.

  He stopped at the car and rested his hand on the light rack atop the roof.

  "You're Nelly," he said.

  She inclined her head without a sound.

  Gage nodded and opened the back door, flooding the ground with the dome light. Gage pointed to her and then into the backseat. "Por que?" she asked.

  "You got to speak American to me," he said, grinning so that the cigarette angled toward the stars.

  "What do you want?"

  "That's better," he said. "You and me need to talk a little is all."

  "Talk?"

  Gage angled his head at the backseat. Nelly's stomach heaved and she brought her hand to her mouth, but got in. Stones rattled off the car's undercarriage as Gage spun the car around and sped off down the back drive. They took a left out of the ranch and accelerated down the country road. Nelly's stomach heaved again when they raced up the ramp to the highway going south, away from the town, the police station, and any legitimate purpose she could think of.

  "Donde vamos?" she asked, the words barely trickling from her lips.

  "I told you, speako Americano," Gage said, grinning at her in the rearview mirror as though holding back a full slate of laughter.

  "Where are we going?"

  "You'll be all right," he said. "You'll be with your people."

  Ten minutes later Gage got off the highway and went down another rural road. He turned off into a gated drive and stopped. A man wearing jeans and a cowboy hat and carrying a machine gun walked up out of the culvert and spoke in a l
ow voice to Gage before unlocking the arm of the gate and swinging it open. Nelly jammed a knuckle into her mouth, stifling a cry. They jounced along the rutted track and around a bend, and came to a stop in a cloud of dust before a tractor trailer.

  They got out to the sound of crickets and the low whine of the big truck's engine. Diesel fumes mixed with the dust, choking her. Gage reached for her arm. Nelly screamed, winced, and turned away, but he got hold and she felt the thick fingers clamp down.

  "You're all right," he said, lifting her nearly off her feet and propelling her to the back of the truck, his words hardly betraying the strain from his effort. "You're just gonna take a little ride."

  Her feet skimmed the dirt, kicking up gravel as Gage marched her the length of a rusted orange container. In the back, a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a thick beard swung open the doors, aiming a machine gun of his own inside. A laser beam of light from the scope stabbed the dark hole like a long red needle. A warm stench floated up out of the truck and Nelly heard sniffling and groans and realized the floor of the trailer was littered with human forms.

  The man in the flowered shirt stepped back and rested his gun on the ground. He took Nelly's other arm and together with Gage hoisted her up and into the back. She stumbled over one person and stepped on another, who shouted a halfhearted curse. Nelly's stomach heaved again, this time spouting a thin stream of vomit that her hands couldn't completely contain. The smell of her own filth lost itself in the pervasive stench. She spun to see Gage and the other man swinging shut the metal doors. The latch clanged home.

  The truck's brakes hissed and shrieked, and the container of human beings lurched forward, slowly gaining speed.

  CHAPTER 26

  JOSe LEFT HIS TRUCK A GOOD BIT UP THE ROAD FROM THE WORKERS' entrance to the ranch, taking care to drive it well into the scrub along the embankment of the bridge that crossed the Trinity. From the backseat of his truck he removed a backpack that held night-vision goggles, a powerful flashlight, a good hunting knife, a rain poncho, and a couple of packages of dried nuts. He hoisted the pack and climbed out onto the road, hiking back toward the entrance, but plunging in through the scrub to avoid the gates and come out on the drive far enough up the way to avoid the camera.

  Using the GPS, he navigated the dirt roads until he found the hillside and stopped for a moment to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his brow. Up in the field, his night vision revealed three deer peering down at him until he started up through the corn and they bolted into the woods. When he reached the place where Elijandro had died, he removed the goggles and flicked on the powerful flashlight. The search for the shell casing turned up nothing and he snorted in frustration, knowing that it had to be there.

  "Unless," he said aloud, finishing the sentence with the thought that Gage or the senator might have taken the shell for a reason. The question was, for what reason?

  Jose thought about Gage's description of Elijandro's head injury, brains all over. He took out his cell phone to make a call and saw that he'd missed three calls from Casey and that she'd left a message. Instead of calling her back, he dialed Ken Trent.

  "How'd it go?" Trent asked.

  "You said it, a weird cat. He was fine, actually. I wanted to ask you about turkey hunting."

  "Season ends tomorrow, so you'll have to wait till next year if you're wanting to go with me."

  "I'm fine with a Butterball from Kroger," Jose said. "I wanted to know what kind of gun you use, what kind of shells."

  Somewhere nearby in the black woods, a rabbit screamed like a dying banshee. Jose jumped.

  "What the hell is that?" Trent asked.

  "I think a rabbit," Jose said. "Coyote must have got it."

  "Where are you?"

  "Murder site," Jose said, "accident site, whatever."

  "In the woods?"

  "The senator's got some spread."

  "Gage isn't with you."

  "No, just me. I circled back."

  The line went quiet. Jose knew how his old boss liked to size up pictures in his mind.

  "I use six shot for turkeys," Trent finally said. "HEVI-Shot. Lots of people shoot fours."

  "What are those? Pellets the size of a pea?" Jose asked, never one himself for anything more than a handgun.

  "More like a BB, a little smaller even."

  "How tight is that pattern at about twenty feet?"

  "Fit in the palm of your hand."

  "Would that punch a hole in a man's skull?"

  "Make a nice divot."

  "A hole?"

  "Maybe. You'd have to talk to Vern Thomson about ballistics."

  "It wouldn't punch through the skull and out the other side, though, would it?" Jose asked.

  "Doubt that."

  "Would a shell casing say what kind of load you had?" Jose asked.

  "The number's right on the side," Trent said, "printed on the plastic."

  "I appreciate it. One more thing."

  "Yeah?"

  "Would you ever hunt a turkey using a slug instead of shot?"

  "Not unless you were happy with a Butterball," Trent said. "You gotta hit them in the head or the neck. Their feathers are so layered, they're like Kevlar. Slug's for a deer. You gonna tell me what's going on?"

  "Long story," Jose said. "I'll buy you a beer. Gotta go. Thanks."

  Jose hung up and began a different search.

  He positioned himself in front of the tree where the senator had supposedly shot from and aimed the flashlight in the direction of the stump where Elijandro had sat. Beyond it, a big silver beech rose up on one side with what looked like a younger oak-about eight inches in diameter-on the other. Beyond them yawned the pitch black of the open field, where the turkey had supposedly been.

  As he stepped over the stump, Jose shone his light down into the scuffed-up leaves and crouched. Softly he pushed aside the leaves, one at a time, filling the night air with a damp loamy smell, until he found some purple rubbery matter that he suspected was gore. He poked at it with his fingertip, verifying it to be more than clotted blood. Gage hadn't exaggerated.

  Shining the beam, he stalked over to the beech tree and ran his hands over its smooth gray skin. He found nothing. He bent to the small oak with its rougher bark, went over it once, and then again more carefully. His fingers passed over a rough brown patch in a jagged crease. He took out his knife and poked the tip into the fibrous web, digging in half an inch before the point struck something metal. With his heart pounding he stepped back, shone his light, and took a photo of the tree's trunk with his phone, closing in to take a second one up close. He dug around what he now realized was a hole until the warped copper of the shotgun slug was exposed.

  He took another picture, then dug the rest of it out, taking care to dig the knife into the tree and not the slug itself in order to preserve its integrity. When he had it free, he examined it under the beam of light, turning it over, but seeing nothing he could pinpoint. He fished a plastic Baggie from the backpack, dropped the slug in, and returned the bag to his pack.

  Jose looked around, breathing hard. His heart pounded out a quick beat inside his chest. He knew that if the slug had passed through Elijandro's head, even though the human eye couldn't know it, a forensics lab could.

  CHAPTER 27

  JOSe'S BLOOD COOLED AS THE HIGHWAY SNAKED INTO THE HIGH-rises of downtown Dallas. He thought about Casey and checked his phone, saw the calls he'd missed, and dialed her up.

  "Are you okay?" Jose asked. "I saw you called."

  "I'm okay now."

  "What happened?" he asked.

  She told him about the creep who had served her the lawsuit papers.

  "We had a guy downtown once," Jose said, "he went to serve this husband with divorce papers. He pops out from between two cars in this parking garage and before he can say anything, the husband buries a screwdriver in the guy's chest, said he had a window in his office that he could never get open. Guy went free, too. Partly because the window story checked
out, but partly because I think the jury felt like that service guy got what he deserved, sneaking around like that."

  "I gave him a pretty good gash with my nails," she said. "Where are you?"

  "On my way back just now," he said. "Listen, Gage showed me where it happened. I waited until it got dark and went back in there by myself. I think I've got something, a shotgun slug. I took it out of a tree. If it's what killed Elijandro, there'll be bone and blood on it."

  "How does that help?" Casey asked. "No one ever said Chase didn't shoot him."

  "If he shot him with this, it's going to be hard to say it was an accident," Jose said.

  He explained to her about turkey hunting.

  "A slug you use for deer," he said. "That's it."

  "Deer or a man."

  "Or a man," Jose said. "Plus, Gage is lying. His face is a billboard. Even a Podunk cop would have saved the shell casing, and he would have questioned the senator and a lot of other people around him when he saw the little gap between two trees that he was supposedly shooting at the turkey through. And this report? It looks like a third-grader wrote it. This thing is like an anthill. Looks like a mound of dirt until you kick it over."

  "They didn't do an autopsy, either," Casey said. "Some local funeral director signed the death certificate and they buried him quick."

  "No autopsy?" Jose said. "How's all this gonna look when they get Gage on the stand? This thing is way too sloppy. He's either gonna have to spill what happened or get pegged as an accomplice. Big stiff white boy like that don't want to see the inside of no Texas jail."

  "You think we can get this to a trial?"

  "If it weren't a US senator, I'd say no doubt about it," Jose said. "With Chase? We need to tread light."

  Neither of them said anything for a moment and Jose rolled down the exit ramp and turned onto the city street that would take him home.

  "You okay?" Jose asked, stopping at a light.

  "Sure," Casey said. "Fine."

  "You want me to come over?"

  When she didn't respond, he cracked his neck from side to side and shifted in his seat, his hands tight on the wheel.