“You’re making me regret this, Owen.”
His attitude, his tantrums, his two-fisted assault of the van’s glove box. And the beer. Lone Star. Right up there with Schlitz, Pabst and Piels. Texas goat piss. And Owen with an open bottle of it while they coasted out of Little Rock in the van, him raising it for a gulp whenever he wasn’t pounding the dash.
“How…can they be losing…to the fucking Titans!”
Beer gulp, fist-pound.
It was Sunday, two-thirty p.m., with the Dallas Cowboys visiting the Tennessee Titans in Nashville, the game in the middle of the second quarter. They were now headed east, about to leave Arkansas and enter Tennessee. They’d make Blacksburg, Virginia by midnight. Owen had his phone plugged into the van’s dash, live-streaming the game from a Dallas affiliate.
Like most Philly guys, Judge’s two favorite pro football teams were the Eagles and any other team playing Dallas. Owen’s team was down by two touchdowns. For Judge, this was hilarious. For Owen, he was about to swallow his tongue. They were in Shearerville, Arkansas, just off I-40 on State Hwy 70, twenty minutes outside Memphis and the Tennessee border.
Gulp, fist pound. “Fucking fuckers…” A general comment directed at the Cowboys and the Titans both. Frustrated, Owen looked over his shoulder at the van’s cargo area again.
“You really need all this shit back here, Judge? I mean, Christ, chains, leashes, vests, flashlights, it makes you look like you’re into some really kinky shit. How about we get rid of some of it to reduce the weight? Maybe let this van clock in at something like, oh, I don’t know, over forty miles an hour?”
They were cruising a state highway in the south with a black man riding shotgun, and said black man was a midget in Rastafarian dreads drinking beer from an open container. The speed limit plus five mph was the most Judge was going to chance, considering where they were. “You know, you’re right, Owen. How about we do this?”
He steered onto the road’s shoulder, held a sleeping Maeby in place by her collar and jammed the brakes. The tires screeched and Owen’s seat belt nearly choked him. “A coupla things I don’t need in here are you and your fucking overnight bag.” He pressed the button for the locks and they clicked open. Judge nodded in the direction of the passenger door. “Get the fuck out.”
“Okay, okay. Fine, Judge, never mind, you made your point. I’ll shut up. Sorry.”
“And stop pounding my dashboard. You’re pissing off my dogs.”
The Cowboys were mounting a comeback. “Damn, Judge, now that’s what’s for dinner, Slick!” So again Judge asked himself, why let this loose popgun tag along on what was now a case with a larger profile? In Texas, Owen had some juice, but now that they were in another state, his stock had dropped.
An admission on Judge’s part: Owen was there for more than one reason. Judge saw him as an unedited version of himself; some of his inner demons personified. Plus maybe his behavior and small stature deflected some of the public focus from Judge’s Tourette’s. Maybe it was also the five hundred bucks Owen offered him for the ride-along. He didn’t take the money, but he let him think he might later.
The Cowboys were on an extended drive deep into Titan territory, getting closer to evening the score when Owen turned from his phone and said, “Judge, I haven’t had this much fun since my tryout with Wrestlemania. No, wait, that’s a negatory. When I punched you in the balls was a pretty good time, too. Before they tased me.” Beer gulp, belch. “I feel another installment for my column coming on”
“I’m thrilled for you.”
“For my court blog. ‘My Trip To The Supreme Court: Thoughts on Roe v Wade.’ Yeah. That’s the ticket.” He put the beer aside, opened his laptop and started keying.
The hum of the van on the highway, Owen keying, the dogs snoring, and the football play-by-play, all this white noise settled Judge back down, allowing him time to think.
Earlier he’d texted LeVander, to let him know he was back on the case, adding that he was bringing a Cowboys fan back with him.
Then another attempt at reaching Geenie. With her, what wasn’t said kept things interesting for them. He’d given up finding someone after he lost his wife, then he met Geenie. This attractive, adjusted woman, her focused life, and his life for the past six months with her in it, it had all been amazing.
“About time you called again, mister,” she said, answering on the first ring.
“What are you wearing?” Judge’s best lecherous smile accompanied the question. Owen choked on his beer.
“Orvis,” she said. “A colorful autumn print with twelve-point bucks. Flannel, neck to toes, with footies. It’s cold in the Poconos today. Plus my face is broken out and I gained fifteen pounds while you’ve been away.” A chiding tone. “Stop trying to impress your new friend, Judge. I know he’s right there.”
Geenie. The most striking fifty-plus-year-old woman Judge knew. Spanish in her blood, and naturally beautiful, and even if what she’d said were true, she was still an extraordinary gift to him. Before her interest in him, he’d been a most extraordinarily broken man.
“Fine. Busted. Hey, we’re closing in on Memphis. Look, I’m still working this thing. We’ll be making a stop at the Planned Parenthood clinic that blew up in Virginia, then we head to D.C. After that, home.”
“I haven’t been to D.C. in a while. Maybe I’ll join you.”
In Judge’s head he said no, absolutely not, too dangerous. Except Geenie was far from the wallflower type. Judge knew this, and she knew that he knew. Still, the macho-guy protector part of him said no, no, no. He’d lost his deceased wife to their respective violent professions. He wasn’t going to chance reliving that.
“You’re not speaking, Judge, which means you’re thinking. Which means you’re looking for a way to say no. Which, my dear, makes me want to make the trip all the more.”
“Look, a number of agencies and the local police are working this. So yes, the answer has to be no.” Experience told him he needed to add a certain suffix to the ultimatum. “Please.”
“You’re cute when you get like this, Judge. Give me a call when you get closer, sweetie, and get ready for some seriously hot I-miss-you-so-much cuddling. Plus maybe I can help you with your bounty after you catch her. How’s that?”
The problem was it was not a hollow offer, and it terrified him. “Um…”
Owen got loud. He was now Skyping with his Glenn Heights, Texas, police chief buddy on his laptop. He tapped down the volume on the phone carrying the game. “Say that again, Frannie,” he said at his laptop screen.
“Hold on a minute, Geenie.” Judge eased the van onto the highway shoulder and listened in on the conversation.
“I said,” Frannie repeated, “tell your Marine bounty hunter friend that the Feds had hits on some of the other souvenirs from the storage locker. From unsolved cases in Oklahoma and New Mexico.”
It was confirmed: the pen belonged to Mr. Beckner, the pastor. No surprise there. And Zachary Enders’s parents now had his college ring back, but they still didn’t have his body. He’d gone missing the year before Teresa Larinda Jordan graduated from the university.
Plus there were surgical instruments.
“This, gentlemen,” Frannie said, Owen’s phone developing an echo, “I’m struggling with.”
The instruments were from a clinic in Oklahoma near the Texas border, according the Frannie, where there’d been an unsolved triple murder in 2010. One doctor, one nurse, one patient, all executed with point-blank gunshots to the head. Plus, “The blood from the smear on the forceps,” he said, “is the same type as the murdered patient and her fetus. We’re waiting on DNA test results.”
Judge felt queasy all over again, but a few swallows choked it back. Owen and Frannie doubled-down with a goddamn Dallas Cowboys chant when they learned their team had scored a go-ahead touchdown. Judge hadn’t forgotten Geenie, who was still on his phone.
“You hear all that?”
“Yes,” she said. “Sounds like a nightmare.”
“You still want to meet me?”
Say no. Please.
“Now more than ever, Judge.”
Shit. “Fine then.” There would be no talking her out of it, but she needed to hear him out. He turned away from Owen to lower his voice, Owen still whooping it up, still Skyping with his police chief friend. The Cowboys had just pulled off a lame-ass come-from-behind victory to stay undefeated for the season.
“Look, Geenie…”
The twist of a bottle cap. Owen bumped Judge’s arm to get his attention with a freshly opened sudsy beer. “C’mon, let’s celebrate, pardner. Your Eagles won today, too.” He eyed the phone, then leaned over to raise his voice at it. “Hi, Judge’s girlfriend Geenie. Owen Wingert here. ’Sup? So Judge here tells me you’re a nurse…”
Judge hung up, reached over and pushed him back against the seat, his free hand to his chest, and held him there. “Will you just shut the fuck up, Owen? I need to have a serious conversation with her. No horsing around. Just…relax, okay?”
“Jeez. Okay. Sorry.”
He redialed Geenie while keeping an eye in Owen. “No accounting for present company,” he said, launching into it when she answered, “there’s some serious terrorism shit going on here, and I don’t want you getting mixed up in it, so…”
“So?” she said. Judge sensed she was enjoying this. “So then what, Judge?”
“Leave your guns at home, Geenie. Please.”
“That’s sweet, Judge, really it is, but we both know I won’t do that.”