CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

When we returned to the scene of the shootout, it looked like half the town had gathered in front of the house. Two of our cruisers sat out front, along with three city police cars and a pair of DPS units and an ambulance. We parked down the street and ducked under the crime scene tape. Inside the house Agent Hotchkiss was running the show and doing a good job of it.

“First thing, how’s Linda?” I asked.

“She’s not in danger,” Hotchkiss said. “Otis Tremmel talked to her for a couple of minutes before they took her cell phone away. They’re prepping her for emergency surgery in the hospital in Nacogdoches. No X-rays yet, but the ER doctor said the bullet broke a couple of bones.”

“Have her parents been notified? I don’t want them to hear it on TV.”

“They have. Tremmel called them, and they’re on their way to the hospital. They took it pretty good, he said.”

“How about Bob Thornton?”

“Sore and grumpy, but no permanent damage. And we’ve got the bullet that hit his flak vest. It’s a little distorted, but intact. If it matches the Twiller and Raynes murder weapon, we’ve got a bankable case on Kimball.”

“Excellent,” I said. “How about the deceased? Have we got anything on them?”

“Hoods out of Mississippi. Names are Robert Quest and Donald Eugene Weeks. The Bureau has files on both of them but it will take a while to get the works.”

“We can assume they are both heavies, though?” I asked.

“Absolutely.”

“I don’t suppose you found any cocaine, did you?”

He grinned. “No, but we found a suitcase full of money with two forty-five-caliber holes in it. We also found an empty Uzi out in the alleyway.”

“My age,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m getting to where I can’t see when it’s dark. I’m a good shot in the daytime, but my night vision is gone. How much was in the suitcase?”

“We haven’t counted it down to the nickel, but it looks like a quarter million in hundred-dollar bills.”

I looked around at the bullet-riddled living room. “Hotch, how do you figure this mess went down?”

“I think that considering how quick it happened, Kimball must have started shooting almost as soon as they were inside and he was sure they had the money. One of the rednecks had the Uzi. We figure that when Kimball shot him, he sprayed the ceiling as he fell. That was the burst we heard right after the first two gunshots. Then Kimball grabbed the Uzi and used it to shoot his way out. We found two magazines for the thing, one that he discarded on the back porch and the other was still in the weapon. My thinking is that since we didn’t find any coke, this had to be a straight-up robbery. Quest and Weeks were lured here for what they thought was going to be a buy. Either Kimball and Arno together planned to take them out and steal the money, or Kimball planned to do all three of them from the first. Which do you think it was?”

“The latter,” I said. “From what I’ve seen of this kid lately, I don’t think he would have planned to kill two people for a fifty-fifty split when he could kill all three and keep the whole thing.”

“We’ve got fugitive alerts out all over the state and western Louisiana too. Do you think we should stake out his mother’s house?”

“No. That’s the last place he’ll go because he knows she won’t hide him. I would bet anything that he’s swiped a car and is already on his way to Houston.”

*   *   *

We were there until well after midnight. The mobile news unit from the Lufkin network affiliate arrived along with a half dozen print reporters, including Sheila, who showed up in shorts and with her hair still damp from the shower. I was pressured into holding an impromptu press conference on the scene wherein I spread a little creative disinformation. I said that as the result of a reliable informant’s tip, a multiagency task force had raided the house in an effort to apprehend a murder suspect and in the process interrupted a drug buy that had gone bad. I revealed that two people had died in the raid, and that their names would be withheld pending notification of the next of kin. I named the officers involved and praised them all, and gave them the details of Linda’s injury. Then I said I would answer any questions I could without jeopardizing an ongoing investigation.

“Were either of the deceased killed by police officers, Sheriff Handel?” asked Emma Waters, the pretty blond coanchor for the Lufkin station.

“Absolutely not.”

“You mentioned a murder suspect,” another reporter said. “Was this in relation to the Amanda Twiller homicide?”

“It was, but I can’t give you the suspect’s name at the moment.”

“Why haven’t you released the name of the man killed in yesterday’s shootout?” asked Dan Ryder, a congenital smart-ass who served as the wire service stringer in central East Texas.

“I had my reasons, but I’ll be happy to do that right now. He was a mob-connected figure from New Orleans named Paul Arno. They called him Big Paul.”

“What was he doing here in Sequoya?” he asked.

“We think it had something to do with this drug deal.”

“Were any drugs found?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know it was a drug buy?”

“Informants, and from the amount of money that was found at the scene it could have hardly been anything else.”

“Money?” he asked. “How much?”

“We’re not sure yet, but it was certainly enough to get the attention of a struggling scribbler like yourself.”

He didn’t like that answer. “Maybe it was a peaceful poker game you raided. Did you ever consider that?”

“Dan, even you should know that people don’t bring Uzis to friendly neighborhood card games. But I will admit that in a sense they were gambling, and it looks like they lost.”