CHAPTER 15

“How’s the nuts?” Gram asked. She slurped her oatmeal, leaving a trail of soggy oats dribbling from her wrinkled chin.

Nothing like discussing your private parts with your eighty-year-old grandmother over morning coffee. “Still working.” I looked at Rhonda and rolled my eyes.

“You know your grandpa got hit there once. Put him out of commission for a month. Thought I was goin’ to have to take a lover.”

I hurriedly got up and topped off my coffee, anxious to nip that conversation in the bud.

“You need to finish your oatmeal, Gram,” Rhonda said. “We’re going to the senior center today.”

I winked at Rhonda, a small gesture of appreciation for rescuing me.

“Oh joy, joy,” Gram said, not the least bit enthused about her field trip. Couldn’t say that I really blamed her.

I took my coffee out on the deck and called Sophia.

“Good morning,” she said, obviously recognizing my number now on caller ID.

“Morning to you, too. I found a set of tire tracks at Ryce McCallen’s yesterday.”

“Hmm. Interesting.”

“Does Odessa PD have a forensics lab?”

“Why do I get the feeling this is going to involve me?”

I wiped a stream of sweat from the back of my neck. “That’s what I like about you, Sophia. You’re one of the few women I know who doesn’t want the world to revolve around them.”

I thought I detected a slight chuckle. “Yes, the Odessa Police Department has a crime lab. It’s not state-of-the-art but it can probably handle matching tire tracks.”

“Can you get me in?”

There was a slight hesitation on her end. Finally, she asked, “When?”

“Either late this afternoon or in the morning.” I still had to get over to McCoy’s and hopefully get some shots of his truck. I also had a lunch date with Claire.

“Let me make a call and I’ll call you back.” She hung up like she usually did, without saying good-bye.

Rhonda stuck her head out the back door and looked more concerned than I was comfortable with. “Hey—there’s a call for you. It’s a Detective Chip Adams from Las Vegas.”

I forced myself to breathe, then followed Rhonda back inside. I stared at the phone a moment after she handed it to me. I took another deep breath then answered. “Chip?”

“Guess you made it down to Texas okay.”

“Long drive but I made it. What’s up?”

“Gilleni was arrested two days ago. No bond.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding since leaving Vegas. “Murder one?”

“And conspiracy to commit.”

“Good. There should be enough evidence there to make it stick.” I had dropped off a nice, neat little package for Adams before leaving, tying Gilleni directly to Gina and her lover’s murder. The best defense attorneys Gilleni’s money could buy would have a hard time making this one go away.

“Gypsy—if we can’t work a deal, you may have to come back to testify.”

I squeezed my eyes closed. That was not what I wanted to hear. Even if I took the Fifth, I’d never make it out of the courthouse alive. “If I have to testify, I might as well put a bullet through my own head and save him the trouble.”

Rhonda’s eyes widened to the size of the mismatched saucers she had in the cabinet. I turned away and she grabbed my arm, staring at me with raw fear.

“Besides,” I said, “if I testify against a former client, I’ll lose every ounce of credibility I ever had as an investigator. You know that, Chip.”

“I’ll see what I can do. This a good number to reach you at?”

I gave him my new cell number. “You’re the only one who has the house number and it doesn’t exist, right?”

“What number? I’ll be back in touch. And Gypsy … take care of yourself. It took some balls to do what you did. You’re an all-right guy.”

I hung up and immediately met the wrath of Rhonda. “What do you mean, put a bullet through your head? Gypsy, what was that all about?”

My mouth was open but nothing was coming out. I didn’t want to get into the whole sordid tale; I prayed for Sophia to call back and rescue me.

“Sounds likes your brother’s in trouble,” Gram said. “That’s what the hell it was all about.” She waddled over to the sink and dropped her empty oatmeal bowl into the dishpan.

Rhonda closed her eyes and let out a quick, short breath. “Gram, why don’t you go get dressed? We’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”

“Whatever. That boy was born in trouble if you ask me.” Gram shuffled down the hallway to her bedroom.

“No one asked you, Gram,” I shouted after her.

When she was out of earshot, Rhonda shoved me toward the table. “Sit. You’re going to explain this whether you’re ready to or not.”

“Don’t you have to be leaving soon?” I asked, hoping for the best.

She bobbed her head toward the bedrooms. “It’ll take her a good thirty minutes to get dressed. Now, tell me what’s going on.”

I guessed she deserved to know. I was staying at her house. “A couple months ago, a guy named Frank Gilleni hired me to find out if his wife, Gina, was having an affair. Gilleni owns a couple of casinos and everyone suspected him of being tied to the mob but no one could prove it.”

“Was he?”

I laughed. “Is Jimmy Hoffa still missing?”

She looked at me with uncertain eyes. “Who’s Jimmy Hoffa?”

God love her. If it didn’t happen in Wink, it never happened. “Never mind, it’s not important. Anyway—yes, he was very involved in organized crime.”

“And you agreed to work for him?”

I gawked at her. “At least he paid me. Very well, I might add.”

“How could you work for him if you knew he was involved with the mob?”

“Rhonda, you’re missing the whole point here. He hired me to find out if his much younger wife was having an affair. And she was. With her high school sweetheart. They were planning on running away, changing their identities, and starting a new life together. I started kinda pulling for them, wanting them to make a break for it and live happily ever after. Anything to get away from Gilleni. He’s a real sonofabitch. I mean sonofabitch.”

She shook her head. “Gypsy—you are such a sucker for stuff like that. Look at you and Claire. The woman’s toxic but it’s never stopped you from believing she’s the love of your life.”

I glared at her. What the hell did Claire have to do with any of this? “Would you like for me to continue or are you going to bitch some more?”

She rolled her eyes. “I was just pointing out your weakness. You’re a hopeless romantic. So what happened with the wife and her boyfriend?”

I continued. “Gilleni started bugging me about what I knew and when was I goin’ to give him my report.”

“Couldn’t you have just made something up?”

“I did. Apparently, he had gotten suspicious because it was taking so long so he had one of his men trail me. And I led them straight to her. Gina and her boyfriend had arranged to disappear the Fourth of July. Sometime around ten the evening before, Gilleni paid them a visit at the boyfriend’s apartment. The maid found their bodies the next morning. He’d been shot in the head; her throat was cut ear to ear.”

Rhonda let it sink in before saying anything. “And you know it was Gilleni?”

I slowly nodded. Other than knowing how much I loved and hated Claire Kinley, I’d never been more sure of anything in my life. “I spent the next few weeks putting together a package of evidence of everything I knew against Gilleni and left it with Chip Adams.”

“The detective you just spoke with?”

I nodded again. “He’d been working Gilleni for years. Just never could get anything to stick.”

She gnawed the inside of her lip. “And you trust him?”

There were few people in the world I trusted. I was sitting at the table with one of them, and I had just hung up with another. “He’s good people. We’ve worked together on several cases.”

She changed from gnawing on her lip to biting a fingernail. “But if he could track you down here…”

“I gave him the number before I left. I knew I’d have to get a new cell phone when I got here, so it was the only number I had to give him.”

She nodded. But I could tell her mind was still bouncing in a thousand different directions. “And you’re sure this Gilleni guy doesn’t know where you are?”

“Few people in Vegas know my real name. Fewer know where I’m from and I don’t think Texas would be the first place they’d look. Rhonda, I never would have come here if I thought for even a second Gilleni could track me down. I wouldn’t put you in that kind of danger.”

She nodded again, then sighed heavily. “I know that.”

Gram shuffled back into the kitchen wearing nothing but a raincoat. And it wasn’t a pretty sight. “Gram! What do you think you’re doing?” Rhonda leapt up and closed the raincoat.

“Hopefully giving Otis Dinkins a thrill. Besides, weatherman said we might finally get some rain this afternoon.”

“Otis Dinkins doesn’t need a thrill. He has a pacemaker. And it’s not going to rain, Gram. You go put some clothes on right now.”

I prayed for Sophia to call, and lo and behold, she did. I quickly took the call and turned away from my naked grandmother.

“Four o’clock. The lab’s not at the police station. It’s at the corner of Baylor and Fourth Street.”

“You got an exact address? My GPS doesn’t do corner-ofs very well.”

“Five-sixteen Baylor. Meet me in the parking lot.”

“See you there.” I hung up first, beating her in the hang-up game. I grinned, imagining what she’d be wearing today. Now, that I’d like to see in nothing but a raincoat.

“So are you going to have to testify at Gilleni’s trial?” Rhonda asked. She had an annoying way of slamming me back to reality.

I rubbed my hands over my face and decided I should probably shave sometime today. “I can’t testify. I wouldn’t make it out of the courthouse.”

Rhonda looked at me. The fear in her eyes broke my heart. “Then what are you going to do?”

“Pray Gilleni takes a plea deal.”

*   *   *

After a shower, I swung by Burke’s and picked up Tatum. Since this particular assignment called for more photographs, I figured he might want to tag along.

“You know where Averitt McCoy lives?” I asked as he climbed into the van’s passenger seat.

He gave me the address. He seemed quiet and reserved today. I wasn’t sure if it was preteen moodiness or if he wasn’t sure about seeing the truck that was used to help kill his father.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.” I sat in the driveway a moment, giving him the opportunity to change his mind.

He looked at me as if he didn’t understand. “No, I want to. I like taking pictures.”

“Okay. Just making sure.”

I keyed Averitt McCoy’s address into my GPS and headed out. McCoy had been so far in debt, I was lucky his address was attached to a rental house and not a cardboard box. The rental was near Kermit, and it being a rental, I was banking on a dirt driveway. Not many landlords are going to pave a drive they don’t use themselves.

We drove in silence for a while, then Tatum finally spoke. “Dad had scheduled a vacation day today. He was supposed to take me to the dentist this morning and then he was going to take me over to the sinkholes to take some pictures.”

My heart grabbed in my chest. I felt for the kid. My ol’ man wasn’t much for family vacations but he did take a day every now and then to take me camping. We’d head down to Big Bend and sleep out under the stars and fish the Rio Grande. Even when I got older and preferred to sleep under an air conditioner, I never begged out of a trip.

“How ’bout if I take you by the sinkholes one day when all this is over?”

He glanced at me and I saw a hint of a smile. “Would you?”

“Might even let you use one of my cameras.”

“Oh, man … that would be like, so cool. See, it’s for my seventh grade science project and I was going to get an early start on it and—”

“You’re doing your science project on sinkholes? During your summer vacation?”

“I wanted to get an early start. And sinkholes are pretty cool.”

I glanced over at him. “If you say so.”

I found Averitt McCoy’s street and decided it was going to be a grand day indeed—the little house was the only house on a dead-end, unpaved street. No nosy neighbors wondering why some guy in a van was taking pictures of McCoy’s driveway. There were a couple rotting barns and abandoned outbuildings scattered around the end of the road, but other than that, McCoy had the whole road to himself.

The truck, an older model Ford, was parked near a small side stoop leading into the house. I parked along the road, grabbed my camera, and hopped out. Tatum and I walked along beside the driveway, not wanting to disturb any tracks. “Do not touch anything, you got it?”

He nodded and followed my every step.

Last night’s storm dropped just a spattering of rain, so the tracks were still very visible. I spotted two different sets; I assumed the smaller set was from the department’s cruiser and the larger ones from his truck.

I took several shots of the tires, the truck, and the tire tracks.

“Gypsy…” Tatum was at the back of the truck, staring into the bed.

“What?”

He slowly raised his arm and pointed to the bed.

I walked around to where he was standing and saw what he was pointing at.

A yellow nylon rope was tossed into a heap at the back of the bed. Tatum just stood there, staring at the rope, seeing things in his mind he didn’t need to see again. “Why don’t you go get back in the van?” I said, imagining the thoughts and images flooding his head at that moment.

He moved slowly back to the van carrying the weight of the world on his scrawny shoulders. I went around to the side of the truck and peered over into the bed. The rope had definitely been cut. One end was frayed, the other still sealed with factory glue.

I called Rodney on his cell. “I think I found the rope they used to hang him with.”

“Where are you?”

“At Averitt McCoy’s. There’s a nylon rope in the bed of his truck. One end’s been cut.”

“Don’t touch it!”

“Rodney, I’m not stupid. I’ve been doing this sort of thing a few years, you know.”

“I know … but, Jesus, Gypsy. Let me see if I can get a warrant.”

“You don’t need a warrant—it’s in plain view. Just get over here and tag it yourself. You’re on duty, right?”

“What if McCoy comes home for lunch?”

“Then maybe he’ll offer us a sandwich. Just get over here, Rodney. And bring an evidence bag.” I gave him the address, then hung up.

I checked the time on my cell and it was close to eleven o’clock. I hadn’t considered McCoy coming home for lunch. Of course I hadn’t expected to find a key piece of evidence lying in his truck bed, either. I went back to the van and drove to the end of the road. I then pulled the van around behind one of the old barns.

“What are we doing?” Tatum asked.

“I don’t know if Averitt McCoy comes home for lunch and if he does, he’s probably not expecting guests. Stay here.”

I got out and crouched beside the barn and waited for Rodney, or McCoy, praying they didn’t arrive at the same time. A few minutes later, Rodney’s cruiser turned onto the road. I stepped out and flagged him down, directing him to pull in behind one of the outbuildings. The poor guy was already red-faced and frazzled.

“You know we’re trespassing,” he whispered after he got out. “You’ve got Tatum with you?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t planning on finding the freakin’ murder weapon. You got the evidence bag?”

He nodded. “Evidence bag, gloves, and department camera. I wasn’t sure we could use your pictures.”

I sprinted toward McCoy’s truck, with Rodney in tow. Rodney handed me the bag and gloves, then took a couple pictures from the back of the truck of the pile of rope in the bed. I asked him to get a wide shot of the rope that also showed the decal on the back window of the cartoon kid taking a whiz. With the gloves on, Rodney then reached over the side and gathered the rope, dropping it into the evidence bag.

“Let’s get outta here, Superman,” I said.

A satisfied grin spread across his face. We were within a few feet of the barn when I heard a car turn onto the dirt road. I shoved Rodney behind the barn, then dove headfirst out of the way. I knew how to take a dive, drop and roll, all that avoiding-disaster stuff, but every ounce of knowledge left me. “Ouch,” I groaned, spitting out a mouthful of west-Texas sand.

“You okay, man?” Rodney’s famous words.

I’d live. I reconsidered when I heard the ominous rattle. It was a Western Diamondback coiled and ready to strike.

“Holy shit … don’t move,” Rodney whispered.

Don’t move? Was he fucking crazy? It all happened so fast. I was scrambling to get the hell away when I felt the white-hot pain rip through my ankle. “Motherfucker! I’m bit!” I was on my back, kicking frantically at the sand to put distance between myself and the pissed-off viper.

Rodney started firing and emptied a clip into the ground before actually taking out the rattler. The snake exploded into blood and guts.

I don’t know who was more frantic: me, Rodney, or now Tatum. “Where’d he get you?” Rodney asked, on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Ankle,” I screamed, unashamed of the panic surging through me faster than the deadly venom. The pain was more intense than anything I’d ever felt in my life.

“It was the mailman,” Tatum said. “The car—it was the mailman. It wasn’t McCoy.”

I threw my head back and screamed out again in unadulterated agony.

“Gypsy, you’ve got to stay calm!” Rodney was yelling as loud as I was screaming. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

“You need to wrap it near the puncture wound,” Tatum said, the only voice of reason. “Like a tourniquet, but not as tight.”

“We can use the tape on your ribs,” Rodney said, grabbing me underneath my arm to help me sit up. He jerked my shirt up and Tatum ripped the tape from around my chest.

My entire body was on fire. I felt like there were a million bees trapped underneath my skin, stinging from the inside out, pushing their way to freedom.

As Tatum wrapped the tape around my calf, Rodney pulled me up. “Come on, come on…,” Rodney said, hurrying Tatum along. “We’ve got to get to the ER.”

I started to hobble toward the van but Rodney was heading toward his cruiser. “You can’t drive. You’re either going to start throwing up or you’re going to pass out.”

“I’m not leaving the van! Do you know how much equipment I’ve got in there?”

“Well, I can’t leave the cruiser.”

“I’ll drive the van,” Tatum said. The kid was in it before either of us could object.

Rodney hurried me to the cruiser, mumbling something about getting fired. He loaded me into the backseat, then yelled at Tatum to stay close behind him and not to stop for anything. He hit the lights and siren when he got out to the main road.

He keyed the department radio. “Dispatch, this is Officer Walker, car 416. Notify Kermit Regional ER I’m on my way in with a rattle bite to the left ankle. Victim is a thirty-eight-year-old male, in good health. No known medical conditions. ETA six minutes.” He clicked off the radio then glanced over his shoulder at me. “You hanging in there? Man, you’re sweating.”

“I think I’m goin’ be sick.”

“Ahh, Jesus.”

My head was spinning. Every nerve in my body had turned into a raging inferno. I tried to remember everything I could about rattlesnake bites but kept coming back to amputated limbs, multiple surgeries, useless muscles, organ damage, and death. I did remember the mortality rate was something like less than 5 percent, which was a good thing I supposed. I wasn’t ready to die. I had lunch plans with Claire. I kept repeating the 5 percent statistic to myself; it kept me from screaming.

I heard Rodney punch a number into his cell phone. “Hey—I don’t want you to panic, but call your mom and see if she’s on duty. I’m on my way to the ER with Gypsy. A rattler got him on the ankle. Rhonda, calm down. It was a big snake and their venom’s not as powerful as a young snake’s. I’m hurrying, Rhonda. I’m pushing ninety now.”

I thought of Tatum behind us in my van and thought I really was going to be sick.

A minute or two later, I was slung from one side of the backseat to the other as Rodney whipped into the hospital parking lot on two wheels. He pulled up outside the emergency department, where a small platoon of trauma personnel were waiting. I was pulled from the backseat and thrown on a gurney in one fluid motion. Rodney ran alongside the stretcher giving the doctor the lowdown on the killer snake as they rushed to a treatment area.

“It was about four-and-a-half-feet long, Western Diamondback. I only saw one puncture site. Left ankle.” He was covered in blood. My blood.

The next thing I heard was my mother burst into the room, her panicked voice more unsettling than the oxygen tube they were cramming up my nose. My mother doesn’t panic. She was over me, her worried face in full view, brushing the sweat-drenched hair from my forehead. “It’s goin’ to be okay, Gypsy. We’re mixing the antivenin now.” The quiver in her voice betrayed the comfort she intended.

Five percent … five percent … five percent.…

The pain was beyond excruciating. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The hit I had taken to the nuts was small potatoes.

“Does he have an advanced directive?” someone in scrubs asked.

Sweet Jesus … use the fucking paddles! Shove whatever you need to down my throat. I have lunch plans with Claire!

“Pupils are constricted,” one of the techs said. “BP’s eighty over sixty-four, pulse rate ninety-two.”

Five percent … five percent … five percent.…

“Cut his clothes off and start a double line IV. Let’s get an IM injection of Dilaudid in him,” the doctor ordered.

A minute later I was butt naked with only a cold sheet covering parts my mother hadn’t seen since I learned to pee in a toilet.

“He’s wearing a St. Christopher. Should we call a priest?”

Hail Mary, full of grace … blah blah blah … Jesus Christ … why couldn’t I remember that simple prayer? Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death. Five percent … five percent … five percent.…

A tech who needed more practice was butchering my arm with an IV until my mother jerked it away from him. She jabbed it in the vein on the first try. It took her less than a few seconds to get the second line in.

“Let’s get two more vials of CroFab antivenin up here stat,” the doctor said.

I lifted my head just enough to get a glimpse of my ankle. It was already swollen to three times the size of the other one. I had blue lines from a ballpoint pen drawn across my lower leg, monitoring the level of swelling and time notated. My toes looked like short, stubby sausages.

My stomach lurched. I instinctively tried to roll to my side—I’d had my share of booze-induced nausea—but between the IV, the oxygen tube, the blood pressure cuff, and the small army of scrubs working feverishly around my leg, I couldn’t move. I grabbed my mother’s arm and she immediately recognized the warning sign.

“Roll him. He’s goin’ to vomit.”

There was a mind-numbing flurry of activity going on, including some projectile vomiting, but I recognized Rhonda’s frenzied scream above the chaos.

“Get her out of here, Rodney,” Mom shouted. “Now!”

Hail Mary, full of grace.… Five percent … five percent … five percent.…

“Could we keep the family hysterics to a minimum, please?” the doctor asked.

Rhonda took that as her okay to stay and pushed past Rodney. She assumed Mom’s previous position of hovering, gently wiping my face and forehead with a cool rag. She was crying and I wanted to tell her that whatever happened, it would be all right. At this point, at least dying would relieve the pain.

I wanted to tell Rhonda I loved her. I wanted to tell her I was as proud as any older brother could be. I wanted to tell her to tell Claire I didn’t care if she was married. Tell her I’d never loved anyone as much in my entire life as I loved her.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to make our lunch date. She wasn’t going to be very happy about being stood up. Maybe dying was a reasonable option.

Or maybe Rhonda would, just once, show me some pity where Claire was concerned and call her to let her know I’d be a little late. “Call Claire,” I mumbled before the stinging pinch jabbed in my hip put me under.