Catch Her If You Can Page 2

  “Noel! You’d better corral that thing before he climbs in and we have to dive in after him.”

  Sergeant Cassidy pushed his patrol cap back on his sweaty forehead and played with the controls. He got Snoopy aimed away from the garbage and zooming in the opposite direction. That’s when the omnivorous little critter went for the pickup.

  It was dusty and dented, much like the other vehicles driven by the customers who patronize Pancho’s. From where I stood, I could see the truck bed contained a jumble of shovels and steel pipes caked with mud. Also the dented beer cooler I mentioned earlier. I assumed a construction crew had stopped at Pancho’s to gas up and/or chow down. Snoopy obviously assumed they’d brought him lunch.

  He kept trying to mount the pickup’s rear wheel. Or hump it. I wasn’t sure which as he charged the tire, backed up, and charged again. Several times.

  “Oh, for . . . !” Totally exasperated, I flapped a hand at Sergeant Cassidy and hurried over to the truck. “Shut him off before he does something that embarrasses us.”

  Noel duly killed Snoopy’s engine and I bent to pick him up. The whole course of history might have changed if I’d gotten a good grip on his shoebox frame. But I didn’t, and Snoop slipped out of my arms. He bounced off the pickup’s side rail and thumped down on top of the beer cooler.

  I leaned over to retrieve him and had him tucked under my arm again when the door to the bar side of Pancho’s establishment slammed back on its hinges. The bear of a man who burst through it came at me in a dead run.

  “What the hell you doing?”

  “Huh?”

  Not the most intelligent response, I admit, but I was so startled by the unexpected attack it was all I could manage at that moment.

  “Get away from my pickup!”

  I found my voice. Or more correctly, the smart mouth my mother claims I sprang out of the womb with.

  “Cool it, pal. I’m not trying to steal your muddy pipes.”

  “What’s that under your arm?”

  “Nothing you need to get excited about.”

  Either he wasn’t listening or he didn’t believe me. Thrusting his hand under his shirttail, he whipped out a vicious-looking semiautomatic.

  “What the fuck have you got under your arm?”

  My heart jumped into my throat. My stomach took a simultaneous dive to the toes of my combat boots. Feeling nothing but icy emptiness in between, I held up my free hand and backed away.

  “Nothing of yours. I swear. This is . . .”

  That’s all I got out before Sergeant Cassidy revved his ATV to full power. I hadn’t seen him leap back into the saddle, but I certainly saw him tear across the parking lot. Head down, he aimed right for the Bear.

  “Noel!” I screamed at the top of my lungs to compete with the ATV’s roar. “Look out! He’s got a gun.”

  What happened next took five seconds. Ten at the most. But they were the longest seconds of my life!

  The Bear spun around. Spotted Noel. Pumped off two shots. The second was still reverberating in my ears when the bar door crashed open again and Pancho let loose with both barrels of the sawed-off shotgun he kept under the counter.

  The blast cut the Bear almost in half. He went down in a spray of blood and guts. Noel thumped his ATV over the body before he could kill the engine. My knees folded, and my butt hit the dirt.

  For the next five or ten seconds, I sat there, stunned, with Snoopy still tucked under one arm. It’s not like I’m a stranger to violence. I was just a kid at the time, but I remember my mother laying open my father’s scalp with a gin bottle before he took off, never to be seen again. I seriously considered doing the same to my ex, Charlie “Dumbass” Spade, when I caught him with our bimbo neighbor. I refrained, but I have been involved in several nasty incidents since taking over leadership of FST-3. None of which were my fault, I would like to point out, although my boss at DARPA headquarters has become increasingly reluctant to return my phone calls.

  This incident had happened so fast, though. I couldn’t seem to comprehend it. Still shell-shocked, I struggled to my feet and rushed over to Sergeant Cassidy.

  “Noel! Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s only a flesh wound.”

  I hadn’t even noticed the red staining his upper thigh! Spinning on my heel, I shouted to Pancho. “He’s hit! Get your response kit.”

  In addition to being the proprietor of the only business establishment in Dry Springs, Pancho also serves as chief of its volunteer fire department. As such, he’s fully trained in emergency response procedures. While he rushed back inside the shop, Noel pooh-poohed his wound.

  “No need to make a fuss, Lieutenant.” He probed the wound with his forefinger. “The mosquitoes in Mogadishu bite deeper than this.”

  Never having been to Mogadishu, I took his word for that. But I still insisted he climb off the ATV, stretch out in the dirt, and elevate his leg until Pancho reappeared. With Noel horizontal, I approached the Bear. Wasn’t much chance he’d survived having his midsection pelletized but I felt compelled to check for a pulse anyway. I didn’t find one.

  I was back at Noel’s side when Pancho returned. His waxed mustache bristling, he knelt in the dirt and peered at the wound with his good eye. A black patch covers the other eye. I’ll explain later.

  “It’s only a flesh wound,” he pronounced after cutting through Noel’s camos. “Barely creased the skin.”

  I ignored my sergeant’s I-told-you-so look. “Just patch him up.”

  “While I do that,” Pancho said with a sideways glance at the Bear, “you’d better contact Roy Alexander.”

  I’d interfaced with Sheriff Alexander during one of those nasty incidents I referred to a moment ago. As a result, the El Paso County sheriff evinced only mild surprise when I reported a shooting at Pancho’s and said he was on his way.

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait. And fill Pancho in on the bizarre sequence of events that had us all squatting in the dirt outside his bar/motel/etc. When I got to the Snoopy part, though, he swiveled on his heel and hitched a disbelieving brow.

  “It’s a what?”

  As I said, Dry Springs is the closest town to FST-3’s isolated test site. The inhabitants know we test some weird stuff. Like the supposedly safe hyper-optic lens that ignited a major brush fire some months back. So Snoopy held Pancho’s fascinated interest while I attempted to explain him.

  “It’s a self-propelled robot designed to sniff out its own food.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Pancho mused, “it does look like a small coyote.”

  Pretty apt comparison. Snoopy certainly possessed some of the same characteristics as the scavengers of the desert.

  “We’re testing it for possible battlefield application.”

  “So why was it trying to hump the tire on this guy’s truck?”

  “You saw that, did you?”

  He flashed me a quick grin. “Kinda hard to miss, Lootenant.”

  “I’m not sure what that was all about,” I admitted. Lips pursed, I studied the pickup. “For some reason, the robot seemed to think he’d found a fuel source in the bed of the pickup.”

  Pancho stroked one side of his droopy handlebar mustache. Despite all the expensive wax he applies daily, the tips insist on turning down more often than up. It always reminds me of that cartoon character Yosemite Sam, except Pancho’s handle is jet black instead of fire-engine red.

  “Any idea what he was after?” he asked, eyeing the dusty pickup.

  “No.”

  My tone implied that it wouldn’t be proper to tamper with evidence before Sheriff Alexander arrived. Pancho’s tone implied the opposite.

  “Maybe we should take a look-see.”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Thought about the kangaroo rat. Bit down harder.

  “Maybe we should.”

  So I have a lively sense of curiosity? Sue me.

  I checked with Noel first to make sure he was comfortable. I also checked t
he pad covering his wound. No fresh, bright blood stained the gauze. Confident my sergeant would survive to continue his sessions with his shrink, I pushed to my feet and joined Pancho.

  He’s an inch or two shorter than I am. Five-six or -seven to my five-seven. But he’s tough and wiry and very reassuring to have at your side when approaching a pickup with suspicious contents.

  The dented red beer cooler drew my immediate attention. Looking back, I’m not sure what I expected to find when I lifted the lid. A skinned and butchered deer maybe. Or the feathered carcass of one of the endangered Northern Aplomado falcons so prized by poachers on both sides of the border. Certainly not three disembodied heads turning a moldy green!

  When the aroma that shot out of the cooler hit me, I slammed the lid down and promptly contaminated the crime scene by throwing up. Pancho jumped back just in time to keep from getting his boots similarly contaminated.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BY the time Sheriff Alexander arrived, Sergeant Cassidy was on his feet and word of the shooting had spread through Dry Springs.

  Thirty-seven inquisitive souls had gathered in the dirt parking lot. They constituted the town’s entire population, less two kids bussed to school some twenty miles away and Eloisa Rivera, currently visiting her daughter in San Diego. The crowd batted absently at flies and speculated on the identity of the Bear, now covered with an oil-stained canvas, as well as the other three deceased.

  I knew most of the folks in the crowd. My team and I had shared beers with the regulars who hung out at the bar and had met the others during stops at the convenience store side of Pancho’s establishment. They pretty much took the Bear’s corpse in stride. Violence has become a fact of life this close to the U.S.-Mexico border. The severed heads fascinated them, though.

  Speculation ran rife about who the deceased were and how they’d ended up in the beer cooler. I caught snatches of conversation that touched on everything from the drug wars raging just south of us to a Silence of the Lambs–type cannibal with gruesome appetites. I also caught more than one glance aimed at Snoopy. I’d kept mum about his taste in snacks but rumors were already circulating. The arrival of a black-and-white spared me a public explanation.

  Sheriff Alexander emerged from the cruiser and settled his straw Stetson low on his brow. Like so many in this part of the country, his face is all weathered skin and white squint lines. After greeting Pancho, he turned to me and tipped two fingers to his hat brim.

  “Hello, Samantha. What’s with you and corpses?”

  He was referring to the decomposing bodies I’d stumbled across while testing another invention last year. Or maybe the rogue FBI agent who ran Mitch and me into an arroyo and got dead as a result. Or the ex-Army sergeant who’d tried to gun down his lover until I threw off his aim.

  “I don’t know,” I replied with some feeling, “but I’ve bagged my limit for the foreseeable future.”

  Nodding, the sheriff approached the canvas and hunkered down on his heels. He lifted the tarp and studied the Bear for several moments before swiveling around to examine the semiautomatic lying in the dirt a few feet away. The contents of the cooler warranted a longer look before the sheriff turned to the crowd.

  “Anyone recognize these people?”

  Head shakes all around.

  “Anyone besides the lieutenant, her sergeant, and Pancho here see what happened?”

  More head shakes.

  “All right, then. Y’all go get out of the sun and let me talk to these three.”

  A few of the onlookers went home. Most of them crowded into the bar, determined not to miss out on the excitement. Pancho, Noel, and I remained in place.

  As you might expect, Snoopy’s role in the sequence of events elicited a disbelieving grunt from the sheriff. He surveyed the SNFIR, its ears drooping in the afternoon heat, and pushed his Stetson to the back of his head.

  “You and your team test some weird stuff, Lieutenant.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He ruminated for a moment, sorting through our statements and his own impressions of the crime scene. “You say the vic fired first?”

  “He did,” I confirmed. “Two shots. One hit Sergeant Cassidy before Pancho, er, took him out.”

  “I’ll need to bag that shotgun as evidence, Panch.”

  “No problem.”

  No problem, we all knew, because he keeps a backup. Or three. Or five. This is West Texas, remember.

  “Not much more we can do here until the coroner arrives,” Alexander announced. “I’ll stay with the bodies. Y’all might as well go inside and cool off.”

  My radio squawked on my way across the parking lot. I unhooked it from my belt with some reluctance. I had a pretty good idea how the rest of my team would react to this unexpected turn of events. I should. I’ve plunged them into several similarly bizarre situations in the months we’ve been together.

  “Lieutenant Spade,” I acknowledged.

  “We aren’t receiving signals from SNFIR. What’s going on?”

  The voice on the other end belonged to Dr. Brian “Rocky” Balboa, our nervous little twitch of a test engineer. Rock’s a good guy. Mostly. But he can be a major pain in the bohunkus when it comes to following prescribed test protocols.

  “We’ve run into, uh, a glitch.”

  “Glitch?”

  Amazing how a single echo can convey so many nuances. I heard instant wariness, incipient dread, and more than a touch of resignation.

  “Noel and I are at Pancho’s,” I explained. “There’s been a shooting and . . .”

  “A shooting! Are you okay?”

  “I am, but Noel was wounded.”

  “They’re at Pancho’s,” I heard Rocky shout to the rest of my team, his voice spiraling up two full octaves. “Noel’s been shot.”

  Wincing at the shrill screech, I tried to assure him Sergeant Cassidy was up and walking and pooh-poohing his mosquito bite. Didn’t work. Rock tends to get a tad agitated. When really excited or nervous, he also tends to expel gas. Big, noxious bloopers that can clear a room in ten seconds flat. I gave silent but very fervent thanks we were communicating via radio.

  “We’re on our way,” he informed me in a rush.

  “Wait, Rock. You don’t need to . . .”

  Too late. He’d slammed the radio down. I heard the sounds of a small stampede and resigned myself to the imminent arrival of the rest of my team.

  THEY weren’t long in coming.

  Our test site is just over ten miles from Dry Springs. Noel and I had been scuttling through the backcountry for hours on our ATVs, chasing Snoopy over hill and dale. Our fellow team members jumped into one of the vans we use to transport supplies and equipment and hit the tarmac. They arrived at Pancho’s mere moments after the county coroner’s team, which had drawn all interested spectators outside again.

  I have to confess I was glad to see my troops. Despite our individual idiosyncrasies—and we have many!—the five members of FST-3 have more or less bonded. More, when our tests and evaluations are going well. Less, on those infrequent occasions I attempt to exert my authority as team leader.

  That’s the thing about being a second lieutenant. People have a hard time taking you seriously. Especially braniac civilians like Dennis O’Reilly, Rocky Balboa, and Penelope England. With his frizzy orange hair and black-framed nerdo glasses, you would think O’Reilly would be the one with a credibility gap. Or Rocky with his owl-eyed stare and thin, twitchy shoulders.

  No one ever questions Pen’s credibility, however. And not just because of her two PhDs and ability to deliver long, detailed lectures on almost any subject. Dr. Penelope England is Earth Mother incarnate. Calm and placid and sturdy in her Birkenstocks and multilayers of natural linen. True, she has a tendency to skewer her lopsided, salt-and-pepper bun with whatever implement is handy. We once spent hours searching for a soil moisture probe before we thought to check her hair. Also true, she has a neighing laugh that makes everyone within hearing distance w
ish fervently they weren’t.

  But Pen wasn’t laughing when she piled out of the van with Dennis and Rocky. Her thick-soled sandals sent up little puffs of dirt as she and the others rushed across the parking lot.

  Pancho noted their arrival and ambled over to join us.

  Editorial aside here. I’ve recently become aware there might be something going on between Pen and Pancho and have yet to recover from the shock. Nor have I heard anything definitive from my sexy Border Patrol agent, who promised to check out rumors Pancho left behind at least one wife, possibly more, when he decamped from Mexico an unknown number of years ago.

  Supposedly, that’s how Pancho lost his eye. Or one version of the story, anyway. Some swear his angry wife gouged it out after catching him with another woman. I certainly wouldn’t blame her if she had. I’d come pretty darn close to mayhem myself after catching Charlie “Bonehead” Spade in the same nauseating circumstances.

  But others contend Pancho got poked in the eye during a riot after a soccer match. Whatever the cause, there’s no getting around the fact that the eye not covered by a black patch lit up when it spotted Pen. I noticed the gleam, but none of the other team members did. They had totally focused on the blood staining Sergeant Cassidy’s ABU pants.

  The rusty splotches pursed Pen’s lips. Rocky swiped a nervous palm across his thinning sandy hair. O’Reilly turned pale and hooked a finger in the neck of his black T-shirt stamped with the image of his hero, world chess champion and weirdo supreme Bobby Fischer.

  After assuring themselves that Noel wasn’t in immediate need of a transfusion or—this from Pen—a cup of specially infused herbal tea, they peppered us with questions.

  “What happened?”

  “Who’s under that canvas tarp?”

  “Is he the one who shot Noel?”

  Before I could answer, Dennis O’Reilly angled his head and peered through his inch-thick lenses. “What’s the coroner removing from that beer cooler? Is that . . . ?” His eyes bugged out. “Good God, is that a head?”