“You’re the reporter?” he said in a dry voice that was little more than a croak.
“Yes.” She nodded and felt a little better about his lucidity. “You offered me an exclusive about your testimony in the Ross McCallum case.”
“I remember.” Sure enough, his eyes flickered with a spark of recollection. “We have ourselves a deal, don’t we?”
“We sure do.”
“And the money—after I’m gone, it’ll go to my daughter. Celeste. Celeste Hernandez. I sent you her address over ta El Paso.”
“Yes, yes. We’ve been over this.” About a million times. “I’ve got Celeste’s name and address on file,” Katrina assured him and felt a little twinge of conscience. Whatever else this old codger had done in his life, he at least felt some latent paternal responsibility.
Some people, herself included, weren’t so lucky.
Caleb’s wrinkled face fell in on itself. “I weren’t much of a father to her. Split with her ma before she was born.” So this was his feeble attempt at atonement. Some of Katrina’s respect for the old codger evaporated, but she figured some fatherly interest was better than none, and even if love for a child came late in life, it was better late than never.
“I want half to go to the church—Our Lady of Sorrows, here, and half to Celeste,” Caleb insisted with a dry, cackling laugh. “That is, after ya pay for the pine box they’re gonna put me in.”
“It’s all arranged. In fact, I brought the paperwork with me,” she said, snapping open her briefcase and pulling out a crisp manila envelope. “Your copy. I’ll just leave it here.” She placed it on the table near the miniature baby Jesus in the manger, but Caleb shook his head.
“Put it in the closet, will ya? Might git stole if it’s left out.”
“By who—er, whom?”
“Cain’t never tell,” he said, “but I don’t trust no one, ’ceptin’ our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
“Probably a good idea.” She tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice as she tucked his envelope into a closet where a ragged plaid robe and slippers with holes resided. “I brought a pocket recorder with me,” she said as she closed the closet door, “so let’s get started.”
“Started doing what?” a demanding voice asked.
A heavy-set nurse with thick glasses and short gray hair strode into the room. Her name tag read Linda Rafkin, RN, and she looked like a bulldog, all flat features and deep scowl. Katrina suspected Nurse Rafkin gave orders and took no prisoners.
“This here’s a woman I need to talk to,” Caleb insisted.
Rafkin walked to the bed, checked the IV and glanced up at the monitor before placing a disposable cover on a thermometer and placing it gently in Caleb’s ear.
“I’m Katrina Nedelesky, and Mr. Swaggert and I have an agreement for an interview—”
“Not here in the hospital you don’t.”
“It’s all right,” Caleb interjected. “Let her stay”
“I won’t be a bother.” Katrina wasn’t about to budge.
The nurse frowned. “Mr. Swaggert needs his rest.”
The old man let out a cackling laugh that ended in a coughing fit. “I think I’ll be gettin’ my share,” he said as the nurse took his blood pressure, read the thermometer and checked his pulse. “I’m dyin‘,” he said matter-of-factly, “nothin’ you or any of these damned contraptions can do to change that sorry fact. So y’all git a move on.” He waved her out the door. “The young lady and me, we got us somethin’ to talk ‘bout.”
Rafkin paused, sized Katrina up from behind those thick lenses and scowled. “Thirty minutes,” she finally allowed, tapping a fleshy finger on the dial of her Timex. “I’m keepin’ track.” With that she left in a rustle of panty hose and starch.
“Ignore Nurse Busybody,” Caleb said to Katrina when they were alone except for the images of the Son of God scattered about the room. “And mind that ya close the door. We don’t want no one to hear what I’m about to say.” With feeble fingers, he hit the mute button on the television.
Katrina didn’t argue. She walked to the door, swept the hallway with a practiced glance, saw no one lurking near the door, then shut it firmly. Satisfied that they were alone, she pulled up the one uncomfortable chair in the room, inching it closer to the bed. As she took a seat, she clicked on the recorder and set it carefully between two small statues of kneeling shepherds. “I have a lot of questions,” she said, “mostly about the night Ramón Estevan died.”
“But that’s not all?”
“No. We’ll get to that night—of course it’s very important. I’ll want to know when you got to the store and what you were doing, who you saw, what you overheard, but I want to start with some background information.” She withdrew a pad and pen, just to take a few personal observations as the recorder picked up the conversation.
“Like what?” He was getting suspicious.
“Well, first of all, for research and background purposes, I want a feel for the town, so you need to tell me everything you can recall about Bad Luck and about Judge Cole and his daughter, Shelby.”
Caleb blinked rapidly. “Judge Cole? Why? He didn’t preside over the murder case. As for his daughter, I think Shelby was out of town when it happened.”
“Probably so, but bear with me. This is my story, and what I’m asking is necessary for me to get it right. Believe me. The Judge was married, right?”
“Not at that time, no. He was married, though, a long time ago. To Jasmine Falconer. Purty thing, Jasmine was. Damned purty.”
“She died quite a while back. Right?”
“Not only died. Kilt herself.” Caleb nodded, the back of his head scratching noisily against his starched pillows. “Up and slit her wrists while takin’ a bubble bath in the Judge’s marble tub.”
Katrina cringed at the thought. She had no love for anyone remotely associated with that bastard of a Judge, but she still felt an inward revulsion at the picture this old coot painted. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Why would she take her own life?”
He hesitated. Scowled. “Have you met Judge Cole?”
“Haven’t had the pleasure,” she said acidly.
“When you do, you’ll understand.” He snorted and shifted on the bed. “Jasmine was a decent woman, not that Red would know the difference.”
“And you do?”
Caleb hoisted a skeletal shoulder.
“Tell me about his children,” she suggested, forcing a smile she didn’t feel.
“Jest one girl. Shelby. She’s not quite thirty, if’n I ’member right. Why do you want to know about her?”
“As I said, background. The way I understand it, Shelby Cole was involved with Nevada Smith, the deputy who led the investigation against Ross McCallum. From what everyone I’ve interviewed says, those two—Smith and McCallum—had been enemies for years, and they were rumored to have had a bad fight sometime before Estevan was murdered.”
The old man thought for a while, and Katrina suspected he might drift off. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and said, “I’d clean fergot about the fight. But yer right. Nevada, he lost an eye, and Ross ended up with cracked ribs and a broken arm or some such thing. They both wound up in the hospital. Trouble was, as I recall, McCallum always had a hankerin’ for Shelby Cole.”
“And she was Nevada’s girl.”
“At the time. I guess.” Caleb shrugged, and through the closed door the sound of a hospital cart rolling past, softly rattling, could be heard. “The gossip around town was that she was seein’ Smith. Only reason I ’member is because Shelby was the Judge’s daughter. Anything Red Cole did at the time was big news.”
Katrina believed him.
“So—if I have the facts straight—somehow Ross McCallum ends up nearly dead in a single-car accident south of town. In Nevada Smith’s truck. Is that right?”
“Yep. Ross, he supposedly stole Smith’s truck the night Ram6n Estevan was killed. No one can figure out why. Smith reported it missing,
which wasn’t too tough as he worked for the Sheriff’s Department. Sure enough, a few hours later, they find it piled up against a tree south of town. Ross McCallum was drunk out of his mind, lucky to be alive.”
“And Ramón Estevan was already dead. Shot by a .38.”
“That’s the way it was.” Caleb lifted a hand to rub his chin, and Katrina noticed the needles piercing his bruised skin, one attached to the tubing of his IV, the other capped, ready to draw blood again, should need be.
Katrina crossed her legs and scribbled on her pad as the recorder kept taping. “But Ross didn’t have a gun on him.”
“Just Nevada Smith’s old Winchester—a huntin’ rifle.”
She stiffened. This was a little fact she’d overlooked. “But not the murder weapon?”
“Nope. As you said, the bullet that killed Ramón Estevan was from a .38.”
She made a note, then checked her watch and changed directions. That warden of a nurse would be back soon if she kept her word, and Katrina suspected that Linda Rafkin, RN, rarely broke a promise. “Let’s talk about your testimony.”
His lips flattened. “Okay.”
“You lied on the stand.”
He hesitated, then nodded curtly. “Yep.”
“You told me on the phone that you were paid to lie and say you saw Ross McCallum at the Estevans’ store that night, right?”
“Yep, but I don’t know from who, so don’t bother askin’. I just got me five thousand bucks for sayin’ I saw McCallum in Nevada Smith’s pickup at the store that night.”
“But you didn’t see it?”
“Didn’t see much.”
“Who paid you?”
“I said, ‘don’t ask’ cuz I don’t know. The money was left in a brown sack in a dumpster behind the White Horse. I collected it, counted it, and said what I had to. End of story.”
“But you perjured yourself. That’s a felony.”
“I know that, but who’s gonna care now?” he asked, and she couldn’t argue the point. The wheels of justice turned too slowly to prosecute and incarcerate Caleb before he died.
He yawned and his eyelids drifted downward. He wouldn’t be able to stay awake much longer. Katrina asked, “So who do you think killed Ram6n Estevan?”
“Don’t know. Anyone, I s’ pose. He was a mean sum-bitch— er, a mean rascal. Got drunk and hit things. Broke out the windows of his own store more than once. And people ‘round town didn’t like the fact that he was doin’ okay with that store of his, thought he was uppity.”
“Because he was Hispanic?”
“If that’s what they’re called now. Mexican. ’Sides that, he was ornery and mean.”
“He had enemies?”
“Everyone in Bad Luck has enemies.”
“Any that would kill him?” she pressed.
“At least one, I figure,” Caleb said, and she wanted to shake the old coot
“Who?”
“Dunno.”
“What do you know?” she asked and tried not to sound irritated.
“It’s all in them transcripts.” He yawned again, and the door opened. Nurse Rafkin, her eyebrows rising above the tops of her glasses, appeared.
“Thanks,” Katrina said, clicking off her recorder. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“You do that,” Caleb said, and as she packed up her recorder and briefcase, she felt his gaze roving over her backside. As if he could do anything more than leer myopically at her. It was sick, really, but she couldn’t help leaning over and giving Caleb a peek at the way her skirt stretched over her buttocks. Why not give the old pervert one last thrill before he gave up his ghost? She was safe. In his pathetic condition, there wasn’t much Swaggert could do about it.
Whack!
Nevada pounded a final nail into the fence post, then grabbed the top rail and tried to shake it free. It held. Good. Little by little this place was coming together. He mopped the sweat from his brow and watched his prize mare prance around the south paddock.
A blood bay, with two white stockings and a trickle of a blaze that curved down her face, the horse was worth more than the rest of his broodmares combined. And she acted as if she knew it, tossing her head the way a pretty girl flipped her hair off her face. Beyond the paddock was a hundred-and-sixty acres he’d annexed to his own place, a piece he’d bought just last year. Other horses grazed there, mostly range horses, though a couple in the herd were a notch above, just not quite the same caliber as this one.
He slid his hammer into his tool belt and walked the fence, studying it for flaws.
He’d been lucky to annex the old Adams homestead. Old man Adams wouldn’t sell to anyone else. He’d been friends with Nevada’s father years before and had been a surrogate uncle to Nevada and his cousin Joe Hawk, when the boys had been growing up. When it came time to retire and move into town, he’d approached Nevada with a deal that was more than fair, in fact, too good to pass up.
“If you don’t buy it, I’ll hafta put it on the market and pay some real estate broker a fee for a stranger to take over. I got me no kids of my own, and I’d really like you to have it.”
Nevada had signed on the dotted line. The property had added pastureland, a stand of cedar, a lake that rarely went dry, a small orchard and a rock quarry. The old ranch house wasn’t worth much, as Oscar Adams had let it run down after his wife died, but to Nevada’s eye, the two-storied house had potential. More than his own shed of a place did. He’d planned to move there. Once he fixed it up.
In time, he reminded himself as he always did when impatience threatened to overtake him, all in good time.
Whistling to Crockett, he walked back to the house and considered calling Levinson again. So far, the private investigator hadn’t been able to find the girl.
Three days had passed since Nevada had first run into Shelby again, over seventy-two hours since he’d been told he was a father, and still there was nothing. In this age of electronic, nearly instant worldwide communication, he’d learned diddly-squat about his daughter—didn’t even know if she really existed.
All he had was Shelby’s insistence that the picture she’d been sent was real, that Elizabeth was his daughter and it was just a matter of finding her.
Born a skeptic, Nevada realized that the letter and snapshot could all be part of someone’s sick imagination—a cruel hoax—enticement for Shelby to return to Bad Luck.
But why? And who was behind it?
If the letter and picture proved to be a sham, it would kill Shelby.
She was bound and determined to find that girl. Well, for that matter, so was he.
Dusting off his hands, he climbed the front steps to the porch and walked inside where, though it was darker, the temperature didn’t bother to drop even one degree. He cracked a window, but there wasn’t much breeze.
He’d talked to Shelby a couple of times on the telephone, did his own digging and kept a running dialogue with the private investigator, but so far, nothing.
Whoever had sent Shelby the picture of the girl had been quiet, not contacting her again. Who the devil was he and why had he picked this time to offer up the information he had? Why now? What had happened in the past few months that would make a person show his hand—why would someone want Shelby Cole to return to Bad Luck now? What had changed?
There was only one thing that might propel whoever it was into action: Ross McCallum was being released.
There was no other connection that Nevada could see.
So what did Ross know about it? Nevada wondered and decided it was time to find out. He was about to put a call in to Levinson again when the phone rang.
He answered before it could jangle a second time. “Smith.”
There was a pause—hesitation on the other end.
“Hello?”
No response, but the sound of music in the background.
“Can you hear me?”
Nothing. Though it was broad daylight, Nevada felt a presence as black as midnight.
r /> “Who is this?” he asked with more authority, and the phone clicked dead. Nevada stared at the receiver for a second. Maybe it had been a mistake, someone dialing the wrong number. There was a chance that he was jumping to conclusions—people misdialed all the time.
And yet he couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that assailed him.
He snagged his keys from a hook near the door and walked outside. The harsh glare of the sun hit him full force. He winced and his bad eye ached from a ten-year-old wound—a wound inflicted by Ross McCallum.
Somehow, today, it seemed a fitting reminder.
The files yielded nothing more than a little insight into the way the Judge’s mind worked. Shelby had read through each one she thought might help her in her quest, but all she learned was the names of Nevada’s parents, the fact that he was a poor student but a stellar recruit in the Army. He’d had brushes with the law as a kid, all documented in the Judge’s file, along with newspaper clippings about him leaving the local Sheriff’s Department. It was all hazy in Shelby’s mind, but it had to do with the arrest and conviction of Ross McCallum. There had been an inquiry because of the stolen truck and Nevada’s history with Ross. Though no charges were ever filed against him, Nevada had officially resigned from his duties, and there was a strong indication that he’d been forced to quit. Hadn’t her father said something about him being “kicked out?”
She’d turned her attention to her own file. It held nothing personal. Birth certificate, school documents, health records, all very clinical. A few awards. Copies of her applications to colleges, but nothing about her pregnancy or the baby. Though there was a medical note about her broken collarbone when she was seven, and her bout of chicken pox at three, there was nothing about the fact that she’d gotten pregnant and had a child. It was almost as if her father were denying that critical moment in her life.
“Oh, Dad,” she whispered, feeling somehow disappointed. But she had managed to find, in all the documents, the name of her father’s lawyer. Orrin Findley’s signature was on several documents. Shelby had scratched out his phone number and address and decided to visit Findley in San Antonio.