Bobby Byrd - Lone Star Noir

Approaching the property from the left side, the game warden told the reporter, he could see the collapsed back quarter of the home. Possibly caused by lightning strike. The heavy oak front door was unlocked, the huge brass knob warm to the touch. Going inside, he saw the thing in the den.

“But what would you say was the cause of death?” asked the reporter.

The game warden shook his head. He said he did not want to speculate.

The reporter was insistent. “Would you say it appears be a homicide?”

No comment. What he wanted to say was, I’m not even sure that thing in there is human, but I guess it is. Fire can do some strange things to a body .

When she came close enough to look inside, the smell was as revolting as what she saw. She wanted to describe the scene to her viewers as “what appears to be a savage and shocking crime,” but she was a professional, so she carefully chose her words to convey a sense of that same conclusion, by stating questions she believed were surely on the mind of every viewer: “How could such a tragic death happen in this peaceful, picturesque neighborhood? And to a man like the victim, a friend of orphans and starving multitudes, whose brother was a prominent evangelical minister?” Of course, the reporter knew that the man was noted for his strident ultraconservative views on politics and society. There had also been rumors, watercooler talk, and political blogs about his lobbying firm’s use of prostitutes, bribes, and strong-arm tactics-including blackmail and complex money laundering schemes-on behalf of its clients.

The dead man had a famous friend, a preacher known to his followers as “the Brother.” The Brother was an evangelist from Houston whose Sunday services were attended by tens of thousands. A vast media empire delivered his thoughts to millions more. Years ago, the Brother and his religious retreat, called Revelation Gardens, had been ensnared in a financial scandal. He had founded the retreat on a 5,000-acre plot near Houston in the 1980s. During the chaos of an election year, when the dead man was expanding his client list through prayer groups which were attended mostly by drillers, speculators, and executives in the then-depressed oil and gas business, the charges had been quietly and mysteriously withdrawn. The retreat thrived and grew, doubling in size in the past fifteen years.

The reporter had seen secret video footage from Revelation Gardens showing the former state senator and the preacher cavorting in a golf cart like a pair of thirteen-yearolds. She had watched with a sickly fascination as the grayhaired men swilled vodka and raced the golf cart across the greens, tossing their empties on the ground, betting money on a pissing contest, giggling when they farted. After the video was over, the reporter felt a little sick to her stomach without knowing exactly why. Maybe it was a premonition.

But so what if the dead lobbyist and his preacher friend acted like adolescent assholes when they got drunk? The real question was, What kind of person could tie someone to a chair and set him on fire? What kind of person could do that?

He sat motionless on the edge of the steel cot, listening to the constant racket of the jail. He had the entire cell block to himself, as per orders from the top. The light was bright and he noticed that his body cast a narrow, crooked shadow on the wall. It resembled a letter of the alphabet, he thought, but couldn’t decide which letter it would be.

Even now that he wasn’t quite as thin as he once was, everyone still used the old nickname, Slim. He remembered what a bitter woman had once said about the name. “It makes sense,” she said. “Because there’s not enough of anything inside there to add up. You’re slim on one side and hollow on the other.”

He had a lean face and dark eyes. He might have had the chipped tooth in his smile fixed long ago except for the fact that it seemed to have a disarming effect on people. Accidents and tricks of nature now and then work in your favor.

When he thought back to the night of the storm, he remembered how the thunder rolled in before the rain and wind like a ham-fisted omen from a B movie. Sitting in his car on a steep hill above Austin, waiting for Teo and Ric to show up. Nature was putting on quite a light show. The lightning would flash silver on the surface of the car and the trees and the ground, but the hillside below remained a pool of darkness, untouched. A few seconds later thunder would rattle the ground, as if the lightning had fallen down there and died.

Replaying the memory now, retracing his steps. Flash, boom, nothing. He didn’t believe that before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. Whenever he’d been close to death, time went into fast-forward, not reverse, and he fought back, treaded water, or ran like hell, whatever it took.

Flash, boom, nothing. Thinking about the mountains in Mexico, where he and some drug-smuggling buddies used to fly across the border at Falcon Lake. Those mountains had claimed a lot more smugglers he knew than the DEA ever did. He didn’t believe in hell or heaven.

Flash, boom, nothing. Teo and Ric never showed up. A total of four of them had been directly involved in the heist. Teo and Ric were with him when they pulled the job. Afterward, Teo took the briefcase to Tom, the money man, who knew the guy who would launder it for them.

But Tom got pinched on Tuesday, the day after the heist. They knew he’d already dropped the money off with the laundry. Question was, what did he tell the cops, if anything?

Maybe Teo and Ric got themselves tagged too, copped a plea and snitched on him. Can’t fight human nature. That three musketeers crap was for fairy tales.

Any successful thief knows when it’s time to split. Hang around too long anywhere, even when things are going great, and your luck runs out. His exit strategy: head to Houston, pick up his money stash and a new ID. He would contact no one, leave no tracks. Fade to black.

But instead of heading east to Houston, he drove west, down the back roads on the edge of town, dodging the frightened deer and debris scattering ahead of the storms. Now and then the city would come into view, with the pink granite dome of the Capitol building, and behind it the UT tower, which Charles Whitman used as a sniper’s perch on August 1, 1966, killing fourteen. As a UT student, Whitman had once gotten in trouble for gutting a poached deer in a shower stall in his dormitory.

Flash, boom, nothing. The lightning seemed to follow him as he pushed the coupe hard on the sharp curves. Lightning does strike twice in the same place, he knew that for a fact. Take the Kid, for example, he’d been struck three times in his life. He had to wonder if that had anything to do with the Kid’s talent.

The Kid was a phenomenal guitar player. With the kind of talent he had, the Kid could’ve written his own ticket. He just needed a lucky break here and there, but now the Kid was dead.

According to the statement from the police department, being hit by a Taser during his arrest was only incidental to his death and the Kid suffered from a type of cardiac arrhythmia “typically found to be endemic in hard-core drug abusers.” Never mind that the Kid wasn’t a druggie, that he only got high on playing guitar.

The Kid was pulled over on a traffic violation when he supposedly “became violent.” Extra units were called to the scene, and at some point a Taser was used to subdue him. EMS was called but he was DOA.

Slim had a guy inside the department, told him it was four Taser hits, not one. All four were special order, paid for with cool, green, in-God-we-trust U.S. dollars .

Rain fell. What was the last thing the guy said?

But I wouldn’t trust anybody . Know what I mean?