James Burke: Rain Gods

There was a breeze out of the south, and even though his St. Augustine grass was dry and stiff, it had a pale greenish aura in the early dawn, and the flowers in his gardens were varied and bright with dew. He didn’t want to think about the victims buried behind the church. No, that wasn’t correct, either. He didn’t want to think about the terror and the helplessness they had experienced before they were lined up and murdered. He didn’t want to brood on these things because he had experienced them himself when he had been forced to stand with his fellow POWs on a snowy stretch of ground in zero-degree weather and wait for a Chinese prison guard to fire his burp gun point-blank into their chests and faces. But because of the mercurial nature of their executioner’s bloodlust, Hackberry was spared and made to watch while others died, and sometimes he wished he had been left among the dead rather than the quick.

He believed that looking into the eyes of one’s executioner in the last seconds of one’s life was perhaps the worst fate that could befall a human being. That parting glimpse into the face of evil destroyed not only hope but any degree of faith in our fellow man that we might possess. He did not want to contend with those good souls who chose to believe we all descend from the same nuclear family, our poor, naked, bumbling ancestors back in Eden who, through pride or curiosity, transgressed by eating forbidden fruit. But he had long ago concluded that certain kinds of experiences at the hands of our fellow man were proof enough that we did not all descend from the same tree.

Or at least these were the thoughts that Hackberry’s sleep often presented to him at first light, as foolish as they might seem.

He drank the coffee from his cup, covered his plate with a sheet of waxed paper, and set it inside his icebox. As he backed out of the driveway in his pickup truck and headed down the two-lane county road, he did not hear the telephone ringing inside his house.

He drove into town, parked behind the combination jail and office that served as his departmental headquarters, and entered the back door. His chief deputy, Pam Tibbs, was already at her desk, wearing jeans and cowboy boots and a short-sleeve khaki shirt and a gun belt, her face without expression. Her hair was thick and mahogany in color, curly at the tips, with a bit of gray that she didn’t dye. Her most enig matic quality lay in her eyes. They could brighten suddenly with goodwill or warmth or intense thought, but no one could be quite sure which. She had been a patrolwoman in Abilene and Galveston and had joined the department four years ago in order to be near her mother, who had been in a local hospice. Pam had a night-school degree from the University of Houston, but she spoke little of her background or her private life and gave others the sense they should not intrude upon it. Hackberry’s recent promotion of her to chief deputy had not necessarily been welcomed by all of her colleagues.

“Good morning,” Hackberry said.

Pam held her eyes on his without replying.

“Something wrong?” he said.

“An Immigration and Customs Enforcement guy by the name of Clawson just left. His business card is on your desk.”

“What does he want?”

“Probably your ass.”

“Pardon?”

“He wants to know why you didn’t call in for help when you found the bodies,” she replied.

“He asked you that?”

“He seems to think I’m the departmental snitch.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“To take a walk.”

Hackberry started toward his office. Through the window he could see the flag straightening on the metal pole in the yard, the sun behind clouds that offered no rain, dust gusting down a broken street lined by stucco and stone buildings that had been constructed no later than the 1920s.

“I heard him talking on his cell outside,” Pam said at his back.

When he turned around, her eyes were fixed on his, one tooth biting down on the corner of her lip.

“Will you just say it, please?”

“The guy’s a prick,” she replied.

“I don’t know who’s worse, you or Maydeen. Will y’all stop using that kind of language while you’re on the job?”

“I heard him talking outside on his cell. I think they know the identity of the witness who called in the shots fired. They think you know his identity, too. They think you’re protecting him.”

“Why would I protect a nine-one-one caller?”

“You have a cousin name of William Robert Holland?”

“What about him?”

“I heard Clawson use the name, that’s all. I got the impression Holland might be your relative, that maybe he knows the nine-one-one caller. I was hearing only half of the conversation.”

“Don’t go anywhere,” Hackberry said. He went into his office and found the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent’s business card centered squarely in the middle of his desk blotter. A cell phone number was written across the top; the area code was 713, Houston. He punched in the number on his desk phone.

“Clawson,” a man’s voice said.

“This is Sheriff Holland. I’m sorry I missed you this morning. What can I help you with?”

“I tried your home, but your message machine wasn’t on.”

“It doesn’t always work. What is it you want to know?”

“A significant lapse of time occurred between your discovery of the bodies out by the church and your call to your dispatcher. Can you clear me up on that?”

“I’m not quite sure what the question is.”

“You wanted to dig them up by yourself?”

“We’re short on manpower.”

“Are you related to a former Texas Ranger by the name of-”

“Billy Bob Holland, yeah, I am. He’s an attorney. So am I, although I don’t practice anymore.”

“That’s interesting. We need to have a chat, Sheriff Holland. I don’t like getting to a crime scene hours after local law enforcement has tracked it up from one end to the other.”

“Why is ICE involved in a homicide investigation?” Hackberry asked. He could hear the chain rattling on the flagpole, a trash can clattering drily on a curbstone. “Do you have the identity of the nine-one-one caller?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that right now.”

“Excuse me, sir, but I have the impression that you consider a con versation a monologue in which other people answer your questions. Don’t come bird-dogging my deputies again.”

“What did you say?”

Hackberry replaced the receiver in the phone cradle. He walked back into the outer office. Pam Tibbs looked up from her paperwork, a slice of sunlight cutting her face. Her eyes were a deep brown, bright, fixed on his, waiting.

“You drive,” he said.

THE AIR WAS muggy and warm when she parked the cruiser in the abandoned Pure filling station across from the stucco shell of the old church. Hackberry got out on the passenger side and looked at the phone booth on the perimeter of the concrete. The clear plastic panels were sprayed and scratched with graffiti, the phone box itself unbolted and removed. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and the hills had turned as dark as a bruise.

“The feds took the box?” Pam said.

“They’ll dust it and all the coins inside and keep us out of the loop at the same time.”

“Who owns the land behind the church?”

“A consortium in Delaware. They bought it from the roach paste people after the Superfund cleaned it up. I don’t think they’re players, though.”

“Where’d the killers get the dozer to bury the bodies? They had to have some familiarity with the area. There were no prints on the shell casings?”

“Nope.”

“Why would anyone kill all these women? What kind of bastard would do this?”