Melissa Cutler - Cowboy Justice

Time to face up to the possibility that she’d lost more in the Parillas Valley than her beloved horse. She’d always prided herself on her ability to circumvent gossip, being neither the fodder nor the circulator. She kept to herself, which was exactly how she wanted to live. But Wallace Meyer Jr. had stripped her of her solitary peace. He and his reckless friends. She wasn’t sure she could survive the exposure the shootout would bring.

Lincoln was dead, her peace had been compromised, and for what? For Wallace Jr. and his buddies to send a message that she and her sisters weren’t wanted in town? She’d assumed the vandalism had been Catcher Creek protesters of their dude ranch, but the Meyer family lived in Tucumcari, not Catcher Creek. What did Wallace Jr. care if she opened a dude ranch?

A spinning started in her head. The drug kicking in. Squinting at her reflection, she was struck with the panicky feeling there was something she knew but couldn’t remember, some answer beyond her grasp. She reached into her head for the thought, but it danced out of range.

Succumbing to the pull of the medication, she shuffled from the bathroom, tugged the privacy curtain closed, and sank into bed with a grunt. At the table near her head was the phone. She reached over with her bad arm, sucking in a tight breath, working to ignore the pain . Get used to it , she warned herself. Tomorrow, no more meds. She needed a clear mind if she was going to solve her problems.

She lifted Vaughn’s business card and read his name. With her fingertip, she traced the outline of his badge on the paper until the image blurred in her vision. She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, but it was just her horrible luck that the two worst ones had collided right before her eyes and she’d been helpless to prevent it. She’d shot the son of a powerful person, and now, to salvage her future, she’d have to rely on the man who’d ripped her heart to shreds and kept coming back to poke at the wound.

She dropped the card on her chest and closed her eyes, praying for a dreamless sleep. But the only image she saw was Vaughn.

With his gourd-shaped figure, bald head, and whiskers, Wallace Meyer reminded Vaughn of the walruses at the San Antonio Sea World he’d seen while on vacation as a kid with his parents and younger sisters. As disarming as Meyer’s appearance was, Vaughn had run charity half marathons with Meyer over the years and knew the secret strength of his lumpy body. He’d waged political battles against the man, and therefore knew the intellect behind the whiskers and bulge of chew in his cheek. He knew the smug superiority hidden behind the genial eyes and ruddy complexion.

Meyer’s shiny scalp was immediately obvious in the hospital waiting room. Next to him sat the tightly permed blond curls of his wife’s head. Vaughn stood in the elevator hallway, his eyes on Meyer, as he reconstructed the armor of ego Rachel had punched a hole through. He smoothed a hand over his tie and swallowed repeatedly until the tingling craving for cigarettes dissipated from his throat.

He’d given up smoking cold turkey the day Rachel broke it off with him a year ago last February, to punish himself for ruining everything. It had seemed like a fit plan at the time, but as it stood now, he only craved a smoke when he had Rachel on the brain—a testament to how his dual addictions had become fused in his psyche. Pathetic, how a four-week affair a year and a half ago had screwed him up so royally.

He shook his arms and fingers out. Get a grip, man.That’s you making yourself miserable, not her. She has no control over your choices. Ha. Right.

The futile self-affirmation brought a sarcastic uptwitch to the corners of his lips. Excellent. Exactly the face he wanted to present to Meyer. When he played the role of the smart-ass punk with no respect for the county’s established guard, Meyer lost his cool. Vaughn loved it when the visage of paternal condescension evaporated from Meyer’s face to reveal the disdain he usually kept in careful check. Didn’t happen often, but enough to make Vaughn hungry for it.

He ducked into the gift shop for a pack of gum, dialing Stratis as he paid the cashier. “Where are you?”

“Outside the post-surgical recovery room, waiting for the all-clear to interview Junior.”

“Any lawyers buzzing around?”

“Not yet.”

Interesting. Vaughn had been so certain Meyer would’ve gone on the defense straight out of the gate that he hadn’t given much consideration to the alternative, that Meyer had reached the decision that his son hadn’t done anything criminal, or at least criminal enough to bring a lawyer into the situation.

“Did you get blood samples?” he asked Stratis. “If Junior’s on drugs again, that could answer a lot of my questions.”

“I sent Binderman to the lab with samples. He put a rush on it, so we should have the tox results by the end of the week.”

The end of the week was four days away. Maddening, how slow the system worked.

That was the rub of enforcing the law in a rural county. Just about every forensic service the job required had to be outsourced to Albuquerque or Santa Fe. Every so often, they utilized the Tucumcari hospital’s lab, but not when a crime had occurred, and definitely not when that crime involved a high-ranking Tucumcari official’s family.

The hospital was little more than a sprawling complex of doctors’ offices, an out-patient surgery wing, and an emergency room. At three stories tall, it was one of the larger buildings in town, but wasn’t ideal for treating medical problems greater than broken bones or kidney stones. Or gunshot wounds, for that matter. Hell, broken bones and gunshot wounds were an integral component of life in the wild west of New Mexico’s high desert.

Outsourcing everything from fingerprinting to tox screens was impossibly slow, which was why Vaughn had come to rely on his ability to get people to talk, perps and witnesses alike. Over the years on the job, he’d become a criminal psychology expert out of sheer desperation to deliver justice to those who deserved it, despite the staggering odds stacked against such an outcome.

He cracked his knuckles, took a slow breath, and lowered the volume on his radio. Then he sauntered across the lobby, whistling. Showtime.

When he dropped into the chair next to Kathryn Meyer, Wallace let his hatred for Vaughn shine through for a split second before his eyes shuttered into cool benevolence.

“Cooper. I was wondering when you’d find your way to me.”

Vaughn flickered a glance at him before extending his hand to Kathryn. “Mrs. Meyer, it’s been a long time. I’m so sorry we’re meeting again under such unfortunate circumstances.”

She shook his hand with a strained, dewy-eyed expression. “Thank you.”

“My deputy informed me Junior’s out of the woods,” Vaughn continued in his most consoling tone. “Sounds like the bullet was successfully removed without complication. You must be relieved.”

“The Lord has blessed us with His mercy once again.”

He patted Mrs. Meyer’s hand. “I’m sure that’s true.”

Wallace stood and hitched his slacks up around his bloated belly. “Kathy, Sheriff Cooper and I are going to step away, talk business.”

Vaughn stood, following Meyer’s lead. “Would you like a cup of coffee from the cart out front, Mrs. Meyer?”

“That would be lovely. Thank you,” she said.

He smiled with his kindest eyes, then followed Meyer through the sliding double doors and around the corner, out of sight from the glass-enclosed lobby. They positioned themselves in the sliver of shade on the side of the building.