The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (39)

“Police,” Pugh shouted. “Your dog attacked us—”

“You shot my dog—”

Tanner cried out, “Oh, God,” as Pugh put her hand under her jacket, on what might have been a gun.

“Pull that fuckin’ gun and I’ll kill you,” the man shouted. “This is my property.”

“We gotta move him,” Kaiser shouted. “We gotta get him going.”

Letty had stepped sideways from the shouting group of cops and Kaiser, and now she slipped the 938 out of her pocket and pointed it at the man’s head, two feet from his ear. “If the cop tells me to shoot you, I’ll blow your brains out.”

The man cocked his head toward her, took in her tone of voice and the nine-millimeter hole at the end of the pistol, and said, “This is my property . . .”

Letty, chill as ice: “Drop the gun or I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you right now.”

Again, a brief assessment, then he half-stooped, carefully dropped the gun on a shoe-sized patch of grass. “Don’t shoot.”

Kaiser was bent over Tanner: “Hey! Hey! We gotta get him going.”

“Take him to my car, it’s open, put him on the backseat,” Pugh said. She had her weapon out now. “Go to the fence,” she told the blond man. “Go to the fence.”

The man stepped over to the fence and Pugh cuffed him to the solid top rail as Kaiser carried Tanner to Pugh’s car, Tanner groaning, “Hurts, hurts,” and slid him into the backseat, then climbed in on top of him.

Pugh said to Letty, “Stay with him, I’ll get a patrol car here right away,” and she jogged to her car and a moment later, it turned a corner and was out of sight.

The man said to Letty, “Killed Rooter. Killed my dog.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. And she was.

“Did you kill it?” he asked.

“No.”

“Would you have killed me?” he asked.

“Without thinking twice,” Letty said. “Are you Max Sawyer?”

“Yeah. Who the fuck are you?”

“Another gun nut,” she said. “You want a drink of water?”



* * *





He didn’t want a drink of water, but his back hurt, he said, and he could use a chair. “There’s a kitchen chair right straight back from the door and there’s a beer on the table, only half drunk.”

Letty looked at the handcuff holding him to the fence, then nodded and went inside the house, got the wooden kitchen chair and the bottle of Dos Equis and carried them outside. Sawyer sat in the chair and said, “You’re too young to be a cop.”

“I’m a researcher with the Department of Homeland Security,” she said. “We’re trying to locate Rand Low, has to do with people stealing oil.”

“What’s your name?”

“Letty. What about Low?”

Sawyer had yellow haystack hair and looked a bit like the prime minister of Great Britain. He chugged the rest of the beer and lobbed the bottle across the yard. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “Haven’t seen Rand since the day he went to prison. I expect he’s over in San Antonio. I doubt he has anything to do with stealin’ oil.”

“Well, he does. Maybe he cut you out of the money—we’re thinking it’s around five million a year. He doesn’t keep it all, of course, but he keeps plenty,” Letty said.

Sawyer smirked at her and said, “You don’t know shit. You must be cruising on looks alone, honey, because you got no idea what you’re talking about.”

Letty smiled: she was right, and Sawyer wasn’t bright enough to know that he’d confirmed it. “I know one thing. You’re going to prison, on account of threatening a cop with a gun. That’s ag assault. You get out, you’ll never be allowed to carry another gun for the rest of your life. Not buy one, not have one, not shoot one. If you were to help us find Rand Low, the charge could go away.”

Sawyer turned away: “Fuck you.”

“The only thing you’re gonna be fuckin’ is some hairy-butted old biker in the state pen,” Letty said.

That made Sawyer laugh. “I like your style,” he said. “And your gun, though it’s not exactly a target shooter.”

“I got a Staccato XC for that,” Letty said.

Sawyer’s eyebrows went up. “No shit? I’d like to see that. You got an optical on it?”

“Leupold Delta Point Pro.”

“Oh, man. Listen, when I bail out—you guys got nothing on me—why don’t you come down and let me try that out? If you’re in the neighborhood?”

They talked guns, Sawyer testing her on the details, then Letty nodded up the street, where a white Monahans cop car had turned the corner. “Here comes your ride. I understand the Texas state government is trying to make its prisons more comfortable. You can relax in the sunshine, get free eats and free medical, it’s almost like a vacation. When you’re not spending time with that biker.”

“You can be a mean little bitch,” Sawyer said. “Even if you’ve got good guns.”

“Maybe I’ll see you again sometime,” Letty said.

“Bring your guns,” Sawyer said. A threat.