Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(69)

"Help me find Karnau, then. He’s got the answers."

White gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. Behind the bland smile, he seemed to be deciding something. He got out of his chair and surveyed his lawn one more time. Then he took an index card and a pen from his pocket. He wrote something on the card, folded it, and let it fall to the table.

"Good-bye, Mr. Navarre." He stretched again, raising himself up on his toes. “So nice to meet you, Miss Lee."

When Guy White was a half acre away, strolling past his newly planted verbena, Maia picked up the index card and read it.

“Try Mr. Karnau at the Placio del Rio tonight. "

"That’s the Riverwalk Hilton. Downtown."

Maia put her champagne glass on the table. She looked at the index card again. "Why do I feel like we’ve just been offered a sacrifice?"

"Or someone’s unwanted ballast."

I looked across the yard at Guy White, who was now stepping carefully but easily between rows of his Blue Princess like this was his minefield and he’d crossed it many times before.

42

After that, the clean air of the country felt good. By one o’c1ock we were speeding along the banks of the Blanco River in Larry Drapiewski’s jeep, and Larry was rapidly consuming the Shiner Bocks and beef fajitas we’d brought him as a peace offering.

“Three beers," Maia said. "What happened to setting a good example for your youngers, Lieutenant?"

Larry laughed. "You get as big as me, Miss Lee, then you can see what three beers does to your blood alcohol content."

Drapiewski’s red jeep seemed right at home in the Hill Country. So did Larry. Off-duty, he was wearing boot-cut Levi’s and black leather Justins that must’ve been made from an entire alligator, a red shirt that made his hair and his freckles seem a little less neon by comparison. Howdy Doody on steroids.

"So what is it you folks are expecting to find?"

Drapiewski said. "It’s been a lot of years since they pulled Halcomb out of that deer blind, son. You expect something with an orange flag on it just sitting out there all this time?"

"That’d be fine," I said.

Larry laughed. The fajita disappeared in his mouth, followed closely by most of the beer. Maia looked on in awe.

Drapiewski’s friend with the Blanco County Sheriff’s Department had the unfortunate name of Deputy Chief Grubb. We met Grubb outside the Dairy Queen, a place he had obviously frequented over the years. His white hair had a slightly greasy tinge to it, and his upper body, once that of a football player, had swollen up over his belt buckle until it bore an uncanny resemblance to a Dilly Bar.

Larry made the introductions.

“Halcomb," Grubb said, by way of introduction.

"That was a luncher."

"Meaning—? "

When Grubb grinned you could get a good feel for how much he liked his coffee. The layers of yellow on his crooked incisors were like glacial flood lines.

"Meaning we ate it, son," he told me. "Never found a damn thing."

It was a ten-minute drive from the DQ in Grubb’s unit. Along the way, he told us about a slave ranch they’d closed down a week before—seventeen Mexican migrant workers kept in a barn, chained up at night, worked with a whip and a double-barrel shotgun during the day. Then he talked about the domestic disputes he’d broken up so far this week, the new Mexican restaurant in town, the high school team’s chances next fall. By the time we’d driven to the site and walked through five acres of brush and live oaks, Maia and I knew every bit of gossip Blanco had to offer, including where to buy your duty-free liquor, what fields the marijuana planes landed in, and which local wives were likely candidates for a steamy affair. All I needed now was a place with cheap rent.

"There it is," Grubb said finally, wiping the sweat off the back of his neck. "Ain’t much."

The blind had probably been old and abandoned when Randall Halcomb’s corpse was stuffed into it years ago. Now it was just a collection of rotten planks and sheets of plywood on four wobbly posts. It had tried to fall down a long time ago but had been stopped by a nearby mesquite that was still propping it up like a sober friend trying to support a drunk. There was a frayed rope ladder hanging from the back. Even if it had held together long enough to climb, the blind would’ve collapsed under the weight of a full—grown man.

Grubb and Drapiewski started trading stories of gory hunting accidents while Maia and I poked around. Nothing was marked with an orange flag. Five cows were standing in a clump in the shadow of the blind, hiding from the afternoon sun. They looked at me with a kind of lazy resentment, wondering what I was doing there. I started to ask myself the same question. I’d been hoping, maybe, to match the terrain to Karnau’s photos, get a sense for where the shots had been taken from, why Halcomb’s employers had chosen this site for a meeting and why Karnau might’ve been here. So far nada.

"Grubb," I called.

The deputy chief came over next to me, with Drapiewski and Maia following.

I nodded at the deer blind. "Did you determine whether this was a dump site or not?"

Grubb took off his deputy’s hat and wiped his forehead on his arm.

"A lot of blood about a hunnerd yards down that way, " he said. "That’s where they killed him. Then they dragged him over here."