Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(28)

“Gloria Paz?” Barrera asked.

“Stil there.” The deputy spat a stream of brown tobacco between the bars of the cattle guard. “Last owner set this place up as a trust. She gets to live here free the rest of her life. Damned if I know why. Then the bank gets it.”

“You know about Wil Stirman?” I asked.

He gave me traffic cop eyes—like he could either shoot me or wish me a nice day. It was al the same to him. “We got worse problems. Evacuating this whole area. One more day of rain, that dam upriver is going to break. This whole val ey’s gonna be under ten feet of water.”

“You warn Ms. Paz?”

“She ain’t going nowhere.”

“How do you figure?”

He made a dry, rasping sound that might’ve been a laugh. “You’l see.”

He touched the brim of his hat and ambled back toward his cruiser.

Barrera looked wistful y at his mustard BMW, sitting useless on the side of the two-lane. We hiked into the ranch.

After a few yards, my boots were caked in limestone frosting. I was dripping with sweat. The mosquitoes were having a picnic on the back of my neck.

Barrera looked perfectly cool. His shirt and tie betrayed no speck of mud, not a single wrinkle. Something they taught at Quantico, I guessed. Staying Starched Under Stress, Course 2101.

“You’ve been out here since the trial?” I asked.

Barrera looked at me blankly. He returned his attention to the muddy slope. “No.”

He was never what you might cal a sparkling conversationalist, but during the hour trip to Castrovil e, he’d been even less effervescent than usual.

That could’ve been because he had a lot on his mind, which was a guess. Or because he didn’t like me, which wasn’t.

“Who was the last owner of this place?” I tried.

“Businessman from San Antonio. Died a while back. Don’t remember his name.”

“He let Gloria Paz live here for free?”

No response.

Okay. Thanks, Sam. That clears it up.

I wished I was in Austin with Erainya—getting Jem settled, seeing Maia Lee, keeping the peace between the two heavily armed women in my life.

But Barrera was the key to understanding Stirman. I was sure of that.

He’d brought me out here to tel me something he didn’t want to say in front of Erainya. If I could get through the morning without kil ing him, I might find out what.

I tried to keep my mind off the mud and insects. I appraised the McCurdy spread from a business point of view. It struck me as more scenic and a lot less useful than my own family ranch in Sabinal.

The terrain was rocky and uneven—hil s and limestone cliffs hugging the Medina River Val ey, poorly suited for crops or cattle. Tourism might’ve worked. Summer cabins for tubers. Or goat ranching. Exotic game. But the McCurdy land didn’t appear to have been managed for any purpose in a long time. Cattle feeders stood rusted and empty. The barn was fal ing apart. A single emaciated heifer stood under a mesquite tree. Three vultures waited patiently on the branch above.

We were almost on top of the ranch house before I realized it was abandoned—a limestone shel in a thicket of live oaks. The windows were square holes of crumbling mortar. The doorway was an empty frame.

The roof had been partial y stripped, leaving a patchwork of metal and cedar beam.

Barrera hesitated in the doorway.

He didn’t need to explain why. The place radiated a quiet malevolence.

Inside were three empty rooms, a fireplace, a doorway in back that probably led to the kitchen. A mildewed watercolor of a fly fisherman hung crooked over the mantel. Most of the living room floor had been stripped to beams, revealing a cel ar below. That was unusual in a Texas house. In most parts of the state, the winters were too mild, the soil too close to bedrock to make a cel ar practical.

Barrera stepped careful y across rotten floorboards toward a set of descending stairs. I’d never been a fan of underground, but I fol owed him down.

The back half of the cel ar was stacked with building materials—slabs of Sheetrock and plywood, buckets of paint and caulking, al covered in plastic tarp, tied off with bungee cords. The stuff looked like it had been there for a while. The tarp was tattered, pools of rainwater crusting in the folds. Rats, or maybe cockroaches, had been chewing the labels off the paint cans.

Two black iron hooks protruded from the wal .

The limestone bore stains like rust or moss, but the streaks suggested spray patterns. I’d seen wal s like that before—in a Hil Country abattoir that had served generations of deer hunters.

“The table was here,” Barrera said.

He stood in the center of the room, holding his palms out as if warming them over a fire. “McCurdy thought the room was soundproof. But up in the cel s, they could hear the screaming.”

A raindrop hit my face. I looked up through the open squares in the roof. I reminded myself I was just ten easy steps to the surface. The floor beams above me were not prison bars.

I thought about the businessman who had bought this place after McCurdy’s suicide. I imagined his optimism as he started tearing up the house—thinking he’d gotten an incredible deal. This load of building materials would fix up the place, make it new and clean again.

I understood now why he’d never finished the job, why the materials were stil sitting here unused and the ranch would eventual y revert to the bank.