The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(39)

Sanchez strained his wrists against the plastic cuffs, trying to get some circulation. With difficulty he opened his peanuts and emptied the bag into his mouth.

DeLeon reached over and punched RECORD on the cassette machine. She gave today's date and all of our names, then leaned back against the door frame.

"So, where were we?"

Sanchez chewed his peanuts. DeLeon hugged the elbows of her khaki coat, pushing the side of one red pump against the tile floor. I found myself shifting in my uneven chair. Bimp-bump.

Finally Sanchez swallowed. He crumpled his peanut bag, let it drop. "We weren't nowhere."

DeLeon nodded. "That's right. You know who this is here, Anthony?" Sanchez avoided looking at me.

DeLeon waited.

When Sanchez finally met my eyes I tried to suppress any emotion. I went blank, the way I do in tai chi, forcing my thoughts to sink into my diaphragm. Sanchez's eyes were gold. They had an unreal quality to them — a brilliant and completely merciless sheen. I suddenly understood why his old boss Jeremiah would've gifted this man a gold-plated .45.

"This is Dr. Navarre," DeLeon said. "He's the new English professor out at UTSA, replacing Aaron Brandon. I want you to apologize to him."

"You want me to what?"

"Navarre thinks you want to kill him. He's been losing sleep over it. Guy's an English prof — figures you scared one of his predecessors to death already, blasted the second one. He figures you've got a thing against UTSA and now you've got it in for him."

Sanchez's eyes drifted up to the ceiling. The thin beard line around his jaw, trimmed under his chin, looked like some kind of black bird. He had a scar across his neck that I hadn't noticed before — a beige line the texture of jute. His smile started to re-form. He tried to control it, then broke out in a laugh.

He looked at both of us, sharing his cold mirth. "Say what?"

"Apologize for scaring him so bad," DeLeon said. "That's all. Tell him it's okay."

Sanchez shook his head, grinning in a dazed kind of way. "You want me to say I'm sorry. For a bastard I didn't kill."

"You want a lawyer present yet?" DeLeon asked.

"I don't want nothing."

"Just checking. Apologize, Anthony."

He laughed, looked at her for several seconds to see if she would keep the straight face. She did. That just amused him more. He looked at me and his golden eyes sparkled. "Yeah, man. Sorry."

He bent over, the laugh bordering on the hysterical now. He shook for a while, wiped his eyes with the backs of his bound hands.

I sat perfectly still.

"That's fine," DeLeon told him. "Now let's see if we can clear away some of these details, just so Professor Navarre feels better. We've agreed that you didn't kill Aaron Brandon, right?"

Sanchez sat up, laughed a little more.

"Right?"

He nodded.

"Okay. So last night we found a .45 three blocks away from Brandon's house, stuck in a drainage ditch. We got a match to the bullets that killed Aaron Brandon. The gun has one of your thumbprints just inside the revolver chamber. We got a witness who saw you coming out of the Brandons' house the night of the murder, after she heard two shots..."

DeLeon shook her head, like she was annoyed with the evidence, then looked at Sanchez for help. "You make sense of any of that, seeing as you didn't kill anybody?"

His gold eyes kept their amusement. "Nobody saw me there, 'cause I wasn't. You plant a gun, say it's mine — I can't do shit about that."

"It was a revolver, Anthony. A gold-plated revolver."

Sanchez's face darkened. "You f**kers couldn't—"

He stopped himself.

DeLeon waited. "We f**kers couldn't what, Anthony — have that revolver? The one you killed Jeremiah Brandon with six years ago? And why would that be?"

No answer.

DeLeon stepped over to the table and grabbed a folder, slid a piece of paper out of it and dropped it onto Sanchez's crotch.

"I was wondering why you came back now, Anthony, why you waited so long — at least now we got the answer to that. How was prison in Mexico?"

Sanchez looked down at the discharge document. I could read the words Nuevo Leon, Sistema Penitenciario Federal, Mexican state seals on either side. "I show you sometime," Sanchez offered to DeLeon.

"That throat-slitting just about heal, did it? I hear the other guy looked even worse."

Sanchez just smiled.

DeLeon retrieved the paper with two fingers, slid it back into the folder, and tossed it onto the table. "Why'd you go to Hector Mara's, Anthony?"

Sanchez licked his lips. "We're friends, man. Old compadres."

"And relatives. Oh, sorry. Ex-relatives. I mean, until that little thing between your wife and Jeremiah Brandon. What was her name — Sandra? What is that legally, when your wife skips town because she's been sleeping with your boss, then you go and kill the boss? Does that constitute a legal divorce?"

Sanchez's neck muscles worked into knots, but he said nothing.

"You knew we'd be looking for you, Anthony, right? Even before you killed Aaron. Why stay with your old buddy Hector, visit your old hangouts, talk to old friends like you've been doing? Why keep such a high profile?"