The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(57)

I found myself hugging him tight, trying to get reassurance from the breaths that expanded his little warm chest, the smell of sleep and child sweat in his rumpled hair. I carried him down Palo Blanco and tried to keep talking in gentle tones so he wouldn't focus on the sound behind us of his mother crying.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Policemen's faces and questions blurred together. At some point Erainya reclaimed Jem. Then I was separated from both of them. A field sergeant came by and took my statement. Halfway through, he finally corrected my understanding of the situation. He pulled me back from total despair with a frown and a matter-of-fact "I thought you knew."

George Berton was not dead.

George's ambulance had been long gone by the time I'd arrived on the scene. The body in George Berton's house, the body SAPD wasn't in any hurry to move, wasn't George's.

The sergeant told me George's condition was critical. And no, I could not leave immediately to see him. The sergeant insisted on taking the rest of my statement, refused to answer further questions, then left me locked in the backseat of the patrol car with the detective's thermos of hot chocolate. I didn't want any hot chocolate, which was just as well. My hands were shaking too badly to unscrew the cap.

I smelled of mothballs and wet garbage. My hair felt shellacked. The throbbing in my head synchronized itself to the pulse of siren light from the unit across the street.

I closed my eyes.

After a few minutes the car dipped from the weight of someone sinking into the front seat.

I looked up expecting to see the night CID detective. Instead I found the Bexar County medical examiner.

As usual, Ray Lozano looked way too nice for your average dissector of dead people. His hair was a huge well-plowed field of black, thick but immaculately trimmed around the edges. He wore a dark blue silk suit covered in a lab wrap. Surgical gloves covered his wedding band and his Swiss Army watch.

Normally Lozano would've been smiling way too much for an M.E., too. But not tonight.

"Hey, ese." He didn't offer his hand, just a very long look of shared anger that glowed like the belly of a furnace.

"Ray," I said. "Lucky call for you tonight."

Under his breath, Lozano swore. "They tell you about it yet?"

I shook my head.

"You want to know?"

"What do you think?"

Lozano looked strange without a laugh ready to burst out. For the first time, he looked his age.

"I can't tell you much about George. He was already en route to BAMC when I got here. As for inside, there's a dead guy named Hector Mara lying faceup in the living room. Any idea why?"

"The shooting was between him and Berton?"

"No. No way. Shooter was a third person. Signs of forced entry on the back door. They lifted half a boot print in the alley. Shooter came in and interrupted Berton's and Mara's conversation. Mara drew a revolver but never got a chance to fire it. Caught one round in the chest, close range, I'm saying a .357."

I closed my eyes, tried to concentrate on my breathing.

"You sure you want to hear this?" Lozano asked.

I nodded.

"We don't have George here, so it's hard to reconstruct the whole story unless—" Lozano stopped, then went on. "Until he gets out of surgery. I know he was shot twice in the back, probably same caliber that hit Mara. My guess, we're looking at one shooter. The guy plugs Mara when Mara draws his revolver, then turns on George. George is armed but he doesn't try anything. I don't know why. The shooter tells George to turn around, or maybe George turns to run. When he does, the shooter fires twice. Berton goes down in the kitchen doorway. Shooter walks back over to Mara, makes sure Mara is dead with a shot to the head, contact wound. Then, for some reason, he doesn't take the same precaution with Berton. Most likely he's scared off the scene before he can."

"When Erainya and I arrived."

"Maybe. The timing is good. This didn't go down very long before you two showed up. Both entrance wounds on Mara were atypical, disproportionately large for the tissue damage and exit wounds. I was wondering about the caliber until I noticed the muzzle imprint on the head wound— erythematous rather than abraded."

"Which means in English?"

"Which means in English a silencer. A .357 semiauto handgun with a silencer. Our shooter came in prepared to do some killing."

"You keep describing one person. One shooter."

"Based on what you saw — the van, multiple people — there must've been more guys at the scene, right? But I'm still saying one shooter went into the house. And why the back-door entry? I don't know. It just seems things would've played differently if there'd been a crowd in the room."

I closed my eyes again, tried to squeeze out the burning sensation in them.

"You look like shit," Lozano said. "I heard about your car, man. You're crazy not letting them take you to the ER."

"I'm fine."

"Like hell," Lozano said. "Look at me."

When I didn't he grabbed my jaw and twisted my face toward his, took a penlight from his pocket and shined it in my eyes. He grunted, put the penlight away, and dug his fingers around my scalp at various points.

"Ouch," I said.

"Relax. My patients never complain." He withdrew his hands. "You start feeling dizzy or nauseous, get your ass to the hospital. Otherwise go home."