The Texas Ranger
“I wouldn’t. How very efficient you’ve become, Miss Langley.”
“Haven’t I, though?” she replied pertly. “Look out, Brannon. One of these days I may be state attorney general myself, and wouldn’t that tie a knot in your ego? Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
Josette turned and started to walk away. The elevator had departed while they were talking. It was on the tenth floor. He pushed the down button viciously.
“Did Jennings have any family?” he asked abruptly.
She turned to look at him. “He has a mother who’s a semi-invalid. She’s on disability and she has a bad heart. Just recently she lost her home because of some scam she fell for. She was supposed to be evicted this week.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “Her husband is long dead and she has no other children. She and Dale were very close. It goes without saying that her son served two years in prison for a crime he never committed while the real culprit escaped justice and inherited the fortune he needed to finance a senate campaign…!”
“Not another word,” Brannon said in a soft, deep tone that made chills run down her spine.
“Or else what?” Josette challenged with uplifted eyebrows and a cool smile. When he didn’t reply, she shrugged. “I hope someone had the decency to inform Mrs. Jennings of her son’s death. Just so that she won’t have to find out on the six o’clock news with footage of the coroner’s office carrying him off in a body bag.”
Brannon’s heart jumped. He hadn’t asked if anyone was going to call Jennings’s next of kin. Damn it, he should have been more efficient. Whatever Jennings had done, his mother wasn’t a criminal.
“I’ll make sure of it,” he said abruptly.
Her eyes softened, just a little, as she matched the memory of that lean, formidable face against the man she’d first known so many years ago. It made her sad to realize what his opinion of her must have been, even at the beginning. He wouldn’t have walked off without a goodbye if there had been any feeling in him for her. He’d hated her the night they’d broken up. He’d hated her more when she accused his friend Webb of being behind Garner’s murder. Probably he still hated her. She didn’t care.
“Thanks,” she said and turned away.
“Have you come across any clue in those files that would point to a potential execution?” he asked deliberately.
Josette came back to face him at once. “You think somebody put out a contract on him,” she said confidently, her voice deliberately lowered.
Brannon nodded. “It was a professional job, not some drive-by shooting or a gang-related conflict. He was on work detail and escaped, apparently with help from some unknown accomplice, made his way to San Antonio, and ended up with a single gunshot wound to the back of the head at point-blank range, just around the corner from our most notorious mobster’s nightclub.”
“But what would be the motive?” she asked curiously. “He was in prison, out of the way. Why would somebody break him out just to kill him? They could have done that at the prison.”
“I don’t know,” he had to admit. “That’s what I have to find out.”
“Poor Dale,” she said heavily. “And his poor mother…!”
“What’s in those files?” he asked, deliberately changing the subject.
“Background checks on all the people who called and wrote to him before his escape, and dossiers on mob figures he was rumored to be connected with,” she said. “We’ll speak to these people, of course, and the police are going to canvas the area where he was found to see if they can turn up any witnesses.”
“Which they won’t find, if it was professional.”
“I know.”
“Why did you choose law enforcement for a career?” he asked unexpectedly.
Her dark eyes narrowed on his face. “Because there are so many innocent people convicted of crimes,” Josette said deliberately. “And so many guilty people go free.”
Brannon stiffened at the innuendo. “Jennings was a mobster and he had a record,” he reminded her.
“He had a felony battery conviction, and first offender status,” she corrected. “He was just a teenager at the time. He got drunk, got into a fight and got arrested. He didn’t even go to jail. After a year’s probation, he was turned loose. But that, and his connection with Jake Marsh, went against him when he was arrested for Garner’s murder.”
“He was cold sober when Garner drowned,” he countered. “They did a breath-analyzer test on him and it registered zilch. Jennings had opportunity and the means—Garner was elderly and couldn’t swim. Being knocked over the head and pushed in the lake in that condition would have been instantly fatal, especially where he went off the pier. It’s twenty-feet deep there.”
“Where’s the motive?” she persisted.
“Garner owed him money, he said, and he couldn’t get his check,” Brannon replied with a cold smile. “Garner had fired him, and they’d already had one argument. They may have argued on the pier. Your memory of the events was questioned. You were drunk, I believe?” he chided.
Josette was still ashamed to admit that she’d been stupid enough to drink spiked punch. Not being used to hard liquor, the vodka had made her disoriented and weak. When she was fifteen, she’d unknowingly been given LSD in her soft drink and almost ended up raped. These days she never took a drink unless she was completely confident of where it had come from. “I wasn’t totally sober,” she admitted in a guilt-ridden tone. “But, then, neither were most of the people at that party. Silvia said she saw Mr. Garner at his car before she took me home and even waved at him. I didn’t see that. She said it was because I was drunk.”
“You didn’t say that at the trial,” he reminded her.
“I didn’t have time to say much at the trial,” she replied. “I was immediately suppoenaed as a prosecution witness because I hadn’t seen Dale or Mrs. Webb at the time Garner was allegedly murdered, which was before she took me home, not after! And I didn’t see Henry Garner at his car as we left. I tried to point out that Dale hadn’t had a blackjack in his car when we arrived. But the prosecuting attorney took me apart, with your helpful suggestions about bringing up my testimony at the rape trial when I was fifteen,” she added pointedly and saw his eyelids flinch. “He destroyed me on the witness stand. I heard later that you and Bib Webb told him about the rape trial. I thought you wanted to help me.” She managed a bitter smile. “You taught me how to dance. You were friends with my father. When I went to college in San Antonio, you were always around. We went out for months together, before Mr. Garner…died.” She drew in a long breath. It hurt to remember how Marc had been with her. She’d thought they were in love. She certainly had been. What a joke! “But none of that mattered, did it? You believed that I lied to implicate Bib Webb. You never doubted it.”
“Bib Webb is one of the most decent human beings I know,” Brannon said icily, refusing to face a truth that he knew for certain now about her credibility.
“Even decent people can get into a circumstance where they’ll do something crazy. Especially if they’re desperate, or drunk. You of all people should know that people on drugs or alcohol frequently forget everything that happened until they sober up,” she added, pleading her case fervently. It was the first time he’d really spoken to her alone about what happened. He seemed to be listening, too, even if he didn’t believe a word she said.
“Silvia wasn’t drunk enough to forget what she saw,” he told her. “She’d only had one drink. And she said she saw Garner by his car when she left the party to take you home.”
“That’s right. She said she saw him there.”
“What’s the difference?” he asked, out of patience. “You won’t change my mind.”
“I know that,” Josette agreed finally. “I don’t know why I try.” She added, “I’ll overnight the information in these files to your San Antonio office before I leave today, so neither of us will have to lug it to San Antonio.” She turned away. “If you have any questions, I’ll be here tomorrow morning and in San Antonio tomorrow night, at the Madison Hotel. You can reach me there.”
He was still stinging from the encounter. “If I have any questions, you’re the last person I’d ask,” he said coolly. “I wouldn’t trust you as far as the street.”
“That never changes, does it?” She laughed. “But your low opinion of me doesn’t affect anything anymore. Basically,” she added with a pointed glance, “I don’t give a damn what you think of me. Go stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Brannon.”
Josette walked down the hall and he watched her go, infuriated that she wouldn’t admit the truth. Maybe her pride wouldn’t let her. He thought about her father, who was disgraced because of her rape trial, and her mother’s fatal stroke after the Jennings trial. He felt sorry for her parents, but there had been nothing he could do for them. He thought of their last date, and her ardent response until he was out of his head with desire, until he found her so intact that he had to stop. He’d really hated her for that, although the time that passed had made it harder to believe that she’d set him up. She’d been as involved as he was. Maybe even more. But no matter how hard he worked at it, he simply couldn’t forget that she’d tried to have his best friend arrested for Henry Garner’s murder. He turned back to the elevator and reluctantly pressed the down button again. He didn’t like leaving with unanswered questions between them. He wanted…He sighed. Maybe he just wanted to sit and look at her for a while. The sight of her opened old wounds, but it also made a warm place in his heart.
He turned from the elevator and went back down the hall.
Chapter Three
Simon Hart studied Josette quietly as she walked into his office and put the file folders down on his desk. She explained the information she’d gathered for the investigation.
“I know this may be painful for you,” he told her quietly. “Since you were dating Jennings two years ago.”
“We were friends, that’s all,” she assured him. “I’m sorry he was killed, and in such a way. I never thought he murdered Henry Garner in the first place.”
“You paid a high price trying to defend him,” Simon said solemnly.
“Yes, but I’d do it again. He was innocent. Someone framed him. The only thing that puzzles me is why he didn’t try harder to fight the conviction. It was as if he just gave up the minute he got in the courtroom,” she recalled pensively.
“Did you see Marc Brannon on your way in here?” he said abruptly.
Her heart jumped. “I saw him.” She forced herself to smile carelessly. “He still can’t believe that his best friend Bib Webb would be involved in anything underhanded. That was what put us on opposite sides of Dale’s trial. Marc’s loyal, I’ll give him that.”
“Too loyal. He can’t be objective.”
“It doesn’t matter. Everyone who could be hurt already has been,” she said philosophically. “Now there’s a new murder to solve.”
He motioned her into a chair. “I want to know what you think.”
She leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs, frowning thoughtfully. She was still shaken by Marc’s unexpected appearance, but her mind was sharp and she focused on the matter at hand. “According to my research, Dale Jennings has a mother, a widow. She’s practically an invalid. Just recently she fell for some sort of financial scam. She lost her life savings and her home. She was going to be evicted this week. Dale knew. I can’t help but think his murder has something to do with that. Maybe he was trying to get money for her in some way.”
“You think he was blackmailing somebody, and his victim hired a killer to stop him?”
Josette nodded slowly. “It’s conjecture, of course. But what if he had information that would hurt somebody? Bib Webb, for example. And what if he demanded money for his silence? Webb stands to lose everything if he’s involved in another scandal. Nobody would believe that he was an innocent bystander if he was connected with a second murder. Besides, he’s ahead in the polls in the senate race. Being proven guilty of murder would sure sour his chances of election.”
“He’s the lieutenant governor, and a successful businessman,” Simon reminded her.
“Only successful because his partner, Garner, died,” she reminded him right back.
“Yes, and Garner was a widower with no children. Webb was named sole beneficiary.”
“He inherited those millions and used his inheritance to buy into a successful agricultural concern and the balance went into the coffers for his political campaign. He won the lieutenant governor race two years ago, although a lot of people said he won it by default, by having his staff dig up dirt on his opponent and forcing him out of the race with it.”
“That was never proved,” Simon reminded her.
“I know. But Jake Marsh’s name was mentioned, and not only in connection with Dale. Now, Webb is well on his way to the nomination for the United States Senate. He’s a rising star.”
“There’s one little hole in your theory, Josette. Murderers don’t usually stop at one murder, unless they’re crimes of passion,” Simon remarked, thinking out loud.
“Nobody stood in Webb’s way until now. If Dale Jennings had something on him, some sort of proof, what would a man in Webb’s position do?”
“First, he’d make sure proof existed.”
“I don’t know how there could have been any tangible proof since nobody saw Mr. Garner’s murder. The only real evidence was the blackjack they found in the passenger seat of Dale’s car. I never saw it, but he didn’t deny that it was his. He never pointed his finger at anybody else. I don’t see what could have spooked anybody into killing him. No, if there was blackmail, there had to be something else, something that would prove Webb guilty of something besides Garner’s death. But the burden of proof will be on us. Otherwise Dale’s death will be another senseless, unsolved homicide.”
“Okay. Take the ball and run with it. But you have to work with Brannon.” He held up a hand when she started to protest. “I know, he’s a pain in the neck and he’s prejudiced against you. But he’ll balance your prejudice against Webb. Besides, he’s one of the best investigators I’ve ever known. I got involved in this to put Jake Marsh away. That’s still my primary goal. I think he’s involved. If he is, the investigation is going to get dangerous. Brannon,” he mused, “is good protection. He’s a master quick-draw artist, and he can even outshoot my brother Rey.”
“Rey won medals in national skeet-shooting competition,” Josette recalled.
“He’s still winning them, national and international ones, too, these days.” He stood up. “Keep this conversation to yourself,” he added sternly. “The governor and Webb are good friends. Webb has powerful allies. I don’t want to get anyone in San Antonio in trouble. We’re investigating a murder that we hope we can link to a notorious mobster who’s probably paid off a lot of people. Period.”
“I’ll be discreet.”
“I hope you and Brannon and the San Antonio CID can turn up something on Marsh. And the sooner the better,” Simon added with a wry smile. “Because I’ll go loopy if Phil Douglas has to take over your job as well as his own.”
“Phil’s a nice boy, and a good cybercrime investigator,” she defended her colleague.
“He’s a computer expert with a superhero complex. He’ll drive me batty.”
“You’re the attorney general,” Josette reminded him. “Send him on a fact-finding trip.”
“There’s a thought. I’ve always wanted to know what the police department’s computer system looks like in Mala Suerte.”
“Mala Suerte is a border town with a population of sixteen, most of whom don’t speak English. Phil isn’t bilingual,” she pointed out.
Simon smiled.
Josette held up a hand. “I’m history. I’ll report in regularly, to keep you posted.”
“You do that.”
She nodded, picked up her files and left.
But once she was outside in the hall, the pleasant expression left her face and she felt as if her knees wouldn’t even support her. Running into Marc unexpectedly like that had shattered her. It had been two years since she’d set eyes on him, since the trial that had made him her worst enemy. She felt drained from the conflict. She only wanted to go home, kick off her shoes, and curl up on the sofa and watch a good black-and-white movie with her cat Barnes. But she’d have to pack instead. Tomorrow, she had to go back to San Antonio and face not only a murder investigation, but the pain of her own past.
Josette walked back into her office and stopped dead. Marc Brannon was still around and he was now occupying her desk chair. His Stetson was sitting on one of the chairs in front of her desk. Marc was sitting behind her desk, in her swivel chair, with his size thirteen highly polished brown boots propped insolently on her desk. Her heart jumped up into her throat for the second time in less than an hour. Despite the years in between, she still reacted to his presence like a starstruck fan. It made her angry that she had so little resistance to a man who’d helped ruin her life. His angry words from two years ago still blistered her pride, in memory.
“I thought you left,” she said shortly. “And I don’t remember inviting you into my office,” she added, slamming the door behind her.
“I didn’t think I needed an invitation. We’re partners,” Brannon drawled, watching her with those glittery gray eyes that didn’t even seem to blink.
“Not my idea,” she replied promptly. She put the files down beside his boots and stood staring at him. He didn’t look a day older than he had when she’d first met him. But he was. There were silver threads just visible at his temples where his thick blond-streaked brown hair waved just a little over his jutting brow. His long legs were muscular. She knew how fast he could run, because she’d seen him chase down horses. She’d seen him ride them, too. He was a champion bronc buster.
“You think Bib Webb hired a hit man to kill Jennings,” he said at once.
“I think somebody did,” Josette corrected. “I don’t rush to judgment.”
“Insinuating that I do?” he asked with an arrogant slide of his eyes down her body. He frowned suddenly as it occurred to him that she was dressed like an aging spinster. Every inch of her was covered. The blouse had a high collar and the jacket was loose enough to barely hint at the curves beneath it. The skirt was slightly flared at the hips, so that it didn’t pull tight when she walked. Her hair was in a tight bun, despite the faint wisps of blond curls that tumbled down over her exquisite complexion. She wasn’t even wearing makeup, unless he missed his guess. Her lips, he recalled, were naturally pink, like the unblemished skin over her high cheekbones.
“No need to check out my assets. I haven’t gone on sale,” she pointed out.
Brannon raised both thick eyebrows. That sounded like banked-down humor, but her face was deadpan.
Josette moved closer to the desk. “I’ve just explained my theory to Simon.”
“Would you care to share it with me?” he invited.
“Sure,” she said. “The minute you get your dirty boots off my desk and behave with some semblance of professional respect.” She didn’t smile as she said it, either.
Brannon pursed his lips, laughed softly and threw his feet to the floor. He’d only done it to get a rise out of her.
He got up and offered her the swivel chair with a flourish. He sank down gracefully into the chair next to the one his hat was resting on and crossed his long legs.
She sat down in her own chair with a long sigh. It had been a hard day and she only wanted to go home. Fat chance of that happening now, she thought.
“Anytime,” he invited.
“Dale Jennings’s mother was in serious trouble,” Josette said without preamble. “She’s sick and living on a small disability check. She’s only in her mid-fifties, not old enough to draw other benefits.” She leaned back in the chair, frowning as she considered the evidence. “She’d lost her small savings by listening to a fast-talking scam artist who convinced her that he was with a federal agency and she had to turn over her savings account to him in repayment for back taxes she owed.”
“Of all the damned outrages,” he said, angered in spite of himself.
That comment moved her. Brannon, despite his rough edges, was compassionate for the weaker or less fortunate. She’d seen him go out of his way to help street people, even to help young men he’d arrested himself. She had to force her eyes away from the powerful, lean contours of his body. She was still fighting a hopeless attraction to him.
“By the time she found out that no federal agency was asking for her savings,” Josette continued, “it was too late. Some people believe anything they’re told, even from people who don’t prove their credentials. She didn’t even ask for any identification, I understand.”
He grimaced. “Did she own her home?”
“She was barely a year away from paying it off. When she couldn’t make the next two payments, the bank foreclosed. She’s staying at a homeless shelter temporarily.” She studied him. “Now put yourself in Dale’s shoes,” she said unexpectedly, “and think how you’d feel if you were in prison and you couldn’t do anything to help her.”
Brannon remembered his own frail, little mother, who’d died an invalid. His thin lips made a straight line across his formidable face.
Josette nodded, realizing that he understood. She remembered his mother, too. “I’m not pointing fingers at anybody right now,” she said before he spoke. “I’m telling you that, first, somebody helped him escape prison detail. Second, somebody had proof or was keeping proof hidden of a crime that involved a person of means. Dale must have thought his chances of blackmailing the guilty party were pretty good. That doesn’t explain what he hoped to do on the outside. But he was killed, and in a very efficient manner. Whoever killed him had to know that he’d escaped from that work detail, and exactly where they could find him. I’m assuming that the person who had him killed was satisfied that he had concrete proof of something illegal, and that Dale was helped to escape so that he could present whatever proof he had and be dealt with efficiently.”
“Any prison has inmates who’ll kill for a price, guards and wardens notwithstanding,” he reminded her. “They didn’t have to get him out of prison to have him killed.”
“True, but maybe he was lured out to present his proof in person, to make sure that he really had it.” Josette leaned forward and clasped her hands on the desk. “Then, what if they thought he had the proof on him, and he didn’t?”
“We don’t know that. We didn’t find anything on the body, no ID of any sort, not even a pocketknife. If it hadn’t been for the information about the Wayne escapee fitting Jennings’s description exactly, and that raven tattoo on his arm to clinch it, we might have spent weeks trying to identify the body.”
She nodded. “So either the perpetrator took the evidence with him, or he didn’t get it and there’s still somebody out there, who was helping Jennings,” she emphasized, “and who now has the evidence and may still use it. Money is a powerful motive for murder. What if Marsh had him killed, for some reason?”
Brannon frowned. “He’s had people killed before. There could be a hit man on the loose, and whoever he’s working for may dig deep enough to find Jennings’s source.”
“That means we have another potential murder waiting to happen unless we solve the crime in time,” she agreed.
He studied her quietly. “You’ve learned a lot in the past few years.”
“Simon taught me,” she said simply. “He started out as an investigator while he was in law school. He’s very good.”
“You haven’t said anything about Bib Webb,” Brannon said.
“I said I don’t have a potential perpetrator,” she replied quietly. “And that’s true. I’m approaching the case with a completely open mind. But there’s a lot of investigative work to do. I’ll give my information to the local district attorney’s office in San Antonio, and we can do interviews with the most prominent people in the case. But I want to talk to Dale’s mother in San Antonio, the evidence technicians and police in San Antonio, and the prison warden at the Wayne Correctional Institute near Floresville. And to any cell mates Dale may have had or anyone who corresponded with him. Especially somebody who knows computers.”