The Maverick: The Maverick / Magnate’s Make-Believe Mistress

“You really travel light, don’t you?” Alice mused.

He looked up, surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“This is the most impersonal office I’ve ever walked into. Wait.” She held up a hand. “I take that back. Jon Blackhawk’s office is worse. He doesn’t even have a photograph in his.”

“My dad would haunt me if I removed his.” He chuckled, sitting down behind the desk.

“Heard anything from the feds?”

“Yes. They got a report back on the car. It was reported missing by a woman who works for a San Antonio politician yesterday. She has no idea who took it.”

“Damn.” She sighed and leaned back. “Well, Longfellow’s working on that piece of paper I found at the crime scene and we may get something from the cast I made of the footprint. We did find faint sole markings, from a sneaker. FBI lab has the cast. They’ll track down which company made the shoe and try to trace where it was sold.”

“That’s a damned long shot.”

“Hey, they’ve solved crimes from chips of paint.”

“I guess so.”

She was deep in thought. “Odd, how that paper was pushed into the dirt under his hand.”

“Somebody stepped on it,” Hayes reminded her.

“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “It was clenched in the victim’s hand and hidden under it.”

Hayes frowned. “Maybe the victim was keeping it hidden deliberately?”

She nodded. “Like, maybe he knew he was going to die and wanted to leave a clue that might bring his killer to justice.”

Hayes chuckled. “Jones, you watch too many crime dramas on TV.”

“Actually, to hear the clerk at the hardware tell it I don’t watch enough,” she sighed. “I got a ten-minute lecture on forensic entomology while he hunted up some supplies I needed.”

“Bug forensics?” he asked.

She nodded. “You can tell time of death by insect activity. I’ve actually taken courses on it. And I’ve solved at least one murder with the help of a bug expert.” She pushed back a stray wisp of dark hair. “But what’s really interesting, Carson, is teeth.”

He frowned. “Teeth?”

She nodded. “Dentition. You can tell so much about a DB from its teeth, especially if there are dental records available. For example, there’s Carabelli’s cusp, which is most frequently found in people of European ancestry. Then there’s the Uto-Aztecan upper premolar with a bulging buccal cusp which is found only in Native Americans. You can identify Asian ancestry in shovel-shaped incisors…Well, anyway, your ancestry, even the story of your life, is in your teeth. Your diet, your age…”

“Whether you got in bar fights,” he interrupted.

She laughed. “Missing some teeth, are we?”

“Only a couple,” he said easily. “I’ve calmed right down in my old age.”

“You and Kilraven,” she agreed dubiously.

He laughed. “Not that yahoo,” he corrected. “Kilraven will never calm down, and you can quote me.”

“He might, if he can ever slay his demons.” She frowned thoughtfully and narrowed her eyes. “We have a lot of law enforcement down here that works in San Antonio.” She was thinking out loud. “There’s Garon Grier, the assistant SAC in the San Antonio field office. There’s Rick Marquez, who works as a detective for San Antonio P.D. And then there’s Kilraven.”

“You trying to say something?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m linking unconnected facts. Sometimes it helps. Okay, here goes. A guy comes down here from San Antonio and gets whacked. He’s driving somebody else’s stolen car. He’s messed up so badly that his own mother couldn’t identify him. Whoever killed him didn’t want him ID’d.”

“Lots of reasons for that, maybe.”

“Maybe. Hear me out. I’m doing pattern associations.” She got up, locked her hands behind her waist, and started pacing, tossing out thoughts as they presented themselves. “Of all those law enforcement people, Kilraven’s been the most conspicuous in San Antonio lately. He was with his brother, Jon, when they tried to solve the kidnapping of Gracie Marsh, Jason Pendleton’s stepsister…”

“Pendleton’s wife, now,” he interrupted with a grin.

She returned it. “He was also connected with the rescue of Rodrigo Ramirez, the DEA agent kidnapping victim whose wife, Glory, was an assistant D.A. in San Antonio.”

Hayes leaned back in his chair. “That wasn’t made public, any of it.”

She nodded absently.

“Rick Marquez has been pretty visible, too,” he pointed out. He frowned. “Wasn’t Rick trying to convince Kilraven to let him reopen that murder case that involved his family?”

“Come to think of it, yes,” she replied, stopping in front of the desk. “Kilraven refused. He said it would only resurrect all the pain, and the media would dine out on it. He and Jon both refused. They figured it was a random crime and the perp was long gone.”

“But that wasn’t the end of it.”

“No,” she said. “Marquez refused to quit. He promised to do his work on the QT and not reveal a word of it to anybody except the detective he brought in to help him sort through the old files.” She grimaced. “But the investigation went nowhere. Less than a week into their project, Marquez and his fellow detective were told to drop the investigation.”

Hayes pursed his lips. “Now isn’t that interesting?”

“There’s more,” she said. “Marquez and the detective went to the D.A. and promised to get enough evidence to reopen the case if they were allowed to continue. The D.A. said to let him talk to a few people. The very next week, the detective who was working with Marquez on the case was suddenly pulled off Homicide and sent back to the uniformed division as a patrol sergeant. And Marquez was told politely to keep his nose out of the matter and not to pursue it any further.”

Hayes was frowning now. “You know, it sounds very much as if somebody high up doesn’t want that case reopened. And I have to ask why?”

She nodded. “Somebody is afraid the case may be solved. If I’m guessing right, somebody with an enormous amount of power in government.”

“And we both know what happens when power is abused,” Hayes said with a scowl. “Years ago, when I was still a deputy sheriff, one of my fellow deputies—a new recruit—decided on his own to investigate rumors of a house of prostitution being run out of a local motel. Like a lamb, he went to the county council and brought it up in an open meeting.”

Alice grimaced, because she knew from long experience what most likely happened after that. “Poor guy!”

“Well, after he was fired and run out of town,” Hayes said, “I was called in and told that I was not to involve myself in that case, if I wanted to continue as a deputy sheriff in this county. I’d made the comment that no law officer should be fired for doing his job, you see.”

“What did you do?” she asked, because she knew Hayes. He wasn’t the sort of person to take a threat like that lying down.

“Ran for sheriff and won,” he said simply. He grinned. “Turns out the head of the county council was getting kickbacks from the pimp. I found out, got the evidence and called a reporter I knew in San Antonio.”

“That reporter?” she exclaimed. “He got a Pulitzer Prize for the story! My gosh, Hayes, the head of the county council went to prison! But it was for more than corruption…”

“He and the pimp also ran a modest drug distribution ring,” he interrupted. “He’ll be going up before the parole board in a few months. I plan to attend the hearing.” He smiled. “I do so enjoy these little informal board meetings.”