The Texas Ranger

“I know. But this one’s tricky. They found a young white guy with a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, execution-style. Remember what’s on Castillo Boulevard?”

“No.”

She gave him a smug look. “Jake Marsh’s nightclub. And the body was found in an alley two doors down from it.”

He broke into a smile. “Well, well! What a nice surprise to drop in my lap, and just when I was feeling sorry for myself.” He hesitated. “Wait a minute. Why’s the captain giving it to me?” he asked suspiciously, glaring toward the head Ranger’s closed door nearby. “The last assignment he gave me was looking into the mysterious death of a mutilated cow.” He leaned down, because he was a head taller than she was. “They thought it was aliens,” he whispered fervently.

She made a face. “You never know. Maybe it was!”

He glared at her.

She grinned. “He’s just ticked because you got to work with the FBI for two years, and they turned down two applications from him. But he said you could have this murder case because you haven’t embarrassed him this month. Yet.”

“It won’t be uncomplicated. In fact, I’ll bet a week’s pay that by dark it’s going to turn into a media feeding frenzy,” he said.

“I won’t take that bet. And, by the way, he said you should stop getting gas at that new all-female gas station downtown, because it’s giving the department a bad name.”

He lifted both eyebrows. “What’s he got against women pumping gas?” he asked innocently.

“Gas isn’t all they’re pumping.” She flushed when she realized what she’d said, gestured impotently at the assignment sheet and exited in a flaming rush.

Brannon grinned wickedly as she retreated. He picked up the sheet and went out of the office, grabbing up his off-white Stetson on the way.

In Austin, a slender woman with her long blond hair in a bun, wearing big gold-rimmed glasses over her twinkling dark brown eyes, was trying to console one of the state attorney general’s computer experts.

“He really likes you, Phil,” Josette Langley told the young man, who was in the first month of his first job out of college. He looked devastated. “Honest he does.”

Phil, redheaded and blue-eyed, glanced toward the door of Simon Hart, Texas Attorney General, and flushed even redder. “He said it was my fault his computer locked down while he was talking to the vice president on-line about an upcoming governors’ conference. He got knocked off the network and couldn’t get back on. He threw the mouse at me.”

“Lucky you, that it wasn’t attached to the CPU at the time,” she said with a wicked grin. “Anyway, he only throws things when Tira’s mad at him. It doesn’t last long. Besides, the vice president is his third cousin,” she pointed out. “And mine, too, come to think of it,” she added thoughtfully. “Never mind, Phil, you have to learn to just let it wash over you, like water on a duck’s back. Simon’s quick-tempered, but he gets over it just as fast.”

He gave her a baleful look. “He never yells at you.”

“I’m a woman,” she pointed out. “He’s very old-fashioned about yelling at women. He and his brothers were raised strictly. They don’t move with the times.”

“He’s got four brothers and he says they’re all just like him. Imagine that!” he said.

She remembered that Phil was an only child, like herself. “They’re not just like him. Anyway, they live in Jacobsville, Texas. The married ones are a lot calmer now.” She didn’t dare allow herself to think about the two remaining Hart bachelors, Leo and Rey. The stories about their homemade biscuit-craving and the things they did to satisfy it was becoming legendary.

“The bachelor ones aren’t calm. One of them carried a cook out of a Victoria restaurant kicking and screaming last week, and they sent the Texas Rangers after him!”

“They sent Judd Dunn,” she replied. “He’s our cousin, too. But it was a joke, sort of. And she wasn’t exactly screaming…Well, never mind. It’s not important.” She was talking too fast. She felt her face go hot at the mention of the Texas Rangers.

She had painful memories of one particular Texas Ranger, whom she’d loved passionately. Gretchen, Marc Brannon’s sister, had told her that Marc Brannon had gone on a drunken rampage two years ago, just after they broke up and ended up on opposite sides of the courtroom in a high-profile murder trial. Marc had left the Rangers shortly afterward and enlisted with the FBI. He was back in San Antonio now, back with the Rangers again. Gretchen also said that Marc had almost driven himself crazy with guilt over an even older incident when Josette was fifteen and he was a policeman in Jacobsville. Odd, she thought, remembering the painful things he’d said to her when they broke up.

Josette had told Gretchen that she didn’t blame Marc for his lack of belief in her innocence. Part of her didn’t. Another, darker part wanted to hang him by his spurs from a live oak tree for the misery of the past two years. He’d never really believed her story until their last disastrous date, and he’d walked out on her without another word, after making her feel like a prostitute. She’d loved him. But he couldn’t have loved her. If he had, he’d never have left Texas, not even if the murder trial had set them at odds.

She cleared her throat at the erotic images that flashed through her mind of her last date with Marc and turned her attention back to poor, downcast Phil Douglas.

“I’ll square things with Simon for you,” she promised him.

“I really like working here,” he said eagerly. “You might mention that. And I promise I’ll fix the computer next time so that his e-mail won’t ever lock down again. I’ll put it in writing, even!”

“I’ll tell him, Phil. Right now, in fact. I have to see him on a question one of the district attorneys faxed in this morning. Chin up, now. The world hasn’t ended. Everything passes with time—even things you think will kill your soul.”

And she should know, she thought, but she didn’t say it out loud.

When she walked into Texas Attorney General Simon Hart’s office, she found him scowling at the telephone as if he’d just taken a bite of it and found it rotten.

“Something wrong?” she asked as she paused in front of his desk.

He shifted, the artificial hand resting on the desk looking so real that sometimes it was hard to remember that he was an amputee. Simon was big, dark-haired, pale-eyed and formidable. His gorgeous redheaded wife, Tira, and his two dark-haired young sons smiled out from a jumble of framed photographs on a polished table behind him. There was one of him with his four brothers just after he’d been elected attorney general. His brothers were giving him apprehensive glances. She smiled. Disabled or not, Simon was a force to behold when he lost his temper.

“That was the assistant district attorney in San Antonio,” he said, indicating the phone. “They’ve got what looks like a mob-related hit in an alley just a few steps from Jake Marsh’s nightclub.” He glanced at her. “A local mob figure,” he added. “Ever heard of him?”

“The name rings a bell, but I can’t place it. That case won’t concern us, will it?” she asked.

He was tracing a pattern on his desk. “As a matter of fact, it might. It depends on whether or not we can tie Marsh to the murder. I don’t have to tell you how hard the district attorney in San Antonio has been trying to shut him down. The D.A. phoned the deputy chief of police and cleared it to have the Texas Rangers send an officer over there to assist in the investigation. If the case can be tied to Marsh, we’ll be looking at multiple jurisdictions and we’ll end up in a high-profile case. In a senate election year here,” he added solemnly, “crime will be a campaign issue. I don’t want Texas in the spotlight again. Neither does the D.A. in Bexar County, so she’s making sure every step is documented and backed up.”

He was holding something back. She could see it in the way he looked at her.

“You know you can’t hide things from me,” she said abruptly. “What is it you don’t want to tell me?”

He shook his head and laughed. “I forgot that uncanny ability of yours to sense what people are feeling. Okay. They’re sending Marc Brannon to look into it,” he told her finally. He held up a hand when she froze and started to speak. “I know there’s bad blood between you, but Marsh is notorious. I want him as much as the D.A. does, so I’m going to send you over there to run liaison for my office during the investigation. I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”

She wasn’t listening. She had a bad feeling about it, too. Her heart was racing. Two years. Two years. “You’ll have a worse feeling if you send me there. Can you see me and Brannon, working together? It will only be possible if they confiscate all his bullets and make me leave my stun gun here in Austin.”

He chuckled. Despite her tragic life, she was strong and independent and dryly funny. He’d hired her two years ago when nobody else would, largely thanks to Brannon, and he was glad. She had a degree in criminal justice. Her choice of jobs was to be an investigator in a district attorney’s office. Fate had landed her here, working on the Prosecutor Assistance and Special Investigation Unit for Simon. She could be loaned out to a requesting district attorney, along with other investigative personnel and even prosecutors, providing resources for criminal investigation.

It was a harrowing job from time to time, but she loved it. She had access to the respected Texas Crime Information Center. It boasted a statewide database on wanted persons and provided real-time on-line information to law enforcement agencies. Josette counted it as one of her biggest blessings during investigations, particularly those involving cybercrime.

“It’s nothing definite yet,” Simon added. “They’re still at the scene. The murder may not even be connected with Marsh, although I hope to God it is. But I thought I’d prepare you, just in case you have to go out there.”

“Okay. Thanks, Simon.”

“We’re family. Sort of.” He frowned. “Was it your third cousin who was related to my stepgrand-mother…?”

“Don’t,” she groaned. “It would take a genealogist to figure it out, it’s so distant.”

“Whatever. They can’t accuse me of nepotism for hiring you, but we’re distant cousins anyway. Family,” he added, with a warm smile. “Sort of. Like the staff.”

“I’m glad you think of them like that, because ‘Cousin’ Phil wants you to know that he likes his job and he’s sorry he messed up your e-mail,” she told him, tongue-in-cheek. “And he hopes you won’t take away his job with the Internet Bureau.”

His light eyes flashed. “You can tell Cousin Phil to kiss my…!”

“Don’t you say it,” she warned, “or I’ll call Tira and tell on you.”

He ground his teeth together. “Oh, all right.” He frowned. “That reminds me. What do you want in here, anyway?”