Thomas Blackhorse's Arc

Chapter 13 of 17

Thomas stood in the hallway with the phone still warm in his hand. Pablo had a shotgun and a name. Ray had a warrant coming at nine. Thomas had paper. He needed an address. Juanita would not sit at the casino waiting to be served. She would go to ground, and the warrant would be worthless until he knew where. He walked back into the interview room. The young woman sat with the book bag gone from her lap and her hands empty in a way that seemed to hurt her. Thomas sat across from her. "Pablo Delgado took a shotgun," he said. "He's the father. He'll shoot her in the street if he finds her first. Then she walks on self defense and he dies in prison." She looked at the table. "You worked her machines eight years," Thomas said. "You know where she sleeps when she's scared." "I know where she keeps me," she said. "That's not the same." "Tell me anyway." She pressed her thumb into the wood. "She has a house. Not the casino. Not the ranch." "Where?" "I don't know the road." "You've been driven there." "In the trunk." Thomas kept his face still. "How long from the casino?" "Forty minutes. Dirt the last ten. A cattle guard. Two." "What did you hear when she opened the door?" She closed her eyes. "Windmill. The bad kind. Squeaks on the downstroke." Thomas wrote it down. "Anything else." "Propane truck came Wednesdays. She complained he was cheating her on the fill." She opened her eyes. "That's all." It was enough. Thomas called Ray from the hall. Ray put him on with a deputy who knew the county. Forty minutes from the casino, dirt access, two cattle guards, a squeaking windmill, a Wednesday propane account under any name that wasn't hers. The deputy came back in six minutes. One property matched. A ranch house registered to a shell out of Farmington. Wednesday deliveries. Windmill in the aerial photo. Thomas wrote the address on the back of Ray's folder. He drove the old Jeep out of the station lot at eight forty. The warrant would be signed by the time he crossed the county line. He called Maria. She said Pablo had left at six in the truck and wasn't answering. Six. Two hours ahead. Thomas pushed the Jeep past what it liked. The dirt turnoff came where the deputy said. First cattle guard rattled the frame. Second one. Pablo's truck sat crooked in the yard with the driver door open. The house door stood open behind it. No shotgun on the seat. No Pablo. Inside, a chair lay on its side and the phone cord was pulled from the wall. Thomas had the address. He had the warrant. He did not have either of them.