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  He turned toward her and hugged her hard for a moment. He had never doubted that she would want to come with him. In fact, he would have been surprised if she hadn’t.

  “I’m starting to think M-15 won’t stop until they’ve killed everybody in the county,” Bonnie said as they got dressed.

  “Yeah, it seems like they’ve declared war on us, all right,” Tom agreed. “But they’ve forgotten one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We can make war right back at ’em.”

  The doctor said, “Sheriff Gorman has a broken shoulder, four broken ribs, a punctured lung from one of those rib fractures, numerous deep cuts and lacerations from being thrown through the windshield, head trauma, and severe damage to his eyes. If he lives, I doubt if he’ll ever have any vision to speak of. The broken shoulder was caused by a bullet wound, and of course he lost a great deal of blood. We don’t know yet if there was any brain damage beyond a concussion.”

  “He can recover from all those things, though, right?” Tom asked.

  The doctor shrugged. “He’s been lucky to stay alive this long. Who knows how much longer his luck will last?”

  Tom rubbed a hand over his head and frowned. The thought of Buddy, helpless and blind, made him sick. But the thought of Buddy being dead was worse.

  “Deputy Henderson said something about there being another man in the car . . .”

  The doctor nodded. “He’s in the morgue, what’s left of him. There’s not much besides charred bones. That was quite an explosion.”

  “Any way of identifying him?”

  “You’ll have to ask the deputy about that. Dental records, maybe. Or DNA, but that seems like a long shot. It’s not my area of expertise, though.”

  Tom looked over at Lauren, who was standing with Bonnie beside the door into the Intensive Care Unit. They were looking through the small window in the door, but Tom wasn’t sure they could see anything except maybe Buddy’s wife Jean, who sat in a wooden chair beside the bed.

  He went over to them and said, “Deputy Henderson, we need to talk.”

  Lauren nodded. She wasn’t in uniform but rather wore jeans and a University of Arizona T-shirt. She had her badge and her holstered revolver clipped to her belt. Her shoulder-length brown hair was loose instead of pulled back in the ponytail she usually wore on duty.

  She followed him about twenty feet down the hall to a small waiting area with reasonably comfortable chairs. As they sat down, Tom said, “Tell me everything you know.”

  Lauren took a deep breath. “Like I told you on the phone, a trucker came along and spotted the wreck off to the side of the road. He stopped to take a look around and found Buddy . . . Sheriff Gorman.”

  “Buddy’s fine,” Tom said with a faint smile. “That’s what I call him, too.”

  “Okay. The trucker called nine-one-one on his cell phone. The night dispatcher sent an ambulance out right away, along with Deputy Montero. Then he called me, even though I was off duty, because I’d asked him to let me know if anything happened.”

  Tom nodded. He could understand Lauren wanting to be kept abreast of the situation.

  “I came here to the hospital first to check on Buddy, then went back to the office to make sure nothing else was going on in the county. That’s when I called you. Then I came back over here.” She shrugged. “That’s all I know. You’re up to date, Mayor Brannon.”

  “Make it Tom,” he told her. “Have you seen the body of the other man, the one who was in the trunk?”

  She nodded, a grim expression on her face. “Not much left. We’ll be lucky to ever identify him.”

  “But he was definitely inside the trunk?”

  “Yes. The lid was popped from the rollover, but the skeleton was relatively intact and still inside the trunk.”

  “So he was locked in there?”

  “Unless someone came along and dumped a body inside the trunk while the car was still on fire. I suppose that’s remotely possible, but I’d consider it highly unlikely. The heat would have been too bad for anybody to get close enough to do something like that.”

  Tom agreed—which left him with a question he wasn’t sure he wanted answered.

  Why had Buddy Gorman locked somebody inside the trunk of his car?

  “Do you know what he was doing down there, or where he had been?”

  Lauren’s eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “Are you asking me as the mayor of Little Tucson, or as Buddy’s friend?”

  “For right now, as Buddy’s friend. Did he tell you what he was planning to do, Lauren?”

  She hesitated for a second longer, then shook her head. “No, I don’t have any idea. But he must have gone to Nogales. There’s nothing else in that direction.”

  Nogales . . . Tom remembered what he had said the previous afternoon about going to Nogales and how Buddy had talked him out of it. Buddy had promised to investigate the murders of his parents . . .

  Had his investigation taken him to Nogales? That was the only answer that seemed to make any sense.

  “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but if I were you I think I’d check with the authorities on this side of the border in Nogales and see if they know whether Buddy was down there last night.”

  Lauren nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. And I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, Tom, but somebody’s going to have to take over running the sheriff’s office for the time being.”

  “That’ll be up to the county commissioners . . . but I intend to recommend to them that they make you the acting sheriff.”

  “What!” The exclamation was startled out of Lauren. “I assumed that Wayne would take over.”

  “Wayne Rushing is a good man, but he’s never been any more than a small-town deputy. Same with Francisco. But you were a full-time officer on the Phoenix police force and were doing really well when you left there. You’d have been a detective soon, and who knows how far you might have gone.”

  “Buddy talked about me, I see,” she said tightly.

  “Buddy was frustrated that he couldn’t get you to work more than part-time. He wanted to give you more responsibility. He said you could handle it better than anybody else in his department.”

  “I suppose he wondered why I left Phoenix, too.”

  Tom shrugged. “Maybe so, but he didn’t say anything to me about it. I guess he figured it was your business.”

  “That’s right, it is.” She hesitated a moment, then went on, “I had a relationship that ended. A broken heart, as corny as that sounds.”

  “Why are you telling me now?” Tom asked.

  “Because you want me to be the acting sheriff, and I’m telling you I’m not cut out for the job. I’m not strong enough, obviously, or I wouldn’t have run off down here to get away from the hurt.”

  “Something hurts bad enough,” Tom said, “anybody’s gonna run to get away from it. And you haven’t let it affect the way you do your job since you’ve been here. Like I said, Buddy was really pleased with your work.”

  “Well . . . I’ve been happier here than I expected to be.”

  Tom wondered if that was because she had found somebody here in Little Tucson to mend that broken heart of hers. He didn’t ponder the matter for long, though.

  “So can I tell the commissioners you’ll take the job?”

  Lauren thought for a moment longer and then nodded. “I guess I can give it a try.”

  “Good. Anything you need, just let me know and I’ll do what I can to help.”

  She reached out and touched his arm for a second. “I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through so much, Mr. Brannon . . . Tom. My God, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since you lost your parents, and now Buddy—”

  “Buddy’s going to make it,” Tom said.

  “If anybody’s stubborn enough to do just that, it’s him.”

  Tom put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “There’s nothing I can do here. Might as well go
home and try to get some rest. I’ve got a busy day coming up. Funeral arrangements, you know.”

  Lauren nodded. “I’m so sorry. It’s all so unfair. Right from the start, from the day of the bank robbery and Carla Willard’s carjacking, all you’ve done is try to help people. And look what it’s gotten you.”

  Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess sometimes the price is high for doing the right thing.”

  “It should never be that high.”

  He nodded in agreement. Lauren was right. M-15 had gone too far, further almost than the human brain could comprehend. And they showed no sign of giving up or even backing off any. He had called it a war, and he wasn’t the first one to use that word.

  How could anybody fight a war that was impossible to win? Was there even any hope, any reason to keep trying? Little Tucson couldn’t look to the federal government for help, that was obvious. The people had tried to help themselves with the Patriot Project, and that had led to even more tragedy. Tom was convinced that whatever had happened to Buddy had happened because of his investigation into the deaths of Tom’s parents.

  Maybe it was time to give up. Maybe Bonnie was right and they ought to leave. Hell, maybe everybody who lived in Sierrita County ought to pack up and leave the place to M-15. Let somebody else deal with it.

  Sick at heart but trying not to show it, Tom walked back down the hall to join his wife and take her home.

  No matter what else happened, one thing you could depend on was that it would be hot in the summertime in these parts. The sun was already scorching at ten o’clock the next morning when Tom stepped out of Crabtree’s Funeral Parlor. He and Ed Crabtree had spent the past hour going over the funeral arrangements for Tom’s parents. Ed looked worn out, and Tom could almost feel sorry for the man. There had been so many funerals over the past couple of weeks that Ed had to be exhausted, and on top of that, his father-in-law had been one of the people killed in the SavMart Massacre. That tragedy had left almost no one in Little Tucson untouched.

  Tom paused on the sidewalk in front of the funeral parlor and looked around. For once, downtown Little Tucson looked almost normal again. All the news crews were over at the hospital, reporting on Sheriff Gorman’s valiant fight for life. Tom thought about walking down to the auto parts store to see how Louly and Sal were doing. From his phone conversations with Louly, he knew that while business hadn’t been good, it hadn’t dried up completely. Tom decided he could take a few minutes to do that. He had left Bonnie at the hospital to sit with Jean Gorman. She would be safe enough there for a while. Lauren had assigned two deputies to the door of the ICU, even before the county commissioners had met in emergency session early this morning and appointed her the acting sheriff.

  Tom turned to walk along the sidewalk, but he had gone only a couple of steps when a big black car pulled up to the curb next to him. The front and rear passenger doors swung open as Tom stiffened, wondering if this was going to be another attack by M-15.

  Two men got out of the car, but they weren’t Hispanic gangsters. One was white, one black, and both wore sober dark suits and sunglasses. The thought that immediately flashed into Tom’s mind was Secret Service. They looked just like the sort of agents he had seen on TV protecting the President.

  “Mr. Brannon?” the black man said. “Would you come with us, please?”

  “Why?” Tom asked bluntly.

  “Someone wants to talk to you.”

  “Well, what if I don’t want to talk to her? She hasn’t done anything to help matters down here. Hell, it’s the sort of thinking that she and all her left-wing friends have done over the past thirty or forty years that’s caused a lot of this problem!”

  Both of the men frowned, and the white one said, “Sir, we don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re not Secret Service?”

  “No, sir,” the black man said.

  “Then who do you work for?”

  “He’d prefer to introduce himself to you. But he said that if you were reluctant to accompany us, we should tell you . . . he can help with M-15.”

  That was surprising, and just intriguing enough to make Tom curious. He wasn’t sure things could get much worse than they were, and besides, these guys—and the two dressed just like them he could see through the open doors of the car—sure didn’t look like Mara Salvatrucha.

  “Why the hell not?” Tom muttered. He stepped down off the sidewalk to get into the car.

  It was cool inside, despite the fact that two of the doors had been standing open for several minutes. The car was as sleek and fancy as any Tom had ever ridden in. He sat in the backseat, between two of the men. He had no idea where they were taking him, but surprisingly, they didn’t go very far, just a few blocks, before the driver pulled the car into the parking lot of the local Dairy Queen. He stopped next to an old red pickup that must have dated from around 1960.

  “Inside,” the black man said, nodding toward the Dairy Queen. “He’s waiting for you.”

  He went inside the Dairy Queen, which wasn’t busy this time of morning. The breakfast rush was over, and it wasn’t time for lunch yet. Only a few people were in the place, and one of them was a silver-haired old man who sat in a booth at the back. He saw Tom come in and raised a hand to catch his eye. Tom walked toward him.

  The old-timer was a stranger. Tom knew he’d never seen him before. The man wore a cowboy shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons on it, and at the sight of it a pang of grief and loss went through Tom. That was the same sort of shirt his dad had always worn.

  “Tom Brannon, ain’t it?” the man greeted him. “Sit down. Get you somethin’ to drink or some ice cream, maybe?” The man twirled a long red plastic spoon in a cup full of some thick ice cream concoction in front of him. “Goddamn, I love these Blizzards! I been thinkin’ I ought to buy Dairy Queen, just so I could have ’em all the time.”

  “No, thanks,” Tom said as he slid into the booth.

  The man extended a knobby hand across the table. He said, “My name’s Hiram Stackhouse.”

  It took Tom a couple of seconds to recognize the name as he shook hands with the old man. When it dawned on him, he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “You own SavMart.”

  Hiram Stackhouse nodded. “Damn right I do. Ever’ single one of ’em, includin’ the one right here in Little Tucson. And I don’t take kindly to havin’ a bunch o’ thugs come in and shoot up one o’ my stores and slaughter a bunch o’ my employees and customers. It’s bad for business.”

  Stackhouse paused and took a bite of his ice cream, licking his lips as he savored the taste.

  “What is it you want from me?” Tom asked.

  “Don’t want nothin’ from you. I’m here to help you, son, give you anything you need to help you fight them M-15 bastards. Money, weapons . . . hell, you want it, I can provide your own private army of ex-Special Forces commandos.”

  Tom leaned back against the hard plastic seat. “You’ve got your own army?”

  Stackhouse chuckled and said, “Well, it might be better to call ’em a security force. The gov’ment tends to get a mite antsy when a private citizen talks about havin’ his own army. Not that I’m all that worried about the gov’ment. Fact is, another reason I’m here is to call off the dogs. I can get the FBI and the Border Patrol off your back. Hell, if I kick up enough of a fuss, I can prob’ly get the pain-in-the-ass ACLU to leave you alone.”

  “You can do that?” Tom said in disbelief. “You can call off the FBI and the Border Patrol?”

  Stackhouse said, “Son, you have any idea how much money goes through SavMart in a year? You know how much hell it’d raise with the economy if folks got up in the mornin’ and every single SavMart store was shut down, even for a day? I could do that, you know. I’m the boss. I don’t answer to no corporation or nothin’. I say shut ’em down, and they stay shut down until I say open ’em again. And if I wanted to, I could just leave ’em closed from now on, with all the merchandise still insid
e ’em. I got so damn much money already I couldn’t spend it all if I lived to be five hunnerd years old!” He laughed again and went on, “So you damn well better believe folks in Washington sit up and take notice when I call and say I want somethin’.”

  Tom could believe it. And he had the feeling that this old man might be crazy enough to follow through on any such threat. He remembered reading about Hiram Stackhouse. He was either the richest or second-richest man in the country every time the financial magazines published such a list. And while he wasn’t quite as eccentric and reclusive as Howard Hughes had been, he was right up there.

  The hope that just about disappeared from Tom after what had happened to Buddy suddenly reignited. One man couldn’t do much against Mara Salvatrucha . . . but one man with the backing of a billionaire who controlled an economy larger than that of many countries . . . well, anything might be possible there.

  “You know,” Stackhouse said when Tom hesitated, “killin’ your ma and pa like that, ain’t very Christian. If it was me, I’d open a can o’ whoopass on them greasers.”

  Tom nodded slowly and said, “Yeah, I reckon it’s time we did exactly that.”

  22

  Ernesto Luis Montoya was followed by Cipriano and Leobardo Asturias when he stalked into the luxurious office on the fortieth floor of the Mexico City high-rise. Montoya carried a folded American newspaper in his hand and slapped it lightly against his thigh as he approached the desk where Sami Al-Khan sat. The Saudi wore an annoyed expression on his round, normally bland face. He had not summoned Montoya to Mexico City or called this meeting. It was Montoya’s idea, and Al-Khan didn’t like being told what to do. He was cooperating, though, because he did not wish to offend an associate of Señor Garcia-Lopez.

  “Señor Montoya,” Al-Khan said curtly. “What can I do for you?” Then, in an attempt to smooth over the situation somewhat, he added, “How was your flight from Nogales?”

  Montoya ignored the second question and slapped the newspaper on Al-Khan’s desk so that the headline faced up. It read PATRIOT PROJECT RALLY IN LITTLE TUCSON. In smaller type, a subhead read VOLUNTEERS FROM ALL OVER COUNTRY TO CONVERGE ON ARIZONA TOWN.