The Bleeding Edge Read online

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Stark said. “Have you read the morning’s paper?”

  Alton snapped his fingers.

  “Those bodies in that house that burned,” he said. “The paper said they’d been decapitated.”

  “This has to do with those drug gangs,” Fred said, his voice trembling with anger and outrage. “You know it does.”

  “More than likely,” Stark agreed.

  “But why put them in the garden?” Alton asked. “Dorothy Hewitt doesn’t have any connection whatsoever with those thugs. She’s not even from around here. She just moved here after her husband died.”

  Stark knew the story. Dorothy and her late husband had bought a place at Shady Hills years earlier, when it first opened, thinking they would retire there. Then Dorothy’s husband had died before they could do that, but she had moved in anyway, stubbornly carrying out the plan they had made back in a time when violence along the border hadn’t been so prevalent.

  “I don’t have any explanation,” Stark said. “Maybe it’s just somebody’s idea of a sick joke. They were driving around, looking for a place to get rid of the heads, and saw those cabbages. That could have given them the notion.”

  “It’s a perverted notion,” Fred muttered. “What’s wrong with some people?”

  “If we knew the answer to that and could fix it, I reckon the world would be a better place,” Stark said.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. A couple of minutes later a sheriff’s department cruiser reached the park and turned in with a squeal of tires. People cleared the street as the car came up with its flashing lights.

  A stocky deputy got out and hurried over to Stark, Fred, and Alton. He leaned to the side to look past Stark and exclaimed, “My God, those are human heads!”

  “Didn’t your dispatcher tell you that?” Alton asked.

  “Well, yeah, but I thought I must’ve heard her wrong.” The deputy swallowed and looked queasy. “I gotta get the sheriff out here. I don’t want any responsibility for this.” He started back to his car, then paused to say to the three men, “You guys stay right there.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Stark promised again.

  During the next half hour, several more sheriff’s cars showed up, as well as an ambulance. Once there were more deputies on hand, Stark and his neighbors were shooed away from the garden as the officers set up a crime scene perimeter. They went back over to Stark’s mobile home, where they were joined by Fred’s wife, Aurelia, and Hallie, who explained that the EMTs were checking out Dorothy Hewitt.

  The five of them sat on lawn chairs in Stark’s yard drinking coffee. Hallie dumped her latte and poured a cup of hot coffee from the pot in Stark’s mobile home. Stark hadn’t had breakfast yet, but he didn’t have much of an appetite most mornings anyway, and even less of one today.

  Once a couple of ice chests containing the heads were loaded in the back of the ambulance and driven away, Sheriff George Lozano came across the street. Stark had met the sheriff before and stood up to shake hands with him.

  “I’d ask you how you’re doing, John Howard, but after starting your morning the way you did, I expect the answer would be ‘Not very good,’” Lozano said.

  Stark shrugged.

  “You’d be right about that, Sheriff,” he said, “but I’m doing better than some.”

  “Yeah,” Lozano said. “Jimmy Rodriguez and his little sister, Sonia.”

  Hallie said, “That’s who those . . . those . . .”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lozano said, not forcing her to finish the question. “That’s not for public consumption, though. We’ve notified the Rodriguez family about the bodies that were found in that farmhouse, but they don’t know about this yet. Neither does the news media.” Lozano sighed. “Although I don’t expect that to last long. I figure cell phone pictures and videos of the scene here will be showing up on the Internet in no time.”

  “I’d be surprised if they haven’t already,” Hallie said. “There were quite a few people standing around earlier.”

  “True,” Lozano said with a resigned nod.

  “I kept ’em back as much as I could,” Stark said.

  “That’s not your job, John Howard, but I appreciate the effort anyway. Tell me what happened.”

  Stark went over the details of the story. It didn’t take long, because he didn’t really know much.

  “I’m guessing those . . . remains . . . had been there for several hours,” Lozano said when Stark was finished. “They must have been put in the garden during the night. Those plants around them were leafy enough that it would be hard to see them from the street unless you knew what you were looking for.”

  Alton said, “Quite a few people probably drove by this morning and never noticed they were there.”

  “That’s right. But whoever put them there knew that somebody would come out to work in the garden sooner or later and find them.” Lozano looked like he had bitten into something that tasted bad. “They didn’t care what a shock it would be. They probably got a big laugh out of it.”

  “It was the drug gangs, right, Sheriff?” Fred asked.

  “I can’t even speculate on that right now, sir,” Lozano told him.

  “What about the Rodriguez boy?” Stark said. “He tied in with one of the cartels?”

  Lozano shook his head.

  “Sorry. I just can’t get into that.”

  “Which means he is,” Hallie said.

  “You have the luxury of guessing, Ms. Duncan,” the sheriff replied. “I have to concentrate on the facts our investigation turns up.”

  “The cartels are behind all the crime down here,” Fred said. Stark heard the bitterness creeping into his friend’s voice. “This used to be a decent place to live. A beautiful place. You couldn’t beat the weather. Now the weather’s still nice, but the criminals run everything.”

  Predictably, Lozano bristled.

  “That’s not true. They don’t run the sheriff’s department, and they never will as long as I’m in charge. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I give you my word.”

  “You’d better be careful what kind of promises you make, Sheriff,” Fred said. “If you give them too much trouble, they’ll just get rid of you.”

  “Fred!” Aurelia said. “You shouldn’t talk like that.”

  “It’s true,” her husband insisted. “We can’t stand up to them. If we try, we end up like . . . like . . .”

  He couldn’t finish, but he turned his head to look across the street toward Dorothy Hewitt’s vegetable garden, so they all knew what he meant.

  Cross the cartels too much, and you might wind up in a cabbage patch.

  Only part of you, though.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The uproar lasted the whole morning, but by afternoon all the official vehicles were gone. Dorothy Hewitt’s lot had been staked and marked off with yellow crime scene tape, though, so nobody was going to forget the grim discovery that had been made there.

  Nobody who had seen those heads was liable to forget them any time soon, anyway.

  Fred Gomez knew he wouldn’t, that was for sure. He hadn’t gotten as close a look at them as Dorothy, John Howard Stark, and Hallie Duncan had, but he had seen enough to know that the grisly image was liable to haunt his dreams for some time to come. He was glad Aurelia had stayed back.

  That evening she found him cleaning his gun. It was a Colt .45 automatic like the one he had carried in the Army, and as far as he was concerned it was the best handgun ever manufactured.

  “What are you doing with that?” Aurelia asked.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” Fred said, then glanced up at her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound that way.”

  “You think you’re going to need that gun?”

  “It doesn’t make you nervous, knowing that somebody put those . . . things . . . in Mrs. Hewitt’s garden?”

  “You said yourself that we can’t stand up to the cartels. You think one gun
is going to make any difference to them?”

  Fred sighed.

  “No, it won’t,” he admitted. “But I’m a man, Aurelia. I have to do something. I have to protect my home and family, or at least try to.”

  “You won’t protect anything by getting yourself killed.”

  He knew she was right, but she just didn’t understand. John Howard would, and so would Alton Duncan. Both of them would know why he felt this way.

  He wouldn’t be surprised if they were cleaning some guns tonight, too.

  “I’ll feel better if you put that away,” Aurelia went on.

  “As soon as I’m finished,” Fred told her. “But I’m going to keep it handy.”

  “So you can have a shootout with some drug gang?”

  “I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Fred said.

  He tensed suddenly as a knock sounded on the front door. Aurelia’s head jerked toward the door. Her eyes widened in fright. Fred had removed the clip from the gun earlier, along with the round that was in the chamber. He slid the clip back in now and worked the slide as he stood up.

  “Go into the bedroom,” he told his wife.

  She looked like she wanted to go a lot farther than that, but she shook her head stubbornly and asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to answer the door,” Fred said.

  “I’m not going to leave you in here by yourself.”

  He knew better than to argue with her. It would be a waste of time. His hand tightened on the .45’s grip. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her, he told himself.

  “Go stand in the kitchen, anyway,” he said, and to his relief Aurelia did so. The counter between kitchen and living room wouldn’t offer much protection, but it was better than nothing.

  Whoever was outside had knocked only a couple of times. Maybe they had gone away, Fred thought as he moved closer to the door.

  Even though the door was fairly sturdy, he knew it wouldn’t stop a projectile from a high-powered weapon. It wouldn’t even slow a bullet down very much. It was all he had, though. He leaned closer and listened intently, trying to tell if whoever had knocked was still out there.

  The sharp rapping sounded again, this time only inches from his face. Fred jumped back. He couldn’t help it.

  “Who is it?” he called. He was glad his voice didn’t sound as shaky as he felt. At least he hoped it didn’t.

  “Antonio.”

  That reply changed things immediately. Fred closed his eyes and heaved a sigh of relief as he recognized the voice of his grandson.

  Aurelia heard it, too, and hurried out from behind the kitchen counter.

  “Don’t just stand there,” she told her husband. “Let the boy in.”

  Fred lowered the Colt and undid the dead bolt and the chain with his other hand. He opened the door and said, “Antonio, what—”

  That was all he got out before Antonio rushed past him, took hold of the door, and closed it quickly behind him.

  Fred tensed again. Antonio was acting like trouble was right behind him.

  And knowing the boy the way he did, Fred realized there was a good chance that was true.

  He hated to think that about his own grandson, but he had to face facts. During the past few years, ever since Fred and Aurelia’s son, Michael, and Michael’s wife, Donna, had been killed in a tragic car accident, Antonio had fallen in with a bad bunch of people.

  After the wreck, Antonio had come from San Antonio and lived here in this very mobile home with his grandparents for six months, since he wasn’t of legal age yet, but as soon as he turned eighteen, he’d moved out to be on his own.

  Fred hadn’t thought that was a good idea and neither had Aurelia, but they hadn’t been able to talk any sense into the boy’s head. They had offered to help pay for Antonio to go to college, but he got a job in the automotive department of the local MegaMart instead and moved into an apartment of his own.

  Most of the defiance Antonio had shown could be traced back to the way his father had felt about Fred and Aurelia. Michael had decided somewhere along the way that he was ashamed of his parents because they “weren’t Hispanic enough,” as he put it. They had spoken English at home nearly all the time Michael was growing up, and what sort of name was Fred for a proud Hispanic man, after all? That white guy on I Love Lucy was named Fred, for God’s sake!

  Their reasoning for making sure that Michael was equally fluent in both English and Spanish was so that he would never be held back in life by an inability to speak both languages. Fred had told Michael that, and Michael had seemed to understand at the time, but later he’d decided that was a betrayal of their native culture. He had listened to too many troublemakers who were more interested in being Mexican-American rather than just plain American. Michael had wound up marrying a girl who felt the same way, and they had raised their son like that. So naturally Antonio felt some resentment toward his grandparents, but they had always tried to do their best for him anyway.

  They still would, Fred thought, regardless of what sort of trouble Antonio was in.

  Antonio’s face was drawn tight and haggard with strain. He looked older than his years tonight. The jeans and T-shirt he wore were dirty and torn, like he’d been crawling through brush. He said, “Has anybody been here looking for me?”

  “No, not that I know of,” Fred replied, shaking his head. He was baffled by what was going on here. “What’s wrong, Antonio? Is somebody after you?”

  Antonio laughed, but there wasn’t a trace of humor in the sound.

  “I need a place to rest for a little while, maybe something to eat,” he said. “And in the morning I gotta catch a bus and get out of here.”

  Aurelia came over and took his arm.

  “Sit down,” she told him. “I’ll bring you some food. And if there’s a problem you’ll stay right here. We’ll help you.”

  Antonio shook his head.

  “You can’t help me. It’ll just cause trouble for you if you try. I’ve got to get out of this part of the country. I need to go as far away as I can, as quick as I can.”

  “That’s crazy!” Fred said. “Running away isn’t going to solve anything.”

  “What are you gonna do, Grandfather?” Antonio demanded. “Fight?” He gestured at the .45 in Fred’s hand. “With that old relic?”

  Sudden anger coursed through Fred. He grabbed Antonio’s arm and said, “Listen to me, boy. This gun may be a relic, but I am, too. That doesn’t mean we can’t still fight! We’ll call the law. The sheriff was just out here today—”

  Fred stopped short as a horrible thought blossomed in his mind. He couldn’t even hardly conceive of it, but he couldn’t banish the idea, no matter how much he wanted to. He had to ask in a husky half-whisper, “Antonio . . . did you have anything to do with . . . with those heads in Mrs. Hewitt’s garden?”

  Antonio frowned and looked genuinely confused, so much so that he didn’t try to jerk his arm out of Fred’s grip.

  “Heads?” he repeated. “I don’t know what you’re talking—”

  Before he could continue, tires screeched on the street outside. Antonio’s head jerked up, and sheer terror flooded into his brown eyes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Even though the doors and windows of the mobile home were closed, the air conditioner was humming softly, and the TV was on, playing a DVD of one of his favorite John Wayne movies, Rio Bravo, Stark heard the tires wailing on pavement, followed by the squeal of brakes.

  Sounds like that were seldom, if ever, followed by anything good.

  He pushed the stop button on the remote and got out of his chair. Another button push turned the TV off, killing the light that came from it. Stark reached over and twisted the knob on the lamp beside his recliner, turning it off as well. Except for the faint glow of a night-light coming through the open bathroom door, the mobile home was dark.

  Stark went to the front window. He didn’t have to be able to see to move around inside the mobile home. He’d
always had the knack of knowing his surroundings. That had led some of the men he’d served with in Vietnam to claim that he could see in the dark, like a cat.

  Stark used his right hand to flick aside the curtain so he could look out. His left reached down to close around the barrel of the shotgun he had leaned against the wall next to the door. He didn’t have to be able to see to do that, either. He instinctively knew where his weapons were.

  He didn’t normally keep his shotgun by the door like that. Since moving here to Shady Hills he hadn’t seen the need for it, although there was a loaded pistol in the nightstand drawer next to his bed. He knew that if he ever found himself in need of a gun, he probably wouldn’t have time to rustle around and hunt one up, then load it.

  After the gruesome business of the heads being left in Dorothy Hewitt’s garden, though, Stark had decided it might be wise to take more precautions. Chances were that the murderous varmints who’d left the heads there wouldn’t ever come back to the retirement park, but that possibility couldn’t be ruled out entirely.

  Somebody was here who wasn’t supposed to be, that was for sure, Stark thought as he moved the curtain aside. Nobody who lived in the park would be driving like that.

  Headlights set on bright blazed out from the car that had come to a stop in front of the Gomez house next door. In the reflected glow of those lights, Stark saw three figures crossing the yard toward the mobile home. Two of them were slender, almost whippet-thin. The third was taller and bulkier, hulking like a bear. As far as Stark could tell they weren’t armed, but he knew better than to believe that. The loose shirts they wore probably concealed pistols and knives.

  Stark was willing to bet that the three men didn’t have any business coming to the home of Fred and Aurelia Gomez. Their grandson, Antonio, was about the same age as these visitors, but Stark had met Antonio a few times and was sure he wasn’t one of this trio.

  Antonio might still have something to do with this, Stark thought. Fred had confided to Stark that he was worried about the sort of people the youngster spent his time with. These three certainly looked like bad news.

  Fred and Aurelia might need his help, Stark decided. But if he went out the front door, he’d probably attract the attention of the three strangers.