Con Law Part 34

'I was too scared to stay over there by myself,' she said.

'It's broad daylight in downtown Midland.'

The men jumped out of the truck. Book grabbed her arm and pulled her across the street and into the Dunn Building.

'Do you?' she asked.

'Do I what?'

'Know Billy Bob did it?'

'No. But he had the most to lose.'

Once inside, he looked back at the men. They were not happy. The driver held a cell phone to his ear.

Book's cell phone rang. He checked the number. The dean.

'h.e.l.lo, Roscoe.'

'Book, you're p.i.s.sing off important people in West Texas.'

'Well, I've p.i.s.sed off important people in South Texas and East Texas, why not West Texas?'

'True. But Tom Dunn's a donor.'

'He may be an aider and abettor in a criminal conspiracy.'

'Why do you say stuff like that? He pledged five million to the school. Called me up, said he was going to revoke his pledge if you didn't get off his back. And his client's back.'

'Roscoe, I haven't even gotten on their backs yet.'

'Book, come home. Teach your Con Law cla.s.s. Stop calling people murderers on the radio.'

'Dunn's murderer client is an Aggie.'

'Really?' The dean got a kick out of that. 'He's also Tom's biggest client.'

'I'm in the lobby of his building in Midland right now. I'm heading up to see him.'

'Book, try to have a cordial conversation.'

'I don't think that's going to happen.'

Roscoe exhaled into the phone.

'Well ... then get a haircut.'

'h.e.l.l of a radio interview, Professor,' Tom Dunn said. 'But you might be jumping the gun.'

'How'd you know I was at Nathan's house?'

Dunn responded with a wry smile. 'My country club's got more members than Marfa's got people. Small town. Everyone knows everything.'

Book and Nadine sat in Tom Dunn's corner office in Midland again. The sun was setting in the western sky. He held out a small baggie containing a green leafy substance.

'We were cleaning out Nathan's office and found this.'

'Marijuana?'

'It ain't lettuce.'

'You're saying Nathan Jones smoked dope?'

'I'm saying we found this in his office. Maybe he smoked it, maybe he was holding it for a friend. Maybe he was high driving home that night. Maybe he pa.s.sed out and ran off the road.'

'That's a convenient theory, Mr. Dunn, since the sheriff couldn't have an autopsy performed because his body was so badly burned.'

'I'm just giving you information, Professor.' He tossed the baggie to Book. 'You can take it.'

Perhaps it was because the Koontz case was fresh on his mind, but Book couldn't help but wonder if he were being set up to be pulled over by a county sheriff on a dark road between Midland and Marfa, searched, and found to be carrying marijuana. A drug bust might const.i.tute cause to revoke his tenure; of course, many professors were children of the sixties, so perhaps not. But Book saw no reason to take the chance.

'You keep it.'

'Suit yourself.'

'Where would he get marijuana?'

Dunn laughed. 'Where not? Marfa is only sixty miles from the border, Professor. Marijuana s.h.i.+pments come north as regular as the U.S. mail.'

It was after ten, and the highway was dark and deserted. Book recalled Billy Bob's words: 'You want to live in the light or in the dark?' Driving a country road at night makes you appreciate electricity. When the sun goes down in the city, there's still light. Streetlights and neon lights and store lights and building lights. But night in the country defines dark. They were in a black hole, only the moon offering any light, and the moon that night was only a sliver of white in the black sky. Both sides of the highway lay in pitch black. Book could see only the fifty feet of asphalt illuminated by the Harley's headlight.

So he throttled back.

There was no other traffic to contend with, but a collision with a deer crossing the road could be dangerous. When driving a country road in a three-ton pickup truck or SUV at night and suddenly encountering a deer in your headlights, the rule was simple: hit the deer. Most people veer to miss the deer, lose control of their vehicle, run off the road, and roll over. The deer survives, but the humans often do not. So hit the deer and live to feel bad about it.

But the rule didn't apply to motorcycles.

The night air had turned cool, so Nadine wore Book's leather jacket as well as the goggles and crash helmet. They were about thirty miles outside Marfa when he saw headlights in the side mirrors. The lights came closer, fast. No doubt a local running with his pedal to the metal. Book slowed and steered to the edge of the highway to allow the vehicle clear pa.s.sage, just in case the driver was working on his second six-pack of the night. The lights were soon on them. And stayed on them, high enough above the road that it had to be a pickup truck. He waved for the truck to pa.s.s, but it stayed behind them. Close behind them.

Then it got closer.

'Professor!'

The truck was too close. Book turned the throttle hard, and the Harley shot ahead. They got a distance ahead of the lights. He thought he had outrun the truck, but the lights appeared in the mirrors again. Book gunned the Harley, but the lights came closer. And got brighter; the driver had hit his bright lights. Book didn't know the road well enough to put the Harley wide open, but he was about to take the chance when the lights finally came around to pa.s.s. Book steered far to the right, onto the rumble strip. He fought to hold the Harley steady. Then the truck steered to the right-and into them.

Nadine screamed.

Chapter 25.

'Someone sure don't like you, Professor.'

Sheriff Brady Munn stood by the door of the hospital room at the Big Bend Regional Medical Center in Alpine just north of the U.S. Courthouse and Detention Center. Alpine is the county seat of Brewster County and twenty-one miles east of Marfa, but there is no hospital in Marfa. They had been run off the road in Presidio County, so Sheriff Munn had jurisdiction over the investigation.

'Billy Bob Barnett.'

'Well, h.e.l.l, podna, I wouldn't like you either, if you all but called me a murderer on the only radio station in town. That tends to p.i.s.s people off.'

'Sheriff, Nathan Jones was murdered. By Billy Bob.'

The sheriff grunted. 'I reckon you're right-about the murder. Billy Bob's still an open question.'

'Two of his goons followed us to Midland in a black pickup truck. I confronted them.'

'I take it that didn't go well.'

'It was less than cordial.'

The sheriff chuckled. 'I bet it was. Less than cordial.'

'And a dark pickup truck ran us off the road three hours later. It had to be them.'

The truck had forced Book off the road. He managed to keep the Harley upright through the prairie gra.s.s, until they hit a railroad track embankment. The bike stopped; they didn't. They both went flying. Book landed in a barbed-wire fence; he required only a teta.n.u.s shot, bandages, and a dozen st.i.tches in his forehead. Nadine flew over the fence, crashed through a mesquite bush, and landed hard in the desert; she broke her left arm and right leg and suffered lacerations on her legs and possibly a concussion. The crash helmet protected her head, the goggles her gla.s.ses and eyes, and the leather jacket her arms and torso from further cuts; but Book had not protected her as he had promised. It was just after eight the next morning, and she lay in the bed, medicated and asleep, with casts on her arm and leg and a white bandage wrapped around her head; she looked like a child. A monitor beeped with each beat of her heart. Book sat next to the bed, close enough to touch her face. The Harley now sat in the back of a Presidio County Sheriff's Department four-wheel-drive pickup truck in the parking lot at the sheriff's office.

'Mexican name of Pedro, got a shop south of the tracks, fixes cars,' the sheriff said. 'Knows motorbikes, too. You want s.h.i.+rley to drop your Harley over there?'

'I'll go with her. Before I leave my Harley with a stranger, I want to check him out.'

The sheriff grunted. 'Way my wife used to be with baby-sitters. So you got nothing on the truck? No make or model?'

'The bright lights blinded me. But it was them.'

'Well, that ain't exactly a positive ID, Professor. I need evidence. I can't go around kung-fu-ing everyone I meet. I'm the law. I gotta play by the rules.'

'It's tae-... Never mind.'

Nadine stirred and tried to move. Her eyes blinked open ... and focused on the white casts covering her arm and leg ... then moved around the hospital room ... the IV connected to her good arm ... the beeping monitors ... the sheriff ... and finally settled on Book. The realization came over her face. Tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

'Oh, Professor.'

Book wiped the tears from her face.

'Where am I?'

'The hospital in Alpine.'

A nurse stuck her head in and said, 'Sheriff, there's a call for you.'

The sheriff stepped outside. Nadine's eyes followed him out then returned to Book.

'You know what we learned last night, Professor?'

'What?'

'A, taekwondo doesn't work against a big truck. And B, they're not trying to scare us off anymore. Now they're trying to kill us.'

'That's not going to happen.'

He wiped her tears again.

'I'm afraid of life, so I'm hiding out in law school. Then you bring me out here on that Harley and now I'm in the hospital with a broken arm, a broken leg, bruises, contusions, a.s.sorted scratches, possible brain damage ... by the way, mesquite hurts.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Professor, has this kind of thing happened before?'

'It has.'

'Is that why Renee quit?'

'It is.'

'Why do you do it?'

'Alzheimer's.'

'You've got Alzheimer's?'

'My mother. Early-onset. She doesn't know who I am.'

She studied him a long moment.

'And you're afraid you'll get it early, too? So you take all those supplements and vitamins I saw in your bathroom, you eat organic and run at dawn and hope you don't win that genetic lottery.'

'My mother has one of the mutant genes that guaranteed she'd have Alzheimer's before age sixty-five. She was sixty-two when the symptoms started.'

'I didn't know there was such a gene.'

'There is. Three, actually. All it takes is one.'

Nadine dropped her eyes and did not look up when she asked, 'Professor ... do you have that mutant gene, too?'