BBH01 - Cimarron Rose Read Free Page B

tore the pecan tree
out of my front yard. I never saw her again.
    A month after Lucas was born she was electrocuted trying to
fix the well pump that Vernon had repaired with adhesive tape from the
medicine cabinet.
    I wrapped my unfinished sandwich in wax paper and put it in
the icebox. When I turned around, L.Q. Navarro was leaning against the
back doorjamb, his arms folded across his chest. His Stetson was the
color of ash, his eyes as lustrous as obsidian.
    '
How's it hangin, L.Q.?'
I said.
    'This weather's a pistol. It don't get any better.'
    'You're not going to try to mess me up today, are
you?'
    'I wouldn't dream of it, Billy Bob.'
    He slipped the scarlet rose from the top buttonhole of his
shirt and rolled it by the stem between his fingers. Where the rose had
been was a hole that glowed with a bloodred light, like a votive candle
burning inside red glass.
    '
It was an accident
,' I said.
    '
That's what I keep telling you. Get rid of this for
me, will you
?' He drew the rose across my palm. My fingers
constricted as though the tendons had been severed by a barber's razor.
     
    Ten minutes later I heard an
automobile in front. I opened the
door and looked down the flagstone walk that dissected the wall of
poplars at the foot of the lawn, and saw the sheriff's deputy named
Mary Beth Sweeney getting out of her cruiser. She fixed her campaign
hat so that the leather cord drew tight against the back of her head,
pushed her shirt down inside her gunbelt with her fingers, and walked
toward me. She had a walk that my father would have referred to as a
'fine carriage', her shoulders erect, her chin lifted, her long legs
slightly accentuating the movement of her hips.
    'How you doin'?' I said.
    'You going to use a PI in discovery?'
    'Probably… You want to come inside?'
    'Out here is good. At the river, night before last? The scene
investigator picked up a vinyl bag-load of beer cans. They're not in
the evidence locker.'
    'Why are you telling me this?'
    'That kid's going down on a bad bounce. I'm not buying into
it.'
    'You can lose your job for this.'
    'Look, you know all these things. The victim's teeth were
broken. Your man didn't have any cuts on his hands. There was no
weapon. When we cuffed him, he was too drunk to stand up.'
    'Criminal Investigation Division, huh?' I said.
    'What about it?'
    'Doing grunt work in a place like this… You must
like the mild summers. In July we fry eggs on the sidewalks.'
    'Use what I've told you, Mr Holland, or wear it in your hat,'
she said.
    She walked back to her cruiser, her attention already focused
on a cardinal perched atop a rose trellis, her hat tipped forward on
her curly head like a Marine Corps DI's.

----
chapter
three
    Before she became a private
investigator, Temple Carrol had
been a corrections officer at Angola penitentiary over in Louisiana, a
patrolwoman with the Dallas police department, and a deputy sheriff in
Fort Bend County. She lived with her invalid father only a mile down
the road from me, and every morning, just at sunrise, she would jog
past my house in her T-shirt and sweatpants, her chestnut hair piled on
her head, the baby fat winking on her hips. She never broke her pace,
never did less than five miles, and never stopped at intersections.
Temple Carrol believed in straight lines.
    Tuesday morning she tapped on the glass to my office door and
then came inside without waiting. She wore a pair of sandals and blue
jeans and a brown-cotton shirt stitched with flowers. She sat on the
corner of my desk and pointed her finger at me.
    'What did that deputy tell you?' she asked.
    'They bagged a whole load of beer cans and whiskey bottles at
the crime scene,' I answered.
    'Try five cans and a couple of wine bottles. The cans all have
Lucas's or the dead girl's prints on them. The bottles are probably
twenty years old.'
    'What have you got on the girl?'
    'Raised by an aunt… Long welfare history…
In high school she was known as a real piece of work… Went to
a