The Last Witness (Badge of Honor 11)

“Your friend whose family owns Nesfoods?” Jason asked, but it was more of a statement and effectively evaded Matt’s question.

“Yeah. He’s down here on business. Actually, it seems like half of Philly is down here.”

“Did he say how he knew? Did he have any other information about her?”

“No, not really anything else. Only that his wife had driven past and seen the damage and crime-scene tape—and said that she hadn’t known Maggie was back from her trip.”

There was a moment’s silence before Washington said, “Okay, got it. Thank you.”

“What the hell is going on, Jason?”

“Let me know if Amanda hears from her. I will get back to you, Matthew,” he said, dodging the question as he broke the connection.

Matt stared at the glowing screen.

If she hears from her?

Then if someone did die in Maggie’s house, it wasn’t her.

She’s simply missing.

He shook his head, then speed-dialed Mickey O’Hara.

III

[ONE]

Hacienda Gentlemen’s Club

Northwest Hi

ghway near Lemmon Avenue, Dallas

Sunday, November 16, 7:45 P.M. Texas Standard Time

The two-year-old dark gray Chevrolet Tahoe, coated in road grime and with mud caked to its wheels and fenders, sat in the parking lot of Juanita’s Tex-Mex Cantina. The lot was adjacent to the Hacienda strip club, the building of which in a former life had served as a Sears & Roebuck home appliance store. The restaurant, despite its garish colors and Spanish-language signage, still somewhat resembled the Burger King that it originally had been.

The Tahoe wasn’t the only vehicle in the parking lots lining Northwest Highway that looked as if it could have just driven in from the sticks. There were plenty of dirty cars and trucks, some of them farm and ranch pickups, but most advertising some type of service—plumbers, electricians, welders.

Odds were heavy, however, that the Tahoe was without question the only one with red-and-blue emergency lights behind the grille, a fully automatic Heckler & Koch UMP .45 ACP submachine gun in a concealed lockbox in back, and, in a rack mounted in the headliner, a Remington 870 Tactical twelve-gauge shotgun.

Sergeant James O. Byrth, of the Texas Rangers, sat behind the wheel, his right elbow on the armrest as he held a cell phone to his ear. In his left hand, at the knuckles, he repeatedly tumbled a small white pinto bean from pinkie finger to thumb, then back again.

Byrth was thirty-one years old, six feet tall, a lithely muscled 170 pounds. His thick dark hair was neat and short. He had on gray slacks—the cuffs breaking over a pair of highly polished black ostrich-skin Western boots—a white cotton dress shirt with a striped necktie, and a navy blue blazer, single-breasted with gold buttons. Pinned just above the shirt pocket was his sterling silver badge, a five-point star within a circle engraved with DEPT. OF PUBLIC SAFETY—TEXAS RANGERS—SERGEANT. A white Stetson rested brim-up on the passenger seat.

As he listened, Byrth’s dark, intelligent eyes stared out the wiper-smeared windshield, intently watching the traffic at the Hacienda’s front door. The façade of the strip club had been painted a bright canary yellow and had posters of half-naked girls in suggestive poses stapled to it. Above the black door, which was swung completely open, a red neon sign flashed ENTRADA. A bouncer, a swarthy rough-looking Hispanic, sat on a backless stool in front of the door, his arms crossed as he eyed the cars circling the parking lot and the approaching customers.

“Hold one, Glenn,” Byrth said into his phone as he heard the growing whine of twin turbofan jet engines. “Here comes another damn plane.”

He looked across the street to where an elevated line of airport runway approach lights blinked into the distance. A moment later a Boeing 737—the medium-range passenger jet’s bright orange belly illuminated by its landing floodlights—flashed overhead with a deafening roar. He watched it descend over the runway lights, then land at Love Field, Dallas’s municipal airport.

After a moment, Byrth said, “Okay, Glenn, give it to me again. What’s the kill count up to?”

—

Texas Rangers Sergeant Jim Byrth had spent most of the day with Hunt County Sheriff Glenn Pabody, after Pabody had put in the call around seven o’clock that morning. Since the founding of the legendary Rangers in 1823—making them the United States’ oldest state law enforcement organization—the relentless lawmen had earned a reputation for taking on extraordinary cases that others didn’t have either the resources or the authority, or often both, to handle. Such was its importance that Section 411.024 of the Texas Government Code stated: “The Texas Rangers may not be abolished.”

“I ain’t sure what exactly this is, Jim,” Pabody had reported. “But it ain’t just another Hunt County meth lab. It’s a helluva lot worse. Definitely some kind of organized crime. Maybe cartel? You need to see it to believe it.”