The Texas Ranger. Diana Palmer

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ asked.

      “Yeah.”

      “Well?” Brannon pressed.

      “It’s Jennings. Dale Jennings.”

      It was a name that Brannon had reason to remember. And now the face that seemed so familiar clicked into place. Jennings, a local hoodlum, had been convicted of murdering a wealthy San Antonio businessman two years before. He was also alleged to have strong ties to Jake Marsh and his underworld. His photograph had been in half the newspapers in the country, not to mention the front page of several tabloids. The trial had been scandalous as well. Josette Langley, the young woman who had been Jennings’s date the night of elderly Henry Garner’s murder, insinuated publicly that the person who stood to gain the most from the death was Brannon’s best friend, who was Bib Webb, now Texas Lieutenant Governor.

      But Webb’s attorney had convinced the prosecutor that it was Jennings who committed the murder and that Josette’s testimony in Jennings’s behalf was filled with lies. She had, after all, been proven a liar in a rape trial some years earlier. Her past was what had saved Webb from any charges. Silvia Webb, Bib’s wife, had seen old man Henry Garner outside and waved to him just before she left to take Josette home. She also said she’d seen a bloody blackjack on the passenger seat of Jennings’s car. Both she and Bib Webb had an alibi for the next few minutes, during which Garner was said to have lost his life on the pier of the private lake at Webb’s estate.

      When Silvia came back from taking Josette home and saw Garner’s car still in the driveway, and empty, and nobody remembered seeing him recently, she called the police to report it. Several guests remembered hearing her make the call, and sounding disturbed. The guests were forbidden to leave the party while they searched for the old man, whom they found floating near the pier, dead. It looked like an accidental drowning, one newscaster said, and it was rumored that the old man had been drinking and walked off the pier, hitting his head on the way down. Still, no one was allowed to leave the scene until the police and the EMTs, along with the coroner, were finished. Witnesses were questioned.

      Even so, it just might have passed for an accident. Except that Josette, who heard the breaking story on television later that night, called the police and told them that Garner hadn’t been drinking at all, that she hadn’t seen him outside when she and Silvia left the party, and that there had been no blackjack in Dale Jennings’s car. She knew because she’d ridden in it to the party.

      A lump was found on Garner’s head when they pulled him out of the water. There was a blackjack lying visible on the passenger seat of Dale Jennings’s car. He’d protested wildly when the police took him away.

      Josette was positive Bib Webb was involved. But it was that suspicion, against the ironclad alibis of Bib Webb and his wife, who stated that Jennings had a motive—an argument the day before with Garner over his salary. It turned out that Garner had been paying Jennings to be his combination handyman and chauffeur. It was alleged that Jennings was helping himself to the old man’s possessions as well. They found a very expensive pair of gold cuff links, a diamond tiepin and a lot of cash in his apartment, which added to the sensationalism of the trial. Jake Marsh had been pulled in and questioned repeatedly because of some nebulous work Dale had done for him. But there was no hard evidence and Marsh walked away without a blemish, to the dismay and fury of Bexar County prosecutors and State Attorney General Simon Hart.

      Brannon stuck his hands into the pockets of his khaki slacks. They clenched as he recalled Josette’s face in another courtroom, years ago, when she was only fifteen and trying to convince a hostile jury that she’d been drugged and nearly raped by the son of a wealthy Jacobsville resident. Josette’s life had been a hard one. But it wounded him that she could have accused Bib Webb, his best friend, of something as heinous as murdering a helpless old man for money. It was so obvious that Jennings had done it. He even had the murder weapon in his car, blatantly in sight on the front passenger seat, still bearing minute traces of blood and tissue, and hair, from poor old Garner’s head. The medical examiner positively identified the blackjack as the weapon used to stun the old man before he was pushed into the water.

      “You know the Langley woman, who works in Simon Hart’s office, don’t you?” Garcia asked suddenly, dragging Brannon back to the present. The two men had known each other since Garcia was a patrolman and Brannon a fledgling Texas Ranger.

      Brannon nodded curtly. “We both come from Jacobsville. Josette and her mother and father moved to San Antonio some years ago. I heard that her parents were dead. I haven’t seen her in two years, not since she moved to Austin,” he added, reminded unwillingly that he’d broken off their relationship the week before Garner had died.

      “No reason to, I imagine,” the officer said carelessly.

      Brannon’s eyes went back to the body on the ground. “This does look like a professional hit,” Brannon said out of the blue, studying Dale Jennings’s body, with his hands bagged and his white, still face vanishing under the zip of the dark body bag. “One downward-angled gunshot to the back of the head at point-blank range. His knees were covered in red mud, just like this.” He moved the dirt caked on the pavement with the toe of his boot. “He was probably kneeling at the time.”

      “That was my first thought, too. And it’s a pretty big coincidence that Marsh’s nightclub is only two doors that way,” the detective agreed, nodding toward the street that fronted the alley.

      “If Marsh is involved here, I’ll find a way to prove it,” Brannon said bitingly. “He’s walked away from murder and attempted murder, drug-dealing, prostitution and illegal betting on sports for years. It’s time we made him pay for the misery he’s caused.”

      “I’ll drink to that. But we can’t just walk in and arrest him without probable cause. Not that I don’t wish I could,” Garcia confessed ruefully.

      “Well, there’s no time like the present to get started. I’m only in the way here as it is. I’ll go back to my office and fill Simon Hart in on what we know.” He pursed his lips. “He’s going to be madder than a teased rattlesnake.”

      Garcia chuckled. “That he is.” He looked toward the body. “Did the guy have any family?”

      “A mother, I think. Did they find the slug?”

      “They found a slug. Ballistics will have to tell us if it’s the right one. I’d bet on a nine millimeter handgun myself, but that’s why we have the Bexar County Forensic Science Center.”

      “And the department of public safety’s own lab,” Brannon felt obliged to mention.

      “Which is a very good one,” Garcia agreed, smiling. “Say, wasn’t Jennings convicted of murder a couple of years ago?” he added suddenly.

      “Yes. In a trial that almost implicated our brand-new lieutenant governor, too,” Brannon told him. “It almost cost him the election. Both contenders were first-time state office seekers. But the other guy dropped out a week before the election, and Bib won. He’s a good man.”

      “Yes. So he is.”

      “I had a nice, easy month all planned,” Brannon sighed. “Now here I am up to my armpits in a dead body and a two-year-old murder case that the press will resurrect and use to embarrass Bib Webb. It couldn’t be worse timing. He’s just won his party’s nomination for that senate seat that the incumbent resigned from because of a heart attack. The publicity could kill Bib’s chances.”

      “Life, they say, is what happens when you have other plans,” Garcia said with a grim smile.

СКАЧАТЬ