Читать книгу Moonglow, Texas - Mary McBride - Страница 8

“Are you sure you’re a deputy U.S. marshal, Shackelford?”

Tom Keifer, a deputy marshal himself, just one week out of basic training in Georgia, had begun to think he’d taken a wrong turn off Highway T, or that maybe there were two Dan Shackelfords in this backwater county in South Texas. The man standing before him right now didn’t look like any government agent he’d ever seen.

Knowing Dan Shackelford was on extended medical leave, Keifer had somehow expected to find him in a dim back bedroom of a shady little convalescent home, where the injured deputy would be sitting in a wheelchair reading—a serious, thin and rather pale man in leather slippers and pressed pajamas.

That hadn’t been the case.

The address Keifer was given turned out to be a defunct trailer park, and Shackelford looked like a bum, wearing ripped jeans and last week’s whiskers and leaning one arm on the door frame of his dented trailer while his free hand curved around the long brown neck of a bottle of beer. Lunch, no doubt, Keifer thought with some disgust. Judging from the roadmaps of his eyes, he’d probably had the same thing for breakfast.

The young deputy eased a finger under his tight, damp, button-down collar even as he viewed the man’s sleeveless T-shirt with pure disdain.

“Daniel L. Shackelford?” he asked again irritably, actually hoping this derelict would tell him he had the wrong man and point him down the road to the home of a competent, clean-shaven deputy. “Can you confirm your mother’s maiden name?”

“Liggett.” He raised the beer bottle, took a long wet swig, then aimed a deliberate, almost affable belch in Keifer’s direction. “Do you want to see my badge and my secret decoder ring, Junior?”

The young man took a half step back, not bothering to disguise his disapproval. He had the right man, much to his disappointment. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“Great.” Shackelford grinned sloppily and leaned a little farther out the door. “Then how ’bout a beer?”

“WITSEC’s been compromised,” Keifer blurted out.

“What?”

“I said WITSEC’s been compromised,” he repeated. “You know. Witness Security?”

“I know what the hell it is.” Shackelford’s expression hovered somewhere between a bleary-eyed Who gives a rip? and a grim-lipped Go on. Tell me more.

“Unidentified hackers broke into the system over the weekend. There’s no telling who or what they were looking for, if anything, and no way to know if they found it. But the Marshals Service has put nearly seven thousand people under protection since the seventies, and they’re all in jeopardy now.”

The man in the doorway let out a low whistle, blinked inscrutably, then took another long pull from his bottle.

“So, headquarters is bringing in every available deputy,” Keifer continued, “in addition to postponing vacations and retirements, and they’re terminating all medical and personal leaves as of today.” He stiffened his shoulders. “Yours included.”

Shackelford hissed an expletive.

“Here.” Keifer shoved a manila envelope through the opening of the trailer’s screen door. “All the information you need is in there.”

Having performed his assignment, the young deputy was eager to leave, to get away from this obvious loser and get on with his own future heroics in the line of duty. He had only contempt for a burned-out, washed-up rummy like Shackelford. The guy had probably never been any good at the job, anyway.

“Any questions?”

“Just one,” Shackelford drawled.

“Yes?”

“Did you say yes, you did want a beer, or no, you didn’t?”

Dan yanked open the lopsided venetian blinds on the trailer’s window. Sunlight strafed the cluttered interior and fell across the letter he had pulled from the manila envelope. The United States Marshals Service emblem was embossed so thick it almost cast a shadow on the page. So did the name on the letterhead. Robert Hayes, regional director. The message below it was handwritten. A familiar scrawl.

Our files are screwed, amigo. Got you a low-priority witness (see attached) living in seized property in Moonglow. Easy duty. She doesn’t even have to know why you’re there. The quieter we keep this, the better, if you catch my drift. Just hang around her awhile, then get your bad self back to the real world.

Bobby

P.S. Didn’t you used to live in Moonglow?