Page 62 of Tex's Angel

“Why don’t I sit with you, while my friend talks to your husband. I’m sure they won’t come to blows because beating up a drunk man would be all kinds of wrong, right brother?” Rigs turns to me as he says the last bit.

That’s clearly secret code for ‘don’t leave evidence on him like bruises and cuts’. I play along, still not sure in my own mind if I’m gonna beat him to within an inch of his life or not. “Of course. I don’t know what I was thinkin’. I’ll be real gentle with him.”

Rigs walks into the house, after he shuts the door behind them. I jump off the porch, landing right beside Herman. Looking down at him, I can’t help but wonder what makes himtick. Why did he lie to his wife about being in the military? Why didn’t he simply walk off instead of leaving bruises all over his little girl? Why have another kid if you couldn’t handle the one that got taken from you by Child Protective Services? Nothing about this made any sense to me, but one thing was glaringly obvious. Herman was not the last of the good family men.

Rider pops up from behind a rose bush. “The back’s clear.”

“Nothing in the outbuildings?” I ask.

“Just tools and trash. Looks like this guy might be stealing shit from the building supply store he works at and reselling it. Grinning, he adds, “We all gotta have hobbies, I guess.” Looking down at Herman and the fact that he was bleeding through his jeans around the knee, he asks, “What the hell did you do to him?”

Never one to lie to a brother, I tell it to him straight. “I threw him down the fuckin’ steps because he was pissing me off.”

“Yeah, I’ve done that before myself. You gonna talk to him or do you want me to?”

“I’ll do it. You can chime in if you want. Rigs says we can’t leave bruises.”

Rider shrugs. “Easily enough done. I know a bunch of ways to inflict pain without leaving visible marks.”

I jerk him up and begin hammering him with questions.

“Clara Collins has been abducted. Do you know anything at all about who took her or why?”

“Who the fuck is Clara Collins?”

I hit him on the top of the head. “Y’all knew who I was talking about five minutes ago. Don’t play dumb with me, Herman. As you’ve probably noticed I have a short fuse tonight.”

“No. Seriously. Who is this Clara Collins you’re going on and on about?”

“She’s the teacher who made the CPS report that resulted in your daughter being taken away?”

“Dude, Anabel wasn’t my daughter,” he says it with the kind of casual indifference that makes it seem almost believable, but I know better.

“That’s not what her birth certificate says.”

He adjusts his position, apparently to get more comfortable before explaining, “They put my name on the damn birth certificate because we were married by the time Andrea gave birth. She was already knocked up when I met her. I told her to get rid of it, but Andrea was convinced the baby would somehow make things better by giving us an instant family.”

I scratch my jaw, trying to understand how his wife thought asking him to raise another man’s baby would make their marriage better. “Let me guess, it didn’t make things better. It just caused a bunch of resentment instead.”

Herman adjusts his bleeding knee. “Yeah. I told her that I’d take the kid on if she looked after it.”

“When Anabel turned out to be handful why didn’t you try and get her treatment? Why abuse her?”

“Ain’t got time or money for head doctors. The kid was just spoiled. I tried to spank her onto the straight and narrow.”

“And you got carried away to the point that you crossed the line into abuse, right?”

“Anabel was anemic. That’s why she bruised easily.”

I reached down, stuffed two fingers in his nostrils and gave his nose a good jerk. “Bullshit.”

His hands fly to his nose, and he yells, “Ow, that fucking shit hurts.”

“Good. It’s just the beginning of the pain I’m gonna deal to you if y’all keep lying to me. I’ve read Anabel’s medical file. She’s not anemic. You told your wife y’all were in the military. That was a lie as well.”

Herman gazes up at me, still holding his nose. “How the hell do you know so much about me and Anabel?”

“I’m a fucking cop, or I was until very recently.” I tell him because it’s true and I don’t want to get into how we’re working with CPS. It’s too much for his drunk brain to comprehend at the moment.

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