Soul of Cole Page 13

  “I didn’t do shit!” Armendez screamed at Bishop’s back as he opened the door. “You said you would get me out!” Bishop turned at the sound of a deep groan from Selvin. Armendez had slammed his elbow into Selvin’s face and knocked him from the chair. He stood over the attorney kicking him repeatedly.

  Bishop, in what some might call a rather subdued manner, called down the hall, “Need some help in here!”

  Three uniformed officers ran to his aid and into interview room three. Bishop walked to the desk. “Tommy Running Dog’s attorney will be indisposed for a while. We will reschedule his interview at Mr. Selvin’s earliest convenience.” Bishop took a couple steps from the desk. “Oh, and charge Richard Armendez with aggravated assault, with intent to do great bodily harm.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Becca stood with her hands flat against the shower wall with the hot water beating down on the top of her head, over her shoulders, and cascading down her back. Her eyes were tightly shut and the cares of the previous days seemed to melt in the heat of the steamy shower.

  The key slipped into the familiar lock. The click heard a thousand times before said welcome home. Matt Walker came into the house and looked around. He could sense that there was no one home. “Anybody home?” He called out. There was no answer. He carried his bag and backpack into his old bedroom and tossed them on the bed. As he glanced around he realized something was wrong. There was a bra and pair of panties lying on the bed, draped over the chair at his old desk was a pair of jeans, way too small for him. Against the wall next to the closet was a large, green duffle bag. He felt an uneasiness seeing the foreign objects in the room he knew so well.

  Becca sensed the water cooling off. As much as she hated to, she shoved in the knob turning off the water. She stood for a long moment breathing in the steam. She wrung out her hair, pushed back the shower curtain, grabbed the towel off the rack and wrapped it around her head forming a turban. She took the big, plush, white terrycloth towel from the counter and dried herself. The mirrors were completely fogged up. She hated to leave the steamy warmth but felt foolish just standing in the middle of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her.

  She opened the door and made her way down the hall to her room. She entered the room and let out a blood curdling scream.

  Poor Matt was standing looking at his trophies on the shelf above the dresser and nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Becca’s scream. He whirled around and yelled, “Who are you!”

  “Who are you? What are you doing in the house?” Rebecca clutched her bath towel tight.

  “I live here!” Matt shouted back. His fight or flight adrenalin kicked in and he was wide-eyed and not the least bit pleased.

  “Oh, my goodness, Matt. Hi, umm, uhh—”

  “I don’t care who you are! You scared the crap out of me. It looks like you’ve taken over my room.” Matt motioned towards the bra and panties on the bed.

  “Yeah, just for awhile.” Becca’s knuckles were white from her grip on the towel.

  “Let me get out of here so you can dress. We need to have a talk.” Matt went out the door, closing it a little harder than necessary. He went back into the kitchen just as he heard the front door open and the familiar sound of his mother’s voice.

  “Matt? Matt, honey? Are you here?”

  “Hey mom!” Matt called back from the kitchen.

  Sharon came around the corner and into the kitchen and threw her arms around her son. “What a wonderful surprise. When did you get back?”

  “About five minutes ago. Who the heck is that in my room?”

  Sharon laughed. “That’s Becca Poore.” She turned and set her purse on the counter.

  “Uh-oh.” Matt felt his face flushing.

  “What?” Sharon replied.

  “I just yelled at her.” He began to laugh. “She’s not going to be happy with me. I didn’t even recognize her.”

  “Becca and Cassie are staying with us for a little while.”

  “I was really sorry to hear about her folks. What on earth happened?”

  “Nobody really knows at this point. The first thing we heard was that Warren shot Judy, then himself.”

  “No way, that could never happen,” Matt interrupted, shaking his head.

  “We all knew that. We knew that couldn’t be. The next day the police determined that it was murder.”

  “Who would kill them?” Matt couldn’t imagine anyone even disliking the couple.

  “That is the question that has kept your father and I awake for a week. There’s no clues, no motive, nothing was stolen. It’s a senseless, barbaric—” Sharon burst into tears.

  Matt reached out and pulled his mom close. “I’m so sorry. I know how much they meant to you.” He felt himself choke up. “Where’s dad?”

  “He went to Warren and Judy’s place to see if he could help with the cleaning. Some people from the church have gathered. It has to be done sooner or later and I couldn’t face it, and I certainly wouldn’t want the girls having to do it.”

  “Hello.” Becca stood smiling shyly near the edge of the kitchen door. “Am I interrupting?” Becca’s hair was dry, she was dressed and her voice was so sweet. Matt found himself smiling back at the lovely, young woman.

  Sharon wiped her eyes, and responded, “No, no.”

  “Becca, I am so sorry. I didn’t recognize you. I’ve never seen you without clothes before.”

  “Naked!” Sharon looked from Matt and then to Rebecca for an explanation.

  “I wasn’t naked! I had a towel around me.”

  “Okay, that was more flesh than I was expecting. You totally took me by surprise.”

  Rebecca smiled and could feel her cheeks redden.

  “I’m really sorry about your folks. They were wonderful people and they really meant a lot to all of us. I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you, Matt.”

  Sharon spoke and interrupted the moment between them. “I was so excited to see you, it didn’t dawn on me to ask, what are you doing here, Matt? I wasn’t expecting you for another month.”

  “There was some big doings at school and they cancelled class for three days. I thought, I’m getting the heck out of here.”

  “Well, I couldn’t think of a better surprise. I am so glad to see you. Are you hungry?”

  “Am I ever not hungry? What have you got?”

  “Well if you don’t mind leftovers, we have a ton of stuff from the funeral. How about a ham sandwich and potato salad?”

  “Perfect.”

  “How about you, Becca? Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah, now that you mention it, I am kind of hungry. I’ll have the same.”

  “You kids have a seat at the table and I’ll get it ready.”

  “Let me help you.” Becca did not want to sit at the table face to face with Matt quite yet.

  The kitchen fell into a soft comfortable silence. Becca pulled the bowl of potato salad from the refrigerator and handed it to Sharon. She took a tray of cold cuts and moved like a shadow behind her.

  Sharon set the salad on the long side of the counter. “I’ll get the bread. You get the mayo, no mustard for Matt. There should be some cheese wrapped up on the second shelf.”

  A few minutes later there were two plates, two sandwiches, and two scoops of potato salad sitting before Matt and Rebecca. Sharon made a pretty obvious exit from the room, and they sat for several minutes in a very awkward silence.

  “So.” They both seemed to say at the same moment.

  “You first.” Matt took a big bite of his potato salad.

  “So, what are you studying in school?” Becca tried a clumsy attempt at getting the conversation started. “I mean, not to be rude, but haven’t we been out of high school about six years now?”

  Matt chuckled. “Yes, we have, but I’m in my second year of veterinary school. And no, I didn’t flunk out two or three times.”

  Becca hoped she hadn’t offended him. “I wasn’t suggesting you were a bad
student, I just couldn’t figure out why you were still in school. I’m sorry, that was rude.”

  “Not any worse than what my dad says. He’s getting kind of sick of paying for college.”

  “I only went one year, to the community college. Then I worked to raise my support.”

  “Yeah, aren’t you in, like, Honduras or something?”

  “Guatemala.” Becca corrected the common mistake.

  “Yeah, yeah, a missionary, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Another awkward silence fell over the room. Matt sat watching Becca mess with her potato salad. He was surprised at her shyness. He somehow remembered her being the lively one of the two sisters. Cassie was the brat; Becca was the fun one, though he would have never told her that’s how he remembered her. He took a sip of his lemonade and thought how strange for them to be sitting at this table as adults.

  He stood up and went to put his plate in the sink. He stood for a long moment with his lemonade, as he gazed out the front window. Nothing has changed. It is kind of a comfort. He smiled at his thoughts.

  Becca looked up and watched him go to the sink. He’s so tall, she thought, she remembered him being so much shorter.

  He turned and opened a cupboard. “I bet mom’s got some cookies in here.” He rummaged through packages.

  Becca looked at his profile. Gone was the pony tail he wore in high school. His hair was cropped in a stylish cut. His beard was very thick and he wore it closely trimmed. He turned back and faced her.

  “So, dad’s gone, and your sister’s not here. What have you got planned for this afternoon?”

  “Nothing, actually,” Becca replied hesitantly.

  “I need to drive out to the Mattson place. You remember John from high school?”

  Becca remembered him, didn’t like him, but didn’t know how to react so she just made a humming sound.

  “Anyway, he’s managing his dad’s ranch now and I told him I would come out and take a look at a horse that got injured. Would you like to ride along? It would give you something to do.”

  Becca felt her face redden even deeper as she replied, “That would be nice.”

  “Okay, let me break the news to my mom and we’ll be off, if you’re ready.”

  Five minutes later they were out at the curb and Becca stared at the passenger door of Matt’s truck. She wondered how in the world she would be able to gracefully get into the vehicle. As she stood there pondering the situation, the passenger window rolled down and Matt’s face appeared.

  “Having trouble there, Shorty?”

  “I was, how do I, umm—”

  “Here, maybe this will help.” Matt fired up the engine. A long, wide running board descended from under the truck. Becca sighed in relief and opened the door. She stepped up and hoisted herself into the truck with no further problems.

  “This is a nice truck.” She admired all the nice touches of the interior.

  “I’ve been working part time at a veterinary clinic. The old clunker Toyota that mom and dad gave me when I went away to college had breathed its last.” Matt pulled from the curb and they were on their way.

  “Mind if I play some music?” Matt reached for the knob.

  The thought of riding out to the country listening to country music blasting made Becca regret her decision to come along. To her shock, the sounds of soft jazz came from the stereo. As they rode along there was something very familiar about the tune playing. To her surprise, she recognized a worship song they sang at church.

  “What are we listening to?” Rebecca asked.

  “It’s a CD of a Christian Jazz group I saw at school. They’re really good.”

  “Huh.” Rebecca was taken by surprise. “I was kind of expecting cowboy music to come blasting through your stereo.”

  “And beer cans flying out the window and a confederate flag flapping in the wind?” Matt grinned, knowing exactly what she meant.

  “Something like that.” Becca tasted her words. “You know, you’re really not what I remembered. You were kind of a hellion in high school.”

  “Probably worse than you even knew, but when I got to college I realized that the Aggies tend to be a pretty wild crowd. You really can’t party and keep your grades up. My sophomore year I realized a lot of them had fallen by the wayside. A buddy of mine, from one of my animal husbandry classes, invited me to Varsity Fellowship. It really turned me around and got me grounded.”

  As she looked at the side of Matt’s face, Becca thought back to the boy she grew up with. They went to church and Sunday School together their whole lives, but you would have never known it from his attitude and behavior at school. This newfound maturity and his re-embrace of faith was a pleasant surprise.

  “Tell me about this Guatemala thing.” Matt wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. “What do you do down there, exactly? Are you a nurse?”

  “No, I wish. Actually, I work a lot with agriculture and improving the water supply to the towns and villages in my area. Town, now that’s an exaggeration. The biggest town around is maybe 2,000 people. It’s a market town called Santos Verde. Most of the villages are no more than ten or twelve families living in an area, defined by a river or the forest.”

  “So what do you do? I mean, to help clean up their water?”

  “One of my main jobs is explaining to the people that they can’t have their drinking well and their outhouse next to each other.” She laughed at what that must have sounded like. “They always have them in far too close proximity to each other. It is such a rainy, wet climate that the sewage leaks into their water supply. So that keeps me pretty busy. Of course, there’s the ministry side, where I work primarily with Junior High aged kids, and our team that does street evangelism.”

  “And how long have you been down there?”

  “Nearly three years in Guatemala. Before that, I was in El Salvador for a year, but we left because it was just too dangerous.”

  “That’s pretty cool.” Matt admired her, but had little understanding why she would put herself in that position. “I always knew you’d do something important.”

  “Really?” Becca was amazed. “I didn’t think you even knew I was alive when we hit about thirteen.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised who’s watching you and whose parents are talking about whom at the kitchen table.”

  The song on the stereo seemed to abruptly change to an upbeat number and they rode along listening to the music. About twenty minutes out of town Matt turned the car into a wide space with a heavy, wrought iron and brick gate. He reached over and took the cell phone from its holder on the dash and punched in a number.

  A moment later he spoke. “John, it’s Matt, I’m at the gate.”

  “Hold on.” Becca could hear through his phone. As she looked forward, the gate began to roll back.

  “Alright, half way there.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but this is just the outer boundary of the ranch.”

  Becca found herself holding tight to the armrest and the door handle as the truck hit ruts and potholes on the gravel road. Several times Matt said ‘Whoa’, in a loud voice after hitting a particularly deep hole.

  “You’d think with all their money they’d have a better road. How are you making it over there?”

  “It’s a good thing I don’t get carsick.” They both laughed and Matt swerved to miss a deep rut in the road. Becca found herself falling over the center armrest.

  “There’s the house.” Matt announced, slowing the truck down a bit. “Look at that thing!”

  “My goodness, it’s a mansion!”

  The house was a sprawling, two story, white affair with pillars across a large, front porch area. “How many square feet do you think that monster is?” Matt crossed his arms and leaned on the top of the steering wheel.

  “I don’t know, it looks more like a hotel than a house.” They both laughed.

  “It’s g
ot to be the biggest place around here.” Becca felt like a kid seeing a big city for the first time, except this was still Orvin, and this gigantic place was in the middle of nowhere.

  Matt turned onto a road to the right. “We’re not going to the house though; we’re going to the barn, although it’s plenty nice enough to live in. In fact, it has a three-bedroom apartment as part of the building.” Ahead was a beautiful red barn trimmed in white and looking like something off a calendar. Standing in front was John Mattson, wearing a big, tan colored cowboy hat and a belt buckle the size of a coffee saucer.

  “Wait till you get a load of this guy.” Matt pulled the truck across ways in front of the opening of the barn and turned off the engine. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

  “No problem. I love horses.”

  “Well the one we’re going to look at cost ten times as much as my truck.”

  Matt opened his door and Becca did the same.

  “Hey Johnny, how’s our patient?” Matt led the way to the barn.

  “I don’t know, she’s not very happy. I got all the stuff you asked for. It’s inside.”

  “You remember Becca Poore, don’t you?”

  “Not this model. I guess we’ve all kind of grown up. You must be Rebecca 2.0. Nice to see ya.”

  “Hi, John. Good to see you, too.”

  The three went into the barn and there was a large table with a white cloth set in the middle of the stable, and a variety of bandages and bottles set out. Over the next half hour, Becca watched as Matt comforted the beautiful animal. He spoke to it in a kind and reassuring voice as he changed dressings on a large wound across its chest.

  “She wasn’t watching where she was going.” John explained the situation to Becca. “She ran right through the barbed wire fence, hit it so hard the post pulled out and impaled her. We thought we were going to lose her. Matt got us a referral for one of his professors and we flew him in to take care of her.”

  Matt ran his hand along the horse’s side and gently patted its rump. “It looks good. It’s healing nicely.”

  “I really appreciate you doing this, Matt. To fly that vet back out would have cost another fortune.”