Seeing Red Read online

  She looked like she could afford much better.

  “I apologize for showing up without an appointment,” she said. “I tried calling you several times this morning, but kept getting your voice mail.”

  Trapper shot a look toward the chair his phone had slid underneath. “I silenced my phone for the wedding. Guess I forgot to turn it back on.” As discreetly as possible, he shifted in his chair in a vain attempt to give his bladder some breathing room.

  “Well, it’s sooner rather than later, Ms. Bailey. You said it was important, but not important enough for you to make an appointment. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like for you to intervene on my behalf and convince your father to grant me an interview.”

  He would have said Come again? or Pardon? or I didn’t quite catch that, but she had articulated perfectly, so what he said was, “Is this a fucking joke?”

  “No.”

  “Seriously, who put you up to this?”

  “No one, Mr. Trapper.”

  “Just plain Trapper is fine, but it doesn’t matter what you call me because we don’t have anything else to say to each other.” He stood up and headed for the door.

  “You haven’t even heard me out.”

  “Yeah. I have. Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta take a piss and then I’ve got a hangover to sleep off. Close the door on your way out. This neighborhood, I hope your car’s still there when you get back to it.”

  He stalked out in bare feet and went down the drab hallway to the men’s room. He used the urinal then went over to the sink and looked at himself in the cloudy, cracked mirror above it. A pile of dog shit had nothing on him.

  He bent down and scooped tap water into his mouth until his thirst was no longer raging, then ducked his head under the faucet. He shook water from his hair and dried his face with paper towels. With one more nod toward respectability, he buttoned his shirt as he was walking back to his office.

  She was still there. Which didn’t come as that much of a surprise. She looked the type that didn’t give up easily.

  Before he could order her out, she said, “Why would you object to The Major giving an interview?”

  “It’s no skin off my nose, but he won’t do it, and I think you already know that or you wouldn’t have come to me, because I’m the last person on the planet who could convince him to do anything.”

  “Why is that?”

  He recognized that cleverly laid trap for what it was and didn’t step into it. “Let me guess. I’m your last resort?” Her expression was as good as an admission. “Before coming to me, how many times did you ask The Major yourself?”

  “I’ve called him thirteen times.”

  “How many times did he hang up on you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Rude bastard.”

  Under her breath, she said, “It must be a family trait.”

  Trapper smiled. “It’s the only one he and I have in common.” He studied her for a moment. “You get points for tenacity. Most give up long before thirteen attempts. Who do you work for?”

  “A network O and O—owned and operated—in Dallas.”

  “You’re on TV? In Dallas?”

  “I do feature stories. Human interest, things like that. Occasionally one makes it to the network’s Sunday evening news show.”

  Trapper was familiar with the program, but he didn’t remember ever having watched it.

  He knew for certain that he’d never seen her, not even on the local station, or he would’ve remembered. She had straight, sleek light brown hair with blonder streaks close to her face. Brown eyes as large as a doe’s. One inch below the outside corner of the left one was a beauty mark the same dark chocolate color as her irises. Her complexion was creamy, her lips plump and pink, and he was reluctant to pull his gaze away from them.

  But he did. “Sorry, but you drove over here for nothing.”

  “Mr. Trapper—”

  “You’re wasting your time. The Major retired from public life years ago.”

  “Three to be exact. And he didn’t merely retire. He went into seclusion. Why do you think he did that?”

  “My guess is that he got sick of talking about it.”

  “What about you?”

  “I was sick of it long before that.”

  “How old were you?”

  “At the time of the bombing? Eleven. Fifth grade.”

  “Your father’s sudden celebrity must have affected you.”

  “Not really.”

  She watched him for a moment, then said softly, “That’s impossible. It had to have impacted your life as dramatically as it did his.”

  He squinted one eye. “You know what this sounds like? Leading questions, like you’re trying to interview me. In which case, you’re SOL because I’m not going to talk about The Major, or me, or my life. Ever. Not to anybody.”

  She reached into the oversize bag and took out an eight-by-ten reproduction of a photograph, laid it on the desk, and pushed it toward him.

  Without even glancing down at it, he pushed it back. “I’ve seen it.” For the second time, he stood up, went to the door, opened it, and stood there with hands on hips, waiting.

  She hesitated, then sighed with resignation, hiked the strap of her bag onto her shoulder, and joined him at the door. “I caught you at a bad time.”

  “No, this is about as good as I get.”

  “Would you consider meeting me later, after you’ve had time to…” She made a gesture that encompassed his sorry state. “To feel better. I could outline what I want to do. We could talk about it over dinner.”

  “Nothing to talk about.”

  “I’m paying.”

  He shook his head. “Thanks anyway.”

  She gnawed the inside of her cheek as though trying to determine which tactic to use to try to persuade him. He could offer some salacious suggestions, but she probably wouldn’t go that far, and even if she did, afterward he’d still say no to her request.

  She took a look around the office before coming back to him. With the tip of her index finger, she underlined the words stenciled on the frosted glass of the door. “Private Investigator.”

  “So it says.”

  “Your profession is to investigate things, solve mysteries.”

  He snuffled. That was his former profession. Nowadays, he was retained by tearful wives wanting him to confirm that their husbands were screwing around. If he managed to get pictures, it doubled his fee. Distraught parents paid him to track down runaway teens, whom he usually found exchanging alleyway blowjobs for heroin.

  He wouldn’t call the work he was doing mystery-solving. Or investigation, for that matter.

  But to her, he said, “Fort Worth’s own Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Are you state licensed?”

  “Oh, yeah. I have a gun, bullets, everything.”

  “Do you have a magnifying glass?”

  The question baffled him because she hadn’t asked it in jest. She was serious. “What for?”

  Those pouty pink lips fashioned an enigmatic smile, and she whispered, “Figure it out.”

  Keeping her eyes on his, she reached into an inside pocket of her bag and withdrew a business card. She didn’t hand it to him, but stuck it in a crack between the frosted glass pane and the door frame, adjacent to the words that spelled out his job description.

  “When you change your mind, my cell number is on the card.”

  Hell would freeze over first.

  Trapper plucked the business card from the slit, flipped it straight into the trash can, and slammed the office door behind her.

  Eager to go home and sleep off the remainder of his hangover in a more comfortable surrounding, he snatched up the sock on the armrest of the sofa and went in search of the other.

  After several frustrating minutes and a litany of elaborate profanity, he found it inside one of his boots. He pulled on his socks but decided he needed an aspirin before he finished dressing. Padding over to
his desk, he opened the lap drawer in the hope of discovering a forgotten bottle of analgesics.

  That damned photograph was there in plain sight where he couldn’t miss it.

  But whether looking at it, or acknowledging it in any manner, or even denying its existence, he was never truly free of it. He had lied to Kerra Bailey. His life was never the same after that photograph went global twenty-five years ago.

  Trapper plopped down into his desk chair and looked at the cursed thing. His head hurt, his eyes were scratchy, his throat and mouth were still parched. But even realizing that it was masochistic, he reached across the desk and slid the photo closer to him.

  Everyone in the entire world had seen it at least once over the past quarter century. Among prize-winning, defining-moment editorial photographs, it ranked right up there with the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square on V-E Day, the naked Vietnamese girl running from napalm, the twin towers of the World Trade Center aflame and crumbling.

  But before 9/11, there was the Pegasus Hotel bombing in downtown Dallas. It had rocked a city still trying to live down the Kennedy assassination, had destroyed a landmark building, had snuffed out the lives of 197 people. Half that number had been critically injured.

  Major Franklin Trapper had led a handful of struggling survivors out of the smoldering rubble to safety.

  A photographer who worked for one of Dallas’s newspapers had been eating a Danish at his desk in the city room when the first bombs detonated. The blast deafened him. The concussion shook his building and created cracks in the aggregate floor beneath his desk. Windows shattered.

  But like an old fire horse, he was conditioned to run toward a disaster. He snatched up his camera, bolted down three flights of fire stairs, and, upon exiting the newspaper building, dashed toward the source of the black plume of smoke that had already engulfed the skyline.

  He reached the scene of terror and chaos ahead of emergency responders and began snapping pictures, including the one that became iconic: Franklin Trapper, recently retired from the U.S. Army, emerging from the smoking building leading a pathetic group of dazed, scorched, bleeding, choking people, one child cradled in his arms, a woman holding onto his coattail, a man whose tibia had a compound fracture using him as a crutch.

  The photographer, now deceased, had won a Pulitzer for his picture. The act of heroism he had captured on film immediately earned him and the photo immortality.

  And, as Trapper well knew, immortality lasted for fucking ever.

  The story behind the photograph and the people in it wouldn’t come to light until later, when those who were hospitalized were able to relate their individual accounts.

  Though, by the time the tales were told, the Trappers’ front yard in suburban Dallas had become an encampment for media. The Major—as he came to be known—had been ordained a national symbol of bravery and self-sacrifice. For years following that day in 1992, he was a sought-after public speaker. He was given every honor and award there was to be bestowed, and many were initiated and named for him. He was invited to the White House by every subsequent administration. At state dinners he was introduced to visiting foreign dignitaries who paid homage to his courage.

  Over time, new disasters produced new heroes. The fireman carrying the toddler from the Oklahoma City bombing overshadowed The Major’s celebrity for a time, but soon he was back on TV talk show guest lists and the after-dinner speaker’s circuit. September eleventh gave him a new slant to address: his random act of heroism compared to those performed every day by unsung heroes. For more than two decades he kept his story timely and relevant.

  Then three years ago, he stopped cold turkey.

  He now lived very privately, avoiding the limelight and refusing requests for public appearances and interviews.

  But his legend lived on. Which was why journalists, biographers, and movie producers emerged now and again, seeking time with him to make their particular pitch. He never granted them that time.

  Until today none had ever sought out Trapper’s help to gain access to his famous father.

  Kerra Bailey’s audacity was galling enough. But damn her for snagging his interest with that remark about the magnifying glass. What could he possibly see in that photograph that he hadn’t seen ten thousand times?

  He longed for a hot shower, an aspirin, his bed and soft pillow.

  “Screw it.” He opened his desk’s lap drawer and, instead of reaching for the bottle of Bayer, searched all the way to the back of it and came up with the long-forgotten magnifying glass.

  Four hours later, he was still in his desk chair, still reeking, head still aching, eyes still scratchy. But everything else had changed.

  He set down the magnifier, pushed the fingers of both hands up through his hair, and held his head between his palms. “Son of a bitch.”

  Chapter 2

  It’s called Gringos, so you should fit right in.”

  John Trapper’s remark had been snide, but after the terse phone call when he’d given Kerra a place and time to meet him, she dressed down, replacing the pantsuit she’d worn earlier to his office with a pair of jeans and a plaid wool poncho.

  She hoped he would at least shower.

  She arrived at the restaurant early, put her name on the wait list for a table, and claimed a stool at the bar where she had a view of the entrance. She hoped for an opportunity to observe him before he became aware of it.

  But the instant he walked in, he homed in on her as though by radar with eyes that belonged in a spectrum of blue all their own. Electric. Like neon light. And when he looked at her, antagonism radiated from them.

  The hostess greeted him. He gave her a slow grin and said something that made her giggle. She indicated Kerra. He nodded and walked toward her.

  He had swapped the wrinkled suit pants he’d obviously slept in for a pair of jeans with knees almost worn completely through. The hems were stringy against the vamp of his cowboy boots. He had on a black leather jacket over a white western-cut shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons. He wore the shirttail out.

  When he reached her, he didn’t speak, just stood there looking down at her. He wasn’t clean-shaven, but he had showered. He smelled of soap. And leather. His dark hair was clean, but he hadn’t tried to tame its natural growth pattern. The thick swirls were as tousled as they had been this morning, and Kerra found herself thinking: Why mess with a good thing?

  They continued to stare each other down until the bartender approached. “I’m fixin’ the lady a margarita rocks. How ’bout you, cowboy?”

  “Dos Equis, please.”

  “Want ’em brought to your table?”

  Before she could reply, Trapper said, “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  He wrapped his hand around Kerra’s elbow, hauled her up off the barstool, and propelled her toward the hostess, who was waiting with menus the size of overpass signs. She led them to a table for two.

  “Do you have a booth?” Trapper asked. “Where we can hear ourselves think?” He gave her a wheedling smile, and she smiled back, and without delay they were led deeper into the restaurant where the lights were dimmer and the mariachi music wasn’t blaring.

  Once they were seated across from each other, Kerra said, “Still hung over?”

  “The beer should help.”

  “Do you get drunk often?”

  “Not near often enough.”

  To avoid meeting his hostile gaze, Kerra looked around, taking in the strands of Christmas lights strung across the ceiling and trying to think of a topic of conversation neutral enough to alleviate the tension. “When did you move from Dallas to Fort Worth?”

  “When Dallas got too far up its own ass.”

  The topic wasn’t the problem, she decided. He was. Anything she said would rub him the wrong way. As soon as the cocktail waitress delivered their drinks, she figured she had just as well skip cordiality and get on with it. “You saw it?”

  “I wouldn’
t be here otherwise.”

  “Did you actually use a magnifying glass?”

  Before he could answer, a waitress arrived with a basket of tortilla chips and a bowl of salsa. “Ready to order?”

  Daunted by the scope of the menu, Kerra opened it and scanned the first page. “So many choices,” she murmured.

  “You eat meat?”

  He asked as though she would get demerits if she didn’t. She bobbed her head once.

  He took her menu from her and handed it along with his to the waitress. “Double fajitas, half chicken, half beef, all the trimmings, split the tortillas fifty-fifty, and I want a side of beef enchiladas, chili on top. Queso’s okay, but don’t come near me with the ranchero.” Then he smiled at her, winked, and added, “Please.”

  After the simpering waitress withdrew, he folded his forearms on the tabletop and leaned toward Kerra. No smile, no wink. “I want to know two things from you.”

  “Only two?”

  “Why’d you come to me?”

  “The reason should be obvious. You’re his only living relative.”

  “Well, what isn’t obvious, at least to you, is that I’m a dismal disappointment to him. If you’re thinking that my intervention on your behalf will make a dent, you’re sadly mistaken. In fact, my involvement would work against you.”

  “That’s a chance I have to take. I don’t have a choice.”

  “How’s that?”

  “His property is posted. If I showed up on his doorstep unannounced and unaccompanied, he could have me arrested for trespassing before I even introduce myself. If you’re with me—”

  “He’ll kick you off his place twice as fast.”

  “He can’t. Your name is on the deed. When your mother died, her share bypassed him and went straight to you. You share ownership of the land.”

  With anger, he plucked a chip from the basket, dunked it in the salsa, and popped it into his mouth, chewing as he studied her. “You did your homework.”

  “You’re damn right I did.”