Free El Gavilan by Craig McDonald Page A

vision for the force, his priorities and his policing techniques. He indulged a few questions about his individual views on border security and immigration issues. He issued several “no comments” regarding his personal life, and, when Shawn stubbornly pushed a little too far, Tell said, “You ask me one more question about my wife and child and I’m going to shove that pen up your ass, sonny.”
    That had flustered Shawn—made him flinch. But then the reporter had dug his hole deeper trying to change tack and justify his intrusiveness. “You know, Chief, I just figured that you being relations to Chris Lyon and all, you’d know and understand that we reporters—”
    But Tell had swiftly stepped back into Shawn for invoking his “notorious” cousin’s name. “Chris was the journalist, not me. But since you raise the subject of Chris, maybe the only man who has less regard for sloppy and intrusive reporters than me, is my cousin. I suspect he’d have some definite opinions about you, if this is always the way you go about your job.”
    After that exchange, Shawn had fallen back to mundane questions about staffing levels, budgets and reorganizational issues. Tell fielded those questions tersely, but professionally.
    Tell checked his watch. The interview had already dragged on twenty minutes longer than he had intended to allot. He said, “I’ve got to end this, Shawn. It’s early days yet and I’m still scrambling to make up for the gap between me and the last chief.”
    “Sure,” Shawn said coolly. “Thanks for your time. And sorry I hit so many no-go areas.”
    Tell looked at him a time. He shook his head and stuck out his hand. “It’s early days for us too, Shawn,” Tell said. “Let’s neither of us take today as some hint of conversations to come.”

NINE
    Miguel and Candelario were playing catch at the back of the New Austin Kid’s Association ball diamonds. Several organized games played by white kids were underway, so the boys had settled on the unmowed field behind the diamonds.
    It had rained for at least an hour total nearly every day for a week, and that had set to bloom something that Candelario, only six months out of Mexico, had no resistance against.
    The boy fresh from Sinaloa sneezed, just as Miguel let fling. Candelario brought his glove up to his screwed-up face, doubling over with the ferocity of his sneeze.
    The ball flew high over Candelario’s head.
    The boy wiped his nose with the back of his arm, sniffled, pivoted, then set heel down the hill to a copse of evergreens to fetch the baseball—a lost ball they had found behind a dugout three days earlier. The boys had had a fistfight over who got to keep it in their home. Their gloves were cast-offs the boys had found in the dugouts and repaired with duct tape and shoelaces.
    As he ran down the hill, Candelario kept his eye on the baseball, watching it part the high grass as it rolled swiftly on. The ball bumped up against something pink at the base of a thicket of trees—something Candelario at first mistook for a rock of some kind.
    The boy reached for the ball and saw pink toes.
    His gaze trailed up the leg and he saw hair in an unfamiliar place—curly short black hair that was matted with blood.
    Candelario began screaming, running back up the hill, pointing behind himself, yelling in Spanish all the way back up to Miguel.
     
    THEN
    Thalia had known what had happened the moment she saw the rising, swelling fireball through the front windows of the diner.
    The propane plant was too far away for the blast’s concussion to break the windows of the diner, but she was unsteadied—Thalia felt the ground tremble even at three miles’ distance.
    Her husband had told Thalia about the dangers of a plant explosion—a catastrophe that could be triggered by something as small as a bit of static electricity from fabrics brushing together. He told her how devastating it could be for those at the scene of the explosion, as well as