Free El Gavilan by Craig McDonald Page B

for those within a mile or so radius—the danger of the imploding windows and flying glass. He told her that those outside and close by might suffer perforated eardrums from the blast’s concussion.
    Flaming debris might be tossed thousands of feet into the air and could fall thousands of feet from its source, depending on wind conditions. All that falling, fiery wreckage could trigger a second round of house and brush fires around the plant.
    Thalia had regained her footing and stared at the rising ball of flame; saw bits of something cascading down from its plume. Not looking back to see if her co-workers were seeing what she was seeing, or if they heard what she said, Thalia had screamed, “I have to go!”
    Then she’d run out to her old truck.
    * * *
    Thalia got as close as the southern corporation line, where a barricade had been set up. She was still four hundred yards from the plant and her husband, yet she could feel the intense heat of the raging fire.
    She grabbed the arms of anyone who looked like a plant worker or emergency technician—anyone who might help her through the barricades and take her to her husband. But nobody would do that, and city cops and county sheriff’s deputies kept turning her away or asking her to leave.
    She was sitting on the bumper of a Horton County sheriff’s SUV, head in hands and racked with sobs when she felt a hand on her shoulder. A man said, “Ma’am, do you have family at the plant?”
    Thalia looked up and saw a big, older man in a gray uniform. The sun glinted on his badge and dark sunglasses. He said carefully, “They tell me anyone in the loading area at the time of the first explosion couldn’t have made it out. That they would have been vaporized—
instantly
, if that’s a comfort. I have a list, honey, a list of the men who were known to be in that loading area. Who are you looking for?”
    Thalia told him her husband’s name.
    The older, husky cop didn’t tell her anything back. He looked at the list and then opened his arms.
    He held her tightly to him as she sobbed and beat on his back with her fists, soaking his uniform’s shirt through between the collar and epaulet with her tears.
    That was how Thalia met Able Hawk.

TEN
    The chief hadn’t been two minutes out of the booth when Able Hawk slid into Tell Lyon’s vacated seat across from Shawn.
    “Had other business across the way,” Able said. “Supposed to be meeting Sheriff Walt Pierce, but the bastard stood me up and his own people can’t seem to find the cocksucker. Buy you another coffee, Shawn?”
    The journalist shrugged. “Why not?” He stuck his notepad in his pocket. “But if you’re thinking I might preview my profile of Lyon for you …”
    Able’s gray eyes narrowed. Not “Tell.” Not “Chief Lyon” or “Tell Lyon,” but simply, tersely, “Lyon.” That was telling, so to speak.
    “I’ll wait to read that profile,” Able said, “just like all the other rubes. That said, I was sitting just across the dining room and I do have eyes, Shawn, nearsighted though they may be. I sensed a charged exchange, even from a distance.”
    Shawn shook his head. “Sure you’re not farsighted, Sheriff Hawk?”
    The old cop smiled back. He said, “I’ll confess that I thought for a second there I might have to step between you two tough guys. Am I wrong?”
    “Came pretty close, I guess.” Shawn surprised himself by admitting it. Then the encounter tumbled from him. He ended with, “And I think the bastard’s cost me my girlfriend.”
    Able smiled and sipped his coffee. “Venturing out where I have no business, I will volunteer my perception the young lady was all eyes for Lyon last night, and he for her.” Able sipped more coffee, made a face, then tore open a packet of sugar and stirred it in. “But looking at it from a different angle, I’ll only observe that Chief Lyon’s late wife was Hispanic. Marita was her name, and she was twenty-seven when she was killed. Only two