Die Trying

had found in a ditch. The identity, and the history.
    The sheriff moved his wrist and laid a finger on the next photograph. It was the gunman who had pushed Holly Johnson into the back of the Lexus.
    “Steven Stewart,” he said. “Called Stevie, or Little Stevie. Farm boy, a couple of bushels short of a wagonload, know what I mean? Jumpy, jittery sort of a boy.”
    “What’s in his file?” Webster asked.
    The sheriff shrugged.
    “Nothing too serious,” he said. “The boy was just too plain dumb for his own good. Group of kids would go out and mess around, and guess who’d be the one still stood there when I roll up? Little Stevie, that’s who. I locked him up a dozen times, I guess, but he never did much of what you would want to call serious shit.”
    McGrath nodded and pointed to the photograph of the gunman who had gotten into the front seat of the Lexus.
    “This guy?” he asked.
    The sheriff moved his finger and laid it on the guy’s glossy throat.
    “Tony Loder,” he said. “This is a fairly bad guy. Smarter than Stevie, dumber than you or me. I’ll give you the file. Maybe it won’t keep you Bureau guys awake nights, but it sure won’t help you sleep any better than you were going to anyhow.”
    “What about the big guy?” Webster asked.
    The sheriff jumped his finger along the row and shook his grizzled head.
    “Never saw this guy before,” he said. “That’s for damn sure. I’d remember him if I had.”
    “We think maybe he’s a foreigner,” Webster said. “Maybe European. Maybe had an accent. That ring any bells with you?”
    The sheriff just kept on shaking his head.
    “Never saw him before,” he said again. “I’d remember.”
    “OK,” McGrath said. “Bell, Little Stevie Stewart, Tony Loder and the mystery man. Where do these Borken guys fit in?”
    The sheriff shrugged.
    “Old Dutch Borken never fit in nowhere,” he said. “That was his problem. He was in Nam, infantry grunt, moved out here when he got out of the service. Brought a pretty wife and a little fat ten-year-old boy with him, started growing citrus, did pretty well for a long while. He was a strange guy, a loner, never saw much of him. But he was happy enough, I guess. Then the wife took sick and died, and the boy started acting weird, the market took a couple of hits, profits were down, the growers all started getting into the banks for loans, interest went up, land went down, the collateral was disappearing, irrigation water got expensive, they all started going belly-up one after the other. Borken took it bad and swallowed his shotgun.”
    Webster nodded.
    “The little fat ten-year-old was Beau Borken?” he asked.
    The sheriff nodded.
    “Beau Borken,” he said. “Very strange boy. Very smart. But obsessed.”
    “With what?” McGrath asked.
    “Mexicans started coming up,” the sheriff said. “Cheap labor. Young Beau was dead set against it. He started hollering about keeping Kendall white. Joined the John Birch types.”
    “So he was a racist?” McGrath said.
    “At first,” the sheriff said. “Then he got into all that conspiracy stuff. Talking about the Jews running the government. Or the United Nations, or both, or some damn thing. The government was all Communists, taking over the world, secret plans for everything. Big conspiracy against everybody, especially him. Banks controlled the government, or was it the government controlled the banks? So the banks were all Communists and they were out to destroy America. He figured the exact reason the bank loaned his father the money was so it could default him later and give the farm to the Mexicans or the blacks or some damn thing. He was raving about it, all the time.”
    “So what happened?” Webster said.
    “Well, of course, the bank did end up defaulting him,” the sheriff said. “The guy wasn’t paying the loan, was he? But they didn’t give his land to the Mexicans. They sold it on to the same big corporation owns everything else around here, which is owned by the pension funds, which probably means it’s owned by you and me, not Communists or Mexicans or anybody else, right?”
    “But the boy blamed the conspiracy for his father’s death?” Brogan asked.
    “He sure did,” the sheriff said. “But the truth is it was Beau himself who did for the old man. I figure old Dutch could have faced just about anything, except his only boy had turned out to be a complete lunatic. A cruel, selfish, weird boy. That’s why he