What's Left is Right: Book two of The Detective Bill Ross Crime Series (22 page)

“Joe didn’t know precisely when Pepe and Jimmy would be led out of the holding cell to the waiting van for transfer. He speculated that they would move them, but he didn’t know for sure.”

“No, he didn’t do both shootings. He needed a second shooter, someone he trusted and someone who would be already set up in place to take them out
if they were transferred
. If they weren’t transferred he had a plan B; don’t know what that was, but he would never have let them live. Rather he or his accomplice would have got to them somehow. some way.”

“But shouldn’t we arrest Joe Nichol then?” said Tommy.

“Your call, son. My opinion is that justice was served. I am not in favor of vigilante actions, but I can see it from Joe’s point of view. Garrison McMullen had so much power and influence that it was likely that he would buy himself enough time that he could live out his life and die from natural causes before any execution could take place. Joe was not going to allow that to happen. We would also have had a tough time convicting him and we would have needed to find the other shooter. No, I’m okay with it. You have to decide if you are.”

Bill then closed his eyes and slept for the remainder of the flight back to Houston.

Qantas flight 108 left LAX right on time for its 16-hour flight to Melbourne and had leveled off at its cruising altitude of 32,000 feet. The female flight attendant was delivering the first round of drinks and seasoned travelers were settling down for the long flight.

It was Billy Williams’ first trip to Australia, and the young computer software salesman was super excited. He was seated in the combined first and business class section in seat F5 and was fiddling with all the gadgets in the sleeper seat cubical, operating the various seat controls and making the seat go up and down.

When he looked across the aisle, the guy in seat A5 was grinning at him.

“Having fun, mate?” he sniggered.

He wore a black tee shirt with “Keep Austin Weird” across the front, an old faded baseball cap, blue jeans and flip-flops. This was in stark contrast to Billy’s GQ outfit of Ralph Lauren Polo and khakis.

“Sorry about that, my first flight to Australia!” replied Billy.

“Are you going down to Australia for vacation?” asked the salesman, trying to make polite conversation.

“No, mate, I live there!”

“You live in Melbourne?”

“No, I live in a little place called Ballarat, it’s about seventy miles from Melbourne.”

“You were in California over Christmas and New Year, then?” continued the software salesman, the adrenalin from the excitement of the flight pumping through his system and causing his mouth to spout forth meaningless cryptic conversation.

“Trip of a lifetime, mate, hunting in Texas with my buddy Joe and then a few weeks watching the babes work out on Venice Beach. Magic!”

“I’ve never been hunting. Did you shoot anything?”

“Bagged a couple, mate. The folks there did a really good job of flushing them out for us, so it was like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“So what do you do in Ballarat, then?”

“Bit of this, bit of that, you know. I take folks on tours of the sheep shearing and around the old Ballarat Bitter brewery that closed down a few years ago. They still run tours. Great beer, Ballarat Bitter, now owned by Carlton, helps them with product balance, I guess, as the other stuff they brew is like rat’s piss!”

“I didn’t get your name, by the way. My name is Billy Williams, and you are?”

“My name’s Carl. Carl Conrad.”

“Well, good to meet you, Carl. Hey, Carl, do you know the best place is to have sex with a sheep…”

Billy was about to continue on with the only sheep joke he knew when in an instant Carl Conrad was up out of his seat and in his face.

“No sheep jokes! You hear me, no sheep jokes! Sheep have feelings! I hate sheep jokes!”

Not a lot was said between them for the rest of the journey. The Airbus A380-800 cruising en route to Melbourne with its 600 passengers, including a young software salesman and a tired ex-Special-Forces sniper and Spirit Rider.

I hope you enjoyed the book. It was total fiction, of course, but the settings for the story are real.

The cities of Cedar Park, Lago Vista, Leander and Round Rock are about 90 minutes northwest of Austin. There is a Point Venture area by Lake Travis, and Whispering Hollow is a private gated park for the exclusive use of the residents of Point Venture. There’s a small golf course in the area, nine holes only and no grill.

The area I chose for the location of the Colinas Verde Ranch is actually a national park. Big Bend National Park has national significance as the largest protected area of Chihuahua Desert topography and ecology in the United States.

The town of Ballarat is a real place and is located 70 miles from Melbourne. I spent a lot of time in Australia on business and I drove to Ballarat one day, visited the sheep-shearing demonstration and drank Ballarat Bitter - great beer.

My wife and I lived in Germany for a couple of years in the small town of Wiesloch in the Rheine-Neckar region. It was a short rail journey to Heidelberg. We love the city. Like Bill Ross, we stayed in the Crown Plaza Hotel, walked along Hauptstrasse and visited the Christmas market in old town. We also would walk across the bridge over the river Neckar to Neuenheim on a Saturday morning to visit the farmers market, drink coffee and eat croissants.

Most of the research for this book I did online. Wikipedia is a great source of information. I accessed the Comanche Nation website
www.comanchenation.com
and also obtained lots of historical information on the early days of the formation of Texas from the Texas State Historical Association website
www.tshaonline.org
.

Finally, a friend of mine was kind enough to buy me a copy of
Empire of the Summer Moon
by S. C. Gwynne on the rise and fall of the Comanche Nation. The content of the book helped me immensely - Thank you, Rich!