Runners by David DeLee

Author:David DeLee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, suspense, mystery, mexico, crime fiction, bounty hunter, women sleuths, new hampshire, short story collection, grace dehaviland, suzie jensen, bail jumper, columbus ohio
Publisher: Dark Road Publishing

FAMILY MATTERS

“BAIL ENFORCEMENT AGENT? I do not know what this means.”

She sat at a small Formica table in her cramped, dreary kitchen, with its old, chipped stove and tiny, humming refrigerator. The walls were grease spattered and the air was rich with chili powder, coriander and cumin. She fingered the business card I’d handed her when she answered the front door.

Along with my occupation, it had my name: Grace deHaviland.

“It means I’m a bounty hunter, Mrs. Navarro.”

“It means,” she said. “You want to take my boy back to jail.”

“Hector has done a very bad thing, Mrs. Navarro.”

Maria Navarro put the card down on the table and slid it back to me. Rejecting it—and me—with the subtle gesture. She sat back. The cheap metal chair creaked and its plastic padding expelled a puff of air, like a sigh.

“The police are looking for him too,” I reminded her. “It would be best if I found him first.” I let her think about that, while she tried to figure me out.

The cramped apartment was hot, trapping the early Indian summer air, stagnant and thick. A trickle of sweat rolled under my loose-fitting collar and down my spine.

Maria Navarro brushed a limp corkscrew of black hair from her forehead and sat forward again, her forearms on the edge of the table. Younger than she looked, life had taken its toll on her. She took back my card.

“Why?” she asked. “Why would it be best for you to arrest my boy, for this thing he did not do, and not the policia? Either way my Hector will be in jail.”

“Because,” I explained, “I want to bring Hector in alive. The police will be less concerned with that than I am.” And why was that, one might ask. Because, I can’t collect a bounty on a dead man. Often, that’s more the pity. I didn’t tell Mrs. Navarro that of course. That would’ve been insensitive. Not to mention counterproductive.

Hector Navarro had been arrested for assault and several lesser charges, all stemming from a beating he’d given Ramon Ruiz a few weeks ago. A beating so bad it put Ruiz in a coma. Though he’d faced violent felony charges, the judge in the case offered him bail anyway, which Hector made.

Since then, things had changed.

The most important development being, Ramon Ruiz had died two days earlier. Hector had been ordered back to court to face amended charges, and no doubt bail revocation. And now, he was in the wind.

“You only wish to collect your bounty, Ms. deHaviland. I am not a stupid woman.”

“No, ma’am, you’re not,” I agreed. “And I won’t insult you by lying to you. I only get paid to bring your son in alive, that’s true. It’s my job. But my reasons don’t matter. In the end we both want the same thing. Hector safe.”

A window fan whirled in a front room, doing little more than move the hot, midday, September air around. The Navarro apartment sat over a dry cleaning store and the

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