Tessa Stark: Desert Heat

Chapter Three

Santa Maria, a city that boasted a very healthy population, rose up out of the desert scrub like a sprawling oasis, blotting out the horizon for miles in any direction. The city itself was something of an eclectic mish-mash of architecture, some of the oldest structures, dating back to the Mexican-American War, now intermingled with towering, modern glass and steel monstrosities, offering up a rather stunning juxtaposition. And the socio-economic landscape was just as varied, made up of working class folks, broke college kids, white collar suburban families, and of course, a handful of upper crust, old money families, most of whom had made their fortunes in either ranching or oil.

Driving through the morning traffic, taking in the vast array of buildings and businesses, she found herself relaxing into her surroundings. Santa Maria was a dry, dusty desert town, with only a glimpse of man-made green spaces here or there, but cruising through the streets just near the outskirts of the downtown area, she could admit there was a certain rugged charm to the place.

This particular part of the city was older and more sparsely developed, boasting ornately constructed brick buildings, a couple of adobe churches sitting behind low stone walls, and old fashioned iron lamp posts dotting the wide streets. Traffic was thinner on this end of Santa Maria, so she took her time, rolling her windows down and letting the heated wind whip through the Wagoneer, enjoying the open sky that had not a cloud in sight and the view of the craggy mountains that were so far in the distance, they were just smears separating the earth from the sky.

Here, the land was so flat and open that it felt as if it must go on forever. And with nothing at all to blot out the sky, to buffer the sheer scope of it, she could almost imagine that it was closer to the ground than it should have been. In fact, it almost felt as if she could just...reach up and touch it.

Just coming from the mountains of Montana, the wide open space, the never ending expanse of arid earth and unhindered sky, felt slightly overwhelming. It also left her with the feeling of being rather exposed, as if there was nothing she could hide behind, nothing to shield her from whatever might be lurking out there among all the scrub, peering back at her.

Braking to a stop at a four-way intersection, she waited her turn and took a left onto Castillo Street, immediately spotting the hazy outline of a massive building jutting upwards, looming there a couple of miles ahead. Seeing the structure, which was the Harris County Sheriff's Office, according to the GPS on her cell, she felt her insides clench.

She'd walked into so many police stations and sheriff's offices and government buildings during her tenure in law enforcement that she couldn't begin to count them. And every single time, she felt herself battling a case of nerves. Not because she was worried she might not get the job done, nor because she wasn't confident in her abilities. No. It was due to something for ethereal.

She hated being the new kid.

Really, that was how it always felt. It was just like being the new kid coming into school in the middle of the year, no friends, no knowledge of how to navigate the hallways without getting lost, the judgmental eyes of all the other students watching her every move. It was a stressful situation. At least, at first. She eventually settled into things and found her way and the local boys eventually thawed out toward her. It was just the beginning stages that she found irksome.

She wished she was already past that part, with her legs steadily beneath her and her feet already pounding the pavement. But, that wasn't how it worked. There were no shortcuts. She had to begin at the beginning, as her mamaw always used to say. And today, the beginning was a meeting with Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, District Attorney Lonnie Eckhart, and Senator Richard Whitmore, who was on Congressional recess for the month of August, which allowed him to come and speak with her personally.