Texas Outlaw

by James Patterson

  “I mean she didn’t feel like it. I mean…”

  He freezes for a minute.

  “I didn’t kill her,” he says, and the fear in his voice that we would think he did makes this seem like the most honest statement he’s made since coming in.

  Ariana steps in, playing the good cop. “Skip, we’re just trying to get a clear picture of what Susan did that night. We want to get all the facts. Can you help us do that?”

  He opens his mouth to say something, then he stands up out of his chair.

  “Y’all are trying to twist things around,” he says, angry. “I ain’t talking anymore without a lawyer.” Then, hesitantly, he says, “Am I free to go?”

  I rise and approach him.

  “You may leave. You are not under arrest. We will reschedule once you’ve consulted with a lawyer.”

  He nods with a jerk, as if to say, You’re damn right I’m free to go.

  “Skip,” I say, getting closer to him. He backs up against the wall, but in this tiny room, there’s nowhere else for him to go. “Don’t you dare think about leaving town. I don’t care if you had anything to do with Susan Snyder’s death or not. If you leave without talking to us again, that’s obstruction of justice, and I will move heaven and earth to find you.”

  Skip looks like he believes me.

  After he leaves, Ariana and I watch the truck pull out of the parking lot, clearly in a hurry, driving at least fifteen miles over the speed limit. The license plate says MC 9.

  “I thought he was going to piss his pants there for a minute,” Ariana says.

  She cracks a smile, and we have a good laugh together. It’s nice to see her laughing. She’s a pretty woman when she’s stone serious, but when she looks happy, she’s absolutely stunning.

  “What do you make of Skip?” she asks. “You think he had something to do with it?”

  “Honestly, no. But he’s hiding something.”

  “That’s the way I feel.”

  I don’t think either of the guys we interviewed today is our man, but that’s just a hunch, and I’m certainly not ready to cross either of them off our suspects list. Alex seemed to genuinely like Susan Snyder. And Skip doesn’t seem quite bright enough to concoct a plan to poison her.

  “That truck Skip was driving,” I ask Ariana, “do all McCormack’s employees drive them?”

  “Yes. There are at least a dozen of them.”

  Skip was driving one with an MC 9 license plate. I pull out my phone and look at the photos I took last night. In one of the pics, I can make out the plate: MC 1.

  “You know who drives this one?” I ask, showing her the picture.

  “Why?” When she senses I might not tell her, she says, “I’ve been open with you about everything. Don’t keep anything from me.”

  I tell her I saw the black truck driving by several times last night and thought maybe I was being watched. Now that I know there are multiple trucks that look the same, I can’t be sure it was MC 1 that drove by each time.

  “Carson McCormack’s son, Gareth, drives MC 1,” Ariana tells me.

  “Tell me about him,” I say, picturing a sixteen-year-old kid spoiled by Daddy’s money.

  “Ex-military,” she says. “Army Ranger. Sniper. Iraq and Afghanistan. Rumor is he has a dozen confirmed kills.”

  My eyes widen. That certainly isn’t what I was expecting. “Do you think he had anything to do with Susan Snyder’s death?”

  “I have no idea,” she says, glancing, as she often does, toward the door to make sure no one is listening. “But he and the chief are pals.”

  “Could be why Susan Snyder didn’t want you to tell him.”

  “Maybe.”

  I can tell by the look on her face that she’s skeptical.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask.

  “Honestly, I bet it was him, driving up and down, getting a good look at you. But I doubt it had anything to do with Susan Snyder. If he murdered her, he’d be keeping a lower profile.”

  “So why was he spying on me?”

  “Gareth McCormack is the alpha dog in these parts,” she says. “Even the chief, who’s about as tough a guy as you’ll find, doesn’t measure up. I think Gareth McCormack heard a Texas Ranger is in town and he’s sniffing around to see if you’re any threat to him.”

  Chapter 22

  THAT EVENING, I’M back on the porch of my motel room, but instead of plucking my Fender, I’ve got Susan Snyder’s case file in my hands. Tonight, I’ve brought out my pistol and set it on the chair next to me, covered by my cowboy hat. I’m probably being paranoid, but Ariana’s words about Gareth McCormack have me on edge.

  As the alpha dog, he can come sniffing around all he likes. But if he wants to try to mark his territory, I’ll be ready.

  Besides, the hat still doesn’t fit me very well. I’d just as soon have it on the chair as on my head.

  It’s a clear night, with the moon high in the sky. The streetlights obscure my view of the stars. There are hardly any cars rolling up and down Main Street, and the parking lot of the motel, like always, is empty. I’m alone with my thoughts.

  I’m thinking about a conversation Ariana and I had late in the afternoon, before we called it quits for the day. I asked her to give me a clearer picture of who Susan Snyder was.

  “You mean was she a slut?” Ariana asked, sensing my question was motivated by the two men we’d interviewed claiming to have had sex with her.

  “I don’t care how many people she slept with,” I said. “I just want a better idea of who she was.”

  What I didn’t say is that from my experience, reputations aren’t always accurate. I’ve been accused of being a womanizer, but the truth is I can count all the women I’ve slept with on one hand. Every one of them was someone I cared deeply about.

  But Susan Snyder is a bit of an enigma to me. The rest of the council are a bunch of good old boys, probably stuck in their ways. Susan Snyder was young and vibrant. In a town like this, a woman would be expected to marry, settle down, have babies. Susan Snyder hadn’t done any of that, apparently by choice.

  Susan went to college at UT and stayed in Austin for a few years afterward, working as a graphic designer. When she was in her late twenties, she came back. She’d apparently built up a big enough client base to go freelance and could live just about anywhere. Even though her parents had retired to Florida, she chose her tiny hometown of Rio Lobo.

  She was always busy in the community, Ariana said, volunteering at the library, organizing fundraisers for the Kiwanis Club, chaperoning dances for the high school kids. About five years ago, when a seat opened up on the town council, she ran. Her opponent was just like the others—an older guy who’d been in the community for a million years. But people seemed taken with Susan’s enthusiasm and charisma. She was elected narrowly.

  Ariana said that the election was controversial—briefly—but the other members of the council seemed to embrace her. They treated her like a daughter—in both good and bad ways. If she had an idea they didn’t agree with, they’d talk to her like she was a young, silly girl who didn’t know any better. But she got her way more often than not. She was reelected without opposition.

  “Enemies?” I asked.

  “None that I know of.”

  “What about the person she beat out in the election?”

  “He’s on the council now. Fred Meikle. He ran for an open seat in the last election. As far as I heard, there were no hard feelings. I saw them interact in the meetings and he seemed fond of her.”

  With any public figure, there’s the image they present to the world, and then there’s the real person—and the two aren’t always the same. People in Rio Lobo might not know about the sexual activity, or they might not care, but otherwise, the Susan Snyder I pictured in my mind felt like a portrait she wanted people to see.

  I could see the image everyone else had of her, but I was going to have to dig deeper to find the real Susan Snyder. When you have abundant physic
al evidence or witness accounts or even motive, you may not need that picture of a murder victim.

  I need to understand her to understand why someone would kill her.

  If anyone killed her.

  As I sit on the motel porch with my legs stretched out in front of me, there is someone else on my mind that I have an unclear picture of. Two people, actually: Carson McCormack and his son, Gareth. They are mysteries to me as well. I’ve already developed a dislike for the two of them, which is unfair. I haven’t even met them.

  McCormack is probably the reason this town doesn’t look like half the insolvent little towns in rural Texas. He pays taxes, employs residents, and, as I’ve seen, makes donations to community projects. But as much as people speak about McCormack in this town, I haven’t yet heard anyone speak highly of him. I have no idea if McCormack or his son had anything to do with Susan Snyder’s death, but I’m going to find out.

  As if on cue, one of McCormack’s trucks rolls down the street. Without using a turn signal, the truck whips into the parking lot of my motel and rolls toward my cabin. I sit up and reach my hand toward my hat, pretending I’m going to pick it up. What I’m really doing is reaching underneath to grab my SIG Sauer.

  The truck rolls to a stop right in front of me. Two men are sitting in the cab. The driver reaches for something on the seat between them. Something I can’t see clearly, something bigger than a pistol—maybe a shotgun.

  Then he pushes open the door.

  I slide my hand under my hat and wrap my fingers around the grip of the pistol.

  Chapter 23

  “HOWDY, FRIEND!” THE guy says as he comes around the door of the truck.

  My heart is galloping, my muscles tensed and ready to swing the gun out.

  “Mind if we jam with you?” the guy says, and he raises the object in his hands: an acoustic guitar.

  I exhale loudly and let go of the gun.

  “Excuse me?” I say, trying to keep my voice steady and not give any indication that my body is racing with adrenaline. “You want to do what?”

  “We heard you was sitting out here picking on a guitar last night,” the guy says, grinning widely as he approaches. “We thought we’d stop by and see if you wanted to jam with us.”

  The man seems to be about thirty, give or take a few years. He wears a Dallas Mavericks ball cap and the same blue work shirt Skip Barnes wore earlier today. He has strong worker’s hands and a beer belly that strains the buttons of his shirt.

  “Who told you I was playing?” I say, thinking of the black truck that seemed to be keeping an eye on me the night before.

  “Norma,” he says, gesturing toward the office of the motel. “She owns the place. You can’t do anything in Rio Lobo without half the town hearing about it.”

  The man introduces himself as Dale Peters. He says that he and his friend, Walt Mitchell, used to be in a band that played one night a week at Lobo Lizard, but their lead singer left town and now they just play together for fun.

  Walt gets out of the truck and shakes my hand. He’s a middle-aged black man with graying hair. He has a pleasant smile and wears a plaid shirt, new jeans, and a clean pair of tennis shoes.

  “I play bass or rhythm guitar,” Dale says. “Walt here teaches music at the school and can play just about any instrument God created. But neither of us can sing worth a lick.”

  I’m not really in the mood to play with a couple of strangers, but it occurs to me that I might be able to use this to my advantage. Today we interviewed two men, one who works at the high school and one who works for Carson McCormack. Maybe I can get some information on our suspects.

  “Sure,” I say. “Let me just go get my guitar.”

  I pick up my hat, careful to keep the gun concealed, and walk into my room. When I come out with my guitar, Dale is sitting down, trying to tune his instrument, and Walt is walking from the truck with a banjo in one hand, a small snare drum in the other, a fiddle case wedged under one arm, and a harmonica tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  I bring a chair over from the porch of the neighboring unit, and the three of us sit down in a triangle. I ask why they want to play with me. Rio Lobo might be small, but there have to be other people here who can pick a guitar.

  “We ain’t never jammed with a Texas Ranger before,” Dale says.

  “Or someone who has a hit country song written about them,” Walt adds.

  I chuckle. “So you know all about me, I guess.”

  “Not everything,” Dale says, grinning. “We don’t know if you can sing worth a damn, but we aim to find out.”

  Chapter 24

  DALE STARTS PLAYING the recognizable opening chords of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” Walt plays the snare drum with a wire brush to keep the same scratchy background beat you hear on Cash’s version. I join in on guitar. Dale sings the first verse. He was right—he’s not much of a vocalist. When it comes time for the second verse, he nods to me, and I sing it. He defers to me and lets me sing the rest. In the original recording, Cash changes the key of his vocals, and the last verse is almost a full octave lower than the first. I don’t sound anything like Johnny Cash, but I do my best to lower my voice as the song progresses.

  Dale and Walt both notice and appreciate the effort.

  “Hot damn, boy,” Dale says. “You ain’t half bad.”

  I sing the rest of the night. We play George Strait, Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, and Eric Church. We don’t just stick to guys’ songs, either—we play a couple of Dixie Chicks tunes and have a good laugh rolling through Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.”

  Dale is a heck of a guitar player, much more than just the rhythm guy he made himself out to be. And Walt, as Dale said, can play pretty much anything. Through the two hours we spend playing together, he rotates among guitar, banjo, fiddle, and drum. He even breaks out the harmonica when we play Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.”

  As personalities go, Dale is gregarious and fun to be around, with a comfortable air and an infectious laugh. Walt is much more demure, letting his instruments do the talking for him.

  They’re both talented musicians, but I hold my own with them. I sing and play and feel like a kid again practicing in my buddy Daryl’s basement after school. I’m surprised by how much fun I have and forget that I wanted to ask them some questions until they’re putting their instruments back in their cases.

  “So what did you guys hear about me?” I ask them, trying to make it sound like small talk. “Why I’m here?”

  Dale says he works with Skip Barnes, and Walt works with Alex Hartley, the football coach. Both have heard what I’ve been investigating.

  “You’re a lucky man,” Dale says to me.

  “Why’s that?”

  “’Cause you get to work with Ariana Delgado,” he says and whistles through his teeth. “Man, I’ve had a crush on her since high school.”

  “He’s dating Willow Dawes,” Walt chimes in. “Have you seen a picture of her?”

  “You’re doubly lucky,” Dale says to me.

  “Did either of you know Susan Snyder?” I ask.

  “Sure.” Dale shrugs. “Hell, everybody knows everybody in this town. But I didn’t know her well.”

  “I voted for her,” Walt says, “but I never actually talked to her.”

  “What do you think of the guys who were dating her?” I say. “Skip and Alex.”

  “I don’t know if I’d use the word dating,” Dale says.

  There it is, I think. Confirmation that people knew she was sleeping around.

  “She and Alex was just friends is all,” Dale says. “And I don’t know what she was doing hanging around with Skip. He’s a buddy of mine, but she was way out of his league.”

  I’m not sure how far to push this, but I say, “He claims they were sleeping together. Friends with benefits, I guess you’d call it.”

  Dale laughs. “I doubt Skip Barnes has been with any woman outside a Juárez brothel.”

  “What ab
out Alex?” I say. “He made the same claim.”

  Dale and Walt exchange a look that I can’t read.

  “Like I said, I always thought they was just friends. What they did on their own time ain’t none of my business.”

  With that, the two pack up and climb into Dale’s truck.

  “That was fun,” Dale says out the window. “Let’s do it again sometime.”

  I give them a wave as they pull out of the lot and then I stand on my porch, thinking.

  Earlier today, I thought Skip Barnes was hiding something. Now I think Alex Hartley might have been as well.

  And when I think of the look they gave each other, I think my new friends, Dale Peters and Walt Mitchell, are hiding something, too.

  Does everyone in this town have secrets?

  Chapter 25

  I’M DREAMING. I know I am.

  But I can’t wake myself up.

  I’m back in the bank, with the robber standing on the counter with the AR-15 and the other holding a handgun to my head. Just like before, I drop to my knees as my hat is blasted off my head. I raise my SIG Sauer, aim it at the robber on the counter, and squeeze the trigger. But this time nothing happens.

  I miss.

  The robber squeezes the trigger of the AR-15 and begins cutting down the customers in the bank. There is no sound. Not from the bullets jumping from the gun barrel. Not from the men and women collapsing in mists of blood, their mouths open in silent screams.

  I know I should shoot again.

  I have to stop him.

  But I’m panicking.

  I turn my head slowly—everything seems to be in slow motion—and look at the other robber. His gun is aimed at my face. I stare into the black hole of the barrel.

  I should move. I should shoot. I should do something.

  But I don’t.

  He squeezes the trigger, and I sit up in bed, my chest heaving, my body slick with sweat. I throw a hand to my face, half expecting to find a bullet hole in my forehead.