Texas Outlaw

by James Patterson

  “Not till next week,” he says. “Y’all come with your questions. We ain’t got nothin’ to hide.”

  Working my way back through the crowd, I can see Ariana looking my way, but I also see a back exit. I push through it, hoping it won’t set off an alarm, and step outside, startling two guys huddled together by the Dumpster. I’m not sure what they were about to do. Smoke a joint maybe? Deal drugs? Maybe something more innocent.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I say. “I needed some fresh air.”

  “No problem,” one of them says, and I realize it’s the football coach, Alex Hartley. “We were just headed back inside.”

  When I’m alone in the dark night, I try to calm my fury before I take the stage again. I’m a Texas Ranger. But the truth is, I’m no match for an Army Ranger trained in lethal hand-to-hand combat—not without my gun.

  The back door pushes open, and Ariana steps out.

  “You okay?” she says, her face genuinely concerned.

  “You were right,” I tell her. “I shouldn’t have gone over there.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “He just got under my skin is all. The Rangers have an official name for guys like him.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Asshole.”

  She and I share a good laugh. Before she can ask any more questions, Dale pokes his head out the door.

  “Hey, cowboy, we got one more set. This crowd’s getting restless.”

  Chapter 35

  WHEN WE START playing again, I’m not feeling it, and neither is the audience. My musical mistakes and dropped lyrics are emptying the dance floor.

  “You all right?” Dale says to me between songs. “We’re losing the crowd.”

  I tell him I’m fine, but I’m not. Then I see Gareth standing in the back, watching me, his arms clasped behind his back like he’s standing at attention all the while, as my dad would say, grinning like a possum eating shit. I put my hand over the mic and tell Dale and Walt I want to try something a little different.

  I pluck at the guitar and start singing the country-and-western classic “Big Iron” by Marty Robbins. In the original recording, released as a single in 1959, the beat is fast under Robbins’s signature melody. The year before he died, Johnny Cash recorded a slow, haunting cover, and that’s the version I attempt.

  The crowd goes quiet and listens—it’s that kind of song. The lyrics tell the story of a vicious killer named Texas Red and the gunfighter who rides into a small town to bring in the outlaw, dead or alive. The original lyrics describe the stranger as an “Arizona Ranger,” but I switch Texas for Arizona, which gets a few whoops and whistles from the crowd. Otherwise, they’re caught up in the performance, listening to the story, waiting to see what happens next.

  Modern country songs typically repeat a chorus around a couple of verses, but old songs like this tell full narratives in several verses with a lot of lyrics to remember. But as a kid I used to listen to this song with my dad, and I know it by heart.

  When I get to the part in the story where the two gunfighters face off, I turn my gaze to Gareth McCormack, who spits and stares back at me. In the song, the townsfolk expect Texas Red to kill the stranger, but the gunfighter is so fast that Texas Red is dead on the ground before he can “clear leather.”

  I don’t stop staring at Gareth until I strum the last notes. The crowd goes wild, clapping and whistling.

  “I’ll be damned,” Dale says. “You got ’em back.”

  I grin and say, “I’ve got another idea.”

  I tell them I want to try a song that none of us has ever played.

  “You think they’ll go for it?” Dale says. “This don’t seem like that kind of crowd.”

  “I think we can pull it off,” Walt says. “I’ll play drums. Rory, you play lead guitar. Dale, you just try to keep up.”

  I turn back to the audience and find Ariana in the crowd.

  “This one goes out to a friend of mine,” I say.

  Then we dive into an impromptu country version of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”

  The audience loves it. People dance and throw their hands into the air, singing along so loudly that no one notices when I mess up the lyrics a few times. Ariana sings along, too, smiling ear to ear and holding her beer up like she’s at a rock show.

  I’m having so much fun that I don’t realize until the song is over that Gareth and his goons have left.

  Whether the Marty Robbins song got under his skin or he just couldn’t stand to see the people in his town rocking out to my music, something drove him out of here.

  It’s not much, but I consider it a moral victory.

  Chapter 36

  THE NEXT FEW nights I have trouble sleeping. Every time I hear a noise, I jump out of bed, grab my gun, and look out the window to make sure no one is vandalizing my truck. When I do sleep, I dream some twisted variation of what happened inside the bank.

  I miss the shot.

  Or I’m too slow.

  Or I’m paralyzed with fear.

  In the most recent dream, the man with the AR-15 isn’t some masked robber.

  It’s Gareth McCormack.

  That morning Ariana and I sit in the conference room, looking for suspicious details in Susan Snyder’s business invoices. She catches me yawning.

  “You getting enough sleep?” she says.

  “The bed in that motel isn’t very comfortable,” I say.

  Which is a lie. I can sleep on the hard ground on a bedroll if my mind is clear and I feel safe.

  “I notice you haven’t taken up Tom and Jessica Aaron on their offer to stay in their studio,” she says.

  I shrug.

  We’ve done some discreet investigation into Tom and Jessica. We checked with the Texas State Board of Pharmacy to make sure there were no red flags in Jessica’s history. We asked around to see if there was any kind of bad blood between Tom and Susan Snyder. So far, nothing has stood out. But I’m still waiting to hear from Freddy about the blood test. Plenty of people in town knew about Susan Snyder’s allergy. The only reason Jessica makes sense as a suspect is if the EpiPen was faulty.

  “Let’s go get some lunch,” Ariana says. “Maybe that will wake you up.”

  For our first lunch together, Ariana and I pick up deli sandwiches to go. The counter girl greets us with a friendly smile and asks when I’ll be playing at Lobo Lizard again. Maybe I’m starting to win this town over.

  When our food is ready, we walk down to the park. The day is hot, but there’s shade under a big bur oak, and we sit on a rock at the edge of the wide, clear river. Downstream, kids play on a rope swing, taking turns launching themselves out into a deep spot. Upstream, a man in waders is fly-fishing.

  Ariana and I are quiet for a few minutes as we navigate the implied break from talking about the case.

  “So,” I say, “how did you end up a detective in Rio Lobo?”

  Ariana says that after studying criminal justice at Angelo State, she went to work for the highway patrol. The chief in Rio Lobo, who remembered her from high school, encouraged her to apply for an open detective position. The town council, however, was pushing for an outside applicant with more experience: John Grady Harris.

  “The chief found the budget to hire two detectives in a town barely big enough to support one,” she says.

  “So you were partners?”

  “For a while.”

  “How did you get along?” I ask.

  “Just fine,” she says. “He flirted with me a bit until he realized I wasn’t interested, and then we developed a mutual respect. Up until recently, that is.”

  She says the former chief, who was well past retirement age, drowned in the river a little over a year ago.

  “He liked to canoe in the afternoons after work,” she says. “It was spring, so the current was pretty swift. I guess the canoe flipped. He wasn’t wearing a life jacket.”

  Both she and Harris applied for the police chief j
ob.

  “We interviewed before the council in an open meeting that Tom Aaron covered for the paper, but the deliberations were closed. They picked Harris.”

  “Was it unanimous?”

  “One or two of them may have preferred me, but as a group, they decided not to go on record with any dissent. They made a public show of support for the new chief. Or maybe none of them thought I was qualified, and they were nice enough to keep quiet about it.”

  “I doubt that’s the case,” I say.

  I think she’d make a good Ranger.

  We sit for a few minutes and watch the river. A red-tailed hawk flies down and takes perch on a yucca stalk, and in the water a raft of ducks swims around, dunking their heads and looking for food.

  I’m about to ask Ariana if she has ever considered applying to the Texas Ranger Division—but my phone buzzes.

  It’s Tom Aaron’s number.

  “Can you come to the paper?” he says when I answer. “I found a couple of items of interest.”

  I tell Ariana, “Looks like our break is over.”

  Chapter 37

  TOM’S OFFICE IS full of newspapers, notebooks, file folders—and maps. A US Geological Survey topographic one is pinned to the wall behind his desk, along with a street map of Rio Lobo. His Texas Press Association awards for community service are nearly obscured by even more piles of paper.

  Tom tells us that he’s discovered two pieces of town council history.

  “I tracked Carson McCormack’s contributions to town council campaigns over the last twenty years,” Tom says. “Every candidate he backed won, with the exception of one person who was elected without his support.”

  “Let me guess,” Ariana says. “Susan Snyder.”

  “This proves she was different,” I say, “but we already knew that.”

  “And we don’t know of any bad blood between her and the council,” Ariana says. “Or her and McCormack.”

  “That brings me to my other discovery,” Tom says.

  Since Susan Snyder was elected, he explains, every item that came before the council passed—or was voted down—unanimously. There were differences of opinion, of course, but the council members always found a compromise.

  “People were worried that Susan Snyder might not fit in, but really the group was highly functional.”

  “I’m sensing there’s a but coming up,” Ariana says.

  He asks if I read the recent article about Carson McCormack filing for an easement to move his trucks through an area designated as open space.

  “This didn’t go to a vote until after Susan was dead,” Tom says, “but the town clerk let me take a look at the full file.” He pulls out a printout of email correspondence and holds it up. “Susan planned to vote no.”

  Tom is providing us with this information about Carson McCormack unprompted. He doesn’t know about the attack on my truck, or my encounter with Gareth McCormack.

  But it’s far from a smoking gun. In fact, it’s almost inconsequential.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” I say, “but all McCormack needed was three votes. Had Susan lived to vote against the measure, it still would have passed four to one.”

  “What we need to figure out,” Ariana says, “is why she was going to vote no.”

  I ask Tom to explain the easement that Carson McCormack requested. Tom stands up and focuses on the US Geological Survey map behind his desk.

  “Here is the town proper,” he says, pointing to a small cluster of black squares. Then he uses his finger to trace a much larger area, extending into undeveloped hills and valleys. “But this is the town’s incorporated area.”

  Tom identifies a huge section of the map as McCormack’s property.

  “Years before I moved here,” Tom says, “McCormack began buying up property and drilling it for oil. Carson’s late wife was still alive, and Gareth would have been a little boy.”

  This is the first I’ve heard about a Mrs. McCormack, and I ask how she died.

  “I don’t think an autopsy was ever performed,” Tom says. “From what I hear, she complained of a bad headache and an hour later she was dead.”

  Ariana and I exchange a look—another unusual death.

  Getting back to the easement, Tom explains that almost twenty years ago McCormack asked the council to designate a chunk of land in the southern part of the town’s incorporated area as open space.

  “I’m no expert about oil,” Tom says, “but the terrain out there is pretty rugged. I figure he didn’t want anyone else to drill there because their pumps would compete with his.”

  “So what changed?” I ask. “Why does he want access now?”

  Tom shrugs. “Maybe his shipping routes are different.”

  “Maybe it’s time we go ask him,” I say to Ariana.

  I thank Tom for his help and discretion, and at the front of the building, we say good-bye.

  As I’m about to climb into my truck, I get a call from Freddy Hernandez, who has the results of the blood test. He starts going on about blood glucose, fatty acids, adrenergic receptors, and vasoconstriction—whatever those things are.

  “Freddy,” I say. “Remember, you were the valedictorian in high school while I was the quarterback of the football team. Break down the test results for me.”

  “Bottom line?” he says.

  “Yes. Bottom line.”

  “The EpiPen worked,” he says.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yep. I can explain why in court if you need me to. But to analyze the blood any further, I need to know what I’m looking for,” he says.

  “That’s the problem,” I say. “I don’t know. I need you to work some magic here, Freddy.”

  He says there’s enough blood left for one more test. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says. “But don’t hold your breath.”

  When I hang up, I tell Ariana the news.

  “I told you it wasn’t Jessica Aaron,” she says.

  “On that note,” I say, “hang on a sec.”

  I leave her on the sidewalk next to my truck and I head back into the newspaper building.

  “Where are you going?” she asks.

  “I’m going to ask Tom if his offer to stay in their studio still stands.”

  Chapter 38

  I’M NOT SAD to say good-bye to my little motel room. Norma, the woman who runs the place, comes out to see me off.

  “I’m going to miss sitting in the lobby and listening to you play that guitar,” she says as I carry my guitar case out of the room and set it in the passenger side of the truck next to my duffel bag.

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” I say, “how do you stay in business?” Since I came to town, I’ve been her only customer.

  She pops a cigarette into her mouth and lights it, then mumbles through her closed lips, “McCormack.”

  “McCormack?”

  She says that when Carson McCormack’s business associates are in town, he usually rents out every room. That income keeps her afloat during the lean weeks.

  “Ask around,” she says. “I bet he subsidizes just about every business in this town in one way or another. Rio Lobo would crumble and blow away without him.”

  “A regular Robin Hood,” I say.

  “Or a necessary evil,” she says, taking another drag. Then she nods toward the road and says, “Speak of the devil.”

  McCormack’s Escalade rolls down Main Street, preceded by one of his trucks and followed by another—McCormack coming back from his business trip. The cluster of vehicles drives the same tight pattern, at speeds way over the limit, as they did on their way out of town.

  On my way to Tom and Jessica Aaron’s place, I call Ariana on Bluetooth.

  “Guess who just got back into town?” I say.

  “I saw the convoy from the parking lot here at the station,” she says.

  “We’re on for tomorrow,” I say. “Let’s go ask a few questions of Rio Lobo’s most famous father and son.”

  Whe
n I pull up in front of Tom and Jessica’s, I find Jessica in the garden, where she proudly shows me her flowers and vegetables, and even an orchard with pear, peach, and fig trees, as well as an enormous pecan tree.

  “No wonder your pecan pie is so good,” I say.

  “I heard your girlfriend’s song again today,” Jessica says. “Any chance we’ll get to meet her while you’re staying with us?”

  “I wish,” I say. “She’s pretty busy right now.”

  She leads me around the side of the garage. The walkway to the stairs is overgrown with bushes laden with ripe berries.

  “I need to get out here and pick these berries and prune the bushes back,” she says as we squeeze past the overgrowth. “When Tom called, I changed the sheets, but otherwise we haven’t been up here in months.”

  The apartment itself isn’t much—just a bed, a couch, a kitchenette area, and a bathroom. The vintage, rustic decorations, with the same touch as the house, make it feel homier than the motel room felt. A window air-conditioning unit exhales cool air into the room.

  “There’s no TV,” she says.

  “I’ve got a book,” I say.

  Jessica points to a cabinet that contains a small metal safe and tells me the combination.

  “If you want to keep your gun in there, you can,” she says, and I get the impression she wants me to.

  I don’t expect full bed-and-board service, but an hour later Tom knocks on my door with a dinner invitation. The chili con carne is delicious and so, of course, is the pecan pie we have for dessert. My earlier suspicion of Jessica tampering with the EpiPen hasn’t completely left my mind, but as we talk, my feelings of unease ebb. I tell myself to welcome their hospitality but keep my eyes open.

  After dinner, Tom shows me his garage.

  “The garden is Jessica’s pet project,” Tom says. “The garage is mine.”

  In one bay is the 1965 Mustang I saw days earlier. In the other, he pulls off the tarp to reveal a 1960 Land Cruiser J40.

  “Does the Cruiser run?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says. “There’s no power steering, no power brakes. It will give you a workout just shifting gears.”