There’s no real need to get there in a hurry, but Creasy told me, “Hey, partner, you might as well open it up and let those horses run.”
So I did.
Now, though, I slow down for the trailer park exit.
The homes in the park make my under-construction casita look like the Embassy Suites. There are run-down trailers with boarded windows and siding patched with duct tape. Cars on blocks. Washing machines in front yards. Chain-link dog pens with snarling pit bulls. Tattered Confederate flags.
Creasy and I approach the front door of the trailer we’re looking for. I unclasp the strap over my pistol, just in case.
A woman who might have been pretty once, before years of meth use, meets us at the door. She’s wearing jean shorts and a tank top, but she’s too thin and her skin has become leathery. I figure she is probably thirty even though she looks closer to fifty.
“He ain’t here,” she says, and smiles, showing a big gap where several teeth are missing.
“Howdy, ma’am,” Creasy says. “So you know why we’re here?”
“I seen it on the news,” she says. “That dumb sumbitch went and knocked off a bank in Oklahoma City. He better not show up here.”
“Has Earl tried to contact you?” I ask.
“Hell if I know,” the woman says. “My cell phone died and I can’t find the charger.”
The woman, who is named Maggie, eyes me up and down.
“Well, ain’t you a tall drink of water,” she says. “Y’all want to come in and drink some sweet tea?”
“We’d like to come in and take a look around,” I say, “with your permission.”
“Sure,” she says. “I’ll pour you some of that tea.”
Inside, the trailer is surprisingly well-kept. The woman doesn’t have much, but what she does have she seems to take care of. The exception is the coffee table, which is lined with two types of beer bottles: Corona and Bud Light. There are too many bottles for her to have drunk them by herself today, given that she doesn’t seem more than a little buzzed. And the house is clean enough that I don’t believe those bottles have piled up over days.
The bottom line: someone else helped her drink those beers.
Maggie is rattling on about what a no-good piece of garbage her boyfriend is and how she hopes the cops in Oklahoma lock him up and throw away the key.
I look around and spot a small desk with a coffee cup full of pens and pencils, and a stack of junk mail. I grab a pen and lean over to write on the back of an envelope.
CASH REWARD
Don’t say anything
Just point
I hold my finger to my mouth and make a sh gesture, then I hand her the envelope.
She doesn’t miss a beat. She just goes on talking about what a lowlife her boyfriend is while pouring tea into two glasses.
“Here’s y’all’s teas,” she says, setting the glasses down on the counter.
Then she points toward the floor, and I can make out a place in the dingy carpet where a large square has been cut out and repositioned back in place. A trapdoor to the crawl space under the trailer, I assume.
Creasy and I each step to one side of the carpet while the woman keeps talking. I pull up the carpet to reveal a small hinged hatch. We draw our guns as quietly as possible.
I yank the trapdoor open and we aim our guns into the hole.
“Son of a bitch!” says a man wedged into the crawl space, his voice whiny.
He is lying on his back with his knees drawn up to his chest, where he clutches a small knapsack. He holds his hands up out of the hole in surrender. Creasy grabs the knapsack and unzips it. It’s full of crisp twenty-dollar bills.
“How’d y’all know I was down here?” Earl asks.
“This is a trailer,” I say. “There aren’t that many places to hide.”
“No, I mean how’d y’all know I was down here in Waco?”
Creasy laughs. “Top-notch detective work. You listed your girlfriend as your emergency contact the last time you were in jail.”
“Oh,” he says.
“Earl,” the woman says to him, “if brains were dynamite, you couldn’t blow your nose.”
Chapter 30
LATER, WHEN THE local authorities come to take Earl away and Creasy is telling Maggie how to retrieve her reward money, I step away, debating whether to make a phone call.
I’ve been working for the past week for the Texas Rangers, but my mind has kept going back to Anne’s investigation. Without the benefit of access to any police evidence or the ability to interview anyone who might have information, I feel like my hands have been tied for the most important case of my life. And it doesn’t matter that that case isn’t in my jurisdiction. That’s never stopped me before.
Arresting Earl in the trailer gave me an idea, and I feel like I can’t hold it back.
“DeAndre,” I say when the detective picks up. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Rory,” Purvis says, “you know you’re not supposed to be calling me.”
I ignore him. “Have you started working with the local Crime Stoppers chapter to offer a reward?”
“Rory, I know how to do my job.”
I want to snap, If you knew how to do your job, you’d have the fucking killer by now.
“You can at least tell me if you’re going to be offering a reward,” I say. “That’s not top secret information.”
Purvis exhales loudly into the phone. “Yes,” he says, taking on the dismissive bureaucratic tone he’s used with me before. “It’s common practice for us to offer a reward for information leading to an arrest in a case like this. We’ve been working out the details with the local Crime Stoppers branch. There will be a news release tomorrow with a press conference to follow.”
I’m pacing next to a trailer a few homes down from where we arrested Earl.
“Here’s what you need to do,” I say. “Go to the truck stop where the witnesses say they saw Cal the night of the murder. Tell them about the reward. You’ve got to do it in person. It’s more convincing that way.”
“Rory—”
“We just got a guy whose girlfriend rolled on him,” I say. “She never would have called a tip line or had the guts to sell him out if I wasn’t standing in front of her. Make the trip to Amarillo. Do it in person. Or call the Rangers and get them to do it.”
I know from experience that some witnesses are more forthcoming to Rangers. Once a suspect who stonewalled the local authorities admitted his guilt within minutes of me walking into the room, telling me, “You’re a Ranger. I figure you’ll get it out of me eventually.”
“Rory—”
I cut Purvis off again, wanting to make sure he hears me.
“Listen to me, DeAndre. This is a crime of passion. Cal is the most obvious suspect. You can’t stop looking at him just because a couple so-called witnesses are willing to protect him.”
“Who said we’ve stopped looking at him?” Purvis says.
This time, his words silence me.
“Leave me alone and let me do my job, or so help me…” Purvis trails off.
“Or you’re going to call my boss again—is that what you were going to say?”
“Yes,” Purvis says. “Let me do my job or I’ll call your boss. You can get in big trouble trying to insert yourself into an investigation where you have no claim or jurisdiction—and one that you have a personal connection to.”
I take a deep breath. “DeAndre, you’ve got to act fast, before Cal decides to split town. The guy’s living out of his truck, for Christ’s sake. There’s nothing to keep him from running.”
“He’s not living out of his truck anymore,” Purvis says.
I wait for him to elaborate.
“He moved back to Anne’s house.”
“What?”
“She put Cal’s name on the deed a while back,” Purvis says casually, as if it doesn’t change my prime suspect’s motive. “The house belongs to him now.”
Chapter 31
“NOW STAY THE hell out of my investigation,” Purvis says, and hangs up.
I stand in stunned silence.
Cal moved into the house?
The house I shared with Anne when we were married.
I feel nauseated. Before I have time to think much about what was said, a hand clamps down on my shoulder.
Creasy says, “We need to roll, partner.”
Creasy says the Houston office called, and they got a tip that a fugitive in one of their investigations is in a strip club in Waco.
“Let’s go see if we can’t bag two bad guys in one day,” Creasy says.
I put the pedal to the floor on the drive to the club. I weave in and out of traffic, the truck’s sirens screaming. My hands are steering the wheel and my foot’s working the pedal, but my mind is on Anne.
And Cal.
And that worthless excuse for a detective, DeAndre Purvis.
When we get to the club, the bouncer at the door sees our badges and lets us through. Every muscle in my body feels taut, like guitar strings pulled too tight and ready to snap.
Creasy doesn’t seem to notice my mood. He eyes a black girl who walks by in a tight pink corset and white leggings.
“I tell you what,” Creasy says. “This sure beats sitting behind a desk. I need to get out of the office more often.”
We stand in the corner and look around, our eyes adjusting to the dark interior. The club isn’t particularly crowded, but there are a handful of men spread out. The lights are green and blue and red, and a retro disco ball hangs over the audience, spraying diamonds of sparkling light throughout the room. The effect doesn’t make visibility any easier. The kaleidoscopic colors just make it harder to see.
Brooks and Dunn’s “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” comes on over the sound system, and a woman in a short trench coat and long black boots comes stomping out onstage, gyrating her hips. It’s not long before her trench coat is lying on the stage and she’s wearing nothing but her boots and a G-string.
Creasy nudges me and nods toward two guys sitting near the stage. “That looks like our boy.”
The description stated that the fugitive—a drug dealer named Trevor Glass—has a spider tattoo on his neck, behind his left ear, and there is a man fitting that description. He’s wearing a threadbare San Antonio Spurs jersey and jeans with more holes than actual denim. He picks up a bottle to take a drink, giving us a good view of his forearm, which has another identifying tattoo. It’s a sword stabbed through the top of a skull and coming out underneath its jawbone.
“Looks like it’s our lucky day,” I say.
Creasy says, “Do you see who that is with him?”
I switch my gaze from the wanted fugitive to his accomplice.
Sitting next to the fugitive is Corgan Guthrie, the brother of the man I shot through the heart.
Chapter 32
CORGAN GUTHRIE IS a short man with a wiry frame. He’s wearing a faded Metallica T-shirt, and every inch of his skin from his wrists to his shoulders is covered in tattoos. He looks like a pit bull—not a very big dog, but one you sure as hell don’t want to mess with.
Guthrie and his friend haven’t seen Creasy and me yet.
“I’m going to call for backup,” Creasy says. “I don’t want this getting ugly.”
I open my mouth to say that isn’t necessary, but before I can speak, Corgan stands up and says to his friend, “I gotta go drain my trouser snake.”
He takes one step and sees us.
“Texas Rangers!” he shouts.
The wanted man makes a break for the exit. Corgan follows.
Before they get more than a few paces, I yank my pistol out of its holster and fire a round into the disco ball. Shards of glass rain down like shimmering confetti. Corgan Guthrie and Trevor Glass freeze in place. The dancer onstage shrieks and runs off. Someone pulls the plug on the music, and the club goes quiet. The lights turn on, drowning out the colored bulbs with a bright yellow glare that makes me squint.
I sheathe my gun.
My ears are ringing. A cloud of smoke lingers in the air.
Creasy tells Trevor Glass that he’s under arrest. He makes the man put his hands behind his head. Creasy cuffs one wrist, then brings the arms down behind Glass’s back and latches his other wrist.
I circle around and stand in front of Corgan Guthrie, breathing hard.
Is this the man who killed Anne?
“Well, if it ain’t the famous Texas Ranger himself: Mr. Rory Yates,” Guthrie says.
This close, I can make out Guthrie’s tattoos: skulls and snakes and screaming ghoulish faces. I can also smell him: spoiled sweat and cigarettes.
“Corgan,” I say. “You’ve been out, what, a week—and already you’re trying to go back to the clink?”
“I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
“Aiding a fugitive,” I say, gesturing at Trevor Glass, whom Creasy is holding by the wrists.
“I didn’t know there was a warrant out for the dumbass,” Corgan says. “No one sends me a letter telling me who’s a fugitive and who ain’t.”
“Then why did you run?”
“Instinct,” he says. “You see five oh, you run.”
“Is that so?”
Guthrie nods.
I shake my head. “I think you ran because you thought we were here for you.” Hoping to bait Guthrie, I add, “Because of what you did.”
“What did I do?”
Nothing in his eyes gives me a clue about whether he had anything to do with Anne’s death. I thought I might be able to detect some truth hidden in his face, but the only emotion in his expression is hatred.
“Murder,” I say, and continue to watch Guthrie’s face closely for a reaction.
Guthrie smirks. “I get it now. You think I killed your wife? Excuse me: ex-wife.”
I wait. Sometimes the best way to get a criminal to hang himself is by being quiet. The compulsion for the guilty to fill the silence can be strong.
“Sorry, Mr. Texas Ranger. I didn’t do it. But it sure brought a smile to my face when I heard what happened.”
Guthrie makes a move toward his pocket, and my hand flashes to my pistol. I almost draw but stop myself when Guthrie pulls out a pack of cigarettes.
Guthrie pops a cigarette between his smirking lips.
“Careful there,” he says, talking out of the corner of his mouth. “You don’t want to go shooting another person without cause. There’s witnesses this time.”
Guthrie lights the cigarette, takes a long drag, and then exhales through his nose. He grins with the cigarette poking out of his lips.
“At least now you know what it’s like to lose something you love,” he says.
I can’t stop myself. I smack the cigarette out of Guthrie’s mouth and surge forward so his face is inches from mine.
“You motherfucker!” I growl. “Did you kill her?”
“I wish,” Guthrie says, and he spits in my face.
I grab Corgan Guthrie by the shirt and shove him backward, but Guthrie is ready for me, and he turns his body, taking my momentum and using it against me. I lose my balance, and Guthrie swings me around and drives me downward. My shoulder crashes into a table, upending it, and then I slam to the floor with Guthrie on top of me. My hat goes rolling across the stained carpet.
“Ain’t so fast without a gun, are you?” Guthrie snarls as he pulls his arm back to slam his fist into my face.
“Freeze!” Creasy shouts.
Guthrie does. Creasy’s pistol is aimed between his eyes.
I pull my own gun out and put the barrel under Guthrie’s chin.
“Get off me,” I say, “or so help me God, you’ll be joining your brother in hell.”
Chapter 33
I DRIVE DOWN the highway, my mind in a trance, my truck staying under the speed limit for once.
Creasy sent me home early. After we cuffed Corgan Guthrie and the local cops showed up, Creasy took me into the alleyway out back and gave me hell.
“Y
ou’re lucky they ain’t got a goddamn video camera in there,” Creasy said, all the usual joviality gone from his voice. “If that kind of behavior was caught on tape and went viral, hell, son, you’d never work in law enforcement again.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Being a Texas Ranger is an honor, son,” Creasy said. “You’ve got to uphold the integrity of that star on your chest.”
Creasy was right. With fewer than two hundred Rangers in a state roughly the size of France, most police officers see becoming a Ranger as the pinnacle achievement of their career. The citizens of Texas view the position with a respect—even a mystique—not always shared with city police or the highway patrol.
I tried to remember that time when Creasy was grooming me to be the next lieutenant, because now I’m not sure I’ll even be able to hang on to my job much longer.
I drove away, knowing that I would be sitting behind a desk for the next month. I also knew Creasy was absolutely right to censure me. At first, I thought the job would distract me from what happened with Anne—and it did, briefly—but I am falling apart and don’t know what to do about it. How much longer can I go on like this? I can’t stand not knowing what’s happening with the investigation.
As I approach my hometown, I don’t want to go to the ranch yet. I can’t see myself sitting alone in my unfinished casita, or going into my parents’ house to face my dying father and my unknowing mother. My mind wanders to the Pale Horse, but since I know Willow won’t be working yet, what would be the point in venturing there?
And then I see the Redbud water tower—that symbolic beacon of the small-town life I once knew. I take the exit ramp and cruise down Main Street. I think about the times Anne and I would eat dinner at our favorite restaurants, or go see a movie at the old two-screen cinema. There is the Dairy Queen where we used to buy ice cream—vanilla for me and strawberry for her—and then we’d sit out front on the picnic tables, talking about growing old together.
When I drive by the high school, I see the football team running drills on the practice field. It looks like that kid Jim Howard—assuming he’s the one in the red jersey—has a hell of an arm.
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