The truck’s headlights blast me and the moon reflects off the windshield, making it impossible for me to see who is behind the wheel.
I strap my gun belt around my waist in a quick, continuous motion.
The truck’s gears shift, and it starts toward us again.
I hesitate, wanting to see my target in the windshield, but the truck picks up speed with the windshield still obscured by glare.
I can’t wait.
My hand goes for the gun, and in that instant, the truck hits a rut, causing the headlights to drop slightly and the moonlight to shift on the windshield.
For an instant, I can see who is behind the wheel.
The same person whose fingerprints are on the bullets.
Sara Beth.
My hand is already moving, and before I realize I’m doing it, I’m squeezing the trigger. The bullet hits the windshield, and Sara Beth disappears behind a spiderweb of fragmented glass.
The truck rolls to a stop. The engine shudders and dies. I holster the gun and run to the side door and fling it open.
Sara Beth is leaning back in the seat, holding her collarbone. Blood is spilling down her blouse.
“Oh, Rory,” she says, her eyes overflowing with tears. “You shot me.”
It looks like the bullet entered just under her clavicle on her left side. It might have clipped the top of her lung, but judging by the blood—a trickle instead of a flood—it looks like it missed the major artery running to the shoulder.
She’ll live.
I’m relieved by this realization, but then another realization comes to me.
This is the person who killed Anne.
And Patty.
The person who tried to kill Willow. And me.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
Before she can answer, I spot something on the other side of her. Cal is lying in the passenger seat. At first I think the blood must be from his broken nose, but there’s way too much of it.
I crawl over Sara Beth to take his pulse, but there’s no point. His throat has been slashed wide open. The black knife, the one I shot out of his hand, is lying on the floorboard, sticky with blood.
“Oh, Christ,” I say, still staring at Cal. “What have you done, Sara Beth?”
Sara Beth’s answer comes as a tug on my gun belt. I whirl around to find her holding my pistol, aiming it at my chest.
“I’ve got one more whore to take with me before I go,” Sara Beth says, keeping the gun on me while she steps backward out of the truck.
“Willow!” I yell. “Run!”
But she can’t. Her ankle is broken.
Chapter 85
I OPEN THE passenger side door and run around the front of the truck. Sara Beth is moving slowly, so I’m able to jump over the wreckage and get to Willow first.
Willow is sitting, clutching her leg, naked. Her body is powdered with drywall dust. I’m standing in front of her, barefoot and shirtless, with a gun belt but no gun.
We’re two easy targets at close range.
Especially for someone who knows how to shoot.
And apparently, Sara Beth does. She did just fine putting bullets in Anne and Patty.
She steps over a broken hunk of drywall and some two-by-fours, and moves just inside the gaping hole in the wall of the casita. She points the gun downward, toward Willow. The bullet would have to pass through me to get to her, but Willow is obviously the target. I hold my hands out and ask Sara Beth to stop.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
She looks at me with sad, heartbroken eyes.
“Why didn’t you love me?” she says. “That’s all I wanted. I just wanted you, Rory.”
I’m speechless, but Willow isn’t.
“You’re fucking crazy!” Willow screams.
“That’s what Anne said,” Sara Beth snarls, “right before I shot her in the face!”
“I don’t understand,” I say, trying to calm her down and stall for time. “Did you think killing everyone else I cared about would make me love you?”
“I thought killing Anne would bring you back home,” Sara Beth says. “And that whore deserved it for taking you away from me in high school. I thought it might bring us together, you and me. And it did—for one night.”
“What about Patty?”
“I saw you two talking at the Pale Horse. Smiling at her. Laughing with her. I thought maybe you were falling for her instead of me. I should have known it was really this bitch I needed to worry about.”
She gestures with the gun, and I think she’s going to shoot, so I yell, “Stop!”
She does.
She stands there, waiting for what I’m going to say. Behind her, to the left of the stalled truck, I can see my parents’ house. All the windows are dark. There is no backup coming.
But the hand holding the gun is trembling. If I stall long enough, maybe Sara Beth will lose so much blood that she won’t be able to hold it up. If her attention falters, maybe I can rush her.
It’s a long shot.
But it’s the only shot I’ve got.
She has my pistol, and my other guns are locked in the trunk of the rental car. The keys are in my jeans, buried somewhere in the rubble.
“It’s me who broke your heart,” I say. “I dumped you in high school. I used you the night of Anne’s funeral. You shouldn’t blame Willow. She’s not at fault here.”
Sara Beth’s eyes are wild and sparkling, her skin iridescent in the moonglow. She’s looking back and forth between Willow and me, trying to take everything in.
“If you’re going to shoot anyone,” I say, “shoot me. Don’t shoot another innocent woman because I hurt you.”
“Oh, Rory,” she says, lifting her arm and looking at the gun as if it were a piece of produce she’s examining at the supermarket. “There are plenty of bullets in here for all three of us.”
“No, Sara Beth.”
“How about six for her?” Sara Beth says, gesturing at Willow. “For the sake of consistency. Then just one for you, Rory. In the heart. Not the face because I wouldn’t want to ruin that. Then, after I kiss you one last time, I’ll lie down next to you and join you. I’ll bleed out before the police arrive, don’t you think?”
I open my mouth to say something, but I can’t speak. I’m dumbfounded by her insanity.
That’s when I notice a glint of light behind Sara Beth. I look closer, and there it is again: a tiny wink from the shadows of the ranch house, as if the moonlight is catching a piece of glass.
I know what it is.
Sara Beth aims her gun. I flop down on top of Willow to shield her.
“Shoot!” I roar.
Sara Beth hesitates, confused.
What happens next takes less than a second.
There is a muzzle flash from the shadows of the ranch house.
A bullet hits the base of Sara Beth’s skull and exits through her cheekbone.
And the report of the rifle rolls over us like a wave of cracking thunder.
Then the second is over, and I’m staring at Sara Beth on the floor, at what’s left of her once beautiful face. Her blood spreads into a muddy puddle in the drywall dust.
All the women I ever cared about are dead now, shot through the face.
Not all of them.
I turn to Willow. I kiss her and hold her tightly in my arms.
Then I sit up and wave toward the ranch house to tell Dad we’re all right.
When we sighted in his rifle—with its low-light scope, perfect for dawn, dusk, or a full moon—Dad told me that he would be able to make the shot when it counted.
I never should have doubted him.
Chapter 86
I WATCH THE funeral from a distance. I stand under the shade of a tree while the crowd gathers around the grave. The gathering is every bit as big as it was for Anne’s funeral. I spot Darren and Freddy. People from high school. Willow—limping in her walking cast.
Before the reverend begins to speak, one of the mourners breaks off
from the group and starts up the hill toward me.
It’s DeAndre Purvis.
He doesn’t say a word at first, just comes up and stands next to me. The reverend begins speaking. We’re too far way to hear.
“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you here or not,” Purvis says finally.
“I didn’t think I belonged down there,” I say, gesturing to the crowd. “But I couldn’t stay away, either.”
“It was a nice thing you did,” Purvis says.
“It seemed the least I could do,” I say.
What we’re referring to is the fact that Calvin Richards is being buried in a plot right next to Anne Yates. I convinced Anne’s parents to allow it.
When the services have concluded and people start to head back to their cars, I say to Purvis, “I owe you an apology, DeAndre.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“I should have just let you handle it,” I say. “I was focused on the wrong guy the whole time.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he says. “We might never have figured it out if you hadn’t stepped in. She might have killed more people. We could be looking down at Willow Dawes’s funeral right now. You know that.”
The comment is of little consolation. Neither of us was able to solve the case in time to save Patty or Cal.
“For what it’s worth,” Purvis says, “there won’t be any charges filed against you. I’m recommending to the Rangers that you be reinstated. You’re a good cop, Rory. You’ve got a passion for the job. You need to rein that passion in sometimes, but mostly that’s a good thing.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But I’m not sure I’m going back.”
“I heard,” Purvis says. “Your lieutenant tells me you’re thinking about taking up ranching.”
In the days since Sara Beth rammed Cal’s truck into my casita, I’ve thought more and more about staying home. Helping to take care of the ranch as Mom and Dad grow older. I did some good as a law enforcement officer—some—but maybe that life is over. Maybe it’s time to do something else.
“You’re a good cop, too,” I tell Purvis. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you enough credit before. This town is lucky to have you.”
Purvis tells me that they’re wrapping up the paperwork on the case.
A group of kids from the high school came forward and admitted to making prank phone calls to Sara Beth. Purvis says that the prank calls probably gave her the idea to make her own prank calls to Anne. That way, no one would suspect Sara Beth. They found two apps on her phone: one to disguise her voice, the other to make the calls appear from random numbers.
Apparently, Jim Howard came forward and said that Sara Beth convinced him to lie about the time he was at her house the night of Anne’s murder. She said it would protect him from any suspicion when really she was trying to protect herself.
Purvis believes Sara Beth planted the gun—she had a spare key to Anne’s place—after I told her I was thinking about breaking in and looking for evidence.
She thought that if she eliminated Anne and Patty and framed Cal for their murders, I would turn to her for comfort.
She just didn’t count on Willow coming along and stealing my heart.
During my fight with Cal in the parking lot, I told him that the police found prints on the bullets. When Sara Beth heard this, she knew she would be discovered. She had nothing to lose by trying to kill Willow before she was arrested.
I forgot that Sara Beth’s father had been a truck driver. I wouldn’t have even known how to shift gears on that big truck, but Sara Beth could probably drive it as easily as Cal.
“I can’t believe she did all that,” I say. “She was my first love.”
“She was a psychopath,” Purvis says. “Plain and simple.”
He says that he’s been working with the Rangers to try to determine if there are any similar unsolved homicides that happened in Austin during the time Sara Beth lived there.
“I’m not sure what we’ll find,” Purvis says. “But she seemed so comfortable with killing that there might be more.”
“She sure fooled me,” I say.
“She fooled us all.”
With that, Purvis extends his hand, and I shake it. Then he walks away.
The crowd has cleared, and I wander down the hill, where two cemetery workers are shoveling dirt into the grave.
“Can I have a minute?” I ask.
They take a smoke break and linger under a nearby tree.
They’ve removed Anne’s tombstone and replaced it with a long adjoining one with both her and Cal’s names on it.
I kneel before the grave marker, and with tears streaming down my cheeks and my voice choked, I tell Anne I’m sorry. I say I hope there is a heaven and that she and Cal are there right now.
“Tell Cal I’m sorry,” I say. “For everything. And tell him thanks—for making you happy.”
When I recommended that Cal be buried next to Anne, I made one more suggestion. And it’s there on the gravestone.
Carved into the marble in between their names, in a cursive script, is their shared epitaph:
We’ll always have Baton Rouge.
Chapter 87
I TAKE MY gun—a nail gun, not my SIG Sauer—and press it against the two-by-four. I pull the trigger and, with a thwack, bury a sixteen-penny framing nail in the wood, fastening the stud in place.
“You about ready to knock off for the day?” Willow calls.
I wipe sweat from my brow and join her, my parents, and my brothers in the lawn chairs in front of the casita. It can hardly be described as a casita anymore. The new building is going to have three bedrooms, two baths, and a spacious living room.
The old casita, or what was left after Sara Beth smashed it with a ten-thousand-pound sledgehammer, was bulldozed days ago. Then Jake called me yesterday morning—I’ve been staying at Willow’s—and asked why I wasn’t out there helping.
“Helping do what?” I said.
“Pour the foundation.”
When I arrived, a cement mixer was on the lot, and a gang of old friends—Darren and Freddy included—were stomping around in the mud in rubber boots, spreading the concrete.
Today, volunteers showed up with a pickup full of loads of plywood and two-by-fours. In no time, the world was filled with the sound of hammering. Coach brought half the football team. Even DeAndre Purvis came out, wearing a tool belt instead of his usual gun belt.
Sometimes living in a small town has its benefits. Actually, it does most of the time.
Now the building is a skeleton of framed walls, ready for plywood on the sides and trusses on the roof.
I figure the community will help us get it to the point where it’s habitable. The finishing touches—carpet, paint, fixtures—will be my responsibility. Or, if she takes me up on my invitation to move in, mine and Willow’s.
Tonight, as the sun descends toward the horizon, I feel happier than I’ve felt in a long time. I’m still grieving, still hurting inside with a pain I don’t like to talk about, but every day is getting better. The hard work has been a needed distraction, the companionship among my family and friends even more cathartic.
“It’s good to be home,” I say.
Dad, who’s been looking better and better each day since his surgery, pats my knee the way he has since I was a boy. Then Mom and Chris load Dad into Chris’s truck and drive him back down to the ranch house. Jake says he needs to get home and help out with the baby.
“You want to head to my place?” Willow asks me.
Her leg is still in a walking cast, which slows her down, but only a little. She has already started performing onstage again, doing most of the show from a stool—and she still manages to pack the house.
“Let’s stay for a few minutes and enjoy the sunset,” I say.
The sun is turning the clouds to the west into a canvas of reds and purples and pinks.
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” I say to Willow.
She gives me a you-know-
me-so-well smile.
“Okay,” she says, and she asks the question she has every evening for the past week. “Have you given any more thought to going back to the Rangers?”
Ted Creasy has been pestering me with the same question. He even came out to the ranch to drop off a new Ford F-150.
“It’s yours when you’re ready, partner.”
I locked my guns and equipment in the toolbox, but otherwise the truck has sat untouched.
Everyone—Ted Creasy, DeAndre Purvis, my family, my friends, Willow—has been telling me not to be too hard on myself. I wish I could have solved the case in time to save Patty and Cal. And more than that, I feel the weight of all those murders. Sara Beth committed them. But she did them, in her twisted way of thinking, because of me.
I can’t help but feel guilty for that.
“So go out and do more good,” Willow always says. “The world is a better place with you working as a Ranger than it is without.”
She and I talked about how the Ranger life destroyed my relationship with Anne. I don’t want to do that to our burgeoning romance.
“We both have nontraditional careers,” she says. “I sing in a bar every night. You’re a Texas Ranger. We’ll make it work.”
But still, I can’t quite pull the trigger and commit. Taking over the ranch as my parents age would be a simpler, more peaceful life.
For now, I just want to enjoy the sunset with my new girlfriend.
But then I hear my phone buzz. The real world intrudes on my moment of bliss.
I don’t recognize the number, but I answer anyway. I have a horrifying moment of fear: I expect a garbled, computer-modified voice to start threatening me.
“Hey, amigo!” a voice with a Mexican accent says. “It’s Duncan Sandoval.”
The police chief down in McAllen. The one I met the day I shot off Rip Jones’s finger. Even though that happened the same day Anne was killed, it feels like a million years ago—another lifetime entirely.
“We need you, buddy” he says. “Your ole pal Rip escaped from jail. I’ve already talked to your lieutenant. He said we could borrow you for a few days. You know this guy’s movements and contacts better than anybody. We need to capture him quick. You’re the one for the job.”
Texas Ranger Page 21
