by Ben Rehder
Dustin rose from the bed and walked over to the closed bathroom door. Dylan had been taking a shower, but the water had cut off a few minutes ago. “Want a Coke?” Dustin said.
“Yeah. I got some quarters on the nightstand.”
The moment Dustin stepped outside, he pulled his phone from his hip and listened to the new voicemail from the sheriff.
CHAPTER 30
Third day in a row, Leigh Anne Beech was in her BMW and on the move. Grady Beech had called Roy Ballard earlier to say that Leigh Anne was planning to meet a friend for lunch in Wimberley.
Roy waited at a rest stop and tracked her on GPS as she took McCall Creek Road in a northeast direction to Highway 290. But then, instead of going east, she turned west. Not the way to Wimberley. She hit Highway 281 and went north to Johnson City. Then she went west again.
By then, Roy was trailing in his Caravan. Way back, because he didn’t want her to become suspicious. Even a beige minivan could become conspicuous if you saw it in your rearview mirror for three days in a row.
Roy had learned that Leigh Anne Beech was not a prudent or attentive driver. She tended to talk on the phone a lot. Roy could tell simply by the way she weaved out of her lane at times and her speed would drop. Other times, she cruised along at 80 to 85 in places where the limit was 65 or 70. Roy didn’t want to get pinged for a ticket, but he had to take that chance. If he laid back and lost sight of her, he could always find her vehicle later via the GPS unit, but what if he’d missed a good photo op in the meantime?
She passed through a tiny community called Hye, home of Garrison Brothers Distillery, then through a larger community called Stonewall, home of Stonewall Motel, Stonewall Body Shop, and Stonewall Smokehouse. Roy wondered how they came up with such creative names.
Fifteen minutes later, Leigh Anne Beech reached the edge of Fredericksburg. Great little town with a German heritage. A tourist destination. Lots of unique little shops and restaurants. Leigh Anne Beech filled up with gas, then she stopped at a shop that sold Amish furniture, food, and gifts. She was in there for about twenty minutes, but when she exited, she had no packages or bags.
Then she got back into her BMW and drove to a motel called the Big Buck Inn.
Gilbert surprised Dustin by saying, “Let’s take a drive.”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere, for fuck’s sake. I’m tired of lying around this shithole.”
So they climbed into Dustin’s truck and headed out.
“Go west,” Gilbert said from the passenger seat. He had a large Styrofoam cup filled with ice, whiskey, and ginger ale between his thighs.
Dustin went west on Highway 290. What did it matter which direction they went? They were just out for a drive, right?
But then Gilbert said, “Take a left up here.”
Now Dustin was starting to wonder. Dylan, in the back seat, caught Dustin’s eye in the rearview mirror and shot him a look that said, What the hell is Gilbert up to now?
Dustin turned left on Avenue F, drove past the headquarters for the Pedernales Electric Cooperative, past some small, neatly maintained homes and trailers, and then the structures gave way to open ranch land. Avenue F had turned into County Road 203, also known as Miller Creek Loop.
Now Gilbert had his phone out, checking something.
“Where are we going?” Dustin asked.
Gilbert didn’t reply.
The road curved sharply west, then south again. Gilbert was looking at a map on his phone.
“Gilbert?”
“Not much further.”
“Where are we going?”
Silence. Then Gilbert said, “Slow down. Slow down. Yeah, right up here. Pull over.”
“Where?”
There was nothing but a gated ranch entrance with limestone columns on either side.
“Here,” Gilbert said.
Dustin simply stopped where he was, on the pavement. They had passed no other cars on this road, and it wasn’t likely they’d see anyone traveling in either direction. Gilbert set his drink in a cup holder, then opened the door and got out. He went to the bed of the truck and started rummaging around for something.
“What the hell are we doing?” Dylan said quietly.
Dustin shook his head, and then his eyes came to rest on a nearby mailbox. COLBY was stenciled on the side. The man in the parking lot outside the café—the game warden’s friend—had been named Phil Colby. Gilbert had managed to track him down.
And now Gilbert was coming around the side of the truck, and Dustin saw that he was carrying a scrap of two-by-four about three feet long.
Gilbert walked toward Colby’s gate but angled to the left, where an electronic keypad was mounted at the top of the metal post. This was how visitors got onto the ranch—by punching a code into the keypad. Gilbert drew back with the piece of scrap lumber and smashed it into the keypad. Again. And again.
“Goddamn it,” Dylan said.
Dustin looked straight ahead through the windshield. Nobody coming. He checked the rearview. All clear. Dustin decided that if a vehicle approached from either direction, he’d take off, leaving Gilbert standing on the side of the road.
“This is so stupid,” Dylan said.
Gilbert finished up with the keypad and let out an excited whoop. Then he went after the mailbox.
Leigh Anne Beech drove to the rear of the motel, out of Roy’s sight, and he wondered if she was meeting someone who already had a room. But less than a minute later, here she came, walking around to the front of the building, to the office. She checked in, which took no more than a minute or so, then returned to the rear of the motel.
Discretion. That’s why she’d parked first, so that her BMW wouldn’t be sitting in plain view from the road. And it was obvious she’d done this before. She knew she’d get a room in the back, because that’s what she always got.
Roy parked at a bank next door, which would give him a good view of any other vehicles that might pull into the motel lot. Just to be sure, Roy checked Google Maps and saw that there was no exit from the parking lot in the back of the property. So he stayed where he was. And waited. For a long time—thirty minutes—nobody came or went. Whoever Leigh Anne was meeting couldn’t already be in the room, because then she wouldn’t have needed to check in.
Oh, hell. What if they were on foot? Roy checked Google Maps again, using street view, and saw that a six-foot privacy fence followed the entire perimeter behind the motel. Unless somebody wanted to climb that fence in broad daylight, they’d enter through the front of the property.
A little while later, Roy realized a full hour had passed. If Leigh Anne was meeting somebody, they were very late. Roy was beginning to wonder if Leigh Anne might have some other reason for renting a motel room. Maybe she simply needed some time alone, and this was the best way to get it. Maybe she had some strange hobby that her husband wouldn’t like. Maybe she was a Santería priestess and she needed solitude to conduct animal sacrifices. Maybe she had a lover, but they were strictly into phone sex.
Then a white Chevy truck swung into the motel parking lot and drove around to the back.
“Turn around!” Billy Don shouted suddenly, just about giving Red an aneurysm, because they’d been riding in silence for the past few miles.
Now Billy Don was attempting to twist his massive torso and look back over his right shoulder at a vehicle they’d just passed—a blue GMC truck that was waiting to enter Highway 281 from Miller Creek Loop. The intersection was roughly halfway between Johnson City and Blanco.
“The red-haired guy!” Billy Don thundered.
“In that truck?”
“The passenger! He’s getting away!”
Red had instinctively slowed down, but now he gave it gas again, because he could see in his rearview mirror that the truck was going straight across the highway, crossing the median to go north. The opposite direction. Red had no choice but to go to the next crossover, several hundred yards down the road.
“H
urry!” Billy Don was twitching and jerking, still looking out the rear window.
“How do you know it was him?” Red switched into the left-hand lane.
“’Cause he was taller’n hell and had red hair.”
Red started to argue but changed his mind, because tall and redheaded pretty much summed up the person they were searching for. And if, somehow, against the odds, there happened to be two tall redheads in the area, would it really matter if Billy Don kicked the shit out of the wrong one? Sure wouldn’t matter to Red. And there would be no way of knowing, since the redhead would almost certainly deny beating up Armando, even if he’d done it.
“We’re gonna lose him!” Billy Don said.
“Just hold on, dammit.” Red finally reached a crossover and whipped the truck left, but there was oncoming traffic, so he had to wait.
“Shit! Go!”
“You want me to get hit by a semi?”
Finally there was a break in traffic, and Red gunned it, which meant his old Ford crept forward at a painfully slow pace.
“I don’t even see ’em anymore,” Billy Don said.
Red kept the accelerator mashed, and eventually the Ford began to pick up some speed. Sixty miles per hour. Then seventy. And eighty. Red wasn’t crazy about the idea of getting pulled over, but he figured if he got stopped, he’d tell the cop he was trying to apprehend a man who’d committed an assault.
Red had it up to ninety when Billy Don pointed toward a vehicle on the horizon and said, “I think that’s them.”
CHAPTER 31
Roy Ballard had to take a calculated risk.
He needed to know whether the person in the white Chevy truck was going to Leigh Anne Beech’s room, and there weren’t many ways to accomplish that.
Since there was no exit from the parking lot back there, he couldn’t pretend to be driving through. The privacy fence would prevent him from being able to see the rear of the motel from the next street over.
That left one viable option: Drive to the rear of the motel and pretend to be another customer. If he’d been thinking, he would’ve actually gone ahead and rented a room himself—providing perfect cover—but it was too late for that now. He would be conspicuous, especially to someone who was having a secret rendezvous with a lover. But the alternative was to give the man time to enter the room, then wait to see which room he exited, which could be overnight, or at least several hours. So Roy decided to take the gamble.
He counted to twenty after the Chevy disappeared from sight, then followed. When he turned the corner, he saw that the Chevy was already parked in a spot right next to Leigh Anne Beech’s BMW. There were no other vehicles back here. Not a one. A man had just emerged from the white truck, and he was about to close the driver’s door. But when he saw Roy’s van rounding the corner, he stopped. He leaned into the truck to get something. Well, to pretend to get something. It was bad acting. The man was stalling. He didn’t want to go into Leigh Anne Beech’s room until he knew that Roy wasn’t a danger.
So Roy went with his plan. Act like he was just another customer. He backed into a spot in front of the room at the near end of the building, a fair distance from the two other vehicles. He did not look in the direction of the Chevy. But in his peripheral vision, Roy could see that the man was still waiting.
Roy got out of the van and popped the rear hatch. Fortunately, he had a gym bag filled with some spare clothes back there. He slung the strap over his shoulder, closed the hatch, and turned toward the room. Just another traveler, checking into his room.
The man was still standing beside the Chevy, with the door open, now pretending to be checking his cell phone.
Roy had worked himself into a tight spot. He had to keep the ruse going. He took a credit card out of his wallet and slipped it into the door slot. Pulled it out and waited for the green light. Didn’t get one, of course. Jiggled the handle. The door remained locked. So Roy went through the steps again. No use. And once more. Jiggled the handle even harder.
He said, “Goddamn it,” just loud enough for the man to hear. Then Roy walked around the corner of the motel, as if he were returning to the front office to get a key that actually worked.
What he really did was simply stand there and wait. Sure enough, in just a few seconds, he heard the closing of the man’s truck door. Half a minute later, he heard the closing of a motel room door.
Okay, so he hadn’t actually seen which room the man had entered, but based on the man’s behavior and where he had parked—and the fact that there were only two vehicles back there—it was obvious the man had just entered Leigh Anne Beech’s room. It looked like Grady Beech was right.
But Roy would need additional evidence.
He waited another five minutes, then he returned to the van and quietly got inside. One of his best video cameras was mounted on a tripod, so now he aimed it toward the front door of Leigh Anne Beech’s room, just a few feet from the BMW’s front bumper. He kept the shot wide, so that it included both vehicles. He started recording. Anyone glancing toward the van, with its tinted windows, wouldn’t notice a thing. The camera could record for hours.
Roy grabbed his laptop and walked to a coffee shop next door to the motel. Might as well be productive while he waited. He’d jotted down the license plate number on the Chevy when it had first entered the motel lot, and in just a few minutes, Roy would have the name of the registered owner, thanks to a website to which he paid a monthly fee. Worth every penny.
A waitress came and took his order—coffee and a slice of apple pie. Before she came back, Roy had the name. Now he just had to wait until the BMW and the Chevy were no longer parked behind the motel.
Dustin Bryant was waiting for the stoplight in Johnson City to turn green when a truck—an old red Ford with dents on every panel and paint missing in spots—pulled up on the driver’s side. The passenger—a huge dude—motioned for Dustin to roll down his window.
The dude looked past Dustin at Gilbert. “Ain’t you the guy that put a thumping on that queer the other night?”
“What’s it to you?” Gilbert replied.
“Hell, don’t get uptight. I just wanna shake your hand, if you’re the guy. We don’t need that type of perverseness around here, that’s for sure. We got family values and such.”
“Yeah, well, you should tell your sheriff that,” Gilbert said. “He’s pretty uptight about it.”
“So you are the guy?”
The big man was pushy. The driver—a skinny dude wearing a feed store cap—was leaning forward and watching.
“Why do you think it was me?” Gilbert asked.
“We heard it was a tall redheaded guy. Someone that don’t live around here. Figured that was you. Y’all got dog boxes in the back, so I figure you’re from East Texas.”
The light changed, but there wasn’t a vehicle behind either truck, so Dustin stayed where he was.
“Well, I ain’t saying nothin’ either way,” Gilbert said, “but I can say if I was the guy, I wouldn’t have no regrets about what I done.”
Now the big man looked puzzled. “So... wait. You saying you did or didn’t do it?”
Gilbert laughed. “You ain’t too swift, are ya?”
The light turned red again.
The man’s expression changed to a scowl. “Ain’t no reason to get nasty.”
The driver said, “Of course he’s the guy, Billy Don. But he can’t admit it, because someone might tell the cops.”
“Bravo,” Gilbert said. “You musta been the valedictorian of your class.”
“Well, fuck you too, buddy,” the driver said.
“Back at ya,” Gilbert said.
Billy Don said, “If you’re gonna mouth off, why don’t y’all pull over and say it to my face?”
Dustin was so sick of this. Everywhere they went, Gilbert created trouble.
“Get bent,” Gilbert said.
Billy Don pointed a meaty finger at Gilbert. “Listen, you gangly sumbitch. That guy you beat up was a
friend of mine. That means you got a serious ass-kicking coming your way.”
“A friend? Ain’t that sweet. You one of his butt buddies?”
“One of his what?” Billy Don asked.
“What about you?” Gilbert said, addressing the driver. “You a rump ranger, too? Bet y’all have some nice three-ways, huh?”
Now the big passenger was red-faced and fuming, and he began to paw for the handle to open the truck door.
The light turned green and Dustin stomped on the gas. The red Ford tried to keep up, but it wasn’t long before Dustin couldn’t see it in the rearview mirror.
Roy gave it three hours, just to be safe. He finished his pie and his coffee, then he browsed through several of the quaint little shops along Main Street. When he returned to the motel and peeked around the corner to the rear lot, the BMW and the Chevy were both gone.
He went straight to his van, got in, and drove to a Sonic Drive-In less than a mile away. He ordered a Dr Pepper and a burger, and while he waited, he reviewed the video from the motel.
About an hour and a half after he’d started the recording, Leigh Anne Beech had exited the motel room by herself, hurried to her car, and drove away. Ten minutes later, the man from the Chevy had emerged. Roy was finally getting a good look at him. His hair was slicked back, wet from a shower. Decent-looking guy. Some might even say handsome. Mid-forties. Apparently Leigh Anne liked older men. The man glanced toward Roy’s van, then climbed into the Chevy and drove away. Didn’t take a genius to know what had happened in that motel room.
“Sir your fee linno, Kay?”
What? What did that mean?
Ryan was speaking gibberish. Dexter Crabtree could not understand his own son. It was unsettling.
“Huh?”