Stag Party (Blanco County Mysteries Book 8)

by Ben Rehder

“You know I didn’t do it,” Red said now. “Irregardless of how it might look, there’s no way I’d do something like that. That should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. Like you.”

  Red waited for Billy Don to say something—anything—to make him feel better. Billy Don remained quiet. They were in the living room of Red’s aging mobile home—Red in the easy chair, Billy Don on the couch, where he usually sat. Over the years, Billy Don’s weight had created a hollow in that couch, and now he sat so low that his knees were almost at the same height as his shoulders. The TV was tuned to ESPN with the sound turned low.

  “I mean, what kind of sick, twisted, heartless sumbitch would hurt an old man like that?” Red asked.

  He was giving Billy Don another chance to say something supportive, like, “Well, I don’t know, Red, but I know for sure it wasn’t you.”

  Billy Don kept silent.

  It was starting to get on Red’s nerves.

  “You got something to say or what?” he finally said.

  “About what?” Billy Don said.

  “Well, duh. What are we talking about, Billy Don? Harley, that’s what. Couple times now I’ve mentioned that I didn’t kill him, but you ain’t said a word.”

  “Didn’t think I had to,” Billy Don said. “I know you didn’t do it.”

  Okay. Good. That was a little bit of a relief.

  “What about the cops?” Red said. “You think they think I did it?”

  Red didn’t usually solicit Billy Don’s opinion on anything more important than good places to eat, because Billy Don was an expert in that particular area. But in this case, Red found himself wanting reassurance that he wasn’t in legal jeopardy, even if that reassurance had to come from a half-wit cedar chopper.

  Billy Don simply shrugged and took a long drink from his Keystone Light.

  “Is that all you got?” Red asked.

  “Huh?” Billy Don said, which partially came out as a belch.

  “Jeez, Billy Don. You’re supposed to offer some words of encouragement. That’s what friends do. Tell me I’m in the clear.”

  “But you might not be.”

  Red let out a sound of exasperation.

  Billy Don said, “What, you want me to lie?”

  “Why would they think I done it?” Red said. “I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t know that. And it ain’t like you’ve got a sparkling reputation.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Red said, sitting up a little straighter.

  “Well, for starters, you’re a poacher,” Billy Don said. “A road hunter. And a trespasser. You don’t follow traffic laws at all. You’ve been known to tell people things that weren’t true, and to trick them into making deals they shouldn’t make, and you sometimes take things that aren’t yours.”

  “So I’m a liar, a con artist, and a thief?” Red said, with all the indignity he could muster. “That what you’re saying?”

  “You saying you’re not?” Billy Don asked. Before Red could answer, Billy Don said, “Remember the time we slipped into that old man’s house and carted his safe away when he was sleeping? Not just sleeping, come to think of it. That woman we was working with doped him up, and we knew it, and we didn’t care.”

  Red had no response.

  “Or the time we threatened Phil Colby with a gun because Roy Swank paid us to steal that trophy buck?”

  “It...it was a pellet gun,” Red said.

  “Yeah, but we meant for him to think it was real.”

  Red couldn’t think of a clever comeback.

  “What about the time you suckered that kid into telling us where that supposed chupacabra was? Then when we caught it—trespassing on someone else’s ranch, I might add—you decided we needed to steal Trey Sweeney’s tranquilizer gun before we toted it off.“

  “We borrowed that gun,” Red said.

  “Is it really borrowing if you never return it?” Billy Don asked. “Hell, just a few weeks ago, we stole that dead pig from them East Texas rednecks and won the bounty,” Billy Don said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have 25 grand to spend and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

  “Ha! You’re the one who stole that pig!” Red said. “Not me. You’re the one that grabbed it from the back of that truck!”

  “No argument, and that just shows what kinda bad influence you are. And besides, you drove like Jeff Gordon to make sure we got away with it.”

  Billy Don finally stopped talking, and Red remained quiet himself.

  It was sort of unsettling to hear someone list Red’s various illegal activities and transgressions over the past few years. It made him realize that some of the local cops might not recognize his underlying sterling qualities and upstanding character. They might actually think of him as a lawbreaker. A thug. A punk.

  Of course, one of Red’s strongest attributes was that he had never been overly concerned with what people thought of him. But in this case, it could be a problem.

  What if the sheriff and his deputies really did come to the conclusion that Red had killed Harley? What if they tried to nail him for a crime he didn’t commit? That sort of thing happened all the time. Crooked or lazy cops were always looking for an easy to way to close a case. It would be simple for them to pin the murder on Red. The local game warden, John Marlin, had always had it out for him, and so did most of the deputies. The proof of their bias against him was in the sheer number of citations they had given him over the years.

  “You look a little freaked out,” Billy Don said.

  Red grabbed his half-empty beer, which was getting somewhat warm by this point. That didn’t stop him from chugging the rest of it.

  Then he said, “There’s only one logical way for me to avoid a travesty of misjustice, while at the same time making sure the person who really killed our friend Harley rots in prison for it.”

  The expression on Billy Don’s face indicated that he was reluctant to hear whatever Red might say next.

  “I’ve got to catch the killer myself,” Red pronounced.

  Billy Don began to laugh. He clearly thought Red was joking. Or maybe he thought Red was serious, but that the idea, by itself—that Red could actually catch a killer—was a real rib-tickler.

  “And I’m gonna need your help,” Red said.

  Billy Don stopped laughing.

  9

  A few days before Red O’Brien and Billy Don Craddock found Harley Frizzell’s body, Phil Colby—John Marlin’s best friend since childhood—was filling his Chevy truck at a gas station in Johnson City when a much larger truck began to back toward Colby’s rear bumper. The driver was attempting to fill up at the neighboring pump in the same row, but the two pumps were close together, and it was obviously going to be a tight fit.

  Colby watched as the black Ford F350 inched closer and closer. Five feet. Four. Three. At two feet, Colby called out, “Easy there, hoss!”

  One foot.

  Then the Ford’s bumper smacked into Colby’s Chevy. Hard.

  “Whoa!” Colby yelled.

  The pitch of the Ford’s diesel engine dropped as the driver let off the gas. The rear window was tinted too darkly to see inside the cab of the Ford.

  Colby had moved alongside the rear fender of his own truck, and now he waited for the Ford to pull forward, so he could determine if there was any damage. He doubted there would be more than a scratch on his heavy-duty steel bumper, and on an old ranch truck like his, it would be just one of hundreds of scratches. Still, though, the driver of the Ford needed to be chastised for being so careless.

  But the Ford didn’t pull forward. It sat idling for ten seconds, still butted up against Colby’s Chevy. Then the driver’s door opened, but nobody exited. Colby waited. Ten more seconds passed.

  “Pull up!” Colby yelled, gesturing with his arms.

  Still nothing. What was the driver doing? Talking on the phone? Talking to someone else inside the truck?

  Finally, the engine died.
>
  Then one of the largest men Colby had ever seen emerged from the Ford. He was plenty tall—perhaps six-two or six-three—but most of his size came from being freakishly broad and thick all over. Rectangular. Like a block of granite. Probably close to four hundred pounds, by Colby’s estimation.

  The man had a dimpled chin covered with dark stubble. The hair on his head was sheared to a sparse fuzz. He was wearing scuffed work boots, enormous blue jeans that were tattered and nearly white from repeated laundering, and a camo T-shirt that stretched tight over his barrel-like torso. His biceps were as big around as Colby’s thighs. His face was flat and broad, with a tiny, incongruous nose and small, round eyes reminiscent of a turtle’s. Deep pock marks hinted at a case of severe acne in the past. It was, by even the most objective view, an unfortunate face. An unpleasant face. An ugly face. But youthful. This man wasn’t any more than 24 or 25 years old. Just a kid.

  He walked slowly around the front of the Ford and came around to the passenger side, where he removed the Ford’s gas cap and began to fill the tank. Only then did he seem to notice Phil Colby standing less than eight feet away.

  He looked at Colby with no expression on his face whatsoever. Colby stared back. Neither man looked away for several moments. Colby heard a loud thump behind him, indicating that his tank was full and the gas pump had shut off automatically.

  Colby remained where he was.

  The kid said, “Need something?”

  Colby paused for a beat or two before speaking. He tended to have a hot temper, and he was the first to acknowledge it. Marlin had also joked on several occasions that Colby had been born without the gene for fear—which was true in some situations. Colby had always recognized that he didn’t scare easily, and in his own experience, there was no reason to be any more fearful of a big man than there was of a man Colby’s size or smaller.

  But he was also wise enough to weigh the pros and cons of inflaming an encounter like this one. How far do you push a guy for dinging your bumper? What was there to gain?

  So Colby simply said, “Maybe you weren’t aware of it, but you backed into my truck.”

  The kid did not reply. His expression remained blank. But he maintained eye contact.

  “Looks like your truck is brand new,” Colby said, “and I’d hate to see you mess it up on a crummy old truck like mine.”

  No response. The indifference was possibly more irritating than the careless driving.

  “And now I understand why you didn’t hear me holler,” Colby said. “You’re deaf, right? You can’t hear me speaking right now?”

  Finally, the behemoth spoke. “You know the best thing for you to do right now?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Get in your truck and drive away.”

  On another day, depending on Colby’s mood, he might have pushed the conversation further. He might have said something like, “I’d ask you to go first, but I’m afraid you might hit a light pole or a brick wall.”

  Instead, Colby took a deep breath. Wasn’t worth it. Not for this punk.

  So he turned and walked back to the pump. He removed the hose handle from his tank and inserted it back into the pump slot. Waited for his receipt. Then climbed into his truck, shut the door, and started the engine.

  As he eased forward, he couldn’t help glancing in the rearview mirror. The kid gave Colby a mock salute. It was meant to be sarcastic. Taunting. You made the right decision. Now take yourself on down the road.

  Colby tapped the brakes.

  Shit. He knew better, but he couldn’t help it.

  Without thinking it through any further, he dropped his truck into reverse. He didn’t floor the gas pedal, but he goosed it pretty good and hit the Ford about twice as hard as the kid had hit Colby’s Chevy.

  The result was a fairly loud and satisfying crash of steel against steel. A middle-aged woman at the parallel row of pumps let out a little shriek of surprise.

  Colby kept his eyes on the mirror. The punk didn’t budge. He kept pumping gas, staring straight ahead as if nothing had happened. Colby waited five seconds, just to be sure. Then he shifted back into forward gear and drove away, wondering why he had given into the impulse.

  Nicole Marlin drove past the elaborate limestone pillars at the entrance of a gated subdivision on Old Marble Falls Road and turned right a half-mile farther north on a rutted dirt driveway. She’d been here at least six or seven times, but that had been more than a year earlier—before Rancho del Blanco Colinas opened for business.

  Quite a study in contrasts, really.

  The “ranch,” which was really just a rural neighborhood, was home to people who were willing and able to pay an extravagant price for a ten-acre tract. There was, of course, a long list of deeded restrictions for anyone wanting to live there. No hunting or target shooting. No livestock, except for horses. No homes smaller than 2,500 square feet. No pier-and-beam construction. No brush burning or fireworks. No improvements—such as outbuildings or permanent landscaping—that didn’t meet the approval of the architectural control committee. Nicole wondered if you needed a permission slip to go to the bathroom.

  At the other end of the spectrum, the residents in areas surrounding Rancho del Blanco Colinas were mostly low-income working-class folks living in mobile homes and small frame houses set back in the cedar trees. Rednecks, some urban dwellers would call them—and many of the people labeled as such didn’t mind. In fact, they often wore the term with pride—a badge of honor that symbolized independence, an adherence to traditional values, and resistance to progressive big-city ideas.

  Nicole was aware that many of these same people—the ones who saw socialism in every government program—very often needed to rely on social safety nets at one point or another. Food stamps, for instance. Medicaid. Unemployment insurance. Likewise, some crime victims condemned big government, but never asked who paid for such things as the victims’ compensation fund, psychiatric counseling, the loss of earnings, or even crime-scene cleanup.

  There were times when Nicole was tempted to point out the hypocrisy, but ultimately, she had no use for political discussion or debate. She didn’t have the patience or the time for it. She was too busy helping those who needed help, regardless of their political affiliation, and Nicole didn’t really care why they needed assistance, or even if they fully understood the source of their relief. Many of them lived at or below poverty level—just one financial crisis away from total destitution.

  That reality caused Nicole to feel self-conscious as she parked her shiny new Honda CR-V on the grassless, hard-packed earth next to the dirty, dent-riddled Mercury Sable in front of Heather Fitzgerald’s mobile home. Nicole noticed that the rear passenger-side window was covered with duct tape and plastic sheeting. The tires were bald. The license plate hung at an angle, missing one mounting bolt. Did the vehicle even run?

  The mobile home itself was in somewhat better shape, which was to say it hadn’t fallen into an obvious state of disrepair or neglect. There was no yard to speak of, and there never had been. That was common out in the country. Why replace the native plants, grasses, and weeds with a lawn that would need watering and mowing? Who had the time for that?

  Nicole killed the engine, stepped from her vehicle, and mounted the steps to the front door. She raised her hand to knock, and the door swung outward—as mobile home doors do—and there stood Heather. It had been thirteen months since Nicole had seen her last, and the physical changes were dramatic. Heather had lost weight—at least fifty or sixty pounds. Before, she had been too heavy, but now she was too thin. Bony. She appeared to have aged ten years. Her face was gaunt, but unusually dark, and the area around her eyes was swollen. Her brown hair was cut short and shot through with gray.

  “You wasn’t quite ready for it, huh?” Heather said. “I ain’t quite the runway model I used to be.”

  Nicole hated to think that the surprise was showing on her face.

  “How’re you doing, Heather?”


  Dumb question.

  “Oh, you know. But hell, this is just another bump in the road, ain’t it? Appreciate you coming out.”

  10

  “Tell me a little more about deer scents,” Garza said as he and Marlin drove south on Highway 281 in the sheriff’s marked unit.

  “What do you want to know?” Marlin said.

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and I guess I’m confused. Most of them are just doe urine, right? Or buck urine? What makes one better than another? Aren’t they all pretty much the same? I guess my point is—how could Harley create a scent that was different than all the others on the market?”

  “I’m no expert,” Marlin said, “but I do know there are differences. Or there can be. In fact, making scents can be sort of an art form. I think trappers made the first scents years and years ago, and I know some trappers who still make their own scents. There’s a long history to it.”

  The sheriff was shaking his head. “I’m still not following. Do they add something to the urine or what? What kind of formula are you talking about?”

  “With urine, yes, I think it’s just straight urine, with nothing added, but there are other kinds of lures—like tarsal gland scents. That’s the gland—”

  “On a buck’s hind legs, yeah,” Garza said. “That clump of hair. They pee on it.”

  “Exactly,” Marlin said.

  “But I don’t remember why the bucks piss on their own legs,” Garza said.

  “They communicate with the smell. It’s a territorial thing. It sends a challenge to other bucks in the area, because the urine combines with the secretions from the gland, and with bacteria in the hair, and that creates an odor that—”

  “Okay,” Garza said, waving a hand. “You’re gonna make me urp.”

  Marlin smiled. “Weak stomach this morning?”

  “I’m fine with blood and guts, you know that. But for some reason, this gland and urine talk—just yuck.”

  “You’ve smelled it when you’re field dressing a buck,” Marlin, “and it can get kind of rank. The more dominant the buck, the stronger the odor. Supposedly.”