by Rehder, Ben
But they had only gone three hundred yards when George slowed the car and pulled into an overgrown driveway. Wade Morgan’s ninety acres. The old man hadn’t set foot in his hunting cabin for more than three seasons. Colby rousted partying teenagers off the land every now and then, occasionally a few poachers, but other than that, the property was virtually abandoned.
“I wanna make something clear right from the start,” Phil said as they bounced along the rutted road. “I never put out on the first date.”
When Marlin got to Vance Scofield’s ranch house, half a dozen vehicles were parked outside. One was a livestock trailer, owned by one of the night deputies, and it was already half filled with cardboard boxes.
There are two types of search warrants in Texas. One allows officers to enter a dwelling and search for a specific item or items alleged to be evidence related to a particular crime. The other, known as an “evidentiary search warrant,” allows the police to load up virtually anything they might want to sift through later—bank statements and other financial records, personal letters, computers, firearms, even furniture, if necessary. Apparently, that was the type of warrant Garza had secured on Scofield’s house.
There was a subtle nuance involved here that lifted Marlin’s spirits about Phil Colby’s situation. Because it was the second time the deputies had entered the premises—and they had relinquished control of the house in the meantime—the evidentiary search warrant had required the approval of a district judge, not a local justice of the peace. Getting a district judge to sign off takes more time and effort. What it meant was, Garza was serious about digging deeper. He wasn’t pointing his finger at Phil and letting it go at that.
As Marlin neared the front door, Ernie Turpin was coming out, wheeling a dolly piled high with more boxes.
Marlin held the door for him. “Garza around?”
Turpin’s forehead was beaded with sweat. “He had to run back to the office for something.”
“How about Tatum?”
“In the back.”
When Marlin found Bill Tatum—in a small, stuffy office, cleaning out a desk—he had a tough time deciphering the expression on the senior deputy’s face. Was he angry at Marlin’s presence? The two of them had always gotten along well, but they hadn’t spoken since Phil’s interview that morning. “Just couldn’t stay away, could you?” Tatum said, but with a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Before Marlin could reply, Tatum held up his hands in a just-kidding gesture.
“I talked to Jenny Geiger,” Marlin said. “The girl from the photograph.”
Tatum stopped what he was doing. “Yeah? When?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“And?”
Marlin ran through the entire conversation, hoping Tatum would appear as excited about the possibilities as Marlin was. But his expression didn’t change until Marlin got to the end. “Somebody jacked off on her door?”
“That’s what she said.” Marlin switched to the part of the phone call that interested him the most. “If Scofield was dealing, that opens up a whole new angle. Maybe a drug deal gone bad. Who knows what kind of scum he was dealing with.”
Tatum drank from a liter-sized plastic bottle of water on the desk. “I got more of these in my cruiser.”
Marlin shook his head.
Tatum chugged down the remainder of the bottle, then wiped his mouth. “If drugs were involved, we’ll find names, numbers…something. Nothing like that has leapt out at us yet.”
Marlin didn’t want to be the one to say it, but he did anyway. “Maybe he was hooked up with Lucas.”
Tatum let that sink in. They’d all considered it before, based on the fact that the two men had disappeared at the same time, but Tatum appeared doubtful. “We have absolutely nothing that says they even knew each other.” He screwed the cap back onto his empty water bottle. “Come on outside with me.”
They walked outside to Tatum’s cruiser. The trunk was open, with an ice chest inside, and Tatum grabbed another liter of water. He held it toward Marlin. “You sure?”
“No thanks.”
Tatum opened the bottle and drained half of it. “Hot in there.”
Marlin studied the surrounding countryside—rolling hills thick with cedars, live oaks, persimmon, and mountain laurel, with waist-high native grasses filling the gaps in between. Beautiful, but the scorching summer to come would turn the bluestem as brittle as uncooked spaghetti.
Tatum cleared his throat. “Listen, I want to be clear about something. I do not think Phil Colby has it in him to kill Vance Scofield. Not deliberately, anyway.”
Marlin waited. He didn’t like that last sentence.
“On the other hand,” Tatum continued, “the lab in Austin is going over Phil’s truck right now. They’re not done, but so far, they’re saying the tires look like a match.”
Marlin didn’t like that sentence, either, but he wasn’t discouraged. Matching tires to a particular set of tracks—like linking hairs to a specific person—was still an imprecise science. There was plenty of room for error. “So what this Geiger woman said…you think I’m grasping at straws?” he asked, unable to keep a small amount of challenge out of his voice.
“I didn’t say that.”
“All I’m doing is checking other angles.”
“I can appreciate that, John, but I just want to know why Phil was over there. If something happened, he needs to be up front with us. Whatever the case, I really think you should prepare yourself for…well, for anything. And I’m saying that as a friend of yours—which I’ve always considered myself to be—and not a cop.”
Anger had been building in Marlin’s gut, but he didn’t want to take it out on Tatum. He turned to lean against Tatum’s vehicle, and he saw Nicole Brooks approaching, carrying a large brown box, much like the ones Ernie Turpin had carted out earlier. But as she neared, Marlin spotted commercial printing on the side, along with a logo that had been drilled into his brain through countless magazine ads and television commercials. A surge ran through him as unexpected as touching a live wire.
Marlin said, “Scofield must’ve had a hell of a sinus condition.”
Tatum looked at him, puzzled. Then he, too, spotted Brooks. The box in her hands was a wholesale lot of over-the-counter allergy medicine. She reached inside and came out with one of the individual retail packages.
“Pseudoephedrine,” she said. “The same brand we found at Lucas’s house. We got four more boxes just like this in the garage.”
“I’ll be damned,” Tatum said.
Marlin could hear a vehicle coming up Scofield’s long caliche driveway. “Thank you, Nicole.”
She gave him a wink.
Whoever was driving the vehicle was going heavy on the gas. The car came through an opening in the trees, and Marlin saw that it was Bobby Garza’s cruiser.
The sheriff pulled in behind Marlin’s truck and quickly climbed out, carrying a single piece of paper. “I just got this by email from a sergeant in Florida,” he said, frustration in his voice. He slapped a laser-printed photo down on the hood of a cruiser. “Tell me that ain’t Lucas Burnette.”
22
LUCAS HAD SEEN plenty of cops in the past six days. Small-town Barney Fifes keeping a watchful eye on their domains. Highway patrolmen cruising the interstates. County deputies looking stern as they ran radar on state highways. But none of them had made Lucas particularly nervous. He had realized early on that—even on lesser-traveled roads—he was virtually anonymous, just one car among thousands, like one ant in a swarming mound. His sense of confidence had come from the fact that they wouldn’t pull him over as long as he didn’t give them a reason to do so. Sure, maybe they had been looking for the Corvette back when he was still driving it, but there were a lot more Corvettes on the road than one might think. And now that he was driving a plain-vanilla hatchback, well, the odds were astronomically in his favor.
Why, then, as he pulled into the motel parking lot, did his gut tighten up when he s
potted a black-and-white parked at the motel across the street? The cruiser was empty, parked in front of the office. This struck him as odd. If the motel manager had called in a complaint, it would almost certainly be against a guest. And if a guest was causing trouble, wouldn’t the cop park in front of that guest’s room?
Lucas decided that he was being way too jumpy, that his nerves were shot from the failed mission at the bar on Duval Street. That didn’t stop him from pulling into the parking lot of his own motel, climbing out, and poking his head around a corner to get a clear view across the street.
He lit a cigarette—so any other guest who came along would peg him as a smoker staying in a nonsmoking room—and he waited.
This is silly, he thought. I’m nearly two thousand miles from home. Nobody is looking for me here.
He absentmindedly ran a hand through his brown hair, wondering if the color change, along with the goatee, was enough to disguise his looks. Maybe he should’ve bought some cheap glasses at a drugstore. He took a drag and could feel the nicotine rush, the pulse pounding in his temple.
He was halfway through his smoke when the cop exited the office carrying a sheet of paper. Or maybe it was a stack of sheets, it was hard to tell.
Now Lucas wondered: Am I being paranoid? Or is this cop handing out flyers at motels?
Seconds later, he had an answer. Or, at least, all the answer he needed.
The cop got into his cruiser, swung from the lot, and came directly across the street to Lucas’s motel. He parked at the office. He climbed out, still carrying a stack of papers, and went inside.
Oh, no. Not now. Not after all he’d been through.
Lucas sprinted to his room, swiped the key card, and threw the door open. Stephanie was sitting on the foot of the bed, a keyboard in her lap, staring at the TV screen.
“We’ve gotta go!” he yelled. “The cops are out front!”
Stephanie didn’t budge, but Lucas hardly noticed. He grabbed the two suitcases. They’d take what was in them. Everything else would be left behind. They’d have to start all over, in some other town, probably in another state. Everything they had wanted—or maybe it was only what Lucas had wanted—had evaporated in a matter of seconds.
Stephanie still hadn’t made a move. “Come on, Steph! What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”
He saw that she was crying—maybe homesick, or maybe just one of her moods.
“Steph,” he said quietly, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Seriously, we’ve gotta get out of here. I know I said they wouldn’t find us, but they did.”
She finally turned his way, and he was shocked by the look of pure hatred on her beautiful face. “What the hell happened on Sunday, Lucas?”
Her tone stopped him cold. He set the suitcases down, then turned and closed the door. “What are you talking about?”
She gave the tiniest shake of her head.
“Steph? Steph, talk to me. What’s going on?”
“I’m talking about Vance!” she screamed. She threw the keyboard at him, but it reached the end of its cord, stopped in midair, and clattered harmlessly to the floor.
What the hell is going on?
Stephanie pointed at the television. “Did you think I’d never find out?”
Lucas turned to the screen. Stephanie had been surfing the Internet. She had logged on to the Web site for the Blanco County Record. Right there, at the top of the page, next to a photo of Vance, was the headline:
DROWNING NOW LABELED HOMICIDE
Stephanie was sobbing. “Why, Lucas? Why the fuck did you have to do that!”
There was a knock at the door, and Lucas realized it would all come to an end now. Actually, it was just the beginning of a new stage, one that was certain to be a nightmare. There was so much to explain, and he knew that nobody would believe what had really happened. Not the cops. And not Stephanie, now that she knew he’d deceived her.
“Steph, I can explain.” His words sounded so feeble and inadequate. “I swear to God—I didn’t do it.”
She looked at him, and Lucas was heartbroken to see that there was fear in her eyes. She had her knees drawn to her chest, gently rocking, as pitiful as a lost child.
There was a second knock, firmer this time, and Lucas realized he had no more fight left in him.
“I love you, Stephanie.”
She didn’t respond.
Lucas turned and opened the door. Standing there was a cleaning woman. “Make up your room?”
When Red came out of the bedroom, it was several hours later than he had expected. Of course, most of that time had been spent sleeping off the vodka, but as for that other part—doing right by Lucy—he figured he’d done a pretty good job. They’d had the radio on, and Red had made it through a George Strait song and most of a Faith Hill. In hindsight, it might’ve been that image of Faith bouncing around in his head that had put him over the edge. But he hadn’t heard any complaints from Lucy, and he took that as a good sign. She’d even commented on the blanket he’d bought down in Nuevo Laredo. Orange and white, with a ten-point buck staring you in the face. One hundred percent acrylic, and fuzzy as a newborn chick. In the twenty years he’d owned that blanket, she was the first lady who’d ever liked it. That right there said something about her good taste.
Red found Billy Don in the living room, parked on the couch, watching some old John Wayne war movie. Red eased himself into the recliner, not saying much, playing it cool, but when he cut his eyes to the side, he saw Billy Don grinning at him.
“Where’s Lucy?” the big man asked.
“Still sleeping,” Red replied, fighting to keep the smile off his face, but his cheeks wouldn’t cooperate.
“You ol’ dog.” Billy Don tossed an empty beer can at him. “Tomato juice, my ass.”
Red was about to bust with pride. But there was something else there. Something he was afraid to acknowledge, because he might scare it away, or somehow jinx it. It had been a damn long time since he had felt this way, the last time being when he had bought his Remington Model 700 at the pawnshop in Austin. The excitement rippled through him like the kick from a good slug of tequila.
Red was pretty sure he was in love.
There. Now he had at least admitted it to himself. It wasn’t something he was ready to blurt out to Lucy quite yet, and he and Billy Don sure didn’t discuss that sort of thing. So, for now, it’d be his own little secret. Which wouldn’t be a problem, because Billy Don was already distracted by some kind of commotion on the screen. Bunch of bombs going off and stuff.
When things had quieted down, Billy Don said, “Hey, Red, why did they call it the longest day?”
“Do what?” Red hadn’t been paying much attention. His thoughts were still on Lucy, and he was wondering if she expected him to return to the bedroom for an encore.
“The invasion at Normandy,” Billy Don said, nodding at the TV.
Red mulled it over. “Because they timed it with the summer whaddayacallit…the solstice. Longest day of the year. Sun don’t set till, like, nine o’clock. Gave ‘em plenty of time to kick some ass.”
Billy Don looked at him with uncertainty, then seemed to accept the explanation and returned his eyes to the screen.
When a commercial came on, Billy Don had another question. “What time we going after the safe?”
“This afternoon. Lucy says she normally drops by the old man’s place at around four.”
That project seemed so unimportant to Red now. What was money when you had love? Who needed to pay the bills when you could share a bed with a gal like Lucy? He’d just as soon hole up in the bedroom and not come out for a week or two. Hell, he’d be making it all the way through the Country Top 40 by then. Song after song, he and Lucy exploring each other like a couple of kids with—
Billy Don cut into Red’s thoughts by saying, “I’m still feeling kinda funny about the whole thing.”
Red could understand that. He had a few doubts himself, when he thought too long abo
ut it. But he said, “You heard how Lucy explained it. The taxes and all that. Don’t you want your money back?”
Billy Don grunted, which could’ve been taken as either a yes or a no. “What about the old man?” he asked. “Won’t he notice the safe’s gone?”
“See, that’s the perfect part of this,” Red replied. “Lucy says the old man is getting a little nutty in his old age. She says she mentioned the safe to him one day, and he had no idea what she was talking about. Looked at her like she was crazy. What that means is, he don’t even know it’s there. Besides, even if he said something to somebody, they’d think he was confused.”
Yep, it was perfect, all right. Which made Red wonder all the more why he felt like they were crossing some line he shouldn’t cross. He considered himself a fairly moral person overall. Sure, he’d kill a deer out of season now and then, do a little spotlighting at night, and maybe even cross a few property lines to get a shot at a wild pig, but he never could see why that was such a big deal. Those wild animals belonged to everybody. And what’s the difference between shooting a buck from your truck instead of a deer blind? He wished someone would explain that to him sometime—somebody other than a judge.
On the other hand, carting off a strongbox full of money? Well, Red figured the ethics involved were a lot more hazy. He had a hard time making it right in his head, no matter what Lucy said.
A few minutes later, the movie came back on, and Billy Don said, “The Duke would never do nothing like this.”
Rita Sue Metzger’s truck was parked in front of her house, so Marlin pulled in behind it.
Just minutes earlier, back at Scofield’s house, the discussion had moved at a rapid clip as the team weighed their latest break.
Marlin, holding the photo: “Where’d it come from?”
Garza: “Tourist took it in Key West. They’re already canvassing the motels.”
Marlin, shaking his head: “Florida? Okay, check this out. I called Stephanie’s cell phone an hour ago. Some old guy answered, and I thought I had the wrong number. He said he was in Miami. Didn’t know who Stephanie was—but he asked me if it was my phone, like he didn’t know whose phone he had.”