Texas Ranger

by James Patterson

  I skim for more, but there’s no mention of Cal or the phone calls in the rest of the entry.

  My heart is pounding, my stomach in knots. It’s a combination of nervous excitement, hoping I’ll find some clue, and reading about how much Anne loved Cal.

  I back up a few days.

  Cal dumped me. He says he’s not good enough for me. That’s the reason? Give me a break. There has to be something else there. Sara Beth says she’s sure he’ll come back to me. He always does. But there was something different about him this time. He was crying, saying that he couldn’t give me what I deserved.

  Oh, Cal, if you only knew: you’re the love of my life. Come back to me!

  My eyes are filling with tears.

  Anne was the love of my life. How could Cal be the love of hers?

  I backtrack through the weeks, skimming pages and looking for buzzwords that might warrant more attention. She doesn’t mention tutoring Jim Howard. There’s very little about Sara Beth or Patty. She mentions the showdown with Willow, but only briefly.

  That new singer at the Pale Horse was flirting with Cal again, and I gave her a piece of my mind. I probably made a fool of myself, but I feel a little disconnected from him lately. Cal said there’s nothing to worry about and that he’s not interested in Willow Dawes. But I can see there’s something there. I think a pretty singer in a bar reminds him of his old self: the partyer. Am I like that old country song? A good-hearted woman in love with a good-timing man?

  Most of the entries are about Cal. Their ordinary life together. He came home from a trip with a bouquet of flowers. He surprised her with a candlelit dinner. They went for a picnic and, with no one else around, made love on the blanket with the breeze kissing their naked skin.

  She writes about their song, “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” by Garth Brooks, and how they had a silly saying between them: “We’ll always have Baton Rouge.”

  I know it sounds corny, but whenever something goes wrong and we say that to each other, I always feel better. The other day, Cal asked me if I believed in heaven. I told him, “For me, heaven is Baton Rouge—with you!”

  The descriptions of the relationship aren’t all romantic and full of sunshine. Anne and Cal fought about money, like all couples. They bickered about little things: he wouldn’t remember to put the toilet seat down; she never cleaned the lint trap on the clothes dryer. Anne never quite trusted that the partyer in Cal was gone for good; Cal never thought he was good enough for Anne.

  As much as I’d love to pin evidence on Cal, there is nothing damning in these anecdotes. They just create a portrait of a real couple. The two had real problems, but Anne, by her own account, very much loved Cal.

  When I’m mentioned, it’s always in comparison to Cal—and I rarely measure up. In one passage, Anne talks about how Cal is gone for as many hours a week as I ever was, sometimes more. But his absence doesn’t bother her as much because it’s always planned, on a predetermined schedule, and he is good about calling, checking in, having long conversations on the phone. When I was caught up in an investigation, I might be gone for days without giving her any sort of update.

  I take a break from searching through her past. I lie back on her bed, put my fingers against the bridge of my nose.

  It’s hard to know you messed up your marriage, harder still to know that someone you hate measured up in a way that you couldn’t. It sounds like Cal’s only failure was one of confidence and self-respect. He didn’t think he was good enough. Which is the opposite of me.

  I always thought I was the right one for her, but I wasn’t.

  She always thought Cal was.

  I sit up and look at the books again. I’ve paged through the more recent two ledgers, but I haven’t cracked the oldest one, which dates from our marriage to just after our divorce.

  It’s highly unlikely that there’s anything that far back that’s going to help me figure out who her killer is.

  But I look anyway. I can’t help myself.

  I want to know what she thought during our marriage.

  And who she cheated on me with.

  Chapter 67

  WITH THIS VOLUME, unlike the others, I start from the beginning. Anne writes in the opening pages about why she’s starting a diary. She’s lonely, and she has no one to talk to about it.

  She provides details of our marriage, giving a new perspective. She writes about how I was away for long hours, and when I did come home, I was becoming increasingly distant. She gives the example of a cookout we went to at a former classmate’s house. She says I was quiet the whole time, sitting off by myself, and when I was around people, I looked as if I wasn’t paying attention to what anyone said.

  I have no memory of the cookout at all. Judging by the dates, I was up to my neck investigating a trio of skeletons that were unearthed during a flood. I was staying in San Angelo, coming home only for a day or two on weekends. I actually have no recollection of what Anne and I did during my brief times off.

  My memory is only of the investigation.

  I do remember the next entry: one of the biggest fights we ever had. Anne writes about how she confronted me about the growing distance between us. She wanted to go to couples counseling. I blew up and told her to give me a break.

  “We have everything we ever wanted,” I said. “You have your job at the school. I have my career with the Texas Rangers.”

  “What about kids?” she asked.

  I had recently seen a twelve-year-old Hispanic boy who’d been shot in the head.

  “There is no way I’m ever having kids!” I shouted—not something I truly meant—and I stomped out of the room.

  In her diary, her version is basically the same as mine, but it reminds me what an asshole I was.

  I wish I could go back and talk some sense into my younger self. I would tell him to communicate with Anne, not yell at her. I needed to listen, to compromise, to be open and honest and not angry. The pressure of my job was getting to me, and what I needed to do was share my feelings with her instead of bottling them up inside. And most important, I needed to care more about her feelings.

  I probably could have kept my career and my marriage if I was a little more willing to put myself in her shoes. If I just listened, tried a little harder to understand her pain.

  I don’t want Rory to have to quit his job. I’m so proud of him for becoming a Texas Ranger. That’s part of what makes him who he is. But our marriage is strained to the verge of breaking, and I can’t be the only one bending. I need him to put some energy into our marriage instead of his job. It might not take much. I think we could still thrive. I really do. I just don’t know how to get through to him.

  Later, she gives up.

  I’ve met someone. I feel so guilty, but this person makes me happy. I have butterflies when I’m with him. I never thought I would be the kind of woman to have an affair, but here it is. I know there is no future with this guy, but I can’t stop myself. I’m happier with him than I’ve been since my early years with Rory. But I feel guilty all the time. I’m a terrible wife. Rory deserves better.

  I set the book aside and put my head in my hands. What hurts is that Anne is blaming herself, carrying so much guilt when it was my fault. I deserved better? No, she was the one who deserved better all the time.

  I shouldn’t be reading this. None of this is any of my business.

  But I tell myself, what if this person she was having an affair with is somehow connected to the murder? Shouldn’t I keep reading to find out?

  Or am I just rationalizing my decision because, in my heart, I want to know?

  I can’t fight the urge any longer. I open the book and keep flipping through the pages. Then I find the answer, even if it’s not spelled out for me.

  I told Rory that I’ve been having an affair. I knew this would finally end our marriage, and I wanted to end things honestly. But I wouldn’t tell him who it was. (I’m scared to even write it down in this diary for fear that he might find out
.) He interrogated me like I was a suspect in one of his investigations, but I wouldn’t say. There is no telling what Rory might do if he found out I was having an affair with someone he’s arrested.

  I stand up and pace around the room.

  Cal.

  It was Cal all along, even back when we were married. It shouldn’t be a surprise to me, but somehow it is.

  As far as I knew, they didn’t start dating until a good year after our divorce. As much as I hated the asshole for dating Anne, I never thought it was him who took her from me.

  I leave the diaries on the bed and storm out through the house. Anne’s father has woken up, and both parents are sitting at the kitchen table when I blow past them. I spin my tires accelerating out of their driveway.

  Dad told me not to kick down Cal’s door until I was 100 percent sure.

  I’m not—but I’m going to kick that door down anyway.

  Chapter 68

  I SKID TO a stop in Anne’s driveway. Cal’s truck is gone, as I expected.

  I grab a pair of rubber gloves from the back of my truck, and I circle around the house. The world is so quiet that every step I make, every breath I take, seems magnified.

  At the back door, I stand and try to get my breathing under control.

  There used to be a screen door that swung out, but it’s been removed, leaving only the wooden door that swings inward.

  I look around, but there is nothing to see but trees and grass and fields on either side of the house. Somewhere close by, a bird is chirping.

  My boot connects—splintering the silence—and the door swings inward, flinging slivers of wood from the doorjamb.

  I stand at the threshold.

  Ever since Anne was killed, I’ve been torn by what I couldn’t do: DeAndre Purvis and Creasy told me not to get involved. I’ve been crossing every line they’ve drawn, but here is the final line—a physical one. If I cross the threshold, I risk the badge on my chest. I risk going to jail.

  I risk everything.

  But I enter the house.

  It’s a surreal experience to walk the halls of a place that’s so familiar to me, yet so alien. Everywhere I see traces of my old life—the microwave Anne and I bought together, curtains we picked out—but also widespread confirmation that this isn’t my house anymore. There’s a shirt of Cal’s thrown over a kitchen chair. Photos on the foyer divider are of the two of them. The walls are painted different colors. Most of the furniture is new, but there is a sofa in the living room that Anne and I bought together, a place where, when we were young, we would sit and watch TV.

  We made love there a few times.

  I wonder if she and Cal did, too.

  I shake my head, trying to clear it, and I start my search. First, I look in the bedroom, feeling for hard objects hidden in the clothes in the drawers. I look under the bed, feel under the mattress. In the closet, I feel around on the shelves, open shoe boxes.

  I look briefly in the living room, where the carpet has been torn up and the plywood is stained with blood. I look in the couch cushions, the drawers of the TV stand. There’s a stench coming from the kitchen, some kind of rotten food, but I don’t search there yet.

  I go to the spare bedroom, which Anne used as an art studio. She taught biology classes at the high school, but she also had a passion for creating art. There are lovely paintings: a beautiful cypress tree robust with fall colors, a creek with a cutbank full of intricately detailed roots, a rainbow over a hayfield on a cloudy day. She also has a series of exquisitely detailed charcoal drawings spread out on the desk. These are all portraits of recognizable people: her father, her mother, friends. There is one of Sara Beth, which I pause over and consider. God, she is beautiful.

  By far, Cal was Anne’s most frequent subject. There are sketches with him looking serious, others smiling, one making a goofy face with his tongue out and eyes crossed. It’s a side of Cal I’ve never seen. These sketches were drawn by a person who loved the subject very much.

  I tell myself to stay focused, so I search the closet, which holds Anne’s winter clothes and a few coats that must belong to Cal. I check the pockets and find nothing. I go through Anne’s desk drawers. Again, nothing.

  In the kitchen, I look under the sink, in the drawers, and in the pantry. The stink coming from the refrigerator is so bad I fight gagging. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I put a kitchen towel over my mouth and nose to lessen the stench, and I open the refrigerator door. The shelves are almost empty. There is a gallon of milk with an expiration date from two weeks ago. A moldy block of cheese.

  I open a crisper drawer, which contains bags of produce so moldy that it’s hard to tell what they once were.

  I glimpse metal underneath a plastic bag containing some kind of round fruit growing white fur and collapsing in on itself.

  I reach in, my hand covered by the rubber glove, and edge the rotten fruit aside.

  Underneath, sealed in its own ziplock bag, is a large handgun.

  A .45-caliber revolver.

  Chapter 69

  I DON’T TOUCH the gun. I leave the house quickly and without a sound besides my own pounding heart. In my truck, I slip off the gloves and drive away, thinking about my options.

  Cal is halfway across the country.

  My search was illegal.

  I can’t tell DeAndre Purvis how I saw the gun.

  I need to find a way for Purvis to discover the gun. But in the meantime, I need to go find Cal. If he somehow gets wind that the police have his weapon, then he might make a run for it, if he hasn’t already.

  I call the manager at Armadillo Shipping.

  “He dropped off his load in Detroit this morning,” Eli says.

  “Everything was normal?”

  “Well, we left messages with the warehouse there to have him call both me and that detective, Purvis. But he didn’t call either one of us.”

  “And they delivered the message?”

  “The foreman there says he told Cal himself,” Eli says. “He could just be trying to cover his ass, but I doubt it. He said Cal looked like death warmed over. He called him a ‘zombie,’ and said he wasn’t even sure Cal was registering what he was telling him.”

  I ask where Cal is headed next.

  “New Jersey.”

  “And how long will it take him to get there?”

  “About ten hours,” Eli says. “I’m sure he’ll sleep somewhere along the way. At least I hope he does. He’ll probably roll in there sometime tomorrow morning.”

  I pull onto I-35 toward Dallas.

  “How long will it take me to get there?”

  “You?” he says, shocked. “From Texas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hell, probably twenty-four hours on the road,” Eli says. “Add in some shut-eye, and you’re looking at two full days of hard driving.”

  “So if I drove all night, I could be there around the same time as him?”

  “Mister, I deal with professional drivers on a daily basis, and I would not recommend trying to drive twenty-four hours straight. That’s a recipe for catastrophe.”

  “Your opinion has been duly noted,” I say, repeating one of my father’s favorite refrains.

  I ask Eli to give me the address of the shipping company in New Jersey.

  After I hang up, I consider calling Purvis. Or Creasy.

  Then I get an idea, and I dial the anonymous help line the police created for the murder investigation. The way the tip line is set up, a volunteer with Crime Stoppers will listen to the message and pass along the information to Purvis.

  Purvis won’t hear it himself, so he won’t be able to identify me.

  When the phone beeps, I say, “I’m an acquaintance of Calvin Richards, and I stopped by his house today. The back door was open so I went inside. There’s a pistol in the refrigerator. It stinks in there. Maybe there’s another dead body.”

  I hang up. I know I’m sensationalizing by putting in the suggestion about another dead body, but I n
eed to give them extra incentive to investigate.

  If Purvis has to wait for a search warrant, it might be tomorrow before he can get into Cal’s house and look around.

  By then, I hope, I should be close to Cal.

  And when I find him, I’m hoping Purvis has issued a warrant for his arrest.

  Chapter 70

  CAL IS DRIVING east on I-80, north of Akron, Ohio. It’s midafternoon, and he’s falling asleep at the wheel.

  His bleary eyes wander over the road. He tries to focus them, but he can’t seem to. No matter how much he squints or blinks or tries to get them to obey, his eyes won’t stay in focus. They lock on some nonexistent point on the horizon, and the rest of his peripheral vision fades into foggy obscurity.

  There are fields on both sides of the highway, and Cal considers letting himself fall asleep. Just close his eyes and drift away. His rig would veer off the road, crunching into the shoulder, and then tip over, into the ditch lining the roadway. He imagines waking up for an instant—enveloped in a tornado of broken glass and the shriek of screeching metal—only for the world to go dark again.

  This time the darkness would last forever.

  The scenario sounds inviting, but there is an unappealing risk to it: survival.

  Maybe he wouldn’t die. Maybe he would wake up in a hospital, with broken legs and a concussion. Or maybe he would be paralyzed. Either way, there was a chance he’d be, sadly, alive.

  And there is the distinct possibility that the crash would take other motorists with him. Driving this truck is like wielding a thirty-ton battering ram. He could smash anything—or anyone—he hit.

  He pulls into a truck stop and gets out to fill his tanks, even though he still has plenty of fuel for several more hours. He paces around in the cool air, trying to shake himself awake.