If he hit the truck at any speed at all, he would have totaled it. But because he hit it from only a few feet away, starting at a dead stop, it looks like he mostly pushed it out of the way without damaging anything too badly.
At least that’s what I hope as I jump in and crank the engine. It fires right up, and I stomp on the gas, yank the steering wheel, and leave the dock in a cloud of burnt-rubber smoke.
I turn on my lights and sirens, and I pass a big rig that’s slowly accelerating toward the highway. I spot Cal’s rig up ahead, going down the on-ramp. The highway doesn’t look too crowded, which is to Cal’s advantage. He won’t be able to accelerate very quickly, but without his trailer, his truck will have plenty of power. He’ll be able to go fast as long as there’s no one in his way.
I think about calling the local authorities for backup, but I know I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t know what I would say. I’m a Texas Ranger in New Jersey trying to apprehend a man who may or may not have a warrant out for his arrest.
When I hit the freeway, I put the pedal down and start weaving around cars.
Cal is doing the same. His truck is going an unsafe speed, changing lanes at a velocity a truck that size shouldn’t be moving.
I race up behind him and wave my hand out the window in a gesture telling him to pull over.
“You’re going to kill somebody!” I yell, as if he can hear me.
I pull my pistol out and think about where I can shoot to slow him down.
A bullet would probably bounce off those big four-foot-diameter tires, and even if I flatten one wheel, there are nine others. I could shoot the gas tank on the side. But even though it’s unlikely to explode—this isn’t a movie—that still seems dangerous.
I need to get in front of the truck and shoot behind me into the grille to try to damage the engine.
The freeway is made up of three lanes, with a dividing wall on the left and an embankment dropping into an unplanted field on the right.
I make a move to pass Cal on the right side, and he swerves, anticipating what I’m trying to do. I brake, swerve, and accelerate, heading between him and the wall on the left side. His truck is slower to correct, but it moves toward me. My foot is jammed against the gas pedal, but I’m not going to make it.
Cal’s truck collides with my passenger side, shoving me over. I fight to keep the steering wheel straight. The dividing wall comes closer and closer, and then my driver’s side mirror disappears in a clatter.
His rig presses me up against the wall. Sparks spray up from where the metal is being ground against the concrete. My driver’s side window explodes. I smell smoke and burning rubber. The screeching sound of metal against concrete is earsplitting.
I think, This is it. This is the moment when I die.
Then Cal swerves away from me, and my truck lurches forward—suddenly freed from Cal’s monstrous metallic grip.
I accelerate to position myself to fire back into his grille, but Cal is already slowing down. There isn’t much of a shoulder here, so he edges his truck onto the embankment. He’s going too fast, and for a moment, I think he’s going to turn the truck over sideways. Instead, he corrects his course and careens down into the field beneath us. His big wheels kick up huge clumps of dirt.
The truck travels for a hundred yards or so, its big wheels sinking deeper and deeper into the soft soil, and then it shudders to a halt.
I ease off the gas and apply the brake. My truck acts like it’s drunk. The steering wheel has only partial maneuvering control, and the whole vehicle shakes as if its four tires are all different sizes.
I pull over and engage my four-wheel drive. I speed into the field after Cal, my truck bouncing through the uneven terrain, the steering wheel swimming in my hands. Smoke is seeping from under my hood.
Up ahead, Cal stumbles out of his truck.
He has something in his hand.
It looks like a knife.
Chapter 76
I SKID TO a halt about twenty feet from Cal’s truck, kicking up a cloud of dust. The engine hisses and ticks. Smoke pours from my grille.
I leap out, my gun drawn and leveled on Cal, who seems unsteady on his feet. The knife in his hand is long and black.
“Drop it!” I yell.
He stares at me with an expression I don’t expect. I expect anger, rage, insanity. What I see is sadness. His eyes are streaming tears. A long spool of saliva hangs from his frowning mouth and dangles in the wind.
“Kill me, Rory,” he wails, sounding like a child crying for help. “Please. Kill me.”
“Put the knife down, Cal,” I say, my voice softer.
My mind is racing.
He has a semi and I have a pickup, and he could have killed me—but he didn’t.
Now he has a knife and I have a gun, and I could kill him.
Will I?
I lower my pistol but ready myself in case I need to bring it back up.
“It’s time to come in, Cal. You need to come in and tell the police everything that happened.”
He lurches forward, causing me to flinch, but he isn’t coming at me. He is dropping to his knees.
“I feel so fucking bad,” he says.
Here it comes, I think. The confession.
“Why do you feel bad?” I say.
He looks at me with an agonized expression.
“I cheated on her, Rory.”
I squint. What?
“She was the most amazing woman in the world, and she was too good for me,” Cal says. “I broke up with her, and I knew I wouldn’t have the willpower to stay away. So I had sex with another woman. I knew she would never forgive me for that. I knew that would break us up for good.”
“So why did you kill her, Cal?”
Cal looks down at the knife in his hands as if he just realized it was there. He talks as if he has forgotten I’m even present.
“Anne kept calling and calling, but I ignored her,” Cal says. “The night she died, I was drunk and shacking up with some random tramp in Saint Louis.”
He mutters that he called the woman the other night when he drove through there, but she was no replacement for Anne, so he hung up and threw his phone into the river.
“If I had just picked up the phone when Anne called,” Cal says. “If I had come home, I could have saved her.”
Rage boils inside of me.
“Goddamnit, Cal!” I shout. “Tell me the fucking truth.”
He looks up at me.
“I killed her when I cheated on her,” he says. “That’s the truth.”
With that, he raises the knife, and I can see immediately that he doesn’t intend to use it on me. His target is the wrist of his own arm.
In a flash, I consider the situation: the speed of his arm, the location of the knife blade, the path my bullet will take. I hear my father’s voice in my head, telling me I can hit whatever I aim at as easily as reaching out and slapping it with my hand.
Cal begins to bring the knife down, and my hand acts, swinging the gun up, squeezing the trigger.
I don’t even hear the shot.
I just see the knife wrenched out of Cal’s hand, as if tugged by an invisible string.
He shakes his hand, wringing out the vibrations and looking at it with an expression that says, Wasn’t I just holding a knife?
The knife is lying in the dirt. There is a silver scar across the black blade.
I stride up to Cal and aim my gun at his forehead. A tendril of smoke rises from the barrel.
“No more bullshit!” I yell. “I want to know: why did you kill them?”
He looks up at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.
“Them?” he says. “What do you mean, them?”
“Anne and Patty,” I bark. “Why did you kill Anne and Patty?”
“Patty’s dead?” he asks, and unless he is a better actor than anyone in Hollywood, his confusion is genuine.
A New Jersey Highway Patrol SUV comes rolling up into the field, a
nd I notice the sound of its siren for the first time.
I holster my gun and turn around with my hands up.
“I’m a cop,” I say to the two patrol officers who jump out, guns drawn. “I’m Rory Yates of the Texas Ranger Division.”
They look at me as if they’ve just seen an alien.
“Ranger,” one of them says, “you’re a hell of a long way from Texas.”
“I know,” I say.
And I know something else: I’m in a load of trouble.
Chapter 77
I ARRIVE BACK in Texas two days later, driving a rental car. I get there about half past noon, and I drive straight to my little unfinished casita and lie down. I’ve had very little shut-eye since I left Texas.
I spent about twenty-four hours talking on and off to police in New Jersey and taking phone calls from DeAndre Purvis and Ted Creasy. Most of that time was spent in interrogation rooms. They never put me in a jail cell, although at first I thought they would.
I don’t know what happened to Cal.
When I asked, Purvis told me that I didn’t have a right to any information anymore. He threatened me with the same interference-with-public-duties charge I used to get the Amarillo waitress and diner manager to talk.
Finally, Creasy told me to rent a car and come home.
“We’ll sort everything out when you get here,” he said.
Before I left, the New Jersey Highway Patrol gave my handgun back to me and let me get my equipment out of my poor pickup truck in the impound. The truck looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to the driver’s side and a meat tenderizer to the passenger side. It looked like the whole truck had taken a diet pill and gotten about a foot thinner. Three tires were flat.
I drove the rental car straight back to Texas, doing the whole trip in a daze, stopping every now and then at rest areas to take short, restless naps. Somewhere along the way, it hit me that I missed Patty’s funeral, and I had to pull over as I was buffeted with waves of guilt and sadness.
Once I get in my bed, I fall right asleep. My mind is empty. It’s as if I’ve finally been able to let go of the investigation. I took my shot, tried to figure it out, and failed miserably and catastrophically. No one will tell me anything. There is no chance of me solving this case on my own.
It’s as if, having tried and failed, I can now do what Purvis wanted me to do from the start and leave the investigation to him.
I wake up with a gloomy light coming in the window. For a moment, I’m unsure if it’s dawn or dusk.
I sit up in bed. My eyes feel puffy, my body stiff, my mouth dry. Out the window, the position of the shadows tells me the sun is setting.
I check my phone and see a text from DeAndre Purvis.
Call me.
“Are you on the road?” he asks when I call.
“I’m home.”
“I need to get an official statement from you,” he says. “Come by tomorrow morning. First thing.”
“Are you going to arrest me?” I ask.
“You’ll find out tomorrow,” he says, and hangs up.
There was something in his voice. An urgency but not the same impoliteness that I’ve been dealing with. I think about it for a few minutes and then put my finger on it.
What I heard in his voice is what I’ve heard in my own voice a number of times. The end of the case is in sight. He wants me to come in and give a statement because he’s wrapping things up.
I walk out onto my front porch in my bare feet. The sun is dropping—another glorious Texas sunset.
My phone buzzes with an incoming call.
It’s Freddy.
“Purvis would have my license yanked if he knew I was calling you,” Freddy says, “but there’s something going on that I think you should know about.”
“Tell me,” I say.
“Regardless of what happens to you,” he says, “you should know that what you did shook things loose for this investigation. If Purvis solves this, it’s because you stepped in.”
He tells me that Purvis didn’t immediately search Cal’s house, believing the anonymous tip wasn’t enough to go on. However, after the shitstorm I stirred up in New Jersey, Purvis has interviewed Cal extensively, and he got Cal to consent to a search of the house.
“Did they find the gun?”
“Hell yes,” Freddy says. “And guess what?”
“The bullets match.”
“The striations are identical,” Freddy confirms. “That is the gun that killed Anne and Patty.”
“What about fingerprints?” I ask.
“Here’s where things get good,” he says. “The gun had been wiped clean. Not a print on it. But it was loaded. And whoever loaded it didn’t think about wiping the bullets down.”
“There are prints on the bullets?”
“Yep,” Freddy says. “Purvis is running the images through AFIS right now.”
The Automated Fingerprint Identification System doesn’t work like it’s portrayed in TV shows. Instead of the computer popping up an identical match—accompanied by a handy-dandy mug shot of the perpetrator—the program produces a list of potential matches. Purvis would have to get a fingerprint expert to compare the images, but what AFIS would do is give Purvis a narrowed list of suspects, most of which would be easy to rule out.
If one person on the list lives in Texas and the rest are from across the country, then that would be particularly telling.
AFIS might give Purvis a name that’s already on his suspect list.
Like Cal Richards.
In light of recent events, that seems unlikely. I’m less convinced now than ever that it was actually him.
“Where is Cal now?” I ask. “Is he still in custody?”
“I don’t know where he is,” Freddy says. “But I do know he is not in custody. He was never charged.”
Chapter 78
I WALK DOWN to my parents’ house. A spectacular full moon breaks out over the horizon and casts an eerie bluish glow over the fields around the ranch house.
Jake’s truck is parked out front, and I go inside to find him sitting with my folks at the kitchen table. Dad’s new rifle is lying in pieces—the barrel, the stock, the low-light scope—on top of a large towel, along with gun oil, cotton patches, and a barrel-cleaning rod.
“You guys been shooting?” I ask.
“Nah,” Dad says. “Jake’s just getting this cleaned up to put in the safe. I ain’t gonna be doing any hunting with it until next year.”
Dad fills me in on his health. His surgery is scheduled for next week.
“I’m in good spirits,” he says, smiling with a toothpick between his teeth.
He looks frail but better than before. He’s still sick, but now that carrying a big secret is no longer weighing on him, he seems somewhat improved. Tired, but still the strong, confident man I knew growing up.
I’m glad to hear he’s no longer harboring any illusions about hunting this season—and even more glad he’s upbeat about his prospects for hunting next year.
“Are you hungry?” Mom asks me.
“Starving.”
She serves me up a helping of what they had for dinner: venison sirloin with mashed potatoes and corn.
I tell them what happened in New Jersey. They respond with quiet support. I don’t think they agree with the way I handled things, but I’m family. They will support me no matter what.
When Jake rises to leave, I ask him if he will give me a ride to the Pale Horse. I don’t want to take the rental. I’m not sure how secure it is, and the trunk is full of everything from my truck: my rifles, shotgun, bulletproof vest, and fingerprint kit. Everything but my pistol, which I put inside the casita.
On the way to the bar, Jake is quiet for a few minutes, then he says, “Holly and I are going to couples counseling. I came by to tell Mom and Dad.”
He looks embarrassed to admit this.
“I think it’s a great idea,” I tell him.
“Really?”
; I tell him that Anne asked me to go to couples counseling back when we were starting to have problems.
“I refused to do it,” I say. “Stupid macho pride. I wish I could go back in time and do things differently. We were young and just needed some help figuring out how to communicate with each other. I think it’s a great idea for you and Holly. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
Jake smiles. He looks happy to have his big brother’s approval.
When he pulls into the parking lot of the Pale Horse, I ask if he wants to come in for a drink.
“Nah,” he says. “I need to get home.”
“It warms my heart to hear you say that,” I tell him.
As his taillights retreat down the roadway, I turn my head out of habit and check the parking lot of the truck stop next door.
Acid boils in my stomach.
Cal’s rig is sitting in the parking lot.
In the moonlight, I can see scratches and dents on the driver’s side, but the truck hardly seems damaged at all compared to my poor pickup.
With my heart pounding, I step into the Pale Horse. The place is packed, but I spot Cal right off, standing next to a table and talking to someone seated. I let my eyes drift from him to the stage for a few seconds.
Willow is singing a Dixie Chicks cover. She doesn’t see me.
I stand there for a minute, my heart pounding, unsure what to do. Finally, I notice who Cal is talking to: Sara Beth.
She is sitting at a table, looking as beautiful as ever, with a couple people I recognize from the high school.
It’s obvious Cal isn’t with them. He just came up to talk to her and hasn’t sat down. Sara Beth is putting up a good front, but I can tell she’s uncomfortable with his presence.
I walk up to Cal.
When he spots me, a look of surprise comes over his face. Then he puts back on his cool, stony facade and considers me with a mask of fake indifference.
“Can we talk?” I say, practically shouting to be heard over the music and the raucous crowd.
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