“Lynda?” Hector Chavez knocked on my front door bright and early Monday morning, and when I peeked out the diamond-shaped window, I saw that the sheriff had been followed by more news reporters and cameras. The desperation I’d worked so hard to repel now crept silently across the hardwood floors of my living room and crouched behind me.
As if finding my husband’s vehicle at the bottom of the lake wasn’t enough, now I had to discuss it with an old friend while being hounded by a crowd of strangers. Why bother? Hector would only explain that they had found Hoby’s wrecker, that he was dead, that he had been dead a long time.
I opened the door but shielded my face with a Kleenex box when I saw cameras pointed at me from the street.
Before either of us spoke, Hector entered, clearly wanting to avoid the media as much as I did. He pushed the door closed behind him, then leaned against it. His eyes quickly swept my tangled hair and worn pajama pants before he cut his gaze to the front window. “I won’t stay long, Lynda.” Without moving from the door, he reached over and pulled the curtain cord, closing out any unwanted attention I might receive from the spectators.
“Thanks.” I crossed my arms and waited for him to decide if I was thanking him for closing my curtains or for not staying long.
“When I leave, I’ll try to get them to give you a break for a while.” He closed his eyes for a second and seemed to take a deep breath to prepare. “I guess you’ve heard about the Lubbock Police Department finding Hoby’s wrecker out in the lake.”
“I thought it was the Texas Rangers.”
“No, the LPD has jurisdiction over the actual lake.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“This is hard for me, Lynda. Hoby was a good friend.” He held his cowboy hat in his hands, rotating it endlessly. “And Neil.”
“Neil?”
“I keep thinking about one summer. The three of us did target practice on the side of his dad’s barn.” He chuckled. “That was before I was in law enforcement, of course. Years later I ran a report when Neil’s pistol was stolen.”
“I never knew it was stolen.”
“Right out of his truck in downtown Trapp.” Hector shook his head. “During the Christmas parade for the volunteer fire department. Don’t that beat all?”
Silence invaded my living room as we both lost ourselves in memories, but then Hector shrugged, ever so slightly, as though to plunge on through his dirty deed. “They didn’t find a body, Lynda.”
A body.
Suddenly I was in a crime scene television show, with my husband playing the part of this week’s victim. I stumbled to the couch and plopped down heavily. “But I saw—” What had I seen? When the wrecker came up out of the water, it had been filled with silt from the bottom of the lake, but as the mud sifted back into the water, I could have sworn I saw a skull through the back window.
“I know what you think you saw.” Hector followed me and sat on the very edge of the recliner. “Most all the spectators saw the same thing, and at this point, we’re letting them believe it was a body, but it was actually Hoby’s old hard hat hanging from the gun rack.”
“A hard hat?” I had forgotten Hoby even had a hard hat. He used to wear it as a batting helmet when he played softball. My teeth bit gently on my bottom lip, and I looked away from Hector toward the empty kitchen, through the window, to the backyard and freedom. “So he’s not dead?” With my worn emotions, I didn’t know what to think, and it crossed my mind that I probably wasn’t behaving the way a widow should behave. Was this some kind of test?
“The boys from Lubbock are speculating, but everyone in town assumes it was either an accident or suicide.” His face scrunched. “That’s probably what you’re thinking, too.” He leaned forward. “Hoby had been diagnosed with depression, right?”
“Yes.” My head seemed full and empty at the same time, and when I tried to talk, my tongue tingled. “What should I be thinking, Hector?”
“I’m sorry to be so blunt,” he said. “I’m not really involved in the investigation of the vehicle, but I have a little to do with those bones that were found.”
I bent one knee to tuck my icy toes beneath the opposite thigh, not seeing the connection.
“At this point,” he continued, “the Rangers are considering the possibility that those bones belonged to Hoby.”
“Wh-what?” My thoughts spun in wild arcs, and I struggled to make sense of them. “Why?”
Hector shrugged. “Because there was no evidence of a body in the truck.”
“But everyone’s saying the Tarrons’ grenades could’ve moved things around.” A feeling of dull nausea settled in my stomach. “If his body wasn’t in the wrecker, then it’s still on the bottom of the lake.”
“Actually …”—Hector shifted, and his holster pressed against the arm of the recliner—“the CSI team from Lubbock had a lot to say about what would happen to a body under those conditions, especially with the windows open on the truck.”
I didn’t want to know what would happen, but surely I was supposed to ask. A good wife would ask. “What would happen?”
Hector studied the cuticle of his left thumb before returning his gaze to me. “Let’s just say that if Hoby had been in the cab when the truck entered the water, his body probably would have surfaced in a day or two.”
Even though I hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast, my stomach churned in protest, and the mild nausea from a few minutes ago flared into a serious threat. My dead husband’s bloated body had risen to the surface of the lake, only to be ripped apart by animals and left to rot.
“I’m sorry this is happening, Lynda. Hoby was a good friend.” Hector continued talking, unaware that my brain was only catching half of what he said. “Also, the Rangers sent those bones to an anthropology expert down in Austin. The preliminary report showed there wasn’t enough DNA to make an identification.”
Bones … DNA … identification … Hoby. I couldn’t take any more of Hector’s verbiage or assumptions or speculations. My husband was dead one minute, alive the next, then dead again. Or maybe it wasn’t him at all. “I think I’ve got it now, Hector.” But really I didn’t. It didn’t make sense at all.
He rose, walked stiffly to the door, and then stopped. He turned back to me, and his eyes were sad. “Lynda, I don’t think you fully understand what I’m saying.”
I pressed my forearms against my stomach in an attempt to settle it. “Okay.”
“You see … at this point, the Rangers don’t know if the bones belonged to Hoby, or if the body was in the truck when it went into the water. They don’t know if the bones were ever in the water at all. They’ll know a lot more once they get the rest of the results from Austin.”
“What are you saying?” If he told me anything else, I might not be able to handle it, but I had to ask. I was supposed to ask.
He held his palms in front of me as though he would catch me if I fell. He spoke slowly and softly. “I’m saying they think there may have been suspicious circumstances.” He pressed his lips together and dropped his gaze, seemingly unable to look me in the eye. “I can’t tell you everything right now, but I can tell you that things aren’t adding up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, but you’re going to have to wait a few days. Wait until we have more evidence.” He reached for the doorknob. “But I need you to keep this between the two of us until I talk to you again.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not sure who I can trust.”