Rusty's bark felt as if someone were committing a home invasion on Frank's head. But not because he was hung over. Because he hadn't had hard liquor in thirty hours, his longest stretch in six years.
"Shut up."
Rusty shut up. For a few minutes. Then he barked again. Frank threw the pillow at the beast. Sobriety put him in a foul mood.
Billie Jean had driven him back to the beach the day before. He couldn't stay at the campsite indefinitely, even at $20 per night. He had to get back home to counsel other lawyers. He had to earn his income, such as it was. He had to get sober. Frank ran half a mile down the beach then puked. He spit bile and gazed at the Gulf. Could he really stay sober for his son? After six years of never being sober? It didn't seem possible. Nor did running the five miles down the beach to the rock jetty. But he would do it. Somehow. For his son.
"Let's go."
He ran down the beach with Rusty.
Frank bathed in the sea then dressed in the bungalow. He fixed his protein drink—whey protein, yogurt, blueberries, strawberries, banana, almond milk—and grabbed the vodka bottle out of habit. He stared at the clear liquid—the alcohol that would clear his head, improve his mood, make him feel alive—then replaced it on the kitchen shelf. He blended the concoction and drank from the pitcher. He almost spit it out.
"People drink this shit?"
He took a nap before the first lawyer arrived. They walked the beach. Frank listened and counseled and earned $50. Times three lawyers. He deposited the cash in the defense fund, aka, a cigar box.
Then he took another nap.
Rusty barked him awake for their tee time. But he did not play a round of golf that day. Golf did not encourage sobriety; it was the kind of game that demanded alcohol afterward. To stay sane, if not sober.
So Frank ate one of the protein bars they had taken from William's dorm room and worked out instead. Pushups on the porch. Eleven. Then he rolled over onto his back and did thirteen sit-ups. Which made him nauseous. He struggled to his feet and did twenty-five jumping jacks. Which made him dizzy. He grabbed hold of the crossbeam on the porch and did seven pull-ups. Which made him throw up.
Should've waited on the protein bar.
He sat in his chair on the porch and turned on the radio. The oldies channel. Buddy Holly was singing "That'll Be the Day."
Buddy Holly was born in Lubbock, Texas, in 1936. Not much has happened there since. With a population of two hundred forty thousand, Lubbock is the big city for West Texas. Ranchers and farmers travel to Lubbock for doctors and lawyers and the stock show and rodeo; their sons and daughter travel to Lubbock for higher education. They study in the College of Architecture, the College of Media and Communication, the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, and, until 1993 when the name was changed, the College of Home Economics.
Thirty thousand students attend Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
They all show up for the football games. A, there's nothing else to do in Lubbock on a Saturday afternoon; and B, the Red Raiders football team is damn fun to watch. The team invented the NASCAR offense: a full-speed, nonstop, no-huddle, run-and-gun, pass-happy, all-out offensive attack. On any given day, the Red Raiders could beat any team in America. They usually didn't, but opposing coaches always worried they might when journeying to Lubbock. Dwayne Gentry and Chuck Miller were worried too as they entered town. But not because of the football team.
Because the whole damn place was dry.
"You can't buy alcohol anywhere in the city?" Chuck said. "That's un-American."
"We're in the Bible Belt, buddy."
"But we're sinners."
"True enough."
"And I really want to sin today."
"I know you do."
Dee Dee Dunston was a sinner, too. They couldn't find alcohol in Lubbock, but they found Cissy Dupre. She had just finished her cheer practice when they approached her on the Tech campus. The investigating officers had interviewed her two years before.
"Cissy Dupre?"
She stopped and gave them a once-over.
"Yes."
"We'd like to talk to you about Dee Dee Dunston."
"No."
She started to walk away, but Dwayne flashed his badge. He carried the badge in case he got pulled over when drinking; once the cop saw he had been on the job, he usually cut Dwayne some slack.
"Official police business, Cissy."
It wasn't, but the badge had the intended effect: she stopped.
"I've never seen a policeman smoking a cigar on the job."
"You've never been to Houston."
"I already talked to the police."
"Two years ago?"
"Two weeks ago."
"Detective Jones?"
"I think so."
"Black cop?"
"Yeah."
"Well, we just have a few follow-up questions."
She sighed. "What do you want to know?"
"I want to know if it's true you can't buy a drink in Lubbock?" Chuck said.
"You can now. They voted the county wet a few years back."
"Oh, praise the Lord."
Cissy frowned. "That's what you wanted to know?"
"No," Dwayne said. "We want to know what happened to Dee Dee?"
She shook her head and looked as if she might cry.
"I guess William Tucker killed her."
"No. Before that night."
"Oh."
Now a few tears came.
"You ever see that show 'Girls Gone Wild'?" she said.
"Oh, I love that show," Chuck said. "I've got all the seasons on DVDs."
Like a kid who had all the Barney episodes.
"Well, that was Dee Dee—girl gone wild. She was this country girl from Sweetwater, but she got here and just went ape."
"How so?" Dwayne said.
"Sex. I mean, everybody gets a little wild, first semester at college, away from your parents, all the boys, the parties, the alcohol. But not like her. She was as sweet as sugar, but she loved sex. I mean, loved it. She was like a sex athlete."
"She was what you would call promiscuous?"
"She was what I'd call a nympho."
"With anyone in particular?"
"Athletes. Star athletes."
"Did you tell the investigators this back then?"
She shook her head. "I didn't want to hurt her family. I met them. They were really nice people. They went to church. But I told that black detective two weeks ago."
"You and Dee Dee roomed together that weekend in Austin?"
She nodded.
"After the game, you went out?"
"A bunch of us cheerleaders did."
"To the Dizzy Rooster?"
Another nod.
"Did you see William Tucker there?"
"He came in after we had been there a while. When he walked into the bar, there was a lot of commotion, people taking cell phone photos of him, that sort of thing—it was like Channing Tatum had walked in."
"Who?"
"Movie star."
"Oh."
"But he saw us—we were still wearing our cheerleader outfits—"
"Why?"
"So the UT players would see us. He walked right up to us. Dee Dee latched onto him, so I flirted with some other UT players."
"So you personally witnessed William Tucker meet Dee Dee that night at the Dizzy Rooster?"
"I personally witnessed them groping each other like horny high schoolers."
"Right there in the bar?"
"Right there at the bar."
"Did they stay at the bar all night?"
"No. When I looked for her again, they were heading to the back."
"Back where?"
"Back of the bar. I figured they were going somewhere to hook up."
"Hook up? Meaning, to have sex."
"Yes."
"Did you see them again?"
"Him. Later I hear this noise, I turn around and he's puking at the bar."
"William threw up in the bar?"
"Yeah."
"But Dee Dee wasn't there?"
"No."
"What time was this?"
"I didn't check my watch. You lose track of time when you're drunk."
"Were you drunk?"
"We all were."
"Dee Dee too?"
"Sure."
"Did you tell the police she had met William?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Why?"
"You didn't think the fact that she had hooked up with William Tucker might've been important to their investigation into her death?"
"No. When they came to my room the next morning, said Dee Dee was dead and had been raped, it never occurred to me that William Tucker might have raped and killed her."
"Why not?"
She offered a shrug. "He's a huge star athlete. He didn't have to rape her."
"Ain't no sex in prison. Not the kind you want, anyway."
The gangbanger next door. William lay on his cot in the dark. The cellblock was quiet. Two words pounded in his brain: death penalty. And two lawyers stood between him and death row: a drunk and an ex-stripper. She was an unproven rookie. He was a past-his-prime star who had lost the skills he once had, who had let himself go, who could no longer compete. Who threw his career away for the bottle, just as so many star athletes had thrown their careers away for drugs. Did he want Frank Tucker quarterbacking his team? With his life on the line? No. He did not. But he didn't have the money to go into the free-agent market and buy a better lawyer. Which meant he didn't have a prayer. Just as his team didn't have a prayer against Kansas State the next day. They would lose. He would lose. The team would go home. He would go to prison. To death row.
"Was she pretty?"
"Who?"
"That girl you killed?"
"I didn't kill her."
"Okay. Was that girl you didn't kill pretty?"
"I don't remember her."
"That don't work, William."
"What?"
"Saying you don't remember nothing. Jury say, he gotta remember something."
"I had a concussion."
"For real?"
"I played a game that day. Strong safety clocked me, helmet to helmet. My coach said I thought I was Troy Aikman playing for the Cowboys against the Giants."
"I always like Troy. Romo, he drive me fuckin' nuts, but Troy, he a player. I remember that game, he got a concussion, linebacker hammered his helmet into Troy's jaw, almost bit his tongue off, bleeding all out his mouth, still throwed the winning touchdown. You do that?"
"No. I throwed … I threw up."
"Ain't you supposed to go to the hospital?"
"I did. They released me."
"And you went straight for the pussy?" The gangbanger laughed. "Man, you must got that high testosterone, too. Shit, you'd be a good brother, fit right in. We the same way. We like the pussy. But that all over now, William Tucker. For both of us."
The gangbanger sighed.
"Ain't no pussy in prison."