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Red was drowsing in bed when he remembered something he’d been wanting to check about Garrett’s weird story.
He stretched and yawned. He’d get to it in a minute. It didn’t seem so important right now.
Mandy had already gotten up and left for work at about eight. He vaguely remembered her kissing him on the cheek. He also remembered—with much greater clarity—the way she’d distracted him last night. What a gal. To be that beautiful and still do the things she’d do...what were the odds? Most women who would do those things in bed were either homely, drunk, or foreign.
Mandy had also said he was a great detective. And she was right. He’d gotten damn good at figuring things out.
He’d learned to trust his gut, and his gut told him Garrett couldn’t be trusted. Something about the situation was screwed up. Or maybe Garrett wasn’t presenting it right. Or leaving something important out.
Red rolled onto his right side and grabbed his iPhone off the old whiskey barrel that acted as a nightstand.
He didn’t really want to become one of those people who was always relying on his phone for every damn thing, but he had to admit it was handy for looking stuff up. It was like carrying a library around in your pocket. Actually, it was even better, because his phone didn’t have a librarian nagging him to keep quiet, or to stop chewing tobacco, or to put his boots back on.
He’d gotten pretty sharp at using Google. Now he typed in “Garrett” and stopped for a second, because he realized he didn’t know Garrett’s last name. Garrett had never given it. That was kind of suspicious, wasn’t it?
What town was he from? Some small town in southern Michigan. Damn it, what was it called?
Oh, right! Like that old show with Jack Klugmann. Quincy!
So Red searched for “Garrett quincy father roof.” He’d learned that you had to put the right combination of words together to find what you wanted.
Sure enough, he got all kinds of hits to newspaper articles, including references to Garrett, whose last name was Becker. Garrett Becker. His dad’s name was Larry Becker. Red clicked the first article listed, and as he read, he realized the facts seemed to match everything Garrett had told them.
Garrett and his dad had been on the roof working. Then Garrett’s mom had texted her husband, saying she’d be forwarding the divorce papers. Moments later, he fell, or jumped, or was pushed. Later Garrett told the cops he hadn’t known his parents were planning to split, or that his dad had been having an affair, and the cops wondered if those issues had caused an argument on the rooftop.
That was exactly the way Garrett had told it. Red wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It would be easier to draw conclusions if Garrett was a big-ass lying son of a bitch.
Red realized it was awfully quiet around here. No sounds of Billy Don snoring. No sounds of Billy Don making ungodly noises in the bathroom. No sounds of Billy Don turning the TV too damn loud because he was halfway deaf from going to tractor pulls without ear protection.
So where was Billy Don?
And where was Garrett?
Screw it. Who cared?
Red kept reading. Despite what he knew already about Garrett and his dead dad, there was one thing in particular Red wanted to find out, but he hadn’t seen it mentioned yet. He finished the first article and moved on to another one, published three days later.
In this one, the cops said they’d questioned Garrett at length several times now, and he’d cooperated, but they still couldn’t determine what had happened on that roof. Lots of people were mad that Garrett hadn’t been arrested, but the cops said you couldn’t just charge a man without probable cause.
Red stopped for a minute to look up the meaning of “probable cause.” He’d heard it before, on TV and in front of a judge, but he wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. Wikipedia said it was “a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person’s belief that certain facts are probably true.”
Red wasn’t sure about the word “prudent,” either, but there was only so much time in a day for looking stuff up.
So he went back to the second article, and that’s when he found the tidbit he’d been looking for.
At the end of that article, one of the detectives said, “We’re a little concerned by the fact that Larry Becker had a life insurance policy for eight hundred thousand dollars, which is to be split equally between his wife and his only child, Garrett Becker.”
Boom.
There it was, spelled out in black and white.
Garrett being angry with his dad was one thing, but if $400,000 wasn’t big-time probable cause, what the hell was?
Albert jerked awake to the sound of a loud thud and the vibration of a hard impact, but he knew none of it was real. All in his head. Replayed memories.
Where was he? He had no idea. Still groggy.
Strange bed. Not as comfortable as his own. And these weren’t his pillows. The paint on the ceiling wasn’t the right color. Much darker in this room. Too much noise outside. It even smelled different.
Then he remembered. A motel. Some little mom-and-pop place. He couldn’t recall the name of it. He couldn’t even name the town he was in. Not a city, a town. Small. It reminded him of horses.
Whinny? Halter? Bridle? None of those.
Gallop.
Wait, not Gallop. Gallup. Gallup, New Mexico, a couple hours west of Albuquerque.
When Albert had rolled into town at 10:30 last night, he’d seen several hotels and motels to choose from, including well-known chains, but he’d settled for a place called...
What was it? Desert something? Something of the sun? Or sands?
Did it matter?
Just a little blue-and-white two-story cinderblock place on the side of the highway, directly across from the train tracks. The name didn’t matter, did it?
The important thing was, last night, Albert had gone inside and told the clerk—an elderly gentleman who may or may not have been an Indian of some kind—that he wanted a room, but he’d lost his ID. Could he give some cash as a deposit instead? Albert had plenty of cash. Over the years, he had slowly stashed a large sum in his getaway bag.
The old clerk hesitated, so Albert said he wouldn’t expect the deposit back.
Wink, wink.
Now Albert propped some pillows behind his head, grabbed the remote control off the nightstand, and turned the TV on.
First thing he saw was a photo of Elmer, which made Albert sit up straight.
Jesus! Elmer! There he was!
Elmer, the emu. Loveable Elmer. So much personality. Mischievous.
And there was Elmer on Good Morning, America, with Robin Roberts chuckling about the fact that a bunch of exotic animals had escaped from a small zoo in central Texas. The headline on the screen read On The Loose!
The video footage showed several of Albert’s animals on the shoulder of the highway, with traffic backed up as far as the camera could see. Cops were all over the place, too. Albert could feel his pulse pick up, just seeing his animals in danger like that.
Then the camera showed the county game warden, John Marlin, leading the animals back into the zoo with a bucket of feed. Smart. So smart. Good guy, making sure the animals were safe. Albert owed him one.
Now the camera switched back to Robin Roberts, who said, “Unfortunately, the chaos at the zoo seems to have come with a tragic mystery, as a body was found on the grounds. The sheriff has not yet been able to identify the victim or pinpoint a cause of death, but experts point out that fatalities among zoo employees are rare, with just four in the past six years. The most recent involved a zookeeper in Sweden who was mauled by a tiger when a gate was left open. That man died later at a hospital.”
Albert let out an involuntary yelp when he suddenly saw his own face on the screen.
Robin Roberts said, “To deepen the mystery, authorities have not been able to locate the owner of the zoo, Albert Cortez. He remains missing this morning.”
One of Robin Roberts’ co-anchors—some guy Albert didn’t know—said, “That’s pretty wild, Robin.”
“Pun intended?” Robin Roberts asked.
He chuckled. “You’ll have to forgive me for that. So the body that was found—that wasn’t the zoo owner?”
“It was not. The police were clear on that.”
“It will be interesting to see how the situation plays out. Taking a look at the weather now, record temperatures across the country continue to turn your average autumn into a hotter, sweatier—”
Albert switched to other channels, but he found no other reports. He scrolled through the channels nonstop for twenty minutes, but nobody else was covering it. Yet. Maybe that GMA report would be the extent of it. Maybe the story would be nothing more than a quick blip on the national radar.
If only he had access to the internet. After that state cop had shaken him up in Roswell, Albert had been too nervous to do anything but drive. The idea of going inside a store to buy a cell phone was more than he could handle. He would have to get over that and just do it.
He left the TV tuned to GMA, got out of bed, and went to the only window at the front of the room. He pushed the curtain aside by two inches. There was the neon-green Ford Fiesta, parked right out front. Several other vehicles were scattered around the parking lot, but the motel was obviously far from full. Same with the town itself. Not much traffic on the highway.
If there were a perfect place to hide out, this might be it.
But for how long? He couldn’t just stay here indefinitely. He had plenty of cash, but he had to start coming up with a plan. He didn’t have to figure it all out at once, though.
One step at a time.