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Red froze for a moment, just staring into the backpack.
He couldn’t blame a homeless guy for carrying a gun around, for protection and whatnot, but it made Red wonder if the dead guy at the zoo had been shot. The cops hadn’t shared that information yet. The truth was, Red wasn’t real comfortable knowing that a suspected murderer was now an armed guest in his house.
Red didn’t want to touch the gun and leave his fingerprints on it, so he shifted the backpack around to get a better look. It was a black Glock semi-automatic in a nylon holster. A real gun, not a toy or a BB gun. Not a big gun. Maybe a .380, but it was hard to—
He flinched as he heard someone climbing the back steps of the trailer. Then the back door opened!
Red quickly began to stuff everything back into the backpack, but he was panicking, and he wasn’t sure if he was doing it in the proper order.
The back door closed and now he heard someone walking down the hallway!
The socks and underwear and shirts were a jumble, but Red shoved it all in as fast as he could, and he zipped it up and—
“What’re you doing?”
Red turned to see Garrett standing in the doorway. Be calm. Deny everything.
“Hey,” Red said. “I thought you went to town with Billy Don.”
Garrett took one step into the bedroom.
“No, I was taking a walk out back. Just looking around.”
“A walk?” Red said. Who the hell just walks around?
“Yeah,” Garrett said. “What, uh, were you doing just now?”
Red had always been pretty good at making up excuses fast—mostly because he had a long history of engaging in behavior that required that sort of thing. Had Garrett seen him handling the backpack? Red figured it was fifty-fifty.
“I was checking the bed sheets,” he said. “I got to thinking this morning that we might need to change the sheets so you can sleep in a clean bed.”
Garrett stared for a long moment. Then he said, “That’s thoughtful of you. The sheets seem okay to me.”
“Just trying to be a good host,” Red said.
“Yeah, okay, but why were you—”
“Hang on,” Red said. “Hear that?”
“What?”
“That’s Billy Don getting back with breakfast tacos,” Red said. “You hungry? I sure am.”
Red moved past him and out the bedroom door before Garrett could ask any more questions.
“Bryce?”
“Yeah?”
Marlin was catching him just as he was opening the door to a blue Ford Ranger. Nice truck. Had a silver toolbox mounted in the back.
“I’m John Marlin, the county game warden.”
Marlin extended his hand and Bryce shook it.
“How’s it going?” Bryce asked.
He was exactly as Darren Meyer had described him—five-nine or so, and just a bit heavy, with shaggy blond hair. He was wearing blue jeans, a purple T-shirt, and sunglasses.
“Just fine,” Marlin said. “Got a minute to talk?”
“Actually, I need to be at work in ten minutes. I’ve got a ton of prep work to do before we open.”
Marlin thought it was odd that Bryce didn’t ask what he wanted to talk about. Most non-hunters would be confused, or at least curious, if they were approached by a game warden.
“I’ll keep it short, then,” Marlin said. “You been out to your uncle’s ranch lately?”
“My uncle?”
A red flag already. Marlin’s experience was that people repeat your question, or part of it, when they want to stall.
“Yeah, Darren Meyer, your uncle.”
“Well, yeah, I mean I know my uncle, but no, I haven’t been out there.”
“He said he gave you permission to go out to the ranch while he’s in Australia.”
“Yeah, he did.”
Marlin could smell marijuana coming off him. Faint, but it was there.
“But you haven’t been there?” Marlin asked.
“Not yet, no. I’ve been pretty busy. Did you talk to him?”
“Yeah, this morning. Have any of your friends been out to the ranch?”
“Can I ask what this is all about? I heard about the weird stuff happening at the zoo across the highway, so...”
“So...?” Marlin prompted him to keep talking.
“I heard somebody on the news say people shouldn’t shoot any of those loose animals. Is that why you’re here? To tell me not to do that?”
“Not just that.”
“I wouldn’t anyway,” Bryce said. “Even without the warning. I’m not into shooting animals. I’m not a hunter or anything like that. I don’t even like to fish.”
He had his hand on the truck door, eager to leave. Marlin wished Bryce wasn’t wearing sunglasses. It would be interesting to see if he could maintain eye contact.
“How about any of your friends?”
“I think a couple of them hunt, but I’m not sure. I really need to—”
“Which friends hunt?”
“Can I call you later and talk about this? I need to go. I’m already late for work.”
“Won’t keep you much longer,” Marlin said. “Which friends of yours hunt?”
“I don’t see why it matters, because none of them were at my uncle’s ranch.”
“But if you weren’t out there, how would you know that? One of them could’ve gone out there without telling you.”
“My friends aren’t like that. They wouldn’t just go.”
Marlin grinned. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that. You never know. Sometimes there’s a misunderstanding—maybe a friend thought you said he could visit the ranch anytime he wanted, but you didn’t mean that at all.”
“Okay, well, I’ll ask if anybody went out there, and if they did, I’ll let you know.”
It was time to be more aggressive.
“I’d rather talk to them myself,” Marlin said, “but it seems you’re dead set on keeping their names from me—which makes me wonder why.”
“But I’m not. I just don’t know what you—”
“Bryce, I want you to listen to me for a second, and then I’ll let you go. No matter what happened at the ranch or who was involved, we’ll find out eventually. By ‘we’ I mean me, the sheriff’s office, and even the Texas Rangers, if we need to call them in. If you were at the ranch anytime in the past few days, we can get the location data on your phone, plus the texts between you and your friends. We’ll go that route if we have to. But if you step up like a man and take care of business right now, I’ll work with you on this. You understand what I’m saying?”
Bryce was staring at the pavement. Finally he raised his head and said, “I don’t know what happened out there, but none of it was my fault. I wasn’t even there.”
“If that’s true, I’ll do my best to keep you out of it. But I need to know who was there.”
Bryce looked around, as if to make sure nobody could overhear. Then he said, “I work with this guy named Trevor at Dairy Queen and sometimes we hang out. I told him about the ranch and he said we should go out there. Then on Monday, he said we should go out there on Tuesday or Wednesday, because he was off on those days. But I had to work, so I told him he could go by himself, just as long as he didn’t do anything stupid.”
“He’s that kind of guy—who might do something stupid?” Marlin asked.
“I don’t know him well enough to be sure.”
“What’s Trevor’s last name?”
“Larkin.”
“Do you know if he took you up on it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him since then.”
“Did he have the gate code?”
“Yeah.”
“Was he planning to hunt or just shoot guns or what?”
“He said he wanted to kill a deer, which is part of the reason I let him go by himself. I’m not into that. It’s kind of cruel, in my opinion.”
“Have you talked to your uncle in the past few days?”
“No, I haven’t talked to him since he left.”
“Has he called you?”
“No. He didn’t know about any of this. He didn’t give me permission to take anyone else out there. I screwed up and I’ll admit it.”
“Do you know what happened out there yesterday?” Marlin asked.
“I heard some rumors, but I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t,” Bryce said.
“Tell me what you heard.”
“That there was a game warden on the ranch and somebody stole my uncle’s truck and then wrecked it on Highway 281 and ran away.”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s all. Was that what happened?”
Apparently word hadn’t spread about the man shooting an axis deer and then pointing the rifle at Marlin. Or Bryce wasn’t being completely honest about what he knew.
“That’s part of it,” Marlin said. “He plowed through your uncle’s gate on the way out, and the truck is banged up pretty good.”
“Jeez,” Bryce said.
“You weren’t there?”
“No, I swear. I was at work.”
“And you haven’t talked to Trevor about this? Not a word?”
“No way. I was too worried it might’ve been him—but I was hoping it wasn’t. We haven’t talked or texted. The truth is, for the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to avoid him.”
“Why’s that?”
Bryce shook his head. “There’s something not right about him. He’s just strange. Creepy strange. I see him staring at girls sometime.”
“Sounds pretty normal to me,” Marlin said. “Being that age and staring at girls.”
“But it’s more than that—like he’s fixated and he’s watching them, not just checking them out. There’s something in his eyes that just isn’t normal. Oh, and then—this is really weird, but he has this leather bracelet that says ‘WWCD,’ and when I asked what that meant, he said, ‘What Would Charlie Do?’ Apparently Charlie was some famous killer. So I was like, dude, that’s a sick joke, but he just looked at me.”
“Charlie?”
“Right.”
“Think he was talking about Charles Manson?”
Technically, Charles Manson hadn’t killed anyone himself, but Marlin had to wonder if Trevor Larkin—or Bryce—would even know that.
“I have no idea,” Bryce said. “He never told me who it was. Maybe it wasn’t really even what those letters stood for. It was just friggin’ weird, to be honest. I think he’s kind of a nutcase. Either that or he likes to pretend he is, because he doesn’t really fit in anywhere. He doesn’t seem to have any friends.”
“So why do you hang out with him?”
“I’m pretty easygoing, but then I saw how weird he is. You always hear about loners snapping and going on a killing spree. That’s the kind of guy he is. Like all this stuff about him stealing my uncle’s truck and plowing it through the gate? That doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“If it was him,” Marlin said.
“Right, if it was.”
Marlin had to remind himself that Bryce’s evaluation of Trevor could be way off base. Even if Bryce could be trusted, he wasn’t trained to do any kind of risk assessment on a person like Trevor Larkin, or anybody else, for that matter.
“When you heard somebody wrecked your uncle’s truck, why didn’t you call the sheriff’s office?”
“I just wanted to stay out of it, especially since I don’t know who did it.”
“But the information you just gave me would’ve been helpful earlier.”
“Yeah, okay, I’m sorry about that.”
“What does Trevor look like?” Marlin asked.
“He’s tall and thin. Has a beard, sort of. Like long stubble. That’s the way he keeps it. Oh, hang on.”
Bryce took his phone out and a moment later turned the screen toward Marlin, showing him a photo of a man from the waist up. It wasn’t a great photo—taken at night and kind of blurry—but Marlin was fairly certain it was the man who’d pointed the rifle. “Fairly certain” wasn’t much of a legal standard, though. He couldn’t swear to it in court.
“Got any others?” Marlin asked.
“Sorry, no.”
Marlin felt confident he could find additional photos online, along with Larkin’s driver’s license photo—and any mug shots that might exist.
Marlin asked at least a dozen more questions, gathering as much information about Trevor Larkin as he could. Then he said, “Go ahead and text me his contact information, along with that photo,” and he gave Bryce his number.
“I will,” Bryce said.
“No, I mean right now,” Marlin said.
Bryce took his phone out again and a moment later the items arrived on Marlin’s phone.
“I really need to go now,” Bryce said. “I’m way late.”
“One more question,” Marlin said. “You know a guy named Rory Grafmiller?”
“I know a guy named Rory,” Bryce said. “I’ve seen him at the pool and we’ve talked a couple of times. I don’t know what his last name is.”
“Do you know where he works?”
“Yeah, that little zoo on 281,” Bryce said. “Where all the animals got out.”
“Does Trevor know Rory?”
“I have no idea,” Bryce said. “I don’t remember him mentioning Rory.”
“Thanks for being straight with me,” Marlin said. “I might be in touch with more questions.”
Bryce did not appear pleased by that prospect.
“One other thing,” Marlin said. “I smell pot. Have you been smoking?”
“No, sir.”
“But I’m smelling it, right?”
“Uh...”
“Shoot straight with me, Bryce.”
“You might smell it, yeah.”
“When was the last time you smoked?”
“Last night.”
“You promise? I don’t want you driving stoned.”
“No, I promise. Really.”