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“You can go to sleep if you want,” Trevor said.
“I’m not sleepy,” Caitlin replied.
She was still on the floor, with her back against the wall and knees drawn to her chest. He had offered her the bed, but she didn’t want it. He’d made it clear that he wasn’t asking her to get in bed with him—that he would get out of the bed and let her have it—but she still didn’t want it. When he’d tried to make conversation, she had replied back with just a word or two.
It was becoming increasingly clear to Trevor that he had not found his Caril Ann. He had misjudged. He was disappointed, but he tried not to show it. Not until he decided what to do. Couldn’t stay here forever.
“It’s cold in here,” Caitlin said.
First time she’d opened her mouth on her own and it was to bitch about something.
“It’s an old house,” Trevor said. “Probably isn’t insulated very well.”
“Can we turn the heater up?”
“You’re that cold?” Trevor asked. “Just get under the blankets.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then look in that closet for a jacket.”
“I will, but I don’t understand why you won’t turn the heater on.”
“I knew from the start that something wasn’t right about the guy,” Red O’Brien said.
“Me, too,” Billy Don Craddock said.
“Oh, hell if you did,” O’Brien said. “Don’t be changing your story now.”
“I ain’t changin’ my—”
“I ’member you saying I was being nosy when I was asking questions about how much money he had to keep traveling around. And later, when he was in the shower, I said maybe he killed his daddy for the insurance, and you ’member what you said?”
“Nope, but I’m sure you do.”
“That I was always coming up with crazy ideas.”
“Which is most of the time accurate.”
“And I found the gun in his backpack, which seems awfully convenient, considering the dead guy at the zoo was shot. He wasn’t stabbed or beaten or hit by a car, he was shot. When I pointed that out, you said I was nuts.”
“Still can’t rule it out,” Billy Don said.
John Marlin finally cut in, saying, “Gentlemen, if you don’t mind, can we leave the bickering until later? Right now, I need to ask some questions.”
Craddock gave an affirmative grumble.
“Yeah, okay,” O’Brien said.
They were standing in front of O’Brien’s trailer. Marlin had parked several yards away from O’Brien’s old Ford truck. Just minutes earlier, driving along the county road, he’d kept an eye open for anyone walking, but he hadn’t seen anybody.
“What’s this guy’s full name?” Marlin asked.
“Garrett Becker,” O’Brien said. “His daddy was named Larry Becker.”
“He’s the one who mighta got shoved off the roof,” Craddock said. “The daddy, I mean. Larry.”
“He knows that,” O’Brien said. “You don’t gotta tell him things he already knows.”
“I need you to tell me what happened, from the moment you picked him up until he shot your truck earlier tonight,” Marlin said.
He wasn’t looking forward to hearing these two rednecks give a long rambling account of the past few days, but he saw no way around it. If Garrett Becker was really near the zoo with a handgun, that would make him a person of interest in the case.
O’Brien said, “Okay, well, we was driving east on 32 yesterday morning when—”
“Yesterday morning?” Craddock said. “Was it really just yesterday morning? It seems like a couple days ago.”
“Nope. It was just yesterday.” O’Brien addressed Marlin again. “We was going to a jobsite down near Canyon Lake when we saw a hitchhiker and Billy Don suggested we should pick him up. I said no at first, but Billy Don started quoting his grandma, at which point I just wanted to shut him up, so I turned around and we went back to get the guy. Really great how that turned out, huh? Anyway, that was about, oh, maybe eight o’clock.”
“More like eight-thirty,” Craddock said.
“By the time we got to the job site, yeah.”
“No, when we picked him up.”
“You’re wrong, but I’m used to that. So we took the guy to the job site and he actually put in a decent day’s work.”
“Good helper,” Craddock said. “Decent with a chisel.”
“But then Billy Don decides to tell him about all the money we won in Vegas, plus all the money we won on that pig-hunting contest, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want a stranger knowing all about the cash we—”
“But you told him we put it in the stock market,” Craddock said.
“Well, I had to say something, didn’t I?”
“I appreciate you being thorough,” Marlin said, “but I don’t need every detail. Not right now. Just give me the big picture and then I’ll ask questions. That sound okay?”
O’Brien stared at him for a long moment, then said, “Hate to say it, but sometimes you folks are hard to please, you know that?”
Marlin could only laugh. “I’m sure we are, but please continue.”
And they did, and it was as painful as Marlin anticipated, but after fifteen minutes, they’d covered all of the pertinent details, including everything O’Brien had learned during his “investigation.” Only problem was, Marlin hadn’t learned anything that O’Brien hadn’t already mentioned during his lengthy voicemail.
Marlin still had no way of knowing if Garrett Becker had ever been in the vicinity of Safari Adventure. According to what Becker had told O’Brien and Craddock, he had seen the swarm of emergency vehicles on Highway 281 yesterday morning and had then turned around and headed north. That was as close to the zoo as he had ever gotten. Was it true? Could it be proven or disproven? Right now, no. Maybe not ever.
What if Garrett Becker was the shooter? Or even a witness? Or what if he was simply in possession of the gun that had been used in the shooting? What if he really had found the gun along the highway, but it had been near the zoo, rather than near Stephenville, as he’d claimed. That could be a tremendous step forward in the case.
Then O’Brien added one more detail. “Oh, we found the shells a few minutes ago,” he said.
“I found ’em,” Craddock said.
“We was looking around after we called you,” O’Brien said.
“And I found ’em in some tall grass beside the driveway,” Craddock said.
Marlin said, “Please tell me you didn’t—”
“We didn’t touch ’em,” Craddock said. “We know better than that.”
“Want us to show you where they are?” O’Brien asked.
“Because I don’t want to do anything that might let anybody know we’re here,” Trevor said.
“How is the heater going to do that?” Caitlin asked.
Caitlin had been trying to decide how hard to push back on Trevor. How would he react if she stood up to him? Or if she stopped letting him make all the decisions? Ultimately, if it came down to it, she would fight like hell. She’d rip his eyes out if she had to. Both her parents had raised her to take care of herself, which included enrolling her in several self-defense classes. If she could get to him when he put the gun down...
“Someone could hear it running,” he said.
“Who? The nearest neighbor is a hundred yards away.”
“It’s not that cold in here,” Trevor said.
“Well, I’m cold anyway,” Caitlin said.
“Then get into the bed,” Trevor said. “Get under the covers.”
“Nope.”
“Then look in that closet, like I said. Maybe there’s a jacket in there.”
“So you won’t turn the heater on?” she asked, putting some attitude behind it.
“No. You need to stop asking.”
She stared at him for a long moment, but he simply stared back. It was irritating, but it was also unnerving. Creepy. There was no empathy in those eyes. No fear, either.
She rose from the floor, went over to the closet, and opened the door. Renee hadn’t yet invited Caitlin over to sort through items for charity, and it was obvious nobody in her family had made any progress on that chore. The closet was filled from one side to the other with clothes hanging from the rod and various bagged and boxed items on the shelf above and on the floor.
There must’ve been thirty or forty blouses, and maybe twenty dresses, all wildly out of date.
Caitlin slid some items to the right and found a bunch of sweaters and light jackets. Most of them were hideous, but it was ridiculous to worry about appearances when—
She stopped. She had almost gotten to the last item on the right, and now she saw something she hadn’t been able to see before.
There, leaning in the corner, was a shotgun.