| |
O’Brien and Craddock led the way to two brass shells resting in some tall grass away from the caliche parking area, but not far from O’Brien’s truck. Marlin squatted with a flashlight and took a good look. The shells were from a .380—the same caliber that had been used to kill the man at the zoo. Marlin took some photos, then carefully collected the casings into an evidence bag.
“What if we find Garrett tonight?” Craddock asked. “Can we shoot him?”
“You can’t just shoot him,” Marlin said.
“What if we feel threatened?” O’Brien asked.
Marlin was hesitant to answer that question, because no matter what he said, these two yahoos would twist it around in their minds to justify an armed response.
“I’m guessing he won’t be coming back,” Marlin said, “and you shouldn’t go looking for him. You understand that?”
“What if he does try to come back?” O’Brien asked. “That’s trespassing, right? And he’s got a gun.”
“Then you should call 911,” Marlin said.
Which directly contradicted the sign O’Brien had planted halfway up his driveway that showed the silhouette of an assault rifle and the words Trespassers: We don’t dial 911.
“But we got a right to defend ourselves and our property,” Craddock said. “Ever’body knows that.”
“Well, you do have that right,” Marlin said, “Just remember it’s easy to shoot a bullet, but it’s impossible to take it back.”
“Well, yeah,” O’Brien said. “It’s a bullet. You probably wouldn’t even be able to find it.”
“It was a figure of speech,” Marlin said. “Just use sound judgment, okay?”
“’Course we would,” O’Brien said. “We both got great judgment.”
Marlin bit his tongue and said, “I’ll need both of you to come to the sheriff’s office tomorrow morning and write down everything you just told me. Can you do that?”
“I knew we shouldn’t have talked so much,” Craddock said, grinning.
“It would be very helpful,” Marlin said.
“All right,” O’Brien said, sounding like a kid whose mom had just told him to finish his chores. “If we gotta do it.”
“Give me a physical description of Garrett Becker,” Marlin said.
“About my height,” O’Brien said. “Kind of skinny. Prob’ly hasn’t shaved in a week.”
“What was he wearing?”
“Blue jeans, tennis shoes, and an orange jacket.
“Bright orange, dark orange, Longhorn orange?” Marlin asked.
“Pretty bright,” O’Brien said. “Maybe not as orange as that shit they make you wear when you’re on one of them public hunts, but pretty close. Oh, hey, I just remembered something else. Can’t believe I left this out.”
“What is it?” Marlin was ready to return to Blanco and look for Caitlin McGregor.
“Earlier we was all watching that lady talking on TV—that one Albert was banging nineteen years ago—did you see that?”
“I heard about it,” Marlin said, remembering the email from Lauren earlier. Apparently Albert Cortez had been having an affair with the woman, who was the wife of a mob boss.
O’Brien said, “Well, we was all wondering why y’all haven’t been able to identify the dead guy at the zoo yet, and Billy Don said—”
“I said maybe he got shot in the face with a shotgun,” Craddock said. “Which would account for y’all not being able to identify him.”
“And Garrett started to say something about that, but he stopped, and I had to badger it out of him,” O’Brien said. “What he said was, he heard the guy—”
“—was shot in the neck,” Craddock said.
Marlin felt that tingle in his chest that often accompanied a significant step forward in a case.
“You sure he said that?” he asked.
“Damn sure did,” O’Brien replied. “Is that right? The guy was shot in the neck?”
“We’re not releasing any information about that,” Marlin said.
“Which means yes,” O’Brien said. “Anyway, I asked Garrett where he’d heard it, since I ain’t seen the first thing about that anywhere.”
“What that means is he knew something he shouldn’ta known,” Craddock added.
“How would he of known it?” O’Brien asked.
It was a good question.
Caitlin had to resist the urge to grab the shotgun, but she pulled a sweater from a hanger instead, and she closed the closet door. Her heart was absolutely pounding.
“What’s wrong?” Trevor said.
“Huh?”
“You look like something’s wrong.”
“Oh, I was just thinking about Renee’s grandmother,” Caitlin said. “It’s so sad that all of her stuff is still here.”
Was the shotgun loaded? That was the most important question. Caitlin could handle a shotgun as well as anybody—she’d hunted dove and shot skeet with her parents for several years—but her experience would be meaningless if it wasn’t loaded.
She pulled the sweater on and sat on the floor again, back against the wall.
“Warm now?” Trevor asked.
“Not yet,” Caitlin said. “And it’s only going to get colder in here.”
“Then grab another sweater.”
If she came out of the closet with the shotgun and it wasn’t loaded, that could be a disaster if she needed to actually shoot him. And she would shoot him, if it came down to it. She needed to buy some time, so she could check for shells in the shotgun.
She said, “I just remembered something—I think there’s a space heater in the kitchen. I think I saw one in there. Nobody would be able to hear that.”
“When?”
“When what?”
“When did you see it?”
“I was over here with Renee a few weeks ago.”
He stared at her again for a very long moment and she had a hard time holding his gaze.
“Don’t lie,” he said very quietly. “You don’t need to lie to me. It pisses me off that you’d lie.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You’ve never been here before. I heard you talking to Renee last week, and y’all were talking about meeting up this coming weekend, and she had to tell you where the house is. That’s when she said where the key was hidden.”
She looked down at her hands—but she was only pretending to be meek, because that’s what he wanted to see.
“What were you gonna do if I left you alone—run for the back door?”
“Yeah,” she said, relieved that he hadn’t somehow deduced her real motive.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “You shouldn’t do that.”
“I won’t,” she said. “I promise.”
“You won’t get the chance,” he said.
“I’m just scared, you know?”
“Scared of what?”
She didn’t intend to laugh, but she couldn’t help herself. “Well, you shot a couple of people, Trevor, and now we’re hiding out here.”
He stared straight ahead at the wall opposite the bed.
“I didn’t want it to start this way, you know,” Trevor said.
“You didn’t want what to start this way? What is it? I still don’t know what that means.”
He was shaking his head slowly and she could tell he wasn’t sure how to answer. Finally he said, “Have you ever been driving along and you think, ‘What would happen if I just jerked the wheel and went over that cliff?’ Or there’s a dump truck coming right at you, and you wonder if you can stop yourself from steering into its path. And I know how crazy that sounds, but I wonder about those things, and I can’t help it.” His voice was getting thicker, like he was about to cry—but he was holding it back. “There are times when I’m at work and I have a knife in my hand...”
Caitlin had no idea how she should respond, or whether she should say anything at all. Instincts guided her and she said, “It has to be hard to deal with those kinds of thoughts.”
“That’s why I wanted to run away,” he said. “And I was hoping you’d want to go with me.”
She said, “But why didn’t you just ask me?” and immediately realized that was a dumb question.
“Would you have gone?” he said, spitting the question at her—daring her to lie and say she would have.
Dangerous ground. She didn’t want him to feel rejected.
She said, “I wouldn’t run away with anybody—you or anyone else. I don’t want to run away. My family is here. I’ve lived here all my life. I’m not planning on going anywhere—at least not yet.”
His face clouded over, and she had no idea what he was thinking.
“It’s not too late to fix all this,” she said. “But you need to give up. I think Rodney and that girl are going to be okay.” She was guessing, based on what she had seen.
“There’s a lot more to it than that,” Trevor said.
“What do you mean?”
“It didn’t start at the Dairy Queen.”
“What didn’t start?” she asked.
He laughed. It was a laugh of regret, but it was still a laugh. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him laugh before.
Then he told her everything.
Marlin was no more than a half-mile from O’Brien’s home when he rounded a gentle curve and saw a flash of orange in some cedar trees along the left side of the county road. Just a quick glimpse. Didn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe it was the text on a NO TRESPASSING sign. Or a logo on a piece of ranch equipment parked behind a barbed-wire fence.
But he stopped, dropped it into reverse, and eased backward slowly, trying to spot the orange again with his headlights.
Nothing.
Had he really seen it?
He drove forward slowly, but this time he swept the area with the spotlight mounted on the outside of his truck. Nothing but cedars and waist-high native grasses. No homes anywhere around here.
Marlin crept along at no more than five miles per hour, looking for any glimpse of orange, maybe a scrap of paper or a tossed soft drink can or surveyor’s tape marking a property line.
Then he saw it again for the briefest of moments.
He braked, then reversed again.
And he braked hard. There it was. Orange. Bright orange. Just the tiniest bit, visible through a dense shield of cedar limbs. No more than thirty yards away. Marlin couldn’t tell what it was. He grabbed his binoculars and peered through them. Still couldn’t tell what he was seeing.
He didn’t want to move his truck, so he set the parking brake and left his spotlight trained on the orange object. Flipped the switch for the light bar across the roof. Thumbed his microphone and let Darrell, the dispatcher, know he was going to be out at this location, searching for a possible armed subject. “Code four unless I advise otherwise.”
Code 4—No further assistance is required.
On almost any other night, Marlin would request backup. It only made sense to minimize risk, considering that Garrett Becker was armed. But right now, every law-enforcement officer within thirty miles was searching for Trevor Larkin and Caitlin McGregor—and Marlin didn’t want to pull anyone away from that important work—not for something like this, when he wasn’t even sure if there was a person hiding in the cedars.
Marlin took his Bushmaster M4 from the overhead rack, then opened the truck door and stepped out. Closed the door gently.
He crossed the pavement and stepped onto the rough caliche soil of the shoulder. Made his way slightly downhill to the barbed-wire fence separating county property from the ranch beyond. From here, at this angle, he could no longer see any orange.
He found a low point in the fence and was able to hoist himself over quickly, without any snags, thanks to his long legs.
No orange from here, either. The cedars were just too dense.
He moved to his right, and further still, and now he saw it again. Fifteen yards away. Was it the orange fabric of a jacket? Garrett Becker hunkering down behind the thick trunk of an old-growth cedar? Perhaps a shoulder or an elbow poking out? It was certainly possible.
A minute passed and Marlin remained perfectly still, watching the orange object.
Then it moved. Just a little bit, but it moved.