I called up Cassie and told her about Frank.
“I can’t believe he didn’t call for backup,” she said.
I thought of my warning to Frank—and his response. He was trying to prove something to me.
“How far away is Richie?” I asked.
“Four hours,” Cassie said.
“And you and Shooter?”
“Little under two.”
I thought of the games Mad Dog and his dad had played. The Ws and Ls. How much time did Frank have? Was daybreak too late? And how long would it take me to find them, if I could?
“I need a game warden,” I said to Cassie. “We have a liaison to National Parks. A place this expansive … there’s gotta be someone on call for emergencies.”
Five minutes later, Cassie rang back. She couldn’t get a chopper for three hours, but Shooter would start driving my way.
“Poulton said to wait ’til daybreak,” she said. “After he told us you shouldn’t be there at all. That you’re suspended.”
“And the game warden?” I interrupted.
“Yeah, I had better results with that. One is driving down from a place called Beech Woods. From what they tell me, she’s worked there twenty years and will be at your location in fifteen minutes.”
I thanked Cassie and used the time to inspect the rest of Frank’s car. But nothing else was out of place.
I studied the map I’d taken from the visitor’s center. The trail at Turkey Creek was twelve miles long. Nearby signs described carnivorous plants, and I deduced that this was one of the draws of Big Thicket: a place with plants that ate insects in the night.
A few minutes later, a white truck with a Big Thicket logo pulled in and a woman got out. She was tall with light brown skin and a thick head of coarse black hair, pulled back in a ponytail. She was dressed in casual clothes, not a uniform.
“Tallulah Terradas,” she introduced herself.
I explained how I’d found Frank’s car. “It’s likely Agent Roberts was taken by our suspect. How well do you know the hunters that come here?”
She shrugged and nodded at the same time. “I’ve worked here for two decades, Agent Camden. Supervised every unit, from Menard to Beaumont. If they’ve been coming a while, I might know ’em.”
“Two men,” I said. “The younger one is twenty-six. Caucasian. The dad is a veteran. Their last name is Nolan.”
“That could be a lot of fellas,” Terradas said.
“Most likely they’ve been hunting here since the younger man was a boy. Eight or nine.”
“You know what they hunt?” Terradas asked.
“The father is an expert archer. My presumption is deer.”
“Well, we’re shotgun and bow-and-arrow for deer. Kids can start shooting at nine if they’re accompanied.”
“The older man may have looked too old to be the boy’s dad,” I said.
She nodded, her brain cranking away. “Like a grandpa, maybe?”
I nodded. “You limit the number of permits, right?”
“Depends on the unit. Some areas top out at fifty. Others, nine hundred permits per year.”
“Do you regularly drive the hunting areas?”
“We do,” she said. “Check licenses. Firearms.”
“They own a white RV,” I said. “Twenty-plus years old.”
Her eyes lit up.
“I think I might know them fellas,” she said. “The old man is rigid with his son, but polite to us.”
I called Cassie, and she sent me a picture, which Terradas verified.
“Back at the office,” Terradas told me, “we’ll have permit information on them. Tomorrow, I could pull—”
“Ms. Terradas,” I interrupted. “I’ve got a situation tonight. I’m looking for where they hunt. Where their special place is. A place others might not know about.”
The warden pulled out a map similar to the one from the visitor’s center. Spread it over the hood of her truck and used her phone as a flashlight.
“If it’s the guys I’m thinking, it’s gonna be a little hard to find at this hour. You want that I go with you?”
I considered this. Shooter was on her way. Two hours out, probably. And I was working without a badge. If I waited ’til sunrise, someone from the Bureau would stop me for sure. Shut me down while they did a confab on how to approach the issue. I was guessing Frank didn’t have that long.
“No,” I said. “My team knows where I am, and they’re sending someone. I’ll keep them abreast.”
“Well, this particular spot is in Jack Gore,” she said. “A baygall unit? You know what that is?”
“It’s a clay layer that traps water,” I said. “A poorly drained marsh.”
“Exactly,” she said. “So it’s pretty dark in there, and not just at night. Tangled vines. Tannin from rotting plants. You gotta be careful.”
She gave me directions, east out of Turkey Creek. “You’re gonna come off of Ninety-Two onto Craven Camp Road,” she said, marking her map with a red Sharpie. “From there, you find Franklin Lake Road.”
I glanced at my phone. Time was passing, and I needed to go. “Franklin Lake has a campground?”
“Franklin Lake doesn’t even have much of a lake,” she said. “But if it’s them two and you want their secret spot…”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s an old Union Gas depot. Place has three or four tanks, but mostly it’s a vacant lot. The hunters aren’t supposed to park there.”
“These two do?”
“Sorta. I’ve seen them pull that white RV under some scrub brush nearby, probably to keep would-be thieves away while they’re gone. There’s a field over there with a dozen hunting blinds. That’s where they begin. From there it’s on foot—toward the river. That’s the best I can tell you. Their spot’s in between the thicket and the water.”
“Do you have a topographic representation of this area?” I asked.
“On my laptop,” she said.
She retrieved her PC from the truck and fired it up. Punched in variables to bring up the Franklin Lake area.
I studied the digital topographic map. The screen showed a mix of blues and greens in one area. Reds and yellows in another.
Terradas moved an errant hair off her face. She had dark brown eyes and a perfect aquiline nose.
“Deep blue is thirty feet above sea level.” She pointed at the screen. “Green, sixty. Yellow, ninety. Red, a hundred and ten.”
Near Franklin Lake was a swarm of dots that I suspected was a river.
“Can you zoom in on that?” I pointed at her laptop.
She did, and the area magnified. “This is the dead end by Union Gas?” I asked. “The parking lot?”
“There’s a little turnaround there,” she said. “And nearby is Franklin Lake. It’s a puddle, really. John’s Lake below is larger. Leads into the Neches. But those two men head in a more northeast direction. Away from John’s Lake.”
I pulled out my phone. Studied the hand-drawn maps that Cassie had texted me, the curving lines I felt were indicators of topography. There were two with an L on them and one with a W.
Down at the bottom of each was a date, and I stared at the date below the W.
March 22, 2013.
Two days before the fishing trip with Tignon.
Was this the one time Ethan Nolan had beaten his dad at their game? Was it then that his father had exacted some punishment that put Ethan in a sling?
I examined the river of dots in the hand drawing, then motioned at Terradas’s laptop. The curve was identical. “These blue dashes are water?”
“No.” She shook her head. “That’s the thicket. Before you get to the water, you gotta get through the pines and live oaks. Beech trees. Then comes the water, thick around your boots. Then swampier still. There’s water elm. Cypress. Tupelo. What we call the backwater slough.”
Was Mad Dog hunted as a child as part of some game? Did he cover his wall in maps that showed where he lost to his father?
“You don’t have a weapon to spare, do you?” I asked.
Terradas gave me a look. “I came straight from dinner.” She reached into her truck and produced a pocketknife. “This is the best I can do.”
“Appreciate it,” I said, taking the knife. “I’ll get this back to you.”
I hurried over to the Crown Vic.
Mad Dog was baiting me to chase him onto territory that he and his dad knew better than anyone else. With his father dead, he was now the expert, and the night was growing darker by the second. At any minute, Mad Dog could end Frank’s life.
I got in Frank’s car and pulled back onto the county highway, heading east, the ranger’s map on the passenger seat and the dome light on so I could glance at it.
In a few minutes the road became dirt, and my hands jerked at the wheel. In the dark, I could not tell how soft the road was, and I regretted not accepting at least an escort from the warden.
Gravel crunched under the Crown Vic’s tires, and the constitution of the road changed again. Soon I turned south. Slowing, I swerved left onto a small road that headed toward Franklin Lake.
I let off the gas.
Out my window, the silhouettes of hunting blinds stood, eight feet by eight, built on wooden platforms raised ten feet above the saw grass. A place for a hunter to wait for deer.
Looking east, I studied the line of trees I’d seen on the topographic map. The same ones that looked like a river of dots in the hand-drawn diagram. I kept up my speed so as not to get stuck in the dirt, my headlights the only thing illuminating the bumpy road.
Beyond the thicket, the water grew deeper, until you were in the Neches River. Up ahead I saw what looked like four large tanks, almost like grain silos, with a catwalk mounted to the front. I clicked on my high beams and saw a sign that read UNION GAS OPERATING COMPANY, 1000 ACRES. The red metal listed a registration number and a date.
I steered around the circular parking area. Nothing.
Then something caught my eye. The edge of a white vehicle, parked under a tree’s bough a hundred feet away.
I followed the circular road I’d come in on, heading back out as if I was done with my search. When I made my way to the gravel road, I shut off my lights.
In a perfect world, I would approach the RV from the rear, examining the doors and evaluating the best path. But I had no weapon other than a pocketknife, and the night was pitch-black.
I had come up working with several people at the FBI who were referred to as mavericks. Saul was one. And I’d noticed two things that made him different. One, he thought differently than others. A skill I had in spades. Two, he acted unexpectedly. Chose instinct over rules. Justified his disruptive behavior later. And was rarely wrong.
Think like you do, Gardy.
Act like other people.
I turned the Crown Vic around. Pointed it back toward the area by the round tanks, evaluating the danger to Frank versus the element of surprise.
I accelerated in the dark, my eyes barely finding the edge of the dirt road. I was moving at twenty miles an hour. Then thirty. Bouncing over small dirt ruts. When the gas tanks and the catwalk came into view, I swerved right through the underbrush and put my foot to the floor.
I hit the RV at full speed, the center of my car as far from the gas tank as I could to keep the vehicles from bursting on impact.
My airbag popped on, a sharp pressure thrusting against my nose. The white recreational vehicle pitched back, caught on a downed log, and went airborne, flipping onto its side.
The Crown Vic plowed into it as I swerved, and the combined mess of us came to a stop.
I knew I could’ve hurt Frank if he was inside, but Mad Dog might do worse, and I needed the element of surprise.
I undid my seat belt. Cut away at the airbag with the ranger’s pocketknife.
Putting my hand to my nose, I found it bloody and likely broken. I got out fast. Climbed onto my hood and from there, on to the RV. One of the two doors was facing up; the other was pinned to the ground.
Standing on the side of the RV, I swung the door open.
Silence.
I dropped down into the hole of the door and found that my feet were traversing the side wall. I used my flashlight to scan the vehicle, hoping to find Frank. Or Mad Dog. Or a weapon he’d left behind. But no one was inside.
Was Frank ever here? Or had Mad Dog killed him in Turkey Creek and left his body in some unknown location?
My light raked the inside of the RV. I was about to leave when I spotted something familiar. My light came back to it.
A bullet hole in the side of a briefcase. Frank’s.
Mad Dog was close.
If I was lucky, so was Frank.