Seated beside Moss in the pickup, Desiree thinks of every law that she’s breaking. She has ignored protocols, disobeyed orders, and jeopardized her career, yet everything about this case has altered her perception of normal. The man next to her should still be in jail or in handcuffs. He swears blind he didn’t escape. Whoever set him free had influence, connections. They didn’t want the money, according to Moss, they wanted Palmer dead.
“Did you steal this pickup?” she asks, speaking for the first time since they left the outskirts of Houston.
“No, ma’am.” Moss looks hurt by the accusation. “They gave it to me.”
Desiree opens her cell phone and calls Virginia, asking for a status update on Moss Webster and asking them to run a motor-vehicle check on the Chevy.
She looks at Moss. “You lied to me. It was stolen from a garage near the Dairy Queen after you escaped.”
“What?”
“I’m sitting in a stolen pickup.”
“Give me some credit. You think I’d steal a shitbox like this? Makes me look like a redneck. And I didn’t escape—they let me go!”
“According to you.”
“I wouldn’t be seen dead driving a Chevy.”
She waves her gun. “Well, I could test that theory.”
They fall into a sullen silence until Desiree changes the subject and asks about the old man who found the boy.
“Theo McAllister’s place is set back from the road,” explains Moss, “but it was near enough for him to hear the shooting and see the burning car. He found the boy the next day.”
Moss taps his hands loosely on the steering wheel. Desiree likes men with big hands.
“That’s when I got to thinking: what if the boy belonged to that woman, the one who was never identified?”
“How do you know about her?”
“I read about it in the papers.”
“She has a name now.”
Moss glances at her.
“Belita Ciera Vega.”
His eyebrows arch.
“You’ve heard it before?”
Moss looks back at the road. “Audie used to have these nightmares. Not all the time, but often enough. He’d wake up screaming, crying out a name. That was the one: Belita. I used to ask him about her but he said it was just a dream.” He glances at Desiree. “You think he’s that boy’s real father?”
“Not according to the birth certificate.”
Desiree falls silent and begins adding more details to the picture forming in her mind. Audie and Belita were married in a chapel in Las Vegas. Five days later they were in Texas. If Audie took part in the robbery, why bring his wife and the boy along? More likely, they were bystanders—caught up in the outcome. Perhaps Audie and the boy were thrown clear by the impact, or they’d stopped by the side of the road and weren’t in the car. Nobody came forward to claim Belita’s body. Audie was in a coma. The boy was too young to help.
Moss breaks the silence. “Why didn’t Audie tell someone about the boy?”
“Maybe they threatened him. Maybe they threatened the boy.”
Moss whistles through his teeth. “That’s got to be one precious child.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t see what they did to Audie in prison. He swam through an ocean of shit when most men would have happily drowned.”
Desiree ignores him for a moment, still developing the story in her mind. She and Moss had been working toward the same end but approaching the search from different angles. Together they had created a compelling story, but that didn’t make it true.
Audie Palmer saw the accident and shoot-out. He watched his wife die. There were seven million reasons to clean up and remove any witnesses, which meant killing Audie or silencing him. They tried both.
There were three deputies involved in the shooting. One is dead, another missing, and the third is Ryan Valdez. DA Edward Dowling is now a newly elected state senator. Frank Senogles ran the original investigation and is now a Special Agent in Charge. Who else might be involved? The conspiracy relied upon Audie Palmer’s silence. They must have used the boy as leverage, which is why they kept him close…very close.
What about the other gang member? In the original statements the two deputies claimed a dark-colored SUV was parked alongside the armored truck and the bags of cash were being transferred. The SUV sped off and was later found burned out near Lake Conroe. These elements of the story were only added after the shooting. The deputies could easily have searched the dispatcher’s log for reports of stolen and burned-out cars and chosen one to link to the robbery.
There was never a description of the missing gang member. Nobody claimed to have seen Carl Palmer. It was always an assumption, which the police helped foster by creating rumors, third-hand accounts, and reports from unnamed sources. Somebody leaked Carl’s name to the media and the story took on a life of its own. Soon it became accepted as fact, backed up by periodic “sightings” of Carl in places like Mexico and the Philippines. There were never any photographs or fingerprints. Each time Carl would mysteriously slip away before the FBI could confirm his identity. Somebody like Senogles could have planted the stories. By keeping this fictitious gang member alive it stopped anyone from looking more closely at the robbery.
Desiree’s mind comes back to the present. The sun is a fading spark on the horizon and farms have given way to wetlands, canals, and shallow lakes. Short grasses are bent by the wind and the air blooms with the smell of salt and rain. Big sky. Big land. Big sea.