Blanco County 04 - Guilt Trip (20 page)
Read Blanco County 04 - Guilt Trip Online
Authors: Ben Rehder
Tags: #Texas, #Murder Mystery, #hunting guide, #deer hunting, #good old boys, #Carl Hiaasen, #rednecks, #Funny mystery, #game warden, #crime fiction, #southern fiction, #Rotary Club
The sheriff pulled in behind Marlin’s truck and quickly climbed out, carrying a single piece of paper. “I just got this by email from a sergeant in Florida,” he said, frustration in his voice. He slapped a laser-printed photo down on the hood of a cruiser. “Tell me that ain’t Lucas Burnette.”
LUCAS HAD SEEN plenty of cops in the past six days. Small-town Barney Fifes keeping a watchful eye on their domains. Highway patrolmen cruising the interstates. County deputies looking stern as they ran radar on state highways. But none of them had made Lucas particularly nervous. He had realized early on that—even on lesser-traveled roads—he was virtually anonymous, just one car among thousands, like one ant in a swarming mound. His sense of confidence had come from the fact that they wouldn’t pull him over as long as he didn’t give them a reason to do so. Sure, maybe they had been looking for the Corvette back when he was still driving it, but there were a lot more Corvettes on the road than one might think. And now that he was driving a plain-vanilla hatchback, well, the odds were astronomically in his favor.
Why, then, as he pulled into the motel parking lot, did his gut tighten up when he spotted a black-and-white parked at the motel across the street? The cruiser was empty, parked in front of the office. This struck him as odd. If the motel manager had called in a complaint, it would almost certainly be against a guest. And if a guest was causing trouble, wouldn’t the cop park in front of that guest’s room?
Lucas decided that he was being way too jumpy, that his nerves were shot from the failed mission at the bar on Duval Street. That didn’t stop him from pulling into the parking lot of his own motel, climbing out, and poking his head around a corner to get a clear view across the street.
He lit a cigarette—so any other guest who came along would peg him as a smoker staying in a nonsmoking room—and he waited.
This is silly,
he thought.
I’m nearly two thousand miles from home. Nobody is looking for me here.
He absentmindedly ran a hand through his brown hair, wondering if the color change, along with the goatee, was enough to disguise his looks. Maybe he should’ve bought some cheap glasses at a drugstore. He took a drag and could feel the nicotine rush, the pulse pounding in his temple.
He was halfway through his smoke when the cop exited the office carrying a sheet of paper. Or maybe it was a stack of sheets, it was hard to tell.
Now Lucas wondered:
Am I being paranoid? Or is this cop handing out flyers at motels?
Seconds later, he had an answer. Or, at least, all the answer he needed.
The cop got into his cruiser, swung from the lot, and came directly across the street to Lucas’s motel. He parked at the office. He climbed out, still carrying a stack of papers, and went inside.
Oh, no. Not now. Not after all he’d been through.
Lucas sprinted to his room, swiped the key card, and threw the door open. Stephanie was sitting on the foot of the bed, a keyboard in her lap, staring at the TV screen.
“We’ve gotta go!” he yelled. “The cops are out front!”
Stephanie didn’t budge, but Lucas hardly noticed. He grabbed the two suitcases. They’d take what was in them. Everything else would be left behind. They’d have to start all over, in some other town, probably in another state. Everything they had wanted—or maybe it was only what Lucas had wanted—had evaporated in a matter of seconds.
Stephanie still hadn’t made a move. “Come on, Steph! What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”
He saw that she was crying—maybe homesick, or maybe just one of her moods.
“Steph,” he said quietly, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Seriously, we’ve gotta get out of here. I know I said they wouldn’t find us, but they did.”
She finally turned his way, and he was shocked by the look of pure hatred on her beautiful face. “What the hell happened on Sunday, Lucas?”
Her tone stopped him cold. He set the suitcases down, then turned and closed the door. “What are you talking about?”
She gave the tiniest shake of her head.
“Steph? Steph, talk to me. What’s going on?”
“I’m talking about Vance!” she screamed. She threw the keyboard at him, but it reached the end of its cord, stopped in midair, and clattered harmlessly to the floor.
What the hell is going on?
Stephanie pointed at the television. “Did you think I’d never find out?”
Lucas turned to the screen. Stephanie had been surfing the Internet. She had logged on to the Web site for the
Blanco County Record.
Right there, at the top of the page, next to a photo of Vance, was the headline:
Stephanie was sobbing. “Why, Lucas? Why the fuck did you have to do that!”
There was a knock at the door, and Lucas realized it would all come to an end now. Actually, it was just the beginning of a new stage, one that was certain to be a nightmare. There was so much to explain, and he knew that nobody would believe what had really happened. Not the cops. And not Stephanie, now that she knew he’d deceived her.
“Steph, I can explain.” His words sounded so feeble and inadequate. “I swear to God—I didn’t do it.”
She looked at him, and Lucas was heartbroken to see that there was fear in her eyes. She had her knees drawn to her chest, gently rocking, as pitiful as a lost child.
There was a second knock, firmer this time, and Lucas realized he had no more fight left in him.
“I love you, Stephanie.”
She didn’t respond.
Lucas turned and opened the door. Standing there was a cleaning woman. “Make up your room?”
When Red came out of the bedroom, it was several hours later than he had expected. Of course, most of that time had been spent sleeping off the vodka, but as for that other part—doing right by Lucy—he figured he’d done a pretty good job. They’d had the radio on, and Red had made it through a George Strait song and most of a Faith Hill. In hindsight, it might’ve been that image of Faith bouncing around in his head that had put him over the edge. But he hadn’t heard any complaints from Lucy, and he took that as a good sign. She’d even commented on the blanket he’d bought down in Nuevo Laredo. Orange and white, with a ten-point buck staring you in the face. One hundred percent acrylic, and fuzzy as a newborn chick. In the twenty years he’d owned that blanket, she was the first lady who’d ever liked it. That right there said something about her good taste.
Red found Billy Don in the living room, parked on the couch, watching some old John Wayne war movie. Red eased himself into the recliner, not saying much, playing it cool, but when he cut his eyes to the side, he saw Billy Don grinning at him.
“Where’s Lucy?” the big man asked.
“Still sleeping,” Red replied, fighting to keep the smile off his face, but his cheeks wouldn’t cooperate.
“You ol’ dog.” Billy Don tossed an empty beer can at him. “Tomato juice, my ass.”
Red was about to bust with pride. But there was something else there. Something he was afraid to acknowledge, because he might scare it away, or somehow jinx it. It had been a damn long time since he had felt this way, the last time being when he had bought his Remington Model 700 at the pawnshop in Austin. The excitement rippled through him like the kick from a good slug of tequila.
Red was pretty sure he was in love.
There. Now he had at least admitted it to himself. It wasn’t something he was ready to blurt out to Lucy quite yet, and he and Billy Don sure didn’t discuss that sort of thing. So, for now, it’d be his own little secret. Which wouldn’t be a problem, because Billy Don was already distracted by some kind of commotion on the screen. Bunch of bombs going off and stuff.
When things had quieted down, Billy Don said, “Hey, Red, why did they call it the longest day?”
“Do what?” Red hadn’t been paying much attention. His thoughts were still on Lucy, and he was wondering if she expected him to return to the bedroom for an encore.
“The invasion at Normandy,” Billy Don said, nodding at the TV.
Red mulled it over. “Because they timed it with the summer whaddayacallit…the solstice. Longest day of the year. Sun don’t set till, like, nine o’clock. Gave ‘em plenty of time to kick some ass.”
Billy Don looked at him with uncertainty, then seemed to accept the explanation and returned his eyes to the screen.
When a commercial came on, Billy Don had another question. “What time we going after the safe?”
“This afternoon. Lucy says she normally drops by the old man’s place at around four.”
That project seemed so unimportant to Red now. What was money when you had love? Who needed to pay the bills when you could share a bed with a gal like Lucy? He’d just as soon hole up in the bedroom and not come out for a week or two. Hell, he’d be making it all the way through the Country Top 40 by then. Song after song, he and Lucy exploring each other like a couple of kids with—
Billy Don cut into Red’s thoughts by saying, “I’m still feeling kinda funny about the whole thing.”
Red could understand that. He had a few doubts himself, when he thought too long about it. But he said, “You heard how Lucy explained it. The taxes and all that. Don’t you want your money back?”
Billy Don grunted, which could’ve been taken as either a yes or a no. “What about the old man?” he asked. “Won’t he notice the safe’s gone?”
“See, that’s the perfect part of this,” Red replied. “Lucy says the old man is getting a little nutty in his old age. She says she mentioned the safe to him one day, and he had no idea what she was talking about. Looked at her like she was crazy. What that means is, he don’t even know it’s there. Besides, even if he said something to somebody, they’d think he was confused.”
Yep, it was perfect, all right. Which made Red wonder all the more why he felt like they were crossing some line he shouldn’t cross. He considered himself a fairly moral person overall. Sure, he’d kill a deer out of season now and then, do a little spotlighting at night, and maybe even cross a few property lines to get a shot at a wild pig, but he never could see why that was such a big deal. Those wild animals belonged to everybody. And what’s the difference between shooting a buck from your truck instead of a deer blind? He wished someone would explain that to him sometime—somebody other than a judge.
On the other hand, carting off a strongbox full of money? Well, Red figured the ethics involved were a lot more hazy. He had a hard time making it right in his head, no matter what Lucy said.
A few minutes later, the movie came back on, and Billy Don said, “The Duke would never do nothing like this.”
Rita Sue Metzger’s truck was parked in front of her house, so Marlin pulled in behind it.
Just minutes earlier, back at Scofield’s house, the discussion had moved at a rapid clip as the team weighed their latest break.
Marlin, holding the photo: “Where’d it come from?”
Garza: “Tourist took it in Key West. They’re already canvassing the motels.”
Marlin, shaking his head: “Florida? Okay, check this out. I called Stephanie’s cell phone an hour ago. Some old guy answered, and I thought I had the wrong number. He said he was in
Miami.
Didn’t know who Stephanie was—but he asked me if it was my phone, like he didn’t know whose phone he had.”
Garza: “Rita Sue said Lucas and Stephanie didn’t hang around together. They were just schoolmates.”
Marlin: “Looks like she might’ve been wrong.”
Garza clapped his hands once, excited. “Okay, we’ve got a possible link between Lucas and Scofield, and now a possible link between Lucas and Stephanie Waring.”
Nobody had to point out the possibilities. The allergy medicine tied Lucas to Scofield. The Florida information tied Lucas to Stephanie—possibly together, on the run. It didn’t look good for either of them.
Tatum: “Let’s get her phone records.”
Marlin: “I’m already on it. Faxed the subpoena about an hour ago.”
Garza: “Have you talked to Chuck Hamm?”
“Well, no, not with this—”
“Yeah, put that aside for now. Can you talk to Rita Sue again? See if she’s heard anything more. Woman’s nutty enough, she might not let us know if Stephanie calls again.”
“How about a warrant for Stephanie’s duplex? We still short on probable cause?”
“Yeah, and I don’t want anything booted on appeal. We can’t jump the gun here. We have to prove that Stephanie and Lucas were more than passing acquaintances. For all we know, Stephanie left her phone over at Scofield’s place, and maybe Lucas grabbed it later. Maybe he’s the one who took it to Florida. Let’s wait for the phone records and see what we can dig up from that.”
“Sorry to bother you again,” he said when Rita Sue answered the door wearing the same blue housecoat.
She waved her hand at him in a don’t-be-silly manner. “Come on in. You want some coffee?”
Marlin stepped inside, the Chihuahua sniffing at his ankles. “No, ma’am, but thank you.”
“I could make a fresh pot.”
“Really, I’m fine. I just had a couple of quick questions.”
Rita Sue motioned for Marlin to sit, and she planted herself in the easy chair again, the dog hopping into her lap. The TV was tuned to a talk show, a man apparently revealing to his wife that he was a closet cross-dresser. Rita Sue reached for the remote and reluctantly turned the set off.
“Y’all heard from Stephanie yet?” Rita Sue asked, before Marlin could ask the same question.
“No, ma’am. We were wondering if you had.”
“Lord, no. Far be it from that girl to remember her mama. ‘Bout knocked my socks off to get a call from her in the first place.”
“If she does call—”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Don’t just let us know. You need to have her call the sheriff’s department, and tell her it’s extremely important. She needs to call us immediately.”
“Oh, I will. I saw on the news where y’all found that man’s body. If Stephanie knew him, I can see where you’d need to talk to her. They saying he was killed?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
