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“Will do,” Harris says. “But I know this guy—he’s going to keep calling and calling until he’s able to interview you.”

“If you can stall him for a few days,” I say, “maybe we’ll have this whole thing wrapped up by then.”

I’m stalling, too. It might not hurt to do an interview with the local newsman—the media could be used to our advantage—but I still need to learn more before I say anything.

When the chief is gone, Ariana and I discuss our plan of attack for the next day. Susan Snyder had recently gone on dates with two men—Ariana had asked around enough to find this out—and one date was on the same night she died. We’ll try to interview both men tomorrow.

Before we call it a day, I ask Ariana why the chief finally gave in and agreed to call the Rangers.

“Did you threaten to quit?”

She says she did, but that isn’t what made the difference.

“He wouldn’t have cared if I’d resigned,” she says. “I threatened to go before the town council and tell everyone why I was resigning. Then I’d go straight to Tom Aaron, the editor of the paper, and I’d tell him. He thought about it for about twenty-four hours and then decided to call the Rangers.”

“We’ll figure this thing out,” I tell her, but truthfully I don’t feel any closer to understanding what’s going on than I did yesterday. “Good work today,” I add as we head to the door.

I want her to know the condescension I used in front of Harris was just an act.

“Thanks for your discretion,” she says.

I think about asking Ariana to join me for dinner at one of the restaurants in town—not a date, just two colleagues who both have to eat. But I figure it’s probably best not to blur any lines in our relationship. Besides, I’m not sure she would accept the invitation.

We can work together without being friends, her demeanor says.

Maybe that’s a good thing. I do have a girlfriend, after all.

Chapter 19

AFTER I EAT a quick plate of tacos at Rosalia’s, I head back to the motel as the sun is going down. I try to call Willow but don’t get an answer. I grab my guitar and sit on the porch outside my room and start plucking at the strings. I place on a chair in front of me a little notebook of songs, with lyrics and chords. I know a lot of songs by heart, but this helps me practice new ones.

My guitar is a Fender acoustic-electric, which lets me practice quietly by myself, but it can also be plugged into an amp if I ever have the occasion to play on a stage, which hasn’t happened since high school. It’s a nice intermediate guitar, a step up from a beginner’s instrument but not quite what a pro would use. Willow has offered to buy me a fancier, more expensive guitar, but this one suits my needs. And it’s a pretty instrument, with a body made of laminated spruce and basswood, and a neck of mahogany.

One of the great things about being with Willow is playing together. I sang and played guitar in a band in high school, but I wasn’t ever good enough to take a shot at making a career of it. It was just fun. Willow and I will sit on the porch of the house and play and sing duets. Her talent blows me out of the water, but she humors me and seems to have a good time. Playing tonight makes me miss Willow even more.

I practice playing the Kenny Chesney song “Better Boat.” It’s a mellow song—just an acoustic guitar and vocals—about a guy riding the waves of life, with a guitar part that’s just tricky enough to be a challenge for an amateur like me. On Kenny Chesney’s version, Mindy Smith sings backing vocals, so it’s a fun song for me to do with Willow.

Tonight, though, the lyrics make my mood worsen. The words suggest the narrator is starting over after a significant loss. He has friends, but he’s mostly alone. I can’t help but think of myself, starting over after Anne’s death and all the events surrounding it. I’ve got friends and even a girlfriend, but here I am, alone on the porch of an empty motel in a town where I have no friends.

I try to switch gears and play Cole Swindell’s “Breakup in the End.” This is another slow song, another combination of vocals and acoustic guitar. But this one’s about a guy ruminating about the girl who got away. He’d go back and do it all over again, even though he knows they break up in the end.

I can’t help but think of Willow. Are we going to break up in the end?

When I’ve managed to put myself in a thoroughly bad mood, I set down the guitar and sit back in the silence. The sun has gone down, and I watch the cars pass under the streetlights and let my mind wander.

I notice a black truck with white lettering painted on the door pass by the motel. I swear the same truck passed a few minutes ago. I pick up my guitar and play, but this time I only pretend to look at my notebook. Really, I’ve got my eyes on the street. Someone is watching me.

A few minutes later, the truck passes again from the other direction. It slows down in front of the motel. Because I took the room farthest from the road, I can’t make out the words on the door. The reflection of a streetlight makes it impossible to see in the window.

When it passes a third time, I’m ready. I pretend to be looking at my phone, like I’m sending a text, and I snap a series of photos. Once the truck is gone, I scroll through the images, trying to find the best one, and when I do, I use my fingers to zoom in on the words on the door.

McCormack Oil

Next to the stenciled words is an illustration of an oil derrick.

I already solved the mystery of who Carson McCormack is, but now I’ve got a new question.

Why does he have someone keeping an eye on me?

Chapter 20

“DID YOU EVER have sex with Susan Snyder?”

The guy sitting in front of me, Alex Hartley, looks stunned at my question. We’ve been interviewing him for an hour, and so far we’ve played pretty nice, but now I want to make him uncomfortable.

“Do I really have to answer that?”

“The more clearly we understand your relationship with Susan,” Ariana says, “the easier it will be to clear you from our investigation.”

Alex told us that he dated Susan on and off for the better part of six months. Nothing serious. Nothing exclusive. Sometimes they’d go a month or six weeks without seeing each other. To me, that doesn’t sound like two people who want to be dating. It sounds like two people who hook up every once in a while.

Still, he seems genuinely upset by her death. She wasn’t his girlfriend, but he liked her. He came into the office today willingly. At one point, describing how he heard the news of her death, his voice became choked and I thought he might cry.

Alex is the football coach at the high school, where he teaches woodworking. He’s a good-looking guy, forty years old. He has a solid alibi for the night Susan Snyder died. He was in El Paso at a convention for football coaches and gave us about a dozen names of people who could verify he was there. But in a case like this, that doesn’t free him from suspicion. Someone could have given her food with peanuts in it before going out of town.

“All right, look,” the coach says. “I’ll tell you if you turn that off.” He gestures to the camera we’ve set up to record the interviews.

I give Ariana a nod, and she turns off the recorder.

“I don’t want a wife. Susan didn’t want a husband. We both liked being single. But we both liked having sex every now and then. We’re human. This town’s too small to use Tinder. We had a nice little arrangement. Nothing serious.”

He says that people don’t care if the football coach sleeps around, but a town councilwoman?

“If it gets out and people call her a slut, I’m going to feel bad. I don’t want to smear anyone’s name.”