Джеймс Паттерсон - Texas Outlaw

Besides, the hat still doesn’t fit me very well. I’d just as soon have it on the chair as on my head.

It’s a clear night, with the moon high in the sky. The streetlights obscure my view of the stars. There are hardly any cars rolling up and down Main Street, and the parking lot of the motel, like always, is empty. I’m alone with my thoughts.

I’m thinking about a conversation Ariana and I had late in the afternoon, before we called it quits for the day. I asked her to give me a clearer picture of who Susan Snyder was.

“You mean was she a slut?” Ariana asked, sensing my question was motivated by the two men we’d interviewed claiming to have had sex with her.

“I don’t care how many people she slept with,” I said. “I just want a better idea of who she was.”

What I didn’t say is that from my experience, reputations aren’t always accurate. I’ve been accused of being a womanizer, but the truth is I can count all the women I’ve slept with on one hand. Every one of them was someone I cared deeply about.

But Susan Snyder is a bit of an enigma to me. The rest of the council are a bunch of good old boys, probably stuck in their ways. Susan Snyder was young and vibrant. In a town like this, a woman would be expected to marry, settle down, have babies. Susan Snyder hadn’t done any of that, apparently by choice.

Susan went to college at UT and stayed in Austin for a few years afterward, working as a graphic designer. When she was in her late twenties, she came back. She’d apparently built up a big enough client base to go freelance and could live just about anywhere. Even though her parents had retired to Florida, she chose her tiny hometown of Rio Lobo.

She was always busy in the community, Ariana said, volunteering at the library, organizing fundraisers for the Kiwanis Club, chaperoning dances for the high school kids. About five years ago, when a seat opened up on the town council, she ran. Her opponent was just like the others—an older guy who’d been in the community for a million years. But people seemed taken with Susan’s enthusiasm and charisma. She was elected narrowly.

Ariana said that the election was controversial—briefly—but the other members of the council seemed to embrace her. They treated her like a daughter—in both good and bad ways. If she had an idea they didn’t agree with, they’d talk to her like she was a young, silly girl who didn’t know any better. But she got her way more often than not. She was reelected without opposition.

“Enemies?” I asked.

“None that I know of.”

“What about the person she beat out in the election?”

“He’s on the council now. Fred Meikle. He ran for an open seat in the last election. As far as I heard, there were no hard feelings. I saw them interact in the meetings and he seemed fond of her.”

With any public figure, there’s the image they present to the world, and then there’s the real person—and the two aren’t always the same. People in Rio Lobo might not know about the sexual activity, or they might not care, but otherwise, the Susan Snyder I pictured in my mind felt like a portrait she wanted people to see.

I could see the image everyone else had of her, but I was going to have to dig deeper to find the real Susan Snyder. When you have abundant physical evidence or witness accounts or even motive, you may not need that picture of a murder victim.

I need to understand her to understand why someone would kill her.

If anyone killed her.

As I sit on the motel porch with my legs stretched out in front of me, there is someone else on my mind that I have an unclear picture of. Two people, actually: Carson McCormack and his son, Gareth. They are mysteries to me as well. I’ve already developed a dislike for the two of them, which is unfair. I haven’t even met them.

McCormack is probably the reason this town doesn’t look like half the insolvent little towns in rural Texas. He pays taxes, employs residents, and, as I’ve seen, makes donations to community projects. But as much as people speak about McCormack in this town, I haven’t yet heard anyone speak highly of him. I have no idea if McCormack or his son had anything to do with Susan Snyder’s death, but I’m going to find out.

As if on cue, one of McCormack’s trucks rolls down the street. Without using a turn signal, the truck whips into the parking lot of my motel and rolls toward my cabin. I sit up and reach my hand toward my hat, pretending I’m going to pick it up. What I’m really doing is reaching underneath to grab my SIG Sauer.

The truck rolls to a stop right in front of me. Two men are sitting in the cab. The driver reaches for something on the seat between them. Something I can’t see clearly, something bigger than a pistol—maybe a shotgun.

Then he pushes open the door.

I slide my hand under my hat and wrap my fingers around the grip of the pistol.

Chapter 23

“HOWDY, FRIEND!” THE guy says as he comes around the door of the truck.

My heart is galloping, my muscles tensed and ready to swing the gun out.

“Mind if we jam with you?” the guy says, and he raises the object in his hands: an acoustic guitar.

I exhale loudly and let go of the gun.

“Excuse me?” I say, trying to keep my voice steady and not give any indication that my body is racing with adrenaline. “You want to do what?”

“We heard you was sitting out here picking on a guitar last night,” the guy says, grinning widely as he approaches. “We thought we’d stop by and see if you wanted to jam with us.”

The man seems to be about thirty, give or take a few years. He wears a Dallas Mavericks ball cap and the same blue work shirt Skip Barnes wore earlier today. He has strong worker’s hands and a beer belly that strains the buttons of his shirt.

“Who told you I was playing?” I say, thinking of the black truck that seemed to be keeping an eye on me the night before.

“Norma,” he says, gesturing toward the office of the motel. “She owns the place. You can’t do anything in Rio Lobo without half the town hearing about it.”

The man introduces himself as Dale Peters. He says that he and his friend, Walt Mitchell, used to be in a band that played one night a week at Lobo Lizard, but their lead singer left town and now they just play together for fun.

Walt gets out of the truck and shakes my hand. He’s a middle-aged black man with graying hair. He has a pleasant smile and wears a plaid shirt, new jeans, and a clean pair of tennis shoes.

“I play bass or rhythm guitar,” Dale says. “Walt here teaches music at the school and can play just about any instrument God created. But neither of us can sing worth a lick.”

I’m not really in the mood to play with a couple of strangers, but it occurs to me that I might be able to use this to my advantage. Today we interviewed two men, one who works at the high school and one who works for Carson McCormack. Maybe I can get some information on our suspects.

“Sure,” I say. “Let me just go get my guitar.”

I pick up my hat, careful to keep the gun concealed, and walk into my room. When I come out with my guitar, Dale is sitting down, trying to tune his instrument, and Walt is walking from the truck with a banjo in one hand, a small snare drum in the other, a fiddle case wedged under one arm, and a harmonica tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt.

I bring a chair over from the porch of the neighboring unit, and the three of us sit down in a triangle. I ask why they want to play with me. Rio Lobo might be small, but there have to be other people here who can pick a guitar.

“We ain’t never jammed with a Texas Ranger before,” Dale says.

“Or someone who has a hit country song written about them,” Walt adds.