I drove the Avalon down the dirt track, past the tank, and through the field to the bluffs over the river, the grass thropping under the bumper. Five feet out from the bank, submerged to his hips, in his blue serge suit with no shirt under his coat, was Garland T. Moon. He flung his bait with a cheap rod out into the current.
I got out of the Avalon and looked down at him from the bluff. Against the late sun his skin looked bathed in iodine.
'This waterway is public property. State of Texas law,' he said. A brown, triangular scab had formed on his bottom lip where I had hit him.
'I'm going to have you picked up anyway.'
He had to lick the scab on his lip before he spoke. 'Thought you might want to know I got me an ACLU civil rights lawyer from Dallas.'
'You know who Sammy Mace is?' I said.
'A greaseball out of Houston?'
'He's in town. I think you've stumbled into his business interests. Maybe I'm wrong.'
He retrieved his bait out of the water and flipped it in an arc back into the current.
'Fore you hit me, you said your daddy was a fine man. That 'fine' man run me off the job. Sixteen years old, carried me out on the highway, told me to get out of his truck. Without no home, food, people, nothing.'
'If he ran you off, you probably stole from him or did worse. I suspect it was 'worse'.'
He was quiet a long time, smiling at nothing. Then he said, 'You ever asked yourself why your daddy hepped out a jailhouse kid like me?'
'He was kind to animals and white trash. That was his way, Moon.'
'My hair is darker red than yours, but maybe that's 'cause my mama was a redhead. Think about it, boy. Your daddy ever pipeline around Waco fifteen years or so before you was born?'
I got in the Avalon and drove back to the house and called 911, a wave of nausea surging into the bottom of my throat.
By the time a deputy in a cruiser got to the house and I went back down to the river with him, Moon had disappeared.
'What's wrong, Billy Bob?' Pete said later in the kitchen.
'Nothing, bud. Everything's solid.'
Don't let Moon wound you, I told myself. That's his power over people. He makes them hate themselves.
'You want some ice cream?' Pete asked.
'Not tonight.'
He continued to stare at me with a puzzled look, then I heard Temple's car in the drive and a moment later Pete going out the screen door for his ride back to her house.
It's the moment every decent cop dreads. It comes unexpectedly, out of nowhere, like a freight train through a wall. Later, when you play the tape over and over again, seeking justification, wondering if there were alternatives, you're left invariably with the last frame on the spool, the only one that counts, and it tells you daily what your true potential is.
Mary Beth went back on duty after only two days' rest.
The 911 call reporting a trespasser and disturbing-the-peace incident at the skeet club should have required little more than the dispatch of a cruiser, perhaps a mediation, perhaps escorting someone off the property or even putting him in jail for twenty-four hours.
Vernon Smothers started looking for Jack Vanzandt at his office, then his home and the yacht basin and the country club. It was late afternoon when he found his way to the skeet club and parked by the pavilion in front of the row of traps that sailed clay pigeons toward a distant treeline.
Bunny Vogel saw him first, saw the energy in his face that was like both anger and fear at the same time, and walked from the pavilion to intercept him.
'You a guest here this evening, Mr Smothers?' Bunny asked.
Vernon's khakis and denim shirt were pressed and clean, his white straw hat tilted on the back of his head, his eyes wide, unblinking. A heated, dry odor seemed to envelop his skin and his clothes.
'You got to be a member or a guest, Mr Smothers. You can go over to the clubhouse there and see about a membership…'
'I see Emma Vanzandt there. Where's her husband at?' Vernon said.
'Sir, I don't think this is a good idea. I'm sorry for what happened to Lucas. I mean, I'm sorry for my part in it…' He gestured in the air, then his voice trailed off.
Jack Vanzandt, Sammy Mace, and a middle-aged man with a ponytail and thick lips and glasses that magnified his eyes walked out of the squat, green building that served as a clubhouse and approached the pavilion. Jack had the breech of a double-barrel shotgun cracked open on his forearm.
Vernon put one hand on Bunny's shoulder and moved him aside, as he would push open a door.
'I ain't up to no traveling shit storms today, Mr Smothers. I got orders about-' Bunny began.
But Vernon was already walking away from him as though he were not there.
Jack and Sammy Mace and the man with the ponytail sat down at a plank table with Emma Vanzandt. None of them paid attention to Vernon Smothers until he was three feet from their table.
'How you doin', Vernon?' Jack said.
'Your boy and his friends vandalized my house and humiliated my son,' Vernon said.
'I don't think that's true,' Jack said.
'Go ask Bunny Vogel. He's the little Judas Iscariot hepped Darl do it.'
Jack blew out his breath.
'This isn't the place for it. Come to my office,' he said.
'I know you for the type man you are, Jack Vanzandt. That man next to you is a goddamn criminal,' Vernon said.
'Hey! This is a private club here. You watch your language,' Sammy Mace said.
'Get up, Jack,' Vernon said.
The man with the ponytail put his hand on top of Jack's forearm. 'It's all right. I'll walk this guy to his truck. Is that your truck there, big man?' he said.
'No,' Jack said. 'Listen, Vernon. Kids get into trouble. It doesn't make it any better if the parents fight. Now-'
Vernon reached out and, with the flat of his hand, popped Jack on one cheek.
'You ain't no war hero. You just a rich man bought all the right people,' he said.
'Jack, put an end to this,' Emma said.
But Bunny Vogel had already called the sheriff's department, and Mary Beth's cruiser had been only two hundred yards from the skeet club when the dispatcher's voice came over her radio.
She turned off the highway and drove onto the grass almost to the pavilion, got out of her cruiser and slipped her baton through the ring on her belt.
She went straight for the source of the problem, Vernon Smothers.
'You're trespassing, sir… No, there won't be any debate about it. You get in your truck and drive back on the highway,' she said.
'Hey, we got the marines here,' Sammy Mace said.
'You shut up,' Mary Beth said.
'What?' Sammy said.
'In your truck, Mr Smothers,' Mary Beth said.
'Hey, what'd you just say to me?' Sammy Mace asked.
'I said you stay out of this unless you want to go to jail,' she replied.
Sammy opened his hands and made a shocked expression to the man in the ponytail.
'You believe this broad?' he asked.
'Last chance,' Mary Beth said.
'You got no right to be impolite. We're not the offending parties here,' the man in the ponytail said.
'We're out of here, Jack. Right now,' Emma said.
Mary Beth cupped her hand around Vernon's arm.
