“Stay back!”
Luke took a deep breath and stepped forward. “I’m unarmed, Garrett. I couldn’t grab your gun from here even if I wanted to. If you’re going to pull the trigger, I can’t stop you. But first tell me why. Tell me what happened.”
Garrett’s eyes darted back toward the front of the house, looking for Lori.
“You owe it to your wife,” he said, struck by a flash of inspiration. “You want her to think you’ve done this because of her?”
Garrett’s face crumpled. “N-no.”
Luke wasn’t sure he understood the belated concern for Lori. Garrett certainly hadn’t been thinking about his wife while he was fooling around with Yesenia Montes.
“There is one thing I’d like you to tell her.”
“Name it.”
“I lied about having sex with Yesenia. I used that as an excuse because I knew people had seen us together.”
Luke hadn’t expected this particular confession. “What were you doing with her?”
Garrett made a sniffling noise. “I set her up on dates sometimes. Introduced her to people. Drove her around.”
Luke was baffled. “Why?”
“She gave me a cut.”
Realization dawned. His sheriff’s deputy was
“I have a gambling problem, in case you didn’t know,” Garrett continued in a self-deprecating tone. “I needed the extra income.”
“You’ve overextended yourself?”
“And then some. We’re going to lose the house. Lori will be better off without me.”
“She won’t get a dime of insurance money if you pull the trigger,” Luke said, relaxing his stance a little. He was pretty sure Garrett wasn’t going to shoot him, or anyone else. “You know, I’ve never really liked guns,” he added, offhand.
Garrett blinked a few times. “You-you haven’t?”
“Nah. That was one of the reasons I accepted this position in Tenaja Falls. I didn’t think I’d have to wear my gun all the time.”
“That’s… stupid,” Garrett decided. “You can’t make a routine traffic stop these days without worrying you’ll catch some psycho behind the wheel.”
Luke found that statement pretty ironic, considering the current situation. “Yeah, I guess. I think I’ll quit wearing it anyway. I don’t like shooting them. I certainly didn’t like getting shot. And the mess they make!” Grimacing, he surveyed the Vic’s interior. “You ever seen a man take a hit to the head at close range?”
Garrett swallowed a few times, looking queasy.
“What am I saying? Of course you have. Must’ve been brains all over in Iraq.”
Garrett’s lips curled back in distaste, but he couldn’t deny it.
“You don’t want your wife to see that, man. Lori will be upset about the house. But she’d be more upset about losing her house and the father of her baby.” Luke put his hand near the open window. “Give me the gun.”
“No.”
“Give me the gun, Garrett. Don’t wait until the whole neighborhood comes out. This place will be swarming with squad cars from the Palomar substation in a few minutes.”
After another moment of indecision, Garrett capitulated, placing his revolver in the palm of Luke’s hand.
As Luke wrapped his fingers around the sweaty, skin-warmed steel, he experienced a powerful surge of rage. The temptation to shove the barrel against Garrett’s skull and demand some answers was overwhelming. Now he knew why cops sometimes lost control with suspects. “Get out,” he said, engaging the safety and tucking the gun into the back of his pants.
“Wh-what? Why?”
“You know procedure as well as I do, Garrett. I’ll be sure to mention that I had your full cooperation when I file my report. Now get the fuck out of the car.”
Garrett opened the driver’s-side door and stepped out, groaning as he considered the ramifications of his actions. Luke had him sprawled over the hood, his hands cuffed behind his back, before he could change his mind.
“Tell me what you did with Yesenia,” he demanded, kicking his feet apart.
“Nothing,” Garrett said. “Nothing, I swear.”
Luke patted him down roughly, every muscle in his body poised to fight. Following instinct instead of procedure, he jerked the cuffs up and shoved Garrett’s head down on the hood, applying what he knew to be a painful amount of pressure. “If you don’t start talking I’ll smear your face all over this driveway.”
“I didn’t touch her. I swear to God I didn’t.”
“Did you plant the snake at Dark Canyon?”
He hesitated. “Confessions made under duress are inadmissible.”
“I’ll show you some duress,” Luke muttered, lifting Garrett from the hood of the car and slamming him facedown again. “Did you plant the snake?”
Garrett made a gurgling noise. Luke lifted him up again.
“Yes,” Garrett cried. “I owe Moses Rivers a lot of money. I thought if I implicated him I could use it as a bargaining chip. Reduce my debt, in exchange for taking the heat off.”
Desperate times called for desperate measures, Luke supposed.
“I never meant to hurt Shay,” Garrett insisted. “I’ve seen her handle snakes before. She’s a pro.”
“Did you set the fire?”
Garrett didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“Goddamn you, Garrett! Don’t tell me you didn’t mean to hurt anyone then, either.”
“The wind was stronger than I thought-”
Luke drove his elbow into the middle of Garrett’s back, shutting him up. “Is that why you killed Bull Ryan, you lying sack of shit? To cast suspicion on Rivers? Or were you just trying to implicate me?”
“I didn’t kill him,” he rasped, struggling for breath. “We… scuffled, over some money I owed him, and he… clutched at his chest. He was dead before he hit the floor. I swear.”
“So instead of calling 911, or performing CPR, you cut the top of his head off? You are a sick motherfucker, Snell. They’re going to lock you up and throw away the key. And you know how law enforcement officers get treated in prison.” He twisted the cuffs. “I hope your cellmate is some big guy named Bubba.”
“Please,” Garrett gasped.
“Why did you move Yesenia?”
“I didn’t,” he insisted.
“The fuck you didn’t!” Jerking the gun from the waistband of his pants, Luke shoved the barrel against the back of Garrett’s thick neck. He still didn’t like guns, but he had to admit he liked making his deputy sorry.
“Okay!” Garrett screamed. “Okay, I’ll talk. Point that thing somewhere else. Please.”
Luke ignored his request. “What did you do to her?”
“She was cheating me out of my cut, keeping all of her earnings. And telling the other girls to do the same.”
“I only meant to scare her,” he panted. “I didn’t think the lion would really attack.”
“What lion?” He jammed the barrel into the back of Garrett’s neck. “Where?”
“At Betty Louis’s ranch,” he said, his big body shuddering with stress. “Betty was in on it. She sees girls at the cafe sometimes, and she does some… recruiting for me. It was all her fault, I swear! She’s the one with the crazy- ass lion.”
“Fernando,” Dylan called out, running across the parking lot to catch up with him.
Angel’s dad stopped and turned, his face showing surprise.
“I mean, uh, Mr. Martinez,” Dylan corrected, faltering. It was a sticky situation, talking to the father of the girl he’d just slept with. “I need to tell you something,” he said in a rush. “Angel went to Vegas.”
