Bone Dry

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. Be cool… gotta think for a second.” Bowel-loosening fear was squirming into Vinnie’s guts, and he tried desperately to ignore it, to stay cool and think clearly. There had to be a way out of this fucking mess. There always was. “Did you call the cops yet?”

“No, man, you already asked me that.”

“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Good. Whatever you do, don’t call them yet!”

“Goddamn, Vinnie, I ain’t stupid.”

Vinnie felt a throbbing in his temples. He took a large breath, all that his lungs could hold. “It’s underwater, man. Gotta be fifty feet. You think it’s still working?”

“Yeah, dude. I checked the brochure that came with it. Fuckin’ thing’s watertight.”

“Okay, okay, no big deal. Where’s your old man?”

“Back in Austin. He left Monday.”

“Good. That means we’ve got some time. Nobody knows your car is gone but us.”

“Man, I been thinking. Even if they found the car in the lake, how would they know we did it? It coulda still been stolen and dumped there, you know? Cops’d think maybe some punks nabbed it, took it for a joyride, and just sunk it for kicks.”

Vinnie thought it over. T.J. was pretty smart, and he was probably right. But Vinnie had to convince him otherwise because of Slaton’s corpse. “Yeah, but all it would take is one goddamn witness to say he saw you in your boat last night, or saw me drivin’ the Porsche into the park. Then we’d be screwed, man, totally screwed. And what about fingerprints? If some kids stole it and dumped it, the cops would expect to find prints. No, we gotta make sure they don’t find it. It’s the only way to cover our asses for sure.”

“Yeah, I guess….”

“Listen to me, T.J. Don’t even think about callin’ it in. You don’t want to go to fuckin’ jail, do you?”

“Hell no!”

“Then just give me a little time, goddammit. I’ll think of something.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Thursday morning, Marlin was on patrol when he heard Wylie Smith calling for him over the radio. The deputy wanted to meet “to talk a few things over.” Fifteen minutes later, Marlin was waiting in the empty parking lot of a dance hall called the River Palace when Wylie wheeled up beside him, his driver’s door next to Marlin’s.

The first thing Marlin noticed was that Wylie had a black eye.

Marlin gave him a nod and Wylie, without a greeting, said, “D’you hear about the mess from last night?”

“No, what’s up?”

“Got a call from a man named Red O’Brien, said he worked for this old guy Emmett Slaton. Cutting down cedar. Anyway, so him and this other guy, Billy Don Craddock, stop by Slaton’s house last night and find blood all over the front porch.” Wylie gave Marlin a serious look, like, Welcome to the big city, boy. “Slaton’s truck’s gone, nobody’s home. The front door was unlocked, so O’Brien walks right into the house-all over my goddamn crime scene-and dials nine-one-one. What a dick.”

“And?” Marlin wondered why the deputy was telling him all this. It wasn’t like they were buddies.

Wylie shook his head. “More blood inside. All over the bed, inside the goddamn bathroom sink, on the carpet, a trail leading right out the front door. And by the time we get there, these two backward assholes have been tromping all over the place. They had plenty of their own wild theories about what had happened, too, like they were gonna solve the whole damn thing for me. I could barely shut this guy Red up. I swear, if being a redneck was against the law, those guys would get a life sentence.”

Marlin knew Wylie was expecting a smile on that line, but he didn’t give him one. The deputy was awfully talkative all of a sudden-with sort of a We’re in this thing together attitude.

“Anyway, Slaton’s nowhere in sight,” Wylie continued, “so I seal the house off and get to work. But other than the blood, I can’t find shit. No forced entry, no signs of struggle. I was up all night and didn’t get anywhere. The old man just vanished. The only thing: Curtis was on patrol last night and spotted Slaton’s truck in the Save- Mart parking lot, locked up tight. More blood in there, too, but nothing else to go on.”

Marlin had gotten to know Emmett Slaton over the years and had chalked him up as one of the good guys. Ornery old coot, but likable. And, of course, Marlin knew Red O’Brien and Billy Don Craddock well. Two of the worst poachers Marlin had ever come across: Worst-meaning not only did the two rednecks poach whenever they got a chance, but they were also exceedingly bad at it. No wits about them whatsoever. “Sounds like you’ve got your hands full,” Marlin said. It was obvious Wylie had a request to make, and Marlin wasn’t going to be the one to extend the olive branch.

“Yeah, which brings me around to this other thing-Bert Gammel from Tuesday.” Wylie bit his lip and stared out his windshield for a moment. “I talked to all the other hunters on the lease, and they all come across legit, except Jack Corey. Went out to his place first thing yesterday morning. Right off the bat he was giving me lip, telling me all kinds of stories but not really saying anything at all, you know? Guy’s got an anger-management problem, too.”

Marlin pointed at his own eye. “That where you got the shiner?”

Wylie nodded and spit on the ground beneath his window. “I started poking around a little too close to home and the son of a bitch took a jab at me. I’ll tell you what, he won’t be doing that again.”

Marlin raised his eyebrows, giving a quizzical look.

Wylie said, “He’s in lockup right now. I was wondering whether you could stop by, have a nice little chat with him. I’ve been thinking: Maybe it’s true, he’ll open up a little more to a local boy like you.”

Local boy. Damn, Marlin thought, Wylie’s an offensive jerk even when he’s trying to call a truce. Marlin let it slide. “What’s Corey told you so far?”

“Not much. He hunted Monday evening, just like the logbooks say. Didn’t shoot, didn’t see anybody else. Heard some shots at about the same time the foreman said. Thought one of them-the one around sundown-came from Gammel’s direction. But man, when I asked him about his run-ins with Gammel, he sure got tight-lipped fast. Said something like, ‘I didn’t do nothin’. You ain’t makin’ me the fall guy.’

“He didn’t ask for a lawyer?”

Wylie absently drummed on the steering wheel and stared into the horizon. “Well, now, he mighta said he should probably get a lawyer, but he never specifically asked for one, no.”

Marlin thought: Great. You’ve muddied up the waters and now you want me to clean it up.

Marlin had known Jack Corey since grade school, and they had been on the football team together in high school. Corey was a large, quiet guy, a plumber by trade. As far as Marlin could recall, Corey had never gotten on the wrong side of the law, outside of a few speeding tickets. Just a big guy who liked to drink beer on Saturday night and hunt deer on Sunday.

Marlin remembered something. “After I left, did y’all have any luck finding the slug?”

Wylie grimaced. “No, but not for lack of trying. Damn place is so wooded, it could have ricocheted or fragmented and ended up just about anywhere. From what Lester says, Corey hunts with a thirty-thirty. So I estimated the trajectory based on the drop of that big ol’ heavy bullet and we scoured the area for about two hours. Even went fifty yards further out than my calculations gave me. Nothing. But talk about your needle in a haystack. It’s damn near impossible to find a slug in these kinds of situations. Give me a shoot-out in a building any day, then I’ll find your slug for ya.”

Marlin nodded. A lot was riding on that bullet, and they both knew it. Wylie slipped his cruiser back into DRIVE. “So, if you could talk to Corey this morning, uh, I would appreciate it.”

Marlin noticed that Wylie wouldn’t meet his eyes and seemed almost embarrassed to ask this small favor.

“I’m not expecting you to get a full confession out of him or anything,” Wylie continued. “Just talk to him, see if you can get him to loosen up a little. Otherwise, that boy’s setting himself up as the prime suspect.”