The owner of the property was Joe Biggs-a tall, slender man with black hair, an insurance agent in Johnson City. Joe said, “Hey, John. Soon as I saw your truck, I figured somebody musta called in.”
“One of your neighbors.”
Joe grimaced. “Sorry about that. We woulda called and let you know we were huntin’, but it was kinda late and it was a spur-of-the-moment kind of deal.”
Marlin played his flashlight across the truck bed. Three dead hogs lay inside. Due to their devastating impact on the environment, feral hogs could be legally hunted at night in Texas, but hunters were encouraged to contact the game warden first and make their intentions known.
“No big deal. Looks like you had some luck.”
“Hell yeah. I been seeing about a dozen every night. Figured it was time to thin ’em out a little. They been runnin’ all the deer away from my feeders.”
The men chatted for a few minutes about the current deer season. One of the men had taken a ten-point on opening day.
“All right, then,” Marlin said. “Guess you’re done for the night? I’m sure your neighbors could use a break.”
Joe gave an embarrassed smile. “Yeah, sorry ’bout that. Didn’t think the shots’d bother ’em. We’re all done.”
Marlin waved and turned to leave.
“Hey,” Joe called out. “Heard you were the big hero tonight.”
Marlin was always amazed at how fast news traveled through the county. “I wouldn’t say ‘hero’ is the right word,” Marlin replied.
“Well, hell, you walked right in there with Corey holding a gun. Pretty damn brave, if you ask me. So what do you think, John? Think Corey done it? Killed Bert?”
“Can’t really talk about that, Joe.” Marlin said, opening the door to his cruiser. “He’ll get his day in court”
“Well, tell me this, then: Have the deputies figured out where Bert got all that cash?”
Marlin paused for a moment, then closed his truck door and walked back over to Joe.
“What cash are you talking about?”
Marlin and Joe were in the cab of the cruiser now, out of earshot of the other two hunters.
Joe’s eyes were wide. “I figured y’all knew all about that. You hadn’t heard?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Joe rubbed his chin. “Well, I didn’t know Bert real well, but he was a friend of Virgil Talkington’s, and Virgil is a friend of mine. Virgil has this poker game every Friday night, and Bert would sometimes show up over there. Anyway, he was always a penny-ante kind of guy. Never brought much money with him, usually just a big jar of change, and he’d fold every hand unless he knew for sure he had a winner. Man, I’ve seen him throw away three of kind, if you can believe it. To hear Virgil tell it, Bert didn’t have much money to spare. Barely made his mortgage.”
“When did he first join the game?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Coupla years ago. And he didn’t play every time, maybe once every month or two. But then, maybe a year ago, he started showing up with a lot more cash. He’d pull out this big roll of bills and flash it all around, and man, would that get our attention! See, he wasn’t that good of a player and, well…”
Marlin smiled. “Y’all would try to separate him from his money.”
“Well, yeah. He seemed to have plenty of it all of a sudden. Brought expensive cigars for everybody, too. Lots of liquor.”
This didn’t sound like much to Marlin. Maybe Bert got a raise, or an inheritance, or won a few bucks on scratch-off lottery cards. Could be anything.
“But then here’s the other thing,” Joe continued. “One day I was over at Kyle’s place”-Kyle Parker owned a small car lot next to Joe’s office-“and Bert comes in to pick up that Explorer he’s been driving for the last eight or ten months. So I’m sitting there eating lunch, shootin’ the shit with Kyle, while Bert fills out the paperwork. Finally, Bert gets done with the forms, Kyle totals up the price on the car, and-get this-Bert hands it all over in cash. Kyle didn’t even bat an eye, like they had already talked about it or something. Sure, that Explorer was three or four years old, but the price was still something like twelve grand. I mean, shee-yit. You know anybody who carries around that kind of cash?”
Marlin agreed that he didn’t-but, thinking it through, he wasn’t sure it meant anything. Some people have strange saving habits, tucking cash away in a Mason jar or, literally, under the mattress. He’d heard about one little old lady in Blanco who lived as if she were one step above the poorhouse. Then the lady died and the heirs discovered she had been a millionaire, hiding huge sums of cash in coffee cans in her attic.
“Did Bert ever say anything about the money-like where he got it? I mean, you’re all sitting around, drinking a few cold ones, somebody’s bound to ask, right?”
Joe nodded his head vigorously. “Damn right, we asked, but he was all tight-lipped about it. One time, he said he made it on one of those dot-com companies, but he wouldn’t never name which one. None of us believed him. Shoot, Bert didn’t know nothing about no stock that wasn’t runnin’ around on four legs.”
Marlin sat in silence for moment, pondering this new information. Joe tipped his beer can and sucked out the last few drops. “Think that’ll help you any?” he asked.
Marlin had no idea. “I don’t know, Joe. I really don’t know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Marlin headed back to Johnson City, his dashboard clock telling him it was nearly four A.M. Driving through the cool night air, his window down, Marlin contemplated what Joe Biggs had told him.
Okay, so Bert Gammel had been throwing a lot of money around. Big deal. Didn’t necessarily have anything to do with the murder. And if it did, it didn’t rule out Jack Corey. Hell, it might implicate him even more. Corey was already at odds with Gammel. The cash could have pushed him over the edge. On the other hand, if Corey had been after the money, why would he ambush Gammel out at the deer lease? Didn’t make a lot of sense. In fact, why even murder him? It seemed only natural that Corey would have tried breaking into Gammel’s house to find the cash.
Another strange thing: Wylie hadn’t said anything about Gammel’s surplus of cash-or if he had, word hadn’t reached Marlin. The likely answer was that Wylie had been so focused on investigating Corey, he hadn’t done much digging into Gammel’s affairs. Wylie had seemed convinced of Corey’s guilt from the beginning, so he probably hadn’t questioned enough people in Gammel’s circles. The spotlight had been on Corey right from the beginning- because of Lester Higgs’s account of the troubles between Corey and Gammel. Something like that could easily send an overzealous detective off in the wrong direction.
The long and short of it: Marlin wanted to talk to Garza about Joe’s story. Maybe Garza and the deputies already knew about the cash and had followed that trail to a logical conclusion. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. Marlin was wide-awake now, so he figured he might as well swing by the sheriff’s office and see what was going on. Maybe Corey had come to his senses by now. Or he could have fallen asleep, allowing Wylie to sneak out. This thing couldn’t go on forever.
Marlin tuned his stereo to an all-news AM station out of Austin.
Marlin recognized Garza’s voice:
The reporter continued:
“At this point, the man involved in the standoff has been identified as Jack Albert Corey, a resident of
