Bone Dry

He’s got some more news.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Marlin walked over to the cruiser, the phone pressed to his ear. Richard Fanick had been a busy man. He had already lifted some prints from the money in the envelope, and was sharing the results.

“So it was a solid match?” Marlin asked. “No doubt at all?”

“Oh, yeah. I got more prints than I know what to do with. Complete latents, partials, you name it. Guy touched nearly every bill in the stack. Just him and Gammel, though. Not the other guy.”

“All right, Richard. This helps me out a lot, and I owe you one for working the weekend.”

“Hey, no problem.”

“Seriously, next time you’re passing through Blanco County, give me a call. I’ll buy you the best barbecue lunch you ever had.”

“It’s a deal.”

Marlin disconnected and turned to Garza. “We gotta go.”

Garza and Marlin sped away in the sheriff’s cruiser-and Red nearly collapsed. He sat on the front steps of the trailer and cradled his head. Damn, that was too close for comfort. Red thanked the Lord that he was blessed with a quick mind and a nimble tongue that helped him avoid trouble. Someone like Billy Don wouldn’t have been able to handle the situation. But Red had played Garza and Marlin like fiddles.

Billy Don poked his head out of the trailer door. “They gone?”

“Yes, they’re gone, no thanks to you. What the hell was you doing in there? Ropin’ a goat?”

“So what’s the plan?”

“We go directly to Judge Hilton and get a warrant,” Garza replied. “I don’t care if we have to chase him down on the golf course. Then the deputies will search Clements’s house, while we go at him again, this time hard.”

Marlin could think of no plausible reason why Clements would have handled Gammel’s money-but if he had, he was obligated by law to tell them about it. Otherwise, he was obstructing an investigation. “You operating on the assumption that he killed Gammel?”

Garza sighed. “I have no idea. But he obviously knows more than he’s telling. The question is, what does he know? And I keep trying to figure out how Sal Mameli is involved-or if he’s involved. Kind of strange that Fanick found his prints on the envelope but not on the money.”

“I suppose Mameli might have handled the envelope during a visit to Gammel’s office. I’m sure they must have met a few times to discuss county projects. It could all be innocent…”

Garza stopped at the one and only traffic light in Johnson City and gave Marlin a glance. “You really believe that?”

Marlin was weighing the question in his mind when he noticed a brown Jeep Cherokee coming the opposite way. Marlin pointed and said, “Isn’t that Clements right there?”

Garza followed Marlin’s gaze. “It sure as hell is. And it isn’t even halftime yet.”

The light changed and the Cherokee pulled through, Clements staring resolutely ahead. Garza waited a few seconds, then swung a U-turn and fell in behind him.

“Guess our plans have changed,” Marlin observed.

“For the time being. Let’s just see what he’s up to.”

Clements continued south on Highway 281, keeping it to the speed limit. When he left the city limits, he edged his speed up to seventy.

“We forgot to give him the standard warning about not leaving town,” Marlin joked.

They caught Clements stealing discreet glances into his rearview mirror, but he did nothing out of the ordinary. Six miles down the road, Clements pulled into a roadside picnic area and came to a stop, Garza and Marlin right behind him.

“What now?” Marlin asked.

“Let’s give him a few minutes.”

Clements continued to sit in his Cherokee, both hands on the wheel, staring out the windshield.

“I’d say the man is trying to make a decision,” Garza said.

“Sure looks that way.”

Garza swung his door open. “Reckon we ought to see if he needs any help with it?”

Marlin popped his own door open. “I’d say that’s the neighborly thing to do.”

Both men exited the cruiser and began walking slowly up to Clements’s vehicle. They could see him watching in the rearview mirror.

“Careful, John. He might be armed.” Garza’s hand was resting on his revolver.

Clements’s chin fell to his chest, like a man defeated. Then he lifted his head, shoved the Cherokee into reverse, and came screaming back toward them. Both men jumped out of the way and the Cherokee slammed into the front end of the cruiser. Clements shifted into DRIVE and burned rubber back onto the highway.

Thomas Peabody sat in his hiding spot in the woods and surveyed the house. It was a long time until nightfall-several hours before he could take action-but he had patience. Oh, yes, he was a patient man indeed. He had waited a painfully long time to be in this position, and he wasn’t going to ruin it by acting prematurely. His entire relationship with Inga was at stake. Soon he would be transformed in her eyes. Saving her from the attacker in the motel room had created a chink in her emotional armor-he had seen it in her eyes and felt it in her embrace. She was almost ready to become his soul mate; he was certain of it. Now he merely needed to define himself for her, once and for all. Then she would realize they were destined for each other.

As Marlin and Garza sprinted back to the cruiser, Marlin heard a hissing sound and noticed green fluid puddling under the front bumper. They hopped in and screeched onto the highway, lights flashing and siren blaring. Garza grabbed the mike and called for backup.

“He took out your radiator,” Marlin said, one hand braced against the dashboard as they gained speed.

“I saw,” Garza replied.

The speedometer was quickly up to ninety. A half-mile ahead, Clements’s Cherokee came into view-stuck behind several vehicles in the left lane and a semi carrying a mobile home in the right lane. Seconds later, Garza was on Clements’s bumper.

The drivers in the left lane began to drop their speed as they heard the siren… as did the driver of the big rig. Now the cruiser and the Cherokee were caught behind a cluster of traffic going fifty. Then Clements saw his chance: He nosed up mere inches from the semi and cut sharply left, almost clipping the front fender of a station wagon. The driver of the wagon tapped the brakes, slowing Garza, as Clements accelerated in the fast lane, gaining a few hundred yards on the cruiser. Finally, the wagon pulled to the right behind the semi, and Garza had a clear path.

“Road narrows,” Marlin reminded him.

Garza nodded. The two southbound lanes merged to one, with a meager shoulder on the side. The cruiser crested a hill, and now they could see another semi carrying the other half of the double-wide mobile home. Clements was already on its tail, weaving left and right, trying to pass. Oncoming drivers blared their horns and swerved right as Clements tried to see around the semi.

Marlin smelled something burning and leaned to see the temperature indicator on the dashboard. Pegged on H. “Car can’t take much more,” he said.

Garza was riding Clements’s bumper now, speed at sixty, and Marlin wondered if the sheriff was going to attempt the PIT maneuver-a move where the pursuing car nudges the rear quarter-panel of the lead car, causing it to spin out. The answer was clear when Garza found a lull in the traffic and pulled into the oncoming lane, edging up to the Cherokee.

Steam poured out from under the hood and Marlin knew the cruiser didn’t have much longer. He craned his neck and looked back-but there were no other deputies in sight yet to continue the chase.

Just as Garza was about to use his right front fender to tap the Cherokee behind the left rear wheel,