The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (37)

When Letty was off the phone, Kaiser said, “We’re crossing over into some dangerous territory here. These guys, this posse, they might have killed the Blackburns and maybe Rivers. We really need to tell the cops about it.”

Letty: “Mmm.”

Greet called back when they were halfway to Midland. “It’s not looking that good for Rivers. His Wells Fargo statement for March shows that he had a little over four hundred dollars in his account—four hundred and thirteen dollars. He earned a few cents of interest since then, but hasn’t made any withdrawals. Visa’s put a hold on his account, it’s on hold since the first of May—he hasn’t paid the minimum the last two months and he hasn’t charged anything. I think he may be in trouble.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Letty said. “I don’t think he’s troubled. Not anymore.”

“Okay. There’s that. Max Sawyer is on probation for a gun law violation, possession of a fully automatic rifle, which he said had been left with him by the wife of a friend. The friend had died, and the woman didn’t want guns around her children. She testified to that, but the federal prosecutor thought she was lying. The U.S. attorney out there isn’t real big on gun violations, so he let Sawyer plead to a lesser charge, a misdemeanor. He got a fine and no jail time. He wasn’t convicted of a felony, so he can legally own guns. At the time he was arrested, he had a house in the town of Monahans. Utility bills in his name are still being sent there.”

As Letty took down the address, Kaiser said, “He had a machine gun. That’s not good. What about Crain?”

“Not much on Crain, couple of minor drug busts in El Paso,” Greet said. “Got fingerprints and a mugshot from those. Never did any time or anything. He shows an address in Monahans that’s right around the block from Sawyer. I’ll text you mugshots for both of them. RamJam, that email, is a dead end. Hasn’t been active in years.”

Letty took down Crain’s address and said, “We’ll check on them. If it looks iffy, we’ll get a Texas cop to go with us.”

“That would be smart,” Greet said. A few minutes after they ended the call, Letty’s phone dinged, and she found the mugshots of Sawyer and Crain. She showed them to Kaiser, who nodded and said, “Got ’em.”

They took one more call before they got to Midland.

Vermilion Wright said, “My goddamn knees now hurt so bad I can barely talk, but—I got something for you.”





NINE




Wright had a name and he thought it was a good one.

“He’s a wildcatter named Roscoe Winks, a piece of white trash if there ever was one,” Wright said. “He’s got a half-dozen played-out wells up west of Seminole. He’s been pumping five or six thousand barrels a year for ten years, limping along, not hardly paying his bills. Two or three years ago he put down an exploratory well up in North Dakota and came up with nothing but dust, and that damn near broke him. Maybe it did. Last year, he jumped up to better than ninety thousand barrels, put on a pipeline out of Midland.”

“Six thousand barrels, though. That’s what, three hundred thousand bucks? Not bad for one guy,” Kaiser said.

“Not one guy—he’s got expenses, got people he’s got to pay, shipping costs, power for the pumpjacks, and all that. Be lucky if he was clearing fifty thousand before this big bump-up.”

Letty asked, “Is it possible that the extra oil came out of the ground? That he started fracking or something?”

“Nawp. I got an old hunting buddy out that way, name of Lowell Harp, who knows Roscoe,” Wright said. “He says Roscoe ain’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Said he’s dead in the water. Lowell was completely surprised to hear Roscoe was suddenly doing so well. You got to talk to Lowell.”

They got name spellings and addresses for Roscoe Winks and Lowell Harp, and a phone number for Harp. “Lowell runs a half-dozen gas stations in towns around the Seminole area, does all right for himself. You can trust him.” Harp, Wright said, was a cousin to his wife.

Letty thanked him and said they’d try to interview Harp the next day. “We’ve got to go talk to the Midland police some more. Probably won’t be finished until it’s too late to get out there today.”

“I’ll tell Lowell to expect you.’’



* * *





When they got off the phone, Kaiser said, “We did all right talking to Miz Turner, and we did even better sittin’ in the truck taking phone calls. It’s almost like we’re professionals.”

“These guys . . . Sawyer, Crain, and Winks . . . sound pretty hardcore,” Letty said. “We need to decide how we’ll handle them. Maybe talk to Dan Tanner, see what he recommends.”

“Don’t want to get in any dusty-road shoot-outs,” Kaiser said. “Though I expect we’d do okay, if it came to that.”

“A machine gun was mentioned,” Letty said.

“Ahh . . . right. Let me reconsider.”



* * *





They were back in Midland before two o’clock and drove straight to the police headquarters. Tanner was there. He gave them lightly edited printouts of their statements, which they read and signed. Letty told him about Max Sawyer and Victor Crain, and their relationship to Rand Low. She showed him the two mugshots.