Seeing Red(79)

“You know John.”

“All too well.”

“They got off to a rocky start,” Glenn told him. “Trapper was mad as hell at her over the earring business, but late that evening, when I went looking for him to tell him you’d regained consciousness, I interrupted a tender moment in her motel room.”

“Back up, Glenn. What earring business?”

“I keep forgetting how much drama you missed that first couple of days.” Glenn told him about Kerra’s missing shoulder bag and the reappearance of one earring. “Though it seems highly unlikely Trapper discovered it under her hospital bed. If her bag didn’t make it to that room, how’d her earring get there?”

“John lied to you?”

“Also to a pair of Texas Rangers.”

“Why would he have taken Kerra’s bag? And when?”

“All of the above remains a mystery. But looks to me like Kerra believed his explanation, no matter how improbable, and he forgave her for suspecting him.”

“Suspecting him of what? Why was he talking to Texas Rangers?”

The sheriff scratched his eyebrow with his thumbnail. “Don’t make me play the tattletale on the boy.”

“He’s not a boy. He’s a man.”

Ill at ease, Glenn fiddled with the leather hatband around his Stetson. “From the get-go Trapper’s been poking into the investigation, hovering around Kerra, wanting to know what she saw, who she saw, if she saw anything. I called him on it, but …”

“He responded to correction in his customary fashion.”

“Basically. But his interest in what happened out at your place drew attention. It seemed more intense than a family member’s wish to catch the bad guys who shot their kin. After the earring thing, the Rangers were ready to put him in lockup and hold him as a possible suspect.”

“For shooting me?”

“I told the Rangers it was horseshit. But, let’s face it, in view of your falling out, which everybody is aware of, he had to be given a hard look.”

“John would never have done it.”

“What I told the Rangers, and I don’t think they really suspected him so much as they disliked his smart-aleck attitude. Anyhow, we had nothing to justify holding him. His alibi for Sunday night checked out. Since then, though, he hasn’t curried any favor by running away with our material witness and keeping her under wraps.

“So either he and Kerra are screwing like bunnies and barely coming up for air, or he’s keeping her in his hip pocket for some other reason, and, knowing Trapper as I do, I’m scared even to speculate on what that might be.”

As he listened to all this, The Major’s features had become increasingly knit with worry and indecision. He asked Glenn to close the door.

Glenn did as requested, then returned to his perch at the foot of the bed. “This looks and feels serious.”

“It is,” The Major said. “I’m afraid John is creating a dreadful situation for himself.”

“What kind of situation? With Kerra?”

“No, this has nothing to do with her, except that he’s drawn her into it.”

He stopped with that, but it was clear to Glenn that his friend was still wrestling with indecision, so he kept quiet and gave him time to collect and arrange his thoughts. Then The Major began to talk and did so in a steady stream without interruption. It was ten minutes before he finished, and by then he was spent, his respiration wheezy.

Glenn ran his palm across his forehead, unsurprised to find that it had turned damp. “Jesus. It’s almost too much to take in.”

“You only just heard it. In three years, I haven’t taken it all in.”

“Well, now I know how the rift between you and Trapper came about. Did he ever hand over Debra’s diary?”

“No. But there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have used it against me if I’d taken that book deal. He didn’t want me out there talking about the bombing.”

“For your own protection.”

“That’s what he believed and still does. I was hoping that he had let go of it while the rest of his life was going down the drain. Then Sunday night got him all fired up again. He’s more certain than ever.”

“That this Thomas Wilcox was behind the Pegasus?”

The Major nodded.

“And that now, twenty-five years later, he made an attempt on your life?”

“Because of Kerra’s unexpected emergence and what the two of us might recall during the rehashing of the experience we shared. I know it sounds outlandish. But John is … is … John.”

Seeking to reassure his old friend, Glenn addressed him by his real name. “Frank, listen to me. Trapper is as sly as a fox, impulsive, cocky as hell. About half the time, I’d like to whack him up alongside the head. The other half of the time, I wish my own son were more like him.

“But for all his brass, Trapper is also one damn good detective. He has an instinct for it that, honestly, I envy. What I’m getting to is, he wouldn’t base a hunch on an influential millionaire unless he had something on the guy.”

“He did tell me one thing. After the Pegasus was bombed, Wilcox acquired the site. He’d been coveting it for years.”

Glenn tugged on his lower lip. “That’s all Trapper’s got?”