Texas Outlaw(10)

Around six o’clock in the evening, the road and the river converge at a little town probably no bigger than a few square miles. I drive clear through and out the other side before I realize I’ve seen the whole thing. There are two stoplights.

I circle back and take a second tour up and down the main roadway. The architecture is a mix of old brick with a distinct Spanish influence (picture the Alamo Mission) and New Mexico–style adobe. The houses are mostly single-story, with shallow roofs and sometimes colorfully painted walls.

I pass by the school, which likely contains every grade—K through twelve. Behind the school are a baseball diamond and a football stadium that don’t look half bad for a town this small. A fenced-in lot holds several school buses, which rural kids probably ride more than two hours a day.

A handful of businesses includes a small grocery store and only a few restaurants. One is called Good Gravy and looks like your typical Texas greasy spoon. A Taste of Texas seems a little nicer. I also see a Tex-Mex place named Rosalia’s. I pass a well-kept bar called Lobo Lizard. The type of place a town dignitary—or what counts for one here—could enjoy a beer alongside a day laborer or a field worker.

There’s a motel with an empty parking lot and a lit-up VACANCY sign with a couple of letters burned out. A tiny adobe post office stands next to a gas station with a mechanic’s garage. I spot a couple of churches, both built in the Spanish style of the early settlers. A pharmacy—a little mom-and-pop place, not a chain—stands next to a small medical center with twenty-four-hour urgent care. The public library is located next to a park with some new-looking playground equipment. I spot a newspaper, the Rio Lobo Record, housed in one of the bigger buildings in town.

I see a McDonald’s, of course, but otherwise the branded world seems to have left the little town alone. The one exception is banks. I count at least five: Wells Fargo, BBVA Compass, Prosperity, PlainsCapital, and Rio Grande Bank and Trust, where Willow and I share an account. There might be more banks than restaurants, which seems odd for a town this size.

Rio Lobo is small, but it’s clean and well maintained. I spot instances of graffiti on fences but no abandoned eyesores. No vacant lots. The occasional man-made arroyo splits off from the river corridor, feeding irrigation throughout the community. The canals are lined with well-worn dirt walking trails. There are plenty of trees, and the lawns are green. For whatever reason—probably oil—Rio Lobo doesn’t seem as cash-strapped as the typical small Texas town.

It’s easy to find the police station, which isn’t much bigger than my two-bedroom house. It shares a gravel parking lot with other municipal buildings: a community center, a senior center, the volunteer fire department.

I pull into the surprisingly busy parking lot. People are filing out of the community center, heading toward their cars. Some of them are dressed up with button-down shirts and bolo ties and sport jackets. A man wearing a tan police uniform with a pistol on one hip and a radio on the other spots me right away and walks over. He probably knows every vehicle in town—and that my truck isn’t from around here.

“I’m John Grady Harris,” he says. “Police chief.”

I open my mouth to introduce myself, but he interrupts me.

“I know who you are. You’re the Texas Ranger we don’t need.”





Chapter 12



WHEN A RANGER reports to a town like this, there are two ways things can go. This isn’t the open-armed welcome, the red-carpet roll. This is the resentful, jealous, resistant reaction of small-town officers who think they can do their job as well as anyone and don’t like the idea of a Ranger coming in and taking the credit.

I want to remain professional. I don’t want to give Chief Harris an indication his comment bothered me.

“Rory Yates,” I say and extend my hand.

When I say my name, he gives me a look of recognition. He knows who I am—the Texas Ranger who stopped the bank robbery. He takes my hand grudgingly.

Harris is in his early thirties, a few years younger than me. He has muscular arms accentuated by his tight short-sleeved uniform. In a lot of rural Texas areas, the police chiefs and sheriffs are good old boys. Big hats and big beer bellies hanging over Texas-shaped belt buckles. Some of them get the job because of who they know, not because they’re qualified. But Harris looks different. He has short-cropped hair, no cowboy hat, and muscles like an amateur weight lifter. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s ex-military.

“There are only two nights a month when this parking lot fills up,” he says. “When the council meets and on bingo night at the senior center.”

I say, “If you didn’t want me to come, Chief, then why am I here?”

“My detective keeps nagging me that there might be more to this than we realize. I called the Rangers to appease her. Don’t worry. I’ll play nice. I’ll cooperate.”

“I appreciate that,” I say, trying to be diplomatic.

“But I know what you’re going to find,” Harris adds. “Susan Snyder died of natural causes. There hasn’t been a murder in Rio Lobo in a decade.”

It’s easy to say there hasn’t been a murder in a decade if you close the book right away on every suspicious death.

“My detective spends her days investigating graffiti and shoplifting,” Harris says. “She’s got a hair up her ass that this might be something more just so she’ll have something else to do.”