Texas Outlaw(17)

He nods with a jerk, as if to say, You’re damn right I’m free to go.

“Skip,” I say, getting closer to him. He backs up against the wall, but in this tiny room, there’s nowhere else for him to go. “Don’t you dare think about leaving town. I don’t care if you had anything to do with Susan Snyder’s death or not. If you leave without talking to us again, that’s obstruction of justice, and I will move heaven and earth to find you.”

Skip looks like he believes me.

After he leaves, Ariana and I watch the truck pull out of the parking lot, clearly in a hurry, driving at least fifteen miles over the speed limit. The license plate says MC 9.

“I thought he was going to piss his pants there for a minute,” Ariana says.

She cracks a smile, and we have a good laugh together. It’s nice to see her laughing. She’s a pretty woman when she’s stone serious, but when she looks happy, she’s absolutely stunning.

“What do you make of Skip?” she asks. “You think he had something to do with it?”

“Honestly, no. But he’s hiding something.”

“That’s the way I feel.”

I don’t think either of the guys we interviewed today is our man, but that’s just a hunch, and I’m certainly not ready to cross either of them off our suspects list. Alex seemed to genuinely like Susan Snyder. And Skip doesn’t seem quite bright enough to concoct a plan to poison her.

“That truck Skip was driving,” I ask Ariana, “do all McCormack’s employees drive them?”

“Yes. There are at least a dozen of them.”

Skip was driving one with an MC 9 license plate. I pull out my phone and look at the photos I took last night. In one of the pics, I can make out the plate: MC 1.

“You know who drives this one?” I ask, showing her the picture.

“Why?” When she senses I might not tell her, she says, “I’ve been open with you about everything. Don’t keep anything from me.”

I tell her I saw the black truck driving by several times last night and thought maybe I was being watched. Now that I know there are multiple trucks that look the same, I can’t be sure it was MC 1 that drove by each time.

“Carson McCormack’s son, Gareth, drives MC 1,” Ariana tells me.

“Tell me about him,” I say, picturing a sixteen-year-old kid spoiled by Daddy’s money.

“Ex-military,” she says. “Army Ranger. Sniper. Iraq and Afghanistan. Rumor is he has a dozen confirmed kills.”

My eyes widen. That certainly isn’t what I was expecting. “Do you think he had anything to do with Susan Snyder’s death?”

“I have no idea,” she says, glancing, as she often does, toward the door to make sure no one is listening. “But he and the chief are pals.”

“Could be why Susan Snyder didn’t want you to tell him.”

“Maybe.”

I can tell by the look on her face that she’s skeptical.

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

“Honestly, I bet it was him, driving up and down, getting a good look at you. But I doubt it had anything to do with Susan Snyder. If he murdered her, he’d be keeping a lower profile.”

“So why was he spying on me?”

“Gareth McCormack is the alpha dog in these parts,” she says. “Even the chief, who’s about as tough a guy as you’ll find, doesn’t measure up. I think Gareth McCormack heard a Texas Ranger is in town and he’s sniffing around to see if you’re any threat to him.”





Chapter 22



THAT EVENING, I’M back on the porch of my motel room, but instead of plucking my Fender, I’ve got Susan Snyder’s case file in my hands. Tonight, I’ve brought out my pistol and set it on the chair next to me, covered by my cowboy hat. I’m probably being paranoid, but Ariana’s words about Gareth McCormack have me on edge.

As the alpha dog, he can come sniffing around all he likes. But if he wants to try to mark his territory, I’ll be ready.

Besides, the hat still doesn’t fit me very well. I’d just as soon have it on the chair as on my head.

It’s a clear night, with the moon high in the sky. The streetlights obscure my view of the stars. There are hardly any cars rolling up and down Main Street, and the parking lot of the motel, like always, is empty. I’m alone with my thoughts.

I’m thinking about a conversation Ariana and I had late in the afternoon, before we called it quits for the day. I asked her to give me a clearer picture of who Susan Snyder was.

“You mean was she a slut?” Ariana asked, sensing my question was motivated by the two men we’d interviewed claiming to have had sex with her.

“I don’t care how many people she slept with,” I said. “I just want a better idea of who she was.”

What I didn’t say is that from my experience, reputations aren’t always accurate. I’ve been accused of being a womanizer, but the truth is I can count all the women I’ve slept with on one hand. Every one of them was someone I cared deeply about.

But Susan Snyder is a bit of an enigma to me. The rest of the council are a bunch of good old boys, probably stuck in their ways. Susan Snyder was young and vibrant. In a town like this, a woman would be expected to marry, settle down, have babies. Susan Snyder hadn’t done any of that, apparently by choice.