“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.
Susan went to college at UT and stayed in Austin for a few years afterward, working as a graphic designer. When she was in her late twenties, she came back. She’d apparently built up a big enough client base to go freelance and could live just about anywhere. Even though her parents had retired to Florida, she chose her tiny hometown of Rio Lobo.
She was always busy in the community, Ariana said, volunteering at the library, organizing fundraisers for the Kiwanis Club, chaperoning dances for the high school kids. About five years ago, when a seat opened up on the town council, she ran. Her opponent was just like the others—an older guy who’d been in the community for a million years. But people seemed taken with Susan’s enthusiasm and charisma. She was elected narrowly.
Ariana said that the election was controversial—briefly—but the other members of the council seemed to embrace her. They treated her like a daughter—in both good and bad ways. If she had an idea they didn’t agree with, they’d talk to her like she was a young, silly girl who didn’t know any better. But she got her way more often than not. She was reelected without opposition.
“Enemies?” I asked.
“None that I know of.”
“What about the person she beat out in the election?”
“He’s on the council now. Fred Meikle. He ran for an open seat in the last election. As far as I heard, there were no hard feelings. I saw them interact in the meetings and he seemed fond of her.”
With any public figure, there’s the image they present to the world, and then there’s the real person—and the two aren’t always the same. People in Rio Lobo might not know about the sexual activity, or they might not care, but otherwise, the Susan Snyder I pictured in my mind felt like a portrait she wanted people to see.
I could see the image everyone else had of her, but I was going to have to dig deeper to find the real Susan Snyder. When you have abundant physical evidence or witness accounts or even motive, you may not need that picture of a murder victim.
I need to understand her to understand why someone would kill her.
If anyone killed her.
As I sit on the motel porch with my legs stretched out in front of me, there is someone else on my mind that I have an unclear picture of. Two people, actually: Carson McCormack and his son, Gareth. They are mysteries to me as well. I’ve already developed a dislike for the two of them, which is unfair. I haven’t even met them.
McCormack is probably the reason this town doesn’t look like half the insolvent little towns in rural Texas. He pays taxes, employs residents, and, as I’ve seen, makes donations to community projects. But as much as people speak about McCormack in this town, I haven’t yet heard anyone speak highly of him. I have no idea if McCormack or his son had anything to do with Susan Snyder’s death, but I’m going to find out.
As if on cue, one of McCormack’s trucks rolls down the street. Without using a turn signal, the truck whips into the parking lot of my motel and rolls toward my cabin. I sit up and reach my hand toward my hat, pretending I’m going to pick it up. What I’m really doing is reaching underneath to grab my SIG Sauer.
The truck rolls to a stop right in front of me. Two men are sitting in the cab. The driver reaches for something on the seat between them. Something I can’t see clearly, something bigger than a pistol—maybe a shotgun.
Then he pushes open the door.
I slide my hand under my hat and wrap my fingers around the grip of the pistol.