Red cranked the ignition and looked over at Billy Don, who had already made a sizable dent in their food supply. “Goddamn, Billy Don, take it easy, will ya? That stuff might have to last awhile.”
Billy Don belched and blew the expelled gas in Red’s direction. “What now, Red?”
Red rolled down the window as he steered his truck out onto Highway 281. “Now we play a little cat and mouse.”
Billy Don nodded seriously.
Red said, “Hey, Billy Don. Who the hell is Jimmy Hoffa?”
Sal Mameli had nothing to do with the death of the deer hunter, Bert Gammel. Smedley kept telling himself that as he munched a bag of honey-roasted peanuts. The sheriff had seemed confident that he had the right man, and that’s why the suspect had taken a hostage. It all made perfect sense. Right?
Likewise, there was nothing to indicate that Mameli had anything to do with Emmett Slaton’s disappearance, either. But Smedley was having a tough time convincing himself of that, too. A quick background check had shown that Slaton owned a number of businesses, including the largest brush-clearing company in the county. And it wasn’t long ago that Sal had gone into that business himself. Way too much of a coincidence. It gave Smedley an uneasy feeling in his gut, worse than a large pizza with extra jalapenos.
That’s why Smedley was once again sitting in his unmarked sedan, staking out the Mameli house. And that’s why he was considering talking to the higher-ups in Austin, asking for a wiretap. That would be a big step, but Smedley thought it was warranted. In spite of what Sal Mameli had accused the U.S. Marshals Service of in the past (mostly because he was a paranoid son of a bitch), they had never tapped his phone since he had joined the program. They had had no legal reason to do so. But now…
Smedley’s train of thought was broken as he saw a flashlight bobbing down the Mameli driveway. It might be Angela coming to get the mail or something. He had seen her and Maria pull in about an hour ago, right at sunset. As the figure crossed the street and approached his car, Smedley got a lump in his throat. It was Maria! Smedley quickly ran his tongue over his teeth to remove the peanut residue.
Maria leaned down to his window and said, “Hola.”
“Hola, Maria,” Smedley replied, feeling like a freshman in Spanish class.
Maria said something else that Smedley couldn’t understand, but he was pretty sure he heard the word comida in there somewhere. He shrugged and said, “No comprendo.”
In the moonlight, he could see Maria’s beautiful smile. She said, “You like dinner?”
Ah, now he got it. Angela must have sent Maria out to invite Smedley to supper. Smedley nodded and extracted himself from the sedan.
Unexpectedly, Maria grabbed his hand and began walking back up the driveway. Smedley tried not to read anything into it. Maybe hand-holding was just a common courtesy in Guatemala. He tried to focus instead on the wonderful evening. Crickets were chirping, there were plenty of stars in the sky, the temperature was in the upper sixties. But when Maria strolled right past the Mamelis’ house and continued to her small cottage behind the garage, Smedley broke into a sweat.
Marlin picked up a hamburger in Dripping Springs on the way home from the lab in Austin. The lab technician, a quiet man named Richard Fanick, had promised to work overtime on the evidence Marlin had found. Fanick had said he might be able to pick up some latent prints on the plastic bag, but the manila envelope was a little more iffy because it had been sealed within the plastic bag. The humidity in the bag might have degraded any existing prints.
Now all Marlin could do was wait.
He had stopped by the sheriff’s office on the way out of town and nothing had changed: Jack Corey was still holed up with Wylie Smith and wasn’t coming out anytime soon. Garza had frowned when Marlin mentioned Corey’s on-air announcement earlier in the day. Marlin felt it was a clear indication that Wylie was to blame for the standoff; Garza wasn’t so sure.
“For all we know, Corey might have been holding a gun to Wylie’s head this time,” Garza had said. “So that recording he made doesn’t prove anything.”
Also, as Marlin had expected, Garza didn’t say much about the new evidence from Gammel’s deer feeder. “Helluva job, John,” Garza said. “Let’s just wait and see if it tells us anything.”
Driving in the dark now, Marlin continued west on Highway 290 and turned right on 281. Six miles to the north, he approached the edges of Johnson City, where a sign proudly proclaimed: HOME TOWN OF LYNDON B. JOHNSON.
A few hundred yards past the sign he passed a convenience store, where he saw a rusty yellow Volvo with its hood up. With all the hectic events in the past twenty-four hours, Marlin had nearly forgotten about Inga Mueller. He pulled in next to her car and saw Inga elbow-deep in the engine compartment. She was wearing snug blue jeans and a clingy green blouse. Marlin was surprised half the male population of Blanco County hadn’t already arrived to offer assistance.
Marlin stuck his head out the window. “You need any help?”
She looked his way and grinned. There was a streak of oil across her forehead. “Can I borrow your gun? I want to put this damn thing out of its misery.”
Marlin hopped out of the truck and walked to the front of her car. He couldn’t remember ever seeing an engine actually appear tired, but this one was pulling it off. “I’m not sure we should waste a perfectly good bullet,” he replied.
“Think they’d be mad if I just left it here? Maybe as a little gift from me to the county?”
“Cops might write you up for littering.”
Inga shook her head in frustration. “One minute it runs just fine, then it won’t start at all. Won’t even turn over.”
“Let me hear it.”
Inga climbed into the vehicle and turned the key. Marlin didn’t even hear a click from the starter. “You’re not getting any juice at all from the battery,” Marlin said. The symptoms reminded him of the problem he’d had with his truck the previous spring. He jiggled the Volvo’s battery cables and, sure enough, found one of the clamps to be loose. “Hold on a second.” Marlin retrieved a wrench from his truck and tightened the nuts on both clamps. “Try it now.”
She turned the key and the car sputtered to life. “Wow,” she said over the engine noise. “You’re good.”
“Lucky guess,” Marlin said. “You just want to keep an eye on those nuts and don’t let them get loose like that.”
Inga killed the engine and stepped out of the car, wiping her hands on a rag. “Speaking of loose nuts, I want you to know that I’m really sorry about what Tommy did last night at my assembly. Getting in that fight… and then biting you like that…”
“And then escaping from custody,” Marlin reminded her.
“Yeah, that too. It’s just Tommy, you know? He gets all worked up about things and does some stupid stuff sometimes. He doesn’t mean any harm.”
Marlin tried to hold his tongue, but couldn’t. “Inga, I’m not gonna sit here and debate his good and bad points with you, but when it comes down to it, he’s a criminal. In a way, he’s even worse, because he breaks the law and pretends it’s okay since it’s all for a worthwhile cause. He hides behind this false nobility, and I think that’s total bullshit. He may have some sort of philosophical message he wants to deliver to the world, but he’s going about it the wrong way. Tommy’s taking the coward’s way out. Anyone can vandalize a bunch of tractors or drive spikes into trees that are marked for logging. But it takes someone with real dedication to try and change things through the proper channels.”