Oklahoma State was marching downfield.
“You ever know Mameli to do anything dishonest, like maybe try to pass some cash under the table?” Garza asked.
Maynard shook his head, but remained focused on the game. “Hate to shoot you down, but me and John been through this already. Seriously, that kinda thing just doesn’t go on out here. At least not in my experience. I can’t speak for Bert, but he was about as honest as they come. I’m tellin’ ya, there ain’t no way he’d take a bribe. And if someone offered one, he’d tell me about it. I guarantee it.”
Garza and Marlin both asked a few more questions, but discovered nothing new. Finally Marlin described finding Gammel’s cash supply in the deer feeder.
“Well, yeah,” Clements said, “that does seem like a strange place to keep your cash, but that doesn’t mean it was dirty money.”
“No, I guess you’re right,” Garza said. “The odd thing was, we found your fingerprints on the envelope.”
Maynard narrowed his eyes, but didn’t seem rattled. “What kinda envelope?”
“Standard manila.”
The project manager smiled. “Like you’d find in an office, I guess?”
Marlin nodded.
Maynard stood and walked over to a small hutch that was buried with paperwork. He extracted several manila envelopes from the pile. “Look like these?”
Marlin said that it did.
“Come on down to my office if you want. We got hundreds of these lying around. Betcha that’s where Bert got it. Hell, he mighta grabbed one off my desk.”
Garza stood. “Yeah, that’s what we were thinking, Maynard. Just had to check it out.”
But Clements wasn’t listening. The Oklahoma State quarterback had found a wide-open receiver in the end zone. Clements groaned and let loose with a string of profanities. He grinned at the two men. “Could be another rebuilding year, I guess.”
“He seem nervous at all to you?” Garza asked, back in the cruiser.
“Not at all,” Marlin replied, wondering whether he should be disappointed or encouraged. “Actually, I guess that makes things easier. Now we can concentrate on Mameli.”
“Right now, I say we concentrate on lunch. You hungry?”
Marlin was surprised. He figured Garza would have wanted to go straight back to the sheriff’s office to monitor the standoff. “Lead the way.”
Garza radioed Darrell Bridges and told the dispatcher where he and Marlin would be for the next hour. Back in Johnson City, Garza pulled into Big Joe’s Restaurant, and the men found a quiet booth in the back. Over chicken-fried steak, they went through the Bert Gammel and Emmett Slaton cases from the beginning, analyzing every detail.
“Still thinking the cases are tied together somehow?” Marlin asked.
“Mameli’s face sure got red when I mentioned Slaton, and he seems to have links to both Slaton and Gammel. Problem is, we’re awful short on motive for either case at the moment. Yeah, the bribery thing seems like a strong possibility, but we need to keep digging.”
“Where?”
Garza gulped some iced tea, then offered a plan. “I’d say we need to reinterview all of the men on the work crews, both Mameli’s and Slaton’s. Especially Red O’Brien and Billy Don Craddock. They work for Slaton, and they were first at the scene at Slaton’s house. Plus, Wylie said they were offering some wild theories about Sal Mameli.”
“Yeah, and Wylie blew ’em off,” Marlin reminded him.
“I know, I know,” Garza said. “Don’t get started on Wylie again. Poor guy’s in bad enough shape as it is.” Garza grabbed the check and glanced at his wristwatch. “Let’s start with Red and see where it gets us. Meanwhile, I’ll send a couple of deputies out to interview some of the others.”
Smedley was slowly going insane. He was sure of it. And if he managed to come out of this with a few marbles still intact, he knew he’d have nightmares about singing farmers for years to come.
Earlier, he’d made an attempt to free himself, but all he’d done was topple the chair with him in it. Now he was lying on his right side, still facing the TV, the headphones still cradling his head. The two rednecks had come in, laughed at his predicament, and left him where he was.
He wondered about his car. Surely it was too damaged to drive. These two goobers must have left it where it was, and, if Smedley had any kind of luck, a cop would spot it and start nosing around.
Smedley was aware of a figure standing over him. It was Red, eating a hamburger. Burger King wrapper. Smedley tried to fight it, but his mouth began salivating and drool ran down his cheek. Red was saying something now, holding the burger out, taunting him. Smedley didn’t have to read lips to know what he was saying: Tell us where the body is, and you’ll get a burger of your own. Smedley eyed the burger, stomach growling, and was afraid he was going to cry.
Suddenly, Red’s expression changed and he set the burger on a desk. He glanced through a window and his eyes got wide.
Garza pulled through the gate to Emmett Slaton’s ranch and followed the driveway toward the house.
“Over there, to the right.” Marlin had spotted a small mobile home tucked in a cedar grove, with a small fleet of brush-clearing machines squatting nearby. Headquarters for Slaton’s business.
Garza steered off the paved driveway and followed a dirt road to the shiny single-wide. As they stepped out of the cruiser, Red O’Brien emerged from the trailer and stood on the steps to the door.
“How you doing, Red?” Garza called.
“Hey there, Sheriff. What brings you out here? Hey, John.”
Marlin nodded a greeting.
Garza squinted into the sun and told Red they were reinterviewing some of the witnesses in the Slaton case. “We’d like to ask you some more questions about Emmett’s disappearance, if you’ve got a few minutes. Wylie mentioned that you had some theories, and I’d like to hear them personally.”
Red was pretty sure he could feel his balls lodged firmly up in his throat. Something was in there in the form of a big lump. His hands had started shaking, so he slipped them into the pockets of his jeans. Now, if he could just control his voice, keep it from wavering all over the place like it normally did when he got shook up. Otherwise, the game warden would spot his nervousness in a heartbeat, because Marlin had seen it firsthand plenty of times.
Red took a quick peek at Smedley’s car, twenty yards away under a large tarp. Sweet Jesus, he was glad they’d decided to cover it up last night. With it being all smashed up, Garza and Marlin would likely be kind of curious.
“Well, yeah, I tol’ your deputy all about it,” Red said, trying to keep it brief. “Sal Mameli really had a hard-on to buy Mr. Slaton’s business, but Mr. Slaton didn’t wanna sell. Then one day-I think it was last Sunday-we seen Mameli driving outta here like a bat out of hell.”
Garza nodded. “Tell you what, why don’t we go inside and sit down? So John and I can take a few notes.”
Red felt faint, and his knees almost buckled.
“You all right?” Marlin asked.
Red tried to respond with a grin. “Little bit light-headed. We’re doing some paintin’ in there, and the fumes been gettin’ to me. You mind if we stay out here so I can get some fresh air?”
Someone was outside! Smedley craned his head and could see Billy Don peeking through the blinds. Red was out there talking to whoever it was.
Smedley tried to pull his wrists apart, but they were bound too tightly. He attempted to straighten his body, to break the tape that was securing him to the chair. No luck. Finally, in desperation, he began slamming his head against the floor of the trailer.
“What was that?” Garza asked.
They all could hear some sort of thumping or banging inside the trailer.