Chapter 29
Wayne Cutter drove past Holly Odom’s house on Zion Hill Road twice, getting a lay of the land before he stopped.
His time in Special Forces had given him a credo of sorts that he taught to the younger troops who worked with him in Berlin—never to go anywhere for the first time.
That was, of course, impossible. What he could do was research a place he was unfamiliar with, talk to people, watch—and listen—from a distance until he had some familiarity with the place he wanted to visit.
As his British mates liked to say, proper planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance.
Holly Odom’s place looked benign enough from a distance. Surrounded by post oak trees and piss elms, the nearest neighbor was a quarter-mile away. There were tracks in the driveway, but no visible vehicles. Someone could have been parked in the back, but at first glance, the place looked vacant.
Cutter had always loved the jigsaw gingerbread look of the old sandstone houses in Texas.
They tended to stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
He’d thought to build one for Lucy on their property.
That plan evaporated when she’d gotten sick.
Cutter cursed under his breath. “Knock it off, Wayne! Get your head in the game. …”
He parked a couple of hundred feet down the road and killed the engine, satisfied for the time being that he wasn’t walking into an ambush. He eased open his door and sat still for a long moment, listening to his surroundings before venturing into the unknown.
He heard no voices, no dogs, just the metallic wobble of a spinning windmill and the rattling knock of the wooden pump shaft going up and down.
Eyes glued in the direction he needed to go, he grabbed the Motorola mic off the dash and let Dispatch know where he was.
Lafayette Johnson’s voice came back almost immediately, incredibly loud against the near silence.
Cutter bumped the volume down to a whisper, scanning the trees to see if the sound had alerted anyone.
“Cutter,” Johnson said. “Be advised, no answer from Mrs. F.” He spoke in veiled terms. Everyone and their dog had a RadioShack police scanner these days. “I called both the other two and get this, no one’s contacted them about any financial help.”
“Ten-four.” Cutter weighed the gravity of this new information. “Good work. Break. Dispatch, please send a unit to the address Johnson gives you to do a wellness check.”
“I have Garza en route at this time,” Nikki said.
Cutter thanked her and then let her know he’d be in the house on his handheld for a few minutes before replacing the mic on his dash. He grabbed the heavy five-D cell Kel-Lite and eased the door shut.
Rather than take the driveway up from the road, he made his way through the oaks and low scrub, revolver in one hand, flashlight in the other.
Grasshoppers flitted out of his path at nearly every step, tick-tick-ticking away through the humid air.
The sound reminded him of the noise Bodie’s bicycle made when he clipped playing cards to the spokes.
He paused and listened twice more on his hundred-foot journey, finally coming up alongside a dusty curve that looked like a good track trap.
He stepped out of the trees and stopped there, taking his eyes off the house long enough to stoop beside the tire tracks still clear in the dust. It had rained three days before, meaning the dually pickup had been there since then, probably leaving before the robbery.
Another vehicle was here more recently, smaller wheelbase.
A similar tread pattern to the one in Jack County.
All six tires on the dually were old and worn.
These were new, aggressive treading, maybe from a small truck like a Datsun or Toyota, or possibly a Jeep.
Cutter melted back into the woods and holstered his revolver.
He wanted to get a look at the rear of the house and needed both hands to bushwhack through the underbrush.
He’d chased too many runners out back doors without knowing what kind of dog, clothesline, or swimming pool lay waiting for him.
In this case, the sun-parched backyard looked clear.
An old tire swing hung from an sickly pecan tree.
Cutter stopped by the swing. Scanning. According to the tracks, the dually had kept to the circular drive while the newer tire tracks ran alongside the house to disappear behind a ramshackle barn.
A wall of trees and brambles rose up behind the barn.
A creek bottom. One set of tracks went in.
Whoever it was, they were still parked back there.
It took a few seconds of scanning, but Cutter finally located footprints leading from the barn to the house through the scabby yard. Whoever it was, they were still inside.
Cutter stepped behind the pecan tree at the same time his hand dropped to the butt of his Smith & Wesson.
“I’m comin’ out!” a low, Southern voice called from inside. Cutter had an accent of course—he was from Texas—but this one was syrupy, like honeyed whiskey. “You’ll have to excuse me, Sheriff, I—”
“Stop where you are,” Cutter barked.
The man complied, arms raised. His hands were even with his shoulders.
His sandy hair was feathered back like some television heartthrob, leading Cutter to believe he spent a good deal of time in front of a mirror.
He wore khaki slacks and expensive leather loafers.
A light cotton sport coat covered a suspicious bulge over his right hip.
Texas firearms laws were draconianly strict.
No reason for this guy to have a gun unless he was a cop.
“I have to say, you scared me, Sheriff,” the man said. “When I saw you lurking around behind the house.” He took a half step.
“Nope!” Cutter barked. “I said stay there.”
“Of course, of course,” the man said. “I can see you are under the misapprehension that I am burglarizing Mrs. Odom’s home.” He flicked a hand toward the back property. “I live close—”
“You sure your name isn’t Moffit?” Cutter said.
The man gave a low chuckle. “I’m afraid you caught me in a falsehood,” he said. “I am Gerald Moffit, manager at TexSafe Armored. I mean no harm, I assure you.”
“Are you armed?”
“Why, yes, sir, I am,” Moffit said. “We’re talkin’ about the theft of five million in precious stones, not to mention the murder of two of my men—”
“Three of your men,” Cutter said. “You forget Foster?”
“My error,” Moffit said. “I heard. So tragic.” His hands dropped an inch. “I’m happy to turn over my pistol to you, if you wish.”
“Keep your hands where they are,” Cutter said again, matter-of-fact, his voice firm and even.
This Foghorn Leghorn affect was beginning to grate on him.
He kept his revolver raised with one hand, drawing the radio with his left to call for backup.
Finished with his transmission, he eyed Moffit from the safety of the thick truck of the pecan tree. “Why did you lie to me, Mr. Moffit?”
“I know how this looks,” he said. “Simple as that.”
“Why are you here?”
“Well, I imagine the same reason you are, sir.” Moffit started to lower his hands again, but Cutter tut-tutted him, motioning with the barrel of his gun to keep them up. Moffit gave a wan smile. “I do say, you are serious about your safety.”
“Have you got ID?”
“Why, yes. Yes, I do. By all means, check my identification. Gerald B. Moffit. As I’ve told you, I am a supervisor at TexSafe over in Fort Worth.”
“Okay, Gerald B. Moffit,” Cutter said. “I ask again: Why are you here?”
“I do believe I told you that as well,” Moffit said, his Old South accent coming on stronger now. “Someone stole my company’s diamonds, and I am doing my best to retrieve them.”
Moffit shifted slightly, letting his right foot slide back a hair. His hands dropped again, almost imperceptibly, like he was testing to see if Cutter noticed.
“Nope,” Cutter said. “Keep them up.” He imagined the man calculating angles and distances.
Moffit’s eyes shifted toward the barn, presumably where his vehicle was parked.
“How’d you know to come here?” Cutter asked. “I only found out about this address an hour ago.”
“It is embarrassing to say, sir, but I have no earthly idea,” Moffit said. “The company sent me. I suppose our private investigators are just that talented.”
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Moffit’s hands began to crawl downward. Again, he glanced toward the barn. You could tell a hell of a lot about a man’s intentions by watching his eyes, even from thirty feet away.
Cutter’s finger curled around the trigger.
It was clear that Moffit intended to shoot his way out and make a run for the barn.
Action is faster than reaction. Period. Military and law enforcement instructors beat that drum daily during training.
Cutter was aimed in and Moffit still managed to draw his pistol and fire a shot before two rounds from Cutter’s Smith & Wesson slammed into his chest. The shot buzzed past Cutter’s ear, close enough to feel.
Cutter might have missed it had he been overly focused on the man’s hands, but the whites of Moffit’s eyes telegraphed his plans a split second before the draw.
Moffit fell to his knees, coughing and sputtering. The pistol slipped from his grasp. He teetered there for a long moment, blinking as if he was astonished to find himself in this predicament. The bullets had shredded his lungs, washing his teeth in frothy pink blood.
Cutter stayed at the pecan tree, covering the house now, just in case one gunfighter turned into two.
“Who else is in there with you?”
“No … no … one,” Moffit whispered. He coughed again. “I am quite alone.”
Cutter trotted forward, half expecting to be shot from the window at any moment. He had questions, and this guy was bleeding out fast.
Moffit had told the truth. He was alone. He breathed his last pitiful breath before Cutter could get to him.
Cutter slid away the gun with the toe of his boot. Far too many friends had been killed by so-called dead men.
“A Browning Hi-Power,” he said under his breath. Gary Ewell, the Jack County deputy, had been murdered with a nine-millimeter. “Well, I do declare …”
Cutter barely got his revolver back in the holster before two Weatherford PD Plymouths fishtailed off Zion Hill Road and sped up the gravel driveway, red and blues flashing, sirens blaring.
He stepped to the side of the house and waved his hat to get their attention.
Two unmarked sedans followed hot on the tail of the patrol cars.
Cutter didn’t know the patrol officers but recognized a city detective named Dee Laufer and Chief of Police Helmond Fritsch, a potbellied man with wire-framed glasses that looked much too small for his wide face.
The five-shot revolver on a thin leather dress belt all but disappeared against the man’s bulk.
Lafayette Johnson and Chief Deputy Smith were just a few seconds behind.
Less than five minutes from the time Cutter pulled the trigger, seven lawmen stood around Gerald Moffit’s corpse. To Cutter, the air still smelled like gunfire, but that could have been his imagination.
“Did that asshole get a shot off?” Chief Smith asked, taking Cutter by the shoulders. Smith had been a rancher all his life and a lawman long enough to know people under stress often walked around wounded without knowing.
“He did,” Cutter said. “But I’m untouched.”
The chief spun him around anyway, giving his body a methodical boot-to-hat search—a blood sweep. “You still got the right number of holes in your body.” He stepped away. “What do you make of this? A TexSafe boss coming here?”
“We’ve known there was an inside man,” Cutter said. “Moffit is that man, or one of them at least. He was the supervisor, the guy who could have assigned a particular driver to the Sunday run from Eastland.”
Johnson stepped forward, holding up his handheld radio. “I never was able to get ahold of Trina Foster,” he said. “Garza’s on his way out there now.”
“It’s worrisome,” Cutter said. “Moffit told her TexSafe was going to provide some goodwill money until her benefits came through. Likely wanted to make sure she was home.” He resisted the urge to walk over and kick Moffit in the ear.
“This asshole may have orchestrated the job,” Smith said. “But if he’s here, he’s likely looking for the diamonds. And if he’s looking for the diamonds, that means somebody double-crossed him. There’s some justice in that.”
“Maybe so,” Cutter said. “But people are going to keep dying until we find those diamonds.” He glanced at Johnson. “Do me a favor and stand by with Moffit’s body for a second. I want to take a walk through the house, see if I can find out what Moffit was looking for.”
“Hold up,” Chief Smith said. “LJ, weren’t you heading over to talk to Mrs. Odom?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Head on, then,” Smith said. “I’m not handy at much in this old world, but I expect I can muster the good sense to sit with a dead body.
You boys know Sheriff Langford isn’t one to let an election get in the way of a good investigation.
Fact is, I do believe the man would be every bit as happy to go back to ranching full time if he loses—but he’s a damned good sheriff.
It would go a long way to keeping him in office if you could put as much daylight as possible between this shitstorm and the election. ”
“And find the killers,” Cutter said.
“That, too,” Smith said.