Chapter 15
Outside, the air had grown muggy and still. The flags drooped on the pole in front of the station. A flat gray haze hung low overhead, hinting of rain later on. Colly, fidgety with anger, paced the parking lot. When her clothes began to cling to her skin, she leaned against the police cruiser and looked around. Nothing moved on Market Street except for a mail truck trundling down the block. The only living thing in sight was a female grackle busily plucking insects from the grille of an SUV a few yards away. As Colly watched, a male bird landed on the gravel beneath and began to strut, puffing his iridescent blue-black feathers and fluttering his wings in a courtship dance until the annoyed female retreated to the branches of a nearby oak.
Colly’s mind drifted back to her conversation with Russ. Why are you letting Avery get under your skin? This isn’t like you. His words had stung, and that was irritating. He had no right to criticize. He didn’t know her—not really. In the past, their relationship had been fairly superficial, always mediated through Randy. Yet Russ’s opinion mattered more to Colly than she cared to admit.
Was she being unreasonable? Colly pushed the question reflexively away. She couldn’t afford the luxury of a psychological spelunking expedition. Russ was the unreasonable one, leveraging her guilt to bring her here, then saddling her with a sullen and headstrong assistant. Was he subconsciously punishing her for his brother’s death? Colly took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Trust your training—the rest is noise , she told herself. Getting to the truth was all that mattered. If Avery jeopardized that process, she would have to go, whether Russ liked it or not. It was as simple as that. Too much was at stake.
Colly’s head had begun to throb. She dug in her purse for her sunglasses but looked up when she heard footsteps on gravel. Avery approached, her eyes downcast and her face hot with embarrassment.
“Sorry I acted without your permission.”
Colly found her sunglasses and put them on. “From now on, you don’t do a thing unless I give the go-ahead.”
Avery glared at the ground. “Got it.”
“Good, let’s go. I want to talk to Denny’s folks.”
After a silent ten-minute drive, they pulled into Lonestar Estates, a seedy, sprawling mobile-home park on the east edge of town. Avery appeared to be familiar with the area, steering deftly through the labyrinth of narrow lanes without the aid of GPS or map.
“You’ve been here before?” Colly asked, but Avery said nothing. Colly tried again. “If Denny’s parents are friends of yours or something, tell me now.”
Avery shook her head. “We’ve been called out on a couple domestics at their place.” She hesitated. “And I used to live here.”
“In this park? When?”
“As a kid—with my dad.” Her hands tightened on the wheel. “After the fire.”
Avery parked the car in a patch of pea gravel beside a double-wide trailer. A row of dead chrysanthemums drooped in plastic pots on the stoop, and the windows were covered with a thick layer of grime. When Colly got out of the car, a scruffy-looking cat that had been lying on the front steps vanished through a hole in the trailer’s metal skirting.
“No vehicles,” Avery said. “Maybe they’re not home.”
Colly knocked on the door without response. She turned to Avery. “You said Denny’s mom works nights and his stepdad’s unemployed?”
“Last I knew.”
They were descending the porch steps when a dented hatchback turned into the yard. The driver, a thin-faced woman, eyed them uncertainly. Finally, she killed the engine and climbed out, a bag of groceries in her arms. She appeared to be in her mid-fifties. Her face was lined and her hair streaked with gray. But as she drew closer, Colly realized that she was at least a decade younger than that, though the years had not been kind.
“Denny’s mom?” Colly whispered.
Avery shook her head. “I don’t know her, but I’ve seen her around.”
“Then you lead.”
The woman stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Can I help you?”
Avery presented her badge and explained their purpose. “We need to talk to Jolene and Jace.”
The woman identified herself as Carmen Ortiz, Jolene Hoyer’s sister. “Jo’s probably still in bed. Give me a couple minutes—I’ll get her up.” She mounted the steps and dug a key from her pocket. “Jace is probably tinkering out back. You can check, if you want.”
Colly and Avery followed a pair of tire tracks around the trailer and through a weedy lot towards a prefab metal garage.
“Anything I need to know before we talk to this guy?” Colly asked.
“The Rangers looked into him. He had no alibi for the afternoon Denny died. But in the end, they ruled him out in favor of Willis.”
Two massive pit bulls slept in the dirt beneath a pecan tree next to the garage. They lifted their immense heads, then stood and walked to the end of their chains, growling. The garage door was open, and a cherry-red pickup fitted with all-terrain tires was backed partway inside, blocking most of the entrance. Colly noted mechanically that the truck, though filthy and mud-splattered, was an expensive one and fairly new. It seemed out of place amid the general air of seedy destitution that characterized the property.
“Hello,” Colly called.
When no one answered, she sidled through the gap between the truck and the doorframe. Avery followed. The interior of the garage was cool and comparatively dim, smelling of motor oil, sawdust, and something else—a familiar odor, earthy and sharp, that put Colly instantly on high alert. As her eyes adjusted, she became suddenly aware of a massive shape looming over her. She gasped and jumped back, reaching reflexively for her sidearm before she realized what she was seeing.
Avery rushed up, pistol in hand.
“It’s okay,” Colly said. “Look.”
Above them, dangling by its hocks from a homemade hoist welded to the bed of the truck, hung the half-skinned carcass of an enormous wild hog. Its belly had been slit open, and beneath it sat a plastic tub filled with blood, offal, and strips of hairy hide.
Colly glanced around the garage. A row of four chest freezers hummed against the left wall. Against the right stood a workbench topped with a butcher block. On a pegboard behind it hung an array of meat hooks, cleavers, and knives. A stainless-steel band saw sat in the center of the space, a halo of blood spatter ringing the sawdust floor beneath it.
“Damn,” Colly whispered. “Freddy Krueger’s playhouse.” She cleared her throat. “Anybody here?”
After a few seconds, they heard a toilet flush, and a man emerged from a door in the rear of the garage, zipping the fly of his coveralls. After the stories she’d heard about Jace Hoyer, Colly expected a hulking giant, but this was a short, wiry white man with coarse, mud-colored hair and a nose that looked as if it had been broken several times.
Seeing Avery, he stopped, and his eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
Avery introduced Colly, then said, “What’s going on here, Jace?”
“What’s it look like?” Jace Hoyer began washing his hands at a utility sink by the workbench.
“I didn’t know it was hunting season,” Colly said.
Hoyer cast her a scornful look and turned off the water with his elbow. “Not from around here, are ya? Ain’t no rules with hogs. Hell, you can shoot ’em from a chopper, if you want.” He pointed at the half-skinned animal. “I cornered that one with my dogs this morning, then stuck it through the eye with a knife.”
As Colly pondered a reply, Avery waved towards the line of freezers. “You’re not selling meat out of your garage, I hope?”
“Who’s gonna hire me in this town anymore?” Hoyer grabbed a leather apron from a hook and threw it over his head, tying it behind his back. “Jolene ain’t worked in weeks—just lays around popping her damn pills. Gotta keep the lights on, somehow.”
“You know you need a license,” Avery said. “Has the DSHS inspected this?”
Hoyer’s eyes flashed. “Go to hell, why don’t ya, and leave us alone. Ain’t we been through enough?”
Colly stepped forward. “This won’t take long. We’re trying to wrap up a few loose ends regarding your stepson’s death.”
“That case is closed. I got nothing to gain by talking to y’all.”
“You’ve got plenty to lose if you don’t.” Avery jerked her chin towards the freezers. “If I were you—”
Colly cut her off. “We’re not trying to jam you up, I promise.”
“As long as I cooperate?” Hoyer spat in the sawdust. “I ain’t falling for that good-cop, bad-cop shit from someone who got her whole family killed. How’re you still a detective?”
Colly met his eyes. “It’s just a few questions, Mr. Hoyer.”
Jace Hoyer stared back at her for a moment, then shook his head and grabbed a long knife from the workbench. Colly’s gun-hand flinched, but Hoyer picked up a whetstone and began running it along the blade. “Fuckin’ Newlands, you’re all alike. What do you wanna know?”
“I understand you worked at the turbine plant.”
“Till your goddamn brother-in-law fired me.”
“Why?”
“He wanted a cat to kick, and I was handy.”
“Meaning—?” Avery prompted.
Hoyer shrugged. “Screwups ain’t ever Lowell Newland’s fault, that’s all.”
“You’re talking about the accident on the highway a couple years ago?” Colly asked.
Hoyer stopped sharpening the knife. “Wasn’t my fault that lady got killed. Lowell called the shots—I just followed orders.”
“I thought it was a freak accident.”
He cast her a sly look and wiped a trickle of sweat from his temple with the heel of his hand. “Sure, freak accident. But the company was taking flak, anyhow. Lowell needed a scapegoat, so he drummed up a bullshit excuse. Fired me on a technicality. Then went around giving folks the impression that the real reason he let me go was that I caused the accident.” The insinuations had been subtle, Hoyer said—nothing overt enough to allow for a defamation lawsuit. But a few winks and nods from Lowell to the right people had been enough to render Hoyer unemployable.
He tossed the whetstone onto the workbench. “I can’t even defend myself, ’cause he made me sign a goddamn NDA.”
“How come?” Avery asked.
Hoyer laughed harshly. “Lowell ain’t the business genius folks think he is, and he ain’t no choirboy, neither.”
Colly took a step closer. “If Lowell did something illegal, the NDA’s not binding. You’d be covered by whistleblower statutes.”
“Think I’m stupid? Who’m I gonna make a report to, Russ Newland and his Ranger buddies? You? I already lost my house, and I reckon they’ll repo my truck any day now. When a grand jury subpoenas me, I’ll tell ’em all about it. Till then, I got nothin’ more to say on the subject.” Hoyer tested the knife blade with his thumb, then strode over to the hog and began to score long, thin strips in its hide.
Colly followed him and leaned against the truck. “Okay, new subject, then. Talk to me about Denny. I heard the two of you didn’t get along.”
“Denny didn’t get along with nobody. Kid needed a lot more ass-whuppin’ than he got.”
“And that’s where you came in?”
“Done my best, but Denny’d go crying to Jolene, and she’d get pissed at me. She wanted us to bond . I tried it her way—used to let him tag along to the factory, sometimes. But how can you bond with a kid who gets his kicks setting fires and blowing up frogs? Something wasn’t right upstairs.” Hoyer tapped the knife against his temple. “Ain’t just my opinion. The shrinks at that clinic done some kind of brain scan on him. Kid was a psycho.”
“That’s pretty harsh. Where were you on the afternoon he disappeared?”
“Right here, working on my truck from lunch till after dark. Then I came in and drank myself silly.”
“The Rangers never verified that,” Avery said.
“How could they? I was alone, for Chrissakes. Jolene was working a double. Denny was a little shit, but I didn’t kill him. If I did, I woulda made damn sure to have a better alibi than the one I got.”
Colly thought for a moment. “What about last night?”
“What about it?”
“Where were you between six and ten?”
Hoyer hesitated. He hunched his shoulders. “Home. Jolene and me watched the Mavs game then went to bed.”
“She’ll vouch that you never left the house?”
“She better—it’s the truth.” He dropped the knife into his apron pocket and seized a strip of hog skin, pulling it down in one long, smooth motion to reveal a layer of glistening white. “Best way to flay a hog’s to peel it like a banana. This way, you don’t rip off the fat. It’s how the old-timers do it. Those YouTube morons with their tutorials don’t know shit.”
“Ever do anything with the skin?” Avery asked abruptly.
Hoyer shrugged. “Hog’s hide ain’t much use for tanning. Too greasy. Sometimes I sell the bristles on eBay. Folks use ’em for fishing flies and whatnot.”
Avery started to ask another question, but Hoyer waved them away. “That’s enough, now. Leave me alone and lemme work, before this hog rots on the gambrel.”
The women walked back towards the trailer in silence. They stopped beside a rusty clothesline, where a lone floral sheet hung limply in the still air.
“What do you think?” Colly asked. “He’s got a motive. Sounds like he couldn’t stand the kid.”
Avery shrugged. “Small feet, though—definitely not size ten.”
“True, but he’d know how to make those rabbit masks.” Colly ran a hand through her hair. “Let’s talk to the wife, see if their stories match up.” She paused. “Good work getting Hoyer to talk, by the way.”
Without waiting for a reply, Colly turned and led the way up the path towards the trailer’s front door.