Chapter Five #3
She was slender, brown hair threaded with silver, somewhere in her fifties. Her eyes were rimmed red and her hands worked a tissue like she was trying to tear it apart without meaning to.
“Agents.” She didn’t sit. “I know why you’re here. I don’t know where Hal is, and I don’t care.” Her voice caught, rough around every word. “That bastard got my son killed.”
“We’re very sorry for your loss,” Creed said. “Do you have any idea where he might go?”
“The last time he called me...” She stopped and pressed her lips together. “I’d already heard about my son. I was too angry to talk to anyone. I hung up on him.” She looked down at her hands. “He was seeing someone in Autumn Falls. A woman named Burch.”
“First name?” Hud asked.
“Charlotte.” She shook her head slowly. “No. That’s not right. I can’t remember. She never mattered much to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Hud fished a card from his wallet and held it out. “Call me if anything comes to mind. Anything at all.”
She took it with both hands, studying it like it might tell her something they hadn’t. “I will. I want him caught as much as you do.”
“Do you know his brother’s name?”
“Amos. But I wouldn’t think he’d help Harold out.”
“His cousins?”
“I never met any cousins.”
Hud nodded. He and Creed moved toward the front door. Hud opened it and stepped out first, the air sharp after the close warmth of the house. Creed followed, pulling the door gently shut behind them.
They stood on the porch a moment without speaking. Down the street a dog was barking at nothing. Farther off, a lawn mower droned on, indifferent to all of it.
“What do you think?” Creed said.
Hud tucked his wallet away. “I don’t know yet.” He looked back at the door, then out at the quiet street. “But she’s scared.”
“Of him, or something else?”
“Don’t know yet.” Hud pulled his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. He went down the steps toward the truck, gravel crunching underfoot. “She held something back. I could feel it.”
Creed fell into step beside him. “You think she knows where he’s running?”
“I think she’s got a guess.” Hud pulled open the driver’s door and climbed in. The cab was hot from sitting in the sun, vinyl seat burning through his shirt. He cracked the windows while Creed got in on the other side. “Whether she’ll tell us is another matter.”
“Can you blame her?” Creed set his hat on the dash and ran a hand through his hair. “She just buried her boy.”
“No,” Hud said it quietly. “I can’t.”
Her son was dead because of the man they were looking for, her own ex-husband.
Whatever he’d pulled the boy into, whatever promises or pressure had brought him along, it had gotten him killed.
And now she was sitting in that house alone, grieving, while the man responsible was still out there, still moving.
Hud started the engine and let it idle. He looked back at the house. The curtain in the front window shifted, then went still.
“She’s protecting something,” he said. “Maybe not him. But something or someone.”
“The rest of his crew, maybe. If she knows who they are and they’re still out there—”
“She’s got reason to be careful about what she says.” Hud nodded. “Yeah.”
He backed out onto the road. “Pull the brand records on the ex. Everything transferred or sold in the last sixty days. If they were moving stolen cattle there’ll be a trail.”
Creed reached for his notebook. “And if the paperwork’s been cleaned up?”
“Then somebody with more than a branding iron helped him.” Hud straightened the wheel and headed down the road, the house shrinking in the mirror. “And we start pulling on that thread next.”
He kept his eyes forward. “Pull everything we have on White Senior, his brother, both cousins. And get me the files on Roby and Hill.”
Creed was already writing. “You think the ones in jail are still talking to him?”
“Men like that don’t stop just because they’re behind a fence. They’ve got phones, they’ve got visitors. Hill especially, he’s got family all over this part of the state.”
“You think White’s still in contact with them?”
“I think he wouldn’t have left without making sure his loose ends were tied off.” Hud drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Question is whether Roby or Hill gave us anything we can actually use.”
“Rawley’s notes say Hill talked some. Not much.” Creed flipped back through the notebook. “Roby didn’t say a word.”
Hud nodded slowly. Rawley Bowman had worked this case for the better part of three months before somebody put three bullets in him.
He was alive, recovering, but he wouldn’t be back in the field anytime soon.
Hud had visited him in the hospital twice.
Both times Rawley had looked up from that bed with the same expression, frustrated, restless, and guilty as hell that he’d had to hand it off.
Find him, he’d said on the second visit. That was all.
Hud intended to.
“Rawley’s notes mention anything about Canada?” he asked.
Creed thumbed forward through the pages. “He had a theory. Nothing solid.” He found the page and scanned it. “Says White has a cousin up near Sunburst. Ranch just south of the border.”
“That’s not a cousin.” Hud glanced over. “That’s a door.”
Creed looked up. “You think he’s heading for the crossing?”
“If I’d just lost my son, had two men in jail and a livestock agent closing in on me?
” Hud kept his eyes on the road. “I’d be heading somewhere nobody could follow.
” He reached over and turned the radio down.
“Get on the phone with the county sheriff. And find out who’s watching the ports of entry up near Sunburst.” He pressed down on the accelerator.
“If Hal White makes it across that border, this whole thing gets a lot more complicated.”
Creed was already dialing.