“He growls when he eats. Defense mechanism, I suppose. Vet thinks he fended for himself a good while. He was half starved and pretty banged up when he came to me.”
“Give the ’ol boy credit for surviving.”
“Let me check in with my neighbor and let him know I’ll be gone. There’s a fifty percent chance of rain this evening, and if we get grounded the cats will need to be fed.”
He followed her out the front door. “Still watch the weather every morning?”
Still eat Frosted Flakes in the morning? The unexpected memory had her pulling the front door closed with a too-firm slam. She turned the key in the lock until the dead bolt slid into place. “The first personal reference to our short but brief marriage—the elephant in the room.”
He stood at the base of the stairs, one foot on the bottom step. “I never was good at pretending.”
“Cutting honesty from what I remember.”
He settled his hat on his head. He tightened and released his jaw. “There something between us we need to lance before we get this show on the road?”
“No.” Emotions tightened and released. She nodded toward the house to her right. “I’ll be right back.”
He studied her a moment. “I’ll be in the car.”
Not sure why she needed to push back over weather and memories of cereal, she hurried, her heels clicking against the sidewalk’s cracked cement, toward her neighbor Ted Rucker’s front door. A couple of quick knocks and the door opened to a tall, lean man with blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses.
“Rucker,” she said. “I’m headed out of town. Could you check in on the cats if you don’t hear from me? I should be back tonight, but you never know.”
He looked past her to Brody who stood outside his Bronco, arms folded over his chest. “Rangers?”
“Ranger Brody Winchester.” She never discussed cases. “I should be back late, but if the weather doesn’t hold, we could be delayed.”
Rucker grinned. “I’ll feed The Three Musketeers. How’s that abscess on Atticus’s side?”
“The antibiotics you prescribed did the trick. Hopefully he’s learned not to tangle with the alley cat down the street.”
“We’ll see. He has a mind of his own.” He frowned. “Safe travels.”
“Thanks again.”
“Hey, when you get back why don’t we get coffee? We’ve been talking about it often enough and never make the time. We can catch up on neighborhood gossip.”
She laughed, already backing away. “Sounds like a plan.”
When she reached the car, Brody opened the door for her and she paused. “You’ve never done that before.”
“I have. Just not for you.”
No anger. No attitude. Merely facts. Not sure how to gauge his statement, she eased in the car and carefully adjusted her purse as he closed the door. When he slid behind the wheel, the Bronco’s large cab did indeed shrink to a far-too-small size. Large wind-chapped hands shoved the key into the ignition. That hand had gripped a baseball bat like it was a lifeline. That hand had once cupped her breast and ignited a need in her that had taken her breath away.
“It helps that you’re familiar with Smith,” he said as he fired up the engine and pulled onto the street.
Swallowing, she considered the road ahead. “He was one of the four serial killers on which I based my dissertation. I never spoke to him, of course. My sources were based on law enforcement records and some interviews.” She’d nearly dropped Smith from the paper altogether when she’d learned Brody had been the arresting officer. Pride wouldn’t allow her to seek an interview with Brody and stubbornness had kept Smith in her dissertation. “Is there more I should be aware of?”
“He was a substitute teacher who fancied himself a novelist. The next Poe. He’d sit in his backyard, his burial ground, and for hours work on his short stories and books.
“Born in Texas and graduated from Oklahoma University summa cum laude. His professors and many of the principals and teachers he worked with respected him. When he had a long-term sub assignment, lots of parents raved about him and requested he be hired permanently. But he refused all offers. He drifted around Oklahoma and Kansas for many years and then returned permanently to Texas twenty years ago.”
Brody threaded the car in and out of traffic and soon they were headed east toward the municipal airport. “I asked him why he moved back, but he never answered. My theory is that he wanted more space, more land and better weather, which makes for a longer killing season.”
“He was in his late forties when he moved back to Texas.”
“That’s right.”
She stared out the front window, rifling through the facts she had on Smith. “His primary burial ground was his backyard but another is suspected.”
“When he was arrested in the suspected disappearance of Tammy Lynn Myers three years ago, we got a subpoena to search his house and grounds. It didn’t take much poking around the backyard to see that the land had been disturbed many times. We spent weeks in that backyard excavating ten bodies. However, we never found Tammy Lynn Myers. We also found evidence in his house that suggested there were at least two other victims. They were also never found.”
“The medical examiner believed that the victims were buried alive.”
“Most of the bodies were so decomposed there was no soft tissue to examine. Then we unearthed a body believed to be his second-to-last victim, a woman he killed weeks before Tammy. The medical examiner found dirt in her lungs and stomach, clearly indicating she’d ingested dirt as she tried to breathe.”
A shiver traced her spine, as she thought about those women so desperate to breathe. “He never fought the charges.”
“No. In fact, he was helpful at times.”
“He was sentenced to death.”
“And has used the last two years filing every appeal he can.”
“He confesses, then fights,” she said. “It’s always about control with him.”
He clenched his jaw, making a muscle by the joint flex. “Looks like the cancer is the game changer now. It’ll kill him before the executioner.”
“Karma has its own justice.”
Without comment, Brody pulled through the gates of the small municipal airport and followed the winding, flat road past the main building with a control tower and then toward the hangars on the north side of the property. He parked beside a hangar. “I asked them to gas up the plane before I left this morning, so the preflight shouldn’t take too long.”
“Can I help?”
“Naw, hang tight. I got it.” They climbed out of the car, and he unlocked a small door that led into the hangar, closed it and seconds later she heard the gears of the big hangar door grinding as the metal slid up and back. Inside the hangar stood a Cessna 150. The single prop, two-seater was painted white with red and black stripes. Brody took his white hat and jacket and tossed both in the back luggage section of the plane.
He attached a hook to the aircraft’s front wheel and easily pulled the plane out of the hangar. Within minutes, he’d inspected the plane’s exterior as if he had done the preflight check a thousand times before.
He opened the airplane door for her and waited as she climbed the awkward step into the plane. After closing the hangar door, he slid behind the yoke of the plane. His shoulder brushed hers as he leaned over and grabbed another preflight list kept tucked by the seat. The Bronco was spacious compared to the cockpit.
He put on headphones and handed her a set before he primed the engine with the choke and then turned the key. The propeller turned once and stopped, but when he cranked the key a second time it turned and caught, quickly sending the propeller spinning so fast it vanished from sight.
Grateful for the loud hum of the engine that would make any conversation difficult, she settled back in her seat, put on her sunglasses, and for the first time since she’d seen Brody standing at the base of her climbing wall, allowed her mind to still.
As he spoke to the tower, he taxied to the runway and swung the plane around so that it rested on the runway’s numbers and faced due east. Without tossing her a quick glance he gunned the engine and the two were hurtling down the runway. Halfway, he pulled the controls back and the front wheels lifted effortlessly off the ground. Her stomach flip-flopped and she was glad now she’d had a small breakfast.
Out the side window, she could see the square, functional buildings of the airport quickly growing smaller and smaller. As they gained altitude, the crystal-blue horizon stood in stark contrast to the brown earth savaged by drought. Glancing at the air speed, it didn’t take much calculating to figure they’d be in West Livingston within the hour.
That gave her sixty minutes to prepare herself for seeing one of the most vicious serial killers in Texas history.
Chapter Two
Saturday, April 6, 3:00 P.M.
The gray walls of Livingston State Prison loomed as Jo stared out the backseat window of the Department of Public Safety’s trooper car. Brody had called ahead from the plane and arranged for a trooper to meet them. He now sat in the front seat next to the officer and she in the back.