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“I know you two broke up,” Mom says. “But your dad and I still like her. You should look her up while she’s in town.”
“I’ve got a girlfriend,” I say. “I thought you liked Megan.”
“IadoreMegan,” Mom says, handing me a big bowl of mashed potatoes to put on the table. “You can still be friends with Willow, can’t you?”
After the dream I had the other night, I’m not so sure.
I don’t want to say it to my mom, but I think the best thing for me is probably to stay away from her. If I want to give my relationship with Megan any chance at surviving, that is.
Mom says that Willow’s in town taking a break before her big summer tour starts. This will be her first year as headliner and she’s got some hot new artist, Riley Chandler, opening for her.
“He’s the one with that song that was big last year, ‘Sundown in Whiskey Town.’”
“I think I’ve heard it,” I say.
The truth is most songs on country radio seem to blend together for me these days. I prefer old Tim McGraw or George Strait to most of what I hear being played.
I try to move the conversation away from Willow and ask about my brothers’ kids. If there’s one thing my parents like to talk about more than my love life, it’s their grandchildren.
Dinner is delicious, as always. You can’t go wrong with country-fried steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, and, for dessert, apple pie made with fruit my dad picked with his own hands. Afterward, I thank my mom and give her a big hug. I embrace Dad, too. He wasn’t a big hugger when I was growing up, but we almost lost him to cancer a while back, and ever since we’ve been better about expressing our emotions.
I could be killed any day on the job—I want the people I love to know how I feel.
On the walk back up to my house, the sun has just finished setting and the yard is starting to light up with fireflies. The sky is filling with stars. I feel strangely lonely. I don’t want to end up like my lieutenant, approaching retirement and married to the job. I want to be like my parents, married forty years and still in love.
My phone buzzes.
It’s Willow.
I want to answer, but I’ve got a strong feeling I shouldn’t. Instead, I send it straight to voicemail. Then I dial Megan to let her know I’ll be out of town for a few days.
As she picks up, enthusiastic to hear from me, I try to convince myself she, not Willow, is the one I really want to talk to.
CHAPTER 7
ON THE ROAD the next morning, I feel so nervous about what I’m doing that I almost call Carlos and tell him the deal is off. But I’ve already gotten the go-ahead from my lieutenant to look into the Cereal Killer case. I have to go.
Out the window, the scenery blurs by, with farms and windmills and the occasional armadillo hobbling along the side of the road. I have the radio on, but I’m lost in thought and don’t pay attention to the music until Willow’s most famous song, “Don’t Date a Texas Ranger,” comes on and grabs my attention. She made the song as a joke back when we were dating, but it turned out to be a hit—and prophetic.
“I should write my own song,” I mutter. “Don’t date a country singer. You’ll never get over her.”
I pull into Snakebite by midmorning. With about three thousand residents, the town lies close to the border of Hamilton and Comanche Counties, right on the very edge of Company F’s jurisdiction. If the town were any farther north, it would be in another county and I would have had a lot more difficulty convincing my lieutenant to let me go.
Snakebite is a nice enough place. There’s a tributary of the Lampasas River running perpendicular to Main Street, with a bike path alongside it and a scenic walking bridge overlooking the creek. A water tower stands on the north edge withSNAKEBITE PROUDpainted on the side.
In no particular hurry, I check into my motel room, eat an early lunch in a restaurant called the Snakebite Sizzler, and then stop by the local police station to let them know I’m here and what I’m doing. I spend a good two hours looking at old files and talking to a detective who worked on the Cereal Killer case. All of this feels like such a waste of time, for me and for everyone I talk to, but I go through the motions so I have something to report back to Ty.
Finally, in late afternoon, I tell myself I can’t put it off any longer. I climb into my truck and head over to Parker Longbaugh’s house.
He actually lives a good thirty minutes out of town, and I drive below the speed limit the whole way, delaying the inevitable. On the way, I pass by the grain elevator where Jackson Clarke used to work. It looks like it’s been closed ever since he ran off. The parking lot is overgrown with weeds and the doors and windows are boarded shut.
Finally, I approach the address. Even though Parker lived here back when he worked for the Rangers, I’ve never seen his house. He always told me that he liked it because it was secluded, and that’s the truth.
As I pull into the driveway, I spot two kids playing out front with superhero figures. The boy, maybe about eight or nine, and the girl, four or five, stop battling Captain America against Thor and Spider-Man, and eye me suspiciously. I saw the boy as a toddler, but I haven’t seen Parker in years and didn’t know he had a daughter. I climb slowly out of the truck, not wanting to scare the kids. I doubt many Texas Rangers with guns on their hips show up to their house, even though their dad used to be one.
I tip my hat to the kids and head up the walk toward the front porch. I can hear the static buzz of grasshoppers out in the field.
Parker and his family live in an old two-story farmhouse on a spacious corner lot, with a large wooded area on one side and a cornfield on the other. The corn stalks are still short this early in the summer. A cluster of fruit trees sits at the back of the property, and several tall red oaks shade the house and the lawn. One oak has fallen down close to the woods, where it looks like Parker has started cutting it into firewood. There’s a barn and a large vegetable garden, along with a jungle gym, a horseshoe pit, and a fire ring of blackened cement blocks. When Parker bought the place, I remember him saying the house had belonged to a family that owned the adjoining fields, but the farmlands had been sold off to bigger operations that had no need for the home.
