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“What the hell are you talking about?” I ask.
He holds up his phone.
“Ty Abrams just called,” Carlos says. “He said,‘You didn’t get this information from me.’”
“What information?” I say, irritated.
Spit it out, Carlos!
“Apparently Abrams talked to Ellis Kilpatrick’s boss last night when they were checking alibis,” Carlos says. “He called today to let Abrams know Ellis didn’t show up for work. The boss was worried about him, and he went over to Ellis’s apartment. His truck was gone, his stuff was packed up, and—the kicker—he made off with three of the shop’s motorcycles.”
I take a deep breath. “You think…?”
Carlos nods his head.
“I think they’re making a run for it,” Carlos says. “All three of them.”
I turn to Willow.
“I’ve got to go,” I say. “Whatever you were going to tell me, just hold onto it. A few more days. I’ll call you in Nashville.”
She nods with a sad expression on her face.
But this is a conversation I can’t have right now.
“I understand,” Willow says, reaching up and straightening my tie. “Go get ’em, Ranger.”
CHAPTER 41
PARKER, ELLIS, AND Harvey circle around the house to the expansive yard at the back of the Longbaughs’ property. Parker wears his pistol on his hip and carries a cordless drill in one hand and a paper grocery bag in the other. Ellis holds a four-foot-long gaff, the kind deep-sea fishers use to snag big fish. Harvey is carrying a flat-bladed shovel.
The sun has just set beneath the cornfield, and besides a faint orange glow coming up from the horizon, the night is dark. Josie and the kids are gone. They’ve got the place to themselves.
The men stop walking, and Parker points to a place in the lawn that looks like it’s recently been patched with a two-foot-by-two-foot square of sod. The spot is hard to see in the long grass. There’s only a faint outline of a square, like a trapdoor in the middle of the lawn, right at the edge of the long strip of extra lush grass where the leach line extends.
Harvey uses the shovel to pry up the sod, turning it upside down. Worms wiggle in the exposed soil. Parker kneels to wipe the dark dirt away from a plastic green saucer the size of a manhole cover embedded into the ground.
The lid to the septic tank.
“I hate this part,” Harvey mutters, a toothpick wedged in the corner of his mouth.
Parker sets the drill down and opens the bag. He pulls out long rubber gloves and distributes them to his partners. Then he gives each of them a medical mask from the bag, and the three of them put them over their mouths and noses. Harvey spits out his toothpick to fit his mask over his face. The white masks stand out in the fading gray light.
Parker kneels and uses the drill, equipped with a Phillips-head screwdriver, to loosen the screws on the edge of the plastic lid.
“You sure was right,” Ellis says. “You knew just where them Rangers wouldn’t look.”
Without answering, Parker pries the lid off the tank. Hundreds of drain flies spill out into the night air, followed by the overpowering stink of raw sewage.
The masks offer little protection. The stench is wretched, enough that the men fight back gagging.
Inside the tank is a pool of shit- and piss-filled water—what looks like a pond of diarrhea four feet deep.
Still kneeling, Parker takes the gaff and leans down. He dips the instrument into the muddy black porridge. He roots around with the gaff for a moment, then pulls with both hands, hoisting up a net containing a plastic bag. He sets it in the grass, and the other two men work to loosen the net and open the bag beneath.
Inside are three submachine guns.
Parker reaches back into the pool of sewage and pulls up another net, and another and another, each containing a plastic-wrapped square about the size of a cinder block. Inside each of these are cash—hundreds of bills wrapped into cubes.
