Page 78 of The Texas Murders

I explain to her what Carlos’s plan is, and once she’s on board, we ask the Tigua officer if we can take his car, with Carpenter in the back. Five minutes later, Carpenter is sitting in the Tigua Tribal Police station’s interview room. With the bandages, we can’t cuff his hands together, but we latch his good hand to the eyebolt in the table. He sets the other arm onto the surface of the table. Red spots are starting to leak through the bandages.

“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing,” Carpenter sneers. “You need to take me to a hospital.”

“We will,” I say. “Soon.”

“I want a lawyer,” he barks. “This ain’t justice.”

“Justice,” I say, “would be injecting you with heroin and letting men pay to rape you. I’d say talking to you for five minutes before taking you to see a doctor is mild by comparison. Especially,” I add, waving dismissively toward his arm in an effort to bait his anger, “for such a minor injury.”

“Minor injury?” he cries, holding up his bandaged arm. “Does this look fucking minor to you?”

I’m glad he’s angry. This might be the only way to save Marta Rivera. Ryan Logan had said that none of the people they’d arrested from any of the raids were willing to say a word about the criminal organization they worked for.

I have to get Llewellyn Carpenter to talk.

Ava and I sit across from him as if this is a normal interview. There’s nothing normal about it. We’re still wearing our guns, still covered in soot and stinking of smoke, interrogating a suspect who should be in an ambulance right now.

“Don’t waste your time, Ranger,” Carpenter says. “I ain’t saying shit.”

“We’ve got you for kidnapping and attempted murder,” I say. “You’ll do a good bit of time. A decade at least. Maybe less, if you’re lucky.”

He stares at me, trying to see where I’m going with this. I made sure to give a low estimate of his future incarceration. I want him to think about the possibility of freedom in ten years.

“But,” I add, “killing a police officer is capital murder. A death sentence.”

He smirks, but I can tell my words are having an effect.

“If this was any other state, you’d grow old on death row,” I say. “You’d have a nice cell all to yourself away from other prisoners while your lawyer filed appeal after appeal. That wouldn’t be a bad life, actually. But this is Texas, where the average time spent on death row is less than ten years. That means, a decade from now, you won’t be walking out on parole, smelling the fresh air. You’ll be lying on a slab while a doctor shoots you up with potassium chloride. If you’re lucky, you won’t be conscious when your sphincter lets go and you shit your pants.”

He glowers at me with his one good eye, burning like a green flame. It gives me satisfaction that I’ve managed to wipe the smirk off his face.

“That’s what’s going to happen,” I say, “unless you cooperate. If you help us out, on my honor, I will testify in every court hearing you ever have that you shouldn’t be given the death penalty for the murder of a Texas Ranger.”

I don’t mention that I know for a fact he didn’t kill a Texas Ranger—that Carlos is alive and well, and on his way to the station now, if not here already.

“We’re not waiting for a lawyer,” I say to Carpenter. “We’re not waiting for the FBI. This is a deal between you and me. It’s a onetime offer, and it expires in two minutes.”

CHAPTER 69

HIS SMIRK IS back.

“That’s not how this works, Ranger,” he says. “Cutting a deal takes lawyers and judges and lots of signatures on dotted lines.”

“It also takes time,” I say, “and that’s one thing Marta Rivera doesn’t have. My primary goal here is to save her life.”

The interview room seems stuffy to me, but it might be that I’m feverish from being so close to the fire—or so close to dying. Either way, I can feel the sweat running down my chest. I hope it doesn’t run down my forehead and give Carpenter a clue to how nervous I am. I’m acting tough, but it’s a bluff. I need information only he has, and I don’t know any other way to get it.

“If we wait to get the FBI and a bunch of lawyers involved,” I say, trying to come across as sincere, “then your boss, Mr. Z, is going to know you’ve been arrested. He’s going to move thewomen he’s still got prisoner. He might kill them. And he’ll do whatever he can to cover his tracks.”

Carpenter shifts in his seat, pleased that he might have some kind of leverage here. His eyes dart to the one-way mirror on the wall.

“Anyone out there watching us?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say truthfully, since I’m not sure if Carlos has shown up yet. I don’t mention that we positioned a video camera to record the conversation.

“No one we’ve arrested associated with these missing women has been willing to roll over,” I say. “Maybe they know that if they talk, something will happen to someone important to them. Maybe an accident. Like a gas leak.”

Now Carpenter’s expression changes to a look something akin to satisfaction. I realize it could very well be that Carpenter is who these other men are afraid of. But he also should know he’s replaceable. If he is Mr. Z’s enforcer, who the other minions are afraid of, Mr. Z might now be in the market for a new guy to do the kind of dirty work Carpenter does. Maybe he already has such a person, an equal to Carpenter or a subordinate who’s been waiting in the wings for this kind of chance. Carpenter’s life could be in danger, or the life of someone he cares about, if there is such a person or thing.

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