Blanco County 04 - Guilt Trip by Ben Rehder

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    Rita Sue lowered her massive rear end into the easy chair, the Chihuahua scrambling to get out of the way, and said, “I sure hope Stephanie ain’t giving y’all any trouble. Lord knows she’s good at it.”
    “No, ma’am,” Garza said. “It’s just that we really need to verify her whereabouts.” He outlined all that had unfolded, beginning with the discovery of Vance Scofield’s SUV. When Garza was finished—after making it clear that it was possible that Stephanie had either drowned or run off with a drug-using financially bankrupt older man—Rita Sue hardly seemed fazed.
    Her first question was, “Who’s this Scofield fella?”
    “You don’t know him?”
    “Heard about him yesterday in the news, but Stephanie never said nothing about him.”
    “Like I said, we’re under the impression they’ve been dating.”
    Rita Sue frowned, running a massive hand over the dog’s tiny head. Marlin noticed a can of Copenhagen on the TV stand next to the easy chair, and he realized that Rita Sue had a boyfriend. He figured there was somebody out there for everyone. She said, “Could be. Of course, my Stephanie, looking the way she does, she always has a lot of boys after her. Kinda hard to keep track of ‘em.”
    “She, uh, dated a lot of men?” Garza asked.
    “Always did, even during high school. But she’s living away from home now, so I don’t hear much about it. Have you checked her duplex? Them ones off Lady Bird Lane in Johnson City?”
    “Yes, ma’am, a deputy stopped by and left a note. We were wondering—could you let us in to have a look around her place?”
    “I sure enough would if I had a key.” She shook her head. “I hate to see y’all going to all this trouble. Steph is liable to be anywhere. Maybe off on a camping trip, or down at the beach this time of year.”
    Marlin said, “She’d just take off like that? Without telling you?”
    Rita Sue chuckled, and Marlin could see dark strands of wayward snuff between her front teeth. No boy friend after all. “Oh, heavens, yes,” she said. “That girl’s a handful, I’m tellin’ ya. Got fired from her last job ‘cause she took off for Vegas, no word to nobody.”
    “Do you know who she went with?” Garza asked.
    “To Vegas?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “I believe it was a girlfriend from work. I hadn’t ever met the gal, so I cain’t remember the name.”
    Marlin asked, “Was Stephanie friends with Lucas Burnette?” He’d been thinking about Lucas a lot lately. Another mystery, the third day now with no sign of the kid whatsoever. To Marlin, the odds seemed slim that Lucas and Vance Scofield could vanish from sparsely populated Blanco County just hours apart without the cases being somehow tied together. The deputies had already checked for a connection between the two men—after all, Lucas might’ve been running a speed lab, and Scofield looked to be a user—but they hadn’t found anything. No phone calls from Scofield to Lucas. No friends or relatives saying they knew one another. Marlin was hoping Stephanie would be the link between Lucas and Scofield.
    But Rita Sue seemed surprised by the question. “The boy from the feed store?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “I imagine they know each other from school. He was a year ahead of Steph, I believe.”
    “But they didn’t see each other on a social basis?”
    “Uh-uh. He’s a sweet boy, though. Always carries my chicken feed out for me. A shame to hear about that fire. I sure hope he’s all right.”
    Garza said, “We’ve left voicemails for Stephanie. Do you know if she carries her cell phone?”
    “You know how those things are. Half the time you cain’t reach nobody, or you cain’t hear each other talking. Pieces of junk, if you ask me.”
    “But does she carry it most of the time?”
    “Far as I know. Most of them kids do, right? You see ‘em all over the place gabbing on them. Driving. In the malls. Plain rude sometimes.”
    Marlin could see that this