Blanco County 04 - Guilt Trip by Ben Rehder Page B

told me earlier, but I figgered this one was big enough.”
    Buford was smiling, not able to help himself. He wasn’t much for strangers, but he already liked this guy. Not putting on an act, just telling a story.
    Joe went on, saying, “We had some words, then I finally grabbed that little slant by the hair and smacked him a good ‘un. His wife called it in. Deputies show up and all that crap. Wouldn’t have been a problem, ‘cept I was on parole for shooting homeless guys with a paintball gun.”
    Buford shook his head, thinking, What is this guy made of?
    “Man paid me to do it,” Joe explained. “Bums was hanging around outside his office at night, getting wasted, pissing all over the place. Somebody finally broke in, so the guy’d had enough. I didn’t want to lay hands on those nasty bastards, so I figgered I’d holler at ‘em and run ‘em off with the paintball gun. The thing was, I figgered the cops couldn’t get me on assault for something like that. Not touching them or nothing. Stupid me.”
    They’d both posted bail the next day, and Little Joe had asked for a ride.
    “Where to?” Buford asked.
    “Wherever you’re going.”
    Joe turned out to be a pretty good little assistant, running details down for Buford, spelling him on stakeouts. Buford got used to having the extra set of ears and eyes real quick, so they had worked up a loose employment agreement. Buford decided, since he was the one with contacts and experience, they’d split the dollars three to one. Joe didn’t have a problem with it. It had worked out real nice so far.
    Joe was holding the bottle with one hand, thumbing nonstop through the channels with the other. “You got a plan yet?”
    “Working on it.”
    “Which way’s Colby’s ranch?”
    “Down 281, right on Miller Creek Loop. About ten minutes to get there.”

9
     
    “KINDA CHILLY THIS morning,” Phil Colby said.
    “Yep,” Marlin replied. “Don’t you worry. It’ll warm up quick.”
    “No doubt. So what’s the plan?”
    It was minutes after sunrise, and they were parked side by side near the low-water crossing into the Mucho Loco subdivision. Just the two of them, no more volunteers.
    “I’ll cross to the other side, then we’ll just walk the banks downstream. Let’s keep an eye on each other, and just holler if you see anything.”
    Colby nodded and pulled his truck onto a grassy area beside the road. Marlin drove slowly across the bridge; the water was low enough now that it barely reached his hubcaps.
    He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was wasting his time, but he couldn’t give up the search yet with so many unanswered questions. Suppose Scofield had been driving the Corvette and Stephanie Waring had been following, maybe an hour later, in the SUV? But what if the water had risen too high by then and she had been swept away? Scofield might’ve waited for her at some meeting place and, when she didn’t show, figured she had changed her mind. He’d think, Well, she didn’t want to run away with me after all. Then he’d hit the road alone.
    Who the hell knows?
    Any number of scenarios were plausible, and several of them ended with a body in the river. That’s why Marlin had to keep looking.
    Ernie and Nicole were starting from scratch, speaking to the same people they had already interviewed, hoping to learn where Scofield might have gone. But last night, after talking to Rita Sue Metzger, Bobby Garza had warned Marlin that he couldn’t commit much manpower to the investigation. “We’ve got two possible scenarios,” Garza had said. “Somebody drowned in Scofield’s vehicle, in which case there’s not a lot we can do at this point. Or Scofield took off in the Vette, with or without Stephanie Waring, and there’s not a lot we can do there either, except wait and see. Until we can find out why the SUV ended up in the river, we don’t even know that a crime has been committed.”
    “What about the stolen Corvette?” Marlin had