But he didn’t have the two bucks. How can a guy be out looking for milk and driving across Texas with his family when he doesn’t even have two bucks in his pocket?

“While I’m dealing with this guy, these two characters in a Trans Am are hassling Vikki. I don’t have trouble in my place, but suddenly, I got it all at one time, you follow me now? Drunks and hard cases don’t mess with my employees, Vikki in particular. Everybody knows that. ‘Orchestrated,’ that was the word I was looking for. It was like it was all orchestrated.”

“You get a license number on any of these guys?” Hackberry said.

“No.”

Hackberry placed his business card on the glass counter. “Call us if you hear from Vikki or if you see any of these guys again,” he said.

“What’s happened to Vikki? You ain’t told me squat,” Junior said.

“We don’t know where she is. As far as we know, you’re the last person to have seen her,” Hackberry said.

Junior Vogel let out his breath, the heel of his hand pressed to his head. “I looked out the window and the guy with the milk was ahead of her. The two creeps in the Trans Am got some gas and followed in the same direction. I watched it happen and didn’t do anything.”

THE SKY WAS gray with dust as they drove back down the state highway toward town, Pam Tibbs behind the wheel.

“I talked to my cousin Billy Bob Holland,” Hackberry said. “He’s a former Texas Ranger and practices law in western Montana. He’s known Pete Flores since he was a little boy. He says Pete was the best little boy he ever knew. He also says he was the smartest.”

“These days it’s not hard for a good kid to get in trouble.”

“Billy Bob says he’d bet his life this boy is innocent of any wrongdoing, at least of the kind we’re talking about.”

“My father was in Vietnam. He was psychotic when he came home. He hanged himself in a jail cell.” Pam’s eyes were straight ahead, her hands in the ten-two position on the steering wheel, her expression as empty as a wood carving.

“Pull on the shoulder,” Hackberry said.

“What for?”

“That road bull is waving at us,” he replied.

The inmates were from a contract prison and wore orange jumpsuits. They were strung out in a long line on the swale, picking up litter and stuffing it into vinyl bags they tied and left on the shoulder. A green bus with steel mesh on the windows was parked up ahead. So was a flatbed diesel truck with a horse trailer anchored to the back bumper. One mounted gunbull was at the back and another at the head of the line working along the road. An unarmed man in a gray uniform with red piping on the collar and pockets stood on the swale, waiting for the cruiser. He wore yellow-tinted aviator shades and an elegant white straw cowboy hat. His uniform was flecked with chaff blowing off the hard pan. His neck and face were deeply lined, like the skin on a turtle. Neither Hackberry nor Pam Tibbs knew him.

“What’s going on, Cap?” Hackberry said, getting out of the cruiser.

“See that Hispanic boy over yonder with Gothic-letter tats all over him?” A polished brass tag on the captain’s pocket said RICKER.

“Yes, sir?” Hack said.

“He killed a bar owner with a knife ’cause the bar owner wouldn’t return the money this kid lost in the rubber machine. Guess what he just found back there in the rocks? I almost downloaded in my britches when he handed it to me.”

“What’d he find?” Hackberry said.

The captain removed a stainless-steel revolver from his pants pocket. “It’s an Airweight thirty-eight, a five-rounder. Two caps already popped. Don’t worry. The hammer is sitting on a spent casing.”

Hackberry removed a ballpoint from his shirt pocket and put it through the trigger guard and removed the revolver from Ricker’s hand. Pam Tibbs got a Ziploc bag from the cruiser and placed the revolver inside it.

“I shouldn’t have handled it?” Ricker said.

“You did all the right things. I appreciate your waving us down,” Hackberry said.

“That ain’t all of it. Better take a look over here,” Ricker said. He walked ahead and pointed at a grassy spot where, during the rainy season, water ran off the road into the swale. “I suspect somebody is a pint or two down right now.”

Over a wide area, the grass was stippled with blood, and in places the blood