Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2) - James Patterson Page 0,101
the latest in the investigation.
A lot has changed.
Instead of the two of us by ourselves in the cramped conference room, there are at least fifteen other people representing a variety of agencies: the Texas Ranger Division, the county sheriff’s department, the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, and Homeland Security. Each has at least a few representatives here.
And this meeting is only the tip of the iceberg, just the epicenter of the investigation tornado. Out and about in Rio Lobo, there are two dozen Rangers—not to mention at least twice that many other law enforcement officials—doing investigative work. Most of them are at McCormack’s ranch, searching the buildings and the property, bagging evidence, scouring the hills with cadaver dogs, excavating hidden graves. At least ten people are just inventorying all the cocaine and illegal guns we’ve found. Other investigators are interrogating town officials. We don’t yet know how widespread the corruption was and who all was in on it, but I feel certain that the arrests we’ve made so far—Harris, his right-hand man Hank Humphreys, and fifteen of McCormack’s soldiers—won’t be the last.
The town population has probably doubled in size overnight if you add all the law enforcement officials and all the journalists who have converged on this little map dot, vying for rooms in the motel, which was vacant a day ago and is now filled to capacity, with the overflow bunking in RVs or tents set up in vacant fields. Every major newspaper in Texas is here, not to mention all the national news channels. Reporters from CNN and Today aren’t too famous to wait sixty minutes for a restaurant table. The town’s two stoplights can’t tame the street traffic.
I’ve been told that what happened in Rio Lobo is the top story on every news network. This won’t go down as the biggest drug bust in US history, but it will certainly make the top ten.
Not that I’ve seen the news myself. I’ve been working nonstop since I climbed down from the oil derrick, with the exception of about two hours of sleep and the time it takes to shower and put on clean clothes. The El Paso company commander brought me new pants and shirts since everything I had burned up in my truck.
McQueen has been a big help, explaining McCormack’s operation, pointing us to where Kyle and the others were buried, showing us the stockpile of drugs McCormack had on the property. McQueen is currently housed in Rio Lobo’s one and only jail cell, but if I have anything to do with it, his incarceration will be temporary.
Every hour or so a new bombshell of information drops in front of me.
Earlier today someone found a cardboard box hidden under the floorboards on McCormack’s property that contained a variety of items, ranging from Middle Eastern clothing to Kyle Hendricks’s badge, Dale Peters’s familiar Dallas Mavericks cap, and Skip Barnes’s cell phone. Skip’s phone revealed texts from Gareth assuring him that the McCormacks would buy his silence and asking him to meet Gareth by the old shed out by the oil derrick—a trap luring him to his death.
We suspect the box holds keepsakes of some kind from all or most of Gareth’s victims, and we’ve got people trying to figure out who once owned the rest of the items. The fact that the box contained a belt buckle Ariana recognized as belonging to the former police chief has led us to believe that Gareth killed him to put Harris in power. That’s a new arm of the investigation. What happened with Ariana’s father, who is now in the final months of his prison sentence, is another new aspect.
Despite how busy we’ve been, Ariana was able to make a tearful phone call, telling him that for the first time in her law-enforcement career she could finally help him and apologizing for ever doubting his innocence.
Cadaver dogs also sniffed out some hidden gravesites on the property, and we now believe that the employees who used to work for McCormack, the ones he supposedly bought out and sent on their way, were probably killed. That would include the lead singer Dale and Walt used to play with. We’re waiting on DNA testing of all the bodies. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Walt yet about Dale. I’m sure he’s heard—everyone in town knows—but I’m going to have to break it to him that his other friend was also murdered.
When I first met Harris, he bragged that Rio Lobo hadn’t had