Page 82 of Backtrack

Cutter forced a smile. “We’re taking him in your car,” he said. “But I’m coming too. I catch ’em, I clean ’em.”

Teague gave a tight chuckle, clearly worried about his friend. “Your rule.”

“Yep,” Cutter said. “One of them …”

CHAPTER 34

Lafayette Johnson maneuvered Ricky Pink in the back seat of Trooper Teague’s patrol car. There was no cage separating the front and rear seats. DPS troopers seemed to rely on the threat of pulling over and giving the prisoner an ass whipping if they got unruly rather than the safety of any screen or partition. Johnson locked his sidearm in the trunk and rode in the back seat with the prisoner, while Cutter sat up front. Cutter’s intention had been to go straight to jail, but considering his own injuries and the massive goose egg on the side of Pink’s head, decided it was better if a doctor looked them both over. Allen Duvall got a ride in the ambulance, handcuffed to the gurney.

LJ read Pink his Miranda rights from the back of a business card he would eventually staple to his written report—so some snake of a defense attorney would be less likely to question the exact wording he’d used for the warning. The fact that Pink was only fifteen was bound to draw increased scrutiny. Everything had to be by the book.

Pink didn’t do anything but glare all the way to the hospital.

“I’m going to uncuff your hands for a second and hook you to the bed so the doc can have a look at you,” LJ said after they’d been shown through the Emergency Room lobby and into a room with a door, rather than the flimsy privacy curtains. “Stay still or—”

“Or what?” the kid snarled. “Your partner will murder me like he murdered my friend?”

Johnson took off a handcuff and then attached the loose end tothe metal rail of the hospital bed. “I wish youwouldmove,” he whispered.

Pink slouched on the bed and glared.

Cutter ended up with eight stitches over his eye and a wrap around his ribs—along with a cautionary tale from the Emergency Room doctor about letting himself get hit in the head so much. This wasn’t the first time they’d met under similar circumstances.

Visits to the ER often took hours, but Ricky Pink’s intimidating size and grim demeanor made hospital personnel speed matters along. LJ let it slip to one of the nurses that Pink was one of the two prime suspects in the brutal shotgun slayings of not only the armored car guards but others as well, including Jack County Deputy Sheriff Gary Ewell. ER staff were happy to see the young hoodlum out of their hospital ASAP.

Allen Duvall was still in surgery when Cutter and the others escorted Pink back to the trooper’s patrol car.

The elation of the capture waned before they departed the hospital. Foster was their only witness to the actual robbery, and he was dead. The Bryants’ neighbor had seen the two men running from the house. Proving burglary wouldn’t be too difficult. Cutter knew he’d need more. Fingerprints, tracks, something at the scene of Trina Foster’s murder. Movies and TV shows made circumstantial evidence sound like a bad thing. The truth was, investigators rarely found a smoking gun, and eyewitnesses were famously unreliable. In the lion’s share of cases Cutter saw go to trial, it was circumstantial evidence that convinced a jury.

What he really wanted was a confession.

CHAPTER 35

Cutter felt like he’d just wrestled shoes onto a dozen rank horses by five p.m. when they got Ricky Pink into interrogation at the Sheriff’s Office. Layers of sweat and grime had long since dried, leaving Cutter filthy and exhausted. The room was small, nine-by-nine feet, just large enough for a metal table and four chairs. Unlike the movies, there was no soundproofing, no fancy two-way mirror. The walls were painted a depressingly dark brown to about waist level. Above that they were a sort of medium avocado green. Chief Smith told everyone he’d read somewhere these particular colors were supposed to calm people down. Cutter suspected he’d found the paint at a price county commissioners could live with. The room was wired for sound. Interviews could be taped, and the brass could stand outside in the hallway and listen if they wanted to.

The smell of boiling potatoes and something Cutter guessed was chipped beef on toast carried in from the jail kitchen, close enough to hear the trustees banging around with pots and pans.

Cutter cuffed the kid to an I-bolt on one side of the metal table, putting his back to the door, and then slid one of the metal chairs hard against the bend of his legs—an unspoken order to sit. Lafayette Johnson leaned over the end of the table working the tape recorder. He propped up the cigar-sized microphone on a plastic stand just out of the outlaw’s reach, then looked up. Cutter gave him a nod, and he pressed Record.

Cutter dropped a manila file folder on his side of the table and then pulled out the chair across from the kid. Searing pain shotthrough his injured ribs with every breath and blink, but he pasted a benign look on his face and sat, gritting his teeth. Pink stared at his hands, locked in his own little world. If he noticed Cutter’s discomfort, he didn’t react to it.

Cutter plunked a piece of cottonwood root the size of his fist on top of the manila folder, and then twisted enough to fish the Barlow knife out of his front pocket. His injuries made the action take a surprising amount of effort. Sweat rolled down his spine by the time he tipped back his chair against the wall and began to work on his carving.

Dosed with as much Tylenol and ibuprofen as the ER docs would allow, Cutter was able to achieve a relatively pain free posture as long as he didn’t bend or twist … or breathe enough to fill up his lungs.

“You’re a big ol’ boy,” he said without looking up. He wanted to say a good deal more, but he kept his thoughts to himself, partially because of the tapes—but mainly because most humans abhorred silence. He could sit and whittle for as long as it took. The kid would eventually say something, even if it was just to cuss him.

For a time, Ricky Pink appeared to be just fine with silence, too.

If Cutter’s mind started to wander, he’d move just enough to drive an excruciating spike through his side. Then, focused again, he’d relax and return to his carving. This particular piece of cottonwood already had the lines of a bird, probably a cardinal, complete with tufted top knot. Once he figured that out, all he had to do was carve away all the stuff that wasn’t bird. He planned to do essentially the same thing in building an airtight criminal case against Duvall and the kid—carve away all the lies so a jury could see the truth.

“How long?” Pink said after a full ten minutes of silence. He’d never looked up from his hands, even to see what Cutter was doing with the pocketknife.

“I have all night, Ricky,” Cutter said. “We can stay here as long as we need to.”

Now Pink’s head snapped up. He was grinning. “I’m talking about your old lady.” He smirked. “How long’s she got before she turns tits up.” Pink cocked his head to one side and made a gurgling sound. “How long?”

Cutter kept whittling while he spoke, his voice low and steady.