Page 28 of Backtrack

Caught by surprise, Johnson shook his head. “I can’t think of anything.”

Cutter stood and slid the chair to its original position against the wall. He started for the door but then turned back to Foster, trying not to sound too much like Columbo.

“So, you have thought about it,” he said. “Stealing a load, I mean.”

“Stealing?” Foster said, incredulous. “No. Of course not.”

Cutter looked at the man for a good twenty seconds watching, listening. When Foster offered no more information, Cutter pulled a business card from the breast pocket of his shirt and set it on the rolling tray beside the plastic water pitcher. “We’ll get out of your hair, but this is my office number. Give me a shout if you have any further questions.”

“Sorry,” Foster whispered. “You know, I just didn’t see much.”

“Not to worry,” Cutter said. “You’ve helped out more than you know.”

CHAPTER 11

“What did you mean back there?” Lafayette Johnson asked on the way to their cars. “You’ve helped out more than you know? Seemed to me that guy wasn’t any help at all.”

The younger deputy hitched up his gun belt and hustled across the parking lot to keep up. For someone with relatively short legs, Cutter moved like a man on a mission. Because he was. Always.

“He won’t read anything into it if he’s got nothing to hide,” Cutter said. “If he’s holding something back, a phrase like that could have him second-guessing what he told us, make him think he slipped up. Maybe make him slip up again.”

The kid appeared to chew on that for a time, then said, “Watts stopped the truck on his own. Goddard had a lockpicking set. Now Foster’s a suspect. Are you saying they’re all suspects?”

“Son,” Cutter said. “This is a homicide investigation. Everyone is a suspect but me—and I’m not even sure about me. Lord knows five million in diamonds would come in handy about now.”

Johnson chuckled and started toward his patrol car. Cutter whistled him back.

“Go ahead and hop in my car,” he said. “We’ll come back for your rig after a while.”

“What are we gonna do now?” Johnson asked. “We don’t have any leads unless you heard something in there that I didn’t.”

Cutter took off his hat and clipped it in the spring-loaded wire rack mounted on the headliner between the sun visors.

“I’d like to sit down with the lead supervisor from TexSafe.”

“Moffit,” Johnson said. “Gerald Moffit.”

It was good to know the kid was paying attention.

“Right,” Cutter said. “He assigned the guards to this particular run.”

“Say he doesn’t have any more than Foster,” Johnson said. “Or, even if he does but decides not to talk to us?”

“Silence gives us something to work with.” Cutter turned the ignition and checked in with the dispatcher, letting her know he and the kid were clear of the hospital and operating as a two-man unit. He hung up the mic and turned to face Johnson, finishing his thought. “In my experience, if you rattle around in the field long enough, the fugitive gods are bound to put something in your path.”

“The fugitive gods?”

“Luck, karma, whatever you want to call it,” Cutter said. “My point is, good things happen when you’re wearing out boot leather. We keep picking away at what we do know, sooner or later we’ll find new threads to pull.” Hands on the wheel, Cutter turned and stared out the side window. “You ever hear that old saying about the horseshoe nail?”

Johnson followed Cutter’s gaze to the west as if the answer might be out there somewhere in the parched grass. He scrunched his nose. “No horseshoe-nail sayings come to mind.”

Cutter began to recite, almost whispering.

“For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost … All for the want of a horseshoe nail.” Cutter shrugged. “It’s a long way of saying we should pay attention to the little things—”

Nikki, the dispatcher, came over the radio again, cutting him off. “Parker County 62.”

Johnson grabbed the mic.