Letty asked, “Is it possible that the extra oil came out of the ground? That he started fracking or something?”
“Nawp. I got an old hunting buddy out that way, name of Lowell Harp, who knows Roscoe,” Wright said. “He says Roscoe ain’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Said he’s dead in the water. Lowell was completely surprised to hear Roscoe was suddenly doing so well. You got to talk to Lowell.”
They got name spellings and addresses for Roscoe Winks and Lowell Harp, and a phone number for Harp. “Lowell runs a half-dozen gas stations in towns around the Seminole area, does all right for himself. You can trust him.” Harp, Wright said, was a cousin to his wife.
Letty thanked him and said they’d try to interview Harp the next day. “We’ve got to go talk to the Midland police some more. Probably won’t be finished until it’s too late to get out there today.”
“I’ll tell Lowell to expect you.’’
* * *
When they got off the phone, Kaiser said, “We did all right talking to Miz Turner, and we did even better sittin’ in the truck taking phone calls. It’s almost like we’re professionals.”
“These guys . . . Sawyer, Crain, and Winks . . . sound pretty hardcore,” Letty said. “We need to decide how we’ll handle them. Maybe talk to Dan Tanner, see what he recommends.”
“Don’t want to get in any dusty-road shoot-outs,” Kaiser said. “Though I expect we’d do okay, if it came to that.”
“A machine gun was mentioned,” Letty said.
“Ahh . . . right. Let me reconsider.”
* * *
They were back in Midland before two o’clock and drove straight to the police headquarters. Tanner was there. He gave them lightly edited printouts of their statements, which they read and signed. Letty told him about Max Sawyer and Victor Crain, and their relationship to Rand Low. She showed him the two mugshots.
“You think they might be related to the Blackburn homicides?”
“They could be, but we don’t know,” Letty said. “DHS was told that a Chevron security team heard a rumor that Low was involved in the oil thefts. Now Blackburn was probably murdered because of the oil thefts. So the connection is a rumor.”
Tanner pinched his already narrow nose, thinking about it, then said, “Okay. Monahans is only about an hour from here. Why don’t we run down and ask them about it? We can bust Low if we find him, for violating his parole.”
Letty shrugged: “I’d like to stop at a Stripes and get an ice cream and a Coke, but I’m good to go.”
Kaiser: “What she said.”
“I know an investigator for the Monahans PD,” Tanner said. “I’ll call her, see if she can go along.”
* * *
They went down in two cars, in heavy truck traffic, Tanner leading, made a quick stop at a Stripes, where all three of them got ice-cream bars, and Letty added a Coke and Kaiser got a Diet Pepsi, and they continued south through Odessa and another thirty-five miles or so into Monahans.
As they followed Tanner, Letty looked out at the highway and asked, “You know how you can tell Texas has low taxes? Because they don’t pick up any of the crap that gets thrown on the highway. Road gators everywhere, those white plastic bags hung up in the weeds everywhere. Everywhere. Like some kind of bizarre flowers.”
Kaiser: “Says the fuckin’ California snowflake . . . Of course, you’re right. Texas magnolias.”
“Texas magnolias,” Letty repeated. “I like it.”
* * *
Monahans looked mostly like a dusty intersection with dusty intersection businesses; and later like a flat dusty town with buildings and housing scattered around somewhat haphazardly, with ninety percent of the structures either yellow or beige.