“More than an hour to sunset,” Kaiser said. “We can’t sit here. Somebody might come by and wonder what we’re doing. But we gotta be back here when we can still see well enough to drive without headlights.”
“We can turn off the headlights if we have to. But the taillights . . .”
“Duct tape and blackout cloth,” Kaiser said.
“Let’s go up to Odessa and visit Tanner,” Letty suggested. “He’ll think it’s nice of us, and we’ll have a comfortable place to sit while we wait. Get a couple Cokes. There’s a Walmart up there, we could get the tape and the blackout cloth.”
“？’Cause we really don’t give a shit about Tanner.”
“I didn’t say that.”
* * *
Tanner was grumpy but relaxed: he’d been given a dose of OxyContin, which he found pleasant, as had Vermilion Wright, with his knee surgery. “Not going to piss on people for using OxyContin anymore,” he said. “Doesn’t affect your thinking, but it does make the pain go away.”
“Take a dozen pills a day for a month and see how you feel,” Kaiser said. “You’ll be selling the tires off your squad car to pay for a fix.”
The conversation more or less slipped downhill from that, and after a while, Tanner said, “I gotta get some sleep. I want to thank you guys for coming by,” and so they left.
“That was refreshing,” Kaiser said, as they crossed the parking lot.
“Did what we needed and I got to pee,” Letty said. “Let’s run over to Walmart and get the tape and cloth for the taillights. It’ll be close to dark before we get back to our bush.”
By ten after nine, they were parked in the weeds at the side of the track. They hadn’t bothered to cover the taillights on the way out, because they could get stopped by cops and because they’d be a mile away from the tanker and the building that went with it. Parked in their bush, Letty spent some time hunting for a decent music station on the satellite radio. There was no traffic: not a single car or truck. In the distance, they could see the lights from I-20, but no moon, as yet.
After a while, Kaiser said, “I’m gonna z-out.”
“Okay.” Letty cleared out her mind and sat.
* * *
At midnight, to the south, a set of headlights bounced and ricocheted along the road that led to the small building and within a minute or so was followed by a second set of lights. Letty nudged Kaiser, who yawned and asked, “We on?”
“We’re on,” Letty said.
The two trucks stopped at the corrugated metal building and a light came on inside it. Twenty minutes later, the light went out, and while they couldn’t see the men, they could see two brilliant flashlight beams as the men behind them crossed the distant road and then disappeared into the creek bed. Five minutes after that, the tanker truck rolled out of the creek bed, onto the road, and started out toward the interstate highway.
When all they could see were the tiny dots of the red running lights on the back of the tanker, Kaiser cranked up the Explorer and they went after it, running parallel to it and a mile north. Seven or eight minutes later, as the truck was approaching the interstate, Kaiser leaned on the gas and they closed in.
The tanker turned northeast toward Odessa. They followed it into the city, where it got off, turning right into the industrial section of town. Kaiser stayed well back, Letty tracking the three red lights on the back of the truck with the binoculars. A quarter-mile off the highway, the truck took a right onto a narrow street into a jumble of metal buildings. Kaiser turned off the Explorer’s headlights and followed, but pulled off the road when they saw taillights flare on the truck.
“What do you want to do?”