Brock exited the gas station with a Gatorade under one arm, sauntered toward his vehicle, and did a double take when he saw Levi. From the way his eyes darted from left to right, Levi thought he might bolt. “Why you so nervous?” Levi asked. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“About what?” Cutter said suspiciously. He didn’t look well. Unkempt and tired. Pretty much how Levi felt himself.
“About the murders at the Doyle farm,” Levi said, watching Cutter carefully.
His shoulders sagged. “Yeah, I heard. It’s really sad,” Cutter said. “Did they find Ethan and that girl yet?”
“So, you know Ethan Doyle?” Levi asked.
“Well, yeah,” Cutter said, taking a swig from his bottle of Gatorade. “We go to school together.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?” Levi asked, rubbing his neck, his hand coming back slick with sweat.
Cutter looked skyward. “Umm, it’s been a while. We got in trouble at the beginning of summer for fighting…”
“Against each other?” Levi interrupted.
“No, together. We ran into some jerks, got in a fight. It was nothing.” Cutter shook his head regretfully. “Our parents said we couldn’t hang out anymore.” The kid was lying or Josie Doyle was. Levi couldn’t think of a reason why the girl would lie about seeing Brock Cutter on the day her parents were murdered.
Levi wanted to see how far Brock would take the lie.
“But I stopped you not far from his house last night. What were you up to?” Levi asked. “You sure were going fast.”
“I told you, I was late coming home. My dad was going to be pissed,” Cutter said defensively.
“You were at a movie, right? What movie?” Levi probed.
“Scary Movie,” Cutter said. “I went with my cousin, Rick. You can call him.”
Levi nodded. “Yeah, I’ll do that. So, any ideas where Ethan might be?”
Cutter shook his head. “Nah, man. Like I said, we hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Last I heard, he was grounded.”
“How ’bout you give me your best guess,” Levi pushed.
“I don’t know, he liked to go fishing, maybe the pool. He dated Kara Turner for a while, maybe over there,” Levi said, then drained the last of his drink. “That’s all I can really think of.”
“Okay,” Levi said, letting Cutter’s lie drop for now. He’d get him into the station for a formal interview tomorrow, pin him down then. In the meantime, he’d keep a close eye on Brock, follow him. Maybe he’d lead him right to Ethan Doyle. “If you think of anything else, give me a call, got it?” Levi said pointedly.
“Sure thing,” Cutter said, dropping his drink into the garbage can. “I hope you find him.”
“Me too,” Levi said as Cutter walked away. The kid is lying, Levi thought. But why? Was he protecting Ethan Doyle or himself?
Three hundred miles away, not far from Leroy, Nebraska, Nebraska State Trooper Phillip Loeb was traveling west on I-80. He had received an alert to be on the lookout for a 1990 silver Datsun pickup truck and damned if there wasn’t one in his rearview mirror. That was some bad business over in Iowa. Two dead, two missing.
Of course, he’d have to get a better look, run the plates. It was probably a false alarm—they usually were.
Loeb slowed his cruiser hoping that the truck would come up beside him to get a look inside, but as he reduced his speed, so did the truck. Several vehicles passed the trooper but the silver truck lagged farther behind. Interesting.
Loeb couldn’t get a good look at the occupants in the truck from his vantage point, but he could see there were two people in the cab. His pulse quickened. He needed to get behind that truck. He called dispatch with his position but the closest trooper was forty miles away. Loeb didn’t want to wait that long for backup to arrive but also knew that the lives of two teens could be at stake.
Again, Loeb slowed down, but so did the truck, allowing several vehicles to come between them. The driver was definitely trying to evade him.
Just as Loeb pulled off to the side of the road to let the truck pass him, the driver stomped on the gas. As it roared past the idling cruiser, Loeb got a glimpse of the passenger—a young woman who stared back at him in terror.
Loeb pulled back onto the road and began pursuing the truck, now traveling in excess of eighty miles per hour.
“Dammit,” Loeb muttered. He flipped on his siren and lights but had to wait for several vehicles to get out of his way before he could safely return to the road. He accelerated, the red needle on the speedometer hovering around ninety miles per hour.