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“Nope. Heard it somewhere.”

“Tammy said Suzie confessed,” said Billy. He sat at the end of the table smelling smokey.

“She did and I recorded it. Molly will type it up and Suzie will sign it this morning before we leave for court. She wants to plead guilty and skip a jury trial. Too embarrassing for her and Chris’s family.”

Billy smiled. “They won’t be loving their daughter-in-law anymore, will they?”

“Nope. Not when they find out what she did.”

“Did it all fit together when she told it to you?” asked Billy.

“No. There are a lot of iffy points in her story. They never should have involved the Thorns, and I can’t see why Raza did that. Too late to ask him now. They would’ve been far better off if the two of them parked the truck on the county road, put Chris in the bush and walked away to let him be found whenever.”

“I think they did put him in the bush, and it was taking too long for the body to be discovered,” said Billy. “That’s when Raza went to Thorn and offered him the big bucks to get involved. Raza was only interested in getting his hands on the insurance money quicker.”

“Yeah, it could’ve happened that way,” I said. “That’s why there were no drag marks. Thorn went and got Chris out of the bush and planted him out behind his house.”

Billy nodded his head. “Chris was already chewed up and they didn’t have to fake that part.”

“Yeah. Your theory might be the right one.”

Tammy put breakfast on our plates and told Billy how mad Outlaw got when we tried to get him into his new trailer.

Billy chuckled. “We’re gonna have a time with him.”

“Yeah, we are. A time getting him in, and then Tammy and I will have us a time every time we stop to give him a break on the trip.”

“Good luck with that. Outlaw is a stallion and he has a strong will. He’ll give you trouble just because he can.” Billy laughed.

Sheriff’s Office. Coyote Creek.

First thing I did when I got to the station, was give Suzie Concordian’s recorded confession to Molly to type up and add to Suzie’s file. We’d need the confession on file when we went to court, or I figured it would be good to have it officially on record.

Molly listened to it as she typed and smiled when she finished up. She got the copy from the printer and gave it to me for Suzie’s signature.

“That’s one way to get rid of your husband, Travis. Put arsenic in his army rations.”

“I guess she had no doubts that Chris would gobble them up. According to her, he was eating more of them every day.”

“I also saw that you had added a murder charge to Tibor Garrison. Too bad about Carter Raza.”

“Happened overnight, Molly. Not much we can do about one prisoner killing his cellmate.”

“Still, it reflects on us… in a way.” Molly sounded sad. “We have to file a report on the death of a prisoner in our jail.”

“I know what you’re thinking, and it never happened before because we never had Tibor Garrison in our jail before. He’s a bad one, Molly.”

“He is.”

“I’ve got to get the others ready to go to court.”

Gail Thorn was bawling her eyes out as I got coats for her and her husband and took them out of their cells.

“Shut up, Gail,” snapped Robert Thorn. “Stop that crying. We’re only going to court, not the fucking gallows.”

“I hate you for this, Robert. This is all on you. I said not to do it no matter how much we were getting paid.”

“I said shut up, Gail,” Thorn hollered at his wife and she began crying again. An emotional time for the Thorns.