Going Nowhere Fast Read Online Free PDF Page B

simple question. You don't really need your mother's help to answer it, do you?"
    "He's been with us for three weeks," Joe said, surprising all of us.
    "Pardon me, Mr. Loudermilk, but I'm talking to the boy here."
    "The 'boy' here is twenty-two years old, officer. And he's my son. Which means as long as I'm in the room to hear it, you're gonna show him some respect when you talk to him. You got that?"
    "I was merely—"
    "You were merely talking to him like a four-year-old you'd caught taking cookies from a jar," I said, backing my husband up. "Theodore is a man. If you treat him like one, he'll tell you anything you want to know. Won't you, Theodore?"
    Dog was still staring at his father, thrilled to the core by Joe's unsolicited rush to his defense.
    "I said, won't you, Theodore?"
    He turned. "Huh? Oh, yes ma'am!" He nodded energetically for Cooper's benefit. "Anything you want to know."
    "Look," Big Joe said. "He's just as confused about all of this as we are. All right? What we all told you yesterday still stands. We didn't know this man Bettis, and we sure as hell didn't invite him into our trailer to use the bathroom. He invited himself in, while we were out. Why, we don't know. I'm sorry."
    "Then none of you had any plans to meet with Bettis before he was murdered."
    "No. How could we? We didn't know the man ."
    "I see," Cooper said, though he quite clearly didn't.
    "Look," Bad Dog said. "I don't get it. This Bettis guy's wallet was missing, right? And all his cash?"
    Cooper nodded solemnly.
    "So what's the mystery? The man was robbed. Somebody probably entered my parents' trailer through the open door, just like he did, and held him up at gunpoint. Cleaned him out, then shot him dead."
    "Why?"
    "Why what?
    "Why shoot him dead? Why shoot him at all? He was sitting on the toilet with his pants around his ankles, for crying out loud. Why would the thief need to shoot him?"
    Bad Dog thought about it for a moment, then said, "That's a good question."
    Big Joe lowered his head and shook it from side to side, the way fathers with little patience for thickheaded sons so often do.
    "Maybe he gave the thief an argument," I said, trying to come to Dog's rescue. "I know I certainly would have, if someone had burst in on me while I was… while I was…"
    "Indisposed," Cooper offered.
    "Yes. Indisposed. I mean, that's such an inopportune time to rob someone, don't you think? I would have been very upset if someone had done that to me, when they could have just as easily waited until my business was through to conduct theirs. If you know what I mean."
    I suspected what I'd just said had sounded foolish, but I wasn't really sure until I found my husband shaking his head at the floor again, a little more emphatically this time.
    Generously ignoring Joe's wordless editorializing, Ranger Cooper smiled at me and said, "You make a good point, ma'am. Mr. Bettis may have put up a fight, at that." He shrugged. "However, I should point out that if he did, it would have had to be a very short one."
    "Why is that?"
    "Because there were no signs of a struggle in the bathroom," Joe said.
    "I didn't say he put up a fight, Ranger Cooper," I said, turning to our host again. "I said, perhaps he gave his killer an argument . In other words—"
    "It was something he said that got him killed, rather than something he did."
    "Yes."
    After a while, Cooper nodded. "I suppose that's certainly possible, yes, ma'am. If he was killed by someone who was already highly aggravated, for example, it could have easily been a wrong word here or there that got him shot." He turned to face Big Joe. "Wouldn't you say so, Mr. Loudermilk?"
    Joe didn't like the sound of the question, and neither did I. "That all depends on what you mean by 'highly aggravated,' " Big Joe said.
    "I mean angry. Upset. The way someone might be if they thought they'd just caught a stranger in the act of burglarizing their home, for example."
    Big Joe just sat there, doing a slow burn.
    "You