“Yeah, what’s got nothing to do with you?”
He looked at her and shrugged.
“Know anything about drive-by shootings?”
He looked to his left, down at the floor, then gave her a one-arm shrug.
“Interesting,” she murmured. “What about the truck?”
“What truck?” he asked, widening his eyes innocently.
But she wasn’t fooled, since she’d seen the furtive dart to the left. “You know the truck. The one that we just picked up that got stolen from you, from where it was parked downtown. After you got out and left it running and headed back to look at the chaos you’d created.”
He shook his head repeatedly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, we’ll see about that,” she said, with a half smile. “It’s motive I’m still looking at, but I think I just found it.” She glanced over at her partner. “Do you get it?”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
She looked at Tex. “It would have been nice if you’d had a good reason for killing those particular people though. You didn’t have to just grab those guys and shoot them because they were everything you weren’t, because you couldn’t pay back the guys who did this to you.”
He stared at her resentfully. “They were healthy. They were fit. They were strong. They were in their prime. Not like a beaten-up cripple, whose best days were past him.” He puffed up and tried to take a step forward but tripped, his left leg quite lame.
She could almost see him crumbling in front of her.
“And this is as good as it gets,” he yelled, then simmered down. “After three years of surgeries which some rich do-gooder doc paid for. I should have killed him too.”
“All those young men you killed, it wasn’t their fault that you are crippled,” she said quietly. “And to even think about killing a Good Samaritan doctor is sick. None of these people harmed you.”
“Maybe not, but they would have,” he said on a snarl. “They were the same,… arrogant. The same guys who never give anybody a fair shake or a hand up. They were just takers.”
“So, because you didn’t know who your victims were, you made that negative assessment and killed them on the spot, even though they were just walking down the street.”
He shrugged. “Why not?” he said. “I could do that. And it felt pretty damn decent.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking at him, “and how do you think being in prison in the physical condition you’re in will feel?”
He stared at her in shock; then he shook his head. “No, no, no, no. They’ll kill me.”
She shrugged. “They might. I guess it depends on if you keep up your interesting ways of taking your problems out on the rest of the world. Yeah, it’s terrible you were hurt, and it was shitty, but you know what? A part of me says you probably brought it on yourself because you stole from them. They didn’t need to do what they did to you, but you didn’t need to turn around and kill all those innocent men, all because you couldn’t confront the guys who crippled you. There was no need for that.”
“There sure as hell was,” he snapped. “They were assholes. Every last one of them was an asshole.”
“You didn’t even know who these guys were, and you killed them anyway,” she said, staring at him like a bug. “You’d never met them and never had anything to do with them.”
“I didn’t need to,” he said. “You can tell who they are just by the way they walk. No way you can miss that kind.”
“That kind?” Rodney asked.
“Yeah,” Tex snapped. “That arrogance, thatI own the worldattitude. That alpha male stride,” he sneered. “But I taught them, didn’t I?”
“I don’t know,” she said, suddenly tired of the whole damn thing. “I’m not sure you taught them anything. They’re dead, and their families will forever wonder why and what they could have done to save them,” she said. “You couldn’t even give them that with a reasonable explanation, just that you were angry at the world,” she said quietly. “But we’ll be taking you down to the station now, so you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“I’m still not sorry,” he snapped. “Those people were bad.”
“Which ones?” she asked. “The guys who beat you up three or four years ago, or the innocent ones you murdered?”
At that, he didn’t have another word to say.