CHAPTER 30
AMBUSH
Stan wasn’t as excited about my new witness as I thought he would be. He told me about the restraining order and Tex’s insistence that he not send General Moya the rest of the ransom. I couldn’t believe Tex would do that to him after all Stan had gone through to find him and get him back home safely. So much for gratitude. . . . Since Stan was too distracted to discuss Jill Murray, I left him and went to my office. I needed to find out as much as I could about Don Harris. I went to the courthouse and checked the criminal and civil court records. Don had been in a lawsuit with a former business partner and another one with an ex-employee who allegedly had stolen some trade secrets. Apparently he had trouble getting along with people. There was also a pending DWI case, and the divorce records showed Don was in his second marriage.
I had to wait nearly twenty minutes for a clerk to pull the divorce file out of storage, but what I found was worth the wait. His first wife, Regina, had divorced him on grounds of physical abuse and adultery, and he hadn’t contested the proceedings. She got everything. Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t much. A rush of excitement came over me. A bitter ex-wife would be another great source of information.
On my way back to the office I stopped by Park Place Motorcars to find out the date of the repair to Harris’ wife’s mirror. The elderly man in the customer service department told me he wasn’t authorized to give out that kind of information so I put on my charm and tried to sweet talk it out of him. Twenty dollars later I got the information. The invoice was dated July 18 which was a week after the murder. This could be the car. As I was walking back to my car, I got this crazy idea about actually inspecting the Mercedes. Jill had told me Harris’ wife worked as a sales representative at J. C. Penny in Collin Creek Mall so I drove there and went to the Penny's parking lot. There were only a couple silver Mercedes and I had the license plate number so it didn’t take long to find the right car.
It had been recently washed so I didn’t expect to find much. I looked around to make sure no one was watching me, then I bent down and inspected the driver's side mirror. Whoever had replaced it had done a good job because I couldn’t tell it wasn’t original equipment. I continued to inspect the rest of the vehicle not knowing what I was looking for exactly but just hoping I'd find something. I looked inside the car through the windows and noticed a pair of binoculars. At the front of the car, in the recesses of the headlight wells I found some yellow fiber that I didn’t recognize so I took a sample. I also found some red mud that had caked below the fender. Thinking it might match dirt from the Double T Ranch I bent down and took a sample of it too. When I stood up a security officer was glaring at me.
“What are you doing, miss?” he said.
“Ah. . . . Ah. . . .Well, I lost my contact lens. I was just searching for it. I know it’s down here somewhere.”
I bent down and pretended to look for the contact. The officer got out of his electric cart and came over to help.
“Aren’t contacts a pain in the ass?” he said. “Mine are falling out all the time too.”
“Oh, well. I guess it’s lost,” I said as I stood up. “Luckily I have insurance. I’ll have to stop at the optometrist in the morning and get it replaced.”
“You sure?” he asked. “I’d be happy to help you search a little longer.”
I smiled and thanked the officer and walked back to my car. The binoculars interested me. If Harris was the killer he might have used them to watch Dusty’s house while he was waiting for Bobby Tuttle to show up. When I got to the office, Stan was alone so I went into his office.
“Hey, where have you been?” Stan said.
“Out and about,” I replied.
“Hey, I’m sorry about this morning. I was just so shaken up over the TRO that I couldn’t concentrate on your new witness—what’s her name?”
“Jill Murray. . . . It’s okay. Did you talk to Toni?”
“Yeah. She’s going to try to talk some sense into Tex. God, I hope she can.”
“I bet he’ll change his mind. He’s got to be concerned about General Moya’s threat.”
Stan shrugged. “Hopefully. . . . So, tell me about your witness.”
I filled Stan in on Jill Murray, my courthouse research, and my inspection of the Mercedes.
“You better be careful, girl. I don’t want to have to get you out of jail again,” he said smiling.
“Don’t worry. I promise that won’t happen.”
Stan inspected the fiber and mud samples and said, “This red mud is pretty common in North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. I doubt it’s going to prove the car was at the scene of the murder. This fiber though might be significant. Let’s take a trip up to the Double T and see if Dusty knows what it is. I want to take another look around up there anyway.”
An afternoon drive in the country sounded relaxing, so I said, “Yes, good idea.”
It was late November and the foliage was in full splendor as we drove north along the eastern edge of Lake Lavon. Stan pointed out several good fishing holes that he and his boys had discovered. I didn’t know anything about fishing so I just smiled and listened to him talk. When we got to the northern end of the lake, he told me about the day he and several hundred other men spent cutting free firewood just before the Corps of Engineers began filling the lake.
“The kids loved playing lumberjack for a day and we brought home enough firewood to last us three years,” Stan said. “So, do you like any outdoor activities?”
“Yes, I like hiking and horseback riding,” I said.
“Oh really? Do you ride often?”
“Not lately. I haven’t had the time. But when I was growing up my parents had a few horses boarded down on a ranch in Red Oak. We used to go down there all the time and ride them.”
“That must have been fun,” Stan said. “So, you must have a few horse stories to tell.”
“Well, yes. There was the time I was out by myself and we ran across a rattlesnake. My horse got spooked and ran off so fast he threw me and I landed on my ass.”
“Oh, my God. Were you hurt?”
“Just a broken arm and damaged pride. . . . It was kind of fun having a cast on my arm though. I must have got a hundred autographs.”
Our conversation was interrupted by the sounds of a siren approaching. I looked into my rear-view mirror and saw a police car behind me with his lights flashing.
“Oh God! What’s this about?”
Stan pulled over, cut the engine, and rolled down his window. The DPS officer got out of his car, wrote Stan’s license number down on a pad, and then walked to the opened window. His name tag read: “P. Curtis.”
“Hi, Officer,” Stan said.
“Did you know you were speeding?” he asked.
Stan frowned and replied, “No, I didn’t realize it. How fast was I going?”
“I clocked you at 63 miles per hour,” he said. “The limit is 55.”
“Oh, gee. I didn’t realize I was going that fast.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Up to the Double T Ranch.”
“What business do you have there?”
Stan told him who we were and why we were going to see Dusty Thomas. He seemed very interested in our mission.
“Well, I’ll just give you a warning now, but watch your speed a little closer from now on.”
“I will. Definitely,” Stan replied.
The officer started to leave and then hesitated. “You know I was on duty that day. I wasn’t two miles from the Double T when all hell broke loose.”
“Is that right?” Stan said, “You didn’t happen to see a silver Mercedes did you?”
“Well, now that you mention it. I did. It was driving pretty fast as I recall and I would have gone after it had I not heard about the shootings at the Double T. I let it go so I could respond to the call.”
“So a man was driving the Mercedes?” I asked.
“I couldn't say for sure. I just saw the driver for a split
second.”
“We may want to show you some pictures. We have a suspect who had a good motive to kill Bobby Tuttle but we can’t prove he was at the scene of the crime. His wife owns a silver Mercedes that our suspect drives on occasion, so if that’s the car you saw it would be a major breakthrough in our case.”
“If you have a picture, I’ll take a look at it but don’t get your hopes up.”
The officer let us go and we continued our journey to the Double T. When we got there Dusty and his wife came out of the house and greeted us. Stan showed Dusty the fiber sample. He looked at it carefully and said, “This is alfalfa. We grow four or five acres of it each year for feed.” He pointed to the east. “Over there. It’s too far to walk. We’ll take the four wheelers.”
Martha and Dusty went into a shed and came out driving a couple of four wheelers. I got on with Dusty and Stan went with Martha. We drove along a dirt road around a large stock pond until we came to a road following the fence line. We took the road about a mile until we came to a fork where we stopped. Dusty pointed to the large pasture that lay before us.
“That’s where we grow the alfalfa. It’s been cut now, but back in July it was pretty tall. If a car came through this area it would likely get some alfalfa caught in its grille,” Dusty said.
“Very good,” I said.
Stan looked back toward the ranch house. The land sloped upward to where we were situated. It was a good vantage point for someone watching the house. I wondered what he was thinking. “Good vantage point, huh?”
“Yes. Now, I wonder where he lost his driver's side mirror.”
Dusty scratched his head and then motioned for us to get into the four wheelers. We took off along the fence line toward the main road. Before we got to the highway, the road abruptly ended. We stopped and got off the four wheelers.
“This is the only way to get on and off the ranch without being seen from the ranch house. I don’t like surprise visitors so I barricaded all the entrances and exits except the main road.”
Dusty pointed to the left where there was a small gap between two fences. “I left a small opening so I could get the tractor through it. It’s very small but a car could almost make it through.”
Dusty walked over to the two fence posts and examined them. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What it is?” Stan asked.
Dusty chuckled. “There’s a streak of silver paint on the fence post.”
Stan ran over and examined the streak. He looked back at me smiling. “Nice work, Paula. You’re gonna crack this case wide open.”
I shrugged. “Well, hopefully, but we’re not quite there yet.”
“I know,” Stan said. “But we’ve got proof Don Harris was out here when Tuttle was murdered. That’s at least good for reasonable doubt.”
I nodded. “We still need that DPS officer to ID Harris as the driver. Otherwise, it could have been anybody out here.”
Stan said, “You better call Bart and tell him he needs to get his crime scene unit out here to compare this paint to Mrs. Harris’ car.”
“Trenton Lee’s gonna be pissed when Bart tells him,” I said.
“Too bad. He’s got to check out all possible leads,” Stan replied. “After all we all have the same task—to find the truth, right?”
“Yes, I’ll remind him if he complains.”
As we drove back to Dallas, I was feeling really good. Things were finally falling into place and I believed for the first time that we were going to be able to put up a credible defense for Dusty Thomas. Now all we had to do was clear me of the hit and run charges and keep Stan from being assassinated. I took a deep breath and prayed the tide had turned and things were beginning to go our way. Then I heard a gunshot. The left front of the car dropped abruptly as the tire blew out. Stan struggled to keep the car on the road. A second gunshot shattered the front windshield. I covered my face with my arms as Stan brought the car to a halt. Stan pushed me toward the door. “Let’s get out of here. We’re sitting ducks,” he yelled.
The shots were coming from the woods to our left. We climbed out of the car and scampered down the embankment toward the lake. Another shot ricocheted off a boulder three inches from my hand. At the lake's edge, Stan grabbed my hand and we ran toward a thick clump of trees that put us out of imminent danger. There was dead silence as we stood breathless behind an old oak tree.
“That couldn’t be the assassin already,” Stan moaned.
“No, I ‘d put my money on Don Harris,” I replied. “He must have found out we’re on his trail.”
“Wonderful. I wonder if he’s had enough fun or if he’s going to come down here and try to finish us off.”
“I don’t know,” I said as I peered around the tree. My battered BMW sat awkwardly on the side of the road. There was no movement that I could see. Stan pulled on my arm, indicating it was time to move on. I was about to follow him when I heard a car coming. Relief swept over me as I realized it was Officer Curtis. We were safe—at least for the moment.
We ran to the base of the embankment and yelled up to Officer Curtis. He came down to where we were and we told him what happened. He radioed his dispatcher and before long two more DPS officers arrived along with a county sheriff’s deputy. My car was a mess—multiple bullet holes, glass everywhere, and a bent front axle. I was sick. Officer Curtis told us to stay away from the vehicle as a crime scene unit was on its way.
Several hours later Curtis took us to the local sheriff’s office where two detectives questioned us about the shooting. We told them our suspicions about Don Harris and the possible assassin from Ecuador. They said they would check out Harris’ whereabouts, but that they obviously couldn’t do anything about General Moya. About an hour later Jodie arrived to take us home. A mob of reporters had gathered outside the sheriff’s office which made getting to her car difficult. The reporters shouted questions to us. Stan assured them we were both fine but declined further comment. What else could we have told them? All we knew was that someone wanted us dead.