Part Three: Seven Hours

I am going to lay out the timeline here, flat, at the front, the way it was eventually established — by a Texas Ranger, a special prosecutor, a county 911 archive, three phone carriers and a truck’s own computer — rather than the way I learned it, which took four months and nearly took my mind.

Saturday, the twelfth of October.

4:34 p.m. — Cade Gaddis, thirty-eight, backs a dual-rear-wheel pickup out of the shop bay at his parents’ property outside Cutter’s Bluff, in Jasper County.

There are about twenty people on the place; it is his mother’s birthday.