Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones)’s Timeline and Summary
- We first meet Ed Tom when he's getting onto a horse alongside his deputy to check out a burned-out car at a botched drug deal out in the Texas desert. The two ride around and Ed Tom shows how good he is at casually sizing up the scene. He also notices the truck of Llewellyn Moss parked at a nearby ridge and goes to check it out.
- Ed Tom and his deputy visit Llewellyn Moss's trailer but find that he's gone. He also sees that the lock on the door has somehow been punched out. He sees a fresh bottle of milk sitting on the coffee table and realizes that he just missed whoever was just inside the trailer.
- Ed Tom sits in a diner and learns from his deputy that there was no bullet found inside the head of a man they found shot dead on the side of the road. How there could be no bullet if there wasn't an exit wound. (Our guess is sorcery.)
- Ed Tom is back at his office checking out the registration on all the vehicles in the desert. He tells his secretary he plans on visiting Odessa to see Carla Jean Moss.
- Ed Tom walks out of his station and jumps into his car to pull over a truck that's transporting bodies from the botched drug buy. He scolds the driver for not respecting the dead and not properly tying down his load.
- Next, he sits down with Carla Jean and tells her that he can protect her husband if he just comes in. He tells her a story about a man wounding himself while trying to shoot a steer in the head to show that nothing is ever certain when it comes to power and violence.
- Ed Tom is sitting back in his diner when his deputy tells him about three dead Mexicans who've been found in a motel out in Del Rio. Ed Tom says the world is going to hell and tells a gruesome story he has heard about a husband and wife murdering old people to cash their social security checks.
- Carla Jean calls and asks him to meet with Llewellyn alone. Ed Tom drives to Llewellyn's motel, but is too late. Llewellyn is dead. He gets a family to call the local police and waits to console Carla Jean.
- After escorting Llewellyn's body to the morgue, Ed Tom goes out for coffee with a cop friend from El Paso. They chat about how dismal the world has become.
- Next up is a visit to an old retired cop named Ellis. Ed Tom talks about retiring from the sheriff's department because he feels overwhelmed by the evil of the world.
- Ellis tells him he's being vain by thinking the whole world should revolve around his ability to make sense of it all.
- Officially retired now, and maybe just a little bored, Ed Tom sits down for breakfast with his wife Loretta. He closes the film by telling Loretta about two dreams he had the night before. The second dream seems to symbolize the combination of hope and despair he feels about the future.