Bell has spent his life attempting to atone for that crime of cowardice, and resolves to crack the case and save the Mosses lives in the process. Bell is haunted by his experiences as a soldier during WWII, where he left his unit to die but received a Bronze Star in the aftermath. Sheriff Bell is called in to investigate the drug crime and protect Moss and Carla Jean. Moss manages to escape, and returns home to tell his wife, Carla Jean, to go to her grandmother's in Odessa, Texas while he escapes with the money.
This marks the beginning of the hunt for Llewelyn Moss, a conflict that will drive the novel for its majority. Upon arriving, he finds that the man has since been shot and killed, and it’s not long after that that a second truck pulls up beside Moss’s, leading to an intense chase through the desert. Moss takes the satchel and returns home to his trailer, but feels significant remorse at having left the thirsty man to die, and returns later that night with a jug of water. After investigating further, Moss discovers a truck filled with heroin and decides to go off and look for the “Last Man Standing.” He finds him, dead under a tree some ways away from the scene, clutching a satchel filled will $2.4 million in cash. After searching the area, he comes across a badly wounded Mexican survivor, who pleads with Moss for water, which Moss denies him since he doesn’t have any on him. Meanwhile, Llewelyn Moss comes across what appears to be the grisly aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong while out hunting antelope. Bell does not believe himself to be willing to take that risk. He believes in the idea of an agent of destruction that embodies this mentality, one that a man would have to risk his soul confronting. Bell realizes that his worldview is dated, and likely fundamentally different from that of others near the Mexico-US border in 1980. He recalls a time when a man who is now being put to death based on Bell’s own testimony killed a 14 year old girl, and though it was described as a ‘crime of passion’ by investigators, he told Bell there was no passion involved. The novel opens with a monologue from protagonist Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, detailing an experience from his time as a sheriff. The plot of the novel follows the experiences and thoughts of three central characters, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, hunter and Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss, and psychopathic hitman Anton Chigurh, tracing how their paths intersect over the course of a series of highly disturbing and violent events.
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