by Kris Lackey
Through Jill’s front door, he could hear the identifier for KGOU, the Norman NPR station that Chickasaw Enterprises helped string to Ada. When he knocked, the radio volume went down, and Jill greeted him with a blinding smile. She was wearing a sunset jersey shift and no shoes. Her apartment smelled like oranges. A five-string banjo sat upright on her couch.
She squeezed his abs. “Avocado and, what, raisins? Apple?”
“Banana.”
“Maybe we should switch jobs.”
“It’s the twenty-first century,” he said. “I am not wearing panty hose.”
“See?”
“Hannah Bond wouldn’t tell me what she had for breakfast this morning at the Downtown Diner in Tish. Said it’s because you’re a dietitian. I think you pose a serious risk to my social well-being.”
“That’ll be the day. I bet it was brains.”
“She was pretty definite on that one—doesn’t eat brains.”
Jill Milton took a bowl of bulgur, mint, and onion salad out of her refrigerator and handed it to Maytubby. “Was she still at the diner when she said that?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, we’ll give her that one.”
“Such a simple thing, I …”
“Bull. She knows the only reason you ask is that you’re envious, and she pretends to be embarrassed to spare you from facing your own dietary smugness.”
He took a spoon from the counter and twiddled it, watching her. “She said the same thing about calf fries, but she was in Wapanucka.”
“You asked her again?”
“We’re not giving her that one,” Maytubby said, going to work on the bulgur.
“Hear anything from the medical examiner or the FBI?”
He shook his head. “Dis is …”
“Isn’t it? I have to make it in the demonstration kitchen. They’ll laugh at me and tell me it looks like dirt. Austin Love still at large?” She peeled an orange and stacked the parings on her finger-pick box.
Maytubby reached in his uniform pocket with his free hand and held the unserved tribal court warrant over his head.
“Woman in Stratford used to know him, claimed she saw him driving an old gray pickup in Ardmore.”
“That and a nickel get you a streetcar ride.”
“I thought so, too. But first thing out of Stratford, I see a gray-primered old Ford pickup driven by this odd-looking fellow with Johnny Rotten hair and one eye casing his sideburn. Hannah stopped the same guy later in the day, driving a Cobalt like the one Jake and I think picked up Love at Kullihoma. Said he was a preacher in Tushka, name on the license Woodley. He gave her a tract titled ‘Satan is Waitin’.’ Church name stamped on the back is a tiny mission in the city. Wait …” He raised his left palm and downed a few more mouthfuls of bulgur. “A new white Lexus like—or the one—Stoddard was driving passed her, going a little fast. She followed at a distance, said the driver was mad about something. Eventually, the white Lexus and Woodley rendezvoused at Boggy Depot. Hannah thought they were on the down-low, and let ’em be. I checked the good reverend’s address in Tushka—empty for years.”
The apartment’s tiny window unit shuddered off. They watched it until it revived—twenty seconds. Then they relaxed.
Maytubby told her about the Love sighting outside Hoyt’s in Stonewall, Wiley Bates’ new boat, and his hasty move. Lorenza Mercante he left out, not because Jill Milton was a jealous person—she wasn’t—but because he made a living watching faces and he knew, if he tried to keep even a shopkeeper he didn’t know out of his face, he would fail because she was a fetching woman. He related Hannah’s interview with Love’s uncle, Raleigh Creech’s surprising hot tip, and the waitin’-Satan pamphlets blown out of a car fleeing his pursuit near Antlers.
“You put in ‘hot tip’ and ‘fleeing pursuit’ for me, huh?”
“I never pander.”
“What, never?”
“No. Never.”
“Never?”
“Well, hardly ever.”
“So, you’ve put Love in Mill Creek, Stonewall, maybe in Antlers, but now …”
Maytubby turned his palms up. “Everybody’s looking for him—and now for the Cobalt. I’m just looking a little harder.”
“Bates ran with him back in the day; uncle was uncle; Creech lived with his sister. What do you make of the others?
Maytubby washed his bowl and spoon, put them on a drying rack. “I think they may be in cahoots.”
“If not, they’re wasting a lot of time together.”
“There was no meth stuff around that place in Antlers. We got no plate on the white Lexus, though I can find that. Still, my guess is, the glue that holds them together is a dangerous controlled substance.”
“You really think, if Stoddard’s the owner of that Lexus, he’s cranking or dealing while fighting a holy war?”
“Maybe he has a weight problem.”
“Maybe Hannah was right and he was just hooking up with Woodley,” Jill said. She licked orange from her fingers, picked a round bamboo tea tray up off the coffee table, and fanned herself. Then she fanned in Maytubby’s direction. “You want some?”
“Yes. The State Senate district Stoddard gave up last year is really close to the Sun Ray Gospel Fellowship, whose tracts the quote Reverend Woodley was handing out. And Majesty Tate called rooms at two old motels close to both.”
“This Woodley fellow, if that’s his name, apparently isn’t even from here. No record. Why would he help Love? Did Love teach him to cook? Hook him up with his old clientele? You think Love has something on him? They have prison friends in common?”
“All possible. But those scenarios sound too complicated for Austin Love. He just had a little drinking gang, got in fights, then later probably cooked meth and sold it around. Certainly toted a shitload of it. He was always sort of a gregarious loner.”
“You mean he was alone in himself but needed company?”
“Exactly. He mostly worked independently. Probably why he and his friends were in county jails together for smashing up taverns, but he went to prison for peddling, while his friends stayed outside. Here, give me that.”
She Frisbeed the tray over the table, and he slapped it straight up and plucked it from the air. He fanned her in slow motion, and she mock-glowered at him.
“You and Hannah still think Love acted alone,” Jill said.
“Oh, yeah. Tate was last seen alive at a bar in Sulphur. Love entered the place alone. Everyone who saw her and Love there said the couple appeared to share a mutual affection.”
“They didn’t say that.”
“Not precisely. They said, ‘Them two couldn’t keep their hands off each other.’ People in Bromide saw Love’s monster truck and its driver going up and down the road to Tate’s house. His tire prints—now we have his truck and a match—are all over her yard. I found a bloody knife that looks like one he always wore. He stole gas from his uncle’s truck the night of the murder. Has a history of battering women. He fled when pursued by officers from three different agencies.”
Maytubby pulled the enlarged mug of Love out of his bulging pocket, unfolded it, and held it out.
Jill grimaced. “Plus, he looks really scary. I have new admiration for Hannah’s restraint.”
“She may let you down.”
“I hope so.”
He stowed Love’s mug shot. “I take it the demonstration kitchen was spared the wrath of Stoddard and his toadies.”
“Are you kidding? Ten women in a kitchen, canning fruit?”
Maytubby nodded. “Utopia.”
“And wearing aprons.”
“Gingham?”
“As a matter of fact.”
“Panty hose?”
She shook her head. “Shhh. Don’t tell.” She went to the counter and brought back a Mason jar pa
cked with peaches.
He looked at the fruit and winced. “Stratford, huh?”
She nodded.
“Drought’ll take the varnish off utopia.”
“Kept the camera operator busy switching angles to hide the flaws.”
“Couldn’t you just bring in some ringers from Save-a-Lot? I mean, not even the cattle are eating local this summer.”
“You watch too many food shows.”
“I don’t even own a television.”
“True. Maybe you watch too many food shows on your computer.”
“I don’t know how to watch television on my computer.”
“Oh, yeah … Well, I got to put my education to work this afternoon. Nurse called from the Nation Medical Center about a predialysis renal diet.”
The window unit quaked to a halt. The brief hush was filled by a sibilant chorus of sprinkler arrays in the odd-numbered lawns of King’s Road houses.
“Did she call you ‘Dr. Milton’?”
“He. No. ‘Jill.’ I know him. Besides, it’s a hospital. You have to be a real doctor.”
“Did you know I am a tribal cop?”
“You mean you’re not a real cop? Damn. All this time, I’m thinking you’re my ticket to respectability.”
“I’m afraid we’re a coupla’ quacks.”
She rose and took his hand, pulled until he rose, exactly to her height: five-ten. “We’ll just have to make the best of a bad situation.” They hugged hard. “You can stay?”
Maytubby nodded.
“You better.”
They leaned against each other and looked out her kitchen window at the points of golden sodium light atop Chimney Hill.
“When this place was built, there was nothing but moonlight on that land,” she said.
“You didn’t have to come back here. How often you think about Brooklyn?”
“You didn’t have to come back, either. Some days, when I’m doing the Eagle Play with the kids or working against a grant deadline, I don’t.” She spread her hand toward the window. “The land smells like home. Especially sycamore and cedar and alfalfa. Big sky, quiet. I do miss the cloak of invisibility. My NYU friends. The collective energy. In small towns, personal force can mean too much. And there aren’t enough different kinds of prejudice to neutralize each other.”
“Or enough noodle shops.”
“Or any noodle shops.”
“Yeah, but let me ask you this: Can you go to cowboy church in Brooklyn?”
“That’s why I love you, man. You always make me feel good about my life choices.”
“And if you had stayed in Brooklyn, you might be shacking up with a tattooed fire-eater from Texarkana.”
“I take back what I said. I really miss that dude.”
“Oh, yeah? What was his name?”
She stuck out her chin. “Dude.”
She pushed him into the tiny bathroom. “Take a shower.”
Chapter 12
“Bill … Bill.” Jill Milton jostled his shoulder.
He muttered something, was quiet for a second, then sat upright in bed. “I’m awake,” he said loudly as he gazed around him like a crash victim trying to put together what just happened.
“It’s your cell.” She pointed to the nightstand on his side, where a glowing rectangle was crawling, blaring the phone’s factory ring tone. Only faint slivers of blue dawn light were bleeding through the old venetian blinds. Drapes of lath, for Okies, he fleetingly recalled. He stared at the cell phone for three seconds, then snatched it up. “Hannah,” he said. Jill watched his glowing blue face. “Really. You call the state? Forty-eight-A at Kite Road, then west to the end. Be there in thirty minutes.”
“She found Love.”
Maytubby fumbled with his shirt buttons. “Yeah. He’s down on the Blue. Ran from her.” Maytubby had one pant leg on when his ham knotted up. He danced in pain, trying to straighten his leg.
“Don’t tense your leg. Straighten it and curl your toes.” Jill put her strong hands to work, kneading the cramp. Her focus frown reminded him of a toddler solving a puzzle.
He breathed deeply, leaning on the nightstand, and let her slip his service trousers on him. He put on his boots and duty belt, managed a fleeting kiss. The strange early commotion had stirred them. She trailed him out of the room, her hand on his back. At the refrigerator, she pinched his shirt and held him back while she fished out a banana and a Mason jar half full of peach juice. She held them out to him. “Go.”
* * *
At the end of the driveway, he passed through tall cast-iron gates that were rusted open. Stopping at King’s Road, he noticed the headlights of a compact car stopped fifty yards up the hill. After a few seconds, the car made a U-turn and disappeared over the hill. Maytubby turned left instead of right and followed the car. When he came over the hill, its brake lights were almost in his grille. He hit the brakes and swerved around a white Fiesta. In his rearview mirror, he could see a fat newspaper spinning end over end into a tree-lined driveway. Dallas Morning News. He hissed at himself and took the back way to the Ada bypass.
Had he slept at home, he could have dropped by HQ to get the four-by-four on his way down. But Jill’s house was several miles closer to Austin Love. At 6:40, just before sunrise, he got off the Ada bypass at Ahloso and headed due south on US 377, strobes and siren all code red—to keep himself awake as much as to warn the ranchers and roustabouts asleep at the wheel before their country store coffee. He never drove as fast as the cops he knew. Even in his few years as a Lighthorseman, he had seen too many men, women, and children killed by speed. As the light came, he searched the road’s margins for deer.
What was Hannah Bond doing before dawn that she would come across Austin Love? Her shift didn’t even start till seven. And how did she spot Love in the dark? A traffic stop? Maytubby was surprised she hadn’t shot him or pursued him alone into the woods along the Blue—even in the dark. She gave no quarter to men who hurt women. It was a shame so many brutes were too wasted at the time to remember who had taken them down in their own homes.
Maytubby called the LHP dispatcher and told her what he was up to. He asked her which officers in the vicinity would be on duty by 7:00 a.m. She said none. He asked her to call the OHP and see if they couldn’t get an officer on Prairie Road just south of 377 and 7, on the side opposite Love’s entry into the forest surrounding the Blue. He gave her the description of the Cobalt and its plate number. He didn’t want a replay of Kullihoma. Bond would have gotten any available Johnston deputies into the game and might also have called OHP. Renaldo was out of Troop E in Durant and didn’t do Johnston County. That was Troop F, in Ardmore. Maytubby finished off his banana and peach juice. They were sweet and healthy. But he began to imagine sitting down with Hannah Bond to biscuits and black-pepper gravy.
He crossed the Blue on State 7, the Belton Bridge, at Hannah Bond’s favorite speeder blind. Taking the next paved right, 48A, he drove south two miles, then turned off the pavement and back west, toward the river, on Kite Road. Bond’s cruiser was parked in an alder grove, blocking the 1966 gray-primered Ford pickup, which had eaten about three inches of persimmon bark.
It was full light and already hot. Machinery in a gravel pit to the north grumbled and raised a white plume of dust. Before Bond got to the Lighthorse cruiser, Maytubby had shed his boots and campaign hat and duty belt and tied on his bandanna. He stuck his pistol in his belt, and two pairs of PlastiCuffs, a pair of field glasses, and a pint flask of water in his pants pocket, then turned down the volume on his shoulder radio. An earpiece would muffle a hemisphere of sounds. He rose and shut the door softly.
Bond stared at him. She was still shaking her head when she fell in behind Maytubby, going the direction Love had fled. “I heard you dressed like that in a chase,” she whispered. “You look plumb retarded.”
As long
as there was at least a little sand, the Herman Survivor boot prints were as good as trail markers.
Bond whispered, “We’ve got an unmarked pickup down near the end of that trail between here and the Blue. Deputy’s off the trail. I can text him. OHP just south of Seven on Three Seventy-Seven.”
Maytubby nodded. If Love walked straight and fast, he couldn’t reach 377 in less than an hour from the time Maytubby and Bond gave chase. The Survivor prints appeared so regularly, Maytubby began to jog. Bond was no slouch on the course. She even had to check her longer stride to stay behind him. Every few minutes, he halted abruptly when he lost sign, forcing her to grab his shoulders so she didn’t bowl him over.
They skirted a bald knoll. From shadows at the edge of the knob, Maytubby used the height to look at the route he took in—to make sure Love’s chauffeur wasn’t circling around behind his back.
They picked up Love’s trail on the other side of the hill and slid down a pebbly cut to Peter Sandy Creek. The bed was dry but shaded. Love hadn’t even bothered to hide his path.
On the other side of the creek, the underbrush thickened: brambles, possum berry, poison oak. Love had ceased to cut trail and had taken the cow path of least resistance, for which Maytubby was warily grateful. The last time out, Love had planned to let him drive right past him. But for now, there were the prints, big as day. A smoldering Marlboro butt. He jogged faster, slaloming around noisy deadwood.
They approached another rise, this one wooded. Near the top, Maytubby slowed and bent at the waist. He turned to see if they were high enough to catch a view of the roads they had taken in. Just barely. Bond knew what he was doing, and bent away to clear his line of vision. Nothing. At the crest of the hill, they crouched and listened. He glassed the woods in every direction. A few crows called as they careened south on their crazy wing beats. Down the other side they jogged, still on the cow path. Their uniform shirts were soaked. Maytubby wrung out his do-rag as he jogged. Bond’s khaki ball cap was soaked right up to its button. When they reached the unimproved road coming south from State 7, there was no sign of the unmarked pickup in either direction, and they could see easily a half mile. The deputy might still be farther north or south. Love’s prints went right across the road, and so did they.