by Kris Lackey
As Maytubby walked toward his car, the Pontotoc County sheriff, Carl Driscoll, hailed him, motioning toward the jail entrance. Driscoll wore rumpled street clothes, and his thick white hair geysered above his sleep-creased forehead. He pointed to a dollop of plastic explosive on the street, its fused blasting cap sprouting from the top like a seedling. Crime tape snaked under a circle of rocks around it.
“DIY,” Maytubby said.
“Easy as biscuits.”
“Going to blow the door.” “Looks that way.”
“Don’t think I’d want bottles full of gas on my pants when I lit that fuse.”
“You’ll always have my vote, Sheriff.”
Shaking his head, Driscoll clucked and said, “That is a dangerous bastard.”
Chapter 22
The Aldridge Coffee Shop, on Main Street, was bright and noisy. Fluorescent light pooled on the flatware and plates. The café smelled like fried bacon, with faint vestiges of tobacco smoke. The walls were hung with framed photos from the thirties and forties: Ada High football teams, men holding up bass and huge yellow catfish, a rank of Aldridge waitresses in white aprons and maids’ caps. Once, the place had been part of a busy hotel. Then motels changed the hotel into an apartment building. Maytubby stole Wi-Fi from one of those apartments to send Agent Scrooby a lively account of the bomb thrower. To Hannah Bond, he e-mailed just the facts, in two sentences.
The Aldridge clientele may have been mature, but when Jill Milton strode in with the morning sun at her back, forks hung in the air and conversation ceased. She wore a black poplin sleeveless dress with a V-collar, black lace crochet tights, and black suede wedges. Tossing her black thatch as she pulled off her sunglasses, she spotted Maytubby at a table near the plate-glass window. She settled her purse and laptop and sat. Customers resumed eating and talking.
“You’re not wear … Bill, what’s wrong with your eyes? You smell like smoke.”
“I just got out of the shower, too. But the other, yeah. Full night.”
The waitress brought Jill coffee. Maytubby ordered oatmeal with raisins. Jill studied his face as if it were lacerated. She ordered Cheerios and a banana.
He smiled. “Are those stockings code?”
“In letter.”
“But not in spirit.”
“Not really. What happened last night?”
He told her. Their food came, but she didn’t touch it. “He’s a guerrilla,” she said. “He rides back into the hills. He might have burned your house, too.”
“I wasn’t home.”
“You should stay with me. How can you eat oatmeal when it’s so hot outside?”
“Because I really want steak and eggs and biscuits and gravy, and if I’m going to be virtuous, I want to be rewarded with a little pain. Not a lot of pain.”
“Where’s your policeman hat? I did my part.”
“It kind of got burned up. The physics were pretty complicated.”
“You want to stay with me till you get this psycho?”
“So I can protect you?”
“I was thinking more because he probably doesn’t know where I live and you’d be safer there. But yeah, sure, so you can protect me.”
“Your Cheerios are getting soggy. Why the heels and tony hose?”
She appraised a spoonful of cold mush. “You’re right.” She ate it and frowned. “Going to Lawton to talk to the Comanche Nation about the Eagle Play. There’s some interest in it.”
“Better warn them about Solomon Stoddard.”
“The scourge of Paoli? Were the state cops able to connect him to Satan is Waitin’? The Bastille guy …”
“Basile. Trepanier. I’ll find out this morning. Meeting with Scrooby in the city. I promised Hannah some tasso from Acadiana. She’ll be in Connerville this afternoon. When I learn what she knows, I’ll know what I have to learn.”
“Dare I ask what tasso is?”
“Delicious, is what.”
She nodded, frowning. “I thought so.”
Chapter 23
As Maytubby crossed the higher ground between the Washita and the Canadian, he noticed that mature trees were dying—something he had never seen. Every livestock pond was dry, and there were very few cattle. He passed a flatbed semi hauling hay. Minnesota plates. He saw no suspicious motorcycles.
His cell rang as he was admiring the healthy cottonwoods on the banks of the South Canadian. He stopped on the apron of a defunct Sinclair station. It was Lynn Washington, the man from Hope. “Sergeant Maytubby …”
Maytubby could hear it in his voice. “Boone is dead.”
“Yes sir,” Washington said. “I questioned him yesterday. Learned nothing. Last night, he was strangled with a bootlace next to his car when he got home from a bar. Neighbor in the mobile home park heard the scuffle.”
“When?”
“Just before midnight.”
“Motorcycle involved?”
“Everybody in the park heard it.”
Maytubby told Washington about the arsonist’s sortie.
“No flies on that mofo.”
“Not a one.”
At one time, Oklahoma City covered more square miles than any other city in the United States. From the most southerly additions of brick ranchos to OSBI headquarters in the northern part of town, Maytubby drove seventeen miles. The agency lived in a glass house, a cube resting on a squat plinth between a food warehouse and a freeway. A guard waved the Lighthorse cruiser through a substantial iron fence.
Scrooby was banging his fist on his forehead when Maytubby arrived at his office on the third floor. “Pissants!” he said, throwing his hands up and tossing back his head. “Agh!”
Maytubby waited for the squall to pass. The agent waved him in, reached for a folder on his desk, and clicked his laptop mouse. “Tate, Tate, Tate. Here we go.”
“Where do you go for ribs?”
Scrooby looked up. “Huh?” He wrinkled his nose, ready to pounce on the non sequitur.
“Ribs. You were eating ribs when I called about the arson in Antlers. There was love in your voice.”
“Oh. Leo’s. To look at it, you’d think it was a bait shop. Until you get close enough and that hickory comes in your vents. Then Leo’s got you in his power. You can’t proceed.”
Maytubby opened a small paper sack and pulled out a generous link of chaurice. “You like smoked sausage?”
“Oh, yeah.” Scrooby took it and lifted it to his nose. He closed his eyes. “Sweet.”
“It’s the Cajun version of that Mexican chorizo.”
Scrooby rolled sideways in his chair and stowed the sausage in a mini fridge. “Can’t even grill it in my own backyard. Damn burn ban. Didn’t stop that peckerwood last night, though, now, did it?”
“If you outlaw fire, only outlaws will have fire.”
Scrooby blew a raspberry. “Tate … Tate. Oh, yeah.” He looked from the folder to the laptop screen. “In the Cobalt, we found some hair and got DNA off straws and other stuff. Love had been in that car. But nothing matched the DNA under Tate’s nails.”
“That was quick. Was any of the hair red?”
“No. Da-da-da, Woodley—your whatever-Frog-name …”
“Trepanier.”
“Treepanty rented the run-down Dairy Whistle month-to-month for the Sun Ray Gospel Fellowship. Neighbors say he had a small crowd Sunday mornings for the last year or so, nothing the last couple of weeks. Nobody recognized Tate from the photo.”
“Show the neighbors one of Stoddard?”
“Oh, right.”
“You find a congregant?”
“A what?”
“Somebody who went to the Sun Ray church.”
“I’m afraid they’re gone with the wind.”
“You get a warrant and search the building?”
“We looked in the windows. Big windows. Nothing in there but some trash.”
“You find any other connections between Woodley-Trepanier and Stoddard?”
“No.”
“You find out if Stoddard was ever seen around the Western Sky or Old Route Sixty-Six?”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t look into it?”
“Correct.”
“But you will.”
Scrooby looked at him. “Stoddard is a stock member of the Oklahoma City Country Club. In Nichols Hills.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the affluent neighborhood a short distance from where they were sitting.
“What’s a stock member?”
“Invitation only. Small club. Exclusive.”
“Any idea why Majesty Tate would have the address and number of the pro shop there?”
“You said nobody there had ever seen her before.”
“Probably out of the question to show her photo and Stoddard’s together.”
Scrooby said nothing.
“Oklahoma History Center?”
“Oh, yeah. Nobody working there yesterday recognized Tate.”
“On my way here, I got a call from my Arkansas CID man. The first suspect in that CODIS-match murder was strangled last night by a man who left the scene on a motorcycle. The victim and Love were exculpated by the same DNA.”
A siren whooped on the freeway. The scent of burnt coffee drifted into the office.
“That’s why you were at the Pontotoc jail last night. Law’s not taking the bait.”
“Right. Amino acids trump cunning. He’s got to clean up the old-fashioned way.” “Today the proud owners of green Ninjas all over Oklahoma want a piece of that jackass.”
“And Woodley-Trepanier is the only person we know to look for,” Maytubby said. “Anybody else can just ride away.”
“Gotta start somewhere. Can’t swab everybody. Can record the names and check ’em in the database. One of our detectives is calling all the cycle dealers in the region to see who bought both a green Ninja and a camo Suzuki RM-Z250.”
“You think our guy’s that stupid?”
“Maybe he didn’t see needing both at once.” Scrooby said. “We’re checking the either option, too, Bill. And yes, I know, he probably stole it or bought it used.” He gave his mini fridge the side-eye.
Maytubby understood that in a few minutes he would be competing with his own bribe. So he stood and took a step toward the door. “What do you think Stoddard was doing, down there in Cajun country defending a local crook who reappeared as a preacher with a different name in his old district?”
Scrooby smiled archly. “Giving him a leg up?”
Chapter 24
The khaki smoke of a wildfire smudged the horizon ahead of Maytubby as he passed Sully Wolf’s dogtrot and mounted the old Wanette bridge over the Canadian. The camelback trusses threw jittering shadows across the cruiser’s dash. A Chinook bearing water to the fire beat the air not far above the rusted iron. At Byars, he detoured west and suddenly found himself in a refugee caravan. Horses and cattle in trailers, dogs standing atop household goods hastily piled in the beds of pickups.
An occasional gust carried smoke across the highway. The fire was close and coming fast. Livestock driven out pasture gates—cattle and horses, even some goats and sheep—emerged ghostlike from the smoke on dusty section roads, trotting blindly onto the highway. A whitetail doe hurdled a compact car in front of him. Refugees gave the animals’ panicked rush a wide berth. Maytubby turned on his strobes to show drivers behind him where the road was.
His radio popped. “Hey, Bill.”
“Sheila.”
“How close are you to Ada?”
“West of Byars. In the smoke.”
He heard Sheila talking to someone else. She came back. “McClain sheriff wants you to evacuate the roads between One Seventy-Seven and Three West. He says go fast, be rough, and take as many as can’t drive in the cruiser. This thing is blowing up. Red Cross is setting up in Konawa.”
“Sheila, could you radio Hannah Bond and tell her what I’m doing?”
“Yessir. Oh, and Fox wants—”
“Will evacuate. Out.”
As Maytubby neared the first major intersection, the line of traffic sped up, and he gained a little head start on the fire. Inbound brush trucks from volunteer fire departments north of the Canadian howled toward him. Not many people lived on the dusty section roads, but some of the houses had long driveways. Both his siren and his strobes were on, and he fishtailed on every turn. As he approached the houses, mongrels bit his fenders, and chickens fled. In most, he found no one at home, but he rousted a few citizens who were shocked to look out their front doors and see a wall of smoke looming over the russet prairie.
By the time he reached the apex of his assigned triangle, the first houses where he had stopped had already flared. A peeling cottage surrounded by potted flowers was the last house before his highways joined and crossed the Canadian. There was no car in the drive. He pounded on the screen, rousing a small black dog that yapped and scratched furiously at the aluminum frame. Somewhere in the house, a woman was singing.
There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r
In the blood, in the blood, of the lamb, of the lamb …
She sang off-key. She was stout and elderly, slicing okra in deadly heat, without electricity. When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she flinched and lost her balance. He caught her and turned her to face him. Her grimace revealed gray dentures. A wave of sour breath made him turn his head a little. “A wildfire is coming. Fast. You have to evacuate.”
She watched his lips and his eyes. “Talk louder.”
He took paper and pen from his pocket and wrote in big letters: fire. leave now.
“I don’t have no car.” The dog set his front paws and barked shrilly.
He motioned for her to follow and bring her dog. Her eyes got large and red, and she turned round and round. Then she threw up her hands, shook her head, and began to untie her apron. Chasing the collarless dog around Maytubby, she finally lassoed it with the apron’s neckstrap and fashioned a makeshift collar and leash.
Maytubby shook a sofa pillow out of its case and began snatching photos from tables and walls and sliding them into the case. The woman grabbed a tattered patent leather purse. She motioned the officer to a deep drawer, where he found two old leatherette photo albums, which he jammed into the pillowcase. Also, a rusted baking-soda tin, which he knew held her cash. He threw that in. She watched him, nodding and weeping. The dog had clearly never felt a collar or a leash. It snapped at the apron and whirled like a dervish.
The old woman pulled the dog with all her might. Slimy okra caps stuck to her forearms. Maytubby took the apron leash and dragged the writhing dog to the cruiser, where he gently boosted it with the toe of his boot into the trunk. It was hot there, but the dog could make it the six minutes to Konawa. He tossed the case into the backseat, settled the woman on the passenger side, her sweaty knee against the stock of his shotgun. She had not visited a bathtub in a good while.
They were over the Canadian in two minutes, soon speeding due east, away from the fire’s path. The woman waved her hands over her head and rocked forward and back with her eyes shut tight. “Sweet Savior, don’t let the fire burn my house. I don’t have no insurance, Jesus.” In the trunk, the black dog barked frantically, its tone different from earlier. “Lord, oh my Lord, spare my house!”
A few of the same pickups Maytubby had seen fleeing the fire were parked in front of Konawa High School. Red-faced men, women, and children stood beneath the awning of a Red Cross van from Shawnee, drinking cold bottled water. Maytubby parked under some shade, wrapped a rag around his hand so the dog couldn’t bite him, and managed to get the creature tied to a water faucet standpipe. He turned on the faucet and let the do
g lap.
He helped the woman into the cool foyer, where the Red Cross was already setting up cots. He eased her down onto one, laid the pillow case and her purse beside her, and brought her some water. “I’m Bill Maytubby,” he shouted. “What’s your name?”
“Odelia Johnson. Folks call me Deely. You think that fire’ll get my house?”
“I hope not.” He offered her his cell. “Anybody you need to call, let them know where you are?”
She looked at the phone, then at him. “I never used one of them thangs. Can you call my brother in Tecumseh?” She knew the number.
Her brother told Maytubby he would pick up his sister and her dog as soon as he could navigate around the fire. Maytubby relayed this to Odelia Johnson and gave her his card. “I’m usually in Ada. Call me if you need anything.”
“I ’preciate it. Now, I don’t have no phone, son.” She slid the card into her bosom. One of the Red Cross volunteers offered to look after the dog, and Maytubby was on his way to Connerville. As he crossed the Canadian again, a dozen miles east of the fire, field pumpers from Ada met him coming the other way. A dazzling white pyrocumulus blossomed above the smoke—the only cloud in the hot sky.
Ten miles down the road, the smoke and fire were barely visible. Trees were exploding, thousands of acres burning, houses and barns being vaporized, families set adrift. A little more than half an hour had passed since everything in the path of the fire was as it had been for a long time, give or take a few births and deaths. In another half hour, Maytubby reckoned, the fire and its refugees would begin leaving his emotional territory, and in a day they would be receding in his memory. The automobile, television—strange how modern humans sampled disaster, coming and going, passing through.
Where US 377 transected the boulder field, the spot where Hannah Bond had broken Majesty Tate’s lugs free, Maytubby saw the deputy’s cruiser parked behind another car. Bond was standing at the other driver’s window, handing him a citation. She stood with her back to Maytubby, so he pulled onto the shoulder and waited until the speeder had pulled away.