by Ace Atkins
“It is morning,” she said. “Damn sunrise. I sure appreciate these biscuits. You know how to make ’em.”
Lillie started to correct her but she decided against it, leaving the old woman turning back to the television and laughing along with something going on with that other old woman, the old woman from the sitcom, hanging outside her window and yelling at some kids. That seemed to really tickle Miss Magnolia.
Lillie got back into her Cherokee, checked off the wellness stop, and started the engine. Sleet tapped on the windshield as dispatch called for Tibbehah 2, Tibbehah 2 being her. She called back to dispatch, letting Cleotha know she was off the check and back on patrol. “Tibbehah 2, we’ve had two neighbor complaints of noise at Number 7 County Road 334.”
“Didn’t Kenny just check out the lumberyard?”
“Two more calls since then,” Cleotha said. “We got a call that someone is driving a backhoe up the hill.”
“Jesus Christ.” Lillie shook her head, awaiting a certain type of drunkenness and stupidity that comes with working the New Year’s Eve shift. She called Kenny on the radio and told him to meet her at the Cobbs’ house. “Wait on me.”
She hit the flashers and mashed the accelerator.
• • •
This is fucking awesome, man,” Chase said. “Fucking awesome.”
He was back down in the lumberyard, watching Kyle start up the backhoe and head on up toward the Cobbs’, not worrying a damn bit about going to the main road but instead just crashing up and over a chain-link fence and hitting the gravel drive up to the house. Chase had his cell phone up to his ear, telling Uncle Peewee to get his ass ready.
“He got it started?”
“Hell, yeah, he got it started,” Chase said. “He crashed through the fucking fence and is headed your way. He said to turn the van around and open them doors because he’s gonna drop that safe inside like a fresh egg.”
“Hot damn,” Peewee said. “That boy’s got big ole nuts.”
“You think you can bust it?” Chase said. “If you got some more time and space? I know it was hard to work in that fucking closet.”
“Hard to see,” Peewee said. “Hard to manipulate that keypad. I get that safe back to my shop and I’ll bust her open wider than a drunken cheerleader.”
“And then we get down to New Orleans.”
“Yes, sir,” Peewee said. “Temptations, here we come!”
“And the Sugar Bowl?”
“Cold beer and warm whores, kid,” Peewee said. “Now, come on and run up the hill before the law gets here. It sounds like a fucking John Wayne movie outside. You got to wake up half the county?”
“Yes, sir,” Chase said, slipping the cell back in the front pocket of his ’Bama hoodie and following the trail of busted fence and ruts in the road, the backhoe rolling on ahead of him, turning the final curve of the hill up to the house. As Chase ran, the sleet fell like tiny little needles on his face, but he was so damn pumped-up, so fucking happy, that it didn’t matter. He and Peewee had pulled it off. Sugar Bowl, here we come.
The cell phone and the gun were jingling in his pocket. He took out the gun, feeling tough and in charge, as he ran up the hill to that ranch house. He stood at the top of the drive, catching his breath, watching the soft light around the bushes and little trees. The house was one story, with a long, nice roof, brick walls, and red shutters. Lots of Christmas decorations around the door and windows, a plastic snowman lit up by the front door. Everything calm and peaceful in that sleet until damn crazy man Kyle headed right for the damn wall where the fat man’s closet was. He didn’t even hesitate, running that little backhoe right into the wall, knocking down bricks and part of the ceiling, using the scoop to push away all the mess in his way, all that clutter of timber and clothes, eating through half the room, rolling over a bed and chairs, flat-screen TV sparking off the fucking wall, until he got to something, let down the scoop again, and backed up and over all the shit, holding the safe in the bucket, coming backwards and then forwards over the lawn and dropping it nice and neat, with some kind of precision, in the back of the black van. Kyle backed up the backhoe, killed the engine, and helped Peewee shut the back doors.
“Come on, kid,” Kyle yelled. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Chase could hear the sirens—some law was sure as hell headed their way now. He dropped around to the side of the van, opening up the door and about to jump inside. Peewee cranked the motor and drove forward, not even waiting until Chase had both feet in the van and the door closed.
They didn’t get a quarter way down that hill when those flashing lights met them. Through the windshield of the van, he saw a patrol car and blue lights. A door opened and a shadow got out, walking toward them.
“Fuckin’ A,” Peewee said.
There wasn’t a way around the vehicle, only through it. But Peewee didn’t have it in him. His lazy-ass uncle knocked the van into park and killed the engine. Chase was mad as hell now, opening up that side door and telling Kyle and Peewee to wait right there, he’d straighten out this whole mess.
“Hold up,” Peewee said, turning back inside the van. “Shit. Hold up, boy. Don’t you do it. Don’t you fucking do it.”
But it was too late. Chase had out his sweet little gun and headed right toward that shadow, walking with the weapon hanging low and out of sight behind his back.
17.
Lillie saw the blue flashers as she rounded the dirt road, Kenny’s Crown Vic parked crooked in the dead center, driver’s door wide open. Sleet falling heavy, windshield wipers working, her headlight spotlighting the cruiser. She called Kenny on the radio. No response. She called again. “Tibbehah 14?” she said. “What’s your 20?”
Nothing. She called in to Cleotha and reached for her twelve-gauge, sheathed by the passenger seat and the gearbox. Lillie had on a heavy sherpa coat and a TIBBEHAH SHERIFF ball cap, the sleet pinging off the bill as she moved into the headlights with the gun, calling out for Kenny.
As she rounded his patrol car, she saw the big piece of road up on ahead, lit up by Kenny’s headlights and flashers, and noted some rutted tire tracks not five feet away. It looked like a big truck might’ve been stuck and had to dig in deep to roll free. She called Kenny again.
The twisting road was quiet. She could only hear the windshield wipers on her Cherokee and the sleet. Cleotha was radioing on her handheld. No call back from Kenny on his cell. Lillie grabbed her mic and asked for all available deputies to head this way. Her stomach felt hollow and cold. She steadied her breath as she moved forward.
Out of the headlights and up the hill a ways, she called Cleotha on her cell and told her what she’d found. Lillie didn’t want to broadcast to every busybody with a scanner that one of her deputies was missing. Art Watts and Ike McCaslin radioed they were headed her way.
“You want me to call Quinn?” Cleotha asked. Lillie didn’t answer, putting down the phone, hearing something in a gulley, a rustling of leaves, movement. She turned on the speed light Quinn had made sure all the deputies attached to their shotguns. He said he didn’t want any deputy fooling around with a flashlight on dark back roads. She marched forward, wind kicking loose some dead leaves from some skeletal trees. Up around the bend, she could see the Cobbs’ ranch house, and down below were the lights of the lumberyard. The windshield wipers kept working as she walked forward, hearing her boots on the gravel road and more rustling down in the ravine.
She got to the edge of the road and pointed the barrel of the shotgun in the ditch, expecting to see a raccoon or an injured deer but instead saw Kenny on his belly, trying to crawl his way out but slipping and falling with each grasp. Lillie jumped into the ditch, using the weapon for its light, and helped Kenny slide down in the mud, checking his injuries. The right leg of his blue jeans a dark maroon, his face the goddamnedest shade of white, mouth working but dry and not forming words.
Lillie
called in to dispatch for an ambulance. She got down to her knee, shotgun still clutched in her right hand, and using her left to hold Kenny’s face, spoke to him. “Are they still here?” she said. “Where’d they go?”
“A kid,” Kenny said. “Got shot by a fucking kid.”
“Who?”
Kenny shook his head. Lillie heard the sirens of the other deputies, the lonely back road lit up in blue lights, car doors slamming, and she called out to them. “Down here,” she said. “Kenny’s shot.”
Ike got a blanket from his cruiser and laid it on the road. He helped Lillie pull Kenny from the mud while she pressed a towel to his leg. The towel turned a bright red while Art Watts was walking up the hill with his AR-15. She pulled off her belt and cinched it tight around Kenny’s leg as a tourniquet.
Lillie asked about the vehicle the shooter drove. But Kenny just kept on repeating that the boy was an Alabama fan, wearing an Alabama shirt. “Fucking ’Bama turd,” he said.
“Son of a bitch,” Lillie said.
A minute later, Art called on the radio from the top of the hill. He said they had a break-in at the Cobbs’, half the house looked to have been smashed in with a backhoe. She listened, let Ike respond to Art’s call, while she kept on cinching Kenny’s thigh, telling him he’d be just fine, everything would work out, although she wasn’t so damn sure. She kept on waiting to hear those sirens, knowing he’d lost a lot of blood down in that ditch.
Ike responded, his black face sweating in the cold, and looked down to where Lillie helped his friend. “Cleotha wants to know if she should call Quinn?”
“OK.” Lillie swallowed and nodded. “Can you get me another towel or something to use? This one’s soaked all the way through.”
Art walked back down the hill, AR-15 in hand and shaking his head. “It’s a fucking mess up there, Lil.”
• • •
Quinn lifted himself from bed, eased into his clothes, heavy jacket, and boots, and walked out into the cold to gather more firewood. Usually he would have stocked up for the night, not having to wake up Hondo or any company, but his company had bent his routine. He lifted up an armful of split and aged red oak, set out by the old smokehouse, and walked back to the house, Hondo following his footsteps. Hondo never giving a damn if it was day or night, always ready to hop in the truck or run a fool’s errand. Even if it was seventeen degrees, dark, and whipping sleet around the house.
Even in the bad weather, the house looked just about perfect, perched atop a hill, smoke pouring from one of the three chimneys, porch lights lit. His great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side built it in 1895 to grow crops and raise seven children. Tonight, the old house glowed for Quinn, knowing Anna Lee was in his bed. He started to think on how things might’ve worked, as it had probably been intended, if ten years of war and missed chances back home hadn’t gotten in the way. She’d never been meant for Luke Stevens and Luke knew that. But there was a daughter for her and a surrogate son for him in Jason. And now with Caddy gone and the plans changing, he might have a full house this year. Maybe new children of his own to raise side by side a stepdaughter and a nephew.
Quinn liked that idea just fine. The old white farmhouse seemed to burst with warmth and light. He could make things work. He wouldn’t even mind planting some crops with his father, seeing how that just might work out. Children, a farm to mend, maybe a wife. Isn’t this what a man did after war? Slow the hell down. This goddamn county could take care of itself.
He had made his way up to the porch, setting down the extra wood by the front door, when the cell rang in his pocket.
• • •
Now, what the boy did was just fucking stupid,” Uncle Peewee said. “Ain’t no getting around that. But I’m not going to have some man I don’t even know talking shit to my nephew. That boy is my kin and this here’s my vehicle.”
Chase listened to the defense from the back, where he rode with the safe on its side, skidding front to back as they took turns on country roads. He was proud of his uncle, speaking his mind to that hothead. Kyle had called him about everything but a white man since Chase had saved all their asses.
“The kid shot a deputy,” Kyle said. “I really don’t care to get a lethal injection in the New Year. How about you, Mr. Sparks? You nail a fucking lawman and they’ll track your ass for the rest of your life.”
“Ain’t nobody is going to nail no one for nothin’,” Peewee said. “Nobody knows who did it. Boy was smart enough to wear a mask. If the man ain’t dead, what’s he going to say? He was shot by a goddamn turtle?”
“I was wearing that mask,” Chase said. “Raphael.”
“Shut the hell up, kid,” Kyle said, not even having the decency to turn and look him in the face. “You just hopped out and took it on yourself to pull the trigger. I don’t recall that when we were running down the plan.”
“I don’t recall the part about no lawman come sliding up on us like it was The Dukes of Hazzard and pulling his weapon on me.”
“Did he pull it?”
“Well,” Chase said. “He had a pistol in hand. I seen it. I’m sure. He told me to drop it or he was going to shoot. I sure as hell wasn’t going to drop the gun. I just bought the damn thing.”
“And so you killed him?”
“I don’t know if he was dead,” Chase said. “When Peewee kicked him in that ditch, he was cussing up a storm. Crying like a dang baby.”
“I wore a mask, too,” Peewee said.
“Donatello.”
“Yes, sir,” Peewee said. “That fucking turtle. We’re all just turtles now. I know’d this cripple boy down in Millport who runs a chop shop when he ain’t mud-racing. He’ll have this van broke down to pieces before day’s over.”
“That’s where y’all are headed?” Kyle said. “You’re not taking this safe without me. What the hell you thinking?”
“Then come on, man,” Peewee said. “I sure as shit don’t want to be sitting ’round with my thumb up my ass and waiting for Johnny Law to find us. That cripple I know can bust open that safe before he takes apart this vehicle. Unless you want me to drop you off on the side of the road? If you want to go on and pay us out, that’s just fine by me.”
“Shut up, man,” Kyle said. “Just shut the fuck up. I got a damn shop at my house and I got the tools to do it. I got a blowtorch and some rods. If we can bend that metal, I can get those cutters in deep. Besides, I got to get them back to the firehouse before someone sees they’re gone. I can’t be riding over to see some fucking cripple drag racer. That’s all we need, one more dumb bastard in on this thing.”
“You calling my uncle dumb, you gray-headed piece of shit?”
“Sparks,” Kyle said, voice low and easy. “You don’t call off that pup and I swear to you I’ll toss him out the window.”
Chase shifted a bit, trying to stand back, hand on the safe, right hand in the pouch of his hoodie. “I’d like to see you try, old man.”
“Y’all calm down now,” Peewee said, taking a turn down a dirt road, wheels bumping up and down. Windshield wipers scraping off the ice. “This ain’t helping none. You say you got a toolshed.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Ain’t no need getting testy,” Peewee said. “I’m just trying to think. Let me ask you this. Would the law have any reason to come and question you?”
“No,” Kyle said. “Well, I don’t know. It ain’t no secret that me and Larry parted ways. But, no, I don’t think they’d be looking at me first off. Mickey Walls was right. Law is going to look right at him. Nobody saw me. Kenny knows me. But I didn’t get out of the van.”
“Who’s Kenny?” Chase said.
“The damn deputy you shot.”
“And saved everyone’s ass.”
“I swear to it,” Kyle said, not finishing his threat but instead lighting up. Blowing smoke and bullshit all insid
e the van. “Toss him right out the window.”
“And you say you got a shop?” Peewee said.
“With a little heat and pressure, I can get that thing cracked open,” Kyle said.
“I think I said the same thing to my second wife,” Peewee said. “Haw, haw.”
Nobody laughed. Chase didn’t even crack a smile, even though he sometimes found his old uncle kind of funny. This was serious shit, serious business, and until they got that damn safe open, they all needed to keep focused and give a damn hundred and ten percent. “Fourth quarter, boys,” Chase said. “Fourth quarter. Let’s see who wants it more.”
“Christ Almighty.” Kyle let down the window, tossed out the cigarette, and started a new one.
18.
See these tracks,” Lillie said, shining her Maglite into the dirt road ruts. “We’re looking at a big truck carrying a real heavy load.”
“What’d they take from the Cobbs?” Quinn said, walking with her outside the crime scene tape up the hill. Hondo followed them, keeping close and looking up at Quinn for directions. The dog liked crime scenes, sniffing about, liking all the sound and activity.
“I’m not sure,” Lillie said. “Did I fail to mention someone drove a fucking backhoe through Larry and Debbi’s bedroom?”
“Larry on someone’s shit list?”
“How many folks in Tibbehah you know that like that man?”
“Maybe a couple.”
“That aren’t related?” Lillie asked.
“That narrows it a bit.”
“Talked to the hospital,” Lillie said. “They got Kenny in surgery. He’s lost a shit ton of blood. But it’s looking good. I got a belt up on his thigh early. Although he’s not thinking straight. He told the EMTs he’d been ambushed by some fucking Ninja Turtles.”
They walked side by side up the hill and onto the Cobbs’ driveway. Some MBI techs from Batesville had just shown up and were taking photos and video, picking through the mess. Ike McCaslin stood on a walkway up to the front door, making sure no one got into the house until the techs were done. More yellow tape had been strewn on the side of the one-story ranch house where there used to be a window and a room. Through the big hole, Quinn could see an upturned mattress and a dresser on its side, lots of clothes tossed across the carpet. Flashlight beams crisscrossed the darkness, some colored Christmas lights hanging crooked over the hole. Ike nodded to Lillie and Quinn.