The Righteous Path: A Parker County Novel (The Parker County Novels Book 1)

by James D F Hannah

  14

  Tri-Comm’s offices were in a two-story brick building that also housed several sets of doctors and lawyers offices. Crash wore her hat in, the paperwork in a manila envelope underneath her arm. The front of Tri-Comm looked like every waiting room she had ever spent time in, with motel room chairs and out-of-date magazines on the end tables. A soft rock station out of Clarksburg was playing overhead, and Crash recognized the Celine Dion song from Titanic. She grimaced at the recognition; she hated that fucking song.

  The woman at the desk was in her mid-fifties, officious looking, in a tweed-looking suit and a blouse with a big puff at the chest, her unnaturally black hair short and hairsprayed hard into place. She glanced up from her phone call, noticed Crash, and gave a nod, then said into the phone, “Georgia, I’ve got to go. Tell me what you decide on for the dinner and give me a ring this evening. Okay? Okay? No, that’s fine, Georgia. Really. Really, I’ve got to go. Ball’s in your court. You’ll do fine, I promise. I’ve got to go, Georgia. Seriously, you decide and you let me know. Okay. Talk to you then. Bye.” She placed the phone back into its cradle and rolled her eyes. “Some people.” She flashed a smile and said, “Can I help you, Deputy?”

  Crash said, “I hope so,” and reached the manila envelope out to her. “That’s a court order for system footage we need for an investigation. I’m delivering it to Mr. Jones.”

  The papers were all from Judge Ottermein’s office, on a light gray paper that was a heavier stock, stamped and looking official. The woman put on a pair of glasses, flipped through the papers, replaced everything into the envelope, and said, “I’ll be right back,” and disappeared into another office.

  Crash bobbed back and forth on the balls of her feet while the radio station went from Celine Dion to some boy band she hated to admit she knew. It was a newer song, though it could have been something she had listened to a decade prior, before she had discovered black fingernail polish and Nine Inch Nails. She wondered why boy bands always seemed to sound the same, regardless of when they came out. The music got a little slicker, the production heavier, but at its core, it was always the same song about loving a girl or losing a girl or spending a lifetime with a girl, all songs focused and designed to make girls feel special and unique—just the same way another girl had felt years before.

  The woman walked out of the office, followed by a man. Forties, graying, mustache, the look of a studious follower of rules. Dressed in a short-sleeve shirt and tie and dark slacks with white specks, Crash identified the signs of cat ownership.

  The woman sat back down behind the desk, whereas the man came around and shook Crash’s hand and identified himself as Doug Jones. “How you doing today, Deputy?”

  “Outstanding. Yourself?”

  “Outside of the police showing up at work, I’m great.” He said it with a slight chuckle, like he knew it wasn’t funny but hoped she would laugh anyway. She didn’t. He pulled the court order from the envelope. His eyes darted across the paperwork. “If you don’t mind, I need to have our attorney look this over.”

  “It’s a black-and-white issue, Mr. Jones. We need that security footage of the Campbell house from the night of the attack.”

  He smiled. “I understand that, honey, but—”

  “Try again,” Crash said.

  Jones looked confused. “Excuse me?”

  “Please finish what you were saying.”

  Jones ruffled the papers. “What I’m saying, sweetheart, is—”

  Crash smiled that smile that wasn’t meant to be funny. “That right there. You can address me as ‘Deputy’ or ‘Chief Deputy Landing.’ Call me ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart’ one more time, and we’ll have problems.”

  Jones’s eyes swelled with surprise. “I meant nothing by that…Deputy.” He cleared his throat. “I need to make sure we’re in the clear with this. Our attorney, he’s out of town right now. I can have this scanned and e-mailed to him. Once he calls me back, I’ll hand you over the footage.”

  She handed him a business card. “My cell number is on there. You call me as soon as your attorney gives you the okay on this. Understand that people’s lives are at risk here. There’s been two attacks. If there’s a third, and you could have helped prevent it, I’ll make sure you’re charged with obstruction of justice. And I’ll put cuffs on you myself.”

  “Is it the policy of the sheriff’s department to threaten people?”

  “Of the department, no. Not my policy either. But I’ll make sure it’s a promise I keep.” Crash leaned around and looked at the woman at the desk. She had watched everything with the slightest of grins on her face. Crash tipped her hat toward her. “You have a good day, ma’am,” she said and walked out the door.

  15

  Parker County High School let out at 2:45 p.m. Crash got there a few minutes before the final bell rang, parked across the street in the parking lot of a pizza place, and leaned against the cruiser so she could watch students file out of the building. It was a torrent of faces. Almost all white, because Parker County was one of the most homogenous counties in the United States—Crash was sure she had read that online, though she supposed that, since the election, you needed to question almost anything you read online.

  Some kids filtered onto the school buses lined up in front of the building. Other kids—better dressed, carrying themselves with a confidence that spoke of privilege—they headed into the student parking lot and got into pickup trucks and newer-model cars. A few kids walked over and into the pizza place. They paused at the sight of Crash, her arms folded across her chest, looking defiant and nonchalant. She gave them a quick nod, and they whispered to themselves and went inside, and she returned her focus to across the street.

  Crash watched Cassie Peters leave the school. She seemed small and frightened, her head sunk low between her shoulders and her books clutched close to her chest like she wanted to will herself to be invisible. No one talked to her as she stepped out into the sunlight and made her way through the throngs of people, dodging contact with anyone, pushing forward and away from everyone, as if touching them would infect her with something fatal.

  In that kid’s mind, it just might, Crash thought.

  Cassie didn’t get on the bus but instead checked traffic both ways with a practiced eye and crossed the street. That was when she saw Crash—as her feet hit the sidewalk. She paused and stared at her.

  Crash smiled. Cassie did not.

  Crash pushed herself off the hood of the cruiser. “How are you doing, Cassie?”

  “Fine.” Cassie’s face twisted into a scowl. She looked like she’d realized someone next her had just passed gas.

  “Good to hear. How was school?”

  “Fine.”

  “That’ll be the response for any question I ask, won’t it?”

  Cassie shrugged. Students from the high school continued to walk over. They slowed down and whispered to each another at the sight of Crash and Cassie talking.

  Crash moved toward Cassie. Cassie leaned away from her.

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” Crash said.

  “What about?”

  “About Micki.”

  “I already told you the other day I don’t know anything.”

  “I know, but I’m hoping maybe you’ll remember something. Kids remember plenty when they don’t have other people around.” Crash craned her head toward the pizza place. “Hungry? We can get a slice.”

  Cassie smirked. “Great fucking idea. That’ll look great tomorrow morning. There’ll be new levels of social martyrdom for me. I’m sure there’s a deeper pit they can throw me into.”

  “What about somewhere else? You like burgers?”

  Cassie seemed to give it thought and glanced back over her shoulder. Groups of kids watched the proceedings from the front of the school and through school bus windows.

  “I’m already dead,” she said. “Why not let them throw more dirt on me?”

  She walked toward the back of the cruiser
and had her hand on the handle when Crash said, “You can ride up front.”

  “No thanks. If they’re going to talk about me, I might as well give them a good story.” She opened the door and slid into the back.

  In the most technical of senses, Tully’s was a bar and shouldn’t have let Cassie in, but Tully was working behind the counter when Crash and Cassie showed up, and he waved them through. He gave them a nod and a smile as he wiped down the counter with a rag that didn’t look clean to begin with. He was a chunky guy on the other side of life, bald with a shaggy rim of yellow-white hair and a face dusted with snowy stubble and aged by decades spent in the darkened confines of the bar.

  The place was empty that afternoon except for two guys sipping on beers and watching the Pirates game on the TV. “Hotel California” blasted from the jukebox, drowning out the play-by-play.

  “The usual, Crash?” Tully said.

  “Two of ’em. And make the fries crispy.” To Cassie, she said, “What you want to drink?”

  “Cranberry and vodka.”

  “Funny. Coke? Sprite? Diet?”

  “Coke.”

  Crash held up two fingers. “Two Cokes.”

  From underneath the counter, Tully brought out an apron he pulled on over a stained Steelers T-shirt. “Sure thing.”

  They sat as far away from the bar and jukebox noise as possible. Cassie, on the side opposite from Crash, had her eyes downward, her body folded in on itself. Crash placed her hat on the table. Cassie glanced over at it. She lifted her head and moved her gaze to Crash. Her face seemed flush with a distant curiosity, as if there were questions she wanted to ask, but they seemed too theoretical to be important.

  “You always this quiet?” Crash said.

  “Not always.”

  “Today you are.”

  “How many kids you talk to that want to talk to cops?”

  “Not very many. People start feeling guilty, they talk to the police.”

  “I didn’t do anything to feel guilty about.”

  “Never said you did. But police make everyone nervous. We show up when bad shit goes down. It doesn’t always make us popular at parties.”

  Cassie tilted her head to the side and pushed her mouth into a bow.

  “Why’d you become a cop?” she said.

  “Because I wanted to do the right thing for people and make sure other people did the right thing, and if they didn’t, then catch them before they did anything else wrong.”

  “I bet that answer goes over great when you talk to third graders and all, but I’m serious. You’re a woman. There wasn’t something else you wanted to do with your life but hang out in this shithole, deal with asshole drunks and other pieces of white trash?”

  “You’re not on the pep squad, are you?”

  Cassie folded her arms across her chest. “I hate this fucking town. Everything about it, and every person here.”

  “You didn’t hate Micki.”

  “Micki hated it here too. Sometimes all you need in your friends is to hate the same shit as you.”

  Crash pointed at Cassie’s T-shirt. It was the Ramones, the picture of the four of them standing against a brick wall. “Being punk rock around here doesn’t make life simpler, either.”

  “Only thing around here are cowboy hat-wearing assholes, listening to fucking Toby Keith and that ignorant shit, or you’ve got these stupid-ass white boys blasting Kendrick Lamar and acting thug when they’re nothing but crackers in a double-wide in the middle of B.F.E. And the girls are bowheads, talking about Rihanna and Beyonce like they understand anything they’re talking about, or they’re fucking racists who think we need to send people back to Africa.” She shook her head in disgust. “If me wondering why anyone would stay here seems weird, I’m sorry, but you must be broken somewhere inside to choose living here, because most bitches who stay in Parker County are married by the time they’re eighteen and pumping out kids, or they’re going to church and waiting for a deacon to propose, or they’re jacked up on five or six different prescriptions. Unless they’re doing heroin, which, Jesus Christ, just fucking die already.”

  Crash leaned back in her chair. “Goddamn. That must be exhausting.”

  “What?”

  “Sitting around all day putting people into little boxes that way. How do you find the time to do anything else?”

  Cassie glared at her with cold, hard eyes. To Crash, it was funny, this girl putting on this show of being such a hard ass. It felt familiar.

  She jutted her chin out toward Cassie’s T-shirt. “You like them?”

  Cassie shook her head, not in a dismissal but to bring herself back to the here and now. She had to look down at the front of her shirt and gave an offhanded shrug. “They’re good. I like the old stuff.”

  “What else do you listen to?”

  “Skinny Puppy, the Stooges, the Clash, Sex Pistols.”

  “Old school. I can appreciate that. You listen to anything new?”

  “A little. Like, on Pandora or Spotify.”

  “It’s nice you’ve got that. In my day, you scouted them out on YouTube. Before that, you had to hope MTV played their video.”

  “MTV used to play videos?” She said it with a straight face, but then it was as though she couldn’t help herself and a smile appeared. It was a nice smile, one that Crash imagined the girl worked hard never to use.

  Tully came out with the Cokes. He nudged at Cassie’s shoulder with his elbow. “You should watch who you hang out with, young lady.” He shot a quick glance over to Crash, then leaned into Cassie. In an exaggerated whisper, he said, “This one, she’s trouble. Spends her time around a suspicious crowd.”

  “You can’t whisper for shit, Tully.” Crash sipped at her soda. “You should try using syrup in this sometime. Some actual Coke in here would bring out the flavor.”

  Tully shook his head. “See what I have to deal with? The police acting like they own the world.”

  “Those burgers done burning yet or what?”

  Tully looked at Crash with a stern expression that was an obvious sham. “You kids today have no respect.”

  Crash’s smile was slow and easy, playful, with a twinkle in her eye. This was the game they always played. They knew their parts.

  “This joint classes up by half when I show up,” she said.

  “I’ll have you know I run a classy joint. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve gotta go empty the rat traps before I bring you your burgers.”

  He headed back to the bar.

  Cassie said, “He was joking about the rat trap, right?”

  “Most likely. I don’t think he’d empty it until after he brought the burgers out.”

  “You’re still joking, right?”

  “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. Who’s to say.” Crash took another drink of her Coke. “God but that is terrible.”

  Cassie drank some of hers. The drink was tentative and cautious, as if the beverage might bite back. “That is bad.”

  “I would not lie to you.”

  There was a beat—a momentary pause where her guard went down and she seemed to consider Crash’s words—before Cassie curled her mouth into that smirk again. “You say that, but it’s like people asking them to trust you. If you have to ask to be trusted, then you can’t be trusted.”

  “Christ, kid, but how did you get so fucking cynical so young?”

  Tully brought them their food before Cassie could answer. That was, if she would answer. Or even if she had an answer.

  About the burgers: they were half the size of the plates they rested on, with the fries filling up the remaining space. The fries were hand cut and dark brown, almost burnt. Tully placed a bottle of ketchup on the table between them and waited.

  Crash lifted the bun and checked everything out. “I see you’re using the fresh lettuce today.”

  “It’s something crazy I thought I’d try.”

  “Kudos on that.”

  “Everything looks good?”

  “Look
s great, Tully.”

  Crash popped open the lid on the ketchup and squeezed out the bottle’s contents until the fries had almost vanished underneath a flood of pureed tomatoes and corn syrup. She fished a few fries out of the mess and ate them. The crunch was audible even over the sound of Three Dog Night playing from the jukebox.

  Crash took a large bite of the burger. It was delicious, and she chewed the bite with an ecstasy she did not try to hide. There were plenty of places to get a decent burger in Parker County—Matt’s friend Henry had mentioned another beer joint to try—but for Crash’s money, Tully’s was the best.

  She looked over and saw half of Cassie’s burger already gone. The girl ate with a furiousness more appropriate for predators in a National Geographic documentary. She kept her eyes down, focused on the food, and didn’t pause long between bites. Cassie wasn’t the first hungry kid she had brought to Tully’s for a cheeseburger, and Crash was confident she wouldn’t be the last, but she didn’t remember the last time one of them had been this hungry. This was how you ate if you thought the food might be taken from you, or there might not be food again.

  Crash focused back on her own burger, and no one spoke as they ate until Crash finished hers, and she saw Cassie working through the fries. Crash wiped the grease off her fingers with a napkin and pushed her plate across the table.

  “I can’t finish ’em, if you want ’em,” she said.

  Cassie paused with a fry in mid-air. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I don’t need ’em anyway.”

  Cassie finished her fries and the rest of Crash’s, then sat there staring at the empty plates. Her face trembled, and her eyes grew wide and glossy with tears. Her voice cracked. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

  Crash fought the urge to come out of the chair and hold the girl, to put her arms around her and squeeze her tight. Give her some space, she thought. Let her have her moment.

  “For what?” Crash said.