“Hand it over?”
“It’s not evidence, is it?”
Dani considered his question. “For the time being, it is.”
“So Parnell’s death wasn’t an accident?”
“Short of charging a horse with murder, it most likely was, but the paperwork hasn’t been filed yet. The county coroner is in charge of that. He ain’t exactly on full-time, so we’ll have to wait until he gets around to it.”
“Fine,” Spivey said, “but trails go cold, you know that, right?”
“You’re free to use your geeks to find out anything you please on Agent McElhenney. I just ain’t handing over the ID to you.”
“Have it your way.”
“I’m curious why you’re so interested in the ID.”
Spivey stared at her. “I’m trying to find my sister, Deputy. I’m hoping this agent will have some answers.”
Dani couldn’t find fault in his logic, but that didn’t change the fact that she thought he was full of shit. “So if you ain’t George Carl Pike anymore, what do I call you?”
Gus looked at Spivey, curious as to how he would weave his web.
“You can call me Jack.”
“Jack? That’s it? No last name. Just Jack.”
Spivey smiled. “A man has got to have his secrets, Deputy.” He stood. “I get the feeling we’ve run into a dead end here, so Partway and I will just leave you to it.”
Gus rolled his eyes. “Don’t call me Partway.” To Dani, “My name ain’t Partway. It’s Gus. For real.” He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a business card. “I’m a lawyer, like he said, and I really do preacher stuff on the side. I can officiate just about anything needing officiating, so keep me in mind for both…The lawyering and the officiating, I mean.”
Spivey dragged Gus out of his chair and pushed him toward the door. Just before exiting, he stopped and asked, “You know anyone in Louisiana?”
Dani looked at him with a narrowed glare. “Louisiana? No. Never been. Why?”
Spivey shrugged. “No big deal. I just know a Billy Savage in New Orleans,” he lied. “Just wondering if you had people from there.” He plastered a fake grin on his face and exited the room.
Dani held on to an image of that grin in her mind’s eye. She had a funny feeling she was going to see it again.
Chapter 10
Dani pulled her cruiser to the curb on the opposite side of the street from Son Crow’s Tavern. A brisk nighttime breeze pushed trash down the ill-paved road as she stepped out of her vehicle and stared at the entrance to the dive for what felt like minutes, but probably only lasted a few seconds. She didn’t want to go inside. This was starting to become a ritual, and she fucking loathed it.
Son didn’t even have to go into detail anymore when he called. He just barked into the phone, “He’s at it again. Can’t have it in my bar.”
The first time Dani answered the call, she was concerned for her friend and fellow deputy. The second time she was less concerned, but still snapped-to in order to help out. The fiftieth time, she wanted to punch him in the face. That’s the thing about drunks. They think their shit doesn’t affect anyone but themselves, when nothing could be further from the truth. They drink, and everyone in their lives has to fight from having their own chunk of living turn to shit.
She did a sideways glance in either direction, looking for traffic, hoping against hope that by some miracle the road would suddenly be clogged with cars and block her crossing. With nothing coming except windswept debris from an overturned garbage can, she made the too-short trip across the street to the bar. The door’s hinges screamed when she pulled it open, and she felt like screaming along with it.
The architecture of the bar was mid-eighties, hickbilly swanky. The wood-paneled walls were speckled with fist- and head-sized holes about every five feet. Pictures of NASCAR stars from years gone by hung precariously above the bar, most in frames that showed signs of being hit by a beer bottle or two. A dead TV that most likely had been purchased the first year of the Reagan administration was locked in a cage meant to protect it from the bottles that had damaged the picture frames. It was mounted above a cash register that looked to be from the same era.
Dani searched the spots of dim illumination created by a half-dozen pendant light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. She could see the despair floating among the dust particles taunting the drunks.
Son, a man in his sixties with an ever-present blanket of white stubble from his neck to his cheekbones, whistled to catch Dani’s attention and directed it to the table in the far corner. A uniformed Terry Randle swayed from side to side, engaging in an animated conversation with a young couple who had just started turning their lives into regrets that they couldn’t undo.
Dani moved quickly in their direction, pushing clodhoppers and shitheads out of her way as she went. When she got within earshot, she overheard Randle say, “I’ll fuck your girl three days a week, and you can have her the rest.”
The redneck ran his tongue across his bucked teeth before responding. “C’mon now, Terry. We bought you a beer like we said. You ain’t gotta be like that.”
“Be like what? Your girl too good for me? You too good for me, girlie?”
The girl in question chomped her gum and tugged her bra away from her rib cage. “Honey, I ain’t fucking no man three days a week. I got better ways to spend my time…”
Dani reached the table. “Time to go, Terry,” she said, reaching for his arm.
Randle turned to the voice he couldn’t place and said, “Don’t touch the fucking law…” He laughed when he saw Dani’s face staring up at him. “It’s the little fucking deputy. Come to arrest me, little fucking deputy?”
“Come to take you home.”
Randle stepped back and spread his arms wide. “Didn’t you hear? I moved in. This is my home, and this is my housewarming party!” He wrapped a nearby hickbilly in a headlock and squeezed until the man yelped.
“Enough,” Dani said as calmly as she could, competing with the growing chatter. “Let’s pay up your tab and scoot.”
“Tab?” Randle roared with laughter, still holding his prey in a viselike headlock. “I’m the fucking law, little deputy.” He took the bottled beer from the woman to his left, downed it, and smashed it on the floor. “This is all fucking gratis.”
She looked over at Son, and he pulled a bat out from underneath the bar, holding it up to show her that her time was running out.
Dani stood as tall as she could and prepared herself mentally to take control of the situation. “Deputy Randle, release that man, and get your shit together. I am taking you to the station where you can sleep it off! Tomorrow, when you wake up with a pounding fucking headache, you are gonna track down every one of these folks and apologize for being an ass unbecoming of that uniform.”
Randle let Dani settle into a frown after she spoke before saying, “I’m unfit for this uniform? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Your current behavior does not put the Baptist Flats Sheriff’s Department in an admirable light…”
“Fuck it,” Randle said, releasing the man from the headlock. “I’ll just take the damn thing off.” Unable to muster the coordination to unbutton his shirt, he pulled it open and sent buttons flying in every direction. The crowd responded with a drunken fervor.
“Deputy Randle,” Dani said with her hand extended and palm out. “You will cease and desist right now! Do not disrobe!”
Randle ignored her. He twirled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the crowd. The stained white undershirt was next. He ripped it down the middle and danced around with it twirling over his head. He was a man who had never set foot in a gym or engaged in any kind of dieting, but thanks to genetics, he managed to avoid the belly spread that comes with nearing your midthirties. The women in the crowd grew particularly raucous. The girl who had no interest in fucking any man three times a week was even on her feet now, encouraging him to take more clothes off.
“Randle!” Dani yelled, struggling to be heard over the crowd.
He tossed the T-shirt into a group of women and unbuttoned his pants, and Dani took small comfort in the fact that he wasn’t wearing his gun belt. He hadn’t become that irresponsible. That was at least something.
Dani stepped forward and admonished the crowd for encouraging him. A sleeveless cracker with leathery skin and more beard than face grabbed her by the arm and twirled her around.
“Get in on the show, darling,” the bearded cracker said. “Show us them tits!”
A man with the same style shirt, but with less beard, grabbed her midsection and tugged at her shirt. She looped her thumb underneath his and twisted his wrist until he fell to his knees in pain.
The heavily bearded cracker grabbed her collar, but collapsed to the floor in a heap before he could tear her shirt open. Randle landed a punch to the man’s eye that knocked him half-unconscious. The shirtless deputy then pounced on him, waling away on the cracker before the man had the opportunity to regain his senses.
Dani had sufficiently subdued her other assailant and turned her attention to Randle. Son was making his way through the unruly drunks with his bat in hand, ready to dole out his own brand of justice.
“Randle,” Dani shouted. “Stop! Step away!”
Randle was screaming, “You do not put your hands on an officer of the law! You do not fuck with one of my deputies!”
Son stepped forward and, with the handle of the bat, jabbed Randle so hard in the stomach it knocked the wind out of the deputy. The bar owner turned to Dani, pointing at her with the bat. “Get this sumbitch out of here. If he weren’t the fucking law, he’d be dead three times over. It ain’t fair that I gotta keep putting up with his shit. Ain’t good for business.”
Dani stayed stoic. “You ain’t wrong about that, Son.” She looked at the cracker with the now blood-soaked beard. “How you wanna proceed? This man needs medical attention.”
Son peered down at the man and snickered. “Wally comes in looking like that half the time. His face is used to getting beat silly. He’ll be fine.”
Dani hesitated.
Son detected a deep sense of duty churning away at Dani’s insides. He turned and whistled in the direction of the door behind the bar. “Big Rob!”
A young man shorter and skinnier than Dani pushed opened the swinging door. “Yeah, Son.”
“C’mon and grab Wally Cornwall up off the floor and take him to the emergency room. He got busted up in a disagreement.”
Big Rob grabbed a set of keys hanging near the cash register and zipped around the bar. When he saw Wally’s face he snickered. “Lord, who’d he disagree with?”
“A couple of fists.”
Big Rob, still chuckling, bent down and prepared to pick up the much bigger Wally. Dani stepped in to help him because no one else volunteered their assistance, but to her surprise the small man yanked the heavily bearded cracker up and hoisted him over his shoulder.
Big Rob carried Wally toward the exit. “Can’t never be a little fella that gets punched dumb in this place. It’s always gotta be a fat fucker.”
Son headed toward the bar. “Now get your drunk deputy out of my establishment.”
Dani yanked Randle’s buttonless shirt away from a woman who was hugging it like a teddy bear and then pushed her fellow deputy toward the door. The crowd watched in a drunken stupor until the two lawmen exited the building, at which time they proceeded to add to their stupor, slowly enhancing the details of the story of the stripping deputy until he was completely naked and beating the shit out of everyone who looked at him cross-eyed.
On the sidewalk, Randle labored to put his shirt on. The coordination he’d lacked to unbutton it had not returned, and he couldn’t get his left arm into the sleeve.
“I can’t keep pulling you out of there, Randle,” Dani said, sounding angry and sad all at once.
“Then don’t. I was doing just fine till you come along.”
“You’re a lot of things, Deputy, but fine ain’t one of them…” She stopped when he began to laugh. “What’s so funny?”
“This place. Right here.” He pointed at the sidewalk. “This is where that dumbass Kenny gunned down that fella.” He twirled around and pointed to the middle of the road. “And Step busted up the other fella with his truck. Dragged the man’s innards all the way down the street.”
Dani turned to the bar to make sure no one heard him, and then she moved around to get in Randle’s face. “What the fuck is wrong with you? People are gonna hear you.”
He looked at her with his eyelids half drawn. “Everybody fucking knows, little deputy. Everybody fucking knows.”
“No, they suspect. They’ve caught wind of rumors. They hear an officer of the law saying it then it ain’t rumors no more. Understand?”
He stared at her blankly.
She grunted in disgust. “C’mon, let’s go,” she said, turning to cross the street.
“How come Otis don’t hate me?”
Dani turned back. “What?”
“How come you don’t hate me for that matter?”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Randle?”
“Jeannie is dead on account of me.”
She considered his point. “You’re drunk…”
“I’m shitfaced, but that don’t change the fact that I got your aunt killed. How come you don’t hate me? You should hate me. Otis should hate me.”
She looked at the sidewalk and saw the starting point to the trouble they’d had just a little over a year ago. “Aunt Jeannie’s…A lot of folks got her killed, Randle. Choices got made that shouldn’t’ve got made.”
He shook his head. “Didn’t but one sell out to that fucker Boss for some cash. I sold him a goddamn ticket that led to Jeannie’s front door.”
She thought and thought but couldn’t come up with a reply that would make him feel better about himself. “Yeah, you fucked up. In a direct and ugly way, you fucked up. I can’t dispel that notion, but I’ll tell you what Otis told me when it came time to figure out what we were gonna do with you. He said you were family. It ain’t no more complicated than that. You’re family, Terry. You ain’t related by blood, but you’re family just the same.”
Randle stood, the stiff breeze flapping his torn shirt behind him like a cape. He cleared the thick, alcohol-coated mucus from his throat and shook his head some more, slowly at first, but he quickly turned the shake into a spasm as the tears began to fall. “I wanna go back, Dani. I’d give anything…I just wanna go back to Boss’s office…and shoot that fucker right between the eyes.”
She approached him, uneasy. Eventually she reached out and awkwardly patted him on the shoulder. “Ain’t no going back. We only get forward in this life. Make the most of the direction you’re given.”
He laughed through the tears. “You read that in a fucking fortune cookie?”
“Saw it on a TV show about a psychic up north somewheres.”
Chapter 11
Downtown Azalea Harbor is a mixture of Southern charm, old-school opulence, and abject poverty. Outside of tourist season, it’s full of rich shits who step over the homeless on the streets with a friendly grin on their pampered faces. Ancient churches pepper the narrow roadways and offer multidenominational penance to the gluttonous masses that frequent the five-star restaurants and high-end shops of the quaint little harbor town. Just like Jesus would have wanted.
The middle-class folks who grease the wheels of the local economy stretch out beyond the peninsula into the outlying suburbs, where plantations and slave quarters once stood, drawn into the cramped yet charming downtown area only on special occasions. They are as much strangers to the affluent shops and eateries as the visitors from Terre Haute and Boise.
The rich, the middle class, the dirt poor, the quality of the seafood and Southern cuisine didn’t make a damn to D. B. Nolen. He was in Azalea Harbor for one reason: the state of South Carolina paid him to live there. Technicall
y they gave him tax breaks and incentives to locate the headquarters for NGI in Azalea Harbor and provide midlevel salaries to 8,500 non-unionized workers, but the result was the same. He turned handshakes and nut-tugs from the local politicians into a tax rebate that had more commas than a Stephen King novel.
Spivey lived on Church Street in a second-floor apartment overlooking a cemetery full of the South’s most prominent blue-blooded corpses. He felt at home with the dead just outside his window. In the morning, he sat in a rickety old chair and stared out over the ornate headstones, drinking his coffee and imagining the ways in which each of them died: diabetes, heart attack, stroke, self-inflicted gunshot wounds. It comforted him to know that he could stand at the edge of a cemetery in dirt-poor Maiden Falls, Spivey’s hometown, and come up with the same causes of death among the dead crackers. The grim reaper doesn’t give a shit about the size of your portfolio.
Spivey’s job title was managing executive of corporate security. It was a prettied-up moniker for what he was: a high-dollar thug. He’d been a thug his whole life. He’d even earned a living at it before NGI, meager as it had been. Nolen gave him a business card and a seven-figure salary and turned Spivey from street grunt to company man. At least that’s the way he presented himself.
In short, Spivey gutted people for a living. Mostly figuratively. He was a sour sumbitch who came from a long line of sour sumbitches who had a history of never entertaining a kind thought about another human being. They begat generations of mean motherfuckers from cave days to modern day.
The world is full of demons, lesser and greater. Not the supernatural kind, mind you. The far more terrifying kind. The human kind. Greedy shits that give zero fucks about the suffering they cause in their quest for more. More homes. More cars. More wretched souls to piss on. But, what they really want more than anything else is a seat at the table with the devil himself, and they’ll run roughshod over one another to get it. Why? Because no one gets stinkin’-shit rich unless the devil’s got a hand in it.
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