In the Valley of the Devil

by Hank Early

  “I’ve already talked to him,” Patterson shot back.

  “Talk to him again,” Ronnie said. “Hell, none of us would be here if he hadn’t threatened my niece.”

  Patterson groaned, as if Ronnie’s deceitfulness truly pained him. “Cuff them both,” he said to Clark.

  “What?” Johnny said. “Why me?”

  “I think you two worked together. I’m going to guess one of your friends has the officer somewhere. The sooner you tell me where, the easier the DA will go on you two boys.”

  Clark came over and slapped handcuffs on Johnny’s wrist first. Johnny tried to jerk away before she got the other one, but Clark just shook her head and nodded toward Ronnie.

  “Shit,” Ronnie said. “Earl, can’t you do something?”

  I shook my head. I honestly didn’t know if I wanted to. Even though I did believe Ronnie, I couldn’t help but think he was getting what he deserved for bringing me and Mary into this mess to start with.

  “Read them their rights,” Patterson said, “and keep them here until I get back.” He nodded at me. “Take a walk with me, Mr. Marcus.”

  I followed him back toward the road. When we were out of earshot of the others, he said, “Lane Jefferson told me something else.”

  “What?”

  “He said Johnny’s an ex-con. I checked and it’s legit. Want to guess what he did time for?”

  I shrugged. It still felt like we were wasting time.

  “Rape. The victim was a thirty-something black woman. A real looker.”

  That caught my attention. “Jesus. We’ve got to find her.”

  “That we do, but I don’t think there was a third man involved.”

  “You said—”

  “I know what I said, but it was just—I don’t know—a floater, to gauge their reaction. Neither man seemed to take the bait. I feel like this was all Johnny. He must have offered Ronnie something to help him, and they decided they could blame it on Jefferson.”

  I nodded. What he was saying wasn’t without logic, but if there wasn’t a third man, where was Mary? I asked him that very question.

  “I think she hit Johnny over the head and took off. My guess is she’s probably already out at the road, walking for help, or maybe she’s already been picked up by a trucker.”

  “She left her gun.”

  “She didn’t leave it. Remember, Johnny had it. He probably just dropped it when she hit him.”

  “What did she hit him with?”

  “I’m guessing a rock. Probably asked to stop at the stream for a drink. When she bent down to drink, she got her hand on a rock and hit him hard. He’s probably been lying there trying to figure out some story to tell ever since. Old Nathaniel? What the hell is that?”

  “I admit it sounds far-fetched, but remember the other day when you came up to the cave?”

  He nodded. “Yep. Old Nathaniel was on the cave wall. I remember.”

  “You don’t see a connection?”

  “Why should I?”

  “That day, you said someone had sprayed the same thing on a missing black kid’s trailer.”

  This seemed to give him pause. He hesitated for a beat longer than usual before answering. “These things come and go. It’s the trend right now. I guarantee Johnny heard about it from some other thugs and decided to capitalize on it.”

  “So, you’re dismissing the possibility of a masked attacker, somebody pretending to be Old Nathaniel?”

  Patterson stopped walking. “Look, I know you cracked a real humdinger when you took down your Daddy’s church. Real fantastical shit. Lightning and pits full of snakes?”

  “I had a lot of help from—”

  “I’ll bet you did. My point is, Mr. Marcus, that might have predisposed you to believing some … I don’t know … for lack of a better term, wild shit. Old Nathaniel. A fucking burlap sack? You’re kidding me, right? Simplest explanation is the best. And we got two simple explanations—either one of their Neanderthal friends has her right now because they’re working together, and the injury was self-inflicted, so to speak, or Mary hit him, and she’s lost in these woods.”

  “I hear you,” I said. “I really do. Old Nathaniel sounds ridiculous. No argument there. But I’m also not ready to condemn Johnny yet. I talked to him and didn’t get the feeling that he was lying. And to be honest, I’m pretty damned certain that Ronnie’s not lying.”

  Patterson fixed me with a piteous look. “That’s probably because they’re both so good at it.” We stepped out of the woods, and the empty highway came into view.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  “I made a call to Atlanta, and they’re coming up tomorrow in force. We’ll get some dogs in the cornfield and woods, and in the meantime we’ll put pressure on Johnny and Ronnie. One of them will crack.”

  “I want to help.”

  He nodded. “I figured you would. Just obey the law, and let me know if you find anything.” He held out his hand, and I took it. “Remember,” he said. “Only two possibilities, and they both end with Johnny and Ronnie.”

  His words were probably supposed to make me feel better, but I knew he was wrong. There were way more than two possibilities, and while they all might start with Ronnie and Johnny, I honestly had no idea where they’d lead from there.

  14

  I waited for Jefferson to pull away before walking back through the woods toward Lane Jefferson’s house. I felt sure he was behind this, and I didn’t want to waste any time in confronting him.

  As I walked, I tried to go through the possibilities. Patterson wanted me to swallow something that I just couldn’t: Ronnie being involved. It felt strange to be in a position where I was defending Ronnie’s moral character, but as vile and reprehensible as he could be sometimes, he didn’t seem like the kind of man to plan a crime like this. He did strike me as a man that would do a hell of a lot to save his own ass. Desperation: that was Ronnie’s downfall. That and a kind of lecherous immaturity that he seemed incapable of not inflicting on others. His story lined up with the kind of person I knew him to be. He acted out of desperation to get Mary and me to the cornfield. He did it to help his niece, an act that almost made me admire him.

  I wasn’t as sure about Johnny. I’d been a PI for a long time, long enough to be on both sides of the intuition argument. When I’d first started out, I’d relied on my intuition a lot. After a year or two of near-death experiences, I’d decided to rethink that strategy and spent the next several years steadfastly ignoring my gut—at least until I found some hard evidence to back it up—but I had faired only marginally better. In the end, experience taught me to take my intuition the way an old man might take his erectile dysfunction meds—with care, and only when the moment was just right.

  The moment felt right with Johnny. I’d seen him waking up. If he’d concocted the Old Nathaniel story in that brief amount of time, he truly was a gifted liar.

  So where did that leave me?

  I parted the trees and stepped off the trail into Lane Jefferson’s backyard. His truck was parked in the driveway. I knew as I stepped toward his house, this had the potential to go sideways very quickly because I was still angry, but I also understood that time was extremely important in these kinds of cases. The longer Mary was missing, the more likely I’d never see her again.

  That thought didn’t do anything to calm me down. In fact, it did just the opposite.

  * * *

  I slammed the side of my fist into Lane Jefferson’s door hard enough to shake the frame.

  A light came on upstairs. I banged again, this time harder—so much so, the skin around my knuckles split and started to bleed. Wincing, I pulled my hand away and touched my 9mm hidden inside my blue jean jacket.

  I heard footsteps coming to the door. The door opened a crack. “Who is it?”

  “Earl Marcus. We need to talk.”

  Jefferson opened the door wider. He wore a pair of boxer shorts and a muscle shirt that revealed chiseled arms and
tattooed shoulders. He held a .45 in his right hand.

  “Hey, it’s the detective. What brings you over?”

  “I came to talk about you calling my girlfriend a bitch.”

  I allowed him just enough time for his face to register confusion before I did my damnedest to knock him out.

  He dropped his gun as he fell, and I kicked it down the hall, deeper into the large house.

  “You’re going to regret that,” he sputtered, bubbles of blood forming as he spoke.

  “Where is she?” I said, through gritted teeth as I dropped to a knee and drew back my fist.

  “Ask your boy Ronnie,” he spat, cringing and holding his hands up to block the blow.

  “I already asked him. He said you set all this up, threatening his niece.”

  Jefferson shook his head. “I didn’t threaten nobody. You don’t know me too well. I don’t make threats. I make promises.”

  I stood up and kicked him in the stomach. He gasped and beat his fist against the floor.

  I knelt until my face was a few inches from his. “You want to get kicked again?”

  He gasped. “No.”

  “Then tell me where she is.”

  “I don’t fucking know where she is.”

  I was about to kick him again, when I heard a voice behind me.

  “Mr. Marcus,” Sheriff Patterson said, standing in the open doorway, “I think that’s enough.”

  Lane sat up, still trying to catch his breath. His mouth was bleeding badly, and his face looked discolored, like he might be about to throw up.

  I stepped away from Lane and held up my hands. Patterson wasn’t holding his firearm, but I wanted to make it clear that I was finished.

  “Arrest his ass,” Lane said, coughing.

  “I’ll take care of my end, Lane. You just take care that you hire a higher quality of worker.”

  “I’ll fucking talk to my daddy if you don’t arrest him,” Lane sputtered. He sounded like a middle school kid. His daddy?

  “Do what you have to do, okay? I’m going to handle things the way I see fit.”

  Lane scrambled to his feet and glared at me. “If I ever see you again, old man,” he said, “I’ll kill you.”

  Patterson groaned. “You know what? One more word out of either of you, and I’m arresting you both. Then you can talk to Daddy your own self when he comes and bails your ass out.”

  He looked from Lane back to me. Neither of us spoke.

  “Let’s go, Earl.”

  “I’d like to ask him some questions.”

  “You already had a chance to do that. Now, we’re going to talk.”

  I didn’t protest. If anything, I was angry at myself now. I’d let my rage get in the way of getting some answers about Mary.

  I followed Patterson out. Behind us, I heard Lane Jefferson muttering to himself. I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was clear: I’d made an enemy.

  * * *

  I’d always been a man in conflict with himself. Even from childhood, I remembered being of two minds about my father and his religion. On the one hand, I wanted it more than I wanted anything. On the other hand, I felt repulsed and frightened by the stifling words and songs and thoughts of heaven and hell.

  Later, after my time spent with Granny, I became a great believer in peaceful solutions. I didn’t support war, believed in gun control, and condemned our nation’s jingoistic tendency to become embroiled in conflicts that could easily be avoided if we’d focus more on trying to get along with other countries instead of trying to take advantage of them. Yet, despite all of this, I had a hard time not resorting to violence myself. As a young man, I fought early and often, winning more than my fair share and learning from the losses. When I left Georgia, I lived hard, on the road, mostly taking jobs at local bars as the guy you’d call in to whip the ass of some drunk asshole. Even though I always felt bad about these actions the next day, I always justified them in the moment. For a while, I fooled myself into thinking the beatdowns I participated in were actually moral because the guys had it coming. We’re talking about racists and rapists and pedophiles and all manner of vermin. It was only later, when I’d lived with myself after the outbursts long enough, that I understood the real reason I engaged in violence. The real reason was that the violence was already inside me, and letting it out felt good. It was like an addiction. A drug, the kind you’re always quitting with good intentions, only to return to it a few weeks later, to satisfy a craving so deep and wide, all you can think about is filling it.

  Even though I’d come a long way since those days, the urge was still there. I could control it better and sometimes even direct it for good, but I was always susceptible to losing my shit. I’d gotten to the point where I understood the urge would never completely go away. I suppose I could blame it on my father and get away with it. Most everybody I knew had been horrified by my father and the way he treated me, but that was another way in which I felt conflicted. I knew that these things affected people. Take Ronnie for instance, and his story about how he started smoking. Hell, after a story like that, I could see exactly how Ronnie had become the man he was now.

  But I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—cut myself the same slack. I had to do better. I had to win the war inside myself or die trying.

  And now it wasn’t just my ass on the line. It was Mary’s too.

  15

  “Who’s his daddy?” I asked after we’d climbed into the sheriff’s cruiser.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  Patterson gave me a look as if he thought I was playing an elaborate prank on him. “Mayor Keith.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. After the divorce, Lane took his mother’s name. But he and the mayor are real close.” Patterson crossed his fingers and held them up. “More like friends these days than anything else.”

  I nodded, trying to understand how this news affected … well, everything. “Are you going to arrest me?”

  Patterson shook his head. “I’m going under the assumption that Lane started it. And if that’s not what happened, I don’t want to hear about it.” He reached over and touched my jaw lightly. “Yep, he gave you a good blow there. Might be broken. Go get it looked at.”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious. Go get it looked at. Make sure there’s a medical record in case he tries to push things.”

  “Sure,” I said, even though as soon as I’d said the word, I realized it wasn’t going to happen. Nothing was going to happen besides trying to find Mary.

  All at once the realization that she was really gone hit me hard. Maybe it was because, in that moment, there was no one to fight, no one to blame, nothing, really, for me to do at all, other than face the reality of the situation.

  Mary Hawkins was missing.

  “You okay?”

  “No,” I said. “I love her.”

  Patterson nodded. “That’s why I’m letting this thing go with Lane. His daddy knows he’s a hothead, so he’ll buy that you two were talking and he threw the first punch.” Patterson made the turn onto County Road 18 to take me to my truck. “At least I hope he will.”

  “Where was Jefferson?” I asked. “You said he was at a friend’s? Who was the friend?”

  Patterson looked over at me warily. “Why, you going to go kick his ass too?”

  “No, of course not. Look, that’s not normally how I work. It’s just … I had to do something, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know. And that’s why I’m cutting you a little slack.” He slowed the cruiser as my truck came into view. “This time.”

  I felt like I was at the end of a short rope, hanging on with one hand while the wind blew like crazy. Below me was the black water, and even though I could hang on for a long time, it wouldn’t matter because the water was rising, and there was nothing I could do about that.

  He stopped the cruiser. “Get some sleep. Like I said earlier, she’s either out there somewhere, or one o
f Ronnie’s friends has her. Either way, we’ll find her.”

  “You never answered my question.”

  “What question?”

  “Who was Lane with?”

  “I don’t think you know him.”

  “Try me.”

  Patterson sighed. “His name is Tag Monroe. He lives up on Summer Mountain.”

  I nodded. “So, he’s respectable.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It just seems like that would be the only reason you’d add the part about where he lived.”

  “Come again?”

  “It’s a subtle way of saying he’s rich as fuck and therefore reliable. It’s okay. You probably didn’t even realize it.”

  “I don’t know what you want from me, Earl. I’m just following protocol. He’s got a solid alibi. Now, if you want to argue that he masterminded the whole thing…”

  “That’s exactly what I want to argue. He told Ronnie to get me and Mary to the cornfield tonight.”

  “That’s according to Ronnie. Do you know he’s been calling the office for the last three months trying to get Lane arrested for something?”

  “Maybe you should have listened.”

  “We did. Before I understood their dynamic, before I understood Ronnie, we looked into it all. There wasn’t shit there. Mind if I ask you a question?”

  I shrugged.

  “How’d you even get hooked up with a man like Ronnie anyway?”

  I laughed. It was a good question. I surprised myself with my response. “He’s not what you think.”

  “Yeah? What is he then?”

  For some reason I thought of my mother. Her theory about evil jumping from one person to the next. I thought of my own daddy and Ronnie’s grandfather, who’d been my father’s best friend. Maybe jump wasn’t the word I was looking for, but there had definitely been some kind of transfer there, some kind of throttling of innocence from a young age, and neither of us had quite recovered since.

  “He’s just a man,” I said, and got out of the car.

  16

  I didn’t sleep that night. Instead, I sat in the yard outside the house, near the ridgeline, looking over the town of Riley. I was trying to think, trying to decide how to proceed once the morning came.