Bluebird, Bluebird

by Attica Locke

  “That is Brady,” she said.

  She glanced over her shoulder.

  The back door to the icehouse was slightly ajar, propped open with a rock.

  Darren could hear the clank of dishes from the kitchen.

  “And Wally knows?” he said, sounding naive to his own ears.

  “Wally ain’t exactly marched on Washington,” she said, and he wondered how old she was. If meth had laid those lines on her face, there was no way to tell; the drug ran on its own time. He watched her suck on her cigarette while taking a good, long look at his badge. It scared her—maybe more than Brady did.

  “You want to ask me something, you better go on and do it before my break is up.” She glanced twice more at the door, shifting from one foot to the other every two seconds, one hand or another reaching for her hair or mouth as she chewed on her thumbnail. She wore slip-on Keds that had sullied to a grayish brown, and the skin above them was dry and pale.

  “Keith Dale?” Darren said. “Is he in the Brotherhood?”

  “I’m not club secretary.”

  Darren gave her a knowing look, planted his boot heels in the dirt to suggest he wasn’t going anywhere. “He hangs out here,” she allowed, stubbing out her cigarette after a deep drag and a cough. Then she shrugged. “A lot of people come to this bar. It’s a nice place. Keith ain’t special.”

  “Was he here on Wednesday night?”

  “I didn’t see him,” she said, looking over his head toward the pine tops, pointedly avoiding eye contact. Darren felt there was more in there, right under the surface. But absent anything else to smoke, she turned to go back inside.

  He offered her the loose cigarette in his pocket, delivering carrot and stick as a twofer. “Brady dealing crystal out of here?” he said. “Van Horn might look the other way. But as a Ranger, I can’t. Not with the feds pushing us for information all the time. You might be holding right now for all I know,” he said, making a point of scanning the lines of her body for any bulges in her tight jeans. She immediately blanched, shaking her head and holding out her hands defensively, Darren’s Camel between her fingers. He leaned in close to light it, looking into her hazel eyes as the smoke she exhaled curled around them. He’d gotten under her skin now. He felt her weighing her options. On the other side of the bayou, someone was smoking venison two weeks ahead of hunting season. Darren smelled the sweet burn of pecan wood. “’Cause you’re flirting with your own indictment if you helping them hide any drug shit back there.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she said flatly. She ran a hand through her thin, greasy hair and sighed in surrender. “Look, Keith usually comes in from the lumber mill in enough time to get a beer and drive Missy home when her shift is up. But if he’s held up in Timpson, she’ll just walk home. They live right off FM 19, the farm road that runs on the other side of them trees,” she said, pointing to the shrug of woods through which Darren had just come. “Honest to God, swear on my babies, I didn’t see Keith Dale that night.”

  “And who waited on the stranger?”

  “Who?”

  But she knew what he was talking about.

  “What’s your name, ma’am?” Darren said. He was direct but not rude. But neither would he let her forget he was law enforcement. Some of this just wasn’t going to be voluntary. When she hesitated, he pressed her again. “I asked for your name.”

  “Lynn.”

  “Lynn, tell me who waited on the black man.”

  She sighed, then finally spit it out. “Missy.”

  She studied her cigarette, as if she could tell time by nicotine. One and a half cigarettes meant her break was definitely over. “Listen, I can’t be out here no more. Don’t mean you no offense, but I’ll catch hell for talking to a cop.”

  “Didn’t you already talk to the sheriff about this?”

  “He ain’t asked no questions about that black fellow until after Missy died,” she said, stubbing out the second cigarette. “Was just in here this morning.”

  So that’s why he’d been late to Wally’s house, Darren thought; he’d been playing catch-up, trying to pretend he’d been working on the Michael Wright homicide all along. “And what’d you tell him?” he asked her.

  “What I told you—that she waited on him.”

  “The black man? Michael?” he said, clarifying.

  She nodded. “Lot of folks didn’t like seeing the two of them talking.”

  “Talking?” It was the same thing Van Horn had said.

  “For at least an hour. Missy actually sat at his table for a bit. I had to tell her to leave. She was twenty minutes past her shift and hadn’t clocked out yet.”

  “She leave alone?” Darren said.

  Michael had rented the spare room in Geneva’s trailer but never returned.

  “It wasn’t any of my business,” she said, equivocating.

  “I’m going to need you to say it, Lynn.”

  She picked at a sore under her chin. “Yeah, I saw her walk out with him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded.

  Darren shook his head to himself. He didn’t want it to be true, could hardly imagine a world where a man who’d been with Randie would mess around with a junior-college dropout from a tiny Texas backwater. And he certainly didn’t want the job of telling Randie about this part of the case.

  “And what about Keith?” he said. “You said he never came in the bar?”

  “No. I said I didn’t see him. But he might have peeked his head in. If he don’t see her, sometimes he’ll catch her walking home and pick her up on the farm road. He would have been looking for her,” she said before an ugly bitterness came over her. She spit out her last words. “Some folks never learn.”

  Darren didn’t immediately understand what she meant. But he had a picture now, a theory. Keith could have come upon his wife and a stranger, a black man, together on the farm road. It was as close as Darren had been able to put Keith near Michael Wright. But he’d have to walk away from here with something concrete—on paper if he could get it—if he was going to sway Wilson to keep pressing, to look at Keith Dale as the number one person of interest.

  “Does Brady work off a schedule, printed up somewhere?” he asked. “I mean, I don’t need to know what else is in his office,” he said, casually raising the specter of a drug case just to keep the wheels good and greased, “but I need that schedule, Lynn. For Wednesday night especially. It’s very important.” He didn’t mention that she’d have to give an affidavit attesting to everything she just said for any of it to count as evidence. But she was nodding as she went back inside, so he didn’t push it. He texted Randie to come for him. If she’d parked at Geneva’s like he’d told her to, she’d be here within a few minutes.

  The back door to the icehouse opened again.

  Too fast, he thought. Way too fast.

  He knew it was trouble even before he looked up and saw not Lynn’s nicotine-stained fingers, offering evidence at his mere request, but rather Brady’s fist traveling at the speed of a fastball. Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. The thought burst like a firecracker in his brain as the first hit landed under his chin.

  He flew back, knocking over the trash can on his way to the ground. He flipped the latch on his holster and had his Colt in hand before he scrambled back to his feet. But when he took aim, Brady already had a .357 pointed at him. And he hadn’t come alone. It took Darren a moment to place the white man in the sweat-stained ball cap standing next to Brady. It was Keith Dale. Brady offered him the kill shot with a callousness that shot adrenaline like hot acid through Darren’s veins. “This is your bag if you want it, Keith,” Brady said, a lopsided and eerily confident grin on his face. “I can jump you in after this.”

  Darren felt breath-choking panic over what he recognized as Brotherhood talk. Brady tilted his gaze in Keith’s direction, wanting his protégé to grasp the magnitude of the moment, the gift that Brady was offering. Keith gave out a tough hoot
of a laugh. Brady grew serious and said, “Do it for Ronnie Malvo.”

  The name ricocheted through Darren’s skull.

  Ronnie “Redrum” Malvo, the man who’d trespassed on Mack’s property last month and come up dead two days later. Through whatever Brotherhood social media pages were out there, Facebook and Reddit threads, news of Darren’s tangential connection to Malvo’s death must have traveled to Shelby County. Darren was officially a marked man who was about to lose his life if he didn’t act now.

  He kicked the .357 out of Brady’s hand, knocking it two feet to his left. Brady made a move for it, but Darren had the Colt pointed at his head in a matter of seconds. The badge gave him the right to shoot. But if helping Mack had gotten him suspended, shooting a man who’d been effectively disarmed would end his career. He was basically in a standoff with himself. His hesitation embarrassed and infuriated him.

  Brady scolded Keith. “Should have shot ol’ boy when you had the chance.” But Darren had the upper hand now, held both men under the Colt’s sway. He eyed Keith from hat to work boots. His knuckles were scratched, and there was a bruise across the top of his right hand as well as another on his cheek just below his left eye. It had blossomed into a buttercup yellow with faint traces of purple at the center. A few days old. “How’d you get those bruises, Keith?”

  Keith eyed him with contempt and spat at Darren’s feet. “Fuck you.”

  “Don’t you say another word,” Brady said. “Van Horn’s got this.”

  Darren heard the sirens then.

  A few hundred yards away, maybe, and coming closer.

  Facedown in the dirt, Darren’s phone was beeping repeatedly. Randie was waiting for him, he remembered. At least he hoped she was.

  But no: here she came now, behind the wheel of his truck.

  She had never gone back to Geneva’s but had instead lingered at the edge of the icehouse’s parking lot, waiting for him. And now she was nosing his truck around the side of the squat building, barely able to steer the wide load on the uneven dirt. She slammed on the brakes so hard that red clouds of dirt swirled above the earth. Darren could hardly see her face over the steering wheel.

  When she saw the guns, Randie screamed.

  Her panic made Brady jumpy. He was eyeing the pistol at his feet. This could go left, Darren knew, real quick, and he didn’t want Randie caught in any crossfire. He needed to get her out of here now. Darren kept his .45 trained on Brady and Keith as he grabbed his phone and made a dash for the truck. The sirens were coming closer as he climbed in beside Randie. Brady went for his gun, and Darren screamed at her, “Drive!” She was so rattled that she gunned the engine, sending them flying forward. Another few yards and she would have driven them straight into the bayou. In order to turn the Chevy around, she had to swing the truck back toward the icehouse. For one brief, terrifying second, they came face-to-face with Brady standing in front of the Chevy, the gun’s barrel pointed directly at them. Randie saw him through the windshield and completely froze, stuck in the middle of her three-point maneuver, her fingers gripping the steering wheel. “Take your foot off the brake, Randie,” Darren said, coaching her through her fear as he yanked the wheel to point the front tires straight toward the highway. “Go now,” he said. “Drive.” She hit the gas, lurching them forward, Darren bracing himself against the dashboard. She hunched over the steering wheel as she squeezed the wide truck through the narrow passage between the wooded field and the side of the icehouse.

  Behind them, Darren heard two unmistakable pops.

  One shot took out the mirror on Darren’s side.

  The other caught one of the rear tires.

  As they drove through the parking lot, they passed Van Horn coming in from the highway. As his squad car moved over the gravel, he locked eyes with Darren. At the sight of a cop, Randie hesitated, but Darren told her to keep driving before Brady landed a shot that mattered, before he killed them both.

  13.

  THEY DIDN’T stop till they got over the county line. Darren instructed Randie to pull into the parking lot of a bowling alley in Garrison. He was a cop running from the law, and much as he appreciated the ridiculousness of it, much as it galled him, he was not about to stop and explain himself to a sheriff he technically outranked. A verbal standoff with local law enforcement over pecking order would piss off Lieutenant Wilson and earn a mark against his name that Darren couldn’t afford, not after just getting his badge back. Let Van Horn deal with the reckless gunplay out of Wally’s place. Darren was not going to be questioned about the way he was running an investigation the sheriff had all but dumped at his feet.

  He ordered Randie out of the car. She was lit with terror, her limbs like live wires she couldn’t stop from quivering. He had to tell her twice to stand back from the Chevy while he changed the rear tire that a bullet had shot clean through. On the ground, fixing the spare into place, he scraped his right shoulder on concrete and tore a pin-size hole in the fabric of his shirt. He sweated as he worked, lines of it running down his back. Randie shivered as nightfall crept closer. She’d dumped the white coat and was wearing only her T-shirt and jeans. He had the spare in place in less than fifteen minutes and got on the phone with his lieutenant right afterward. He wanted a warrant on the grounds of potential drug possession with intent to sell, using the Brotherhood connection as probable cause. While he was searching Wally’s icehouse he’d seize Missy’s work schedule. It was the kind of bait and switch cops did all the time. But Wilson was furious.

  “Ranger, you’ve got less than twelve hours before some stringer from Chicago touches down on Texas soil, sniffing around, and you’re dicking around about meth sales? You practically begged me for this, remember? You’re there to gather evidence on the Michael Wright homicide, and that’s all.”

  “I’m telling you it’s connected to the Missy Dale murder.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Darren explained his strategy: they could use the drug issue to get inside; they could bury a request for employee schedules in the warrant. It was potential evidence that could put the two deceased together on the same night, the very night Michael Wright disappeared. But Wilson wasn’t having it.

  “This is not a drug case.”

  “Wait,” Darren said. “When I was working the task force, I wasn’t allowed to bring up race crimes, and now I’m in the middle of a race crime, and suddenly you don’t want me to bring up drugs?” Randie was standing on the other side of the truck’s cab, leaned against the door. She’d heard every word.

  “You don’t know this is a race crime,” Wilson said.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Watch it, Darren.”

  “Why is it so hard for you to admit what’s right in front of your face? I’m in this town that’s swarming with members of the Aryan Brotherhood, and two of them tried to make a trophy out of my ass tonight.”

  “What?”

  Darren stopped himself. He hadn’t told his lieutenant about the shooting; some part of him didn’t trust his department to back him in this situation. If he said a word about Ronnie Malvo, with a grand jury indictment still hanging in the air, Wilson would pull him out of there instantly, and Randie would be on her own. Wilson’s end of the line went silent, save for the soft trill of phones ringing in the background. Darren remembered the quiet hush of the sensibly carpeted Houston headquarters, how civilized the public corruption investigations and assists in the world of white-collar crime seemed as he stood on cracked asphalt in a shitheel town on the outskirts of Shelby County, having just been shot at by a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. He told Lieutenant Wilson he was working on a few leads, then got off the phone as quickly as he could, cursing under his breath. Randie crossed her arms over her chest.

  “What now?”

  Darren told the only truth he knew right then. “I need a drink.”

  He tossed his tools into the narrow backseat, then started for the bowling alley. Randie seemed confused at f
irst but followed him anyway. Because the bar inside the bowling alley had only beer and wine—and fuck that—they made a quick turnaround to the truck and ended up at a tin-roofed joint up the highway. This side of the county line, he could breathe a little more deeply. They were playing blues when Darren held the door open for Randie, a Koko Taylor song filling the one-room bar and dance hall. It was black folks mostly, wrapping up a late afternoon of day-drinking. There were a few men in T-shirts setting up for some kind of a show tonight, bringing in drum kits and portable speakers.

  Darren tried to remember what day it was, how long it had been since Greg had called him about the two murders in Lark. Some part of him knew he was edging around a mistake sitting inside this bar, that the heat from the run-in with Brady and Keith Dale was blurring his judgment. It wasn’t yet six o’clock: the sun was still setting when they’d left the parking lot. If Randie didn’t have anything, he thought he could keep it to one drink. But she met his bourbon with an order for a vodka martini, which somehow came back as two shots of vodka mixed with Sprite and a maraschino cherry tossed in. Randie took a sip, made a face, then drank half of it. They sat in silence for a bit. The music played as two men in their sixties wearing nearly identical checkered shirts played dominoes at the next table, the pieces clinking musically against the wooden tabletop, matching time with the blue notes pouring out of the speakers. Darren was trying to figure out another way into the icehouse, another way to prove Missy’s whereabouts on Wednesday night, to verify Lynn’s story, when Randie pushed her drink a few inches away and crossed her arms. She spoke so softly that Darren had to lean forward, setting his elbows on the sticky table. The whole thing tilted, startling Darren and nearly upending Randie’s drink. But she didn’t flinch.