by Attica Locke
This time of night, he could think of only one place to go to get the mess inside his car cleaned up, the one place in Shelby County where he thought few questions would be asked and where the color of his skin might afford some cover—which, even with the badge, he felt he could use on a night like this. He didn’t feel like explaining the blood to an attendant at a well-lit truck stop in Garrison or Timpson. He made Randie drive—even though she was shaky and unsure she could manage—so he could ride in the bed of the truck. Out in the open, the wind stinging his eyes at seventy miles an hour, he kept watch on the highway as it slid away in the dark behind them. The loaded Colt in his lap, he made sure no one was behind them, and he prayed for Randie to steer them to safety.
The cafe was open but empty save for Geneva’s granddaughter, Faith, who was sitting in one of the booths typing on a Dell laptop the size of a coffee-table book, and Isaac, who was sweeping up knots of hair by the green barber’s chair when Darren walked in, traces of blood on his undershirt and the front of his pants.
Faith looked up and gasped.
Darren said, “Your grandmother here?”
Faith looked at Randie, who had come in behind him, her curls tangled like a fluff of black cotton from the drive; she’d had to ride with both windows rolled down to keep from vomiting the Sprite and the vodka and chunks of jarred red cherries. She and Darren were both breathing heavily, as if they’d run the five miles across the county line from Garrison. “Lock the door,” Darren said. Faith stood and complied, ringing the tiny bell as she turned the brass key in the door lock. Again Darren said, “Where’s Geneva?” He was already walking behind the counter when Faith said her grandmother was in the kitchen.
Darren pushed open the swinging door to the other room, where Dennis, Geneva’s cook, was tying up a black garbage bag, dark liquid leaking out of the bottom, and Geneva was setting pork chops in tinfoil and placing them in Tupperware containers. She had an industrial-size Frigidaire that took up most of the small kitchen, nearly bumping edges with the eight-burner stove. When she closed the refrigerator door, she saw Darren and the blood.
“What in the devil?” she said, taking a step back and glancing anxiously at Dennis while Darren scanned the kitchen for cleaning supplies.
A second later, a blast from a rifle shook the walls.
They heard an explosion of shattering glass from the other room and Faith screaming in a way that filled Darren with dread. He lifted the .45 from its holster and pushed through the kitchen door. Faith was standing by the door to the cafe, which had a crater the size of a baseball just above the handle on which the brass bell was still trembling. “Move,” Darren said, pushing her aside.
Randie was crouching on the floor underneath the counter. He fought the urge to go to her. Instead he raised his pistol and went outside just as a pair of red taillights slipped out of Geneva’s parking lot, drifting away and up the highway. North, Darren noted. Weapon drawn, he checked the parking lot and the weeds surrounding the cafe. He made sure to check for anyone lurking behind Geneva’s place, feeling exposed in the dark as he walked the uneven patchwork of grass and clumps of dirt and weeds, his eyes unable to see by the dim light of night, unsure even in which direction he should look. His heart hammered in his chest; his breath came in short, ragged bursts. The lights were on inside the trailer out back, but the rooms were empty. He went through them one by one. Three bedrooms and a narrow kitchen, the fridge and stove an olive green, the whole place done up in a reddish-orange shag carpet. This was Geneva’s home, all six hundred square feet of it, and it held her scent, a mix of sandalwood and sugar.
He remembered that Wendy said something about Geneva and a shotgun.
On his return to the cafe, he told her to keep a handful of shells in her apron pocket, to keep the twelve-gauge at the ready; it was going to be that kind of night. He checked on the others next. Isaac was mumbling, over and over, “Ain’t see ’em coming, sir,” as he wrung his ashy hands. He made a humming noise between each word and was rocking from heel to toe, heel to toe on both feet. He wore ill-fitting slacks and penny loafers, the fake leather peeling at the seams. Darren wondered if the man was mentally challenged—if he was, in the parlance of East Texas, touched. The moment she saw Geneva, Faith ran to her grandmother, who wrapped her arms around the girl. The older woman was just coming out of the kitchen, Dennis at her heels. His eyes were lit on fire, his jaw squared in rage. “I knew this was coming,” he said. Darren turned to Randie finally. He holstered his weapon and, without thinking, put both hands on her shoulders. He checked to see if she was hurt. He searched for injury, either from a wayward shotgun pellet or flying glass, either of which could put an eye out, could nick an artery or vein. But she appeared unharmed.
She threw her arms around him, holding on as she might have held to a piece of driftwood in raging waters, a lifeline that might slip through her fingers. She clung so tightly he could feel her racing heart through the thin cotton of his undershirt, could feel her tears dampen the skin on his chest, for something in Randie broke then. This night had opened a valve past mere grief, had touched a fear that burrowed beneath the skin of any colored person below the shadow of the Mason-Dixon Line. She was terrified and shaking in his arms. Darren whispered to tell her, “I’m here.” I’m here, too. Like his people, Mathews men going back generations, he was not going to be run off. As he held the man’s wife, Darren doubled down on his vow to catch Michael’s killer.
Wasn’t but a minute past midnight, and the lights were still on in the front room of Wally’s house, across the highway. Darren put Geneva, Faith, and Randie in the trailer out back, with Dennis and the shotgun in a lawn chair out front. Dennis was more than happy to take on Darren’s role of protector. Isaac, despite Darren’s many protests, took off for home on foot. Geneva told Darren to let him, that there was no reasoning with Isaac when he got spooked. Darren reluctantly let him go, then climbed in his bloody truck and made the short trip across the highway. The gate to Monticello was still open, and Van Horn’s squad car was parked in the circular driveway.
Darren hopped out of his truck and banged on the front door.
Wally opened it a few seconds later, and Darren pushed past him, over the door’s threshold. Wally looked into his living room and said, “Parker, we got us a live one here. Smelled the bourbon on him before he hit the door.”
Van Horn stood from behind the dining-room table, where papers and files and a mug of coffee sat next to a desktop computer that had clearly been deposited there for the sheriff’s purposes. There were cords running every which way and coming to rest in a tangled pile at Van Horn’s feet. The sheriff saw the blood on Darren’s clothes, the fact that he wasn’t wearing his shirt or his badge. Wally let out a whistle. “You didn’t hear that shot?” Darren said. “Right across the highway, and you’re sitting in here drinking coffee and not doing a damn thing.”
“Watch your language, son.”
“Ranger,” Darren said.
“What shot?” Wally said, but his head turned in the direction of his front window, through which he could see Geneva’s cafe, a telling gesture.
“Not ten minutes ago, somebody shot through the front of Geneva’s.”
Wally said, “That’s a shame.”
But Van Horn was less dismissive. He hiked up his pants and went to grab his car keys from the corner of the dining-room table. “I’ll have a look.”
Darren said the perpetrator was long gone and gave a description of the back end of a pickup truck, the size and shape of the taillights. It’d been too dark to read the license plate, but he thought he saw the number 2, maybe 5.
“How much have you been drinking, Ranger?” the sheriff said.
“I know what I saw.”
“Like I said, I’ll take a look.”
“I can look for a rifle shell, but if you go after ’em now, you might find a gun that’s still warm. I suggest you start looking in and around Wally’s bar.”
“Yo
u the one brought trouble up there,” Wally said.
“It was two of them tried to jump me today, tried to shoot my ass.”
“That’s not the way I heard it.”
“Wally, stay out of this,” Van Horn said. To Darren, he said, “We got an eyewitness said you were the one out there waving a pistol around.”
“After an assault on an officer.”
The sheriff nodded toward Darren’s undershirt, stained with the rust-brown traces of blood. “And you identified yourself as such? Had a badge visible? ’Cause this could all be tossed up to a misunderstanding. Looking like you do mighta confused—”
“This,” he said, referring to the blood on his clothes, “is after some piece of shit tailed me out to Garrison and dumped a dead animal in my truck.”
“Well, I can’t do nothing about that. You was over the county line.”
“Getting lit, apparently,” Wally added.
Darren felt sober as a stone. He balled his left hand and rapped his fist hard on the cherry wood of the dining-room table. “Somebody’s waging a terror campaign, trying to stop me from looking into the murder of Michael Wright.”
“That shooting at Geneva’s don’t have nothing to do with you,” Wally said. “A local girl was killed out back of her place, and it’s just stirring up long-held feelings about the kind of folks coming in and out of her place. Folks gon’ sure use this as a way to push her out. If she’d sell it to me, I could make her comfortable for the rest of her life, and she ain’t have to fool with standing on her feet twelve hours a day. But Geneva don’t know when to cut her losses.”
“You’re worried about the folks coming through her place when you got members of the most violent gang in the state spilling out of your icehouse? Two of whom pulled a gun on me tonight while mentioning Brotherhood business with the Rangers?”
They’d said Ronnie Malvo.
“We have an eyewitness who said no such thing took place,” Wally said.
We, Darren noted. He seemed to already know a hell of a lot about an incident he didn’t see. He wondered what else Wally knew about Brady and Keith.
“You know they’re ABT?” he said.
“Who?”
“Brady, your manager, and Keith Dale.”
Van Horn got a sense of where this might be headed and said, “I heard from Brady that things got a little heated, but that’s a serious accusation.”
“And based on what?” Wally said. “A few tattoos?”
“I worked the fed task force investigating the Brotherhood. I know more than a little bit about their goings-on. The guns and the drugs,” he said, looking at Wally, making sure the possibility wasn’t lost on him that either one of these things could be moving through his icehouse.
“And I happen to know you were removed from that task force,” Wally said. “Had your badge suspended until you miraculously arrived in Lark.”
So he got it like that, huh? Darren thought.
Apparently Wally had enough juice to dig deep into Darren’s department and come up with his personnel record. He wondered again about Wally’s business dealings, what put him in this five-thousand-square-foot house, how and from which direction he was connected to law enforcement, on the up-and-up or the down and dirty. Was he merely letting the Brotherhood drink in his icehouse or was there more to the story? Wally had a smug look on his face as he said, “And you in here drunk and looking like an alley cat. It ain’t a wonder they took your badge.”
From the other side of the house, a child cried.
Keith’s son, Darren remembered. He couldn’t understand what that boy was still doing here, why he’d been left here by his father and his grandparents.
“I’m not drunk,” Darren said.
But he smelled like it, and he looked like hell.
He turned to Sheriff Van Horn and said, “I want Keith Dale.”
“I’m not about to arrest a man on your say-so.”
“I want a sit-down, that’s all,” Darren said. “I want an interview.”
Van Horn pretended to consider the request, but he knew he couldn’t very well deny this of a Texas Ranger investigating the case. Darren didn’t even need to make the request, but he wanted a setting only the sheriff could provide.
“Lark don’t have no police force,” Van Horn said, “but I’d be happy to let you talk to the man here, with me present, of course.”
He looked to Wally to confirm this was okay.
Darren shook his head. “I want it at the sheriff’s office in Center.”
“As long as I’m there, too,” Van Horn said. “Not turning this into a free-for-all. I’ll allow it only if you keep the questioning along a very strict line.”
Van Horn could allow all he wanted to for all Darren cared.
He was about to get Keith Dale in an interrogation room.
15.
HE GRABBED a plastic bucket and a bunch of rags from Geneva’s kitchen, filling one with water and splashes of bleach and tucking the others in a bunch under his arm. Then he walked outside. Working by the glow of his headlights reflecting off the cafe’s front windows, he scrubbed down the front seat of the truck with the doctored water, sopping up rags and wiping and then dropping them on the pavement when they got too soaked to do more than spread the blood around. He was ever mindful of the sanctity of Geneva’s place, not wanting to leave puddles of blood in her parking lot, not knowing where or whether she kept a hose around the place. He worked in silence, ear to the road for any passing cars on the highway, the Colt .45 at his hip. He’d propped the broken front door open, which is why he didn’t hear Faith come out. He caught a flash in his peripheral vision and had his hand on the butt of his weapon before he heard her voice. “You should try ammonia on the carpets,” she said. Walking closer to the truck, she caught a whiff of the bleach and said, “But you can’t mix it with the bleach or you’re liable to fall out. Still, for blood, ammonia’s better on rugs.”
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said. “Randie okay?”
“She and Grandmama sleep,” she said before bending over and picking up two of the rags. Not squeamish in the least, she walked to the edge of the parking lot and squeezed the smelly pink water into the weeds. When she returned the rags ready for reuse, she looked at him and said, “You like her?”
“Randie?” he asked, though he’d known whom she meant.
“I never met a widow young as her.”
“It’s a terrible thing that happened,” he said, leaving it at that. He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by the question or how he should answer.
“I never met a Texas Ranger, either.”
Darren turned from the open driver’s-side door and looked at Faith. She was a small girl, petite, with fine features. Her lips and her hair were the two biggest things about her, giving her a doll-like quality even though she had to be at least eighteen to be getting married. Her lipstick had faded hours ago and had left a pink stain, and she chewed on her bottom lip, wanting to say more. He thanked her for wringing the rags, and she said, “It’s salt and baking soda to get blood out of clothes. I can wash yours if you want.”
“You know a lot about cleaning up blood, young lady,” he said.
He was trying to play the moment light, searching for some levity on this dark night, but the look on Faith’s face made him sorry he’d said anything at all.
“I’ve had to clean my fair share.”
He wasn’t sure if there was more she had to say or if he wanted to hear it.
He asked her a generic question instead.
“You live in the back with your grandmother?”
“I do now. I was at Wiley College before this. It’s in Marshall.”
He knew Wiley. Most black folks in East Texas did. Wiley, Prairie View A&M, and Texas Southern University were hallmarks of black collegiate education going back generations. His uncles got matching bachelor’s degrees from Prairie View; Duke, Darren’s father, had been accepted to TSU, in Houston, but def
erred so he could follow in his big brother William’s footsteps by doing a tour of duty in Vietnam.
“What’d you study?”
“I was a public relations major,” she said. “Wasn’t gon’ be in this town forever. I always thought I’d end up in Dallas or Houston somewhere.”
“Still can, can’t you?” he said. He’d gotten most of the dried blood off the seat, though it had taken a lot of sweat and effort. The carpets were left, and he thought to simply toss them into the truck bed until he could get the Chevy detailed, whenever that would be. “A PR degree—you can take that just about anywhere.”
“I never got my degree.”
There was a brief moment when he chose to leave it there.
She was a nice girl, but she had small-town problems that didn’t interest him while he was cleaning blood out of his truck in the middle of the night. He didn’t want a story. He asked about something to eat. It was coming on eight hours since he’d had anything in his belly besides bourbon. Faith walked toward the kitchen, and Darren followed, asking as he set down the bucket and rags where he could get some plywood to fix up the front door. Faith told him to check out back, and he did, riffling through vegetable crates and a collection of old soda bottles—grape Nehi and Coca-Cola—and newspapers stacked in a damp cardboard box. There were more cardboard boxes, broken down and leaning against the Dumpster. Darren grabbed a handful of these and a roll of duct tape from a shelf high above the kitchen sink. While Faith heated up a couple of pork chops on the stove, Darren jerry-rigged a cover for the front door, leaving the bell in place, free to swing and sing for Geneva’s customers. He could smell the pork fat sizzling on the bone and nearly tore into the meat with his hands when Faith set a plate across from him on the counter. She poured him a Dr Pepper. He wanted a beer at the very least, but he considered himself on duty now and wanted to be alert. Faith leaned against the counter from the other side, near the cash register, and watched him eat. He finished and wanted more, but he didn’t want to trouble the girl more than he already had. “That woman ruined my life, my mama,” she said suddenly and with a heaping dose of drama and bitter spite. She seemed pleased to have a captive audience in Darren. “That’s why I didn’t want to go with my grandmama to Gatesville, if you were wondering.”