South of Shiloh

by Chuck Logan

  The three of them stepped into the curtained cubicle where Marcy Leets sat on a raised gurney with the shreds of her dress hanging down her waist. A coppery-red residue of blood and Betadine disinfectant trickled from her swollen left eye and dribbled down her smooth neck and breasts and pooled in the crease of her stomach. A nurse was blotting a tiara of caked blood from the widow’s peak above her forehead with a disinfectant wipe. Heavy purple stripes of blood bruising raked her chest.

  One of the blackest men in Corinth, Mississippi, looked up and furrowed his thick brows when he saw Beeman and Rane. “You will leave, please,” Doctor Durga Prasad ordered in precise, clipped English. Late of Calcutta, he was a vigorous stump of a man with a shiny bald head.

  The nurse named Nola, addressed as Sheba, pursed her lips and turned to Prasad. “Doctor, you’re new here but we’ve seen this before. We need police on this, to talk to her. This is Deputy Beeman with the Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Is my face damaged?” Marcy asked in a too-calm voice.

  The other nurse was removing a blood-pressure cuff from Marcy’s arm as Prasad looked Beeman up and down, then raised a pencil flashlight and shined it in Marcy’s eyes.

  “Doctor,” Marcy enunciated doggedly, “when the swelling goes down on my cheek, will my face be damaged?”

  “Please. Can you open your mouth?” Dr. Prasad asked.

  Marcy opened her mouth with some difficulty. Prasad peered, probed gently with the pencil light and a wooden tongue depressor. His gloved finger and thumb quickly tested around her teeth, tongue, and the roof of her mouth. “You have a few loose teeth, cuts inside the cheek, and we’ll want X-rays,” he said to the nurse. “Run an IV, one milligram of Ativan.”

  “No drugs, please,” Marcy mumbled.

  “Just to take the edge off, honey; get you calmed down,” the nurse said, her fingers busy with a bright needle and plastic tubing.

  “I guess,” Marcy said, her eyes gliding, sitting up straighter as the nurse screwed a syringe in the IV, pressed the plunger. “What I mean is,” Marcy said, “will I need stitches for my cheek? Will I be…disfigured?”

  Prasad’s exact eyes studied the swollen, liverish cheek. “No, this is abrasion, some quite deep, and swelling. You’ll have a…black eye,” he said, knitting his prominent eyebrows.

  “Doctor, I am very concerned about my face,” Marcy said.

  “We will see X-rays,” Prasad said. Then he nodded to the other nurse at the table. Deftly, the nurse stripped the torn blue dress down around Marcy’s hips. Sheba stepped forward to assist. The two nurses gently lifted and turned Marcy so Prasad could examine her back.

  “You two out. This woman deserves privacy,” Prasad insisted as Marcy was disrobed.

  Beeman and Rane stepped back as the curtain was pulled in their faces.

  “What do you think?” Rane asked Beeman.

  “Don’t know. Don’t like it Dwayne’s here.”

  The curtain swept open. Now Marcy wore a shapeless purple gown with a faded floral design. Little daisies.

  She looked up and seemed to recognize Beeman for the first time. She plucked the loose material of the smock with her thumb and forefinger, let it fall, and attempted to smile, showing red-rimmed teeth in swollen lips. “They musta washed it with purple…”

  Beeman stared at her, then turned to Dr. Prasad. “Can I talk to her alone for a minute?”

  Prasad diplomatically looked to Sheba, who nodded.

  “One minute. She must go to X-ray,” the doctor said.

  As the doctor and the nurses left the cubicle, Beeman put a hand on Rane’s arm, signaling him to stay. Then he drew the curtain. When they were alone, Marcy experimentally explored her teeth and puffy lips with her tongue. Carefully, she spit bloody saliva into an antiseptic wipe, used a clean corner to blot her lips. Then, wincing, she motioned with her head for Beeman to come closer. As he leaned forward, she whispered through tiny bubbles of blood, “Watch yourself, Bee, he ain’t acting this time. He’s really crazy out there.”

  “I need something, Marcy; anything?” Beeman asked.

  Marcy shut her eyes, shivered, fought a rush of tears, and then nodded imperceptibly. In a barely audible voice, she whispered, “Billie Watts.”

  “What about Billie?”

  “He’s got his dumb ass mixed up with Dwayne and Mitchell Lee. Now he’s scared shit, hiding out at Pickwick in his condo…” Her eyes pleaded: no more.

  Beeman nodded and said gently, “Okay. You got my cell. You call, hear.”

  Marcy shut her eyes and nodded.

  “That’s all,” Dr. Prasad said with finality, stepping back in, “you go out of my ER. Now.”

  Beeman and Rane sidestepped a wheelchair and retreated down the corridor toward the admitting desk. Darl Leets, standing with Sergeant Timms and the two kids, narrowed his eyes at Beeman and Beeman returned the look; a fast negotiation Rane could not track.

  They kept walking, and Sheba appeared beside them. Beeman took her aside by the arm. “Take good care of her.”

  They looked at each other. Sheba moved in close and said quietly, “We can take care of her. We’ve done it before. Somebody should take of him.” She was muttering, squeezing her gloved hands so tight the rubber squeaked.

  Rane watched them continue to stare at each other. Then the nurse said, “We gotta talk. Outside. I’ll just be a minute.”

  Rane braced himself going back through the door, expecting Dwayne Leets and his driver to be waiting. But the Caddy was nowhere in sight. So he stood under the portico, listening to the rain beat down. An after-scent of blood and Betadine clung to him in the humid air. The pain, fear, and adrenaline rickets he’d felt coming off Marcy Leets did not have a specific smell. A soundtrack, maybe, of gentle Southern voices smoothing over violence. Then Rane realized he was hearing faint snatches of music from a car radio drifting across the parking lot through the rain; they sounded like “Tupelo Honey.”

  Sheba came through the door, peeling off her gloves. Watching her approach he considered a professional question. Did black pigment hold passion tighter to the features?

  “Who’s he?” Sheba asked as she slipped a pack of Newports from under her blouse, put one in her lips, and flicked a lighter.

  “He’s okay,” Beeman said.

  Sheba tossed her head, blew a stream of smoke. “State cop, in from Jackson?”

  “It don’t matter, go ahead. You can talk,” Beeman said.

  Sheba briefly bit her lower lip, thinking. “This is all looking like some crazy damn soap opera the white folks got going, huh, Peaches? You and Mitchell Lee…”

  “People like a show that fits their…prejudices on a thing,” Beeman said slowly.

  Rane watched the careful, almost decorous, way they held themselves in each other’s presence.

  Sheba said, “You can just feel it in the air. I hear the dumb-ass yahoos are laying bets in the beer joints. Word’s out you and Mitchell Lee going shoot it out cowboy-fashion at Shiloh this weekend.”

  “Who the odds favor?” Beeman started to smile.

  Sheba screwed her lips around her cigarette. “Well, one thing people say about Mitchell Lee is that boy can shoot.”

  “That what you wanted to tell me to cheer me up?” Beeman asked.

  “No. There’s something else. You know LaSalle’s back?”

  “So?”

  “So, he’s staying out at Kirby Creek. Miss Kirby’s put him to work around the place. They won’t take him back on the ambu yet.”

  Beeman shrugged. “Don’t surprise me. It’s the kind of gesture you’d expect after what happened with Miss Kirby’s brother…”

  “I don’t think it’s like that. I get the feeling she reached out to him,” Sheba said. “Had him out to change the locks on the house first thing.”

  Beeman paid more attention. “Got him out at the estate…huh?”

  “Thing is,” Sheba said, “he comes around here and visits the old crew. And he goes down and hangs
around the OR with the anesthetists. He was going to nursing school before he deployed with the guard, had a plan to work his way into nurse anesthetist. Well, Alma I work with, she’s not real sure but maybe he slipped the key to the room where they keep all the surgery carts.” She raised her eyebrows.

  “Just what do they keep in those carts?” Beeman asked.

  “Serious class IV narcotics.”

  “You think ole LaSalle is self-medicating?”

  “I worry his head’s all fucked up in ways we don’t fully understand from a medical viewpoint. TBI. Traumatic brain injury. Asymptomatic in-head wounds that don’t show, from concussion. It’s going be the Agent Orange of Iraq.”

  Beeman pondered briefly, then nodded. “Okay, thanks.”

  “There’s another thing,” Sheba said. “Alma said LaSalle’s going strapped.”

  “Really? I never known LaSalle to carry since…” Beeman’s eyes were working now.

  “…His bad days on the block in Combs Court,” Sheba said as she stubbed out her smoke in a planter next to the door. “I gotta get back in.” Her regal face softened as she extended her hand and squeezed Beeman’s forearm. “You watch your skinny white ass, hear?”

  Back in the car, they sat staring at the rain drumming on the windshield. Rane had questions but clearly Beeman wasn’t in a mood to talk. Then, finally, the cop broke the silence.

  “You catch the drift, John, how it’s shaping up with Mitchell Lee?”

  “People expect you and him to have it out,” Rane said.

  “More’n that. People made a decision.” Beeman exhaled, put the car in gear, and spoke straight ahead, to the rain. “We got a saying. The man needs killing.”

  Then he drove home without saying another word.

  45

  PATTI HALVORSEN PARKED HER ACCORD ACROSS from the historic Washington County courthouse on Stillwater’s south hill. Floodlights and slowly rippling flags circled the steel-ribbed steeple of a Veterans’ Memorial next to the parking lot. Across the street, the red brick building sported an arched balcony and an Italianate cupola, plus a Civil War statue on the lawn. Jenny sat on the courthouse steps wearing a sweat suit.

  She stood up and greeted her pal. “Thanks for coming. I need a gut check.”

  “You pick this place for a reason?” Patti asked. Five years older than Jenny, she was a solid, durable blonde.

  “Connections,” Jenny said, pointing to the statue of the Union soldier. “Paul took his first step to Mississippi here. We were out for a walk and he started chatting with this guy about the statue. Then the guy mentioned there’s a house just up the street that was originally built by a veteran of the First Minnesota Regiment. Paul walked up the street, looked at the house, and discovered the Civil War. All the books started showing up. Next thing he went out to Fort Snelling.”

  “Are these good memories?” Patti asked, inclining her head.

  “Patti, the service is Sunday. I know this is bad timing,” Jenny said frankly. “But Molly isn’t Paul’s.”

  She explained it all in succinct detail, including the incriminating irony of being in Rane’s living room when the call came. How Rane drove her home and wound up being the one to tell Molly. Taking Paul’s uniform. Where he was now. Beeman on the phone. Her call to locate Rane’s relatives.

  “I always wondered what you were holding in,” Patti said simply.

  “At first I encouraged him to go. I wanted to know what happened to Paul. It’s, like, his job,” Jenny said in a rush. “Now I’m worried this is more than compensating for being an absent father.” She hugged herself. “When I met him I thought he was exciting.”

  Patti gave a wry smile. “And now?”

  “With hindsight I think I confused exciting with scary.” Jenny hugged herself tighter and pursed her lips. “What if the same thing that drove him away in the first place is still driving him down in Mississippi?”

  “We can discuss your personal drama later when you have made some decisions, like whether to tell Molly who he is, how much access he gets to her.” Patti was blunt. “You got a bigger problem, girl. You worked with street kids. You know the rules. Could Rane harm himself or others?”

  Jenny unclamped her arms, opened her hands. “Patti, I talked to a cop.”

  “That’s right. And cops don’t care about your love life coming back on you. They deal in motive and probable cause. If you’ve led this Mississippi cop to believe Rane could be a public danger then you better follow through and talk to the aunt and uncle.”

  Jenny bit her lip. Patti said it first: “Even staring a funeral in the face.”

  Jenny turned and looked at the shadowy Union soldier advancing with a fixed bayonet on the courthouse lawn.

  “Right,” she said.

  46

  BREAKFAST WAS FAST, WITH LITTLE TALK; TOAST and ink-black coffee. A few minutes later, Rane was sitting in the passenger seat of the Crown Vic as Beeman drove north on new 45, and he figured enough time had passed, so he said it.

  “Peaches?”

  “What’s she like? Jenny Edin?” Beeman asked right back in a slightly surly drawl.

  “Little defensive this morning?” Rane asked.

  “C’mon, what’s she like?” Beeman persisted.

  “I think going out with me was the only impulsive move she ever made.”

  “Different from you, huh?” Beeman gave Rane a sidelong glance. “Charging into stuff…infiltrating that police cordon to get close to a barricaded shooter. That was some picture, him pointing a twelve-gauge at you just before he stuck it in his mouth.”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “On the fuckin’ Internet. You got your picture…”

  Rane smiled faintly, looked out the side window into the evaporating ground fog.

  “You always get your picture, huh?” Beeman said with slow amusement. “Gives a guy the shakes, like having a ghoul perched on my shoulder.”

  “Peaches,” Rane repeated.

  “Aw Gawd damn…”

  Rane shrugged. “Maybe I get it. Slow night. Two a.m. Cops, nurses, EMTs. Only place to get a cup of coffee is the emergency room…”

  “Wasn’t like that. She was in the guard, went over together to Saudi. There was this ruckus outside the base. We had these sand berms set up and a water point, where we’d wash down our vehicles. And Spec Four Nola Johnson was out there washing a Humvee when this Mercedes full of religious police roared up and these guys get out and start swinging camel whips.” Beeman turned and smiled. “She was stripped down to Skivvies and a halter, see, and they didn’t like that.

  “Well I was on patrol and there was a report of shots fired so I drove out there and found her backing off these raghead assholes with her M16. That’s how we actually met.”

  Beeman smiled. “Then I was manning a checkpoint and one of them shamal winds blew up and socked me in. Nola took cover with me in the bunker for the night. So there we were down to one pack of Kools, two liters of bottled water, and my last can of peaches.”

  “Where’d the nickname Sheba come from?” Rane asked.

  Beeman sighed. “Seemed to fit, being stuck out there in the neighborhood of the Rivers of Babylon…”

  “And when you came back?”

  “Well, things have changed. We had us a black mayor for a while and all. But they ain’t changed that much. What happens in Saudi stays in Saudi. She married black and I married white. Gotta face facts…” Beeman said.

  “…If you want to run for sheriff?” Rane probed.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Beeman mused, leaning forward, punching on the radio, pressing the tuning key through several country stations until he hit on Jim Morrison singing “Riders on the Storm.” “Sheriff can get away with having some black pussy on the side. Ole Buford did. That ain’t what doomed me,” Beeman grinned.

  “Really?”

  “Yep. I was out one night in a two-man squad and made the mistake of saying a lot of country music sounded like a cow pissin’
in an empty bucket.” Beeman winked. “Was a preference for classic rock that done in my career…”

  “Isn’t my business but you seem to be on pretty good terms with all the women we’ve been meeting,” Rane said with a sidelong grin.

  Beeman grumbled, turned off the radio, and started singing an impromptu version of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line,” keeping time with his toe on the gas pedal and bouncing Rane around on the front seat.

  Rane gazed out the window after they turned off 45. “You’re taking a different road than yesterday.”

  “Good memory. Yep, this is the front-door road to Kirby Creek.”

  The trees thinned and the house appeared in a white flicker of columns through breaks in the foliage. As they drew closer, Rane spied a silver Lexus and a blue Chevy truck parked in front of the house. A minute later, Rane could make out the chiseled detail on the monument that rose in front of the house. There was enough fog clinging to the hill to give the statue a sentinel aspect.

  “Looks brand-new,” he said.

  “Put up last week. Mitchell Lee’s butterfly kiss to the old man. ’Course now old Hiram’s expected to pass any minute. Story of Mitchell Lee’s life.”

  Beeman parked next to the Lexus. They got out and hadn’t taken two steps when a pneumatic clatter started around the side of the house. Beeman motioned to Rane to follow him toward the source of the racket. They turned the corner and discovered the noise came from a seventy-five-pound Bosch electric demolition hammer cradled in the powerful arms of a black man wearing a respirator. He was coated in brick dust, his body shuddering with the banging hammer, busting out concrete steps at the base of a side door. Seeing them approach, he switched off the jackhammer, set it down, and pulled the mask down around his neck.

  “Hey LaSalle, what you doin’, man?” Beeman said. “I thought you’re on the sick list.”

  As they shook hands, Rane noted the casual homeboy thumb clench and dap; a more than passing familiarity. Despite the dust coating the black man’s face and arms, he saw fresh scarring. Another thing, his grimy T-shirt bulged behind his right hip in a way to suggest a handgun.