by Chuck Logan
“This here’s John Rane. He’s a photographer from up North. My latest Yankee pilgrim I’m trying to keep out of trouble,” Beeman said.
“LaSalle Ector, pleased to meet you, John,” said the black guy, shaking Rane’s hand. “Bee givin’ you the tour, huh? He tell you how Corinth’s big on Yankee tourists?” LaSalle’s grin was careful, smoky-cool. “How the first couple thousand liked it so much they stayed.”
Beeman grumbled. “Fuckin’ with me, as usual. He means the National Cemetery on the south side where the Union dead are buried.”
“Yeah,” LaSalle said, “the good citizens of Corinth went out of their way to honor them Yankee boys by building our black slum around the cemetery. Ain’t that right, Bee?”
Beeman smiled. “LaSalle has this forlorn hope I got a social conscience.”
“Redneck with a heart and a brain is a man in constant turmoil,” LaSalle said.
Beeman looked away. “Yeah, well…” Turning back to LaSalle, “What’s with you riding a buster? What’re you doin’ here?”
LaSalle heaved his shoulders. “Miss Kirby wants to replace these old steps and redo them like they were on the original. She found this old photo.”
Beeman said, “LaSalle was our ace EMT drive-like-a-raped-ape ambulance driver. Then he deployed to Iraq with the guard last year and got banged up.” He nodded to Rane. “John was over there the first time. Army picture-taker.”
“Oh yeah, whereabouts?” LaSalle asked.
“I tagged along with the 101st when they leapfrogged into Kuwait. You?” Rane asked.
“Shit, man, third month I was there the airport road—fuckin’ Route Irish—blew up in my face. Got to see a lot of Walter Reed, though.”
“What do the docs say?” Beeman asked in a more serious tone.
“Residual issues from concussion. More tests. They won’t take me back at Magnolia till it clears up. So Miss Kirby’s put me to work for the duration,” LaSalle said.
“LaSalle,” Beeman lowered his voice slightly and took a step closer. “You hear her say anything about Mitchell Lee?”
The big man cocked his head. “Like he went goofy and took a shot at you Saturday and killed that boy? And maybe he beat up Marcy Leets last night? Phone’s been ringing all morning. There’s lots of gossip goin’ round.”
Beeman hitched up his belt. “Well, if it was him, no telling what he might do next.”
LaSalle frowned. “Maybe why I’m here, huh? She’s not staying in Corinth till this blows over. I drive her back and forth to the hospital to see the old man.” He jerked his head at the house. “He don’t have a key to this place ’cause I changed the locks. And she quit running on the roads. He shows his face here he’ll have to get past me. Fuck him. Hope he does show. Hope he’s drunk and drowning in a ditch. He runs off and leaves her with her daddy dying. After all Hiram Kirby did for him.”
“Well, I gotta go talk to her about it,” Beeman said, screwing up his lips.
“Is it like they say, Bee?” LaSalle asked. “You and Mitchell Lee?”
“People love to talk,” Beeman grunted, then he cuffed LaSalle on a dusty shoulder and motioned Rane toward the front of the house.
“Nice meeting you,” Rane said.
“Likewise. And don’t let Bee distort your thinking,” LaSalle said amiably.
As they walked away, Rane said, “Strapped.”
“Definitely.” Beeman didn’t act overly concerned.
“No love lost between LaSalle and Mitchell Lee,” Rane said.
Beeman shrugged. “Mitchell Lee was in the guard with LaSalle and Miss Kirby’s brother, Robert.” Beeman stopped, turned back toward the sound of the jackhammer, and said, “Miss Kirby’s brother died pulling LaSalle out of that ambush where he got messed up. You was LaSalle how’d you feel about Mitchell Lee?”
“So what are we doing here?” Rane asked.
“Ask a few questions. Then you’re going to chat with Miss Kirby while I nose around. I want to get a look at the gun rack, see what’s missing. Mitchell Lee didn’t have any muzzleloaders of his own; always used the old man’s.”
They rounded the house and met a lean, freckled redhead who would have been pretty except you looked twice at her jaw. She waited on the veranda by the front door. Ellender Kirby wore a white halter, short green shorts, and flip-flops. She had a marathoner’s legs.
“Bee,” she said with a weary smile. “I wondered when I’d be seeing you?”
“Miss Kirby, I’m real sorry about your daddy.”
“Thank you, Bee. It’s getting down to the hard part. DNR orders. No special measures,” she said.
“That’s a tough one,” Beeman said.
She dropped her eyes. When she raised them, she said, “But I don’t think you drove out here to inquire about my father?”
“No ma’am. Fact is, I’m trying to get a line on Mitchell Lee.”
“I figured.” Then she brightened. “First things first. Who’s this you have with you?”
Beeman nodded. “This is John Rane. He’s a photographer down from Minnesota. I’m showing him around.”
They shook hands and Rane felt the steely undercurrent in her slim fingers. “Welcome to Kirby Creek, John. I take it your visit to Corinth is not a pleasure trip.”
“No ma’am. I’m following up on the Minnesota reenactor who was killed…”
“Right down there, last Saturday.” Ellie Kirby pointed down the slope toward the edge of the woods. She smiled tightly. “They still have the yellow tape. Never thought we’d have a crime scene on the place.” She turned to Beeman. “Nobody really believes that shooting was an accident, do they Bee? I heard what people are saying…”
Beeman lowered his eyes, looked up. “Ain’t no easy way to put it.”
Ellender pursed her lips. “Well, before the killing starts why don’t y’all come on in. All I have is soda in a cooler. I’m sorry but we have the kitchen and the back rooms sealed off because of the dust.”
“How’s he doing, LaSalle? Should he be doing bull work?”
Ellie smiled tightly. “So many of the boys are coming back with these concussion problems because the roadside bombs are so powerful. He has dizzy spells but he can feel them coming on. With his medical training, I trust his judgment. As for the work, you know LaSalle…” She fluttered her eyes. “Once he gets started I just stay out of the way.”
“Miss Kirby, he’s carrying a gun,” Beeman said.
“Knows how to use it, too. Which Mitchell Lee will become very aware of if he shows his face,” she said emphatically.
They walked into the house, with Ellie throwing comments over her shoulder to Rane in gaps from the banging hammer. “The scars on the columns and walls are left over from the battle in 1862. House was built in 1857 and is an example of the Greek Revival style popular at the time. Really the design is quite simple: a central passage. That’s the drawing room on the left, then the dining room. Library and bedroom are on the right.” As she talked, Rane caught glimpses of floor-to-ceiling mirrors and intricate molding beyond the tall doorways.
The back end of the central hall was masked with plastic sheeting fastened to the doorways with duct tape. Blankets covered what appeared to be a piano along the left side of the hall. Beeman stepped away into the library as Ellie opened a cooler next to the piano and took out three cans of Classic Coke.
She handed one to Rane and said, “One-story layout, John; no grand Gone With the Wind staircase. To find those you must travel south and east; northern Mississippi wasn’t plantation country. In fact, before The War, when this was all Tishomingo County, the people voted to stay in the Union. Of course, after Fort Sumter, the politicians in Jackson stampeded them into the fight.” She smiled tightly. “Farther south you go in Mississippi the more gray they bleed.”
Beeman returned; Ellie gave him a Coke, led them back down the hall and out the front door, saying, “I can’t talk over that racket.” They followed her across the lawn to the base of the
monument. She stepped to the crest of the hill and stood between two of the cannons, one hand on a tidy hip, the other raising her soda. A gust of breeze ruffled her short copper hair, and when she turned, she looked to Rane like an angry Liberty leading the mob.
Her eyes blazed at Beeman. “I ain’t seen him, Bee. I ain’t heard a peep. And you don’t have to slink around. Daddy’s match Enfield is missing from the gun cabinet. Not saying he took it. But it’s definitely wandered off.”
She held up her left hand, solemn as an oath-taker; the narrow white ring of untanned skin showed naked on the third finger. “I threw it away, Bee. I can’t stand any more of his bullshit on top of what Daddy’s going through,” she said as she swung her head and glared at the new monument. “And now I’ll have to look at this thing every day for the rest of my life and think of him, which was not the original intention.”
Beeman toed the grass with his boot. “Hadda check in. It’s my job, Miss Kirby.”
A ripple of disgust crossed her face. “The last night I saw him, the night before he left for Memphis, he came in after midnight and I could smell her on him clear down the stairs, that summer barnyard stink men love.” She wrinkled her nose. “I swear, someone should shovel Marcy Leets out.”
“Guess you didn’t hear,” Beeman said.
“Of course I heard.” She rolled her eyes and her freckles reddened. “Three of my friends already called this morning. Are you surprised? Family she married into. That beauty shop is just for show…”
She drew back her hand and flung the pop can at the base of the monument. It spiraled off, leaving a frothy brown stain on the clean granite. Then she stalked back toward the house. Halfway to the steps she turned and yelled over the bang of the hammer:
“You looking for Mitchell Lee, I’d start with his goddamn whore!”
They set their unfinished Cokes down at the base of the monument, walked back to the cruiser, and remained silent until the house was out of sight. They slowed, meeting four pickups with lowboys in tow. “They’re coming to pick up the cannons for Shiloh,” Beeman said, waving to the drivers going past. Then he pulled back on the road.
When they cleared the property, Rane turned to Beeman and said, “You defer to her.”
Beeman exhaled. “It’s a game we play. You hear her: ‘I ain’t seen him.’ ‘Y’all.’ She don’t talk like that to her friends. That’s what they do, talk down with the help.”
“You check out the gun case?”
“Yep; like she said. The Enfield’s missing.”
“Well, she isn’t covering for him,” Rane said.
“Nope.”
“And she don’t care much for Marcy Leets.”
“Yeah, pretty vocal about it too. Same as Marcy was about her. What’s that line in Shakespeare? About women protesting too much…”
Beeman didn’t pursue the thought. When they pulled onto the highway, Rane noticed a dusty brown Mustang parked on the shoulder near the Kirby road. The windows were an opaque grime, impossible to see the driver. As they turned south on 45, the Mustang fell in several cars behind them.
“Now what?” Rane asked.
“Track down Billie Watts.”
“Like Marcy Leets said.”
“Yep.”
“What’s Marcy Leets’s part in this?” Rane wondered.
Beeman grinned. “Now that’s a serious spiritual question. Marcy’s enough to turn a Southern Baptist into a fuckin’ Buddhist…”
“Say again?”
“Deeper I get into this mess I’m starting to think Marcy Leets is the reincarnation of Louise Hathcock.”
47
THE MORNING MIST BURNED OFF, THE AIR SWEATED gray, and the roadside gravel gleamed moist adobe-red. They pulled off the highway at Shiloh Road on the outskirts of Corinth and Beeman got out to make some calls. Rane watched the funky Mustang pass them, slow down, and pull off farther down the road in the shade of some trees.
Rane got out and waited while Beeman talked.
“Now Morg, think on it, man. You don’t cooperate certain things are gonna come out. Now you check and see if he’s there ’cause he’s been out of the office all week. Call me back at this number.”
Beeman ended the call, stretched, and hitched up his gun belt.
“See that Mustang up ahead,” Rane asked.
“Yep.”
“He’s been following us,” Rane said.
“No shit. Yesterday it was a blue Xterra. When I said the sheriff’s keeping an arm’s length from me and Mitchell Lee I didn’t mean he’s gonna hang us out here all alone. Jimmy’s had a deputy shadowing me since they shot out the picture window. Was a car parked outside of the house last night.”
“So you weren’t kidding about being bait.”
Beeman crinkled his eyes. “We’re bait. You still in?”
Rane shrugged. “Who’re you talking to?”
“First I called his daddy’s law office. Billie Watts didn’t come in today or any day all week. So I figured he’s repaired to his hideaway condo on the Tennessee River. The guy I just talked to is a security guard works out there. I snatched him up a while ago with a trunk full of bonded whiskey he sells with his brother out of a garage in Hatchie. Alcorn’s a dry county outside six-percent beer and wine in the Corinth city limits. I let him go to have a handle on him for just such an occasion as this.”
The sky to the north made a dragging sound, like a match before it strikes. They both looked up at the fitful clouds. “Gonna rain all weekend, just watch,” Beeman predicted.
Back in the car, Beeman whipped a U-turn. The Mustang swung around in a similar maneuver and fell in behind. They were cruising the edge of town when Beeman’s cell phone rang.
“Okay, good,” Beeman said. “Now you’re gonna meet us at the side gate. Then you’re gonna walk us up to the room and help us get in.
“Never mind who. Less you know the better. And don’t let his accent throw you. Let me remind you the federal district we’re in don’t stop at the state line. We cool? Okay. Give me an hour.”
Beeman turned off the phone. “John, might help if you act kind of aloof and federal-almighty,” then he smiled and added, “shouldn’t be too hard, with that permanent case of Minnesota hemorrhoids you got.”
When he pulled up to 72, Beeman leaned over, opened the glove compartment, dug around, and withdrew a hockey puck–size canister, oxblood-colored, with a gold top. As he removed the lid, he said, “Copenhagen Long Cut is a filthy habit. What my daddy did when I was a kid, he had me emptying the damn spit cans he kept all over the house. I wouldn’t even have it in the car if Margie was in town.” He offered the tin. “You want a taste?”
Rane violently shook his head.
Beeman carefully inserted a pinch of chew in his lower lip and then searched under the seat for an empty pop can, which he placed between his thighs. Then he adjusted the wad in his lower lip, floored the gas, and left rubber as he fishtailed through traffic onto Highway 72.
“When my daddy was young he ran with Buford,” Beeman said, eyes lidded, leaning forward, raising the pop can, and spitting. “Old Clarence would say: ‘There comes a point when you just gotta kick in a few doors…’”
EAST ON STATE 72, GOING BY TRAFFIC LIKE IT WAS STANDING STILL, they streaked past the Iuka turnoff. As they turned north on an exit, Beeman thumbed his cell.
“Dell? Yeah, Bee. Tell you what. Why don’t you hang back for a while. Don’t think you want this detour on your trip ticket.”
They lost the Mustang and worked the bigger roads down to smaller roads until they were on a wooded two-lane that meandered down toward the river. About halfway down, Beeman braked suddenly and swerved to miss a bobbling animal that looked like an ambling seashell crossing the center line.
“What the hell was that?” Rane asked, craning his neck for a second look.
“Why’d the chicken cross the road?” Beeman chuckled.
“What?”
“To teach the armadillo how to.
They been moving into the area from the west.”
“I guess,” Rane said. “Up north we have possums getting squashed on the road to Duluth.”
“Must be global warming, huh.”
Laughing, they came around a bend, the trees cleared, and two white towers rose next to a wide marina. Rane counted seven stories of balconies and cupolas atop little green roofs.
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree,” Beeman recited. Then he sighed as they turned into the rear service entrance, “I been itching to get inside this place for years. They got their own private security force, don’t like cops coming around. This here’s where the gentry hangs, to recreate in ways they couldn’t get away with in places like Corinth. This is gonna be fun.”
“Just what exactly are you going to do that’s fun?” Rane asked.
“Well, technically this comes under cultivating a snitch. Except he’s a smart-ass, rich-kid lawyer from a family that goes way back. So we gotta be creative.” Beeman gazed ruefully down the river. “So we get him out of his element and fuck with his buttons. Just follow my lead.”
Beeman drove toward a tall man running to flab, who waited next to a gate in the chain-link fence. As they pulled up, he worked the sliding gate open. He wore a tractor hat, jeans, a Darryl Worley T-shirt, and a sheet of nervous sweat on his face.
“I don’t know, Bee,” the guy said, fingering a badge clipped to his belt as Beeman eased through the gate. “I ain’t working today. Came in special for this. Don’t have my uniform. I could get in a lot of trouble.”
“Correction, Morg,” Beeman said. “You’re already in a lot of trouble and this little assist is gonna make a piece of it go away. Now is he still here?”
Morg bobbed his head. “And he’s starting early. He buzzed in a female visitor under an hour ago.” Morg swallowed. “Boys at the desk say she was on the young side.”
“How young?” Beeman asked.
“Like call-the-truant-officer young,” Morg winced. Then he pointed to the building. “Park under that overhang next to the door, in the shadows,” he said, eyeing Rane, who glowered back with an expression he hoped looked like infallible contempt.