Outside the Law

by Phillip Thompson

  He calmed his ragged breath enough to clear his head. Ray’s car still sat on the shoulder, headlights streaming into the hot Mississippi night, two corpses cooling nearby. He yanked off a sneaker and a sock and tied the sock around the bullet wound in his right leg, still cursing Delmer’s .44 Magnum. Satisfied he had stopped the blood for the moment, he put his shoe back on and pushed himself to his feet. Pain hit him behind the eyeballs, white hot, and he sagged against the tree. He took a deep breath and pushed off, stumbled up the shoulder to the car. He stepped over Turn and hobbled to the driver’s side. Keys still in the ignition. Amateurs, both of them. He sagged against the driver’s side.

  Tonight was a first-class fuckup, no doubt, but now he had a name and a solid description for Hack. Delmer Blackburn.

  “And Mr. Delmer Blackburn, very soon it’s gone be yo’ ass.”

  He hated the very thought of his next move, but he had no choice. He sure as shit wasn’t going to drive off in this car and have every cop in the state looking for him. He grimaced, pulled out his phone, and punched Hack’s number.

  “Yes?” Hack answered.

  He sighed. “Hack you ain’t going to believe this one.”

  COLT

  “Goddammit.”

  He put his hands on his hips and stared at the gory tableau on the gray, early morning highway in front of him: Monte Carlo with a faded blue paint job, both doors open, sitting in the gravel under a line of pines at a closed-down rest stop. Body on each side, both on their backs with gunshot wounds. Both male.

  John walked up beside him after radioing their location. “This may explain why Blackburn wasn’t home earlier.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, maybe.” He walked to the driver’s side. The dead man there wore a look of shock in his wide-open eyes and a pulpy, wet bullet hole in his cheek. Looked like most of his brain was scattered behind him on the asphalt. Cheap nickel-plated auto in his right hand. No brass nearby, so it was probably unlikely he fired the weapon.

  He checked the car’s interior. Nothing. No dope, no money, no guns, nothing. On the other side of the car, John knelt over the other corpse.

  “Whoever did this,” John said over the car, “used a big-ass weapon.”

  He walked around the rear of the car and knelt beside John. “Yeah, same with the other guy. Probably a Magnum or a forty-five.”

  John nodded. “Well, this is a big dude. Looks like a roadie for a heavy metal band.”

  He looked behind them, down the highway. “Shooter popped them both from somewhere back there. Other guy didn’t even get off a shot. Saturday night special still in his hand.”

  “This guy did,” John said, pointing to a brass casing a couple of feet from the body. “And that Glock in his hand ain’t no Saturday night special.”

  He stood and walked away from the vehicle. “Well, the person called it in said he heard a series of gunshots. We’ve already accounted for at least three,” he said as he scoured the ground to the rear of the scene. He stopped.

  “Hey,” he called back to John. “You see this?”

  “What?”

  “Blood over here. Lots of it.” He pulled his flashlight and aimed it toward the large splotch, a dark red stain in the gravel of the highway shoulder.

  John came over and whistled when he saw it. “Yeah, somebody took one good.”

  He found another, then another splash of blood leading down the slope of the shoulder, across a shallow ditch, and into the woods.

  “Somebody got hit and got away,” he said.

  “The shooter? Delmer?”

  “Naw, something ain’t right here,” he said, staring at the dark wall of trees. “Whoever it is robbing these dealers doesn’t kill them. At least that’s what I think. Let’s say it’s the guy doing the robbing, though. If so, this went really wrong for him. He wasn’t expecting this, and when it went down, he goes Wyatt Earp on these guys, bags two of ’em.”

  “Makes sense,” John said. “But he’s got a problem.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “One guy got away. And he’s liable to be spooked now. Big time. And he may show up at a hospital.”

  John nodded toward the coroner’s vehicle making its way up the road just as the sun topped the tree line. “I think we should put out a BOLO for Delmer Blackburn,” he said.

  “Do it. Armed and dangerous.”

  HACK

  He watched Dee take a deep drag off the joint as he splashed alcohol over the leg wound.

  “In the old days,” he said, “You’d be drinking whiskey for the pain.”

  Dee winced but held his leg steady. “These ain’t the old days,” he said. He blew a thin stream of blue smoke toward the ceiling of the house they were now renting, a bland prefab job near the Mississippi-Alabama line just off Highway 69. “And goddamn that hurts.”

  “Getting shot usually does.” He turned to the kitchen table and surveyed the kit spread out on a towel. “You’re lucky it’s a through and through, so I don’t have to go digging around for the bullet. All I have to do is sew you up.” He grabbed a suture needle and a loop of thread, turned to face Dee.

  The boy took another hit and nodded. He was holding up well, considering he had a pretty good chunk of his calf blown out, had lost a good bit of blood, and was scared shitless.

  “Yeah, well, just make sure you got some oxy handy, OK?” Dee said.

  He smiled and shook his head. He reached with his free hand and gave Dee the bottle. The kid shook a few out and tossed them in his mouth, washing them down with the open bottle of beer at his feet.

  He went to work sewing up the leg. “Tell me,” he said.

  Dee nodded. “We show up at the meet, everything is cool, ’cept for that one dumbass, Turn, wanted to go all cowboy. Dunno, maybe I shouldn’t’a said what the real deal was. But I said I was there to make sure everything went smooth, he was ready to rock. We get there—”

  “Who was driving?”

  “Ray was,” Dee said, his speech slowing from the oxy high. “That Turn cat was in the passenger seat. I was in the back.”

  “Who got there first?”

  Dee cut him a look. “We did. You think I’m an amateur?”

  He didn’t look up. “No, I don’t. But I want to know exactly how this went down.”

  “We’re sitting in the car about five minutes, and the car rolls up. A Mazda. Mazda3, I think. Dark color, maybe like a midnight blue.” Dee looked down at his bloody leg. “You know that shit hurts. I wasn’t kidding.”

  Hack nodded, letting the pain meds, the weed, and the alcohol do the work on Dee.

  “Anyway,” Dee said, “this guy gets out and starts walking toward us. Not aggressive or nothing. Just walking. Ray gets out. Then Turn busts out the car with his piece in his hand. When I saw that, I come out, too, and we got us a Mexican standoff.”

  Hack knotted off the sutures and wiped the leg down. “But.”

  Dee nodded. “Yeah, but. Turn starts mouthing off, accusing the guy of ripping dealers off, making the guy real nervous. You could see that. I started to make my way off to Turn’s left, figuring I’d flank his ass or something. But before I took two steps, the guy yanks out a fucking Magnum and goes all OK Corral. He popped Turn dead in the chest. I try to get over to the side of the road in the dark, and he hit me in the leg. Then he killed Ray.”

  Hack looked at him. “I thought Ray and he were buddies.”

  Dee shrugged. “Dunno, man. Turn told Ray to carry a piece. Maybe he thought Ray was going to draw down on him.”

  “Was he?”

  “Shit naw. Ray’s scared as a motherfucker. I don’t think he even got a shot off.”

  “Then what?”

  “I got my ass into the woods. He stood there staring right at me, but he couldn’t see anything in the dark. Then he rooted around in the car, cussing and yelling. Then he drove off.”

  Hack started collecting up his gear and walked to the sink to rinse it off. “And that’s it?”

  “Nope. Wyatt Earp go
t away tonight, but I got his plate number. More importantly, I got his name. Delmer Blackburn.”

  Hack turned to Dee. “Delmer Blackburn,” he said.

  Dee nodded.

  “Write that plate number down before you get too high to remember. Then get your ass on one of the beds and pass out.”

  DELMER

  He couldn’t go home. Not right now. And he didn’t like being out in the open. For all he knew, the highway patrol or the FBI or the DEA was looking for him. He surely hoped that black guy he’d shot had bled to death, but he couldn’t count on that.

  Admit it, boy, you’re fucked, and you don’t know what to do.

  He crossed over into Alabama and drove through the country roads, speeding, slowing, making random turns, marveling at his own stupidity. In a moment of panic, he stopped on a bridge on a rural back road and tossed the pistol into the black stream below.

  He asked himself over and over how he could convince himself that there was really supposed to be fifty thousand dollars in cash in that car. The dope dealers were stupid, but they weren’t that stupid. He knew that now, should have known it then. But he got greedy. He nodded at his own eyes in the rearview mirror to confirm the thought.

  Jesus, what was I thinking?

  He stared at the tops of pine trees, backlit by the pink sunrise. He saw a brown sign for Bankhead National Forest and turned in the direction the arrow pointed. He followed the signs along ever-narrowing roads into the forest, where sunlight had yet to reach. He stopped at a crossroads and cut off the lights. Darkness fell upon him like a mantle.

  He tried to sleep and accomplished nothing but a sore back as images of blood and Ray falling dead ran through his mind like an endless horror movie with no soundtrack. After an hour, he gave up, cranked the car, and headed back to Mississippi, a pink morning sky behind him and long highway shadows to his front.

  Distracted and exhausted as he was, he did not notice the deputy sheriff’s car—or the fact that he had crossed back into Mississippi—until he saw the brown-and-white closing on him fast enough to tell him it wasn’t a coincidence.

  “Fuck!” he yelled, eyes on the rearview. He thought about flooring it and outrunning the deputy until he realized that his car barely ran, period. Outrunning anything faster than a skateboard was out of the question. That realization turned into a fear he’d never felt, a terror that sent tremors through his hands on the wheel and through his bowels. He squirmed as panic rose in him like boiling water, and he thought he might come apart, joint by joint, as the deputy hit his blue lights and blasted the siren, one short whoop. He was caught, and he was fucked. He slowed, then pulled to the side of Highway 12, and came to a stop on a low shoulder covered with Johnsongrass and dandelions.

  Already the cop was out of his car, shotgun at his shoulder and yelling at him to step out of the car. He killed the engine and rolled down the window. Stuck both hands through.

  “It’s going to be a long fucking day,” he said to no one in particular.

  COLT

  He waited for the buzz, then yanked the heavy steel door open. Stepped inside the corridor leading to the cell block and nodded first at the deputy behind the glass, then at John, who was walking toward him.

  “How long you been here?” he said when John got close enough.

  “Long enough to hear Mr. Delmer Blackburn in there freak the fuck out.”

  “Yeah?” He started toward the row of cell doors. “Well, I got to be honest. You’d scare the hell out of me, too, if I didn’t know you.”

  John grinned and shook his head. “Yeah, well. That may be true, but Delmer looks like he hasn’t slept in days, wants a lawyer, but can’t stop talking. Even after I read him his rights.”

  “Let me guess,” he said as he stopped at another steel door, the one that led to the interview room. “He didn’t do shit, officer.”

  John snorted and pulled the door open. “Hear it for yourself.”

  He stepped into the room, and John clicked the door shut behind him.

  Delmer Blackburn sat at the table in the center of the room, left hand cuffed to a metal rail than ran the length of the table. He looked like hell. Disheveled and jumpy as a cat. Maybe thirty, about one sixty. Skinny, with baggy clothes—at least the denim short-sleeve shirt. Completely unremarkable pale face and eyes, unruly blond hair. Delmer looked like half the males in the county.

  He pulled out the empty metal folding chair and watched Delmer jump at the sound of the legs scraping the concrete floor.

  Seated, he looked across the table. Delmer had a hard time looking him in the eye.

  “Hell of a way to start a morning, ain’t it, Delmer?”

  All that produced was a shrug.

  “You want some coffee? I’m sure I could find you a cup somewhere.”

  “Naw, man, I don’t need no coffee.”

  He nodded and leaned his elbows onto the table. “Ahite then, let’s just get to it. Deputy Carver told me he already read you your rights, and you understand them. That right?”

  Delmer cleared his throat and crossed his arms. “Hell yeah, and I want a lawyer, ’cause I ain’t done nothing anybody wouldn’t a done.”

  He held up a hand. “I hear you, Delmer, and we already put a call in to the public defender’s office. I’m going out on a limb and guessing you can’t afford an attorney.”

  Delmer shook his head and looked genuinely nervous.

  “Right,” he said. “So I imagine ol’ Gideon Hayes is breaking every speed limit in town to get here. As far as them two dope dealers—the dead ones—I’m sure I follow your logic. I mean, I think the last robbery kinda went sideways on you, right? Shit got out of hand, bullets flying, all that?”

  Delmer shrugged. It seemed to dawn on him that his best course of action was to keep his mouth shut.

  He leaned a little more across the table, made sure Delmer locked eyes with him.

  “But those other two guys, you killed,” he said, watching Delmer’s face. “Those two I can’t figure out.”

  Delmer’s eyebrows shot up, and he jerked so hard the cuff on his wrist rattled against the rail. “What other two?” he said.

  He stared at Delmer. The guy was not real bright and seemed incapable of guile. But so did a lot of other murderers. He leaned back in his chair. “Oh, come on, Delmer, you’re not going to sit there and tell me you didn’t kill Pritchard and Munny.”

  “Hell no, I did not,” Delmer said, all puffed up and offended by the accusation. “I knew they was dead, I mean I heard they was dead, but I sure as shit didn’t kill them.”

  “Delmer, I think that’s bullshit. Right now I got four dead drug dealers in this county. You’re all but confessing to killing two of them, and you robbed the other two. I’m willing to bet you killed Pritchard and Munny. What I want to know is how and why.”

  Delmer sucked in half the air in the room, his eyes wide with terror.

  “Sheriff, I swear ’fore God I didn’t kill Pritchard and Munny. And that shit on the highway, that was self-defense. They came out that car packing all kinds of artillery. OK, I ripped Pritchard and Munny off, but I didn’t kill ’em.”

  “See, now we’re getting somewhere. Where did you rob Pritchard?”

  “About two blocks away from Winnie’s, man. I hit his ass hard and fast and got out of there. That sumbitch fought back, too.”

  “And look where it got him. What about Munny?”

  “In his apartment. I broke in and took what he had there.”

  “And both of them were alive when you left them?”

  Delmer looked at him like was an alien. “Well, yeah, of course they were. I sure as shit didn’t kill them.”

  He leaned into Delmer again. “Then who did?”

  “I ain’t got no idea.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I don’t know,” Delmer yelled in a panicky, girlish voice.

  He stood and walked to the wall, facing Delmer, and began pacing.

  “Delmer,” he
said, “here’s the situation. You’re facing two counts of murder, possession, hell, grand larceny, and whole bunch of shit I haven’t even thought up yet. Your ass is going down for that.”

  Delmer sagged in his chair and lowered his head to the metal table, and for a moment, it looked like he was going to cry.

  He stopped pacing and leaned against the wall. “So my question to you, Delmer is do you want to help yourself?”

  Delmer made a noise that sounded like a yes, if a cat could say yes.

  “Look at me.”

  Delmer raised his head.

  “What in the hell were you thinking?”

  Delmer put his head in his hands. “You think I ain’t been asking myself that same damn question all fucking night?”

  He crossed his arms. “I’ve heard of stupid shit before, and this is right up there.”

  Delmer snorted through this hands. “Oh yeah, sure, easy for you, when you’re the law around here. Local boy, football star, badass Marine. Yeah, you know a lot about my options, don’t you? You know what I was thinking? One big score, and me and my mother would finally be free of the goddamn suffocating misery that both of us are in. Who knows, maybe we could get the fuck out of here and this miserable shithole town.

  “You ain’t got no idea what it’s like growing up without a father and a mother who’s a drunk and a drug addict.”

  “I got an idea. What happened to your father?” he asked, still leaning against the wall.

  “I’s too young to remember the man when he died,” he said. “Car wreck over in Starkville, so my momma says.”

  “Where is your momma?”

  “How in the hell should I know? She never got over it and started drinking and drugging because of it. And she did that shit for years.”

  “Did? She sober now?”

  Delmer nodded and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Yeah, supposably, but not that it makes any difference at all. Fucking moody and needy all the time. I ain’t got time for that. Shows up when she needs money, disappears for months at a time. Called me a month ago to say she was sober, but who the fuck knows, you know? I don’t have any idea how to handle her. Tried to get her to take medication, you know, go see a shrink or something, but she won’t do it.