Outside the Law

by Phillip Thompson

  “So, to answer your fucking question, what was I thinking? I was thinking I’d get the fuck out of this hellhole and take my mother with me.”

  He pushed himself away from the wall. “Well, if you still want to have even a hope of a chance to help your momma, you listen good. Somebody is running around killing people in my county. The same people you stole from. And you’re going to help me find him. Or you do the whole stretch for double murder, and you can forget about ever helping your mother. Understand?”

  A single, shining silver tear crept down Delmer’s right cheek. His head barely moved through a nod. “Where’s my damn lawyer?”

  He turned and knocked on the door. “No idea. Ain’t called him yet.” He stepped into the corridor where John waited with his hands in his pocket and a bored look on his face.

  “You hear any of that?”

  John nodded. “Some. Told you he won’t shut up.”

  “’Cause he’s scared shitless. But I don’t think he’s the guy I’m looking for.”

  “You serious?” John wasn’t bored anymore.

  He nodded. “Yeah, he’s an idiot, and he’s got issues, but he ain’t the type to go around shooting people in the eyes with snake shot.”

  “Snake shot again?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, Freddie Mac confirmed it. Two shots to the eyes. And that shootout on the highway didn’t involve snake shot, I can guarantee you that. I think somebody is killing these guys after Delmer robs them.”

  “Why? And who?”

  “Don’t know, at least not yet. Munny and Pritchard ran dope for McNairy, though. My guess is the McNairy bosses got a little pissed off about the robberies and decided to set an example.”

  “Wait. Wouldn’t it be easier to kill the guy doing the robberies? Why not kill Delmer?”

  “They probably didn’t know it was Delmer. At least until last night. They set him up, and it went to hell when they did try to kill him.”

  “So what do we do?”

  He started walking toward the exit.

  “Call Gideon and tell him he’s got a new client. Then we’re going to let him go.”

  John grabbed his arm. “Whoa. Let him go? He’s a murder suspect, Colt.”

  “I know. Best one we got. But if my theory holds, this McNairy asshole will keep gunning for Delmer in there. Maybe the other person who got shot out there on Highway 12 was this McNairy guy. So, we let Gideon think he’s getting sprung on a technicality, see if he can lead us to the guy. And when he does, we’ll snatch his ass.”

  John sighed. “I don’t know, Colt. Sounds risky. And not very solid.”

  “Yep. On both counts. But I got a hunch. Besides,” he said as he stepped through the steel door back into the jail lobby, “it beats the hell out of campaigning.”

  MOLLY

  “Questions, sir?”

  She allowed herself a breath of relief as she watched her boss, Timothy Rollins, mull over the data she’d just presented via a PowerPoint slide deck and a wall map of the area in question. Rollins, the special agent in charge of the Memphis office, had a habit of absorbing the information of an entire brief with very few, if any, questions until the end, whereupon he would rattle off a series of interrogatives, some general, others impossibly penetrating.

  She had just delivered a kickass brief, she told herself. She had been meticulous with her chronology and careful to leaven her hunches with enough circumstantial evidence, physical evidence, and field agent acumen to make these hunches sound more like educated guesses.

  She’d even chosen her attire with care and precision: a tailored black suit with a ultra-white shirt, simple gold necklace and earrings. She had worn it on only two occasions: when she was presented a commendation during her first tour in Memphis and when she first met the director of the bureau in Washington, DC.

  Rollins sat quiet for another minute, fingers steepled under his chin, brow furrowed. She stood patiently across the table from him, whiteboard at her back. Then he sat up and put his elbows on the conference table at which he sat.

  “First of all,” he said in a baritone drawl that belied the executive suit and expensive watch. “That was an outstanding brief, Molly. Very thorough. And I like the logic behind your assumptions.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I do think, though, that the theory that this shooter is a serial killer may be a reach.”

  “I understand, sir,” she said. Her face remained placid, but the faint and familiar sting of disappointment hit home.

  “That’s some damn good investigative work to find that link, but right now that link doesn’t trump the preponderance of evidence and indications that this is a drug case. So I’m not sure about your task force proposal.”

  She nodded again, even as she felt her carefully constructed case collapsing. “Yes, sir, that’s a valid point. But while I was doing the research for this brief, there was another shooting. Same general area.”

  “Really?” Rollins said. “And you think they’re related?”

  She nodded. “Possibly. Shootout on a rural highway two nights ago. Two dead. That one was all over the local news channel as a drug deal gone bad. One wounded, and my guess was it wasn’t the shooter. I have a copy of the local sheriff’s report if you want to see it.”

  She reached for the stack of papers on the table, but Rollins waved her off. “Keep going,” he said.

  “There was blood trail leading off into the woods from two dead bodies around a vehicle. No money or drugs. Brass all over the road. Nine millimeter and forty-four Magnum. Slugs in the bodies or embedded in the asphalt.”

  “Seems exactly like a drug deal gone bad,” Rollins said. “And none of your snake shot?”

  She shook her head and frowned. “No, sir, and I’ll grant you that this might be an unrelated incident. But, still, the issue of the snake shot shooter nagged at me. Until I realized I’d heard of it before.”

  Rollins cocked an eyebrow. “How so?”

  “I had to dig through some files to find it, but two years ago, a house fire in Knoxville. Cause remained undetermined, even after local fire department, ATF and even FBI investigations. House burned nearly to the ground. The female body, or what was left of it, wasn’t found until two days later.

  “The woman’s remains were charred so badly it was impossible to determine time of death or much else, but one discovery was unmistakable to the examiner: the corpse contained small steel pellets in the skull, as if she had been shot through the eyes.”

  Rollins ran a hand along his chin, thinking.

  “It’s a long shot, I know, sir,” she said, trying to get the words out before Rollins shut her down. “Because it was a fire presumed at first to have been caused by an explosion of some sort, ATF had investigated. My thought process was that since we found this case, we still have jurisdiction, and, more to the point, if that death was connected to the other two, it means that whoever this Snake Shot Shooter is, he’s more than an enforcer or a warlord making a move on someone’s territory. He was in all likelihood a serial killer.” She stopped talking, held her breath, realizing just how batshit crazy this must sound.

  “Molly, I’m not minimizing your work, and you have done some exceptional investigating. But this sounds like a drug case to me.”

  “Yes, sir. But since we—I—found it, even though I agree it’s really a drug case, we have jurisdiction on the Knoxville fire. A task force would at least give us a chance to nail this guy.”

  “Molly, have a seat,” Rollins said.

  Uh oh, here it comes. She sat and forced her face to remain neutral even as anger roiled behind her eyes.

  Rollins leaned forward again. As always, she was surprised at how young he looked up close and that he was more handsome than most agents his age. But her admiration ended there. His face, unlike hers, was not a mask. His was an expression that made him appear exactly as he was—a senior agent about to give her bad news.

  “I know you want this,” he s
aid, looking her in the eyes. “I know what it’s like to be behind the eight ball.”

  He must have seen her eyebrows rise, because he nodded, his mouth a tight line, brown eyes peering from under his brows.

  “Fifteen years ago wasn’t that far back,” he said. “But even then, to be a black kid from Macon, Georgia, a rookie agent in this bureau…” He shook his head to punctuate the sentence. “I used to have a saying: Every damn day. That’s what it was like. It took me two solid years in the Kansas City office just to get acknowledged. And that was because I managed to screw up on the first real case I contributed to. It wasn’t a big case, or an important one. Some local liquor store owners running a back-door bootlegging operation. But I broke the chain of custody on some evidence—invoices of all things, if you can believe it.”

  She nodded. Didn’t know what else to do. She was totally unaccustomed to someone as senior as an SAIC being this candid.

  “Yeah, hosed it right up. So, a lot of charges dropped. Along with what little reputation I had. But I got past it. Just to have to put up with more bullshit every time I got an assignment with more responsibility.

  “I read your file, Molly. The whole thing. You made a judgment call—you went with your gut. And in the end, you were right. That Stuart guy had a bead on those guys and what they wanted to do. You looked at the pieces, just like you did here. They stole weapons, killed one of their own, and tried to shoot down a freaking seven forty-seven. And would have, had you not put a bullet through Rodney Spears’s head. You did the right thing.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she heard herself say, without a shred of embarrassment.

  “I know the breaks haven’t come your way,” he continued. “I don’t know why. Other than you made some people in the bureau look like they dropped the ball. Not your fault. Maybe they did. And you can believe me when I tell you that when the opportunity comes for you to be in the lead, I’m going to give it to you. But this is not it. This belongs to the DEA. I’d like you to give them the same brief and be the sole liaison for our office, but I’m going to have to say no to organizing a task force.”

  Even though he had softened the blow, and even though she took him as sincere, she fought down a lava fountain of rage and resentment. It wasn’t fair, no matter how much Rollins tried to empathize and pay her due respect and promise to watch out for her. Fuck that. She had busted her ass on this, and she’d be god-damned if she’d stand in front of a room full of smirking cowboy DEA assholes fucking her with their eyes.

  She nodded. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir. May I make a request?”

  He nodded. “As long as it’s not a request for a transfer.”

  She forced a smile. “No, sir. But I pulled some pretty serious hours pulling all this together. Would it be OK if I took a couple days of leave? I could use the break, and I’d like to go back to Virginia and visit my parents.”

  Rollins’s dour expression melted into one of relief. “Absolutely.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. “I’ll pack all this up.” She stood, as did Rollins.

  “Good job, Molly,” he said as he left the room.

  She nodded, her mouth clamped shut.

  DEE

  He limped out the front door and squinted into the glare outside. The Percocet was still buzzing in him, but the sun hurt his eyes as he walked to the rental car.

  He cranked up, hit the A/C at full blast, and pulled out onto the small asphalt road that fronted the house. He hoped this wouldn’t take all day. He had only a couple of Percocets in his pocket and his leg still hurt.

  He rolled into town and turned left into a drive-in restaurant. Hit the power window switch while he read the menu, and when the dude came on the intercom, he ordered the first meal he saw—burger, fries, soda combo.

  He wasn’t there for the food. He had a name, and his job today—as ordered by Hack—was to learn all he could about one Delmer Blackburn. Which shouldn’t be hard. He had a wad of cash, and he could sniff out dope fiends from a mile off. The good dealers always can.

  That cowboy motherfucker Turn had hung out at this joint, before he got his dumb ass shot. Dee looked the place over, with its faded yellow awnings, dirty parking spaces, shitty intercom, and bored-looking staff and decided this was a natural fit for that gunslinging idiot.

  His food arrived, on a tray carried by a skinny teenage boy with dull eyes and acne. Brown hair shooting out from under a red visor.

  “Hey, man,” he said to the boy, “you see Turn around here? He flashed a grin, then went serious, for effect.

  The kid knitted his brow at him, more curious than alarmed. Then shook his head.

  “Dude, Turn’s dead,” the kid said. “Got killed a couple of days ago.”

  “What?” he said. “No shit? What happened?” He handed over a ten for the lunch and pulled the greasy sack into the car.

  The boy shrugged. “Dunno. Cops said drugs or some shit. He got shot over on 12.”

  He feigned a puzzled look.

  “The highway northeast of town, toward the state line,” the boy said.

  “Oh.” He nodded. “Well, damn, I’ll have to read ’bout that in the paper.” He took his change. “Hey, you know any his buddies? I came outta Memphis to see him, and I at least could, you know, say hey to his people.”

  The kid thought. “Only friend of his I know is Alan Ross.”

  “Where he hang?”

  Another shrug. “He works at the Home Depot on 45.”

  “Hey, man, thanks, I’ll stop by.” He took another ten out of his pocket and handed it to the kid, whose eyes went wide.

  “You already paid,” the kid said.

  He nodded. “I know. That’s for you. Tip for being friendly.”

  The kid glanced over his shoulder at the restaurant. Inside, three more teenagers busied themselves with orders for the half dozen other cars parked in stalls around the building. He smiled. “No problem.”

  He found Alan Ross in the paint aisle at Home Depot. Ross was older than the drive-in kid and seemed to know why he was there. That allowed him to cut through the bullshit. It cost him a fifty and two Vicodins, but he got more info on Delmer Blackburn. He was sure to drop enough hints to let Ross know that Blackburn was in deep shit with a bad motherfucker from Memphis.

  “You tell him,” he said to Ross, “he want to parlay, he should hit me up.” He handed Ross a slip of paper with the number of the burner phone he used for such purposes.

  “Yeah, sure, man,” Ross said, a little unsure of what to make of this information.

  He spent the next three hours repeating this routine, crisscrossing the county, chatting up dealers, users, and bartenders. It cost him nearly $400 plus half a dozen pills, but it wasn’t his money or dope anyway. Plus, he was the one got shot. He figured the shit evened out.

  Delmer Blackburn was just a small-town idiot. Worked several jobs here and there in town, lived with his mother for about a year, ever since he lost his job at the Dollar Tree and couldn’t pay the rent. Then, the mother took off, disappeared. Blackburn had been bouncing around ever since.

  Satisfied with the dossier, he headed back toward Columbus to complete the second task: to get the scoop on this Rhonda Raines woman. Hack had been adamant about that.

  He had her address and place of work—courthouse downtown, which, if anybody cared to ask him, was pretty damn risky. But nobody, especially Hack, asked. He also had her license plate number. That shit with her son sounded bad. Drug deal that went south, sounded like. Shot by some white guy dealer. She still went to “grief recovery” meetings on a regular basis.

  He slowed as he drove past the statue of a Confederate soldier on the corner of the courthouse lot. The courthouse itself looked like something out of Gone with the Wind—a towering brick building with huge white columns at the entrance and a clock tower.

  Rhonda Raines was a court officer in that building, and even though he’d prefer to know a little more about where she did that work and when she lef
t for the day, there was no way in hell he was stepping foot inside that building, not with a bullet hole in his leg and a pocketful Percocet. Instead, he rolled past the building and made several turns through downtown until he was reading address numbers off houses and mailboxes until he came to the one that matched the Raines woman.

  He pulled to the curb. Her house wasn’t much. One story, white, and needing a paint job. What little yard there was had mostly weeds and brown, dead spots. Same with the other houses in the area—he recognized it as the part of town where black folks lived, some trying to live a normal life of jobs, kids, and bills and the rest hustling.

  He parked at the curb and limped up the low concrete steps to the front door. He tried the door a couple of times. Locked. He glanced around the neighborhood and thought about walking around back, but decided it was too obvious—plus he couldn’t run for shit if it came to that. Instead, he climbed back into his car, dug a Percocet out of his pocket, tossed it in his mouth, and chewed it as he turned the car around. He headed for the church where the grief recovery meetings were held.

  COLT

  He couldn’t help but smile. John and Gideon Hayes had been going at it for about twenty minutes out in the main office and so far agreed only on the fact that it was morning.

  His pleasure at the scene, which he viewed from the relative safety of his office, was not without its guilt.

  Technically, he should be the one having this conversation with Gideon, going over the particulars of the Calvin Bibb arrest. Hayes had jockeyed for the case as soon as he learned Bibb couldn’t afford a lawyer and that, it being a federal case, he might get a little publicity.

  But John had been first on the scene, and, anyway, a day avoiding Gideon Hayes, even if only for a moment, was a win. John would give him shit about it later, but he’d rather put up with that than one of Hayes’s condescending, loquacious lectures—even though he knew he had one coming himself.