Outside the Law

by Phillip Thompson

  “Oh,” he said. “There is no case. You’re out here snooping around on your own. Probably without authority. Nice. And you have the audacity to call me shady.”

  She jabbed a finger at him, and he raised his eyebrows in surprise, a move that angered her even more.

  “Knock it off, Sheriff, before I run your ass—” She caught herself and settled back into her seat. Took a pull off her beer. Blew out a breath. Then she smiled. “I’m on vacation, like I said. And I happened to hear about this shooting.”

  He smiled back. “Bullshit. Let me guess. You have a hunch about a killer. A hunch not shared by your higher-ups, who told you to go pound sand. You said fuck that and started following this hunch anyway.”

  She nodded. “Something like that,” she said through a mouthful of pork.

  “I thought rogue agents were only in the movies.”

  “They are. I’m officially on leave. That’s the truth. What I do on my own time is my business.”

  “In my county, that means your business is my business.”

  Anger again. “What are you after here, Sheriff? Reelection? This is the third killing in just a few weeks. You haven’t caught the guy. Why not put the word out far and wide and cast a net for this guy?”

  He thought about that question. “Like I said, it’s a local matter.”

  She nearly choked on her food. “Local? Or personal?”

  He crossed his arms. Her impertinence was getting on his nerves. “Look, unless you have some real reason to be here, I suggest you leave this matter to local law enforcement, which in this case is me, and continue your vacation somewhere else, like outside of my county.”

  She leaned back and sighed. “Look, you can sit there with your good-looking smile and all your redneck charm and try to bullshit me, but it’s not going to work. You think you’re the first guy to try that?”

  He shifted in his seat and sipped his beer.

  “Right,” she said. “You’re not. Hell, you’re not even the first one from Mississippi to try it.”

  That intrigued him, and he couldn’t keep a smile from crawling across his face.

  “None of your business,” she said, reading his mind. “And not the point. The point is there’s a man killing people out there, and I think you and I are after the same person. Seems to me we can double the chances of arresting this guy, and everybody wins.”

  He looked at her hard for a second, then figured what the hell. “When I find this guy, I’m going to kill him.”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it. And before you start to tell me that’s not how y’all do things down here, I’ll remind you that this man is likely responsible for more murders than what he’s already apparently committed. So don’t think you can go all vigilante on me. He’s going to be arrested and tried in a court of law.”

  “Really?” he said. “You ever had a man try to kill you, Agent McDonough?”

  MOLLY

  The question hit her like an accusation. One she’d been ready to answer for years.

  “Yes, I have, Sheriff Harper,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “A man named Rodney Spears. Shot him dead on a beach in Hawaii. Had no choice. One in the head, one in the chest, just like I was trained to do.”

  His face changed. Not the insouciant, in-control lawman now. She could tell he was reappraising her and, if she had to bet, liked what he saw in her as a law enforcement professional.

  “Yeah,” she said. “A few years ago. I was still new, working in DC when some rifles went missing from an armory at the Marine Corps base on Oahu. Long story, but I got sent there by the assistant director of the bureau to get a handle on the situation.”

  “Why you?” Harper asked. “Sorry, what I mean is, why not the local office?”

  She shrugged. “Like I said, long story. Back then, I kinda had a rep as a hard charger after cracking a case on a serial bomber in Memphis. So I got sent. There was a small group of locals on Oahu who were basically a domestic terrorist group. Had this idea of forcing the United States to let Hawaii form its own government. Nuts. But nuts who had managed to steal rifles, kill a guy, and steal a Stinger missile from a navy ship. And planned to shoot down a seven forty-seven over Honolulu.”

  “Shit,” Harper said. “Why did I never hear anything about this?”

  “Because the way we were able to stop them was on account of a former agent who lived there, and he was the one who discovered all this. He was a pariah, hardheaded, and fucking brilliant. He figured it all out, and we ended up chasing two guys down a beach at night. We stopped them just as they were setting up. Rodney Spears drew a weapon on me, and I shot him.”

  “So?”

  “So, what?”

  “Nobody even heard about this?” Harper said.

  “Nope,” she said. “The whole thing embarrassed the hell out of ATF. And I got buried. I was sent out there to prevent a former, persona non grata agent—who was kinda going rogue, actually—from doing anything, and I ended up working with him. So I was reprimanded for disobeying a direct order, bringing discredit, blah, blah, blah.

  “That’s bullshit. You saved a lot of lives.”

  “Yeah, it was bullshit,” she said, unable to stop talking. “But it was not long after 9/11 and nobody wanted that kind of shit in the press. So I got exiled back to Memphis.”

  Harper stared at her, nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She took a long pull off her beer and looked away. The room felt hot and uncomfortable all of a sudden.

  Harper kept staring at her. “So this is your chance at redemption.”

  She started at that. He was a quick study, this one. She nodded slowly and looked across the table at him. “Yes, it is.”

  COLT

  “His name is Hackett,” he said. “Lewis Hackett. He didn’t shoot Delmer Blackburn—that was some gangbangerlooking kid with him.”

  He told her what happened on the bridge, and he noticed that even though she took no notes, she took in every word. She was smart and a pro. And possibly doomed.

  He finished his lunch while she walked him through her one-person investigation, and he had to admit she was thorough and intuitive. Her hunches made sense. There was a lot of talk about databases and analysis and macros that he didn’t understand, but he got the gist of it. And it sure as hell sounded like the same guy. He said so as he wiped the barbecue sauce off his hands.

  “So,” she said, pushing her own plate to the side. “How do we get this guy?”

  “Give him his money.”

  She squinted, her face a question.

  “We still have the money Delmer was supposed to give him on the bridge,” he said. “He’ll still be wanting that. And me.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah, me. I have my own long story, but the short of it is, this guy isn’t just after the money. He’s out to bring my head on a plate back to his boss in Memphis.”

  She furrowed her brow. “For?”

  “I shot one of his guys a while back. Local dumbass. But this Hack person thinks he can score some points by whacking me.”

  That surprised her, he could tell. He rose, and she followed suit. “I’m going to talk to John, my deputy, see if we can set up a money meeting,” he said. “When I do, I’ll call you.”

  “You better,” she said.

  JOHN

  “Thanks,” he said as Rhonda refilled his mug with coffee. He’d been there half an hour, sitting at her kitchen table at the end of a workday. Under normal circumstances, he enjoyed the time luxuriating in her company, conversation, and laughter. It had become a very pleasant habit. Except for the discussion of some of the details of his job, which he had just spent the last ten minutes doing. But today he wondered if this would be the last time he would get this opportunity. He had seen Hack up close, and, though he wouldn’t admit it to Colt, the guy caused him to feel fear for the first time in a long time.

  “He’s taking this very personally,” he said. “It’s like this guy, I don
’t know, stirs up something in Colt that sets him off. When we were on the bridge, I watched him change from, you know, a sheriff—a cop—into something out of an old western. He practically dared the guy to pull on us.”

  Rhonda looked back at him. “He does have a way of taunting you.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, but it was more than that. He used a phrase one time—when I got shot. ‘Old anger,’ he called it. He had a look on his face like he was a thousand miles away.”

  She tucked the carafe back into the machine and sat across the table from him with her own cup. “Honestly, John, I never have understood how y’all do what you do. Scares me to death to even think about that. “Losing you. Losing Colt. Either of you.”

  Her words landed on him wrong, especially after the conversation he’d had with Colt. Seemed like every conversation had to include Colt’s name. “I know it’s scary Rhonda, but me and Colt know how to handle it.”

  She nodded, looked down at the coffee steaming in her cup. “I know y’all do but that’s not much comfort when you’re out there handling it. I can’t lose anything else, John. Not after Clifford.”

  “I’m not going to do anything reckless.”

  A smile flashed, then disappeared.

  He blew across the top of his mug, took a sip. “But can I tell you something?”

  She cocked her head at him, curious, maybe even startled. “Of course you can.”

  He cleared his throat. “I like you, Rhonda. A lot, you know that. I like what we have.”

  “But?”

  “But sometimes it feels like I can never get Colt to leave the room.”

  Her brow furrowed, and she looked uncomfortable. “What do you mean?”

  “Even now. You just said you can’t lose him. Look, I know y’all have history. I get that. But sometimes I feel like I’m just standing in for him. Like some kind of, I don’t know, pinch hitter.”

  Her expression told him he had just offended her, and he hated himself for even bringing up the subject.

  “John,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  Rhonda met his eyes. “John, listen to me,” she said in a voice choked with memories. She smiled and looked away, and he saw her eyes mist for an instant, like she had just remembered someone lost a long time ago. “Colt was a sweet, gentle boy when we met. We were so young.”

  “Colt was sweet?”

  “Mmmhmmm, very. But he was also confused, hurt, and very angry. His father’s foolishness hurt him, but he has his own demons. I saw those demons get hold of him, right in front of my eyes, and I don’t want to ever see that again. That old anger you’re talking about. It changed the way I looked at Colt.”

  “How?”

  She looked down at the table. “It was so long ago. Colt and I went out on a date, if you can believe that, when we were in high school. And you can probably guess that a white boy and a black girl on a date didn’t happen too much around here back in those days.”

  He nodded, not knowing what to say.

  She laced her fingers together in front of her and stared off into the distance, or into the past, it seemed. “We went all the way to Starkville just to watch a movie, in the hopes we wouldn’t be seen by anyone who knew us.” She laughed, a low bitter sound. “Turns out, it didn’t matter.”

  “Somebody did see you?”

  “Not anyone we knew. Three boys, white boys, harassed us on the way back to Colt’s car, saying vile, hateful things. Colt made sure I got to the car safely, then he turned on them. It got ugly.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  She pressed her lips together and drew a ragged breath. “It was terrifying, John. Colt was getting beaten by these boys, but he managed to get the car door open, and he pulled out an ax handle—I have no idea where he got it—and he beat all three of those boys to a pulp. I mean, I thought he had killed them. You can imagine how scared I was. I think it scared him as much as me.”

  “Colt?” Really?” He leaned back in his chair. “I had no idea. Never seen him scared. Not even in combat.”

  She rose and refilled their cups. “Yes, well, like I said, it changed the way I looked at him. We drove home and never spoke of it again. And that was the end of our romance.” She smiled at the word, then looked directly at him. “So, no, John, you are not pinch-hitting for Colt, or for any man for that matter. I’m with you precisely because you aren’t like him. Yes, you’re both cops and Marine buddies and all that, but you have that gentleness that Colt no longer has. If he had it at all, it was before that night.”

  He nodded, trying to understand. “I see,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure if he really did.

  She put her hand on his. “Let me put it to you this way,” she said. “Colt has always had my back. When Clifford died, I knew Colt would find the man who did it. I believed it. And I even prayed that Colt would kill him. I really did. I’ve known that about him my whole life. And I’ve always known that he’s there if I ever need that kind of…ferocity. But I could never be part of that—not in a relationship. I don’t feel safe that way. He’s very dear to me. But there’s no denying he’s a violent man. Some people can reconcile love and violence, or accommodate it. But I can’t. You need to know that as much as I care for Colt, it is completely different from how I feel about you. I feel safe with you. Do you understand that?”

  “I think so.”

  “Colt has always had my back,” she said, as if she’d not heard anything he’d said. “And I love him for that.”

  He shrugged. “I love him like a brother, too.”

  COLT

  He had to give it to her, she was fast and professional. If not a bit ambitious for his liking.

  He sat across from Molly at Snider’s, a tiny store near the state line on Old 82. Their table, one of only two in the joint, sat to one side of the store, near the deli counter, at the opposite end of the aisles of home goods and fishing tackle. The other table, occupied by a couple with a toddler, sat on the other side, near the canned goods aisle. The place reeked of cooking grease and the catfish plates they’d each demolished in the middle of the afternoon while the owner/cook/waiter watched them from the register. Over lunch, they’d pieced together a timeline of the murders, and he’d listened to more of McDonough’s theories. She seemed to have a lot of them.

  “Plus,” she said, wiping her fingers with a paper napkin and moving the plastic basket to the side, “I was able to dig a little, now that I have a name.”

  He sipped iced tea. “We already ran him.”

  “Yeah, but you said his juvie record was sealed.”

  “Don’t tell me you—”

  “No,” she said. “Sealed is sealed. She pulled a folder from the backpack at her feet and opened it on the table. “But I was able to pull up his name in some of our d-bases—that’s one thing I’m damn good at.”

  “And?”

  “He’s been connected in one way or another to the Dixie Mafia, a bootlegging ring in Kentucky, and the Mexican cartels—or at least one of them.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Hard to say. Usually, though, it looks like muscle.”

  “So, he’s a well-dressed thug.”

  She cocked her head at him. “Huh?”

  “When I met him, he was wearing an expensive suit. Didn’t come across as some hillbilly thug.”

  “Oh.” She sipped at her tea. “There’s more. Seems that as a teenager, back in Kentucky, he was implicated in the rape and murder of a learning-disabled girl about the same age.”

  He whistled. “That explains the sealed record.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but if you dig deep enough you can still find stuff in newspapers. And this murder created quite the scandal in the holler.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “After the girl died, her father was shot to death in his front yard one night by an unknown assailant. Just happened to be the same day Hackett ran away from home, carrying nothing but his .410 sho
tgun.”

  “Let me guess.”

  “Yep. Girl’s father—Reginald McCall—killed by a single shotgun blast. Apparently he accused Hackett publicly, confronted the elder Hackett at his home. A slight to hillbilly honor, that sort of thing.”

  Outside, he heard two car doors slam. “Anything else?”

  “No, that’s about it.”

  He glanced out the store window and froze. Hack and the black kid were walking toward the door.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  “What?” McDonough said, then looked out the window. “Those two?” Then, “Oh, shit. That’s Hack, isn’t it?”

  He looked across the table at her. She was still cool. “Yeah. Look, head over to one of those aisles where you have a clear line of sight.”

  She understood and was up and gone before he could turn his head back to the window. He grabbed her food basket and pulled it to his side of the table and moved her backpack behind his seat just as the door rattled and the little bell at the top tinkled. Hack strode in, the black kid limping behind him.

  He pushed his chair back and watched them approach. Put his hand on his holster, popped the snap.

  Hack, wearing another expensive suit without a tie, stopped about five feet short. Black kid to his left, hands on his hips.

  “Mr. Hack,” he said, not bothering with preamble. “I hope you’re not stalking me. That would not be a healthy course of action.”

  Hack glared at him. No toothy smile today.

  “Sheriff, you are still in possession of something of value to me.”

  “Delmer? Hell, you took care of him two nights ago. Or was that you?” He pointed to the kid.

  Hack didn’t answer.

  “Oh,” he said. “The money is what you want. Sorry. Impounded. You’ll have to go back to your bosses empty-handed.”

  Now Hack smiled. “Perhaps not. As I alluded to the other night, my employer would pay a generous reward for your badge—dead, not alive.”

  “Do tell. You didn’t fare so well on the bridge. You think you can do that today?”