Outside the Law

by Phillip Thompson

  “I believe the odds are in my favor today,” Hack said. He tilted his head toward the black kid, who was doing his best to look tough.

  He stood and stepped around the table, hand still on his pistol. “You sure about that?” he said, and cut his eyes toward Molly. Hack, then the kid, turned to see her standing ten feet behind them, in front of a table where a family stared at this sudden confrontational scene. She stared at Hack with hard eyes and eased her hand to her hip, revealing the pistol under her shirt. He had to fight the urge to smile.

  Hack faced him again, eyes blazing. “Some other time, Sheriff.”

  “Obviously, you know how to find me,” he said. “But hear me on this, Hack. The next time you and I see each other, I won’t be this talkative. Or accommodating.”

  Hack’s lip curled in a sneer. “I look forward to it, Harper.”

  “Not as much as me.”

  Hack turned and stomped out of the store. The kid jumped, startled, and hobbled after him.

  McDonough rushed to the table. “Jesus,” she said. “Why in the hell didn’t you arrest him?”

  He nodded toward the other end of the store. The parents and toddler were as still and mute as the cans on the shelves behind them. “Civilians,” he said.

  Molly’s eyes went wide, then her face darkened in a scowl. “You had me as backup,” she said. “I could have covered him while you walked his ass outside.”

  “I didn’t think of that at the time,” he said, staring out the window.

  “Well, what the fuck were you thinking?”

  “That if I drew down on him with these civilians here, it would have been a bloodbath.”

  She put her hands on her hips, obviously furious. “So a murderer just walks out of here. That’s pretty goddamn stupid.”

  “I’m beginning to think the same thing, now that we’re having this conversation.”

  “I’ll tell you what else is stupid,” she said. “Getting off on this little Gary Cooper thing you got going.”

  He grimaced. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Stupid and negligent.”

  “Shut up, McDonough.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one who let him walk,” she said. She walked around him and snatched up her backpack. “Did you even get a look at the car or the plates?”

  “Ford Taurus.”

  “Tennessee plates,” she said. She put her hands on her hips. “Jesus, Harper.”

  “I said shut up,” he said. “He’ll be back. I have his money.”

  HACK

  He fought his anger back into a box so that he could think clearly. His wrath was awakening and beginning to pace back and forth across his mind, demanding to be satiated. Soon, he told himself. Soon.

  “Dee, I want you to contact Strickland, Foster, and Preston,” he said as the kid wheeled the car back onto the highway, headed west on the two-lane road toward the orange late-afternoon sun. “Tell them their services are required at their usual fee, and they should leave Memphis for here immediately.”

  Dee cut his eyes at him. “You sure you want those guys?”

  “I’m not asking for an opinion or an assessment.”

  “I understand that, but, seriously. I can see Strickland and Foster, even though those two rednecks don’t have half a brain between them. But Preston is a fucking psycho.”

  “He is brutal and efficient and utterly unafflicted with squeamishness.”

  “Motherfucker medieval is what he is. Blowtorch a man’s dick off. That’s pretty fucked up.”

  “Shut up and drive, Dee. And bear in mind that the reason I’m giving this order is due to your recklessness at that bridge.”

  Dee sighed. He didn’t say another word all the way back to Columbus.

  When his anger had cooled, he looked at Dee. “Go to the house, then give me the keys.”

  Dee shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

  An hour later, he listened to the engine cool as he surveyed the downtown street. Even from a half a block away, he could tell what this was. AA meeting. Drunks and addicts were easy to spot, especially in broad daylight and near a church. The men leathery and skinny, with drawn faces and milky ratlike eyes. Twitchy from the detox and the nerve-jangling newness of being dried out and the panicky emotional rawness it caused. They had the faces of the craven, the hunted, the defeated yet defiant. Even the three men who smoked easily on the sidewalk near the entrance to the Baptist church, the ones who obviously had some semblance of recovery, they, too, had shadows behind their eyes, shadows caused by the demons of shame, sin, remorse, and the terrors of jail and the DTs.

  He sat behind the wheel of his car, parallel parked on a downtown street facing the church with a clear view of the entrance to the small brick building behind the sanctuary of the church. He had been idle for twenty minutes.

  The women were worse. They looked like a cross between electroshock treatment patients and horror movie wraiths, stringy and old before they’d had a chance to be young, bellies distended, jumpy like alley cats, shabby in disaster-relief clothing. Addiction was particularly hard on women, he reckoned. None loitered outside to smoke with the men.

  He had begun to think Dee had given him wrong information until he noticed a change in the tide of humanity washing up against the shore of the church.

  The wretches of addiction wandered off, some alone, but mostly in groups of two or three, and as they did, a new wave filled their ranks the same way until a single group of men and women, about a dozen in all, stood near the side entrance of the church. This group wore not the haunted looks of the addicts, but a facade of normalcy to hide that which haunted them. And unlike the previous group, these men and women looked healthy—at least physically—and for the most part, employed, from the painter in splotched coveralls with flecks of dark paint in his white beard to the woman in a dark-green business suit, heels, and expensive leather bag hanging from her shoulder.

  Rhonda Raines came into view fifteen minutes before the meeting was to begin. He recognized her immediately. Dee had been thorough and exceedingly efficient, especially considering he was a young black man in an alien and very white small town. He made a mental note to pass the boy an extra hundred.

  Rhonda Raines, midforties, divorced, never remarried. Only child, Clifford, shot to death last year. The murder was investigated by her longtime friend and sheriff, Colt Harper. Dee reported that some people suggested Harper and Raines had been much more than friends when they were young.

  Rhonda strode past two men puffing on cigarettes with confidence and a smile. A little guarded maybe, but a smile nonetheless, and with far more vivacity than he had anticipated. The grief did not seem to affect her outwardly. And she still had her looks. She wore simple, but not cheap clothes, black pants, white blouse. Gold jewelry and a hint of lipstick.

  He watched her disappear into the church. Out of reflex, he checked his watch.

  He got out of the car, locked it. He had an hour. Might as well check out the barbecue place he’d passed back up the street.

  When he returned, he slipped back into his car just as the meeting broke up. Men and women filed out and stretched their arms, lit cigarettes in the fading daylight, and started or resumed conversations. He watched Rhonda as she made small talk with several women on the sidewalk outside the church. She spoke at length—nearly ten minutes—to one woman in particular, a matronly housewife-looking woman who listened intently. Facial expressions serious, but not grave.

  The conversation carried on at such a length that Rhonda was the last person in the area after the housewife woman walked away, toward the center of town.

  He met her at her car, coming up from across the street and behind her as she unlocked her door.

  “Ms. Raines?” he said, not smiling. He was not a beacon tonight. He was darkness. An unremitting, blank darkness.

  She stepped back, drew her breath sharply. Her right hand knifed into her purse.

  “Do not,” he said. He pulled his blazer back just enough t
o expose the shoulder holster and the big revolver. “You will come with me. Quietly.” He tilted his head toward his car. “This way. In front of me. And trust me, Ms. Raines, I can pull this pistol and shoot you before you can take two steps, if you’re considering an escape.”

  She glared at him. The rage in her eyes, quite the opposite of the fear or pleading or even resignation he expected startled him. She wasn’t afraid of him. That mattered not to the darkness. She soon would be.

  “Move,” he said.

  He walked her to the passenger side, opened her door, and she slid in. To any observer, they were a couple going out for a drive in the hazy dusk.

  From the small of his back, he produced handcuffs, and before she could react, he had secured her wrists to a U-bolt inside the door. He had installed it specifically for this purpose.

  When he was behind the wheel, he looked at her and said, “Do not scream or make any sudden gestures, Ms. Raines.”

  She stared through the windshield, her jaw muscles working. In the fading light, her profile contrasted sharply against the dark-green foliage outside the window. He was pleased that this was a strong woman.

  He drove through town, then took the two-lane road that led back to the rented house. Even though the sun had bled away and the night had come quickly to the clear skies, the day’s heat lingered. He ran the air conditioner at high, the fan providing the only sound in the car’s interior. Rhonda stared out her window with a fierce countenance, as if plotting his murder.

  He swung into the driveway of the rented house, the interior dark and still. Only now did her face betray her fear. This satisfied him.

  She began fighting him as soon as he opened her door, even though she was pulled out at an awkward angle. Her flailing legs clipped his a couple of times, and he was surprised at the pain caused by her kicks. She fought with a fury he had rarely seen, in a man or a woman.

  She quieted only when he sat astride her back and shoved the muzzle of the revolver into the base of her skull.

  He freed her wrists then recuffed her hands behind her back with powerful, deft movements, then hoisted her to her feet and shoved her toward the door.

  He pushed her through, ahead of him. Even with the headlights illuminating the interior, the room was soaked in shadows. Rhonda stumbled and fell hard on her side. She groaned, loudly, and scrambled back to her feet. She was quick, like a cat, but it didn’t matter. She was merely the mouse, and he the cat.

  He stood back and observed her. Her exertions had not tired her. She was sturdy. “Ms. Raines,” he said in a level voice, “I will admit these are rather unusual circumstances for introductions, and I hope you’ll forgive my coarseness. Unfortunately, my options are limited, as I suppose my invitation would have been rebuffed had I simply asked you to accompany me.”

  “Who are you?” she said, her voice as level as his.

  He reached into a hip pocket and produced a folding knife. A high-tensile serrated steel blade, one of his favorites. Very efficient and extraordinarily effective. He rolled it in the palm of his right hand, enjoying its heft and admiring the potential lethality in such a small instrument.

  “That does not matter,” he said, his voice low and soothing. “What does matter is that you obey my orders and cooperate fully.”

  She scoffed, and he felt a flash of anger at her impudence, her defiance of him. He smiled. “Oh, you will, Ms. Raines.”

  “What do you want from me?” Her eyes shot to the knife in his hand. “I don’t have any money.”

  He took her by the arm and led her to one of the bedrooms in the back of the house. “In due time. What I want has nothing to do with money.”

  DEE

  One thing was for sure: he was tired of white guys. And Mississippi. The whole trip had been a pain in his ass, and he’d be glad to be back in Memphis. Every time there was a bunch of these dumbass rednecks around, somebody got shot. Himself included.

  He checked his rearview out of habit, but with the extra concern of knowing the damn car had bullet holes in it. Round here that probably weren’t all that unusual, but still, he sure as hell didn’t need the heat on his ass.

  Hack’s comments before he took off to grab the Raines woman still pissed him off. That Delmer motherfucker had it coming, and he didn’t regret shooting him one bit. Been his plan all along, soon as he handed over the money. Nobody expected that fool to show up with that sheriff, the one Mr. Freeze was supposed to be killing. How in the fuck he showed up there he’d never know.

  Hack played it cool, though. Until they got back to the house. There was a second or two when they were sitting in the driveway, sun still not up, when he was sure Hack was going to kill him. But he stayed calm. Well, not calm, but he didn’t go apeshit, either.

  But that Mexican standoff in that gas station the other day got under Hack’s skin, no doubt. He knew Hack was fuming about Harper just sitting there smart-assing him and that cute little lady cop covering him. He was surprised that Hack didn’t even try to draw down on the man, but he didn’t.

  Grabbing that Raines woman, though, that was something. Wanted to do that hisself. That’s how he knew Hack was burning up to stick it to Harper good. He would have handled that different, but he wasn’t the boss. Still, it pissed him off Hack didn’t even bother to send him to do it—even though he threw in an extra hundred for finding her. Instead, he just sent him out here to hand-hold these three idiots.

  He headed north on the highway to link up with Strickland, Foster, and Preston. Hack called them “an advantage,” but they was really reinforcements. Hack weren’t scared of that sheriff, but a blind man could see that the sheriff was trouble—and not one goddam bit scared of Hack, either. He was way too comfortable standing there on that bridge with a pistol on his hip. And especially in that gas station. Fucker didn’t even get out of his chair.

  That’s why he took a shot at that Delmer moron. Shit was getting terminal in a hurry, and he wanted to make sure he got his in before the shit went down. But it went down anyway. He wasn’t expecting that sheriff and the brother to be so goddamn fast on the draw.

  Truth be told, him and Hack was lucky to get out of there without getting shot all to shit. Hack must have felt it, too, and that’s why he called for extra guys.

  Strickland and Foster were small-time dumbasses who mostly worked South Memphis and across the Mississippi line. “Collections” is what they called the ass-beatings they handed out to bar owners, dealers, whores, and pimps. Neither of them was very bright and had the rap sheets prove it. They were good with their fists and a gun, though, so they had value to Hack.

  Preston, though, was another story. Pure psycho. A lot like Hack, he just realized. Same cold attitude. He heard that Preston once cut a guy’s ears off for not listening good enough. Then made the guy talk into his own cut-off hears as a joke before he shot him. Sick shit.

  He checked his mirror again, saw only one car behind him—way behind him—and hit his blinker as he rolled into the gravel parking lot of a convenience store—Matt’s Mart, the sign said, one of those portable signs with the letters you can put on yourself.

  The three men were already there. He recognized Foster’s truck. Why these guys always drive pickup trucks? he thought as he killed the engine.

  He was halfway to the door when it swung open and Strickland came out pulling a big can of beer out of a paper sack. Looking like he’d been working on a car all day. Strickland recognized him and grinned.

  The other two followed him, both carrying identical sacks. Foster looked like a less grungy version of Strickland: tall, skinny, loose jeans, Bass Pro T-shirt, baseball cap jammed on top of shaggy blond hair that jutted out from the edges like straw. Preston reminded him of a high school football coach—thick through the shoulders and evenly muscled everywhere else, he was linebacker big in black slacks and a short-sleeve white golf shirt that looked too small. Aviator sunglasses under a coal-black crew cut. You’d never guess he was so handy with a blow torch.


  “Yo, Dee, what’s up?” Foster called. Strickland popped the top on his beer and raised it to his mouth.

  He shrugged. “Not a thing, man. You boys look ready to roll.”

  Foster nodded. “Hell yeah. But we don’t need a guide. You coulda just texted us an address. We all got smart phones.”

  Strickland snorted around the top of his can. “Hell yeah,” he said. “Them phones smarter than we are.”

  That ain’t no shit.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, “but Hack was talking about operational security or some shit and told me to make sure I showed y’all how to get there personally.”

  “Buncha bullshit, you ask me,” Foster said.

  “Nobody asked you,” Preston said. They all turned to this sudden seriousness. “So shut up and drink your fucking beer.”

  Exactly, he thought.

  Preston nodded his head toward the highway. “We should get moving.”

  “You in a hurry,” he said to Preston, who nodded again.

  “I am now,” Preston said. His head was fixed toward the highway.

  He turned and looked over his shoulder. A Chevy, woman driver, was turning in and staring at them. He shrugged. “Yeah, good idea, I guess.”

  MOLLY

  She’d been on her way to her latest hotel room after filling the tank on her car when she noticed the Ford Taurus. Tennessee plates, same numbers she’d memorized and run after the encounter with Hack at the convenience store. She didn’t bother to tell Harper—she refused to think of him as “Colt” even though he’d told her to call him that instead of “Sheriff”—because she wasn’t about to get in another pissing contest with him over jurisdiction. He would have just tried to shut her down anyway, if she’d told him she was going to run the plates and go after Hack and the kid with him.

  This kid—young black male driver—was in front of her, and it made her “Spidey sense” kick in. She’d swung around and followed at a distance for a few miles, eyes fixed on the broken taillight—Harper said he’d shot one out. And she couldn’t tell from this distance, but she thought she could make out a bullet hole in the trunk. She fell back on the highway, given the light traffic.