They could’ve followed the tracks.
Maybe. You could kill them.
The thought makes his stomach lurch. How many rounds are in the rifle?
Four to begin with. Jackson fired one. I ejected one. I fired one. One left. But I’m not going to shoot anyone else. I can’t do that again.
Don’t say what you won’t do. Think about Mom. Heather.
Or maybe there’re two left. If he had one in the chamber and four in the magazine.
He stops and checks the rifle. Pulling back the bolt, he ejects the round in the chamber. As he does, another one takes its place. Ejecting the second round empties the gun.
Bending to pick the two rounds from the ground, he stands, blows them off, and reloads the weapon.
As he nears the end of the hardwood forest, he veers right, heading in the direction of the four-wheeler without making a conscious decision to do so.
Get to the ATV, then to the truck, then to town. Then what? Who do I go to? Who can I trust?
Pain.
Exhaustion.
Cold.
Fear.
Thirst.
Hunger.
Body cut, scratched, and bruised by the forest, every throbbing step bringing more discomfort.
Unsteady.
Moving slowly now, his shaking and shivering making him stagger and stumble.
Mouth dry, the taste of vomit lingering, he tries to swallow, to quench his thirst, but can’t.
The frigid air causes his throat to feel like he’s breathing fire, his ears so red-cold they feel raw and razor burned, his head so frozen it feels feverish.
Famished.
He’s so hungry, his abdomen so empty, he feels as if his body is starting to consume itself, cannibalizing the lining of his stomach.
Opening his phone, he searches for signal.
None.
14
Now
* * *
The night is foggy now.
The town is empty. Appearing abandoned.
The single traffic light in town has switched, as it does every night, into a flashing caution light, its rhythmic, intermittent red glow splashing on the empty streets and closed businesses of downtown.
As I near our road, I see Chris Taunton, Anna’s ex-husband, standing on the sidewalk of Highway 22 near the old hardware store looking toward our dark house.
I hit my emergency lights and pull over beside him.
The moment he sees me, he begins to walk back toward Main Street.
Throwing my car into Park, I jump out and tell him to stop.
He slows and turns toward me but doesn’t completely stop moving. “Why, officer?” he asks, making a mockery of the word officer. “Sorry, I mean detective.”
“I said stop.”
He does.
“This is harassment,” he says. “I can’t even go out for a walk in my own town without you . . . accosting me.”
“You’ll know when you’re being accosted,” I say. “This is nothing like that.”
“Why can’t I walk without you bothering me?”
“You weren’t walking,” I say. “You were standing here watching our home.”
“I certainly was not, but for the sake of argument let’s say I was. There’s no law against it.”
“There is in this town,” I say. “If you want to walk in the middle of the night, find somewhere else to do it. I don’t want to see you around our home or street again.”
“You really think you can tell me where to walk?” he says. “What to look at?”
“Tell you what I think. I think you’re gonna keep pushing, keep aggravating and irritating in an attempt to get a reaction, the way all stalkers and psychopaths do, but you’re not going to like the reaction you get. Promise you that.”
“You threatening me?”
“Not at all. I’m telling you that this can all be avoided, but if you don’t stop, you’re going to get a reaction, but it won’t be the one you’re looking for.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“I’m not going to take the law into my own hands,” I say. “I’m not going to beat you up or set you up. I’m going to do everything by the book. So keep provoking if you want to, keep stalking and harassing, but it’s not going to end well for you. You’re gonna find yourself right back in prison with even less of a life than you have now.”
“Can I go?” he says.
I nod. “Just remember what I said. And don’t let me see you around here like this again.”
“Sure thing de-tec-tive. Whatever you say.”
15
Then
* * *
—You out there, killer?
Gauge’s voice is so calm, so flat and even, it chills Remington far more than the cold.
—I’m here if you need to talk.
Remington doesn’t respond.
—You ever killed before? Not very pleasant, is it? But you had to do it, didn’t you? See, there are times when you just don’t have any other options. And when it’s you or them, well, it’s got to be them, right? Hey, I understand. I’ve been there. Earlier today, in fact.
Jerking the radio to his mouth, depressing the button, speaking—no thought, no filter, no way to stop himself now.
—Who was she and why’d you have to kill her?
He hadn’t planned to. It just came out, as if independent of him, a rogue bypassing his decision-making process.
—Not knowing really bothers you, doesn’t it?
—She wasn’t trying to kill you.
—There’s more than one way to die. And some shit’s worse than death. A lot worse.
—Such as?
—Things that kill a man’s soul.
—Such as?
—Well, I’m sure there’re lots of things. Ruinin’ a man’s reputation comes to mind. Destroying his family. Taking away everything he’s worked for. I suspect prison would damn well do it, too. But I’m just speculatin’. Who’s to say what would kill a man—or cause him to kill?
—Bullshit justification.
—Don’t be too harsh on me now, killer. You and I obviously have more in common than you’d like to think.
—We’re nothing alike.
—We’ve both taken a life today.
—I killed a man, yes, but you . . . you murdered a woman. Self-defense is nothing like premeditated, unprovoked, cold-blooded murder.
Gauge doesn’t respond.
Remington realizes he’s said too much. He should’ve never started talking to him in the first place.
—Anybody hear anything? Gauge asks. Get a lock on him?
—No.
—Me neither.
—Nothing here.
—Keep looking.
—It’s time to call Spider, the big man says. Get the dogs out here and finish this.
—I think we’re closer to him than you think, Gauge says. Let’s give it a few more minutes. That okay with you, killer?
Remington doesn’t respond, and scolds himself for being stupid enough to do it before.
16
Then
* * *
She’s never had someone look at her the way he does.
It’s frightening and exhilarating at the same time.
He’s so mysterious, so completely unknowable. What’s going on behind those intense eyes of his? Is he thinking the same thing she is? Wanting to do the same things to her she wants him to?
In the past, when she’s been noticed at all, it has been by men and boys she hadn’t wanted to be noticed by. Drunk men way too old for her. Odd boys who saw in her a similar kind of pain and awkwardness and isolation.
He’s not like any of that.
Sure, he’s a little older, but not enough to be . . . Not too much. He’s a man. He’s not an old man. And he’s stable. Secure. Strong. And so handsome. She’s never had a handsome man find her appealing. Why would they?
She has nothing, is nothing. She’s plain and poor and a little pec
uliar. Maybe more than a little.
But she’s capable of love and loyalty. Capable of it in way the popular, pretty girls will never be.
Maybe that’s what he sees. Maybe, just maybe, he can see something with those intense, mysterious eyes that no one else has been able to.
Could it be?
Could this really be happening?
Is it finally her turn to be happy?
She’s not superstitious, but she rubs her bracelet for luck just the same.
17
Now
* * *
Bothered by my confrontation with Chris and still not ready to enter my empty house again, I drive out to the Salt Shaker Lounge on Highway 22.
A rural, roadside bar, 22 is a throwback package and lounge with the most colorful characters in town and a true sense of community. It’s my favorite place in town to visit. Back when I was drinking I would’ve wanted to live here.
It’s late on a weeknight. The joint is empty except for a few serious drinkers well on their way to oblivion scattered around the bar, and two heavily tattooed, scantily dressed, strung out young women over in the gaming area shooting pool.
By the time I reach the bar, the bartender has a tall glass of CranCherry juice waiting on me.
“Thank you,” I say, raising the glass to her.
“Just don’t overdo it,” she says.
Chris Stapleton’s Whiskey and You is on the jukebox and the muted TVs all carry the same program—a snowy hunting show in which women are celebrating shooting huge game they proudly mount on their walls.
As I was hoping, Hank Felty is here, sipping on his usual, face flushed, nose a deep red on its way toward plum.
I slide over beside him.
Hank Felty, who seems older than he is and is mostly retired, was once easily the largest grower in Gulf County and one of the largest in North Florida.
He turns toward me slowly, his eyes attempting to find focus, as he flicks ashes in the small glass ashtray in front of him.
“How’s it hanging, Hank?” I say.
“These days it’s only my balls that hang,” he says. “And they stay around my damn knees.”
He finishes off his whiskey and water and I buy him another.
I pepper him with small talk for a few, then work my way into what I really want to converse with him about.
“You remember Remington James and all those boys getting killed out in the swamp?” I say.
He nods. “Shit yeah I remember that shit.”
“I’m lookin’ into it,” I say.
“No shit?”
“None.”
“Well, I’ll be damned, ’Bout damn time somebody did. Cole was a good man. So was his boy—or was on his way to be . . . coming one. Shame what happened to—well, both of them really.”
“Everybody says you have that many dead men in a shootout, only one thing it can be,” I say.
He nods.
“I just didn’t think we had any operations that big around here by then,” I say.
“Just ’cause I retired don’t mean everybody did. You could say . . . when I went off to . . . college, it created a sort of . . . vacuum. Somebody had to fill it.”
I’ve heard him refer to his stint in prison as college many times before.
“Any idea who?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Ain’t just sayin’ that ’cause you a law dog neither. I truly don’t know. Everything’s different now. Everything’s changed. We used to keep it simple. Hell, we’d grow it out in the woods somewhere—usually on somebody’s property who wasn’t involved, but could keep an eye on it for us. If the shit was found, they’d act shocked somebody had done such a thing on their land. And we’d ship that shit. Wouldn’t keep it on us.”
He pauses to take a sip of his drink and a drag on his smoke, but when he finishes those he’s forgotten what he was saying so just sits there silently.
From over in the gaming area, one of the young women knocks a ball off the pool table and they both yelp and laugh like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“You said you wouldn’t keep it on you, that you shipped it.”
“Oh. Well, yeah. Hell yeah. You won’t want to get caught with it, right? So you grow it on somebody else’s land and then we’d double bag that shit up, put it in boxes and ship that shit Fed Ex or UPS.”
His mention of Fed Ex makes me think of Laura Matthers, a young woman I dated when I first moved back to Florida from Atlanta. She drove into my life on a Fed Ex truck in what seems like a lifetime ago now.
The drive-thru bell dings and the bartender makes her way over to the window.
As I look back from glancing at her I become aware of a new song playing on the jukebox, and I wonder how many have played while I was listening to Hank and thinking about the illegal drug trade in this area. In a particularly sad and poignant song, Miranda Lambert is telling Mr. Tin Man how lucky he is not to have a heart.
“You grow and sell the shit around here, fine, you can make a little money, but you ship it to Tampa or Miami, Atlanta or Memphis, you make three times more—at least.”
I nod and take another pull on my CranCherry.
“Had to make as much as we could on it,” he adds. “Hell, we had to grow three crops every single time.”
“Three crops?”
“Yeah, just to get one. Plant one for the cops. One for other growers watching you, wanting to steal your crop—they used to follow us around when they thought we were going to our field, so . . . you had to go a different way every time and really you needed to lead them to a fake crop. One you planted just for them. And the third crop was yours. Plant three to get one. Do business like that you got to make as much as you can off the one crop you actually get to keep.”
I nod and think about the high price of doing illegal business.
“That many men out there, getting killed like that,” I say, “have to be a pretty big operation, wouldn’t it?”
He nods. “But . . . they could’a been out there for some other reason. Operation that big ’round here . . . Where? Where they growin’ it? How they movin’ it? How’ve they gotten away with it so long? ’Specially after a big shootout like that?”
“Think about who was sheriff at the time,” I say.
“Fuckin’ Robin Wilson,” he says. “You’re right. That would . . . explain it. Crooked bastard. You know why I went away to college? ’Cause he wanted a bigger piece of the pie and I thought I could negotiate with him. He showed me. My way or the highway, man—highway straight to damnation and ruination.”
Miranda finishes telling Mr. Tin Man if he ever felt one breaking he’d never want a heart, and Keith Urban begins telling a sad woman alone in a bar that blue ain’t her color.
“Could he have been behind it all?” I ask. “Pushed you out to take over? So when he was investigating what happened, he was investigating himself?”
He shakes his head. “Wasn’t the type to do any actual work. Just wanted the skim—and a hell of a lot of it—from the work we did.”
While we’ve been talking most of the patrons of the bar have paid their tab and slipped out into the night. Now it’s just me, Hank, the bartender, and one other guy who appears to be sleeping between sips of his whiskey and soda.
“Could it be something besides weed?” I say. “Opioids or something?”
He shakes his head. “Won’t grow around here. We tried. Needs like a damn tropical environment. Not hot enough up here.”
“Any ideas where I should start? Who to look at?”
He shakes his head. “I’d tell you if I knew. Like I say, I liked Cole and Remington. I just don’t think they’s an operation that big around here. Must be somethin’ else. ’Course what the hell else could you even do in the swamp?”
18
Then
* * *
Lost.
Again.
This
tract of land that belongs to him now is so much larger than he realized before. Of course, he may not even be on his property any longer. Depending on where he is exactly, he could have wandered onto paper company land or state protected property or . . . Who owns the piece on the other side? A hunting club?
Occasionally, the cold wind carries on its currents the smell of smoke, causing images of the burning girl to flicker in his mind.
He wonders if his pursuers have built a campfire to huddle around, or if in the distance a raging forest fire is ravishing the drought-dry tinderbox of timbers.
Certain he should’ve reached the pine flats by now, he enters instead the edge of a titi swamp. Do the flats border the far side? All he can do is keep walking, shuffling his feet along the forest floor, scattering leaves, divoting the dirt.
He has no idea of the time, and though it feels like the middle of the night, he knows that even with all that’s happened since he’s been out here, not much time has elapsed.
It’s probably between nine and ten.
—What time is it? he asks into the radio.
The question is addressed to no one in particular, but it’s Gauge’s languorous voice that rises from the small speaker of the walkie-talkie.
—You got somewhere to be?
—Just curious.
—We wouldn’t want to keep you from anything.
Remington doesn’t respond.
—It’s 10:39.
—Thanks.
Is Mom okay? Is she lying on the floor after falling while trying to get her supper or medicine? Hopefully she’s sleeping. Oblivious to how late I am.
Wonder what Heather’s doing right now.
He had told Heather he’d call her when he came out of the woods. Did she grow alarmed when he didn’t or angry that he had failed to keep his word again?
Did her bad feeling cause her to call Mom? Did she discover that I’m not home and call someone to come take care of her? Did she call the police? Even if she had, they wouldn’t begin searching for him until morning. Would he be dead by then?
The Remington James Box Set Page 23