Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  Maybe Quinton had done him a favor by getting him sent there. Not much else fazed him since then. He thought about that, sitting up on the shelf with his back against the cold concrete block wall, listened to the sounds of rattling keys and clanging iron bars, men snoring or talking. It was just one more part of his life he’d managed to close off. Like too many other things. He’d learned to shrug off what he didn’t want to remember.

  His head throbbed. He had a cut over his brow as well as two cuts on his knuckles where he’d hit Brad. Tomorrow he’d be really sore but tonight he just felt tired. It was probably close to two or three in the morning by now, and guards would come around pretty soon with something that resembled breakfast. Watered down grits, most likely. That should start the morning off well.

  He was under no illusions things would go smoothly in court. Bud Casey may be a good lawyer, but he had a feeling the cops wouldn’t be likely to cooperate. And if Quinton got to the judge before Bud did—well, he pretty much knew how that would go. Judges won elections in Cane Creek when they had Quinton’s backing.

  His cellmate snorted, woke up, and looked over at him. Chantry looked back. Neither said anything, and after a beat, the guy rolled over and ignored him. He put his head back against the wall and tried to relax. Sleep eluded him, but if he could do what he’d learned in the Marines and loosen his muscles, rest his mind and body just enough, he’d get through the night. Tomorrow would take care of itself. It always did.

  He must have dozed sitting up. A harsh clang on the bars jerked up him upright. A guard called his name, told him to stand up and turn around. It had to be early. He did, slowly, looking at the guard warily. He seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place him.

  “Lock your hands behind your head, spread your legs,” the guard ordered, and he did that too, not liking this one bit.

  He got patted down again, then shoved roughly up against the wall and cuffed with his hands behind his back. When he turned his head, the guard slammed him hard against the wall and told him not to move. Leg cuffs were snapped around his ankles. Two guards walked him down the corridor, one on each side like he was a flight risk. Like he’d get anywhere even if he got free from the cuffs. It was quiet, sounds muffled. Dim light kept shadows in the cells and corners he passed, making it even more furtive. This was not promising. Something was up that he was sure he wouldn’t like.

  He didn’t know quite what to expect, but he certainly didn’t expect Bert Quinton to be waiting on him in one of those drab rooms. His belly tightened. Oh yeah. This would definitely be something he’d hate and Quinton enjoyed.

  “You’re up kinda early, aren’t you,” he said when the guard shoved him down into a chair opposite Quinton. “Or late.”

  “My work is never done, it seems. So, I see that you’ve gotten yourself in a situation here, Mr. Callahan. Tragic.”

  Chantry’s throat tightened. “Cathy—is she all right?”

  “A little late for concern, don’t you think?”

  His mouth flattened. “Maybe you need to ask her husband about that.”

  “Do I?” Quinton stared at him coolly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Chantry just gave him a look. After a moment, Quinton sat back in his chair.

  “You’ve always played your cards close to your chest. It doesn’t seem to be working well for you lately. Maybe it’s time you rethink your strategy. Despite the fact that this latest debacle is your worst to date, it’s not too late to make things right. Save taxpayers the time and money and ordeal of a trial.”

  “You mean confess to something I didn’t do just to make you look good? Not a chance.”

  Quinton’s eyes narrowed. “You were always an obstinate boy and you’ve learned nothing over the years.”

  “I’ve learned to recognize a pile of shit when I see it. Or smell it.”

  “Insults don’t faze me. I came here to help you, whether you want to believe that or not.”

  “No, you came here to get a confession the police aren’t allowed to get when my lawyer’s not present. You think because you own half the town you can do what you want. That you’re above the law. You’re not.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice and kept his eyes fixed on him as he said, “Your hands aren’t all that clean, Quinton. I remember that even if you prefer to forget it whenever you can.”

  For a moment nothing was said. The two stared at each other across that small table like two dogs sizing up their opponent. He knew Quinton had to be wondering what and how much he knew. How much he’d risk telling when the right moment came. It was true he kept what he knew to himself most of the time. It was usually safer. But there were times to be quiet and times to talk. He’d learned that through the years, too. The hard part was knowing when to do which. If in doubt, say nothing.

  Quinton shook his head. “You’re making a big mistake, Chantry. Maybe I was wrong about you. You’re not that smart, after all.”

  “You’re wrong about a lot of things.”

  “Perhaps.” Quinton stood up, looked down at him for a minute. “But I’m not handcuffed to a chair and accused of assault with a deadly weapon. You are. Think about that.”

  Like he hadn’t been all too aware of it already.

  Quinton rapped on the door and it opened for him. He paused to look back at Chantry, a faint smile on his face. “I’ll do what I can to see you get treated well. If you change your mind, all you have to do is ask for me.”

  He knew what that meant: Trouble.

  Instead of being returned to his former cell, the guards put him in with two prisoners that looked like refugees from a wrestling tag team. They were waiting on him. Even if he hadn’t been cuffed, he’d have had a tough time, but as it was, the guards “forgot” to take off his cuffs and left him in there with them for a while. By the time they came back to check on him, he was barely conscious. They uncuffed him and left him there, lying on the cold concrete floor and bleeding.

  When the next shift came on duty, they took him to the Quinton County hospital for treatment, and that’s where Bud Casey found him sometime around noon. Furious, he looked at Chantry lying on the stretcher in the emergency room, cuffed to the metal frame. Bud got so mad that even as dazed and in pain as he was, Chantry tried to reassure him he’d make it.

  “S’okay.”

  “The hell it is.” Bud paused in his pacing, looked at him and winced. “You look like hell. I know they put you in with those guys on purpose but we’ll never be able to prove it.”

  No point in mentioning the cuffs. That’d never be proven either. Chantry sucked in a deep breath that made his ribs hurt. He wondered if one of them was busted. It sure felt like it. One eye was swollen shut, his mouth kept bleeding, and he thought a tooth might be loose. He’d been racked and rolled pretty good.

  “Quinton showed up,” he got out after a few minutes, and Bud turned to look at him again with a lifted brow. “Offered to . . . help.”

  “Yeah, I bet he did.” Bud snorted. “Asshole. Dale’s right about him. Always has been. It’s a damn shame—well, enough about that. I found out a few things, got a judge to dismiss the charges. Seems your call to 911 proves you didn’t shoot Cathy.”

  “How’s she doin’?”

  “She’ll be fine. Still out of it, but she’ll make it. She’s at the Med in Memphis. Want to hear what I found out? Herky Welch said he saw Brad Durbin leaving the carriage house just a couple of minutes after he heard the shot. I knew you’d placed a call to 911, so I checked up on it. They keep recordings of those calls.” Bud nodded when Chantry blinked at him. “Yep. Proves you weren’t there alone. Apparently, you thought you’d hung up but you hadn’t. The operator got it all on tape. Heard you talking to Brad, heard him say he hadn’t meant to do it. They’ve got a warrant out for him.”

  That should disappoint the hell out of Quinton. And Gordon. Chantry nodded. Sometimes things had a way of working out after all.

  “And,” Bud continued, “I got a copy of the tape bef
ore it could mysteriously disappear. I know how that happens sometimes. Listen, Chantry, I know this may not be the right time to say this, but boy, you’ve got to think about whether or not you should stay in town. Quinton on your ass is bad enough, but he’s not the only one who’d like to see you go down. Think about it.”

  He had. It’d probably make Bud think he was nuts, but it only made him more determined to stay. He’d only run once from Quinton, and that was to keep Mikey safe. He didn’t intend to do it again.

  Maybe he’d said that out loud, because Bud just stared at him. Then he shook his head. “I hope to hell you know what you’re doing.”

  Yeah, so did he. One thing was for sure, he’d gone too far to back down now. He’d given Quinton something to think about, and if he judged him right, the old man wouldn’t rest until he’d managed to find out what he knew and just how big a danger he could be. He’d covered up the truth about Tansy’s real father all these years, so he’d be pretty anxious it didn’t get out now.

  That was the biggest advantage Chantry had right now. It’d put Quinton on the defensive for a change. He’d be so busy covering his ass, he’d forget to watch shadows in all the corners. And there was a very big shadow living right at Six Oaks.

  CHAPTER 33

  Doc was pretty good about him not being able to come in until the next day. He told him to stay home a couple of days, but Chantry was already bored with doing nothing and showed up at the clinic. Mindy took one look at his face and burst into tears, and then Doc said maybe it was better if he just stuck to the animals for a few days instead of try to meet with human clients.

  During a lull in the busy schedule, Chantry thanked him for calling Bud Casey. Doc just shrugged. “Wouldn’t have known anything about it except Herky called to tell me what happened. I knew you’d need a lawyer.”

  “Seems like Herky saved my ass twice. First by calling you, then by telling the police he’d seen Brad there.”

  “Yeah. The cops didn’t want to listen. Bud had to step in. Have you talked to Cathy?”

  “She’s still at the Med in Memphis. Supposed to come home day after tomorrow, I think. She’s doing okay. Backed up my version, but as far as I know, no one’s seen Brad yet.”

  “He’s probably in Mexico by now. Dumbass.”

  No argument there.

  They sat in Doc’s cluttered office, Chantry in a chair opposite his desk. Magazines stacked high enough to cover half the lower walls, issues of Veterinary Medicine probably going back ten or fifteen years. It was a comfortable clutter. Familiar.

  Doc didn’t ask the obvious question, if Chantry had been fooling around with Cathy, just took the situation at face value. Probably one of the very few in Cane Creek to do that, if not the only one. Even Tansy—who had called to see if he was okay—had danced delicately around the topic as if not wanting to know the answer. He understood. She had to remember that he and Cathy had done a lot of fooling around together once. Hell, most of the town would remember that. Even Cinda assumed they still messed around, but that was forgivable since she had caught them with Cathy’s hand on his goods.

  “I doubt the cops are even looking that hard for Brad,” Chantry said after a minute, and Doc nodded agreement.

  “Quinton probably has a lot to do with that. Brad works for him. Looks bad to have your employee involved in a violent domestic dispute when he’s head of casino security.”

  “With Quinton, violence is probably a job requirement.” Chantry eased into a comfortable position in the chair, flinched slightly when his ribs protested with a sharp twinge. Nothing was broken, but he did have a cracked rib that hurt almost as much. Doctors had bound his chest with one of those elastic bandages, then told him to be careful and not lift anything heavier than five pounds. As if he could have managed that anyway.

  “Chris doesn’t seem so bad,” Doc said, and Chantry didn’t say anything to that. He had his own opinions about Chris Quinton. “Heard he’s decent to work for, tries to be fair when the old man isn’t around,” Doc continued. “Gets his decisions overrode a lot. Quinton makes his life hell as often as he can.”

  He couldn’t work up much sympathy for Chris. Shrugging, he said, “He can leave Cane Creek any time he gets tired of it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  No point in going in that direction. It’d be one of those things they’d just have to disagree about. He changed subjects.

  “Sending Ledbetter’s pup home tomorrow. Did he ever hear back from the breeder about how he got a dog with ICH?”

  They talked for a few minutes about breeders and puppy mills, then the talk switched to a brief discussion of local dog fighting. Chantry hadn’t forgotten his intention of finding out more about Billy Mac Stark. He’d just been distracted for a while. When he had time, he’d ask around and see what he could learn. There had to be more than just Doc and Mindy who knew about it. It’d be an entire underground operation. Dogs, owners, trainers, spectators, lots of betting and money would be involved.

  “You’re liable to bite off more than you can chew if you try to take that on,” Doc said. “I remember when Earl Stryker tried to stop it. He got hurt pretty bad before he decided it wasn’t worth it. Said it was an accident, but how the hell he ended up at the bottom of a gravel pit with two broken legs is still a mystery. Keep that in mind.”

  “So you’re telling me small towns aren’t really less dangerous than big cities.”

  Doc laughed. “That’s a crock. Maybe some folks think that just because they hear about a lot more crimes in big cities, that small towns are safer. Percentage-wise, I’d say Cane Creek is on a par with Memphis or New York. We just keep it quiet better.”

  That sounded about right.

  Chantry went home early, more tired than he’d thought he’d be, and ended up parking in the alley instead of the garage because he didn’t feel like walking down from the main house. It seemed like a mile instead of a few yards. Later, he’d go see Herky, thank him for saving his butt for him. Right now, all he wanted to do was sit down in front of the TV and have a cold beer.

  They’d prescribed pain pills at the hospital, but he figured a beer or two was all the pain killer he needed. He didn’t like anything that took away his choices, and drugs did that to him. A simple muscle relaxer could make him too slow, dull his senses past what he liked. He didn’t drink to excess for the same reason. Only once or twice in his entire life.

  It was a balmy evening, enough of a breeze to cool the air and ground mosquitoes, leach away heat from the day. The courtyard had a pergola, one of those open-air things overhead built of sturdy weathered timbers. This one had vines climbing all over it, dripping down in places, some of them sweet-smelling, some just thick greenery. He wandered out to smoke, restless and uninterested in anything on television. The beer should take the edge off, let him relax a little.

  Dusk slowly sucked light from the sky, shadows deepened, and something like silence eased across lawns and streets. A dog barked, a horn honked, but other than that there were no sirens, no traffic noises. Someone was grilling out, the smell drifting on the wind.

  “Thought you’d be celebrating,” a voice said behind him, and he turned to see Chris at the side of the courtyard, staring at him over a brick planter filled with bright red flowers.

  “Celebrating what? Cathy getting shot? Getting arrested? Getting my ass kicked? Which is it?”

  “Take your pick. You have a way of cutting to the chase anyway.” Chris stepped around the planter and came into the courtyard. One of the lanterns flicked on, gleamed in his hair. “So how does she look? Did she—ask about me? You saw Tansy, didn’t you?”

  He looked at him for a minute. “You’re not going to pretend that you haven’t.”

  Chris leaned against one of the support posts, crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve seen her every time she’s come back. Just not up close.”

  “Why? You like suffering that much?”

  “It’s worse wondering. At le
ast . . . at least when I see her I know she’s okay.”

  “Why the hell do you come talk to me about her? Don’t you have any friends who’d give a damn if you want to whine about lost love?”

  “No.” Chris laughed, but it sounded more bitter than amused. “Not any who I’d want to hear about Tansy. Think I’d want that to get back to my grandfather?”

  Chantry was really in no mood to deal with Chris’s brand of masochism. “Then grow some balls and do what you want for a change. Go see her. Talk to her.” He smoked the last of his cigarette and stuck the butt in a pot of sand, irritable and short-tempered. When he looked up, Chris was staring at him with an odd expression.

  “You look like hell, Chantry.”

  “Thanks. Did I invite you or do you just come with the house?”

  Chris smiled faintly. “I’m not part of the furnishings, if that’s what you mean. Hell, I don’t know why I’m here. Maybe because you’re the only one who knows. Everything.”

  “Just my luck.”

  “Yeah. Listen, I heard my grandfather talking. He’s not real happy with you.”

  “That’s nothing new.”

  “No. But he’s talking about calling a friend at Mississippi State. Pulling some strings. You might want to watch your back.”

  “I always do.”

  “Right. Don’t underestimate him, Chantry.”

  “There’s not much he can do. My grades are good, Doc will vouch for me.”

  “Just keep what I said in mind.”

  “Why do you always come ’round to warn me? Makes me wonder if you don’t have your own agenda.” Chantry narrowed his eyes, studying Chris in the dim light. He still didn’t trust him, still hadn’t forgotten their past. Not that he trusted many people anyway.