by Ace Atkins
Quinn took a breath, steadying himself. He stared at Childress, waiting for that sorry son of a bitch to meet his eyes. But Childress didn’t have the courage, keeping his eyes down, a good old dog.
“We’re just trying to make some sense of the events,” Wilbanks said.
“I shot one man,” Lillie said. “I shot a corrupt officer trying to kill Sheriff Colson. I used my Winchester model 70 and turned that weapon over to the state. But y’all can go straight to hell if you believe that in the heat of the moment I put down a gun I’ve been shooting since I was a teenager and picked up a tactical fifty-cal to cover my tracks. That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”
“What’s strange to us,” Childress said, finally speaking, looking up from the floor, “is that some of these puzzle pieces got some weird edges.”
Quinn had to hold on to the armrests of his seat, dig the hell in, or else he felt he might launch over the conference table and grab the bastard by his wispy hair or mustache and bang his head on the table.
“That weapon never belonged to Deputy Virgil,” Stevens said. “Are y’all gonna charge my clients today? Or did you just want to piss a little in their morning coffee?”
Wilbanks coughed into his hand and wiped his face, sweating even more, as the meeting continued. He looked over at Childress and licked his lips. “We’d hoped to get some kind of statement from Miss Virgil regarding these events. To clarify.”
“Chief Deputy Virgil,” Sonny Stevens said.
Wilbanks apologized and looked down at the legal pad on his desk. He tapped a pen on some penciled notes, waited a few long seconds, and looked across the table. “Do you mind if we change topics for a moment?” he asked. “We did have another reason for calling this meeting.”
Stevens cut his eyes over at Quinn, smoothed down his tie, and circled a couple fingers for him to go ahead, tell them what he wanted.
“You’ve reopened a cold case from 1977?” Wilbanks asked.
Quinn nodded.
“How’s that coming?” the fat man asked.
“I’m a little confused here,” Quinn said. “What’s that investigation have to do with the shooting last April?”
“Our office has taken a big interest in that case,” Childress said, speaking up. “The district attorney wanted us to ask personally how y’all were making out.”
“Well,” Lillie said, “we’d be further along if we weren’t being called out for bullshit questions. Or having to wait around while you boys creep my house. Do you know what a fucking mess you left my panties drawer?”
“Just doing our jobs,” Childress said.
“Just like us,” Quinn said. “Without question.”
“Why’s the old case so important?” Stevens asked. “With eight counties, it’s not like y’all are sitting around with your thumbs up your asses.”
“This one has caught the attention of the DA,” Childress said. “It has a lot of personal significance for him.”
“Did he know the victims?” Quinn asked.
“Victims?” Childress said. “I know of only one.”
Quinn stared at Dale Childress and said, “Just which case are we talking about?”
“The lynching,” Wilbanks said. “That black fella who they strung up in the tree, shot and burned.”
“How’d you know about that?” Lillie asked.
“You’re not looking into what happened?” Wilbanks said.
“We didn’t say that,” Quinn said. “But why would you want to know about something that happened nearly forty years ago? Our investigation is tied to a completely different case.”
“The DA would be grateful for y’all making some headway down in Jericho,” Wilbanks said. “The racial edge to this crime is something he’d like to see addressed. We know about the rape and murder that may have sparked this crime. But the law was ignored and this man’s rights were violated.”
“I don’t know whether to punch y’all,” Lillie said, “or stand up in salute.”
“How about both,” Quinn said.
Sonny Stevens raised his hand, trying to quiet his clients. “And why would your office entrust an important case to law enforcement officers they say they don’t fully trust?”
“We have to follow up with the shooting,” Childress said. “Just as sure as y’all will be following up with that lynching. Now that new witnesses have come forward.”
“Y’all really keep tabs on Jericho,” Lillie said. “Did you find that out before or after y’all went through my panties?”
Sonny Stevens held up a hand, telling everyone to settle the hell down. “Am I hearing some kind of quid pro quo situation on the table? Some folks charged in exchange for an end to this ridiculous investigation of my clients?”
Wilbanks swallowed, patted his sweating head, and looked to Quinn and Lillie and then back to Stevens. “No, sir. We’re simply stating the DA and his entire office would be grateful if some headway could be made in a pretty ugly chapter here in north Mississippi. The two items are unrelated.”
“Well, god damn,” Stevens said, shaking his head.
“What’s that, sir?” Wilbanks said.
“Politics do trump all,” Stevens said, stood, and buttoned the top button of his suit coat. Quinn stood more slowly, Lillie following them both, walking out the door. No handshakes, no words said, until they were out of the stale, sour-smelling building and in a parking lot, facing the back of the Oxford town square.
“Sneaky motherfuckers,” Stevens said. “They wouldn’t admit it with their feet to the fire and their cojones in a vise. But they want y’all to come up with results and make this local turd into the next attorney general.”
“I never owned a gun like that in my life,” Lillie said. “They seeded it to make sure.”
“Guess they thought y’all needed some extra incentive,” Stevens said. “But what in the world would make y’all not follow through on an investigation you’re already working on? And this case has been around almost forty years. Who the hell is in such a rush for something so goddamn old?”
• • •
Stagg heard them as he was finishing up a plate of fried catfish, coleslaw, and beans at the Rebel. The sound was something terrific, drowning out even the 18-wheelers rolling in off Highway 45. He watched from the red-padded back booth and saw a good thirty, forty of those shitbirds on two wheels zip between the gas pumps and the restaurants, finding a place to gather above the semi lot. Mr. Ringold excused himself to go out and get himself a better look. Stagg stood, dropped a couple bucks on the table as was his custom with the waitresses, and walked down the long row of stools at the dining counter, past the truckers hunched over their meat loaf and chicken-fried steak not giving one shit about the noise shaking the plate glass. Only a couple of his longtime waitresses gathered by the register, witnessing the entire Born Losers Motorcycle Club come back to town.
Stagg kept standing there with hands on hips, reaching over by the candy displays and finding a couple peppermints in a big white bucket, offered on the honor system to benefit a home for abused kids over in Grenada.
He walked out slow and easy, seeing the men getting off their bikes, taking in the bright and cold day. The sound of their growling pipes still ringing in his ears as he made his way to the pumps and over to the higher ground where they’d parked. Hot damn. Here we go.
One man separated himself from the others. He had a shaved head and wore a thick black leather jacket with leather pants with high leather boots. He had on dark sunglasses and his face was a mess of tattoos, ink on his chin and down his cheeks and over his throat. The closer he got, Stagg could make out that the ink on his chin was that of a devil’s goatee and the one on his neck was one of those dreamcatchers that he sold in the Rebel for four dollars and ninety-nine cents. Genuine Choctaw but made in China.
“You Johnny Stagg
?” the man said. His voice was gravelly and thick, accusing as an old woman’s. Stagg figured the boy was in his late forties or early fifties, hard to tell without any hair and all those goddamn crazy tattoos.
Stagg just nodded.
“You sure don’t look like much.”
Stagg didn’t say anything.
“I hear you run this shithole.”
Stagg grinned, not being able to help himself, this boy was the genuine article of swagger and bullshit. He was pretty certain that even this boy’s momma didn’t love him.
“Y’all’s food any good?” the man said. “We’ve been riding all morning from Meridian.”
“Why don’t you see for yourself?” Stagg said. “Try the lemon pie.”
“And the titties out back?” the man said. “We talking local talent or Grade A? I don’t want some toothless, pregnant skank grinding my pecker for a dollar.”
“The bar doesn’t open till four,” Stagg said. “You might have noticed that on the billboards if you boys could read. You sure do have a mess of them with you.”
“Johnny Stagg,” the man said. “Damn, it’s good to see you. I sure have heard a bunch of things.”
“Is that right?” Stagg asked, not giving a damn but drawing things out, seeing Ringold making his way out through the dozens and dozens of parked trucks and finding some land up above the Rebel.
“I heard you were sneaky as hell,” the man said. “Smart. Tricky. That if a man turned his back on you, you’d stick it hard and high inside him.”
Ringold was just a shadow on the ridge over the tattooed freak’s shoulder. Stagg just now caught the glimmer of a rifle scope from above. Money well spent.
“Might be true,” Stagg said. “Might be true now.”
“We didn’t come for trouble,” the man said. “We came to eat country chow and see some big ole titties. If they ain’t dancing now, you better go wake them up and say you got company. Shake ’em hard and long.”
“We don’t open the Trap till four.”
“The Booby Trap,” the man said. “That’s clever as hell. You think of that all by yourself, Mr. Stagg?”
“I sure did,” Stagg said. “And it’s made me a rich man.”
“But you didn’t get really rich until about twenty years ago,” the man said. “I was there. I remember. You just don’t remember me, do you?”
“What’s your name, son?”
“Animal.”
“Your momma name you that?”
“It’s what you’ll call me from now on,” the man said. “And, sir, we’ll be regulars here for a while. Just getting things ready.”
“I’ve been expecting y’all,” Stagg said. “As long as you tend to your manners, there won’t be no trouble. Buy your gas, buy a plate lunch. Y’all can go in like normal folks to the Booby Trap when we open. But, son, just don’t try and get tough with me. I got myself a real weak stomach and the indigestion.”
“You know that hell is coming,” Animal said. “Right?”
“I’ve gotten his letters from Brushy Mountain,” Stagg said.
“This is our county now,” he said. “Understood?”
“Is that so?” Stagg said. “Hmm.”
“Goddamn right.”
“OK,” Stagg said. “But I sure would be careful about gloating too much on your big ole fucking hog. There’s a high-velocity rifle aimed right at your head, boy. Have you ever seen what one of them things can do to a watermelon? When it explodes, it makes a hell of a goddamn mess.”
The man, Animal, kind of laughed. But when he turned to look over his shoulder, his face turned a few more funny colors. He didn’t say jack as he walked back to his men and their rows of shiny chrome Harleys.
Stagg flipped a peppermint into his mouth, crunching it with his back teeth.
Diane noticed the old truck following her not two seconds after leaving the Jericho Farm & Ranch. Not that a beat-up white Chevy was strange, but it was clear to her the driver had been waiting. He’d been parked on the gravel, westbound on Cotton Road, and after she drove east, he made a U-turn and kept on her truck real close. She’d promised that these bastards wouldn’t spook her any. She’d decided just to pretend they weren’t even there unless they got too close and she’d call the sheriff to get them off her ass. She headed on to the town square, following up and around, and then spit out the other side of Cotton Road, toward Highway 45, following it past where the old Hollywood Video had been and the Dollar Store, coming up into the lot of the Piggly Wiggly. The storm had torn the ever-living shit out of the Pig, the metal roof of the store sucked into the tornado and most of the goods either taken or given away.
But now, it looked like the same old Pig that had been there since the late sixties. Diane parked in the lot, saw the white Chevy roll past her, up and around the lot, and park back toward the Shell station.
Diane would not let the bastards scare her or change her routine. She wanted to pick up some beef cuts, potatoes, and vegetables for a stew. If someone wanted to make something of it, she had a fully loaded .38 Taurus in her handbag.
Despite all the repairs to the roof and the foundation, not much had changed inside the Pig. They had the same old registers, the same manager’s box perched above the gumball machines, and a little café where they served fried chicken and biscuits. Diane started off in the produce, getting some red potatoes, carrots, onions, and some celery. She wished they had a good bakery in town, tired of all this crummy, tasteless white stuff they kept. She’d never made bread herself, but maybe she needed to learn.
Diane looked over her shoulder, not seeing anyone or anything, and kept on heading over to dairy. She loaded a jug of milk and butter into her cart. The speakers above her were as new as the ceiling, but the manager still played the same music, that soft elevator stuff of not-so-recent hits, an instrumental of Kenny and Dolly’s “Islands in the Stream.”
The butcher shop was along the far back wall and she searched through the plastic-wrapped packages for something cheap, but not too tough, that she could leave simmering in a Crock-Pot. A woman at her church once told her you could leave an old shoe in a Crock-Pot and make it soft. But that wasn’t altogether true. The meat was the base for everything and you might as well spend a little extra.
“Y’all having steaks tonight?” said a man behind her.
She turned to see a short, odd, crummy little guy in thin Liberty overalls wearing a trucker hat. He was somewhere in his seventies and had a nose that looked like a rhubarb.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “do I know you?”
“E. J. Royce,” the man said, smiling.
“Mr. Royce,” she said. “I apologize.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “It’s been a while. I switched over the Co-op on account of it being closer to my house.”
“So I see,” she said. Royce had on a Tibbehah County Co-op trucker’s cap.
“How your boys?”
“Moved away.”
“How old are they?”
Diane told him, and she placed the package of stew meat in her cart and started to turn away. “Good seeing you.”
“And your momma?”
“Not well,” she said. “She has Alzheimer’s.”
Royce edged his cart gently in front of Diane’s, cutting her off, the old man smiling, face chapped and worn. His flannel shirt so thin, it didn’t look like it could stand another washing. “Listen,” he said, “Miss Tull.”
Diane stared at the man. The music above them playing more instrumentals, “Always On My Mind” sounding as syrupy-sweet as possible. She backed away the cart but studied the old man’s face and the eager look in his faded blue eyes. “Did you just follow me?”
“Me?” he said. “No, ma’am. I just came in here to get me some of them Hungry-Man dinners. I swear to you, you don’t need to cook nothi
ng. They make a hell of roast beef and potatoes. But their chicken and gravy is just like something your grandmomma might make.”
“Do you drive an old beat-up Chevy truck?”
“Ma’am,” Royce said, “I don’t want to take much of your time. I just seen you in here and thought to myself, ‘Yep, that’s Diane Tull.’ I was just talking about you the other day with some old buddies. You know, I used to be in law enforcement. I proudly retired after twenty-five years of commitment to this county.”
“What do you want?”
Royce removed his hat, showing he didn’t have hair except on the sides, and scratched his bald head. He didn’t have anything in his cart. She moved back her cart another few inches, wanting to get away but at the same time curious about why Royce was following her. A bearded young man on a motorcycle. And now this old coot. Maybe she just attracted the crazy folks like those bugs to her porch light.
He slid the hat back on his head, leaned his forearms on the cart’s basket, and looked in either direction. “I hear you gotten curious about some things might have happened after y’all had all that trouble.”
Diane Tull looked at Royce right in his cataracted eyes. “What of it.”
“Don’t blame you,” he said. “You may not recall, but me and Sheriff Beckett were the first ones who got to you, after you walked a spell out on Jericho Road. That trucker seen you all bloody and called it in on his CB.”
“I remember.”
Royce nodded, all serious. “God help y’all for what you girls went through.”
“I just came here to make some stew,” she said. “I don’t need anyone laying their hands on me in the meat aisle. I don’t think Jesus makes visits to the Piggly Wiggly.”
“I just think you need to be more appreciative to those who took care of your troubles.”
“Come again?”
“You don’t need to embarrass the folks who looked out for you and Miss Stillwell when y’all needed them,” he said. “You weren’t in no shape to be put through a trial. Things got done that needed to be done.”