The Forsaken

by Ace Atkins

  Quinn stood. He looked down at Stagg.

  Ringold stood, too, and Stagg stood between them, his nose and lacquered teeth inches from Quinn’s face. “You don’t know?”

  Quinn stared at the man, thinking about what exactly would happen if he punched Johnny Stagg in the throat and tossed him from his office. Ringold would try to stop it, but most of the job would already be done.

  “Your goddamn daddy rode with them sonsabitches,” Stagg said. “He was a full-on member of the Born Losers when they hung that man high from that tree out on Jericho Road. That’s why you won’t touch it. It’s too goddamn close.”

  Quinn didn’t say a word. He breathed and studied Stagg’s craggy, misshapen face.

  Stagg walked out of the office. But Ringold hovered there, hands loose and easy at his side, tilting his head to the side and giving a wry smile, before following behind Johnny Stagg.

  There was snow two weeks later, not much of it, maybe a dusting of an inch, ice over the bridges and some slick spots on the paved roads. Quinn had gone back to night patrols, Lillie taking on the day. It wasn’t even 1800, but the sky had grown black as Quinn met Lillie outside the Dixie gas station, the bright lights and neon shining onto frozen puddles. She parked her Jeep and climbed in the F-250 passenger seat, holding two large accordion folders and an old cardboard box.

  “Merry Christmas.”

  “It’s almost February,” Quinn said.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day, then,” she said, “if you’re into hair samples, dental prints, three shell casings, and an old pair of combat boots . . .”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lillie said. “I only had to put in five written requests and call the state office about fifteen times before they replied. But here it is, delivered to the SO today, signature only.”

  “I wonder why the local DA didn’t look for it.”

  “Because they didn’t know,” Lillie said. “I got passed around to every son of a bitch in the attorney general’s office until I found the archive. And then I had to call the archive with a creative list of search criteria. This all was filed in 1979 when the evidence was sent for safekeeping. The case was just ID’d as an unidentified body. There was no murder case or corresponding paperwork from your uncle.”

  “We knew that.”

  “But here we go . . .”

  “Now what?”

  “I’m going to drive it over to Batesville in the morning,” Lillie said. “With a lot of sweet talk and my charming personality, we should get some DNA results back in a year or two.”

  “You shitting me?”

  “We got one lab for this region,” Lillie said. “A year is being generous.”

  “What kind of shells?”

  “Twenty-two long.”

  “And the boots?”

  “Boots,” she said. “Black boots.”

  She handed Quinn the box and he opened the top and reached inside. The boots were very old, cracked black leather with worn rubber soles and smelled of mothballs. They had twelve eyelets but no laces, the topmost eyelets busted from their holes. Quinn studied the tongue of the boot, barely making out the name. CORCORAN. MADE IN THE USA. “These are paratrooper boots from the sixties,” Quinn said. “I saw my fair share in surplus stores when I was a kid. I used to love going in those places.”

  Quinn put the old boots back in the box and handed the box back to Lillie. “More stuff in the files for you to read,” Lillie said. “The dental impressions are incomplete. Teeth missing. The lower jaw apparently had been removed.”

  “If he wanted to keep it quiet,” Quinn said, “why in the hell wouldn’t my uncle just destroy it? Not send it on as a John Doe?”

  “He didn’t investigate,” Lillie said. “But I guess he figured this fella’s life was worth the price of a stamp.”

  Quinn let out his breath. Light snow swirled in the headlights of his truck. It was very quiet and very cold outside.

  “Any word from Miss Jean?” Lillie asked.

  The heater ran fast and hard in his truck. “Nope,” Quinn said. “She denies my dad was ever part of that crew. She told me she’d rather me quit discussing the matter altogether.”

  “Sounds like Jean.”

  “And since that talk, she’s gone to half a box of wine a night.”

  “Hit that nerve.”

  “Guess so.”

  “But you believe Stagg?”

  “I’d never take Stagg at his word,” Quinn said. “But I spoke to J.T. He fixed bikes and rode with the Losers some. He confirmed it. He said my daddy was a full-patched member.”

  “Between raising hell and making movies, he was riding with a gang?”

  “Club,” Quinn said. “J.T. said they were just a club and most of them decent folks.”

  “Chains LeDoux?” Lillie said. “You see his sheet?”

  Quinn nodded. “Hard man,” Quinn said. “Did three tours with the Marines in Vietnam. Came home to Mississippi to raise hell.”

  “What’d J.T. say about the lynching?”

  “At first, he pretended not to know,” Quinn said. “I brought a six-pack with me and after about four beers he said he recalled what happened but believed they got the right man.”

  “He was with them?”

  “He said some of the club didn’t go,” Quinn said. “He said he didn’t see it.”

  “Would you admit it?”

  Quinn shook his head. “Nope.”

  “And Hank Stillwell?”

  “Says he tried to stop it,” Quinn said. “He said he called Judge Blanton from a pay phone to talk some sense to the boys because my uncle was away.”

  “But Blanton didn’t want to get involved?”

  “That’s what he said,” Quinn said. “He claims Blanton wanted him to allow God’s will after hearing what had happened to Lori.”

  “Blanton,” Lillie said. “Jesus H.”

  “And Jason Colson, too.”

  Lillie shook her head, her face half shadowed in the dim light by the pumps. “Did your dad really date Adrienne Barbeau?”

  “And Suzanne Somers,” Quinn said.

  Lillie raised her eyebrows.

  “Maybe at the same time.”

  “Must’ve been hard for your mom,” Lillie said. “Having a wanderer like that around.”

  “Funny thing is that Jean swears to Christ that he never cheated on her,” Quinn said. “I know she loved him. A lot. She’ll talk about Elvis Presley all goddamn night, but one word about Jason Colson will send her tearing up, rushing out of the room.”

  “What happened?”

  “He left,” Quinn said. “Three or four times. Each time, Caddy and I thought it was for good. But he’d keep showing up like a house cat. Then that all stopped.”

  “Birthday cards?”

  “For a while.”

  “Calls?”

  “Almost never.”

  “Why?”

  Quinn’s diesel engine kept on chugging into the cold night, light cutting through the darkness and the long bend of Jericho Road. The little snowflakes hitting the asphalt and burning down to nothing.

  “Go relieve that sitter for Rose,” Quinn said. “I’ll call later.”

  “Roger that.”

  Lillie reached for the door handle and started to get out. She pushed a bunch of her long curly hair behind her ear. She was strong and hard-edged, but could be tender and loving, too. She just didn’t show that side to people she didn’t trust. “You know all the talk about the DA wanting this thing for political points is Grade A bullshit.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “Johnny Stagg is shitting his pants,” Lillie said. “Chains LeDoux goes free on Friday.”

  “We could just stand back and watch,” Quinn said. “Might be interesting.”

 
Lillie gathered the box of boots in her arms and shook her head. “Damn, I wish it were that simple.”

  Quinn watched her walk back to her Jeep and then circled his big truck back to the main road, night dispatch reporting a domestic dispute in Sugar Ditch. A man had threatened to kill his wife. Neighbors had gathered outside the home to watch. OK. Another night.

  Quinn hit the light bar and the siren and rode off.

  • • •

  Diane Tull rode out to the Jericho Cemetery with Caddy Colson after closing up the Farm & Ranch that night. Caddy had started off by visiting Jamey Dixon’s grave every day, and then, when that became too painful, every week. She sometimes brought flowers, other times just scribbled notes or Bible verses, but always left with two fingers first pressed to her lips and then to the cold headstone. It was snowing just a bit when they got there, a few streetlamps shining on the flat land where Jericho people had been buried since the town’s founding.

  Caddy used the flat of her hand to brush away snow on top of Dixon’s headstone and Diane put a hand on her shoulder and then walked down the rolling hill, the light growing dim, more of the headstones and markers now in shadows. But she could walk there blind, to the big headstone of Lori’s grandfather, who’d fought in World War II, and the other various markers of the Stillwell family. Lori’s was curved and simple, a basic inscription:

  LORI ANN STILLWELL, MAY 9, 1963 TO JULY 4, 1977.

  I will fear no evil as thou art with me.

  Diane hadn’t been here in a long while, maybe not since she’d come back to Jericho. But seeing the dates, knowing that so much time had passed, that she wasn’t that smart-mouth kid anymore but a graying woman with two grown sons, seemed like a dream. It was all there, that funeral, when they’d all stood there on that flat of land. That stuttering, sweating preacher trying to search and grasp and not find one true word to make sense of what happened to her that summer. Diane just remembered feeling more sorry for him than anybody, him finally just shutting up, closing his eyes, and praying that Lori would find eternal life and peace and all that sort of thing. This was never an ordained thing or willed by God’s master plan. It was just horrible and the preacher knew enough not to say otherwise.

  As Caddy had done for Dixon, she wiped away the snow from the top of the granite headstone and just hovered over where they’d buried Lori’s body. The ground was hard and cold and she tried to summon up some good thought, maybe a prayer or a song that she knew Lori would have appreciated. She should’ve brought flowers.

  In her mind, she saw Lori smiling and laughing, sitting on that warm stone in the middle of the creek with fireworks cracking overhead, and Diane smiled, too. But the way her mind worked, it all faded to the face of the man who’d forced himself on her and Lori, and then, that not being enough, shot them down on that hill. That disfigured face and the way he spoke with certainty and a goddamn ownership of them both crowded the laughing Lori right out of her head. It always did.

  Diane closed her eyes and told Lori she was sorry.

  When she opened them again, it had started to snow much harder, falling crooked and cold on the hillside, as she walked back up to where Caddy now stood by the truck.

  “Did it help?” Caddy said.

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither.”

  “They’re not there,” Diane said. “I don’t know where they are, but they’re not in this place.”

  “You know what I want?”

  Diane opened the door to her truck and waited.

  “I want to go to the bar and line up fifteen tequila shots end to end,” Caddy said. “I want to take any pill I can find on the bathroom floor and I want to wake up in about a week, if I wake up at all.”

  “I don’t like that plan.”

  “Me neither.”

  The women climbed in the truck cab and Diane cranked the engine, the windshield wipers clearing the view as she turned out of the cemetery.

  “I have a fine son,” Caddy said. “And good people who need help. That’s what I told Jamey. I told him he’d helped me find my strength.”

  “I don’t know if it’s strength,” Diane said, “but I’m not scared at all. I changed my mind about wanting all this to go away. I want the light to shine on everything that happened. I want people to know about the man that was hung. How could anyone do that and say it was a gift for me? I never asked for anyone to be murdered. Those men left a dark stain on everything since.”

  “There’s something you need to know,” Caddy said as they rode back toward The River, where she had left her old truck. “Quinn told me our father used to ride with those men. I’m ashamed of it. But I’m not surprised that’s where I came from.”

  “You’re a great woman, Caddy.”

  “No,” she said, “I’m not. But I’m trying like hell to be good.”

  “I’m not afraid of those bikers,” Diane Tull said, taking the curves and turns, shining the headlights up onto that old barn church. “I’m not. Every night, I pray that they’ll come back for me.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to look them right in the eyes and tell ’em to eat shit.”

  You know the worst part about being a goddamn train conductor at a shopping mall?” asked Quinn’s Uncle Van.

  “Dodging shoppers in the food court?”

  “No, sir,” Uncle Van said. “Hemorrhoids.”

  “That kids’ train really jostle you that much?”

  “It’s the sitting,” Uncle Van said. “I get paid two bucks a kid to ride them around from Sears, past the Victoria’s Secret, and then back down by the playground. You know by that Build-A-Bear workshop?”

  “It’s been some time since I’ve been to the Tupelo Mall.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Uncle Van said, frying up a hamburger patty on the stove. “Bring Jason on by and I’ll let him ride for free.”

  “That’s nice of you,” Quinn said. “Caddy said she had a trip planned.”

  “That boy’s my kin,” Van said. “You ever hear me say anything about him being a little dark?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He looks just like your daddy after he’d go down to Panama City Beach and get himself a tan.”

  Van slipped the burger into a bun and went to his refrigerator to crack open a Bud for him and one for Quinn. They both stood up in his kitchen as Van ate. He lived in a trailer in a little collection of trailers near Fate called Chance’s Bend. Van’s newest profession at the mall had gone on longer than most of his careers except maybe painting houses. There were a few years that he mainly made a living by trapping coyotes and collecting bounty from a federal grant.

  “How’s your momma?”

  “Fine,” Quinn said. “Been a little tight at the farm, with her and Caddy moving in. Momma’s house should be finished in a month.”

  “Damn contractors tell you a month, you better plan on six,” Van said, taking a big bite, ketchup spilling on his white T-shirt. “That’s the way they work. I know ’cause I used to do that shit.”

  Van was a fat man with a chubby face and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. He’d always reminded Quinn of a Buddha statue. He once saw one in a Chinese restaurant in Memphis as a kid and he remembered thinking at the time that his uncle had suddenly become famous.

  Quinn sipped on the beer, not to be rude. He’d be riding on duty till 0600 and the roads were already getting slick.

  “Hadn’t seen you much since the storm,” Van said. “God damn, we got lucky out here. Someone was to fart in a different direction, I wouldn’t have nowhere to live.”

  Quinn nodded. He smiled at Uncle Van, the man still wearing his conductor’s hat from his day job. He chewed and chewed and then said, “On the phone, you said you had some questions for me. Go on. Shoot.”

  “I tried Uncle Jerry,” Quinn said. “But he’s out on the road, Aunt Dot
said somewhere in Texas, and not taking any calls. I needed to learn some things about my dad.”

  Van stopped chewing. He put down his burger and wiped his mouth. “You hadn’t ever asked me word one about your old man. Is he in trouble again? What the hell did he do now?”

  “Nothing,” Quinn said. “I’m trying to find out what he was doing here back in ’seventy-seven when he started dating my mother.”

  “He was still working in Hollywood,” Van said. “He’d come through maybe once a year to see family, check on your grandfather before he kicked the bucket. ’Seventy-seven was the year our momma died and he came back to help get Daddy settled. He wouldn’t have ever come back after that except on account of your mother, trying to make that all work, trying to stay away from those high-flying Hollywood ways and all that shit. Did I tell you he once took me out to the Joshua Tree and we got so screwed-up on mushrooms that I had a four-hour conversation with an iguana?”

  “Never heard that one.”

  “Strange,” Van said, taking another bite of burger.

  “I know he was in Jericho in ’78 and married my mom in ’79,” Quinn said. “I was born the next year.”

  “He loved you, Quinn,” Van said. “He’s a failed man. But he loved you.”

  Uncle Van removed his conductor’s hat as if suddenly realizing he had it on his head. “Damn kids drive me crazy, asking me to toot my horn. But there’s some nice ladies out at Barnes Crossing. They got this one gal selling panties at Victoria’s Secret. Holy shit.”

  “What I need to know is if my father used to ride with a motorcycle gang here,” Quinn said. “The Born Losers.”

  Van’s face didn’t show much. He washed down the burger with some beer. He put down the beer, picked it back up and took another swig. “Hmm,” he said. “Define what you mean by ‘ride’?”

  “Was he a member?”

  “No.”

  “But he hung out with them?”

  Van shrugged. His house still showed the admiration he had for his older brother, framed and signed movie posters from Stroker Ace and Cannonball Run II. Dom DeLuise signing in big scrawl Don’t play with your meatballs.