by Nick Pirog
“Why the fuck you so interested in who bets with me?”
He’d already given me the reaction I wanted. If cops didn’t bet with him, if Fuzz meant nothing to him, he would have just laughed my inquiry off.
I said, “Small town and all, I was just curious.”
“Well,” he grinned, “take your curiosity and your fucking bets and shove them up your ass.”
He reached out and snatched the envelope back from my hand. Then he calmly sat back down, unwrapped his burger, and began eating.
Chapter Fifteen
“How long do you figure it will take to get rid of all that brush?” I asked.
Randall put both hands on his hips, gazing out at the 250 acres of overgrown farmland. It was 7:30 in the morning and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. According to my new smartphone, the temperature would get into the low nineties.
Since seeing Randall at the church revival, he had stopped by to take care of a couple of odd jobs: installing a new door on the farmhouse, fixing a leaking toilet, and repairing a hole at the back of the barn. But now it was time to farm.
Randall let loose a low whistle, then answered, “With just you and me doing it, probably a week, maybe two.”
“That long?”
“We could hire a couple more people,” Randall said, “get a couple more tractors going.”
“Let’s see how today goes.”
“Alrighty.” He cocked his head at the large tractor and said, “Why don’t you drive first?”
“I’ve never driven a tractor.”
“You know how to drive a stick shift?”
“I delivered pizzas in my buddy’s Saab in college for a couple of nights.”
“How did that go?”
“I ruined his transmission.”
He laughed. “Well, good, because this is an automatic.”
Attached to the back of the tractor was an eight-foot-wide Brush Hog. It was basically a giant lawn mower capable of cutting down the weed and bush jungle that had overtaken the land.
While I drove, Randall stayed behind, shoveling the cuttings into the back of his truck and trailer. He would then dump them in the wide expanse of dirt in front of the farmhouse where he said we could burn it.
It looked like backbreaking labor, and I decided we were going to need a couple more hands if we wanted to get this done before Thanksgiving.
Keeping my hands on the wheel, cha-chunking my way back and forth across the quarter-square-mile section Randall pointed out, I had plenty of time to think.
I was having a hard time connecting the dots from Mike Zernan’s murder to the Save-More murders. It was like trying to get from New York to China but without a plane, boat, or car.
The biggest problem was Lowry Barnes.
He shot six people, killing five. There was no question about that. That was forged in steel. Then he killed himself. Ergo, he could not have killed Mike Zernan. That simple fact would not stop rattling around in my brain.
I said it out loud three times. “Lowry Barnes could not have killed Mike Zernan. Lowry Barnes could not have killed Mike Zernan. Lowry Barnes could not have killed Mike Zernan.” Sometimes this leads to an epiphany. Today it did not.
However, I did continue talking to myself.
“Will Dennel was a bookie. Maybe Lowry Barnes bet with him, got in deep, then couldn’t pay because he got fired from his job. But even if Will Dennel was the target, why did Lowry commit suicide? And how could this all be connected to Mike Zernan? Unless maybe someone at the Tarrin Police Department was also betting with Will. Maybe whoever Fuzz was found out Mike Zernan had taken Will Dennel’s notebook and they knew their name would show up.”
I nodded to myself.
“Maybe that’s what Mike stumbled on. Maybe Mike wasn’t even investigating the Save-More murders. Maybe he was trying to find out which cops were betting with Will. Maybe this pissed him off. Shit, maybe Chief Eccleston was the one betting. Maybe that’s why Eccleston fired Mike. Told him if he stopped poking around, he would make sure he got his full pension—plus maybe even a little bonus. Then Mike keeps Will Dennel’s notebook as collateral just in case Eccleston goes back on his word.
“Then Eccleston gets wind I’m over there talking to Mike. Maybe he’s listening in, on one of those bugs Mike thought someone set up. Eccleston thinks Mike is just crazy enough to tell me everything and decides he needs to get that Moleskine. So he goes over there, strangles him, then ransacks the place.”
I ran the simulation over in my head.
It was feasible, though far from probable.
I shook my head and noticed in my rambling I forgot to turn around. I’d been chugging along in a straight line for close to half a mile. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Randall off in the distance, hands on his hips, just watching.
I whipped the steering wheel around and cha-chunked my way back in his direction.
“Was Eccleston Fuzz?” I asked out loud. “Or it could have been anyone in the Tarrin Police Department. Someone who owed Will Dennel eighty-three thousand dollars. But Bree said Will was pretty lax when it came to collecting, that he didn’t threaten people with baseball bats. But still, eighty-three thousand dollars. How had he even let someone get that deep into him? Maybe it was because the guy was a cop. Maybe Fuzz told Will that if he didn’t let him keep betting, he would shut down his whole shop.”
A minute later, I came abreast of Randall.
He was covered in sweat, leaning on the shovel, belly laughing. “Where were you going, buddy?”
“I got distracted.”
“Thinking about Wheeler can do that.”
My eyebrows jumped.
“Oh, I saw how you were looking at her.” He chuckled. “And I don’t blame ya for one second.”
We both laughed, then decided we’d earned a break. We walked toward the farmhouse. There was a mountain of grass, weeds, and brush piled three feet high.
“Is it legal to burn that stuff?” I asked.
“No, but everybody does. We’ll do it at night. Nobody will even notice.”
We entered the house, and Harold and May scampered forward and pawed at both our legs.
Randall asked, “Why did you have me fix the pigpen it you’re just gonna let them live in the house?”
“They like it in here.”
“You like them in here.”
I shrugged, then grabbed two beers.
Out on the porch, each of us resting in one of the new rocking chairs I bought the previous day, Randall said, “I just want to thank you for hiring me.”
We clinked bottles, then I asked, “So were you born here in Tarrin?”
“I was born in Alabama. My dad moved us up here when I was twelve.”
“What part of Alabama?”
“Montgomery.”
“How was that?”
He took a long swig. “I was born in 1970, so I was brought up at the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement. My dad was a preacher and he was pretty active.”
“What about your mom?”
“She died the year before we moved up here. Brain aneurysm.”
I told him I was sorry, and he waved it off. “You said your dad was a preacher?”
“Still is.”
It took me a moment to connect the dots. “Your dad? He wasn’t—”
“Sure was.”
His dad was the preacher at the revival. He had a little bit of white in his hair, but he didn’t look nearly old enough to have a forty-six-year-old son.
“How old is he?”
“Sixty-three.”
Without prodding, Randall said, “He was seventeen when he had me.” He didn’t make me ask, going straight into the story. “My mom was two years younger. Only fifteen. When she turned sixteen, they got married.”
“You can get married at sixteen?”
“In Alabama you could. Still can, I think, if your parents consent, and both of theirs did. Hell, they demanded it.” He paused, then said, “Anyh
ow, they had two more kids after me. Stayed married for eleven years until she died.”
“Wow,” I said. “It’s rare those marriages work out.”
He nodded.
I asked, “Why did your dad move you guys to Missouri?”
“A guy my dad knew from the Movement was opening a church up here and offered my dad the pulpit.”
“So he’s been preaching at the church—”
“For going on thirty-four years.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
He smiled and took a swig of beer.
“How was it moving from the South to the North?” Before he could answer, I added, “Was Missouri part of the North?”
“The Mason-Dixon line actually goes right through the middle of Missouri, just north of St. Louis. During the Civil War, Missouri was claimed by both the Union and the Confederate, and sent soldiers to both camps.”
“So it was both?”
“Geographically, yes. But emotionally, I’d say your average Missourian would say it’s part of the South.”
“How bad was the racism here, compared to Alabama?”
He scoffed, “That’s like asking how the crab cakes are compared to Maryland.”
“It was that bad down there?”
He nodded, but said nothing.
There wasn’t anything he could say that could make a white boy from Seattle understand.
“What about in Tarrin?” I asked.
“It was a different sort of racism. White kid might call you a nigger, but they weren’t gonna throw a rock at you when they said it.”
“How many other black kids were there?”
“There were three other black kids who went to my middle school. About ten at my high school.”
I punched him lightly on the shoulder and said, “That’s enough for a basketball team.”
He laughed, then said, “My dad’s church was actually one of the biggest reasons more black people started moving to town.”
“They all moved here so your father could yell at them?”
He chuckled.
I did my best impression of his father. “On these hot summer nights, keep your dicks in your pants you horny little beasts.”
He slapped his knee and nearly spit up the last swig of beer he drank. When he composed himself, he said, “Pretty much.” Then he was laughing again.
If Randall recorded his laugh as an MP3, I could listen to it for hours.
“How many black people went to your high school?” he asked.
“Probably a few hundred, but my school was pretty big, a couple thousand kids.”
“You get along with the brothers?”
“I played basketball so I was buddies with a lot of them.”
“You any good?”
“I had a pretty good jump shot. I walked on at the University of Washington, but I quit after the second practice.”
“Why?”
“The coach called me a lazy sack of shit. Then I told him his wife thought I was all hustle.”
He laughed again, then said, “So when you say quit, you mean—”
“I was impolitely asked to leave practice by two assistant coaches and a security guard.”
“I bet you were a cocky little shit back then.”
I grinned. “Thank God that went away.”
He smacked me on the shoulder.
I asked, “Did you play any sports?”
“Football.”
“Let me guess, offensive tackle.”
He grinned, impressed. “Yep, and defensive end.”
“You any good?”
“Full ride to Purdue.”
“No kidding?”
He nodded.
“How’d you guys do?”
“Not great. Only had one winning season when I was there.”
“The pros ever come sniffing?”
“Not really. I was small for a college offensive tackle, I would have been a fruit fly in the pros.” He took a breath. “But I got a free education, got a degree in agricultural studies, then moved back home.”
“Agricultural studies? You were always into farming?”
“Got into it when I was in high school. One of the assistant coaches had a farm and he’d pay some of us to come work it during the off-season and the summer.” He glanced down at his hands and said, “I fell in love with the dirt.”
“Is that what you did when you moved back?”
“Started working on my old assistant coach’s farm full-time. I would help out with the football team too, as sort of an ad hoc offensive line coach. Did that for a long time, just saving as much as I could. When I was in my early thirties, I took out a loan, and bought a ninety-acre plot.”
“Where was that?”
“About six miles east of here. Farmed my ass off for the next five or six years. Made a couple nice returns.” His face fell. “Then I lost it.”
I wanted to ask him what happened but I didn’t want to pry. All I said was, “I’m sorry.”
He puffed out his cheeks, took a breath, then said, “But if I hadn’t lost the farm, I probably wouldn’t have met Alexa.”
“God works in mysterious ways,” I said. I may have said this in his dad’s voice.
He laughed, then said, “You got to stop doing that, man.”
“Never.”
I asked, “So you met Alexa?”
“Yeah, I went back to coaching the kids at the high school—was the freshman/sophomore head coach—and Alexa was teaching tenth grade. Got married a couple years later, and the twins came a few years after that.”
I told him how absolutely beautiful his daughters were, then asked, “What happened with the coaching?”
“About five years ago, they got rid of the freshman/sophomore team. I could have stayed on as an assistant with the varsity team, but I was making more money picking up odd jobs.” He downed the last of his beer, then said, “Speaking of that, we ought to get back to work.”
We spent the next seven hours back in the fields, the two of us splitting time driving the tractor and shoveling the vast amounts of brush into the back of Randall’s truck and trailer.
After the sun set, Randall and I returned to the rocking chairs. Along with the chairs, I’d also purchased a bug zapper and a bunch of citronella candles. But even together, the zapper and the candles were overmatched and the mosquitos descended on us. Randall didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the swarming insects, immune to them after a lifetime in the Midwest. I swatted, slapped, and inhaled bugs until finally giving in and covering myself in a thick layer of noxious bug repellant.
There was a small cooler of beers between Randall and me, and we sipped brews under the fluorescent blue light of the bug zapper. The first beer, we talked about me. My life, my parents, my sister, a few of my cases. The second beer, we more or less sat in silence, both of us exhausted from a fourteen-hour day in the baking sun.
At one point, Randall took out his lighter and lit the mountain of brush in the dirt in front of the house.
The third beer, we watched it burn.
Chapter Sixteen
The next two days were much the same. Randall showed up on my doorstep at 7:00 a.m. with two steaming cups of coffee. Then we spent the next fourteen hours switching off between driving the tractor and shoveling the brush. Then we drank beers and watched the pile blaze and settle to ash.
On Saturday, we took a half day.
For Mike Zernan’s funeral.
The cemetery was on the far eastern edge of Tarrin, adjacent to sprawling mounds of dirt that Randall explained was where the kids went to BMX. As if on cue, a rider emerged over one of the hills, zoomed down a steep decline, then hit a jump, launching himself into the air.
It was a peculiar dichotomy, the cemetery and the BMX park so close to one another. One a final resting place. The other, perhaps the essence of living. And it probably made things super easy when a kid did a backflip and broke his neck.
Just drag him across the street.
The cemetery parking lot was overflowing. I was curious how many people would show up for Mike’s funeral. It was a small town, and he had been a public servant for twenty years, but I was surprised at the number of cars.
I parked the Range Rover in the dirt overflow parking, and Randall asked, “Was it really necessary to bring them?”
Harold and May were both sitting on Randall’s lap.
“They’ve been cooped up all day. They needed a little field trip.”
“You’re gonna end up in the loony bin.”
“Says the guy wearing a white suit to a funeral.”
“Hey,” he said, “I look good. And this is my lightest suit.”
To his credit, it was baking hot. To his discredit, he looked like he was about to host Family Feud.
A few days earlier, I bought a suit at the only store in town that sold such things. The measurements of the suit were depressing. My waist was once a 34. Now I was a 40.
Sigh.
Randall and I exited the car, both pulling our suit coats from where they were hanging on hooks in the backseat.
I pulled on the navy jacket, my internal temperature jumping ten degrees, then noticed through the window that Randall had left the passenger door open.
I ran around the car. Randall was struggling into his white linen suit coat, and I shouted, “The piglets!”
They were gone.
I whipped my head around and saw them. They were scampering between the grave stones, headed toward the large crowd gathered for Mike Zernan’s funeral.
Uh-oh.
I sprinted after them.
The assemblage was close to a hundred people. There were seats for fifty, then another fifty people were standing. Mike’s casket split the crowd in half, situated next to a large mound of dirt that would cover his casket after it was lowered into the ground. A small lectern was set under the shade of a birch tree, where a reverend stood speechless. He, like everyone else gathered, watched in stunned silence as two little, funeral-crashing piglets found their way to the large pile of dirt and began rolling around in it.
OMG.
I watched as a couple people attempted to wrangle them, but the two piglets darted away in a game of chase.