by Ace Atkins
“Who told you that?”
Quinn didn’t answer. His hands hung loose at his sides. In his periphery, he could see Reggie had his right hand on the butt of his Glock. But at the moment, they were all taking it cool and in stride. The girl was correct; they had no right to enter her property.
“You mind calling her outside?”
“She ain’t here.”
“Where is she?”
“Down in Louisiana someplace,” TJ said, lowering the shotgun. “Went with some friends to go mud riding down around Colfax. She’s been seeing a fella who’s got a jacked-up Mule he races in through those bayous and creeks. I didn’t ask too much. You know how Momma likes to party.”
“I thought she was seeing Chester Pratt,” Quinn said.
“Is that who told you to come out here in the middle of the damn night?” TJ asked. “Shit. That bastard’s been mooning over Momma for nearly a month now. Can’t get it through his head that she’s moved on without him. I don’t have time for this nonsense. I got to get John Wesley to bed. You do know it’s a school night?”
“Heard you dropped out.”
“I did,” TJ said. “But John Wesley didn’t. Can I go inside now? I’m freezing my damn ass off.”
Reggie glanced over Quinn. He lifted a chin. “You mind if we just take a look around?” he asked.
“I don’t give a damn,” she said. “Do as you please.”
Reggie nodded over to where smoke was coming from up behind a pile of junked cars and old appliances. The deputy walked off without saying another word, Quinn standing there and smiling at TJ.
“You and your mother been having some more trouble?” Quinn asked.
“Nope,” TJ said. “Why are you out roaming the county this late at night, Sheriff? Didn’t you get married or something?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And got a baby?”
Quinn nodded. TJ was backlit from where she stood on the porch, and Quinn couldn’t see her face clear enough to know if she was serious or just having some fun with him.
“Maybe that’ll calm you down some,” TJ said. “Keep you from harassing good and decent people of Tibbehah County in all your spare time.”
“Is Ladarius McCade in there with you?”
“That ain’t none of your damn business.”
“You know he didn’t show up for court last week,” Quinn said.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “That was some real bullshit right there.”
“Not to the woman he stole the car from.”
“His brother loaned it to him,” she said. “Talk to his brother.”
“His brother’s up in Chicago, TJ.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “He ain’t here.”
“Can I come in and see for myself?”
“Like I said, I got to get John Wesley down for bed,” she said. “And I know my damn rights.”
Quinn nodded. Reggie reappeared from behind the mound of rusting metal. He motioned with his head for Quinn to follow him back behind the junked cars. Quinn could now smell the smoke, drifting in the cold wind.
“If you hear from your momma, tell her to call us.”
“My momma ain’t the check-in type,” TJ said. “ ’Night, Sheriff.”
TJ walked back into the trailer, slammed the door shut, and turned off the porch lights. Quinn marched through the trash strewn about the dirt lot and joined up with Reggie.
“That girl’s got some personality.”
“Can’t blame her,” Quinn said. “She came by it honest. Her mother’s a real piece of work.”
He kept walking with Reggie over to a pit dug down about four feet into the earth and along the hillside. The dying orange embers of a fire burning in the darkness, a few sparks catching up the cold air and flying into the distance.
“Whatever she wanted to get rid of is long gone now,” Reggie said.
Quinn unwrapped a Liga Privada and clipped off the end with his pocketknife. He grabbed a nearby stick and got down on his haunches, poking at what little was left in the firepit. “I guess it’s time to hear Chester Pratt’s side of things.”
* * *
* * *
Chester Pratt sat a long while in the half-dark, the shadowed figure telling him to stay there and keep quiet. But going on five, ten minutes, Pratt was starting to get restless, hoping the man would go and get on with whatever he was about to do. He wasn’t so much scared as he was annoyed.
“We waiting on someone?” Pratt asked.
“Shut your damn mouth.”
“You don’t like bourbon?”
“I said shut up.”
“You can take your pick,” Pratt said. “We don’t put the top shelf stuff out anymore. Goes too fast. We keep the good stuff for the best customers in the stockroom. Doesn’t hurt if you slip me or one of the clerks a twenty or fifty, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Anyone tell you that you got a face that needs punching?”
“A few.”
Something in the man’s voice sounded damn familiar, someone he’d crossed in the store or maybe out in the county. It was rough and guttural, terse and mean. He’d had some words with this fella at some point at time. But only a dumb ass would ask a man with a gun on him, Say, I know you. Don’t I? That’s a good way to get your fool head shot off.
“I know why you’re here,” Pratt said. “But I don’t have the money. I said it was coming and I’m doing all I can to get it. Me and you can sit here in the storeroom until the Second Coming, but it won’t make any difference. A few folks owe me, too. When I get paid, then I can make good on what I borrowed. Some folks call that robbing Peter to pay Paul. But no one ever said nothing about Paul giving two shits how business got done.”
“And what do you think is fair?”
“What do you mean?”
“Considering you’re late and all.”
“I think you should explain that I’m working on it,” Pratt said. “Hell. You can do what you want to me, but that can’t make me get what I’m owed and what y’all are owed any faster. In fact, you do something to me, and that’s gonna dry up the whole process.”
The man reached over and cut on the lights. The light was white hot after sitting in the dark so long. As Chester’s eyes adjusted, he realized he did know the man but just wasn’t sure from where. He was a thick, muscular fella with a brushy reddish beard and narrow eyes the color of a swamp. He had on a brown Mossy Oak hoodie and a pair of camo pants with lace-up military boots. He held a big black automatic pistol at his side as he stared right at Chester Pratt, studying on him and appearing to be considering his next course of action. The man was white with reddened cheeks and wore a ball cap over a shaved head. The ball cap had a gold patch with a timber rattler on it, the familiar don’t tread on me written below. Only the fella had a more don’t fuck with me look about him, spitting some tobacco juice on the floor and walking up to where Pratt sat at his desk. The man stunk of BO and cigarettes, his breath hot and spicy on Chester’s face.
“I was told to bring your pecker back on a silver platter.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t.”
“This row back here,” the man said. “On the racks? That’s all your top shelf hooch?”
“Yes, sir,” Pratt said. “Sure is. Help yourself. Some wine boxes over there in the corner, sir.”
“My name’s Bishop.”
“Take what you like, Mr. Bishop.”
“Just Bishop,” the man said. “Best not to forget it.”
Bishop walked over to the floor-to-ceiling metal storage racks and plucked a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23. He pulled out the cork, took a sniff, and then shook his head. He dropped it onto the concrete floor, where the glass cracked and the bourbon splattered. That bottle would’ve gone
on the cheap for more than three grand. Bishop did the same thing with four, five, six of his other prestige bottles. Not smiling, not laughing. Just smelling each one and dropping them onto the floor as if they weren’t to his liking.
“Ain’t a bourbon man, I guess,” Pratt said, trying to keep it light. But it sure did hurt seeing nearly ten grand destroyed before his very eyes. Not to mention some of the finest whiskey ever made by man.
“I wouldn’t drink this shit ’less I had a Coca-Cola to mix in it,” Bishop said. “You agree, don’t you, Chester Pratt?”
“Destroying my top shelf items ain’t gonna get that money any faster.”
“Shut your damn pussy lips.”
Pratt wasn’t tied up nor had the man pointed the gun on him. But he was afraid just the same. Something in those swampy eyes, narrow and small, made the man seem more animal than human.
“Me and you is gonna be good friends,” Bishop said. “I’m coming back here each and every night until we get what we is owed. You decide to bring in the law, and I’ll start showing up at your house or over at that country woman’s trailer you’ve been screwing.”
“Who’s that?”
“You telling me you haven’t been knocking boots with that Byrd woman?”
Chester Pratt was quiet. The only sound came from outside, trucks coming and going from the Rebel, and the man’s slow, ragged breathing.
“Don’t be late, Chester Pratt,” Bishop said, knocking Chester in the head with the butt of his pistol. “Last fella tried to fuck me ended up getting cornholed by a cattle prod.”
“Good Lord Almighty,” Pratt said from the floor, touching the heel of his hand to his bloody temple.
“Yeah,” he said. “That fella said the same thing. But I damn sure got his attention.”
* * *
* * *
Quinn couldn’t find Chester Pratt at home or working late at the liquor store, so he headed back to the farm for a few hours’ sleep. He was back up at five, showered and shaved and cooking breakfast for his adopted son Brandon. The kid was now eight years old, towheaded with bright blue eyes and a near constant smile. Brandon not only didn’t complain about having a new sister, he welcomed it, helping his mother decorate Halley’s room, and always happy to hold her while Maggie had to make dinner or tend to an errand.
The black skillet hissed and popped as Quinn watched a gaggle of turkeys in his back field, picking around the remnants of their corn. The landscape barren and shadowed in late February, the stalks brown and broken. Twin pecan trees loomed big and skeletal behind the old farmhouse that had been in Quinn’s family since 1895.
“How much longer till turkey season?” Brandon asked, standing beside him and looking out into the same field.
“Three weeks.” Quinn flipped the ham. “Since when do you care about turkey hunting?”
“Since I started practicing my call,” Brandon said. “Want to hear it?”
“Better hold off,” Quinn said. “Your momma’s still asleep. She may not appreciate it like I would.”
Quinn continued to watch the back field, the turkeys skirting the woods as he cooked up three fried eggs with ham and served Brandon on a bright blue Fiesta plate.
After they both ate, Quinn would drive Brandon to school before heading into the sheriff’s office. He’d already called in to Cleotha at dispatch to make sure he wasn’t needed earlier. Cleotha, being Cleotha, just said, “Ain’t shit going on, Sheriff. Besides a couple peckerwoods in a tussle outside the Dixie gas station last night. Both of them scattered when patrol rolled up on their ass.”
Brandon seemed to be deep in thought as Quinn joined him at the kitchen table. The kid now officially a Colson after the adoption last year while Quinn recovered from gunshot wounds from the ambush out on Perfect Circle Road. It had taken months to heal before he could take on Fannie Hathcock and her cronies ruling north Mississippi. Quinn and Brandon had spent many hours walking the woods and doing a little fishing on their private lake. The kid still trying to make sense of his biological father, who was both a decorated Marine and a criminal, guaranteed to spend rest of his life at FCI Yazoo City.
“Where’d you go last night?” Brandon asked.
“Just tending to a little business,” Quinn said.
“In the middle of the night?”
“Yes, sir,” Quinn said. “No time clocks for the sheriff. I’m on call twenty-four-seven whether I like it or not.”
“I bet someone is dead,” Brandon said. “You don’t usually go out that late unless something real bad happened. Who died?”
“No one died.”
“You sure?”
“Well,” Quinn said. “I hope not.”
The thing about living in a rural county is that one way or another, almost everyone was connected in some way, big or small. Quinn recalled Brandon was in the same grade as the Byrd boy, and they’d come to blows on more than one occasion. “How are things going between you and John Wesley Byrd?”
“Permission to use bad language, sir?”
“Sure,” Quinn said. “It’s only us.”
“That kid’s a real asshole.”
“How so?”
“He’s always messing with me,” Brandon said. “Pushing me in line. Saying that you deserved to get shot.”
“He really said that?”
“Sure did,” Brandon said. “John Wesley’s dirty and nasty. I don’t think that kid’s ever even seen a bar of soap. Smells like a skunk dipped in cow shit.”
“The Byrds don’t have much money,” Quinn said. “You might want to take that into account. Some folks aren’t as fortunate as us. He may be angry at you for all you’ve got.”
Brandon shrugged and sliced his biscuit in two, sliding in the egg and ham to make a sandwich. He took a big bite and washed it down with some orange juice. Behind him, through the big picture window, Hondo came hobbling up from the cow pasture, panting hard. Quinn let him into the kitchen, the screen door slamming shut with a creaky thwap.
“John Wesley hasn’t been in school all week,” Brandon said.
“Is he sick?”
“I guess,” Brandon said. “I got to say that son of a bitch being gone makes my world a hell of a lot better place.”
Behind them, Maggie coughed and Quinn turned to see his wife leaning into the doorway, her eyebrows raised. She had on a white terry-cloth robe, reddish-brown hair pulled up into a bun. Her eyes tired and sleepy as she stifled a yawn with her fist. Hondo snuffled up to her, tail wagging.
Brandon apologized, picked up his biscuit sandwich, and headed past his mom and back to his room to get dressed for school. Quinn rinsed off the plates and slid his stiff uniform shirt over his white tee before kissing Maggie on the cheek.
“I’d prefer Brandon didn’t talk like this was Cole Range at Benning,” Maggie said.
“We were talking about John Wesley Byrd.”
“What about him?” Maggie said, grinning. “Besides the kid being a real son of a bitch.”
“Brandon said he hasn’t seen the boy all week.”
“Did you find his mother?”
“Not yet.”
“You think something happened to her?”
Quinn refilled his coffee mug and reached for his Tibbehah County cap. “Chester Pratt was worried,” Quinn said. “And now I can’t find Chester Pratt.”
“Well, you know what happened to Gina Byrd.”
“She went off with a new man?”
“Isn’t that what she always does?”
“Her daughter says she’s just mud riding down in Louisiana.”
“While leaving her kids to fend for themselves?”
“Yep,” Quinn said. “TJ may be the only momma John Wesley knows.”
“A kid raising a kid.”
“Wish I could say it was an unusual arrangement in
this county.”
Quinn kissed Maggie again and headed for the door. Brandon was already outside in the backseat of the Big Green Machine, Hondo sitting up front, ready to ride shotgun.
As he walked around his truck, his cell rang. Quinn answered.
“Howdy, Quinn,” a man said. “Bruce Lovemaiden over in Parsham County. Looks like we found a vehicle y’all were looking for? A blue Nissan registered to a Gina Byrd.”
“Any sign of her?”
“No, sir,” he said. “Appears she crashed the vehicle and just abandoned it. You want to drive over and have a look-see?”
THREE
You take that dog everywhere?” Sheriff Bruce Lovemaiden asked.
“Only places he wants to go,” Quinn said.
Hondo tenderly jumped out onto the roadside, walking up to Lovemaiden. The sheriff patted the old dog’s head as Hondo sniffed his hand. “What’s his name again?”
“Hondo.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Like that John Wayne picture. The one they shot in 3D.”
Lovemaiden was a big man with a sizable belly and a head the size of a bowling ball. Despite him having at least ten years on Quinn, he had the air of an overgrown kid. His dark hair was slicked down and hard-parted like a third grader’s.
“Can’t say I blame him for wanting to get out of Tibbehah County,” Lovemaiden said. “And head on into God’s Country.”
“Never heard Parsham County called that.”
“Says it right there at the county line,” Lovemaiden said. That big shit-eating grin plastered on his boyish face. “Welcome to God’s Country, please don’t drive through it like it’s hell.”
“Ain’t that something,” Quinn said.
He shook Lovemaiden’s hand and followed him off the sloping highway lined with cedar trees and oaks and onto an unpaved road. Lovemaiden had a funny walk, loping like early man who’d yet to evolve, big hands and long arms swinging at his sides. Twenty meters off the highway and down a gravel road swallowed up by oak branches, Quinn spotted the blue Nissan hanging sideways into a drainage ditch.