by Ace Atkins
TJ did not cry. She felt like she should be crying, but nothing came out. She just sat there, still and quiet in that big empty conference room, hands in her lap. Her ears still ringing with the sounds of Quiet Riot and Cinderella. She wished she was back in the car now, hands on the wheel and the music cranked up as high as it would go. She would drive anywhere and everywhere, not looking in her rearview for a minute to see what was chasing her.
“We didn’t want you hearing any rumors,” Lovemaiden said. “From one of those pesky TV reporters.”
“Y’all think it’s Momma?”
“We don’t know,” Lovemaiden said. “Not yet.”
She didn’t look at him. She looked to Quinn Colson and his lean, hard face and flinty eyes. He still had his damn hand on her shoulder and she shook free. “Y’all think it’s Momma?”
Quinn looked right at her. And he said, “Yes.”
“Lord God.”
“Tell me about the last time you saw her,” Quinn said. “And everything she said and did.”
“I already done told you.”
“You said she was going down to Louisiana,” he said. “With her new boyfriend. Is that still right?”
“ ‘Still right’?” she said. “You calling me a liar?”
That fat lawman moved around to the head of the long oval table and took a seat beside the doughy investigator with the goatee. Lovemaiden had a Styrofoam dip cup in his hand and lifted it to his lips to spit. Behind him, through the glass, she saw Deputy Caruthers walking out with none other than fucking Chester Pratt. That’s what took so long. Quinn Colson and these two men from Parsham County had been sitting down with that goddamn snake.
She and Pratt locked eyes for just a second, and Pratt, being the true coward that he was, looked away and kept on heading out to the front door.
“That’s the liar,” she said, pointing. “Whatever he told you is bullshit. Is that what all this mess is about? He’s the one y’all need to be grilling about my momma. Chester Pratt is a two-bit con man and true and authentic liar.”
Lovemaiden spit again. His left cheek twitched a bit and he set down the cup. “You and your momma were having troubles. Is that right?”
The special investigator, Bobby Peden, now had a yellow legal pad in front of him, jotting down some notes. She saw a cell phone had been pushed to the center of the table, recording what was being said.
“No, sir.”
“Y’all didn’t get into it the other night?” he asked. “Your momma wanting to send you to that Wings of Faith school up in Missouri? I heard Mr. Pratt even offered to pay your way.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “Mr. Pratt can’t even pay his own damn bills.”
“Come on now, TJ,” Lovemaiden said. His voice smooth and reassuring and annoying the hell out of her. “Help us out a little.”
“My friends call me TJ,” she said.
“Okay, TJ,” he said.
“But you can call me Tanya Jane.”
“Okay, Miss Tanya Jane,” Lovemaiden said. “Did you and your momma get in an argument about you going up to that Wings of Faith?”
“Wasn’t no argument,” TJ said. “I told her there was no fucking way I was going up to that school. They got pictures on their site of girls riding horses and playing volleyball. But if you look at the fine print, all they want to do is scrub the makeup off your face, slip you into a flowered dress, and brainwash your ass. The say their mission is to get a young woman to submit. Submit, hell. Submit to who? Would y’all please tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“I’m guessing they want you to submit to Christ,” Lovemaiden said. “That’s what all young women need to do at some time in their lives.”
“And what the hell do you know about being a young woman?”
The question hung there for a few seconds just as TJ caught the mean stares that Sheriff Colson was giving to Bruce Lovemaiden, looking at him across the table like a man telling another man he needed to shut the hell up. But Lovemaiden either didn’t get the message or had no intention of taking advice. He leaned back in a big spinning chair and placed his two fat hands behind his head.
“I got two daughters,” Lovemaiden said. “One’s married with two grandbabies. And for a long while she got herself lost before she finally came to terms with biblical thinking. Woman’s got to get with the program. Get right all the harms she’s done. I don’t have to tell you there’s no salvation without coming clean. How about it, TJ. You ready to lay your burdens down?”
TJ looked to Quinn Colson and back to the fat sheriff and his investigator.
“Lay down my burdens?” she asked. “Where is my goddamn mother?”
“We heard sometimes it got real rough with your momma,” Lovemaiden said, shaking his head. “Real rough.”
“Chester Pratt told you that?” she said. “Chester is a liar. Where’s my fucking mother?”
She screamed the last part and that’s when Quinn Colson stood up and told Lovemaiden and his special investigator to wait for him back in the office. Lovemaiden groaned, making a big show out of placing two meaty hands on the table, and pulling his fat ass out of the spinning chair.
“Me and you ain’t done, missy,” Lovemaiden said. “Not by a gosh-dang long shot.”
“Y’all wait in my office,” Quinn said. “I need to speak to Miss Byrd in private.”
* * *
* * *
Chester Pratt parked out back of the chain-link fence behind what used to be the Cobb Lumber Mill before old Larry Cobb cornholed himself by keeping payoff records between him and Johnny Stagg and half the damn county supervisors. Cobb was still sitting in federal prison over in Louisiana while Johnny Stagg was probably working on his second piece of pecan pie à la mode at the Rebel right about now. Just didn’t seem fair, Pratt thought, watching the steam come off the massive piles of cut timber, bright lights shining into the big expanse of the lumberyard, trucks still coming and going from the front gates even though it was nearly midnight.
Pratt took a sip of some whiskey in his Yeti cup, leaning back into the heated leather seat, wanting to close his eyes for a few minutes. Just what in the hell had he gotten himself into? All he’d wanted to do was get that damn liquor license and set himself up in a business that he could control. That had been the trouble with everything he’d ever tried to do, someone coming along and fucking up the situation. Like that steak house in Oxford. How the hell was he supposed to know two assholes had the same idea in mind and opened up their steak houses not two weeks after him? And what about the time he’d bought into that fine menswear shop in New Albany just in time for a damn recession? Any other time, he’d been outfitting half the town for blue blazers for Sunday service and selling to all those frat boys who came down by the truckload from Ole Miss because that’s what their daddy had done before them. He’d been in cattle, timber, food, clothes, and now liquor. Liquor was the thing that he knew was going to make him a success, a respected member of the Jericho community, maybe a slot on the Chamber of Commerce, perhaps even a time that he might run for Board of Aldermen or get on the sugar tit of being a county supervisor.
He’d done everything right. Only to get himself screwed. Again. Like the old blues song said, if it weren’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have no luck at all.
Chester took another nip from his cup, watching all that steam rising from the big ole piles of cut timber, the lights as bright as a Friday night football game. He let down his window, his Mercedes parked in shadow, and lit up a cigarette. He could figure this out. He could get Stagg paid and get that bald-headed monkey off his ass. But first, he needed to find out what in the fuck was going on with Gina. That was a special brand of crazy that he sure as hell didn’t need now. Every single one of his wives had been batshit crazy. Chester Pratt sure knew how to pick ’em. If that body they found over in Parsham was really Gina, he’d
been right smart to go to the police from the get-go when she up and disappeared. Now they were thinking of him as the concerned citizen and worried boyfriend. He told that Sheriff Lovemaiden the exact damn truth he’d been thinking. If any harm had come to Gina, they better be looking right at her daughter. She’d hurt her momma plenty of times before.
Pratt’s car soon filled with light and he looked into his rearview to see headlights coming up slow and easy behind him. Pratt tapped his cigarette out the cracked window and watched two men get out of a truck, the one on the passenger’s side seeming to have some kind of trouble walking. The driver reached behind the other man, propping him up, and half-carried him over to Pratt’s open window. The men were short as hell and wiry. Pratt could detect their scent from ten feet off.
“What’s the matter with him?” Pratt asked.
“Just a little corrective activity with a fat boy at the pool hall,” said the one called Dusty Nix. “You know he don’t take no lip.”
“Anybody follow you out?”
“We ain’t no mental defects,” Dusty said.
“Just try and stay out of trouble,” Pratt said. “Can y’all just do that for a few weeks?”
The older man, the one called Flem, who was either Dusty’s older brother, uncle, or daddy, didn’t look well at all. His face was as white as a sheet and he kept on holding at his side as if he’d been gut-kicked by a mule.
“He’s hurt.”
“It ain’t nothing,” the older man said.
“How bad was the fight?” Pratt asked.
“I don’t mean no disrespect, Mr. Pratt,” Dusty Nix said. “But did you bring us what you done promised?”
Pratt was expecting this, finishing off the cigarette and flicking it into the weeds beyond the Nix boys. He’d already paid them enough for the job with a little extra promised, and he’d offered to find them some more roofing work with some of his rich friends in Tibbehah. It was a fine and friendly arrangement.
“It’s coming.”
“Coming?” Dusty Nix said. “If it’s coming, why’d you call us up in the middle of the dang night? My momma is about to have Daddy’s ass for breakfast for us heading out drinking and raising hell. She doesn’t take too kind to that, especially as she’s been trying to get Daddy into being deacon down the road at the Assembly of God. That ain’t an easy task, Mr. Pratt.”
Pratt watched as the older man pulled his hand away from his side and flashed a bloody towel that he’d been holding against him. The older man just stared at Chester Pratt with hollow black eyes before pressing the towel back to his side and gritting his teeth.
“What the damn hell?”
“Ain’t nothing,” the old man said.
“Looks like something to me.”
“We need to get paid, Mr. Pratt,” he said. “That there’s the deal. You may’ve hired us on a personal matter. But that doesn’t make no difference. Roofing or running roughshod, it’s all the damn same. We did like we was told.”
“You talked to the woman?” Pratt said. “Right?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Indeed we did.”
“What happened then?” Pratt asked. “Where the hell did she go? What did she say?”
“After we told her to shut her goddamn mouth?”
“Yes,” Pratt said. “After that.”
“Well,” Dusty Nix said, grinning a little. “That’s a kind of a funny story. You was right about one thing. That woman sure got her an attitude. Me and Daddy didn’t care for it one damn bit and caught up with her for her recklessness.”
“What do you mean?” Chester said. “Caught up with her?”
Dusty licked his lips. The old man, holding his bloodied side, just grinned.
Chester Pratt watched them both and felt as if ice water had been injected into his veins.
SEVEN
Can I get you a Coke, TJ?” Quinn asked.
“Don’t you think for one second I don’t know what y’all are pulling.”
“What are we pulling, TJ?”
“I told you to call me Tanya Jane.”
“You told Sheriff Lovemaiden to call you Tanya Jane,” Quinn said. “I was hoping you and me might be friends.”
TJ laughed at that and shook her head. Quinn smiled, trying to make the girl feel comfortable and at ease. He knew there was no use being tough on a teenage girl who’d probably, almost definitely, just lost her mother. She hadn’t been charged with a crime, and at that very moment all Quinn had were a bunch of stories that Chester Pratt had told them. He didn’t know much. But he sure as hell didn’t trust Chester Pratt.
“You got that fat sheriff to come down on me like a ton of bricks,” TJ said. “Accusing me of all kinds of bullshit. Then you kick his ass out and wander on in offering me a Coca-Cola like everything is cool. You boys need to practice a little more before trying that act on me. I may be only seventeen, but I ain’t stupid.”
“Would it matter if I told you I didn’t put too much in what Chester Pratt had to say?”
TJ looked over at Quinn, hands tucked into the opposite sleeves of an old blue sweatshirt, a camo cap reading jericho farm & ranch pulled down in her eyes as she slunk low in the conference room chair. She didn’t answer.
“What about that Sheriff Lovemaiden?”
“This isn’t about him, either,” Quinn said. “You don’t live in Parsham. You live in Tibbehah County. If something happened to your mother, I give you my word I’ll find out.”
“Why should I trust you?” she said. “Wasn’t Hamp Beckett your uncle?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then you know what he did to my daddy.”
“I heard rumors,” Quinn said. “But I don’t truck in rumors. I was on the other side of the earth when that happened.”
“Your uncle killed my daddy.”
“My uncle did a lot of bad things,” Quinn said. “No doubt something like that might’ve happened. But right now, let’s talk about your mother.”
“You said you believe that body you found is her?”
Quinn nodded as he stood against the far wall of the conference room. After Sheriff Lovemaiden marched out into the SO lobby, Quinn had closed the blinds, leaving him and TJ in privacy. He didn’t have much time. A social worker was on her way from Tupelo, and a court-appointed attorney wasn’t far behind if they tried to keep her.
“Was it true what Chester Pratt said?” Quinn asked. “About your mother wanting to send you to that reform school?”
“Wings of Faith?” TJ asked. “Yes, sir. That’s true.”
“Doesn’t sound that bad.”
“I look like the type to wear skirts down to my ankles and sing hymns?”
Quinn reached over and slid the Coca-Cola can in front of her. She popped the top and leaned back into the chair. “What did your mother think about you and Ladarius McCade?”
“She loves him,” TJ said. “She thinks Ladarius hung the damn moon. Sometimes I think she loves that boy more than she loves me and John Wesley. Why? Let me guess. You’re hearing different from Chester Pratt.”
Chester Pratt had told Quinn and the boys from Parsham that Gina Byrd wasn’t happy at all about her daughter dating a young black man who’d been in and out of the Walter Payton Unit at Henley-Young juvie. Pratt said TJ and Gina Byrd had a long, nasty fight that weekend that ended with TJ pulling a .38 and threatening to shoot her own mother if she said another word about Ladarius or Wings of Faith. Chester Pratt admitted, somewhat tearfully, that Gina Byrd was concerned for her life.
“Are you going to lock me up?”
“For what?”
“For killing my mother.”
“We’re not for certain that body is your mother,” Quinn said. “Not yet.”
“But if she’s dead, it looks like you and that fat sheriff have decided I’m the one w
ho done it.”
“No, ma’am,” Quinn said. “I have no idea what happened. But maybe you do?”
“I can tell you one damn thing,” TJ said, wiping away the slightest tear from her left eye. Her voice grown husky. “I’d never kill my own momma. And anyone who said Momma was trying to keep me and Ladarius apart is a damn liar. She loved that boy. The Wings of Faith wasn’t about anything but a new Jesus kick. She would’ve forgotten about it by next Sunday.”
“Who would want to kill your mother, TJ?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about that new boyfriend?” Quinn asked. “Was there really another man she was seeing?”
TJ waited a long beat. She cried a little bit more but then straightened up in the chair and wiped her face with the cuffs of her old sweatshirt. She nodded as she seemed to be thinking about exactly what she wanted to say.
“I don’t know,” TJ said. “There might’ve been.”
“Why’d you lie?”
“Damn it all to hell,” TJ said. “I wasn’t lying for me. I was lying for her. She came home the other night covered in blood. She was scared to death and said two men had attacked her outside the Southern Star. She got hold of the man’s knife and got loose.”
“Why didn’t she call us?”
“She was scared,” she said. “She thinks she killed one of ’em.”
“Sounds like self-defense.”
“I think she knew both of ’em,” TJ said. “You know Momma. You know what kind of taste she’s got in men. I didn’t want to know and didn’t ask questions. I just helped her get packed and get gone.”
“Were those the clothes you burned?”
TJ nodded.
“What did those men want?” Quinn said. “Did she say?”
“I shouldn’t say no more,” TJ said. “I’ve told you more than enough. And I have the sense to shut my mouth with cops.”
“To help you, you gotta help me.”
“I got a kid brother at home,” TJ said. “John Wesley’s alone wondering where his big sister’s at.”