The Heathens

by Ace Atkins

  “Not this kind of money,” Quinn said. “Ronnie Pratt says he’d planned to go in with Chester for about twenty-five grand. At the last minute, Chester didn’t need it.”

  “Where’d you hear Gina Byrd got that kind of money?”

  “Gina had been saying the settlement was big enough to change their lives,” Quinn said. “According to Miss Donna Grace at the flower shop yesterday.”

  “Let me get this shit straight,” Lillie said. “Miss Donna Grace, the fucking florist, has the hotline on the junkie who made door hangings out of old rope and rusted tin cans? Well, let me call up my supervisor and let him know that fucking Petticoat Junction PD has solved the case. We can all stand down.”

  There was a long silence. Lillie thinking maybe she’d pushed Quinn too damn far this time. He could get real sensitive about his investigations and being a relative newcomer to police work after ten years in the Army kicking in doors over in the Jihad Jungle. But she was tired and worn out and just wanted a few hours with Rose and her new dog. Was that too much to ask?

  Lillie took a deep breath. Jerry Lee lay panting on his side while Rose cuddled up next to him. Rose had on a little red ski hat with a toggle ball on top. Her cheeks red and flushed from the running and the cold wind. “Did you contact the bank?” Lillie asked.

  “Yep.”

  “And?”

  “I’m waiting on the judge to see Gina’s records,” Quinn said. “I’m also planning on riding out to see Tabitha Threadgill and see what she knows.”

  “Big Momma?” Lillie asked. “Lucky you. There are parts of Tibbehah County I really miss. Mornings at the Fillin’ Station. Getting fried catfish over at Pap’s. But making midnight calls on Big Momma for beating the holy fuck out of her girlfriends ain’t one of them.”

  “She’s Jerry Jeff Valentine’s half-sister.”

  “I know exactly who she is,” Lillie said. “You don’t need to go and tell me about Tabitha Threadgill. I was hog wrestling that fat crazy bitch while you were ogling shaggy goats out there in Kandahar.”

  “Is that what I was doing?”

  “What else are a bunch of red-blooded Army Rangers gonna do for fun while on deployment?”

  “I’ll be sure not to brief you on what I hear.”

  “Call me when you clear those kids,” Lillie said. “In the meantime, you better watch your narrow ass with Miss Threadgill. That woman makes Fannie Hathcock seem like the fuzzy-ass kitty cat.”

  “Some days I do miss your way with words, Lillie.”

  “And other days?”

  “Other days I’ve learned to be my own counsel.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Lillie said. “I knew I trained you right.”

  Lillie looked at her watch and waved for Rose come on back. Lillie walked toward her car and into the wind, looking at the monorail out to Mud Island and at the old Pyramid that been turned into a Bass Pro Shop and fancy redneck motel. The Mississippi moved fast and strong down to New Orleans, branches and stray pieces of trash caught in the flow.

  “One more thing,” Quinn said.

  Lillie waited, her back to the river and the wind.

  “Why’d you name your dog Jerry Lee?” Quinn asked.

  “Why else, son?” Lillie said. “Because he’s a stone-cold killer.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Baby,” Ladarius said. “I know we just met. But do you mind taking that gun out of my face?”

  “You got five seconds to explain who you are and what you’re doing here or I’m hitting 911.”

  “Come on now, missy,” Ladarius said. “Let’s all be cool for a second.”

  “Walk one more step and I’ll show you cool,” the girl said. “My father just bought me this Smith & Wesson and I sure as hell know how to use it. Now answer my GD question.”

  TJ watched all the cool and bullshit drain from Ladarius’s face as the boy froze up before TJ walked out in the open, barefoot with her hands up, and said, “Just some kids looking for some shelter,” she said. “We thought this place was abandoned.”

  “Abandoned?” the blonde girl said. “How many freaky deaky empty houses leave a Sub-Zero fridge and eighteen television sets? And Jesus Christ. Just how many of there are you?”

  “Four,” TJ said. “Me and my little brother. Ladarius here and my friend Holly.”

  “Y’all just go around and break into houses for kicks?” the girl asked, still holding a big-ass silver gun in her hands. Her hands shook some, but her hair and makeup were perfect, huge blue eyes accentuated with lots of mascara. She had one of those fake leopard coats with the fur-trimmed hood loose around her neck, the coat open and showing off a frilly white shirt and fancy jeans shredded on her thighs.

  “We were cold and we were hungry,” TJ said. “And we’re about out of gas.”

  “Nothing to eat here but jars of olives and stale crackers,” she said. “Where’d y’all get those steaks?”

  “Piggly Wiggly,” Ladarius said, lying quick. “Two-for-one special. Sit down and I’ll grill you up one. How you like it? You look like a medium-rare kinda girl.”

  “Both of you need to quit talking and sit down until the cops come,” the girl said. “I told my father something was wrong with the security system, but he wouldn’t listen. He said everything worked just perfect. Perfect, hell. Works great until some trashy-ass redneck kids break into our house.”

  TJ nodded, knowing damn well what it felt like to be on the good side of the gun, and walked over beside Ladarius. They both took a seat at the big kitchen island. On the stove top, the iron skillet kept on smoking until the girl walked around and turned off the gas.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” she said again. “Don’t you hicks have any sense? I mean really. You want to burn down the whole GD house. Go ahead and call down the rest of you. Let me have a look at the whole sorry bunch.”

  TJ yelled for Holly and John Wesley, who were back in the great room watching that big-ass television. They’d moved on from Harry Potter and now were watching those Spy Kids movies from a long time back. She figured they’d been too busy eating steak and eggs to pay attention to this girl busting all up in the place.

  When Holly walked into the kitchen, she immediately dropped her plate onto the floor, sending the meat and gristle and bone flying. “Oh, my god. Oh, my god.”

  John Wesley followed, smiling, not seeming to care a new girl was in the house and holding a huge automatic gun in her hand. “Howdy,” he said. “My name’s John Wesley. That’s a real nice gun. Where you get it?”

  “Sit down, kid,” the girl said. “Just how old are you?”

  “Nine,” John Wesley said, beaming. “But I’ll be ten come this June. Where you’d get that gun? Looks like a .357 with a walnut grip. My Uncle Wayne has one just like it.”

  The girl switched the big gun into her other hand and pulled a phone from her back pocket. She sure as hell was punching up some numbers before her eyes widened and her face lit up. “Wait,” she said. “Wait a hot damn second. I know you. Or at least two of you.”

  “I doubt it,” TJ said.

  “Yes, I do,” the girl said. “You’re her. Aren’t you? And that’s your black boyfriend?”

  “Yeah,” Ladarius said. “You got me. I’m the black one.”

  “Y’all killed her mother?” the girl said. “Didn’t you? Cut her up and dropped her down in some redneck trash dump down in Mississippi.”

  John Wesley stopped shuffling around and smiling. He turned to TJ while his face broke apart and his whole body shook, convulsing like she’d seen people do at that church they opened up in the old Hollywood Video. The kid started to speak but something caught in his throat. TJ got up and ran over to him, dropping down on her knees and hugging him tight.

  “Go on,” TJ said, yelling at the girl. “Call the police. Do what you need to.”

&
nbsp; “Did y’all do it?”

  “Hush,” TJ said.

  “Really?” the girl said. “I hate my damn stepmother so much my teeth ache. That woman must’ve done something awful for you to do what y’all did.”

  John Wesley couldn’t take it anymore, standing tall and wiggling free of TJ, little fists balled up at his side. “That’s a lie! You’re a damn liar! My momma’s not dead! She went to Louisiana! You’re a bullshit liar!”

  “We didn’t kill anyone,” Ladarius said. “Police wanted to put TJ in jail. Me, too. So we ran. Okay? That good with you?”

  Holly hadn’t said a damn word since breaking her plate, getting down on her hands and knees cleaning up the mess she’d made. Now she was sitting back on her big haunches, looking up to this girl and back to TJ, not sure which one was more in charge. That was Holly, always looking for a damn leader.

  “Please don’t call the police,” TJ said, pulling John Wesley close, who was now silently crying while glaring at the girl. “I can explain some things. And then we’ll leave.”

  The girl slipped the gun inside the pocket of the fancy cheetah-print coat, still holding the phone in her right hand. “Y’all are famous,” she said. “You’re all over the damn news. Got your lover under your spell and everything. In love and on the run.”

  “He ain’t my lover,” TJ said. “He’s just a friend.”

  “Not from what I’m hearing,” the girl said. She nodded to the middle of the island where Ladarius had left half a joint at the edge of a saucer. “Wait a second. Y’all have some weed?”

  “Help yourself, sweet thing,” Ladarius said.

  TJ shot him a look. She turned back to the girl, waiting to see what she was doing. Behind her, she could hear Holly Harkins sobbing, hands over her eyes, not wanting to see what happened next.

  “Only an insane person would sit down and smoke a joint with a bunch of redneck outlaws like you,” the girl said.

  Ladarius reached for the joint and handed it to her. She reached out and took it.

  “Well,” the girl said. “I guess it’s your lucky goddamn day. I just got back from rehab last week. My counselor told me to get out and live my own life. You know? All that good shit.”

  TJ held John Wesley as tight as she could, looking back to Holly. Holly, covered up in a big blue sweatshirt, had her hands still over her face and eyes, turning her head from side to side and mumbling some kind of prayer.

  “Okay, then?” TJ asked. “Are we good?”

  “Maybe.” The girl smiled. “Let me think about it. One of y’all outlaws got a light?”

  * * *

  * * *

  To call Tabitha Threadgill unattractive might be a little too generous, Quinn thought. She had to weigh well over three hundred pounds with a face like a bulldog and a temperament to match. The woman started most conversations with “What the fuck do you want?” or “That bitch told you what?” So many crazy women out on her land. For as long as Quinn had been sheriff, Tabitha had always had a string of steady girlfriends, most of them partners she’d met online and coerced to come and stay with her down home on her “Mississippi Ranch.” Her ranch being sixty acres of logged-out hills and a narrow patch of skinny pine trees where she lived in a one-story house of indeterminate style or shape, mainly held together with duct tape, Visqueen, and spit.

  Quinn turned off the main road and headed onto the woman’s land, the small, ramshackle house coming into view. As he parked, he noticed a nice collection of new toys around the trailer. A new aboveground swimming pool covered for the winter, a speedboat up on a trailer, and two matching jet skis.

  Quinn walked up the wooden steps and knocked on the door. He heard a television inside and soon some shuffling steps before the dead bolt slid back on the door. A skinny girl, late teens or early twenties, opened up. She had bug eyes and stringy red hair, wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt that came down past her knees. The T-shirt read: big boobed and tattooed. The young woman didn’t appear to be either of those things.

  “Miss Threadgill around?”

  “You mean Big Momma?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She’s out hunting with the girls,” she said.

  “Hunting season ended last week.”

  “Really?” the girl said, folding her arms over her small chest, shivering a bit. “Maybe they’re just out mud riding. Big Momma’s been racing them things around ever since they got here Christmas morning.”

  “And what’s your name?”

  “Jenny.”

  “What do you do, Jenny?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just came down for the weekend. A little fun in the country. Cook a hog. Shoot some guns. You want to come on in, good lookin’?”

  Quinn shook his head, about to head back to his truck, when he heard the rumbling of a four-wheeler racing down from the hills and zigzagging through the skinny pine trees. He stepped off the porch and down to the dirt path as he spotted Tabitha Threadgill herself behind the wheel of a big four-wheeler, another skinny young girl riding behind her, arms stretched around the big woman’s waist. Two more four-wheelers, same make and model, followed with two heavyset women driving in a straight line behind her.

  Tabitha rode up hard and fast to where Quinn stood, kicking up some rocks and dust. She had on a pair of red pajamas with unlaced mud boots and a big green Carhartt coat. A cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. “The fuck you doing here, Quinn?”

  “Morning, Big Momma,” Quinn said. “Y’all out hunting?”

  A nice-sized doe lay slumped over the back of one of the other four-wheelers, glassy-eyed and tongue hanging out. The other two women were nearly as big as Tabitha with their backsides drooping off each side of the narrow seats. They couldn’t be much older than Quinn but had weathered faces and almost colorless eyes, hair a strawy mix of white and yellow. One of them appeared to have sideburns and the faint tracing of a mustache.

  “Found this doe on the road,” Tabitha said. “What of it?”

  “I’m not a game warden,” Quinn said. “I came to talk to you about Gina Byrd.”

  “I know she’s dead,” Tabitha said. “I know someone done killed her sorry ass. You want me to go hang my head and cry about it? Shit.”

  The two other big women stayed put on their four-wheelers. The skinny girl had come out onto the porch, still shivering while watching the action from the stairs, her stringy red hair blowing over her pale white face. The leafless trees around the property swayed in the cold wind.

  “Also just heard your mother died recently,” Quinn said. “My condolences on both.”

  “Sad about Momma,” Tabitha said, sucking down the cigarette to a nub and pitching it at Quinn’s feet. “My asshole half-sister stuck her in a real shithole. Wadn’t for that, she’d be alive today.”

  “Was that up in Corinth?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Newspapers called that place Motel Hell. You know, like that movie where them folks eat their guests like a pork supper?”

  “I may have read something about it.”

  Big Momma reached for a pack of cigarettes and set fire to the end of one with a small, skinny lighter. “Something on your mind, Sheriff?” she said. “Or did you just come on out to offer your fucking thoughts and prayers? Because I’m about to freeze my big-ass titties off out here while we shoot the breeze.”

  Quinn scratched at his cheek, looked down at the dust on his square-toed boots and then back at Big Momma. It wasn’t easy looking that woman in the eye, but he did his best. Her eyes were so tiny they were almost lost in the expanse of her face, jowls drooping as she sucked in more smoke.

  “Appears you’ve been having a real time around here,” Quinn said. “Nice swimming pool. Some new four-wheelers and a big boat. Yep. Y’all are living the life.”

  “Don’t see how that’s any of your concer
n.”

  “Just wondering how things turned around for you,” Quinn said. “Last time I saw you, you were worried about some man from over in New Albany foreclosing on your land.”

  “Not no more,” she said. “That shit’s all over.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Ain’t no luck about it,” she said. “Paid that shit off with the settlement my lawyer got. A little left over for a few toys. No crime in that. Is it?”

  “No, ma’am,” Quinn said. “That’s a nice one, too. What is that, a Kawasaki? The 750?”

  “Yep,” Big Momma said, turning to each of her gal pals. Giving what might’ve passed as a smile if her lips could curl in that direction. “They call these things Brute Force. I kind of liked that as that’s been my motto. Right behind ‘Momma gets shit done.’ This here model has a twelve-hundred-pound towing capacity.”

  “Bet that comes in handy.”

  “Damn straight,” Big Momma said. The skinny girl up behind her peeking out from around the mammoth back of the woman. “Are we done here? Me and my girls need to strip this here deer.”

  “Guess that settlement paid out to your mother’s whole family.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s right.”

  “Gina Byrd, too.”

  “Gina?” she said. “Gina didn’t get jack shit. That bitch wasn’t family. Only that runt girl of hers got a cut. And nothing like the family got, neither.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” Quinn said. “How much was it?”

  “Don’t see how that’s any business of yours.”

  “Might help me figure out some things.”

  “Like how far them goddamn kids are gonna get on my ole momma’s money?”

  “Sure,” Quinn said. “Something like that.”

  “Not too far at all,” Big Momma said. “That smart attorney up there in Corinth seen to it that little cunt couldn’t touch that money till she turned eighteen.”

  “Who was in charge of it?”

  “Don’t rightly know,” Big Momma said. The ash on her cigarette drooping long before the wind blew and scattered the ashes across her jacket. “I figured Gina. Guess she ain’t gonna be spending none of it now, either. Ha. Ha. That’s why I don’t live for tomorrow. That’s why me and my gal pals run and gun and party like hell till this big ole shitshow stops spinning.”