by Ace Atkins
Quinn nodded. Smoke twirled into the scattering blades of an overhead fan as he looked up at Lillie seated atop his desk. “Can I buy you dinner at the new Chinese place on the Square? Their General Tso’s chicken isn’t half bad.”
“Appreciate it,” Lillie said. “But I promised Rose I’d pick her up at school. She’s stayed the last two nights with a friend. Hard to explain to a seven-year-old exactly what a U.S. Marshal does.”
“Before you go—’’
“No,” Lillie said. “You may not splatter the walls with Wes Taggart.”
“I can’t find a file,” Quinn said. “From back when my uncle was sheriff.”
“What are you looking for?”
Quinn nodded. “Brandon Taylor.”
“Christ Almighty,” Lillie said. “How the hell did that come up? From Maggie?”
“Maggie had questions,” Quinn said. “I looked around for the report and couldn’t find a thing. And then today a woman from New York came to see me about looking into the case.”
“I understand Maggie,” Lillie said. “I know she and the Taylor boy were friendly. But why the hell does someone from New York give two shits about some old suicide?”
“You know the Taylor family.”
“’Fraid I do.”
“They can’t let it go,” Quinn said. “And I think Shaina Taylor reached out to these people to reopen the investigation as a podcast.”
“They have anything?” Lillie said. “Other than a lot of questions from the Taylors?”
“This woman Tashi Coleman said the Taylor family has the original autopsy, the preliminary one done here,” Quinn said. “She says the original report says Brandon Tayler had died from a .38 bullet.”
“So?”
“Don’t you remember?” Quinn asked. “He was supposed to have walked into those woods with his Remington .308. The family also says they found Brandon about ten feet from his rifle.”
“Maybe the ‘.38’ is a typo,” Lillie said. “None of those Bundrens could spell worth a shit. That includes your little old honeybunny, Ophelia. She used to look over my shoulder in French class all the damn time and copy my answers.”
“Before you left, I moved everything my uncle had squirreled away in the house and the barn out to a climate-controlled unit in town,” he said. “There’s the initial incident report, when Brandon’s dad reported him missing, and two more follow-up reports after that. But most of what I know came from what I found online. Old newspaper stories.”
“Did you happen to see the name Hubie Phillips?”
Quinn shook his head.
“But you know who he is?” she said.
“Sure,” Quinn said. “He used to teach at Tibbehah High.”
“You know what happened to him?”
“I heard folks ran him out of town.”
“The whole damn county turned against him because they thought he’d been having an improper relationship with Brandon,” she said. “He was a good English teacher, taught a lot of mouth-breathers around here that speaking properly wasn’t a sin. You shoulda seen the man light up when someone used ain’t or went for a double negative. My God, I loved that man.”
“My uncle thought he had something to do with Brandon’s death?”
“In one way or another,” Lillie said. “He was a suspect before they found the body. People starting to whisper about how Brandon spent more time with him than he did his own family. And then there were the facts everyone else pretended weren’t real.”
“Like what?”
“Man in his forties, unmarried, who spent time up in Memphis taking on cultural pursuits.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I’m pretty sure Hubie Phillips was gay and that alone made him a suspect in whatever happened to Brandon Taylor. I mentioned it to Sheriff Beckett once and he got real angry with me. I think he felt bad about the association Phillips had with the case and the fact he’d been fired and had to leave Jericho in the middle of the night. Me and you were in school then. Don’t you recall, Quinn?”
“I recall there was something about a teacher,” Quinn said. “But I didn’t remember who it was.”
“What was going on while people searched wasn’t exactly advertised,” she said. “I didn’t find out the whole story until I came on with the sheriff’s department. But your uncle bowed to pressure from the local yokels and brought Phillips in for an interview. It was enough to send Brandon’s daddy down to Tibbehah High with a loaded pistol and revenge on his mind. He dragged poor Mr. Phillips into a bathroom stall and stuck a .44 down his throat, asking him all kinds of vile questions.”
“How do you know?” Quinn said. “This is a hell of a small town and I never heard that story.”
“Fucking E. J. Royce.”
“Shit.”
“Yep,” Lillie said, tilting her head to study Quinn. “Is that old turd dead yet?”
“Unfortunately, he’s still with us.”
“Try not to threaten Royce right off,” Lillie said. “He can’t help he was born a racist, misogynist peckerhead any more than a dog can’t help licking its nuts.”
“Will do.” Quinn nodded and picked up his cigar. “You ready to talk to Wes Taggart?”
Lillie smiled. “Damn straight.”
* * *
* * *
“You made your people sit out here in the heat, Chief?” Ray said. “You know they could’ve come inside, had a nice lunch made for them by Miss Lucille. Vardaman wouldn’t have cared.”
“I don’t want my people to know my business,” Chief Robbie said, standing in the shade of a huge twisted oak outside the hunt lodge perched on the hill. Ray had always heard how fancy it was, but, Christ Almighty, it looked like a glorified Cracker Barrel to him. It was true. Money can’t buy good taste.
“You don’t like this part,” Ray said. “Do you?”
Chief didn’t answer, his big hairless chest sweating as soon as they got outside. With the long hair and the bare skin, he reminded him of some kind of drugstore romance novel cover. Chief Robbie in Savage Instincts.
“Mr. White says we support this man,” Chief Robbie said. “OK, then. That’s part of our agreement. But his ideas, what he stands for, what he has said on his radio stations—”
“He does love to talk,” Ray said, looking at the big Indian as he shielded his eyes from the sun. “And he may be the biggest goddamn crook this state has ever seen. But he’s our crook. And after the election, we’ll own his sorry ass.”
The Chief nodded.
Ray stuck out his hand and the Chief studied it for a moment.
Ray knew he wasn’t going to let go of the whole Fannie Hathcock debacle, knowing Ray and Fannie were intimate friends on occasion. The Chief once remarked to Ray that he could smell evil all over him. Ray thought it was some kind of Indian trick, but then he realized he meant the Chanel No. 5. Not to mention, there was also the matter of a young kid named Mingo who had worked for both Chief Robbie and Fannie. When push came to shove, the kid went to Fannie. God forbid if the Chief ever knew how all that shit turned out.
The Chief nodded and accepted Ray’s hand.
The big man’s grip was like putting walnuts in a fucking vise. Ray could feel the old cartilage in his hands crack and pop. He squeezed back as hard as he could and gave the man a solid wink. They were pals now, friends again, the sun would shine down on Mississippi for their wonderful ole confederacy of crooks.
“Before you go,” Ray said, smoothing down the edge of his silver mustache, “I have a favor to ask.”
“For Vardaman?” he said. “Or for you?”
“For Mr. White.”
The Chief folded his arms across his chest and listened as Ray told him about the unfortunate incident of Wes Taggart being arrested in the motel in Biloxi.
“Cou
ld he hurt us?” Chief Robbie asked.
Ray didn’t say anything, just leveled a dead-eyed stare at the big Indian and nodded.
* * *
* * *
“I don’t have to talk to none of y’all,” Wes Taggart said. “My goddamn American rights have been shit upon ever since this dyke bitch busted into my motel room in Biloxi and aimed a pistol at my peter.”
Lillie looked up at Quinn. “He’s right,” she said. “I didn’t mirandize his pecker. But it was so damn small I couldn’t see it.”
“See what I’m talking about?” Taggart said. “You hear the kind of shit she’s pulling on me? I’m a fucking white man in America and don’t need to be treated like a crackhead.”
Quinn stood over him in the interview room at the Tibbehah County Jail. The interview room wasn’t much; an eight-by-eight cinder-block holding cell with walls painted a light green. Somewhere Quinn had heard the lighter color soothed the inmates, but his first suspect had taken off his pants and shit on the walls trying to spell out his name. They painted over it the same green as it had always been.
“You know me?” Quinn said. He left his gun on his desk and kept his clenched fists under his biceps.
“Naw,” Taggart said. “Why would I?”
Quinn had thought about Wes Taggart every night since they’d found Boom beaten and bloodied and left for dead. He’d had unpleasant thoughts about what he’d do when finally faced with the man. Most of the time the damage would be done with his hands. Sometimes it was just a quick shot. But this is where Lillie had trained him. For all her big talk and jokes, Lillie had helped him make the transition from warrior to peacekeeper. And you didn’t beat a suspect. You didn’t torture them to get the truth. You just let the son of a bitch twist and turn with their lies and eventually hang themselves.
“You and J. B. Hood came into my county to teach Boom Kimbrough a lesson,” Quinn said. “You damn near killed him.”
“I don’t know how many fucking times I have to say this, but I don’t know any SOB named Boom,” he said. “Why don’t you go out and roust some other hardworking folks? Whatever shit you’re trying to frame me with ain’t gonna work. What do you got? You got a weapon? Some DNA? Some blood or shit? You see, I know my business. You can’t let the word of a bleached blonde cooze make it so.”
“Purple,” Lillie said. “Your cooze has purple hair.”
“I want to see my high-dollar lawyer and I want him now,” he said. “I ain’t saying no more to neither of you about something that happened to y’all’s friend.”
“What did you say?” Quinn said.
“Don’t try to fuck me for your friend fucking up.”
Quinn felt his jaw tighten and his eye twitch a little. He thought about reaching for Taggart and pulling his sorry ass to his feet, letting Lillie unlock his cuffs and let them just go at it inside the locked room until only Quinn was left standing. There would be blood and shit on all those pale green walls.
“We’ve got a Louisville Slugger with Boom’s blood and your prints all over it,” Quinn said. “J. B. Hood must’ve kept it as a trophy when he flipped his car.”
“And you shot him,” Taggart said. “You gonna shoot me, too? Call it an accident? Old-time frontier justice like when I used to watch The Rifleman with my daddy?”
“Would it make you shut up?” Lillie asked.
Quinn shook his head, let out a breath, tried to let his fists relax, untighten, let his hands drop to his sides and placed them on his hips. He looked at the muscly man with the craggy face, shaved head, and blue scrawl down his biceps and over his forearms. His eyes were a pale blue and his face had stubble about as long as the hair on his skeletal head.
“Are we done here?” Taggart said.
“Nope,” Quinn said. “I’d like to talk to you a little about your relationship with J. K. Vardaman.”
“You mean our next governor?” Taggart said, laughing. “How the hell would I know a fella like that?”
Lillie shook her head and walked out of the room. Quinn watched Taggart’s face, the cocky laugh settling down into a shit-eating grin.
“You’re facing attempted murder charges here in Tibbehah,” Quinn said. “Not to mention what you and your late pal J. B. Hood did to Cody Pritchard. You’re looking at murder for him, too. And that’s long before you sit down with the Feds.”
“Fuck me like a dang mangy dog.”
“All I’m saying is if you know something about Vardaman working with your people on the Coast,” Quinn said, “I’d be interested in hearing you out.”
“Y’all are nuts.”
“Loyalty,” Quinn said. “Sure do admire that. Good luck to you, Wes.”
Quinn walked from the interview room, waiting for the jail guard to buzz him back through the locked doors and into the lobby. Quinn headed outside to the flagpole in the parking lot and worked on taking in deep, even breaths and letting them go slowly. The air was hot and sticky and the sun reflected off the rows of vehicles out in the lot.
“You did good in there, Ranger,” Lillie said. “I didn’t know about the prints.”
Quinn nodded. “Be great if it was true,” he said. “Goddamn prints showed J. B. Hood’s little monkey hands were all over that bat.”
“And the other bat?”
Quinn shook his head. “We never found another.”
Lillie smiled. “And what’d he say about Vardaman?”
“Claims he never met him.”
“How did he look when he said it?” Lillie asked.
“Like a goddamn liar.”
SIX
Tashi picked up Jessica, her producer, researcher, and full-time partner in crime, at the Traveler’s Rest Motel just outside Jericho. This would be the fifth time they’d worked together on an investigative story, starting off together at Columbia as grad students and then coming on as network interns at the same time. They’d both fetched coffee, done grunt work, and brainstormed ideas. Thin Air had actually been Jessica’s baby, after watching one of those crazy Dateline shows about a missing woman in Iowa. Tashi remembered walking into her loft in Red Hook, Jessica already a little stoned, open boxes of Thai food all around her, and telling her to sit down and watch something.
When the segment was over, Jessica turned to Tashi and said, “Don’t you think we could do better?”
And they did. Their investigation into that very same case led to the eventual arrest and prosecution of a deputy sheriff who’d been on the fringe of the case. He’d done his best to hide evidence, misdirect investigators, and cover up any trace of his relationship to the victim. Through Tashi and Jessica’s work, the state police eventually learned of a shallow grave outside Iowa City where the lawman had buried her.
“How come everyone I meet knows I’m not from here?” Jessica said, Tashi driving them farther south into the county. Her GPS set to a place called The River.
“Maybe it’s the blue hair,” Tashi said, turning off of Highway 9 and onto Jericho Road. “And your big black Doc Martens. You definitely bring a certain vibe to the state of Mississippi.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve toned it down while you’ve been out doing your meet and greet,” Jessica said. “I dressed down considerably for my little resupply trip to Walmart. Don’t you see this T-shirt, ‘Love it or Leave it’? But as I was in line at Walmart, waiting to check out, I got the same question, ‘Where you from?’ Like ‘New York City’ was tattooed on my forehead.”
“Everybody seems to know everybody else down here,” Tashi said, the road and terrain flattening out south of town, long stretches of cotton and soybeans all around them. The sun high and blazing hot. “Even with Brandon Taylor, look at all the connections. His former girlfriend is now married to the sheriff, who is the nephew of the old sheriff. And the sheriff’s sister used to know Brandon. And Brandon’s father worked at the sawmill owned by
one of the town’s biggest crooks. It’s one degree of separation with everybody in town.”
She slowed and put on her blinker as she spotted a hand-painted sign directing them to THE RIVER. ALL WELCOME.
“Are they going to try and convert us?” Jessica said. “Maybe you should let them know you’re Jewish and I’m a lapsed Catholic. You know, straight off, so it’s out there.”
“This place is more of a community outreach than a church,” Tashi said. “They have a decent online presence. It was started by a guy named Jamey Dixon. He had a pretty extensive history, spent some time at Parchman for manslaughter. He was convicted of killing his girlfriend in 2005. They found her on a back highway run over dozens of times. The body was so mutilated, there wasn’t much of her left. Although he always claimed he was innocent.”
“Maybe he was.”
“Whatever happened, he started this church,” she said. “It was supposed to be a throwback to old country religion. He had a bluegrass band every Sunday and apparently did a lot of good for this county. He’d become an ordained minister while in Parchman and spent the rest of his life on the outside handing out food, clothes, and money to the poor.”
“And what happened to him?”
“All that money he gave away belonged to some other cellmates from an armored car job,” Tashi said. “When they found out he’d double-crossed them, they broke out of prison and murdered him.”
“Jesus,” Jessica said. “Just where have you taken me this time?”
“His last girlfriend is the woman I wanted you to run a background on today,” Tashi said, seeing the long wooden fence up ahead, a cattle gate wide open with a road curving into some small pine trees. “Caddy Colson.”
“Who is the sheriff’s sister.”
“Correct.”
“Not exactly an angel herself.”
“What’d you find out?” Tashi said, seeing the wooden barn and a big skeletal metal frame of a building under construction, surrounded by several trailers and little shotgun shacks at the end of the road. She let down her window and she could hear the high whine of the cicadas and chirping of birds. Great Southern background sounds that would go well with trucks rounding the Square blaring country music.