by Ace Atkins
Quinn could call DeSoto dispatch and run into the restaurant. He could make the arrest and hand whoever this was to the locals.
Most folks have a little more time to unwind, unpack the wedding gifts, set up shop in their house and get into a new routine. Quinn had maybe two months before Tashi Coleman had showed up, making shit tough for Maggie, bringing up some hard memories for her, making her walk back into the woods with them, trying to figure out what happened back in the fall of ’97. More than anything, Quinn just wanted those women gone and his wife back. They’d been trying like hell to keep little Brandon away from all this mess, but two nights ago, after Tashi had showed up at the farm, he’d wandered in, listened to talk about the body, the placement of the gun, all the craziness that followed. Little Brandon wanted to know why they were whispering about him and why did he shoot that gun?
Quinn could see a waitress walking up to Maggie, the women talking to each other for a bit and then the waitress walking away. His cell phone started to ring.
Quinn picked up.
“They’re gone,” Maggie said. “But they left me a key to the lockers. Let’s see what this bullshit is about.”
Quinn spotted Maggie over by the candy aisle and the novelty T-shirts. BLACK SMOKE DON’T MEAN IT’S BROKE. I LOVE THE SMELL OF DIESEL IN THE MORNING. JESUS CHRIST, THE #1 SAVIOR. Maggie tilted her head toward the trucker entrance facing the diesel pumps. They passed through the snack cakes, the hot dogs turning on heated rollers, black coffee stagnant and burnt in clear pots, action movie DVDs and audio tapes of Westerns and erotic thrillers. They wandered into a break room with a half-dozen truckers lounging about in easy chairs, half awake, watching flickering images on a corner TV set. Judge Judy, with her glasses down her nose, taking two women to task for trying to get out of paying for a parrot.
Maggie headed back toward the bathrooms and showers to a row of metal lockers, nodding toward one and turning the key. She pulled out a single photograph, a four-by-six picture of her and Brandon Taylor. The two sat together on a couch, but a decent distance apart, Brandon laughing, Maggie cutting her eyes over at him, a dubious look on her face. She had much longer hair then, nearly down to her waist, but the same turned-up nose and spread of freckles, eyes so green they almost didn’t seem real.
“I don’t remember taking this,” Maggie said.
“Anything else in there?”
Maggie reached into the locker and pulled out a small silver chain, a silver heart pendant rocking between her fingers. She held it up to the light, tilting her head to study the inscription. Her face reddened as she dropped it back inside like it were hot.
“How close?” Quinn said.
“Real close,” Maggie said. “Brandon gave it to me the first summer we met. I gave it back to him the next summer when we broke up. We’d had a silly fight. Just stupid. About me flirting with another boy on the Square. We made up, but I never saw him again. God, I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Maybe we can get some prints off the necklace or the photo,” Quinn said. “I’ll talk to the manager here about pulling some security footage and talk to that waitress. Just what did she tell you?”
“She said I sure had pretty hair,” Maggie said. “And then asked if I was Maggie Powers.”
“Not Maggie Colson?”
“Nope,” she said. “The waitress said the man who’d left this said I’d have real pretty hair.”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Mags,” Quinn said. “That’s creepy as hell.”
“Goddamn, this pisses me off.”
“Someone’s definitely messing with your head,” Quinn said. “Don’t let ’em in.”
Maggie nodded, letting out a long breath and placing the flat of her hand against her forehead. “Promise me you’ll get this fucker, Quinn,” she said. “I’m not fifteen anymore.”
* * *
* * *
“Damn,” Jessica said. “We’re going to need our own box for all of Quinn Colson’s records. Disturbing the peace. Reckless driving. Assault. Another assault. Minor in possession of alcohol. More reckless driving. Can you even go a hundred on these back roads?”
“Funny how all this went away.”
“Well,” Jessica said. “He was a minor. Most of the driving offenses happened when he was sixteen and seventeen. Some kind of junior varsity Burt Reynolds tearing up the hills of Tibbehah County. I don’t know if this really tells us a whole hell of a lot other than Quinn was a wild kid, joined the Army, and got his shit straight. Good background material. Definitely tells us Sheriff Beckett was no stranger to cutting breaks for family.”
Tashi flipped through more files, most of the offenses on notecards, alphabetized when they were lucky. But some of the file cabinets had been toppled and the cards had been scattered. They’d uprighted the cabinets and sorted the cards back in order, doing a great service for Tibbehah County’s pristine recordkeeping system. She looked down at her watch—nearly six o’clock—and it was already getting dark. They’d either need to go grab dinner and some more flashlights or just come back in the morning. It scared her to leave all this tonight now that people knew what they wanted to find. All of this could disappear tomorrow. This place was a find, a stroke of luck, on account of Jessica being so damn chatty with the clerk. Sometimes it helped having blue hair. No one could play funny and inoffensive like Jessica Torres.
“Remember the time you talked the bartender at Dutch Kills into opening that bottle of really expensive bourbon?” Tashi said. “What was that stuff called again?”
“Twenty-three-year-old Pappy Van Winkle,” Jessica said, heaving another file cabinet off the floor. “Bottle probably cost six hundred bucks.”
“And we never got a tab.”
“’Twern’t nothing.”
“I was impressed,” Tashi said. “You always get people to do things like that. People open up to you, trust you, more than me. People are so damn guarded when I talk to them.”
“Please,” Jessica said. “First off, people love to confide in you. You have a wholesome face. And the only reason we drank the good booze that night is because I showed him my tits.”
“Bullshit.”
“Well, not there in the bar. But the night before. We hooked up. He was a decent lay, but a much better bartender.”
Tashi started to laugh, rifling through more files, getting pretty good at it. The cards themselves had been well done, typed out in bold black ink, names, dates, and offenses clearly marked. If the stack was in order, she could get dozens done within a few minutes, looking for either Colson or Taylor. Only finding Colson so far. She kept flipping through. Caldwell, Carmody, Chase, Clemons . . . More Colson, Quinn. She picked up a card and started to read it, finding an envelope stapled to the back. Opening the envelope, she pulled out two neatly typed pages, an arrest report with a narrative attached.
“Holy fucking shit.”
Jessica peeked up from the other side of the cabinet, resting her forearms on top, staring at Tashi. The thought suddenly coming to her how ridiculous it was to have gone from their dorm at Columbia to a shithole apartment in Williamsburg to an abandoned schoolhouse in Mississippi in only two years. Tashi flattened the sheet of paper out on top of the cabinet, Jessica now moving behind her and reading over her shoulder. “What?” Jessica said. “You need more light?”
“Shh.”
Jessica turned on the light on her cell phone, chin resting on Tashi’s shoulder blade.
“Holy fucking shit,” Jessica said.
“I know,” Tashi said. “Right?”
“Illegal trespassing,” Jessica said. “On acreage belonging to the Hawkins family.”
“Did you see the date?” Tashi said.
“October 1997,” Jessica said. “Less than a month before Brandon Taylor disappears.”
SEVENTEEN
It was now the fourth of October,
a Thursday morning, and the exotic dancer Dana Ray had finally had enough of Bradley Wayne’s shit, shooting him in the right thigh with his own .44 pistol. Quinn sat with Reggie in his F-150 in the rain, drinking coffee and watching the EMTs load Bradley Wayne into an ambulance. Dana Ray had been arrested and taken to jail by their new deputy, Celia Jackson. Quinn cracked the window as the ambulance drove off onto Jericho Road toward the hospital, hoping to hell Maggie wouldn’t be the one to have to deal with Bradley Wayne’s sorry ass next.
“That woman says she didn’t mean to shoot him in the leg,” Reggie said, typing up the report on the laptop.
“I know,” Quinn said, lighting up the back half of his Liga Privada. “She meant to shoot him in the pecker.”
“Did she really say that?”
“Yep.”
“You want me to put it in the report?” Reggie asked, looking over at Quinn, eyes wide.
“No, sir,” Quinn said, blowing smoke out the window, watching the working girls at Vienna’s Place gather under the long expanse of its sloping tin roof. All ten of them were wearing black negligees, some covering themselves with black silk robes. In their thigh-high boots with the tall acrylic heels, they looked like a conspiracy of ravens.
“Never a dull moment in Tibbehah,” Reggie said. “This morning Deputy Cullison and I chased two brothers from Yalobusha County down County Road 191. They’d stolen six toilets from Robbie Neece’s work shed. The boy driving hit a pothole and damn near threw the commode into our windshield.”
“Where’d y’all catch them?”
“Highway patrol stopped them on the county line,” Reggie said, typing as he talked. One of the working girls at Fannie’s caught Quinn’s eye, opening her robe wide to show off her sparkling bra and panty set. She blew Quinn a kiss. “Mr. Neece sure was pissed about his commodes. Two of them got busted. Those damn brothers had been working for him on the new houses he’d been building up by the high school.”
Quinn watched two more girls wave. A new girl turned her butt to him and smacked it. Quinn hit the light bar on his truck with the siren and the black-clad ladies all stepped inside out of the rain. He continued to smoke, putting down the cigar for a moment, smoke curling up from the ashtray as the windshield wipers rocked back and forth. Fannie had added something new to Vienna’s sign. SUPPORT SINGLE MOTHERS.
“Any luck with those women from New York leaving town?” Reggie said, not looking up, the laptop screen shining on his face.
“They have every right to be here,” Quinn said. “I just don’t like them stopping by unannounced pretty much every other day. They don’t seem to understand forensics takes some time, especially in Mississippi. They think I’m hiding what I know about the body we found. And some other things, too.”
“What they were saying,” Reggie said, “sounded like a lot of bullshit to me. I’m sorry they’re making things tough on you and your family.”
“What they said is all true,” Quinn said. “I did all those things. I used to get into fights. I stole a county vehicle. Sometimes I trespassed on people’s land. I may have poached a little bit when I was a kid. What my uncle did may not have been legal, but I’m thankful for it. He knew I didn’t have a lot of guidance back at home with Jason out in L.A.”
“What’s the damn point of it?”
“You hadn’t heard?” Quinn said, lifting the cigar to his lips.
“No, sir.”
“E. J. Royce told those women I’d been shooting at the Taylor boy before they found him dead,” Quinn said. “Royce said my Uncle Hamp covered it up when the kid went missing. Like he covered up a lot of things. Those women just happened to find about dozen or so times I was arrested but never prosecuted. One time I’d crossed over on the Hawkins land. I didn’t even know it. My uncle did his best to keep me clean, on track.”
“And that gives some kind of credibility to a man like Royce?” Reggie said. “Please. That man is plain-out wicked. You won’t even believe what he told me the first time he saw me in uniform.”
“I bet I would,” Quinn said.
“Yes, sir,” Reggie said. “Just like that. Racist old peckerhead. But what you did or didn’t do back then doesn’t mean a damn now. I wouldn’t even speak to those ladies next time they come by the office. If they make any trouble, I’d throw their asses in jail.”
“Can’t do that,” Quinn said. “Protecting their right to question me is kind of the reason we risked our ass in the Army all those years. I saw them last week and answered all their questions. I verified everything they said and denied the rumors and flat-out lies. It’s all part of my job. But what they’re doing to Maggie? That’s a whole other deal.”
Reggie closed the laptop. He reached for his mic and told Cleotha he was headed to Tibbehah General to keep an eye on Bradley Wayne Guthrie while they extracted the bullet. Reggie put down the mic and looked over at Quinn, hand on the door and ready to get back to his own cruiser.
“How’s Maggie doing?” he asked.
“Not too good,” Quinn said. “She’s pretty much a nervous wreck.”
“You told me about what y’all saw at the truck stop up in Olive Branch,” Reggie said. “Anything come of that?”
“I pulled the surveillance at the Flying J and interviewed the waitress,” Quinn said. “I got a still from the video, but it’s tough to see a damn thing. The necklace Maggie found and the photograph didn’t have any prints. Not a one.”
“Some weird shit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you want to do with Bradley Wayne?” Reggie asked.
“When he comes to, charge him with agg assault,” Quinn said.
“And what are you going to do with Miss Dana Ray?”
“Maybe give her a lesson about improving her aim.”
* * *
* * *
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Skinner said, standing in the rain at the clearing along Highway 45. The dirt work just starting for the Tibbehah Cross, backhoes digging into the side of a sloping hill of orange clay. “We really shouldn’t be seen together.”
“I left fifteen messages with your secretary, Miss Ida,” E. J. Royce said. “I don’t mean to be all sensitive, but I have to say it sounds like a big ole brush-off to me. So this morning down at the pool hall, I heard y’all had broken ground on some civic project and I said to myself, ‘E.J., I’ll bet that’s why ole Skinner ain’t called you back. Maybe you should go visit him in person and get right down to the ole nitty-gritty.’”
Skinner leaned against his brand-new Dodge 2500, fire engine red, bought and paid for by the county. Some people took notice it had both a sunroof and deluxe leather package. But he’d been working on and off for Tibbehah County most of his life and figured it cut an impressive image when meeting with important folks around the state. Success brought on success. The rain tapped at the brim of his pearl white Stetson as he watched the bulldozers scrape away the hill, leveling out the earth where the new cross would stand tall and proud.
“What’re y’all putting in?” Royce asked. “Some kind of service road to get to the steak and titties faster?”
“No, sir,” Skinner said, leaning against the hood of his truck. “We are not. Don’t you read the newspaper, Royce?”
“These days only thing a newspaper is good for is wiping your damn ass,” Royce said. “That business turned to shit about twenty years ago. Now it’s nothing but stories about Hollywood elites and fake news from the goddamn liberal machine. How’s a white man supposed to know what the fuck’s going on in the world? Sometimes I wish I could punch Betty Jo Mize right in her fucking nose. The things that woman writes.”
Skinner felt his face flush, rain sliding off his hat and down the slick surface of his cowboy duster. “I’d appreciate you not using vulgar language in my presence.”
“Oh, I forgot, Skinner,” Royce said. “
You’re the fucking Moral Majority of Tibbehah County. You and Anita Goddamn Bryant. Damn, I used to daydream about squeezing that woman’s big old fat titties like a pair of Florida grapefruits.”
“Enough,” Skinner said, raising his voice, slapping his hand on the hood of his big new truck. “None of that gutter talk. Not here. You bring a dust cloud of deception and immorality everywhere you go. Here I was, standing out here in the rain, thinking on this morning’s meditation—I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth—and then you appear, talking filthy about squeezing a woman’s breasts like grapefruits.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Royce said. “Don’t tell me you don’t like titties, neither.”
“I hope this cross will become a beacon of light in the darkness,” Skinner said. “I’m told folks will be able to see its light for nearly two miles, beyond the hills and turns of this here highway.”
“Hallelujah, Brother Skinner,” Royce said, turning his head to spit. “Hallelujah.”
“Don’t you dare mock my faith,” Skinner said, feeling the heat in his face begin to cool. “What do you have when things get black as midnight up at your little shack in Carthage? Or when the final trumpet blows?”
“I got me some old dogs to keep me warm, dirty movies on some VHS tapes, and some Fighting Cock whiskey,” Royce said, grinning and scratching at his neck. “But I have to say my groceries have gotten a mite low since the last time we met. Hard keeping me and them dogs fed on a state pension. Two of my checks done bounced at the Piggly Wiggly last week and they posted them on the manager’s window like I’m some kind of fucking criminal.”
“You can’t help it,” Skinner said, seeing the whole cross taking shape there on the hill and in the rain. The majesty of the whole thing nearly made him weep. “You spew out profanities as easily as some men breathe. Did you ever consider some good, God-fearin’ folks find that kind of behavior reprehensible? It’s why I don’t care to be seen in your presence.”