The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

by C. J. Box

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” she said.

  “I know what you mean,” the sheriff said.

  * * *

  In April of 1942 Jimmy Doolittle bombed Tokyo and crash-landed his B-25s on the Chinese mainland. In reprisal for the help given to his crews by Chinese peasants, the Japanese murdered 250,000 civilians. Maria and Jesus were brought back to Grandfather’s place, and Mother and Tige and I rejoined my father in our little brick home on Hawthorne Street in Houston. That summer, after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the war turned around at Midway, and we knew that in all probability the light of civilization had been saved. It was a grand time to be around. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

  MICHAEL CEBULA

  Second Cousins

  FROM Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

  “Could you ever kill a man?”

  That’s how she said it, that’s how she laid it on me, us two in bed and it so early in the morning that I hadn’t even had my first cigarette. Of course, I could guess who she was talking about.

  I took my time, which is my way, and before I could respond, Toola turned and propped herself up on her elbows, looked me over, and answered herself.

  “You could do it,” she said.

  I knew how she came to that conclusion, or thought I did. I’ve got that lean and hungry look, one you’re born with, one that persists even on a full belly, and it’s enough to make people assume you’ll do anything for a dollar; it makes them think they can ask you something like that and you’ll stick your hand out and say, “How much?” without ever wondering How come? Didn’t even matter that she knew I was a deputy and had the badge to prove it. The color of your eyes and the set of your mouth determine your destiny as much as anything else. Well, that and your family.

  “That’s quite a question,” I said, “for so early in the morning. I don’t know.”

  “Now you’re going modest on me?”

  “When wasn’t I modest before?”

  Instead of answering, Toola turned again and lay on her back and stared at the ceiling, her old and much-abused mattress squeaking and protesting like it’d been shot. The box fan on her bureau did nothing to cool the room down, and sweat lingered on her chest like some kind of slick icing. Toola claimed she was thirty-one, her license said thirty-six, and sometimes when she’d smile you’d swear twenty-five. She had long black hair and soft white skin and was good-looking in all the ways you’d expect, but what caught me first was she had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. She told me later they were contacts.

  Now I pawed at the nightstand beside me but couldn’t find my cigarettes. I was feeling about half starved, but even after all our times together I still didn’t know if Toola could cook, only that she wasn’t the type of woman you asked to make you breakfast. My head was aching and I wanted to sink back down into that bed, but I could already hear the combine running over the soybean field across the road. That meant somebody could have seen my patrol car out front. I hardly had the energy for it, but I swung my legs over the bed and looked around for my clothes. My clothes and my cigarettes.

  Toola said, “You ever think of leaving here, Danny?”

  “Can I put my pants on first?”

  “They’re in the kitchen. Under the table, next to your boots.”

  “In the kitchen, under the table. How did they—​never mind.”

  “What I meant is, you ever think of just hitting the road? Getting in your car and driving until you leave everyone behind and find someplace better than all this?”

  I gave up looking for my cigarettes and walked to the door. Toola hadn’t moved a muscle. You never could guess what that girl might say next. But I always liked hearing her talk.

  “No place is all that different,” I said. “Not in any way that counts.”

  “Lord,” she said. “Don’t tell me that.”

  * * *

  I left Toola where she was, and where she was likely to remain for as long as the sun was up, and walked outside to the porch. My patrol car was out front, surrounded by a mess of chickens, but I’d locked the doors the night before so I wasn’t too worried about them stealing it even though they moved with the nervous jitter of a money-hungry band of tweakers. It was hot already and humid, the kind of air you don’t walk in as much as swim through, and I wasn’t much looking forward to my shift, even before you considered my hangover.

  Me and Toola had been visiting each other several nights a week for the last six months, and while that had its benefits it was costing me sleep, especially sleep in my own bed. That’s one of those prices you pay that looks different in the daylight than it did the night before. Which isn’t the same as saying you regret it. Toola was the kind of woman that was hard to get out of your mind.

  I could still hear that combine, but I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see any other cars or houses, for that matter, only woods and soybean fields. Probably only two or three people passed by Toola’s house in a given day, but leaving my cruiser out front was sloppy. I knew Toola sold weed, and she knew I knew she sold weed, and we never talked about it. My job was to stop criminals from hurting people, and Toola never hurt anybody, was the way I figured it. Now, the sheriff, he might have seen this different. Which was why I kept my mouth shut about Toola.

  I stopped at home long enough to grab a shower and a clean uniform and eat a plate of eggs and potatoes, that tired bachelor meal, one served at my place as much as three times a day. After a while on your own, you start to wonder how many men get married just to improve the menu. When I finished, I radioed dispatch to say I was going straight to patrol. Nobody cared. They never do once you earn their trust.

  There’s country roads here in Ohio that you can roam for miles without seeing anything other than soybeans and field corn, copses of trees and maybe a stray barn. It’s enough to drive you crazy with loneliness or thrill you with the illusion of freedom, depending on your mood. I picked one of those roads at random and set to it. My inclination that morning was to lay low and let that hangover burn off. I pulled two people over for speeding and let them both off with a warning. I never give tickets unless I have to, even though I’m mostly convinced that anyone driving slower than me is an idiot and everyone else is a maniac.

  It turned out that second driver was some distant acquaintance of my father’s, and he went on for so long at his surprise at finding me on this side of the law that I thought for a moment of giving him a ticket after all, but in the end I just stone-faced him and gave curt, unhelpful answers to his questions about my father’s current whereabouts and he drove off mad like somehow I was the jerk in all of this. There’s some people you just can’t do favors for.

  It was on about noon by then, and I was thinking of heading into town for lunch when I saw them: brief black skid marks shooting off the road not far in front of me. I don’t know why exactly they caught my eye. Maybe you drive these roads enough, day after day, you notice anything new. Or maybe I saw them because that’s how it was always meant to be. Either way, I stopped my cruiser along the side of the road, got out, and looked down the hill, over the grass field and into the woods. It wouldn’t have been visible if you were driving past, singing along to Waylon or Johnny Cash, but standing where I was and looking close, you could just make out the back of a steel-gray Cadillac Eldorado sitting silent between two fat buckeye trees.

  I froze for a moment. That car was as familiar to me as my own name.

  I walked back to my cruiser and looked down the road both ways. Still empty. I drove down the road about a mile, then backed into a small dirt trail that led away from the road and into the field corn. Anybody that passed by and saw my cruiser would figure I was taking a snooze.

  I slipped down the trail into the woods and backtracked toward the Cadillac. By the time I got there I was sweating hard and about ate up by mosquitos. The window was down, the flies were buzzing, and the smell was awful. I looked inside. One dead, gunshot, the same man I expected.
/>   This was bad. Really bad. And not just for the usual reasons either.

  I spent a few more minutes looking in and around the car, then headed back to my vehicle. But I didn’t call it in to the sheriff. I wasn’t that stupid.

  * * *

  My half-brother, C.T., lived outside of town in a beat-up piney-wood cabin surrounded by overgrown and dying ash trees. He was as good a place as any to start. I about wore out my knuckles knocking on his front door before he finally answered.

  “What in the world?” he said, blinking in the harsh sunshine, his wet eyes shining liquor-slick.

  “Too early for you?” I said, with as much false cheer as I could muster.

  C.T. didn’t move from the doorway. He looked at my patrol car, then back at me. “Depends what you’re here for.”

  C.T. sold weed, pills, and powder. And probably a whole lot of other illegal substances too. But he would have been reluctant to talk to me even if all he hawked were steak knives or newspaper subscriptions. Me and C.T. had never been friendly, even when we were kids.

  “Why don’t you invite me in first,” I said.

  “Is it gonna be that kind of conversation?”

  “It might could be.”

  C.T. sighed and turned and walked back inside, which was as much of an invitation as I was likely to get. However you are picturing the inside of C.T.’s house is pretty much how it looked. There were too many empty beer cans and whiskey bottles to count and enough dirty dishes laying around that I had to take a minute to clear a space on the couch to sit down.

  C.T. sat across from me in a ripped and faded easy chair, sipping a two-liter bottle of orange soda. He had the kind of thick long blond hair that you knew would last forever, and he wore the casual and wrinkled clothes of someone who never punched a clock. Me, I spent all day in uniform, and though I was barely thirty, my own hair was starting to retreat in a way that told me it would disappear slowly and then all at once like clear-cut timber. One night Toola had run her hands through what still remained and told me she thought bald men were sexy. I hadn’t yet decided how I felt about that.

  “What’d you spike that soda with?” I said.

  “Nothing you could handle.” C.T. took another sip. “What is it you’re wanting?”

  “Haven’t seen you in a while,” I said. “Thought it might be good to hear what you’ve been up to lately.”

  “Same as always, man. Just trying to find me a pretty girl, you know, one that’s got legs as long as a Monday.”

  “And a skirt as short as the weekend?”

  “It’s not as funny if you steal the punch line,” he said.

  “How about you try being a little more specific.”

  C.T. slunk back in his chair like a sulky child. “Is this a cops talk or a family talk?”

  He always said it like that, cops, just so he could turn it into a four-letter word. It was unspoken between us, but we had a kind of silent agreement that I wouldn’t ever bust C.T. and in return he would give me a little information from time to time. It never amounted to much; the rare solid piece of info was always aimed at some new enemy of his and was more gossip than anything else, but so far it had suited us both fine.

  “Let’s make this one a law-enforcement conversation,” I said. “The kind where I hear enough good intel that I lose interest in searching your pickup to see what I might find.”

  “Man, you don’t have to put it so harsh as that,” C.T. said. He leaned farther back in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and rubbed his mouth. “Okay, let me think on that for a minute. What would Deputy Dan like to know, what would Deputy Dan like to know. Well, how about Lowell Adams is selling pills out of that new bait shop of his.”

  “Not anymore. He got popped two days ago.”

  “Shoot, really?”

  I couldn’t tell if C.T. really didn’t know or was just feeding me stale information. He wouldn’t help me if he didn’t have to.

  “Yes, really,” I said. “You got something worthwhile or not?”

  “Now, just hold on,” C.T. said. “Don’t get so agitated. Give me a second to keep on thinking.” After a moment he grinned. “You hear Laurie DelMarr’s stepping out on Horace?”

  “Why you telling me that for?”

  “Man, I’m telling everybody,” C.T. cackled. “You imagine what’s going to happen when Horace finds out?”

  I stood up. “It’s a shame you don’t know anything good,” I said. “Looks like I’m going to have to search that truck of yours after all. The barn too.”

  “C’mon, man, if I don’t know, how can I tell you? I’m just small-time now; it’s not like the glory days, you know? I do a little business and it’s hardly enough to pay my rent.”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve heard sadder stories than that, C.T. How about you join the rest of us and get a real job?”

  “Hey, man, I look for work, like, every week.”

  That was a lie. C.T. would rather have a crooked quarter than a straight dollar.

  “If times are so tough,” I told him, “you ought to go work for Selby Cluxton.”

  I said that to needle him, and also to throw out a little bait. But C.T. didn’t even nibble at the hook.

  “Can’t see myself ever getting so desperate as that,” he said.

  It wasn’t the answer I was hoping for. I looked around the room, at a loss for what to do next. C.T.’s place always depressed me, probably because it looked no different from the series of dumps we’d lived in growing up. Neither one of us spoke. I needed to figure out if he knew anything about the dead man in the Cadillac without letting him know what I’d found. I was about to press C.T. again when something caught my eye.

  On the windowsill, next to two dead flies, was a half-empty pack of Chesterfield cigarettes. I walked over and picked it up with my pen, the way I’d seen actors on television do. Only one man around here smoked these.

  “This mean what I think it means?” I said.

  “Daddy always did have particular tastes. He come on over the other day, must have left them on accident once we got to drinking.”

  “He’s back?” I said. “Since when?”

  C.T. kicked his feet up on top of the wobbly coffee table and grinned. Did I mention he was taller than me too?

  “Aren’t you supposed to know Daddy’s back?” he said. “Being the law and all?”

  “We don’t keep track of all his comings and goings. He doesn’t rate that highly, not anymore.”

  “Maybe not to the rest of them. But to you?”

  C.T. was enjoying this a little too much. “All I’m asking is how long he’s been back,” I said. “And what you’ve been up to.”

  “He’s been back, say, two-three weeks. He didn’t come calling till last week, though, wanted me to help him move some new furniture to where he’s staying now.”

  “Should I be checking reports of armed robberies at furniture stores?”

  “Nah, he bought it. It’s all legit.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  C.T. shrugged. “He’s going legit. For real.”

  I shook my head. “You believe that?”

  C.T. leaned forward, still grinning. “You can’t even say his name. You know what that tells people?”

  “Is it better or worse than what it tells them when a grown man calls his father ‘Daddy’?”

  C.T.’s smile dropped as quick and final as a man in a noose. “There’s no call for that kind of talk,” he said. “Listen, you want to search my property, then try and get a warrant. Until then, maybe you ought to get going, so I can get my beauty sleep.”

  “It’s lunchtime.”

  “You keep your hours and I’ll keep mine.”

  “What’s he planning to do, now that he’s back?”

  “If he told me, and you know that’s an if, how could I ever tell you?”

  And there it was. So much for turning legit.

  “I expect he’s wanting to take back what was his,” I said.

&n
bsp; “Look at that,” said C.T. “And people say you’re not smart enough to make sheriff.”

  * * *

  I kept the Chesterfields, even though they’re not my brand. In fact, just the sight of them on the seat next to me turned my stomach. On the way back to town, I stopped at a gas station to buy my own. While I was there, just to check, I used the pay phone to call C.T. His line was busy. Two guesses who he was talking to.

  My father, the man C.T. called “Daddy” and I called Lionel, had run the drug game in this county and the ones surrounding it for most of my life. He did until recently, that is, due to a two-year stretch he’d served in the penitentiary for beating the tar out of a mouthy college boy who was filled with more whiskey courage than good sense. Lionel had been released six months ago, and then he’d just gone and disappeared without so much as spending a single night in the one town he’d ever called home. Nobody knew where he went, though I had my guesses.

  The beating he laid on that college boy, the beatings he used to lay on me, all the drugs he sold, and all the dirt he did to stay on top, none of that is what broke us up. No, only one crime of his really mattered to me. When I was six, my mother disappeared. Ran away, if you asked Lionel. Which, for lack of proof to the contrary, is what ended up in the official report. I know, because I’ve seen it. It was all lies. Problem is, there’s what you know is the truth and there’s what you can prove, and they’re only about as related as second cousins.

  It’s embarrassing to admit, but Lionel was the reason I was a deputy. Before I was big enough to hold a gun there was some stupid notion in my mind as a kid of arresting him, leading him off in handcuffs. Not for what I knew he did to my mother—​that case was long since ice cold—​but for dealing, or beatings, or any of the other evils he did every day. That’s kid stuff, those fantasies, and I never told anyone about it, just kept it alive in my heart. Except then once I finally convinced the county to hire me, I was immediately taken off any case that might relate to him. Conflict of interest, they said; what would the voters think, relying on a son to investigate his father? It was funny, in a way.