Country Hardball

by Steve Weddle

  “You know full well Littleton Mosley’s wife screwed him over. He’s working ten-hour shifts in Arkadelphia, and she’s at home paying bills.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “No, and it wouldn’t have been his problem if she’d been doing that instead of spending her day with the Pribble boy.”

  “That’s the one she run off with? The kid mules for Rudd?” Caskey asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How you know so much about all this?”

  “Because they went to our church. Mosley and his wife. His wife doesn’t pay the bills and runs off with Pribble. Then you bust the man for going into his own house.”

  “Six months she didn’t pay the mortgage, Dennis. You know that ain’t right. Bank forecloses and padlocks the place. I didn’t do that. Mosley breaks the locks open. I didn’t do that.”

  “The bank locked up all his stuff in that house. His clothes. His mama’s wedding ring. Everything the man owned. How was he supposed to know his wife wasn’t paying the bills? That she was supporting Pribble?”

  “You ask me, a man’s gotta notice that kind of shit goes on in his own home. You know?”

  “Yeah. Then it’s a good thing I’m not asking you.”

  “Look, I just arrested him because someone called in a B&E. I was just doing my job. The bank’s the ones what pressed charges. Blame them. Judge Gordon. He’s the one what gave the guy thirty days. Blame him. Hell, I was just doing my job.”

  Yeah, McWilliams thought. That’s what the judge and the bank would say, too.

  “You see the game last night?” Caskey asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Day game,” McWilliams said. “Cora taped it.”

  “Conors starting, right?”

  “Yeah. The Reds brought back their closer. Kid from Puerto Rico. Dominican. Whatever. Gets his head screwed on straight, he’ll be a good one.”

  “Good fastball? Like really fast, right?” Caskey asked. He didn’t much understand baseball.

  “Fastball’s fine. Good off-speed stuff, too. When he’s on, not many better.”

  “What’s he throw? Like a hundred?”

  “Mid-90s, I think. It’s not about speed. It’s timing. It’s control.”

  “A strike going 95 miles an hour is—”

  “Is a goddamn walk-off homer in the major leagues,” McWilliams said, then slapped the inside of the car door. He held his hand up, made a fist. Tightened it. Loosened it.

  “You all right?” Caskey asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good thing that’s not your throwing hand,” he said, then shut up quick.

  When the deputies got to Dalton’s store, the only custom noan Her was walking back to his truck, an old Chevy with a dog chained in the bed and a back window made from duct tape and a trash bag.

  “Ossifurs,” he nodded, then spit as they passed.

  McWilliams reached back, grabbed the man’s arm, leaned him against the hood of his truck while the dog started to break nasty.

  “Might want to show a little respect there,” McWilliams said.

  The man kept his mouth shut, nodded. Swallowed a mouthful of dipspit before he was turned loose. The man peeled gravel as he left the parking lot.

  Caskey held the door open as McWilliams walked through the front of the store, leaned in as he walked by. “You know that’s one of Rudd’s boys, right?”

  McWilliams nodded, let his eyes adjust to the inside of the store. “That’ll be just fine.”

  They each gave a two-finger eyebrow salute to the Tompkins kid behind the counter and walked toward the back where Dalton kept his office.

  “How’s Ruby doing?” McWilliams asked.

  “She’s doing all right, thanks. Good days and bad. Mostly good the past few weeks.”

  “Glad to hear that. Had her on the prayer list long enough, she oughta be damn near indestructible by now.”

  Dalton nodded. “Damn near is, I reckon.”

  “They still working on that class action suit against the mill? What’d she have in at that place? Thirty years?”

  “She put in twenty-three-and-a-half years there. And the suit’s about dead. Lawyers working out some sort of settlement with the government. Probably wind up asbestos is good for you, sprinkle it on your Wheaties, by the time they’re done.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Yeah. As long as the lawyers get their money, guess they don’t mind. So you boys find out anything?”

  Caskey looked for a place to spit, got most of it into a trash can. “Just had to ask you a couple of questions as follow-up, Hank.”

  “So you don’t have anything?”

  McWilliams took over while Caskey went back into the main store to grab a cup from the fountain drinks.

  “My partner says you picked up some filters around the side of the store?”

  “Yeah, place gets mighty trashified you’re not careful.”

  “I was thinking maybe these were special. You still have them?”

  “Why would I still have trashed smokes?”

  McWilliams turned behind him as he heard Caskey getting close. He nodded, closed the door with Caskey on the outside. Figured Caskey could go make small talk with the Tompkins kid. McWilliams sat down in a folding chair and motioned for Dalton to do the same.

  McWilliams leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, legs spread apart. “How long you known me for, Hank?”

  “Shit, Dennis. What’s this about?”

  “My whole life, right?”

  “Yeah. What are you getting at?”

  “You know everybody, I bet. You worked the shop over at Emerson for years, working for your daddy. Then y 7S hadckou took over. Got a couple more stores. All that time, you’re in these stores, right? You know everybody.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You know Miss Velma? Sunday school teacher?”

  “You know I do.”

  “She come in here ever?”

  “Time and again, yeah.”

  McWilliams nodded. “What’s she get?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  McWilliams stood up, knocked his chair down behind him. “Damn it, Hank, we don’t have all day. What the hell does Miss Velma buy?”

  Hank Dalton leaned back, slid his chair a little. “Quart of milk. Saltines. Soap Opera Digest.”

  “Goddamn right she does.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  McWilliams walked around Dalton’s desk, opening drawers while Dalton said “hey now” and “you can’t.” Then from the middle drawer he pulled out a plastic bag of three cigarette butts, dumped them onto Dalton’s desk.

  McWilliams scooped them up in the palm of his right hand, held them in front of Dalton’s face. “Who smokes these cigarettes?”

  Caskey opened the door. “Everything all right, fellas?”

  Neither man looked at Caskey. Both men nodded.

  • • •

  Caskey shut the door and walked back to talking with the Tompkins boy and MeChell Womack, who’d come in to talk to Dalton about his insurance claim.

  “I gotta bag some more ice,” the kid said. “Holler anyone comes in.” He walked to the back of the store.

  “So,” Caskey said, hopping up to sit on the counter, the only clear space next to the register, between the beef jerky and the energy boosts. “You were saying how you and Dwayne were done broke up.”

  “Deputy, I can’t really see how that’s any of your business, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “No, no. Not at all. Lotta folks don’t understand how intertwined everything around here is.”

  “Intertwined?”

  “Means linked together.”

  “I know what the word means,” she said. “I just don’t know how you mean it.”

  “Like look around. Man works his whole life making a good living. Goes the straight and narrow. Has all kinds of wicked shit he has to overcome, him and his wife. Pardon my French. The oldest
boy. I mean, a parent shouldn’t never have to bury their kid, right? And then he has some no-acccount younger boy gets everything handed to him his whole life, grows up the world owes him a living. Only he ain’t never had to do a lick of work, you see?”

  “Are you talking about Mr. Dalton’s son?”

  “I’m just talking out loud. You know, showing how one life intertwines with another. House of cards. Dominos. However you want to look at it. One thing tied up into the next, pull a thread and it all falls apart. How if I knew what so-and-so was doing at the time of the robbery, I could eliminate my an hself a suspect. All pieces to the same puzzle, only I ain’t got the front of the box to see what the picture looks like.”

  “That’s the only reason you were asking if Dwayne and I were still together? To see if I had an alibi for the robbery?”

  “That’s it exactly. See, I knew all that college learning would pay off for you.”

  “Two years in Magnolia isn’t exactly ‘all that college learning,’ you know.”

  “Yeah. I went up there for some classes, too. Criminal justice. Wrote a paper on the hegemony of the justice system.”

  “The what?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I never really got what it meant, neither. Something about power of some people over another. I remember the word, though. Hegemony.”

  “Oh. Well, the paper? That went okay?”

  “I don’t know. I just kinda stopped going. Like church, I guess. Two nights a week. The drive up there and back. You know, gas prices and all.”

  She nodded. “Don’t I know it.”

  They sat there in silence for half a minute.

  Caskey bounced the backs of his boots against the counter wall. Ba-dum-bump. Ba-dum-bump. “So I hear there’s going to be a bunch of trouble this weekend.”

  She said, “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Figure you might want to have an alibi.”

  “To be safe?”

  “Yeah. Just to be safe.”

  “You got any ideas?”

  He grinned. “I got a few.”

  The office door opened. McWilliams and Dalton came into the main room of the store, the deputy holding one of the cigarette butts. Dalton went behind the counter, reached up into the cigarette display, and pulled out a package of Carolina Selects. He set them on the counter as Caskey slid off. McWilliams walked over, took the pack, wedged it into his shirt pocket.

  “That’s four and a quarter,” Dalton said.

  McWilliams turned to face him. “Put it on my tab, Hank. And tell Ruby we’re praying for her.” Then he moved for the door. “Miss Womack,” he nodded and walked out, with Caskey trailing.

  When they pulled out onto the street, Caskey asked him what that was all about.

  “Hank knows who did it,” McWilliams said.

  “His boy?”

  “No, don’t think so.”

  “Why not? And what was all that about the cigarettes?”

  “If he’d thought it was his boy again, he’d’ve given us someone else. Pointed us somewhere away from the boy. Like with the thing at his house. When he said it was a couple of drunk Mexicans.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Well, when he told us that, I figured it was anybody but a couple of drunk Mexicans. Just sending us on a wild goose chase.”

  “Oh, I got ya,” Caskey said, though he wasn’t sure he did. “And the cigarettes?”

  “Dalton picked up the butts killedan H by the store,” McWilliams said. “You told me that. And you said he didn’t throw them away.”

  “Yeah. Right. Put them in his pocket.”

  “How many trash cans have you seen between where he found those butts and his office?”

  “Trash cans. I don’t know. A couple?”

  “Two outside. One inside the front door. And then the other one in his office. You need to pay more attention you looking for that promotion.”

  “Yeah. Okay. So what?”

  “So, when you’re cleaning up trash, what do you do?”

  “Oh, I see. You throw it away. But he put the butts in his pocket.”

  “Right.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “Right.”

  “Oh.”

  They made a couple of turns, pulled up to the sheriff’s department. When McWilliams moved to get out, Caskey reached across for his arm. “So Hank was protecting someone?”

  “That’s what I figure.”

  “But it wasn’t his son?”

  “No. His son doesn’t smoke Carolina Selects. Doesn’t smoke at all.”

  “Maybe it was someone with him?”

  “I don’t think so. If it was Marlboros or Camels or a dozen other brands, who knows? But there ain’t but so many people even remember Carolina Selects, much less smoke them.”

  “So you know who it was?” Caskey asked.

  “Damn sure wasn’t a couple of drunk Mexicans.”

  They got out of the car in time to see Deputy Mike Lacewell talking on his cell phone, walking toward his cruiser.

  When he saw Caskey and McWilliams, Lacewell flipped his phone closed, slid it into his shirt pocket. “Fellas, just in time to turn your asses around. Got ourselves a search warrant.”

  Caskey whispered over the top of the cruiser to McWilliams. “Five bucks it’s Dalton’s kid.”

  “Where we headed?” McWilliams asked Lacewell.

  “You’ll never guess.”

  “Then how about you fucking tell us,” Caskey said.

  “Asshole. Heading to the Rudd farm.”

  “Damn,” Caskey said, as soon as he could say anything.

  They got back into the car and followed Lacewell.

  McWilliams had pulled the shotguns from the trunk and was loading them as they drove. “This seem strange to you?” he asked Caskey.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Going in on a search warrant to Rudd’s. You ever been to Rudd’s farm on a warrant?”

  “No.”

  “Ever tried?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why now?” McWilliams asked. “Why are we going in now?”

  State troopers had already set up a barricade at the end of Rudd’s upan Hroad, the long, exposed drive up to the big house. Caskey slowed as they were waved through.

  “Hell if I know,” Caskey said. “I’m sure you got an idea.”

  “A couple,” McWilliams said, sliding in another shell. “Maybe we get there and the place is totally clean. He sets this up, Rudd does, just to show he’s got nothing to hide.”

  “That’s smart.”

  “The kind of thing he’d do, right? Then next time someone tries to say he’s the kingpin around here, he throws his hands up and says haven’t we been through this, blah, blah, blah.”

  “Damn, that is smart.” Caskey slowed down as the made a big curve up to Rudd’s. “What else? You said you had a couple ideas?”

  “Yeah. But I won’t know until we get there. Lacewell got the warrant?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “All right. Can’t know until then.”

  • • •

  They got out of the car, walked across the side yard under a pecan tree. McWilliams reached down, picked up a pecan, bounced it in his throwing hand, let it fall to the ground.

  They found Lacewell and some troopers by the front steps leading up to the porch. “Sheriff said tell you Eddie’s with Mr. Rudd in the kitchen,” he said.

  “That mean you’re supposed to keep me away from the kitchen?” McWilliams asked.

  “Means you’re supposed to keep your own damn self away from the kitchen. Oh, and before I forget, Mattie said Cora called at the office for you. Said don’t forget dinner at Grady and Delsie’s place.”

  “Yeah. Fine,” McWilliams said. Salisbury steaks and cans of tea at his wife’s brother’s house. He planned to take his pistol in case someone said they were going to play Rook again. McWilliams looked up at the house, generations old, turned back to Lacewell. “Who’s got a copy
of the warrant?”

  “Reckon there’s plenty copies floating around so’s we can tell what we’re looking for.”

  McWilliams looked at the copy Lacewell was handing him. Date and address. Areas to be searched. The primary residence. All outbuildings, known and unknown, including but not limited to the “big barn.” The place most of southwest Arkansas knew as the drying house. Stories of pot plants hung through like tobacco, hanging and drying. The place was cursed. Every time the cops got a good lead and followed it to the farm, they’d find nothing. Not even no drugs. Just an absence of everything. Cleaned up and all the good stuff hidden, like your in-laws were coming to visit. Even the aerial shots of the property had disappeared from the system.

  “How’d we end up here?” McWilliams asked. “Why today?”

  Lacewell laughed. “This ruin your plans? Got tickets for the big game?”

  McWilliams was still reading through the warrant, but he saw Caskey swallow something thick. Look “what the hell?” at Lacewell.

  “I meant the tractor pull,” Lacewell said. “That tractor pull.” Not the Astros exhibition game in Magnolia. Not the team Skinny Dennis could have been pitching for if he hadn’t lost out on that sch noan Holarship, the draft, the Muleriders, the plan to hit the farm system after his degree. All to chase after whoever shot his little sister and that Rudd boy with her, asking for trouble. Not what Lacewell said at all.

  “Where’s Boggs?”

  “Judge Boggs?” Lacewell asked.

  McWilliams held the paper back out for Caskey. “He off hunting?”

  “Maybe he’s hunting for that piece of tail you let get away,” Caskey said to Lacewell.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Olivia?” McWilliams asked. “The woman in the clerk’s office there?”

  Caskey nodded. “She’s fair game, right, Mike?”

  “We’re not going out now, if that’s what you mean,” Lacewell said.

  “That’s what I was asking.”

  McWilliams nodded. “So His Honor?”

  “Think he’s got cases tomorrow. I’m on the schedule to work the court.” Lacewell was the type who liked working as a bailiff. Stand in one place. Air conditioning. A sit-down lunch with a knife and fork.

  “Gordon signed the warrant,” McWilliams said. “Should have been Boggs.” Caskey was reading through the warrant, McWilliams grabbed it back. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “We’re looking for cash and a pistol. You see the list of what we’re looking for?” McWilliams handed the warrant back to Caskey again.