When These Mountains Burn

by David Joy

  NINETEEN

  For the life of him, Holland couldn’t figure out why the mules always used rental cars. Maybe they thought not owning the vehicle would make it harder to hold them accountable at trial. Of course that wasn’t true. A man gets pulled over with two kilos of powder heroin stashed in the trunk, it doesn’t matter if he owns the rig outright or it’s a forty-five-dollar-a-day economy car from Enterprise.

  An informant provided intel that something was about to move, but the timing wasn’t right to kick down the door. Instead, they let the deal play out. They let the runners leave the stash house and waited to pull the cars over until they were an hour and a half outside of Atlanta, just north of Ellijay, entering the Chattahoochee National Forest.

  The mules were running a two-car convoy with a clean vehicle in the back to keep the law from getting behind the lead car. When the local PD hit the blue lights on the rear vehicle, the driver pulled over and gave some rehearsed spiel about taking his girlfriend up to the mountains for the weekend. What he didn’t know was that a mile up the road a pair of police interceptors had the lead car stopped, and a Belgian Malinois named Sparkles was working her way around from bumper to bumper. It took the dog all of two seconds to hit on the trunk, maybe another minute for officers to dig the package out from under the spare tire.

  Agents had video of both cars leaving the stash house together. No how-did-that-get-there, never-seen-him-before-in-my-life bullshit would keep either driver from catching a bid. They knew that the same as the officers, which was why both of them lawyered up just as soon as they were in handcuffs.

  The passenger, though, she didn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground.

  Makayla Thompson was dating the man driving the rear car. She was a freshman in college studying hospitality management, going to school while her grandmother looked after her three-year-old daughter. She came from a working-class home and had never gotten so much as a speeding ticket. What started as nothing more than a thrill-seeking joyride with her boyfriend had the potential to ruin her life. In a few short minutes she’d watched her future melt through her fingers. She was the type of person Holland knew would play ball.

  Holland walked into the interrogation room and slid a box of tissues across the table. Makayla looked up and he could see the innocence and vulnerability unearthed in her eyes. She was a pretty girl, dark skinned with shoulder-length hair in corkscrew curls. She wore a choker necklace and a dark red blouse that cut a low V to mid-chest. Mascara bled down her cheeks like drips of paint. She was entirely out of place.

  “Makayla, I’m Agent Holland. I was going to see if I could talk with you a little bit about what went on today.”

  She nodded her head, but even that was enough to unravel her. Her face crumpled and tears trickled from the corners of her eyes.

  Holland pulled a tissue from the box and offered it to her. “How do you know the person you were in the car with today?”

  “He’s my boyfriend.”

  “And what’s his name?”

  “Marcus.”

  “Now, when you got in the car with Marcus, did you know where he was taking you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did he tell you y’all were going?”

  “He said we had to follow somebody upstate.”

  “And did you know who you were following?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Sean.”

  “And did you know what was in that car?”

  Makayla buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

  “Makayla, I know you didn’t have anything to do with what those two were doing. You were just along for the ride. But you’re in a lot of trouble right now and the only way I can help you is if you talk to me. You need to answer my questions.”

  Holland despised the game of good cop. Fact was, she knew what she was doing when she climbed in the car. That might not have made her as guilty as the two driving, but right was right and wrong was wrong and our lives were the summation of every choice we ever made. What was a world without consequences?

  “Did he tell you who you were going to meet?”

  “No.”

  “Did he mention where exactly you were going?”

  “Not really.”

  “Makayla, I need you to think about this. If you want me to help you, you’re going to have to give me something. If you want to watch that little girl of yours grow up from the front porch rather than from behind glass, you need to tell me what he said. You give me something I can work with and this all goes away. You go right back to class on Monday and this wasn’t anything but a bad weekend.”

  “All he said was that we had to follow Sean to the state line and then we’d turn around and come home.”

  “And who were you meeting at the state line?”

  “We weren’t meeting anybody.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we was just supposed to follow him to the state line and turn around. That’s it. I don’t know where he was going after that.”

  “So y’all were supposed to turn around, but the other car was supposed to keep going?”

  “That’s right. They kept bragging about how once they got to the state line they were home free. Said they had police escorts once they got there. They make these runs every couple weeks. They split a grand and take turns driving whichever car—this time Sean drives lead, next time Marcus. They always talked about how there wasn’t anybody pulling them over once they were out of Georgia.”

  “Police escorts?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “And where exactly were they going?”

  “I don’t have any idea. But last time Marcus went up there I know he stayed at a casino somewhere. Came home talking about how he’d won all this money. He hit two hundred dollars on a slot machine. You’d have thought he’d won the Powerball the way he was talking. Took me out to eat at the Red Lobster and his cheap ass was wrapping up cheddar biscuits in a napkin and making me hide them in my purse.”

  Holland tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help it. Luckily it seemed to relieve the tension for a moment. Makayla wiped the tears from under her eyes with the sides of her index fingers. She shook her head and a slight grin lifted her cheeks for a split second. She held her arms together straight in front of her with her hands locked between her knees like she was cold. Holland took a sip of coffee and let what she’d said roll around.

  The idea of police escorts was an unsettling thought. If the runners were meeting someone at the line who could provide that type of protection, then it had to be state troopers or county lawmen, and either way made working a case damn near impossible. The agency was used to pulling local resources for support when they went into small communities. A handful of crooked cops tainted an entire department. US-74 snaked its way up the mountain and crossed the line into Cherokee County. A new casino had opened there a year before in Murphy on tribal land. Holland remembered that afternoon in Asheville and what that boy had said. Cherokee.

  At the time he was so pissed and tired and ready to get home that he hadn’t given a second thought to that little cocky son of a bitch. A few days later when Rodriguez called with some harebrained theory about all of the dope moving from west to east, two routes from Atlanta into western North Carolina both passing through tribal land, and the possibility of using casinos to launder the money, Holland had nearly hung up the phone. All of a sudden that didn’t seem like such a wild idea. Using jurisdictional protections of a sovereign nation as sanctuary. It was brilliant.

  He wondered if Rodriguez had any leads on anyone who might be dirty. If it was, in fact, tribal police, Holland would catch hell trying to prove it. Decades on the job had shaped him into a cynic. He was not one to fall for gut reactions. Still, there was something about the whole thing that felt right. Someti
mes when everyone was pointing in the same direction, the smartest thing a man could do was look.

  TWENTY

  A trail of cupcake wrappers littered the aisles of Food Lion. At the end of the trail, Denny Rattler was hooked into a blood pressure machine by the pharmacy. He was licking purple icing off the last of a dozen, and as the cuff tightened down on his arm all he could think was that he could still eat more.

  For the first time in a week, he felt pretty good. The real sickness—the cold sweats, the vomiting, the diarrhea, the cramping, the cravings—was only intense for the first three or four days. But between the nausea and anxiety, he hadn’t been able to keep much down until this morning. It was day eight and Denny could’ve won the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest if those sons of bitches would’ve traded the wieners for Ding Dongs.

  The machine released the air out of the cuff with a loud hiss and Denny checked his numbers: 134 over 84. He rubbed his biceps and finished off the cupcake. The chart said borderline hypertension.

  He remembered one time he was in the car with a bunch of boys methed out of their gourds who said they had a lead on some tar. They were sitting in the parking lot of the Ingles in Sylva and this fat fuck loudmouth named Woody was convinced his heart was about to explode. Everyone else wanted to finish the bag, but Woody wasn’t so sure he was going to make it. He ran inside the store to check his blood pressure, came back out to the car, and snorted enough crystal to put a satellite into orbit. Denny chuckled and stood up.

  Over in the bakery, a white-haired woman with thick glasses and a hairnet was putting out fresh doughnuts. Denny snatched a box off the shelf and started in. He strolled casually for the dairy aisle, figuring some cold milk would help the glaze down his gullet, and with a bottle of 2% in hand he made his way for the door.

  He was close enough to getting away that he could feel the sunshine on his face when somebody grabbed him by the arm and that box of doughnuts hit the concrete. He cut his eyes to the side and saw a black uniform and a shiny badge and that was all it took for his arm to jerk away and his legs to start running. There was a Coke machine against the wall about twenty feet from where he started and he was almost to it when the fire came through him. His muscles locked up and he toppled face-first stiff and straight as a felled tree.

  The world was suddenly turned on its side and there was this little chubby-faced boy jumping up and down in the parking lot screaming, “He tased him, Ma! He fucking tased him!” Denny felt his shoulders pop as the officer yanked his arms behind his back. His face was scrunched and his cheek was burning where it had smacked the pavement. Everyone outside was staring, holding their buggies like a still-life painting. The cuffs clicked. He felt the metal cold on his wrists. That fast. That fast and the jig was up. Everything had been good just a minute before. A man’s luck sure could turn on a dime.

  * * *

  • • •

  A large map of the Qualla Boundary covered most of one wall. The room was small and there was a surveillance camera mounted in the corner. Cinder block was painted tan that looked about the color of clay. Denny glanced around the room, leaned back, and slicked his fingers through his greasy hair. He wished they’d hurry up and book him so he could take a shower and wash the stink off. He’d been sleeping at the river park and the Axe body spray he’d used for a bum’s bath at the Food Lion could only mask so much.

  While he’d had run-ins with damn near everyone in the department, Denny’d never seen the arresting officer before. The name badge on his uniform said he was a Locust. He looked to be mid-twenties, square-jawed, and wore his hair in a mid-fade shaved low on top. Locust hadn’t said anything since bringing Denny into the room. He just stood in the corner by the window with his arms crossed. A detective named Donnie Owle was doing all the talking, and Denny knew Donnie well. He’d followed the course of Owle’s career from patrol to narcotics. Now he was a full-blown detective.

  Anywhere outside of Cherokee, Owle could’ve passed for a white man. He was pale-skinned and had a head that was big around as a basketball. There wasn’t any hair left on top and the fluorescents made a glare of his scalp. A cheap suit fit him loosely and he wore a bolo tie like a tried-and-true idiot.

  “Why don’t you tell me what went on over at the campground in Whittier?” Owle asked. He took a sip of coffee from a short Styrofoam cup.

  The question caught Denny off guard, because up until then everything he’d been asked about was small potatoes. He tried not to let his surprise show. “I don’t know what in the world you’re talking about. What campground?”

  “You can do better than that, Denny. There was a witness saw a piss-colored LeBaron squealing tires out of that parking lot. Now, who do you know drives a car that looks like that? Thing is, I don’t really care one way or another. That’s not even our jurisdiction. I was just asking more as a favor for a friend of mine in Jackson County. I owe him one, I guess you could say.”

  Denny’s palms were getting clammy. Ever since it happened, he couldn’t shake the image of that boy sprawled out on the cabin floor, the needle in his neck, his mouth open like a fish. “I don’t even got that car no more.”

  “You don’t got it?”

  “Ain’t that what I said?” Denny ran the corner of his thumbnail under the fingernail of his middle finger and smeared the grit on his pant leg. “Somebody stole that car a couple weeks ago. I ain’t seen it since.”

  “Who stole it?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You report it?”

  “No.”

  “And why not? A man’s car gets stolen you’d think he’d call the law. Most folks would probably want to try and get their car back, at least make an insurance claim.”

  “Didn’t figure y’all would do me any favors.” He massaged his wrists where the handcuffs had rubbed him raw.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Well,” Denny said, but he didn’t finish his sentence.

  A call came in on the radio and the young officer in the corner walked out of the room. Now it was just the two of them. Owle scooted his chair around the table so that he was almost sitting beside him.

  “We found that car of yours wrapped around a tree about a mile up Bearclaw. Blood all over the place. Not a soul in sight.”

  For the first time in the conversation, Denny looked deep into the detective’s eyes. He was trying to decide whether Owle was bullshitting.

  “Now, looking at you, Denny, it sure don’t seem like you’ve been in any sort of car wreck recently. Don’t get me wrong, you look like six kinds of shit slung sideways, but you don’t look like you’ve gone headfirst through a windshield.”

  Denny’s heart was pounding all of a sudden. He was thinking about that idiot who’d hit him in the head with the pistol and that moonfaced kid who didn’t have the brains God gave a goose. Right then he remembered the way that dead fellow’s feet had looked when he was lying there on that grubby floor, how he was barefoot and the soles of his feet were black and raw from walking.

  “All that to say, if you tell me your car was stolen, I’m of a mind to believe that. What I really want to talk about, though, is the Outlet Mall. I was going to see if you might tell me who’s running that place. What’s moving through those trailers? Where’s it coming from? You give me a little bit of information and I can get you out of this petty theft bullshit easy peasy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Next thing you’re going to tell me you’ve never used drugs in your life, that you’ve never missed church on Sunday, that you’ve got my wife’s name tattooed right straight across your ass.”

  “I don’t think my ass is wide enough for a name like that.”

  “What was that?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you I’ve never used.”

  Owle stood up from his chair and leaned forward over the table
. He was balanced on his fists like he was about to sink his hands into Denny’s throat.

  “How long me and you known each other, now, Owle? Seven, eight years?”

  “A long time.”

  “And in all that time have you ever known me to be the kind to talk?”

  * * *

  • • •

  When the detective left, Denny spent the next three hours humming and singing the Johnny Cash San Quentin album from “Big River” to the closing medley. He knew every word to every song, every joke that was told, and had been locked up enough that finding creative ways to fill the time had become second nature. There wasn’t a clock on the wall, but the light was getting yellow outside and he imagined the day was getting on toward evening.

  Someone knocked on the door and Denny turned to see a fellow he’d known all his life named Cordell Crowe. When they were younger, Cordell and Denny picked guitar together at church. He’d even dated Denny’s sister in high school, but wound up marrying a Saunooke girl a good bit younger from Mingus Mill. She got pregnant, they got married, and Cordell took a job with the tribal police, working his way up through the department.

  Dark-headed and kind-eyed, he had a face that shook when he laughed. He’d never carried that hard demeanor like most who wore a badge and maybe that was why he’d been able to make a career of it. Any blowhard could crack skulls and make arrests, but big busts were built off relationships. With Cordell, a man always knew where he stood, and that type of trust could sometimes get you to slip up and say something you had no intention of saying.

  Cordell slapped his hand on Denny’s shoulder and squeezed. “As I live and breathe, it is you, you old bugger. How the hell are you?”

  “Been better,” Denny said. “But been a lot worse too.”

  “I was sitting out there in my office and could’ve sworn I heard somebody say your name. Had to get up and see if they were talking about the Denny Rattler that used to sneak Thunderbird onto the church bus.”