“What you got?” His eyes narrowed.
“A picture.”
“I don’t need a picture.”
Thunder charged again and for the first time I caught sight of a pale flashing in the darkened clouds.
I held the photo up anyway. “This man. Do you know him?”
“I told you I don’t need a damn picture. Where is he? Arrested? He gets a phone call, don’t he? He ain’t called. We can get a lawyer. Don’t think we can’t. There ain’t no getting away with this. We have rights—”
“We?”
“Me and my brother. We have rights. You can’t keep him. You can’t spirit him away in the night. We are citizens and free men—”
“Daniel Boone?” I shook the picture in front of him to try for a little focus. “This man?” When Dewey looked away I stepped around and put the paper in front of him again. “Is this your brother?”
“You know that already. Why else would you be here? You come for me now, ain’t you? This is how it starts. Rounding up the citizens.” The energy that locked his limbs released and Dewey stood straight, a mimicry of standing at attention and stared right into my eyes. “I ain’t gonna go. You got no charges and no cause.”
Before he could begin again about his rights and the Constitution, I lowered the paper and tried to soften my own eyes. I stepped back and said as gently as I could, “Mr. Boone, I’m sorry.” That stopped him. No matter how much you hate or fear the government, when someone with a badge shows up to say they’re sorry, you know it’s bad news.
The clouds that had been creeping were running. Lightning pulsed within them and the wind hit, cold and moist. I could smell the rain and the waft of clean air.
“How bad is it?” The question was quiet and knowing. It said bad news was not entirely unexpected, but please, bring me hope. I’ve heard it spoken a thousand ways in a thousand voices.
“I’m sorry . . .” I began again.
Dewey nodded and a trembling began in his lips. It spread quickly through his body and he looked for a moment like he might collapse. He didn’t. At least not on the outside. “He’s dead?” It came out as a question. He wasn’t really asking.
“Yes, Mr. Boone. I’m sorry.”
“Was he drunk?”
“What?”
“I’ve told him. Scolded him. Mama did too, over and over. Don’t drink on the road, she’d tell him. It’ll be the death of you.”
“Mr. Boone.”
Lightning bolted from the lowered black front clouds to the ground. It looked far away. Not that far, because thunder followed nearly instantly. The scent of the ozone blew through.
“But he loved drivin’ fast. And sometimes I think he loved being drunk more than anything else.” His misty recollections congealed back into suspicion as he looked back from the grass up to my eyes. “I don’t believe it.” It was a pronouncement, a statement of truth and denial at the same time. “I don’t believe it. I won’t. He can’t be gone.”
“It wasn’t a car accident, Mr. Boone.” I let that stand out there between us for a moment, a damaged fence between two bad neighbors who can’t see to a mending. Then I said again, “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t—” Then he did. Understanding blossomed in his face and the roots of the flower reached into his gut. “Who?” he asked. “How?”
“Who?” I echoed the question and regretted the edge that was in my voice. Dewey was a kid attuned to suspicion and I feared setting him off again.
“Who did it?”
I was surprised by the reaction or lack of it. For the first time he seemed like a rational person. He was smaller than he’d been at first. Before he seemed puffed, one of those fish that turns itself into a ball with all the spines. Once the knowledge that his brother had been murdered settled on his shoulders, the armor of his anger and suspicion drooped, all wet paper. The boy was revealed.
“Did someone mean him harm?” I asked.
A hard roll of wind hit us. The canvas of the tents flapped more loudly. Lines that had been pulled extra taut hummed in the air. More people came out of trailers and tents to work the ropes. When the gust slowed to a crawl, it carried a new smell from the nearby lake. The new scent was of old wet wood and rich mud, spawning fish and deep water just turning over for the season. It was decay and fecundity.
“It’s a hard world, detective.” The thought was strong. The words themselves were so soft they were nearly carried away by the wind.
Before I could ask anything more a shout came from behind him. I looked up to see a man marching with a bit of a limp across the undulating grass. He appeared to have come from the largest and nicest trailer and not happy to be sent out into the weather.
“Dewey!” the man shouted again this time it reached us clearly and Dewey turned. “What the hell? I told you to get to work and check all the tents before the storm. Not make time with the local—”
I could imagine what kind of local I was, but the man stopped shouting. Maybe he noticed my badge or he saw how Dewey was looking. Either way he shut his mouth and turned to run back to the big RV. His limp was much more pronounced as he ran.
“Dewey,” I said it as gently as I could. “Would you come down to the station to talk with me?”
He shook his head. “I can’t, can I.” The statement was said as something obvious, something he imagined I had to understand.
I wasn’t sure if I did or not. Then the door to the RV opened and Reverend Roscoe Bolin, dressed all in black, came out. He was followed by a gaunt-looking man with a dark complexion and a walrus mustache blacker than anything the Reverend had on. He struck me as Middle Eastern and probably moneyed by his features and bearing.
Roscoe walked over followed by the man who had been shouting at Dewey a moment before. The mustached man, remained by the RV and smoked.
“You can,” I told Dewey. “You really need to. You want to help figure this out don’t you?”
“I can’t figure nothin’ out no more.”
Lighting ripped the bottom of the black clouds, ragged, bright fingers that were there, then gone leaving a rumble of falling barrels on an oak floor. Hard drops of rain hit me, one on my cheek and one down the open collar of my shirt. Both rolled down my skin, fat, cold tears.
“Hurricane,” Roscoe called.
I looked up and nodded to him then I turned back to Dewey. “It’s important, Dewey. I want to find out who hurt your brother.”
He wanted to say something, but never got the words out. The Reverend came trotting up behind him again cheerfully calling, “Hurricane.”
“Detective,” I said.
He stopped and dropped the smile.
“It’s Detective Williams.” I explained. “This is an official visit.”
Without a beat, without hesitation at all, Roscoe asked, “What’s happened, Dewey?”
“Daniel is dead.” I noticed he took care to pronounce his brother’s name fully, not Dan’el as I would have expected. “Killed,” he added.
“We’ll take care of it,” Roscoe told him, again, without hesitation or surprise. To punctuate the statement, thunder once more scattered above our heads.
“What do you mean, you’ll take care of it, Reverend?” I wasn’t surprised when Roscoe ignored my questions.
Instead, he put his hand on Dewey’s shoulder turning him to meet his eyes. Without looking at me he answered. “We’ll take care of the arrangements. We’ll have a funeral for your brother right here and have him taken home for interment among friends and family. Does that sound all right, Dewey?”
Dewey Boone shrugged. I thought for a moment, he was turning to look at me. The Reverend’s hands visibly tightened and turned Dewey by the shoulders.
“Come back to the trailer,” Roscoe told him. “We’ll talk. We’ll get things going for poor Daniel.” He turned the boy around then pushed to get him moving.
I couldn’t see Dewey’s eyes, but I saw his body stiffen and his feet stop as though he had walked into a wall
. I didn’t need to see his eyes to see that he was looking at the dark man beside the RV door.
The dark man, with two fingers pinched at the butt, flicked his cigarette away and opened the door.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
Roscoe heard me; that was clear. Again he ignored me just as clearly. I caught the look at the corner of his eye and the resolute turning away. “Go to Massoud,” he said, pushing Dewey ahead of him.
As they walked, I put out a hand to touch the Reverend’s arm. I was going to say that I still wanted to talk to Dewey or to ask that he come down to the station and make a statement. I didn’t get the chance. The big man who had brought Roscoe out of the RV stepped in between us and pushed my hand away.
I guess my bad reputation hadn’t gotten around to him yet.
A lot of civilians don’t understand how broad the rules about assaulting a police officer are and how they’re always slanted in favor of the cop. A lot of people, like, I believed, the man in front of me, do know. But they think I’m a woman before they think I’m a cop. It’s their mistake.
As soon as the big man interposed himself between the Reverend and me, I let him come, leading with his right hand on my left wrist. With the edge of my boot heel I stepped down on the outer toes of his foot and pushed my body in. It looked like an accident when he fell on his butt. No one believed how it looked.
“Careful,” I told him. Then I stepped around without bothering to look down at him. I had the Reverend’s eye.
He glanced down and kind of smiled as he looked back. Above and behind me lightning flashed and I saw it echo in the brighter shards of his eyes. No thunder followed but hard, cold bullets of rain began to fall. I could hear them hitting the tent canvas each drop spaced so far apart it could have been a slow motion telegraph warning of what was to come.
“I still need to speak with Dewey about his brother, if you don’t mind Reverend.”
“Of course,” he answered keeping his guiding hand on the young man’s shoulders. “May I ask, is this in the official capacity of interviewing a suspect or a talk to gather information from the bereaved family member?”
The big guy had gotten up and was standing close, an offended dog waiting to be let off the leash. I let him wait while I considered.
“I ask,” Roscoe continued, “So I know what to tell the lawyer we’ll be providing him with.”
“Mr. Boone is a family member.” I conceded.
“Then will tomorrow be soon enough for him to speak with you?”
I tucked the paper I’d been holding in one jacket pocket and pulled a business card from another. “Tomorrow would be great,” I said holding out the card to the kid.
It wasn’t until he got a nudge from the Reverend that Dewey reached to accept the card.
“We’ll call,” the Reverend assured me. I was already moving.
The big guy had been standing too close to my back on the left waiting to front me as I turned. I didn’t turn I backed up leading with my elbow. He took it right below the sternum and woofed out his air as I kept pushing back. His feet were planted wide. The thinking, I assume, was that I would be intimidated if he appeared even larger and more solid when I turned. It was a mistake on a lot of levels, mostly because he wasn’t ready to move. His balance was wrong. His feet weren’t ready for me to press him again and, again, he went down. Ass and elbows.
“What’s your name?” I asked looking down on him.
He tried looking around me to the Reverend.
“This doesn’t concern your boss,” I told him. “This is about you.”
Rain that had pattered began to drop steady. The front had arrived. Thick, hard droplets hit the ground kicking up dust, raising an earthy, spring smell.
The big guy tried scooting back. I stepped forward putting my pointy-toe boot right between his thighs.
“Let me guess.” I pretended to think it through. “Your last name is Boone?”
“Silas is my cousin.” Dewey said from behind me. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to help me or Silas.
“Shut up, Dewey,” Silas scolded. “You don’t need to be tellin’ the cops anything.”
I scooched my boot forward so my toe was a real threat to his tender bits, then I said, “No. You shut up, Silas. I’ve had about enough of you.”
A wet lick of wind ran though the grounds and popped the tents. It died in ripples, but carried a steady, thickening rain. I didn’t much care. I was ready to make a point or two. I would have if it weren’t for the hail that began falling. It came in a fast firing rage that tattooed the ground, the tents, and vehicles with white pellets.
“Silas Boone,” I mulled as I stepped away. “I’ll be looking into that.”
I trotted off to my truck hoping the hail wasn’t doing any damage to the hood.
Chapter 5
The sheriff had his feet up on his desk and his eyes pointed to the window when I came in. At first I assumed he was watching the spring storm blowing through the tops of trees. Then I realized he wasn’t looking outside but inside—at the picture of his late wife Emily on the windowsill.
“It’s a mother fucker, Hurricane,” he said without looking at me.
The language was like hearing a new, strange noise from your engine on a familiar stretch of road, wrong and disconcerting. Not the word itself. The sheriff was a man who cursed loudly and often, but almost always for impact. In anger or deep pain I’ve heard him use every word in the book. Those times, he’s considered me—one of the highest honors a man like him can bestow—just one of the guys. Other times, quiet, talking-across-the-desk times, he still thought of me as a lady and curbed his language. It was a strange contrast and had to be a difficult balancing act, but one I actually admired. One I appreciated.
This was different.
“God damn it.” He spoke quietly. Still I heard the slight quaver in his voice. “Damn it all to son-of-a-bitching hell.”
I closed the door.
“Are you all right, sir?”
He snorted a derisive little laugh through his nose then lifted a balled tissue to dab under his glasses. “There isn’t a lot of all right left in life these days, young lady.”
“You should speak to someone.” I stunned myself with words I never thought I would say after my own hatred of therapy. “Maybe not the same woman I’m seeing,” I added.
“I’m talking to you.”
“I was thinking of a professional.”
“I know what you were thinking. But I’m just sad. I’ve earned a little of that and saved up a lot more besides. After Vietnam I thought I’d never be sad again. And I wasn’t until . . . Now I feel like I can’t remember the last time I was happy.”
He let his dirty boots fall from the desk to clop loudly on the floor then sat up in his chair and looked at me. It was a deep look that reminded me he knew almost all my secrets. It reassured me also that he had never shared them with anyone.
“You can’t have my job,” he stated simply. “You can’t handle it.”
“What?” I didn’t know whether to be offended or relieved then I wondered why he thought I wanted it.
“You’re a fine and tough woman, but you’re tempered too hard for the politics. And you have too much going on in your life. You’re too rich for one thing and people would wonder what you’re up to.”
“Sir, I—”
“Don’t worry about it. I know it’s not something you were planning.” He pointed at the chairs in front of his desk. “Sit down; you’re bothering me.”
I sat.
“But I want you to think about it. So you won’t be thinking I let you down.”
“I could never think that.”
“Never say never.” He used the wadded tissue to touch at his nose. “It’s important what you leave behind and who you leave to carry on.”
I didn’t know what to say but he seemed to expect something so I nodded.
“You can’t be sheriff, Hurricane. Hell being Hurricane is about
half the reason you can’t. The other half is a million other reasons we don’t need to talk about. But the thing is, the department needs you.”
“Needs?”
He laughed, and he grinned but his eyes were still shining a little from the tears. “Hell, it’s kind of hard for me to say too. But it’s true. I know I said you should retire and play with the money your husband left you. You’d be good at it, but you wouldn’t be happy. It wouldn’t be good for the department either.”
“You’ve been thinking about this.”
“A lot. Like I said, it’s important.”
“Why now?” I asked. “Why are you making plans now? You said you were sick of people asking you about it.”
“I am. But I got to thinking, maybe they were seeing things I didn’t. Then I thought, fuck them.” He laughed like he had the past night in the field, full and loud. “And I thought, who wants to spend what time they have left worrying about this shit? Dead guys and piles of fish? But I don’t want to abandon it either. I plan to leave it better than I found it. I need you to do that.”
“I’ll help anyway I can.” I decided I was relieved. The sheriff was right about everything, except maybe the department needing me. I tried counting how many mandated therapy sessions I had left. If I was sheriff I could probably get out of those.
“What do you think of Blevins?”
“In what way,” I asked, imagining I sounded as if I was hedging some bets.
“He could do it.”
“Do what?”
“Win an election.”
“I’m not sure that’s much a part of his thinking.”
“Yeah. I imagine you’re right about that. I think you could make it a part.”
I scowled. “Why me? You just said the reason I’m not suited for the job was that I’m not political.”
The sheriff sat and looked at me like I had missed something important. He stared so long that his expression evolved as the question hung on the wall, pornography in a museum waiting for comment. In the end his expression lightened and seemed to be half calling me an idiot and half enjoying the joke at my expense.
Finally he said, “It would be a favor to me if you would talk to him when the time comes.”
A Particular Darkness Page 7
