The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I can’t talk about Dad right now,” Quinn said. “I got to get back and help out.”

  “Nice haircut,” Caddy said. “I knew you couldn’t handle that hippie look. You feel better?”

  “Like a hundred dollars.”

  “Dad can wait,” Caddy said, finding a chair. She hoisted her legs off the floor and tucked her knees close to her chest, arms hugging them close. “But just for the record, Momma won’t stand for his shit. She’s prepared to go to court if she has to.”

  Quinn drank some black coffee. Hondo wandered in from the front porch and Quinn poured him out some special dog food made from wild-caught salmon and then replenished his water.

  “I knew that girl,” Caddy said, pointing with her cigarette. “She came out to The River three days ago. She needed a place to stay, get some wash done. She said her father had tossed her out of the house.”

  Quinn walked over to the kitchen table and sat near his sister. Both of them a strange version of each other, one dark-headed and one blonde. But both with the same high cheekbones, pointy nose, and long, gangly limbs. Caddy was a good deal smaller, but now that they’d both cut their hair short again, it was damn-near two sides of a coin.

  “Was she in trouble?”

  Caddy reached for the ashtray set by the sugar dish. She tapped off the ash and took a drag, shaking her head at the same time. “No,” she said. “No more than the rest. She said she wanted to get out of town and would do anything she could to make that happen. She said she’d been dancing a bit at Vienna’s Place. You know that’s the new name of the Booby Trap, right?”

  “I keep up on things like that.”

  “But she didn’t say anything about a boyfriend or a customer wanting to hurt her,” Caddy said. “She seemed more sad than afraid. Kept on talking nonsense about wanting to write her life story but getting spurned by some Christian romance writer over in Tupelo. That make any sense to you?”

  “You know who her daddy is, don’t you?”

  Caddy shook her head. Quinn was wrong, her hair might be even shorter than his, her face brown and sunburned, whiter spaces around the eyes where she wore sunglasses in the field.

  “Wash Jones.”

  “The fat guy who drove the shit truck?” she said. “Every time I saw him, he was drunk as hell, empting septic tanks with a smile.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “He’s a mess,” Caddy said. “No wonder. The girl was sweet, kind. Real naïve about things. Thought she could figure things out with nothing to go on. She believed she could get into that life and walk in and out as she pleased. She told me getting naked was no big thing, she said it was more a game than anything.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  Caddy shrugged, tipped off the cigarette. “I told her all about who I was and what I’d done,” she said. “I told her it was a hell of a long walk back. I tried to keep on the here and now and kept that afterlife talk to a minimum. Maybe I was wrong.”

  “Did she leave anything at The River?”

  “No,” Caddy said. “Packed up at one of the shacks yesterday morning. I hadn’t seen her since.”

  Quinn drank some coffee. His cell phone started to buzz on the table. It was Lillie. “I was worse than a deer in headlights,” Lillie said, talking before Quinn could even say hello. “I was like a deer caught up in the fucking truck grille. What a mess. We have about twenty reporters down here now hanging out in the meeting room. I got both Cleotha and Mary Alice working. Mary Alice brought in boxes of Krispy Kreme for the jackals. I need you back here.”

  “Headed that way,” Quinn said, mashing the off button.

  “The girl had visitors,” Caddy said. “She wasn’t there. But I talked to them.”

  “Who?”

  “You got to promise me you’ll be real careful on this.”

  “Aren’t I always?” Quinn said. “Anything you know can help.”

  “A whole crew of those boys Daddy used to ride with,” Caddy said. “The Born Losers. The head one wore a patch that said ‘Wrong Way.’”

  “When was this?”

  “Last night, around sunset.”

  “Shit,” Quinn said.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “We’ve stepped right in it.”

  15

  You weren’t kidding,” Quinn said, peeking through the blinds of Lillie’s office.

  “Yep,” Lillie said. “It’s an outright clusterfuck.”

  The whole time he’d been sheriff, Quinn had never seen the parking lot behind the jail half full. Now it was packed with TV news trucks, topped with antennas, and all the damn newspaper reporters from all over the Mid-South. Lillie had just gotten off the phone with a reporter in Birmingham and said it’s only going to get bigger, spread out into a national story.

  “She was pretty,” Lillie said. “And white. Her momma put up some pictures on Facebook of Milly in her cheerleading uniform. She looked the very ideal of cute little Southern girl.”

  “You gonna tell them different?” Quinn said.

  “Not my job,” Lillie said. “I only care about what that girl was up to if it helps find the motherfucker.”

  “What do we know?”

  “Not much,” Lillie said. “Say, you cut off your beard and hair. Why’d you do that?”

  “Felt like the right time,” he said. “Appreciate the clean shirt.”

  “Wasn’t clean as much as it just didn’t say ‘Sheriff’ on the patch.”

  “I get a badge?”

  Lillie nodded, chewing on a nail, looking out the plate-glass window to more cars and TV trucks rolling into Tibbehah County. The only time the town had this many visitors was during the Sweet Potato Festival and then it was only for two days. Sometimes, they got a lot of folks from Louisiana and Alabama during the regional rodeo. Lillie reached into the right-hand drawer of a desk and tossed a gold star toward him. He snatched it right up.

  “Caddy tells me that motorcycle gang stopped off at The River yesterday.”

  “That a fact?” Lillie said.

  “Looking for Milly Jones,” Quinn said. “She had to pull out Hamp’s old shotgun before they’d leave.”

  “Fannie Hathcock’s looking better and better.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Fannie runs those boys,” Lillie said. “Everybody knows it. They mooch off her bar, the diner at the Rebel. Shit, most of them live out at the Golden Cherry. You can smell them when you pass by if you don’t roll up your windows. Worse than a paper mill.”

  “Who was Milly with last?”

  “Working on it,” Lillie said. “State folks are tracking her phone.”

  “You find the phone?”

  “Burnt to a crisp in the car.”

  “But the cell company can track her movements.”

  “That’s the idea,” Lillie said. “Just like we did those shitbag thieves last year out at Larry Cobb’s place.”

  “You ready to round up some of those current shitbags?”

  “I don’t want to shut them down,” Lillie said. “I want to make them skittery and nervous. If they were making noise to Caddy, they were doing it other places, too.”

  “No reason we can’t stop by the Golden Cherry.”

  “When’s the last time you stopped by the Golden Cherry?”

  “Prom.”

  “And how’d that work out for you and Anna Lee?”

  “She puked all in the bed after drinking some Boone’s Farm strawberry wine,” Quinn said. “And I had to sober her up by dawn before her folks found out.”

  “Good times.”

  “What about the reporters?”

  “I promised to talk to them all at five,” Lillie said. “So let’s go out and do some actual police work and then I can get back here and do my makeup
.”

  “You don’t wear any makeup.”

  Lillie picked up a Remington 870 Express and held it in her right hand. Quinn nodded to it. “Oh,” Lillie said. “That’s right.”

  • • •

  Fannie Hathcock waited for a long while in the resort bar, looking up to the flat-screen, before she pressed her hand to her mouth. The TV had no sound, but there was no mistaking the girl in the cheerleading outfit for young Milly, the cheerleader who twerked to Miley Cyrus before she robbed Vienna’s blind. The words under her picture said SMALL MISSISSIPPI TOWN SEEKS ANSWERS.

  “Fuck me to hell,” Fannie said.

  “Ma’am?” the bartender said.

  “Yes,” Fannie said. “I’ll have some more champagne.”

  The bartender poured the rest of the bottle, Fannie not even a little bit drunk. She’d been drinking on the house since nine that morning and now it was nearly three. Still no sign of White or his boys and, as it got this late, she wasn’t sure they’d ever show. The bartender was a bone-thin, older woman wearing a crisp tuxedo shirt and a bolo tie.

  “Springs rolls and jalapeño poppers are two-for-one,” she said.

  “Goody.”

  “Would you like an app?”

  “No thank you,” Fannie said, trying to get the woman to go away. “Can you turn up the news?”

  Acting sheriff Lillie Virgil says the girl was found shortly before midnight. She had been walking a county road near Highway 45 while completely engulfed in flames. The girl was identified this morning as Milly Jones of the nearby Blackjack community. She had attended Tibbehah High School, where friends remember her as popular, bubbly, and outgoing. She died earlier today at the Burn Unit at the MED. A spokesperson for the hospital . . .

  “All right,” Fannie said, lifting a hand. “You can turn it down.”

  “Ain’t that horrible,” the woman said. “Can you imagine being lit on fire like that?”

  “No,” Fannie said. “I really can’t.”

  “I can turn it to the ESPN,” the woman said. “Can you believe it’s football season already? You for State or Ole Miss?”

  Fannie didn’t answer, taking a sip of champagne, thinking that son of a bitch, that moron Lyle, had really done it this time. She’d asked for a simple thing like find the girl and haul her ass back to the club. But he couldn’t handle it. He’d been too damn thickheaded and mean just to get the cash back she’d taken. The girl must’ve smart-talked him or one of the boys. Or one of the boys just couldn’t control himself, touched the girl, and then needed to cover up the mess. This was bad. Real bad. Little bubbles lifted to the surface of the glass. The champagne was dull as hell, probably cost them eight bucks and marked up to fifty.

  “You mind if I take a seat?” a man said.

  Fannie looked up to a familiar craggy face. “Jesus, Ray,” Fannie said. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Fannie,” Ray said. “Damn, you’re looking good.”

  “If I didn’t know you were full of shit, I’d blush.”

  “Wish you’d called ahead.”

  “That’s what your lawn jockey told me.”

  “Fannie, how long do we go back?”

  “The fucking Stone Age.”

  “And so we have a good deal of trust built up between us?”

  “Sure, Ray,” Fannie said. “If you say so.”

  Since the last time she’d seen Ray, his salt-and-pepper hair had gone completely salt. But he’d been part of the New Orleans crew, working with some of the real old-timers who got run out of Corinth years ago. He knew the names and the crimes and had weathered and endured it all. He wore a nice seersucker suit with a yellow-and-purple-striped tie. A nice show hankie in his pocket. If she had to deal with anyone, at least Ray had some class.

  “I want to see White,” Fannie said.

  Ray looked to Fannie, pursed lips, and shook his head. “Not a good time.”

  “Tell me a good one.”

  “He’s getting lots of attention lately,” Ray said. “Kinda makes him nervous.”

  “I don’t like anyone thumbing their nose at me,” Fannie said. “Thinking I owe them a favor for cleaning up some shit they started.”

  “That tribal chief wanted you tied to the stake and burned.”

  “Not my fault,” Fannie said. “Not my problem. That chief was about as much Choctaw as my Irish grandfather’s lily-white ass.”

  “Well,” Ray said, turning to her with those sad hound dog eyes. “It was a real mess. You’re lucky you landed on your feet.”

  Fannie shrugged, finished off the champagne, and used a fork to tap the glass and bring the bartender back around. Great thing about champagne was that she could down a couple bottles and barely feel a damn thing.

  “How about you head on back to Tibbehah County,” he said, “and we’ll be in touch real soon. I promise I’ll set something up. At the right time and place. You know?”

  “You’re sweet, Ray,” Fannie said. “And you were a hell of a lay. Did your wife ever find out?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Said she didn’t blame me a bit. Said you had great tits and a hell of an ass.” He continued to grin and played a bit with the cuffs of his seersucker jacket.

  “Listen to me,” Fannie said, leaning in and whispering in Ray’s ear. “Don’t fault me if the fucking highway patrol shuts us down and hauls my ass to jail.”

  Ray leaned in more to the bar, cutting his eyes over to Fannie. She now had his fucking attention. “Who?” he said, more mouthing it than talking.

  “Some high-dollar rednecks from Jackson who think they own that county,” she said. “Someone needs to let them know different.”

  Ray nodded, rubbing his hand together as he did when thinking, almost like he was about to conjure up some kind of ceremony or sacrifice a virgin. “OK,” he said. “Let me see what I can do.”

  Fannie reached over and grabbed her purse, not even thinking about paying the tab, as much as she made for those assholes. “Good seeing you, Ray.”

  “Did you see the news?” Ray said, eye lifting to the television set. “Some teenage girl was lit on fire up there. They found her still alive walking a back road.”

  Fannie tossed back the last of the champagne and laid down a fifty for the tip to let Ray know she was nobody’s punch. “You don’t say.”

  • • •

  Those are some fugly motherfuckers,” Lillie said.

  “How do you want to go about this?”

  “Find Wrong Way,” Lillie said. “Since he was the one asking about Milly. His real name is Lyle Masters, a two-time loser from Macon, Georgia. I don’t know much about him because, to be honest, they never caused much trouble. In a way, they did my job for me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I never had a customer complaint at the Rebel.”

  “I bet,” Quinn said. “If anyone complained, they’d take him out back and stomp the ever-living shit out of him.”

  “Come on,” Lillie said, grabbing the Jeep door handle. “Let’s quit jawing and get some answers.”

  “You know they want to help,” he said. “We won’t be able to shut them up.”

  A dozen or so bikers lounged about the Golden Cherry’s pool. Most had beards and potbellies. Some wore shorts, others had just stripped down to their underwear, denim and leather scattered about. Lillie had on her shades, tailored uniform, and boots, with a ball cap over her eyes and the Remington twelve-gauge in her hand. None of the bikers paid her any mind when she walked up to the lounge chairs.

  “Hey,” she said.

  One of the bikers turned up the music louder. A bunch of the boys laughed. Someone cannonballed into the pool and scattered water across Quinn’s cowboy boots. Considering they were shit kickers, he wasn’t offended. Lillie kicked at the feet of a snoozing biker wearing shades, tig
hty-whities, and combat boots. “Hey, fuckhead.”

  The man stirred and lifted his shades off his face. “Yeah?”

  “Where’s Lyle?”

  “Wrong Way?”

  “Lyle Masters,” Lillie said.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Sheriff Virgil and Assistant Sheriff Quinn Colson.”

  “He’s sleeping,” the man said. “I’ll tell him y’all stopped by.”

  “Which unit?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Quinn eyed the guy, lifted his chin, and said, “Don’t I know you?”

  “Mister, I ain’t never seen you before in my life.”

  “Jacob,” Quinn said. “Jacob Lee. You beat up a woman who said you stole money in her purse. You got charged, but I don’t believe you ever showed for court. Give me a second and we can check.”

  The man slid glasses back down on his eyes and reclined back in the chair. “One thirty-seven.”

  “What’s that?” Lillie said, grinning.

  “Wrong Way’s in 137.”

  Lillie tipped her ball cap, walking along the lounge chairs filled with the all-star lineup of north Mississippi shitheads. Someone catcalled Lillie, but she kept on walking, shotgun in hand, eyes on the far side of the Golden Cherry Motel. Quinn moved alongside her, watching everyone they passed, listening for a hint of a quick move or someone trying to surprise them. But it looked like Coors Light, some reefer, and the hot sun had done most of the work. Everyone drunk, sleepy, and stoned as hell. More than twenty bikes sat parked side by side, bright chrome and mirrors gleaming in the sun. Music came from a far open door. Guns N’ Roses. “Sweet Child o’ Mine.”

  In the half-light, two bikers sat around a small round table. A woman in a Confederate flag bikini danced on top of a bed while they showered her with dollar bills. The room looked like it needed more of a Hazmat team than a maid. Dozens of crushed beer cans on the ground, ashtrays overflowing, and crumpled-up hamburger wrappers.

  “First a naughty nurse and now a cop,” a man with a black beard and no shirt said. “Get on up there, doll.”