The Innocents

by Ace Atkins

  Quinn nodded to the old wooden chair across from the desk. Jason set down the greasy sacks and two bottles of Coke, sat, and propped his boots at the edge of the desk. “Unless you’d rather have coffee?”

  “Already drank two pots today,” Quinn said. “I could run up to Memphis and back again.”

  “Get something in your stomach,” Jason said. “I’ve been watching TV most of the day. I saw that girl’s daddy hold that press conference at the MED. About tore my guts out to watch what that family went through. You met him? Talk to those folks yet?”

  “Lillie has,” Quinn said. “The girl’s father is the town fuckup. Used to be the septic man, but hasn’t worked in years. Said he has post-traumatic stress after his old boss was hung on a cross by a white supremacist.”

  Quinn headed out to the small kitchen and returned with some plastic silverware and paper plates. He helped himself to a breast, a wing, and a few scoops of slaw and beans. Jason followed his lead and they ate for long while in silence. Kenny came into the office, said hello, and said he was headed home. His eyes half-closed, fat face drawn. He’d been on duty since six the night before.

  “Anything new?” Jason said.

  “Not really,” Quinn said. “No more than you heard from the reporters.”

  “Damn. Sure are a lot of them out there,” Jason said, craning his head to look out the office window. “I had to park way down the road. Don’t know how y’all expect to conduct an investigation.”

  “For the most part, they’ve been respectful,” Quinn said. “We’ve set times for updates, press conferences. Lillie taught me working with the press is a two-way street. Sometimes, they turn up something you need to know.”

  “With all that technology, y’all will find that bastard right quick,” Jason said. “I watch all those CSI TV shows. I saw all of ’em working down by the river.”

  “Yeah,” Quinn said. “Sure, Dad.”

  “You can’t do something like that to another human being without someone seeing something or talking,” Jason said. “This isn’t something any decent person could keep to themselves. Everyone’s talking about that girl, Milly Jones. I saw the Sheriffs’ Association has offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward.”

  “It’s twenty thousand now,” Quinn said. “After the story ran on CNN.”

  Quinn noticed the nervousness, the nodding, the overall customary catching-up between them, waiting for Jason to go ahead and say what was on his mind. Quinn had learned to appreciate his father, but he knew damn well Jason didn’t come over just to deliver a fried chicken dinner. Quinn spotted a few crime scene photos on the desk, scooped them up, and dropped them in the right-hand drawer of the desk. Nobody should have to look at what that girl went through unless they were paid to do it.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Jason said.

  “She walked nearly a quarter mile like that,” Quinn said. “I don’t know how she did it.”

  “I don’t need much of your time,” Jason said, stroking the long gray goatee. “But I know this thing is going to keep you away from the farm. I’m sorry but this just can’t wait.”

  “She kept on trying to talk,” Quinn said, leaning back in the sheriff’s chair, spotting more hot lights shining in the jail parking lot from TV reporters doing stand-ups. “Rumor has it she told EMTs who did this to her. But that’s not true.”

  Cleotha waddled into the office and set a stack of pink callback slips on Lillie’s desk, smiling at Quinn and nodding to Jason. She closed the door with a tight click. Quinn leaned back into his seat.

  “I’m ready to do business,” Jason said. “It doesn’t have to be tonight. Or even tomorrow. But I need you to get in touch with Johnny Stagg.”

  Quinn dropped his head into his hands, nodding. “I’m not leaving here until we get some kind of direction,” he said. “Know where we’re headed with the girl. Wait. Just what are you asking me about?”

  “Land,” Jason said. “The two hundred acres.”

  “Oh, that’ll wait,” Quinn said. “You think Johnny Stagg wants to do me any favors?”

  “Longer we wait, the more Stagg will see the daylight from his prison time,” Jason said. “He’ll start thinking about working this county again and he’ll want to hold on to every damn inch he’s got.”

  “Let’s talk after we make some arrests,” Quinn said. “You think I can leave here? Or start making some kind of real estate plans right now?”

  “I know,” Jason said. “I know. But I figured no time was going to be right. If it ain’t that girl, it’s something else going south in this county. Tibbehah County is a damn revolving door of bad shit. It’s been that way since the white man bought it from the Choctaws. I just need you to make a connection and you can step away. I’ll do the rest.”

  “You want to talk to Johnny Stagg yourself?”

  Jason nodded, Quinn shaking his head. Cleotha appeared at the door, cracking it open, and saying she had Lillie on line 2. “And she don’t sound none too happy.”

  Quinn held up a finger, looked to his dad, and said, “I can’t stop you from doing your own business. But if you expect me to call on Stagg hat in hand, it’s not going to happen.”

  “Appreciate your directness, son,” Jason said, standing, and winked at his son. “I never would want to make you trouble. But if you and me are square on this, well, all right then.”

  18

  Ordeen Davis hadn’t been home from Memphis an hour when Coach Mills called his cell and said he sure needed to talk to his ass. Ordeen tried to find Nito since Nito had that new ride, trading the Nova in Memphis for an ’89 Chevy Impala and some cash, but Nito didn’t pick up. Ordeen couldn’t figure out what the coach wanted besides maybe giving him a come-to-Jesus talk or maybe tell him about some shit job he found. Stocking shelves at the Walmart or working out of a warehouse in South Tupelo where they needed strong backs.

  Ordeen got his sister to drop him at Tibbehah Stadium, his momma preaching at the church late. Sign outside saying IF YOU WOULD SHUT UP, YOU COULD HEAR GOD’S VOICE. The lights turned on for practice still shining over the empty bleachers and green field. No one in the whole place as Ordeen walked onto the grass and down toward the facility where they lifted weights and did drills in the winter. He damn near lived there when he’d been in school. Coach told him if he worked hard, did everything he said, and lived right, he’d make it out of town. Ordeen followed that plan, but Coach didn’t say shit about him being two inches too short and three-tenths of a second too damn slow.

  Bud Mills sat in the dark practice facility on an old orange plastic chair. He was smoking a cigarette in the shadow, dead center on the Astroturf, marked off for twenty yards of fake field. Blocking dummies scattered across the bright green. Coach had on nothing but red coaching shorts, high white socks, and cleats. He had flabby old titties and a white tuft of hair between ’em.

  “Ordeen,” Mills said. “Come on in. Just finished up watching game film. You know, we got Holly Springs next week. Bunch of thugs. We don’t watch out, they’re gonna stomp our ass. Remember two seasons ago they came in here with all that finger-pointing and dancing bullshit. We got to shut their asses down real quick.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “C’mon,” Coach said, standing up slow with his bad back and bad knees, reaching for another school chair. “Something’s been on my mind since you got picked up. I want to make sure we get straight on all that.”

  “What’s that, Coach?”

  “I’m worried about you hanging to ole Ranito,” Coach said. “He’s been acting real strange. I don’t need to ask you who really owned that gun. Or those pills. I tried to let him know I was pulling for him. I told him he was more of a man than that. But I can’t make him change. He’s got to do that for himself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In the half-light of the still, silent building where there’d been so mu
ch goddamn noise and sweat, he looked at the rounded shape of Coach Bud Mills. He reminded Ordeen of a smooth-ass metal statue or something that had been weathered away for a million years. All the angles softened, belly and neck, until he was just a blob of flesh with eyes and a hole for a mouth. He plugged the mouth with the cigarette and asked how his momma and them had been doing.

  “She good.”

  “Your momma’s a fine lady,” Coach said. “Always has been. And you’re a fine boy. Let me ask you something. Hadn’t Nito been acting real strange to you?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “The other day, did he tell you what me and him talked about?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ordeen said. “I figured you just trying to look out for your boys now we out in the real world. Same like you said, Coach. Real world is a tough, messed-up place. You said it took heart and mental toughness if you wanted to find your way through.”

  Coach Mills nodded along with what Ordeen was saying, Ordeen dishing out a little bullshit just so Mills could get on to why he’d called him out to the practice field. Don’t hang with Nito. Don’t do drugs. Yeah, he got all that shit.

  “Did you know that girl who got herself killed?”

  Ordeen nodded. “Milly,” he said. “Yeah, I knew her.”

  “I want this to be between us, son,” Coach Mills said. “But do you know if her and Nito were going steady together?”

  “No, sir,” Ordeen said. “She wadn’t ever with Nito. She couldn’t stand his ass.”

  Coach took a long-as-hell drag on that cigarette and let it out slow and easy, a big gray cloud blooming around his fat head. “That make Nito mad?” Coach said. “Wanting a little cheerleader like that and her turning him down?”

  Ordeen shook his head, trying to read Coach’s face but just getting the soft chin and shadows, one clear blue eye. “Wait,” he said. “You think he did something?”

  “I don’t know,” Coach said. “But if I were you, I would keep far, far away from that boy. He’s gonna get you kilt. I love you and your momma too damn much to see that happen. Y’all are some fine folks.”

  • • •

  By 0800 the next morning, Quinn and Lillie sat in Linda Carlton’s living room with her surviving daughter, Amber, talking over a plate of cookies and two Styrofoam cups of purple Kool-Aid. Must have been twenty or thirty folks in the small ranch house in the Blackjack community, lots of cakes, cookies, and cold cuts spread out from the kitchen to the dining room, neighbors knowing grieving people needed to eat. People spoke in hushed voices. At least two pastors had stopped by, praying with Linda and Amber, saying they hoped Milly found some peace. Quinn knew both ministers, one being his own from Calvary Methodist back in Jericho.

  “I hadn’t slept in two days,” Linda said. “And I don’t want to. Every time I close my eyelids, I see Milly’s face. Not as she had been, but like she looked at the hospital.”

  “We’re kinda fuzzy on a few things, ma’am,” Lillie said. “We can’t make out the last hour and half of where she’d been and might’ve gone.”

  “Well, we saw her at about five,” Linda said, looking to Amber. “Right?”

  Amber bit her lower lip and nodded.

  Linda Carlton was a small, frail woman, in a pink sweat suit with no shoes. She looked pale and washed-out without any makeup, smoker lines around her mouth. Amber was fifteen, a stout girl in an XXL Tinker Bell sweatshirt and bright pink shorts. The front door kept on opening and closing, more food and more flowers pouring in. More tears and prayers. Every so often, someone would duck their head in the doorway and then disappear. Both Quinn and Lillie still in uniform.

  “She wanted to grab a few things she’d left,” Linda said. “I hadn’t changed her bedroom a bit since she moved out. She took all her clothes but left all her trophies, stuffed animals, picture books, and things.”

  “What’d she take?” Lillie said.

  Linda shrugged. “All I saw was a few picture books and that dumb pink bear she got from my ex-husband. I don’t know why she loved that thing so damn much. Wash got it down at Gulf Shores, Alabama, while he was on a nice long drunk.”

  Lillie looked to Amber and Amber shook her head.

  “Did Milly say where she was going?” Quinn said.

  “Nope,” Linda said. “But she did tell me she loved me. Almost like she knew what was gonna happen. We all hadn’t really seen eye to eye for the last few years. I told her she was wasting her life sticking around Jericho. She needed to take her talents and move somewhere new. When she left, she gave me a big hug, whispering that I’d been right and she was getting on with her life.”

  On a large white wall hung three separate silhouettes of a boy and two girls. Around the frames were countless more pictures of little Milly, stocky Amber, and a young, muscular teenage boy. The kid had a wide, prominent smile and cheeks scarred with acne. In several photos, he wore a football uniform. Amber noticed Quinn staring and he smiled at the girl.

  “You don’t expect your babies to go before you,” Linda said. “I lost two. That’s too much for one woman.”

  Amber buried her face in her hands and hunched her back. Linda shook her head, getting choked-up, and clutching a wadded-up Kleenex to her nose.

  “After I hugged Milly, all I could think to say was, ‘Well, bye then,’” Linda said. “Just like that. Kind of like You done came for your junk and now get out of here. What the hell was I thinking to talk to her like that? No wonder she moved out and moved in with Wash.”

  “Was she close with Wash?” Quinn asked, looking toward the teen.

  “No, sir,” Amber said. “Milly hated him.”

  “It was more about the drinking than anything,” Linda said. “When he started to drink, we’d get the hell out of the way. Hell, you know Wash Jones. His reputation in this town.”

  Quinn nodded, turning to Lillie, letting her take back over.

  “Did Milly get personal bills at this address?” Lillie asked. “Cell phone or credit card statements?”

  “Some,” Linda said. “But I think that was part of what she picked up. I can look around the house.”

  “How about names of her closest friends?” Lillie said. “Who she stayed in contact with?”

  Linda and Amber both said the name Nikki at the same time. Apparently, Milly and Nikki had been best friends since third grade and damn-near inseparable. “She’s got a baby boy now,” Linda said. “Cute baby named Jon-Jon. Don’t know anything about his daddy except he’s white.”

  “I know Milly was working at the Dollar Store and had just quit over in Tupelo at the Build-A-Bear,” Lillie said. “Had she found any more work in town?”

  Linda swallowed and shook her head. Quinn saw her reach out and grab Amber’s knee and the fat little girl’s face go blank.

  Quinn waited, Lillie knowing damn well where Milly Jones had been making some off-the-books cash. She absolutely could not wait to get over to Vienna’s with a warrant and go through security tapes and conduct interviews with any creep who came in contact with the girl. But Lillie said she had to be patient, build that case minute by minute. They needed to show a progression of details, everything heading on back to Vienna’s, eliminating family and boyfriends.

  “So this was all around five?” Lillie asked.

  Both Linda and Amber nodded. Amber wiping her eyes.

  “And you didn’t see what she took?” Lillie asked.

  “She got that old picture of her and Brandon,” Linda said. “I saw the frame in the box as she was leavin’. And that bear. Wash’s drunk-ass bear.”

  “Brandon was our brother,” Amber said. “He died in a hunting accident.”

  The words hunting accident made Linda turn even a brighter shade of white and sent that Kleenex back to her nose. She breathed it in and close
d her eyes.

  “You mind telling us what happened?” Lillie said.

  Linda spoke fast and hard, “Boy was cleaning his gun,” she said. “Don’t listen to any other mess about that. He had a hell of a lot to live for. He had just gotten his own truck, had him a sweet little girlfriend. A great athlete. Can y’all excuse me for a minute? I feel like if I don’t lay down, I’ll pass out.”

  Quinn and Lillie stood. Amber helped her mother to the bedroom and then returned to the big, flowered couch. She sat back down and smiled at Lillie and Quinn, crying down her big ruddy cheeks, pulling her chubby knees up into her sweatshirt.

  “Any idea where your sister headed?” Lillie asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Amber said. “I didn’t ask. And I don’t think Milly would’ve told me.”

  “You know where she was working?” Quinn said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you think that’s what got her killed?” Lillie asked.

  Amber buried her face in her hands and nodded a few times, snuffling a bunch. She wiped her nose across the sleeve of her Tinker Bell sweatshirt and said, “Don’t y’all?”

  19

  Jason Colson met Bentley at noon at a Waffle House down in Starkville. “No offense,” Jason said. “But if we’re gonna be doing a little business, best that folks don’t see us together.”

  “I understand,” Bentley had said. “Appreciate you thinking about us.”

  Jason got there early, spending thirty minutes in his old Chevy and then thirty minutes inside drinking coffee in a back booth before Bentley showed. He had on khakis and a white golf shirt, looking as if maybe Jason had caught him on the ninth hole. “Y’all got some real trouble in Jericho,” Bentley said. “That burning girl is all over the news.”

  “No one wants to talk about much else,” Jason said. “My son’s gone back to work for the sheriff’s office and I had to slide through all those reporters and investigators just to get a word in edgewise.”

  “Is he on board with us?”