The Dirty South - Charlie Parker Series 18 (2020)

by Connolly, John

  ‘Who else knows about you and Sallie?’ said Rhinehart.

  ‘I don’t know what others Sallie might have told. I was angry that she’d shared a confidence with you. She said it was an accident.’

  ‘It was,’ said Rhinehart. ‘It slipped out one night when she’d had too much to drink.’

  ‘She was beset by that weakness,’ said Pettle. ‘It was one of many.’

  Here’s sanctimony, thought Rhinehart.

  ‘Just as you were afflicted by your own,’ he said.

  ‘I know it. I have knelt before God in shame.’

  ‘I’m sure that helped. But He forgave you, too.’

  ‘What about Leonard Cresil?’ said Pettle, ignoring the sarcasm.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Does he drink here?’

  ‘I’m happy to say he does not.’

  ‘But you know of him?’

  ‘I’d have to be blind not to, him and Shire both.’

  ‘Are you in contact with either of them?’

  ‘Why are you asking?’

  ‘I’d be obliged if you’d answer the question.’

  ‘I prefer not to keep the company of such individuals,’ said Rhinehart primly, and Pettle marveled at the bar owner’s mendacity, especially as he had failed to ask the reason for questioning him about Cresil. Pettle was now convinced that Rhinehart was in touch with Cresil, and it was he who had first shared with Cresil his knowledge of Pettle’s affair with Sallie Kernigan.

  ‘As for your wife,’ said Rhinehart, ‘my opinion is that she’ll say nothing about the affair outside the safety of her own home. She’ll see no reason to risk further humiliation. So it’s just us, then, barring evidence to the contrary, and I have no interest in undermining your position in this community. We have to find ways to work together, all of us, if this town is to prosper.’

  This much Rhinehart meant sincerely. If Pettle had come here seeking assurances that Rhinehart would remain quiet about his indiscretion, then he would give him what he wanted, but only because it would put the churchman in his debt. Rhinehart had plans to extend his bar once Kovas commenced building. He even had a local contractor lined up to do the work, and had paid a deposit – more of a bribe, really – to ensure that he wouldn’t be forgotten when the time came. In due course, he might even open another premises, something more upscale. He was weary of selling pretzels, greasy sausages, and Bud Light. There was money in it, admittedly, but not enough for his liking.

  Yet that kind of expansion inevitably involved paperwork and permits. It would also draw objections, particularly from the religious types in the county. An ally would be helpful in countering them, and should Reverend Pettle prove reluctant to oblige, a reminder of his own intimate experience of human frailty might cause him to reconsider.

  ‘You know what the really sad part is?’ said Pettle. ‘Because my wife wouldn’t have relations with me, it drove me back to Sallie, and she welcomed me again to her bed.’

  This Rhinehart hadn’t known. Jesus, the reverend was playing with hellfire.

  ‘Man is not meant to be alone,’ said Rhinehart, in the absence of anything better to offer. He’d read that somewhere, or heard it at a wedding.

  ‘But you’re alone,’ said Pettle.

  ‘Marriage doesn’t appeal to me. But I do like women – more than they like me, which is a heavy load to bear.’

  ‘Is that why you insisted on bothering Sallie with your attentions?’

  ‘Hey!’ Rhinehart waved a finger in Pettle’s face. ‘I won’t take that shit, not from you, not after what you just told me.’

  Pettle nodded glumly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, well.’

  An awkward interval ensued until Rhinehart broke it with a question.

  ‘Are you going to tell the police about your involvement with Sallie?’

  ‘It wasn’t my intention,’ said Pettle.

  ‘There’s a chance they won’t find out about it, but in a town this size, who can say? It might be better to make a clean breast of it, before they come calling. You know Griffin has a detective working the case, some ex-cop from New York? He was in here last night. I didn’t warm to him.’

  ‘His name is Parker.’

  ‘Yeah, Parker, that’s it.’

  Rhinehart recalled the man in the bar, and his brief confrontation with Rich Emory. This Parker, he reflected, wasn’t afraid of causing trouble.

  ‘What about you?’ said Pettle.

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Do you have anything to hide?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Everyone has something to hide. We are all sinners, and sin requires concealment.’

  ‘My sins aren’t the kind that concern the police,’ said Rhinehart. ‘The IRS, maybe, but not the police.’

  He went to get more coffee. He was feeling anxious. Pettle was still circling, but to what end? And that wasn’t all: there was something the preacher had said earlier, something that bothered Rhinehart as soon as he heard it, but which had since slipped from his memory. He wanted to retrieve it, though. It was important.

  Rhinehart came back with the pot and refilled both cups, even though Pettle had drunk only a mouthful. He didn’t bother returning the pot to the hot plate, but sat it on a coaster instead.

  ‘What are you trying to say, Reverend? I’m getting tired of listening to you beating about the bush.’

  Pettle removed his spectacles, wiped them with a cloth that he took from his pocket, and restored them to the bridge of his nose. When he regarded Rhinehart again, it was with a new clarity that had nothing to do with the cleaning of the lenses.

  ‘I was at Sallie’s on Thursday,’ he said. ‘I was sitting at the kitchen table when Donna Lee came home from school. Donna Lee was used to me calling around occasionally, and I’d like to believe she didn’t think ill of it. She was upset, but wouldn’t tell her mother what happened. They’d been fighting a lot lately. I suspect it was mostly Donna Lee’s teenage hormones, although Sallie also had a short fuse. If someone tried to pour oil on troubled waters, Sallie would set fire to it.’

  There it was again. Rhinehart had it now, but said nothing.

  ‘So I went in and talked to Donna Lee. I always had a way with her. I never judged her, never spoke harshly to her, always encouraged her in her studies and her music. I could have been a good father to her.’

  ‘So you said before.’

  ‘Because it’s important. Donna Lee was vulnerable because of her background, but also on account of how she looked. She was beautiful, inside and out. She needed to be cared for, and her mother couldn’t do it, not the way she should have. She tried, but her vices undid her, and caused her attention to wander. There were men who might have tried to take advantage of Donna Lee under those circumstances. Men like you, Denny.’

  ‘Get out of here,’ said Rhinehart softly.

  Pettle didn’t move. ‘She told me what you did,’ he said. ‘How you offered her a ride home, how you laid hold of her breast, how you pulled at her hair as she ran, pulled it so hard she thought her scalp would come away in your hand. She didn’t want to go to the police, because she said it would just be her word against yours and she didn’t want to cause trouble. She didn’t want me to tell her mother, either, because she knew you and Sallie were tight, even though Sallie had warned her to be wary around you.’

  ‘That’s all lies.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Donna Lee didn’t tell lies. She’d prefer to say nothing at all than offer an untruth.’

  ‘She was no angel,’ said Rhinehart. ‘She was whoring around. Her momma said so, but wouldn’t tell me who the guy was. Said she had to be careful, but I had my suspicions.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear you spout such poison about a dead child.’

  ‘You ought to listen. Maybe that man was the one who killed her.’

  ‘Or maybe you killed her, Denny, because she didn’t like your hands on her.’


  ‘I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘That should be for the police to decide.’

  ‘You go spreading slander and I’ll ruin you,’ said Rhinehart. ‘Once the whole town finds out about you and Sallie, you’ll be finished here. Your bitch wife won’t have any reason to stay with you, and you’ll be a congregation of one. And don’t think the finger of suspicion won’t point at you when it comes to Donna Lee. You were fucking her mother, and they’ll wonder if you didn’t have an eye for the daughter as well.’

  ‘You’re a vile man,’ said Pettle.

  ‘That may be true, but I’m no creeping Jesus, not like you. It might even be that you’re worse than a charlatan, and you got more than fucking on your conscience.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘“Had,” Reverend. “Had.”’

  ‘What?’ Pettle looked confused by this sudden turn.

  ‘When you were speaking about Sallie just now, you said she had a short fuse, and she was beset by a weakness for liquor. Not has: had, like you know she’s already dead. But last I heard, Sallie was missing, and the police were still hoping to trace her. Why would you do that, Reverend? Why would you speak about Sallie as though she’s in the ground? Those are hard questions, and I wouldn’t like to be the one required to answer them. So you go talk to the police, and you tell them what you think I might have done. And when they ask me about it, I’ll share with them what Sallie told me, and what you said here today, and we’ll see which one of us still has a future in Cargill by the end of it. Now take your stink of hypocrisy from my bar.’

  Pettle didn’t reply. He turned his face from Rhinehart and got unsteadily to his feet, using the chair for support until he was confident in his ability to remain upright unaided. He walked to the back door, unbolted it, and closed it again behind him as he stepped into the parking lot, all without acknowledging his tormentor.

  Rhinehart remained where he was. His heart was beating rapidly and his palms were sweating. He felt as though he were about to have a seizure. It would be bad for him if Pettle went to the police. Word would get around that he was alleged to have sexually assaulted Donna Lee Kernigan in the days before her death. Even if it was only hearsay, and could never progress further because the girl could offer no testimony, it might harm his business, although perhaps only for a while. Even if Pettle were believed, the regulars would accept it if Rhinehart claimed the allegation contained more exaggeration than truth, and it had all been a misunderstanding between him and Donna Lee. They’d believe him because they wanted to: not believing him might require them to drink elsewhere, and the options in town were limited. In addition, Rhinehart was certain that he could account for his movements during the time Donna Lee had been missing, because he’d spent most of it at the bar. He went home only to rest, and then for just a few hours, because he’d never been a good sleeper. In the end, the police wanted to find the killer of those girls, and any other crimes, actual or alleged, would pale into insignificance beside the fact of the murders. He’d get through this, whatever happened.

  He brought the coffeepot back to the hot plate. He’d heat it up again later. No sense in letting even such modest fare go to waste. He went to his office and stared at the piles of invoices and receipts. Earlier he’d been dreading the paperwork, but now it would serve as a distraction. He sat at his desk and put on his glasses.

  A noise came from the doorway. He looked up.

  And Reverend Nathan Pettle started shooting.

  69

  Pruitt Dix’s last known address was an apartment just south of 630 in downtown Little Rock. Neither Knight nor Griffin had any great desire to visit the city at the best of times, even before the Bloods and Crips started using it as a shooting gallery, but someone had to go up there to question Dix, and certainly not alone. Griffin didn’t want both Knight and himself to be out of the county simultaneously at such an early stage of the investigation. On the other hand, Dix had a bad reputation, one that his address did nothing to counter, since the only people who lived in that district were either too poor to be able to live anywhere else or too criminal to care.

  Griffin made contact with the Little Rock PD to call in a favor, resulting in a detective named Tommy Robinett agreeing to meet Knight at Franke’s Cafeteria on North Rodney Parham, and keep him company while he went looking for Dix. After Knight headed off, Griffin tried to touch base with the rest of his officers. Giddons and Petrie, the two most reliable part-timers – now essentially full-timers because of the killings – were continuing the door-to-door interviews. Colson’s cell phone was out of range, and she wasn’t answering her radio; Griffin guessed that she was probably dealing with someone out in the boondocks. Naylor did respond from his car, though. He sounded out of breath.

  ‘You climbing a hill, son?’ asked Griffin.

  ‘Silverbell Lane,’ said Naylor. Silverbell Lane snaked up into the Ouachita, and the rains had made some of the private roads that led to its houses virtually unnavigable for now. If Naylor had wanted to talk to anyone up there, he’d have been forced to make his way partly on foot.

  ‘If you fall,’ said Griffin, ‘you’re paying your own laundry bill, so best stay vertical.’

  ‘I just spoke to Bill Tindle,’ said Naylor.

  ‘I know Bill.’ Tindle had been a trainer of racehorses before old age rendered him unfit for duty. He lived near the top of Silverbell Lane with his daughter Min, a spinster who had a depth of feeling for Kel Knight, and wouldn’t have allowed his marital status to get in the way should he have been of a mind to reciprocate. Kel Knight avoided Silverbell Lane like the plague itself.

  ‘Well, he says Min was driving him into town last week, along Bloodroot, and he saw a girl matching Donna Lee Kernigan’s description picking up her schoolbooks from the ground. Her hair was all messed up, he said, and she looked like she might have been crying. A truck had just pulled away from where she was. Mr Tindle told Min to stop and make sure the girl was okay, but she took a cut into the woods before they could speak with her. He thought he knew the truck, though.’

  ‘Tilon Ward?’

  ‘No, Denny Rhinehart. Mr Tindle said he recognized it because Denny has all those German stickers on his rear fender.’

  Denny Rhinehart was third-generation German-American, but persisted in collecting flag decals relating to his ancestral homeland, although he eschewed swastikas and twin lightning bolts on grounds of taste. Griffin had never had any trouble with Rhinehart beyond the occasional disturbance in his parking lot on weekends. Nevertheless, he knew Tilon Ward was a regular at the Rhine Heart, along with assorted men and women whom Griffin strongly suspected of being minor dealers, and only the lack of probable cause had so far prevented him from attempting to prove this suspicion right. It meant that Denny Rhinehart was willing to turn a blind eye to illegality, if not actively engage in it.

  ‘You talk to Min about this?’ said Griffin.

  ‘Mr Tindle let me use his phone to call her at work. She says he’s remembering right, and it was definitely last Thursday, although she wouldn’t swear that Denny’s truck was actually pulling away when they saw it, and she didn’t get a good look at the girl. Mr Tindle is sure it was Donna Lee, though, on account of how tall she was. I took down everything he told me, read it back to him, then had him sign it. You know, just in case.’

  Just in case Tindle’s condition suddenly deteriorated, leaving no proof of what he’d seen or said. Naylor was smart. It was only a matter of time before he moved over to the state police.

  ‘You did good,’ said Griffin. ‘Better than good.’

  He told Naylor to return to town, replaced the handset, and walked to the nearest window. He could see the Rhine Heart from where he stood. The parking lot was empty, but he knew Denny usually parked his truck around back. He’d probably be in his office by now.

  If Bill Tindle wasn’t mistaken, he’d witnessed the fallout from an altercation between Denny Rhinehart and Donna Lee Kernigan. It might have
been something as simple as the girl crossing the road at the wrong time, but Griffin had heard from a cop in the Little Rock Vice Squad – a brother of Tommy Robinett, the detective who’d agreed to assist Kel Knight with the Dix inquiry – that Rhinehart had been questioned by police after being spotted emerging from an apartment block in Geyer Springs, a building suspected of housing a brothel on its top floor. Rhinehart had claimed to be visiting a friend, but declined to name the acquaintance in question, and the police had no reason to detain him. When the brothel was raided the following night, it was found to contain only black women, most of them in their late teens and early twenties. Rhinehart might just have been experimenting, or was guilty of being in the wrong place for entirely legal reasons; but he might also have enjoyed a predilection for young girls of color, and Sallie Kernigan had formerly worked at the Rhine Heart, and still frequented it as a customer. On the other hand, Mina Dobbs claimed to have witnessed Donna Lee Kernigan climbing into a newish red truck, while Rhinehart drove an old blue Jeep Comanche that wouldn’t have been worth the effort required to set it on fire.

  And there remained the fact that the only print retrieved from Donna Lee’s remains had come not from Denny Rhinehart but from Hollis Ward. Rhinehart would have known Hollis from around town, but they weren’t close, or even on good terms; one of the reasons that Tilon Ward had always liked the Rhine Heart was because his father didn’t frequent the place, so he wasn’t likely to bump into his papa while he was drinking. Then Hollis Ward had gone missing for years, only to return to leave his mark on a mutilated girl …

  So Evan Griffin now had a man long believed to be dead as the main suspect in the Kernigan killing and, by default, the murder of Patricia Hartley as well. Meanwhile, that same man’s son might well have been the last person to see Donna Lee alive, but he was currently nowhere to be found, and was apparently keeping company with a known felon linked to Randall Butcher: strip club owner, would-be property tycoon, and a probable purveyor of narcotics. Finally, one of the friendly local bar owners, previously best known for serving warm beer and cold food, and possibly for frequenting a brothel specializing in younger black women, had seemingly been glimpsed driving away from a distressed Donna Lee Kernigan just days before her murder.