Heaven, My Home

by Attica Locke

  “Other use?” Donald said.

  The baby fussed, teeing up for a cry. Sadie set him on the floor.

  “All of that is being handled by Leroy,” Margaret said before asking Virginia to go get her pipe and a flask of whiskey she kept in a kitchen drawer. “He is working with Rosemary King on the particulars of the sale. The historical society, they’re putting the land in a trust to preserve it and our place here.”

  “She’s cutting you out,” Darren said, seeing it all now. “Rosemary.”

  “But this,” Donald said, grabbing the petition for federal recognition for the tribe right out of Darren’s hand. “This would make us a sovereign nation.”

  “On land you don’t own.”

  No one said a word until Margaret yelled at Ray to stop all that noise. He took his foot off the sewing-machine pedal, and the house fell quiet, except for the sound of the baby scooting across the floor with a feather he’d found; Virginia knocked it out of his hand before he put it in his mouth.

  “And once this trust, if that’s what it is, owns Hopetown, they can sell off part of the land?” Virginia said.

  “So it’s a trick,” Donald said.

  You give ’em an inch, they’ll take a town.

  Margaret shook her head in disbelief. “Does Leroy know?”

  “I think that’s why he hasn’t signed the papers yet,” Darren said, remembering Erika’s irritation the day before and her father’s other delirious statement that now made a hell of a lot more sense. Rosemary could stop this.

  * * *

  Mary, Mrs. King’s maid, tried to block Darren at the door.

  “But you don’t have an appointment, sir,” she said as a piece of pure performance, throwing her voice to the back of the house. Quietly she said to Darren, “Go while you can.” He would realize too late that it was more than Rosemary’s wrath she was warning him against. But at the moment, he removed the thin black woman—who had smudged the bright white of her apron pressing against the heavy door to keep him out—from his path as gently as he could. He had a badge, he said, all the appointment he needed, and he stalked through the house calling Rosemary’s name. He found her in a large study that was lined to the ceiling with books and had several velvet lounge chairs and settees organized in a U-shape in front of a magnificent mahogany desk behind which Rosemary King sat holding a sterling-silver letter opener before a stack of correspondence—all heavyweight paper and embossed envelopes in colors of cream and white. She looked up and saw Darren, and without an ounce of surprise at his presence—wearing an expression that said this was Texas, after all; there were roaches everywhere, no matter how hard you tried to keep them out of the house—she pointed the letter opener at Mary. Her maid was hanging in the doorway of the study, clinging to the doorjamb as she might to a tree in a violent rainstorm, something to keep her from sliding to the floor.

  “Get Roger on the phone.”

  “I tried to keep him from coming inside—”

  “Now!”

  For some reason Darren expected Rosemary to stand, to defend herself against what she must have known was coming. But she went back to her stack of correspondence, barely acknowledging Darren over the lenses of the reading glasses perched on her nose. She was wearing jodhpurs and a pale blue cable-knit sweater that brought out the ice in her eyes, even as they reflected the glow of the fire that was crackling in the fireplace to the right of her feet.

  “So you traded Sandler Gaines a casino for your son’s freedom?”

  She slit through the top of another envelope with the point of the letter opener. With something resembling boredom, she said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you don’t leave my home now, it won’t be Sheriff Quinn you’ll have to contend with. I sense his kind doesn’t stir you to action.”

  “There is no trust, is there?” Darren said. “It’s a shell organization, a lie you created to get Leroy to sell to you.”

  “It’s a rapprochement,” she said before licking the seal of an envelope with the pink point of her tongue. She wrote her name in careful script across the front. “His family stole from me, and I forgave him, and I promised his Indians would be safe.”

  There was so much wrong with what she’d just said that Darren took a step back and cocked his head, as if to see her from a different angle. Was this woman insane, bloated with beliefs that made her as dangerous as her once violent son? Except that Rosemary’s were contained within the gentility of this Victorian mansion. “His people didn’t steal from you,” Darren said. “They saved their own lives.”

  “Thereby obtaining property that rightly belonged to my relatives.”

  “They obtained themselves?”

  “Who knows what my great-great-grandmother could have accomplished if she’d had a chance to cash out on her slaves before the war ended.”

  “And Margaret Goodfellow and her people, they don’t belong to Leroy Page any more than his people ever truly belonged to you. They are family to each other. And you used that to try to steal the land right out from under them.”

  “They are getting their sovereign corner of it. I don’t know why that’s so hard for them to understand. The whole community, tribe, whatever you want to call it is down to fewer than twelve people. How much space do they need? A lakefront casino with novelty rides from Jefferson on an old-fashioned steamboat, this could be a boon for everyone. Rising tide and all that. There’ll be jobs for them at the casino if they want. I will personally make sure of that.”

  “But it’s not going to happen, is it?”

  “We’ve still got time,” she said.

  “Your son, Rosemary, he said to call it off. He’s not going through with parole. In fact, just yesterday he confessed to ordering a hit on a fellow ABT.”

  Now Rosemary stood, pushing her chair back with such force, its front two legs briefly left the ground. They landed with a scrape on the stone floor. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Darren said. “It was his idea . . . and Marnie’s.” He knew that would make her blow her top, and he wanted her this way, rage snipping at the thin membrane that held her tongue in place. “He’s not getting out, Rosemary.”

  She shook her head. “They hate each other. There is no way the two of them cooked this up. He wouldn’t. Bill knows how much I want him home.”

  It was as if her lover had spurned her for another. “I think they want Levi home more.”

  She let out a brutal gut punch of a laugh. “My grandson is dead.”

  Rosemary returned to her seat at the desk, a show of grief knocking her legs out from under her, but Darren couldn’t tell if she believed what she’d said.

  “What about Monica Maldonado?” he said. “Did you hire her firm or did Sandler Gaines do it or is there even a difference?”

  “I’m not sure any of this is your concern.”

  “It is if she’s missing.”

  “My, but hasn’t your stay in Jefferson given you a sweet tooth for tall tales. Been reading too many of our ghost stories, Mr. Mathews?”

  “It’s Ranger.”

  She gave a tiny shrug to suggest she couldn’t be bothered with that.

  “Are you trying to tell me you never had any contact with her?” he said.

  “Not at all, Ranger. You said yourself she was seen leaving my dinner party, where, if I remember correctly, she told several of my guests she was intent on seeing the lake, that she had made plans to rent a small boat from one of the local vendors in the town of Uncertain to explore it before she left Texas.”

  “A boat?”

  “I believe several of my dinner guests can attest to her expressing that sentiment.”

  “You know what I think? I think Monica got cold feet about what she was being asked to do out here, talked to you and Sandler about it, and when you realized that she might tell Margaret’s family what was really going on and that they would refuse to sign—”

  “And what? I murdered the poor girl?”

&
nbsp; “I didn’t say anything about murder.”

  He remembered again the noises he’d heard, the deep, repeated thumps. Had someone banged her head against the wall, knocking her unconscious or worse? Was that how her hair comb had broken in two? Darren had come out of his room that night and noticed that the elevator was already on the second floor, so he took the stairs. Was Rosemary already in the process of spiriting her away? It was hard to imagine, unless she’d had help. He got a sudden picture of Clyde parked in front of the Cardinal Hotel, forever at Rosemary’s beck and call.

  “Ranger, dear boy, do you know how many people go missing on that water? She could have had an accident. She could have eaten some bad oysters, for all I know or care. It will not change what is happening in Hopetown.”

  “And if Leroy doesn’t sign the sale papers?”

  “He will,” she said. “Or he goes to prison.”

  Darren stood over her at the desk, feeling the heat from the fire lick from the toes of his boots up toward his thighs. He was trying to make sense of what she’d said when he heard footsteps behind him, caught the smell of English Leather.

  “Roger, thank God,” she said, coming around the desk. She walked to Roger, reaching to clasp both his hands in hers. “He just barged in here.”

  “Ranger Mathews, I’m afraid if you don’t have a warrant of some kind signed by a Marion County judge, I’m going to ask you to leave the premises.”

  But Darren didn’t leave. In fact, he didn’t move. He was playing her words over and over. Or he goes to prison. The only way Darren could figure Leroy Page was going to prison was if the charges were really true, if no one ever found her grandson alive and well.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Rosemary said, returning to her desk. She pressed an intercom button on her landline and barked the word, “Now.”

  Darren thought she was alerting Mary that Roger had arrived, but some animal aspect of his brain was already at work, knew this didn’t make any sense. A moment later a bulky silhouette filled the door frame, and Roger made a squeal-like sound and hollered, “I can’t be here. Goddamn it, Rosemary, I can’t be here for this.” He ducked out of the room just as Bo, Gil Thomason’s red-bearded neighbor, burst in. He stormed past Rosemary, lifted Darren, and slammed him onto the desk, causing papers to slide and the silver letter opener to poke Darren’s back. He could admit a split second of utter shock. He’d never had a man disregard the fact of his badge with such verve and clear abandon, absent any fear. The guy got in a few licks across Darren’s face before Darren could unholster his Colt and stab it into the man’s gut. It brought the immense weight off of him, allowed Darren to breathe again as the man stood.

  “You’re not going to shoot this boy,” Rosemary said to Darren, “not in this county, not in my house, and get away with it. I paid for Steve Quinn’s campaign. Both of them. And Bo here’s got you on tape threatening white citizens out in Hopetown. Your reputation of frequently acting outside the bounds of law precedes you and leaves me a kind of creativity in explaining what went on here tonight. That ought to scare you into sitting your ass down about all of this here in my town that doesn’t concern you, hear? You shoot Bo, and I’ll say it was unprovoked. I’ll say you hollered Whitey or Cracker or any other damn thing. It’s time for you to go now, Ranger Mathews. I want you to leave my home and my town.”

  Darren tasted blood in the corner of his mouth.

  He licked at it, a coppery bloom on his tongue.

  He threw his hands up in a show of surrender, but his mind was already out of the room, already halfway to the hospital up Highway 59, where he had to see Leroy Page. “You said if Leroy doesn’t sign the sale papers, he goes to prison. Just tell me how, help me understand, and I’ll go. Why did you say that?”

  “Because we had a deal.”

  23.

  ROSEMARY AND Leroy had cut a deal, but it wasn’t working out for either of them. She wanted her casino and her son out of prison; he wanted Margaret Goodfellow and her family members to have secure rights to the land.

  And someone, Darren believed, had gotten caught in the middle.

  When he arrived outside Mr. Page’s room at the Marion County Hospital, Greg was stationed out front, sitting on a chair and using a rolling tray from another room as a makeshift desk. There were other agents here too, as well as the deputies who were present during the arrest. One of them was eating a package of Chuckles from the vending machine. The other was playing Candy Crush on his phone. It was Greg who stood when he saw Darren, who actually put his body before the door when Darren tried to enter. Through the small window in the door, he could see the old man still cuffed to the bed, Erika by his side, looking more wilted than before, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

  “You can’t go in there,” Greg said. He looked at Darren with a pose of great, federally backed authority, but really it was just two friends staring at each other, one of whom suspected the other of having slept with his wife. Greg felt the accusation. It sat on the air like a lead weight, the two men’s pointed avoidance of it the only thing keeping it from dropping hard at their feet.

  “I have to talk to him. We may not have a lot of time.”

  “He’s in a coma.” Greg gave Darren a gentle shove back. “No one but family right now. I can’t let you in there, man,” he said. Then, seeing the frantic look on Darren’s face, he added, “What the hell is happening, Darren? Quinn said you were going on about some missing woman, somebody you saw with Sandler Gaines.”

  “It has to do with the sale. This whole thing is about the sale.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The boy is still alive.” It wasn’t until he said it out loud that he knew it was true.

  Greg looked around at the other agents and lawmen, and then, as if embarrassed for Darren in some way, he whispered, “Are you high?”

  “The old man was using him as a bargaining chip. Stupid, yes, but he’s out there and we’ve got to find him.” Again, he went for the door to Mr. Page’s room. But Greg grabbed him by the arm and dragged him a few feet down the hall, well out of earshot of the agents in black suits now wrinkled and stale.

  “Darren, I just indicted the man in federal court on a homicide charge.”

  But if Levi is alive and returned, Darren thought, Leroy doesn’t go to prison.

  This was what Rosemary was waiting on, for Mr. Page to come to his senses about the sale, not realizing that Mr. Page had lost access to his senses.

  He slapped his palm against the hospital wall. “Greg, that kid is alive, and we have to find him.”

  “I’m worried about you, Darren,” Greg said, leaning in close enough to smell his breath. Darren knew he must have seemed unhinged. There was still dried blood on his mouth. “We found the kid’s clothes at Page’s house. It doesn’t get any clearer. What’s going on with you? Who did that to your face?”

  “You can’t have gotten the DNA back that fast.”

  “No, but we’re banking everything on the mother and sister identifying the items of clothing. The stuff itself, shirt and shorts, even underwear, had been laundered. The man actually had them folded and sitting on top of his washer. The fucker thought he could wash away all the evidence.”

  Darren got a sudden image of the dozens and dozens of premade sandwiches in Leroy’s fridge on the day he’d returned from a fishing trip with no fish, his pants legs soaked to the knee with lake water, like he’d waded out to something. And Greg said they’d found the boy’s clothes washed and folded. He hadn’t hurt the boy; Margaret was right about that. He was taking care of him.

  Darren thought he knew where.

  He left Greg with his mouth hanging open and ran as fast as he could through the halls out to the parking lot. He got into his truck and raced toward the railroad tracks and the Truth and Treasures shop.

  “I need a map,” he told Marcus. “Gogo Island. Where is it exactly?”

  Marcus, who had been sitting with his feet up on his table listening to a
podcast on his phone while sleeving new inventory of photographs into plastic, reached to the box on the floor for a copy of his book. He flipped through the pages until he came upon a crude hand-drawn map of Caddo Lake, considerably less impressive than the one Sheriff Quinn had shown Darren when they first met. He ripped it from the book like it was an act of great heroism.

  There was no way the map was to scale; it didn’t even show the whole of the lake, just the shore on the Harrison County side, the docks near the town of Karnack, part of Goat Island, the largest on the lake, and Horse Island. Between those two islands sat what was called Back Lake, and Darren remembered that the water out there was so wide and unruly that folks had broken it into parts in their minds to be able to make sense of something so massive. Back Lake ultimately flowed into Clinton Lake, on whose shores Hopetown sat, the northeastern-most part of the lake that belonged to Texas.

  Somewhere in all that blue on the page, Marcus put his finger on a spot that was about the shape and size of a butterbean, according to this map.

  “That’s it,” he said, his voice low, almost reverent. “Bordered on all sides by tall pines and hickory trees, so that you can’t hardly know what all’s went on there. But that’s it. Gogo.”

  “You got another one?” Darren said, shaking his head when Marcus reached for another book. “No, a larger map, something they give out to tourists and fishermen, that sort of thing? Between the two maps, I think I can find it.”

  “How you gon’ get there?”

  That had yet to be figured out. On the way over, Darren had called Sheriff Quinn three times, each time leaving the same message about needing to get in contact with the game warden. The sheriff had not returned his calls, and Darren thought it was probably time to accept that that bridge was burned and smoldering by now. So he phoned his lieutenant in Houston. “Mathews,” Wilson barked as soon as he picked up his desk line. “Why am I still getting calls from Frank Vaughn, the DA in San Jacinto County? You didn’t mention the Bill King catch, did you?”