Heaven, My Home

by Attica Locke

  “Holy crap, is that thing real?”

  Despite himself, Darren let out a low chuckle. The kid couldn’t even believe a savior who was sitting right there in front of him. Or maybe, Darren thought, maybe he was just a kid seeing a Texas Ranger badge for the first time.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s real.”

  24.

  MARCUS HAD to steer the boat toward Hopetown in the rain while Darren kept the Colt trained on the boat’s handcuffed captain. Marcus didn’t at all know what he was doing, and at several points, Levi had to take over to show Marcus which buttons to push, which throttles to toggle this way or that. Levi had never been on a boat that size before either, but he said it was just like a video game. Any time he wasn’t at the control board, he was right up under Darren, as if he were afraid to leave the Ranger’s side, as if this might all have been a dream and if he couldn’t feel the lawman near him, he might wake up back in that hut. No one else is coming for you. Darren could smell the musk of his blond hair, could feel the heat in his body rev up the closer they got to the shore. Calls had been made on the way, and by the time they arrived, pulling onto shore not too far from Levi’s granddaddy’s boathouse, Sheriff Quinn was waiting, as were Marnie King and her daughter, Dana. Marnie, hair slick with rainwater, hanging in limp chunks around her head, ran into the shallows at the shore and reached for Levi before he could even climb over the side of the boat. She kissed his cheeks, his dirty arms, cried as she looked over the top of his head and said to Darren, “Thank you.” Once on land, Levi ran to his sister and she hugged him tight and swung him around. Darren left the family to themselves. Marcus didn’t take off the life vests until he was safely on land, where he assured Quinn he’d hit the captain in self-defense. The sheriff got a good look at Jim and his mullet lying prostrate on the floor of the boat and let out a whistle. “Oh boy, this gon’ be a goddamn mess.”

  Darren climbed off the boat as well. There was no way he was riding that thing back across the lake. He’d find some other way to get into town. He’d started walking in that direction on the road that led out of Hopetown when he heard the shuffle of tiny footsteps in the red dirt and sand that made up the roads out there. He turned and saw Levi coming up behind him, his face wide open like a daisy drinking in dew, like Darren was the sun that made all things possible. “But what about Daddy?” he said. He must have been chewing on this question the whole ride to Hopetown. Gil was gone. That was one prayer answered. He was back home with his sister and his mama; that was another. “Is Daddy still coming home soon like he said?”

  Darren looked at the boy and was for a moment speechless.

  Because of Darren, Bill King would likely never leave prison. It was no less than what he deserved, considering the murder for which he’d never served any time. And yet Darren still felt the lie in it, the liberties he’d taken that meant he had to look Levi in the face and say, “No, son, he’s not coming home.”

  Levi bit his lip and kicked a toe in the dirt, confused and hurt.

  “Just like Keisha and Jarrod Washington’s daddy ain’t coming home.”

  “Who?”

  “Ask your mama to look it up for you,” Darren said, trying to be matter-of-fact about the information and not willfully cruel. Levi’s life was a precarious one. Like a toy ball tottering on a wire fence, he could fall either way. They’d have to be careful with him, his family. “Or, better yet, write your daddy a letter and ask him about it. If he’s changed like he says he has, he’ll tell you the truth.” As he continued his walk out of Hopetown, he heard drums in the distance, the wail of Donald’s guitar, could picture Margaret and her family dancing in the rain.

  In the end, the only federal case to come out of Marion County that December was the investigation into the conspiracy to commit fraud by Rosemary King and Sandler Gaines, the latter of whom skipped town shortly after the boy had been found. Rosemary, Roger by her side, held a press conference on the manicured lawn of her Victorian colonial and called the whole thing “hogwash.”

  Monica Maldonado’s rental car was found abandoned on a farm road halfway to Longview, but there was nothing to suggest she hadn’t parked it there herself and simply walked off—no physical sign that anyone but her and a rental-car employee had ever been inside the vehicle. She had, as Rosemary predicted, simply disappeared, and though Sheriff Quinn had come around to seeing the foulness at the center of the thing, without a body, he couldn’t do anything but open a missing-person case with his department and wait for something to change.

  Darren stayed in town long enough to meet two of her sisters, who had flown in from Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania; they thanked him for alerting the authorities to her disappearance, but still he felt ashamed there wasn’t much else he could do. It was not a case in which the Texas Rangers chose to get involved. It was Quinn’s to handle. He told the sisters that Monica had tried to stop something she thought was wrong, that she had prevented good people from being cheated out of their birthright and that it may have gotten her killed. They said they were going to stay for a bit, renting a room in the hotel where their sister was last seen and promising to park outside of Rosemary King’s house for days on end; they wanted her to feel their sister’s ghost.

  When Leroy Page came out of his coma a week later, he was arrested again, this time for kidnapping and child endangerment, but only Sheriff Quinn’s men were present. Greg had left town by then, and so had Darren, but not before he’d gotten the old man to sign legal documents that Lisa had generously had a lawyer at her firm prepare, pro bono, for Mr. Page, papers that turned over property rights to Margaret and Donald Goodfellow with a clause that specifically forbade any subleasing of the land, thereby eradicating the legal and cultural loophole the white nationalists in the trailer park had used to usurp a whole swath of Hopetown, terrorizing Mr. Page and Margaret’s extended family.

  Lisa had seemed pleased she was able to help.

  It was, they both knew, the least she could do.

  Greg and Darren had met at the edge of Hopetown to watch while Marion County deputies kicked out every resident in every trailer, van, car, houseboat, and tent, telling them anything they couldn’t drive off the land in fifteen minutes would be demolished by a bulldozer. People rushed out barefoot holding picture albums, TVs, one fellow struggling to carry a minifridge. They packed up cars, trucks, and the yellow van that sat next door to the trailer where Gil Thomason had lived with Marnie and her kids. They were all running, all except Bo, whom the deputies had arrested two days before for shooting into Leroy’s Page’s house and nearly killing the man. Attempted murder, another state felony. Greg, his hate-crime work done, had brought a couple of beers to the show, and they both leaned against Darren’s truck, having the most peaceful moment between them in days, both enjoying the spectacle of white folks being run off some shit they’d never owned, had no business touching.

  At one point, Greg’s expression grew soft, pensive. “We got to talk, man.”

  Darren shook his head. “Not now, Greg. Soon. But not now.”

  He never got a chance to say a proper goodbye to any of them.

  Not to Leroy, Margaret, Ray, Donald, Virginia, Sadie, the baby, or the other members of the Caddo tribe that Darren had hardly gotten to know. He never talked to Marnie or Dana again, or Gil Thomason, who was looking at a good stretch of time inside the facilities of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Their trailer soon to be bulldozed, Marnie had moved her kids into a motel off Highway 59, just south of Jefferson. He drove by it on his way out of town, looking for a towheaded boy with tight, chip-heavy shoulders. He saw Dana watching Levi at the pool, Marnie sitting with a foot dipped into the deep end, not a one of them wearing a proper bathing suit. They were laughing at something Levi had said. Darren took one long last look at the boy, hoping like hell he was right about the kid and Greg was wrong, that after all this he wouldn’t one day meet up with a nineteen-year-old Levi King, a man-child with SS bolts inked on his wrist.


  Camilla

  HE WAS back to staying in the house where he’d grown up, the homestead in San Jacinto County, his beloved Camilla. He didn’t put a date on his return, just told Lisa he needed to be close to it for a while. Home. She didn’t press it, had felt buoyed by her ability to help Darren for once, clearing the interlopers out of what was now the home of the Hasinai band of Caddo Indians of Marion County, Texas, their petition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs going through with new documents that carried none of the mercenary stink of Sandler Gaines. She had shared a part of him, his work, and that was enough for now. If he wanted space—and she was granted a few more days without having to answer any questions—she was happy to give it. It was weird for Darren, commuting into the city to get to the Rangers office in Houston, weirder still to walk into his lieutenant’s office on his first day back and find a piece of San Jacinto County staring him in the face.

  District Attorney Frank Vaughn was sitting across from Wilson, who was standing behind his desk, arms crossed as tight as if two pythons were taking the breath from a grown man. He was staring at something resting on top of the papers and file folders on his desk. The plastic bag it sat in caught the light and Darren didn’t know what it was until he saw the red tape across the top of the bag, the word EVIDENCE. He didn’t move, didn’t take a step forward. Vaughn turned around in his seat and saw Darren had entered the room. He shot him a grin that could cut glass. “And here come this ol’ boy now,” he said.

  The gun, a snub-nosed .38 revolver, was sitting on Wilson’s desk.

  Wilson finally looked up at his Ranger, an expression on his face that sat at a crossroads of confusion, betrayal, and disappointment. “Mathews.”

  “You want to tell your lieutenant why I have the pistol that killed Ronnie Malvo in my possession, same time as you was getting a confession from Bill King?” Vaughn said. “When ain’t nobody in my department can put Bill King anywhere near this weapon or anyone he might have hired to do the job?”

  “You don’t know that,” Darren said. He couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Don’t I, though?”

  “Darren?” Wilson’s tone was hopeful, wanting some easy explanation.

  “Where’d you get that?” Darren asked Vaughn.

  He could feel his heart pound, a drumbeat at the base of his throat.

  Vaughn started, “Not that I owe you any information—”

  “It was an anonymous tip,” Wilson said, irritated by Vaughn clearly enjoying himself. “But their county ballistics says it’s the real deal. It’s the gun.”

  Vaughn looked down at his tie, lifted it like he hoped to divine something in its paisley pattern, then let it fall against the small mound of his paunch. “So we got us a situation here,” he said, looking now at the Texas A&M class ring on his right hand. “Trying to—”

  “Link that gun to Bill King?”

  Wilson shot Darren a look of barely suppressed rage, then came to his rescue anyway. “We’d like to take the case from here, Frank, run the murder investigation out of the multiagency task force, get Bill King on conspiracy.”

  “Bill King ain’t have nothing to do with Ronnie Malvo, and he knows it.” He was pointing at Darren. “Tip I got,” Vaughn continued, “suggests you’ve had knowledge of the murder of Ronnie Malvo that you have never disclosed to law enforcement or my office, that you might have known where this gun was since the killing. Hell, might have committed perjury in front of the grand jury for all I know.”

  “That’s enough,” Wilson said. “Darren, is any of this true?”

  He knew enough not to say a word.

  Vaughn fiddled with his tie again and said, “We’re investigating you for charges of obstruction. Came down here to let your people know.” To Wilson: “You might want to think twice about having this one on the job right now.”

  “I’ll decide what happens in my department, Mr. Vaughn.”

  “You do what you have to down here, and I’ll take care of San Jacinto County, and that includes the investigation into the murder of Ronnie Malvo. My office will continue handling it and any other charges that might come out of it.”

  He was looking right at Darren as he said the last bit.

  “You finished?” Darren said.

  “Not even close.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  Vaughn paused long enough to give Darren a bit of hope. Vaughn knew less than he was letting on. Darren knew where the anonymous tip had come from; now he needed to know what exactly his mother had said. Vaughn tried to recapture the heavy note of danger in his voice, the threat he wanted Darren to feel.

  He smiled, showing his teeth again, and said, “Not yet.”

  She was not in her trailer.

  Nothing was.

  The whole thing had been completely emptied out. The kitchen cupboards were bare; there was no more than a single plastic fork and a packet of hot sauce in all of the kitchen drawers. The TV, the one Darren had paid for with hush money, was gone, as was the box that connected it to the cable service he’d paid to have installed. She’d left the bed frame and the mattress, but all of her clothes and shoes were gone. Even the small sticky bottles of hotel shampoo she stole from work were no longer lined up along the edge of the plastic bathtub.

  Bell Callis had taken the money and run.

  She’d abandoned him a second time, he thought as he walked on wobbly legs down the trailer’s front steps, the midday sun pressing down on the top of his head. He fell to his knees in the dirt and crabgrass in front of his mother’s trailer, took off his hat, and buried his face in it, the only shade he could find. He hid his shame in it, screamed all his rage into it, begged for God’s help in it, and then he cried. For what she’d done to him and for the shit he’d done that had put her in a position to hurt him again in this lifetime. He’d lied and abused the power of his badge—for noble reasons, sure, but reasons that might now send him to prison. He thought of his uncle William in his hat and badge riding high in the cab of his old Ford truck, how when Darren was even a little too old for it, he’d let the boy sit right next to him in the cab, close enough that Darren could lay his head on the man’s shoulder, could feel safe against the impenetrable wall of his goodness. Mack had been William’s friend too. Maybe his uncle would understand what Darren had tried to do. Or maybe he’d call him the worst kind of fool.

  He would have to tell Mack but still try not to scare him. Darren had convinced himself on the drive over to the McMillans’ cabin at the northwest edge of San Jacinto County that there was no reason to panic. The best thing they could do now was stick with the story they’d always told, continue to keep secret the night at Mack’s house when the old man had pointed a gun at Ronnie “Redrum” Malvo’s head, furious with him for coming onto the property, for scaring his granddaughter Breanna, for all the ways he’d been harassing her for weeks.

  There was a fire going inside the A-frame cabin. Darren could see a curl of smoke coming through the chimney, could smell a mix of chestnut and pine in the fireplace. He parked his Silverado behind Mack’s ancient Ford truck. There was another car in the driveway, a little Chevy Spark, red as an apple.

  Darren glanced inside the compact car on his way to the cabin’s front porch. He saw a few college textbooks and a dream catcher hanging from the rearview mirror. He guessed Mack had scraped together some money to get Breanna a car so she wouldn’t have to walk around town anymore or catch a bus up to Polk County, where she was in school, so she would never have to come face to face with the likes of a Ronnie Malvo and his kind ever again.

  Mack opened the door before Darren even knocked.

  Inside, the TV was on, and Mack was drinking a beer and eating a ham sandwich off a TV tray, watching a game show. He didn’t bother to offer Darren a beer or even a glass of water, and that’s when Darren sensed something was seriously wrong. He took a closer look at the undershirt Mack was wearing, saw it covered in stains of a variation in color and placement that sugges
ted he’d been in it for days. His hair was knotted in places, like he hadn’t run a comb through it in a while, and his eyes glazed over as he looked at the TV.

  Darren sat down next to Mack. “Vaughn come by here again?” he said, wondering if this was the cause of what appeared to be a psychological decline of some sort. This was the most undone Darren had seen him since this all went down, and that included the night he’d cried with Darren when he realized how close he had come to killing a man. Maybe the actual doing of it was slowly starting to tear him apart.

  “Listen, Darren, we got to talk.”

  “I know about the gun. I know they have it.”

  “What?” Mack stood suddenly, knocking the TV tray so that his beer bottle fell on its side. It soaked the plate and his sandwich and spilled onto the woven carpet at his feet, which Darren saw were both bare and ashy.

  “Now, look, it don’t immediately change anything,” Darren said. “I’ve been working on an angle that will protect you in this thing, I promise you.”

  Mack sank back onto a couch that was the color of marigolds gone brown with age. He let out a grunt that sounded almost like a macabre chuckle, a private marveling at some dark joke. “Bre, honey, get on in here. It’s Darren, honey.”

  She came from the other room wearing black leggings and an oversize sweater that came down to her knees. She must have been in the middle of braiding her hair, because half of her head was puffed out, as cottony as quilt stuffing, only black and shining with coconut oil. “Yeah, Paw-Paw?”

  Her grandfather gave her a stern look and said, “Sit down.”

  She did as she was told, taking a seat as far away from her grandfather and Darren as she possibly could while still being in the same room, on that same couch. She wasn’t looking at Darren but down at the comb in her hand. She pulled strands of hair from it and watched as they floated to the carpet below.