by David Joy
For so long Calvin had been terrified of what would happen if he told the truth. All he’d had to do was walk out of those woods. All he’d had to do was go to the sheriff and come clean. Thinking about what he’d covered up, he could see how selfish it all was, that none of it had a goddamn thing in the world to do with Angie or keeping her safe, that up until then every decision he’d made had been about himself. Every decision had been about keeping himself out of trouble. If he loved her, he would’ve done anything in the world to protect her, even if that meant giving his own life away.
That feeling in the pit of his stomach evolved into a sort of resolve. It was almost midnight when he marched off the bridge and he knew now what he had to do. He stopped at his pickup, opened the driver’s-side door, and sat inside, looking at that photograph of Angie while he smoked a cigarette down to ashes. The revolver lay across his lap and he rubbed the blued cylinder with his thumb like he was polishing silverware. After he finished his cigarette, he slammed the door, and headed down the road to the brick house where Stillwell lived.
The light was on in the front room. The unmarked patrol car sat in the drive. Calvin stepped across a ditch and walked through the yard, dew on the grass slicking the soles of his boots. He came up the steps onto the porch and as he reached to knock on the door he understood that this was it, that there could be no turning back from here. In a moment, the porch light flicked on, the lock unlatched, and there he stood.
Stillwell was barefoot with a ratty Smoky Mountain High Booster Club T-shirt and a pair of dark basketball shorts with white stripes down the seams. There was a look of confusion in his eyes, his lips flat and his jaw clenched. Looking at him, Calvin could see the boy he’d grown up with, all those years having filled the saddlebags under his eyes. Still, it was the same man. The same kid he’d fought with on the practice field over a girl. The same kid who ran off gung ho after 9/11 their senior year in high school and joined the Marines. The same man who came home and took a job and went to work like all the rest of them because even when they left they always came back, these mountains always calling them home. They were all tied together in that way and Calvin hoped that was enough.
“Calvin?” he said.
“There’s something I’m about to tell you and I need you to trust me, Michael. I need you to listen.”
THIRTY
A slow trail of gray curved from the chimney into a cloudless sky and filled the cove with the smell of wood smoke. They prowled beneath ragged jack pine following the gravel to where the yard opened to the house, the windows a yellow glow in a night dim and silent. Speaking with hand signals rather than words, they snuck around the Buick and stopped at the edge of the porch. Their eyes cut back and forth to one another, and each man nodded when he understood: There could be no hesitation from here.
Dwayne Brewer sat on the couch in the living room with a chainsaw in his lap and a round file in one hand sharpening teeth, oblivious to what was right outside. A single thunderous blow cracked the door back on its hinges, something rattling over the floor, a canister flipping end over end followed by a crack of light and sound. All he could see was white. A barrage of voices yelled, “Sheriff’s Office! Search Warrant! Sheriff’s Office! Search Warrant!” but Dwayne Brewer didn’t hear a single syllable. An acrid phosphorus smell stung his nose and the smoke alarm beeped overhead. He opened his mouth wide trying to pop his ears, the ringing still loud as muffled voices began to break through. “Gun! Gun!” he heard someone yelling, and he knew they were clearing the 1911 from the coffee table in front of him. “Show me your hands, Dwayne. I want to see your hands.”
Dwayne Brewer opened his hands and held them palms forward at the sides of his face like an idiot mime. A slight grin cut his cheeks. “I don’t know why in the world you didn’t just knock.”
“Stand up,” Stillwell ordered.
“I would’ve answered the door like a human being. I don’t know why you don’t just treat me like a human being.”
“I said stand up.”
“I can’t see to stand up,” Dwayne said. “All I see’s white and I can barely hear a word you’re saying.”
He felt someone take the chainsaw from his lap, felt the thud on the floor by his foot. Someone had ahold of his arm. “Up!” the man yelled. “And go ahead and put your hands behind your back for me.”
Dwayne stood, the front of his white undershirt and the thighs of his jeans painted with bar oil and grease. The man spun him around and cuffed his wrists.
“I hope you’ve got a search warrant,” Dwayne said.
“We do.”
“And what exactly are you looking for?”
“Right now this deputy’s going to take you outside and you’re going to hold tight.”
“I want to see that search warrant,” Dwayne said. His vision began to return. Everything was washed with white glare, streaked halos running from the edges of everything. Through the rest of the house he could hear the other deputies working to clear the rooms. “Need one, need one,” someone yelled from the back of the house. “Clear,” another yelled. Through the ringing, footsteps, and voices, a rerun of Married with Children was playing on the television behind him.
A young, baby-faced deputy in olive-drab cargo pants, a gray T-shirt, and a black bulletproof vest with the word SHERIFF centered in yellow led Dwayne onto the porch. The light from the house carried outside and Dwayne stood there feeling the rotten planks bow under his weight. The deputy backed him against a post and told him to hold still while he patted him down, asking him if there was anything sharp in his pockets.
“Just a pocketknife,” Dwayne said, his mind immediately turning to the cell phones in his pockets, one belonging to Angie Moss. The deputy turned Dwayne’s pockets inside out and set what he found on the warped railing. Dwayne could see a tribal tattoo wrapping the boy’s bicep. He was solid up top, but looked to have skipped leg day, a pair of twigs holding him up, and Dwayne wanted desperately out of those cuffs, desperately to split that boy’s head open like a cantaloupe. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, tried to imagine the deputies working their way through each room.
A buck stove clanked in the corner of the living room, the metal popping and tinking as the heat built inside. Dark knots spotted the grain of pine-batten walls stained bronze. There was some furniture—a faux-suede couch, a coffee table, a side table, a lamp, and an ornate rocking chair by the stove. The living room opened to both sides, one side going into the kitchen, the other opening to a bedroom and hallway.
In the kitchen, white cabinets ran the length of the hardwood floor. The countertops were spotless. A cast-iron pan rested on the stove and a mudroom opened off the far side, a door there led into the backyard.
Down the hall, a bedroom cut off to the right. The walls were slatted together by old barn wood painted powder blue. Every room had a different construction like the place had been piecemealed together by a lunatic junkman. Nothing matched from one wall to the next. The floor in the bedroom to the right was uncovered flakeboard. A dozen or more chainsaws and flat-screen televisions he’d stolen were organized in rows. There was a conspicuous order to the room, to the entire house, for that matter. Everything was meticulously placed and clean, a place absent the slightest excess.
His bedroom was little more than a king-size mattress centered against the wall, no frame or box spring, no headboard, comforter, or sheets. A chest of drawers stood against the opposite wall, a tattered Bible centered on the walnut top. Other than that the room was empty, a dark burgundy carpet covered the floor, the drywall bright and blank as if it had been bleached.
There were a couple rifles in the closet, a lever-action Marlin .30-30 that belonged to his grandfather and a Remington 700 mountain rifle chambered in 7-08 with a Simmons Aetec scope he’d snatched up from Middleton Pawn for damn near nothing. The little Smith & Wesson Darl Moody had pulled on him that night in the dou
blewide was tucked under the pillow on his bed, and that was the only thing to worry about, though there was no way to really know to whom it belonged. What they had was circumstantial at best, and they sure as shit weren’t about to stumble onto that root cellar off in the woods. Dwayne’s mind eased at that thought, his shoulders falling, the fire sinking back into his chest. He opened his eyes and smiled.
In a few minutes, Stillwell came onto the porch. He wore the same olive-drab cargo pants and shirt as the rest of the twelve-man team, the cuffs of the pants tucked into the tops of Belleville boots, a black bulletproof vest strapped over his chest. He held the grip of his rifle casually with one hand, allowing the weight of the gun to hang on its sling.
“Found this in his pocket, boss man,” the deputy who’d led Dwayne onto the porch said, holding up a broad-handled folding knife.
“Bag it.”
“A couple of cell phones, too.” The deputy nodded down to a pair of cell phones, one with a bright pink case and rhinestones.
Stillwell picked the phone up and hit the home button. A picture of Angie smiling filled the screen, her hands hung on Calvin’s arm, his arm wrapped under her neck, his head down kissing her shoulder. “Where’d you get this?” Stillwell shook the cell phone in front of Dwayne’s face.
“Found it,” Dwayne said.
“Say you found it?”
“Sometimes I like to go walk around the college for exercise. There’s a lot to look at over there. Well, I was strolling around this morning. Found that laying right out on the sidewalk like somebody might’ve set it there.”
Stillwell stepped forward and pressed the corner of the phone hard into the center of Dwayne’s forehead. “Where the fuck is she?”
“Who?” Dwayne raised his eyebrows like he hadn’t the foggiest what in the world Stillwell was talking about.
“You better start thinking long and hard about what you’re saying, Dwayne. Where the fuck is she?”
The rest of the deputies huddled around the porch waiting for a response.
“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Dwayne said. “I told you. I found that phone sitting there on the sidewalk this morning.”
Stillwell turned to the deputy.
“Take him down to the station . . .”
“For what?” Dwayne growled. “What in the hell am I being charged with?”
“Hold him in the interrogation room,” Stillwell said. He stared hard into the deputy’s eyes. “I don’t want anybody talking to him till I get there. You understand?”
“Yes, sir,” the deputy said.
“For what?” Dwayne yelled. “You need to tell me why I’m being arrested.”
Stillwell turned to the deputies in the yard. “Rice, you’re going to come with me. The rest of you go on home.”
“We can all ride,” one of the deputies standing in the yard said, looking around at the rest of the team with his arms crossed.
“No,” Stillwell said. “Rice and Dills are on duty. Rice, you’re going to come with me, and Dills is going to take Mr. Brewer. The rest of you get on back home to your families. I already dragged you out of bed.”
“Somebody’s going to tell me what in the hell this is all about. I want to see that warrant,” Dwayne yelled. “I want to know what I’m being charged with.”
“I’m not charging you with anything right now, Mr. Brewer.” Stillwell spun and stepped toward him and Dwayne barreled forward. The deputy at his side clenched Dwayne’s arm and was drug like he’d latched on to a pickup truck. A few other deputies rushed onto the porch to help, but Stillwell didn’t move. They were chest to chest and Dwayne was snarling in his face.
“You can’t tear somebody’s house apart, throw them in handcuffs, and haul them off to jail without cause.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Stillwell said. “I can hold you forty-eight hours without giving you Miranda or charging you with anything, Mr. Brewer. You’re a person of interest in an active investigation.”
“What investigation?” Dwayne’s face boiled. “Tell me what the hell this is about?”
“You know good and well what this is about, Mr. Brewer. You didn’t find that phone on any goddamn sidewalk. You know that as much as I do.”
“I don’t know nothing more than what I’ve done told you, boss man,” Dwayne said. He mocked that little baby-faced deputy, hocked a thick wad of crud from deep in his throat, and spit it right into Stillwell’s face.
THIRTY-ONE
While Dwayne Brewer waited, his mind warped with rage. The cuffs on his wrists cut into his arms and his hands were bloodless and numb. When Stillwell finally came into the room, he carried a can of Coke and was wiping the mouth of the can clean with the bottom of his shirt.
“You want something to drink?”
“I want out of these goddamn handcuffs.”
Dwayne watched him lean to see where his hands stuck out between the chair back and seat. “Hell, those are mine,” he said. “Glad I saw that.” He pulled out a chair at the table and scooted close. “Booking desk’s supposed to put you in a set of theirs when you come in. Know how I know those ain’t from the booking desk?”
Dwayne didn’t know what the fuck he was yammering on about, but he was growing tired of it fast.
“I know those didn’t come from the booking desk, because they keep pink handcuffs.” Stillwell shook his head and chuckled. “Pink handcuffs. No shitting you. When an officer brings in a prisoner, booking’s supposed to take the prisoner out of the arresting officer’s cuffs and put them in a set they keep at the desk. Thing was those dipshits kept losing them. I guess it’s like anything else in an office. A stapler. Scotch tape. Don’t realize you can’t find it till you need it. So they bought a bunch of pink handcuffs to keep from losing them. Nowadays, a man can find anything on the Internet.”
“That’s a fine story there, boss man, but why don’t you get these handcuffs off of me seeing as you said I wasn’t being arrested. This sure doesn’t feel like not being arrested.”
“You’re a big boy, Mr. Brewer.” Stillwell stood up and shook a pair of keys loose from his front pocket. He still wore the olive-drab cargo pants, but had taken off his vest and T-shirt to a black compression shirt. “Some of these boys weren’t sure they’d be able to handle you if you weren’t cuffed up.” He leaned down and fit the key into the cuffs, popped the ratchets loose. “But I ain’t so worried about that.” He folded the pair of hinged handcuffs with black cheek plates and stainless single-strands in half, slipped them into the woven leather holster on his belt, and took a seat at the table.
In such a tiny room, Dwayne Brewer seemed all that much bigger. His arms were massive, the white undershirt riding high on his biceps. Even his head was huge, a block of bone like he could take a baseball bat to the face and not even blink. White bracelets showed where the cuffs had cut off circulation and he stretched his fingers and rubbed his wrists.
“You going to tell me what this is all about?”
“You know what this is about.”
“I’ve already told you—”
“You can keep right on with that I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about bullshit, but that’s not going to help either one of us,” Stillwell interrupted.
Dwayne Brewer sneered at Stillwell coldly, a single thought rattling around his skull like a .22-caliber bullet. I’ll strangle the goddamn life out of you yet.
“Why don’t you start with the phone? Tell me where you got that cell phone?”
“I told you. I found it sitting on the sidewalk.”
“Where?”
“Over there at the community college.”
“You go there a lot?”
“Sometimes.”
“You want me to believe you go over there and walk around that campus for exercise?”
“You saying a man like me
can’t walk around that place like anybody else?” Dwayne rocked himself back in the chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “I think that’s pretty shitty of you.”
“So you were walking around that campus and there that phone was?”
“Right there it was.”
“You didn’t think about taking it to security, maybe into the building where you found it and seeing if somebody might’ve dropped it on their way in? Seems like that’d be the civil thing to do. Don’t you think?”
“Civility doesn’t have much to do with anything anymore now, does it, boss man? You throw somebody in handcuffs because you don’t like the way they look, don’t like where they come from, and you hold them in here but say, ‘Naw, we ain’t arresting you,’ and then you want to talk to me about civility.” Dwayne leaned forward and slapped his hands flat against the table. “That’s the pot and the kettle, ain’t it?”
Stillwell grunted in a sort of half-assed agreement and nodded. “See, in my mind you picking up that cell phone and not having the decency to walk inside and see if it might’ve belonged to somebody, now, in my mind that’s as bad as stealing. But that’s just the way I see it.”
Dwayne guffawed.
“Kind of like all those televisions and chainsaws you had stacked up in that room at your house. I imagine if we run the numbers, I’ll wind up thinking the same thing about those. Probably even be a little more cut-and-dry.”
“I run a legitimate business there, boss man.”
“A legitimate business, huh?”
