by Ace Atkins
Lillie cut on the fan as Mary Alice had requested and sat back down. She mulled it over for a few minutes. “I’d ask around Sugar Ditch,” Lillie said. “Reach out into the black community with a description of both.”
“Don’t know much about the victim.”
“Maybe we will soon,” Lillie said. “As long as it wasn’t burned and buried, it’ll show up.”
Quinn puffed on the cigar and ashed the tip in a COLSON FOR SHERIFF coffee mug. “What else we got going today?” Quinn said.
“Goddamn Chester got drunk again and busted the window at the florist shop,” Lillie said. “He’s into some kind of feud with Miss Doris over that alley where he takes a piss now and then. And we got some kind of family squabble out in Providence with Missy Hayes. She says her uncle tossed all her shit out of a house where she was staying. The uncle says she was a renter who didn’t pay and that she’d been warned. Kin or not.”
“Who’s her uncle?”
“Levi Sims.”
Quinn nodded, puffed on the cigar some more. “Between those two, I wouldn’t know who to believe.”
“That whole family is fucked in the head,” Lillie said.
“Make sure to put that in the report,” Quinn said.
“You bet.”
“I’ll talk to Boom,” Quinn said. “Might be good if we ride together in Sugar Ditch, talk to some folks we know.”
“Are you saying people in the Ditch are mistrustful of white folks?” Lillie said, taking the cigar from Quinn’s mouth and taking a puff. “And you need Boom just to get them to loosen up and talk a bit?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Damn,” Lillie said. “You’re turning into a pretty good investigator, Sheriff.”
Appreciate you stopping by, Sheriff,” W. D. “Sonny” Stevens said. “But I’m afraid I got some right shitty news for you.”
“Terrific,” Quinn said.
They stood out on Stevens’s balcony on the second floor of his law office. The repair work and construction around the Square now a common racket during the week. Twenty or so contractor trucks were parked in and around the Square, filling in the holes and gaps that the tornado left. Lots of hammering and saws, big chunks of Sheetrock lifted off trucks and fitted on the studs. Blue tarps fluttered from a few rooftops still waiting for repairs. New permits being pulled every day.
“DA wants you in Oxford Friday for a sit-down,” Stevens said.
“OK.”
“This is a step up from the informal, friendly stuff,” Stevens said.
“Fine by me.”
“Getting ugly.”
“That’s expected,” Quinn said. “Let ’em get to it. If they want to ruin the election, now’s the time.”
“They also have a search warrant to check Lillie’s house,” he said. “I learned this from a trusted friend in Oxford. So tell her to act surprised when they show up.”
“Don’t worry,” Quinn said. “Lillie will give them an earful.”
“How’d it go last time?” Stevens said. “With that investigator in New Albany?”
“He was slicker than shit.”
“Friendly?”
“Too friendly,” Quinn said. “He didn’t stop grinning the whole time. What could they possibly have, Mr. Stevens?”
“DA’s trying to tie you both to all that money,” Stevens said. “That’s it, right? You and Lillie ambush those two convicts making an exchange and, when the Jericho police showed, y’all shot them, too. So, I’d guess the DA either found a witness or they’re trying to show an uptick in your personal finances.”
“Hell,” Quinn said. “You know how much I make a year?”
“Shameful,” Stevens said, shaking his head. “Just shameful.”
Quinn leaned over the wooden banister and looked out at the Square. The old movie house built in the thirties, which for a short time became a church, was now coming back as a movie house. Some woman from Oxford had moved into town to start a coffee shop and tanning parlor, and there were two restaurants—a Greek and a Chinese restaurant—moving into spaces that had been vacant since Quinn had been a kid. What was a tragedy was now deemed an economic miracle.
“I never intended to go for second term anyway,” Quinn said. “I came back to bury my uncle and then left the Regiment to finish some things. I’ve done my part.”
“But you don’t care for being forced out?”
“No, sir,” Quinn said. “You know that scene in Butch and Sundance when Sundance can’t stomach being called a cheater? He makes the man across from him ask him to stay at the poker table.”
“Other fella was Sam Elliott,” Stevens said. “Before he grew the mustache.”
“That’s pretty much how I feel.”
“I don’t like it, either,” Stevens said. “And don’t care for the way it smells.”
“Like bullshit and diesel?”
“Got Johnny Stagg all over it.”
“Yep.”
“You need to inform Miss Virgil that she’ll be served with a search warrant sometime later today,” Stevens said. “We’ll all head over to Oxford tomorrow and see what the DA is about to throw down. Maybe he has a deal on the table.”
“No deals.”
“You’d like to be asked to stay awhile.”
They watched all the activity on the Square for a bit. Neither of them spoke until Quinn turned to the older man. “Mr. Stevens?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This may be off topic,” Quinn said, “but do you recall a couple young girls attacked in 1977? One girl was shot and killed. The other raped and left for dead.”
“Diane Tull,” he said. “And Hank Stillwell’s daughter.”
“Do you know what happened after?” Quinn said. “A man was snatched up and lynched.”
Stevens swallowed. His fine gray hair blowing wild and scattering over his head. He leaned into a space by Quinn at the banister and spit down on the sidewalk below. Quinn could smell the bourbon on his breath, but he seemed clear-eyed and sharp. “That was one of the most disgusting acts I think ever happened in this town.”
“So who were they?” Quinn said. “The ones who could pull it off and no one would question it?”
Stevens shook his head, reaching up and patting down his scattering hair. They both stood there, young man and old man, leaning over the railing and watching the rebuilding of the new and improved Jericho. The American flag flying next to the gazebo and an old cannon by the foot of the veterans’ monument. More hammering and sawing and commotion carried on below, signaling movement, improvement, and change.
“That’s been quite a while.”
“Doesn’t make things any better.”
“I might know someone who can help y’all out,” he said. “Let me ask around.”
• • •
“Someone wants me to shut my goddamn mouth,” Diane Tull said. “They wanted it so badly, they wrote it on the side of my pickup truck.”
“That don’t seem right,” Hank Stillwell said. “Maybe someone’s just joshin’ you.”
“And they slashed my tires and came up to my home, peeping in the windows,” Diane said. “No, sir. They’re not joshing me. They mean business, and, at this point, I’m a little confused by your motivation here. Do you want to find out who killed your daughter or just stir all this shit back up?”
Diane had called the old man to meet her on the Natchez Trace at noon. That way, she could get loose from the store without anyone asking a bunch of questions. And the more Hank Stillwell’s muscle car was parked outside her house or at the feed store, the more people would start thinking they were having an affair. Just what she needed, folks think she was hopping in bed with a man twenty years her senior. Hank Stillwell. Jesus, she sure hoped not.
“I just want to help,” Stillwell said. “I figu
red you’d want the same.”
“Who’s doing this pushing?” she said. “Who doesn’t want this to come out?”
“That’s a hell of a long list,” Stillwell said. They stood under a covered viewing area where you could look out at Indian mounds rising up from the flat, grassy ground. This was the place, according to the official park map, where the Choctaws came to bury their dead with pieces of pottery, weapons, and tools. There were two different viewing points and a building with public restrooms.
“I don’t really care who this embarrasses,” she said. “Do you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“But you rode with these people?” she said. “This could get you in trouble, too.”
“I’ve been clean now for more than twenty years,” Stillwell said. “I have a good many years of my life that I don’t even recall. After Lori died, I just wanted to make myself numb to the world and with the help of some lucky pills I succeeded.”
“But they’re back?” Diane said, cars and trucks slowly driving past them on the Trace. “Aren’t they? I’ve seen them coming back in town, buying things at the store, heading back out to that clubhouse y’all used to have. Are they the same folks?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Stillwell said. “Some of them. Some are new. Others are dead.”
“And the more this comes out,” Diane said, “the more it shuts them down.”
Stillwell’s face was covered in reddish gray stubble, looking as if it had been a couple days since his last shave and maybe last bath. He wore a red-and-black checked coat, threadbare trousers, and an ancient pair of pointy-toed cowboy boots. “What they did was wrong. That man gets out of prison and he’s going to turn this town inside out. He’s been sitting there up at Brushy Mountain thinking on things, making plans for when he comes back. You and me don’t step up, tell what we know, we’re going to find this county in worse shape than after the storm.”
“One man?” she said. “You really believe he can do all that?”
Stillwell nodded. “He’s got a list of people he wants cleared out and I’m number one on that list.”
“So you’re trying to save your own skin?”
“I’m the dumb son of a bitch who put him in prison,” Stillwell said. “I turned informant on the whole crew and testified in federal court. Chains LeDoux calls me his own personal Judas Iscariot.”
“This isn’t about Lori,” Diane said. “This isn’t about me.”
“It’s all the same, Miss Tull,” he said. “We’re just all caught up in it until we see it all through.”
“I should go.”
Stillwell touched her arm as she passed. He looked into her eyes, shivering as if the coat didn’t offer him any warmth in the setting sun. “Please,” he said. “All I need you to do is tell the sheriff that these people got the wrong man. Tell them that you saw the fella who did this to y’all after that man got hung.”
“I already did, Hank,” she said. “And now I’m done with whatever angle you’re working. Please leave me the hell alone.”
By the time Quinn got back to the farm, he’d already picked up two drug addicts who missed their court dates, talked a woman out of filing charges against her fifteen-year-old son for poking a fork in her butt, helped an old woman riddled with dementia get home from the Piggly Wiggly, and wrote an incident report for a crew down from Byhalia who’d had a thousand bucks’ worth of tools stolen. He hadn’t even made it up the front steps when Caddy met him at the door with one of those pissed-off Caddy looks, screen door slamming behind her. Her hands on her hips and staring down at her brother, not saying good to see you, welcome home, how was your day? But instead, “What the hell did you tell my son this morning?”
“Hey there, Caddy,” Quinn said, not breaking stride, walking up the brick steps to the front porch and taking a seat in an old rocker.
“What did you tell him, Quinn?” Caddy said. “I had to pick him up early from school. He has bruises all up and down his body and his eye is nearly swollen shut.”
“Did he win?” Quinn said.
“Damn you.”
“He’s a kid,” Quinn said. “He’s a boy. Besides, do you know what those little bastards said to him on the playground?”
“I don’t give a crap,” Caddy said. “He’s five. I don’t want him fighting. I don’t want him to respond to those kind of taunts. You don’t think I’ve laid awake at night thinking about what these little rednecks will make of some half-black kid? You think it’s bad now? It’s going to be a hundred times worse in high school. I think about him asking a girl on a date and, no matter if they’re black or white, what they’ll say. It breaks my heart.”
“Sit down.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“Sit down, Caddy,” Quinn said. “Let’s talk. It’s been a hell of a day and I did my best with Jason. I just gave him the same advice Momma gave me when that turd Carl Rose wanted to kick my ass.”
“I remember that,” Caddy said, sitting. “I recall everyone talking about it. You broke his nose.”
“Yep,” Quinn said. “And Carl Rose hadn’t been worth a shit since.”
“Well, Jason isn’t you,” she said. “And there were two boys doing this to him.”
“He can’t let people talk to him like that,” Quinn said. “Saying he smells ’cause he’s part black. Jason’s going to have to learn to fight sooner or later.”
“At five?” Caddy said. “Have you gone crazy? I’m not trying to raise a fine young soldier, I’m trying to raise a good boy with a good belief system. If I tried to fight every bastard that had done me wrong, I wouldn’t have time to breathe.”
“Well,” Quinn said, leaning back in the rocker, “I’m sorry.”
“Really?”
“Shit, yeah,” Quinn said. “Wasn’t my place. I don’t have kids. I’m just trying to help out some.”
Caddy was on the porch swing, some of the red-hot color gone from her face. She had on a man’s button-down over a George Jones T-shirt. “OK,” she said. “I appreciate you trying. I really do. But I don’t want Jason to be a kindergarten hell-raiser. I want him to make better choices than we did. Smart ones.”
“Isn’t ass-kicking in the Bible?”
“Maybe you forgot to read the second half of that book,” Caddy said, smiling a bit. The old swing kicked up and back slowly on chains from the curved beaded-board ceiling. Quinn had painted it a light blue, the color of the sky, as the old-timers had way back to keep the bad spirits away, finding some of the original paint when he’d scraped it clean.
“What’s for supper?” Quinn said.
“Mom’s got something going,” she said. “I think she’s frying up some of that deer you just got processed. The cubed steak with some sweet potatoes and green beans.”
It was quiet and still between them in the falling shadows. Quinn could hear bird songs and the skittering of squirrels. Deep over the pasture, a hawk circled, making its final hunting rounds in the last light of day. “You doing OK, sis?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Why?”
“You hadn’t stopped working in almost a year.”
“I don’t want to stop,” she said, placing a hand on Quinn’s knee. “I slow down and all I can do is think. I read somewhere that when you’re going through hell, just mash the pedal to the metal and keep going.”
“I think that was Jerry Reed.”
They stayed on the porch, front door closed to Jean and Jason. Caddy said Jean had gotten some ice on Jason’s eye, helped tend to his cuts and bruises. The older boys who’d done it were suspended and she said Jason took some kind of comfort in the justice of that. Quinn hadn’t expected the boys to really take it out on him.
“How’d everything go with Diane Tull?” Caddy asked. “Every time I start feeling sorry for myself, I think about what that woman has gone through.”
“But to be raped and shot, lying there and knowing your best friend was dead.”
“Hard stuff,” Quinn said. “I just hope I can help.”
“Did Uncle Hamp ever do anything?”
“Nope.”
“Not even questioned someone?”
Quinn took a deep breath and stood, stretching his arms and back. Being in the truck for most of the day was making him more stiff and sore. He needed to get back on the fire roads even earlier tomorrow. “We both know Uncle Hamp was pretty good at looking the other way when he thought justice was served,” Quinn said. “What he did wasn’t legally correct. But he surely thought it was right.”
“He turned his head from something bad?”
“Diane Tull thinks so,” Quinn said. “Some men around here killed the man they believed hurt her and she’s having some trouble with that part of things. I don’t think she ever wanted that part of it to come up. She believes the man they killed was innocent.”
“Good Lord.”
“Took him out to Jericho Road where it all happened and hung him from that old oak,” Quinn said. “It’s still there but dead, black and charred. I think it was hit by lightning. Our uncle just sat off on the sidelines and let the whole thing go. She came to him later when she spotted the real killer and our uncle ignored her.”
“So who was the man?”
“Nobody ever knew,” Quinn said. “He’s buried in an unmarked grave.”
“Jesus God.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
• • •
After supper, Quinn picked up Boom and drove south out of Jericho down to Sugar Ditch, an old black community of shacks and hovels. Most of the people there lived in the bottomland along a creek that flooded with every rain. The buildings weren’t up to any sort of code—the county had no building code at all—and many of them didn’t have indoor plumbing. Most people didn’t own the houses, if you could call them that. They paid rent to the man who ran the district, a former pimp and car thief by the name of Dupuy. There weren’t a lot of places you could complain, as Dupuy also represented the district as county supervisor and conveniently fought against any building code proposals as “government interfering with our rights as property owners.” He drove a big white Jaguar, smoked Newports, and Quinn didn’t think he’d ever seen the man without a cell phone screwed tight to his ear.
