by Ace Atkins
Quinn put his hand to Boom’s shoulder. Boom and Quinn stayed stock-still.
Ringold walked out onto the airfield, looked to the north, the small blue lights stretching out far into the distance. He was a shadow, machine gun in his right hand, as he moved back to the Quonset hut, still pumping with rap music, and shut the door.
“Feds probably don’t give a shit about Stagg running pussy.”
“Those boys didn’t come all the way from Tennessee for tail,” Quinn said. “There’s plenty of that in Memphis.”
“Wonder who’s doing the buying and who’s doing the selling?” Boom said.
Diane got up early the next morning, earlier than usual, to run by the Sonic and get a Breakfast Burrito for her mother. Her mother lived in an assisted-care facility just down the road from county hospital. Her memory had gotten worse and worse, a radio frequency that would sometimes come in strong and clear and other times faint and distant. That morning, the signal was medium, her mother needing a little prodding when Diane walked in. There was a big warm smile from the wheelchair, her mother sitting crooked in a flowered housecoat, looking out the window, but there was that hesitation of recognition. “Mom, it’s me. Diane.”
And her mother’s smile grew even larger when Diane sat the Sonic sack on the table and opened up the burrito and tater tots. She might have forgotten her own daughter, her own name, and the last twenty years of her life, but she sure knew the burrito and was still exact about the eggs, sausage, and cheese. Tots on the side, and black coffee. And here was her feast.
Her mother, whose name was Alma, shared the room with another woman with Alzheimer’s, this woman just recently moving in and not being able to talk, only putter about and hum. She’d sing spirituals and clap and ask you to join in whenever the mood struck her. Luckily, she was off for some therapy and Diane could sit with her mother, wheeling her over to the table and unwrapping the burrito.
“How you been, Mom?”
“Have you seen your father? He’s run off again.”
Diane’s father had been dead now twenty-two years.
“No, ma’am,” she said. “Haven’t seen him.”
“He’s like that,” she said. “Can’t be trusted.”
That much being true, the tight-ass Holy Roller preacher eventually running off with the Mary Kay saleswoman in town and starting a new family in Tupelo, working for a right-wing Christian radio station. That was her biological father, not old Mr. Shed Castle, her stepfather, also dead.
“Do you remember when I got hurt?” Diane said. “When I was in the hospital?”
“You had a fine boy,” her mother said. “Big, too.”
“When that man hurt me, Mom,” Diane said. “When I got shot?”
“Who shot you?” her mother said, tilting her head. “You look fine to me.”
“A long time back,” she said. “I was with Lori Stillwell.”
“A sweet girl,” her mother said. “A lovely girl. Hair down to her butt. Shiny like a shampoo commercial.”
“Yes,” Diane said. “Lori was beautiful. Do you remember when that man came for us? That man who hurt us?”
There was a darkness, a passing of light, in the dim blue eyes of her mother. She had a mouthful of the burrito and kept on eating, but there were wheels turning, a shifting and searching somewhere in the mind, trying to place what was being asked. She chewed and chewed. Diane just sat there, a bright sun coming up over the little parking lot facing Cotton Road. “Lori died.”
Diane turned to her mother. “Yes, Mom,” she said. “Do you recall?”
“Poor girl died,” she said. “You almost died. God. Are you all right? Where is your father? Where did he go? I told him he’d get hurt. Those people would hurt him.”
“Who, Mom?” Diane said. “Who would hurt him?”
Her mother chewed some more, thinking on things. “These tater tots are crispy. They are just so tasty.”
“Where did Dad go?” Diane said. The morning sun seemed to leach all the color from the hoods and roofs of the cars, everything in a dull gray light, cars zipping past on Cotton Road. A sad concrete birdbath outside the window, dirty water frozen in the bowl.
“Lori’s father,” her mother said. “He wanted your father to come with him. He knew what to do. He was a very bad man. All of those men were bad.”
“Who?”
“He had very strange eyes, that one,” she said. “He looked like a wolf, with long black hair. Gray eyes. He wanted your father to come. He wanted your father to see what they had done. They were all very proud. I told him no. Where is he? Did he go with them?”
“Where?” Diane said. “Where, Mom? Who are you talking about?”
“Out to that tree,” her mother said. “There was a gift hanging from the tree. The man had something for us. He was very happy.”
“Who?”
Her mother took another bite, body and head crooked as if the world was spinning a little strange for her, trying to find her balance. Light passed in and out of her eyes. She swallowed. Her hands shook as she lifted the coffee and took a sip, some spilling on the table. Diane wiped it up. Her mother looked up at her, smiling. “Hello,” her mother said. “You are somebody? Aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Diane said, patting her mother’s hand. “Just a friend.”
• • •
Lillie Virgil ran roll call at the morning meeting with deputies Dave Cullison, Art Watts, Ike McCaslin, and Kenny. Kenny hadn’t missed a patrol since the tornado ripped through his family home, killing both his parents. He’d driven his father, mortally wounded, on an ATV out to the field where his dead mother was found, sucked from their house and tossed a quarter mile away. He buried them, tended to their legal affairs, and set about clearing the destruction on his family land. Lillie had tried to speak to him about it many times, but instead Kenny would rather talk about his dog, a black Lab he’d rescued a year earlier who’d become his best friend.
Kenny arrived first, husky and beaming, looking forward to the day’s patrol.
The night had yielded a little action: attempted robbery at the Dixie gas station (“attempt” perhaps too strong a word, as the robber fled immediately when the cashier, Miss Peaches, pulled Luther Varner’s .357 from under the counter), a thirteen-year-old girl had run away from home for two hours before being found eating raisin toast at the Rebel, a domestic between a common-law couple, fighting over the purchase of a fifty-inch television, and eight traffic accidents, on account of the iced roads. Most of the ice had started to thaw at first light, but another cold front was expected to pound them tonight and Lillie ran through which wreckers would be on call.
“What’d Miss Peaches say to the robber?” Ike McCaslin asked, rubbing his eyes and giving that slow, easy smile of his. He was a tall, reedy black man who’d been with the SO longer than anyone.
“She knew him,” Lillie said. “It was the youngest Richardson boy who lives with his sister up on Perfect Circle Road. He just walked in and said, ‘Give it up,’ and Miss Peaches aimed the weapon at his crotch and told him to go get his narrow ass back home or she’d shoot his pecker clean off.”
“Miss Peaches,” Ike said. “She don’t take no shit.”
“No, sir,” Lillie said. “Kenny, you got anything needs a follow today?”
“Need to check up on those mowers getting stolen out on 351,” Kenny said. “Mary Alice had a call about another theft last night, but it was on toward the Ditch. Mr. Davis had a zero-turn Toro that he used for work. Someone hooked up the mower to the trailer and just rode off.”
“Art? Dave?”
“Same old shit,” Dave Cullison said. Dave was still wearing a heavy parka and gloves from running traffic detail at the high school.
“Where’s Quinn?” Art said.
“Had a meeting,” she said.
“Are tho
se bastards in Oxford going to leave both y’all alone?” Art said. “I’m about getting sick of everyone asking me about it. It’s as if people in this county can’t recall old cross-eyed Leonard Chappell being an A-1 shitbird since we were kids.”
“Don’t know,” Lillie said, hopping off the desk. “Don’t care. Let’s hit the road.”
Lillie snatched up her cold-weather coat and Tibbehah ball cap as Mary Alice poked her head into the SO meeting room and said that Lillie had some company. “I went ahead and sent him to your office,” Mary Alice said. “Hope that’s all right. E. J. Royce.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lillie said, and then muttered “Shit” to herself, following the hallway to her door. The door was old and heavy, with the top half pebbled glass reading LILLIE VIRGIL CHIEF DEPUTY, along with the official shield of Tibbehah County law enforcement.
She opened the door to find Royce standing by her desk, puttering about, looking through some of her personal effects and smiling up at her as if there was nothing to it. “Morning, Miss Virgil,” Royce said. “You asked that I stop by if I wanted to follow up on that old case. So here I am.”
It looked and smelled as if Royce hadn’t bathed in a few days. He still had that ever-present dirty white stubble on his face. He wore the same threadbare flannel shirt and wash-worn Liberty overalls. He’d removed his trucker hat, the meager white hair that remained on his head stuck up high like a rooster’s comb.
“You want some coffee?” Lillie said.
“No, ma’am,” he said. “Just figured me and you might have a heart-to-heart, you being the senior of the folks in this office. Quinn kind of came to the scene late. I don’t think he understands or respects the work of Sheriff Beckett.”
“Sheriff Beckett was on the take.”
“That hadn’t been proven.”
“What you got, Mr. Royce?”
The old man scratched his stubbled cheeks and smiled. His teeth were yellowed and crooked, one eyetooth capped in gold. “Just wanted to see how things was progressing from one lawman to another.”
He kind of grinned when he said that last bit, eyes taking in Lillie’s posture and hands on her wide hips. Lillie eyed him and nodded a bit. “You just want to know what we’re doing since this was your case at one time?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You didn’t seem to be interested the other day.”
“Y’all kind of caught me with my pants down,” he said. “I was just waking up and not thinking. When y’all left, I started to kind of wonder why you and Hamp’s nephew would be kicking all this mess up. Are you some kind of special friends with the Tull girl?”
Lillie was five foot eight in bare feet but five foot ten in her boots that day. She stepped forward two paces and looked down at E. J. Royce’s bald head. “Do you have something to say?”
“Relax there, darling,” he said. “I don’t care which way y’all’s pendulum swings. What concerns me is y’all making a mess of what happened. I mean, when it all gets down to it, who gives a shit?”
“Who gives a shit that a young woman was murdered and another raped?”
“That ain’t it,” Royce said, his eyes glowing with an alcoholic heat. His cheeks so red, it looked as if he’d applied some rouge. “I just can’t figure out why y’all have interest in that nigger they strung up.”
“Excuse me?”
“We got the right man,” he said. “That nigger took them girls. Why on God’s Green do y’all want to make something of it? Justice was done.”
Lillie crossed her arms over her chest. “Sit down, Mr. Royce.”
“I’m just fine.”
“Sit the fuck down, Royce.”
Royce sat. He seemed amused by the whole thing, grinning and sort of laughing, thinking the world sure had turned into a funny place. He craned his head back and forth, studying Lillie’s personal mementos on the way. “Who’s that with all them medals on their neck?”
“That was the SEC championship,” Lillie said. “I shot a perfect score. I’m prone to steadiness when my mind comes to it.”
“Oh, hell,” Royce said. “You are a pistol. I can’t even imagine what old Sheriff Beckett would think about his wild-ass nephew running the show, ruining his name for some wandering nigger and having some smart-mouth dyke woman as his sidekick. What’s the world coming to?”
Lillie did not speak. She breathed slowly. The door cracked open a little and Kenny stuck his portly body inside, obviously listening from the hall. “Everything OK?” he said.
“Mr. Royce was just leaving.”
Royce laughed, showing rows of uneven teeth, and stood, putting that old trucker hat on his rooster hair. His entire being smelled of burned-up cigarettes, ashen and dead.
“You know why people like you don’t bother me?”
Royce grinned.
“’Cause all of y’all are dying off,” Lillie said. “Less and less of you every day. You lost. Thank Jesus.”
Royce turned to Lillie, clenched his jaw, and spit on the floor, before following Kenny out of her office. Kenny hung by the door, wide-eyed, before shutting it.
“This man gives you a bit of trouble, you toss his ass in the tank,” Lillie said. “And, for God’s sake, make sure he takes a shower. He smells like flaming dog shit.”
Glad you stopped by, Quinn,” Johnny Stagg said. “Sure is a fine morning. Cold. But fine just the same. Come on back with me. We can talk a bit.”
“I’d rather talk out here, Johnny,” Quinn said. “How about right in the restaurant? Just so people won’t start talking about me behind my back.”
Stagg stopped midstride, having just turned in to the hallway by the public toilets. He nodded, grinned, and said, “Sure, wherever you like, Sheriff. You had breakfast? I can have Willie James fry you up some eggs and bacon. I think we still got some hot biscuits.”
“I’m good.”
“What brings you here, Quinn?”
“Your man Ringold said you wanted to talk,” he said. “So let’s talk.”
“Come on back to my booth,” Stagg said, walking on ahead. “I keep this place special for friends and family.”
Quinn ignored the last remark, though he wanted to say that he was neither and didn’t want to be. He followed Stagg to the crescent-moon shape of red vinyl and sat down. Stagg had moved some of his famous head shots of celebrities out here. Apparently, one time he’d had the honor of serving Jim Henson a plate of pancakes. And there was Jim in a photo, looking alive and well, with his hand up the butt of Kermit the Frog.
“You want coffee?” Stagg said.
“No, sir,” Quinn said. “I need to get back on patrol. We had some accidents last night. Lots of reports to write.”
“Probably seems slow after what we all went through after the great shitstorm,” Stagg said. “Sure I can’t interest you in anything?”
Quinn shook his head. Stagg folded his bony hands in front of him, no one within earshot, the waitresses seating folks near the convenience store and western-wear mart. Nothing more authentic than a straw hat and a pair of boots made in China to ride high in your rig and play cowboy.
“I feel for your troubles, Quinn,” Stagg said. “I don’t think it’s fair.”
Quinn just stared at Johnny, breathing in deep through his nose, and kept calm, hands flat on the table.
“I don’t like the rumors I’m hearing and what people are saying,” Stagg said. “It pained the shit out of me to talk to you like I did last night. You’re a good lawman and we’re lucky to have you. But it’s my constituents who want answers. You can’t just blow a fellow lawman’s brains out and expect no one to say nothing. Life ain’t no John Wayne movie.”
“I’ve always been a Jimmy Stewart man myself.”
“Or Gary Cooper?” Stagg said, grinned big. “I see a lot of ole Gary Cooper.”
Quinn
checked the time, surrounded by big sheets of plate glass looking out on the truck stop business, feeling as if they were floating there in an aquarium. Stagg glancing up and crooking his finger for a waitress and wanting to know if that lemon pie had cooled down yet. If it had, cut him up a nice old slice with a glass of Coca-Cola. “Sure is good,” Stagg said. “Mmm-mmm.”
“You publicly embarrass me last night and now you want to feed me pie,” Quinn said. “I’ll ask again, what do you want?”
“I heard you been asking around a bit about a murder back in ’77,” Stagg said, leaning back in the padded vinyl, licking his lips. “I have to say, I’m a little hurt you didn’t come to me, ask me about it. You know, I do have a pretty good memory for all things Tibbehah County.”
“OK,” Quinn said. “Tell me what I don’t know.”
“You spoken to Hank Stillwell yet?”
“No, sir,” Quinn said. “Not yet. But he’s the father of the victim. It’s high on the list.”
Stagg nodded. The waitress brought him a Coca-Cola but said that Willie James said the pie was still cooling and not to mess with it. Stagg shrugged and drank some Coke. “Y’all sure taking your time.”
“Didn’t know there was a rush,” Quinn said, thinking on the meeting with the ADA in Oxford. The smell of Stagg all over all them.
“It would be to the advantage of everyone in this county if the truth was brought out. All of it. Including what happened after to that black fella.”
“Now, that sort of surprises me, Johnny,” Quinn said. “You’re not exactly one who likes to air the county’s bad business. I’d have thought you’d want to keep everyone quiet.”
“Come on, Quinn,” Stagg said. “I just try and make a dollar like everyone else. I ain’t hunting a man like he were some kind of animal. I don’t give a shit if he was black or white. You know much about the Staggs?”
“I know your people.”
“We been living up around Carthage for nearly a hundred years,” Stagg said. “We were all dirt-eating poor. If one family looked to hate another family for being black or white, we didn’t survive. That’s the way it had always been. All we needed to do was pay that rent to ole man Vardaman and he’d allow us to have a roof over our head. We were all niggers to those people.”
