by Julia Keller
But that, in turn, did not mean that several people had suddenly up and decided that they needed a Tweety Bird or a leering skull or a weeping Jesus or a red rose with a trailing vine of thorns tattooed on a chest or neck or bicep. Skin U Alive was a distribution point for certain varieties of illegal drugs. Jake knew that. All local law enforcement personnel knew that. But knowing that did not mean that there was one damned thing they could do about it.
Mack was an entrepreneur. He didn’t sell drugs himself; that was too risky. What he did was provide a venue in which drugs could be sold. There was a difference. He was not especially clever, and he didn’t keep a high-priced lawyer on retainer, but he had a knack when it came to dealing with the law. He knew that in a poor county with much more serious crimes to worry about, a man who kept his head down and didn’t flaunt his success and never got too greedy would be allowed to run his business. In a lesser-of-two-evils world like this one, Mack Cruickshank made sure he was always the lesser. If it came to a choice between assigning a deputy to either solve a murder or bust Mack for providing an outlet for the sale of pot or oxycodone, the Raythune County Sheriff’s Department had to pick the former.
So Jake had a good idea of what the comparatively high number of vehicles in the lot meant. He pushed open the door. It always stuck and had to be cajoled. A little bell tinkled from the top of the door.
“Deputy Oakes. As I live and breathe,” said Mack.
A lamp on either side of the cash register provided the only light at the present moment. Dim or not, there was no missing Mack Cruikshank. He sat with regal ease in a big leather armchair. He was a giant man—he had passed the three-hundred-pound mark a decade ago and just kept right on going—and he sported jeans that rode well below his prodigious belly, heavy black boots, and a sleeveless black leather vest, the better to show off the handiwork of his wife, Juniper. She had decorated both of his arms with colorful depictions of rearing dragons and hooded wizards and twisting strands of barbed wire. Mack’s gray hair was pulled back into a greasy ponytail that rode his back like something you’d find in a marsupial pouch. His face was a giant cratered mess of flesh and fissures. His deep-set dark eyes never ceased to calculate and weigh and measure the world; even in the dimness, Jake was aware of the work of those eyes, ceaselessly sizing up everything that came within view, gauging its strength, its propensity to put up a fight.
The small room was lined with mirrors. Jake never knew quite where to look in here; the mirrors seemed to double and triple the space, so that you could fool yourself into thinking you were facing an army when it was really just three guys and one young woman, also leaning back in leather armchairs.
Nobody was getting a tattoo.
“Hey, Mack,” Jake said. “How’s it going?”
“Going good.” Mack had yet to sit up straight in the chair. He was tilted back with his belly spread out across his thighs like bread dough set out to rise on a kitchen counter. Sitting up would have indicated that he either feared or respected the deputy. Neither was the case.
“I’m looking for Leo.”
“You are, are you?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“Well, now.”
No one else in the shop had moved or, as far as Jake could tell, even breathed. In the shadowy half-light, their immobility and the sense of menace they exuded gave each one the ambience of a poisonous lizard splayed across a rock, slithery tongue ready to strike.
“Yeah.” Jake took another step forward. He didn’t have time for this. And neither do they, he thought. They don’t know what’s out there.
“Haven’t seen him lately,” Mack said.
One of the customers spoke up. “Sure you have, Mack. He’s in the back. Sick as a dog. Been there all day.”
Mack’s big head swung around slowly, slowly, slowly, in the man’s direction. The man realized he had spoken when he shouldn’t have. Jake saw him cringe and shrink back into his chair. Mack did not speak aloud to the man, but the message was clear enough: Get you later for that, you shit-for-brains.
Mack eventually would have told Jake that Leo was on the premises. But first there would have been a little give-and-take, a conversational checkers match that amused Mack and annoyed the deputy—which would have amused Mack even more. Now that he had been diagnosed with diabetes and had to watch what he ate, Mack’s pleasures were considerably diminished in kind and number; verbally jousting with a deputy sheriff was one of the few left to him, a non-caloric but deeply satisfying treat.
And then Shit-for-Brains had gone and wrecked the whole thing.
“Gimme a minute to think about it,” Mack said amiably, as if he appreciated the poke with a memory stick. Showing anger took all the fun out of the negotiation. Anger meant you gave a damn. “Yeah, I guess old Leo is in the back room. Slipped my mind.”
“Thanks.” Jake touched the rim of his hat. Courtesy mattered in here. People who did not understand that were at a disadvantage.
“You fixing to take him in, Deputy? He’s sick, like the man said. Been throwing up in a bucket since yesterday.” Mack wrinkled up his broad pug nose in disgust. Human effluvia offended him. For a strong, tough man, Mack Cruikshank was, Jake had learned a while back, surprisingly persnickety and delicate. “And I mean actual sick,” Mack added. “Not from nothing he took. Juniper says it’s the flu. That’s why he’s in the back. Don’t want him spreading his damned germs all over the shop.”
“Okay. I won’t be long.” Jake started to walk down the unofficial keel line of the small room. He paused after three steps. “Something I need to say here. You all can tell me to go to hell. I expect you will. I’m gonna say it, anyway.”
No one stirred. But they were listening. He could feel it.
“There’s some bad heroin being sold around here today,” Jake said. He was careful to keep his voice clipped, informational. No drama. No Paul Revere stuff. “They’ve laced it with something called carfentanil. It’s been causing overdoses all over town. And some deaths, too.”
“Heard sumptin’ about that.”
Jake didn’t know who had spoken. This was his chance to warn the people most at risk—these people and the people they knew, the ever-expanding circle of drug users in these mountain valleys.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “So get the word out, okay? Chances are whoever’s selling it doesn’t even know what’s in it. I want to get them to stop. And in the meantime, I want folks to know. Any heroin you buy today is probably tainted. Just might kill you.”
Mack chuckled. His chuckle sounded like something recorded for a Halloween TV special; it had darkness in it, but the top note was a peppery glee.
“I surely hope,” Mack said, “you’re not suggesting that there’s any drugs being consumed on this property at the present time. Because if you are suggesting such a thing, I can’t let you go into the back room without a warrant. On the other hand—if you’re just here to say hi to old Leo, then that’s fine and dandy. Go right on back, Deputy.”
“I’m here for Leo.” He didn’t bother to add that if Leo indeed had sold the heroin, he might very well be facing murder charges.
“Good.”
“But everybody needs to be real careful, okay?” Jake said. “That’s all I’m asking.”
A voice spoke up from another occupied chair: “What the hell do you care what happens to a bunch of addicts?”
“I don’t,” Jake said. He used his jauntiest tone, the disarming one. He knew better than to preach to them about the value and sanctity of every human life. They wouldn’t believe he meant it. Sometimes he didn’t believe he meant it, either. “One of you dies—it makes a lot more paperwork for me. And I’m a lazy so-and-so. Just ask Mack here.”
A round of chuckles.
Moments later Jake was in the back room, looking down at a sweaty, disheveled and clearly ill Leo Smith, who writhed on a mattress on the floor. That was when Jake told him he looked like hell, and made the additional crack about healthy living. “Leo Smi
th” and “healthy living” were not words that commonly occupied the same sentence.
“Know that,” Leo said with a groan. “Got the flu.” He was twenty years old but he looked fifty, with indifferently cut brown hair and spiky brown stubble that staked its claim to the bottom half of his face and most of his neck.
Jake nodded. He looked around. This was the storeroom for Skin U Alive. Its contents included two leather chairs with ripped seats; the ripping appeared to have been accomplished by a knife with a serrated blade, wielded in a fit of rage, forcing the chairs into retirement. Jake chalked it up to some long-standing grudge against Mack. There were also metal shelves stacked with equipment actually related to the application of tattoos—a surprising discovery, because so few stores in this part of the county were in the business advertised on their sign. He also saw packages of printer paper, rolls of duct tape, a socket set, and a long-handled scraper for use on an icy windshield.
“Sorry you’re ailing, Leo,” Jake said, in a voice that indicated he was not the least bit sorry, “but I’ve got a problem. And if I’ve got a problem, then you’ve got a problem.” It was clichéd stuff, all right, and straight out of a TV cop show, but he needed to keep the conversation light. And he needed to keep it on Leo’s level.
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“Fenton McHale.”
“What about him?”
“You sold him heroin this morning.”
“Did not.”
“I got a witness says you did.”
Leo lifted the top half of his body from the soiled mattress, propping himself up sideways on one elbow. “I been puking for the past two days,” he said in a weak voice. “I ain’t sold nothing to nobody. Never even left this here room.”
Jake crouched down so that he would be at eye level with Leo. He hated to do that—Leo smelled like fruity vomit and sweat—but it was necessary.
“Leo, there are people dying out there from this particular batch of heroin. I need you to stop selling it. And I need you to tell me where you got it.”
“I done told you. I ain’t left this roo—”
Jake snatched the long-handled scraper from the shelf. In a flash he had angled it like a vise to capture Leo’s neck, twisting Leo’s body so that he faced away from Jake. While Leo squirmed frantically and clawed at the scraper with desperate fingers, Jake tightened it up under the man’s chin.
“Shut up,” Jake said, his lips nearly touching Leo’s left ear. “You got it? Shut up. No more lies. Where’d you get the heroin you sold to McHale today?”
“I—didn’t—” Leo’s voice was an air-starved rasp. “Didn’t—sell—”
Jake dropped the scraper. He stood up.
“Tell me the truth,” he said, “or I’ll do that all over again. Harder. Don’t think I won’t.”
A panting, frazzled Leo spit out a chunk of phlegm. It landed on the mattress. He barely noticed. He coughed, pulling his wrist across his mouth.
“I didn’t say I never sold to that asshole McHale,” Leo said. “I just said I didn’t sell him anything in the past couple days. Don’t know who did, neither. Been too damned sick.”
Jake felt a cold trickle of doubt. The customers in the front room of Skin U Alive had no incentive to lie for Leo. And they had said the same thing: Leo had the flu. He had been flat on his back and helpless during the time when somebody sold McHale—and a lot of other people, too—the tainted heroin.
Leo flopped back down on the mattress. He clutched his belly and rocked back and forth, letting out a low moan.
“Hey. Jill.” Jake had punched in the numbers Jill Cousins had given him earlier that day. “Deputy Oakes again. Nope—no more information on McHale.” Let her find out on her own that she would need to seek other employment. “I asked you who’d sold him the heroin. And you said Leo Smith.” Hearing her reply, he felt like crushing the phone with his bare hand as if it was an empty soda can. “Okay. You’re right—I asked who his regular supplier was. I didn’t specify today.”
He slapped the cell back in his pocket. He was no closer to finding out who was selling the bad batch.
“So it wasn’t you.” He nudged Leo’s backside with the toe of his boot. “McHale got it on his own today. From somebody else. Because you didn’t show up. You were telling the truth. Getting the flu makes you one lucky SOB, Leo.”
Leo coughed, spat, and moaned some more. “Ain’t feeling none too lucky. Pass me that bucket over there, willya? Something’s comin’ up again.”
Bell
7:09 P.M.
In the summer, dusk was her favorite time to drive. It was different in the winter; she didn’t like driving in the winter twilight, when the murky, fast-fading light meant that you couldn’t tell the state of the pavement. Black ice was always lurking on mountain roads, ready to yank the asphalt out from under you like a tablecloth in a magic act.
But summer dusk was sultry, with the consequent benefit of no ice on the roads. What you couldn’t see wouldn’t hurt you. She loved the guilelessness of summer dusk, the languor, the glide. Driving at this time of day, at this time of the year, relaxed her.
Usually.
Not tonight. Tonight, she was tense and wary. Might as well be winter, Bell thought.
She looked over at Rhonda. The assistant prosecutor was reading a note on her phone. The screen’s light illuminated Rhonda’s broad face, a face that carried hints of at least eight generations of Lovejoys and Beauchamps who had lived and died in these hills. Bell had met more than a few of Rhonda’s relatives—in a county as small as this one, every person you knew came stapled to a trail of other people you would get to know, too—and she was always struck by the way one face merged into another, by the subtle replicating echo that moved from face to face. There was something consoling about that, to Bell’s way of thinking. It was as if certain ideas never perished from the earth, even if they could only be expressed in something as fragile as a human face. They constantly found new life in a different venue.
“Here it is,” Rhonda said. “Just got an e-mail back from her parole officer. The last address he has for Tammy Kincaid is an apartment complex out by Charm Lake.”
“I don’t like the sound of that—‘the last address he has.’ He’s her PO, for God’s sake. Shouldn’t he know for sure where she lives?”
“Yep. He surely should. Let me put it this way. When God was handing out the gene for work ethic, Ross Parker called in sick that day.”
“Okay, fine.” Bell flipped on her blinker. Time to make the turn onto Nash Pike. From there, they would head east to Charm Lake.
Jake Oakes had called her an hour ago. He needed Bell to help him run down the last two names on his list of local dealers: Tammy Kincaid and Raylene Hughes. He had received Sheriff Harrison’s blessing to make the request. They were shorthanded and the toll of overdoses was climbing; there wasn’t time to ponder the propriety of a prosecutor pitching in on an investigation. Bell had done it before. She would do it again.
“Really appreciate you coming along, Rhonda,” Bell said. Her next call after signing off with Jake had been to her assistant prosecutor. “If Kincaid looks like a dead end, we’ll go see Raylene. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like she’s not averse to picking up a few bucks on the wrong side of the law now and again.”
“I didn’t know she was a dealer, though,” Rhonda said. “I was pretty surprised to see her on Jake’s list.”
“You mean she might have some moral strictures?”
“Lord, no. I just didn’t figure her to be that ambitious.”
Bell laughed. “Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.”
“Just wish I could’ve tracked her down earlier,” Rhonda said, exasperation in her voice. “Saved us the trip.”
“I know you do. It’s always a trade-off between job and family. How’s your cousin doing, anyway?”
Rhonda’s cousin, Rafe Ferguson, was recovering in a Charleston hospital from his emergency
surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurysm. The call had come into Rhonda’s office that morning, just as she was winding up her conversation with Penny Latrobe. Rhonda left minutes later to drive her mother and father to the hospital to see Rafe for what might be the last time.
“Rafe’s a fighter,” Rhonda said. She waited a beat. “Unfortunately, he’s also a smoker and a drinker, and he’s never turned down a second helping in his life. Nor a third. The doctors have been clear with Neena—that’s his wife. Unless he’s ready to make some changes in his lifestyle, he won’t be around to see his grandkids grow up.”
Bell nodded. She heard that story a dozen times a month in Raythune County. Diseases related to cigarettes and whiskey and obesity—and now drugs—had settled into the area like a turkey vulture on a fence post. Waiting to swoop in and feast.
“So Parker’s meeting us there, right?” Bell said. Out of politeness she had asked the questions she needed to ask about Rhonda’s family. Now they could get to work.
“Yeah. He says that’s best. Tammy can be a mite skittish. You don’t want to mess with her unless you know what you’re doing.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means she served a fifteen-year sentence at Lakin for aggravated assault for pumping a couple of slugs into her ex-girlfriend’s backside. Once she got out, she took up with the wife of a gun dealer named Blake Pugh.”
“Surely to God the conditions of her parole don’t allow her to have a—”
“No. Of course not. She can’t touch a firearm. But as Ross will be happy to tell you, every time he’s made a surprise visit to Tammy’s apartment, there’s LaVerne Pugh, big as life.”
“Any guns on the premises?”
“No. So he couldn’t revoke parole. But if LaVerne’s there, then guns aren’t too far away.”
“So Blake Pugh approves of his wife’s relationship with Tammy Kincaid?”
Rhonda shrugged. “Not necessarily. But love’s a funny thing. According to Ross, Pugh would rather share LaVerne with Tammy Kincaid than lose her altogether. And no matter how pissed off Pugh might get with his wife, he’d still give her a gun if she needed it.”
