Walking to Orson’s truck was fresh punishment. Uncle Orson had gotten my window repaired, but in the chaos of the attack on him I hadn’t traded vehicles. I regretted it. His was lifted, which required me to climb with a hand on the pillar support to get in. It hurt like hell.
Aside from that, Orson’s old truck was horrible. It was great for plowing through snowbanks. For any kind of comfort, it was the wrong choice. The seats were sagging, the windows ill fitting, and worst of all, there was no radio.
I had no complaints about the engine. It started right up. The rumbling vibration was hard enough to be soothing. I left the lights off and turned the heater up high.
In the dark and the diminishing cold I became more aware of the pain in my body. Lawson had done more damage. The ribs that were bruised before, maybe hairline fractured, were certainly worse off. I consoled myself with the supposition that if they were broken, I wouldn’t be walking or complaining so much.
Well, walking anyway.
The question came to me. Is this what I want from my life?
Since my rape at the hands of superior officers in Iraq I had been fighting. I fought the army for justice. I fought to keep a job that was itself a daily struggle. Every moment, I wrestled with sobriety and anger. Where was the happiness I was fighting for?
Could I even honestly tell myself I was fighting for anything? Even the breaths I took seemed to be simply in opposition to dying.
The truck was getting warm. I opened my coat to let the heat inside. The increasing temperature made me sag into the seat. My skin tingled. My eyelids were heavy. Sleep called. My body was dumping the adrenaline that had risen in the fight. The feeling was more pronounced because the recent days had been nothing but extreme highs and lows. There is a military cliché that says, sleep when you can because you never know when your next chance may be. A side to that cliché that most people don’t understand is that after the stress and terror of combat, many soldiers want nothing more than sleep.
There was one other thing I wanted. Without thinking about it I reached over and opened the glove box. Inside there was a jar of clear liquid. It was moonshine, the real illegal deal. It was some of the last batch Clare had made before going straight and working for me.
I twisted the lid off. Unaged whiskey has no color and little smell. Both come from the wooden casks. That didn’t stop me from raising the jar to my nose and breathing in the faint aroma. After that, I remember holding out the jar and looking into the liquid. I remember closing my eyes and asking myself if I really wanted to keep fighting.
Chapter 18
Dream, vision, or some other, secret reality—I never know which it is when the dead visit me. Usually it was my husband. For a long time, I would wake in the middle of the night to find him lying beside me. Sometimes he was as I imagined him to be before the chemicals of warfare began their slow destruction of his body. Other times he was a nightmare from the grave, sleeping with me, offering nothing but the cold of death.
That night he was simply a presence looking at me with sadness. He gave no advice or warnings. I didn’t ask for any. We looked at each other. He faded from the seat beside me, his face replaced by Billy’s.
Billy was outside the cab knocking on the window. He was smiling, happy to see me. There was concern, too. I reached over to pull the door lock and realized that my hand was empty. The jar of moonshine was on the floorboard. It was empty. The liquid was pooled on the mat. I felt cheated and grateful for it at the same time.
“Are you okay?” Billy asked as he climbed in.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You haven’t answered your phone. We got a 911 call about a woman and a big man fighting in the drop-off zone. What happened?”
“You have pretty much the whole story. I walked out the door. Lawson and Sissy were there. I think he had been working her over a little bit. Then he saw me.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Hurting,” I said. “I don’t think there is any real damage.”
“Are you lying to me?”
I wanted to answer. I didn’t. It’s possible that I couldn’t if I tried. For the first time, I was aware of how much I feared confessing weakness to Billy. He was a better person than I was. I had cursed his kindness as a liability on the job. It wasn’t. My anger was. But I didn’t want that taken away from me.
“I just wanted a drink.” I said it like a dare.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
“You decided to have a drink? Or to pour it out?” He lifted his feet and put them down, making small splashes in the corn whiskey. “I know you, Katrina. And I know when you really decide to drink, you will.”
I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my coat and asked, “Did you get the warrants?”
“Yeah.” Billy looked like he wanted to say something else.
I didn’t let him. I asked, “When do we execute?”
He checked his watch and said, “Still a couple of hours. You were right about the trailer and land on the south side of 160. It is titled in the name of Sissy Harding. Her maiden name.”
“Why start there?”
“The warrant says we’re looking for evidence. We’re really looking to catch Lawson and Levi. There is a good chance that’s where they’re hiding. And I figure they’re most likely to be there at night.”
Billy leaned his head against the passenger window and closed his eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Grabbing a little nap. Join me?”
I looked the other way and rolled my eyes. When I turned back there was a fraction of a second where I wasn’t sure who was in the truck with me, Billy Blevins or Nelson Solomon.
The next thing I knew Billy was sitting there with a steaming cup of coffee. The truck engine was dead. Cold was creeping back in.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I shut off the truck to save your gas.”
“I was asleep?”
“You can call it that.”
“Where’d you get coffee?”
Billy lifted a thermos from between his feet. “My truck. I come prepared.”
“Always the difference between us.”
“You’re wrong about that. We’re just prepared for different things.” He handed me the plastic cup.
The heat was wonderful on my hands. I pressed it to my face.
“You should go home,” he said. “Get some real sleep.”
“Is that your way of telling me not to show up for the raid on the trailer?”
“Would you listen, if I did?”
“You would have to fire me to keep me away.” The look on Billy’s face made me regret saying it. He appeared to be giving termination serious thought. “I’ll be fine. The coffee was all I needed.”
He looked at his watch. Then he looked again and stared at it for too long. “I’m getting to the SO. I’ve pulled in everyone available to hit that trailer. Your time would be better spent staying here at the hospital.”
“Uncle Orson doesn’t need me at the moment.”
“I was talking about checking in for a long stay of your own.”
“Thanks for the coffee,” I said.
Billy went to his departmental SUV and left. I waited for the coffee to warm me and put a little jolt in my heart. I could have waited forever it seemed. When I did go, I drove slowly. I felt worried. My mind was nothing but blowing brown dust. I touched the scar at my eyebrow.
I was still touching the scar when I pulled into the lot at the SO. I looked to be the last to arrive. There was a huddle of deputies around Billy. I left the truck running and joined the group.
“…one last thing,” Billy said. He was speaking loud into the wind. “We have no evidence that either E. Lawson or Levi Sharon are on the property. That’s why we’re
going in on the warrant to search for evidence. Don’t let that make you complacent. Either or both of these men could be hiding in the trailer. They are dangerous.”
“You couldn’t say all this inside where it’s warm?” Duck asked. “And I’m the CO. Why couldn’t I stay in the jail, where even the prisoners get to be toasty and dry?”
“All hands,” Billy said. “That includes corrections officers, Duck.”
Calvin came out of the SO building and scanned the parking lot. “Hey,” he called. Not quite loud enough.
The group was already shuffling off to their vehicles.
“Hang on,” I shouted.
Everyone stopped.
“What’s Calvin want?” I pointed to him. He was waving his arms and running over.
“We have radios, you know,” Duck said. A few of the guys laughed.
“Where’s Bob?” Calvin asked.
No one laughed. We all looked around.
“Did she know what time we were gathering?” Billy asked.
“You know she did. You told her yourself,” Calvin answered.
“Did you—”
“I called.” Calvin cut Billy off. “Home and cell.”
“Maybe her unit got stuck in the snow,” Duck suggested.
Billy lifted his hand radio and said, “Dispatch—from sheriff.”
“Go ahead, Sheriff.”
“Do you have a 20 on Deputy Rantz?”
“Negative. The board lists her as off until 2100.”
Without needing to, Billy looked at his watch.
I was already running to my truck when he said, “Calvin, you ride with me.”
Duck yelled, “I’ll go with Hurricane!”
“You’d better hurry up then!” I called back.
Duck was a big, slow man. If he wasn’t a friend, I would have left him. At least he had a radio. Billy’s voice came over it, calm and forceful. Three units were responding. I wondered if that included us.
Dispatch was reading out Bobbi Rantz’s address before we got out of the parking lot. She lived in Forsyth, so we were on her street in minutes.
“We have a 911 report of shots fired at the address,” dispatch said when we were three hundred yards away.
Bob lived in a small frame house in a line of similar houses all painted some shade of white. They were packed close together but erratically located. In the piled and filthy snow, they looked like ragged teeth in a diseased mouth.
Billy had taken the lead, running fast with lights and siren. Duck and I came up second. Uncle Orson’s old truck didn’t inspire a lot of confidence on slick roads. It was in its element, though, when I reached the house and kept going through the drifts to stop in Bob’s yard.
Piled snow flew like the froth of rough seas. Through the spray I noticed a Ford truck parked on the street two doors down. I kept my eyes on the truck as the air cleared. It was the same one Levi had been driving when he confronted me at the Star Road Theater. Beyond it, parked in a vacant lot and barely visible behind still-green junipers, was a Taney County Sheriff’s Department cruiser.
We all piled out of our vehicles and I called out, “It’s not just Dugan!” Everyone looked and I pointed out the truck and cruiser down the street. “Levi Sharon is here. Probably inside.”
Another two cruisers pulled up. Billy pointed to the deputies and shouted, “You!” He shifted the aim of his finger to the gathering groups of people on both sides of the house. “Get those people back.” He turned to Calvin. “Get more people here. Set up a command post and take over site control. Back my SUV across the street, park it by that tree. That’ll be the CP. Duck!” Billy pointed again. “Go around back. Keep under cover.” Duck went as fast as he could. His pace almost qualified as a run.
Billy joined me, keeping Uncle Orson’s truck between us and the front of Bob’s house.
“If Bob was okay, she’d be outside by now,” I said.
Billy nodded in agreement. It seemed like flakes were falling off his Stetson. They weren’t. It was snowing again. We both looked to the sky. As if on cue, the air stilled. Flakes, fat and wet, dropped in slow motion. They immediately began to pile up.
I started to say something. It was going to be about the situation. I wanted it to be about the job at hand. I said, “I wish you would put a rain cover on your hat.”
The surprise in his face was worth the foolish feeling I suffered. He didn’t quite smile. He didn’t say anything, either. But he understood the comment probably more than I did. He turned his attention back to the front door of Bob’s house.
“I’ll get one,” he said. Then he shouted, “Levi—Dugan—whichever one of you is standing—you need to come out!”
The front door swung in. The opening was empty and dark.
“Who’s there?” Billy called out.
“Who you think?” Levi shouted back.
“Levi, is Deputy Rantz all right?”
“The girl is fine. She ain’t happy.”
“Why don’t you send her out? Then we can talk.”
“We’re talking now. And if she’s out, there’s nothing stopping you from coming in.”
“How about if I make you a promise?” Billy asked.
“Most times that’d be enough.” Levi’s shout carried a sad weight.
“This time?”
“It’s snowing again.”
Billy looked at me. Then he let his head hang. He moved to the edge of the truck hood. That left his upper body exposed. “Yes, it is. Pretty hard.”
“I like the snow. Remember how we talked about the trees and the seasons we missed in Iraq?”
“I remember.”
“I missed the snow.”
“Levi!” Billy barked the name. “We need to talk in a way to move things forward.”
“There’s only so far forward we can go, Big Billy.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s a truth and an inevitability. All things come to this point.”
“There doesn’t have to be an ending. Not here.”
The shadowed doorway remained silent.
“Tell me what’s been going on in there, Levi,” Billy said, stepping to the bumper of the truck. That left him fully exposed. His weapon was pointed into the piling snow. He held it in a relaxed one-handed grip.
My grip was two-handed and tense.
An anguished screech came from the house. Then Tom Dugan came into view. He flopped forward, his left shoulder propped against the doorframe. He sagged on one leg. Blood was running from his pants. He had been shot either in the hip or high on the thigh. It was hard to tell.
“This is the bastard that killed Rose,” Levi shouted from behind Dugan.
“No, he isn’t,” Billy answered. He turned to look at where he had staged Calvin.
I followed the direction of his glance and saw that there was already an ambulance waiting. Calvin was sending other deputies out to circle the house. I was impressed and proud of him. I resolved to let him know.
“Your cops are screwed up, Billy,” Levi called. “They’re killing girls and attacking each other.”
“Ask yourself who sent you after Dugan,” Billy said. He wasn’t shouting anymore. “Then ask yourself the last time Lawson had your interests at heart.”
Billy was several inches in front of the truck. The snow showed gouged trails where he was scooting through it rather than stepping.
“Lawson’s as bad as they come,” Levi said. “That don’t make him wrong.”
“You okay, Dugan?”
“Hell no, I’m not okay.” His voice was a loud whine. “She shot me.”
“Seems to me you brought that on yourself, pardner,” Billy said.
“That’s bullshit. I just came here to talk to Bobbi. That’s all, talk.”
“I
’m betting you came uninvited.” Billy kept creeping forward.
I lifted my weapon and sighted over Dugan’s right shoulder. I tried not to think about actually trying the shot if Levi raised a gun on Billy.
“Just to talk!” Dugan wailed his justification. “I left my weapon in the car. I came to talk to her.”
A loud, derisive laugh came from behind Dugan. Then Levi said, “He keeps saying that.”
Dugan squealed like a kicked pig.
“Don’t you?” Levi asked him. “That leg sure hurts, don’t it?” To Billy he said, “This piece of shit keeps crying about all the ways he’s misunderstood. He moans about how he left his gun behind. When I got here he was on the floor and this was beside him.”
A small, familiar pistol came out the door. It bounced once on the covered porch and landed in the new snow on the top step.
“It’s not mine!” Dugan pleaded.
“I don’t care,” Billy said. His voice had a crystal edge. It was as cold as lost grace. He was almost halfway to the porch and had never yet lifted his feet.
I looked to the left and saw more deputies had arrived. Calvin was working the radio and using hand signals to fan them out around the house. Two were crouch-walking behind me to get to the left side. Wind kicked up and the falling snow whipped up into a froth. When I looked again, Billy was veiled. The house and the black hole of the open door appeared to have receded into a fog. I saw movement in the opening but could make no sense out of it.
I took a few steps, moving out from behind the truck and around to flank Billy.
“Let him go,” Billy said.
I doubted that his voice would carry to the house, he spoke so quietly.
It carried. Levi answered. “I’m doin’ your job for you.”
“You’re doing Lawson’s scut work.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know a lot more than you, Levi.” Billy shuffle-stepped a few more inches. “You’re carrying the weight for things that happened a long time ago. It’s time to put it down before it kills you.”
“Get me out of here!” Dugan shouted out, seemingly to no one in particular.
“Shut up,” Billy told him.
A Killing Secret Page 19
