by Wiley Cash
Down the darkened street to his left, Winston saw flashlights moving through the shell of a home that was under construction. A fire truck and two pickups that probably belonged to volunteer firefighters sat out front. He turned and drove toward them. He pulled the cruiser behind the fire truck, grabbed his own flashlight, and climbed out.
He didn’t recognize the four men on the scene, but they recognized him and called him sheriff. Only one of them wore the full regalia of thick rubber boots, suspenders, and the heavy helmet with the plastic shield flipped up and away from his face. While the others loaded the hose back onto the truck, he stood in what looked to be the house’s living room, where huge windows in the back of the room would reveal views of the marsh once the sun began to rise. The wall and floor in the corner of the room closest to the marsh were charred black. The fireman held the beam of his flashlight there and pointed with his free hand.
“It looks like an incendiary device, Sheriff,” he said.
Winston stepped toward the burned area; the floor was wet, and shards of glass crunched beneath his feet.
“Somebody tossed a glass bottle full of accelerant,” the fireman said.
“I see that,” Winston said. He shone his flashlight around the room. The windows had not yet been installed. “Was it still burning when y’all got here?”
“Yes, sir,” the fireman said. “Just barely. We doused it to make sure it was out.”
Beneath the broken glass, the plywood floor was soaked through, and Winston could hear water dripping from the ceiling and the eaves outside the open gaps in the walls where the windows would go. He imagined the four firefighters spraying the house with water beginning with the exterior, snaking the hose through one of the open windows, and then doing the same inside.
“Looks like y’all might’ve saved the house,” Winston said, “or what’ll be a house one day.”
“Thank you, sir,” the fireman said, his body relaxing with a squeak of rubber as he shifted his weight to one leg.
“Let’s hope he doesn’t use more accelerant next time,” Winston said, “or another incendiary device.”
“Next time?” the fireman said. “You think he’ll be back?”
“I would think so,” Winston said. “Most people don’t commit an arson like this one just to see a corner of a room get blacked up before the fire truck arrives. They learn something with each fire they set, and they usually don’t quit until they’re caught.”
The fireman stood there another moment while Winston passed the beam of his light over the floor and ceiling, and then the man stepped outside to where the others had gathered in the dark around the fire truck. Winston could see the glowing end of a cigarette and hear snatches of conversation.
He walked to the window closest to where it appeared the fire had started, and he shone his flashlight on the dark gray, sandy ground outside, looking for fresh footprints. He climbed out the window and dropped the few feet down to the soft earth. Outside, there were countless divots in the ground that could have been the footprints of an arsonist or a construction worker or a firefighter or deer, or perhaps even spots where tools or planks had been dropped or where hard rain had come off the roof and fallen haphazardly without gutters to guide it.
He walked around the far side of the structure where a driveway had been scraped from the garage to the street but not yet filled with cement. He stepped down into the wide trough and looked out at the road, where a truck’s headlights had just been extinguished. Winston raised his flashlight in the direction of the road and knew immediately that the truck belonged to Bradley Frye.
Frye walked around to the front of his truck and talked with the firefighters who were still gathered at the back of the engine. Winston could see that Frye wasn’t dressed as if he’d just left bed in a hurry; instead, he wore a black union suit and boots. Once again, he had a pistol holstered on his belt. Winston couldn’t hear what Frye and the other men were saying, but he chose to stay where he stood in the driveway instead of walking closer to where they were gathered in the street. Eventually the firefighter he’d spoken with inside the house looked up at Winston and gave him a wave.
“We’re heading out, Sheriff,” he said. “You need anything else from us?”
“Nothing right now,” Winston said. “I may give y’all a call tomorrow if you don’t mind putting together something about what you found when you got out here tonight.”
“You got it, Sheriff,” the man said.
Winston watched him climb into the fire engine as the other three men returned to their trucks. Bradley Frye stood on the edge of the yard, looking from the house to Winston. Winston watched him, not moving or saying a word until Frye set out across the yard toward the house.
“No, no, no,” Winston said. He clicked off his flashlight and slid it through the loop on his belt, and then he stepped into the yard to intercept Frye before he could walk any farther.
“What do you mean ‘no, no, no’?” Frye said. “That’s my damn house right there.”
“It’s a crime scene now,” Winston said. “I don’t want anybody tampering with it.”
“Tampering with it?” Frye said. “Tampering?” He turned and pointed to his left at the forest that separated the development from the Grove, which, this close to the water, was at least a mile away. “You need to talk to those thugs about tampering,” he said. “We’ve lost tools, had homes and vehicles damaged, four-wheelers coming through and tearing up sod. And you’re going to warn me, the owner, about tampering when you won’t do nothing to stop them?”
“Maybe they’ll stay out of your neighborhood if you stay out of theirs,” Winston said. He walked past Frye without waiting for him to respond. He reached for his flashlight and clicked it on again, raised its beam once he was close enough to Frye’s truck.
“What are you talking about?” Frye asked.
“Why are you even out here this time of night?” Winston asked. “You been out trick-or-treating?”
“Checking on my property,” Frye said. “Somebody’s got to keep it safe. Y’all ain’t going to do it.”
Winston shone the flashlight on Frye’s truck, peered in its windows. “Where do you put them?” he asked.
“Put what?” Frye said, then, “Stay away from my truck. You don’t have the right to look at it.”
Winston laughed. “Oh, Brad, you’ve got a lot to learn about the law before they swear you in. You’d better start studying.” He tapped the toolbox in the bed of Frye’s truck with the end of his flashlight, heard the echo inside. “Is this where you keep your battle flags when you’re not flying them?” Winston looked back at Frye, and then he continued moving the flashlight’s beam around Frye’s truck until he found what he was looking for: a bracket made to hold a flag had been fastened to the back of the truck’s cab just below the back windshield. Winston looked at Frye where he still stood in the yard, his light steady on the bracket. “Is this where you put it?”
“Put what?”
“Your little rebel flag. The one you fly when you’re trying to scare Black folks into believing you’re a tough guy.”
“Get away from my truck,” Frye said, pounding down through the yard toward Winston. He grabbed Winston’s arm that held the flashlight, causing it to clatter to the asphalt.
Winston took hold of Frye’s left arm and spun his body so that his back slammed against the passenger’s-side door. He splayed Frye’s legs with his knee, and he threw his left forearm under Frye’s chin to keep him pinned there. The men’s faces were inches apart, and Winston could hear Frye’s breathing and feel his pulse pounding in his neck and smell beer on his breath.
“Boy, never put your hands on an officer,” Winston said. “Never.”
He felt Frye’s right hand flick toward the gun he had holstered on his hip, but Winston was faster, and before Frye was able to get ahold of his pistol Winston had his pressed against the soft skin below Frye’s chin. He held it there, his mind thinking things that
shocked him. Did he want to shoot Bradley Frye? Could he? How would he explain it, and could he get away with it? These thoughts passed through Winston’s mind in the time it would’ve taken a bullet to leave his gun and enter Frye’s head, which ended up being enough time for Winston to check himself. Instead of squeezing the trigger, he lowered his left hand and unholstered Frye’s pistol and tossed it onto the dirt behind him. He wondered if drinking had made Frye braver and stupider than he otherwise was.
“I told you to leave that weapon at home,” Winston said. He took a step back toward the house and lowered his pistol.
Frye stood up straight and ran his hands over his clothes like he was either grooming himself or checking his body for bullet holes.
“Do that in a couple of months and you’ll be holding a gun on the high sheriff of Brunswick County.”
“That’ll be fine,” Winston said. “I’ll still be the faster draw.”
“You going to shoot me now?” Frye asked. “First, you shot one in Gastonia and now a white boy down here. It’d be a hell of a way to end your career. Go from shooting criminals to shooting heroes.”
“No,” Winston said. He sighed, holstered his pistol. “I’m not going to shoot you. I’m not even going to kick your ass, especially not without an audience because you’d just lie about it anyway.” Winston kept his eyes on Frye and walked backward in the yard until he stood over Frye’s weapon. He bent down and picked up the gun and cracked the cylinder, turning it up so the bullets slipped out. He closed his hands around them, but he held the unloaded gun out to Frye, who took it and slid it back into his holster. “And you’re not a hero, Brad. You’re a soft-handed daddy’s boy who grew up with money and mistook it for brains. If you become sheriff it won’t make you any smarter or any braver than you were when you were a punk-ass kid ganging up on Black kids because you thought it would make your daddy proud.”
“You keep my daddy’s name out of your mouth.”
“You keep out of the Grove, Brad, unless you’re invited, and I can’t imagine a soul there wanting to see your face. Those people have been through enough.”
“Those people are drug dealers and vandals. You saw what happened to Rodney Bellamy. And now they’re setting these houses on fire.”
“We don’t know what happened to Rodney Bellamy,” Winston said. “And we don’t know who set this fire. It could have been you. Stay out of the Grove, Brad.” Winston, his fist still closed around the bullets, lifted his hand. “I’m going to hold on to these. Why don’t you head home. My office will reach out to you tomorrow for a statement, maybe call you back out here to look around in the daylight.”
“I’ve seen all I need to see to know what happened,” Frye said.
“Then I reckon you can go.”
Winston stood in the yard and watched Frye’s truck drive around the cul-de-sac at the end of the road before turning and gunning his engine on the way past Winston. Winston stood there until the truck’s taillights disappeared and he could no longer hear the noise of its engine. The sounds of the night—frogs, the lap of the water, crickets—lifted up around him like a television set that’s volume was slowly being raised. He considered stopping by the address on Spoonbill where the call had come from, but the lights in the neighborhood had all gone off for the night and the fire had been put out, and whatever would need to happen next could wait until morning.
Chapter 12
Colleen woke to the sound of her father’s voice outside her bedroom door, his knuckles tapping gently. She’d been dreaming—something about the water knocking through the pipes of an old European city, a place she’d never been. She opened her eyes now, slices of sunlight cutting into them like razor blades. Her wristwatch sat where she had left it on her bedside table, and she picked it up and examined it, but her vision was too fuzzed with sleep to read it, though she was able to see and feel that she still wore her mother’s ring. She let her head fall back onto her pillow.
“Colleen,” her father said. He knocked again. “I need you to wake up, honey.”
She knew he was knocking because her mother had woken up and gone downstairs and had been unable to find her ring. She imagined the fear and panic that had probably shot through her upon discovering it gone. For a moment, Colleen wanted to feel that it served her mother right for leaving the ring exposed while a stranger spent the night in their home, and then she felt guilty for being the one who had taken it.
“Okay,” Colleen said, just loud enough for her voice to escape her mouth. A headache thrummed on the edge of her temples, but she fought it with thoughts of a hot shower, Tylenol, and a glass of water.
“You up?” her dad asked, apparently not having moved from his spot outside in the hallway.
“Yes,” she said, frustrated now, remembering what it was like to be woken up for school as a teenager or called by her parents to some other morning duty she didn’t want to perform. Her mind confronted the possibility that perhaps Scott was on the phone, and her chest seized in an icy panic. She’d unplugged the jack from the back of the phone the night before just as she was falling asleep on the off chance that it would ring in the night for her father or in the early morning for her mother, and she had not considered that Scott might call her. But if it was early here it was even earlier there, and there was no way he would call unless it was an emergency. And Scott was alone in Dallas. There could be no emergency when Scott was alone because he was the most self-reliant person she’d ever met.
She stretched her arms above her head, her mind turning toward Danny and what he’d said the night before about her not having anything more in common with anyone in the world than she had in common with Scott, and she knew it was true and that Danny was right. At their wedding, Scott’s parents’ pastor had read the verses—she couldn’t remember the name of the scripture—about love being patient and kind. But where were the verses about grief? Where were the verses about grief being selfish and cruel and solitary?
She sat up on the edge of the bed and put her elbows on her knees. She rubbed her eyes and ran her fingers over her face. She squeezed her mother’s ring off her swollen finger and closed her hand around it. She checked her watch again, now fully awake. It was a little after 8:00 a.m. Her father knocked again.
“Jesus,” she whispered to herself.
She stood and walked to the door, turned the lock on the knob, and opened it. Her father leaned against the door frame in the hallway. She opened her hand and showed him the ring. He was already wearing his uniform, but his eyes were red and rimmed with sleeplessness, and his face had a look of confused exhaustion.
“Why are you showing me that?” he asked.
“I figured you were looking for it,” she said. “I had it in my room.”
He took it from her and held it in his hand. “I don’t think your mother even noticed it was gone,” he said.
Colleen leaned out into the hallway and saw that the door to Groom’s room was open, but he was nowhere in sight. And then she heard the shower turn on in the bathroom across the hall.
“I need you to ride out to Rodney Bellamy’s house with me,” her father said.
“Why?”
“I need to question his widow,” he said. “I know Rodney was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I need to at least ask about it now that she’s had a day or two to recover from the shock of it.” Her father stepped back and folded his arms. He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “And there’s some other things.”
“What other things?” she asked.
“Bradley Frye,” her father said. “He’s been driving through the Grove at night with some of his good ol’ boys, flying rebel flags, shooting guns in the air, trying to scare people. I need to let her know I’m working on it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” she said.
“I didn’t figure it would.”
“I saw him out last night with Danny. Danny said that he—” But she was interrupted by her mother’s voice calling
from downstairs.
“Y’all come on down here and eat,” she said. “Tell Mr. Groom that food’s on the table.”
Her father had turned toward the stairs at the sound of her mother’s voice. He looked back at Colleen, and his face had changed; he now looked annoyed, frustrated.
“You’ll have to meet our FBI pilot,” he said. “We’re going to drop him at the airport on the way. Let him get back to work so he can get this damn plane out of here.”
She considered telling her father that she’d met Groom only a few hours earlier, that she’d seen her mother’s car parked outside the Carolina Motel and found him on the pay phone in the empty parking lot, that later she’d discovered him waiting for her when she returned home. But she didn’t feel like explaining any of that to her father this early in the morning, didn’t feel like admitting that she’d been drunk and confused and caught off guard. “What’s he like?” she said instead.
Her father looked at the closed bathroom door across the hallway. He lowered his voice. “He’s kind of uptight,” he said. “Most of those FBI guys are.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That makes sense.”
Her father went downstairs, and soon she could hear his and her mother’s muffled voices coming from the kitchen. She knew he was probably teasing her mother about not knowing where her ring had been. Across the hall, the shower was still running.
Without thinking—at least without thinking clearly—Colleen crept down the hall past the bathroom toward the room where Groom had spent the night. She peered inside the open door. The bed was tightly made on the single mattress atop the simple frame that her parents had always kept pushed in the corner for guests who never came. Her mother’s old sewing machine sat beside the bed on top of an old card table; several small chests with drawers full of ribbon, thread, and needles were stacked beside it. The boots that Groom had been wearing last night rested side by side beneath the bed. An army-green duffel bag sat beside them. Otherwise, there was nothing in the room that spoke to the fact that someone had spent the night there.
