The Innocents (21 page)

“I know.”

“People have been calling me a terrorist my whole life,” Sammi said. “We moved to Mississippi when I was six. But I was born outside Detroit, in Dearborn. I sort of remember what it was like there. Lots of Muslims, families getting together without people looking at us funny. I was happy. Everything seemed a lot brighter up there. More trees. More love. I guess coming down here after nine/eleven wasn’t the best idea. My father had a brother who worked down in Gulfport. He set him up with a few stores, and here I am.”

“Don’t judge this town on those bikers,” Caddy said. “They’re not even from here.”

“It’s not the bikers,” Sammi said. “Even before all this, people looked at me funny. They laughed at me in school, calling me Jihad Johnny and all that shit. They once evacuated the high school after I got into a fight with another kid. The kid told the principal I planned to blow up the lunchroom.”

“What’d your parents say?”

“You know my father?”

“I’ve met him,” Caddy said.

“Well, it’s always the same thing,” Sammi said, trying to push himself off the bed but getting met with some pain. He gritted his teeth. “He always said we were lucky to be here. Anytime there was something bad in Syria on the news, he’d have us watch it. He’d talk about how we lived in a better place and to ignore the bad stuff. He told us to
never talk religion or politics with y’all. He said work hard in school, do your best to become a doctor, engineer, or something. But look at me. I barely got a degree. I’ll be selling live bait and Moon Pies until I’m an old man. I guess it’s made me hard. I don’t care how much folks try and hurt me.”

“I know what you mean,” Caddy said. “This is a place to rest up, heal, get a new life plan. Think of this place like a base camp. You stay here until you’re strong enough to either go back to work or do something new.”

“My father wants me back at the store today.”

Caddy nodded. “You just got out of the hospital,” she said. “Give yourself some time.”

“What if they come back?” Sammi said. “What if those men ride up here on those fucking Harleys and try to start trouble with you?”

“They’ve been here before,” she said. “And I asked them to leave.”

Sammi smiled, Caddy seeing he’d busted a couple of teeth. “You asked them?”

“Nicely,” Caddy said. “And I pointed my uncle’s old twelve-gauge at the ugliest one.”

“They’re all ugly.”

“True.”

“The Quran commands me to stand out firmly for justice,” he said. “Even if that means going against yourself, your parents, or kin.”

“The Bible likes justice, too,” Caddy said. “How you go about it just depends on what volume you read.”

“If those men killed Milly, I want them to die for it,” Sammi said. “I think about her every minute. I could have helped her.”

“How?” Caddy said. “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”

•   •   •

T
ell me exactly what he said,” Quinn said.

“He asked me if Milly had been talking about him,” Nikki said. “I told him no and he called me a liar.”

“He threatened you.”

“Not exactly,” Nikki said. “He went around it. My son had woken up when he drove up. I opened the door and told him I was busy, but when I walked back to the crib, he was right behind me. He kept on telling me babies freaked him out because they were so delicate. Jesus God. My blood just ran cold.”

“Did Milly talk about Nito?”

“Only that he was a complete unhinged freak,” Nikki said. “She told me he was always asking her out, saying that since she’d gone black with Joshua, there was no going back. But Nito wasn’t Joshua. Joshua was a good-looking, smart guy. Nito Reece is nasty. He’s a damn drug dealer and a thug.”

“I can bring him in,” Quinn said. “Talk to him.”

“Please, please don’t use my name,” Nikki said. “God. I have a baby. Do I look like I have a whole lot of options around here?”

Quinn stood with the girl in what could only be politely described as a shithole. The baby was back inside with his grandmother, Quinn standing sure-footed in the dirt yard smoking a Drew Estates Maduro he’d started that morning. Nikki sat down on a toppled old refrigerator. A stained mattress lay nearby, along with a bunch of Coke cans tossed around the yard. A hot wind blew through the trees, a dog barking from down the road.

The dog got the attention of Hondo, who poked his head from the
passenger side of Quinn’s truck and sniffed at the air. Quinn wrote his cell on the back of an old business card and handed it to the girl.

“Nito Reece gets within a mile of you, you call me.”

“He’s crazy, you know?”

“Yep.”

“But I don’t see him killing Milly,” Nikki said. “I think what happened has just made everyone crazy. And if you’re crazy to start, that ball can really start rolling.”

“I’ve heard a lot about Nito,” Quinn said. “But this is the first I’ve heard about him knowing Milly Jones.”

“What if he knows me and you talked?”

“I don’t think it’ll be me who’ll pull him in,” Quinn said. “The sheriff’s better with people skills.”

“Lillie Virgil?” Nikki said, sort of laughing. “Are you kidding
me?”

C
an a man get a fuckin’ Mountain Dew around here?” Nito Reece said. “I mean, shit.”

“We’re full-service, Ranito,” Lillie said. “We have some extra barbecue from the Fillin’ Station in the fridge. Would you like me to heat that up, too?”

“Fillin’ Station?” Nito said. “Yeah, well. All right. Got any sides?”

“Beans and slaw,” Lillie said. “Maybe some white bread.”

“White bread,” Nito said, laughing. “Shit. OK.”

Nito sat at a small table in a small, square cinder-block room at the sheriff’s office. The walls had been painted a light blue, Lillie being told it would soothe the suspect into talking. In her years of being a cop, she never found that to be true. Usually when you force a human being into a small, crowded space, they grow more defensive. She got Nito the Mountain Dew and asked Mary Alice to heat up the barbecue. God
knows, they had enough food, piles being brought in by concerned folks around Tibbehah who wanted them to keep up their strength, go ahead and hurry up and make that arrest.

“I know what’s going on here,” Nito said. “Y’all trying to get me to roll over on Ordeen for that bullshit charge during that illegal stop. But that shit ain’t happenin’. All I can say is, that wasn’t his dope or his gun. Someone setting his ass up.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Lillie said. “Wasn’t he arrested driving your car? I guess he felt comfortable to take his stuff and hide it in your glove box.”

“Damn,” Nito said. “Shit.”

“You’re a convicted drug dealer,” Lillie said. “You’ve been in twice already. I hear you do business with the Bohannan Twins in Memphis. So how about we all talk straight? I need your help.”

“Y’all straight trippin’,” Nito said, rubbing his pink tongue over his gold teeth. Hands folded in front of him like a good church boy.

“How long did you and Milly Jones date?” Lillie asked.

“No,” Nito said, standing up. “Hell, no. I thought you ask me to come in here and talk about my boy, help y’all get straight in your mind he didn’t do nothin’. Now you asking me about that dead white girl. Shit. You set my ass up.”

“Folks up in Blackjack saw y’all riding around together,” Lillie said. “That electric-blue car of yours is pretty hard to miss.”

“I don’t have that car no more,” Nito said. “I sold it. If someone said they saw me and Milly riding around in that Nova I had, then they lying out their damn assholes.”

Mary Alice knocked, poked her head into the interview room, and asked if they still wanted a plate. Lillie nodded and Mary Alice came in
smiling, steam coming off the barbecue, and sat it in front of Nito. Service with a smile.

“We gonna be here for a while?” Nito said. “’Cause I got shit to do.”

“Depends on you, Nito,” Lillie said. “Sit down. Are you going to help us out? I don’t want to have to look into who really owned the gun Ordeen had on him. You know it was stolen from a fella in Clarksdale? You go over to the Delta much?”

“OK, so I knew Milly Jones,” Nito said, sitting down. “Everybody know each other in Blackjack. We got a population of two hundred folks. Girl like to party. She like those bad boys.”

“Were you intimate?” Lillie asked.

“You mean, were we fucking?” Nito said, unlatching his hands, leaning back, stretching his arms up over his head.

“Yeah,” Lillie said. “Were you fucking?”

Nito leaned back into his seat, massaging his chest, feeling cool and comfortable to be back on familiar ground. He grinned, saying it, bragging about it, without opening his mouth. “Few times,” he said. “Didn’t mean nothing.”

“Where were you the night she got killed?”

“Damn, that was like three weeks ago,” Nito said. “I drank some beers, smoked a blunt, and went to the football game. If you hadn’t noticed, ain’t a lot more to do in Jericho, Mississippi. You want me to find some folks who saw me at that game?”

“Yep,” Lillie said. “We would. How about after the game?”

“Motherfucker,” Nito said. “Why’d y’all get on my ass? ’Cause I’m the closest black man? I want me a damn lawyer.”

“That’s cool,” Lillie said. “And we can hold you until they show up. Might be sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

“Y’all ain’t the good guys,” Nito said. “Never have been. The old sheriff was the one who killed my daddy. No one even asked shit about it. You think you doing right ’cause you got the gun and the badge? But you ain’t nothing but straight thug just like me. Only difference is, you got the law behind you.”

“Yeah?” Lillie said. “Pretty big difference.”

“OK,” Nito said. “So I smoked it up, went to the game, watched Tibbehah almost get their ass kicked, and then I went home, watched some shit on TV, and fell asleep.”

“Who was at your house?” Lillie asked.

“My momma,” Nito said. “You want to talk to her, too?”

“Yeah, I would,” Lillie said. “What were y’all watching?”

“Shit.”

“Can you be a little more specific?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It was late. I like to watch them home improvement shows. You know, where they get a real shit show and then within a day they make it look like a palace down on the beach.”

“You’re into that?” Lillie said.

“Sure,” Nito said. “Also watch those infomercials for sex products. Those two ladies who talk about selling those big black things. You like that stuff?”

Lillie sat down across from him, leaning forward a bit, elbows resting on the old scuffed table. “Ever hear Milly talk about Fannie Hathcock?”

“That bitch owns the truck stop.”

“Yeah,” Lillie said. “That same bitch.”

“Maybe,” Nito said. “You think she might’ve killed her?”

“What’d you hear?”

“I don’t know,” Nito said, mouth lit up with all that gold. “
Hmm.
What’s that worth to me?”

“Will you go on record?”

“Girl might’ve taken some shit didn’t belong to her,” Nito said. “Damn, she was scared of that bitch. Said that woman wanted to kill her ass.”

•   •   •

I
’m cooking T-bones,” Jason Colson said. “How about you stop by? Ain’t that far, just a short walk through the cornfield.”

“I know the way,” Quinn said. “Need to catch up on some sleep.”

“Man’s got to eat.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m watching Little Jason tonight,” his father said. “He saw your truck drive up.”

Quinn blew out his breath. “OK, Granddad.”

Quinn hung his uniform shirt in an old armoire, set his Beretta in the gun safe, and picked up a fresh bottle of whiskey he’d been saving for a long time. The whiskey was for him. Jason wasn’t drinking this week. Or so he said.

As he walked from the old farmhouse, he could see the colorful Christmas lights strung from two four-by-fours, crisscrossed back to Jason’s trailer. The cherry-red Firebird now off the blocks, sanded down and painted with a flat-gray primer. He’d put wheels and tires back on the car, too.

“Is she running yet?” Quinn said.

“Close,” Jason said, standing under the lights, flipping steaks on a Weber grill. “Boom picked up the engine last week. He’s got it out at
his place. He’s seeing what he can do. But we may have to go all in and get a new one. Transmission, too.”

“How’s the body?”

Jason grinned. “’Bout like mine,” he said. “Lots of miles and wear, but still road-ready. You want a baked potato? Got a few in the oven. Little Jason loves a baked potato. Doesn’t care for red meat. You know that boy told me he was a vegetarian? Just like that. When I was his age, I didn’t even know what that word meant.”

Quinn nodded. Jason covered up the grill, funneling the smoke, as Little Jason bounded out of the trailer, where he’d been watching cartoons. He wrapped Quinn’s waist in a big hug. Quinn had been gone a long time and when he’d gotten home he’d barely seen his nephew. They’d been through a lot. Jason was his fishing buddy. He’d just gotten him a bow-and-arrow set that he’d pass along whenever Caddy approved it.

“Nice night,” Jason said. “No moon at all. That’s when I think I love coming back here best. I can turn off all the lights, sit back, and just look at all those damn stars. You could never do that in Los Angeles. In L.A., you had to head on out to Joshua Tree to make sense of the world.”

Quinn nodded. He slit open the top of the bourbon bottle and poured out a little in a coffee mug. The coffee mug was emblazed with the symbol for the 75th Regiment, a lightning bolt through a shield of a sun and star.

Little Jason found an old metal porch chair and pulled it closer to the grill to watch all the action. He admitted the steaks smelled good but still didn’t want one.

“Doesn’t even eat hamburgers.”

“Except when Grandmomma’s meat loaf gets forced on him.”

Jason shook his head. “You really think that qualifies as a meat product?”

Quinn straightened his legs out in front of him, crossing his boots at the ankle. He thought about lighting up the rest of his cigar but figured it could wait until after dinner. Something was on Jason’s mind and there was no use rushing things until he was ready to talk.

“Can you at least take the night off?” Jason said.

“Lillie interviewed a subject this afternoon,” Quinn said. “We had a meeting and agreed to come back to the SO at 0600 unless something comes up.”

“Y’all got something?”

“Lillie thinks so.”

“And you?”

“Not really sure what we got,” Quinn said. “Folks around here are pretty good at pointing fingers at each other.”

Jason nodded, stroking the gray goatee. “Don’t I know it.” He had on a Gram Parsons T-shirt, once telling Quinn it had been personally given to him by an original member of the Flying Burrito Brothers who was from Meridian. He lifted up the top of the Weber, poked at the steaks, and asked Quinn to go inside and get him a plate.

“They got the
WWE
on tonight,” Jason said. “Who’s that guy again?”

“The Beast,” Little Jason said. “They said it was the first time he’s wrestled in twelve years. That’s longer than I’ve been alive.”

“What’s he look like?” Quinn said.

“I can promise he ain’t pretty,” Jason said, grinning.

“It’s Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose in a Triple Threat match,” Little Jason said. “Someone’s gonna have their dang ass handed to them.”

“Jason?” Quinn said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Watch your mouth and go grab us a plate,” Quinn said. “Looks like your granddaddy is about ready.”

Jason lifted his eyes from the fire, forking the meat off the center of the grill to let it cool and rest before they ate.

“OK,” Jason said, soon as they heard the screen door thwack closed after Little Jason. “I got us a deal. But I need some help.”

“Hold up,” Quinn said, raising the flat of his hand. “Did you talk to Stagg?”

“Drove all the way over to Montgomery, Alabama,” Jason said. “Stopped off at the Hank Williams museum before I drove back. Got you a bumper sticker in my truck.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Stagg looks like a damn accountant,” Jason said. “They cut off most of his hair. He said he’s been mainly doing yard work, pruning bushes and things like that.”

“Has he found the Lord yet?”

“Says he’s working on it,” Jason said. “Goes to Bible study regular.”

Little Jason brought out the plate and bounded back into the trailer for some tofu hot dogs.

“Well,” Quinn said. “What’s he want?”

“That part’s a little tricky,” Jason said. “How about we talk after we eat?”

Quinn just stared at his father as he stabbed the bloody meat and placed the steaks on the plate. Jason swallowed, nodded, and handed Quinn what he’d just cooked up.

“Even with the investors, we’ll need you to put up the farm for collateral.”

“No way.”

“Now, hold on.”

“You think Jean will go for that?” Quinn said. “She’d disown me.”

“I know leaving here was wrong,” Jason said. “But what in the world does that woman still have against me? You turned out all
right.”