The Lost Ones (6 page)

“Mr. Stagg in?” Donnie asked a fat guy named Leonard who’d been a deputy sheriff for fifteen years before Quinn Colson had run him off. Leonard looked up from the sports page of the
Daily Journal
and nodded, leaning forward and stubbing out the cigarette between his fingers.

“He call you?”

“He knows I’m here,” Donnie said.

“I’ll ask.”

“Just open the fucking door, Leonard,” Donnie said. “Shit. Don’t be such a goddamn hard-on.”

Stagg had two offices, one in downtown Jericho, for meetings on his development company and county business, and the real office behind the pole dancers, right next to the back room where high-stakes poker was played. Stagg was even so goddamn ole-time corny that he ran a Faro game on Sunday nights. The only person Donnie’d ever heard of who played Faro was Wyatt Earp.

Leonard opened the door and waved him inside.

Stagg was on a phone call, giving him that Johnny Stagg wink and pointing out an open chair. Donnie took in the office with heads of dead animals and mounted fish, framed pictures of folks who’d sent glamour shots to him; people who were only famous in northeast Mississippi but somehow meant shit to Johnny Stagg. Maybe Stagg thought if he collected enough of them he wouldn’t be the son of some dirt farmer out by Carthage who had to peddle his soul and rape thousands of acres of land to make that first million.

“Donnie,” Stagg said. “You got something to discuss?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Johnny. Maybe I just came on out for a beer and a pecker tug. Did I walk in the right room?”

Stagg grinned.

“Yeah, I got business.”

Stagg propped up a pair of oxblood loafers on his desk. Stagg dressing like an old frat boy, with his button-down shirt, red sweater-vest, and Ole Miss team belt, wanting so damn much to be accepted by the folks in Oxford that he gave a decent amount of income to the athletic program there, Donnie hearing he was about to get a full seat on the board despite having barely graduated high school in Tibbehah County. He’d come a long way from cleaning out bedpans for the old people he conned out of land for nearly a decade.

“Guns.”

“What you got?” Stagg said, his weathered face a road map to hell. “I could use a good deer rifle.”

“Not to sell,” Donnie said. “I’m buying.”

“I don’t sell guns, Donnie.”

“Johnny, you’d sell your own mother if there was money in it.”

“I don’t appreciate that kind of talk,” Stagg said, scratching his cheek. “My momma’s been dead for twenty years.”

“Would that make a difference?”

“Your daddy is a fine man,” Stagg said. “War hero, at that. He know you’re out here?”

“My daddy hadn’t wiped my ass for some time.”

“And the proposition?”

Donnie reached into his blue jeans jacket for a torn piece of notebook paper, reading it off like a grocery list: “Eighty Mossberg shotguns, fifty AKs, seventy-two Glock 19s, and fifty or so M4s. Oh, and a couple grenade launchers. I wasn’t so sure about those last two.”

Stagg just smiled, showing off his tombstone teeth, and laughed like Donnie had said something funny. Donnie just waited, deadpan.

“Took all I could from a shitty situation in the Guard, Mr. Stagg,” Donnie said. “Got out with a few toys. I got forty-six M4s left, but they’re wanting a hundred. I can get most of what they want. M4s, being military grade and all, are a little trickier.”

“Can’t help you, son.”

“Is that really a picture of you and Tim McGraw or one of those phonies you get made up at Six Flags?”

“Tim came to one of my parties at Ole Miss last year,” Stagg said. “His wife sang me ‘Happy Birthday.’”

“Is she just as pretty in person?”

Stagg smiled and walked past Donnie, Donnie thinking the son of a bitch was throwing him out, but instead he called in Leonard. Leonard stood, splayfooted and nearly cross-eyed, the long-running joke being that he’d been the only deputy who could keep his eyes on two suspects at once. “You get Dara for me?” Stagg asked.

“I don’t need to pay for no girl,” Donnie said.

“Call it a welcome-home gift,” Stagg said. “Thanks for all you done for America.”

“Hell,” Donnie said. “If you put it like that.”

The girl was too good for The Booby Trap, Donnie halfway impressed Johnny could recognize the talent or maybe had at least gotten lucky. She was not hard-looking or wrinkled or drugged-out. She seemed almost shy at first, with a thick head of curly blond hair and wide-set brown eyes. She smelled like cherry perfume, a nineteen-year-old, barely legal wet dream who sat him down in a ragged chair in that empty mirrored room—a goddamn thousand Donnie Varners—shitty dance music playing so loud he couldn’t hear himself think as she straddled his waist and pulled her tank top over her head. The girl kept on a pair of cotton panties, and Donnie got a good bit of ass in his hands.

She pulled down her bra strap by strap, showing off a natural pair, soft and drooping, not like those rock-hard things girls got in
Playboy
. She leaned into him with hot cinnamon breath, letting him smell the cherries in her hair and neck, and then pulled back, helping him out of his jacket, rubbing his chest, pulling off his boots.

“What the hell?”

But then she rubbed his feet and ran her hands up each of his legs, spreading his knees wide apart and then moving the flat of her hand around the old bulldog. Donnie closed his eyes, wishing he had a cold Coors in one hand and a smoke in the other. And, damn, if she didn’t pull up his shirt, kissing his stomach and then peeling down her panties, bending over to give him the whole show.

Johnny Stagg was a good man, Donnie thought, as she fell back into him and twisted up his shirt and ran her hands over her chest before she stopped cold as the houselights flicked on and the music stopped, Leonard’s ugly face looking down on him.

He was sucking his teeth.

“God damn, Leonard,” Donnie said. “You sure made it shrink up.”

“He’s clean,” Dara said, reaching for her little panties and thin tank top, fanning out a match after she lit a smoke and disappearing behind the bar to pour herself a Jack on ice.

“And I thought you loved me,” Donnie said, heaving himself into his Levi’s jacket, walking to her, and stealing the smoke from her mouth. “I am truly hurt.”

The girl toasted him from behind the bar.

Leonard opened up the back door, motioning Donnie with two fingers. The red light from the neon mud-flap girl, kicking high and low, high and low, outside.

“Mr. Stagg will be in touch,” Leonard said.

“You ever get deputy of the month?” Donnie asked.

Leonard scowled at him.

“Guess not.”

8

QUINN RELIEVED KENNY AT TWO A. M. A COUPLE DAYS LATER, BRINGING IN
a thermos of black coffee and a cold sausage biscuit, a Maglite, and a ragged Louis L’Amour paperback he’d found at the farmhouse. Kenny had been standing in the kitchen when he opened the back door, chain-smoking cigarettes and staring into the darkness, dog tired and deep in thought. Quinn moved past him, patting him on the shoulder, but Kenny didn’t move, a big fat shadow with the glowing red tip of his cigarette in his mouth.

“I had to shower three times to get this smell out,” Kenny said. “Washed my hair with lemon juice.”

Quinn sat down on the Torres’s old sofa and screwed off the cap from the end of his thermos and poured a cup. “You hear anything?”

“Walked in from the north end of the property, just like you said. Been quiet.”

“I brought a book.”

“What is it?”

“Quick and the Dead,”
Quinn said.

“Didn’t they make a movie out of that?” Kenny said.

“Yep. Sam Elliott.”

“He was real good in that
Lebowski
picture,” Kenny said in the darkness. “Funny as hell.”

“You don’t have to stay, Kenny.”

“I’m good,” he said. “Drank a couple Red Bulls. Been just kind of thinking a lot. Took that Lab to see Jess Colley. Jess says she’s got mange and heartworms. Gonna cost five hundred dollars to get her healthy.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” Kenny said. “Get her fixed up, I guess.”

Quinn drank some more hot coffee and felt for the flashlight and paperback at his side. He leaned back into the sofa, knowing that four hours wasn’t a damn thing. On training and in missions, waiting could be days or weeks, sometimes while wearing face paint and blanketed in a ghillie suit. Being a Ranger was full-tilt shitstorm or nothing. When you weren’t shooting, you were running, and when you weren’t running, you were jumping out of airplanes. He knew keeping still was an art.

“Quinn,” Kenny said. “You mind if I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Me and you kinda lost track of each other after graduation,” he said. “I didn’t write you or nothin’. Hadn’t seen you in almost ten years. How come you gave me this job?”

“Not many folks I could trust.”

Quinn could only still see the outline of Kenny, watching the end of the cigarette glow red-hot, and then heard the hiss as he tossed the butt in the kitchen sink.

“I can’t really imagine what y’all went through.”

“What’s that?” Quinn asked.

“Do you wake up in night sweats like you see veterans do in movies? Or just driving around and get a flashback, thinking about your best friend getting killed in the line of duty? I imagine that can mindfuck you good even if you don’t lose a limb like ole Boom.”

“You try and keep your head clear.”

“How do you do that?”

“Some of my buddies find God,” Quinn said. “Most of them still like to fight, in bars or in the ring.”

“You see folks die?”

“Yep.”

“You kill some?”

“I did.”

“Buddies get killed?”

“Kenny, it’s pretty late.”

“I’m sorry,” Kenny said. “Didn’t mean to push. I mean, we just hadn’t talked at all since I come onto the department. And I guess I’m just sayin’ I appreciate you for coming back. I know things been different.”

Quinn drank some coffee. Kenny’s Bic flicked back on, and he lit another cigarette. The room filling with tobacco smoke over the kitchen counter and into the family room, cold night air breathing through the cracked windows.

“You think I should save that dog?” Kenny asked.

“Good to have a dog,” Quinn said.

“Better ’an my ex-wife,” Kenny said. “Found out she gave our youth pastor a blow job. And the kicker was, I figured the son of a bitch was gay. He had his hair frosted like you see on old women and wore leather bracelets and shit.”

“You want some coffee?”

“I got to git,” Kenny said. “Sorry about askin’ about war and all that. I know you got to keep them things secret.”

“I don’t mind the talk.”

They both heard the wood creak on the old porch at the same time. Kenny’s fresh cigarette hissed into the sink as Quinn stood and unholstered his gun. He saw the large shape of Kenny step back from the kitchen and into the living room, raising his weapon as the door jimmied open and a hand fumbled for the lights. The voice of a girl saying “Shit” when she realized there wasn’t electricity.

Keys dropped onto a countertop.

Quinn got a good sense of a short girl, low and fat, arms down by her sides and hands empty. He clicked the Maglite up into her wide face. She squinted and covered her eyes. Kenny giving a hell of an unnecessary “Hold it.”

“Mara?” Quinn asked.

The girl didn’t say anything. Her face was white and doughy, with bug eyes, under a pink John Deere ski hat, expressionless in the flashlight beam. Kenny moved behind her and gripped her by the thick arm, reaching for his handcuffs. Mara Torres just stood there, chunky and short, a not-quite-miniature version of her mother.

“Where are they?” Quinn asked.

“I’m alone,” her voice soft and thick country. “Hell.”

“Kenny, go check the road,” Quinn said. “I’ll take Miss Torres to the jail.”

“My name ain’t Torres,” she said. “That Mex bastard ain’t my father.”

9

DONNIE ATE SUPPER WITH HIS FATHER EVERY THURSDAY NIGHT AT THE
Jericho VFW Hall right after Bible study. This had pretty much been the deal since his momma died when he was twelve, and Luther Varner looked forward to taking his son to that big meal at the old cinder-block building at the edge of town. Donnie wasn’t complaining. No, sir. They had row after row of fried catfish (with the tail on), French fries, coleslaw, baked beans, and sometimes a little barbecue if the cook—usually a large black man—decided to get a little creative. All the old soldiers in town—and there seemed to be more and more of them, a helluva lot more of them than when Donnie had been a kid—just ate that shit up. The Jericho VFW spanned World War II to what people called the Global War on Terror but what Donnie just called a big fucking mess.

He and his daddy had a lot in common, he figured. His daddy had been a Marine sniper in Vietnam. But like all old soldiers, his daddy never said a word about it. About as close as he’d ever come to knowing what old Luther went through was watching him bawl during the annual showing of
Sergeant York
on TBS. Something sure got to him there.

“What’d you think about the talk tonight?”

“I think Joseph’s brothers were a bunch of assholes,” Donnie said.

“Pretty tough on that kid for a damn coat.”

“Must’ve been some coat.”

Luther Varner stood about six-foot-four, with a silver crew cut, leathery skin, and a
Semper Fi
tattoo with a smiling skull on his right forearm. He lifted that forearm to burn off another smoke, squashing it into his coffee cup, and reached for another piece of fried catfish.

The VFW was clogged with so much cigarette smoke that the goddamn air purifier had turned yellow.

“You ever have crazy dreams like that?” Luther asked. “Like that ole pharaoh?”