The Ranger (15 page)

Quinn listened for a moment and waited a beat as a fat trucker came out of the toilet, smelling like five-cent aftershave, a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

When he was gone, Quinn slipped the edge of the tire iron near the lock and gave it a sharp tug. The lock busted right apart, denting the frame, but the locker opened.

He reached inside and found some folded clothes and a pack of condoms. She’d squirreled away some beef jerky and a bottle of Aristocrat vodka, a carton of cigarettes, and three pairs of panties.

“You ever heard of a man named Keith Shackelford?”

“No.”

“You ever see Jill with a man?”

“I always saw her with a man.”

“This guy may have burn marks on him.”

She shook her head.

Quinn squatted down and reached deep in the locker, finding a thick leather-bound book, or what could pass for leather. It was a case for photographs, branded with Native American symbols and designs. He unbuttoned the cover and flipped through twenty or so pictures.

He closed the locker door and stood up, flipping through more, reaching a side pocket and finding a thick pack of more photographs bound with a rubber band. In the weak fluorescent light he sorted through pictures of Jill Bullard. Jill playing with Beccalynn at some park. Jill and her parents. Jill with some man he did not recognize but would check against Shackelford’s mug shot. Jill partying out on Beale Street. And then a shot that just kind of left him cold, paralyzed, before he flipped the image, front to back.

“You know this girl?”

“I got to pee,” she said.

“Do you know her?”

Kayla looked at Quinn, her mouth open, backing away, looking as if she might cry.

Quinn turned back to the photo. Jill Bullard and another girl, clicking glasses at some club, both in short skirts and tight tops. Good times.

He didn’t bother to go after Kayla.

He knew the girl.

Caddy.

15

Sometime in the early morning on Monday, just as
light was coming on, something woke Lena in that old trailer. She turned and saw the door was open, nothing in the frame, the girls gone now. She rolled back over, eyes closed, and then opened them to find the old man—Daddy Gowrie—standing over her, his pants unhitched to his bony knees, and saying, “Shh. Shhh.” Over and over.

Lena wanted to scream, but the sound caught down deep in her throat. She pressed herself against the mattress and dug her heels into the coils, trying to get free of the blankets. As she scooted back, she felt hard steel and reached down and found a pistol—guns seeming to grow like mushrooms around the trailer—and she pointed it right between the man’s legs, down to his flaccid place, and told him, without any kind of thought, that she’d be happy to remove what was troubling him.

He kept saying, “Shh. Shhh,” until another man rushed the door, and the old man nearly tripped over himself while he hitched up his pants and turned to run. Gowrie yelled, “Pa!,” and then, seeing him fiddling with his pants, Gowrie coldcocked the old man across the jaw, sending him down to his knees. Gowrie kicked his ribs twice so hard that Lena screamed, getting her breath back, as she steadied the gun in her hand.

Gowrie turned to her and held out his hand, his head wrapped in a red bandanna, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, wearing a dirty T-shirt and jeans, no shoes, making her know that he’d run from somewhere to find the situation.

“He’s a sick man,” Gowrie said. “Git.”

He kicked his father again, and the old man scrambled to his hands and feet and skittered out of the room and down through the open front door. Gowrie reached for a lighter on the kitchen counter, clicking flame to cigarette, and then looked back to Lena, studying her with more appreciation. The wind seemed to enter the room and pull out every breath, the whole space feeling more empty than anything she’d ever imagined.

“Next time, pull that trigger. That old man has had so many weapons aimed at him, I think he’s gotten used to it.”

The front door battered against the trailer wall in the cold morning wind. Gowrie stood there, smoking, as she lowered the gun. And in walked Ditto, out of breath and red-faced, his eyes flitting from Lena back to Gowrie, standing there with some measure of toughness but still too damn afraid to ask questions.

Quinn and Lillie
were back down in Sugar Ditch searching for Keith Shackelford’s girlfriend, finding nothing new from Miss Williams but meeting a teenage boy in the Fast Stop who knew her. He said he’d seen her down at a yard sale a couple days back, and after getting a decent idea of where he was talking about, they piled back into the Jeep and headed deeper into the Ditch, finding an empty lot where a fat man was sitting in an easy chair. The fat man wore sunglasses in the weak winter sunshine, holding court by a camper behind an old pickup and two long tables filled with about anything you could imagine: old clothes, dishes, hats, CDs, microwave ovens, and a couple television sets. Lillie let Quinn do the talking this time, Quinn getting a feeling that Lillie was testing him to see if he could handle not being a hard-ass. He greeted the fat man and introduced himself, asking about Latecia.

“She bought two pairs of shoes for her kids.”

“You know where she lives or works?”

“Where she gonna work ’round here?”

“Who was she with?”

“Boy named Peanut.”

“You know where I can find Peanut?”

“What you want with Peanut?”

“We just want to talk to Latecia. She’s not in any trouble.”

“I heard that shit before.”

But the fat man told Quinn, with a grunt, not ever leaving the folding chair, and pointed them back the way they’d come, a block over from the Fast Stop, where they could find Peanut playing spades under an old pecan tree.

“Thanks,” Quinn said, offering his hand.

The man looked at his hand and then up at Quinn. “I ain’t seen a sheriff’s car down here in two years.”

The pecan tree
looked like it had been sculpted, not grown, sitting there in the side lot of the liquor store, rooted in the air with most of the dirt eroded away, leaving only a tangled mass in the hard-packed ground. Quinn and Lillie parked on the street and approached the game, the five players not glancing over once as they got close. Quinn watched their hands and movements more out of instinct than any real worry. He could only imagine these guys thought they were going to get tossed from their daily game. Lillie greeted them like old friends, and apparently knew a couple of them from some minor arrests. They lifted their eyes from their cards and said hello, none of them moving or asking what they were doing wrong. The men were all in their twenties and wore heavy coats and scarves, and crisp and bright new baseball caps.

“Which one of y’all is Peanut?” Lillie asked.

No one looked up.

“I’m not here to hassle any of you,” she said. “I’m looking for Latecia Young. And Latecia isn’t in trouble, either. We’re trying to find a fella named Shackelford.”

One of the men lifted his eyes from his cards, front chair legs settling down to the dirt. He was skinny and wore a St. Louis Cardinals cap. He had green eyes and an earring in each ear. He looked to Quinn and then Lillie, and nodded. “That guy is a piece of shit.”

“So we heard,” Quinn said.

“She don’t have nothing to do with him no more.”

“Where is she?”

“She at work.”

“Where does she work?”

“She’s a maid at the Indian casino.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She gotta go back to Jericho with y’all?”

Lillie shook her head. “We just want to know where to find Shackelford.”

“She stay in the Gray Stone with her momma,” he said. “First one on the right when you drive in. Upstairs.”

Lillie nodded and he nodded back.

“You won’t find her till tonight.” Peanut’s eyes went back to the cards, carefully choosing a couple, as Quinn and Lillie turned to walk away from the old tree.

As they reached Lillie’s Jeep, the phone rang in Quinn’s pocket, and he answered.

“Quinn, can you meet for lunch?” Judge Blanton asked, taking a long breath. “Stagg made an offer.”

“I can be there in ten minutes.”

Quinn parked outside
the El Dorado Mexican Restaurant a little before noon, saying hello to the owner, a portly little guy named Javier who’d owned the place since at least Quinn’s twelfth birthday party. It had been a good birthday party, with a piñata and too much candy, and Quinn vaguely recalled vomiting in a sombrero. But Javier didn’t seem to hold a grudge, as he led him through the main restaurant past a buffet getting stocked with ground beef and cheeses and tons of chips and tortillas. Quinn hadn’t eaten since his mother’s church spread yesterday, and he felt like grabbing a plate right there, eating while listening to what Blanton had learned.

But he removed his hat and walked into the large, empty room, seeing food already laid out on a large table, steaming piles of chips and plates of enchiladas and tacos. Plenty of salsa, guacamole, and beans, and right near the end sat Johnny Stagg, in a buttoned-up hunting shirt, along with an older man in a suit and red tie.

Stagg stood up and offered his bony hand to Quinn.

Quinn just looked at it, and Johnny sat back down.

“Didn’t know we had company,” Quinn said.

“Figured we could make this a friendly meeting,” Blanton said, keeping his seat and motioning to an open chair. “Does that work?”

“What’s the offer?”

“Let’s eat first,” Blanton said, pulling out a chair. “Would you like a beer? We’re no longer a dry county.”

“I’d like to see the offer.”

Blanton reached into an old leather satchel and pulled out a legal file, handing Quinn the top sheet. Quinn read it.

“The timber’s worth more than this.”

Blanton nodded that old buzz-cut head and met Quinn’s look with hangdog eyes. “And he’ll excuse all the debt.”

“It’s fair, Quinn,” Stagg said, scratching his cheek. “But let’s break some bread or some of them ole tortillas.” Stagg snorted at that, wide-mouthed with big teeth, nodding to the man in the suit. The man in the suit nodded back.

“Who’s he?” Quinn asked.

“Mr. Lamar, come down from Memphis. He’s an attorney.” Mr. Lamar kept his chair and nodded to Quinn, smiling as if all this was polite as hell. The suit he wore wasn’t the kind you saw men wearing at the Sunday service, heavy wool and pin-striped, a perfect cut. He estimated the man’s watch cost about five grand.

“Just why do you want that old farm so much?” Quinn asked.

“I don’t want you to take this personal,” Stagg said. “I got to look after my accounts. I’m so very sorry about your uncle, but business don’t stop.”

“Is that why you sent those men over to our farm the other night?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, son.”

“Of course.”

“Let’s just have lunch,” Blanton said. “We can talk business over in my office later.”

“There’s nothing to discuss.”

“Hold on, now,” Stagg said.

“I see those shitbags on my property again and I’m in my legal right to shoot every one.”

Stagg took a deep breath, smiling and shaking his head with a tired understanding of the world. “I know you’re not a big fan of this town,” Stagg said. “I figured that’s why you never came back. This stuff only ties you down.”

“You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I know’d you hadn’t been home in six years.”

“Been a little busy.”

“To see your momma?”

“I’ve seen my mother plenty since I’ve been away.”

“But you hadn’t come home,” Stagg said. “You ain’t a lot different from your daddy out in California, doin’ anything you can to crawl free of this town. You got it written all over your face that you’re too good for this place. Quinn Colson ain’t nobody’s redneck.”

Quinn stood there over the table laden down with hot food as Javier brought out a round of frosty Mexican beers. “This is a waste of my time,” Quinn said. “Thank you, Judge.”

“Hold on,” Stagg said, scrambling to his feet and reaching for the upper part of Quinn’s arm to stop him from leaving. “I’m doing this as a favor to the judge and your momma. Mr. Lamar come all the way down here to file a lien, and I told him you were a reasonable man and that we could work this thing out over lunch. Sit down. We don’t want this goin’ in no court.”

“I’m not hungry,” Quinn said. “And you can remove your hand, Johnny.”

“Come on,” Stagg said, letting go and smiling a big jack-o’-lantern grin with his veneered teeth. “We don’t have to talk business. Right? Just a friendly lunch. You check out that offer and you’ll see it’s on the level.”

“Johnny, you’re so crooked you probably pay this fella here to help you screw on your pants every morning.”

Lamar shifted in his chair, straightened his red tie, and raised his eyebrows at Judge Blanton, giving a sly little smile about what he’d just witnessed at this civil meeting.

“See you, Judge,” Quinn said, and walked out of the restaurant.