The Shameless Read online

  BY ACE ATKINS

  QUINN COLSON NOVELS

  The Ranger

  The Lost Ones

  The Broken Places

  The Forsaken

  The Redeemers

  The Innocents

  The Fallen

  The Sinners

  The Shameless

  ROBERT B. PARKER’S SPENSER NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby

  Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland

  Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot

  Robert B. Parker’s Kickback

  Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn

  Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies

  Robert B. Parker’s Old Black Magic

  NICK TRAVERS NOVELS

  Crossroad Blues

  Leavin’ Trunk Blues

  Dark End of the Street

  Dirty South

  TRUE CRIME NOVELS

  White Shadow

  Wicked City

  Devil’s Garden

  Infamous

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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  Copyright © 2019 by Ace Atkins

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Atkins, Ace, author.

  Title: The shameless / Ace Atkins.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2019] | Series: A Quinn Colson novel ; 9

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019018652| ISBN 9780525539469 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525539483 (epub)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Crime. | FICTION / Thrillers. | FICTION / Action & Adventure. | GSAFD: Adventure fiction. | Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3551.T49 S53 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018652

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Patsy Brumfield

  The News Queen of Mississippi

  CONTENTS

  By Ace Atkins

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Episode 1: Brandon

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Episode 2: The Big Woods

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Episode 3: The Search Party

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Episode 4: The Teacher

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Episode 5: The Sheriff

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Episode 6: Quinn Colson

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Episode 7: Maggie

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Episode 8: The Witness

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  About the Author

  “There ain’t any explanations. Not of anything. All you can do is point at the nature of things. If you are smart enough to see ’em.”

  —Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men

  Don’t stand up when the enemy’s coming against you. Kneel down, lie down, hide behind a tree.

  —Rogers’ Rangers Standing Order No. 18

  Tashi Coleman

  Thin Air podcast

  Episode 1: BRANDON

  NARRATOR: Last year, Brandon Taylor’s sister contacted me through social media with a simple but urgent question: WILL YOU PLEASE COME TO MISSISSIPPI TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BROTHER?

  It was written in all caps, with little information about who she was or who her brother had been. She said she’d heard our earlier podcasts about missing people, murders, and botched police investigations. Over the course of the next several months, Shaina Taylor messaged me with countless newspaper articles, family photos, and details of candlelight vigils and walkathons to find out who killed Brandon.

  On the last day his family saw him, Brandon said he planned to go deer hunting after school, a regular pastime in north Mississippi. He came home, grabbed a cold ham biscuit and a Mountain Dew and his Remington rifle. He parked his Chevy Apache pickup off a county road and walked into a large parcel of land adjoining a national forest. He never walked out.

  For days, rescue crews searched the woods, crossing over the same thick forest time and again. More than a week later, Brandon’s body was found, ravaged by animals, time, and weather. The local sheriff ruled his death a suicide after a brief investigation. His rifle was located nearby, fired once. A bullet in his skull.

  His family and friends never believed it. His sister said every step of the police and forensic work had been a mess. A proper autopsy was never performed and possible suspects never questioned. Not to mention, she said, no one in their county ever wanted the case solved. The truth would only embarrass some important people and call into question the motive of the county sheriff, a good and decent old man named Hamp Beckett. Over a series of dozens of heartbreaking messages, Shaina Taylor turned to us and said we were her last hope.

  We receive countless requests like Shaina’s every day from all over the country. Thousands of people disappear or die without solid answers for their families. Shaina said her brother lived an idyllic life in a small Southern town. She called him a normal fifteen-year-old boy, with loads of friends, a classic old truck, and a girlfriend he’d met over the summer. She said he was a great photographer with a keen eye, a talented guitar player who idolized Garth Brooks, and a blossoming journalist.

  The last part is what got me. Brandon Taylor had been a student journalist and a valuable member of the yearbook staff. He could’ve been anyone on our team of reporters, had he grown up. His family deserved answers.

  So last summer, I packed up the few belongings I have and met up with my producer, Jessica Torres, to drive from New York City down to Tibbehah County, Mississippi. It’s a rural place known for sweet potatoes and some recent sensational stories about drug dealers, bank robbers, and a young crusading sheriff—coincidentally or not, the nephew of the old sheriff. Some real Walking Tall meets Faulkner kind of stories. As always, we tried to make ourselves invisible as we
worked, talking to Brandon’s family members, friends, and local law enforcement, both retired and present. What resulted wasn’t quite the story we hoped to find.

  Instead, we uncovered something darker and more sinister, a true meditation on today’s society. What do we value? Lies or facts. Posturing or morality. But to explain all that now would be taking you way too far down the country roads of Mississippi.

  First, I must tell you about this boy, Brandon Taylor, and his 1955 Chevy Apache truck. It was a cold, rainy day in November 1997, and there was a rumor about the largest buck in the county wandering somewhere near County Road 334 . . .

  ONE

  Lillie Virgil had been bird-dogging Wes Taggart’s sorry ass for most of the summer, from Panama City to New Orleans and now back to Biloxi. The top-shelf turd had left a trail of filthy motel rooms, unpaid restaurant tabs, and jilted strippers. The last one being his undoing, a cute little piece of tail named Twilight who he’d brought with him from Tibbehah County on his run from the law. He was wanted on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering, and the attempted murder of a close friend of Lillie’s, a one-armed trucker named Boom Kimbrough.

  “This is it?” Lillie said, pointing to the old neon sign reading STAR INN. It was early morning, not long past dawn, the two having made the drive all the way from Memphis through the night to the Gulf Coast. With the windows open, you could smell the salt air on the hot wind.

  “Yep,” Twilight said, playing with the ends of her bleached blonde hair, the tips tinged with a purplish hue. “We spent a week here last month. Eating shrimp po’ boys and drinkin’ Jim Beam. Now, do I get my money or what?”

  “Depends on if he’s here,” Lillie said. “And sweetie? Would you mind not putting your feet on my fucking dash?”

  The girl took down her bare feet, with those stubby purple-painted toes, as Lillie parked the gray Dodge Charger across the road, right outside the Sharkheads T-shirt shop, the entrance a wide gaping mouth with sharp teeth. Across the road, the Star Inn advertised LOW RATES. JACUZZI ROOMS. CABLE TV & SWIMMING POOL. Real class with a capital K.

  “Did Wes at least spring for the Jacuzzi?” Lillie asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Twilight said. “That should’ve told me something. We got a cheap-ass room overlooking the fucking parking lot. I laid out on the beach every day while he laid in bed watching goddamn cartoons and smoking American Spirit Lights. I’d get in as the sun was going down, thinking we were going for a steak dinner, and he’d just be lying there drunk as hell and wanting me to suck his peter.”

  “That’s some real romance right there, kid,” Lillie said. “Bogart and Bacall shit. Now would you reach in the backseat for my binoculars? I think I spotted Romeo up there on the second floor scratching his nuts.”

  Five days ago, Twilight, whose real name was Tiffany Dement but went by Twilight to avoid professional confusion, checked in with her momma back in El Dorado, Arkansas. Lillie, a U.S. Federal Marshal, had visited Mrs. Dement in June and made sure the woman kept her on speed dial if she heard a word from her daughter, a former straight-A student and churchgoer. Momma was worried sick, as her baby had left town six months before high school graduation, sometimes sending home money but more often just postcards from Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, Panama City Beach, or Graceland. The last one really impressed the woman as it contained a recipe for Elvis’s favorite meat loaf.

  “Looks like your boyfriend cut his hair.”

  “He ain’t my boyfriend.”

  “If you suck a man’s peter while he’s watching SpongeBob playing his fucking nose flute, then y’all got some kind of personal deal.”

  “Damn, you’re a hard woman, Miss Virgil.”

  “Just honest,” Lillie said, turning and reaching down in the console between them for a pack of Bubblicious. She’d been chewing the hell out of it after she quit smoking. Damn, it hadn’t been easy.

  “Is that him?” Twilight asked. “Is that Wes with his shirt off? Can I see?”

  Lillie handed her the binoculars and reached for her cell phone, calling in the Biloxi police before making the arrest. She could easily handle it herself but would rather not have to deal with some local fuckwads complicating things. Twilight lifted the binoculars up to the railing, where it looked like Wes Taggart was licking the frosting off a donut. He used to have a shaggy seventies-style look, an uglier version of Scott Glenn in Urban Cowboy, but now he was jailbird bald. Almost like he was resigned to his fate.

  “I don’t know what I saw in that man,” Twilight said, shaking her head. The early-morning light catching the glint from the ruby stud in her pug nose as she shook her head.

  “Probably reminded you of your worthless daddy.”

  “How’d you know my daddy was worthless?” Twilight said, still twisting at the ends of her purplish hair, her face a wide question mark.

  Lillie leaned into the wheel of the Charger, eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Bans with big silver lenses, and just said, “Lucky guess.”

  “He didn’t touch me or nothin’, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Your daddy or Wes Taggart?”

  “Daddy, of course,” she said. “Wes Taggart humped me like a mangy damn dog first night we met. Took me back to the VIP room at Vienna’s Place in Jericho and got five damn lap dances in a row. Had the DJ play nothin’ but some old band called Def Leppard. You know, ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me,’ ‘Pyromania,’ all that shit? And then didn’t pay me a dime. Said what was between me and him was personal. Wish I’d known what the arrangement was before I started shifting his gears.”

  “Next time get paid up front,” Lillie said. “Don’t be anyone’s punch.”

  “Why are you so damn hard, Miss Virgil?” she said.

  “You know what?” Lillie said. “I never gave it a second thought.”

  “You drive like damn Dale Junior and keep a loaded Winchester twelve-gauge in your trunk,” she said. “I seen it when you loaded up our bags up in Memphis. You’re taller than my daddy and most boys I know, got an ass like an NFL linebacker, don’t talk much except for when you’re cussin’ or telling folks what to do. You don’t back up for no man, do you?”

  “That’s enough, Sister Twilight,” Lillie said. “My big ass is full of smoke. And I think I can take it from here.”

  “Money?”

  “In the dash,” she said.

  Twilight looked kind of sheepish about it until Lillie nodded to the glovebox and she opened it to find a fat envelope inside stuffed with cash. “Can I at least stick around and see how it goes down?”

  “Only if you shut your damn mouth,” Lillie said. “And promise to stay the hell out of the way.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Senator Jimmy Vardaman arrived at the Neshoba County Fair that morning triumphant as hell after beating the establishment favorite two-to-one in the primary runoff in June. His long silver hair was slicked tight to his skull, and he’d dressed for success in khakis and a blue-and-white gingham shirt rolled to the elbows. A real man of the people, with a big toothy grin and a bright gold watch. It was a warm and muggy morning, Vardaman up on the dais as his supporters sat in church pews laid out underneath the Founders Square tin-roofed pavilion. He announced he sure was ready to dig deep into the muck in Jackson and serve the working folk of Mississippi. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

  Just the mention of the working man sent a sea of red bandannas swirling in the crowd, his symbol, worn around the necks of his supporters. Sweat spread under his arms and across his chest as he spoke like an old-time preacher. His face was flushed with sun and heat as if he worked outdoors, not hanging out at the Country Club of Jackson.

  “We’re all just foot soldiers in a long history of American exceptionalism,” Vardaman said. “This past year I’ve been called a radical and a racist. But let me tell you something, friends, don’t you listen to what the fake news tells y
ou. We’re on a rendezvous with destiny this fall. Those people want to tear down our flags. Our statues. But that dog don’t hunt here in Neshoba. We know honor. We know truth.”

  Sheriff Quinn Colson turned to his wife, Maggie, her jaw muscles clenched so tight they looked like walnuts. Her pale green eyes scanning over the crowd, in disbelief and anger at what she was seeing and hearing, spinning her wedding ring around her finger. “Jesus God.”

  “Don’t give him any ideas,” Quinn said.

  “I think I may puke.”

  Much of the crowd was on its feet, in the shade of the pavilion’s wide metal roof, waving the red bandannas and yelling, most of them incomprehensibly, as Vardaman spread his hands wide, palms outstretched, and soaked in the praise. An elderly woman in a wheelchair, oxygen tubes going up her nose, held a WOMEN FOR VARDAMAN sign decorated with the stars and bars of the Confederate flag. Sweat trickled from Quinn’s brow and he removed his Tibbehah County sheriff’s ball cap to dry his face.

  He’d been sheriff now for nearly a decade and he still wasn’t sure the state was getting any better. It was the entire reason he’d retired early as a U.S. Army Ranger, believing he could make a difference, fighting corruption, drug running, and violence in his own backyard.

  “If that man is elected governor, he’ll set Mississippi back fifty years,” Maggie said.

  “Considering where we are now,” Quinn said, “that’d put us somewhere during Reconstruction.”

  The scene around Founders Square on the Neshoba Fairgrounds looked as if it might’ve come from a Norman Rockwell painting. Shoeless kids ran wild with packs of dogs behind them, oblivious to the speeches going on under the big pavilion. Every summer, families gathered for two weeks of horse races, livestock shows, carnival rides, and deep-fried food, culminating in the most important stump speeches in the state. Maggie’s family had been coming for decades.

  Quinn was born and raised in Mississippi, but this was his first time at the fair, coming at Maggie’s urging to meet his new extended family after their wedding in June. He was a tallish, muscular man with a chiseled face of sharp planes and edges, dark green eyes with a hard glint in them. He had on blue jeans and a starched sheriff’s office shirt, despite it being nearly a hundred degrees. Compared to Camp Anaconda in Afghanistan, Mississippi in August felt like a cool spring day.