The Revelators Read online

  ALSO 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

  Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes

  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

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  Copyright © 2020 by Ace Atkins

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Atkins, Ace, author.

  Title: The revelators / Ace Atkins.

  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2020] | Series: A Quinn Colson novel

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020017668 (print) | LCCN 2020017669 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525539490 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525539513 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3551.T49 R49 2020 (print) | LCC PS3551.T49 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017668

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020017669

  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.

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  For Charles Portis

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Ace Atkins

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About the Author

  Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got.

  —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

  Let the enemy come till he’s almost close enough to touch, then let him have it and jump out and finish him up with your hatchet.

  —Rogers’ Rangers Standing Orders No. 19

  Quinn. Quinn. Goddamn you.”

  Sheriff Quinn Colson knew it was Boom Kimbrough but couldn’t focus on his best friend’s face. Rain hammered the creek bed where he lay on his back, knowing he was bleeding out but not feeling much of anything. The sky above him was half-covered in fast-moving gray-black clouds over a hazy yellow harvest moon. It was Halloween night out on Perfect Circle Road in Tibbehah County, Mississippi, and damn if the shit hadn’t hit the fan.

  “Quinn, man,” Boom said. “Stay with me, brother. Can you hear me? We got folks coming.”

  Boom pulled Quinn from the creek bed onto a sandy shoal. His GMC truck lay on its side, engine still running with one headlight shining down the length of the crooked creek. Holy hell, it was tough to breathe, a raspy hollow pain with each breath letting Quinn know he’d collapsed a lung. He’d been shot twice, maybe a few more times for good measure.

  Those militia boys had ambushed Quinn as soon as he rolled up. One stuck a gun to his spine while they took his deputy Kenny and locked him up inside the trunk of his own cruiser. Kenny kicking and yelling while the Watchmen went to work on Quinn with their fists, boots, and stocks of their rifles. Quinn thought he’d be protecting a stripper named Dana Ray from her shitbird boyfriend but instead walked right into a trap.

  Boom held Quinn’s head in his lap, pressing his old hunting jacket to Quinn’s back and side, again promising help was on its way. All Quinn had to do was breathe, stay awake and alive, and with him. Boom used the hook of his prosthetic hand to tear Quinn’s bloody shirt loose from his chest, rain falling in curtains all around them. Cold water running down Boom’s black face and down his curly black beard.

  “She set me up,” Quinn said. His mouth was so damn dry, tasting the rainwater on his lips.

  “I know.”

  “Fannie Hathcock,” Quinn said. “She got ’em out here.”

  “Who shot you?” Boom asked.

  Quinn couldn’t answer, feeling a searing pain in his back and deep into his chest, eyes closing and not opening until he was in the white-hot light of the hospital being wheeled down a long hallway. No longer his best friend Boom, but his wife Maggie, a registered nurse in street clothes, talking to him, telling him everything was OK. He was going to be OK. She smelled like clean laundry and sunshine, a silver cross ticking from around her neck. Maggie’s calm, pleasant freckled face flushed red and worried. Her long, lean fingers on his face telling him how much she loved him.

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t know what it’s like to quit, Ranger.”

  Her face so perfect and interesting, the clearness of her green eyes and the intensity of all those little freckles on her cheeks. Her mouth a red pout, eyes radiating heat and electricity and warmth and goodness. He reached up to touch her face, all that soft white light enveloping him in a bright explosion. And then it was hours or several days later when he saw his wife again, this time with Boom standing over her shoulder. She said Quinn was on the other side of two surgeries, his body healing up and getting stronger every day. Boom looking down and smiling, promising they now had the bastards on the run, the real fun just about to start. Quinn seemed to stay in that hospital bed forever. Lillie Virgil sitting up with him on long nights, updating him on what she knew from the Marshals Service. His mother Jean praying and offering daily inspirational quotes from Jesus Christ and Elvis Presley. His nephew Jason and his adopted son Brandon stopping by each morning, looking awkward and nervous,
not sure what to make of Quinn lying flat on his back with all those tubes and wires. Quinn would wink at them and tell them they’d be back out hunting turkey and fishing for bass real soon.

  It was weeks later, or maybe a full month, when Quinn woke up to see the familiar shape of a man sitting in the shadows, reclining in a chair in his hospital room. It was very late or very early, full dark outside the window. The shadow man noticed Quinn’s movement and turned on a lamp beside him, illuminating his bald head and clean-shaven face. He wore a black polo shirt, both arms covered in a labyrinth of colorful tattoos.

  “Shit, that was close,” the man said.

  “Missed my heart by a quarter-inch,” Quinn said. “That’s either good luck or bad aim.”

  “You see who did this?” Jon Holliday, federal agent, asked. “Which one of them?”

  “One of the Watchmen tried to stop him,” Quinn said. “The shooter was an Indian. Son of a bitch looked just like Jay Silverheels.”

  “Midnight Special from the Rez,” Holliday said. “Same one who busted in the jail for Wes Taggart.”

  “That’s the way I see it.”

  “Could you ID him?”

  “Pretty dark night out on Perfect Circle Road,” Quinn said, lips cracked and dry. “But I could try.”

  “You know who sent him?”

  “You bet,” Quinn said. “Fannie Hathcock.”

  “Yes, sir,” Holliday said, leaning forward in the chair. His face moving deep into shadow. “Only we can’t get close to her or any of her new friends in Jackson. Governor Vardaman signed a special order to lock down Tibbehah County. Says the lawlessness has gone on too long.”

  “He can’t do that.”

  “Too late,” Holliday said. “Already has.”

  Quinn tried to push himself up off his back, the pain coming on now, something fierce and sharp hitting him in his spine and deep down into his lungs. His eyes watered as Holliday got to his feet and helped Quinn lower back into a soft pillow. Quinn let out a long and ragged breath, his wind raspy and uneven.

  “We’ve got to play Vardaman’s game for a while.”

  “No way,” Quinn said.

  “Don’t have much choice,” Holliday said. “You’re going to have to trust me. Again.”

  Quinn didn’t answer, trying to steady his breath, adjust his eyes into the shadows across Holliday’s face and body as the man stood over his hospital bed. On his forearm, a tattoo of a skull in a beret grinned under the banner DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.

  “I trust you,” Quinn said. “But I can’t hang back. As soon as I’m back on my feet—”

  “I’ll need help,” Holliday said. “But you won’t be alone. Even if you don’t see ’em, we got this whole county wired to take down Fannie Hathcock and the Syndicate. OK?”

  “Are we under martial law?”

  “Vardaman’s version of it,” Holliday said. “He’s set up some kind of committee in Jackson to scrutinize the criminal element in Tibbehah County.”

  “Son of a damn bitch.”

  Holliday stuck out his hand. Quinn reached up slow and steady to take it. His grip weaker than he would’ve liked.

  “Good to see you back with the living,” Holliday said.

  “How long?”

  “Patience and perseverance,” Holliday said, grinning. “We’re baiting the field now.”

  1

  Ten months after the shooting out on Perfect Circle Road, a twelve-year-old girl named Ana Gabriel walked in the ninety-five-degree August heat with her little brother Sancho. Sancho was only nine and knew nothing about politics or corruption in Tibbehah County, only that their mother hadn’t shown up to drive them home on their first day of school and he was upset. It frustrated him even further that Ana Gabriel had decided they’d better walk than wait, Sancho questioning all that was good and holy, a full four miles back to the Frog Pond Trailer Park, where so many of the Mexican and Guatemalan families had settled. They were very tired and sweaty, cutting through a thicket of pines and down through a kudzu ravine that hugged the highway.

  “I knew this day would come,” Sancho said. “The Rapture. Just like the movies from church. Angels blowing trumpets. People being whisked into the clouds to meet Jesus, even those in airplanes or sitting on toilets. He has taken all the good people and left the sullen and the wicked behind. Every story must end, Ana Gabriel. We know as much. Now it is time for the human race.”

  “Would you please shut up?” Ana Gabriel Hernandez-Ramirez said, walking beside her little brother. “Mamá has a reason. She is still at work. Maybe she had to go to the market to buy eggs, cheese, and milk. Perhaps even had engine trouble. Her car. You know that car. So many troubles.”

  “Then why won’t she answer her phone?” Sancho asked, wide face shining with sweat, trudging alongside her, short legs trying to keep up. “We have called her twenty times.”

  An odd August stillness fell over the Frog Pond Trailer Park on the outskirts of Jericho, Mississippi. Ana Gabriel had never heard it so quiet or seen it so empty, draped in an odd dusky gold light, the heat radiating up from the ground. Sancho followed her into the little maze that took them to the far corner of the park to the white single-wide they rented by the week.

  “Our family left us,” Sancho said. “Again.”

  “They would never leave us,” Ana Gabriel said. “They love us very much. Take that back or I will punch you very hard in the head.”

  “Then it is the Rapture,” he said, excited. “We have to find the others, start deciding who is in charge. I would like to be the mayor of the city. Or perhaps the president of the United States. I would also like my own very large truck. One with big silver wheels and a winch. I like GMC but would settle for a Chevy if we find one with the keys in it.”

  “You’re only nine.”

  “Does it matter now?” he said. “Now that we are the only ones left? All of it so very sad. The bad children who didn’t mind their parents or eat all their dinner. Ana Gabriel, we haven’t been to church in at least three Sundays. Think of the shame.”

  “This is something else,” she said. “Two girls I know were brought to the principal’s office and never returned. You yourself said you saw Tomas in the lunchroom, crying along with his uncle. I don’t like where any of this is headed.”

  “Mamá forgot us.”

  “Mamá never forgets,” Ana Gabriel said. Her mind already turning over a hundred different possibilities of what might have happened. All of them bad. “She works hard. She works late. You know this. It’s a new job. She has responsibilities. So many chickens to clean and pull out their insides. Why do you always worry? Why do you always think the worst?”

  “That’s my job,” Sancho said. “I am the man. The head of the household. Our uncle Chuy told me as much over the summer. C’mon. We need to start gathering wood for the fire.”

  “It’s ninety-five degrees,” Ana Gabriel said. “Why would we need a fire?”

  “Anytime anyone is lost or left behind, they build a fire. Don’t you pay attention to what we’ve seen on The Walking Dead?”

  The journey to the Frog Pond hadn’t been so bad, pushing through the woods, rows and rows of skinny pine trees planted as neatly as crops of corn, the August sun shining down through the branches and onto the copper-colored needles at their feet. Sancho was as wide as he was tall, hoisting his heavy Spider-Man backpack across his shoulders. His face round, with black hair cut still and straight with their mother’s scissors. Ana Gabriel stood a head taller but didn’t let her mother touch her hair, letting it grow straight, long, shiny, and black down to her backside.

  Today, she’d tied it in a neat purple ribbon, freshly combed for the first day of school. If only she hadn’t had to sweat through her new linen shirt embroidered with red roses or dirtied her jeans from Walmart, covered full of brambles and cockleburs.

  “
If you’re so smart,” Sancho said, “you tell me where is everyone? Where has everyone gone?”

  Sancho was right. The Frog Pond park was filled with a quiet so complete, she could hear the wind cutting through the spaces between the old rusted trailers. A loose door slamming over and over against the jamb. She looked down at her new Reeboks, bright white and perfect this morning, now covered in a fine brown dust.

  “I bet everyone is on the Square, getting ice cream and milk shakes at Sonic,” she said. “Or buying new shoes.”

  “My shoes are old,” Sancho said. “They have the name Bobby written inside with marker and smell like sweaty socks. Who was this Bobby? Why did he smell so bad?”

  “We are grateful for what we have.”

  “You are grateful for that silver bracelet,” he said. “The one your boyfriend gave you.”

  She felt her face flush. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Then why do you sit with him at church and walk with him for Sunday dinner?” Sancho said. “I even saw you holding his hand maybe six times this summer. The boy with the light brown skin and bright blue eyes. Jason Colson. I know his name. You’ve already written it in pink marker.”

  Ana Gabriel moved her hands over her backpack, biting her lower lip. “Shut up,” she said. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”

  “Saying it so many times only proves what I say,” Sancho said. “I hope he was a bad kid, maybe one who cheats and steals, for your sake, and that he wasn’t taken up to heaven in a golden light. That way you and him might kiss and warm yourself by the fire.”

  She was about to whack Sancho on the back of his head with her book bag when they spotted the other children gathering in the center of the trailer park. Maybe eight, nine of them, some of them crying. One boy sitting on the wooden steps of his trailer, his head in his hands. They were all The Others, the new ones to Tibbehah County. The Mexicans. The Guatemalans. The Hondurans. All different, although most of the children had been born here. They were supposed to be Americans, but few seemed to agree.

  After ten different schools in twelve years, Ana Gabriel had moved across much of Texas and Alabama and then Georgia. Their last home had been in a very old apartment complex on Buford Highway in Atlanta, barely seeing their father, who worked every day in construction, doing the jobs that no sane person would want. Lathering tar on roofs, connecting tubes under old houses. He was still there, or so she thought, sending them money every few weeks even though he had a new wife and family. Their mother had taken a job at a poultry processing plant in Tibbehah.