The Ranger Page 12

  “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.

  He was in the lot and opening the door to the old Ford when Blanton walked up on him and said: “It’s a fair deal.”

  “Not even half the land value?”

  “Quinn, why do you want that burden?” Blanton said. “I’m working for you and I’ll do what you say. A little personal advice? Walk away with some money in your pocket.”

  “That land’s been in my family since 1895.”

  “The offer may not be generous, but it’s fair. If that fella Lamar in there pushes it, you won’t have nothing. He’s the kind that makes five hundred an hour. You might even owe some.”

  “I’d rather burn it down.”

  Blanton looked out on the downtown Square and reached into his coat pocket for an old gold timepiece. He fiddled with it in his left hand, winding it up, before turning back to Quinn and giving a generous smile. “Okay. I’ll fight them.”

  “Good.”

  “But you need to understand the odds.”

  “I do.”

  “You could lose everything.”

  “At least make that son of a bitch work for it.”

  “Hamp dumped this on you.”

  “I’ll finish it.”

  “Damn, you are Hamp Beckett’s nephew to a T.”

  “I appreciate you saying that, Judge.”

  Quinn smiled. The old man smiled back and patted Quinn’s shoulder, before walking back inside the El Dorado.

  Quinn took a hot shower and shaved and dressed in an old flannel shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, his mother warming up a plate lunch for him. She’d gathered leftovers from his homecoming party, ham and potato salad, some sweet-potato pie from Thanksgiving. He thanked her and sat at the kitchen table, Jason in a high chair across from him, working on small bits of ham and green beans, chugging down some apple juice, and then staring at Quinn until something about Quinn’s face tickled him a great dea
l. Quinn winked at him. And that made the situation somehow even better.

  His mother finished cleaning up a bit around the sink, a local radio station playing some old-time gospel, and she sat down by Jason, wiping his face with a damp rag. She smiled at Quinn. Quinn had seen that look before, the sadness before he’d leave.

  “Do people say things about me? About how I’ve been gone so long?”

  “People in Jericho have little to do but gossip.”

  “But they say things about me, about the way I feel about my family.”

  “I don’t pay it a bit of mind.”

  “They’re wrong, you know.”

  “Believe me, they know about every trip I’ve made over to Columbus, Georgia, to see you. They know everything you’ve been doing.”

  Not everything.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Shush,” Jean Colson said, leaning back in her chair, looking much older than the mother he’d seen in his mind for so long. Lines on her face, creases around her eyes. “Just wind.”

  “It’s not because I don’t care about you or Caddy.”

  Jean looked across at her son and reached for his hand. He met her halfway.

  “A man does what you do and you got to put up some barriers, some walls. Your grandfather had to do the same thing. I know who you were protecting.”

  Quinn smiled at her. Jason tossed the plate of food down to the floor with a clatter, laughing.

  “Guess he doesn’t care for my cooking,” she said.

  “I’ll be back,” Quinn said. “Sooner this time.”

  “You take care of you. I got things here.”

  16

  Latecia Young wasn’t happy to see Quinn, and was even less excited when he mentioned Keith Shackelford’s name. She just kind of hung there in the doorway of her project apartment, arm propped on the frame, looking Quinn up and down, and then walking back to her kitchen, not saying come in but not telling him to get lost, either. Quinn entered, removing his baseball cap as he did, and followed her, where she was heating up a cold plate of mac and cheese. She ate the mac and cheese standing up, twisting open a half-drunk bottle of Diet Coke while they talked, nodding and agreeing with what he said, like she really didn’t have any choice in the matter. Quinn was pretty sure she thought he was with the sheriff’s office, but he never said that, only said that his uncle had been the sheriff.

  “And you haven’t seen Keith all year?”

  “Nope.”

  “You know where he’s living?”

  “Las’ time we talked, he’d been staying with Jett. I don’t know where he went after the fire.”

  “You seen him since?”

  “Don’t want to, neither,” she said, shaking her head. “Heard it fucked him up real bad.”

  Latecia was muscular and thin, light-skinned, wearing a threadbare T-shirt and faded jeans without shoes. A light blue maid’s uniform hung on the back of a bathroom door.

  “He call you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “But you don’t answer?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can you call him back now?”

  “You want me to lie?” she asked, resting her arm on a refrigerator. She’d been inked with a blue tattoo on her bicep of praying hands. “Play games? Hadn’t been for that fire, I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten away from him. You ever had someone grabbing you so tight while you know they the one drownin’?”

  “Why was he drowning?”

  She shrugged.

  “Just call and say you have something he may want. Tell him you’re gonna drop it off.”

  “Shit, no.”

  “Will you give me the number?”

  She looked Quinn up and down again and then stared at him for a beat, thinking and trying to decide how this whole thing would shake out. “I got myself clean. I haven’t had a drink in six months. I don’t even smoke.”

  Quinn nodded.

  “I keep my job for another three months and I get my kids back.”

  “How many kids?”

  “I got a boy and a girl. The boy is six and the girl is eight.”

  “Who’s got them now?”

  “They with a foster family,” she said. “They father was worse than Keith. Used to beat me if I even thought about leaving. How you get into these things? I can’t think right for myself.”

  “Did you know Jill Bullard?”

  She shook her head, looking down at her untouched dinner.

  “What about Keith and Jett Price? They spend a lot of time together?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’d they do?”

  “Drank, smoked weed. Talked war and drank. Jett sold guns, I think. They used to sit around all day in their underwear and play video games till they’d get a call and git gone.”

  “Where?”

  She walked over to a chair where she’d hung her purse, reaching inside for a cell phone and scrolling through the numbers. She repeated the number to Quinn.

  He memorized it.

  “Don’t you tell him where you got this.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “What’d he do now?”

  “I don’t think that fire was an accident.”

  “Lots of folks wouldn’t mind seein’ Keith dead.”

  “Like who?”

  “Are we finished? This may be shit, but it’s my goddamn dinner.”

  Quinn called the number, and Keith Shackelford picked up on the first ring.

  “Jett Price’s family wanted to check on you,” Quinn said. “Make sure you didn’t need any money.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “I’m a friend of the family,” Quinn said. “The church took up a collection. But, sorry to bother you.”

  “Hold up. Hold up. How much we talkin’, preacher man?”

  Quinn picked up Lillie, and they drove northwest about thirty minutes into Webster County and the town of Eupora. There wasn’t much to Eupora besides a big gas station coupled with a McDonald’s, a run-down motel, a family fish buffet, and a pizza joint by the railroad tracks. The address Shackelford gave had them turning off Highway 9 onto a side street behind a state mental hospital.

  Shackelford lived on one side of a tired old duplex, the other apartment looking abandoned, with a plywood-covered window and a screen door hanging loose from the frame. They passed the house once and then parked down the road, walking back, Lillie saying she wasn’t happy with how Quinn had set this up.

  From across the street they could see in the apartment’s long shot of hallway, running from front door to back, a shadowed figure looking out from the frame.

  “You see that?” Quinn asked.

  “He see us?”

  “I think he sees that uniform.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  The shadow turned and darted full speed down the hallway, hitting that back door at a rush, and ran into a wide, open field chest-high with dead grass and junked cars. Quinn took off at a sprint, running around the house, spotting the figure, swallowed up by the field, moving in slow motion, feet weighed down.

  Quinn caught him by the collar of his T-shirt and wrestled him down into the winter mud.

  Keith Shackelford wasn’t much to look at, but most people in the gas-station restaurant couldn’t keep their eyes off him. Half his face had been ruined in the fire, with bright red skin and deep rubbery scars across his throat. Both his ears had burned to nubs, and he had no eyelashes or eyebrows to speak of. His hair had been burned away, although he kept a ball cap down over his eyes, black and red in honor of Dale Earnhardt. Quinn couldn’t figure out for the life of him how Keith Shackelford could then pop a cigarette in his mouth and click open the lighter.

  “I appreciate you coming with us,” Lillie said.

  “Didn’t know not coming was an option,” he said, turning his eyes toward Quinn.

  “You had a choice,” Quinn said.

  “So I guess there ai
n’t no donation plate.”

  “Sorry about that,” Quinn said.

  “And you ain’t no preacher.”

  “Nope.”

  They drank coffee in the rear corner of the little McDonald’s connected to the gas-station convenience store. Keith took a seat in the very back, eyes down, trying not to lift them off a paper cup that he didn’t touch.

  “How well did you know Jill?” Quinn asked.

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He shrugged. “She was around. With Jett a lot. I think he liked her a hell of a lot more ’an she liked him. She was only around when he had money. You could always count on Jill to be around then.”

  “You didn’t care for her?”

  “Did I say that? I’m sorry she’s dead. You could tell she’d been a good-lookin’ girl before she got all messed up. Had Daddy issues. I guess you know her daddy was a preacher. Those kids never turn out right.”

  “What were y’all into?” Lillie asked, Quinn noticing how relaxed she asked it, slipping back in her seat, reaching for a cigarette herself, making the whole thing nice and easy, conversational.

  “You name it,” Keith said, placing his hands on the table, wearing thin gloves, a flannel shirt buttoned at the wrist and the throat. “I tried every drug known to man, and I’m still sitting here with y’all and drinkin’ coffee.”

  “And you served with Jett?” Quinn asked.

  “No,” he said. “We was both in the Army but not together. He’d been out for a few years when I come back from my last tour. You military? ’Cause if you ain’t, you need to get a refund on that haircut.”

  “I am.”

  “Still?”

  “Yep.”

  “Reserves?”

  “No,” Quinn said, reaching for his coffee. “I’m in Third Batt of the Seventy-fifth.”

  “You a Ranger?” Keith asked. His thick scarred eyelids opened, making him look confused, his face naked and seeming like that of a man much older than twenty-five.

  Quinn nodded.

  “Goddamn,” Keith said. “I saw two Rangers get in a bar fight one time in Memphis, and they done beat up the bouncer and two cops. Took about a dozen men to control them, and they was still fighting. Y’all are crazy as shit.”