Bull Mountain (18 page)

Holly turned his attention back to Clayton, who hadn’t moved.
He stood staring at the floor as if Joe were still down there. “I think you’re done here, Sheriff.” He laid a cautious hand on Clayton’s shoulder. “Let me take you home.”

Clayton wore a look on his face like he’d just woken from surgery that required a heavy anesthetic. “Okay,” he said. Holly looked back to Nicole, who hadn’t moved much, either, except to survey the damage done to her daddy’s
place. He nodded at her, then toted Clayton out to his car.

4.

Kate came out on the porch holding a .30-.30 before Holly could open the door on Clayton’s side of the Crown Vic. Holly knew about Kate. He knew from photos that she was beautiful, but her standing there with that rifle, in nothing but an oversized nightshirt, put her on the list of the top ten sexiest women he’d ever seen.
The porch light silhouetting her legs through the thin material drove her up to the top five. She could see someone else in the car but couldn’t make out who it was. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Mrs. Burroughs?”

“I know
my
name. I asked who
you
are.”

Holly smiled.

“I’m serious. My husband’s the sheriff.”

“I work with your husband. He’s here with me in the car.”

“Who the hell are you?”

Holly held his hands up slightly higher than his shoulders. “My name is Simon Holly. I’m a federal agent and, seriously, ma’am, Clayton is here in the car.”

Kate took a step forward to see the man in the car a little better in the dark. Holly lowered one hand and opened the passenger-side door. Light flooded the interior of the Crown Vic, and Kate saw her husband.
She lowered the rifle a little and took two more steps toward the car before noticing the damage done to his face and steadied the gun back on Simon. She racked the lever. “What happened to him?”

Holly put his hands up a little higher. “Oh, no. You got it wrong. I didn’t do that. He was already like that. I’m just giving him a ride home.”

“He’s a friend, Katie. Put that thing away.” Clayton
raised a wobbly hand in the air to motion for her to put down the gun, and then tried unsuccessfully to pull himself out of the car. Simon lurched forward and grabbed his elbow to keep him from falling. Kate leaned the rifle against the quarter panel of the car and took Clayton’s face in her hands. She smelled the whiskey immediately and pulled back.

“Clayton? Are you . . . ? Have you been
 . . . ?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re drunk and you’re beat-up. What the hell is going on here?” She examined his swollen eye, but with a lot less compassion than she would have done if he was sober. She looked to Holly to fill in the blanks. “What happened?”

“I suppose you should ask him, ma’am.”

“I’m asking you.”

“I’m thinking he might want to tell you himself.”

“That’s enough,” Clayton said, grabbing the rifle and making his way toward the porch. “Holly, bring the file on your dead bandito to my office in the morning. Thanks for the ride.” He carefully took the steps and opened the screen door.

“Clayton!” Kate said, surprised—confused—disgusted.

“Just come inside, woman. You ain’t got no pants on.” Clayton disappeared into the house. Kate’s
cheeks flushed a bright rosy red, but Holly was sure it was caused by anger and not humility. He studied his shoes and puffed his cheeks out. He kept his hands buried deep in his pockets. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. Kate twisted her head so fast from the front door to Holly, he thought it might snap right off.

“Sorry? What are you sorry for?” She didn’t wait on an answer. “Are you sorry Halford
didn’t kill him? I know that’s what happened. I know he went up there with some fool idea that you put in his head. I know that’s a year of sobriety down the toilet because of this bullshit.”

“Wait a minute, Kate. It’s bigger than that.”

“Don’t use my name familiar. You don’t know me. Just get back in your car and drive away. I’d tell you to stay away, but we both know that ain’t gonna
happen, is it?”

“I can’t.”

“Get the hell off my property.”

“All right, Mrs. Burroughs.” Holly moved to the driver’s side of the car and put his hand on the door. “You know,” he said, “the girl down at Lucky’s wanted to call you to come get him. I didn’t think you’d want that to play out in public.”

“What do you want? A thank-you?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. He kind of did.

Kate’s hip swiveled out to the side on instinct. It showed off her curves even more, and Holly struggled to keep his attention on her eyes. She grabbed the rifle from where Clayton had propped it against the door and flung her hair back out of her face. “I want you to listen to me, Agent Holly. Can you do that? I mean really listen?”

“Sure.”

“Good, because I don’t plan on ever having to
talk to you again. My husband is a good man—”

“Mrs. Burroughs.”

“You just said you could listen.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now, he’s a good man and he’s a good sheriff—almost to a fault. He can handle himself and he’s capable of making his own decisions, but that doesn’t let you off the hook for planting the seed. Don’t think for a second that I won’t hold you just as accountable if anything
like this happens again on your watch.”

“My intentions here are to do this peacefully.”

“Says the man whose face
didn’t
get pummeled today. I don’t care what your intentions are. I just want my husband to come home to me every night whole. Tonight is your one pass. But after tonight, if you get him hurt again, if
anything
happens to that man while he’s acting on your behalf, I don’t care
who you are, or what your intentions were, you’re going to have to answer to more than just the Lord. Are we clear on that, Special Agent Holly?”

Holly studied her resolve; this woman was a piece of work. She’d just threatened a federal agent and meant every word of it. Holly nodded, more in admiration than agreement. He opened the car door.

“Holly, one more thing.”

“What’s that, Mrs.
Burroughs?”

“Another thing about Clayton. Once he gets his mind set to something, there’s no stopping him until it’s run its course. Not until it’s done. So I’d be extremely careful what exactly you set him on.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kate watched the twin red taillights fade to black before she gave her hands permission to shake.

5.

“I’m sorry, baby. It was a onetime thing. It won’t
happen again.” Clayton was barely conscious, drifting off on their bed as he spoke. Kate covered him with the quilt and stroked his rust-colored hair. There was no point in trying to talk about anything now. Clayton waking up in his boots and dirty clothes with a monster hangover would have to be penance enough. She’d deal with the rest later.

“It’s okay, Clayton. Get some rest.”

Within
seconds he was out, and the snoring began. He snored only when he drank. She stayed there, sitting on the bed, running her fingers through his hair for a few minutes more before getting up to put the rifle back in the gun cabinet. She walked into the kitchen and used her foot to slide a small wooden step stool out of the pantry and position it in front of the refrigerator. She stepped up, moved
a few bottles of vitamins out of the way, and opened the high cupboard. She pulled out the bottle of bourbon. The bottle she wasn’t supposed to know about. She stepped down, opened another cabinet, and took out a rocks glass. Waterford crystal. Expensive. A wedding gift from some friend she’d drifted out of touch with years ago. She carried the whiskey and the glass to the front door, careful not
to let the screen door creak and wake up Clayton. Like that would happen. He’d sleep through a hurricane right now. She sat down on the porch swing and held the bottle up to the moonlight. It was a little over half empty. A full two, maybe three, inches below the thin black pen mark she’d put on the back label. Last time she checked, it was at an inch. She closed her eyes and sat quiet, swinging there,
listening to the mountain’s nightlife competing for the chance to sing her to sleep. She poured herself a drink and set the bottle down beside her. She held the glass for a long time, staring at it, rolling it between her palms before she finally poured it out on the porch and cried.

CHAPTER

A
NGEL

1973

1.

Angel rested her forehead against the cool glass of the bus window. The tree line buzzed by in a blur of greens, browns, and reds. Every so often she tried to focus on a single point of
interest and moved her head to break the blur, but there was nothing to see she hadn’t seen a hundred times before. She’d hitched every inch of this highway over the course of the past five years in an effort to escape her life, but always ended up headed back in this direction. She’d spent the last of the money the big black man from the hotel gave her on the bus ticket. If she had done what he told
her and gone to a hospital, she might still have it all, but she didn’t. She went to Pepé, her pimp. It’s true what they say about young gullible women thinking their tormentors love them. Angel was walking, talking, battered proof. Pepé said he cared about her. Promised to take care of her. Swore to her no other man would put hands on her she didn’t want there. He told her hospitals led to uncomfortable
questions, and that led to police, which led to jail. He would never let that happen to her. He’d protect her, and his protection was absolute. Except, his protection consisted of taking all her money, putting a needle full of opium in her arm, and getting a bunch of Hispanic yes-men to hold her down and shove her shoulder back in place while she drooled into a dirty sofa cushion. She
didn’t remember all of it, just flashes of color, sweaty faces, and laughter. One of them, the one Pepé called El Cirujano, stitched up her face where that bastard from Georgia had cut her. She hadn’t pulled the gauze off to examine the damage. In fact, she’d avoided her reflection altogether since it all went down. Right now she was fine with never seeing her face again, but she knew something bad
was festering under there. Pepé kept her doped up for God knows how long, relegated to the back room of that double-wide, until it dawned on him that nobody would want to fuck a skinny whore in her condition with a face that looked like raw hamburger. That’s when the dope stopped coming and the sick started. Almost two months she’d stayed cooped up in that shithole. She knew it would be just a matter
of time before he’d kill her and have his boys toss her body in a dumpster somewhere. A far cry from the life she’d come out here for. She’d thought to stash one of the C-notes in the lining of her bra, and the first chance she got, she slid it under a corner of carpet. When the time came to bail, she took that money and the clothes she had on and climbed out the trailer window. She made a beeline
to the bus station where Pepé had first scooped her up so many months ago and bought a ticket for the first bus home. Why didn’t she just go to the damn hospital? Why was she so stupid? Why was everyone else always right, and she got everything so terribly wrong? She moved her forehead around on the window, using up all the coolness of the glass, and closed her eyes. She knew going home was
just the latest in her lifelong series of mistakes.

2.

The young man sitting next to Angel in the aisle seat fished a bag of peanuts from the rucksack on his lap. “You want some?” he asked, shaking the bag toward Angel. He was chubby in a man-child kind of way, with a full head of tightly curled brown hair. He wore blue jeans and a Florida State sweatshirt that sported the same Indian-head
logo also embroidered on the rucksack. He was obviously in his twenties, but the rosy cheeks and chub made him look younger. He seemed nice enough, letting her have the window seat when she got on the bus, and, so far, he hadn’t mentioned the bandages on her face or the dirty denim shirt and sweat-stained tube top she was wearing. She could tell he was fighting it, but he’d managed to keep his
eyes off her tits this whole time as well, and she was thankful for it. She had caught him stealing glances at her bony white legs for the past few miles. She used to like being ogled. It made her feel pretty, but now it just made her feel ill.

“No, thanks, I’m okay.”

Florida State tucked the peanuts back into his bag and secured the flap, taking the time to buckle each strap.

Can’t
be too careful traveling with whores,
she thought, and wished she’d taken the peanuts. She was starving.

“Suit yourself,” he said, “but you look pretty hungry.”

“I’m really not,” she lied. “My stomach’s a little knotted up this morning.”

“You trying to get clean?” he said without skipping a beat, like he was asking about the weather or a local football score. Angel shifted herself
toward the window and slowly angled her arms in an attempt to hide the blackened veins that road-mapped them.

“It’s cool,” Florida State said. “I’m not judging or anything. I think it’s great you want to do better for yourself. I’m Hattie, by the way.” Hattie stuck out a pudgy hand for Angel to shake. She handled it like it was carved from dog shit.

“I’m Angel.”

“Nice to meet you,
Angel. Are you headed home or leaving home?”

“Going home.”

“Cool. Cool. I got a buddy down in Pensacola getting married in a few days. I’m gonna hang out in the gulf and tan up a little before I hit the wedding.”

Angel wanted to laugh. This guy had about as much of a chance of getting tanned up as she did getting her virginity back. She really didn’t care what Hattie’s plans were.
She only wanted to sleep away the last hours of this trip and wake up in a brand-new but slightly less shitty situation. Hattie wasn’t going to let that happen.

“You mind if I ask what happened to your face?”

“Yes,” she said. It came out fast and sharp.

“That’s cool. I’m just being friendly. I’ll shut up.”

Angel felt a twinge of guilt for snapping at the guy. She was all bandaged
up, after all, so why wouldn’t he ask? “No. Look, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be rude. I got into a . . . situation recently, and now I’m just trying to get out—way out.”

“Jeez, sounds rough.”

“It was.”

“What brought you to Jacksonville in the first place?”

She laughed. Here she was, beaten, bandaged, badly dressed, covered in bruises and track marks, hadn’t showered in more than
a week, and answering that question embarrassed her. Angel considered Hattie for the first time. If she wasn’t so foul and down on herself, she might have found him cute in a Peter Pan kind of way. She had to admit, though, it was nice talking to a decent guy. “It’s a dumb reason.”

“Can’t be that dumb if you’re gonna up and move to another state. Tell me.”

“I wanted to be a singer.”

“A singer?”

“Yeah. I told you it was dumb.”

“No, it ain’t. That’s cool. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. What kind of singing?”

“Rock and roll, I guess. A little country, too.”

“Like Linda Ronstadt? I love her.”

“A little,” Angel said. She was brightening up some. No one ever wanted to talk to her about her music. Mostly people just rolled their eyes. “I like Ronstadt, but
I wanted a harder edge. More like Janis Joplin, you know?”

“Like her stuff with Big Brother and the Holding Company?”

“Yeah.” Angel was excited now. Not many people she met knew the music she listened to. The smile she wore made the wounds in her face throb. “But my idea was to make it a little more southern, like picture Janis singing for Lynyrd Skynyrd, or something.”

“Ah, that’s
why you came to Jacksonville and you didn’t head the other way toward California.”

“Yeah, I thought I’d get inspired if I lived in the same town those guys were from. I thought some of what they had might rub off on me.”

Hattie unstrapped his rucksack and offered his peanuts again. This time she accepted. She popped an entire handful in her mouth but immediately regretted it. It hurt to
chew.

“Still could, you know.”

“Still could what?” she said carefully from the side of her full mouth.

“Still could make it big. You got plenty of time to get back out there.”

Angel finished chewing before she responded to that. “No,” she said. “No, I can’t.” She was suddenly cold, and hugged herself close around her midriff. She stared back out the window. “Things have . . . changed.”
She closed her eyes and thought about another one of her stupid decisions. In the three months she’d worked johns for Pepé, she’d at least made them wear a rubber. That, or she was slick enough to get one of those stupid sponges in place first. That bastard—
Gareth
, Pepé had called him—he refused. She was too scared to argue. No, she wasn’t scared. She was
into
him, so she gave in to him. She was
just stupid, and that was nothing new.

“You okay?” Hattie said.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Well, I sure don’t see why you can’t make another run at the whole singing thing, Angel. I mean, you sure are pretty enough.”

Instantly Angel was hyper-aware of how much of her body was uncovered. She tried not to show it, but shrank up a little in her seat out of instinct. “Thank you,” she said,
polite but frigid. He’d gotten her talking. It was her fault. Here it comes.

“I mean, a girl with your kinda looks, and your figure, could go all the way, for sure.” Hattie lightly rubbed a finger down the smoothness of her thigh. Angel continued to shrink. “You don’t even know if I can sing,” she said. She wanted to scream.

“I’ll just bet you sing like an angel. I bet that’s how you got
your name.”

Angel stared out at the whirl of buzzing trees and highway markers. “That’s not my name,” she said. “That’s just what someone else decided I should be called. My real name’s Marion.”

“That’s a pretty name, too, Marion. A pretty name for a pretty girl.” Another pudgy finger down her thigh. He shifted his weight to press closer to her. She thought she might puke. Two months ago
she would have screamed in his face and punched him square in the nuts, but now all she could see was the face of that man at the hotel, Gareth Burroughs. He’d almost killed her. He would always be right there to remind her how little she mattered. How helpless she really was. She hugged her belly tighter.

Hattie kept talking, kept groping, but she stopped responding. He said something about
getting a drink. Finding a quiet place to “talk” when the bus stopped in Destin. He said he knew just the place. She bet he did. She closed her eyes again and hugged herself tighter, trying to disappear into the cocoon of her thin, damaged arms—to squeeze herself out of existence. She had to believe this time around things would be different. If she could just get back home, things
had
to be different.
They just had to. It wasn’t just about her anymore. Things were going to be better for her in Mobile.

Better for her and the baby.

3.

Marion stood in front of the Grand Central diner on Dauphin Street, holding a pay phone to her ear and a menthol 100 to her lips. It rang twice.

“Hello.”

“Mama?”

“Marion? Is that you?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Oh my God, baby, where are you?”

“I’m home, Mama.”

“Oh, thank the Lord. Tell me where you are, and I’ll send Roy to pick you up.”

Marion switched the phone to the other ear as if the first one were defective and she had heard her mother wrong. “You’ll send Roy? Mama . . . ? Is he still . . . ?”

“Is he still what, honey?”

“Mama, Roy’s the reason—”

“Marion, honey, please don’t start that up. You’re home,
baby. That’s all that matters. We’ll work it all out. Where are you?”

Silence.

“Marion, baby? Are you still there?”

“I . . . I got to go, Mama.”

“Marion, wait. Your father’s changed. He’s a good man. It was all a misunderstanding.”

“He’s not my father.”

“Marion, baby, please. Tell me where you are and we can all sit down and work it out. You’ll see. He’s a wonderful man,
and he misses you very much.”

“Mama . . .”

“Hold on, baby, he wants to talk to you . . .”

“Mama!”

“Hold on . . .”

“That you, pretty bird? You come to your senses? You wanna come on home now?”

Click.

Marion tossed her cigarette butt to the ground and immediately dug in her purse for the pack to light another. She savagely flicked her Bic until the flame held, and she
pulled in as much smoke as her lungs could handle. She dropped another coin in the slot and punched another number. It rang three times.