The Innocents (19 page)

“Shut up,” Lillie said. “Colson, how about you call dispatch for a little help in transport?”

“What about our bikes?” Lyle asked.

“Wrong Way, don’t worry your pretty little head about that,” Lillie said. “We’ll show your personal property the same love and care you showed Mr. Khouraki.”

“You put one scratch on my bike . . .” Wrong Way said.

Quinn got on one knee to see the man’s face more clearly. He sure hoped he didn’t have to transport this one in the Big Green Machine. It would take a bucket of Febreze to get rid of the stink. “And you’ll do what?”

Wrong Way spit on Quinn’s boot. It was about all he had left in
him.

N
early two weeks after his son had the run-in with those bikers, Jason Colson rolled up to the federal prison at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, for a sit-down with none other than Johnny T. Stagg. Most folks said that Stagg didn’t have a middle name, only used the
T.
to look halfway respectable, everyone knowing the Johnny was just Johnny, never Jonathan. Jason never asked him about the
T.
or really much of anything since Stagg had risen in power in Tibbehah, from dogcatcher to head county supervisor, about the same time Jason had found regular work out in Hollywood. Stagg took over the old choke-and-puke by the highway, Jason recalling it had been an Exxon station for a while, with real breathing tigers in cages to draw in the tourists headed down 45.
PLEASE DON’T FLICK YOUR
CIGARETTE BUTTS ON T
HE ANIMALS
, the old sign read.

“Your buddies wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Stagg said, not long
after they had the usual back-and-forth about who they knew, where they’d been, and exactly how were things inside a minimum security prison. “I already lost too much, as it is. But I prayed on it and, well, I figured talking can’t hurt.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Jason said. “I only wanted to see if you were open to the idea.” He was a little surprised to hear Stagg talk about prayer as he knew all the stories about Stagg running girls, drugs, and elections with a heavy hand since he’d been back. Maybe all the caddying, bush pruning, and healthy outdoor recreating in the federal pen had made Stagg think on things.

“I don’t know quite what to make of it,” Stagg said. “I’d been thinking about putting a little house out there after I leave this place. Might even retire. Figured Quinn wouldn’t mind having me a neighbor.
Ha, ha.
Since I’d served my time and made things right.”

Stagg’s skin had grown even more red and weathered since Jason saw him last, his classic 1950s pompadour barbered down to a more businesslike cut. But he still had the skeletal craggy face, the big veneers, and the hooked nose. He wore a prison-issue green T-shirt, green pants, and black sneakers. “But you’ll have to remind me, Mr. Colson,” Stagg said. “I own a bunch of land. How many acres is this parcel again?”

“Two hundred and fifty.”

“Uh-huh,” Stagg said, grinning a bit. “You plan on sticking around Jericho? Need a place to settle? Maybe put up a log cabin?”

“Something like that.” Jason reached down next to the chair and brought out a small box of peppermints he’d bought at a Walgreens over the state line. Folks said Stagg favored keeping a fresh mint going, as his breath was like hot air escaped from inside a dead mule.

“Appreciate that, sir,” Stagg said. “Well, I guess it’s not much of a secret that me and your boy never saw eye to eye.”

“Heard it was more than that,” Jason said. “Y’all pretty much despised each other.”

Stagg shrugged, “I think Quinn had a hard time adjusting to Jericho after being in the service,” he said. “Lots of things had changed. Places he knew as a kid had closed up. Most of the business had moved off the Square and out to the highway. That Amsden girl he’d been seeing had married another man. Although I heard they’re sweet on each other again. After war, the real world just seems kind of off-kilter. Remember how it was for boys after Vietnam?”

“You bet,” Jason said. “I had a buddy who told me he got spit on not twenty-four hours after stepping off the plane.”

“I think your boy was respected,” Stagg said. “But he had a habit of blaming other folks for his troubles. Mad at the world. He was still in the service when he came after me, blamed me for your brother-in-law Hamp Beckett dying. You and I both know that wadn’t anyone’s fault but Hamp’s.”

Jason nodded. He’d heard a lot of theories, many that implicated Stagg. But you didn’t act like a hard-on coming hat in hand. A man gritted his teeth and tried his best to see that deal through. “Sure.”

“Just how much are you willing to pay?”

“Land is stripped,” he said. “And what’s left is a real mess.”

Stagg grinned with tombstone teeth big enough to pop the cap from a beer bottle. He folded his hands on the picnic table and nodded and nodded. “Cleared,” he said. “And ready for development.”

“You expect much development up there around Fate?” Jason said, smiling back. “Only business up there is a scratch-and-dent grocery and a deer processor.”

Stagg’s grin didn’t wave, only stared at Jason, waiting for him to get on with it, tell him a price, as that was the only thing that got a man like Stagg’s attention.

Jason said, “Fifteen hundred an acre.”

“Oh, hell.”

“That’s twice what it’s worth,” Jason said. “I appreciate your predicament. But as I told our friends, I’m not here to bargain. Only to make an offer. If that’s not acceptable, it’s your land and you can do with it what you want.”

Stagg scratched under his nose with the back of his forefinger. A prisoner on a riding lawn mower passed by the patio, kicking up a plume of dirt and grass as he passed, drowning out the business talk for several moments. Stagg wore a different expression now, less cocky and more thoughtful. “What’s Quinn doing?” he said. “Now that he’s not the sheriff.”

“Overseas work,” he said. “He trains Afghanis how to be cops.”

“Signs and wonders.”

“But he’s back now, working a little bit for Lillie Virgil.”

“That woman gets elected sheriff and every boy and man better check his cojones at the county line,” Stagg said. “You think Mississippi is ready for a woman running the show? One who knows how to use a big gun and shoot?”

“Lillie’s a fine woman,” Jason said. “I’ve known her since she was a little girl. Quinn says she’s twice the lawman, or lawperson, or whatever you’re supposed to say, than him. He said he didn’t know much about detective work, investigations, details, and all that when he came home. She was the one who trained him.”

“Don’t I know it,” Stagg said. “They did a lot of training out at the Rebel, trying to toss my pecker into that churning meat grinder.”

Jason looked around at the prison grounds. Lots of manicured bushes, small islands of roses, and neatly trimmed maples and magnolias. It looked more like a celebrity rehab center, as Jason had visited plenty of
those, than a federal prison. “Doesn’t look so bad, Mr. Stagg,” Jason said. “Definitely isn’t Parchman.”

“I wouldn’t wish Parchman on anyone,” he said. “Except maybe a couple folks. But I’m reading the Bible every day, attending prayer meetings, trying to let go of all that kind of stuff. I read in
Time
magazine that anger can contribute to heart disease and the cancer.”

“I once dated a woman out in Los Angeles who could tell how much hate a person held on to by the color of their aura,” Jason said.

“Los Angeles,” he said. “
Whew.
I got to visit there someday. They still got the Brown Derby?”

“Burned down about twenty years ago.”

“Fifteen hundred?” Stagg said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t want to be ugly here, but in the grand scheme that’s not a whole lot of money,” he said. “By my standards.”

“You might consider it had been in Quinn’s family for more than a century.”

“Are you buying that land?” Stagg said. “Or is Quinn?”

Jason took a breath, smiled, and waited. The lawn mower passed again, chipped bits of leaves and grass flying up onto the patio. Both men having to wait until the machine headed out toward the parking lot, trimming a narrow path along a sidewalk. Damn, it was hot as hell out here. Late August, but still pushing a hundred degrees. Stagg seemed to thrive in it.

“Mr. Colson, let’s lay it all out on this table,” Stagg said. “I don’t really give two shits about some logged-out crap hole in Fate. That land’s been worth holding on to just to piss off your son.”

“Pretty much what I figured,” Jason said, pushing himself up from the table. His bad knee giving him hell. “Sorry to have wasted your time.”

“But,” Stagg said, waiting, drawing it out. He held up the flat of his hand. “I do have an interest in a fifty-acre parcel not too far from what used to be my truck stop.”

“OK.”

“Got some high-minded owners who would never sell to me,” he said. “And if someone starts making phone calls from Jackson, they might get real ambitious. Nervous and all.”

“Sorry,” Jason said. “I’m not following you, Mr. Stagg.”

“I see that land you want to be worth about the same as this fifty acres,” Stagg said, cracking a mint with his back teeth. “I got no problems in swapping deeds with you.”

“You thinking about getting back in business soon?” Jason said.

Stagg swallowed, hot wind scattering his dry white hair. He pressed the hair down to his head and winked. “Sir, I always heard you got all the charisma in the family,” he said. “And now I know it.”

•   •   •

L
illie had done a week’s shopping at the Piggly Wiggly, cart loaded down, with her daughter Rose, now four, riding high in the kid’s seat. Lillie had come straight from her shift, wearing her uniform, gun on hip, making her rounds, aisle to aisle, making sure she got the Cheez-Its and Capri Suns for Rose’s lunch box, hell to pay if she didn’t. She was loading it all into the back of her Cherokee when she saw Wash Jones standing by the front door of the grocery. A group of women from the Baptist church were having a bake sale, the proceeds to help Milly Jones’s family in their time of need.

Wash saw Lillie and Lillie saw Wash. He walked across the lot in big strides, shaking a few hands and saluting people from across the way. Wash, who’d gone from Town Loser to Town Hero in two whole weeks,
gaining a lot of purpose and confidence as the man who’d sired the murdered kid. A long way from apprentice to the county’s septic tank king.

“Howdy, Wash,” Lillie said.

“Been trying to call you, Lillie,” he said. “Internet’s heating up. Did you know our Facebook page now has more than ten thousand followers? Ten thousand! We got folks from up in Ohio trying to make sense of this. All over the dang twitterverse.”

“Good for them.”

“I’m just saying, folks are starting to wonder.”

“Wonder what?” Lillie said, lifting Rose from the cart and helping her climb up into the car. The dark-eyed, dark-skinned little girl smiling up at Momma as she scrambled into her car seat and tugged at the straps. Rose had gone from Guatemala to a foster hell and into a loving Mississippi home in her few short years.

“Hmm,” Wash Jones. “I recall Milly at that age. She sure was a hellcat.”

“We’re doing all we can,” Lillie said. “This is the first time I’ve spent time with my child since the night it happened. Babysitter said we’d run out of every bit of food.”

“I don’t fault you, Miss Virgil,” Wash said. “I just need something to tell folks. I don’t want people pointing fingers at you. Wondering just what’s happening. Two weeks. A murder like that? Folks start to wonder who is doing what.”

Lillie helped Rose strap in, then leaned inside and started the car to get the air-conditioning going. She turned to Wash and crossed her arms over her chest. Wash, dressed in brown overalls and a stained white T-shirt, smiled back at her, eager, wanting to know the latest facts for him to parcel out to his people, folks online who called him “courageous” and a man with “intestinal fortitude.”

“We still don’t have autopsy results yet,” Lillie said. “Given the circumstances. Well, it’s tougher than most.”

“What about the crime scene?” Wash said. “Did y’all find some clues? You know, like a cigarette butt with some DNA? Tire tracks? Some of that dang thermo-imaging?”

“No, sir.”

“But you did bag some evidence, find some fingerprints?”

“Your daughter’s vehicle was incinerated.”

“Lord God.”

“We’re doing our best,” Lillie said. “We have some leads.”

“Who?”

“I don’t want to point fingers until we have someone solid,” Lillie said. “Right now, it’s all hypothetical.”

“Huh?”

“We’re throwing darts and see where they land.”

“She was my baby,” Wash said, scratching his whiskered chin. “Baby love. My lovey.”

“I better get going.”

“You know we got Greta Van Susteren flying in from Atlanta tonight?” Wash said. “She’s that hatchet-faced broad from the OJ show on ole CNN. I figured we’d get her a Mex meal down at the El Dorado. Ain’t much, but they got tequila.”

“I promise to keep you posted.”

Wash walked close up to the Cherokee, peering into the glass at Rose, waving to the little girl. Rose, being a smart little tyke, looked embarrassed and glanced away like she didn’t see him. Wash did a little impromptu dance, shifting his sizable weight from side to side, foot to foot.

“Hard not having a daddy.”

“Should be any day for those autopsy results.”

“You got a boyfriend or something?” Wash said. “Some kind of man for the child to get to know?”

Lillie bit her damn tongue so hard that she thought it might just bleed. She tried to think about what the man had gone through, his daughter walking a back highway while completely on fire. A teenager walking while on fire. Her windpipe damn-near cauterized.

“Aren’t y’all glad you could wipe me from the books?” Wash Jones said. “I mean, damn. I guess it pays to be a Walmart customer, that video showing me and Charlotte buying that thirty-inch Sony at the exact moment. I think about that. What if our TV hadn’t gone out? Charlotte wanting to watch
Dancing with the Stars
. I mean, y’all might’ve still thought I could have done it. Leaving things like that with Milly. But, Miss Virgil, I want you to know I never had that kind of hate in my heart. Whoever did this wanted to send a message. It’s like what they call on those cop shows a real Message Killin’.”

“We have some leads,” Lillie said. “We have suspects. I wish I could tell you more.”

Wash swallowed, took a few steps forward, and scratched his hairy neck. “Y’all are looking at that redheaded bitch at the Rebel. Ain’t you?”

“We have some leads.”

“That’s a goddang den of iniquity down there,” he said. “But who am I? I didn’t do nothin’. Might have just gone ahead and sold my sweet girl to some white slavers. They used her ass up and then burned her. Why? Why would that woman burn my girl?”