SO J.T. BLACK KNEW DENNIS REACH, AND THEY BOTH KNEW Carol Ray to some greater or lesser degree of intimacy. Now Reach was dead and Black was sniffing around his ex-wife. I wasn’t sure yet what it all meant or what the living members of the triangle were up to, but I was willing to bet my retirement it wasn’t anything you’d embroider on a throw pillow.
Sheriff Wince wasn’t available. I tried his mobile and his office but he didn’t answer, and the deputy I spoke to instead said he’d been threatened with terrible things if he forwarded my call.
I said, “Mine specifically or just anyone?”
“You specifically.”
“That’s not very flattering.”
“We’re cops,” the boy said, “not flatter-bugs.”
Lindley was in at the Jackson County sheriff’s station.
He said, “Please tell me you want to confess.”
“Why? Would that make you happy?”
“Let me put it this way: I’ve got kids. Six kids. That’s a lot these days. Hell, it was a lot back when I was young. And, what’s more, they’re boys. It’s like living with a herd of wild beasts. You want so much as a morsel of food for yourself, you got to fight for it. You want to watch a program on the TV, it’s like going to war. The last twenty some-odd years, I can’t even fuck my wife without assurance of an audience and some kind of snide remark in the morning.”
“Must be quite a show.”
“Don’t make me come over there now.”
“Sorry.”
“And finally, finally, after a lifetime of this business, I’m about to pack the last of those little bastards off to college. Another month, I’ll be able to watch whatever the hell I want on the idiot box whenever I want, everything in that refrigerator will be mine, and I’ll be able to screw my wife in the middle of the living room floor and twice on Friday night, and there won’t be a word said about it except, ‘My God, R.L., you’re the greatest.’ I’ll be like a goddamn king.”
“Yeah?”
“And busting you would still make me happier.”
“Dang.”
“Just telling the truth. What’s on your mind? Assuming I give a damn.”
I said, “I’m interested in what you can tell me about J.T. Black.”
“And why, pray, should I tell you anything about him? You’re my prime suspect, after all.”
“Humor me, would you? Maybe pretend I’m writing a story about it.”
“Okay, write this in your story: J.T. Black is a big, mean, racist, shit-for-brains motherfucker. And that’s on the record, man. His daddy is a coal operator, has his own little string out this way, and the way I hear things he about owned this entire county, one time or another. J.T. was a deputy for a number of years before I busted his ass in the last election. Not bragging about it, just stating fact. End of story.”
“He’s a White Dragon, isn’t he?”
“He is,” R.L. said after a moment. “Leastways, he was. Way I understand things, Black and the Dragons had a bit of falling out.”
“Any idea over what?”
“Nope. You understand, we were never what you’d call close.”
“He’s not on your Twitter feed?”
“What?”
“Nothing. I don’t even know.”
“Man starts talking nonsense like that—Twitter and whatnot—needs to get his head screwed on right. What’s all this about, anyway? Why you suddenly interested in a gang of crazies like the Dragons?”
“Have you got anything new in the Reach case?”
“My momma told me never to answer a question with a question,” he said. “You think Black is tangled up in all that?”
I said, “Don’t know. But Reach was a White Dragon and so was Black, and I just ran into J.T. the other day hanging around one of Reach’s ex-wives.”
Lindley chuckled. “So you met Carol Ray, did you?”
“Briefly but beautifully.”
“She’s trouble, that one. And deeper into her former husband’s doings than she likes to let on. Cop in me thinks I should warn you about that. Other hand, she gets done with you, you’re like to be out of my hair for good and always. I’m thinking I’ll go with that idea. The second one. See where it leads.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“I don’t care.”
I ignored him. I said, “She seemed to think Dennis might have been done in by his bad-ass buds.”
“That’d be mighty convenient for you, wouldn’t it? Slim, I’ve worked more than my fair share of homicides. One thing they all had in common, the biggest asshole in closest proximity was almost always guilty. Guess who that is.”
“I have a picture of it in my mind.”
“Good. And one more thing before I bring this pleasant chat to a close: I catch you nosing around this business in my county, trying to fuck up my investigation, I will have your ass back in a cell so fast it’ll give you jet lag. You’ll be looking at obstruction of justice and accessory to murder. And that’s just the appetizer.”
“What if I make you a personal promise to behave?”
I won’t even share what Lindley said to that.
It took me another couple hours to track down Reach’s other exes. One was a nurse’s aid at a cancer center in Ohio, the other ran a pricey yoga camp in Hohenwald, Tennessee. Neither of them was hiding out. Getting anything out of them, though, was a story unto itself. The nurse’s aid didn’t want to talk about it, said she was glad the motherfucker was dead—in so many words—and invited me to the Forest City for the party. At least the yoga instructor put on mournful airs.
“It’s hard,” she said, her accent thick and slow, “terribly hard to feel sad and happy all at the same time. Conflicted. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I guess I do.”
“Of course, I didn’t want Dennis to suffer. Did he suffer?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe a little.”
“Sad.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you say he suffered?”
And on like that for longer than comfort allowed.
Jessie, the son Carol Ray had mentioned, belonged to the yoga instructor, but he was stationed in Germany and wouldn’t rotate home for another year and a half. Another dead end.
By the time I was finished for the night, Anci had been asleep for hours and the house was that nighttime quiet when you can hear the clocks ticking. I finished the book I was reading—one of Anci’s mystery stories—and took out my phone and dialed Peggy.
“Well, listen to what the cat dragged in.”
“Is that me? Am I the thing the cat dragged in?”
“That’s you, baby.”
“Just as long as I know where things stand. How’s your sister?”
Peggy said, “Let me put it this way, she’s single-handedly keeping the box wine industry in this country afloat. But we’re beginning to work a few things out. How’s everything back home?”
I took a deep breath and gave her a quick rundown of everything that had happened.
She said, “You’re kidding? A missing dog case turned into murder? I’ve only been gone three days.”
“I know.”
“I tell you, this is just like that damn thing with the chickens last year.”
“Not exactly. I didn’t end up in the slammer over that one.”
“No. Just the emergency room,” she said. “And you’re on the hook for it, too, this Reach business. What do you think it’s all about?”
“Not sure yet, but I think it’s possible our man Reach was trying to skip a few rungs on his way up the White Dragon ladder and somebody took umbrage.”
“Sounds like a working theory, anyway,” she said, “but are you sure these are the kind of people you want to get tangled up with?”
“Assuredly not,” I said. “But I think I’ve got a lead or two around the periphery. Little luck, I can ask a couple of questions and settle the whole mess in another day or so. Far as I can tell, the worst of it’s already over.”
“Here’s hoping.”
I did hope it, too. Hoped it all profound. But it wasn’t to be, because that’s when I sniffed out the first trace of wood smoke on the air, a sharp tang that stung the eyes and tickled the nostrils. My mind instantly told me “woodstove,” but nobody with any sense would be burning a woodstove in that weather, not unless they were trying to see visions or sweat out demons. A campfire, then, maybe. But from where? The closest camping was nowhere. The scent grew stronger and kept growing until it stung my eyes and throat. I got up and walked off the porch to follow the smoke around back of the house, and then I saw and smelled it for what it really was: burning cedar.
I said into the phone, “Hey, babe, let me call you back, okay? Someone’s set my house on fire.”