Chapter 37
She wasn’t there when the cops showed up. Sunshine. Which I know isn’t her real name—because no one’s really named Sunshine, like she said—but I don’t have anything else to call her. Anyway, the cops showed up, and they found three dead bodies in a POS Ford Tempo and a shot-up motorcycle, and about five minutes later a Cessna took off from the airstrip.
They connected the bodies in the Tempo to the bodies at Tommy’s and pieced together there’d been a robbery, but there wasn’t any money to indicate a score.
Wilson’s plane landed at a strip down in Tennessee, but of course no one saw who the pilot was, or what happened to them once the plane was on the ground.
The state police had questions, and they eventually came around to Parker County to ask them. After all, there was no shortage of bodies with Parker County addresses on their driver’s licenses. But Crash didn’t have answers to give them. Not good ones, at least.
I told her what I could. I related the story over cups of coffee in her office a few days later, once I’d been able to process things and decided what to do next.
“Why’d you let her go?” Crash said. “Knowing she’d killed two people.”
“She might have been tougher than she looked,” I said. “Hadn’t expected she’d walk away.”
“The female body’s built to withstand childbirth, Henry. What’s a couple of shots to the chest?”
“From my own personal experience, painful as fuck.”
Crash popped a pod into the Keurig on her desk and waited thirty seconds for it to finish spewing coffee into her cup. I wrinkled my nose at it.
“Life is short, Henry,” she said. “It’s shorter with you around. Pardon me if I want an extra cup of coffee in that time.”
I shook my head. “I don’t judge.”
Crash cracked a mile-wide smile from behind her cup. “The hell you say. All you do is judge, Henry. That’s damn-near your reason for being.” She set the cup aside and reached into a desk drawer, removed a manila folder, and handed it to me. “Ralph Cole didn’t have anything to do with the robberies. Not that we could tell.”
“Didn’t think you were investigating the robberies.”
“We weren’t. But in investigating his murder, we found out he’d gone and found himself a bit of a side hustle.”
I flipped open the folder cover. It was a nude photo of two people doing the thing that adults do. Except these weren’t adults. A quick glance at their faces showed an innocence the world hadn’t stripped away yet, but goddamned if someone wasn’t trying.
I closed the folder quickly and set it back on Crash’s desk.
“We found that in Cole’s house,” Crash said. “That and so, so much more. He had terabytes of photos and videos on computers in that joint, and no one looked like they were eighteen. Plus he had lists of names, kids with juvie records.”
“Diego on there?”
“Not sure yet. It’ll take forever for them to ID all the kids involved. Feds said it looks like Cole’s done this for years. Plus they found contact information for some guys up in Morgantown and Pittsburgh. Handed it off to the Feds. The look of it is Cole was finding kids for these guys to film for porn.”
“Goddammit.”
“Guess Cole got what he had coming to him, just not for the reason we thought he got it.”
“Now who’s judging?”
Crash kicked her small feet up onto her desk. “That would be me, Henry.”
Then she told me she had found out that Paula Hayes’s mother was Cyndi Palmer’s sister, making Paula Hayes and Trey Barlow cousins, because that’s how genealogy works. Not that we had anyone alive to confirm it, but our best guesses had Palmer and Paula Hayes deciding to work together to skim cash from the Long Riders, with Trey Barlow along as the more-than-willing gunman.
“Nothing brings a family together like a little larceny,” Crash said.
“Says a lot about your parenting when you choose to bring your son into a robbery,” I said.
“Asshole wasn’t forced into it, Henry. Barlow was the sort, he’d steal Christmas lights off the front porch if they weren’t stapled into the wood.”
I finished my coffee and stood and headed to the door. Crash said, “You never said whether you decided you’re running or not.”
I stopped and looked at her. “I guess I’m going to.”
“You know I’ll have to kick your ass, right?”
“Never expected you’d not put up a fight.”
“Won’t be a fight, Henry. I’ll kick your ass.”
I nodded, gave the room a scan. “Maybe I’ll paint in here after I win.”
“Go to hell, Henry.”
I went by El Paso Grande, and a picture of Diego hung in a frame just as you walked in. I didn’t know the kid who seated me or the young woman who took my order. I ate my chips and guac and tacos and refried beans and tried to block out the music and the soccer playing on the TVs and the general sense of happiness of everyone around me.
As I paid the check, I sensed someone looking at me. The door into the kitchen was cracked, and part of Miguel’s face peeked through. Our eyes connected long enough to feel the loss and mournfulness, fast enough for me to turn away and shove money to someone and leave.
I drove by Barlow’s place. Knocked on the door. No one answered.
I could have asked the neighbors if they had seen Mindy, but they wouldn’t have told me if they had. It wasn’t that type of neighborhood.
I didn’t have a last name for her, even. If she was local, I could find her through the high school, but then what? What was I but some old guy trying to save a kid who wasn’t interested in being saved?
There are few certainties in life, but one of them is that there will always be Trey Barlows, there will always be Mindys, and there will also be Diegos. There will always be the broken, the needy, the wounded, and right behind them will be someone ready to exploit all that hurt. They will always find their way to one another, and maybe there’s not much that a stubborn but well-intentioned nine-fingered ex-state trooper can do about that.
I didn’t think one win out of this entire mess was too much to ask. There were too many dead bodies and no one to answer for them. A young girl was on her way to more poor life choices. A family was shattered, struggling through the loss of a son, of a brother. I’d let a killer go free. I’d volunteered to put myself in the line of fire against forces I knew I wasn’t ready to deal with. Getting Mindy somewhere safe—at least all of this wouldn’t be for nothing.
Sometimes, though, you don’t get a win. Sometimes it’s all a draw. And sometimes you simply lose. Life is long enough, and the game stacked enough, the best you can hope for is being content with the points you do score, and whenever you can’t, hope you can score them the next time.
Lily was sitting on the front porch drinking white wine when I pulled into the driveway. She didn’t move as I got out of the Aztek and came up the walkway. Didn’t say anything as I sat next to her.
She took a drink of wine and continued looking at the lawn, at the street, at anything that wasn’t me.
“I’ve been thinking, Henry,” she said.
“Admirable.”
“In that thinking, I’ve realized that sometimes I come across as nothing more than this moral arbiter for you. Some mechanism for you to gauge whether you’re a good person or not. And that’s not what I want to be. I love you, but I can’t be the barometer for your sense of right or wrong. Whatever comes of us has to be because we each have a sense of agency in our lives.”
“Agreed. I don’t always handle the ‘being an adult with an adult’ thing well. There’s a reason I’m divorced, and you’re the first woman I’ve been with since then who’s hung around and didn’t get shot, so all of this continues to be new territory for me.”
“I’ll continue to be the woman who doesn’t get shot if it’s all good and well with you.”
“I’d prefer it to remain so.”
She reached a hand out toward me, and I accepted it, our fingers locking between each other’s.
“I talked to Bingham,” I said. “I’m taking his offer—let him run me for sheriff.”
“What about the Long Riders?”
“They’re coming regardless of me being in office. But maybe if I’m there, I can do something to help. It’ll be my job and not just my hobby.”
“Other women’s partners rebuild cars or do woodwork.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “Mine takes on criminal organizations.”
“I suppose you’re a very lucky woman that way, Lily.”
“The way you use the term ‘luck’ has a fluidity to it I doubt was intended originally.”
Woody’s Jeep Renegade came up and parked behind my car. I told Woody that his ride was one of the few that might have made my own look good in comparison. Which wasn’t true, because mine was utter and total shit, but it was one of the few times where I might have had a few points on him.
Woody got out of the Jeep and walked around the front. Lily rose from her chair and walked to the edge of the porch.
“How you doing there, Dr. Wilder?” Woody said.
“Great as long as you stop with that ‘Dr. Wilder’ bullshit and call me Lily like everyone else does.”
Woody smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Lily glanced back at me, then to Woody. “Your faithful companion didn’t mention you were dropping by.”
I came up behind her and put my arm around her waist. “Might be because he didn’t know.”
“I’m full of surprises,” Woody said. He took a step toward the passenger’s side door. “Had someone I wanted you to meet.”
Woody opened the door and Athena jumped out. She landed solidly on all three feet and stood there, unsure what to do. She looked to Woody for instruction.
Lily’s hand went to her mouth, and the sunlight caught a glimpse of moisture in the corner of her eye. She dashed down the porch steps into the yard, standing on the edge of the grass.
As soon as Athena saw Lily, her tongue dropped out of her mouth and she started to bound toward her, but then she froze and her head twisted around so she could see Woody. Woody nodded and Athena crossed the yard in two leaps, meeting Lily and pushing her head into Lily’s hands.
Lily let herself drop into the grass and Athena buried herself into Lily’s shape, as Lily hugged and rubbed and pet the giant dog.
Neither of them noticed as I walked off the porch and over to Woody.
“You said she might want a dog,” Woody said. “I thought this might not be a bad match.”
Lily wrapped her arms around Athena and drew her closer. Athena sighed and melted into the embrace.
“Yeah, I guess it’s not bad,” I said.