KEITH CAUGHT up with them on the farm road, the nigger and his wife, just a few acres from the house Keith paid the rent on every month. Later Missy would say, over and over, that he was just driving her home, that Keith had it all wrong; they had only been talking. But right then, Keith didn’t care. He spun his wheels in the red dirt and sped out in front of the black car. Michael Wright had to slam on his brakes to keep from hitting the front end of Keith’s truck, which was by then pointed in his direction. The nigger held up his hand, shielding his eyes against the blast of white light stabbing into the front seat of his car. He seemed genuinely confused as to what was happening, and that only fueled Keith’s rage—that the man didn’t even know enough to know he was doing something wrong, wasn’t from around here and didn’t know we don’t play that shit down here. The lights on Keith’s Dodge showed Illinois plates, the hood ornament a classy blue and white, the nigger too stupid to know he was driving the führer’s favorite ride. How you like them rims? Keith himself had never been north of Oklahoma, thought the world outside Texas was a cesspool of race mixing and confusion about who built this country, spics and nigs with their hands out, begging for this, that, and the other, never doing a decent day’s work in their lives, but even still they were coming for our jobs, coming for our wives and daughters. And now it was happening inside little ol’ Lark, Texas. It was happening to him again.
Missy stumbled out of the car first. She had on a white T-shirt and a skirt with flowers running up the sides, and he couldn’t help but think of the ease with which a hand could slide up her thigh. He saw his son’s face suddenly and had to stop himself from revving the engine and taking them both out, toppling them like bowling pins. He’d caught her out here a couple of times before, one time only a few months before Junior was born. He knew there was a chance that baby wasn’t his even before he came out purple and wet and screaming at the world. He’d have shot Lil’ Joe Sweet himself if his woman, skinny little nigger bitch, hadn’t done it first. Black or not, he couldn’t help but respect her for the efficiency with which she had dealt with the problem. From the beginning, Keith had been hemmed in by his love for that girl and his son. He and Missy had been high school sweethearts. He’d taken her to his senior prom, had come back from Angelina College his freshman year so he could go to hers. They liked the same music, hunting, and fishing. She was a country girl, sweet but strong. First deer season they were together, he’d gone out with her and her dad on opening day and was floored when she downed a buck their first hour in the stand. And good Lord, she was pretty, green eyes and blond hair, a plump ass and a waist he could wrap an arm around. She was only the second girl he’d been with. One kiss and he was done. He’d married her as fast he could, found a small cabin they could rent. They wanted babies, lots of babies. Then he went away on drug charges, a twenty-six-month bid, and knew he’d lost her the first hour he was home. It was in the way she turned her mouth to the side when he went to kiss her. His lips landed on her cheek, and he knew she was done.
She held up her hands in front of her, the headlights making black shadows beneath her eyes, clouds of red dirt swirling at her feet. “No, Keith,” she said. The crescent moon wasn’t strong enough to muscle any light through the thick braid of pine trees and cottonwood, and the darkness beyond the circle of light around the two cars was absolute. “This ain’t what you think,” she said.
The nigger came out of the car next.
He said, “Just taking the lady home.”
He wasn’t scared, not yet, and that inflamed Keith even more.
He hopped out of the truck’s cab and went for the nigger, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him against the shiny black car, worth more than Keith made in the last two years combined. The man’s head hit the roofline of the car, and that’s when he got really scared; he was alone on a dark farm road with two white folks, one of whom had him by the throat. The panic on his face whetted Keith’s appetite for inflicting pain, and he hit the man square in the face. Behind him, Missy was yelling for Keith to stop. She ran from the other side of the car and beat two fists against his back. Keith hit the man again, with homicidal force. But the nigger didn’t go all the way down. In fact before he even hit the ground, something seemed to snap in his posture, a surge of stress chemicals tilting toward the fight side of the fight-or-flight scale. He came up swinging, and Keith can admit the nigger landed a few good pops across his head, not enough to leave a scratch but enough to keep Keith from being fooled by the man’s clothes, his smooth leather loafers. The nigger could fight, would get the best of Keith if he let him. Keith reached down and caught a handful of dirt and threw it in his eyes. It was a dirty trick, but with no witness besides Missy, Keith didn’t care.
It was enough to give him the upper hand. He went at the man with both fists, pummeling him from all sides, punching until skin broke, until he felt bone, until he could see blood on his knuckles by the light of the truck’s headlamps.
“Stop it, Keith,” Missy yelled, because the nigger could no longer speak for himself. Keith told his wife to get her nigger-loving ass in the truck right now. He stepped back a few feet, and both Missy and the nigger got the wrong idea, thought a retreat was in motion. She actually went to his side, tried to help the man to his feet. She didn’t see Keith head to the back of his Dodge, didn’t realize he’d fished a two-by-four from the truck bed until he was standing right over her and the man on the ground, telling Missy, “Get out the way.”
He lifted the piece of solid wood and told the nigger to open his eyes. He wanted him to look at Keith when he said, “Stay the hell away from my wife.”
“Damn it, Keith, don’t you dare.”
The nigger spit blood in the dirt. He raised a hand in defense. “I was just driving her home, man,” he said, his voice a thick croak. “That’s all.”
Keith was seconds from landing the bar of wood on the man’s skull when Missy jumped between them. “Do it and you’ll have to kill me, too. You might could explain one dead, but I know you ain’t smart enough to get out of two. ’Cause I’ll tell—don’t think I won’t.” The headlights were behind him, haloing his head, and Missy couldn’t see his eyes for the shadows. “This ain’t about Junior,” she said. “This don’t have nothing to do with that. He was just driving me home.” And when Keith still didn’t drop the weapon, she said, “You just got out, Keith.”
The mention of the Walls cleared his head.
He dropped the two-by-four, gave the nigger one last kick in the gut, and spit on his head. Then he grabbed Missy and yanked her ass to the truck. The BMW’s headlights were still on. They bore witness to Keith backing up the truck so he could turn around on the dirt road and head around the bend toward his cabin, farther up the road. The nigger was still breathing. “I swear.”
“He’s lying,” Van Horn said. “Just like he’s been lying from the beginning about Missy. He all but confessed in there.” He’d unbuttoned the top of his shirt, and Darren could see how red his skin was, heating him from the inside out. Van Horn pulled a handkerchief from his slacks and wiped his brow.
“He only copped to Missy’s murder,” Darren said.
They were standing outside the interrogation room in a narrow hallway that shared the same chipped linoleum tiles, the same rows of too-bright fluorescent lights. Van Horn looked both chastened and relieved when he told Darren of his intention to have the district attorney file charges against Keith Dale.
“He killed her to cover up for the other,” Van Horn said. “Then he put her body behind Geneva’s, knowing I’d think one of her people did it, mad about that other fellow. I didn’t know he had that much of the devil in him.”
Darren couldn’t believe the words about to come out of his mouth.
“I don’t think he did it,” he said. “At least not by himself.”
Van Horn waved away the thought. “He killed that girl in cold blood.”
“Missy, yes. But not Michael.”
“You actually believe that shitheel?”
“There’s somebody else.” Has to be. Brady came to mind. Something about their run-in out back of the icehouse was sitting wrong with Darren.
“Wait a minute, now,” Van Horn said. “You was hollering about Keith Dale being good for this from the time you crossed the county line.”
“But where’s the car?”
“Who the hell knows? Maybe he drove it into the Trinity River for all I know or care. But there’s no way in hell he didn’t finish the boy that night.”
“Unless he didn’t do it alone.”
Van Horn shook his head and started down the hall, the heels of his black ropers clicking on the tiles, forcing Darren to follow him into his office, near the front of the station. Like the room Darren had sat in earlier while reading the grisly details of Missy Dale’s autopsy, it was paneled in wood. But Van Horn’s office was carpeted in a military gray that clashed with the cheap paneling. His desk was wide and pale oak and empty save for a phone, a brass paperweight, and the sandwich he had been eating when Darren walked into the station with Keith Dale in cuffs. It was homemade—deviled ham on thick slices of white bread, whisper-thin slices of tomato and red onion peeking out. There was a diet soda sitting beside it on the desk. Darren found himself scanning the room for family photos, looking for a ring on Van Horn’s left hand. Seeing neither, he got a sudden image of the sheriff standing over his kitchen countertop in his shorts at dawn, making his lunch, and it unnerved him in a way that he couldn’t quite put into words. He didn’t want to see a man in this room, couldn’t afford to see flesh behind that sheriff’s badge. Van Horn closed the door behind Darren.
When the two men were alone, the sheriff said, “Look, you got the win. You brought him in, and folks ain’t gon’ forget that.”
“Brady,” Darren started.
“Who?”
“The manager at the icehouse. He offered Keith a kill. Me. He offered me.” Darren felt his face flush at the mention of the incident. It was his lowest point as a Ranger, his lowest point as a man who’d been taught to stand his ground. “As an initiation into the Brotherhood.”
“Look, I know you got a hard-on for the Brotherhood,” Van Horn said, shutting him down. “I know you got kicked off that task force—”
“Not true.”
“But this here is a domestic deal, that’s all. Keith Dale got his panties in a bunch over his gal out there with another”—he paused where one particular word wanted to come out of hiding, but then settled on—“black man, and he went crazy, beat his ass and killed him, and then he was afraid Missy was gon’ say something to somebody so he killed her to keep her quiet. This was a man with a wife he couldn’t control who was gon’ make sure he got the last word.”
“But if he’d already killed Michael Wright, why would Brady have offered me as his chance to jump in the ABT? He should have already been initiated.”
“You not listening, son,” Van Horn said. He stood behind his desk, looked at his half-eaten lunch, then threw the whole thing in the trash. The sudden movement ignited the smell of the onions, and the air in the room soured. “Keith Dale is too chickenshit to be a member of the Brotherhood.” He said it as if Keith had failed to qualify for active duty in the Marines, as if being a member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas was some kind of badge of honor.
“Look, I’m still point on this,” Darren said.
“You were never point.”
“The Rangers put me on the ground to investigate the murder of Michael Wright, and I have a duty to them and to my state to find the real killer.”
“I’m ready to arrest Keith on both the Wright murder and Missy.”
“You arrest Keith, and I’ll tell the DA myself the case is shit. You put this on trial and lose, it’ll look at best like you’re incompetent and at worst like you’re rushing to put this on Keith to avoid the ABT connection. And then you sure as shit will have the feds in this county before you can blink.”
He knew that would get him. It seemed like any mention of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas operating in Shelby County spooked Van Horn to hell.
“You want to let that boy walk out of here?”
“Hold him on assault charges for that stunt at the lumberyard. Give me some time to put together stronger evidence. If it’s Keith, it’s Keith. But if it’s someone else got their hands in this thing, then give me time to find them.”
“I hold him on assault charges, that means the only one I got for Missy’s murder is Geneva Sweet,” Van Horn said, “and she stays in lockup.”
He thought of Geneva spending a night—alone, if she was lucky—in a rusty jail cell, a single cot chained to a cement wall, the floor cracked and stained with God knows what, bars not wide enough to stick a fist through. It had already been a few hours, but things would feel different come sundown, every sound in the night an ominous echo. He felt faintly ill at the thought of her spending the night there. He tried to remember what she was wearing. If the temperature dropped tonight, would those clothes be enough to keep her warm?
“Look, you can arrest Keith for Missy,” he said. “I’m fine with that.”
“Naw. You got me questioning everything now,” Van Horn said with a sly smile. It was the card he had, and he laid it down hard. “Geneva Sweet stays in jail. I got forty-eight hours till I have to put her before a judge.” He lifted the can of diet soda and downed whatever was swimming around the bottom of the can. He let loose a rough belch, then said plainly, “You got two days, Ranger.”