WILSON WOKE him again.
For a good thirty seconds, he thought he was still dreaming. He couldn’t place the room or the woman sleeping next to him, a woman whose breath he felt across the lower half of his face, as her body was curled toward him, her head turned up, just an inch or so from his shoulder. Lisa, he thought. But the hair brushing against his neck was all wrong, thick where Lisa’s was thin and straight, and her skin smelled yeasty and sour, unlike the vanilla scent of the expensive creams his wife favored. Randie. He whispered her name before he understood what his lieutenant was saying. She exhaled and rolled away from him, her body turned toward the opposite wall. Darren sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed. He shifted the cell phone he didn’t remember answering, cradling it against his neck. Wilson was speaking, mid-bark. “I need you to get out to Center right away,” he said. “They’re doing this thing at the courthouse there, and headquarters in Austin wants you on camera.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The press conference.”
“What press conference?”
“Tell me, Ranger, that you’ve been trapped under a fallen tree for the past four hours and you haven’t been willfully ignoring my calls all morning.”
Darren looked down at his phone. It was barely past nine in the morning, and there were eight voice-mail notifications, all starting shortly after 5:00 a.m. He recognized Wilson’s number as well as Greg’s. Greg had made at least three of those calls from his desk at the Houston office of the FBI. Darren had apparently slept through the whole thing. “Wait,” he said, rubbing the crust from his eyes and unbunching the fabric between his legs. “Who’s having a press conference?”
“They arrested Keith Dale.”
“For the murder of his wife?”
“For both murders.”
“No,” Darren said, standing. “No. Van Horn is giving me more time on the Michael Wright case. He promised he wouldn’t make a move until—”
“Ranger, you made your case,” Wilson said, sounding unsure what the problem was. He’d misread the lack of enthusiasm in Darren’s voice for indignation, his junior officer fishing for an apology of some sort. Wilson huffed out a breath of exasperation. “I missed this one, okay? You got your arrest.”
“Based on what?”
“They got a confession.”
“That’s not true,” Darren said. He started toward the bedroom door, stepping out so as not to wake Randie, but as he closed the door, he looked back and saw she’d already awakened and was sitting up and looking at him. “I was in the room,” he said, shutting the bedroom door and leaning against the wall of the narrow hallway that led to the two other bedrooms. “He said he beat the guy, that’s it.”
“Van Horn likes him for both.”
“Something’s missing,” Darren said. “The car, for one thing.”
“There’s always pieces that don’t fit; you know that.”
“If he did it, I’m not sure he did it alone. There could be some larger ABT connection in all this. The icehouse out there is a Brotherhood stronghold. Wallace Jefferson is clearly aware of, if not outright sanctioning, members of a criminal gang fraternizing at his establishment. If we dig a little deeper—”
“Look, this is the exact thing the county and the feds don’t want.”
“The feds?” Darren said, remembering the calls from Greg.
“This is some backwards-ass cracker shit, Mathews, and you know it,” Wilson said. “You called it from day one. And the last thing we need is the idea that the Aryan Brotherhood is running out of control in East Texas or that we got blacks and whites killing each other in this state. All the protests that’s been going on in the rest of the country—Texas don’t need nothing like that down here. Folks are still smarting over the cop shootings in Dallas. Let’s don’t start ourselves a race war over one dumb redneck in Shelby County. As of right now, there’s not a stitch of evidence the Brotherhood had a hand in this, so let’s take a win where we got one and not turn this into a bigger crusade.”
Still, something was wrong.
Darren felt it, even as he felt he had no other choice but to meet his boss at the courthouse in Center, Texas, the county seat, where Wilson had, with spectacular forethought, brought along a clean white shirt and a pressed pair of black pants from Darren’s bottom desk drawer in Houston. He changed in the first-floor men’s room, located just outside the county clerk’s office, where there was a line of folks waiting to apply for marriage licenses and get copies of birth certificates.
Inside the men’s room, Darren dressed quickly, as Wilson had said they wouldn’t start without him. He tucked in the shirt and smoothed the front of the pants, which had an awful sheen from being pressed too many times. He couldn’t remember how long the clothes had been sitting in his drawer, and it shamed him the thrill he got knowing that his desk hadn’t been cleared out in his absence, that he might yet be welcomed back to the Rangers, for real this time. He guessed he had Michael Wright to thank for that, and the perverse gratitude he felt was tainted by an awful guilt, a heavy weight anchoring the lower half of his body in place. He still, up until the moment he slid his Stetson on his head, wasn’t sure he could go through with it. If he did this thing—walked out there and let them use his black face to tell a bank of reporters that there was nothing to see here, that they’d found their man, that the death of a black man from Chicago and a local white woman was no more than a domestic matter, the Rangers and the county having brought in a black officer to investigate and ensure sensitivity to the racial issues at play—if he just gave in to the simplicity of it, Keith Dale as nothing more than a jealous husband who’d lost control, if he could take the win, like Wilson said, he could get his badge back and go home. The bathroom door opened, and Greg poked his head in. “D,” he said, smiling when their eyes met.
He was shorter than Darren.
But then again, most people were.
He was wearing a navy blue suit, cut slim across a torso that wasn’t as slim as it used to be. It gave Greg the appearance of an adolescent boy squeezed into his only good suit for a funeral no one saw coming, a suit he’d long ago outgrown. His mood was also wrong for the occasion, enlivened where it should have been sober. He went in for a hug, but Darren was stiff and awkward, and Greg settled for a pat on his friend’s back. “You came through, man, big-time.”
“The Bureau sent you?”
Greg nodded. “Once my supervisor heard I was the one who gave you a tip on the double homicide, he took me off the desk and sent me up here to offer an assist if the county boys out here get in over their heads.” He had sandy brown hair and the closely cropped haircut of a company man, unlike the gelled white-boy flattop he’d tried to rock in high school, which made him look like he’d stuck a wet finger in a light socket. His eyes were wide and the color of spring grass, and unlike Darren, he was clean-shaven today. He was, as Lisa had once told Darren, a handsome guy, and Darren certainly knew the effect Greg had on women. He’d been jealous of it as a teenager, the ease with which Greg could get a girl to do things she told other boys she wasn’t ready for. Darren, not completely understanding what Greg was doing at the press conference, opened the bathroom door as the two men headed out, Darren’s boots clicking on the gray floor.
“There’s nothing in Keith Dale’s prison file that indicates he was running with the ABT on the inside.” Greg said he’d checked with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He’d gotten a report from them just yesterday.
Darren said, “If the sheriff is alleging there’s no ABT connection, why the need for the feds at all?”
“We don’t know what this is. He hasn’t been charged yet.”
“And you don’t find it odd that they’re holding a press conference when he hasn’t been charged with either crime?”
“My understanding is all the legwork has been done,” Greg said, glancing at himself in the mirror above the sink. “I mean, you caught the guy, Darren. News of the arrest will just put folks at ease. And my presence will let folks feel like the sheriff and his men aren’t trying any slippery shit with this.”
“In other words, we’re both props.”
“We’re doing our jobs, man,” Greg said, appearing slightly put out that Darren didn’t appreciate the opportunity he’d placed in his lap. “Someone’s going to jail on this thing. Sheriff would still be talking about a robbery if you hadn’t rolled into town. If I hadn’t called you.” He wanted that last bit clear.
“You talk to that guy out of Chicago? Wozniak?” Darren asked.
Greg nodded and said, “This is bigger than that now. There’s a stringer out here for the Times. CNN sent a camera crew out of Houston. They’re going to want to talk to you, too,” he said as if he’d just remembered something, though it was clear from his excited demeanor, the way he kind of pitched forward on the balls of his feet, that in the last twenty-four hours this couldn’t have left his mind for even a second. “I pitched a sit-down with the two of us for Nightline, you know, explaining—how I called you first.” There it is again, Darren thought. It made him sad, the degree to which this kind of credit hogging mattered to Greg, that three years behind a desk had made him so desperate for the climb that a double homicide was seen as an opportunity first and a crime against nature second. But wasn’t Darren a little guilty of this, too?
Keith Dale had likely killed his wife and had admitted to beating Michael Wright as near to death as a man could get. Randie was right: he was not innocent. Maybe justice was messier than Darren realized when he’d first pinned a badge to his chest; it was no better or worse than a sieve, a cheap net, a catch-as-catch-can system that gave the illusion of righteousness when really the need for tidy resolution trumped sloppy uncertainty any day. Keith Dale deserved to go to prison, sure he did, but Darren couldn’t shake the feeling that what they were doing to Keith was no different from what had been done to black folks for centuries. Grab one, any one, and don’t ask any more questions.
“Remember, you’d never even heard of Lark when I sent you the early details of the case,” Greg said. “Well, it might make a good angle on the story.”
“You know I can’t speak to the media without running it by unit.”
“After this, they’re going to let you do whatever the hell you want.”
They’d arrived outside the makeshift media room on the other side of the county courthouse. The plate on the door said LOUNGE, but the room had been made over for the press conference. Through the wire-glass window in the door, Darren could see at least a dozen reporters standing behind a cluster of video cameras, their lenses and microphones pointing toward a podium where Wilson, Van Horn, and one of his deputies were waiting on Greg and Darren.
He didn’t speak through the entire thing, through the announcement of Keith Dale’s arrest for the murders of Michael Wright and Missy Dale, the explanation of the Texas Rangers’ involvement, even the questions directed at Ranger Mathews specifically, deferring with his silence to Wilson and Van Horn. This was their story to sell. He stood with his hands clasped in front of him, his spine as stiff as the trunk of a poplar tree, boots planted firmly on the ground.
Greg spoke. Of course he did.
He waxed philosophical about the role of the federal government in maintaining law and order for its citizens, adept as it was in investigating crimes of a sensitive nature—all without ever saying the words hate crime or being in any way clear about when or if anyone would be prosecuted for the death of Michael Wright, either by the state of Texas or the Justice Department. He talked of Missy only as a way to complete the narrative; he spoke of the need for the community to not jump to conclusions about the motive for the murder of a black man in Texas. Listening to all of it, Darren felt an odd sense of dislocation, like being in a dream state in which he both did and didn’t recognize the world around him or the words spoken in his mother tongue. Wasn’t this whole press conference a leap toward a conclusion, a desperate reach for a rope that could swing Van Horn and Wilson safely to the other side of this bubbling mess, bypassing the murky waters of history, the race swamp that would take you whole if you let it?
It was over quickly, before reporters even knew which questions to ask. Many, like Darren just four days ago, had never heard of Lark. Mystery and resolution were presented together in the span of a twelve-minute press conference. And the neatness of it was satisfying, like laying the last piece in the center of a puzzle, the soft snap of a picture becoming whole, a truth sealed.
After, Wilson patted Darren on the back and said he now had something real to take back to headquarters to get Darren’s suspension lifted. He couldn’t make a move before the grand jury made a decision about Rutherford McMillan, but he had hope for the first time that Darren could return to work.
“Especially if nothing comes out of the search of your place in Camilla.”
“They did that search weeks ago.”
Wilson, who had an olive complexion and salt-and-pepper hair, leaned in to Darren so he could lower his voice and still be heard. “Look, I would have said something if I could, but that would have been my tail. The DA just wanted another look around. It wasn’t on me, Mathews. It wasn’t my call.”
They’d done a second search of the house, he realized.
“Jesus.”
“They went in this morning.”
“When they knew I was out of the county,” Darren said. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Wilson had provided the San Jacinto County DA with that information, and he didn’t bother to hide the accusation in his tone.
“If there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there,” Wilson said. “No reason to fear.”
“There’s nothing in that house.”
But why were they searching his place when the grand jury had heard all the supposed evidence against Mack—when they were already deliberating?
Were new charges being considered?
Charges against Darren?
The thought of it shot panic through every part of his body.
“I wouldn’t worry none on it,” Wilson said. “You’re a fine young man. And your uncle William was a man I respected like hell. Let’s see what the grand jury comes back with on the other deal, and let me see if I can’t get you back in the field, where you belong, Ranger.” Darren had, Wilson said, shown a willingness to put the facts before his feelings, and his uncle would be proud. Darren resented the mention of his uncle and might have said something about William Mathews being a man who would never have swallowed this degree of uncertainty and unease about an investigation into the murder of a black man in order to make white folks feel better about the state of things in Texas. He might have said he was sure he was failing in his duty to pursue the truth, inconvenient and complicated though it may be—a duty passed down to him by the Mathews men who had raised him. But he held his tongue and pulled out his cell phone instead. As the last reporter and her cameraman were filing out, Darren found a quiet spot in the hallway and left a message on the answering machine in his mother’s trailer, telling Bell that there was a few hundred dollars in it if she went out to the Mathews place in Camilla and cleaned up whatever mess the sheriff’s deputies may have left in their wake—more if she could keep her mouth shut about it. He especially didn’t want to worry Clayton with news that this thing with Mack might be taking a perilous turn in Darren’s direction. There’s nothing in that house. Besides, news of the sheriff’s department tearing through his family’s homestead for a second time would only deepen Clayton’s resentment of law enforcement, and Darren didn’t want to hear it right now.
As he ended his call, Van Horn approached him in the hallway and said with little fanfare or concern, “Geneva Sweet is free to go home now.”
She refused a ride the first time he offered, insisting she would rather wait for her granddaughter. But after Darren called Faith in Lark—and she said she could use the extra help, having kept the cafe open against her grandmother’s wishes—Geneva finally relented. Outside the courthouse, there were news vans still lined up along San Augustine Street, a few cameramen looking for a last shot of the courthouse, something to make the squat, boxlike brick building look more majestic than it was. Because the name Geneva Sweet had slid off no tongue during the short press conference, there was no interest in the nearly seventy-year-old black woman being led by Darren, who, having removed his hat, looked for all the world like her son or nephew, escorting her gently to the parking lot.
He tried to help her into the truck, but she swatted away his hand, and with a grunt and a muttered prayer managed to lift herself into the high-rise cab. By the time Darren made it around to the driver’s side and slid in behind the steering wheel, Geneva had her seat belt on and her hands resting in her lap. He set his Stetson on the bench seat between them and kicked on the engine.
The climb into the Chevy had winded her slightly, and Darren, looking over, caught the play of light off the sheen on her forehead, a few of her tight gray curls sticking to her skin like gnats on flypaper. She adjusted the direction of the air-conditioning vent in front of her but otherwise didn’t move or speak.
They set out on State Highway 87.
Darren debated whether to cut through the meat of the county and travel by scenic local roads to get back to Lark. This part of East Texas was near enough to Louisiana to put a dampness in the air, a kiss of moss blowing from Texas live oaks; it was a breathtaking country vista. But he figured Geneva wanted the quickest way home, so he turned toward Timpson, where he jumped on 59, heading south to Lark. He honored her silence for the first few miles. But in the end, he knew something had to be said. “I didn’t have anything to do with you being arrested,” he told her. He wanted to get that out of the way. But if he thought this would soften the stonelike set of her jaw, he was mistaken. He wondered how much she knew, either about Keith’s arrest or the fact that Sheriff Van Horn was willing to let her go last night—that it was Darren who had pushed for more time, even if it meant a cold night in jail for Geneva. “I didn’t mean you any harm in this thing,” he said, glancing from the highway to the passenger seat. She didn’t nod, speak, or smile, didn’t offer him the least of her attention, so that Darren actually felt a flare of anger in his chest. Elderly or not, she was behaving like a recalcitrant child, stubborn and willful.
“You don’t like me much,” he said.
“Don’t know you.” The words came up out of nowhere, like a burp of bad air that caught her unawares. “Got no reason to trust you, that’s all.”
“I came out here to help.”
“And look how that worked out for me,” she said, smoothing the front of her skirt, a pale cotton blend that had been sullied during her night in lockup.
“You’d have been arrested for Missy whether I set foot in Lark or not. You made sure of that by not coming clean about seeing Missy the night she died, when you knew the sheriff was hunting for someone to put that on,” Darren said, gripping the steering wheel till his nails met the palms of his hands, digging in. “If it wasn’t for me shining a light on Keith, you’d likely still be in that jail cell, with the DA enjoining a grand jury to keep you there.”
“Well, you got what you wanted, so now you can go on back to wherever you come from and leave well enough alone,” she said, crossing her arms and staring out at the road. “Rest of us got to live in these parts long after you gone.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he said. Her words had lit up some part of his brain, warning his conscious mind to pay attention. He heard fear in her voice where he never had before, felt it vibrating between them in the truck’s narrow cab. He turned to look at her across the seat, trying to read her expression.
“There’s no proof Keith did it.”
“Aw, he murdered that girl, no question. That son of a bitch robbed my grandson of a mother to look out for him in this world.” She was sitting stiff and straight but was thrumming with rage, like a live wire. “And you’re a fool if you think he didn’t kill that black fellow, too. I just don’t like folks coming down here, a town we been living in since before you could pee straight, a place you don’t understand, and think you know every damn thing. You and the girl.”
“I was born in San Jacinto County,” he said. “And the girl has a name.”
Randie.
“I wouldn’t know it, since she never walked in my place and paid me any kind of respect.”
“She lost her husband, Geneva.”
“She not the only one.”
Joe.
He was afraid to say the name out loud, afraid to break the spell.
“I loved the one God gave me,” she said. “I knew what I had.”
Geneva said nothing after that, and Darren tried to keep his mouth shut. But he felt protective of Randie and couldn’t make sense of the affront Geneva felt at the mention of the young widow. “You don’t know anything about her marriage to Michael.” He was thinking of Missy and the whispers, Randie’s stories of the other women that had populated their troubled marriage.
Geneva gave a tiny shrug of indifference.
“I know what he told me,” she said. “What Missy said, too.”
“Missy?”
She turned and looked through the glass at the countryside blurring green and honey-colored gold, the sky a constant and steady blue. “You know what she told me they talked about that night, her and Michael, what started this whole thing?” She turned, and their eyes met across the bench seat. Darren felt his heart lift and press against his breastbone. He felt a longing to understand.
“Love lost,” she said. “My son; his wife. They’d both had something wrenched away from them, in different ways and for different reasons. Missy saw something in Michael same way I did, time he walked into my cafe.”