Lillie found the dead men first, holding up her hand to Caddy on the path, telling her to stay back. “More of your brother’s handiwork,” Lillie said. “God, it’s a mess. I’d rather you not see this shit. Try not to look down.”
But Caddy didn’t listen. Caddy Colson never listened to anyone, walking up to where Lillie stood and seeing the weird diorama set in dirt and ice. One man lay facedown in moldy leaves and another was flat on his back, with big wide eyes and a bowie knife stuck up under his chin and impaling his tongue. There’d been a big scuffle, lots of footprints, and more blood. It looked like a butcher’s floor that needed a good mopping.
“That’s Quinn’s knife,” Caddy said.
“So it is,” Lillie said. “He can come back and get it himself. Let’s just keep moving.”
“What about that pack?” Caddy said, getting down on all fours and starting to rifle through a camo backpack, finding big brass bullets, a half-used roll of gauze, torn strips from a flannel shirt, and an empty bottle of water. She held up a roll of fishing line and some hooks, a book of matches. “He must’ve gotten this from Rusty. Why’d he leave it?”
“He took their guns,” Lillie said. “A man can only carry so much.”
Caddy shook her head, got to her feet, and began to follow Lillie again, Lillie glancing down every few minutes to study her GPS. She took off her hat, tightened her ponytail with a rubber band, and tugged the hat back on before heading off. The woods soon opened up into a sprawling meadow dotted with small trees. The brown grass was hip-high and brittle with ice, as they waded through. The sky was big and wide, gray and lifeless.
“It’s straight ahead,” Caddy said. “I remember it. Just keep walking. I know where I am. I know it.”
“We’re taking the long way around,” Lillie said.
“Why?”
“In case someone’s watching, I’d rather not have my ass hanging out,” Lillie said. “Here, we can duck back into the woods.”
“But I can see it,” Caddy said. “I see the glimmer off the tin roof.”
“And folks can see you, too,” Lillie said. “Keep walking. You hear shots, run into the woods. You hear me?”
“Who are these guys?”
“In my humble opinion, I’d say professional shitbirds,” Lillie said. “They’re not law enforcement and don’t have any authority at all out here. I see someone I don’t know and I’ll shoot first. I’m not asking for badges. You know, like that movie?”
“What movie?”
“Ask Quinn when we see him,” Lillie said. “He’ll know. He knows those Westerns.”
She looked at Caddy, who’d grown very pale and silent. Her eyes, unblinking and silent, wouldn’t leave that barn. Her jaw set, muscles clenching in her face.
“You OK?”
“I didn’t want to come back here.”
“I’m with you.”
“Never,” she said. “I only wanted to burn it down. I burned it down a thousand times in my mind.”
They moved in a big sloppy circle, following the tree line and coming closer to the big old barn, washed and beaten of paint, leaning hard against the wind. Lillie held her Winchester as she walked, her trigger finger just outside the guard.
Up ahead, the figure of a man walked out from the shadows waving his arms over his head. “Hello, hello,” he said. “Deputy Virgil?”
• • •
I don’t feel comfortable doing this in the daylight,” Mickey Walls said. “And truth be known, I don’t feel comfortable doing this at all. Can’t we get right another way? After all this shit’s over and the dust has settled?”
“Dust ain’t gonna settle,” Chase said. “Now get out of the fucking Hummer and show me where Kyle hid my stash.”
They’d come this far, might as well see this through, get this kid gone. Mickey knew any moment he’d see a Tibbehah County patrol car roll on up behind them, lights flashing. How they’d love to put him with one of those Alabama boys, try to pin Kyle on him. If they ever did find Kyle.
“So that’s it?” Mickey said. “You just up and decide to take the rest of it? ’Cause you earned it.”
“I’m making it right,” Chase said. “I done told you, I want half. This is just between me and you now. What’s right is right.”
“Can I ask you something first?”
“Sure,” Chase said. “I ain’t got no truck with it.”
“How do I know you ain’t gonna use me and then shoot me right in the head like your Uncle Peewee?” Mickey said.
“’Cause you don’t,” Chase said. “You’re thinking like the defense in the LSU game. After Saban took that time-out, they were waiting on that trick play. They changed up their defense, watching ole Landon Collins run back on the field, clock ticking down.”
“I didn’t see the game,” Mickey said. “I don’t give a damn for LSU or ’Bama.”
“The ball is snapped to Mosley instead and he hands the son of a bitch off to Jarrick Williams,” Chase said. “LSU knew it was coming but could never imagine it coming like this.”
“So you’re not going to shoot me?” Mickey said. “You’re going to take your money and leave Jericho? Right?”
“Right as rain.”
“Come on,” Mickey said, opening the door to his Hummer, windshield wipers frozen in place. “Kyle kept it in the septic tank. Hope you don’t mind the smell of shit.”
• • •
Sometime on the walk out of the woods, Quinn started talking to his dead uncle.
Uncle Hamp looked to be in fine form, not even any scarring from where he’d shot himself in the head, and seemed to have lost a good bit of weight. He looked almost like the Hamp Beckett who’d come home from Korea and the U.S. Army to take over as lawman of Tibbehah County, running the back roads and trying to shut down the Colson family stills. His eyes and buzz cut were the same shade of black. His hair looked to have been varnished at some point, maybe after death.
“How’d you find me?” Quinn said.
“You used your radio,” Hamp said. “Don’t you remember?”
“Damn, it’s cold,” Quinn said. “I can’t feel nothing.”
“Move closer to the fire,” Hamp said. “Help’s on the way.”
“I got rid of the guns,” Quinn said. “I hid them in the creek. I couldn’t carry them anymore.”
“You did fine.”
“I saw the barn,” Quinn said. “I nearly made it. Didn’t I?”
“You just needed some help.”
“Won’t they see us?” Quinn said. “That’s a lot of smoke.”
Uncle Hamp tossed on some more old twigs and the fire kicked up good and hot, crackling under that tin roof. His face was obscured with all the heat and fire, smoke twirling around him. Nothing looked the same in the barn, not as he remembered. It looked like a fun house, the whole shelter tilted and warped, walls that curved and tin that sagged. Quinn recalled a rat. There had been a rat up in the corncrib. He recalled it looked at him with those red eyes, guarding all the old corn, while the fat man crawled on top of Caddy, making those noises.
“Can I look at your arm?”
“Don’t you touch it.”
“Looks broke?”
“Don’t touch me,” Quinn said. “I swear, I’ll shoot you, Uncle Hamp. I already killed plenty of men. It hurts bad. God damn, it hurts.”
“I’m not your damn uncle,” someone said. “Jesus Christ. Quinn? Can you even fucking see me?”
“God, there were rats up there,” Quinn said. “Nasty as hell. They had red eyes.”
“Just stay warm,” someone said, Quinn feeling two cold fingers on his neck. “Your lips have turned blue. You can barely talk, Ranger.”
• • •
Glad I found you,” the man said, grinning little yellow nubs for teeth. “Help’ll be here soon. We’re going to try and land a chopper right over there in that field and get you two out. That’s a big wide space out there in them weeds.”
“Who the hell are you?” Lillie asked.
The man wore a blue jacket with an insignia for the Mississippi Highway Patrol. He took off his hat, showing his short gray crew cut, and introduced himself, giving himself the rank of captain. Lillie felt like her stomach had dropped out of her. The man Ringold had mentioned. God damn it. Caddy eyed him with some suspicion, crossing her arms over her body, and raised her eyebrows at Lillie. Her pink wool hat was far down on her head, her shoulders slumped and hands in her pockets.
“I don’t want to be evacuated,” Lillie said. “We just walked over twelve miles, up through those hills, to get to the middle of nowhere. I think we’ll stay until we get business finished.”
“Ma’am,” the Trooper said. “It’s nearly night. We got some good folks out here. The best. We’ll find Mr. Colson and get him to answer for what he did to Rusty Wise. I guess this isn’t his first go-around with a matter like this.”
“I don’t know you,” Lillie said. “I never even heard your name. So why don’t you get the fuck out of the way.”
“I can’t do that, ma’am,” the Trooper said. “Too much blood been spilt.”
“You run down Quinn Colson again and more blood’s going to get spilt,” Lillie said. “This is his sister with me. You hear me, old man? It’s been a long day of tramping through these woods to get where we’re going. Whether you like it or not, I am the acting sheriff of Tibbehah County and I’m in command of this whole show.”
The Trooper grinned with those goddamn stubby tobacco-stained teeth, his face like leather. “Maybe you don’t realize this ain’t Tibbehah County? Now keep on walking so I can get you two little ladies on out of here. I got shit to do.”
The man motioned them on, Lillie noting the gun in his hand was a fifty-cal sniper rifle made by Barrett. Someone had planted a gun just like that in her home two years ago and blamed her for killing a convict and the preacher who Caddy had loved.
Jesus Christ, it kept on getting better and better.