Within minutes of the first helicopter arriving at the farm, the valley began to look like an anthill kicked in by a size-eleven boot. There were suits everywhere. State police arrived next and there wasn’t enough yellow tape created to wrap off everything that needed it at the Rockdale Farm. Fire crews had arrived due to the explosion and were still stomping at small grass fires with shovels and rakes as the Rabun County Coroner’s Office carried away the bodies of Eddie Rockdale and his uncle Casper, John “Tater” Hopkins, Special Agent Geoff Dahmer, and a big, burned-up Asian killing machine missing a significant portion of his face and skull. Over the next few hours, Dane informed Assistant Director O’Barr of what had occurred. He and Special Agent Velasquez found the boy, William, where his brother had told him to wait at Black Mountain Safari Park, but were attacked, bound, and brought here to the Farm by Eddie Rockdale, who had a deal in place with Special Agent Geoff Dahmer to exchange an unknown sum of money for the boy. Dane and Special Agent Velasquez both tried to reason with Rockdale but failed, right before Rockdale and his people were attacked and killed by the now headless and barbecued Filipino mobster. This allowed Dane and Velasquez to escape with the boy, when they were engaged in a firefight with Dahmer, who had taken Mrs. Rockdale as a hostage. Roselita heroically held a low ground position and fired the shot that freed Lydia Rockdale, allowing Dane to shoot Dahmer dead. Dane also shot the LPG tank, causing the massive explosion that burned the Asian man and accidentally injured Roselita Velasquez. He also informed August that it was Lydia Rockdale who had saved his life by putting the fatal bullet in the assassin.
The story was a mouthful, and Dane wondered how many times he was going to have to tell it over the next few days. It was going to be a lot, he was sure. Roselita was stabilized and taken to McFalls Memorial to be treated for her injuries, while EMTs examined the newly widowed Lydia Rockdale and a very tight-lipped Ned Lemon, who was ready to be taken back into custody by the McFalls County SO. Dane sat on the front porch with William and they watched August O’Barr approach again as key players of Dane’s story were taken away and the federal and state manpower was dismissed.
“Well, this is one big shit show, Kirby.”
“Yeah. I know.”
August extended a hand to William, who didn’t look at it, much less shake it. “I’m August. I’m happy to see you came through all this okay, William. We have some people from child services on their way here right now.”
William said nothing and kept his eyes on some fixed point in the distance.
“I’m really sorry for your loss, son.” August shot Dane a “what gives” look.
Dane shrugged. “He doesn’t talk much. Hasn’t said more than two words since I found him.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
August lowered his hand and they stayed like that for a minute, enveloped by an uncomfortable silence, until it was broken by McFalls County Sheriff Darby Ellis. He’d already cuffed Ned, who had apparently been hiding out in the woods and had nothing at all to do with the events at the farm, and had him in the back of his car.
“Assistant Director O’Barr?” Darby said, and removed his hat.
August pursed his lips and nodded to the Sheriff.
“Do you reckon I can be on my way with my prisoner now, or do your people need to talk to him any more?”
August ran a hand over his bristle-brush head. “You can take him, Sheriff. I know where to find him if I need him. Oh, and thank you for your help on this, son. It won’t go unnoticed.” O’Barr shook Darby’s hand, and Dane thought he saw the old man wink at him when he let go. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The sheriff reseated his hat and walked toward his car. Not long after Darby’s taillights disappeared into the trees, another vehicle showed up from DFCS for William. He went with a big, solemn-faced woman with a clipboard without a word spoken, but nodded at Dane as he got in the van. Dane nodded back.
August sat down on the porch next to him. It took him a few beats to speak, and he lit up a long menthol cigarette in the meantime. He inhaled and spoke through a big mouthful of smoke. “My boys found a compact car about a half mile away from here stashed in the woods. They think it belongs to that big dead Asian fella.”
“Oh yeah?” Dane said, doing his best to sound surprised. “Why do they think that?”
“Oh, blood and bandages, that kind of thing. It just doesn’t belong here, you know? Like him.” August nodded to the biggest of the body bags laid out by the last remaining ambulance.
Dane nodded. “Makes sense.”
“Yeah. Didn’t find any money, though.”
“No?” Dane said.
August shook his head. “Nope. They sure did not.” He sucked in another big drag of smoke. “Kirby, can I be honest with you?”
“Sure, August.”
“I don’t give a fuck about you. Not one. Not one single fuck. Not since the beginning of all this.”
“Well, okay,” Dane said.
“From what I hear you got one foot in the grave anyway, so giving a fuck would be a wasted fuck, you tracking?”
“I think so.”
“It true you got the cancer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the lungs?”
“Yes, sir.”
August looked at his cigarette and then stomped it out under his loafer. “Bad shake.”
“Yes, sir.”
O’Barr removed a toothpick from his shirt pocket and began to gnaw at it as he swished it from side to side in his mouth. “But my point is, you and what happens to you ain’t something I’m going to lose a wink of sleep over—but—the boy is safe—so good on you. And everybody I can tell that ended up dead here today pretty much needed to be so. My casebook is lighter for it, and I’ll be damned if that deathbed confession you got from Rockdale about your hometown unsolved wasn’t one hell of a masterstroke. That’s even going to make that goofy-ass teenage sheriff of yours happy—not to mention clear your buddy, Lemon, of the murder charge. I mean, it’s like the whole scenario is wrapped up all nice with a bow and everyone comes out peachy, smelling like a fresh-cut rose.” August took the toothpick out of his mouth and held it between index finger and thumb. Dane said nothing. “You know who gets fucked here, Kirby? You know who comes out looking like a chump?”
“I couldn’t tell you, August. I’m just laying out what happened.”
August let a slow laugh build in his belly and then turned to lock eyes with Dane. His stare was cold, gray, and hard, and his face wasn’t so much old to Dane now as it was wise. Dane knew the old-guard policeman could see right through him. “Me,” he said. “Me. I’m the one who leaves here looking like an ass-clown. I have less than a year until I retire without a single blemish on my jacket and you—you just dropped a psychotic rogue agent operating under my charge into my lap with me none the wiser. That makes me look incompetent. Not to mention not a nickel of the money that got everybody so hot and bothered in the first place was recovered, and you deliver me a story so full of holes it looks worse than that old Ford over there.” August pointed the toothpick at Dane’s destroyed pickup.
“It’s what happened, August.”
“It’s Assistant Director O’Barr,” August said as he stood up. He jabbed the toothpick into something imaginary in the air between them. “Holes,” he said. “You know the funny thing about holes. When you pick at them, they get wider and wider and wider until you know what?”
“What’s that?” Dane said.
“The truth falls out. And the best way to wipe the shit of a dirty agent off my shoe is to be the first to expose another one.”
Dane said nothing but kept O’Barr’s cold stare. “You can’t expect me to believe Special Agent Velasquez was not aware of her partner’s actions, Kirby.” He let that suspicion hang between them for a moment. “So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go down to that Podunk hospital of yours and sit my tired ass in a chair and wait until Rosey’s sweet little ass wakes up, and then I’m gonna start poking.” He jabbed the toothpick in the air again before turning to walk away. “Oh,” he said, turning back. “And if I can find even the smallest whiff of bullshit about what happened out here, how much credibility do you think that deathbed confession you witnessed is gonna hold? One lie—one itty-bitty lie compromises the integrity of the whole, and then it’s off to the pokey for your buddy, Lemon. And I understand he’s a two-time loser as well. Damn, Kirby. That’s got to suck. But fuck it, right? I mean, you ain’t gonna be around to see it anyway.” He turned to walk off again.
“O’Barr,” Dane said and pulled himself upright using the porch railing. “Wait.”
August stopped again and faced Dane. He put the toothpick back in his mouth. “Wait for what?” he said.
“They’re good people, August. Ned is good people. Rose—she’s good police. One of the best detectives I’ve ever worked with. We saved the kid and closed the case. Everybody wins.”
“Not everybody. I thought I was pretty clear about that.”
“You were, but setting out to ruin good people because of bad press? C’mon, August. There has to be a better way.”
August looked down into the grass and pulled the toothpick from his mouth. “Sorry, Kirby. Bad press ruins careers. I’m not about to let it ruin mine.”
Dane took a step off the porch. He lowered his voice. “I’m not about to believe you were unaware of the atrocities your agent was committing right under your nose, August.”
O’Barr’s eyes sunk back and he turned into the darker, harder man Dane had witnessed days ago in the motel room Arnie Blackwell was killed in. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Kirby.”
“Oh, yeah? So if I did a little bullshit sniffing of my own, you’d come out of that smelling like an Irish spring?”
O’Barr took a quick step back toward Dane and then looked around the yard and calmed himself. “Are you in too big a hurry to die instead of waiting on the cancer to kill you, Kirby?”
“No, sir. I can wait.”
“Then watch your mouth and stay out of my way.”
“I can do that, sir. If you take my eyewitness account and leave the people involved alone.”
O’Barr smiled, but it was venomous. He took another step toward Dane. “I could end you right now, Kirby. Not one of the men out here would question me.”
“I believe that, sir.”
“Then give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.”
It was Dane’s turn to look at the ground. He rubbed a hand through his hair and then sunk both hands into the pockets of his filthy cargo pants. He met August’s eyes and held them. “What if I gave you one point two million reasons?”
August sucked on his toothpick for what seemed to Dane like a lifetime before the smile came. “Did I tell you I’m retiring soon?”
A day later, when Roselita woke up, it wasn’t August O’Barr sitting next to her hospital bed. It was Dane. Roselita was practically mummified and drunk with painkillers, but her round face was mostly clear and she could understand what was happening around her. Dane stood when she turned her head to look at him and he saw her eyes were open. “Hey, partner.”
“Where am I?”
“You’re at McFalls Memorial Hospital, but I believe they are going to send you down to Augusta to the Burn Center. It sounds scary, but you’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“The kid?”
“Is fine. He’s under the protection of Clementine Richland and her people down in Cobb. He’s going to be okay, too.”
Roselita closed her eyes again.
“Your fiancée is out there talking to the doctors now,” Dane said and Roselita’s eyes popped back open.
“Kelly is here?”
“Yeah. I called her on your phone. Used your finger to unlock it while you were sleeping. I hope that’s okay. She got here about an hour after I hung up. She must drive like you.”
Roselita let out a small smile that seemed to hurt her. “Dane—did he—did—”
Dane leaned down closer to the bed. “He did. Just like you said he would. All August wanted was the money. Now that he has access to it, he can’t get this case wrapped up quick enough. You’re coming out of this clean.”
Roselita jetted a bandage-wrapped hand out and grabbed Dane’s shirt. “Why? Why did you do this—for me? After what I did. After what I—” Roselita stopped talking and let go of Dane’s shirt when the door opened behind them and a beautiful but tired and obviously pregnant blond woman, in jeans and a pink flannel shirt, with tear-streaked mascara lining her cheeks, burst in. Dane moved as Kelly rushed in to be at her woman’s side. She kissed her cheeks and mouth before leaning down to hug her. Roselita winced but kept her eyes wide on Dane. Dane slipped his ball cap on and put one hand on his stomach. He made the shape of a half circle—the universal sign for pregnant—and nodded at Kelly. He mouthed the words “Don’t waste it.” Roselita didn’t have enough time to say thank you before Dane left the room.