“Ned.”
“Chief.”
“I’m not the Chief anymore, Ned.”
“Uh-huh. And I’m supposed to believe that dipshit over there is a sheriff? He doesn’t even look old enough to have hair around his pecker yet.”
“Yes. He’s the new sheriff of McFalls County, and he’s definitely not a dipshit. He’s a good man. I vouched for him.”
“He’s a dipshit. He’s wearing slacks in the woods.”
Dane raised an eyebrow at the dirty sheet covering Ned’s lower half. “Ned, you’re not wearing any pants in the woods.” Dane had a point. Ned let it go. “Ned, what happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are your pants?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“This don’t look good, Ned.”
“That I do know.”
“Well, that’s a start.” Dane sat down in the grass in front of Ned—a man he used to call his best friend; a man he hadn’t seen in almost a decade—and helped keep the sheet gathered in the right place to make sure he stayed covered. Ned cleared a space for Dane to sit. After a long, awkward moment, Dane broached the next uncomfortable subject. “Is this yours?” He held up the gallon-size evidence bag Sheriff Ellis had handed him a few minutes ago—a bag containing an old but solid blued-steel .38 caliber revolver, a six-shooter with two empty chambers. Ned barely looked at it before he responded. “No.” He stared down at the sheet. Dane pointed back toward the group of locals by the house. “Well, those boys over there are saying that when they came upon you, you were sleeping off a drunk—right here—holding this in your hand.”
Ned looked at the hunters, and then back down at his lap. He didn’t take a second look at the gun. “I don’t doubt that.”
“Sheriff Ellis also corroborates that story. He says he took this from you before they woke you up. Do you remember any of that?”
“No.”
“No, you don’t remember having the gun, or no, you don’t remember the sheriff waking you up?”
“All I remember is that tow-headed prick poking me with a rifle. That ain’t no way to rouse a man from his sleep, Dane. He’s lucky he took that damn gun away from me before I shot his ass with it. No telling what could’ve happened. You don’t go poking at a man in his sleep, like some kind of dead dog on the side of the road. It ain’t right.”
Dane tucked the plastic bag with the antique gun into his coat pocket and took off his hat. He rubbed at his shaggy brown hair and could feel the sting of fresh sunburn on his scalp. “Well, Ned, in most cases, I’d tend to agree with you on that, but right now you gotta try and look at it from his point of view. The man gets a call that there’s been a shooting up here, and when he shows up, he finds Tom—a fella well loved around here—shot to death on his front porch. He looks around and sees you over here passed out, free-balling against a tree and holding a recently discharged firearm. All things considered, I’d say he was just being careful.”
Ned reached down under the dirty sheet and readjusted whatever was down there. “I suppose you’re right.”
“He also called me out here to talk to you like you asked him to when he could’ve just as easily arrested you and hauled you down to county lockup, so maybe you should cut him a little slack.”
“I just asked him to get someone I knew is all. Someone who knew me.”
“That’s not what he told me. He said you asked for me by name.”
“Well, maybe I did, then. I don’t know.”
“You know I don’t even work for the county anymore, right? Did you know that?”
“I heard, but you’re here, ain’t you?”
Dane tried to catch Ned’s eyes, but couldn’t. Ned seemed to be purposely avoiding Dane’s stare. “Yeah, I am—and that’s all the more reason to cooperate with the sheriff, Ned. Seeing as he did what you asked him to despite you being an asshole and all.” Dane scanned the woods and took in his surroundings. Sheriff Ellis said he could have five minutes alone with Ned before they hauled him in. “Is there anything else you want to tell me about any of this—seeing that it’s just me and you right now? It may be the last chance we get to talk—alone, I mean.”
Dane finally caught Ned’s eye for the first time. He gave the impression that he didn’t need to talk. He seemed confident, as if Dane already knew everything he needed to know. “Nothing else to tell.”
“Are you sure, Ned?”
“I’m sure, Dane. Tom is my friend. You know that. He was one of the only people that stuck by me after what happened.”
“Was,” Dane said. “He was your friend. Until somebody shot him, and I’m betting this gun in my pocket—the one you were holding—is going to match the holes in his back, which puts you in an awkward position.”
“I didn’t shoot him, Dane. You know I didn’t.”
“I didn’t say you did, Ned.” Dane kicked at an empty mason jar by his foot. “But by the looks of things, you were hitting the old man’s shine pretty hard, and sometimes when you’re drunk—”
“I didn’t shoot him,” Ned repeated. “I told you he was my friend. Why the hell did you come out here if you weren’t going to help me?”
“I am helping you, Ned, and I’m your friend, too. Tom wasn’t the only one who stuck by you back then.”
“Yeah, man. Thanks for the commissary money. It was a big help.”
“That’s not fair, man.” Dane felt a soft buzzing on his leg and reached into his pocket to grab his phone. The number on the display belonged to Charles Finnegan. Charles was Dane’s friend and immediate supervisor at the Bureau. “Hang on a minute, Ned.” He tapped ACCEPT on the phone. “Hey, Charles. Listen, I’m going to need to call you back. I’ve got a situation over here.”
“Have you fallen and you can’t get up?”
“Funny. No, but I am out here in the sticks right now. The sheriff up here caught himself a murder and things have…” Dane thought about how to put it. “Well, things have gotten a little hinky.”
“Hinky?”
“It’s complicated. I’ll have to call you back.”
“Dane, you’re supposed to be taking some time off. Time off that you need. I shouldn’t even be calling you right now, but I expected you to be fishing. You should be out by Bear Creek, not poking around meth labs up on Bull Mountain. I’m sure the sheriff up there can handle whatever he’s got going on. You work for me now.”
“You’re right, Charles, but this ain’t just some backwoods lab explosion. Wait a minute—how did you know I was at Bear Creek?”
“Because I know everything, Dane. That’s why. And I don’t condone freelancing. Especially in your condition.”
“I’m not in any condition. Don’t do that. And I’m not freelancing, either. It’s just that this Sheriff—Ellis—he’s a little new to all this, and like I told you, he just caught a real-deal murder—and it’s a weird one at that.”
“I don’t care, Kirby. You need to be taking it easy, and besides, I—”
“I am taking it easy. Stop worrying.”
“I’ll worry if I damn well please, and like I said, I called you for a reason—”
“Well, give me a few minutes and I’ll call you back. The victim up here is pretty well-known, and not only did he get gunned down on his own front porch, but as a bonus, a buddy of mine from back at McFalls County FD is involved.” Dane looked at Ned and covered the phone. “You sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me? This guy is good people.”
“No,” Ned said. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree. Dane put the phone back to his ear. “Anyway, the reception is for shit out here and the sheriff is getting antsy. I can hit you back and tell you all about it when I leave here.”
“Hold on—Dane, I—”
Dane tapped his phone off and slid it back into his pocket. “Sorry about that, Ned. Now back to what I was saying. This looks bad, and we’ve only got another minute or so together without anyone else around, so if there’s anything you want to tell me, now’s the time.”
Ned didn’t hesitate to spit out another “No.”
“Was there anyone else out here with you and Tom before you blacked out?”
“No,” Ned said again, but this time there was a slight hint of hesitation in his voice. He looked down at his covered feet when he said it. Dane had known this man a long time. For more than thirty-five years. He also knew Ned could never look someone in the face when he was lying. But it had been almost ten years since Dane had seen him. People change. Ned kicked the sheet off his bare foot and rubbed his heel in the dirt to relieve an itch—or to keep Dane from thinking about any more questions to ask.
“Ned, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything you know.”
“I don’t know anything else.”
“C’mon, Ned—”
“Trust me, Dane. I don’t know any more than you do.”
“Trust you? Ned, I haven’t seen you in over what—nine years? Now all of a sudden, out of the blue, you call me out to—to this?”
Ned shuffled under the tree and scratched his back against the crumbling bark. “I’m telling you everything I know, Dane. I came over here a few nights ago to drink with Tom. I got lit up last night. I blacked out and woke up out here with that blond-headed jackass over there poking me with a rifle. I asked for you because the last I heard, you were wearing the sheriff’s badge in Fannin, and I wasn’t interested in pleading my case to a kid.”
“I gave that sheriff thing up a while ago. It was a bad fit. And it doesn’t sound like you’re pleading anything to me but guilty.”
Ned scratched his back on the tree some more. “If that’s how you’re taking it, then I guess I am, because other than what I told you, that’s what happened and I haven’t moved from this tree since. That’s it. All of it. I got nothing else to tell. I wish I did.”
“Right.” Dane wasn’t happy with the nutshell response, but he didn’t press it—not yet. There was no time. “Well, Sheriff Ellis was kind enough to let us have this conversation, but he’s going to have to do his job now. I can assume you’re not going to give him any more grief, right?”
“There’s not much grief I can give as long as I’m wearing a toga.”
“I’m glad you recognize that. I’m going to tell him that cuffs aren’t necessary, but he doesn’t have to listen to me. He’s still gonna have to bring you down to the station, so it’s his decision.”
“You mean he needs to arrest me?”
“Yes, Ned, he does. No way around it, but don’t get all worked up about it. I’m going to ride down to the station, too, and take a look at all this.” Both men sat in the grass and studied each other. It had been a long time. Dane stood up. He listened to both his knees pop and groaned. “I’ll follow y’all down to the station and we can try to figure out what’s what from there.”
Ned picked up another empty jar of shine, shook it a bit, and set it back down on the ground. “You got a smoke?”
“I sure don’t. I’m eight years quit.”
Ned’s eyes glazed back over. “Well, good for you, man. That shit will kill you.”
Dane almost laughed, but he didn’t. He and Ned just shared another moment of uncomfortable silence. Their faces had aged over the years, but the sadness they’d both carried around since they were young men was still as fresh as it had ever been. “You said you told me everything.”
“I did.”
“You said the last you heard I was wearing the sheriff’s badge over in Fannin. So you must’ve been home for some time now.”
Ned lowered his head. “About a year or so.”
Dane felt the sting of that admission. “You’ve been home that long and you didn’t think to call me until you found yourself in trouble?”
“I thought I was doing you a favor.”
“By calling me out to this shit?”
“By not calling you at all.”
“So where have you been staying all this time?”
“Here and there. Why does it matter? I didn’t want to see anyone.” Ned picked at the grass growing high under his palms and tossed clumps of it rooted to chunks of red dirt across the ground as if he were skipping stones over a lake.
“You know, I spent a long time worried about you, Ned. We all did. A postcard while you were gone would’ve been nice, or a phone call once you got back. I could’ve used you around, you know.”
“I’m sorry about that, Dane. I never said I was a great friend.”
Dane cocked his head. “Yeah, you kinda did.”
“Well, add that to my endless list of disappointments.”
Dane sighed and tucked his hands down deep into his cargo pants. “All right. I suppose now ain’t the time to talk about it anyway. How about I stop by Pollard’s on the way to the station and pick you up some smokes?”
“That would be grand.”
“You still a Camel man?”
“I’m a ‘whatever I can get’ man.”
“All right, then.” Dane pushed himself off the tree he was leaning on and let out a little grunt.
“Are you okay, Dane?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine to me.” Ned held a hand over his eyes to block the sun in his face until Dane stood directly in the light. It backlit him and Dane’s face went full dark like some sort of phantom.
“I saw you come in,” Ned said. “You were moving like a sixty-year-old. What condition were you taking about just now—on the phone—with that guy, Charles? You said you were taking it easy. Why should you be taking it easy?”
Dane seated his ball cap down low on his head. He looked less like a phantom now and more like the man Ned used to call his friend. “Why don’t we worry about you right now, Ned, and not me,” Dane said, avoiding the question. “I’ll see you back at the station.” He started back toward Sheriff Ellis and his deputy without saying anything else that would conjure up any more memories either of them would rather not deal with at the moment. He didn’t say goodbye. It felt like the worst thing to do. The last time he said goodbye to Ned Lemon, he didn’t see him again until just now. Dane’s phone buzzed again, and he pulled it from his pocket. It was Charles again. He was about to answer when Ned called out.
“Hey, Dane.”
“Yeah?” Dane sent the call to voicemail.
“Maybe I did kill him.”
“Kill who, Ned? Tom?”
“Yeah. I didn’t pull the trigger like that high-school kid over there thinks I did, but I’m sure I’m the reason he’s dead all the same—you know that, don’t you?”
Dane’s phone started buzzing again almost immediately. “How do you mean, Ned?”
“I mean people die around me, Dane. Everybody knows that. That’s who I am.”
Dane just stared at his friend and had absolutely nothing to say that would bring him any solace. He knew exactly how that felt. Maybe he even agreed.
He kept walking, tapped ACCEPT on his phone, and held it to his ear. “Damn, Charles, I said I’d call you back.”
“Number one, don’t you ‘Damn, Charles’ me. I’m your boss. Number two, don’t you ever hang up on me again if you like having me as a boss, and number three, tell your man Ellis over there that you’re done playing hayseed cop. You’re being called up.”
“Called up? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you’ve just been requested by name to fly to Jacksonville, Florida, by the big dogs. That’s what I was calling you about in the first place before you hung up on me.”
“What? Why?”
“You’ll be briefed on the ride down here. You need to get to McFalls Memorial ASAP.”
“Seriously, Charles, why?”
“Because it’s the closest helipad to where you’re at and I need you to meet the team they put together at the chopper.”
“The team who put together?”
“Damn, Dane, you are slow. The FBI is who. Now get to that hospital, get on that bird, and get your ass to Jacksonville. Call me after you land.”
Dane could feel his head swimming. He’d never heard Charles talk to him with such hostility. This was serious if it had Charles Finnegan riled up. “What the hell is going on in Florida?”
“Listen to me, Kirby. The assistant director of the FBI asked me personally to find and send you to him, so that’s what I’m doing. I don’t ask questions. I do as I’m told. You should try it. It’s called chain of command. At the very least you should just do it because I damn well said so and that’s good enough.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts. I tried coddling your ass and I got hung up on. Now get it in gear and go do what I tell you.”
Dane shot a stunned look at Ellis and his deputy, whose name he’d already forgotten. He handed off the bagged .38 to Ellis and watched both men move toward Ned. They struggled a little to keep Ned’s lower half covered as they raised him to his feet. “Yeah, Charles. Okay, I’m going now.”
“Good, and I expect a sit-rep once you’re on the ground.” GBI Deputy Director Finnegan ended the call, and Dane stared at his phone as if he’d forgotten what it was. He tucked the phone into his pocket and started the slow ascent back up the ravine to the main road. As he fought to keep his footing in the clay and pushed back the endless vines of kudzu and thorny brush, one thought played over and over in Dane’s head like a record on repeat.
What the hell just happened?