The next morning, the day after she’d tracked the kids to Forrest City, Lillie Virgil and Charlie Hodge headed over to Hot Springs, Arkansas. A security camera at a cabin on Lake Hamilton had shown none other than Ladarius McCade breaking in and stealing a freezer full of T-bones. By the time Lillie and Hodge arrived, the PD had sent out patrols to houses around the cabin and connected the kids to another break-in, this time at a big-ass mansion down the road owned by Vince Bloodgood, a fat fella who presented Lillie with his business card straight off. President and CEO of Bloodgood Motors in Fayetteville.
“I think these killers must’ve taken my baby,” Bloodgood said, shaking his head. “She’s a beautiful girl, frail and scared, ran off from home two days ago. Me and my wife have been worried sick. That’s her car right there. Nice little Mercedes G-Wagen. Gently pre-owned. Bought it for her sixteenth birthday. How are you doing for a vehicle, Miss Virgil?”
“Why do you think your daughter joined up with those kids?” Lillie asked.
“Wait till you see the mess inside my home,” Bloodgood said. He wore a dark blue double-breasted suit, a white shirt with a wide red tie, and styled his hair in an exaggerated comb-over. “Police almost finished up doing what they set out to do. House is a real wreck, ma’am. Looks like that Byrd girl had quite the time, sleeping around every bed like she was Little Miss Goldilocks with her pants on fire.”
“Is that what you saw?” Lillie said. “Ain’t that something.”
“Sexual action all over my family home.”
“Mm-hmm,” Lillie said. “And just why’d your daughter run away again?”
“She never really run off,” Bloodgood said. “Chastity got some idiot at the rehab center to drive her to Fayetteville for her vehicle. Don’t you worry about that detail. I called up that center and made sure that ole boy was fired. We’d paid up for two more weeks.”
“And what was she doing in rehab?”
“Girl drank worse than my ex-wife,” Bloodgood said. “Popped prescription pills like they were Tic Tacs. I prayed on it a long time. Wasn’t no easy decision to put my baby in a place like that for the fourth time. Not since what she did with that boy at this place in Aspen. But Chastity and my current wife had a little feud going on. A few weeks back, they really got into it while we were watching Dancing with the Stars, Chastity telling her stepmomma that sexy gal from The Bachelorette wasn’t nothing but a ho-bag. Hell, I didn’t even know what she meant. A ho-bag. But my wife took some double meaning to it, that Chastity was saying that she was cut from the same cloth.”
“Has Chastity been in contact since she left?” Lillie asked.
“No, ma’am,” Bloodgood said. “We figured she might’ve run off to one of our many homes. But this was the last place we expected. It’s been shut up since the first of the year.”
“I saw the for sale signs,” Lillie said. “This place is owned by the bank?”
“Just some financial shuffling is all,” Bloodgood said. “It’s been a tough year to sell a Chevy. Sure I can’t interest you in a new vehicle? You find Chastity and we can work something out. Is that your old Charger over there?”
Lillie nodded. “Government owned.”
“What’s your personal vehicle?”
“A piece of shit Jeep Cherokee.”
“You got kids?”
“A daughter.”
“How old?”
“Nine.”
“A little girl,” Bloodgood said. “Oh, hell. I don’t have to tell you a thing. You find me my little Chastity baby and I’ll cut you a deal that’ll make you blush. I’m thinking you’d like the new Trailblazer a whole lot. You mind me asking if there’s a Mr. Virgil?”
“Listen, Mr. Bloodgood,” Lillie said. “How about we cut the horseshit for a second and get right down to it. Besides the boat, have you accounted for everything?”
“Everything?” Bloodgood said. “Shoot. That might take a while. House has sixteen bedrooms and ten baths. Haven’t seen nothing yet but I’d be most glad to show you around. Already told all I know to that mean-looking fella with the crew cut.”
“Deputy Marshal Charlie Hodge is a pussycat,” Lillie said. “He’d only shoot you if he respected you.”
“How’s that?”
Lillie told Vince Bloodgood to hang tight on the mansion tour and walked on over to where Charlie made friendly with the locals. He introduced her to the sergeant on duty and the patrol officer who’d found the kids late last night. The officer, a tall, skinny, redheaded kid with a pockmarked face, said another officer just found the boat tied up at a marina across the lake.
“Then what the fuck are we doing here?” Lillie asked.
“Ma’am?” the officer asked.
“Call us if you find anything inside,” Lillie said, motioning to Charlie and heading back to their car. “Also check out all cars reported stolen in the last twenty-four hours.”
“These kids do that, too?” he asked.
“These damn kids do everything,” Lillie said.
Quinn met Maggie at the Fillin’ Station for breakfast after she’d dropped Brandon at school. She was already seated, Halley still in her cozy baby sling, and waved to him from the back booth kept special for him and the Colson family. His Uncle Hamp used to sit in the same spot, coming here for coffee and a biscuit going back before it was a restaurant and one of only two gas stations in town. There were still plenty of pictures of Hamp Beckett on the walls, framed clippings of him shutting down the Colson family moonshine stills and once making the biggest marijuana bust in Mississippi history over at the Pritchard place. He’d been the town hero before he stuck a .44 in his mouth and pulled the trigger out of shame.
“Mornin’ there, Sheriff,” Miss Mary said.
Quinn winked at Mary, taking off his hat and coat, hanging them on the rack by the front door under the deer heads and framed bass and crappie. A Bible verse on an old piece of barnwood said to turn your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding.
Outside the hand-painted windows, Quinn saw Sheriff Bruce Lovemaiden pull up and make a great effort of crawling out of his patrol car and waddling toward the front door. Quinn headed back to Maggie, kissing her on the cheek and whispering in her ear, “How’d you sleep?”
Her green eyes lit up over the rim of the coffee mug.
“Just fine,” she said. “Until her midnight feeding. And again at four. I would’ve woke you, but you were snoring.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
Quinn told her he had a little business about to enter the front door. Maggie didn’t seem pleased but knew that was the course of trying to meet up in a public place on a weekday. One of the many reasons, most of them health-related, she preferred to make their meals at home and stay off the Jericho Square.
Miss Mary handed Quinn a hot cup of coffee before he intercepted Lovemaiden. The bell above jingled as Lovemaiden walked in and scouted the darkened room. The propane units scattered around the restaurant glowed bright orange. The air smelled of bacon and scalded coffee.
“Thought we were meeting up at the sheriff’s office?” Quinn asked.
“Got here early,” Lovemaiden said.
“I was about to have breakfast with my family.”
Lovemaiden again scouted the room and spotted the only woman and baby in the place. He smiled and nodded, turning back to Quinn.
“Pretty little lady,” he said. “Sit down. This can’t wait, Quinn.”
Quinn took a seat at the first table by the front door. Lovemaiden, who had been all in a rush, reached for his reading glasses and the laminated menu. He scoured the daily specials, lips moving as he did so.
“Sheriff?”
Lovemaiden looked over his half-glasses, his face jowly and hangdog. He had huge blue eyes and broken blood vessels on his cheeks. His hair combed back off his immense forehead. “That McCade boy planned this killing a while back,” Lovemaiden said, leaning into the table and whispering the words. “Seems it was his idea after the girl’s mother and Pratt made trouble for them.”
“Gina Byrd didn’t have trouble with Ladarius McCade.”
“Bullshit,” Lovemaiden said. “What kind of momma would want her little girl shacking up with a thug like that kid? He spent more time in juvie than he had in social studies. If you don’t believe me, I got someone you need to talk with.”
“Who?”
“A boy did business with McCade,” Lovemaiden said. “Thieving. Stealing cars and raising hell. Spent some time with McCade up in Memphis at one time or another. Ladarius told all in a real heart-to-heart one night. Kid coming to tears saying TJ Byrd was a girl like no other. A pussy made of solid gold.”
“I don’t appreciate that kind of talk,” Quinn said. “Especially about a minor. How about you tell me exactly what he said.”
“Oh,” Lovemaiden said. “Nothing but damn well near everything. It was the kid’s idea to chop up Gina Byrd like a goddamn Thanksgiving turkey and stick her parts down in a bleach barrel. Ladarius planned to get the body out of Tibbehah County so he’d never be tied to the crime.”
“What’s the kid’s name?” Quinn asked.
“I left the whole report with your woman Cleotha at the front desk,” Lovemaiden said, grinning wide. “I just wanted to relay the good news live and in person. Okay? A courtesy from one sheriff to another. Now, do you mind if I order? I’ve been up all night working this gosh-dang mess and sure could use a bite.”
Quinn stood up and tapped at the menu on the table. “Try the country fried steak with gravy.”
“Good as the Rebel?”
“Better,” Quinn said. “I’ll call after I take a look at the report.”
Lovemaiden grunted as Quinn picked up his coffee mug and turned to the back of the restaurant. Maggie had Halley up in her lap, nursing her under the privacy of a light blue blanket, old people still scandalized at the sight of breastfeeding in the city limits.
“Is that Lovemaiden?”
“Live and in person.”
“Did he find something?”
“Nope.”
“Why’d he come to see you?”
Quinn turned to look over his shoulder. Lovemaiden was giving his order to Miss Mary and Quinn offered a half-assed wave before turned back to Maggie. “He wants me to come over to Parsham County to meet a snitch.”
“And you don’t believe him?”
“Nope,” Quinn said. “How about after breakfast, we stop off at the hospital and check out any walk-ins with nasty infected cuts?”
“I need to check in anyway,” Maggie said. “They want me back to work in three weeks.”
“Three weeks?” Quinn said. “That’s not what we had talked about.”
Maggie didn’t answer, shuffling Halley in her lap. The little girl wide awake now, as Maggie wiped her face with a napkin and handed her over to Quinn. He held his daughter tight, the child’s eyes wide and unfocused. Halley so small, light in his lap, while she checked out all the smells and sounds of the Fillin’ Station diner.
“She sure is curious,” Maggie said.
“Skeptical,” Quinn said.
“I guess she comes by it naturally.”
They pulled over somewhere between Prescott and Hope, John Wesley and Chastity both needing to pee about the same time. John Wesley nearly had to use a Coke bottle before Ladarius pulled over the white Kia Sorento he’d picked up across from the Salty Dog Marina. Ladarius parked the SUV up on an access road to nowhere, a slice of asphalt that went up into the piney hills and dead-ended at an endless section of electric towers running down a cleared path. The thick power lines buzzed overhead.
Chastity called it as good a place as any, no mile markers or identifying houses nearby. Ladarius shook his head but held the phone anyway, ready to start the recording, just as he got word from Chastity. Holly Harkins leaned against the hood of the SUV, head down, hoodie obscuring her face as she picked at a clump of weeds she’d found on the roadside.
TJ sure didn’t like this. But she kept to script, holding Daddy’s .38 down against her leg as Chastity kneeled on the ground. The rolling sweep of it, the gigantic electric towers and desolate slice of road added to the drama, although TJ was sure never to point the gun right at the girl. She let the image of them standing there, her standing with Chastity kneeling, say what needed to be said.
There was no damn reason it had to come to this. But the law and Mr. Chester Pratt of Jericho didn’t leave me with no other choice. With me now is Chastity Bloodgood of Fayetteville, Arkansas. We’ve taken her on our journey in an effort to shine the light on our cause of innocence. We may be just no-count trailer trash, or that’s what y’all are saying online, but Chastity here is that blue-eyed blonde rich white girl that just might get y’all’s attention. We will stop at nothing to make sure we are heard and that Sheriff Quinn Colson of Tibbehah County arrests that lying bastard Chester Pratt for my momma’s murder. I’m not saying he killed her all by himself, but we know he sure as hell knows who did. He knows those two men who attacked my momma outside the Southern Star. What he’s been saying about me, my best friend since kindergarten Holly Harkins, and my boyfriend Ladarius McCade ain’t nothing but a damn dumpster fire of lies. My momma loved Ladarius, never wanted to see us apart. The only mistake my momma made was cuddling up to a leathery old con man like Chester with his tired-ass khaki pants and those fucking Ole Miss sweater-vests that cost more than our rent. She trusted him. Trusted that old bastard so much she looted a bank trust set up in my name, filled with twenty-five thousand dollars from a legal settlement. I hope the authorities are aware of this knot in the goddamn hose line. And if not, they better check out his lies. I want me and my kid brother John Wesley back home along with Ladarius and Holly. As far as Chastity goes, we’re offering her free and safe return once Chester Pratt is in jail. Until then, she’ll remain our prisoner, going with us wherever the road takes us. We didn’t ask for trouble. We don’t want trouble. We just want someone to cut through the thick fog of bullshit and lies and get those men who killed my momma. She may have been nothing to y’all. But she was damn sure the world to me and John Wesley.
TJ nodded to signal she’d finished and Ladarius stopped the recording, sliding the phone into his back pocket. TJ reached down and helped Chastity off her knees. Chastity not looking pleased as she dusted off the knees of her fancy jeans.
“Damn it to hell,” Chastity said. “I told you to threaten me. At least push me around, stick that pistol to my head. My free and safe return? What kind of shit was that? You need to ask for a reward. My daddy will pay. My daddy will do about anything in the world for me. Come on now, TJ Byrd. Be bold. Be brave. Show me that stone-cold criminal that I know you can be.”
“She’s no criminal,” Holly said, shouting as she slid from the hood of the car. “Are you out of your damn mind, Goldilocks? We don’t want trouble. We want less trouble. How the hell is TJ pointing a gun at your dumb head gonna make things easier for any of us? You just want the drama? The drama is making you excited and crazy. Just why were you in that rehab center, Chastity Bloodgood? I don’t think it was just drinking and pills. I think you’re a goddamn crazy woman.”
Chastity smiled and shook her head, trying to make it look like Holly was the one who’d now gone crazy. The day gray and cold, pine trees making wave-like patterns up into the hills. Cars zoomed up and down the Arkansas highway.
“Post it,” TJ said. “Or don’t. C’mon. Let’s get back on the road.”
“What’s the use of kidnapping if you don’t threaten me?” Chastity said. “Don’t be so damn small and dumb. We need some money, girl.”
Ladarius walked up between them, placing a hand on TJ’s shoulder as he knew this just might go to fist city. No one spoke to TJ like that. Or at least, no one ever did it twice.
Chastity rolled her eyes and headed back to the SUV, opening the back door and slamming herself inside. John Wesley walked from the woods, where he’d had a longer transaction than expected, and asked Ladarius if they had any napkins in that car. TJ had been concentrating so hard on what to say and what to do for Chastity, that she nearly missed Holly turning a hard shoulder and marching down the sloped grassy hill to the highway. TJ shouted down after her. Where in the hell was that girl going?
Holly kept on moving down the slope through waist-high weeds, headed down to the road, marching back toward Hot Springs. She was almost to the highway.
“Shit,” TJ said.
She yelled to Holly. But Holly broke into a run, charging down the hill toward the shoulder of the road.
Holly stopped just before she crossed the highway and turned back to face them, lifted her right fist, and offered her middle finger to them all.
Stagg hung back from the workers inside Frontier Village that morning, the hammering and the high whine of an electric saw so loud it rattled the metal walls. Inside the empty Diamond Saloon, he watched the boys work on the little stage where they’d have real-life can-can girls putting on a revue for all the daddies, flipping up their skirts and showing a little thigh. It wouldn’t be the fifty-dollar pecker pulls Fannie Hathcock offered, but Stagg knew having some pretty girls around wasn’t ever bad for business.
He’d just taken out a pen to doodle an idea for some old-timey lighting for the electricians when Midnight Man appeared. He told Stagg two fellas had come to the Rebel wanting to talk.
“What do they want?”
“Won’t say,” Midnight Man said. “Look like a couple midgets to me. Smell like shit.”
“Must be some carnies,” Stagg said. “Come over to sew up that busted seam on the bouncy house. Send ’em on over.”
Stagg handed the sketch to one of the electricians and headed out the swinging doors, taking pleasure walking on the wooden sidewalk past the open windows that would soon be filled with glass. He looked up at the dark ceiling where they would project the moon and stars, a little slice of American history and wonder right here in Tibbehah County.
Stagg popped a peppermint candy in his mouth and glanced around at the whole world taking shape, hoping they could get that old bouncy house working again. He’d been on the phone for two days with some woman from Florida who’d sold it to him with all the defects, saying she’d never promised perfect condition.
Stagg leaned on the wood railing as the front door opened, filling the darkened space with bright light. Two small figures entered the metal structure, tiny shadows, craning their heads this way and that, checking out all the changes going on inside Fannie’s old titty barn.
The older of the two started chatting up one of his carpenters, asking him what in the hell were they building. The younger one didn’t seem as distracted, soon taking note of Stagg and walking on over to the village, crossing markings where they’d be laying the mini railroad tracks, coming up in front of Stagg’s General Store and removing his dirty baseball hat.
“Mr. Stagg?”
Johnny Stagg nodded.
“I heard you was hiring.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Y’all the ones who know about fixing bouncy houses?”
“Matter of fact we do,” the man said. “We know how to fix all kinds of houses. Especially ones with a bad foundation, maybe in need of some additional security and enforcement.”
“What you driving at, son?” Stagg said. “Ain’t nothing wrong with this foundation. I done poured it myself more than twenty years ago. It’s withstood pole dancing, fistfights, and even an old boy plastered out of his mind on Aristocrat vodka. Drove his truck right through the establishment.”
“Where’s that man Bishop walks behind you?” the little man said. “Tends to your business?”
Stagg didn’t like the way he was asking or the fact that he hadn’t seen nor heard from Mr. Bishop since late last night. The realization of who these fellas were must’ve showed on his face because it seemed to give great pleasure to this stocky little guy. He grinned bigger than shit and placed his hands on his hips as if he were a man twice his size.
“You a Nix?” Stagg said.
“I’m Dusty Nix,” the man said, nodding. “And over there, that gray-headed fella is my daddy. He goes by Flem.”
“That’s a mighty old-fashioned name.”
“Suits him,” Dusty Nix said. “He’s a mighty old-fashioned man. We come to talk to you about some work.”
“What kind of work?”
“Same as Mr. Bishop done,” he said. “Only we do much better.”
Stagg laughed and shook his head. He patted his pockets for another piece of peppermint candy but couldn’t find none. Dusty Nix reached out his hand, no bigger than an eight-year-old’s, and tried to pass him a little yellow butterscotch. Stagg let his hand hang there, not wanting to touch nothing come from that midget’s pocket.
“Few men better than Mr. Bishop,” Stagg said, suddenly feeling as alone and naked as a fella with his peter out on a rifle range. “He’ll be around real soon.”
“Is that right?” Nix said, slipping a few pieces of hard candy into Stagg’s shirt pocket. He stood close, plucking a Pall Mall into the side of his mouth and flicking on a lighter.
“You got something on your mind, son?”
“I did,” he said. “But that’s been taken care of. Make sure to give us a call if Mr. Bishop don’t show.”
Dusty Nix nodded to his daddy, who hobbled over like a man with a wooden leg. He held some kind of package under his arm in a plain brown wrapper. The older man presented it to Stagg as if he’d just trucked the crown jewels into Tibbehah.
“What the hell’s this?” Stagg asked.
“Cajun sausage we make special during deer season,” the old man said, his lower teeth a wreck of rotten little brown pebbles. “Chop it up and mix it with some eggs. A little spicy, but sure do taste like a little bit of heaven.”
Stagg accepted the package, the meat feeling warm and wet in the palm of his hands, as he watched the two odd little men head for the door. Midnight Man was quick up on his shoulder, breathing hard and giving a soft grunt as they disappeared into the parking lot.
“What they want?” Midnight Man asked.
“They wanted us to know Bishop fucked up,” Stagg said, handing off the package to Midnight Man. “Throw this shit in the dumpster. I’m headed home to shower.”
“Something a-matter, Mr. Stagg?”
Stagg looked down at the wetness on his hands. Blood had soaked through the package.
Of all the dumb things Holly had done in her life, throwing in with TJ and Ladarius had to be the King Turd of them all. Just to run down a short list: aiding and abetting murder suspects, stealing her momma’s Dodge Grand Caravan minivan, ducking out on Phil Jr. over at the Captain’s Table, and taking the Lord’s name in vain at least sixteen times since leaving the Tibbehah County line. Now she was walking into the cold wind right at this very moment, trying to make her way back to Hot Springs, and hopefully on back to Mississippi before she started down a stretch of road that she could never come back from.
“Holly!” someone yelled.
She glanced quick over her shoulder and saw TJ hanging out the passenger window of that white Kia.
“Come on,” TJ said, yelling some more. “Get in. We’re gonna get busted if you don’t check yourself.”
Holly lifted her hand and extended her middle finger again, a salute to freedom and sanity, continuing her walk north along Highway 67. She was prepared to walk all the way back to Tibbehah County if necessary and would just as soon hop in a hot rod with the devil himself than climb in that car with TJ and that ridiculous girl who went by the name of Chastity. Wasn’t nothing chaste about that girl, running after both TJ and Ladarius at the same time. Holly shoved both hands in her coat and kept on walking ahead, Ladarius riding up behind her now, honking the horn. TJ and Chastity yelling to her now to come on and get inside.
“Leave me alone,” Holly said, screaming.
She figured she might run for it. Maybe make a break for the trees and lose them for good. The thought of finally tearing away from TJ left a hard feeling in her heart, like something real bad inside her had got rotten, meat going spoiled. As she walked, she started to cry, and goddamn, she hated to cry. All the feeling of being kids with TJ and playing on the monkey bars or swimming in Choctaw Lake, sitting with TJ as she tried to work on her dead daddy’s Monte Carlo, acting like a miracle had been performed when that motor turned over not once, but twice, that old black piece of shit not being worth nothing other than playing those old cassette tapes of Cheap Trick and Bon Jovi. “Livin’ on a Prayer.” What a shitty lie that had been.
“Get in the fucking car,” Ladarius said. “You’re gonna get our ass caught.”
Holly stopped walking. Ladarius pulled up beside her, both TJ hanging out the front window and Chastity hanging out the back, smiling so big it looked as if her big rosy cheeks might break.
“Not with her,” Holly said. “Dump that crazy bitch right here and right now. Or y’all best move on. It’s time to make a goddamn stand, TJ. You ain’t known that girl but a day.”
Ladarius revved the motor, rolling slow and easy beside them. Behind them, Holly facing south while the car faced north, she spotted a highway patrol car running fast and hard down the highway. The patrol car flashed its lights at them but kept on driving, heading on to something bigger and more important on down the road. Her heart had nearly stopped.
But it had been enough. TJ slid on back inside the car, looking straight ahead and telling Ladarius to go ahead and go. Stand on it. Chastity poked out her lower lip and gave a fake-ass crying face before Holly pulled her fist back and rushed forward to smack her good in her nose. That glass window went up real fast. Now it was just Holly and TJ.
“I thought you were my friend,” TJ said.
“You made your choice.”
“We ain’t coming back,” TJ said. “Not now. Not ever. Hope you got on your good shoes.”
“Y’all aren’t gonna make it,” Holly said. “You know that. Right? That crazy-ass girl is gonna get all y’all killed.”
“Go to hell.”
“That’s where y’all are headed,” Holly said, walking more, more determined now than she’d ever been. “But not me. I’m headed home even if I have to walk the whole damn way. Just don’t expect flowers and tears on y’all’s grave. I’m over it.”