The car was a Chevy, a black Monte Carlo, and it waited at the roadside, both of the girls stuck down between the gulley and the road. Diane grabbed Lori’s hand and told her to be quiet and just walk, and they followed the road as the Monte Carlo drove slow alongside of them. Revving the motor every few seconds, Diane now scared, scared as hell, because she didn’t know this car or the driver and knew they were still a good ways from Varner’s, where they could call someone, or scream near some trailers, and not be hanging out here in the night. She couldn’t even imagine what her daddy would say if she told him.
The passenger window rolled down. She could not see the driver but caught part of his face when he fired up a cigarette and said, “You little dolls want a ride?” In half shadow, he was black and wore a beard, she could see, a jean jacket collar popped around his neck, something wrong with his skin, as if some of it had been burned at one time. The lighter went out and the girls kept walking. She held Lori’s hand tighter. The younger girl was trembling and staring at the ground. That proud, sexy strut from the Square was gone; now it was fast and shameful and following that barbed wire path, her muttering that she should never ever have taken those joints, that they shouldn’t have been drinking and messing about.
“Hush,” Diane said. “Just hush.”
The Monte Carlo revved. The man followed them slow but didn’t say another word. Diane thought maybe they could run, but running might make it worse, show the man they were scared, although he probably already knew it and liked it.
When an old truck passed them on the road, one headlight busted out, and heading to town, the girls ran up to the side of the road and waved and yelled, but the truck just kept on puttering by them, leaving them full out exposed in the headlights of the Monte Carlo and caught in the high beams. As the old truck disappeared over the hill, there was still the sound of the big party, a mile away, playing some Tanya Tucker. “Delta Dawn.”
Diane held on to Lori’s hand tighter.
The driver’s door opened and the shadow of the man appeared behind the lights. Diane tried to shield her eyes and yelled for the man to get the hell away from both of them. Lori was crying. And that made Diane madder than anything. “What the fuck do you want?”
The man had a gun and was upon them faster than Diane would have thought possible, snatching up a good hunk of her hair and forcing her back to his car. She screamed as loud as she could. Lori could have run. She could have run. Diane yelled so much she felt her lungs might explode.
The car door slammed behind them just as the fireworks started above, coloring their windshield in wild patterns, and the man sped off to the west. The soft crying of Lori in the backseat.
Lori was only fourteen.
I’ve always wondered, Quinn,” W. R. “Sonny” Stevens, attorney-at-law, said. “Did you ever see your daddy work, doing those stunts, up close and in person?”
“Caddy and I went out to Hollywood a couple times when we were really young, back in the eighties,” Quinn Colson said. “By then he was on Dukes of Hazzard, A-Team, and MacGyver. He let us hang out on set and see him race cars and flip them. It scared the hell out of my sister. But I kind of liked it. I once saw my dad run around for nearly a minute while completely on fire.”
Stevens leaned back into his chair, his office filled with historic photos of Jericho, Mississippi’s last hundred years, from its days as prosperous lumber mill and railroad town to the day last year when a tornado shredded nearly all of it. One of them was a picture of Jason Colson jumping ten Ford Pintos on his motorcycle back in ’77. The office seemed to have remained untouched since then, windows painted shut and stale air locked up tight, dust motes in the sunlight, the room smelling of tobacco, whiskey, and old legal books.
“Maybe the reason you joined the Army?” Stevens said, smiling a bit, motioning with his chin.
Quinn was dressed for duty, that being the joke of it for some: spit-polished cowboy boots, crisp jeans, and a khaki shirt worn with an embroidered star of the county sheriff. He wore a Beretta 9mm on his hip, the same gun that had followed him into thirteen tours of Iraq and Trashcanistan when he was with the Regiment, 3rd Batt. He was tall and thin, his hair cut a half-inch thick on top and next to nothing on the side. High and tight.
“You liked all that danger and excitement like your dad?”
“I liked the Army for other reasons,” Quinn said. “I think my dad just liked hanging out with movie stars, drinking beer, and getting laid. Not much to the Jason Colson thought process.”
Stevens smiled and swallowed, looking as if he really didn’t know what to say. Which would be a first for Stevens, known for being the best lawyer in Tibbehah County when he was sober. And the second-best when he was drunk.
He was a compact man, somewhere in his late sixties, with thinning white hair, bright blue eyes, and cheeks flushed red from the booze. Quinn had never seen him when he was not wearing a coat and a tie. Today it was a navy sport coat with gold buttons, a white dress shirt with red tie, and khakis. Stevens stared in a knowing, grandfatherly way, hands clasped on top of the desk, waiting to dispense with the bullshit and get on to the case.
“OK,” Quinn said. “How’s it look?”
“Honestly?” Stevens said. “Pretty fucked-up.”
“You really think they’ll take our case to the grand jury?” Quinn said. “I answered every question the DA had honestly and accurately. Never believed they’d run with it. I thought I’d left tribunals and red tape when I left the service.”
Sonny Stevens got up and stretched, right hand in his trouser pocket jingling some loose change, and walked to a bank of windows above Doris’s Flower Shop & Specialties. The office had a wide, second-story porch and a nice view of the town square, most of it under construction right now as a good half was ripped apart by that tornado. There were concrete trucks and contractors parked inside what had been a city park and veterans’ memorial. Now it was a staging area for the workers who were trying to rebuild what was lost. “I just wish you’d called me earlier,” Stevens said. “The DA has had a real time turning a pretty simple, straightforward story into one of intrigue and corruption. I might could’ve stopped this shit from the start. But now? Politically, it’s gone too far.”
“What’s to study on?” Quinn said. “Deputy Virgil and I met those men to get my sister and my nephew back. A sniper up in the hills killed two men, and when we looked to get out, Leonard Chappell and his flunky tried to kill me.”
“And you shot them?” Stevens said, staring out the window.
“I shot Leonard. Lillie shot the other officer.”
“Can you step back a little, Quinn?” Stevens said. “Tell it to me again, as straight and simple as possible. The cleanest and easiest version is the one a jury will believe. Start with Jamey Dixon. How’d you end up driving out to that airfield with him?”
“That convict Esau Davis kidnapped my sister and nephew, Jason,” Quinn said. “Jason was four. Davis had sunk an armored car in a bass pond before he was incarcerated. He blamed Dixon for beating him to the car and taking the money.”