South of Shiloh (21 page)

25

A THOUSAND MILES DUE SOUTH OF MAIL LAKE,
Wisconsin, Mitch sat cross-legged at the extension of his chain, scooped up a handful of red sediment, and let it trickle through his fingers.

“I’ll tell you about the truth,” he said.

About twenty feet away, in the narrow part of the cave, LaSalle sat on a pile of cement sacks, casually knocking the old mortar off a brick with a hand pick.

“Truth is I worked my ass off in that bank and never got a break. I hustled up that monument for old Hiram and he went and had a heart attack. Seven years I busted my hump tryin’ to inject some life into that woman’s dead nookie.” Mitch shook his head. “The truth is I needed some relief.”

Tap, tap, tap, went the pick.

Mitch pushed up on his feet, dragged his chain to the chamber pot, undid his trousers, and urinated. He recognized the pot now, an heirloom from the house; memorable because of the decal of Ulysses S. Grant’s face stuck in the bottom.

Mitch did up his scratchy, dirty pants, went back, and sat down.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“What’s that suppose to do, wear me down?” he asked.

LaSalle held up a brick, sighted down its length, and said, “S’pose to get the rock so you can use them again.” Then he placed the brick with a hollow click on the neat stack at his side.

“She’d never do that, what she said,” Mitch said.

“Nope, probably have me to do it,” LaSalle said matter-of-fact.

“Shit, man. That’d be premeditated killing.”

LaSalle set down the pick, lounged back, and perused Mitch. “Depends how you look at it. I heard this guy on the radio, from that Southern Poverty bunch in Birmingham. He said that when Gabriel blows his horn gonna be hundreds, maybe thousands, of black men rise up from the rivers of Mississippi where you all dumped them with logging chains around their necks.” LaSalle flicked dust from his jeans. “Walling off one murdering white boy won’t hardly make a ripple in all that. Besides, you ain’t even here. Says in the paper you went missing in Memphis.”

Mitch shook his shackled leg. “Well here I am in chains with you lording it over me.” He narrowed his eyes. “Feels on my end like you get off on it…like you got this black-white payback thing going.”

LaSalle smiled slowly. “Nah. If it’s just between you and me it’s more a green-yellow thing, huh?”

“The guard; me not going.” Mitch lowered his eyes.

“Don’t take it so hard. You just did what most people did. We went driving the roads in Iraq and you stayed home and went shopping, like the president told you,” LaSalle said with quiet, total contempt.

Mitch gritted his teeth and had a bad moment as the walls started to close in. “Goddamn, what’s she want from me?”

“Between you and her. I learned a long time ago not to mess around in a domestic. I just patch up the casualties,” LaSalle said in that breezy tone he had, like cold, blowing smoke. He got up and walked over to Mitch. “Okay, legs out straight and put your right hand under your butt. I’m going to look at that cut.”

Mitch’s hands were free but he couldn’t see going after LaSalle. Besides, his leg was shackled and who knew where they kept the key?

So he assumed the position. LaSalle removed disinfectant and gauze from his first-aid bag. As he cleaned and re-bandaged Mitch’s left hand, he said casually: “I see you watching me like I’m gonna slip up. And I heard all that you said about me being all blowed up and turned to mush. It ain’t like that, Mitch. I’m not disabled. I’m healing, you hear.” He pressed Mitch’s reddened palm and asked, standing up, “When’d you have your last tetanus shot?”

“You got me chained up in the dirt and you’re worried about a tetanus shot?”

When LaSalle grinned, the scars on his face pulled tight, like tribal tattoos. “That could get infected. Miss Kirby don’t want you suffering needlessly.”

Then LaSalle gathered up the cardboard leavings of a microwaved meal, retreated down the passage, canted his broad shoulders sideways to fit through the choke point, and disappeared into the gloom.

“Bullshit,” Mitch said when he was alone. If LaSalle was “healing,” he’d be driving the ambulance. More like he was the neighborhood retard; only one dumb enough to go along with Ellie’s backyard kids’ play. Edgar Allan Poe, she said. “The Cask of Amontillado.”

Give me a break.

Okay, keep it simple, like they say in AA. Don’t waste time wondering why you missed Beeman. Or worry what’s going on out there. Here and now, Mitch.

She’d caught him doing something and she wasn’t sure exactly what. Her not calling in the law was the key. She’s the one fucked up. A man was dead and she wanted some kind of apology?

So just hang tight, face her down, and eventually she’d get over being pissed and realize he was too hot to handle. Wouldn’t do to have the Kirby name mixed up in this scene. She’d have to let him go.

And then what? He had resources: Dwayne and Billie Watts. They’d figure out something. It could still work. Except next time he’d use a scoped deer gun on Beeman. Back off on that. You’ll just spiral out.

Thing now is stay positive. Wait her out and maybe you can get free of this tar ball.

Mitch rubbed the growth on his chin and tried to estimate the time by the progress of his beard. Not sure how long he’d been in here. The utility light was a constant glare; no dawn, no sunset to go by.

LaSalle had brought him an inflatable air mattress, two blankets, and a roll of toilet paper when he delivered the first microwaved meal. Since then he’d had four meals, each accompanied by two plastic bottles of water. He’d slept twice and used the pot twice. Between his third and fourth feeding LaSalle had removed the chamber pot, hosed the crap off Grant’s face, and returned it. So somewhere in day three.

Just LaSalle in and out. No Ellie.

He picked the crumpled Pall Malls off the blankets and counted the hoarded cigarettes left in the pack. Five. LaSalle took the lighter away and gave him a pack of book matches.
ABE’S GRILL, OLDEST DINER ON ROUTE
72, said the front.

Could go for some of Abe’s biscuits about now.

He walked toward the back of the chamber, away from the overhead light. When he lit a cigarette, the flare of the match cast a flickering shadow on the limestone walls. Damn place curled around him like the folds of a stone intestine. A broad seep of water blackened one corner. Smell of mineral salts. Cave formation.

Holding the match up like a tiny torch, he shuffled into the recess. Rusty wink of more chains curled in the corner. Talk about the fuckin’ blues. Imagine what went through their tripping African minds crossing the big water to wind up in here? Mitch winced when the match burned his fingers. In the sudden blackness, he realized what happened. “Hang time,” he said aloud.

Wet damned day. Low-velocity round. Beeman musta moved before it got there. Not a perfect plan after all. Then he pictured Dwayne and Darl and Billie scrambling, wondering where he was. And Marcy, probably having a private laugh. Told you so.

Shit, man, creepy back in here. Mitch hugged himself and shuffled from the dark, back to the bright artificial light.

26

ON THE WAY BACK INTO ST. PAUL, PERRY MACNEIL
called on the cell. When Perry offered to buy him lunch, Rane figured he smelled something after handing him off to Borck about the reenactors. He needed Perry to back him on the phone if his credentials were questioned Down South, and he needed Perry’s contacts.

“Meet me at my place in an hour,” Rane said.

Back home he carried the cased rifle inside, along with a much-thumbed technical manual he’d borrowed from Mike’s shop:
Shooting Civil War Rifles.
Then he set out a gun-cleaning kit, some twine, a wad of gauze, and a roll of duct tape. He wrapped the gauze around the twine, secured it with narrow strips of tape, and soaked it in the gun oil. Then he inserted the plug two inches down the muzzle of the Sharps, which he had scrupulously cleaned until it passed Mike’s inspection. The string would allow him to pull it out. Okay. Then he smeared the rifle’s moving parts with a liberal dose of graphite lubricant. Last, he pressed a clumsy swatch of duct tape over the flip-up elevation sights to hide the white tick marks on the side of the rectangular aperture.

Satisfied he’d protected the breech, lever, and trigger mechanisms, he filled a wash bucket with water, carried the rifle outside, tucked it in the weeds of a flower bed, doused it with the water, turned it over, repeated the process, and flipped the rifle several times in the mud.

He left the Sharps in the dirt, went back inside, and had a pot of coffee going by the time Perry knocked on the door.

Perry accepted a cup of coffee, made a face when Rane lit a cigarette, and sat down at the kitchen table, where Rane had spread open an AAA road atlas to the two-page map of the U.S. interstate system. Perry sipped his coffee and looked up at Rane.

They trusted each other. Perry would put his job on the line, if the story was good enough.

Rane picked up a yellow Magic Marker and traced a bright chrome route east from St. Paul to Madison, then the line turned south and ran down the length of Illinois to Cairo, jumped the Mississippi River, followed the river’s west bank through Missouri and Arkansas, and then veered east through Memphis, dropped into Mississippi, and stopped at the intersection of state highways 72 and 45.

“Corinth,” Rane said, paging forward through the atlas to the Mississippi state map.

Perry connected the dots and their eyes met.

“The Stillwater guy who got killed…” he said slowly.

Rane nodded. “Paul Edin. It could be like they say, a freak accident. They never found a bullet. But, off the record, there’s a cop down there who thinks they might have a sniper.”

“No shit?” The cigarette smoke no longer bothered Perry; he leaned forward, staring at the map.

“I say again, it’s off the record, they’re playing it down. Because next weekend they’re going to throw a lot of security into a Civil War event here.” Rane circled the Shiloh National Park in yellow with the marker, just above Corinth. “They think the guy might hit again.”

“Jesus,” Perry perked up, “how’d you get…”

Rane narrowed his eyes. “You gotta keep this one to yourself.”

Perry cupped his chin, thought about it. “Maybe we should bring in a reporter?”

“Reporter, bullshit,” Rane said.

Perry held up his hands in a mollifying gesture. He and Rane had been over this topic before. Rane considered himself immune to the newsie gene; that congenital lust for secrets he equated with blabbing teenage girls in a high school cafeteria. Plus he’d already published three photo books heavy on narrative and was arguably the best writer on the staff.

“I mean it,” Rane said, stabbing a warning finger. “I’m working on getting an intro to the cop investigating Edin’s death. I don’t know if he’ll talk to me at all. I’m double-screwed going in: (a) I work for a paper; (b) I’m a Yankee interloper on his turf. If the sniper angle starts percolating he’ll sure as hell freeze me out.”

“What do you want from me?” Perry asked.

“I need an inside contact down there. Could you snoop out somebody who’s worked for a paper in the area?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Rane watched the thought process in Perry’s consummate deskman’s eyes as he bobbed his head to one side, then the other, sussing out the potential blowback from management, the union, the staff—all of whom disapproved of Rane’s style of leaving the paper for extended periods and “becoming the story.” “You’re already suspended. You could get fired again,” he said simply. After a moment, he added: “The question is, could
I
get fired?”

Rane grinned. “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke, huh Perry.”

“How’re you going to approach it?” Perry asked.

Rane jerked his head toward his truck outside. “Blend in with the reenactors. I have a Civil War uniform and all the trimmings.” He left the kitchen briefly, came back with the haversack, and opened it, showing Perry the Nikon and lenses. “I should be able to carry this stuff without drawing attention.”

Perry smiled expectantly, raised his eyebrows.

Rane reassured him: “And my laptop to transmit to you if I get anything.”

Perry rose and carried his coffee cup to the sink. “So when are you leaving?”

“Couple hours.”

“Why not fly, rent a car?”

“With a big-ass rifle? A cartridge box full of black powder?”

“Phew, you really went for this one,” Perry said.

Rane ignored the remark as he walked Perry to the door. “I’ll be in touch,” he said as he shook Perry’s hand and ushered him out.

An hour later, Rane carried one of his twenty-four-packs of bottled water to the Jeep and took an inventory. Paul’s uniform and accessories were packed into the Jeep along with a thermos of coffee for the road. The Springfield was leaning in the back of the bedroom closet. The canvas rifle case lay flat on the living room couch to accommodate the Sharps marinating in the flower bed. The cap box on Paul’s belt was full of percussion caps. Twenty rounds of live ammo were tucked in the bottom of his travel bag.

And he’d clipped Paul’s fate card to the sun visor over the steering wheel, like the sword of Damocles.

He checked his voice mail and replayed a message from Harry Cantrell confirming that Harry had faxed a letter about Rane’s credentials to the Southern cop, as instructed. Then he cleaned Hajji’s cat box and filled it with a huge dump of litter. He was pouring dry cat food and water into oversized stainless bowls when he admitted to himself why he was delaying his departure.

He stood at his light table and studied the brown leather journal he’d discovered in Paul’s haversack. Jenny and Molly should have the journal.

And there was something else Jenny should have. He grimaced. Have to think about
that
. But the journal definitely had to be returned. Could he drop it off? He had to go right past Stillwater on his way to Wisconsin. But he didn’t really want to go back into that house…

C’mon, Rane. It’s a duty call. Do it.

He had entered her cell number in his directory, so he thumbed down the key. After one last moment’s hesitation he selected “Jenny.”

One ring, two…

“Yes?” she answered in a tired voice.

“It’s me, John,” he said.

“I know who it is.”

Rane waited out one of their awkward silences then asked, “Where are you?”

“Home. But I could use a break,” she said frankly.

Just say it. “Look, Jenny, there’s a journal I found in Paul’s things. You and Molly should have it. Could I meet you…?”

After several seconds, she asked, “Are you at the house?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” she said, ending the call.