South of Shiloh (33 page)

“Guess you didn’t hear,” Beeman said.

“Of course
I heard
.” She rolled her eyes and her freckles reddened. “Three of my friends already called this morning. Are you surprised? Family she married into. That beauty shop is just for show…”

She drew back her hand and flung the pop can at the base of the monument. It spiraled off, leaving a frothy brown stain on the clean granite. Then she stalked back toward the house. Halfway to the steps she turned and yelled over the bang of the hammer:

“You looking for Mitchell Lee, I’d start with his goddamn whore!”

They set their unfinished Cokes down at the base of the monument, walked back to the cruiser, and remained silent until the house was out of sight. They slowed, meeting four pickups with lowboys in tow. “They’re coming to pick up the cannons for Shiloh,” Beeman said, waving to the drivers going past. Then he pulled back on the road.

When they cleared the property, Rane turned to Beeman and said, “You defer to her.”

Beeman exhaled. “It’s a game we play. You hear her: ‘I
ain’t
seen him.’ ‘Y’all.’ She don’t talk like that to her friends. That’s what they do, talk down with the help.”

“You check out the gun case?”

“Yep; like she said. The Enfield’s missing.”

“Well, she isn’t covering for him,” Rane said.

“Nope.”

“And she don’t care much for Marcy Leets.”

“Yeah, pretty vocal about it too. Same as Marcy was about her. What’s that line in Shakespeare? About women protesting too much…”

Beeman didn’t pursue the thought. When they pulled onto the highway, Rane noticed a dusty brown Mustang parked on the shoulder near the Kirby road. The windows were an opaque grime, impossible to see the driver. As they turned south on 45, the Mustang fell in several cars behind them.

“Now what?” Rane asked.

“Track down Billie Watts.”

“Like Marcy Leets said.”

“Yep.”

“What’s Marcy Leets’s part in this?” Rane wondered.

Beeman grinned. “Now that’s a serious spiritual question. Marcy’s enough to turn a Southern Baptist into a fuckin’ Buddhist…”

“Say again?”

“Deeper I get into this mess I’m starting to think Marcy Leets is the reincarnation of Louise Hathcock.”

47

THE MORNING MIST BURNED OFF, THE AIR SWEATED
gray, and the roadside gravel gleamed moist adobe-red. They pulled off the highway at Shiloh Road on the outskirts of Corinth and Beeman got out to make some calls. Rane watched the funky Mustang pass them, slow down, and pull off farther down the road in the shade of some trees.

Rane got out and waited while Beeman talked.

“Now Morg, think on it, man. You don’t cooperate certain things are gonna come out. Now you check and see if he’s there ’cause he’s been out of the office all week. Call me back at this number.”

Beeman ended the call, stretched, and hitched up his gun belt.

“See that Mustang up ahead,” Rane asked.

“Yep.”

“He’s been following us,” Rane said.

“No shit. Yesterday it was a blue Xterra. When I said the sheriff’s keeping an arm’s length from me and Mitchell Lee I didn’t mean he’s gonna hang us out here all alone. Jimmy’s had a deputy shadowing me since they shot out the picture window. Was a car parked outside of the house last night.”

“So you weren’t kidding about being bait.”

Beeman crinkled his eyes. “
We’re
bait. You still in?”

Rane shrugged. “Who’re you talking to?”

“First I called his daddy’s law office. Billie Watts didn’t come in today or any day all week. So I figured he’s repaired to his hideaway condo on the Tennessee River. The guy I just talked to is a security guard works out there. I snatched him up a while ago with a trunk full of bonded whiskey he sells with his brother out of a garage in Hatchie. Alcorn’s a dry county outside six-percent beer and wine in the Corinth city limits. I let him go to have a handle on him for just such an occasion as this.”

The sky to the north made a dragging sound, like a match before it strikes. They both looked up at the fitful clouds. “Gonna rain all weekend, just watch,” Beeman predicted.

Back in the car, Beeman whipped a U-turn. The Mustang swung around in a similar maneuver and fell in behind. They were cruising the edge of town when Beeman’s cell phone rang.

“Okay, good,” Beeman said. “Now you’re gonna meet us at the side gate. Then you’re gonna walk us up to the room and help us get in.

“Never mind who. Less you know the better. And don’t let his accent throw you. Let me remind you the federal district we’re in don’t stop at the state line. We cool? Okay. Give me an hour.”

Beeman turned off the phone. “John, might help if you act kind of aloof and federal-almighty,” then he smiled and added, “shouldn’t be too hard, with that permanent case of Minnesota hemorrhoids you got.”

When he pulled up to 72, Beeman leaned over, opened the glove compartment, dug around, and withdrew a hockey puck–size canister, oxblood-colored, with a gold top. As he removed the lid, he said, “Copenhagen Long Cut is a filthy habit. What my daddy did when I was a kid, he had me emptying the damn spit cans he kept all over the house. I wouldn’t even have it in the car if Margie was in town.” He offered the tin. “You want a taste?”

Rane violently shook his head.

Beeman carefully inserted a pinch of chew in his lower lip and then searched under the seat for an empty pop can, which he placed between his thighs. Then he adjusted the wad in his lower lip, floored the gas, and left rubber as he fishtailed through traffic onto Highway 72.

“When my daddy was young he ran with Buford,” Beeman said, eyes lidded, leaning forward, raising the pop can, and spitting. “Old Clarence would say: ‘There comes a point when you just gotta kick in a few doors…’”

EAST ON STATE 72, GOING BY TRAFFIC LIKE IT WAS STANDING STILL,
they streaked past the Iuka turnoff. As they turned north on an exit, Beeman thumbed his cell.

“Dell? Yeah, Bee. Tell you what. Why don’t you hang back for a while. Don’t think you want this detour on your trip ticket.”

They lost the Mustang and worked the bigger roads down to smaller roads until they were on a wooded two-lane that meandered down toward the river. About halfway down, Beeman braked suddenly and swerved to miss a bobbling animal that looked like an ambling seashell crossing the center line.

“What the hell was that?” Rane asked, craning his neck for a second look.

“Why’d the chicken cross the road?” Beeman chuckled.

“What?”

“To teach the armadillo how to. They been moving into the area from the west.”

“I guess,” Rane said. “Up north we have possums getting squashed on the road to Duluth.”

“Must be global warming, huh.”

Laughing, they came around a bend, the trees cleared, and two white towers rose next to a wide marina. Rane counted seven stories of balconies and cupolas atop little green roofs.

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree,” Beeman recited. Then he sighed as they turned into the rear service entrance, “I been itching to get inside this place for years. They got their own private security force, don’t like cops coming around. This here’s where the gentry hangs, to recreate in ways they couldn’t get away with in places like Corinth. This is gonna be
fun
.”

“Just what exactly are you going to do that’s fun?” Rane asked.

“Well, technically this comes under cultivating a snitch. Except he’s a smart-ass, rich-kid lawyer from a family that goes way back. So we gotta be creative.” Beeman gazed ruefully down the river. “So we get him out of his element and fuck with his buttons. Just follow my lead.”

Beeman drove toward a tall man running to flab, who waited next to a gate in the chain-link fence. As they pulled up, he worked the sliding gate open. He wore a tractor hat, jeans, a Darryl Worley T-shirt, and a sheet of nervous sweat on his face.

“I don’t know, Bee,” the guy said, fingering a badge clipped to his belt as Beeman eased through the gate. “I ain’t working today. Came in special for this. Don’t have my uniform. I could get in a lot of trouble.”

“Correction, Morg,” Beeman said. “You’re already in a lot of trouble and this little assist is gonna make a piece of it go away. Now is he still here?”

Morg bobbed his head. “And he’s starting early. He buzzed in a female visitor under an hour ago.” Morg swallowed. “Boys at the desk say she was on the young side.”

“How young?” Beeman asked.

“Like call-the-truant-officer young,” Morg winced. Then he pointed to the building. “Park under that overhang next to the door, in the shadows,” he said, eyeing Rane, who glowered back with an expression he hoped looked like infallible contempt.

They parked the car and got out fast as Morg shook out a ring full of keys, opened the door, and they stepped into the building’s lower level. “Service elevator’s this way,” Morg said. “He’s on six.”

Beeman said, “Now Morg, once we collect him, we need you to scout ahead. Be nice to get him out with nobody seein’.”

Morg bobbled his head, not unlike the armadillo. “Long as we go out the way we come in.”

Beeman turned to Rane. “I got no problem with that. How about you Agent Rane?”

Rane grunted in the affirmative. They walked down a corridor, stopped at an elevator, and Morg pushed the button. As they waited for the lift, Morg ground his teeth. “So how do I get him to open the door?”

“Tell him something’s wrong with the air-conditioning or heat or the sprinkler system. You gotta check all the rooms,” Beeman suggested.

The elevator arrived, the door slid open, and they got on. Beeman pushed 6. Morg’s slack face worked and he muttered under his breath, “air-conditioning, sprinklers and heaters…”

Rane thought of Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
leading the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow along the Yellow Brick Road. He stifled a smile.
Lions and tigers and bears…

The elevator stopped, they got out, and Beeman asked Morg, “Does one of those keys fix this elevator to run straight to the basement and skip all the floors?”

“Uh-huh.” Morg stepped in, selected a key, and monkeyed around with the control panel. He stepped back out. “All set. It’ll stay here open and shoot straight down when we get back.”

“Good. Soon’s we get in you scoot back here and make sure for us.” Morg nodded and they padded on thick carpet, following him to an anonymous door in a beige corridor full of doors.

Beeman nodded to Morg, stepped back, tensed, bent his knees slightly, and unsnapped the strap on his holster. Morg swallowed audibly at the sound of the strap breaking free. Beeman did not draw the SIG.

Morg knocked on the door, three hard raps. Then he raised his badge to the peephole.

“What?” A muted annoyed question beyond the door.

Beeman prodded Morg in the kidney with a rigid finger. “Security,” Morg yelped. “We gotta check all the air-conditioners on six.”

The voice was closer now to the door. “The what?”

“Air-conditioners, wiring’s acting up. Fire danger. Gotta check all the rooms…”

“Aw shit, okay…”

The deadbolt clicked, then the lock over the keyhole. As the door cracked a fraction, Beeman shoved Morg down the hall, cocked his knee back to his chest, uncoiled, and smashed the sole of his boot just above the doorknob.

Flying open, the door connected with flesh and bone. Rane heard garbled profanity and a cry of pain as Beeman, one hand on the butt of his pistol, lunged into the apartment. Rane rushed right behind him.

Low black-leather couches. A man in a paisley silk robe sprawled against the back of the nearest couch. His chest and splayed legs were deeply tanned. His naked buttocks and groin were pale, hairy dough. As Beeman stood over the prone man, Rane moved through the apartment; kitchenette off the living room, bathroom down a short hall leading to a closed door. The bedroom. He stopped at an oval glass table between the leather couches, saw sprinkles of white powder trickled out from the edge of a glossy magazine, the cover read
VIP
something, showed smiling people raising wine glasses.

He lifted the magazine and saw three lines of disturbed white powder next to a rolled hundred-dollar bill. A bank of windows with a sliding door opened on a balcony and the river six stories below. An ebony set of samurai swords perched on a display wall rack. The plants were fabric.

And then a girl with straight brown hair opened the bedroom door and stood in the doorway. She wore a matching paisley robe open down the front. Rane sympathized with her, straining so hard to be invisible and not having a clue how to do it.

Rane and Beeman stared at the girl and Rane intuited Beeman’s thoughts: was she sixteen going on forty or a deer in the headlights?

Beeman stepped over dazed Billie Watts and moved closer to the girl. “Don’t move, Billie,” he said firmly, then he faced the girl. “You skippin’ school, honey?”

“Oh shit,” the girl said, staring at the badge and gun on Beeman’s belt. Her chin began to tremble and she shook her head violently. “Teachers’ meeting.”

Encouraged, Beeman said in a calm, reasonable voice, “I’d like to see some ID, young lady.”

“Hey, wait a fuckin’ minute,” Billie Watts protested, lurching up on his elbows. “Renee, you don’t say a word.”

“Do up your robe, Renee,” Beeman said calmly. “Better yet, go on and get dressed.”

As she darted back into the bedroom, Beeman turned on Billie Watts.

“Show me a warrant,” Billie snarled, sitting up and working with his skewed robe.

“A warrant? Way the roads corkscrew in here, I ain’t even sure which state this fuckin’ place is in,” Beeman said as he leaned over and unloaded his cud of tobacco into the fake moss at the bottom of a planter.

The girl came hopping through the doorway in unzipped jeans and a blouse, pulling on a shoe, stuffing her socks and underpants into her purse. “I never done this before, sir, honest,” she pleaded to Beeman.

“I believe you, I do. Just calm down and sit there on the couch.” The girl sat, primly drawing her knees together. “Now how’d you get here?” Beeman asked.

“Drove.”

“Sure you can drive? You’re a bit shook up. How long you been driving?”

“Six months, a little more. I never had a ticket.”

“Aw shit,” Billie Watts muttered.

Beeman ignored him. “Uh-huh. Better show me the keys, I want to make sure you got a way home.”

Her face working, she dug in her purse and held up a jangle of keys. Beeman palmed the key ring quickly and studied a round plastic coin pouch, the kind with a slit in the middle, from a car dealership.

“Buick? That’s a good car,” he said amiably.

Renee nodded, ashen-faced. “Buick LaCrosse, 3.6 liter V6. Daddy’s partial to Buicks…”

“And he buys them at this dealership down 72 in Muscle Shoals, huh?” Beeman asked, turning to Billie. Then he handed the keys back to Renee. “Now I’m letting you go with a warning, you understand?”

She bobbed her head vigorously.

“Okay, now. Go on, git. And you drive carefully, back to Alabama, hear?”

“Yes sir,” Renee blurted, then she gathered her purse, launched off the couch, and hurried from the room.

When they were alone, Billie demanded, “What the hell’s going on here, Beeman? Am I under arrest?”

“Not even close, Billie. Far as I’m concerned this never happened. I just want to have a little chat with no minors present is all,” Beeman said judiciously.

“So talk,” Billie said suspiciously.

“I don’t want to talk here. Get up,” Beeman said.

“Who’s he?” Billie said, looking at Rane.

“I don’t want to talk here, either,” Rane said in a flat Upper Midwestern twang that attracted Billie Watts’s attention.

“I need to get dressed,” Billie said, getting awkwardly to his feet.

“I don’t want you to get dressed,” Beeman said, clamping a hand on Billie’s arm. Rane moved in and gripped his other arm. Keying on Beeman’s lead, Rane helped propel Billie, barefoot and clothed only in the flimsy silk robe, through the door into the hall.