Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) (25 page)

“Now tell me about this pretty little Cedar and you.”

“What about Cedar and me?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Since you’ve been back home, exactly zero girls had come around until she did, and now I’ve seen you two together more than twice. That adds up to Cedar and you.”

“It’s only been a week, Mom, and I'm not sure it’s going to work out.”

“Are you blind? She’s crazy about you.”

Boone shook his head. “I thought so, too. Now, I don’t know.
I told her something important, and she didn’t say a word. Just left me hanging there.”

“What did I say about reading Lamar’s signals? Try reading hers.”

Boone shook his head again. “It’s not that easy. She mixes them up a lot.”

“If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth it, right?” she said. “Now get off your butt.
Time for class.”

"But I stink
like smoke," Boone said. “I need a bath.”

"
Sorry. I had to shut down the well pump to use the pond water," she said.

"No shower?"

"Maybe you could use the school's? They still have showers in the gym, right? It's your choice, Boone."

Some choice. He could either get naked in the locker room or stink like sweaty charcoal all day
.

Forty-five minutes later, Boone walked into the locker room in the college gym. He had used up every reserve he had, and even after wolfing down three coffees and a box of nutrition bars, Boone was so wrung out, he felt almost liquid. The whole time he was in the shower, he thought he might go down the drain with the water.

Every muscle i
n his body hurt, all of them. Fighting fires was a huge adrenaline rush, especially when it was your own property. How had the fire started? Lamar thought the source was a bad light socket in the loft, but Boone had to wonder about the timing. Maybe it was an electrical fire. Maybe not.

He came out of the shower sopping wet, head bent low and moaning, and groped around for the towel he had left hanging on a hook.

"Looking for this?" Ronnie, one of Eugene's goons, said, holding up the towel. It was dirty and wrinkled like he had rubbed it all over floor.

Just what Boone needed. Wet, naked, and ragged out with a ticked
off redneck holding his towel. At least his brother was nowhere to be seen.

"Whitey tighties?" Donnie said, appearing from behind the lockers holding up his underwear. "It figures a
sailor would be wearing man panties."

In answer,
Boone shook like a wet dog, flinging water out of his hair and all over the place. As the twins ducked the droplets, Boone walked off to the lockers and started getting dressed. Boone had just buttoned his jeans—carefully—when Donnie threw his drawers at him. Boone ducked and grabbed the shirt. That's when Ronnie tried to pop him with the dirty towel.

Boone grabbed the e
nd of the towel and jerked it free. His speed and strength surprised Ronnie, and for a second, they stared at each other, not moving.

"What do you morons want?" Boone said. He tossed the
towel into the locker and pulled on his shirt.

Donnie slammed him against the lockers. "Who you calling a moron?"

"Let go of me,” Boone said, his voice calm and unwavering. It was a warning, not a request.

"Or what? Get your
slant-eyed friend to use kung fu on us?"

"I said, let go of me,"
Boone's voice took on the hard edge of a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed. “Last time I'm going to say it before one of you ends up in the hospital.”

This seemed to confuse Donnie
, who let go. He looked back at Ronnie, who was busy dumping Boone's book bag on the floor. His textbooks, notes, and pencils fell on the tiled floor, including a copy of the newspaper article about Mrs. Vega being identified.

Ronnie snatched the newspaper
. "You want to know what we want?" he said, his face getting redder every second. "We want this shit to cease."

"What
shit?" Boone said.

"This dead Mexican
shit. Yesterday, somebody filed a complaint against Eugene. Now, he's suspended while Cap investigates. That complaint needs to disappear. You got it?" Ronnie walked over to the toilets near the showers. He tossed the paper into the bowl and flushed it. "If that complaint don't disappear, that's going to be your head going around the bowl and down the hole. Got that, socialist?"

"
Socialist?" he said, "Why do y'all keep calling me that?"

“
You're dumber than you look. Come on, Don."

They used the side door, which led to the emergency exit near the parking lot. Boone heard the alarm sound. After they left,
he picked up all his stuff and shoved it into his backpack. Dumbass rednecks. If they thought threatening would change anything, they were bigger morons than they looked.

He stood up at the sound of tennis shoes squeaking
.

"Turn around,"
Dewayne Loach said.

Boone turned slo
wly. "What's this about?"

"Your friend, the Japanese kid. He wasn't supposed to get hurt.
I made them stop after I recognized him."

"I'm calling the sheriff. You're going to jail."

Dewayne shook his head. "Your word against mine, Childress. Like the cops would believe you anyhow. You think they don't know what's been going on?"

"Spare me.
" Like he was going to believe that Sheriff Hoyt would look the other way if he knew about it. "What's the difference between Luigi and the woman who died in the fire?"

"The Japanese kid isn't here taking folks' jobs. That's all the Mexicans are good for, working cheap and sucking the working man dry."

"She was Guatemalan."

"Who?"

"The woman. She wasn't from Mexico. She was from Guatemala."

"What difference does that make?"

"The way I see it, if you're going to let somebody die for being Mexican, you should at least make sure they're from Mexico first. Or do they all look alike to Eugene and you?"

Dewayne
balled up a fist. He swung hard, and Boone ducked, but Dewayne wasn't aiming for him. His fist slammed into a locker. It left a dent. A trickle of blood ran between his fingers.

Boone was sure
Dewayne had broken something, but he decided to push his luck. "You say you're sorry. Prove it. Come with me to the sheriff's office, and tell him what they did to Luigi. Tell him about the guys terrorizing the Latinos."

Dewayne
shook his head. "You must want me in the graveyard, because that's where I'd be in Eugene found out."

"The sheriff can
—"

"
Eugene's the only kin I got left." Dewayne headed for the door. "My whole family was firefighters. My granddaddy and daddy both died trying in the line of duty. There ain't nothing like seeing the fire marshal's white car pull into your driveway, instead of your daddy's truck. You think you got it all figured out, Childress, but it ain't as easy to be a hero as you think."

After class, his cell rang, and Boone answered, expecting it to be Cedar. He was disappointed when his grandfather’s voice came through the phone.

“Meet me at the jail,” he said.

“Sorry, Abner, I have a test at noon.”

“You studied
for it?”

“Of course I did.”

“Then meet me at the jail. It won’t take but a few minutes, and you’re the only one he’ll talk to.”

“Who?”

“Stumpy Meeks, of course.”

Twenty minutes later,
Abner led Boone down the hallway to the visitors’ area of the county jail. There was a bank of what looked like teller windows, complete with dark green phones for talking to the prisoners. The prisoner in this case was Stumpy, whom Boone hadn’t seen in days.

As he and
Abner pulled up heavy metal chairs in front of the glass, however, Boone was stunned by the magnitude of the change. Stumpy had never been a model of good grooming. Now, he looked like a man who had gone feral and spent his time wallowing in the mud. His hair was thick and matted, his bead caked with black dirt, and there were red welts on his forehead and neck. The blindingly orange inmate jumpsuit he wore didn’t help, either. Nor did the fact that it fit him like an oversized tent.

“You’ve lost weight,” Boone said through the phone, trying to be polite.

Abner had other ideas. He yelled through a vent in the glass. “You look like death warmed over. Good god, man. Didn’t they bathe you?”

Stumpy blinked slowly. His brows knitted and then his mouth formed the wo
rds, “Do I know you?”

Boone held the receiver out so that
Abner could listen, too.

“He’s my grandfather, Abner Zickafoose. He’s here to help. Me, too.”

Abner leaned down to the vent again. “You got a lawyer yet? You didn’t talk to the cops, did you?”

“Sure, I did,” Stumpy said. “I told them to kiss my
ass and to get Mr. Childress here.”

“Why me?” Boone asked
.

“Cause you’re the only one that woul
d believe that. I didn’t burn down that house.”

“Of course, you didn’t.”
Abner said. “Anybody with any sense would know that. The thing is, there’s not a lick of sense to be had in this county. So you need an attorney.”

“Like I
got the money for a lawyer. Ain’t got two cents to my name.”

“The court will appoint one for you,” Boone said. “The first thing he should do is petition the court to lower your bail.”

“You actually believe that?” Stumpy laughed. “Shoot, they’re going to let me rot under the jail.”

It was hard to argue with a man wearing swamp mud for makeup. “At least give it a try.”

Abner took the phone from Boone. He spoke softly, so that the jailer couldn’t hear. “Why did you take the chemicals out of the school storeroom?”

Stumpy blanched. It was hard to tell from the mud, but Boone could see him jerk slightly, and the corners of his mouth turned down. “How’d you know about that?”

“You just told me,” Abner said. “Got an answer to my question?”

Stumpy shook his head. “They’ll kill me.”

“Who?”

“I ain’t as stupid as I look. Folks like this, you don’t mess around with.”

Abner interrupted. “That’s why you’ve been hiding out in the swamps? You’re afraid?”

“You’d be afraid, to
o, old man.” He lipped his chapped lips, then chewed on a piece of dead skin. “Between you, me, and the wall, I got myself into a bad spot. To get out of it, I had to do this thing, you know? I had to take a few things from the storeroom and then leave them in the janitor’s closet for pick up. But that’s all.”

“You didn’t have any idea what the chemicals were for?”
Boone asked.

“I didn’t ask questions. That’s a bad thing in this county.”

“Who picked up the chemicals?”

“You think I’m stupid?”

“Well, then, you asked you to steal them?”

“Y’know, now that I think about it,” Stumpy said, “maybe it’d be good idea if I was to stop talking. Y’know, till my lawyer shows up.”

Boone took the phone from Abner. “Listen to me, Stumpy. We can help, but you have to give us the information to prove you’re innocent.”

“That’s the problem.”
Stumpy hung up the phone and stood. He signaled the jailer. “I ain’t innocent at all.”

“That didn’t go as planned,” Boone told Abner as they walked down a long concrete corridor to the waiting area.

“I wish he’d given us more about the chemicals.” Abner agreed. “That’s the key to solving this thing.”

Boone
signed out at the jailer's desk and handed his grandfather the pen. “I understand why he’s afraid. I would be too, if they were accusing me of arson.”

And doubly afraid if
Eugene Loach had ordered him to steal the chemicals in the first place. It all made sense now. Loach tells him to steal the chemicals. Traces of the chemicals are found at both sites. One thing wasn’t adding up, though: Loach and his boys weren’t at the Tin City fire.

"
The arson charge isn’t scaring him. He knows he’s not guilty. There’s something more going on. That should come as no surprise to you, by the way.”

The jailer buzzed the door, and they walked into the waiting room. Boone noted that the place was empty.
“Don’t you think that Hoyt is going to be pissed about you continuing to investigate?"

“What Hoyt doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He can arrest me again if he wants, but the charges won’t stick, and he knows it. He’s just trying to scare me.”