Reckoning and Ruin (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

We reached the edge of the fishpond as Jefferson climbed down from his pick-up. He was promptly mobbed by the girls. His hair wasn't the platinum blond of his father's—it was the yellow-brown of wheat—but from a distance, he looked like a darker version of the Boone I remembered from my teenage years. Not tall, but lean, with a high forehead and angled Nordic features. Those features were currently hidden under a camouflage hunting cap, the rest of him head-to-toe camo too, even the bibbed hip waders covered in mud.

“It's a little 'un, six feet tops,” he said to Cheyanne. “He did put up a nice fight, though.”

He steered the bouncing girls toward the back of the truck and pulled down the tailgate. The gator was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and staring at its captors with cold reptilian hatred. Little or not, I wouldn't have wanted to give him a shot at me. Cheyanne helped Jefferson drag the thing out and haul it to the edge of the fishpond, next to the wooden pier. Shallow and muddy, the pond stretched like a boomerang around a hump of soggy land.

I squinted across the stretch of water, glimpsing chain link running around the entire perimeter. “New fence?”

“Yep.”

And then I heard the rolling splash of a tail hitting the water. Then another. I shielded my eyes with one hand and stepped up to the edge of the pier. A dozen alligators sunned in the waning light. I'd always heard rumors, that to piss Boone off was a one-way trip to the gator pit with marsh crabs snacking on the leftovers. I'd passed it along myself, laughing in my head because I knew it wasn't true.

Wasn't laughing any more.

Jefferson turned his attention to the beast at the edge of the water, its jaws roped shut. Cheyanne ordered the girls to stay back, and they obeyed wordlessly. She went to help Jefferson, grabbing one end of the critter, her biceps bunching. Together they undid the ropes and heaved the reptile into the water, where it disappeared with a snap and a whip of its tail.

“Lord have mercy,” I said. “Y'all turned the fishpond into a gator pit.”

Jefferson regarded me for the first time. “Gators are like pigs and goats. They eat anything and turn it into meat pretty fast.” He looked at Cheyanne. “Go on and take the girls back to the house. I'll be up in a little bit.”

She did as he asked, throwing one final warning glare my way as she gathered her daughters. I slapped at the sand gnats chewing a hole in my neck. Spring brought them out by the billions, tiny specks of teeth as voracious as wolverines.

Jefferson saw my smacking and handed me a dark glass bottle. Lemon eucalyptus oil. I daubed some of it on my neck, rubbed it into my hairline. My eyes watered at the pungent citrus and menthol mixture, but short of DEET or cigarette smoke, it was the only thing that would keep the buggers at bay.

“Cheyanne said Boone was in the hospital.”

“Yeah.”

I handed the oil back to him. “How bad is it?”

“Bad. He'll come home, though, thank the Lord.”

“You see him today?”

“No, he don't talk to nobody when he's in the hospital, not even me. He filed for confidential patient status on account of the people who might still be bearing a grudge for some of his previous activities. The only time I'll hear from him is when they got the discharge papers ready, and he needs a ride back here.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Daddy's always been a proud man. IPF is hard. It makes for weakness. He don't want anybody to see him like that.”

“I'm gonna try anyway.”

“Of course you are.” He shoved his hat backward, resettled it lower on his forehead. “If you manage to pull it off, tell the old man I said hey.”

He pulled out a pack of Red Man, his daddy's chew, and shoved a wad of it in his cheek. Ten years older than me, now he looked decades. Despite his anti-government proclivities, he was cooperating with the investigation. Had to, I knew. They'd dropped some charges in return, softened others, but if he reneged, he'd be in jail with Jasper.

“You coulda called,” he said. “We got phones, you know. E-mail and texts, all that new-fangledy stuff.”

He delivered the line with deadpan sarcasm. He was wary, distrustful, and didn't like me one bit. But he was smart, in some ways, and knew we were in this together, like it or not. Which is why I knew he'd be willing to help me, up to a point anyway.

“I need to talk to Boone. But I need to talk to you too.”

He spat. “So talk.”

“John Wilde's disappeared. Hope too.”

“So?”

“You know anything about it?”

He shook his head.

“You sure?”

His patience was unraveling. “Why would I have anything to do with that piece of shit?”

“He was threatening to set things straight, and now he's vanished. The last anybody heard from him was a message on my machine.”

Jefferson tucked the tobacco back in his pocket. “Man always was an idiot.”

“An idiot who still owes you twenty grand. You all forgiving and forgetting now?”

He shrugged. “Every business takes a loss from time to time. I wrote that off as one.”

“You can afford to do that?”

“We're getting by.”

“Now that you sold Boone's pistol collection. And all his great-granddaddy's Confederate memorabilia.”

He didn't deny it, or ask where I'd heard such a thing. He simply watched the sunset-dappled water, following the long shapes riding the surface.

I shook my head. “Thing is, why get rid of that first? Why not all those beater cars and boats under the house?”

He shrugged. “You think I ain't been trying? But the local junk market is over-saturated. As they say.”

“So you been keeping your nose clean, just driving around the island in your pick-up, rehabilitating gators.”

“Straight and narrow.”

He pulled out a sandwich bag full of squashed marshmallows and popped one on top of the water, where it bobbed for a second. A blunt scaly snout rose from the depths, opening and closing on the marshmallow with barely a sound. Across the pond, a half-dozen others slid into the water, headed our way. Gators with a sweet tooth. It made the reptiles seem tame, like scaled and slit-eyed dogs. But a gator was a gator. To see anything else would have been a dangerous mistake.

“You think Jasper's got something to do with any of this?” I said. “He managed to have himself an armed rebellion right under the KKK's nose, and he's still got people out there, I know he does. He could disappear somebody easy, even from jail.”

“Maybe so. He does have people. But they ain't my people.”

“Ah yes. Your people. Once Jasper started piling up bodies, all your people started hiding and lying and pointing fingers.” I let the words trip syllable by syllable off my tongue. “Including you.”

He turned hard eyes my way. “Not including me. If you'll remember, I was the one who came to make sure you were okay in the middle of the shitstorm he created.” He looked back over the water. “I ain't never tried to hurt you, Tee. You and me are on different sides, true enough. But you're family, and Daddy always says that comes first.”

Tee. It had been decades since I'd heard that nickname. A contraction of Tai, which was itself a nickname, dreamed up by a sweetly oddball aunt with a disreputable Vietnamese to English dictionary. And while Jefferson delivered the words calmly, I knew it was a cover. His brother's betrayal had rocked him to the core, and not only the attempted assassination part. Jefferson was a company man. To have his brother, his fellow Klansman, betray not just his family but the entire Aryan nation? That was an abomination beyond forgiveness.

I leaned my arms on the railing. “He's suing me, you know.”

Jefferson's head snapped back. “What for?”

“Assault. Suing Trey too.”

“How much?”

“Together? Nine million.”

Jefferson whistled long and low. “Damn.”

Behind him, I could see the back yard, the defunct pool. I could hear the laughter of his girls and it was almost like being a kid again, juicy with delight, ravenous and curious and burning with energy. A final lick of orange light glinted off the Thunderbird, heavy, weighted with memory…

I blinked. From this vantage point, I could see what was parked on the other side of the yard—a 2010 Harley-Davidson Night Rod Special, black on black from fender to fender, its leather and silver chrome piercingly familiar. I could feel the curve of the seat as I straddled it, the vibration of the V-twin engine against my thighs.

I pointed. “Jefferson Forrest Boone, if you haven't seen John Wilde around here, what's his Harley doing parked under your house?”

Chapter Twenty-four

Jefferson's eyes tightened. “Ain't really none of your business.”

I felt the caution catch. I'd never backed down from this man in my life, not even when we were kids, and yet I felt the sudden urge to run. I dropped my shoulders, shifted my left foot back six inches. Opened my hands and kept them loose and ready.

“It damn sure is my business,” I said. “Now do you want to explain this to me, or to the folks who are gonna come after me?”

“You would, wouldn't you? Call the law on me?”

“Consider it called the second I don't check in with Trey.”

Jefferson flinched. I was surprised to see something flash in his eyes that wasn't purely anger. Anger was in there, all right, but it was mingled with affront.

He nodded slowly, coming to terms with it. “Fine. Be like that. I ain't never laid a hand on you, Tee. But it's good to know you think I might. That's mighty fine information right there.”

“Stop making this personal. Why is John's—?”

“Because he gave it to me in return for wiping his debt clean. And then he walked out the front gate.”

“Walked?”

“Don't believe me? Come on.”

He turned and headed for the house, shoving the marshmallows into his pocket. I cursed and followed him back up the path and inside the house. He walked with purpose, shoving open the door without announcing himself, passing Cheyanne in the kitchen with the girls. They giggled and stirred a pot on the stove, their mouths already smeared with chocolate. They didn't see us, but Cheyanne did. Her predator eyes watched us all the way out of the great room.

Jefferson turned left, down the hall leading to the bedrooms. It was hushed in this part of the house, uncomfortably private. I followed, not saying a word. He went to what had been a closet when I was little, but which was now a state-of-the-art safe room, with a bulletproof door and a security console inside. During Jasper's attempted coup, it had been fully stocked with shotguns and pistols and rifles and stacks of ammo, doomsday quantities.

No longer. The room was now stripped to the basics—landline, radio, first aid kit. Crates of water and a stack of blankets.

Jefferson pulled up a chair and sat down at the computer station. He tapped the keys, and a four-plexed screen appeared showing real time footage of the backyard, the dock, the gator pit, and the front gate. He tapped again, and one square expanded to fill the video monitor. Then it went dark. And then it started rolling.

I immediately saw a figure I recognized. “That's John.”

Jefferson didn't look my way. “Yep. On the Harley. Now watch this.”

I watched as he fast-forwarded past John knocking on the door, disappearing inside, then coming back out. When he left, though, he walked right past the bike until he was out of frame, leaving Jefferson alone.

I turned to the actual Jefferson, standing there fuming with righteous indignation. “Why didn't you tell me this in the first place?”

“Because I don't need any more trouble in this house, and I knew you'd go straight to your cop friends and tell them all about it. I don't know what happened to John, but that was the first time I've seen him in over a year and it was the last time I've seen him since. He was trouble then, and he's trouble now, and I don't need it.”

“He's vanished.”

“Not because of me.”

I tapped my foot. In the kitchen I heard a shriek of joyous laughter. I could smell something baking, something sweet. It was almost dinnertime.

“When was this?”

“Friday morning. He accused me of following him and Hope, told me he didn't want trouble, they were trying to get off to a fresh start. I told him he wanted a fresh start, he needed to wipe his tally sheet clean with me. He said that was what he'd come to do.”

Then he'd walked down to the Whitemarsh Island Walmart and called Train.

“So he gave you the bike and you called it square. That's all he took out of here?”

“Yep.”

I pointed at the screen. “Then what's that he's sticking in the back of his jeans? A going-away present?”

Jefferson gave me an elaborate shrug. The Boone family might have gotten out of the drugs and tobacco and moonshine dealing, but they carried guns like stray dogs carried fleas.

“Hope found a pistol in the glove compartment, a JA-22 in mighty sad shape. Said she'd never seen it before.”

Jefferson didn't drop his eyes. “You don't say.”

“John never liked guns and didn't know crap about them, which is why I'm not surprised he'd shove a junk piece like that in his pants. He tell you why he wanted it?”

“Nope. But I guarantee you I wasn't the reason. He walked outta here clean slate. Nothing to fear from me.”

I started to argue, but Cheyanne came to the door, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She looked straight at Jefferson. “There's some sheriff's deputies want to talk to you.”

“Where?”

“Out front.”

Jefferson shot me a look before he rose to his feet. “This your doing?”

I raised my hands, palms out. “Don't look at me.”

He took Cheyanne by the elbow and led her into the hall. I heard muffled conversation, heated, with my name rising up like a bad smell. Eventually, Jefferson headed back into the great room, leaving me alone with Cheyanne.

She filled the doorway, glowering. “We ain't had no problems with the cops until you showed up. Now we got the law on our lawn.”

“Well, I didn't put 'em there.”

“Like hell you didn't. So you listen up and you listen good—I have worked too long and too hard keeping this family together to let you destroy it.” She shoved her sleeves up. “I've got two little girls. And the only thing they've got is me, their daddy, and this land. That's why we have cooperated every step of the way, so that we could keep this house for them, so they'll know what it is to have a home. And now you come, dragging trouble—”

“I'm not dragging a damn thing.”

“—like I don't have enough to deal with from…”

She bit back her words. Anger glowed high on her cheekbones, but something else too. Fear, a bright shining wash of it.

“Cheyanne? Who's causing problems besides the law? Jasper?”

“It's nothing I can't handle myself.”

She came into the room and planted herself in front of the video monitor. On the screen, the deputies were talking to Jefferson. They stood on the front porch, Jefferson stood inside the door. The conversation went on this way for several minutes, and if I hadn't known the context, it would have seemed friendly, man-to-man stuff. No warrants were produced, no handcuffs either. Eventually Jefferson shut the door and came back inside the safe room.

Cheyanne cut to the chase. “Well?”

“Apparently somebody beat up Jasper, and the law decided I might have had something to do with it.”

Cheyanne's jaw dropped. “You? You ain't even been up there.”

“Apparently some skinheads got into it with him. Now he's in a hospital bed, saying I sicced them on him.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “Like I'd have anything to do with those neo-Nazi sons-a-bitches.”

I stayed quiet about my conversation with Shane the PT, but I remembered him saying clearly that Jasper had started the altercation. Had he done it simply so that he could blame Jefferson for the attack? That sounded like something right out of his playbook. He wouldn't cop to that, of course…but his talkative physical therapist might be willing to drop some information if could catch him somewhere besides inside the detention center.

I stood up, shouldered my bag. Cheyanne and Jefferson switched hard looks on me.

“I think it's time I showed myself out,” I said.

***

Jefferson walked me back to my car, not from courtesy. He didn't speak. Some part of me felt the pull of the blood we shared, but another part despised him, and I couldn't figure out how both parts co-existed simultaneously. Across the water, I heard the bellow of a bull gator staking its territory, marshmallows forgotten. I rolled up my window and started backing out. That was the problem with gators—no matter how many marshmallows they ate, they were still gators.