South of Shiloh (24 page)

31

THEIR SIDE BLINKED FIRST.

After the seventh microwaved Hungry Man dinner of roast beef, peas, and mashed potatoes, LaSalle told Mitch to peel off his dirty shell jacket and cotton shirt. Then he handcuffed Mitch’s hands behind his back, blindfolded him, removed the leg shackle, and helped him out of his trousers, socks, and underwear. Barefoot and bare-assed, Mitch was walked from the cave, through the old shed, and smelled fresh air for the first time in days.

LaSalle had him stand knee-deep in the lake, scrubbed him top to bottom with a soapy brush, like a horse, threw a few buckets of water over him, toweled him off, and took him back inside. Then LaSalle helped him into clean undershorts and the same nasty wool pants. The shackle clicked back on his ankle. The handcuffs came off, then the blindfold. LaSalle tossed him a clean undershirt and socks. As Mitch pulled on the T-shirt, he saw a backpack on the dirt floor. Opening it, he found his thermos, two packs of Marlboros, a gallon of water, a plastic cup, a toothbrush, and a tube of Colgate.

Mitch sat down, opened the thermos, poured a cup of steaming coffee, and took a sip. Strong with brown sugar, the way he liked it. There was this magnet plunk-on dealy stuck to the refrigerator door at the Corinth house. This Turkish saying: black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love.

Ellie’s coffee.

Taking his time, Mitch opened a pack of Marlboros, lit one, and blew a stream of smoke at the harsh overhead light. Then his eyes settled on LaSalle.

“You’re lucky,” LaSalle said reluctantly, arms folded, leaning against a cave wall. “They didn’t find a bullet. They’re calling it an accident.”

Mitch sipped coffee and smiled. “See. Could have been anybody. Your basic Civil War reenactor foul-up.” He placed the thermos cup on the floor and said, “So—Ellie having second thoughts?”

“Could be you got a point. We’re in sorta uncharted waters here.” LaSalle gnawed his lower lip.

“Don’t have to be,” Mitch said, all reasonable. “I’ll overlook you attacking me in the woods, jumping to conclusions about people getting shot, and this kidnap business.”

“Kidnap? Hell,” LaSalle said, a little defensive, “you’re recuperating at your wife’s house under medically qualified supervision.”

When Mitch was a youth, Hiram Kirby had taught him one great secret of his success, which was to get people talking about themselves and listen carefully. So Mitch decided the diplomatic move was to change the subject. He heaved his shoulders, exhaled, and let his eyes travel the limestone walls, which were looking less grim; now an exotic setting maybe for a story down the line.

For a moment he relished the possibilities of dragging Ellie in here and bricking her ass up with a candle and a collection of Poe. But that wouldn’t meet the threshold of an accident.

His eyes settled back on LaSalle. “I always wondered, what was it like over there, in Iraq?” Mitch asked.

“Hot,” LaSalle grunted. “Sand and flies in everything. Got these camel spiders in the desert big as squirrels like to cozy up to you at night to get warm.”

Mitch tried to imagine a spider big as a squirrel.

“I mean personally, for you?” he asked.

LaSalle, wary, shook off the question and turned to leave. Then he stopped and swung around. “Why you ask?”

Mitch stared at the dirt floor. “Don’t know for sure. Maybe because I cheated my way out of going.”

LaSalle shrugged. “Robert Kirby said you just showed your true colors…”

“That’s bullshit, LaSalle. The way he run over me at the bank—how do you suppose it’d been in a combat zone him having all the more authority over me,” Mitch protested.

“He might have surprised you,” LaSalle said softly, “he surprised a lot of us when it came right down to it.”

Mitch looked away. “I didn’t mean about that, I mean what was it like for you before…?”

“Actually?”

“Sure.”

The big medic folded his arms across his chest. “The truth is I loved it. I picked up more about emergency medicine in three months than most doctors learn in their whole life.”

Mitch cocked his head. “Why’s that?”

LaSalle said, “Nobody’s looking over their shoulder worried about getting sued in a combat zone. You jump right in and take chances to save people.”

“Must be a bitch, huh?” Mitch asked tentatively. “Learning all that and not getting your job back?”

LaSalle fixed his serious brown eyes on a point in the middle distance between them, and Mitch imagined him meditating on a crowded foreign landscape of palm crowns and closed brown faces and red dust and minarets and the call to prayer suddenly exploding. After a moment, LaSalle said softly, “I was luckier than most.”

“I can only guess.” Mitch inspected the cigarette in his hand.

“Lot of guys I saw at Walter Reed would forget how to dress themselves, how to flush a toilet. Got so I was taking care of them full-time instead of therapy,” LaSalle said.

“Not so lucky as you, huh?”

“Yeah, they were moderate to severe. I just caught a mild concussion. Takes a while to heal up is all.” Then LaSalle grimaced like this wasn’t his favorite subject, walked down the passage, and disappeared.

Mitch settled back and poured another cup of coffee.

Okay. Looking better. He wished he could see an article in the paper about them not recovering the bullet. They’re coming around, figuring out they’d have some answering to do about why they kept him chained in a hole for days.

Mitch took a last drag and doused the cigarette in the dirt. Then he took a long time brushing his teeth.

Antsy, wanting to keep the forward momentum going, he got to studying the cement plug in the limestone wall, into which his leg chain was anchored. Could be two hundred years old, that cement. Hoping the old mortar had deteriorated, he searched the dirt floor patiently. Yes. Found him a bent rusty nail so old it could have come from John Brown’s gallows. Using the brown bubbled iron, he began gouging at the cement plug around the chain anchor.

The light flickered, a shadow moved over the stone walls, and LaSalle was back, grinning at him. “A for effort, Mitch, but give it up. That chain was designed to hold somebody my size, huh? Not some skinny pissant like you.” Then LaSalle extended his hand, palm open. “Gimme,” he said, shaking his head.

Mitch threw the nail forward. LaSalle snatched it up and said, “What a dumb shit, don’t know to quit when you’re ahead.”

32

RANE TOOK THE LOCAL ADVICE, CHECKED INTO
the Holiday Inn, and grabbed a handful of tourist brochures and a street map on his way through the lobby. Over a dinner salad at the restaurant next to the motel, he perused the brochures.

A highlighted block of type informed him that, not unlike his own St. Paul, the Corinth area had been a roost for hoodlums in the old days. In fact, this was Buford Pusser territory, of
Walking Tall
movie fame. According to the tourist handout, the Tennessee sheriff had battled “the state-line mob” in the sixties. The rest was mostly Civil War stuff about Shiloh and the Siege and Battle of Corinth. Rane concentrated mainly on the street maps.

Back in his room he checked out his camera and lenses, then plugged in his cell phone and laptop. Looking up, he caught his murky reflection in the blank TV screen and suddenly he was alone with the memory of Jenny Edin standing in his living room.

She was smart and would have figured out why he gave her the key. By now she’d have seen the pictures. A gesture to let her know he hadn’t totally forgotten he had a daughter.

Rane abruptly went outside to the parking lot, opened the Jeep, and pawed through the glove compartment for the pack of Spirits. All through the thousand-mile drive he’d resisted them. Even during the storm. Now thinking about Jenny had him reaching for the cancer sticks.

He paced the parking lot with the unlit cigarette in his lips and breathed night air that carried a sultry reek of auto exhaust punctuated by the squeal of tires racing on hot asphalt. A tingle on his forearm brought him back. He swatted the mosquito, flipped the cigarette away, and went back in the motel, rubbing a dot of blood off his skin. He took a fast shower, lay down on the bed, and removed the two books from his travel bag. First he thumbed through the gun manual he’d borrowed from Mike, then he settled down with
The Battle of Shiloh.

At nine a.m., rested, dressed in clean jeans and T-shirt, his camera bag packed, Rane ate a fast breakfast from the buffet in the lobby and called Anne Payton. She answered promptly and told him to meet her in half an hour at KC’s Espresso on the corner of Waldron and Fillmore in the historic district.

As he mapped a route to the coffee shop on a Corinth street map, he called the office number on Beeman’s card. The dispatcher at the sheriff’s office handed him off to Beeman’s voice mail. After the beep, he left a message identifying himself, confirming that he was in town, and left his cell phone number.

Mindful of Cantrell’s suggestion that a little military goes a long way in the South, Rane dug out a worn army soft cap with faded camouflage badges stitched across the crown, weighed it in his palm, and decided to wait on that. Then he removed the pierced quarter from his key ring and stuck it in his wallet.

To look the part, he slung a camera body with the 17–55 mm lens over his shoulder, then tucked the cap, his cell, a pen, and a spiral notebook in the black haversack along with Mike’s antique gun manual.

He walked to his Jeep in delicious morning cool. Soft air. A glaze of dew sparkled on his windshield.

Corinth’s old town was located north of the newer commercial strip along State 72. Rane turned left off the highway at the first light east of the motel, passed through a section of old brick factory buildings, warehouses, and railroad tracks and entered the historic downtown. He located the coffee shop and drove a circuit of the streets, taking mental snapshots; people nodded to him as he stopped at intersections; old-fashioned diagonal parking made for narrow passage. The clean storefronts set in old brick buildings projected a prosperous feel, along with newer cars and trucks. He noted a die-hard Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker on a battered pickup. Then he passed a crew of street sweepers, black men in bright orange vests and striped green prisoner trousers, pushing brooms. Behind the work crew, a gust of wind unfurled the flag flying on the courthouse pole behind a Civil War statue. Rane saw the blue, star-studded St. Andrew’s Cross in its red background flutter in the corner of the Mississippi state flag.

Now there was a “gotcha” snapshot.

He worked his way back to the coffee shop, parked, picked the fate card off his dashboard, and put it in the glove compartment. Then, camera and bag swinging, he went inside to tables, easy chairs, a mural-covered wall, a computer station, and the aromatic gurgle of an espresso machine. Ordering coffee, Rane sensed that his movements and his voice cut corners a bit too sharply in this languid space of easy smiles. Relax, he told himself. He took a seat facing the door and perused the morning soccer-mom crowd in shorts revealing tanned tennis legs.

Anne was ten minutes late.

Short, pretty once and now energetically plump, she was in her mid-fifties, with her blond hair styled in a pageboy. She came through the door, wearing slacks, blouse, and sandals, and walked straight to his table.

“Hello John,” she said with an amused smile.

Rane smiled back. “That easy to spot, huh?”

She nodded. “Could be how you vibrate in this pale jagged kinda way.”

They shook hands and she motioned for him to join her at the counter. “First off, not real sure if I can be of assistance.” She batted her eyes. “I’m just a poor little housewife buzzing around the country club, church charities, and the garden club picking up gossip.”

“I appreciate you taking the time to talk,” Rane said.

Her smile remained the same but her blue eyes tightened. “Of course, Chris wouldn’t point you at a dummy, now would he?”

At the counter, she suggested, “Why don’t you refresh your coffee, let me get my latte and we’ll go outside. Less ears.”

After they had their coffee, she led him out the back door. “You’re getting here a little after the fact. All the big stations in the state came last weekend. We even had CNN,” she said.

Rane nodded. “This is more of a background piece; the area, reenactors. I’ll tie it up at the Shiloh event.”

“Uh-huh,” she responded, clearly unconvinced.

They walked down the block, crossed a street, and entered a compact landscaped park with a shaded gazebo. Tourist stations with maps and factoids about the Battle of Corinth lined a wrought-iron fence overlooking railroad tracks. Rane glanced at a painting on one of the displays, in which blue and gray soldiers fought over the railroad depot.

“Watch your step, honey,” Anne said. “We’re drippin’ in history.” They sat down on a shaded bench. “Okay,” she said, “so we understand each other: I talked to Chris last night. He used to be your boss?”

Rane nodded. “Before he went to Atlanta.”

“He said I should give you everything you need to get started…” She pursed her lips. “Actually what he said was, point you toward a minefield and watch to see if something useful blows up.”

Rane shrugged. “Chris always had a subtle touch.”

Anne sipped her coffee. “He also said you have a habit of working alone, ditching reporters and pushing the edge.” She raised an eyebrow. “I’d be careful of the pushing-the-edge part down here, in this.”

“In this,” Rane repeated.

“Uh-huh. The Minnesota boy’s death has been ruled an accident. No weapon, no bullet, no suspect. Case closed.”

Rane smiled as his eyes took in the quaint clean streets, the state flags hanging on the storefronts, and the amiable pedestrians. “Rumor has it you got a sniper who gets off shooting people at Civil War reenactments,” he said.

Anne smiled back and said slowly, “My my. So that’s why you’re here.”

Rane shrugged. “Worth checking out.”

“Well,” Anne said, “if they could print gossip in this town you’d have a newspaper thick as the Memphis phonebook. You are not going to get anyone to say ‘sniper’ on the record. Good Lord, John, this is a tourist trap for buses full of Yankees.”

“Off the record, then?”

“Well,” she sniffed. “I
suppose
I could give you what the gals in my lunch bunch think.”

Rane leaned closer. “Anything would help. Later today I’m meeting up with a cop named Kenny Beeman. He was standing right next to Paul Edin when Edin was shot. What’s he like?”

“What he’s like is—off the record—I’d say right now nobody is real keen on standing next to Kenny Beeman.” She cocked her head and studied him thoughtfully.

“And…?”

The busy-bee coyness vanished from her face. “And I mean, in all due respect to that unfortunate Edin boy, this ain’t about Minnesota, honey; this is about Mississippi. And you’re a long way from home.”

“Okaay,” Rane said slowly, “what I heard is, some of the locals think somebody took a shot at Beeman during the reenactment and hit Edin by mistake.”

Anne lowered her eyes and studied the spots on the back of her hand. “I didn’t say that. You did.” Then she raised her eyes and said, “But what you’ve just described does meet the criterion of an accident according to a certain logic.”

“Who’s got it in for Beeman?” Rane asked.

Anne sipped her coffee. “Well,” she said, “a number of people in town, who watch such things, think Beeman is running for sheriff. He was chief deputy but didn’t like the desk work, liked investigations. Given the meager county budget, anyone wanting to be sheriff has to figure out a way to keep costs down. So he’s zeroed in on one family that uses a disproportionate share of our police calls, court time, and limited jail space. His solution is to run them out of the county, back up into Tennessee. Some of them insist on staying and stealing cars and selling drugs and shooting at people. So in the last year he’s sent two of these boys down to the state prison. Like, let the folks in Jackson pay for their room and board. In fact, he shot one of them in the knee after a car chase.” She paused. “Bee is big on car chases. Well this boy he shot was a state champion hurdler at Selmer High and his remaining kin, the ones Bee hasn’t sent to the penitentiary yet, are fairly pissed off and word is Dwayne Leets, who’s big in the Memphis drug trade, took out a contract.”

“Leets,” Rane said.

“Uh-huh.” Anne paused. “There’s a couple dozen Leetses spread around but it’s the bunch out of Selmer in particular that’s got it in for Bee. There was four brothers to start. There’s Dwayne and Darl and Dumb and Dumber. Dumber is Danny, who tried to drive a big cat off a construction site and then ran over a city police car before Bee climbed up and brained him with a flashlight. Then there’s Dumb, that’s Donny, who shot a customer at a gas station checkout over in Iuka. Shot him dead. He’s the one Bee run off the road and blew out his knee.

“That leaves Dwayne and Darl, who have airtight alibis for last Saturday. So the gossip favors Mitchell Lee Nickels as the person of interest. He’s a cousin to the main Leets nest. Mitch turned out almost normal except for a case of the social bends and an occasional drinking problem. He married into a prominent Corinth family and now he has mysteriously vanished. They found his travel bag at a motel in West Memphis, along with a sizable check he had just collected for his local charity project. No sign of him since.”

“So why him?”

“Well,” Anne said, “Mitchell Lee and Beeman are not the best of acquaintances owing to the widely held but unproven theory that Beeman’s father killed Mitchell’s father.” She paused to sip her coffee. Then she trailed one hand idly in the air. “And Mitchell Lee likes to shoot old Civil War rifles in competition. In fact he got drunk and shot at Bee with one of them last year. But most folks say that was just showing off.”

“Is this more gossip?” Rane said.

“Nope. There’s a police record. Mitchell Lee went on a rampage, beat up the girlfriend he had on the side, then took this rifle and a bottle of Jack Daniels to the National Cemetery at dawn and was having target practice with those star-shaped GAR grave ornaments on the Yankee graves. Bee came to collect him and Mitchell Lee shot the side-view mirror off Bee’s cruiser.” Anne held up her hand, thumb and finger about four inches apart. “Missed Bee about yea much and they say he was a hundred fifty yards away. Bee was sitting in the car at the time.”

Rane raised his eyebrows and whistled softly. “I guess.”

Anne nodded. “There’s also the fact Beeman sent his wife and two boys out of town to stay with relatives last Sunday morning after somebody shot out his picture window.”

With that Anne stood up, walked to a nearby trash container, and deposited her cardboard cup. “I should think that’s enough minefields to keep you occupied before lunch.”

Rane got to his feet. “Well, thank you, ma’am, for being so…direct.”

“Do enjoy your visit to our little town, John. You have my cell?”

Rane nodded.

“If you trip across anything interesting that explodes in your face, you will call?” Anne said with a warm smile.