The Broken Places (39 page)

Toward the north, there was a glint off glass, way too far for Lillie to run. Quinn yelled, too late, “Get down, Jamey. Get down.”

Dixon’s head exploded in front of him, misting Esau’s face with blood. Quinn had already hit the ground when Leonard fired his weapon where Quinn used to be. Quinn had pulled his gun from the appendix holster and shot Leonard twice in the head and turned toward Joe Ed. But Joe Ed had already dropped from another far-off rifle crack, this one farther south on the ridgeline. Lillie.

Esau dropped the .357 and picked up the grocery sacks, running for his truck with Caddy and Jason still cowering inside. He got about five meters before he fell to his knees as the northern rifle sounded, the big round hitting him square in the chest. The sack of cash falling with him, tumbling open, paper money catching on a hard gust of wind and spreading all across the valley like a ticker-tape parade.

Quinn was on the ground, crawling forward, weapon in his right hand, to that old brown GMC and his family. Two more rifle shots from Lillie’s position.

The unknown sniper on the hill kept firing at Quinn.

Quinn made it up under the old truck. If he yelled, he could talk to Caddy through the floorboard.

“Are the keys in the ignition?”

“Nope.”

“Is the steering column busted?”

“He took the keys.”

“Shit.”

Quinn said “shit” more to himself than Caddy, telling her to keep down and stay down. “Where’s Jamey?” she asked. “Was he shot? Is he OK?”

“Stay down,” Quinn said. “You stay on top of Jason and protect him no matter what you hear. You understand?”

Esau Davis lay facedown in the mud about fifteen meters away. From under the old truck, Quinn could hear Caddy’s low, mournful cries. He tried to shut them out, looking back at fifteen meters away—which may as well have been a hundred—at Esau’s dead body, red hair lifting up and blowing in the sharp wind.

More money caught in the wind and swirled and spread across the open field.

A silver truck spewed gravel by the Quonset huts and sped off down a fire road.

Quinn knew it wasn’t the sniper, figuring it for who was left of Leonard’s men. Lillie and the sniper still traded shots at each other.

Quinn took a breath and crawled from under the truck, running for Esau’s body.

He reached for the dead man’s legs and pulled him back as fast as he could. More bullets pinged around him, and one hit Esau in the gut as Quinn dropped the body and scrambled back under the truck. He reached out under the driver’s-side door and searched his pants pockets. A couple bullets hit the dead man and busted out glass from the truck.

Jason was crying now. Quinn could hear Caddy trying to calm him down.

“I got the keys,” Quinn said. “Is the truck locked?”

“It’s open.”

“I’m going to crawl in on the passenger side, and lay crossways on the seat,” Quinn said. “Which window was shot out?”

“The back.”

“Hold Jason tight,” Quinn said. “When the shooting starts again, I want you to throw open that door and I’ll get inside. You got that, sis?”

“He’s dead,” Caddy said. “Isn’t he?”

“Think of Jason and hold tight,” Quinn said. “You ready with that door?”

The shooting started up again and Caddy yelled “go,” and Quinn crawled on his back, kicking off for traction on Esau Davis’s body and off the weedy concrete, and scrambling out sideways, rolling free from the truck and jumping up into the cab. A rifle shot took out the rearview mirror as he slammed the door shut.

The cab was quiet, and he could hear Caddy and Jason breathing down in the broad space of the floorboard. Quinn lay on his back on the bench seat, which was covered in material like an old Indian blanket. He slipped the key in the ignition, winked at Jason, and said, “Ain’t this fun, buddy?”

Jason rubbed his nose and nodded.

“Stay down,” Quinn said. “And I’ll let you drive us home.”

He cranked the truck. The engine wouldn’t turn over.

He cranked it again, revving it, the alternator trying to bring to life a weak battery, Quinn turning it and turning it and knowing if he didn’t quit the son of a bitch would flood. The front window exploded, the man shooting through the cab now from the rear, glass falling down on them, just as the engine sparked and caught. Quinn slid as far down into the seat as possible and yanked the shifter into drive, heading straight down the broken and worn tarmac, Caddy and Jason bumping up and down, Quinn not being able to see shit but feeling his way, the truck rolling hard over something or somebody. Quinn didn’t give a damn as long as they moved forward. He felt for the spot where he’d parked his own truck, raising up just a bit over the wheel to catch a glimpse, turning hard to the right to avoid smashing into it, and kept on rolling. The shooting continued.

Quinn drove, raising his head up more as they hit the edge of the tarmac.

Caddy held Jason in the floorboard. She was crying harder now, knowing for certain nobody was left behind.

“Did you kill that red man?” Jason said, crawling up into the seat, keeping low like Caddy had told them. Quinn drove as fast as the old truck would move out and away to the dirt road and then stopped hard where the woods started.

“Why’d you stop?” Caddy said, getting up into the seat beside Quinn. The wind broke through the open space of the windowless cab. There was glass in Jason’s hair and blood on Caddy’s face. “Why are you stopping?”

Quinn opened the driver’s-side door and brushed away all the glass with the flat of his hand. Caddy rocked Jason and kissed the top of Jason’s head.

“I’m sorry,” Quinn said. “I’m truly sorry.”

“He loved us.”

Quinn wasn’t sure what to say.

“He was true and real.”

“I know.”

“Who?” Jason said, looking up at his mother. “Did Uncle Quinn kill that bad man?”

Lillie emerged from the woods with her rifle, out of breath, her face shining with sweat. Without a word, she tossed the rifle in the backseat and crawled in after it. Quinn got back behind the wheel and they hightailed it up and away from the old airfield. “Jesus, who was that?”

“That wasn’t an amateur,” Quinn said.

“Hell no, it wasn’t.”

“And now they’re gone?” Quinn said.

“Sniper quit working as soon as you knocked that truck in gear,” Lillie said. “I was worried for a second that this piece of shit wasn’t going to turn over.”

More glass broke free of the windshield frame as they jostled over the gravel road and then turned toward the main highway. Lillie reached her hand from the backseat and touched Caddy’s shoulder.

Caddy dropped her head into her hand and started to cry hard.

Wind and leaves rushed through the open car as they fishtailed onto the main highway. Quinn pulled Jason into his lap and pretended to let him steer the truck.

Lillie was on her handheld radio, calling in to Mary Alice for all available to meet them at the roadside. “Four dead,” Lillie said. “And we got a shooter loose in the hills. We need guns and some dogs.”

•   •   •

Johnny Stagg pulled
his maroon El Dorado off to the southbound shoulder of Highway 45 and took a leak. He walked back to his car, burned down a cigarette, and looked up ten minutes later to see a man dressed in black come out of the woods with a long black gear box that he carried by a handle.

The man got into Stagg’s car and shut the door. Stagg took one final puff off the cigarette and tossed it from his window as he drove off the shoulder and followed the 18-wheelers moving on down to Meridian and Mobile.

“It’s a mess.”

“Are they dead?” Stagg asked.

“They’re dead, but so are your boys, too.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Dixon brought the sheriff with him,” the trooper said. “And he had a sniper up in the hills. You should have studied the situation a little bit more. How’d Dixon connect with the fucking sheriff?”

“He was fucking the sheriff’s sister.”

“Been good to know.”

“Is the sheriff dead, too?”

“Nope.”

“Who’d he kill?”

“I don’t know who killed who,” the trooper said. “I took down Dixon and Davis just like we had agreed.”

“And they killed how many?”

“Two.”

“What about the three other boys?”

“When the shooting started, they hauled ass,” the trooper said. “If I were you, I’d be looking into hiring some more quality folks, Mr. Stagg.”

“Son of a bitch,” Stagg said. “Did they see you?”

The trooper didn’t answer him, Stagg knowing the question was dumb right as it came out of his mouth. But then he started thinking about Leonard and whoever had walked with him being dead, too, and caught in some kind of situation with Quinn and the sheriff’s office. That whole mess ain’t gonna look good to anyone, no matter how you try and explain it.

Stagg took the exit for the Rebel Truck Stop. That old neon mud-flap girl kicking her legs up and down, welcoming and servicing all those who would be coming down to save the soul of Jericho, Mississippi.

Stagg slowed and lit another cigarette. “I got me an idea,” he said.

But the trooper had already opened the door and was walking across the lot to his black patrol car. He slid the case in the trunk and walked around the driver’s side, peeling out of the parking lot with the sirens and the light bar flashing.

Headed to some kind of emergency.

•   •   •

“This doesn’t look good, Lil.”

It was midnight. They sat across from each other in Quinn’s office, a dull light coming from the lamp on her desk.

“I told those agents they could go fuck themselves.”

“Probably doesn’t forward our cause,” Quinn said.

“They think we fired on Leonard and Joe Ed’s dumb ass to protect Jamey Dixon?”

“They called into question who shot Dixon and Esau,” Quinn said. “They saw all those hundred-dollar bills scattered all over the place and think maybe we started shooting to keep the spoils of two convicts.”

“That’s pretty sorry.”

“It is.”

“What’d they say about Stagg helping Dixon with his pardon?”

Quinn scratched his cheek. “They wrote it down. You?”

“They asked me how a woman got to be so good with a gun.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I let them know I was captain of the Ole Miss rifle team and would challenge them on the range. Any time. Any day.”

“It ain’t easy being the good guys.”

“They’re going to talk to Mary Alice,” Lillie said. “She’ll try to cover for us, but there’s nothing on dispatch showing what we were doing.”

“I explained all this.”

“And they still don’t believe there was a sniper?”

Quinn shook his head. “All that money and those dead people are thickening their skulls. They got to wait for the state lab to run a test on your rifle and try to match it to the bullet that killed Jamey and Davis. Then they’ll still try to prove it was connected to us.”

“You know this puts us head to head with Stagg,” Lillie said. “This working-separate-in-the-same-world shit is done.”

Quinn nodded. “It’s a mess,” he said. “All of it.”

“I feel for Caddy,” Lillie said. “God.”

“Yep.”

“Where is she?”

“They took Jamey’s body to the Bundrens’.”

“God.”

“Where else could they go?”

“And did the Bundrens accept it?”

Quinn nodded. “Ophelia tried to console Caddy,” Quinn said. “Caddy is as busted up as I’ve ever seen her. She and Ophelia talked. About what, I don’t know.”

“I can’t believe the Bundrens allowed it.”

“What’s left to discuss?”

“All I know is that I don’t have time to be asked a bunch of stupid-ass questions about why I shot two of the most worthless, evil men in this county,” Lillie said. “Did you know Joe Ed Burney was so God-Almighty stupid he once got his dick stuck in an intake valve of a Jacuzzi? You think I’m mourning their loss?”

“And they tried to shoot me.”

Lillie grinned and turned toward the door. She shrugged. “You really blame ’em?”

Quinn stood up and reached for his hat.

“Where you going?”

“We got the lights back on some streets,” Quinn said. “More houses to be cleared.”

“When have you slept?”

“Hell,” Quinn said. “I can’t sleep.”

“Me, either,” Lillie said. “But today sure made me miss my daughter.”

“Go.”