The Broken Places (5 page)

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They saved a chair
for Jamey Dixon even though he didn’t show at Jean Colson’s Wednesday dinner. Quinn was relieved that he could actually sit down and enjoy the meal his mother cooked. Fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread. Had Dixon been there, he would have taken his meal to go and eaten back at the sheriff’s office. If Caddy wanted to involve a convicted murderer in her life, that was up to her. But Quinn didn’t have to break bread with him.

Tonight it was just Caddy and Jason, his mom, and Boom. Boom, Quinn’s oldest friend, had known him all his life, running rabbits and deer, fishing every creek, pond, and lake in Tibbehah County. Boom was a large black man and missing his right arm from an injury in Iraq when his convoy hit an IED outside Fallujah. But some time back when Quinn needed help rousting some methhead white supremacists from town, he learned Boom could still shoot just fine.

“Still can’t get used to that thing,” Boom said, removing his prosthetic arm and setting it on the floor. “Works decent for tools. I need it. But hell, I don’t need it to eat a piece of chicken.”

“Can I see it?” Jason said.

“Not now,” Caddy said.

“Kid can see it,” Boom said, picking it up off the floor and carrying it around to Jason. To a child almost five years old, a high-tech prosthetic hand was pretty cool.

“You be careful,” Jean said. “Hear me?”

“He can’t break it, Mrs. Colson,” Boom said, taking a seat back at the end of the table. “Thing is tough as hell. I can hold a wrench or a screwdriver on an engine block. For once, the VA actually came through. A near miracle they didn’t screw this up.”

Caddy seemed too busy to sit down, shuffling from the kitchen to the table to refill glasses and plates. This was the new Caddy, the attentive Caddy, who wanted to show off her responsibility. Before she sat down, she cleared the empty plate and silverware from where Dixon would have sat.

Quinn looked to Boom. Boom raised his eyebrows. Caddy sat with a great whoosh of breath. “You know Jamey said he’s almost got the water line finished,” Caddy said. “He’s really sorry he couldn’t make it.”

Quinn stayed silent, reached for another chicken breast, and started eating. Jason kept on playing with Boom’s arm and hand, separating out the fingers and then shaking the mechanical hand in his with a giggle.

“You know about this band Jamey has coming in from Nashville?” Caddy said. “We put out a bunch of posters.”

At the end of the table, Boom continued to eat. Jean poured some more wine, this being Jean’s third glass from the refrigerated box of chardonnay.

“You know, Momma, the band’s guitar player once sat in with Elvis,” Caddy said.

“What’s his name?” Jean said.

“I don’t recall,” Caddy said. “Jamey will know. I think he only played on Elvis’s final album. That one he was recording at Graceland because he hated to leave the house.”

“Sad times,” Jean said. “So sad. All those backstabbers mooching off him. He bought them Cadillacs and they broke his heart.”

Jean had grown a little heavier since Quinn had left for the Army, but she still had the red hair and the smoky voice and was popular among widowers and divorced men in Jericho. Quinn ran criminal checks on several when they started to call. The newest owned the Ford dealership in town and had hair plugs and halitosis.

Quinn kept eating and let the conversation move over him and on across the table. Boom would eye him every so often, knowing his buddy was itching to say something about Dixon but was somehow keeping his cool. Quinn nodded back at Boom, the sleeve of Boom’s flannel shirt pinned up to the elbow, as he switched from fork to tea glass with great speed.

“This band, they call themselves Manna, became interested in Jamey’s story,” Caddy said. “You know, about him being wrongly accused?”

Boom stopped chewing. Quinn took a deep breath and wiped his mouth. “Is that a fact?” he said. “I thought he was just pardoned.”

Jean kicked Quinn under the table. Quinn only shrugged. Jean couldn’t kick that hard.

“They didn’t even want gas money for their drive,” Caddy said. “It was important for all of them to play the first service at The River.”

“Hmm,” Quinn said.

“So you’ll be there?”

“Nope,” Quinn said.

“Why?” Caddy said.

“I have my own church,” Quinn said. “You remember Calvary Methodist where we grew up? Our pastor, Miss Rebecca?”

“I never left our church,” she said. “I’m still a member. I’m also a member of Jamey’s church, too, because I believe in what he’s trying to do. He’s one of the few folks who actually cares about the future of this screwed-up place and actually seeks out the misfits and the forgotten.”

“I can’t recall anyone being excluded at Calvary,” Quinn said.

Again, Jean kicked him under the table, this time a little harder, tipping the rim of her wineglass at him. Jason had put down Boom’s arm and was now eating a very large piece of cornbread. Caddy smiled and reached her arm around her son. Quinn had to admit Caddy looked happier and healthier than he had seen her in some time. Her pale skin had the healthy flush of working outdoors, and she was dressed in a simple flannel cowboy shirt and blue jeans. No jewelry. Very little makeup. She pretty much looked like his kid sister.

And hell, Jason was happy to have her home. No matter what Jean and Quinn did, there was no substitute for his mother.

“I want all y’all to get to know the real Jamey, not just the rumors and gossip,” Caddy said.

“Being sent to Parchman prison isn’t rumor and gossip,” Quinn said. “He was convicted by a jury and sentenced by a judge.”

“Would anyone like some pepper sauce?” Jean asked.

Boom raised his fork and nodded. Boom kept his head down as he ate, knowing where this was going, and probably enjoying the waiting before the fireworks. Jean disappeared into the kitchen. Jason asked to be excused to go watch cartoons; these days he was into something called
Beyblade
, a Japanese show.

“You weren’t here when it happened,” Caddy said as soon as Jason was out of earshot. “You never knew how our uncle railroaded him because of his friendship with Judge Blanton. I feel for their whole family. But Judge Blanton could never believe that his granddaughter was an absolute mess and addicted to crack.”

Quinn put down his chicken bones and pushed back the china plate. The plate came from Jean’s good china with the blue flowers that had belonged to their grandmother. “I read Dixon’s whole file, and to be honest, I’m worried about you and Jason being in his company.”

“Uncle Hamp wrote that mess to give the family an excuse,” she said. “He thought Jamey was a troublemaker and didn’t like him. He wanted him gone.”

Jean emerged from the kitchen holding a chocolate pie with the whipped cream piled about three inches high. She set the pie closer to Boom and began to serve him a generous slice.

“This is why we friends, Quinn,” Boom said. “Ain’t nobody makes pie like this. You whip that cream, too?”

Jean smiled and set a fresh fork beside Boom’s plate.

She served Caddy, then Quinn, and dished out a final piece for Jason. She brought it to him in the living room, where there were sounds of rockets and exploding spaceships. Quinn dug into the pie and was thankful for the change in conversation. After he helped with the dishes, he’d have to roll back into duty and stay on until dawn. He’d have his mother fill up his thermos with coffee before he left.

“Can I ask you something, Quinn?” Caddy said.

“Sure.”

“Are you seeing Ophelia Bundren?” Caddy said.

Quinn kept chewing but raised his eyebrows. He took another bite of pie, not answering and not wanting to.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, Quinn,” Caddy said. “She’s beautiful and smart. Beautiful eyes. I’ve always liked her a lot. Maybe even better than Anna Lee.”

Boom glanced up at Quinn and then quickly away. Quinn kept eating.

“Have you been by to see Anna Lee since she had the baby?”

“I see her at church,” Quinn said. “Sometimes downtown. Why?”

“She wasn’t right for you, Quinn,” Caddy said. “Be glad she married Luke before you came home. I never wanted to tell you this, but I didn’t like you with her. Now, Ophelia is different. I can see how you two would fit.”

“It doesn’t bother you that she doesn’t care at all for Jamey Dixon?”

Caddy shook her head, the ponytail swatting back and forth. “People have said the same or worse about me,” she said. “I had to deal with a lot when I decided to move back from Memphis. The only thing that was different is that what they were saying was pretty much true. I was all those things. Jamey just has to live with the blame. Even if he drove Adelaide to what happened, he’s paid for seven years. Can you imagine living seven years in some kind of hell?”

Boom just shook his head. Quinn thought he noticed a trace of a smile.

“Yeah, Caddy,” Quinn said. “I think all of us here have visited hell once or twice.”

Caddy held her breath, but then after a moment smiled at her brother. She’d come a long way from that neon club in south Memphis where Quinn had found her not even two years ago. “But we’re back.”

Quinn smiled back and nodded his head.

Quinn met up with Lillie at the Hilltop, a gas station on the other side of the Big Black River, not far from Yellow Leaf, a little hamlet north of Jericho but south of the Natchez Trace. Lillie was leaning against her official vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee freshly painted Army green with a new light bar on top, all courtesy of Boom at the County Barn. Lillie was drinking coffee from a foam cup and wearing a satin sheriff’s office jacket. She looked bemused as Quinn pulled his truck in facing the opposite direction.

A couple men sat inside the gas station, eating barbecue plates and staring out a steamed-up plate-glass window. Bad weather coming in from the west, showing in pockets of blooming yellow light and far-off thunder. She handed Quinn a cup of coffee.

“OK,” Lillie said. “I admit it. I want to know. How’d dinner go with the convict?”

“Dixon didn’t show.”

“Well, now,” she said. “That at least was classy of him.”

“I don’t think it was out of respect,” Quinn said. “Caddy said he was busy working on his church barn. And by the way, Caddy is absolutely positive that our uncle railroaded Jamey Dixon into Parchman because he and Judge Blanton were friends.”

“God rest his soul,” Lillie said.

“Sure,” Quinn said. “God rest both of ’em.”

There was more thunder across the bottomland, where they were planting soybeans and later cotton. Rain started to patter, moving up in a fast sheet, hitting the pavement until it started to fall on the Hilltop lot.

“You got to love a shitstorm in the night,” Lillie said. “Just as you’re coming on.”

“Is it possible?”

“What?”

“That Uncle Hamp fixed the case?”

“Hell no.”

“You’ve always been a little blind when it came to my uncle.”

“I know what he did,” Lillie said. “I know how hard he fell. But at the time that happened, he wouldn’t have fixed a case. Judge Blanton or not.”

“Funny world without the Judge or Uncle Hamp,” Quinn said, standing in a soft rain. “Who the hell put us in charge?”

“The voters of Tibbehah County.”

Quinn grinned.

“I appreciate you taking on nights,” Lillie said. “I know that’s not easy.”

Quinn shrugged. It had been the only thing to do since Lillie had adopted an infant Mexican child from a nasty human trafficking case last year. A woman and her husband had been selling third-world babies on the Internet. Lillie and Quinn had found the children, but the couple had vanished.

Quinn drank some coffee. The rain pinged a little harder on the bill of his ball cap. The police radio crackled with the voice of Mary Alice’s night replacement and another deputy, Kenny, answering back.

“How’s Rose?”

“Beautiful,” Lillie said. “I don’t know who her parents were or how she got into the hands of those shitbirds. But her folks must have been good people. I know it. If they are alive, I wish they could know how much their daughter is loved.”

“How come all the shitbirds seem to set up in Tibbehah County?”

“Plain lucky.” Lillie grinned. “And we’re too close to Memphis.”

Quinn nodded. He started back to the truck.

“So, you and Ophelia Bundren?”

Quinn didn’t answer, placing his hand on the truck’s door handle.

“Hey,” Lillie said. “Besides this storm, Mary Alice got a call from Mrs. King on County Road 381. Some peckerhead has gone and stolen all of her turnips.”

“You’re making that up.”

“Nope.”

“That sounds like a prank call,” Quinn said. “Someone stole all her turnips.”

“Small county,” Lillie said. “Big crimes.”

“I’ll swing by,” Quinn said. “And maybe notify the Feds. You think she might also be keeping Prince Albert in a can?”

“So?” Lillie said.

“Yeah?”

“Ophelia Bundren?”

Quinn shook his head, crawled into his Ford F-250, and started the diesel engine. His headlights lit up Lillie’s wicked smile as she got into her Jeep and made her way home for the night.