The Innocents (27 page)

T
hey found Wash Jones four days later at the local Chevy dealership, doing a live interview on a right-wing talk radio show about the decline of morals in America, a recent loss by Ole Miss, and the tragic and untimely death of his eldest daughter. He sat at a card table in the middle of the two talk show hosts, headphones on, still wearing the image of Milly’s angel on the front of his T-shirt. The owner of the dealership stood nearby, showing a Hispanic couple the insides of a metallic orange Silverado 2500.

“Almost like he’s enjoying himself,” Lillie said.

“‘Almost’?” Quinn said.

At a station break, Wash shook the hands of the radio hosts and limped his way over to Quinn and Lillie. He wore a Tibbehah County Wildcats ball cap and a big smile. His face shone with sweat, big belly stretching the material of his T-shirt. “Missed you the other night,
Sheriff,” he said to Lillie. “Heck of a night. I ’bout broke down when the band played ‘Angel from Montgomery.’ I hugged Coach Bud and thanked him for all he did to get Milly’s killer to justice. Want to thank you, too, Miss Virgil. I don’t think I could have gone living with her killer being out there, unknown to us all.”

Lillie smiled and nodded.

“You mind if I ask which one of you shot up that black son of a bitch?” he said, grinning. “’Cause I’d sure like to shake your hand.”

“Mr. Jones,” Lillie said. “We’ve just gotten some new information about what Milly might’ve been doing that night. And we’re hoping you might help us understand.”

“So you won’t tell me?” Wash said. “I heard it was one shot. A dang killshot right through the brain. Listen, y’all want a hot dog or something? Dealership has free hot dogs and balloons for the kids. Also might let you take a test-drive, Quinn. Get you out of that old Ford you been driving.”

“I’m loyal,” Quinn said. “Thanks.”

Wash followed them back to Lillie’s Cherokee, parked near the service department. The man hadn’t shaved in a few days, his weak chin bristling with white hairs. He sniffed, rubbing a finger under his nose, and stood splayfooted for some more news about Milly he might be able to share with some cable news hosts. He’d fast become a late-night favorite, commenting on everything from gun rights to his personal hopeful in the presidential election. Online, there had been a movement of Wash Jones for President in deference to his straight talk and outrageous sayings.

“Did your son ever tell you he’d been molested?” Lillie asked. Lillie never being one for small talk.

“What?” Wash asked, looking even more dumbfounded than if
he’d been slapped across his ruddy face. “What’s Brandon got to do with nothing?”

“We believe Milly wanted to expose his rapist.”

“Where did y’all get that trash?” he asked. “Dang. He wasn’t more than sixteen when he died. He wasn’t raped no more than me.”

“Your ex-wife said he’d confided in her,” Quinn said.

“And your daughter,” Lillie said. “She said y’all took him to get counseling in Tupelo right before he killed himself.”

“My boy didn’t kill himself,” Wash said. “Holy moly. Everybody knows that boy got injured while chasing a twelve-point buck. How’s this helping? How’s this supposed to do a goddang thing but throw muck at my family? I spent most of my life as a hardworking American knee-deep in shit, but this sure do take the cake.”

A portly woman wearing a
MILLY JONES IS MY GUARDIAN ANGE
L
shirt walked up to Wash and without a word gave him a long, deep hug, saying she’d be praying for him. He patted her back and smiled, saying he sure did appreciate her support and that she could find out more tonight on
Nancy Grace
at eight Central.

“Milly had Brandon’s old cell phone,” Quinn said. “We unlocked it this week and found hundreds of texts between Brandon and an older man. Brandon wanted to tell the truth to everyone, but the man threatened his life and the safety of your whole family.”

“Trash,” Wash said. “Nothing but trash. I don’t want to hear a word of it. Do you know what I’ve been going through, a first-class trip through the depths of hell? Brandon has been gone a long while. We healed up on that. Do y’all think the Jones family hasn’t suffered enough?”

Lillie put her hands on her hips, looking to the carnival set up in front of the showroom window, kids playing around in a jump house, a
clown making balloon animals, and the owner of the dealership handing out sacks of popcorn and free hot dogs. The air smelled of a county fair.

“Before high school, Brandon was a manager for the football team,” Lillie said. “He helped out with the equipment, chasing down footballs, running water out to the players.”

“You bet,” Wash said. “Done that for two years. Coach Bud respected him so much, he took him on road trips. You know how many young kids wish they had an opportunity like that? Made him feel part of the team.”

Quinn looked to Lillie. Lillie said, “How’d he get to and from the games?”

“On the dang bus,” he said. “Sometimes, he rode with Coach. Just what are y’all getting at?”

Lillie’s radio on her hip started to squawk with Kenny working an accident scene over on County Road 221. She turned down the radio, tilted her head, eyes against the sun, and said, “This isn’t for public consumption,” she said. “Especially for
Nancy Grace
tonight. But those text messages were coming from Coach Mills.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Afraid not.” Lillie shook her head. Quinn stood ready if Wash Jones wanted to show his true self right there at the Chevy dealership among the sales folks, kids, and clowns. But Wash just hung back, mouth wide-open, breathing in and out, eyes unfocused and fuzzy, trying to make sense of just exactly had been said.

“Coach Mills is a hero,” Wash said. “Without him, y’all would have never splattered Nito Reece’s black ass all over that damn cotton compress.”

Quinn shook his head. “Milly wanted him exposed,” he said. “The
last call she made was to Bud Mills, thirty minutes before that trucker found her on fire.”

“A lie,” he said. “Y’all are lying. Ole Job never had to suffer words and horrors like this.”

“We’re bringing in the coach for raping Brandon and other boys,” Lillie said. “If you know something, now’s the time. This man may be responsible for the deaths of both of your children.”

“Y’all have an agenda of filth,” he said. “And I ain’t going to that fuckin’ circus.”

He spit on the ground, eyed Lillie and Quinn up and down, and shook his stupid head sadly and theatrically. “You don’t want Nito to be the one.”

“Come again?” Lillie said.

“Y’all just can’t stand that some poor ole nigger boy murdered an angel of this world,” he said. “You got to tear us all down, make us no better than the blacks, to work on whatever weak tea liberal-ass agenda you got.”

“It’s not just Brandon,” Lillie said. “There’s a long list. Milly’s the hero. She’s the only one with guts to stand up to him.”

Wash shook his head. “Get the hell out of here,” he said. “And, god damn, you ain’t the nephew to Hamp Beckett. That man is doing somersaults in his grave right now, hearing ‘The World Turned Upside Down.’”

“I expect you’re right, Mr. Jones,” he said. “Uncle Hamp kept a file on Bud Mills, thick as two phone books. Years of young boys like Brandon. Last night, I found it in the mess I inherited and we’ve been calling up victims all day. I wouldn’t have known where to look if it hadn’t been for Milly.”

“Good Lord Almighty,” Wash said.

“Thank the Lord, the apple fell damn far from the tree,” Lillie said. “You’re right. Milly was a special woman.”

•   •   •

W
hat the hell do you want?” Ordeen Davis asked. “You want to try and fuck with me some more?”

“Everywhere I go today,” Quinn said, “I make friends.”

“Y’all wanted Nito and you got him,” Ordeen said. “I wasn’t about to help with that bullshit. You had it in your mind to kill his ass and that’s what you did.”

Quinn didn’t have an answer, as he had killed Nito. He’d rushed right into that small box of a room, seeing Nito Reece grinning ear to ear while running a pressure wash gun up the rectum of three-time Mississippi Coach of the Year Bud Mills. D. J. Norwood raised a .32 pistol at Quinn and Quinn blasted a hole through Norwood with his twelve-gauge, turning to Nito as he pulled a gun from his jeans. But Wash Jones had been wrong. Quinn had shot Nito not once, but twice.

Ordeen stood with a soapy sponge in hand, a bucket full of suds, and a garden hose running down his driveway. Nito Reece’s electric-blue Nova, sporting twenty-inch spinning silver rims, was parked out in front of Ordeen’s mother’s brick ranch house a few miles outside town. Same tag reading
HERE
KITTY KITTY
.

“We think Nito might have had some help killing Milly Jones.”

Ordeen tossed the sponge in the bucket, walked over to the spigot, and turned off the water, suds and bubbles raining down off the slick blue hood and shiny silver rims. He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “I wondered how long till y’all were going to start bird-dogging my ass on this.”

“I’m not looking at you, Ordeen,” Quinn said. “You have my word. I just need to know what Nito told you about Milly Jones.”

“Nito said y’all was trying to set him up,” he said. “And that Coach Mills helping y’all out. Telling a bunch of lies.”

“You might be right.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ordeen said. “Y’all found his Nova up in Memphis and checked out every damn inch. You know, it’s clean as hell.”

“He sold it to folks who run a detail shop.”

“I paid them cash for this car,” Ordeen said. “They didn’t want it no more. I’m gonna drive it out of respect for Nito. I’m putting his name on the back window. He’s a damn victim in this thing just like Milly Jones.”

“Nito may have been coerced,” Quinn said. “But he helped.”

“Bullshit, man,” Ordeen said. “You try to play some head games with me? Everybody loves Coach’s ass for bringing in the law to string up my boy. Y’all were too happy to kill some black folks. But I ain’t playin’ that. I don’t have nothing to do with nothing.”

“We just arrested Coach Mills,” Quinn said.

“Bullshit.”

“He’s been molesting kids for a long time,” Quinn said. “Milly Jones was going to out him for what he’d done to her brother.”

The words struck Ordeen, standing there, nodding and listening, in his white wifebeater shirt and low-hanging jean shorts. His braided hair looking wild and unkempt as a lion’s mane. All of sudden, he started to shake his head and burst out laughing. He wasn’t faking it, laughing so hard he dropped his hands to his knees like he’d just finished up a long series of wind sprints. “Like I said,” Ordeen said, “bull-fucking-shit. Ain’t nobody can take down Bud Mills. He’s bigger than any law or politician in Jericho.”

“Did Nito ever tell you about him and Coach?”

“He told me enough.”

“I mean, when he was a kid,” Quinn said. “Did he ever talk about being with Coach while his momma was out working late, getting arrested for drugs and hooking? I found an old report from my uncle that said his mother believed Nito had been molested. But nobody took her seriously.”

“I ain’t getting into this mess,” Ordeen said. “I’m done. I’m done with all this shit. I don’t trust you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you the same as everybody else,” he said. “Your uncle kilt Nito’s father and you kilt Nito. And now you ain’t gonna rest till I’m dead, too.”

“No,” Quinn said. “I need you to stand up.”

“‘Stand up’?” Ordeen said, laughing again. “Bullshit, man. Bullshit.”

“Bud Mills raped children,” Quinn said. “He raped Nito and he raped Milly Jones’s little brother and probably a hell of a lot more boys. I think you heard something from Nito after he got pulled into this mess. I think you need to quit hangdogging it and feeling sorry for yourself and stand up and act like a man.”

“Just like Coach,” Ordeen said. “You sound just like Coach.”

“Why would you want to stick with him?” Quinn asked. “After what he did to Nito? Why don’t you go ahead and let everyone keep believing Coach Bud Mills shined the light on the black drug dealer who raped and murdered an angel?”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Listen up, man,” Quinn said. “I never liked Mills. He was a bully and a walking freak show. But I need you to stand up. What we got isn’t strong enough.”

“What you got?”

“An old phone and the word of a dead kid.”

Ordeen walked back over to the spigot and turned on the water, rinsing off his dead friend’s ride, taking slow, special care on the hood and windows, sluicing with soapy water. He kept shaking his head, muttering to himself. “Ain’t gonna happen.”

“Why’s that?”

“You send Coach Mills to prison and then folks around here gonna have to start looking at themselves. Since when has that shit ever happened? Even a goddamn tornado and the hand of God on this county couldn’t rattle that cage.”

“Help us out, Ordeen,” Quinn said. “Putting a
Fly High
sticker on that old Nova won’t do shit for Nito.”

Ordeen stared at him for a long while. Then he nodded.

•   •   •

J
ason Colson met Bentley at a cigar lounge down in Jackson after the kid stopped returning his phone calls and emails. Bentley swore nothing was a-matter, he’d been doing a lot of work for his father and for a Washington lobbyist who’d given him an internship straight out of Ole Miss. Jason walked into the smoke-filled room lined with brown leather couches, easy chairs, and framed prints of women with big jugs in seductive poses with cigars between their teeth, thinking this was going to be it. He could finally seal the damn deal and hustle on back to Jericho to get on the bulldozer, clear the lands, and plan on that big beautiful barn that would sit on top of that stark, naked hill.

The kid offered him some twenty-three-year-old Pappy Van Winkle that had been a personal gift from the governor. But Jason refused, telling him that it had been a while since he drank but he had no trouble
being around it. “I ain’t no Seventh-day Adventist,” Jason said, clutching an accordion binder under his arm, pearl Stetson down in his eyes. “I just have too many miles on my liver and don’t have the time nor inclination for it to expire.”