Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

‘I realize that,’ said Griffin. ‘I’m trying to do the same, but it’s going to become difficult for me from the moment you get in touch with Jurel.’

‘Jurel Cade is the chief investigator for the county. I have a responsibility to inform him of what’s occurred.’

‘You can inform him just as soon as Tucker has finished with the scene.’

Holt practically danced on the spot with frustration.

‘But by then it’ll be too late!’

‘Too late for whom?’

‘For Jurel.’

‘You don’t serve at his favor.’

‘No, I serve at the favor of his entire fucking family. So do you, Evan. You may not believe you’re a political appointee, but you are. If the Cades want you gone, you’re gone, and Cargill will just have to swallow its sorrow before finding someone to take your place.’

‘You mean someone who’ll do as the Cades tell him?’

Holt quit dancing. His eyes met Griffin’s, and the chief saw the native cunning concealed behind a clown’s demeanor.

‘Someone who’ll do right by the county,’ said Holt.

‘We have dead girls, Loyd.’

‘No, we have poor dead colored girls, Evan. That’s not the same thing. I’m sorry for what happened to them, truly I am, but we got to think of the needs of all the folk in this county and this state. We’re a couple of signatures away from a new beginning, the one we was promised, and that’ll be good for everyone, black and white.’

And how often had Griffin heard those three words over the last year? We was promised. Better times are coming. You just have to hang in there. They’re on their way, you can bet your house on that, because we was promised .

We was promised, we was promised, we was promised.

‘Not much good to that girl back there,’ said Griffin. ‘Not much good to Patricia Hartley.’

‘They’re both dead, Evan, so I’ll tell you this for free: they’re beyond caring. Now get out of my fucking way or I’ll have you up before Judge Hawkins for obstructing me in the commission of my duties.’

Griffin gave it a few seconds, for dignity’s sake, before yielding the road to Holt. The little man went tramping toward Cargill, cell phone in hand.

Griffin’s radio spoke. It was Lorrie Colson. She was with Reverend Nathan Pettle, but had held off on bringing him to the scene until Tucker McKenzie’s work was complete. But Pettle, unsurprisingly, was growing impatient. If a member of his congregation was dead, his people needed to be informed.

‘Tucker?’ Griffin shouted, as Knight came over to join him.

‘Five minutes.’

Loyd Holt had already reached the top of the nearest rise and was now descending the other side, vanishing from sight. It looked like the ground was swallowing him up, which would have been preferable to the alternative: in a couple of minutes, if that, Holt would be on the phone to the county sheriff’s office, and Jurel Cade would come running.

‘Help Tucker to pack up,’ Griffin told Knight. ‘Make sure you secure everything he has, put it in the trunk of your car, and take the long road back to town.’

Knight started moving.

‘And Kel?’

‘Yes?’

‘You cover that girl. I want her nakedness concealed before the reverend gets here.’

16

Tilon Ward had not driven very far. He’d parked his truck on a side road, amid a smear of trees on a hill, giving him a clear view of the police activity while concealing him from sight. There he sat in the driver’s seat, smoking a cigarette and thinking that, as fucked up as life could sometimes be, the possibility always existed that it could get fucked up a whole lot more. He felt a tickling on his cheek. When he scratched at it, his finger came away wet. He had not even realized he was crying.

Tilon could have told Evan Griffin a great deal about the dead girl. He could have shared with him her identity, and where she lived. He could have described her body in intimate detail, and the sounds she made during sex. He could have offered up the taste and smell of her, and the way she spoke his name, with the emphasis on the second syllable instead of the first, because she thought it was fun to pronounce it differently from others, and by individuating him she made him more her own.

Tilon didn’t think anyone knew about him and the girl. He’d warned her not to share the fact of their relationship with anyone, because it would stir up a world of hurt for both of them. To some, it might have resembled a commercial exchange – sex for money – but he had never really considered it to be thus, and he did not believe that she did either, because he sensed her affection for him was real, and he had begun to reciprocate in kind. Oh, he still gave her cash whenever they met, because she and her mother didn’t have much of their own, but it was more in the manner of a gift than payment for services offered and received – or so he told himself, and told her as well, although the truth was more complex than that, and he might have been fooling himself just as much as he was fooling her.

Yet how odd it was that he should have been the one to discover her body, as though some force beyond human comprehension had intended it to be this way. Tilon had even briefly considered abandoning the remains, leaving them for someone else to find. By involving himself, he would inevitably draw police attention, and if the investigation uncovered the association between him and the girl, he would become a suspect. While he maintained a grudging respect, even trust, for Chief Evan Griffin, he retained none at all for Jurel Cade. The latter was looking for an excuse to move against Tilon, and if he could pin some killings on him, he would – especially these killings, because making an arrest would take a lot of the pressure off the county. But Tilon Ward knew this much: he hadn’t killed this girl, or Patricia Hartley, or anyone else, which meant that locking him up wouldn’t put an end to whatever was happening.

Unless, of course, it did. What if the killer decided to make use of a patsy and went to ground after the arrest, leaving Tilon to suffer the consequences? The state of Arkansas had the death penalty, and wasn’t shy about sticking men with the needle. It was also, in its callous way, color-blind when it came to capital punishment, which was almost admirable unless you happened to be the white man strapped to a gurney while fingers probed for a suitable vein.

So common sense dictated that Tilon should have kept his mouth shut and let someone else find the dead girl. But whatever feelings he’d had for her, combined with a semblance of common decency, impelled him to make the call. He was part of it now, but he supposed he’d been part of it from the first time he took her to his bed.

He heard the sound of vehicles approaching from the direction of town, and moments later a Cargill PD cruiser headed toward the scene, closely followed by a Country Squire station wagon in dirty winter white. Ward recognized the car: it was Reverend Nathan Pettle’s, which meant the police were only minutes away from identifying the body. At the same time, another Cargill PD cruiser was leaving the scene, Kel Knight behind the wheel.

Ward was tempted to use the arriving and departing cars to mask his own withdrawal – sound carried oddly around here, and he had no desire to attract further attention – but he was also worried about taking to the road before all the players were on the field. He’d witnessed the interaction between Loyd Holt and Evan Griffin as a dumb show, followed by Holt’s slow trot toward town, and figured out what had probably occurred. It wouldn’t be long before Jurel Cade made his appearance.

So he lit another cigarette, watched, and waited.

17