Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

Dix was leaning against a 1970 Chevy Chevelle LS6 in forest green. The paint job looked as though it could have done with some work, but this neglect was deliberate. Beneath the shabby exterior, the body was pristine, and it boasted a 7.4-liter engine to make a dead man weep. The car stereo was playing some classical music that Tilon recognized from the meth labs, because Dix always determined the soundtrack while they worked.

Tilon could see his mother peering out through the kitchen window. He hoped she hadn’t called the police. He could understand the impulse, but it would be better for all involved if she resisted. He parked his truck alongside Dix’s Chevy and got out.

‘Pruitt,’ he said. ‘What brings you here?’

Dix didn’t answer directly, but instead inclined a thumb toward the house.

‘I told your momma I was a friend of yours. I didn’t want her to become concerned.’

His voice held just the faintest of lisps. It was the kind of speech defect that children and ignorant men were tempted to mock and imitate. No one had done so in Pruitt Dix’s presence for a very long time.

‘No, we wouldn’t want that,’ said Tilon.

‘Maybe you ought to wave to her, just to confirm my bona fides.’

Tilon waved a hand with all the enthusiasm of a man who fears having his fingers shot off. The drape on the window fell, and he could see his mother no longer.

‘She seems like a nice lady,’ said Dix.

‘She is.’

‘You think she still has urges?’

‘What?’

‘Needs – of a sexual nature.’

‘I don’t know, Pruitt. I try not to speak of such matters with her.’

‘Just curious. Because your poppa’s been gone a long time, right?’

‘He has.’

Dix had not blinked once since the conversation began. His eyes were yellow-green, like those of certain cats, and Tilon could not recall ever witnessing the dilation of their pupils. The neutral expression on Dix’s face rarely changed, even when he was causing pain to another, and so it was difficult to know when one was being baited by him – with predictable consequences if one rose to it – or if one was merely engaged in an exchange with an entity that did not think or reason as other humans did.

‘I would not be inclined to fuck her myself, you understand,’ said Dix. ‘It was by way of being a general inquiry into the physical appetites of her gender in the mature years.’

Tilon had no desire to pursue the topic. He could not conceive of the workings of Dix’s mind, but a day that had started as badly as a day could begin, short of his own extinction, now appeared intent on deteriorating still further.

‘You still haven’t told me why you’re here,’ said Tilon.

‘I’m here because you lied to Randall.’

With Dix, it was important not to react. His placidity was only skin-deep, and he associated excessive displays of emotion with insincerity.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Tilon. ‘I wouldn’t lie to Randall about anything.’

‘You lied by omission. You neglected to inform him that it was you who found the Kernigan girl. He’s curious as to why that might be.’

It was fortunate for Tilon that he had already prepared himself for this eventuality. He had just not expected it to arrive so soon, although its inevitability was entirely a product of his own actions.

‘I was in shock. It didn’t seem to matter who found her, only that she was dead.’

‘Randall doesn’t believe that was your call to make, under the circumstances.’

‘These aren’t ordinary circumstances.’

‘Which is why he’d like to see you.’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘I’m busy, Pruitt.’

‘Not so busy that you couldn’t take time out for a beer at the Rhine Heart.’

Tilon mentally ran through the faces at the bar in an effort to establish who might have ratted him out, unless Dix had been following him since this afternoon, which was unlikely. It could have been any one of the customers, but Tilon had the feeling it might have been Denny Rhinehart himself, which meant that Denny and Randall Butcher were closer than Tilon had believed. This realization did not make Tilon happy.

‘I’ve been trying to find Sallie Kernigan before the cops do,’ he said. ‘I thought Denny might know where she was.’

‘Why? You want to console her in her time of loss?’

‘She works for us.’

‘Does she?’

‘She sells.’

‘I wasn’t cognizant of that.’

‘It’s a recent development. I’m trying her out.’

‘And when did you start taking such a direct interest in distribution?’

‘We’re going to need people on the ground when this Kovas business kicks off. I considered it advisable to begin cultivating contacts we could trust. Sallie has a good manner. People like being around her.’

‘Do they now?’

He sounded skeptical. Pruitt Dix didn’t like being around people, with the exception of Randall Butcher. Enjoying the company of others was an alien concept to him.

‘She might work for you,’ he said, ‘but you work for us .’

‘I work for Randall,’ Tilon corrected.

Dix’s right hand jerked, as though he had only just restrained himself from inflicting an injury on the man before him. Tilon wondered how many others had been less fortunate, and ended up being deprived by Dix of the use of a limb or blinded in one eye. And Dix had done worse than that: he’d buried bodies in the Ouachita for Randall Butcher.

‘You do enjoy walking close to the edge, Tilon,’ he said.

‘We have that in common, Pruitt.’

Dix danced his fingers on the body of his car, permitting some of his anger to leach away through the action. Tilon would not have been shocked had the paintwork bubbled beneath Dix’s touch.

‘I can’t go back without you,’ said Dix. ‘It would look bad.’

‘I’m asking for a few hours more. I’ll be with Randall soon enough.’

Dix mulled over this before nodding his acceptance. He slid behind the wheel of the Chevy in a single graceful movement, the action bequeathing a trace of his scent to the air. He smelled like the sediment in a vase of dead flowers.

‘Were you fucking her, Tilon?’ he asked through the open window.

The question threw Tilon.

‘Who?’ said Tilon, which was the wrong answer, and Dix let him see that he knew.

‘Sallie,’ he said. ‘Who else would I be asking about?’

‘No,’ said Tilon, ‘I wasn’t fucking her.’

Dix shrugged.

‘Good-looking woman,’ he said. ‘I could understand if you were. What about the daughter?’

‘Randall asked me that already.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I said no.’

‘I guess that clears it up. Shame about the girl, though. I hope they find Sallie soon. A mother has a right to know the fate of her child.’

The car started with a growl, but Dix didn’t gun it. That wasn’t his style. Tilon watched him drive slowly away before returning to his apartment. His mother intercepted him in the yard.

‘You ought to be more careful in your choice of friends,’ she said.

‘He’s not my friend.’

‘He said he was.’

‘He lied.’

Tilon tried to pass around her, but she gripped his arm.

‘Erma Glass called. She says the talk around town is that you found the Kernigan girl.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You ought to have told me so.’

‘Why, Momma?’

‘Because I got a right to know. I shouldn’t have to wait to hear about it from the likes of Erma Glass.’

Tilon’s temper broke.

‘What do you want me to tell you?’ he shouted. ‘You want to know what was done to her? Is that what you want to hear? The one who killed her, he stuck branches in her, jammed them in her mouth and her privates, same as was done to Patricia Hartley and Estella Jackson. He fucked Donna Lee with a stick. He fucked her. With a stick . You happy now? You satisfied?’