Fortunes fool chance mcc.., p.17
Fortune's Fool : Chance McCabe Book One, page 17
McCabe found his pants laid across a chair against the wall opposite his bed. He reached into the pocket and his fingers felt cool metal. He pulled his hand from the pocket and slowly uncurled his fingers. In his palm was the same key the old man had shown him in the dream.
thirty-two
Deputy Benjamin Taylor sat across a small table from Sandy Wiggins. She was dressed in her waitress uniform, minus the pink trucker hat emblazoned with the diner’s cartoon opossum mascot. She had left the hat on the front seat of her PT Cruiser in the diner’s parking lot. Her bleached blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her face showed a mix of boredom and apprehension as she fidgeted nervously.
“Is this gonna take long?” she asked.
“I just have a few questions,” said Taylor.
They were in an 8x8 room in the Sheriff’s department. Wood paneling last seen elsewhere in the 1970s covered the windowless walls. The hollow aluminum door, now pushed closed, was the only entrance or exit from the room. Aside from the table and the two folding chairs on which they sat, there was nothing in the room. The sheriff’s department called this room ‘the box’, a place for interrogation and eliciting of confessions. But as Hatchootucknee County had — officially, at least — one of the lowest crime rates in the entire continental United States, the room was seldom used.
Decades ago, when this building had been a Woolworth’s department store, the room had been the ‘colored’ break room. The white employees had a larger, more spacious break room upstairs, while the few black employees who worked as custodians or line cooks at the lunch counter were relegated to this tiny space when and if they were allowed time for breaks.
“Thank you again for agreeing to talk to me,” Taylor said.
“Like, I had a choice,” Sandy responded. “You couldn’t just talk to me at work?”
“I’m afraid not. Prying eyes and all that.”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a lawyer?”
“Do I look to you like the kind of person who has a lawyer?”
“If you’d be more comfortable with an attorney here, you can call one. But I’ll have to detain you until the attorney gets here and who knows how long that might take. It’d be a lot quicker if you and I just had a talk. And when we’re done, I’ll drive you back to the diner.”
“Fine,” said Sandy. “Let’s get this over with. I need a cigarette.”
“Can’t let you smoke in here, but I could get you a cup of coffee, maybe a Coke?”
Sandy shook her head. “Just ask me what you’re going to ask me and let’s get this over with.”
Taylor nodded. “A week ago Tuesday. Where were you?”
“I don’t know. Probably at work.”
“I checked with the Smiling Possum. You were off that day.”
“Oh,” she said, as if suddenly remembering. “I think that was the day I went to Mobile.”
“Why did you go there?”
“To shop.”
“Can’t do that here?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure. I can just go to the mall here on Main Street.”
“What were you shopping for? Anything in particular?”
“Makeup. Tips are shitty most days, but if I don’t doll up and flirt, I don’t get squat.”
“You went alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure about that?”
She paused for a moment, realizing belatedly that he was asking her leading questions. “No. I forgot. Jesse drove me.”
“Your brother?”
“Only Jesse I know.”
“He didn’t have work that day?”
She laughed.
“Something funny about that?” Taylor asked.
“Yeah. Jesse working. That’s real funny.”
“I thought he worked for Johnny Bill Fredericks. Is that not the case?”
“He feeds JB’s animals. Does that count as work?”
“At his private zoo?”
“Yeah, at JB’s zoo. But it ain’t like a job where he goes and punches in and punches out and can’t leave till his shift is over. He just does whatever JB tells him to. Goes and picks up food and brings it back. Shit like that.”
“But he didn’t work that day?”
“Well, I guess he sorta was working.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Jesse went to see a man about a mule while we were there. On a farm outside of the city.”
“A mule?”
“Yeah.”
“To add it to the zoo?”
She laughed. “Jesse wanted the mule for meat.”
“There’s something at the zoo that would eat a mule?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “The old man was trying to sell a mule he couldn’t take care of no more. Jesse called him and I guess they worked something out, cause he got a horse trailer from JB and went to get it. I don’t think Jesse told the old man what he was going to do with the mule.”
“And you tagged along to go to get makeup?”
She nodded. “At the mall.”
“Jesse go in with you?”
She shook her head. “Jesse’s banned from the mall.”
“Why was he banned from the mall?”
“Probably fighting or showing his dick to little girls. That’s what’s got him banned from other places.”
“So you went to the mall first and then you got the mule?”
“Didn’t get the mule. Old man said he gave it to somebody else. But I think he was lying. I think maybe he figured out what Jesse wanted it for. Jesse don’t exactly have a poker face.”
“How did Jesse take that?”
“He was pissed.”
“What did he do?”
“Knocked the old man out. Punched him in the side of the head. He was bleeding from his ear. The old man went down and Jesse kicked him a couple of times. Stomped on his head.”
“Was the old man okay?”
“He was moving when we left.”
“You didn’t check on him?”
She shook her head. “Jesse said to leave him alone. I was scared to do anything. When Jesse’s mad, he can be mean. Real mean. Mean as Ray sometimes. And he was mad about the mule.”
“So you came straight home after that?”
She nodded.
“Didn’t stop anywhere else? Nowhere at all?”
“No, not that I remember.”
Taylor took out his cell phone. He thumbed a few buttons on the screen and then slid the phone across the table. A still shot from a security camera video was on the screen.
“Is that you? Looks like you to me,” he said. She looked at it but said nothing. “This was taken a week ago Tuesday at a convenience store outside of Mobile.”
“We stopped for gas. I guess. I forgot about that.”
“You don’t look like you forgot. You look like you were trying to leave that part out. But then when you saw I had a photo of you in the store you suddenly remembered.”
“We stopped for gas. Big fucking deal.”
“Jesse come inside the store with you or was he banned from there, too?”
“Jesse pumped the gas. I went in and paid. Bought a pack of cigarettes.”
“That’s all that happened? Nothing else?”
She dropped her head, stared down at the floor. “I think maybe I want to call a lawyer after all.”
Taylor reached across the table, took his phone back. He slid the screen to another photo. “Look at him,” he said, pointing to the screen. “You saw him there. Didn’t you?”
She didn’t look up. “I’m not saying anything else.”
“Look at the phone. His name is Melvin Jenkins, Jr. You saw him there. You talked to him.”
Silence from Sandy.
“He's eighteen years old and in his third year of college. Really smart kid. Genius even. Graduated high school at fifteen. He’s missing now. And you know what happened to him, don’t you?”
“I’m not saying anything else.”
“His mother wants to know where he is. She needs to know what happened to her son. And you can tell her.”
She looked up. “I don’t know what happened to him.”
“You saw him. You were both there at the same time. You talked to him.”
“I don’t know what happened to him,” she said again.
Taylor paused. He was no detective, not a trained interrogator. He wasn’t sure what to do next. She’d asked for an attorney and he knew the questions were supposed to stop at that point, but he pressed on. “Did he say something to you?”
She sat unmoving. Taylor could see her body tremble. It was subtle, but he saw it. “He said something to you. What did he say?”
“He asked me if I had a problem.”
“If you had a problem?”
“He looked like...” She kept her eyes downward as the words trailed off. Subconsciously, she rubbed her thumb over the tattoo on her wrist. “He reminded me of somebody I used to know and I guess I was looking at him too long.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say nothing. I just went to the truck. But Jesse saw him talking to me. Jesse asked me what he said and I told him to fuck off and take me home. But Jesse was in a mood. He got out of the truck and—”
The door of the room flung open. Sheriff Angus Doyle’s form filled the doorway. Behind him stood Virgil Tomkins.
“Afternoon, Sandra Jean,” said Doyle. “How you doing today?”
Sandy said nothing, just nodded in the sheriff’s direction.
“I appreciate you coming in to help us out with this matter,” Doyle said. “But I think we’ve got all we need. Deputy Taylor, I’d like to see you in my office.” Doyle smiled at Sandy, gave her a wink. “Good seeing you again, Sandra Jean. I got to get over to the Possum for a bowl of grits. Been too long. You take care of yourself now. Virgil, see that this young lady gets home.”
“Yes, sir,” said Tomkins, flashing a shit-eating grin at Taylor.
thirty-three
Sheriff Angus Doyle waddled into his office, leaving the door opened. Taylor followed him in. The interior office was somewhat spartan. A plastic ficus plant in one corner, a hat rack with Doyle’s Stetson hanging from it in another. A high-backed, well-worn leather chair was parked behind an antique oak desk. A corded, multi-line phone with buttons you had to depress to change lines was perched atop it. The phone, like the sheriff himself, a relic from a bygone era. There was a large window that looked out onto Main Street, or would have if the blinds had been opened.
On the walls were framed photos of Doyle in camouflage clothing, posing with a rifle and animals he’d killed, apparently on safari. A lion. A giraffe. A Cape buffalo and several species of antelope that Taylor couldn’t identify.
Doyle plopped his bulk into the leather chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked up at Taylor. There was a wooden chair on the opposite side of the desk.
“Looks just like Africa, don’t it?” Doyle said, noticing Taylor taking in the photos.
“I wouldn’t know,” said Taylor.
Doyle laughed and took a cigar from a box on his desk. He rolled it between his fingers without putting it in his mouth. “Never been there either, actually. I hope to someday. It’s on my bucket list. Those were taken over in Texas. Game reserve. A hunting club I’m a member of. I go every year. Next year, I’m planning to get me an elephant. You hunt, Deputy?”
“No.”
“You should change that. We’re commanded to do so. It is a God-given responsibility. ‘And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’ Genesis chapter one verse twenty-eight. Couldn’t be more clear. You believe in the Bible, don’t you, Deputy?”
“I’ve read it.”
Doyle pointed at the wooden chair. “Sit down, Deputy. You don’t have to stand.”
Taylor sat.
“You have a unique distinction among my deputies. You are the only one I did not personally hire.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“The Justice Department of the United States thinks our policing practices down here are discriminatory, so much so that they sued us in federal court. Never mind the fact that the population of Hatchootucknee County is almost evenly divided between white folks and black folks and that in my last election I received forty percent of the black vote. You’d think if I had discriminatory policing practices I wouldn’t have so many black folks voting for me, now would you?”
Taylor didn’t answer.
“Never the less, our county officials, led by our idiot former mayor, deemed it necessary to settle with the feds and signed what you call a consent decree. And as a part of that agreement, we were required to hire a deputy from the minority community. Now whether we actually needed another deputy in this county is beside the point. The feds told us we had to hire another and so the county appropriated the money to make that happen. Would you like to know what was cut from the budget to pay that new deputy’s salary and benefits?”
Taylor said nothing. He already knew.
“The county fired a schoolteacher at the elementary school,” Doyle said. “Wasn’t the choice I would have made, but I was left out of the loop. I assumed I would get to choose my deputy as I had always done. I wanted to hire someone from this community.”
“I am from this community.”
“No. No, you are not. You spent a few summers here with your late grandmother when you were a boy, but you were never a member of this community. No one here knows you. Your roots are scarcely below the surface.”
It had been more than just a few summers, but Taylor didn’t argue.
“Your friends in the federal government told me I had to hire you. Told me I had no choice in the matter. It was that or stand in violation of the consent decree. And if we violate any tenet of that decree, then the feds will come in here and wipe out our entire department, fire all of us, and reconstitute these offices as they see fit. They have the right to do it, they said.”
He actually made air quotes as he said the word ‘right.’
“My reading of the Constitution tells me the federal government has no right to tell a local jurisdiction like ours how to conduct our affairs, but since when has that ever stopped them? Even so, I chose to accept the decree for the good of this county. Everything I do is for the good of this county. So now here you sit in my office, a member of our little department. And to my pleasant surprise, you’ve been a good hire. A little headstrong. Rash at times. But I have little to complain about your work.”
Taylor remained silent.
“That said, it’s clear you want to change the way we do things around here. Hell, I suspect you want my job. You saw yourself sitting behind this desk on the day you arrived here, didn’t you?” Doyle smiled. “Someday you might get your wish. But until then, we do things my way. And we do things my way because my way works. It’s worked for over thirty years and if something ain’t broke, you don’t fix it.”
Doyle exhaled, a long sigh that made his mustache dance. “What exactly is your issue with the Wiggins’ family?”
“I don’t have an issue with them.”
“A couple of days ago, you had the brothers on their knees in handcuffs behind their truck on the side of the highway—”
“Zip ties,” Taylor interrupted. “I haven’t been issued handcuffs. I bought zip ties at the hardware store.”
“And today,” Doyle resumed as if he had not been interrupted, “I find their sister in the box being questioning by you about lord knows what. So I ask you again, what is your issue?”
“Her name came up in an investigation.”
“An investigation? You a detective now? Or is this something your federal friends asked you to look into?”
“Melvin Jenkins, Jr.” said Taylor.
“Is that the missing boy from Mobile?”
“Security camera footage puts Sandra Wiggins in the same convenience store Jenkins disappeared from on the same day he disappeared.”
“Is that in our county?”
“She is a resident of our county.”
Doyle steepled his fingers on the desk. “You have anything more? Just her in the same store?”
“That’s why I was questioning her.”
“So a coincidence is all you’ve got? She’s in a store well within driving distance of here? Hell, I go to Mobile myself on occasion. I’ve stopped for gas at that very same store. Am I a suspect, as well?”
“I was attempting to get more information from her,” Taylor said.
“You think she has knowledge of the boy’s disappearance?”
“Eighteen years old. He’s a man, not a boy.”
Doyle held up a meaty hand. “Not a racial thing, Deputy. Just the way I speak. Boy means male. I use boy and man interchangeably.” He lowered his hand, leaned back in his chair, and pursed his lips.
“I’d like to resume questioning her,” Taylor said.
“She ask for an attorney?”
Taylor didn’t answer.
“Well, that being the case, our hands are tied,” said Doyle. He bit the tip off of the cigar and spit it in a waste bin behind the desk. “Word of advice, Deputy? Choose your battles. Choose them wisely.”
Doyle stuck the cigar in his mouth. He pulled a large wooden match from a drawer and dragged the phosphorous end across the desk until it ignited. He held it up, staring at the flame. “You were hired under a consent decree, but that decree does not prevent me from firing you for cause. I do not wish to do that. As I said, you’ve been a good hire. But insubordination would be cause. Am I understood, Deputy?”
Taylor didn’t answer.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“Yes sir. I understand.”
Doyle lit the cigar, took a couple of puffs, and blew out a cloud of acrid gray smoke. “I ordered you a set of handcuffs. I’ll make a call, check on those. See why they haven’t come in yet. Close the door behind you on the way out.”
