The Ranger - Ace Atkins [44]
“You know this fucker?” he yelled over his shoulder.
Kayla walked up, head down, hands in the pockets of the big pink coat, and said he was okay, that she knew him. The man didn’t stop staring at Quinn, Quinn noting the man was just plain ugly, with a misshapen face and weak chin, acne across his forehead and on his neck.
“You got a problem?” he asked Quinn.
“Ugly doesn’t make tough.”
The man made a move for Quinn, and Quinn punched him in the stomach, knocking him flat on his ass, leaving him gasping for air. Quinn stood over the man, just observing, until he got to his feet and walked away.
“Who’s he?” Quinn asked.
“My boyfriend.”
Quinn didn’t say anything.
“I don’t want no trouble,” she said. “I haven’t even started to work.”
“The girl is dead.”
Kayla shrugged. Her face was white and chapped, dark hair catching a long streak dyed red. The diesel smell was strong, pumping and fuming around them.
“Thought you’d want to know.”
“I didn’t know her.”
“Her real name was Jill Bullard.”
Kayla shrugged again. “Nobody has real names out here. We’re all just kind of passing through until we can get to Memphis or Jackson.”
“Can I buy you something to eat?”
“I got to work.”
“Sure like to know anything about her.”
“I told you. What the fuck.”
“You know where she lived?”
“The point is to be working all night,” she said. “Then you go home. You see?”
“You just carry everything in that backpack?”
“Your girl Jill kept a locker,” she said.
“You know where?”
“What, are you gonna break into it?”
“Sure.”
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“I’m not the police.”
“Then what the fuck do you care?”
“Can you show me the locker?”
“You really buy me something to eat?”
“What about your boyfriend?”
“He’s a pussy.”
Quinn grabbed a tire iron from the Ford and tucked it inside his coat, following Kayla inside the Rebel Truck Stop. The restaurant and shopping mart was still, late on a Sunday night. The cashier, watching a small television, peered up for a moment with his old hooded eyes and then went back to his show as Kayla took Quinn back to the bathrooms and showers, a long row of telephones and video games, pinging away, in the hall. She nodded him over to a bank of lockers and showed him one in the right corner, saying she remembered the locker because it was the same as her lucky number.
“Thirteen?”
“Been lucky for me.”
Quinn listened for a moment and waited a beat as a fat trucker came out of the toilet, smelling like five-cent aftershave, a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.
When he was gone, Quinn slipped the edge of the tire iron near the lock and gave it a sharp tug. The lock busted right apart, denting the frame, but the locker opened.
He reached inside and found some folded clothes and a pack of condoms. She’d squirreled away some beef jerky and a bottle of Aristocrat vodka, a carton of cigarettes, and three pairs of panties.
“You ever heard of a man named Keith Shackelford?”
“No.”
“You ever see Jill with a man?”
“I always saw her with a man.”
“This guy may have burn marks on him.”
She shook her head.
Quinn squatted down and reached deep in the locker, finding a thick leather-bound book, or what could pass for leather. It was a case for photographs, branded with Native American symbols and designs. He unbuttoned the cover and flipped through twenty or so pictures.
He closed the locker door and stood up, flipping through more, reaching a side pocket and finding a thick pack of more photographs bound with a rubber band. In the weak fluorescent light he sorted through pictures of Jill Bullard. Jill playing with Beccalynn at some park. Jill and her parents. Jill with some man he did not recognize but would check against Shackelford’s mug shot. Jill partying out on Beale Street. And then a shot that just kind of left him cold, paralyzed, before he flipped the image, front to back.
“You know this girl?”
“I got to pee,” she said.
“Do you know her?”
Kayla looked at Quinn, her mouth open, backing away, looking as if she might cry.
Quinn turned back to the photo. Jill Bullard and another