The Ranger - Ace Atkins [50]
“You didn’t care for her?”
“Did I say that? I’m sorry she’s dead. You could tell she’d been a good-lookin’ girl before she got all messed up. Had Daddy issues. I guess you know her daddy was a preacher. Those kids never turn out right.”
“What were y’all into?” Lillie asked, Quinn noticing how relaxed she asked it, slipping back in her seat, reaching for a cigarette herself, making the whole thing nice and easy, conversational.
“You name it,” Keith said, placing his hands on the table, wearing thin gloves, a flannel shirt buttoned at the wrist and the throat. “I tried every drug known to man, and I’m still sitting here with y’all and drinkin’ coffee.”
“And you served with Jett?” Quinn asked.
“No,” he said. “We was both in the Army but not together. He’d been out for a few years when I come back from my last tour. You military? ’Cause if you ain’t, you need to get a refund on that haircut.”
“I am.”
“Still?”
“Yep.”
“Reserves?”
“No,” Quinn said, reaching for his coffee. “I’m in Third Batt of the Seventy-fifth.”
“You a Ranger?” Keith asked. His thick scarred eyelids opened, making him look confused, his face naked and seeming like that of a man much older than twenty-five.
Quinn nodded.
“Goddamn,” Keith said. “I saw two Rangers get in a bar fight one time in Memphis, and they done beat up the bouncer and two cops. Took about a dozen men to control them, and they was still fighting. Y’all are crazy as shit.”
Quinn shrugged.
Lillie said, “We’re thinking that Jett may have owed some folks some money when he got killed.”
“Sure. He owed me some goddamn money.”
“Some people may have wanted to scare him a bit?” she asked.
Keith looked down at his coffee. He looked around the restaurant and caught the eye of a teenage boy eating a cheeseburger and staring at Keith’s face. Keith looked at him and flipped him the bird. He shook his head. “What are y’all driving at?”
Quinn looked at him.
“I done my time,” he said. “Okay. I got the hell out of Dodge and got free of that kind of life. When a man gets turned upon the spit, he starts to contemplate his soul. I can imagine hell feels a lot like waking up in the middle of the night with your clothes on fire and children screaming. I tried to find those kids. I tried. I see ’em every night. That little girl comes to me sometimes. Jett’s daughter told me it was okay. I tried, man. But half that damn trailer was up and burning after the explosion.”
Lillie exchanged looks with Quinn.
“What exploded?”
“Half that trailer.”
Keith put a hand to his destroyed face, his fingers moving up to his temples and lost eyebrows. He shook his head. “You ever get to that point that you just don’t give a goddamn?”
“What explosion?” Lillie asked.
She knew. Just like Quinn knew.
“They said they’d pour gasoline on me and finish the job if I said a word,” he said, starting to laugh. “I guess that’s what happened to Jill. You know what? She was never too smart.”
“What explosion?” Lillie asked.
“What’d you think it was?” Keith said. “A grease fire? Goddamn. When I come to, I looked for my britches and my gun, thinking my ass was back in Fallujah. You know what I’m sayin’, Lieutenant?”
“Sergeant,” Quinn said. “I enlisted just like you.”
Keith met his eyes for a second and then looked away. He nodded to himself, as if making up his mind.
“What the hell did y’all think Jett Price did for a living? He couldn’t even finish the paperwork to get disability. That dumb son of a bitch was cooking meth all around Tibbehah County. He’d been doing it since he got back, and I was helping him. The lab exploded and burned that trailer down, not a goddamn skillet. Okay? We straight?”
Quinn leaned in and grabbed Keith by the forearm, Keith’s face softening in pain. “For who?”
“Come on, man.”
Quinn didn’t let go, and he felt Lillie touch his arm.
“Who?”
Quinn squeezed until he could feel the flesh become bone.
“You ever heard the name Gowrie?” Keith asked.
Quinn looked over to Lillie.