The Ranger - Ace Atkins [51]
“He have a run-in with Sheriff Beckett?”
“Sheriff Beckett tried to run his ass outta the county when Gowrie started actin’ up.”
Lillie nodded, listening, not offering anything back.
“Gowrie said he was gonna kill him. Can you imagine having the balls to take out a lawman like that?”
17
“So how’d this whole deal work?” Quinn asked. “This shit Gowrie was running.”
“I’d sure like to get home,” Shackelford said, sitting in the backseat of Lillie’s Cherokee. He stared out the window at 9 as they passed a sign that read 18 MILES TO JERICHO. “You got no cause to take me in. I got mud in my boots and up my ass when you tackled me like that.”
“Deputy Virgil here is just giving us a ride to town.”
“Gowrie sees me with y’all and he’ll kill me.”
“No he won’t,” Quinn said. “We’ll use an unmarked car.”
“You don’t know Gowrie.”
“He’s of no concern.”
“You gonna watch my ass for the next few years, Ranger? ’Cause I’d prefer not to end up like Jill Bullard’s dead ass. Didn’t you say the buzzards had got to her?”
“Just keep me on the right roads.”
“I don’t know what you want.”
“He wants to know about your damn operation, shithead,” Lillie said. “Jesus Christ.”
“Goddamn, she’s mean.”
“I’ll pay you for your time,” Quinn said, turning around to look at the bony, hairless man. “Okay?”
“I ain’t exactly welcome in Tibbehah County,” Shackelford said, sort of talking to himself. “How’d y’all find me? ’Cause if you can find me, I’m thinking I better boogie on down the road.”
“Let’s meet back up at the sheriff’s office at ten o’clock,” Lillie said. “That’ll give me some time to talk to Wesley.”
Quinn nodded.
“I still don’t know why y’all need me,” Shackelford said. “You getting some kind of pleasure in watching me shit my pants?”
Quinn remained silent, driving a twelve-year-old green Buick Lillie had borrowed from impound, looking for the cutoff road that Shackelford had told him about. They passed the remnants of an old country store, a lone trailer filled with sharp light, and more leaning barns that would be swallowed in kudzu come spring. The sides of the road had been recently shaved away, leaving no shoulder, only a steep drop down into a gully filled with brush.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” Shackelford said.
“Nope.”
“Bet you was a good soldier. How long you been in?”
“Little more than ten years.”
“You seen some shit?”
Quinn didn’t answer him.
“Can’t you talk about operations?” Shackelford asked.
“Where’s the cutoff?”
“Just around this bend,” he said, scrunching down into the passenger seat, making himself small, Dale Earnhardt cap covering half his scarred face. “Shit.”
“No one can see you unless I turn on a light.”
“I don’t take chances.”
“How many places cooked for Gowrie?”
“Many as thirteen and little as five or six.”
“How much money?”
“Me and Jett got paid per batch,” he said. “I don’t know how much Gowrie sold it for.”
“How much per batch?”
“Maybe five hundred. I didn’t exactly keep a record.”
“Where’d he sell it?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t ask.”
“Who collected?”
“Him and his daddy. You ever met Daddy Gowrie? He’s a mess. Dumber than dog shit. Once tried to rob a bank with a salad fork and did a ten-year stretch at Brushy Mountain.”
Quinn looked at Shackelford, down in the floor of the car, hairless and pink, and then up to a bent-up road sign with an arrow pointing down another county road. They drove up through wide hills and down into valleys that used to be farms but now had mainly become rows of pine for timber. The land had been stripped and planted and then clear-cut down to nothing, making the whole landscape feel used.
“Look, these things move around some,” Shackelford said. “This is where I know they used to cook. But Gowrie’s gonna shake some things up every few weeks in case the law is on him.”
“Is that it?”
Quinn motioned to a mailbox in the shape of a horse’s ass, the head looking away from the mail slot.
“That’s where it was.”
Quinn killed the engine and grabbed the door handle.
“What if I run?”
“Are you under arrest?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m not the law.”
“You sure