The Ranger - Ace Atkins [96]
Blanton shook his head, eyes bloodshot and dark-rimmed. Johnny Stagg felt his face glow red-hot, like he’d just taken a dump on the man’s high-dollar Oriental rugs.
Quinn met Wesley in the front drive, nodding over to Gowrie’s 1969 black Camaro. “How do you like my wheels?”
“When are you headed back?”
“Today.”
“You plan on driving that machine back to Columbus?”
“Is that a problem?” Quinn asked.
“Probably,” he said. “It’s a piece of evidence. We thought it had been stolen from the gas station, but Lillie said you took it.”
“I guess we’d better drive it back to the sheriff’s office, then.”
“Things might happen to a vehicle in transit.”
“Sure could.”
Wesley grinned a little.
“Hell yeah,” Quinn said, jumping into the front seat, cranking that big engine and knocking it into reverse, Dynaflow pipes puttering like a speedboat as they pulled alongside Deputy Leonard McMinn and waved.
McMinn tilted his head like a dog hearing a high-pitched sound and raised his hand to wave back.
Wesley dug some dip from the front of his uniform pocket and thumped it with his thumb. “Hit it,” he said.
Quinn redlined the motor, taking it on up before knocking it into first gear, the Camaro beautifully hanging there in space, burning the shit out of Gowrie’s back tires and sending up black smoke into Leonard’s face.
They laughed all the way out to Main Street and then hit the long, long road out of town, taking the Camaro on up to way past a hundred, knowing that no one could touch them, Quinn feeling like he had in high school, only this time with the law riding shotgun.
“This is more fun than that fire truck.”
“Bet your ass,” Quinn said.
He found a country music station, and they blared some good outlaw stuff from back in the day, zipping down all those hidden country roads, passing forgotten cemeteries and crumbling gas stations, nothing but gravel and dirt. Quinn switched with Wesley, and Wesley took the car bumping up and over the road into an overgrown field, crashing through a rotting fence and spinning out in the mud and dust, nearly getting stuck in a ravine, but then redlining her again and mashing that pedal till they were back onto the country road leading to the farm.
Both of them laughed so hard they almost lost their breath.
The radio played Haggard, “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink,” and Quinn couldn’t help but laugh at the future sheriff of the county tearing up the back roads. They hit a turn, and Wesley shifted up, taking on the grade of the hills ringing the valley of the farm, the Camaro spinning gravel and dust along the narrow road.
“Who in the hell left us in charge?” Wesley said.
“Some unfortunate folks,” Quinn said.
“God help us all,” Wesley said, rolling down the window and spitting, running fast along the line of barbed wire, the fence line nothing but a blur. The road would crest the hill, and they’d hit another road that would lead back to his uncle’s place, maybe a mile or so way. The land out here was rented by a hunt club and owned by a logging company, as was much of the big stretches of old timber. Quinn recalled all that old-growth timber on the old McKibben place being logged out, as Wesley turned north and downshifted, running along the ridge of the hill. He wondered if a guy like Johnny Stagg possessed a soul.
“You look out for my momma,” Quinn said.
“You bet.”
“And do better than Leonard.”
“I promise.”
“Gowrie will be back,” Quinn said.
“Why do you say that?”
“He won’t let this rest.”
“You worry too much, Quinn.”
Wesley slowed at the next curve, that final bend up in the hills that would head east and back down into the valley to the farm. He downshifted and braked to where a couple trucks pinched the road.
Quinn couldn’t see anyone standing close and figured the trucks belonged to a couple of hunters who’d been too lazy to find a place to park. Wesley stopped hard, those back pipes chugging away in idle. “What the hell,” Quinn said, opening the passenger door.
Quinn noticed Wesley had his hand on his service revolver.
“Hold up,