Bull Mountain(5)

Clayton peered down the hallway and then at the door to his office, contemplating which headache to tackle first. He chose the devil he knew.

2.

“Okay,” the sheriff said, and sipped his coffee. “Start at the beginning.”

Choctaw sank down in the chair opposite the sheriff’s desk and pushed his Stetson back on his brow. The deputy was the kind of skinny that made his skin look shrink-wrapped to his bones, and he squirmed in his seat like a high school student called before the principal.

“All right,” he said. “I was out a few nights ago with my buddy Chester. You remember Chester? We served together in Iraq. He come down from Tennessee a few weeks back, after he got home from his last tour. I brought him around the office when he first got here.”

The sheriff nodded. “Yeah, I remember the guy.”

“Cool. Anyway, we got a way of messin’ with each other that goes way back to when we were fixing Humvees in the desert—just clownin’, you know? Anyway, last week I bought me one of those blow-up dolls—”

The sheriff put a hand up. “Hold on, like a sex-toy thing?”

“Yeah, exactly. A Fuck and Suck Sally. Them things ain’t cheap, by the way.”

“Good to know. Where the hell did you find one of those around here?”

“The Internet, boss. I even got me one of those PayPal accounts just for that reason.”

“A who-pal-what?”

The deputy looked a bit dumbfounded. “A PayPal account . . . ?”

Static played across the sheriff’s gray-green eyes as he sat and stroked his beard.

“Look, it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. The point is, I bought this blow-up doll to mess with Chester. I should have bought a bicycle pump, too, because I damn near gave myself an aneurysm blowing the thing up.”

“What does any of this have to do with last night?”

“I’m getting to that. Bear with me. A few days after I bought the thing, I set it up all pretty-like in the passenger seat of Chester’s ride right before he come out of The Pair O’ Jacks—that joint headed up I-75 toward Roswell. You know the place?”

The sheriff nodded again. “Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, right, so when he comes out to the car, he’s expecting to see me, but instead he gets an eyeful of Fuck and Suck Sally. He totally lost his shit. Straight up busted his ass trying to get back out of the car.”

The deputy waited for the sheriff to laugh, but it didn’t happen. He just stared at the younger man blankly, as if he were trying to gauge his level of stupid.

“Is this remotely leading to why we’re sitting in my office this early on a Sunday morning, when we both would clearly rather be somewhere else?” He pushed his own hat up a few inches, leaned back in the swivel chair, and crossed his arms.

“It was funny,” Choctaw insisted. “I guess you had to be there.”

“I guess so.”

“Anyway, now the ball’s in Chester’s court to get me back, and that brings us to last night.”

“Finally.”

Choctaw took off his hat, pushed back his shiny black hair, and reseated it deep on his brow. “So I’m out on patrol, and I’m letting Chester ride along with me.” Choctaw put up both his hands palms out to fend off another dirty look. “I know you don’t like that sort of thing, so don’t bother sayin’ so.”

The sheriff bit down on his lip and sighed through his nose. He took off his hat as well, freeing a head of bushy, rust-brown hair, and set the hat on his desk. “Go on,” he said, scratching at his temples where his hat had been pressing down and where the first hints of gray were beginning to appear.

“Chester is all on my case about stopping at the Texaco on 56 to get some chew and whatnot.” The deputy paused and thought on what he’d just said. “You know something, boss? I should have known right then. He normally wants to go way out to Pollard’s Corner so he can sneak peeks at Old Man Pollard’s daughter working the counter. She just turned eighteen, you know, but I swear she looks a lot older than that. I don’t see how Old Man Pollard—”

“Focus, Deputy.”

“Right. Anyway, I should have known something was off about that, but I missed it.”

“The world’s finest detective.”

“Whatever. So I pull into the Texaco, and Chester hands me a few bills and asks me to go in, like I’m his do-boy, but whatever, he’s lazy, I know that, so I go inside.”

“Where was Chester?”

“In the car.”

“You left Chester in a county-owned vehicle?”

“I trust the guy, boss.” Choctaw was spectacular at missing the point entirely. “So I go in and leave the engine running.”

“You left the engine running in your patrol car with a civilian in it?”

“Yeah, boss, like you ain’t never done it.”

The sheriff pulled at his beard. “Go on.”

“Yeah, like I was sayin’, I walk in and wouldn’t you know it, there’s this dumb-shit crackhead with a peashooter .22 holding up the place. I about shit and fell back in it. I knew looking at him he wasn’t from around here.” He raised an eyebrow at the sheriff to emphasize the perpetrator’s darker persuasion. “A brother, probably picking up some quick cash on his way back to Atlanta.”