Justice Lost (Darren Street #3)(70)

The sheriff handed me a card with his cell number on it. “Call me anytime. I hope we can figure something out.”

He said goodbye and walked out the door. After the sheriff left, I drank three more beers. I had to just keep my hands from shaking because I was so livid. Scandal and corruption were certainly nothing new to Tennessee politics and law enforcement. I’d been reading about scandals all my life and had experienced more than my share of corruption firsthand, but to think that Hanes Howell, who acted so smug and respectable, was involved with Ben Clancy and Joe DuBose and Roby Penn and Stephen Morris, not to mention all the pimps and drug dealers and human traffickers, made my stomach turn. I remembered what he’d said about Roger Tate, and a smile crossed my face. He’d called him a “washed-up old fool.” We’d just see about that.

Maybe it was the beer, and maybe, once again, I’d just reached my limit, but I began to reflect. I’d tried to do the right thing after Grace died, but Morris swatted me away like an annoying insect. Because of that, I killed Fraturra, believing I had no choice. If I hadn’t killed him, who knew how many others he might have hurt?

Once that was over, I’d tried to find some solace in Grace’s memory, but she rejected me. My mother had faded into nothingness.

And then the game changed completely. At Granny’s suggestion, and with the help of Roger Tate and Claire, I’d thrown myself into the race for district attorney general and had largely managed to put Grace and the past out of my mind. The irony of it still slapped me in the face a couple of times a day. I wasn’t running the office the way many would have liked it to be run, but with the exception of helping Granny with her gambling aspirations, I had no plans to take part in any kind of corruption.

And then Roby Penn started killing people left and right and wasn’t answering for anything. The conversation with the sheriff had been insightful, if what he was saying was true. He seemed sincere, though, and I’d become a pretty good judge of who was lying and who wasn’t.

With the embarrassing exception of Hanes Howell III.

I’d had it. I’d had it up to my eyeballs with worrying about what was right and what was wrong and what was just and unjust. Not many months before, I hadn’t cared about any of that. Now, I found myself no longer wanting to care. I only wanted to kill. Grace had abandoned me. My mother wasn’t around anymore. I had been left to my own devices, and I knew that could turn out badly and bloody.

There wasn’t a single person I could trust outside of Claire and the Tiptons. There really wasn’t anything Claire could do, at least not yet. Granny and her grandsons might be able to help me with Roby, but I wasn’t the type to bushwhack somebody. If I was going to confront Roby, I would confront him face-to-face. To me, he was like Big Pappy. He hadn’t really done anything to me personally, but I figured he was just biding his time.

I looked at my phone. It was almost ten o’clock at night. I called Claire, who had returned to the swamp.

“Am I bothering you?” I said.

“You sound like you’ve had a little to drink.”

“I have. Not too much, but a little.”

“It’s good to hear your voice,” she said.

“Yours, too. Listen, I’m going to do something in the morning, and it may not work out for me.”

“What, Darren? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to put an end to at least part of what’s been going on here, one way or another. I’m going to put an end to it, or I’m going to die trying.”

“Darren, don’t make rash decisions when you’ve been drinking. What’s happened?”

“Nothing’s happened, that’s why I have to do something. The man who killed Stephen Morris and all those other people is probably planning his next murder. The hustles haven’t stopped, the money is still flowing. There’s corruption everywhere, even at the highest level of state law enforcement.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Hanes Howell is what I’m talking about. He’s right in the middle of it. And the FBI has apparently committed a catastrophic clusterfuck. I’ll tell you about that later. But Howell . . . I’m sure about him. He called your grandfather a washed-up old fool. Can you believe that? I should have kicked his ass for that, Claire. I’m sorry, but at the time he said it, I didn’t know what he was into.”

“My grandfather has been called far worse, Darren. You’re overreacting. What are you going to do?”

“When I get off the phone with you, I’m going to call the sheriff. Tomorrow morning, he and I are going to drive out to Roby Penn’s together, and I’m going to arrest him.”

“Do you have a warrant?”

“Nope.”

“So you’re not going to arrest him.”

“It doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t allow himself to be arrested, anyway.”

“So you’re going to a gunfight?”

“Probably.”

“You said he’s the sheriff’s uncle. You’ll wind up in a cross fire.”

“Some things have come up about the sheriff I didn’t know before. I think I can trust him to at least get me close to this guy. I don’t know what he’ll do if bullets start flying, but at least he can get me in there.”