13. Char
CHAR
The smell of fried chicken entered before Nielson did.
“We’re in for a treat tonight,” the sheriff said as he came soaring back into the room.
“Tonight?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” he said as he balanced two drinks against his chest, “the sun is nearly set outside.”
I wondered how the guys were doing. How much they were freaking out over what happened.
“My old lady’s specialty,” Nielson said as he sat with a grunt in front of me. “Fried chicken, green beans cooked with a turkey leg, rice and gravy, and some cornbread muffins.”
My stomach growled audibly. “What’s in the cups?”
He smiled brightly. “Some good ol’ blackwater tea.”
I furrowed my brow. “What’s that?”
“Well,” he said as he started divvying out the food, “my old lady’s from South Carolina, you see. And their sweet tea is so sweet sometimes, and the tea is steeped so deep sometimes, that you can’t see the bottom of the jug.”
“Blackwater tea,” I murmured as I picked up the to-go Styrofoam cup.
I took a pull of the drink and simply couldn’t stop. It tasted so amazing, like dessert in a cup. I sipped and I sipped. I swallowed every ice-cold mouthful my tongue could get its taste buds on.
“God, that’s good,” I groaned as I finally released the straw.
The sheriff beamed with pride. “That’s my wife.”
The way he looked as he talked about her warmed my heart. “How long have you two been married?”
“Going on thirty years now, give or take.”
I snickered. “Give or take? You don’t know?”
He barked with laughter. “The old lady can hardly remember what year it is. She doesn’t bother with how many years we’ve been married. Only when I do and don’t take out the trash.”
“As she should.”
He chuckled as he stabbed at his green beans with his plastic fork. “So, Doc.”
I settled in for a ride of a conversation. “Yes. Doc.”
“How much do you know about Doc?”
I shook my head. “Nothing, really, except he threw a signal which, apparently, kicked all this shit off.”
“So you know what they’re selling.”
“I do.”
“And you know why they have these businesses?”
I paused. “Sure. I mean, makes sense, right?”
The sheriff eyed me carefully. “I’m going to know when you’re lying, Miss Char.”
I didn’t want to ruin the trust we built, so I took another route. “No, I haven’t figured it out yet. I assume it has something to do with money, though.”
“Money cleaning, specifically.”
Deep down inside, I knew it should’ve been obvious. “Ah.”
“Make sense?”
I shoved a fork full of rice and gravy into my mouth.
I nodded my head because I knew that if I opened my mouth, I’d never stop talking.
Money laundering, too? Along with the guns?
I wanted to be shocked. I wanted to be the kind of woman that got shocked over things like that.
Dainty and cute. A walking bubble of sunshine who everyone couldn’t help but smile at.
It no longer shocked me, though, the things I kept finding out about the guys.
I was jaded and scarred like that.
“So, anyway,” Nielson said as he turned his attention back to his to-go tray, “they met up with Doc and things were going according to plan as they had done several times before.”
“Several times?” I asked with my mouth full. “Repeat customer?”
He nodded. “They have a few of those. I don’t know any particular inner workings. But Doc wasn’t a first timer. From the little that I know, they’ve done at least five different appointments with one another.”
“What was the signal he threw?”
“I don’t know what the original signal is. You’ll have to ask the guys about that one. What I do know is that the signal is only supposed to be thrown if one party or the other knows someone is watching them.”
I blinked. “So ‘Doc threw the signal’ is code for ‘someone’s watching what we’re doing’?”
He pointed his fork at me. “Bingo.”
Jesus, was everything in code for these guys? I thought back to that time when I overheard Gauge talking at the bottom of my steps. Something about a doctor’s appointment that he had to keep. Was that what we were talking about?
Was this the doctor’s appointment he had to leave for?
It’s got to be. It doesn’t make sense with anything else.
However, if he knew about the signal and the appointment with Doc, I wondered if he knew…
“What happened to Bait?” I asked.
Sheriff Nielson paused as his eyes locked with his green beans. “An explosion.”
“You know what I mean.”
He took a bite of his fried chicken, and I knew what that meant.
He tried to keep his jaw busy. He tried to gather his thoughts.
Was he not supposed to tell me? Maybe not allowed?
I wracked my brain for any reason as to why the guys wouldn’t want me to know what happened to Bait.
After all, none of them talked about it.
After our little memorial service for him, he was barely mentioned.
It almost felt like Bait deserved better than that.
“Him and Rat were?—”
I watched the sheriff gather his thoughts as he dropped his fork and sat back.
“Take your time, there’s no rush,” I said softly.
He tilted his head up toward the sky. “Bait and Rat were attacked by a professional squad at their mechanic shop on the other side of our sleepy little town. Bait was taken, Rat was left behind so beaten and battered and bruised that you could hardly recognize him.”
I resisted the urge to interject as he leveled his head out over his shoulders and closed his eyes.
“From what’s been told to me, and what we found at the site of carnage later that day, was the site of an explosion. There was an old, decommissioned underground bunker out there in the desert. They were really popular back during the Cold War. Only the best for the best and all that shit.”
I grabbed my tea and took a long pull as he chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“There was a trap,” he said as his voice hiccupped, “apparently. He was strapped to a bomb in a chair, and the guys couldn’t?—”
I blinked back tears as Nielson shook his head.
“They did everything they could, but they?—”
I swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
He sniffled and cleared his throat. “I’m almost convinced that bitch was in the squad that took Bait.”
“I could almost guarantee it.”
He blinked. “You what?”
I set my drink back down. “I know a few details from that day. Key little details that, with your context, make a hell of a lot of sense.”
“Like what?”
“Again, I don’t know all of the details.
Just a few key ones. But I know what Bait’s last words were, and Bait apparently told the guys that a woman’s last words to him in the back of the van they tossed him into was ‘an eye for an eye.’ Which, by the way, is the same van one of your officers gave her to drive off in. ”
“I know,” was all he said.
I furrowed my brow. “You know?”
He leaned forward. “And you’re certain of this? About what you just told me?”
I made a mental note to wrap back around to the van at a later time. “Yes. The guys and I have talked about it on a couple of occasions.”
“And he specifically said a woman?”
I nodded. “Yes. He says that a woman told him, ‘an eye for an eye.’ I’ve tried to help the guys figure out what that means because we know it has to be important.”
“That crazy fucking bitch,” he hissed.
“I’ve got no way to prove this, but my gut tells me that the woman you’re referencing, the woman he’s referencing, the woman we’re chasing, and the woman who’s coming to interview me are one and the same.”
“Interview you?”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward. “Interview you for what?”
And just like that, it was my turn to regale him with the conversations I had with the woman face to face.
I closed my eyes and ran through the memories in order, trying to piece them together in some form of a visible timeline for us to chew on.
I talked with him about the first time I knew she was watching me like a hawk.
You know, when she pinpointed the fact that Dallas and I were sleeping together.
I told him about how she drugged the guys, and how it was all in an attempt to get me away from them because of how she knew me.
I even told him about our connection. About how she was one of the arresting officers in my father’s case. The second my lips moved, they didn’t stop until I turned over every detail, expounded on every action, and explained every single motive on my end.
And when I was done, there was an unfamiliar look in the sheriff’s eye.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head softly. “I’m so sorry.”
I blinked. “For what?”
He tilted his head. “For everything you’ve endured.”
I sighed heavily. “Please, tell me we’ve got enough on this bitch to do something about her.”
He searched my stare for a long time before he responded. “You know, when Deacon came to me and told me that one of their monthly stipends would be late, I dug around and bugged him for some answers.”
“Is the department struggling financially?”
He snickered. “What department isn’t?”
I snickered along with him. “This is true.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, what I meant was it had never happened before. You know, up until now. They’d never been late on any sort of payment, not even when Axel ran things. I knew something was up the second he came by and told me himself.”
“He felt responsible.”
“Exactly, and at first, I just wanted to figure out why. He gave me the usual spiel anyone would give in that situation, you know, needing an extension on time just to get things and affairs in order. He blamed it on them making moves to purchase the bar?—”
“Wait, you knew they were going to purchase the bar?”
He held his gaze with mine. “I did, yeah.”
I guess it shouldn’t have shocked me. But I had to know.
“Is Miss Lilly happy?”
He leaned forward and outstretched his hand, placing it gingerly over mine. “As happy as I’ve ever heard her, Char.”
My eyes watered over. “Promise? Because I don’t—have a very good track record with—with mother figures, and all that.”