A few days had passed since Chew and Dante’s meet with Topher at Club 56 and a lot had changed since. Chew had made his way back to Dante’s place, taken what little things he had, and tracked down a friend from the old days that was willing to put him up for a night. John Cade had been a few years beneath him at school and the two had run together back in the wild days for a minute before Cade decided it wasn’t for him. He’d gone straight whilst Chew was inside and found God or something. Chew hadn’t cared enough to ask and he could tell from the fear in Cade’s eyes when he’d shown up on his doorstep that he wasn’t about to turn him down. As much as Chew hated to admit it there was a part of him that felt proud he could still make people feel that.

He thought he’d wake up the next morning and find a dozen or so text messages from Dante asking where he was at but instead he woke to a missed call from number he didn’t recognize. To his surprise it was Ten Pickett Bowling informing him that the position there was his if he wanted it. Chew didn’t want it but he was doubly certain he didn’t want to go back to his old life after his meet with Topher the other night and this was the only option he had open that wasn’t that.

So there Chew Lewis stood, six foot six of solid muscle, wearing a bright yellow polo shirt with red trim that was several sizes too small and a bright red cap with a bowling pin attached to it with a spring. He greeted the scant visitors to the bowling alley as they filed in and helped them exchange their shoes for ones that wouldn’t have them falling on their asses at the lanes. That was the work. It wasn’t pretty, it surely wasn’t interesting, but it was better than getting blown to pieces on behalf of some Italian that was too dense to see he was walking in to a death trap. If Dante wanted to march right into it with him that was on him.

On his second day at Ten Pickett Bowling a familiar face appeared at the doorway in the late afternoon. There in a dark blue coat and a pair of dark trousers stood Gus Harris. He’d been friends with Chew’s father back in the day to hear him tell it but Chew had never heard a soul verify that tale. The only tales Chew had heard about Gus before he went inside was that he’d been an addict once upon a time. It was hard to believe at the time and even harder to believe now that Chew laid eyes on him.

“Charles,” Gus said with a warm smile. “It’s good to see you.”

Chew nodded by way of recognition. “Gus.”

He took a glance towards the back office at his manager and signaled to him that he was taking his break. With a nonchalant point towards the exit, Chew led Gus out of the bowling alley to the side of the building and the two men leant against the side of it. Chew reached inside his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, sliding it between his lips, before offering one to Gus. Gus shook his head and placed his hands in his pockets.

“I’m glad to see you’ve landed on your feet, Charles.”

Chew exhaled a little, smiling wryly as he took a puff of his cigarette. “If you can call this landing on your feet.”

Gus shrugged.

“Well, it’s not going to land you back in prison and it puts a bit of money in your pocket. That’s a start.”

Towards the end of his time in prison Chew had started receiving letters from Gus. At first he’d throw them away without reading them, bemused at their having arrived for him after all those years, but eventually he began to treasure them. Chew had never exactly been one for reading, he imagined he’d have led a very different life if he had been, but those letters meant something to him even if he had trouble admitting it.

He flicked the plastic bowling pin atop his work cap and looked at the deacon with an expectant look.

“What do you want? A thank you for the letters or something?”

“I don’t want anything,” Gus said earnestly. “I was speaking with your nephew the other day and it occurred to me that I ought to drop in on you and see how you were doing.”

Chew grimaced slightly at the mention of Antwan’s name, he still felt bad for the way he’d brushed his nephew off that day and passing the courts each day on his way to work hadn’t helped. It was on those courts he'd trained Antwan, put him through his paces, tried his best to instil in him some discipline that might help him get out of this place and become more than Marcus or he had managed.

He looked at Gus with a sigh and muttered, “And? How am I doing?”

Gus smiled.

“A lot better than last time we spoke.”

Chew shrugged as he glanced down at the deep slash marks on his wrists. “Yeah, well, that’s not saying much.”

He’d never spoken to a soul outside of Gus about it. Not Dante, not Michelle, not even the doctors in the infirmary that pleaded with him to open up to them about it. Growing up he’d always heard that you only did two days in prison, the day you went in and the day you went out, but the reality was harsher than that and had worn on a man even as tough as Chew Lewis.

Gus reached out and placed a hand on Chew's shoulder. “You know you can always come to me if you ever need somebody to talk to, Charles.”

“I come to work every morning and then go home at night,” Chew said with another puff of his cigarette, moving his arm out from beneath Gus' hand. “It doesn't exactly make for great conversation. Trust me.”

“What about Antwan and Michelle? Have you spoken with them?”

Chew shook his head. “The kid came past Dante’s place last week, all starry-eyed and shit, even brought me a present.”

“He’s a good kid, a little mixed-up, but he has a good heart.”

From the sounds of it Gus knew more about Antwan than Chew did. Gus knew more about everyone than Chew or anyone else did. There wasn’t a doorway in Norman that Gus hadn’t darkened, not an old lady’s hand he hadn’t held and prayed with, and as much as Chew might have been able to scare the John Cades of the world he’d never command the respect Gus was able to with a softly-spoken word. It was humbling.

If he’d had another chance at life Chew thought he’d have done something else with his life, something that earned people’s respects without having to beat it out of them, but he knew whatever shot he had at that was long gone. This was his life. Working at Ten Pickett Bowling and living vicariously through what he read of his nephew’s achievements in the local paper. Word was there was a game tonight.

“Yeah, well, that’s why I sent him away,” Chew muttered. “Michelle don’t want me anywhere near him after what went down with Marcus and I can’t say I blame her for that.”

Gus’ eyes opened slightly at the mention of Marcus’ name. “Do you think of him often?”

Chew he stared down at the ground beside his feet. Everywhere he looked there were reminders of Marcus and they seemed to be coming faster and thicker with each day he was back in Norman.

“Every single day.”

He took one last heavy drag of his cigarette, flicked the butt towards the sidewalk, and placed the red cap atop his head with a sigh. He could feel the bowling pin atop it swinging back and forth farcically as he turned to face Gus Harris and smiled politely, his eyes glazed over somewhat as if lost in a fog of memories of his lost friend.

“I better get back to work. Shoes aren't about to hand themselves out now, are they?”

John Norman didn't completely black out after Jed stomped him. It was more like a brownout that had flights of consciousness that would quickly be followed by dimming periods that felt like a second had passed, but John could tell serious chunk of time had passed in between. He was pretty sure he was concussed. Even in his state, he had a good idea of where he was. His face was against what felt like the floor of a car and his hands and legs were tied together by what felt like cheap nylon rope. They were moving somewhere. The car he was in would bump and stir occasionally, the bumps sending waves of pain through his battered face. John browned out again and felt no movement through the car. They were parked wherever they were. Something was pressed against his back. Something big and bulky. To John, it felt like another person.

A pneumatic hiss sounded behind him. Someone lifted the hatch of a car. Rough hands grabbed him and pulled him out the back of an SUV. He stood on wobbly legs. Crickets were sounding in the dark, and the smell the lake wafted through his nose. A light from somewhere shined. John could make out Jed's tall and muscular frame in the dim light. But the skinny man holding the Coleman lantern beside him let John know he was in some serious shit.

Jim Brown. A first-rate psycho and his cousin, John's grandpa Mike and Jim Brown's grandma being brother and sister. Another fine branch grown from that twisted and rotten Norman Family Tree. Both men had those small, harsh eyes everyone called Norman eyes. Jim Brown's eyes were always distorted by his thick glasses. Tonight, he wore a pair of black leather gloves.

"Hey, Johnny," he said, softly slapping John with a glove-clad hand. "You with me?"

"Yeah," John said groggily.

Jim Brown said, "Sounds like he's got a concussion."

"Good," said Jed. "This'll make it easier."

A knife blade snapped open somewhere in the dark. John began to struggle, but stopped when the blade cut the binds on his leg. Jed held his powerful hands around his shoulders and kept him still as Jim Brown cut the rope holding his arms together. He was free for all of a half second before Jed spun John around to face him. He backhanded him with his left hand, sending John's already hurting face aflame with more pain. He stumbled backwards in the dark before his foot found a tree root that tripped him up and sent him falling into the dirt. Jed's hands grabbed John again and hoisted him up. He tossed John like a rag doll farther into the woods. He felt my body slam against something solid and meaty, His head knocking against the ground.

John browned out again, this time coming to as the car that had carried him here was pulling away, its engine fading in the distance. His head rested against whatever it was he had fallen on. A solid, weighty object was resting on his back just below the shoulder blades. His buzzed brain made a connection to his gun. he groped for the thing on his back with my right hand. It was a gun, just not his gun. It was someone else's. He held on to the gun with his right while he groped through the dark with his left, feeling what he landed against. John felt flesh and fat and quickly rolled away in horror. It took him a few minutes to get to his feet. When he did, he pulled his cell phone out and used its light to shine on the body on the ground.

Laying face up on a bed of pine needles, his glassy eyes staring up into the night sky, was Howard Beggs. Or that's what John thought was Howard Beggs, since he was missing a face and all. The shock of using a fresh corpse as a pillow sent John reeling back through the dark as far away from Beggs' body as possible. He tripped on another root and was sent flat on his ass in the middle of the fallen leaves and needles. His teeth clicked together and rattled his jaw, the gun slipped from his hands as he sprawled out on the ground just a few feet away from the dead body. John groped in the darkness for the gun, found it, and squinted at it in the dark. Not his gun... but now it had his fingerprints all over it.

"Son of a bitch."

And that was when he saw the headlights headed his way.

--

John picked himself up from the ground as quick as he could. The headlights were bumping along with the unpaved trail the car was riding on. He tucked his phone into his pants before staring at the gun in the dark. It wasn't his, but it had his fingerprints on it. There was no way in hell that this wasn't the murder weapon that killed Beggs. He had to get rid of it. John tucked it into his jacket and ran through the woods. His body smacked against bushes and branches. A small branch slapped against his already injured face, causing his vision to dim. John's knees wobbled and threatened to give out from the pain. He ignored it, fought against it, and kept going.

He was maybe a hundred yards away from the original spot where he was left when the car come to a stop. John slid behind an old oak tree to watch what happened next. The headlights shined on Beggs' body, illuminating him and the immediate area. A door opened and a figure stepped out. The person left the door open and walked towards Beggs' body. A police radio inside the car let out a burst of static, then a dispatcher's voice saying something unintelligible from this far away.

The person stood over Beggs and crouched down over the body. John started backing away in the dark as quickly and quietly as he could. Whoever was looking at Beggs stood up and stared for a long time in the darkness. John stayed frozen a few feet behind the oak tree, his heartbeat roaring in his ears. Finally, the hidden person relented and headed back to the car. John crouched down and watched the car do a U-turn on the dirt path and go back the way they came.

Back in the dark, he began to blindly search out through the woods and kept going away from the dirt road. Whoever had come to look at Beggs' body had left, but they still had to be out here and watching the road. After all, whoever it was, they were a cop. A cop waiting for a murderer to show up with the murder weapon. John's hands touched the gun in his pocket on instinct. He stopped and pulled it out, ejecting the clip into his hands. He couldn't see it in the dark, but just based on weight alone it was lighter than a full clip.

Jed and Jim Brown hadn't killed him, but they might as well have. He ran through the events of the last few days... he was going all over town, looking for Beggs and saying the man owed him money... and now he was dead and John clearly looked like he had been in a fight. To John, that sounded like the perfect conditions of just about every murder that happens in a hick town. He pulled his phone out and shut it off. The last thing he wanted was to give the cops a chance to track him with it, even though it didn't have a signal. The area around the lake was where cell phone signals go to die. Ongoing theory as to why there are no cell towers nearby is so that all those fishers and boaters out on the lake wouldn't be bothered by phone calls from their wives.

John put the clip and gun back into his pocket and kept slowly walking. The trees and the canopy above got lighter and lighter as he walked, more stars coming through to provide a little light. Finally, after what felt like an hour, he came to the gentle slope where the trees stopped and the lake started. A crescent moon hang in the sky that night and it shone down to provide a little light on the area. It was a cove tucked away from the lake. A semi-circle of trees ran from start to finish around the cove. John knew this place. I'd been fishing here a time or two. As the crow flies, it was maybe two miles from Jenkins Mill.

He walked towards the water and pulled the gun from his jacket. He gripped the barrel firmly and tossed the gun out into the lake. It made a small splash and disappeared into the dark waters of the lake. He had no intention of making this frame up easy for those sons of bitches. They wanted to charge him with murder, they'd have to work for it. With the gun disposed, he headed towards the general direction of Jenkins Mill. It was slow going. He walked carefully to avoid injury and anybody who may be out here looking for him. As quietly as he tried to walk, the woods didn't make it easy. Dried leaves, twigs, pine cones, and whatever else you can think of was out there. It was like nature itself was conspiring against him.

He finally turned his phone back on at about one in the morning. It said it had a signal, only two bars, but it was enough. John knew only person he could trust to come get him and actually keep their mouths shut about it. But damn if he didn't want to make that call. Finally, he worked up the nerve and it went about as well as John expected. He told him to park right down the road from Jenkins Mill and then turned off his phone again. John figured turning his phone back on was probably a major mistake, but he had to risk it. It was fifteen miles back to Pickett, and no way in hell he could walk all that way in the woods with someone out there watching the road.

An hour later, he emerged from the trees. John kept low and walked towards the parked Cadillac car sitting at the dirt pull off beside the road. His knuckles rapped on the driver's side window, waking the driver with a start.

"Wakey wakey," he said.

"Little shit," Mike Norman said hatefully. He turned on the car's interior light and rolled down the window. His mean look disappeared when he could see part of John's beaten face. "The hell happened to you?"

"I'll explain on the way to Jardin," John said, opening the driver's door. "I'm driving."

It was game night in Norman and every warm black body in the county had flocked to watch Antwan Dixon play off the back of his fifty-nine point performance earlier in the week. Antwan took to the court for the shootaround in preparation of the game ahead without a worry on his mind. The crowd buzzed with excitement every time he knocked down a shot even though the game hadn’t even started and each time it happened Antwan felt more and more confident. He took a glance up into the stands and saw Jayson sat beside his mother and smiled in their direction. He was going to put on a show tonight that they would never forget now his mind was back where it should have been all along. Getting them out of this nowhere town.

From behind him amidst the buzz of the crowd Antwan heard a familiar voice calling out to him.

“Antwan.”

He looked round and saw Roland Spencer waving in his direction from besides the stands. A pair of black sunglasses sat over his eyes and his lip was swollen and pink but his suit made him hard to spot. Antwan looked back round, clapping in the direction of one of his teammates for a ball, and continued to shoot the ball as if he hadn’t noticed Roland standing there. He would talk with him once he was done.

A few shots later he heard Roland’s voice calling out to him once more. “Antwan, stop a minute and talk to me, son.”

He turned to see that this time Roland had crept from the stands to near the sideline and could see Coach Calhoun in the corner of his eye watching on. Coach disapproved of Roland’s presence at the games almost as much as Antwan’s mother and given the scolding Coach had given him after finding out about the weed, Antwan couldn’t afford any more distractions.

“I need to warm up, Roland, I don’t have time to talk. Tonight’s important.”

“You don’t have time to talk?” Roland said with a shake of his head, the hurt apparent in his voice. “What the hell is going on? You’ve been avoiding me ever since that little incident with the Sheriff’s Department.”

Antwan didn’t know how Roland had managed to get that to go away and Antwan had thought better of asking him, especially after his conversation with the deacon. The more he thought about it and all the things that Roland had done for him, the more Antwan began to worry that something more was going on here than he let on.

“It’s not that,” Antwan sighed. “I’ve been thinking, I guess, things have been a little hectic. It’s not about that.”

One of Roland’s bushy eyebrows cocked above his sunglasses. “You sure? It sure as hell seems like it.”

Antwan glanced up at the stands at his mother and Jayson as he mulled over how to approach what was about to happen. Roland had been a friend to him for years and despite everything Antwan still considered him a friend. He’d been there for him when even his mother hadn’t been and that meant something to him, but things had got out of hand. He caught his mother’s eye and she nodded at him resolutely as if urging him on. Antwan cleared his throat as he ran a hand through his hair and then looked at Roland with a brief smile.

“My moms wants me to give the car back, Roland, and I told her I’d do it.”

Roland let out a chuckle. “What? Why? That car is yours, son.”

“I don’t want it anymore,” Antwan said with a shrug. "So you do whatever it is you need to do. Take it back, sell it, or give it back to whoever you took it from, man."

Roland swiped his sunglasses from his brow and thrust them into the inside pocket of his oversized suit, reaching out for Antwan by the arm, and holding onto it firmly.

“You don’t like it? I can get you another one, Antwan, a bigger one if you want. You want some rims? We’ll get you rims. Whatever it is you want, son, I’ll get you. You hear me?”

Antwan tugged his arm free of Roland’s grasp angrily.

“Why are you always trying to buy me, man?”

A lock of shock appeared on Roland’s face. “What?”

“If you’re my friend then be my friend, Roland, I don’t need all these things.”

Roland stared at him silently as he visibly tried to find the words to convey how he felt. Antwan watched as his benefactor, his friend, looked as if he ran the gauntlet of emotions in the span of twenty seconds. First hurt, then anger, then sadness, before finally returning back to hurt, a wounded expression laid bare for all to see on his face.

“After all I’ve done for you, this is how you’re going to do me? This isn’t right, Antwan.”

Antwan felt a pang of guilt. It wasn’t the same guilt he had felt when he’d lost his temper with his mother or the guilt he’d felt when he found out Jayson had tried to take the rap for him. It was obligation instead of affection. For a second he wondered whether he’d gone too far but another glance in his mother’s direction in the stands helped steel him and assure him of the necessity of what he’d said. He looked at Roland and shook his head gently.

“It ain’t like that.”

Roland stood there as if looking through him and from behind Antwan the sound of Coach Calhoun’s voice bellowing in his direction reminded Antwan where he was and what he was meant to be doing. He placed a hand up towards Coach to assure him he was coming.

“Look, I need to warm up,” Antwan said as he began to jog over to centre court. “We’ll speak after the game.”

*****

He wasn’t sure what had happened or how it had happened but for the first time in his what seemed like forever Jayson had seen Antwan have a bad game. So bad that his team was down by eight points at home with little over a minute left on the clock. Every shot that Antwan had put up had looked wrong the second it had left his hand and Jayson had lost count of the number that had clanged loudly against the rim. Something was wrong. He’d watched from the stands with Michelle as Antwan had spoken with Roland on the sidelines and wondered whether maybe that had thrown him off his game, but whatever had happened Antwan looked like a completely different person out there. There was less than a minute in the game and he had eleven points, eight of which had come from the line, and turned the ball over countless times.

Something was definitely wrong.

There was still time though. Jayson had watched enough basketball in his life to know that there was always a way back. Tracy McGrady had scored eleven points in thirty seconds, Reggie Miller had scored eight in nine seconds, and Jayson knew that one day people Antwan’s name would be up in lights with theirs. If anyone could bring their team back from the precipice, it was Antwan Dixon.

Except this time he couldn’t do it. They inbounded the ball to Antwan and instead of driving to the basket or pulling up for a three, he was caught in a double team in the corner and lost possession of the ball, within seconds the ball was being dunked emphatically through the basket. Antwan looked shell-shocked. Jayson watched as the crowd sat in cowed silence, some even shouting abuse toward the court, and shook his head in disbelief at what was happening.

The final forty-five seconds passed in the blink of an eye and the opposing team’s fans came streaming onto the court. Antwan stood with a blank expression and tried to navigate his way through them and towards the locker room. As he walked, one of the opposing fans stood in his way and screamed jubilantly in his face and Antwan shoved him away from him. Jayson leapt from his seat and descended down the stands towards his friend, intent on stopping him from getting himself into any more trouble than he’d gotten into this week.

He placed one of his hands on his friend’s shoulder as if to stop him lashing out at the fan. “Antwan.”

Antwan’s eyes were glassy with welled up tears, the rage was clear on his face, but it softened somewhat as he recognised that it was Jayson stood there next to him.

He gestured towards the exit. “Let’s get out of here.”

Jayson took a glance back at Michelle up in the stands and pointed towards the exit of the gymnasium and she nodded, understanding, and began to descend down the stairs. Slowly Jayson and Antwan made their way through the crowd with Jayson making use of his impossibly broad frame to bulldoze through the crowd. Antwan was hurting. He wanted him out of there as soon as possible.

They didn’t talk as they made it to the exit of the gymnasium and Jayson knew better than to comfort his friend, at least not out in the open where everyone could see. Antwan wasn’t used to failure, he’d never had to encounter it before in his life, having willed every team he’d ever been on to victory since before he was thirteen. This would eat away at him, motivated him to become a better player, and he’d come back next year bigger and better than before. Jayson was sure of it.

The cold air hit Jayson like a truck as he opened the gymnasium door and escorted Antwan through it. From behind him he could hear the cacophony of cheering fans and drums being played. He scanned through the crowd for Michelle’s face to make sure she was making good progress after them and followed Antwan out.

People had begun to file out of the gym after them and even in the light of the gym behind them it was difficult to see much further than a few paces ahead of them. Jayson made sure to keep his friend in his sight, placing his hand on his back as they walked, as they drew nearer to the beaten down old truck Jayson had driven them there in.

Suddenly in the darkness a figure stepped out in front of them. Jayson could barely make out his face beneath the black hoodie he was wearing but as they got closer something about him seemed familiar.

The boy smiled and reached into the waistband of his jeans. “You remember me, motherfucker?”

The moon shone along the length of the gun in the boy’s hand just long enough for Jayson to spot it and make a move. There was a loud bang as Jayson’s arms wrapped around Antwan and tackled him to the ground. From behind them the disgruntled fans that had been filing out of the gym were screaming and scattering. From atop Antwan, Jayson looked around at the boy in the hoodie, whose hands were shaking with fear as he stared down at them. He dropped the gun and sprinted off into the darkness.

“Jayson?” Antwan said from beneath him. “Jayson? You good?”

Jayson nodded, shocked. “I’m good, man.”

He attempted to push himself off of Antwan but found his arms too weak to support his own weight. A confused look appeared on his face as he reached down, placing a hand on his stomach, and felt his fingers run over a patch on his coat that was soaking wet. He lifted his fingers up to the light to look at the liquid to find them blood red. Slowly a feeling of unease set in it dawned on Jayson what had happened and he stared down at Antwan, his eyes beginning to flicker in his head.

“Jayson?”

He fell with a heavy thud atop Antwan and the world went black. He could hear the sound of Antwan shouting for help, calling out for someone to call an ambulance, as he wriggled out from underneath him. It was cold, so cold, all but for Antwan’s fingers interlocked between his own. He couldn’t see him, he could barely hear him anymore, but as he drifted out of consciousness he knew that when he opened his eyes he’d seen Antwan again. He had to.

Who would look out for him otherwise? He was his best friend.

Stay still," Strange said.

John Norman lay on his back on the dirty trailer floor. He looked up at the once white ceiling that was now a dull brown and dotted with water stains from a leaky roof. His eyes glanced towards Strange as he placed his rough hands on John's cheeks. "Take a deep breath and don't flinch. I'm going on the count of three. One... three!"

Strange's hands squeezed John's nose and twisted it back into place. It made a loud pop and he yelled. The stabbing pain in John's face filled his vision with tiny black dots that danced and swirled around the water stains on the ceiling.

"There we go," Strange said, patting John's shoulder. "You can sit up."

He did and leaned against the back cushion on the couch. Strange handed him a beer and a dish towel wrapped around ice cubes. John sipped the beer with one hand while he held the towel to his swollen and bruised face with the other. Strange walked around the living room cluttered with empty beer cans, cigarette packs, and yellowing newspapers. He sat down in the recliner facing the couch and lit up a cigarette. Strange was junkie skinny, wearing a light brown t-shirt and a pair of torn jeans. His auburn hair was cut short in a military style high and tight.

By John's recollection, Strange had only been home from prison for about six months. He'd shipped out with the Army right after high school, like a lot of young boys in Pickett did when they didn't have the brains for college or the skills for industry. The Army trained him as a medic and then his division had shipped out to Afghanistan. Something happened over there, John wasn't sure what, but he'd turned to morphine and pain pills for comfort. He got caught stealing from a field hospital and was sent packing. He'd served time at an Army prison somewhere out in Kansas before they sent him back home to Pickett.

To his credit, he found a way to make his training work for him. He ran a backwoods clinic out of his trailer, helping people with various injuries for money or pills. Might not sound like a good idea, but the closest hospital was thirty miles away, and he always catered to the fringes of society that didn't like to deal with things like health insurance or police reports.

"Give it to me straight, doc," John said after a sip of beer. "Will I ever be able to play violin again?"

"Unless you're playing with your face, I don't see why not," he said in between cigarette puffs. "You got a mild concussion. That and the dislocated nose were the worse of it. Your face is gonna hurt like hell for a while, but it'll get better."

The screen door opened and Mike came in. He looked at John and then at Strange. "Got him fixed up?"

"Best as I could," Strange said. He leaned forward and looked at both of us anxiously. "Now, about..."

Mike said, "Here," and tossed a half-empty pill bottle underhanded towards Strange.

Strange caught them with one hand and quickly opened the childproof cap. He eyed the tiny tablets inside the bottle the way a jeweler eyes a diamond, scrutinizing everything in sight. Strange looked up at Mike and then nodded. Then he took three tablets and tossed them into his mouth. Instead of swallowing, he chewed them up. Chewing instead of swallowing lead to a faster high, or so the junkies thought.

"I had those left over from my rotator cuff surgery," Mike said to John.

"When'd you have surgery?" He asked.

"Few months ago," Mike said with a shrug. "Wasn't anything to make a big deal about. He ready to go?"

"Oh, yeah," Strange said, his eyes already glazing over from the painkillers. "But he should avoid running into any fists from now on. Also, he should stay awake a few more hours just to be safe. Take my advice. I may not be a doctor, but that's because I'm not a major cunt."

Strange sunk down in his chair as the pills started to take effect. Mike looked over at John before heading out the door. He followed Mike out the screen door and down the porch of Strange's trailer. They walked across the cluttered yard filled with flat tires and fallen leaves towards his Cadillac.

"I got some more pills in case you need any," Mike said after starting the car. "Face doesn't look that bad once you got the blood wiped away."

"Yeah," he said, looking into the car's rearview mirror. His nose was swollen and his cheeks were puffy with a collection of small scratches and cuts on the forehead and chin. A shiner circled his left eye where Jed had connected with his fist. Strange was right that he was lucky to not be hurt worse. John was sure Jed could have made it a whole lot worse if he had wanted to.

They rode in silence back towards town. John told Mike the story on the drive up to Strange's trailer, everything from Parker's impressment of his services up until he got in Mike's car that night. He stayed quiet after that and hadn't said a word until coming into the trailer after Strange had fixed him up. John could almost hear the gears spinning in his head.

"We can be in Atlanta in two and a half hours," he finally said when they were halfway back to town. "Or Charlotte in three. I got enough cash to get you a one-way ticket somewhere. You can be off the plane and gone where ever you need to hide before the sheriff's department even knows what the hell is going on."

John put his hands up, a fruitless gesture in the dark. "Wait, I don't want to do that."

"You think you got a choice, boy? They tried to frame you for murder. You may have chunked that weapon, but the fix is still on and you can't get out from under it if you're still walking around Pickett."

"Let them arrest me," John said. "They can do one of those gunshot residue tests on me and see I didn't fire a weapon at all."

"You think it'll get that far?" Mike asked with a hollow and bitter laugh. "That cop they sent after you was there for a reason, boy, as was the extra rounds they left in that gun. You cannot be allowed to live. They would have come up with some bullshit about you resisting arrest, say you took a shot at the deputy and then gun you down."

"Nobody would think I'd be that stupid to try and kill a police officer."

"You're a Norman," Mike said dissmissvely. "You wouldn't be the first one of us to take a shot at a cop."

John sat in the dark, stewing in silence while the car sped south on the winding highway towards town. Mike was right, and he knew that. Who better to set up with murder than a Norman? Wouldn't surprise anybody at all if John suddenly snapped and went to killing people. He was always the "weird one" of the family, the one who had to go his own way. In truth he should have been running so fast you'd see nothing of him but asses and elbows... but then again.

"No," he said after a minute. "I want to see how this plays out. Jed and Jim Brown set me up, and I want to know why. I want to know what was so damn important about a shitheel like Beggs."

That was all true to a certain extent but he left out the real reason why he wanted to stick around: Carol. She was all mixed up in this some way, and he wanted to know how. He wanted to find her and make sure she was safe and protect her. He was high on some macho romanticism bullshit, letting it override his common sense. Then there was another deeper reason he wanted to say. He looked out at the pines as they passed by in the dark. Pickett County was all he knew. Save for a few stints in prison, he spent his entire life here. He was Pickett and Pickett was him, it was in his blood. Go to Atlanta or Charlotte? And do what exactly? Work at a fucking Dollar General? No. He had this town, his crop, and his name.

He didn't realize it, but he was as much a fiend as Strange. Instead of oxy and codeine as his drug of choice, it was a woman and a county. This world he lived in, this shadow world where Southern good ole boys and crime and violence all interconnect was his world. He kept chasing that high of a good drug deal, muscling a someone who owed him money, of running scams and pulling one over on as many people as possible.

And like a lot of junkies, he was now paying a steep price for that high.

Roland Spencer’s car came to a halt on the gravel outside of the hospital and he sat in it for a few moments considering whether to go inside. It had been a little over four hours since he’d argued with Antwan courtside before the game. Roland remembered wondering how his night could get any worse as he watched Antwan put on the worst performance of his career in front of dozens of scouts. Then he’d heard the sound of a gun firing outside and his blood ran cold. Normally news spread fast in Norman but on this there was nothing. All Roland knew was that someone had taken a shot at Antwan and that his friend Jayson had been hit. He’d tried to get a hold of Michelle Lewis but she hadn’t answered her phone and Jayson’s mother was out of state for the weekend visiting relatives. The only reason Jayson was even still in Norman this weekend was to watch Antwan. Either way both or either of those boys were laid up in that hospital and Roland couldn’t help them sat outside.

He stepped out of the car and made his way across to the hospital. As the gravel crunched under his feet he heard Antwan from earlier that night. “If you’re my friend, be my friend,” the boy had said. Whatever had happened outside that gymnasium, whatever Billy Brown wanted out of him, Roland still cared for Antwan and he was certain the boy would need a friend now more than ever before. It took him some haggling at the desk but after a few minutes Roland was able to find out where Jayson and Antwan were.

He ascended up the narrow stairs of the hospital and felt his heart beating in his mouth with every step. It was hard not to presume the worst or wonder what would happen to him if Antwan had been hurt but Roland steeled himself and put all thoughts of his own interests to the back of his mind. As he reached the top of the stairs he saw a single light from a window along the long hallway of hospital rooms. A figure was stood in front of it.

It was Michelle Lewis. Having heard the footsteps she turned to face Roland and her tired, tear-sodden face became strewn with bitterness.

“What are you doing here?”

Roland lifted his hands into the air as he approached her to signify he meant no harm. “I’m not here to cause any trouble, Michelle.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

Roland sighed as he thought better of returning Michelle’s insults and instead he chose to stare into the hospital room. Antwan was sat alone beside an empty hospital bed with his head in his hands. The baby blue shorts and jersey were stained with what Roland could only presume was Jayson’s blood and his hands were covered in it. From the boys expression, from his outpouring of pain, Roland knew better than to ask what had happened. Jayson Aaron was dead. There was nothing Roland could do for Jayson but he could still help Antwan.

Roland gestured towards Antwan. “I wanted to see the boy, that’s all, make sure he was okay.”

Michelle wiped a tear from her cheek with the sleeve of her top and then glowered at Roland. She strained to keep her voice down to stop Antwan from overhearing.

“Okay? He watched his best friend die.”

“I understand that,” Roland said earnestly. “I was very fond of Jayson.”

It was true. Though he’d only met Jayson a handful of times he had heard Antwan speak glowingly about him on hundreds of occasions. They had played on the same basketball team growing up, spent birthdays and Christmases with one another, and if Roland had heard correctly Jayson had even stepped up on that whole weed thing. Roland glanced at Antwan sat alone in that hospital room and thought for a second about what he’d say to him. Whether there was anything he could say.

As he turned back he saw Michelle’s face staring back at him. This time her glower was even more poisonous and she made no attempt to keep her voice down.

“I knew something like this would happen, I warned Antwan. You’re a bad influence, Roland, you throwing all that blood money of yours at my baby, giving him cars. It was your fault this happened. You put Jayson in the ground, not the boy that pulled the trigger. You hear me?”

A tall shadow was cast over the pair of them as Antwan appeared from the hospital room. His eyes were swollen red from crying and blood was caked in his curly hair.

“Ma,” Antwan pleaded, his voice waving with desperation. “Stop.”

Michelle went to speak but Roland cut over her, taken aback by how distressed the boy was.

“Are you okay, Antwan?”

Antwan nodded feebly.

“Can we go for a drive or something? I need to clear my head.”

“Have you spoken to the Sheriff’s Department?” Roland asked. “They’re going to want to talk to you.”

“I just want to go for a drive, I don’t want to be here anymore, man.”

Roland nodded and placed his arm around Antwan and gestured towards the stairs at the end of the hallway silently. He could feel the boy shaking in his arms and they began to walk. A pair of hands grasped one of Antwan’s bloodstained hands and tried to pull him free from beneath Roland’s arm.

“No,” Michelle commanded angrily. “You’re not going with him. He is the reason all of this happened, Antwan. You’re staying here with me. You understand me? That man is poison.”

Roland watched on awkwardly, choosing to bite his tongue given the circumstances, and gestured to Antwan that he could stay if he wanted. Instead Antwan shook his head with a dismissive sigh and pulled his hand free.

“Just stop, Mom.”

Roland saw Michelle’s face crumple with grief as if she had lost another son. On another day Roland would have scorned her for allowing her obsession with him to supersede the moment but he thought better of it. There had been enough ill will tonight. Somewhere out there Alicia Aaron had gone to sleep completely unaware that her old child was dead. The thought sobered Roland and he shook his head in Michelle’s direction, placed his arm around Antwan’s shoulder, and led him towards the exit.

“You’ll be okay, son.”


Michelle had waited at the hospital for a few hours for Antwan to return from his drive with Roland before it became clear that wasn’t going to happen. She had forgotten that it was Jayson that had given them a lift to the game that night and was stranded at the hospital for a time before she put in a call to Gus Harris. It had taken a few tries but eventually she had woken him and he had agreed to take her home. The journey home had been all but silent. Michelle could barely bring herself to talk about what had happened but Gus seemed to have heard from somewhere. He always seemed to have an idea what was going on in Norman. Though in her tiredness Michelle could swear that his sage-like calm was absent this morning. Gus seemed tetchy, annoyed even, but Michelle put that down to lack of sleep more than anything else.

When she arrived at her home the first thing she noticed was that some of Antwan’s things had gone. Roland must have brought him back here whilst she was waiting at the hospital. Were she not so tired she might have been spitting venom at the thought of that snake being in her home. Instead she close to slump into one of the wooden seats beside the table whilst Gus made her a much-needed coffee.

She blew on it to cool it down before taking a tentative sip that burned the tip of her tongue. She was too tired to care. Suddenly as if compelled out of her by some force outside of her control she found herself speaking.

“It still seems like a bad dream.”

Gus took a seat beside her and let out a tired sigh. “If only it were that.”

“He was such a good boy,” Michelle muttered. “He’d never hurt a soul in his life.”

At seventeen Jayson had been the size of an NFL lineman but not once had Michelle seen him throw his weight around. He was and always had been an empathetic boy that had kept Antwan grounded for the past decade. There wasn’t a soul in Norman that would have a bad word to say about him and without him Michelle wasn’t sure Antwan would make it. Especially not now that Roland had his hooks back into him.

“How is Antwan taking it?”

“Honestly? I couldn’t tell you,” Michelle admitted, ashamed she couldn’t tell Gus more. “He didn’t say a word at the hospital. I tried to get him to wash his hands, take those bloody clothes off, but he didn’t even move. He just sat there with his head in his hands until Roland arrived.”

Gus tutted.

“Jayson was his rock,” He said, drumming fingers along the table. “It’s going to take some time.”

Michelle felt ashamed that even as Jayson laid dead her thoughts where with Antwan instead of him. She hoped that word had reached Alicia or her people and that he wasn’t laid up in that hospital without anyone there for him. Nobody deserved that.

“Have they caught the son of a bitch that shot Jayson?”

Gus nodded. “Handed himself in a few hours ago.”

Her hands shook with rage as she thought about what she would do to Jayson’s killer if she ever laid eyes on him.

“Yeah, well I hope he never sees the outside of a cell again.”

She looked up at Gus to find that her show of vengeance was not matched in him. He wasn’t baying for the boy’s blood like Michelle was, nor did he seem to wish any harm on the boy, instead he seemed struck by a malaise that wouldn’t budge.

“His name is DeSean Hamilton. I’m going to see his great grandmother once I’m done here.”

Michelle almost spat out a mouthful of coffee at that. “What? Why? That boy killed Jayson.”

Gus shook his head in disbelief and set his cup of coffee down in exasperation.

“That he did, but in his pulling that trigger that woman lost a grandson too, Michelle. I thought you of all people would understand loss cuts both ways in a situation like this.”

Michelle remembered where she was when she learned that Marcus Dixon had been killed. It wasn’t hard to recall. She had been sat around this very table sobbing as her mother tried in vain to console her. She’d lost more than a lover or the father of her child that day, she had lost her brother too, and she knew Gus was making a veiled reference to it. She would have resented him for it had the truth in what he’d said not stung so much.

Everywhere you went in Norman history seemed to repeat itself and this was no exception. How long would it be before she was sat around this table crying because Antwan had been taken from her? As her thoughts drifted to her own son once more Gus stood up from his seat and reassured her he'd be back in the afternoon. Michelle set her head down on the table and closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep, as she heard her front door click shut behind Gus.

Sergeant Danny Johnson sat behind the wheel of his unmarked car and had to fight to keep from breaking down. He was in the parking lot of Brown's Grocery, parked near the road and away from all the cars. The last twelve or so hours had taken their toll on him. He was sound asleep when his wife woke him up with the phone. Work was calling. He got to the high school a half hour later and found a dead body. Jayson Aaron. Danny knew him in a roundabout way, his mother took him to the same church that Danny's family went to. Danny hadn't thought of him as a person. That was the key to keeping sane in a job like this. Even though another young black man from Norman was dead, he had to treat it dispassionately. Danny and Echols worked the scene, talked to witnesses, even went to the hospital and talked to the boy closest to the shooting.

Antwan Dixon hadn't had much to say, but who the hell could blame him? He'd watched his best friend die. By all eyewitness accounts, the boy saved Antwan's life by putting himself between Antwan and the shooter. Danny didn't want to bring it up with the boy. He could tell Antwan was playing the event over and over again in his mind. There was no insight to be gleaned by having him go over it again.

He and Echols were getting ready to try and compile what they knew about their suspect when Jean at the sheriff's department called Echols. The shooter turned himself in just a few hours after killing Jayson. Echols spent the rest of the night taking down the kid's statement while Danny tried to find Jayson's momma. He finally got in touch with her at eight this morning. She was out of town with her sisters in Charlotte. Danny had done so many death notifications over the years that he'd lost count, but Alicia Aaron followed the usual pattern of denial followed by complete mental breakdown. This was the second man she lost after Albert, Jayson's father and her husband, died of a heart attack six years ago. The boy was their only son and now she was completely alone.

That phone call nearly drove Danny over the edge because, as he heard Alicia's sobs, he pictured his own wife's breakdown if something ever happened to DJ. Not if, but more like when. If a good boy like Jayson could get gunned down, DJ didn't have a chance. Danny and Lesa both knew that, but they never talked about DJ anymore. It was like their only son just dropped off the face of the earth ever since that night he moved out of their house. He only lived three blocks away from their house, but Danny went out of his way to never run into the man who had his name.

Danny thought about finding DJ sprawled on the ground one night, bullets riddled in his body. The last thing he said to DJ when they last spoke was to get the fuck out of his house with that goddamn drug money. He bellowed that no son of his would help destroy this town and this community. He almost arrested him right there, but DJ ran out of the house and out of Danny's life that night.

Parked near the front of the grocery store was DJ's black Caprice. He worked here as a bagger, at least on paper. No way in hell a bag boy could afford that tricked out car, those name brand clothes, and that expensive furniture Danny saw movers moving into DJ's house. The Brown from Brown's Grocery came from DJ's real boss, the son of a bitch nobody ever seemed to want to talk about. Danny and Lesa always went out of town to do their grocery shopping, just on the off chance they ran into DJ inside.

The shit with Jayson's shooting made Danny want to go inside, find his boy, and wrap him in a big hug. He wanted to say he was sorry for driving him away, sorry that he had pushed him into the arms of Billy Brown, and he just wanted him to be safe and happy. That's what he wanted to say. He knew he'd never do it. He wasn't that type of father. Hugging and declarations of love were not his style, no matter how bad he wanted it to be.

His phone vibrating snapped him out of his thoughts. He collected himself before answering.

"This is Johnson."

"Danny, it's Scott."

"What's up, Major?"

"Need you to come out to the lake, near Jenkins Mill. We got another dead body, Danny. It's a murder."

Danny said he was on the way and hung up. Two murders within twelve hours of each other wasn't exactly a record in Pickett County, but it was the most the town had seen since those violent days back in the 80's, when the man Danny's son looked up to killed so many people, the creeks and river seemed to flow red with blood.

He cast one last look back at DJ's car before he started up his unmarked and pulled out the parking lot.

No more Vontae Carters. Those were the words that went round and round Gus’ head as he made the drive up to Renee Hamilton’s old house on the hill overlooking the train tracks that marked the end of Pickett and the start of Norman. Less than a fortnight ago he had promised himself he’d do everything in his power to bring an end to the senseless murders that had blighted his community and now Jayson Aaron was dead. Gus tried to keep his cool, tell himself there was nothing more he could have done, but every inch closer he drew to the old Hamilton house he damned himself for ever thinking he had the hubris to stop what was happening in his town. He could no sooner have stopped the tide than prevented what had happened to Jayson and he’d be equally helpless the next time it happened.

It was a test of faith, it had to be a test of faith, Gus reassured himself as he climbed out of his car and approached the grand old house. Even to his untrained eye it was clear the house had been here years before Norman had been established. The architecture alone was to mark it out as different from the rest. It had grown into disrepair in recent years and the green paint job on the outside had begun to turn white and flake loose, but it was still impressive to look at. Rumour had it that the old Hamilton place used to belong to a slave owner that had gotten a whole host of children on Renee Hamilton’s great, great grandmother and left them house before he died. Gus wasn’t sure whether he believed that.

He climbed the stairs of the porch, noting that many of the houses windows were broken on the second level, and knocked on Renee’s front door gently. After next to a minute or two a dark wrinkled face peered through one of the curtains down at Gus and the door opened shortly afterwards.

Renee Hamilton was well into her eighties though she looked close to a hundred. There wasn’t an ounce of fat left on her and her skin looked like it hung lifelessly across her skeleton. She gestured Gus inside her house and he followed after her, lending Renee his arm as they walked, before sitting down in the spacious lounge. It was dusty, its corners strewn with cobwebs, and its walls adorned with pictures, some older than Gus. After he had declined some tea close to six times, Renee finally took a seat in a frayed mustard armchair in the corner of the room.

Her voice was soft and ageless. So quiet that Gus had to lean closer to hear it. “Thank you for coming, Deacon.”

“There’s no need to thank me,” Gus said with a dutiful smile. “I know it’s a difficult time for you and your family, Mrs. Hamilton.”

Her great grandson DeSean had shot Jayson dead last night. A week prior Antwan had scored fifty-nine points on him, talking trash in his face all night, and capped it off with a dunk that had been seen all across America. From what Gus understood, DeSean felt obliged to take matters into his own hands and get some payback off the court. It was senseless. Barbaric. What was even more senseless was that it was a scene that would be likely played out again and again in Norman over some imagined slight. Pride mattered more to these boys than anything else. Even life or death.

Renee’s beady eyes were fixed on Gus. “Don’t have much left in all honesty.”

“Pardon?”

She gestured towards the countless pictures that lined the wall of the lounge. “Family.”

Each one was caked in more dust than the next. One in particular caught the deacon’s eye. It yellowed with age but he could clearly make out the faces of a smiling young woman in a wedding dress beside her doting husband. It was Renee.

“My husband passed some eight years back of cancer and ain’t a soul seen my daughter in nearly a decade. We had a big family once, even by Norman’s standards, more brother and sisters than you could count. There were twelve of us back then and I’m all that’s left.”

Gus placed a hand atop Renee’s skeletal fingers. “DeSean was all you had?”

“Mmhm.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

His imagination ran wild at the thought of the old Hamilton house in its prime, flush with colour and life, children everywhere you looked and music playing. There were more memories in this building than Gus could accrue in a thousand lifetimes and yet Renee was all that remained of them. Soon even she would be gone and the house would squat here as the solitary reminder of a time when their ancestors had endured hardships far greater than John Norman could ever inflict upon them. How long before the anachronistic charm of the Hamilton home was dragged down and new homes were built in its place? Or worse, meth heads set up shop in its walls? Gus couldn’t help but feel like that day was coming.

He turned to Renee to find her beady eyes sodden with tears.

“He was such a hardworking boy,” Renee muttered. “Always did his chores with a smile on his face, wasn’t afraid to roll his sleeves up when the time came for it, and what a singing voice he had. He used to sit by my bed when he was a boy and sing for me until there were tears in my eyes. But I guess that doesn’t matter much anymore.”

Gus clasped Renee’s fingers gently. “It matters still.”

She nodded appreciatively as Gus reached into his pocket and handed a handkerchief to dry her tears with. With a great deal of care she dabbed at her cheeks and eyes with it, folding it over each time, and then held it between her fingers as her gentle voice crept forth from her lips once more.

“The police say he shot that boy dead but as hard as I try to picture it, to picture my DeSean doing so hateful, so mean, I can’t do it. He’ll always be that sweet boy beside my bed singing for me, regardless of what the police or anyone says.”

Gus felt himself choke up a little at the thought of her up in this big house on her own now that DeSean was on the inside. There was no way Renee would be able to make the trips out to visit him given how frail she was and by the time DeSean was out she would have long passed. All that would remain of the once sprawling Hamilton family would be the house. Gus couldn’t bring himself to speak it, nor could he bring himself to give the woman false promises, instead he would offer her what little solace he could. There was not much to go around at the moment.

“There is good in all of us, Mrs. Hamilton, even those that do terrible things. It’s important not to lose sight of that. Whatever DeSean has done, he’s still your grandson and nothing can change that. He’s going to need your love more than ever.”

Renee nodded once more in appreciation at the deacon’s words and clutched onto his hand a little tighter.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to DeSean’s mother?”

Renee shook her head in disapproval as she attempted to recall what had happened to her great granddaughter. “Drugs, Deacon, she got hooked on them while she was pregnant with DeSean and never lost the habit. Thank the Lord that was one weakness she didn’t pass on to DeSean.”

Drugs. It was always drugs. They had torn Norman apart over the past two or three decades. They had torn Gus’ life apart too before he’d found the word of God. He thought for a moment of Michelle Lewis wishing harm on DeSean for what he’d done and exhaled in frustration. DeSean wasn’t a monster that had climbed freely from the depths of Hell. He was a person, molded by the environment he’d been born into, an environment not too dissimilar from that one that had formed Antwan. Yet he would spend the rest of his adult life in prison. There was an unfairness there, an arbitrariness that made it difficult to see the plan in it all, but now Gus understood that it had never been within his power to rectify that. It was Norman. It chewed people up and spat them out as mangled, twisted beings before they’d even had the chance to lead real lives.

All he could do was be there to pick up the pieces.

He stayed for an hour or so and spoke to Renee about all manner of things. She regaled him tales of a Pickett that Gus never knew existed, a time before the drugs had torn their county apart, and he fed on her stories hungrily to renew his faith that the county might be like that once more. For his part, he did his best to assure Renee that he would visit her grandson in prison in her stead and stop by to transcribe the letters she wished to send to him. It was the least that he could do.

As they parted, Renee clung onto Gus tightly and he placed a hand atop her thinning white hair gently. He heard her soft voice, tinged with sadness, emanate from his chest. “Will you stop by again sometime soon? It would be nice to have some company.”

“Of course,” Gus said with a soft, heartfelt nod.

As he descended the steps of the old, crumbling house he reminded himself to speak to someone in town about getting the windows fixed. He’d see about getting the house repainted once everything had died down. Even on Gus’ say-so, he couldn’t imagine there’d be many volunteers to help repaint the house of the boy that murdered Jayson Aaron. If need be he’d rolled up his sleeves and paint the thing on his own. That house was living history and Renee was too, but they were more than that. They were the future. Like an old, stubborn tree in the middle of the city that stood as a reminder of what once was and what could be again.

Vontae Carter was dead, Jayson Aaron was too, somewhere DeSean Hamilton was sitting in a cell with little chance of ever seeing the outside world again, but for as long as that old rotting house was still on its feet Gus would keep fighting the good fight. Even if it meant losing every damn time.

The sound of knocking jolted Michelle awake and she glanced up at the clock on the wall to gauge how long she’d been asleep before realising she had no idea what time she’d come home. It was still light out though so she couldn’t have been asleep for long. She sat up from the table and wiped some drool from her cheek as she made her way towards the door to let Gus back in.

As she approached it she saw a figure casting a shadow through her front door that she didn’t recognise at first. It was tall, tall enough to be Antwan, but his frame had far too much muscle for it to be her son. After a few seconds she put the pieces together and reached for the baseball bat that she kept behind her door in case of emergencies. Slowly she swung the door with one hand, keeping the bat in her other hand tucked behind the door for the time being.

“Hello Michelle.”

Chew Lewis stood in her doorway with his hands tucked into the pockets of track pants. He was wearing a baggy white t-shirt that clung to his sculpted body and his hair was freshly shaved but there was no mistaking him. It seemed his time in prison had been kinder to her brother than she’d imagined they would have been. He’d bulked up some and didn’t look much older all things considered.

Michelle looked him up and down dismissively. “I thought I made it clear you weren’t welcome here.”

“I heard about what happened,” Chew said with a shrug. “Thought maybe given the circumstances you might need some family around you.”

As nonchalant as her brother might have been trying to appear it was clear from the earnestness in his voice that he was concerned. It was clear from the fact he was even here that he was concerned. She’d told him if she ever saw him again she’d shoot him and she’d meant it. For what Chew had taken from her he deserved that and more. That he had to cheek to stand on her doorstep and call himself her kin was downright provocative.

“You’re not my family.”

Michelle gripped the handle of the baseball bat tightly and Chew stared down at it with a smile. “You planning on using that thing, little sister?”

She ought to do it. Michelle had spent years fantasizing about the pain she’d inflict on her older brother if she ever saw him again and here he was. She wanted to cave his skull in right there and then for what he’d done but try as she might to lift the bat and swing it at him her arm stayed by her side. Had Chew arrived at any other point she would have swung it happily but after what had happened something about it didn’t feel right.

Perhaps sensing his sister’s indecision Chew took his hands out of his pockets and stepped backwards slightly.

“Look, I’m not here to cause anything. Antwan came to speak to me a week or so ago, brought Jayson with him, we had words of a sort and he left. Didn’t sit comfortably with me the way we left things after I heard about what happened. Thought maybe I could put things right. You know?”

Michelle shook her head. “Antwan isn’t here.”

A look of confusion appeared on her brother’s face.

“Where is he?”

She let it drop to the ground with a heavy thud and pushed the door open slowly. “I guess you’d better come in.”

Chew shrugged his shoulders and stepped through the doorway into his childhood home. Michelle took a glance out of the door along the street to see whether anyone had followed him in or was waiting for him before shutting the door behind him. His sudden reappearance had given his sister an idea.

*****

Chew sat with his head in his hands at the small table that he’d once eaten his breakfast at as a child. The dent in the fridge that Chew had placed in doing his George Rogers impression nearly twenty years ago was still there. Along the doorway there were pencil markings where Marcus and he had measured themselves growing up. More memories than he cared to remember came flooding back just being in this house and he did his best not to be overwhelmed by them as he sat there. He never thought he’d see the inside of his mother’s home again and he definitely never thought he’d sat around a table with Michelle again.

Unlike then his sister expected something from Chew now and he suspected it was the only reason she had let him in. She had spent the past hour explaining what had happened to Jayson and why it had happened. Some character had been sniffing around Antwan, causing him trouble, giving him drugs, and getting him mixed up in things that he had no business being mixed up in. It’s what had got Jayson killed, she had said without an ounce of uncertainty to her voice, and it was going to get Antwan killed too. She wanted a message sent to the guy responsible.

It turned out the “guy” in question was none other than pimpin’ Roland Spencer. The same Roland Spencer that used to sell stolen watches out of a suitcase. Apparently Spencer had gone legit whilst Chew was inside and left that life behind. If it weren’t for Jayson having passed Chew would have folded over with laughter at the suggestion but it was clear from his sister’s voice she was being serious.

Chew lifted his head from his hands and looked at his sister’s stony face. “Do you understand what you’re asking of me?”

She didn’t so much as flinch.

“Of course I understand.”

What had happened had hardened Michelle. He’d heard rumours about what sister was getting up to whilst he was inside but he tried his best to ignore them. There are plenty of people on the inside that want to mess with your mind, have you thinking about things you have no business thinking about, either to have you chasing for a high to dull the pain or hoping to send you to the infirmary.

“I know it might be hard for you to believe but I’ve gone straight now, Michelle, I don’t do things like that anymore. That life is behind me now and I swore I’d never go back to it.”

A dismissive laughed escape from between Michelle’s lips.

“What about Antwan, Chew? If you don’t do this, Roland is going to keep corrupting that boy until what happened to Jayson happens to your nephew too. Are you going to stand by and watch that happen?”

“I can’t do this,” Chew said and shook his head. “This ain't in me anymore.”

She might not have believed him but he had changed. The things he’d seen on the inside, the hopelessness he’d felt, and most of all the lack of ambition on the part of some of the other prisoners had changed him. The thought of going back to that life and ending right back next to those same people in the cells was one that Chew wouldn’t even bear to think about. As little as a life as he had on the outside, it was better than being stuck in that place.

He’d always thought it was better to die on your feet than live on your knees but after being stuck in that place he’d realized there were two options. There was such a thing as dying on your knees. Prison was it.

Chew stood up from his seat and began to walk away from Michelle. From behind him he heard his sister stand up from the table so quickly that she knocked the chair behind her to the ground.

“That’s it? You’re going to take my baby’s daddy away from him and then stand by and watch whilst he throws his life away too?” She shouted at him as he made his way to the door.

“You owe him, Chew, you owe me.”

As he wrapped one of his large hands around the handle of the front door he heard his sister marching after him. She stopped before him and placed one of her hands around his arm. “You owe Marcus.”

"A fisherman found him this morning. He was heading towards the creek."

Mark Echols squatted down next to the dead body and examined it with latex-covered gloves. The victim was face first in the dirt with half of their head blown off. Danny walked in concentric circles with a camera. He snapped off shots of the crime scene while Mark looked up at Scott Andrews. As head of the sheriff's CID, Andrews was officially Mark and Danny's boss. He handled the occasional case, but nothing too strenuous. If he couldn't get a pay off from it, he didn't want it. Mark knew that Andrews hated his guts. He was jealous of Mark's intellect, how Mark could read a crime scene like an open book while Andrews stumbled through them like a blind man. He was also envious of how Mark could interrogate a suspect without having to resort to violence like Andrews often did.

"Did you catch the call?" Danny asked Andrews as he took shots of the victim's body.

"Yeah," Andrews said. "I was at the sheriff's department when the call came in. You two were busy, so I took it."

Mark and Danny were busy with another murder. A kid got shot in the aftermath of the high school basketball game last night. They worked the scene like they always did. Mark went back to the sheriff's department when the murderer turned himself in while Danny went to the hospital to get statements from eyewitnesses. He spent all night with the murderer, DeSean Hamilton, getting his statement. Mark didn't need to apply pressure to get him to tell it. He told willingly about a feud with Antwan Dixon and how the boy he killed died protecting Antwan. DeSean cried after telling his story. Mark tried best to comfort him, but he found he couldn't muster up any sorrow for a kid who killed someone over a fucking basketball game.

Mark searched the dirty blue jeans of the dead man and came out with his wallet.

"Howard Beggs."

Mark stood and looked over at Danny. Andrews raised an eyebrow as the two shared a look.

"What?"

"We spent all last week looking for a Howard Beggs," Danny said. "Sheriff Parker himself wanted him for something."

Mark saw Andrews' jaw tighten a bit as he looked down at his boots. Mark's eyes drifted back to Danny. Years as partners, working interrogations and crimes and dealing in the duplicitous nature of people, gave them a sixth sense between the two of them. They could sometimes communicate whole conversations with just eye contact.

"Well, I got some intel that may be a lead," Andrews said with both hands on his hips. "A CI of mine mentioned Beggs just a few days ago. John Norman had been asking around about him, apparently Beggs owed him some money."

This time Mark did even look up at Danny. He knew exactly what he was thinking, and he didn't want to tip Andrews off to anything. While he and Danny looked for Beggs, they also tailed John Norman. Their surveillance turned up a small pot farm out on Trask Road. Like with Beggs, they acted on Sheriff Parker's orders. They handed the pictures over to Parker and that was the last they heard of the matter until now.

John Norman and Howard Beggs with a too eager Scott Andrews smack dab in the middle. Mark stood up and caught a look from Danny as they went back to work on the scene. He knew from the way Danny was looking that they would have a long discussion as soon as Andrews was gone.

--

It was nearly eleven in the morning when John woke up. He had that momentary flash of panic that goes with waking up in a strange place. It took a second before he remembered what happened last night and where he was. They made it back into town at about four in the morning. Mike said something about going out to Ray's to pick his truck up, but John told him it didn't seem like a good idea. His truck wouldn't be the only one left at Ray's overnight, but if Jed's police officer buddy had gotten back to him that John couldn't be found then someone could be watching the parking lot at Ray's.

Same with his trailer or Mike's for that matter. Everyone in town knew that there was no love lost between the two of them, but he was still someone who John might run to in a pinch. And seeing as how he actually ran to him in a pinch, it made sense not to go to his house. They instead went to Bettie Jo's. Bettie Jo was Mike's girlfriend of nearly ten years, three years longer than the longest of his marriages. Whoever was looking for John might come calling to Bettie Jo eventually, but it'd probably be awhile.

He spent the morning on the old plaid couch in her living room. He had a pillow down between two cushions to protect his back from the metal spring that poked through the fabric and would jab at him anytime he moved. His face felt swollen and hot to the touch. There was pain, but it was more like soreness than anything. His nose didn't shoot stabbing pains through his face any time he breathed, so that was a plus.

John finally sat up and looked around. Like the Johnson house, Bettie Jo's tan colored walls were covered with photos of kids and grandchildren. Unlike John's family and a good part of Pickett County, Bettie Jo's children managed to get the hell out of here and not look back. Downside of that was that they never came to visit. John guessed that was why she was with Mike, there nobody else around for her. John went to church with Bettie Jo back when his momma thought she could pray his stepfather out of their lives. Bettie had always been kind and caring to him. Her with Mike didn't make sense, but around here kind women and abusive assholes went together like peanut butter and jelly.

There was a clattering noise from the kitchen. John stood up and looked down as he worked the kinks from his back. He was still dressed in his clothes from the day before but that wasn't too big of a deal. If he brushed mhis teeth and freshened up the hot spots, he'd be good to go. John padded across the carpet in his socks and walked towards the kitchen.

Sitting around the kitchen table were Mike and Bettie Jo. They were both drinking coffee, Bettie Jo reading a copy of the Index-Journal, a regional daily paper that operated a few counties over. Both were dressed in what they had been wearing when John and Mike showed up. For Mike it was his flannel shirt and jeans, for Bettie Jo it was the bathrobe she wore to cover her nightgown.

"Morning," Mike said after taking a sip of his coffee.

Bettie Jo looked up from her paper and at John. She was in her sixties with shoulder-length gray hair and was short and on the chubby side. Her face was as chubby as her body with a double-chin.

"You need anything for your face?" She asked in a concerned voice.

"I'm fine," he said. He stood just on the threshold of the kitchen, not wanting to go further inside. He knew if I did that would be an open invitation for Bettie Jo to make a fuss over him.

"You want some coffee? Want me to make you anything?"

"I'm fine," he repeated.

"You change your mind," she said with a frown. "You let me know. Oh," Bettie Jo leaned forward "I forgot to ask what with all the excitement last night, but how's your momma?"

"She's fine. Living in Georgia now with her new husband."

"He a good man?"

"Jury's still out," he said with a shrug. "But from what little I been around, he seems okay. Can't be no worse than the last one."

"Or the one before that."

"Ready to go?" Mike asked with his eyebrows raised. John nodded and he stood while Bettie Jo stayed seated.

"Good luck," she said with a squeeze to Mike's hand. "Hope they can help you find those fellas."

The story they gave Bettie Jo last night was that John had been jumped coming out of Ray's. John said he was half-drunk and running his mouth and pissed some people off. He called Mike and they went over to Bettie Jo's just because his house might not be safe that night. While not a total lie, it left out the minor details like a dead body and me being framed for killing said dead body.

John followed Mike out the house and into the leave covered front yard. Bettie Jo lived in one of the old mill houses that was set up on a grid around the Simpson Mill. Her yard had three magnolias in it that were always shedding leaves. The leaves covered the grass year round and created big patches of dirt where the covered leaves killed the grass. The space between the branches on the trees showed an overcast sky with dark gray rain clouds rolling in.

They got into Mike's Cadillac and rode through the streets until a red light stopped them. The red light in question was the only one in Pickett, and it sat the crossroad of the two major highways the town was planted on. One ran through the heart of the town and took you west to east, from Athens in Georgia to Columbia in the middle part of the state. The other one, which just touched the outskirts of the city, ran north to south, stopping at I-85 on the north half while the southern end petered out somewhere in Augusta. The two highways were near carbon copies of the two rail lines that ran through the town. The intersection of two major railways were why the cotton mills had come calling to Pickett County a hundred years ago, bringing the county and its citizens kicking and screaming into the 20th century.

The light turned green and Mike headed west towards the state line. He kept going past Ray's, keeping his eyes on the road while John looked at the parking lot. His truck was still there, along with two or three others that had been left behind by folks too drunk to make it home on their own power. He didn't see Jed's Tahoe, Ray's pickup, or anything looking like a police car, marked or unmarked. Mike kept going and turned around just short of the bridge that marked the beginning of Georgia. He drove back to Ray's and kept going.

"Where we headed?" Mike asked.

"I thought we were gonna get my truck?"

"I'll drive you where you need to go," he said as they headed back to town. "I got a bad feeling about your truck. Just... bear with me, boy, and let me take you where you want to go."

"Beggs lived out somewhere near the McCormick county line," John said as they went back through the red light. "Head that way."

Mike said softly, "Remember what we talked about earlier. This is serious shit you stepped in. I don't know who all is behind it, but if it's Billy then your best bet is getting the hell away from Pickett as fast as you can."

"I have to do something," John said. "I want to find Carol at least. Help her out, if only for her sake."

"When you gonna stop trying to get that girl to fall in love with you?"

John balled his hands and stared straight ahead at the slow, steady rain pattering the windshield. "About the time you get over Billy kicking your ass."

"You godda--," he started to go into his usual cussing spree, but stopped and sighed. "This ain't getting us nowhere. You do what you gotta do, okay? My offer still stands. You got rid of your gun, and that'll buy you a few days. Get that girl to safety, or whatever it is you planning on doing, and then get out of here. This town, this county, these people, are goddamn poison, son. You know and I know it. Now, we've never seen eye to eye on anything. Hell, I think the last few hours have been the longest we've gone without cussing each other out, but at least let me try to do something for you just this once."

"I appreciate it," John mumbled. It was the truth, John realized. His theory about staying away from John was always bullshit, but there was truth to Mike's statement that this town was poison. If you didn't get out early, you never did. You'd drink yourself to death while pining on days gone by, just like your parents and their parents.

"Let me do some legwork today and we'll talk about it tonight. If it looks bad, I'll be headed to where the fuck ever I can afford to run to regardless of what happens, okay?"

He nodded with a small look of relief on his face. It disappeared once he realized he was making it and then said, "Like I said earlier, do what you gotta do."

Mike reached across the car and opened the glove compartment. Sitting inside on top of all hiss old insurance cards and receipts was Smith & Wesson .38 Special. The black revolver clashed with the bright white papers and the beige dash.

"How many people you killed with that?" John asked.

"None," he said defensively. "It's got the files number scratched off. It ain't registered to me, either. I bought it from Mel Davis damn near twenty years ago, back when he was still alive and selling hot guns. Haven't used it for anything but target practice since."

Jon reached out and picked the gun up. He checked the chamber and counted six shots. Sitting in the car, holding an illegal and untraceable hammered the point home to John that there was more than likely no going back. He realized that there are moments in everybody's life when they make a decision that closes off a door to them. After that choice, there's no going back. Despite his delusions on a happy ending, he knew that whatever played out over the next few days would be the end of his life as he knew it, no more growing weed and no uneasy truce with Billy Brown. For John, picking up that gun was his crossing the Rubicon moment. Now he would have to let the dice fell where they may.

"What are odds on Parker's involvement?" He asked Mike while tucking the gun into his jacket.

"Even odds at best," he said. "He was the one that hired you and got you asking 'round town about that Beggs man. Hell, for all we know, he was that sumbitch out in the woods last night."

"I didn't think Parker was that dirty."

Mike shrugged. "He was never one of my guys, sure, and he was one of the few deputies that didn't get fucked in the ass by that SLED investigation in the 90's, but that don't make him clean. Then or now. Regardless, I would trust him about as far as I could throw his fat ass."

John stewed on those words as Mike drove towards the county line. His arrest sheet had Beggs' address on Dixon Road. It was right on the border with McCormick county. Lots of houses along the winding road would end up in Pickett or McCormick based on what direction the road took. You'd go through both counties at least three times going this way. It always made jurisdiction a nightmare for the sheriff's departments whenever some shit went down out here. Mike turned off the highway and onto Dixon. Most of the houses out here were of the white trash variety, old cars and car parts scattered among high grass and dog houses. Fittingly, the old Norman homestead was somewhere out here. Amidst the white trash scenery is where Eli Norman and his wife settled down to raise their brood of bastards.

After a few minutes of driving, Mike came to Beggs' house. The grass in the yard was high and yellowing from the change in season, but no car parts anywhere to be seen. The house itself was a one-story home that looked from the outside like it only had four rooms total in it. It was one of those cheap houses people in the country built back in the 30's. Peasoup green with white shutters and trim. Both colors needed a fresh coat of paint pretty badly. The dirt driveway had an older model navy blue Honda Civic sitting in it. Mike kept driving a bit further and pulled off to the side of the road a few hundred yards away. John got out and walked through the rain back towards the house.

He kept his hands on the .38 as he walked across the front yard towards the Honda. Beggs' arrest report had him being stopped in a Jeep Cherokee. The sheriff's towed the car to the impound lot after they found drugs on him. John looked at the Honda and then towards the door. If somebody was waiting to spring a trap, they were either dumb or looking to ambush him from somewhere besides the house. He pulled the .38 out and slowly walked towards the front door. The knob moved after the first test of it. John gingerly opened the door and stepped into the house.

The smell of must and stale piss hit him like a freight train. John blinked a few times and pinched his nose with his left hand to block the smell. His watering eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light in the house. The place reminded him a lot of Strange's trailer in general clutter. Drink cans mingled with beer cans on the hardwood floors. Ice cream wrappers and candy papers along with plastic baggies that had to be for meth. The furniture and electronics that should have been here were gone. Either someone robbed Beggs, or he pawned it. John was betting on the latter. Whereas Strange, a high-functioning addict with a stable source of income and supply, could afford to keep his TV and couch, someone like Beggs would have to resort to the pawn shop a lot quicker. He slowly walked through the garbage towards the next room.

The kitchen's fridge was gone, but the table was still in place. That was because it had precious cargo on it. A series of vials, beakers, and tubes ran across the table. Like a twisted Rube Goldberg machine, all the tubes connected to a single spout where a lone flask sat collecting shit brown liquid. The flask was overflowing, each drop sending more liquid onto the linoleum floor. John didn't need to get any closer to know what all this shit did, and what the liquid in the flask was. Beggs was making Meth on his own. A huge no-no here in Billy Land.

John turned away from the kitchen and back across a scuffed hallway. He went into what was the bedroom leading with the .38. The bedroom was covered in old and musty clothes, used hypo needles, and a lone mattress beside a hotplate. He noticed all that, and more importantly, noticed the person on the mattress.

Leaned against the mattress, drooling and doing the nod that only Oxycontin could give, was Carol Johnson.

A broad smile appeared on Dante’s face as he spotted Chew Lewis making his way towards him from down the block. It had nearly been a week since they’d exchanged words outside of Club 65 and Dante was beginning to worry about his old friend. When Chew called him that morning he’d been more relieved than he imagined he would be to hear from him again. When Chew asked him to find them a ride and some heat Dante had been ecstatic. He could tell by the sound of Chew’s voice that they were back in business. Whatever it was, whatever Chew needed, Dante was just glad to have Chew back. Not the one that had been talking that workingman shtick for the past couple weeks.

Chew opened the passenger side door to the silver Honda Accord that Dante had stolen that morning and sat down in the passenger seat.

Dante looked round and smiled at him smugly. “I knew it was only a matter of time.”

Without so much as a look in his direction Chew barked back. “Shut up.”

And that was it. No need for some lengthy discussion about things. Dante pulled away from the curb and the two men drove for a time as Chew directed Dante to wherever the hell it was they were headed. They didn’t need to talk much, they’d never needed to, but Dante felt reassured to know they were back on good terms. With anyone else he might have worried that they were carrying a grudge but Dante knew Chew better than that. If Chew had wanted him dead he’d have a hole in his head before he even knew a thing about it. There was a reason the little hoppers around Norman still told stories about Chew-motherfucking-Lewis, after all.

“You were right about that thing with Topher,” Dante said with a smile. “Heard that meet of his with the Dominicans was a fucking massacre.”

From beside him Chew shrugged a little and continued to stare out of the window impassively. “Yeah, well, didn’t taking a fucking rocket scientist to see that one coming. He make it out of there alive?”

All Dante had heard was that the Cubans had been waiting there for them armed to the teeth with AKs and had made mincemeat out of the crew Topher had taken down there. As much as Dante hoped that Topher had got out of there alive, he didn’t think it was very likely, those Cubans didn’t sound like the type to take prisoners. Though he’d been spitting feathers at Chew for walking out that night the doubts he’d placed in Dante’s mind had stopped Dante from signing up for it too. Guess that meant Dante owed him one.

“Fuck if I know, man.”

Finally Chew gestured to Dante to bring the car to a stop and Dante scanned around for a few moments as he tried to figure out what he was meant to be seeing. There was nothing around other than Roland Spencer’s tire place and what possible business Chew could possibly have with him was lost on Dante.

He looked round at Chew to work out why the hell they were there and found his eyes fixed on the glowing neon sign above it. “You going to explain to me why we’re staking out Spencer’s place?”

Chew reached into the pocket of his track pants and threw a balaclava into his lap.

“We need to send a little message.”

About twenty-five questions ran through Dante’s mind but he shrugged and pulled the balaclava over his head instead.

“Alright, can’t believe you worked at a fucking bowling alley when we could have been out here making bank,” Dante smiled. “Doing what we do best. You feel me?”

Chew pulled on his balaclava and stared at Dante, his face deathly serious. “This is a one time thing. Once this is done with I go back to the bowling alley and you do whatever the fuck it is you do, Dante.”

Dante flashed his smug smile and pointed beneath the dash.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. Heats in the glove compartment.”

Chew gave it a punch and it fell open to reveal the fourth generation Glock 17 that Dante liked to use and a silver Colt 1911. To the best of Dante’s memory Chew had used a Colt before they went inside. It was a touch that his friend seemed to appreciate as he reached down for the Colt and handed Dante his Glock. They sat in the car for a few seconds checking their weapons until both men were satisfied and they left the car behind and began to walk towards Roland’s business.

Antwan could feel his heart beating as they approached it. “This something to do with you going to Alicia’s boy getting shot?”

Chew nodded.

“Something like that.”

*****

Roland Spencer sat in his office staring at the stacks of paperwork that lay on his desk. Get into the tire business they said, there’d be stacks of money in it they said, but no one had told him how much paperwork he’d have to shift through on a nightly basis. Things were hectic enough between Jayson being shot and Antwan staying at his for the past two nights. That he’d spent every day since trying to scale the mountain of never-ending paperwork that wasn’t exactly helping. With that being said, Antwan seemed to be coping with things better than Roland had expected and had even braved going to school. Most importantly he’d stopped talking that nonsense he’d been talking the night Jayson was shot which left Roland’s arrangement with Billy Brown on much surer footing.

Without warning Yolanda Thomas popped her head around through the doorway of Roland’s office, smiling like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “Is it okay if I head home for the night, Mr. Spencer? It’s getting late.”

Roland had only hired her because of the way her curves shook as she walked. Why the hell would a tire business need a receptionist? He hadn’t known at the time that Yolanda had a long-term boyfriend and that piece of news had been particularly unpleasing. Nonetheless she was nice to look at after a long day’s work, even if she did tend to treat Roland like a doddering old man at the best of times.

Roland smiled. “Sure, I can close up here tonight, Yolanda.”

Yolanda thanked him and disappeared from sight. He heard her footsteps echoing out of the showroom and allowed himself a moment to picture her behind as she walked. If she’d give him a chance, Roland would show her he still had some life in his old bones. He had enough at least to see to it that she wouldn’t be able to walk straight once he was done.

Roland laughed to himself a little at the thought and stepped out of the office for a second, mindful of being in the back room with the door unlocked, as he approached the doors he saw two figures appearing out of the darkness approaching him at speed.

One was tall and muscular and clad in black track pants and a white t-shirt. The other was average height with a white dress shirt and cheap black pants on. Both men wore black balaclavas and had weapons trained on Roland before he had a chance to lock the doors and keep them out. The taller of the two men kicked the doors open and they smashed against Roland and knocked him to the ground.

The man in the dress shirt bounded through the open doors and brandished the Glock in his hand at Roland. “Put your fucking hands up.”

Roland felt a trickle of blood from his lip where the force of the doors hitting him had reopened the cut on his lip, he pressed his hand against it slowly, and then looked up at the two men with his hands in the air.

“What’s going on here?”

The tall man strode in and placed his hand on the lapels of Roland’s suit and dragged him away from the entrance and out of sight of anyone that happened to walk past. The ease with which he moved him was terrifying. At least it might have been if anyone but Billy Brown owned this place. One mention of his name and these punks would be gone in a second.

The man in the pants strode forwards and pushed the muzzle of his Glock against Roland’s cheek. “You don’t get to ask questions around here anymore, motherfucker.”

A titter emerged from Spencer’s lips as he thought about what Billy would have done to them once he tracked down whoever these amateurs were.

“You stupid sons of bitches,” Roland said, blood dripping from his lip. “You know who owns this place?”

His laughter seemed to anger the man in the black pants and he brought the butt of his Glock down against the top of Roland’s skull so hard that it almost knocked Roland clean out. There was a burning pain from the top of his head and he could feel the blood trickling down the back of his neck, but he was conscious.

The man in the black pants smiled. “I don’t give a fuck who owns this place.”

From behind him the huge one in the t-shirt stepped forward, directing the man in the black pants to get behind him, and then knelt beside Roland. He placed his Colt in Roland’s face and cocked it to show him that he was serious.

A deep voice emanated from behind his balaclava.

“You and I are going to have a little chat about Antwan Dixon.”

Roland could feel the man’s breath on his face and he tried his best to maintain eye contact with him but the pain in his head made it almost unbearable. What did they want with Antwan? Maybe Brown had cut a deal with someone else and he needed Roland dealt with. No, that made no sense, Brown could have put a bullet in him in the middle of town and every person there would have sworn they’d seen the ghost of Custer do it if he told them to. Who were these people?

Before the hulk of a man knelt beside him could pick his point back up there came a tinkling sound as the doors to the showroom opened.

Roland identified Yolanda’s footsteps before he heard her voice. “Sorry, Mr. Spencer, I left my purse in the back.”

The man in the black pants looked round at Yolanda and raised his Glock in her direction. She froze, dropping her phone to the ground as she put her hands into the air without a word.

The man in the black pants shook his head and looked at his colleague. “What do we do, man?”

Yolanda raised an eyebrow as if she recognised the man’s voice. “Dante? Is that you?”

Dante took a glance at his muscular friend.

“Don’t do it.”

Before the words had even finished coming out of the brick-house’s mouth his friend had pulled the trigger and blown Yolanda’s brains clean out. She landed with a dull thud and Roland’s gasped in shock as he watched her twitch around on the floor for a few seconds. If they had killed her, what were they intending to do to him? He tried to crawl backwards away from the man in the t-shirt without him noticing but the man’s hands were on him before he knew it.

With a heavy sigh the man slapped Roland across the face with his weapon hard enough that Roland was sure he felt his nose break. It wasn’t the blow that knocked him out but the impact of his head bouncing against the hard floor in the showroom. As he drifted out of consciousness he could still make out the silhouettes of the two men stood over him. The last thing he heard was the tall man’s deep voice.

“Fuck.”

Scott Andrews struggled for breath while Jed throttled the life out of him. He was sprawled out on the hood of his unmarked police car, flailing and trying to reach the gun on his hip. Jed grinned widely while Billy Brown looked over his shoulder and down at Scott with an impassive look that conveyed disappointment.

"Good help is so hard to find these days," Billy said with the shake of his head. "I tell you to kill a guy, you botch that. I tell you to find him, two of my boys find him first. He ends up dead, only he might be a goddamn undercover state police officer, so we come up with a plan to put the heat off of us... only you can't find the guy we're supposed to be framing!"

Billy patted Jed's back and he let go of Scott's throat. He gasped for air and slid off the roof of the car, falling into the dirt that surrounded the deserted boat ramp. Scott saw spots around the corners of his vision as he stood and pulled his sidearm, aiming it square at Jed's big frame.

"You touch me again, you fucking nigger, and I to God I will shove this gun down your throat and pull the trigger till it goes click!"

Jed just winked as Billy stepped forward.

"Put the gun down, Scott," Billy said calmly. "Jed got a little too carried away, I admit that, but there's no need to escalate it. Think calmly and think rationally about this."

Scott hesitated a moment before finally holstering his gun. The pain around his neck was stinging. In a few hours it would be a dark ring of bruises.

"Now," Billy said one the gun was gone, "If this guy Jed killed was indeed a SLED agent, we need to find out who knows about it and, more importantly, what he knew about us. I think Jed's girl is the key."

"Fucking Carol," Jed said dismissively. "Bitch don't know when to close her legs."

"She's your woman," Billy said with a look back to Jed. "Find her, goddammit." He turned back to Scott and aimed a finger in his direction. "And you, find John Norman. Make sure he dies resisting arrest."

"It ain't that simple, Billy," Scott said. "I--"

"No," Bill said curtly. "It is that simple. We are in a world of shit, and you will get us out of this. Because I say so. Don't forget who the fuck you really work for. Get out there and find Norman and kill him dead."

Billy walked away towards his truck without another word while Jed stared straight ahead at Scott with a smile that had no trace of warmth of friendliness in it. Scott turned around and got in his car. His hands trembled against the wheel. What exactly had he gotten himself into? This wasn't the usual bullshit Billy paid him to do, he wasn't making evidence disappear or tipping him off on a raid... this was murder, plain and simple. And he wasn't sure if he could do it.

Don't forget who you really work for, Billy had said. All the warmth and the sons dried up real fucking quickly when Billy Brown showed his true colors. Scott sighed and started his car up, pulling out the boat ramp a few minutes after Billy and Jed.

--

It took Carol a few hours to wake up and have half a mind about her. John and Mike sat parked at a spot a half mile down the road from Beggs house while she came to. Mike napped while John spent that time trying to make sense of what all was going on. He thumbed through the information Parker gave him at the start of it. Scott Andrews started it all by arresting Howard Beggs last week on bullshit charges. Beggs made bail, and then pulled a vanishing act on the Pickett County sheriff's Department and Billy's Boys. From there enter the hero John Norman, whose investigation goes to shit and Beggs is dead with the hero the likely suspect. John wondered what was so important about Beggs that they went through all this trouble? Did he reveal something to Andrews while he was in lockup? Or was Andrews gunning for him right off the bat, but Beggs made bail before that? Something was gnawing at him besides all those questions. He felt like I was missing something, something his white trash brain couldn't figure out.

They were a few miles outside of Mt. Carmel, a small community a few miles away from the Pickett County line. The rain from earlier stopped an hour ago, but the trees still shed the excess moisture from their branches and leaves. John needed a cigarette but he was all out. The smoke would help his brain,likke nicotine would be the Drano to eat away the clog in his mind. He went back over it again; Beggs get stopped for small potatoes, goes to jail and makes bail...

Makes bail.

He started to dig through his jacket and came up with a few sheets of paper folded several times over. John opened them up and rifled through the sheets that made up Beggs' arrest report and record. Suprisingly for someone that looked as strung out as he did, this was only his second pop for drugs in the past year, a felony wrap for Beggs. He had a record, but it was for shit like DUI, public urination, even a few spousal assault charges, but no drugs until last year. John stopped when he reached the latest charge. Possession of a Controlled Substance, Schedule II. The amount they found on him was enough to get the charge, but not enough to bump it up to the felony Possession with Intent to Sell that cops love to tack on regardless if you're selling it or not. After reading through all that, John came to the end and the part where the judge sets bail. It was blank. Nothing from the judge about bail, which would have been a pretty penny for a guy like Beggs. No bail, so what? He just waltzes out of jail? No way he broke out, not even Parker could hush something like that up and it still doesn't explain Billy's angle.

That entire train of thought violently derailed when he heard a groan from the backseat of the Cadillac. he quickly turned around to see Carol sitting up and rubbing her eyes. The rubbing made the mascara smear and made Carol look like a racoon. She pulled her hands away from her eyes and saw him.

"John," she said cautiously. "Where the hell am I? Why are you here?"

"Just calm down and everything's going to be okay, alright." He held his hands up as a sign of peace and threw in a smile to go with it. "I saved you."

"Saved me from what?"

"From whatever's our there, uhh... I found you at Howard Beggs' house, passed out."

"Whose car is this?"

"It's my grandpa's," he said, motioning towards Mike snoring in the driver's seat.

"John," she said slowly. "What the hell did you do? I fall asleep and then I wake up in a car with you of all people."

"You didn't fall asleep," John said a scowl. "We both know what you were on back at Beggs' house. And as for me doing anything, you damn well know I didn't do a goddamn thing."

His face was beginning to flush in anger, that basic need to just lash out and hurt the closest thing he could find was beginning to creep up the back of my spine towards his head. He tried to shake it off by holding his hands up again. That old familiar feeling. When it came to Carol, some things never changed.

"Carol, what happened between us was the past. ..I've done good since. I'm being honest when I say that calling the cops on me was the best damn thing you could have done."

"We talked about this," she said quietly, her body wincing in advance of some outburst.

John sagged a bit. It's a hell of a thing to love someone that don't love you back. He got out of prison thinking they would be back to how they were, but she had moved on and he couldn't accept that. He ended up being arrested for harassment and stalking. Sheriff Parker, for whatever reason, stepped in to talk to Carol's parents about dropping the charges. They did so in exchange for a restraining order. He was never charged with anything, but the restraining order stayed valid until a few years ago. He still kept his distance before this shit forced them together. They weren't good for each other, he knew it... but why is it the things that aren't good for you feel so good?

"Tell me what's going on," said softly. "Please."

"Alright. Beggs is dead. Did you know that?"

"No," she said in a hollow voice. "I didn't. I've been at his house since he got let ot I... I knew something bad might happen to him if Jed or Jim Brown caught up with him, but..."

"Sheriff Parker hired me to find him, force is more like it. I found him dead, killed by either Jed or Jim Brown. They're setting me up to take the fall for his murder, Carol." He made sure to look in her eyes when he said the next part. "I need to know why they wanted him dead. What did a tweaker like him do to piss off people like that?"

"I think he was trying to steal from Billy." Carol turned away from John's gaze, but he could see the tears beginning to well up in her eyes. "I think him and George Silvers were gonna start expanding outside Pickett County and cook meth for the other counties."

"That shouldn't have been a problem, I always thought Billy didn't mind guys making some money on the side."

"But they were going to cut him out the deal."

John stayed silent while Carol silently wept for Howard Beggs. A low-life methhead rated higher in her book than he did. That pissed him off more than he ever wanted to admit, and he hated himself for it. Carol had just lost a man she cared about, and he was getting jealous over the fact she'd never cry like that for him. There was another flash of anger from deep down somewhere. He wanted to slap Carol, wrap his hands around her neck and make her love him.

"Where do you fit in with all this?" John asked after he pushed the anger down to a safe enough level. "Were you just with Beggs?"

"No," she said between sobs. "Jed... he made me hook with him. Th-they were suspicious that Beggs was working with George, so they wanted me to find out for sure."

He let her go on crying some more while he tried to make sense of it all. George and Beggs were planning to branch out without Billy getting his cut. To run a racket and not give Billy a taste is tantamount to breaking a commandment around here. But why was Beggs dead but George still walking around?

"Listen," he said, reaching out across the backseat to touch Carol's shoulder. She flinched at the touch, sending another ripple of anger through him. He shoved the anger down again and instead laid his hand on the headrest of the seat and started again. "Listen, whatever's going on, you should get out of town for a few days. Find a motel or something to stay in and lay low until this all blows over."

"I can't," she sniffled. "I have my kids to think about."

"Carol," he said with a sigh. "I went by your house. Your momma's more of a mother to them than you are. You're just afraid you'll run out of pills, right?"

"Fuck you, John! Who the fuck are you to judge me? You sell weed! There are a bunch of goddamn dope fiends and drunks in your fucking family, and you're just as crazy as the rest of them."

"I'm not judging," he said through gritted teeth. "I'm not preaching at you, I'm just stating the truth. If I give you enough money to get your shit, will you do like I said and get out of town."

Carol looked out the window before she nodded slowly "Yes."

"Good."

John turned around and gently woke Mike up. A few minutes later they were back on the highway and John told his grandfather all Carol told him..

"Where we headed?" Mike asked.

"North through town, all the way up to Anderson."

"Why?"

"Get her to safety," he said with a nod towards the backseat. "I got some money, she can lay low in a hotel for a few days."

Mike grunted as they headed north. John felt uneasy about the whole damn thing, but he knew getting Carol to safety was at least the right thin. If she got out of this mess, he would at least be able to say he did one good thing in this whole goddamn mess.

They had managed to bundle Roland into the back of the Prius without too much fuss after Chew had knocked him out. It was dark out and Spencer’s Tire and Rims was conveniently placed far enough out of sight that they didn’t have to worry about any passersby catching a glimpse of what was going on. Chew pulled his balaclava off of his face and wiped the sweat away from his lips as he set it down between his legs on the seat.

He looked at Dante, who was visibly shaking. “What the fuck was that, man?”

“That bitch must have recognised my voice or something,” Dante muttered weakly. “We went to middle school with one another back in the day, man. Yolanda something. Can’t believe she fucking recognised me.”

Chew reached over and grabbed Dante by the arm forcefully as the gravity of the situation they had found themselves in began to dawn on him. He hadn’t stopped to think about the girl with her brains blown out on the floor back then until Roland’s place was well in the distance.

“You didn’t have to fucking shoot her, Dante.”

“Hey! Enough with the fucking names already,” Dante said as he pulled his arm free from Chew’s grasp. “What other choice did I have? She could have ID’ed me, man, and it wouldn’t take a genius to work out who you were.”

It was nonsense. Even with his hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel it was clear that Dante was scared. His face had gone white as a sheet and his voice, usually piercing to the point that it grated on him, was soft and feeble. As much as he tried to convince himself that he’d done it to protect them, the truth was that he’d shot that woman dead because he was scared and both of them knew it.

Chew pinched the bridge of his nose and sat back in his seat. “We could have bolted, left the whole thing be, now we have a dead fucking body on us and another live one in the back.”

“I had no choice,” Dante said, staring at Chew as if that would help to convince him. “This was your thing, man. There’s no point pointing fingers now, the bitch is dead, all we can fucking do is play the hand we were dealt.”

Chew’s thoughts went to his sister and Antwan, to Jayson, and to all the years he’d spent promising himself in prison that he’d never end up back there. It had been a fortnight since he was freed and an innocent girl was dead because of something that he’d set in motion. He should have known not to involve Dante in this.

Chew muttered in a defeated voice. “We were meant to scare him, not murder his secretary and kidnap him.”

Dante shook his head silently and kept his eyes on the road as he drove the pair through Norman. Chew looked at Dante, his face strewn with nervousness, and muttered a silent expletive under his breath before resting his head against the glass to watch the buildings they passed. It was going to be a long drive.

It went without saying that there was only one place that they could take Roland. The Bog had been Chew’s dumping ground of choice before he’d gone inside. It was the whole goddamned county's dumping ground of choice. Sometimes he liked to change things up and dump them in the old row houses over in Saloon City, but they didn’t have that kind of time on their hands and they certainly wouldn’t be able to find a nail gun at this time of night. The Bog was a pretty difficult place to find someone if they decided to hole up in there.

Especially if person in question happened to know every nook and cranny of that place as well as Chew did.

As they passed Ten Pickett Bowling, Chew couldn’t help but wonder if his stint as a civilian was done. He looked over at Dante. “PCSD are going to be all over our asses in by sun up.”

“We’ll get round them,” Dante said with a smile. “We’ve done it before.”

Something felt different this time. Back then, for better or for worse, Chew never questioned the morality of what they were doing. He needed to eat, he needed to put food on his family’s table, and that was all there was to that. If he’d been good with a scalpel he would have been a surgeon instead but the only gifts God had given him was his strength. So he used it with impunity to get the things he and the people he loved needed. It was as simple as that.

Now he felt awash with shame at having stood by and watched Dante shoot that girl like it was nothing. It was like she wasn’t a person at all. Getting away was easy, Chew thought, it would be living with himself knowing he could have stopped that girl from being shot over nothing that he'd struggle with.

*****

Laval Turner hummed to himself as he lifted the stacks of newspapers onto the back of his truck and scanned his clipboard for a few moments. He was well into his sixties, skinny as a rail and wrinkly too, but Laval was as fit as men half his age and he was very proud of that fact. His milk white skin was almost translucent in the morning light. Only freckles and tufts of white hair along it broke the blue veins that ran over it like spider’s webs. To this day people presumed that Laval as a Negro on account of his name and the fact he was belonged to one of only a handfu of white households still in Norman. He’d actually been named after Gamecock great Billy Laval.

He’d been born dirt poor in Norman, blind to colour, and worked and lived alongside Negros for years without so much as a thought to the colour of their skin. That made him something of an exception down in these parts, had earned him the ire of a fair few people too, but he’d never known anything different. Once the steel mill packed up and left Laval had done some odd jobs here and there before deciding to settle down and retire. Laval and his wife had managed their finances well over the years and they had more than enough to see them out. The newspaper thing had come a little later when he’d got bored of siting on his behind doing nothing all-day and wanted to keep active.

He placed the clipboard underneath his armpit and kicked the tires of his truck a little before starting towards the driver’s side. As he was set to climb in the neon sign of Spencer’s Tire and Rims caught his eye against the piercing white clouds. It was still on. Laval shook his head, threw his clipboard down on the seat of the truck, and headed over towards the tire showroom with a grin.

Sometimes Laval would see Roland in the mornings on his way to work and the tire salesman would give him shit over the state of his old truck. Roland had always been affable if a little greasy. Laval appreciated that he had a sense of humour and could take it as well as he dished it out. As he approached the building Laval straightened the blue cap atop his pale head and prepared to needle Spencer at having left the light on all night.

As he reached the doors he noticed that a faint light was coming from Roland’s back office. What was going on? Laval hoped he’d find Roland passed out in there with a bottle of scotch in his lap so he could spend the next six months reminding him about it. Though something about this didn’t feel right.

He pushed the doors to the showroom open slowly. “Roland?”

There was no response. Laval pushed on into the showroom a few more paces, staring towards the dim light coming from the office, as if expecting a disheveled Roland to appear at any second.

After a few seconds of silence Laval called out again. “Roland? You left the sign on, you stupid son of a bitch.”

Again there was no response. Laval looked around for a few moments as he wondered where Roland could have got to and why the hell he’d have left the doors unlocked if he wasn’t here. Suddenly a loud rattling noise sounded from behind him that made him jump so much that he almost shat himself right there and then. He turned to see the body of a young girl laid there lifelessly, dry blood on the floor around her head, her eyes staring at the ceiling. Beside her was a phone that vibrated back and forth as it rung silently. Laval took a few steps backwards as he felt a wave of nausea sweep over him and grasped onto the reception desk as his legs went weak.

It was Roland's girl Yolanda.

Danny Johnson walked through the showroom of Roland Spencer's tire place while Echols pulled fibers from the body of Yolanda Thomas. Sherry Calhoun and Clint Land had the place barred from the public, but Danny still saw about a dozen black men and woman watching them through the big windows of the showroom. This murder marked the third one in Pickett County over the past week. Danny knew Yolanda in a roundabout way. He went to school with her uncle George, her father being a few years younger than Danny and George.

"You know who runs this place, Danny?" Echols asked as he took photos of the body.

"Roland Spencer, a bit of a shady character."

"You like him for this?"

Danny looked back at the people watching from outside. Word was already filtering through the community about the shooting. It wouldn't be long before one of Yolanda's people came to the scene, demanding to know if it was true or not. Danny saw Gus Harris among those out there. Gus just nodded his head towards Danny. He had the same, world-weary eyes that Danny knew he also had. They were both men who had seen too many dead bodies and knew that the only way to prevent from drowning was to go along with the current, no matter how rough it was.

"Danny?" Echols asked again.

"I don't know," he finally said, turning to look at his partner. "Ronald Spencer is more of a talker instead of a doer. He's an idiot, but I don't know if he's dumb enough to kill his secretary in the showroom of his own business."

"We've seen dumber crimes," Echols said, photographing Yolanda's face.

"I'll ask Clint and Sherry to canvass the area for leads, see if anybody saw anything."

They both looked towards the door as it opened and Sheriff Gene Parker walked in. Parker wore a suit and tie with cowboy boots, his steely grey hair combed perfectly and with a plug of tobacco in his mouth.

"Fellas," he said with a nod. "What's it look like?"

"Murder," said Echols. "And maybe a prime suspect. Roland Spencer is the name of the guy who owns this place, dead girl is his secretary."

"Right," Parker said, spitting tobacco juice in a styrofoam cup in his hand. "This shit is getting out of hand, boys. This makes number three, two of 'em unsolved. I can request SLED to come in and help y'all with the murders if you need help."

"We have a prime suspect in the Beggs murder," said Danny. "John Norman."

Danny saw Echols staring at him out the corner of his eye. He tried to not meet it, but Parker caught the look and furrowed his brow.

"Something wrong, boys?"

"A disagreement, sheriff," said Danny.

"Sir," Echols said, standing and walked towards Parker. "Why did you ask us to both find Howard Beggs and follow John Norman a week before, presumably, Norman killed Beggs?"

"Sheriff's prerogative," Parker sniffled. "I sometimes do things that are in the interest of this county that only I can know. One day, one of y'all will understand. I can't be sheriff forever, and no way in hell do I want to see Scott Andrews take my badge."

Parker spat into his cup again and winked at the two detectives.

"Y'all make sure to put out APBs on this Roland Spencer and John Norman. I want them brought in for questioning and charged if it comes to that. If y'all can't get it done, I'll bring the state police in to take care of it. Okay? Good. Need anything, let me know."

Danny and Echols watched Parker saunter out as quickly as he had come. The two sergeants traded looks again.

"Something is not right, Danny. I'm telling you.

"Focus on this murder," Danny said with a shake of his head. "And let's hope we can get it solved before a fourth one happens."

--

The front door to John Norman's trailer shuddered and shook before it came off its hinges. Scott Andrews stepped over the flimsy metal door, his gun out as he walked into the trailer. The small, cramped little single-wide was a cluttered mess that reeked of weed. Scott went through every room for a sign of life. Not finding one, he reached into the small of his back and pulled out a gun wrapped in a plastic bag.

This was the murder weapon Jed used on Beggs. It was an unregistered piece that had its serial numbers filed off. Scott made sure to wipe it clean of any prints before putting into the bag. They wouldn't find John's prints on the gun, but they wouldn't find Jed's. It wasn't always that you got prints on a weapon in a murder case, so Scott felt sure that planting the gun in the trailer would serve as ample evidence without a print.

He went into the bedroom, planning to tuck it in between the mattress and the box spring, when he balked. He saw a curled up piece of paper on a nightstand. What drew his eyes to it was the sheriff's department logo on the top of the page. Scott walked over and picked the paper up. It was the arrest report on Howard Beggs. Official PCSD material, senative and classified, and it was in John Norman's trailer.

"What the fuck is going on?" Scott said to himself.

--

Mike Norman pulled into the motel parking lot just after ten that night. He drove John and Carol through Pickett and Abbeville County all the way to Anderson. John looked through the parking lot at the Howard Johnson’s just off I-85. Bright halogen lights strung up around the parking lot gave the place a clean, sterile look that didn’t offer any comfort. But John guessed that was the point. This was a way station for people headed out to parts unknown; it was a temporary shelter and nothing more.

Mike found a parking spot close to the front office and turned the car off. Carol looked out through the window at the surroundings and then at John.
"Are you sure this is the only way?"

"Only way that doesn’t end up with you getting hurt."

"I just can’t believe Howard’s dead..."

She looked like she was about to break down crying again. John put his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. She’d spent most of the ride up here crying softly while she sat curled up on the passenger seat. He helped her out of the car and they walked under the halogen lights towards the office.

"Here," John said as he pulled money from his pocket. "This should keep you holed up for a few days."

She looked at the wad of cash and then at John, her eyes gleaming covetously. Even through her grief, the monster that is addiction was shining through. She started to reach for it, but John pulled it back at the last second.

"Hey!" She stared at him with a perturbed look on her face that was as telling as watching her down a bottle of oxy would ever be.

"Use this right." He placed the money in her hands. "What you have left over, you spend on your kids."

"Okay, okay," she said as she picked the money up and rifled through it to count it.

Sitting there, watching her count that money, John knew that there would be no happy ending for him. The denial that clouded his vision since the start of this melted away. The odds were too stacked against him. The only thing he had on his side was an old man, a mean old man to be sure, but just one old man against Billy Brown and the cops. To top it all off, the girl he got into all this trouble for was more concerned about pills than she was about anything else.

"Can you make me a promise?" He asked quietly.

"What?" Carol said without looking up from the money.

"I know how much of a bitch being addicted to something can be. I get it. But, please, for your kid’s sake could you please try to get clean?"

"Jesus, John, you sound like my fucking father."

"Maybe that’s what you need." His voice started to rise and he could feel his face flushing. "Ever think of that?"

Carol’s face pulled back into a snarl. “Oh, I see what this is. Still trying to make time with me? Is that what this is, you pathetic piece of shit? Give me all this money so I’ll spread my fucking legs for you? Huh? HUH?!”

And that was when he lost his temper. He lashed out with his left hand and slapped Carol so hard it knocked her to the ground. She screamed and started to crawl away, but he grabbed her ponytail with his right hand and yanked her back. His left hand reached into his jacket while she struggled against his grip. Carol's arms trashed and her nails tried to dig into his skin. She cut John's forehead just a few inches from his right eye but he didn't didn’t feel it. Pain was a distant memory, as was love, worry, or sadness. It was all secondary to the hate. He pulled the gun Mike gave him from the seat and pressed it to her temple. The struggling stopped. Somewhere from behind, Mike's driver door opened.

"Listen to me right goddamn now," John said into her ear. "I don’t want to fuck you, why do I want to fuck some nigger loving junkie? The girl I loved is dead, and you’re just some dried up old husk nobody worth a damn wants anymore."

Carol was doing something that was a mix of hyperventilating and sobbing. He poked her temple with the barrel of the gun and let out a hollow laugh as she shuddered from the touch of the gun.

"What’s wrong, baby? I thought you liked scumbags? Is this turning you on? I bet it is. Let me make this very clear to you, Carol. Either you get clean, or you die. You won’t OD either. I’ll come back and find you and put a goddamn bullet in your head."

He felt Mike's hands on his back, pulling him away. Carol started to sob and crawl towards the hotel's front office as Mike pushed John back towards his car.

"Get in the car, you goddamn idiot," he hissed as he pushed John into his Cadillac.

They peeled rubber out of the parking lot, leaving Carol behind in the dark. Mike cursed at him loudly, but John wasn't listening. His hands were shaking and his eyes were stinging with tears. He hated myself for what he did back there. He laid hands on a woman in anger for the first time in his life. Now, he was no better than the drunks and shitheads who beat on their old ladies for no reason. As much as he hated it, what he hated more was how good the act made him feel. It was like there was a switch somewhere in his head that had been turned on. For the first time since this whole mess started, John felt like he was in control.

Mixed with that feeling were the dark red revenge fantasies that now filled his mind. Visions of Billy being shot, Jed being stabbed, beating Jim Brown to death and making them all beg for mercy while he ended their lives. It was horrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. For years he had been ignoring my anger, pushing it down and locking it away where he couldn’t get to it. Now that his back was against the wall, that anger came roaring out. There was no way in hell he could put it back now, and he probably didn’t want to put it back. For years people said that he was a time bomb, that eventually his family history would catch up to him. Now, it looked like that was coming true. John's Norman side was coming out and he had a tiger by the tail with it. A tiger he could use against Billy.

Mike kept cursing as he drove south back towards Pickett. John ignored him and lit up a cigarette in the dark, plotting is next move.

-

He forced the rickety wooden door opened with his shoulder and went inside the filth filled room. Inside he found a tweaker hunched over a TV, entranced with trying to take it apart. On the far end of the room, sitting on a piss-stained mattress and getting head from a bony whore, was George Silvers. The whore’s face was frozen in a look of panic, her open mouth hanging just a few inches from George’s rapid shriveling manhood.

“What the fu—,“ George started before seeing the gun in John's hands.

“Everybody who ain’t George get the fuck out.”

The whore jumped up and pulled the TV obsessed meth head from the set. They scuttled out the room whileJohn walked towards George with the gun trained on him.

“You lied to me, Georgie,” he said as he sucked his teeth. “Now, I thought we was kin. Kin don’t do that to each other.”

“Fuck you talking about, John?”

John fired off the gun. The bullet burrowed into the peeling wallpaper beside George’s head. He yelled and held his ears.

“Lie to me again, George, and I’ll aim for the wallpaper and hit you instead. You was spinning bullshit when you said you didn’t know Howard Beggs. Why lie?”

“Why do you think?” He spat. “Bad enough I got Billy breathing down my neck and Parker threatening to toss me in jail, but the last thing I want is fucking you in the mix.”

“Parker?” John frowned. “When’d you talk to him?”

“Day before you showed up at the trailer. He came looking for Beggs just like you did. I fed him the same bullshit that I told you and he left, but not after telling me he’d send me to the state pen if I was lying to him.”

Parker? Why the hell had Parker not told him about going to see George? Billy’s guy on the force coming to see George made sense if Billy was issuing a dragnet for Beggs. But if Parker was working the same angles as John, then why bring him in at all?

“Beggs is dead, George. You know that?”

He nodded slowly and licked his lips. “Yeah.” He stuttered. “I mean, I- I figured that’s what happened.”

“What do you know about that? I’m getting antsy. I tend to fidget when I get antsy. Best hurry up and tell me.”

“Few hours after you came to see me, Beggs showed up. He got his fix and headed up to Jardin. I... I called Jed. They took him, Jed and whoever he's with. I could imagine what they’d do next.”

“Why take Beggs and not you? You were both plotting to stab Billy in the back.”

“I—I guess Billy needed a good meth cook. Beggs had a good formula, but he couldn’t cook worth shit.”

His line about Beggs’ cooking skills rang true to John. He saw the distilled dog shit on the floor of his house. But something didn’t jive with what George was saying.

“You overestimate your skills, George. You’re not Betty Crocker here, cousin. Probably a dozen people in Pickett County alone that could cook as good as you. What did I say about lying to me?”

Before he could answer, John lunged forward and slapped him with the barrel of the pistol. The sight of the piece dragged across his cheek and cut a long, vertical line that ran just under his right eye down to his nose. He yelled and grabbed the cheek.

“Goddammit!” He yelled in pain.

“Tell me!” John shouted. “Why were you spared but they killed Beggs? Tell me before I put a fucking bullet in your head! Tell me, goddammit!”

In a convoluted and jumbled mess that ran together in one long sentence, George told him why. John made him repeat it three more times before he could understand it and fully believe him. That was when all the pieces fell into place.

Michelle Lewis sat in her car and watched Dante’s apartment nervously for some signs of life. Her brother had agreed to pay Roland Spencer a visit last night to make sure he stayed away from her son Antwan. Chew had been reluctant to begin with but he’d relented eventually and promised her he’d be in contact with Dante and get it sorted that very night. It was the morning now and Michelle hadn’t heard a peep from either her brother or Dante and had started to worry that something had gone wrong. As much as she hated Chew, as much as she downright reviled that sleaze Dante, she was still worried sick. She rang her brother more times than she could count but he wasn’t answering his phone so Michelle decided she’d wait at Dante’s and see if she’d find them there.

After another fifteen or so phone calls to Chew she finally got out of her car and climbed the stairs of Dante’s apartment block. It was exactly the type of place a person deserved to live in. The corridors of the hallways reeked of piss and she could hear people shouting, the sound of springs being tested to their limits, and dogs barking as she walked through the building. Finally she stopped outside of Dante’s apartment and knocked on the door as discretely as she could.

“Chew?”

She waited for a few seconds, staring down at her phone in hope of some sign of life from her brother, before banging again a little louder.

“Dante?”

“Come on,” Michelle said nervously. “It’s me.”

She pressed her ear up against the wall to see whether there was any movement on the inside. Still nothing. She banged on the door again, this time hard enough that it hurt the side of her hand. “This isn’t funny.”

Michelle shook her head, convinced nobody was inside, and walked away from Dante’s apartment and down the stairs of the apartment building. She had no idea where they were, what had happened, or whether they’d gone through with it at all, but the fact she couldn’t get a hold of them made her fear the worse. In that case the last place she needed to be seen was here. She jogged down the stairs, keeping her face pointed downwards and her bouffant hair covering it as best as she could, before leaving the building entirely and re-entering her car parked outside. As she started it she stared back up and muttered a silent prayer for her brother under her breath.


It had been a week to forget in Pickett County and it was shaping up to get even worse. First Jayson Aaron had been gunned down last night outside of the old gymnasium and this morning a girl been found with a bullet buried deep in her brain over at Spencer’s Tires and Rims across town. Sherry Calhoun had spent her morning canvassing Norman in the hopes of finding someone that had heard or seen something of use. So far she’d had twelve doors slammed in her face, been cussed out eight times, and flat out ignored three times. Sherry had become a Sheriff’s Deputy become she thought she could make a difference, she could help people, but on days like these she realised how difficult it could be to help people unless they wanted to be helped.

She looked down at her list of names as she sauntered down the street to the next house and smiled as she recognised the name. Gus Harris was a deacon at the largest African Methodist Episcopal Church in Norman and though she’d never met the man before she had a feeling that he wasn’t about to go slamming his door in her face. His house was modest, smaller than many of the others on the street, but the yard was well kept and colourful flowers were littered around in pots along his porch. She knocked on his door and waited with her notepad at the ready.

After a few seconds Gus appeared. He was wearing smart dress shoes, black pants, and a navy sweat over the top of a white shirt. Sherry noticed the skinny black tie around his neck. Were it not for the time Gus looked like he might have been going somewhere. As he opened the door and stepped out onto his porch he smiled at Sherry in a way that instantly put her at ease.

“Good morning,” Sherry said as she responded with an earnest smile of her own. “I’m sorry to wake you so early.”

Gus shook his head and gestured down at the smart shoes on his feet. “It’s okay, us church folk get up earlier than most people. To what do I owe the pleasure, Deputy?”

“It’s not a social call, I’m afraid. There was a fatal shooting a few blocks from here down at Spencer’s Tire and Rims and we’ve been canvassing the area to see if anyone heard or saw anything.”

“I saw the tape outside of Roland's place morning on my way to the store,” Gus said with a weary sigh. “Roland and I weren’t exactly friends but I’d never wish something like that on him.”

Sherry made a silent note of Gus' comment in her head before shaking her head slightly. “The victim was Mr. Spencer’s secretary, actually, a Yolanda Thomas.”

A pensive look appeared on Gus’ face that Sherry couldn’t quite read. It was somewhere between relief and bemusement. He hadn’t been the first person to presume that Roland had been the one shot dead. When she’d been briefed she had thought someone had gone after Spencer too. It was an open secret that Roland Spencer’s business practices weren’t exactly kosher but the man seemed to have a knack for avoiding scrutiny from law enforcement.

“What? Why would anyone want to kill Roland Spencer’s secretary?”

Sherry shrugged her shoulders. “That’s what we’re trying to work out.”

Gus leant against the wall of his house and thought for a moment whilst Sherry looked on.

“I can’t say I heard or saw anything out of the usual last night.”

“I see,” Sherry nodded. “If you do remember anything don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

She reached out and handed Gus a business card with her details on and began to descend down the stairs. Gus stood for a few seconds, staring down at it between his fingers, and called out to Sherry. “Wait, what about Roland? Have you been able to get a hold of him?”

From the base of the stairs Sherry shook her head, staring up at Gus as he stood twiddling the card.

“He wasn’t at the scene if that’s what you’re asking, but nobody’s heard a peep out of him since last night. Gone off grid completely.”

Gus placed the card in his pocket and sighed. “You think, maybe, it was him?”

Roland Spencer was a lot of things but from the sound of it murder wasn’t in his playbook. To hear the people round here tell it he was cleverer than to kill someone in his own business and think it wouldn’t come back on him in a heartbeat.

“Weirder things have happened,” Sherry muttered skeptically. “But honestly? I don’t see it. Worse case scenario somehow he’s got himself mixed up in something above his pay grade and gone underground. Either way, if you get word of him tell him that the Sheriff's Department wants a word with him. It would be wise of him to stop by in a timely fashion.”

The deacon remained silent and looked down at the ground as if lost in thought. After a few seconds he looked at Sherry and then around to the houses along the street that surrounded his own home.

“You been having much luck around here? With the canvassing?”

Sherry wanted to be able to tell him that people had helpful. Heck, for her to be able to say that they’d been responsive would have been something. The truth was that she knew nothing more about what had happened last night at Spencer’s Tire and Rims than when she’d set out that morning. At the rate it was going Sherry couldn’t see that changing anytime soon.

“You’re the first one that’s even been willing to speak to me all morning.”

“You can thank Old John Norman for that,” Gus muttered. “But Old John Norman’s been dead for decades and that girl deserves better than to be laid up on some slab for a second longer than she needs to be on account of his transgressions.”

Sherry knew all about John Norman and what had gone on back in Pickett County back then. They said John Norman was the nastiest piece of work to ever grace Pickett, given that the African-American community still damned his name decades after his death, Sherry figured there must have been some truth to that. There were wounds in this place, wounds deeper than she could comprehend, and in truth she didn’t feel like it was her place to speak on John Norman or the things he’d done.

Instead she frowned a little and looked up at Gus. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’ll help you, Deputy Calhoun,” Gus said with a determined look. “I’ll get them to speak to you.”


Sherry lifted a hand to guard her eyes from the sun and stared down at the full notepad the rested in her hands. Gus had escorted her along the next thirty or forty houses she’d canvassed and the different had been like day and night. Where once she was met with scowls and cusswords, the people behind the doors seemed all but too happy to talk with Gus there. Nobody had much in the way of information, whatever had happened at Spencer’s place seems to have gone unnoticed by the so-called Ghetto News Wire, but Sherry felt much better than she had in the morning. She had put some faces to names, shaken some hands, and that counted for something.

As they stood on the corner of Gus’ street, she looked at the deacon and smiled. “Thank you for this.”

He shook his head dismissively.

“As charming as you are, Deputy, I’m not doing this for you.”

“I know,” Cherry blushed at the compliment. “But still, I have a feeling you don’t hear that half as often as you probably ought to hear it.”

Her radio sounded and she strode away from Gus for a second to listen in. It was Clint Land checking in. With all the bodies that had fallen over the past week or so the entire Sherriff’s Department was on edge. Gene had made it clear to them all how important it was that they get control of the situation before people’s faith in the department was eroded any more. The last thing they needed was someone taking a pop at someone in a badge. She assured Clint she was fine and informed him that she’d not learned much, before walking back to Gus stood on the corner.

He looked at Sherry hopefully. “Any news on Roland? Has he been in touch?”

Sherry shook her head. “Nothing.”

They spoke for a time longer and Gus enquired how much longer it would be before Roland could be declared a missing person. Sherry shared his concern for Spencer’s whereabouts. There felt like there was something more going on here than Sherry could understand at the moment. Something told her once they found Roland it would all make sense.

She said her goodbyes and thanked Gus again for his help before starting down towards the squad car that was parked a few feet down the street. As she grasped the handle of it she saw Gus walked towards her again, his hand pressed against his mouth in thought, and looked up at him as if waiting for him to speak.

“We need to visit Antwan Dixon,” Gus said meditatively. “Something tells me if anyone knows where Roland Spencer is, it’ll be Antwan.”

John spent a few minutes in Mike's car, trying to steel his resolve and prepare for what he might have to do. The Cadillac was parked outside Pickett First Methodist, right down the block from Sheriff Parker’s house. It was ten till one and the rains of earlier started back up just as Mike parked the car. A light drizzle peppered the windshield with drips of water. He took a deep breath and began to climb out the car.

"Let me go in with you," said Mike. "I do not trust this son of a bitch. Never have."

"I ain't going in alone," John said, patting the gun hidden under his jacket.

"Just give me a holler, okay? I'll pull up closer so I can hear better. I hear yelling or a gunshot and I'm busting in."

John nodded and got out the car. Parker’s house was a two-story home just off what people in town called the Mill Hill, the slope above where the empty Simpson Mill sits. The entire hill was filled with the old homes the company provided to workers. The second floor in Parker’s home was an add-on and looked like it. The more modern style and fresh paint clashed with the humble architecture of the blue collar worker bottom.

Parker’s silver unmarked car the county provided him with sat in the front yard. His wife passed a few years ago from breast cancer and his only son lived outside the county was his own family so he lived alone. He went around back and inspected the door. It was locked but not deadbolted. It only took John a few minutes to pick it with the old credit card routine. With the door unlocked, he slowly opened the back door and ventured inside. He passed through the back porch that had old clothes and a washer and a dryer in it. The next room through that was the kitchen.

He put one foot into the tile floor of the kitchen when the light snapped on. Standing in a white tank-top and striped boxers was Parker. The bored looked on his face made it look like he was waiting on a bus instead of a burglar. Down by his side was his service pistol. It was aimed square at John's chest. His gun was still in his pocket.

“Have a seat,” he said, walking towards the kitchen table beside the sink.

John stared while he sat down and laid the gun down on the table. “Shut the back door, please. House can be kinda drafty in this weather.”

Not knowing what else to do, he complied and sat down at the table facing the sheriff. Parker’s fingers were laced together and resting in front of him on the table. A supposed gesture of good faith, John guessed. Still, the gun was well within reach. There would be no way in hell he could beat Parker in either going for his gun or reaching to get the pistol in his pocket.

He started. “A few days ago, someone in the woods found a body. This led to a few of my deputies finding the body of Howard Beggs. Four bullets went through his body, mostly his head. The only reason we made him as Beggs was because the license in his back pocket.”

John stayed silent while Parker’s gray-blue eyes kept him transfixed where he sat. He stared at John for a few seconds that felt like they took forever to pass before he kept talking.

“Scott Andrews, my chief deputy, said you were asking all over town about Beggs recently. Scott also asked to run a background check on you. He said he remembered you having a gun. Last I talked to him, he was bucking for a search warrant on your trailer.”

John kept silent while Parker kept staring.

“Well.” Parker shook his head and let out a short bark of a laugh. “Boy, they fucked you over but good. Only way you’d look better is if they found you over Beggs’ body.”

“You bastard,” John finally said. “You goddamn bastard. You set me up for this from the get go.”

“Me?” Parker asked, pointing to himself. “No. I was just following orders.”

John leaned forward and showed his teeth as he spoke. “Bullshit. You know where this was going to lead me. I know you went to see George Silvers the day before you hired me. He told me he spilled everything to you.”

Parker sighed and scratched the back of his head. “He did. And now you know the truth.”

“And I still don’t believe it.”

Parker raised a hand and showed John he was going to pick up the gun.

“I’m armed as well,” said John. “So, you try anything you’re going down with me.”

Parker picked the gun up and motioned for John to follow him through the house. He stayed close behind Parker while the sheriff led him into a bedroom that had been converted into a study with a desk and a few file cabinets. There was a leather chair facing the desk. John sat down gingerly, slipping a hand into his pocket to grab his gun, while Parker rifled through the desk. Finally, he pulled out a folder and slid it across the surface of the desk to him.

“Read it and weep,” he said.

John opened the folder and saw that George’s bullshit was all true.

The photo was a mugshot of Howard Beggs. The date beside the shot said it was taken six years earlier. He was eighty pounds heavier, his blonde hair in a buzzcut and a thick mustache over his lip. Beside the photo was a file that was completely different than what he had read about him.

Howard Beggs was, in reality, Jerry Miller. Instead of being forty years old and from Darlington County, he was instead born in Moncks Corner. And he was a detective sergeant with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

“So,” he said, looking up at Parker. “That’s why they set me up for this?”

“Yep,” Parker said. “It’s one thing to make a tweaker like Howard Beggs disappear, nobody gives a shit. But do the same to Sergeant Jerry Miller? Not so easy.”

An undercover SLED agent? He leaned back in the chair and had to fight the urge to puke all over the file and Parker’s desk. When it had passed, he shook his head and looked at Parker.

“So that’s how he got off without having to pay bail?” John asked.

“Yep. Soon as Sherry brought him in, he was on the phone to someone in Columbia. They got him off right fast and in a hurry by putting pressure on me. After that I asked around to some of my friends with the state police, and that was when I found out. He was sent in to Pickett six months ago to look at all of us, Billy and the sheriff’s department.”

“That arrest report you had was fake?”

“Yep. Everything up until his last arrest. Turns out, the state police were just as interested in finding him as Billy. He’d gone off the reservation, so to speak.”

“Meth does that to people." He passed the folder back to Parker. “Billy knew a week before you did. George said Beggs got fucked up one night and bragged to him that their little plan to expand behind Billy’s back would work. That was when he told George the truth. George ran and told Billy to save his own skin. Also explains why Scott Andrews pulled him over for no real reason.”

“Yeah,” Parker said. “If not for Sherry showing up, Beggs probably wouldn’t have made it off that roadside alive.”

John agreed. “Easiest thing in the world for Andrews to shoot him while he’s stopped and drive off like nothing happened. Sherry shows up and Andrews can’t kill him, so they bring him in. He gets free and then rabbits. He comes to George for help, George sells him out and the set up is on for me. Only thing I can’t figure is your part in this, sheriff. You roped me into this. You were in on the fix, but why if Andrews is playing for the other side? I didn’t think Billy had everybody in his pocket.”

“Like I said, just following orders.”

John pulled his gun from his jacket and leveled it at the sheriff's chest.

“Not good enough, Gene.”

He glanced at the gun by his side. It would be close, but it may end up as a draw. They both knew a draw would end with both of us shot. Instead of getting feisty, Parker hunched over his chair and leaned forward. His face screwed up and John could tell he was fighting back tears.

“Billy’s had my ass under the eight ball for nearly twenty damn years. I don’t work for him, I’m his slave. He’s got blackmail that would ruin me, John. I’m talking about more than getting me thrown out of office, I mean criminal charges.”

“What, exactly?”

“No,” he said with the shake of his head. “I’m not telling, I don’t care if you shoot me full of holes. The point is, John, Billy’s owned me for nearly my whole time in office. I went looking for Beggs on my own after Mark and Danny failed to find him. I came across George and he sung when I threatened him with jail. The snake that he is, he told Billy and Billy came up with the plan. We’d use you as the fall guy. You're a Norman, for god's sake. Everybody’s been waiting on you to snap. No way in hell nobody would believe you getting framed.”

John's anger started to rise. Parker was joining the cast of characters that made up the revenge fantasies in his head. Smashing his face into the desk over and over again until his blood stained the wood was starting to look like a good possibility.

He kept going. “So, I was to force you into finding Beggs and let you ask your questions around town. Then Jed would grab you, plant his gun on you, and he’d leave you by his body where Scott would find you and arrest you, or shoot you down and pretend you drew the gun on him. Scott would get the glory that that would launch him to running for sheriff.”

“Replacing you?” John asked.

“Yeah,” Parker said with a look of disdain. “Apparently, I’m too old and it’s time to put me out to pasture. Billy wants Scott as sheriff now, a man he doesn’t have to threaten to work for him.”

It was laid out in front of him, the whole damn thing. An undercover state police officer addicted to meth and gone rogue with some half-assed plan to make meth and money, but his greed got him killed and, more importantly, majorly fucked John's life up.

He looked down at his gun and then up at Parker. “I don’t want to go to jail, so if you let me leave now I won’t have to hurt you.”

“I have no intention of arresting you, none at all.”

“Then what?” John skeptically asked.

“You want this to go away?” Parker leaned forward to look him square in the eyes. “You do exactly as I say and I can make this go away, or at least buy you enough time to leave.”

“What do I have to do?”

He smiled and John felt his arms break out in goose bumps at the cold and callous thing on Parker's face that was supposed to be warm and friendly. “They want to push me out, I think you should push them out.”

“Who?”

“Billy, Scott, Jed, even crazy ass Jim Brown. I want you to kill them all and find the blackmail Billy has on me. You do that, I’ll pin the murder on one of them and get you off scot free.”

“Are you serious?” John asked with an arched eyebrow.

“As a heart attack, son. Hell, you pull this off right and I’ll give you my blessing to run Billy’s rackets.”

“Never say the law here in Pickett County don’t look out for the wellbeing of its citizens...”

“Billy’s had a good run, but it’s over,” Parker said with a shrug. “Besides, you’re a Norman. If anybody can do it right, it’s you.”

John knew that was sucking up bullshit. He didn’t want to do all the things Mike had done. Dealing drugs, breaking legs, and pimping wasn’t John's style. But he had a chance to get revenge without any impunity. And it was an offer Parker was too quick to throw out.

“How long have you had this card in your back pocket?” John asked.

Another look of innocence from Parker. “What do you mean?”

“Getting me out of trouble with Carol and her folks, cutting through all that red tape and greasing palms get me free, knowing that Bill may employ me, knowing about my little weed farm for years. How long you been waiting to cash those all those favors in?”

“Ah.” He chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “You see, John, lot of men collect things. Cars, fishing rods, baseball cards, things like that. Me? I collect favors. You think you’re the only one in this county, or hell, the only one in this state I’ve went the extra mile for? I got friends all over Pickett, you’re just one of many. And now I’m asking for one more favor. You got it in you to step up to the plate and do what needs to be done?”

John stood up and tucked the gun into his jacket. “Of course. I’m a Norman, ain’t I?”

Parker smiled, a genuine one this time. “You most certainly are. Now, go do your ancestors proud and go out there and kill as many sumbitches as you can.”

---

Gene Parker stood at the window and watched Mike Norman's Cadillac disappear down the street. He let out a long breath and sighed. His knees nearly buckled and his hands were shaking fiercely. When he saw John Norman in his kitchen, he was certain he was going to die right then and there. But he talked his way out of it. It was mostly truth, but there was bullshit in there to. Enough to spin the Norman boy's anger away from himself and towards more deserving parties.

He turned from the window and shuffled back towards his holster. He slid the service pistol into place and picked his cell phone up off the coffee table. Gene took a deep breath and dialed a number.

"It's Gene Parker," he said after a few long moments of silence. "We need to have us a talk."

---

Mike couldn't believe what John had just told him. They drove out of town and parked amidst all the rotten old buildings in Saloon City. Mike just listened as John recapped his conversation with Parker. This entire mess was a clusterfuck. Just trying to make sense of it hurt his head. This game Billy was playing was a bunch of bullshit in his estimate. Back when Mike ran things, he just walked up and killed someone. End of story. All these layers and lies just tangled things up.

"Still want to stay?" He asked his grandson.

"Parker made it clear I either get the blackmail Billy has on him, or I get a murder charge on me."

Mike sighed and ran his hands through his thinning hair.

"If Billy has anything on the sheriff, we both know where it'd be."

John nodded slowly. "Ray's. That big ass safe in the backroom."

Mike popped the trunk and started to open the door of his car. He motioned for John to follow him. They went to the back of the Cadillac where Mike raised the trunk. Laying there was a twelve gauge pump shotgun with a box of shells.

"You take the shotgun and I'll take the pistol in your jacket," said Mike.

"I don't--"

"I ain't asking," he said curtly. He looked at John through the dark. "This ain't just about you, boy. It's about us. What Billy Brown took from us. Not just my business, but my son. Your daddy. You grew up without a father because of that son of a bitch, and now he keeps fucking with us long after the war is over. This is about clearing your name and bringing our name back. People in this county used to fear the last name Norman. They need to learn to again."

Mike watched as John picked up the shotgun pumped a shell into the breech.

"Let's go."

The first day back had been hard. Antwan was used to being the center of attention at school but it was a different kind of attention than he’d become used to. Friends filed up to him one by one to pay their condolences to him and even kids he’d not spoken a word to or he knew hated his guts stopped to stay a word. It was unnerving, unnecessary even, but by recess things had gone back to normal. It was strange without Jayson there to eat his food with. Antwan didn’t know who to sit with or where to go so opted to remain in his homeroom to try to get some work done. Heck, if Jayson could see Antwan right now doing his work before the last second for once he’d have sworn the world was coming to an end. It was painful, lonely too, but Antwan was glad he’d gone to school instead of sitting in Roland’s house on his own.

The second day was more manageable. The condolences still came, teachers still took him to the side where he could to tell him they’d be there if they needed him, and the principal was still determined to shove counselor after counselor in Antwan’s direction to get him to talk about what had happened. They didn’t understand. There was nothing for Antwan to talk about. The only person he wanted to talk to at the moment was Jayson and Jayson was gone.

When he found out that it was DeSean Hamilton that had killed Jayson he’d wanted to tear the whole school down. They said he’d done it because Antwan humiliated him, because he felt helpless, and had been aiming for Antwan that night. Jayson had saved his life. It hurt him to think back to that night and how he’d not even taken the time to read the name on the back of DeSean’s jersey whilst he’d taunted him all night. DeSean hadn’t even existed to him and yet he’d taken Antwan’s best friend away from him over some trash talk. It was his mouth that had killed Jayson, not DeSean Hamilton, and that would be true to him for as long as he lived. He’d have to live with that.

So he endured the lonely days at schools and took what solace he could from Roland’s company at night. He’d toyed with the idea of going back to his mom’s house but the way she’d blown up at Roland at the hospital still ate away at him. A thousand things, including his mother, raced through Antwan’s mind in chemistry before the appearance of Vice-Principal Jamieson added another thing for Antwan to worry about. No doubt he was there to take him to another counselor or to suggest that he take some time to mourn.

Instead he took him to his office where Gus Harris and the sheriff’s deputy that had interrogated Antwan after he’d been pulled over were sat waiting for him. He took a seat and eyed them suspiciously. “What’s going on? Am I in trouble or something?”

Vice-Principal Jamieson shook his head, his big brown double chins flapping as he did so, and spoke in a deep velvety voice that Antwan had become well acquainted with over the past two days.

“It’s nothing to be worried about, Antwan, Deputy Calhoun here wants to ask you a couple of questions. That’s all.”

Calhoun, that had been her name, she was related to Coach Calhoun. Antwan pointed in Gus’ direction. “What’s he doing here then?”

Gus smiled at him. “Call it moral support.”

Antwan narrowed his eyes a little, confused and skeptical in equal measure. He’d told the police everything he had to tell them about Jayson’s shooting the day Roland had picked him up from the hospital.

Deputy Calhoun leant forward from her seat and smiled at Antwan. “When was the last time you spoke to Roland, Antwan?”

He frowned at her suspiciously, feigning anger to cover his nervousness. Roland was the nearest thing to a friend that Antwan had left now that Jayson was gone. That whole business with the cars and the weed was behind them and Roland had been there for him over the past couple of days. His mother had been so obsessed with turning Antwan against him that even as Antwan’s best friend laid dead she was still using it to attack him. Roland was all he had. If something had happened to him Antwan wasn’t sure how he’d cope.

“What’s happened?”

For a second Gus, sat slightly behind Deputy Calhoun, made eye contact with Antwan. “Just answer the question, son.”

From his voice Antwan could tell something was wrong.

“Yesterday afternoon? Something like that.”

Deputy Calhoun flicked open her notepad and began to scribble something down. “You haven’t heard from him since? Has he been in contact? Phone calls, text messages, anything?”

“Nothing,” Antwan muttered. “Not that I can remember.”

Again Gus piped up, though this time his voice was more forceful from the last time and there was a sense of urgency to it. “Think, Antwan.”

Something was definitely wrong. That day at the court Gus had seemed calm, serene, but there was something different to him this afternoon. The urgency in his voice made Antwan worried for Roland’s wellbeing. A deputy showing up in the middle of a school day asking questions couldn’t be a good thing and Gus being there only reinforced that to Antwan. His eyes darted around the room, from Calhoun, to Gus, to Jamieson, the ground, and back as Antwan tried to track his movements over the past few hours. Had he spoken to Roland? He couldn’t remember.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to check his texts and he nodded as one jogged his memory.

“Well, I text him last night and he didn’t respond,” Antwan said, lifting the phone up to them. “I thought it was pretty weird because usually he hits me back pretty quick. Used to clown him about how I’d never seen an old guy use a touch screen keyboard that fast before.”

Gus and Deputy Calhoun looked at one another for a second before Calhoun scribbled some more in her little notepad.

Antwan looked at them, awaiting a response. “That it? Can I go back to class?”

From behind his desk Vice-Principal Jamieson cleared his throat, pushed his chair back, and stood up from his seat. “Given the circumstances, we think it might be best if Deacon Harris and Deputy Calhoun escort you home. They want to ask your mother a few questions about Roland.”

“My moms? What? Why? What the hell is going on?”

Deputy Calhoun went to speak then looked at Gus for a few moments, he nodded reassuringly, and she turned back to Antwan. “There’s been a shooting, Antwan, the secretary at Roland’s tire business was found dead this morning and Roland’s missing.”

Antwan sat in silence for a second or two, completely unmoved by the information, before springing into life. He lifted the small coffee table in front of him off the ground with one arm and kicked over another small table by his side with all the force his lanky, six foot five frame could accomplish.

Deputy Calhoun sprung to her feet and extended a hand in Antwan’s direction to calm him. Beside her Gus had stood and had his hands out, palms facing downwards, trying to maintain eye contact with Antwan as he huffed and puffed in the centre of the room.

Antwan kicked out at the overturned coffee table again. “Fuck this town, man.”

From behind him a pair of hands rested themselves on his broad shoulders and Vice-Principal Jamieson directed Antwan back to his seat.

“Calm down, son.”

Antwan sat, breathing heavily, as tears began to appear in his eyes and his caramel skin became red and flustered. They weren’t tears of sadness or mourning but tears of rage. He balled his fists and slammed them against the top of his legs before burying his head in his hands. “First Jayson and now this? I hate this fucking place.”

“It’s okay,” Gus muttered sympathetically, rubbing Antwan’s back. “It’s going to be okay.”

Convinced he had calmed down, Deputy Calhoun breathed a sigh of relief and bent over to place the upturned coffee table back in its rightful position. From her knees she placed a hand on Antwan’s leg and smiled at him. “We’re going to take you home, okay? It’s the best place for you to be at the moment.”


Michelle Lewis watched as her son slinked towards his room without so much as a look in her direction. Disheartened, she gestured to Deputy Calhoun and Gus to take a seat at the small table in the kitchen. They did so, all three struggling to fit around the table, and Michelle looked at Calhoun and smiled at her nervously.

Not long after she’d got back from Dante’s apartment block word had reached her of a shooting taking place at Roland’s place. It wasn’t hard to work out who was responsible but given that she’d still been completely incapable of contacting her brother she wasn’t sure what to say or do. For the time being she reconciled herself to staying quiet. That meant playing dumb until she’d heard from Chew or Dante.

“Is something wrong with Antwan?”

“Antwan’s fine, Miss Lewis,” Deputy Calhoun said with a smile. “We stopped by the school to ask him a couple of questions and his Vice-Principal thought we ought to bring him home for the day given everything.”

Michelle feigned surprise. “Questions? Questions about what?”

Calhoun reached into the pocket of her khaki trousers and produced a small notepad that looked well used, setting it down on the table with a sigh, before looking back up at Michelle. There was something to the woman that Michelle couldn’t quite put her finger on. An earnestness that she’d not encountered in a warm body associated with the PCSD for a long time.

“You may or may not have seen the news by now but there was a fatal shooting at Spencer’s Tire and Rims last night. A Yolanda Thomas, Roland Spencer’s secretary, was shot dead in the early hours and we’re trying to find the perpetrators and find out Mr. Spencer’s whereabouts. We thought given your son’s association with Mr. Spencer it might be sensible to ask him a few questions.”

Again Michelle feigned surprise. “A shooting?”

From beside Calhoun she could feel the deacon’s gaze resting on her the entire time. She stole a glance in Gus’ direction for a section and his eyes, usually calm and soothing, looked suspicious. She smiled in his direction and he nodded at her politely without offering a smile back.

“Yes, ma’am,” Calhoun said, thumbing her way through her notepad. “You know Mr. Spencer, don’t you?”
Michelle nodded. “In passing.”

Gus shuffled a little beside Calhoun and for a second Michelle worried that he might reveal the extent to which she really knew Roland. Instead he stayed silent, though the look on his face was stony, and chose to listen in to Michelle and Calhoun’s conversation instead.

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

For a moment Michelle thought, though it was more to buy time than a need to traipse through memory lane to recall it, finally she nodded at Calhoun. “The night that Jayson Aaron was murdered.”

The deputy scribbled a few words in her black notebook.

“Do you have any idea why someone might want to harm Yolanda? Or Mr. Spencer for that matter?”

Why? Because he tried to take her son away from her and got Jayson Aaron killed, Michelle thought, trying desperately to keep her contempt for Roland showing. For a second her thoughts drifted this Yolanda woman that had got caught up in things and a pang of guilt hit her but it passed as quickly as it came.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Michelle said with a nonchalant shrug. “I never met this, Yolanda? And as much as Roland and I never got on, I’d certainly never want him shot or something. Is that what you think’s happened?”

Calhoun scribbled a few more lines in her notepad before looking up at Michelle with an absent nod. “We aren’t sure what’s happened.”

Michelle stared off into the distance for a few seconds in an attempt to feign trying to recall some detail that could be of use and then shook her head blankly at Calhoun. The deputy sighed, reached for notepad, and placed it into her pocket as she stood up from the little table.

“Look, I have a lot to get through today, plenty of questions still need asking, and I’ll need to account for this time at that, so why don’t I leave you my card and you can call me if anything else comes to mind? That sound agreeable?”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a card that Michelle stared at for half a second and then slipped into one of her pockets.

“Sure,” Michelle smiled. “That’s fine.”

She stood up from her seat to escort Calhoun and Gus out but noticed that the deacon had remained in his seat. The deputy looked back at him with a smile, pointing towards the exit. “You need a lift home, Gus?”

Gus smiled politely at her and shook his head. “It’s fine, I’ll stay a while.”

Deputy Calhoun shrugged her shoulders. Michelle looked at the deacon and his face had grown gravely serious and suspicious, his eyes fixed on hers pointedly. “I think Michelle and I need to have a little chat.”

Michelle walked the deputy to the door and wished her good luck in her search. She shut the door behind her slowly and began the walk back to the kitchen. Her palms were sweaty and her feet felt heavier with each step she took towards it. She wasn't sure how Gus knew, but somehow he did, and the was nothing she wanted to do than turn that corner and face him. She swallowed loudly and clenched her fist to disguise her shakings hands from him and then paced into the kitchen and sat opposite Gus. He stared at her with an incisive look of his face and began to shake his head.


Dante had always fucking hated the Bog. As far as he was concerned the place was a humid deathtrap. The only people that came down to the Bog out of choice were tweakers and hookers looking to take advantage of Johns from out of town. Well, them and people like Chew and Dante. Over the years they’d made more than their fair share of bodies disappear in the Bogs but Dante hadn’t been back since things had gone south in Georgia. He could barely remember his way around. Chew seemed to take to it like he’d never left the place. He always seemed to have an understanding of how the Bog worked which confused the fuck out of Dante given that Chew was as ghetto as they came. You could have given him a fire lighter and some gasoline and he’d still have struggled to light a fire in the wild. Yet here, amidst the tree frogs and the putrid looking waters, Chew seemed in his element.

They had ditched the car well away from the beaten path, where even they’d struggle to find it, and carried Roland for what had seemed like hours through the Bog. Chew had done most of the heavy lifting. Dante had struggled to keep up with him even with Roland on his shoulder due to the heat. It was bad enough in here normally but with a balaclava over his head Dante was dripping with sweat as they traipsed through the Bog in the darkness. Finally Chew came to a stop and pointed up at one of the abandoned houses that littered the place. Dante went ahead, readying his holster for action, and checked the place out to make sure it was empty before they went inside. Once in they tied Roland to a filthy chair and stuffed a dirty rag in his mouth to make sure he wouldn’t be making any noise when he came to. They took turns throughout the night to stand guard whilst they tried to figure out what their play was.

It was well into the afternoon that Roland came to and within minutes of having woken up he managed to rile Dante. Sat there, bloodied and bruised, he stared at Dante in the eye and though Roland was unable to speak he did his best to smile obnoxiously in Dante’s direction. For a time Dante ignored him but after twenty minutes or so of Roland’s stifled laughter it began to wear on him.

“Why the fuck are you smiling?”

Chew’s voice came from the corner of the room. “Calm down.”

He was sat on a dirty mattress, empty vials and bottles filled with piss scattered around the room, and his once pristine clean sneakers and track pants were caked with mud and God knows what. Ever since Dante had pulled that trigger on that Yolanda girl back at the showroom Chew had been acting funny with him. Dante figured that was on account of his not having been party to offing someone for a long while. Roland seemed to have all but ignored Chew in the corner sensing that Dante would be more receptive to his mind games.

“Fuck that,” Dante said, cocking his Glock and placing it beneath Roland’s chin. “Why the fuck are you smiling at me? You want me to blow your brains out or something? That what you want?”

Chew sighed heavily and pointed at Roland. “How is he meant to answer you with that rag in his mouth?”

Dante uncocked his Glock and yanked the filthy rag from Roland’s mouth.

“Speak.”

“You’re dead men,” Roland said, his laughter broken up by intermittent coughs. “Both of you are dead men.”

Undeterred Dante gestured towards the gun in his hand. “Oh? What makes you so sure of that? We’re the ones with the guns, motherfucker.”

Again Roland burst into another fit of obnoxious laughter but this time his coughing stopped him dead in his tracks, the force of them causing him to wince as if reminded him of the deep cuts on the top of his head.

“I tried to warn you back at the tire shop,” Spencer said with a shit-eating grin. “The place is a front for Billy Brown.”

Dante’s blood ran cold and he looked at Chew who hadn’t budged an inch at the news. Had he known? No, not even Chew was stupid enough to think that crossing Brown was a good idea. Not unless that prison had turned his brain to mush, which Dante hadn’t completely ruled out.

Dante grabbed a hold of one of Roland’s bloodied lapels. “What?”

“You heard me,” Roland said with a wry smile. “You really think we wouldn’t have CCTV unless we were connected? Give me some credit.”

How could they have been so stupid? All it would have taken was half an hour to make a couple of phone calls and Dante could have found all of this out on his own. Billy fucking Brown? There wasn’t a place in the whole county they could hide from that man. Dante shook his head and began to pace, taking care to avoid what he could only presume was human excrement on the ground, as he tried to get his head around what they’d done.

“Fuck,” Dante mumbled nervously. “We’re fucked. Once Billy gets word of this he’ll track us to the end of the world and back, man. You don’t cross Billy and live, no-one does, that’s the only fucking law in Pickett.”

There was a reason that Billy Brown had been able to run the Normans out of existence. The fucking Normans. They’d been in Pickett County for generations and Billy Brown damn near made them extinct. The sheriff’s office hadn’t been able to lay a glove on Billy in years and here Dante and Chew were, two men without an ounce of backup, shitting all over one of his employees.

“Calm down,” Chew said with a shrug of his shoulders. “He doesn’t know our names.”

Dante nodded, reassured slightly, for as long as that was the case there was a chance they’d get out of this caper without Billy murdering everyone they’d ever met. He looked at Roland, whose shit-eating grin had grown wider all of a sudden, and wondered what on Earth he could have done to warrant ending up here. It definitely didn’t warrant them losing their lives over it. No matter what it was. As Dante finally began to calm down and his breathing began to slow another laugh escaped from Roland’s lips.

“You heard the man,” Roland smiled. “Calm down, Dante.”

Scott Andrews pulled into the gravel parking lot of Ray's and turned off the engine of his car. Ray and Jed's cars were parked near the front entrance of the bar, while John Norman's truck was still where it had been since last night. Scott closed his eyes and let out a long breath. He was way in over his head and he knew it. He'd known it since he saw Jed killed Howard Beggs...

No, his name was Jerry Miller. A state trooper and a SLED sergeant came to the sheriff's office today and identified the dead man as an undercover SLED agent. The story Scott thought was bullshit turned out to be true. Jed, and by extension Billy, killed a fellow cop. All the heinous shit Scott had been asked to do over the years, this was going over the line. He'd witness and murder and was trying to frame an innocent man while the fucking scumbag who did the crime acted like he was Scott's boss. He no longer cared about the money or Billy's promise to make him sheriff. He had to get clean.

Scott climbed out the car and walked into the bar. The chairs were already up on the tables. Jed was busy wiping down the bar while Ray counted money in the cash register. Both looked up as he entered.

"There's my boy," Jed said with a smile.

"I ain't your boy," Scott snapped. "And I ain't Billy's boy, not no longer."

"The fuck you say?" Ray said with a grimace. "You mind your goddamn mind, son."

"Fuck you," Scott said, pointing his finger at Ray. "And fuck Billy! You killed a goddamn state police officer, Jed. I'm out. Fuck all of y'all."

"You ain't out, nigga," Jed said as he walked around the bar. "Until Billy says you're out."

"I'm out of this deal and I'm out of the fucking sheriff's department," Scott said. "I'm calling SLED first chance I get and I am telling them every fucking thing. All of you motherfuckers are going to burn. The two of you, Jim Brown and DJ, even Billy goddamn Brown!"

Scott pulled his service pistol as soon as he saw Ray going for something behind the counter. Scott knew the old man kept a Colt Python down under the register. He kept a gun trained on Ray while looking towards Jed. Slowly, Scott started to back out towards the door.

"You sons of bitches forgot who the law was around here, and now you're all gonna fucking pay."

--

Gene Parker stood at the midfield point on the football field, smoking a cigarette while he waited. The grass was yellow and dead in the early winter air. It wasn't much of a stadium, just a pair of metal bleachers on two sides of the field and an electronic scoreboard on the opposite end of the field house. Gene never played on this field when he was in school, back when he went to school it was across town near the mill and the football field was a patch of land that was mostly dirt and sat right beside the school.

The man walking towards him had never played on the field either. Though he was just a few years younger than him, Billy Brown's graduating class, class of '72, was the last to come out of the old high school. They both played varsity together, Gene as a noseguard and Billy as a defensive back. Unsurprisingly, Billy always played with a chip on his shoulder. He was rough and mean when it came to the game. He almost got kicked off the team when they played Dixie and he stomped on a boy's leg after the play was over. They had damn good defense Gene's senior year, and it only got better when Billy was a senior. Gene remembered watching from the bleachers while Billy's '71 Pickett Panthers won the state championship.

"Billy."

"Gene."

"Sheriff calls in the middle of the night wanting a meeting, I got to know what's going on."

"Your boys killed a man a few nights ago. A guy who went by the name Howard Beggs."

Billy looked at Gene passively. Gene sighed and unzipped his jacket, pulling his shirt up and showing his flabby and pale stomach. He turned out his pockets and showed Billy that he wasn't wearing a wire. When he was done with his show, Billy just shrugged.

"Admit it or not, I don't give a damn. The fact is they done it, and the fact is he was an undercover state policeman. Sent in to investigate your businesses and my sheriff's department."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because either tonight or tomorrow, John Norman is going to do something very stupid because he has no choice in the matter. He thinks I can snap my fingers and make evidence disappear. He thinks you have blackmail on me, and that I work for you."

Billy let out a deep laugh. "You work for me? As if I'd want your sorry ass."

Gene bristled and stuffed his hands in his pockets to hide his balled up fists.

"I'm just giving you this warning, Billy. Take it serious or don't, I could give two shits. What I do care about is Scott Andrews. I know he's your guy inside the sheriff's department. If this SLED guy coming to town is the first wave of a serious state investigation, then something has to be done about Scott. His involvement with you hurts the both of us. You could go to jail and I could be run out of office."

"I see," Billy said with a nod of his head. "Want me and my guys to do your fucking dirty work, Gene?"

"I like the status quo, Billy. Scott and John can alter that status quo. I'm just suggesting ways to keep everything the same."

"And what about us?" Billy asked. "What about the shit between you and me. What about Re--"

"Don't you say her fucking name," Gene hissed. "You don't get to go there, Billy."

Billy smirked in a bit of self-satisfaction. He shrugged again and Gene had to take a deep breath to calm himself.

"Like I said, status quo. I keep getting elected, you throw me and my guys a few busts every so often to make us look good and we'll call it quits. What happened between us back then... it's the past."

"Past ain't never past around here, Gene. You know better than I do that the past is just waiting to come back around. The shit between us will always be between us until it ain't."

"I'm done, Billy. You got your warning and your advice. That's it."

Gene turned around and started walking off the field. He could hear his pulse throbbing in his ears with each and every step. He knew Billy's eyes were barreling down on him. Those little eyes that saw everything could see Gene's frustration and impotence as clear as day. He was right and Gene knew it. What was between them would come to light eventually... but not tonight. Tonight was about taking pragmatic measures. Tonight was about survival.

--

Mike pulled up to Ray's parking lot. John saw an unmarked car in the parking lot, the same one he was out by Reid Creek last night. Nail it as Scott Andrews' unmarked car.

"Shit, police," Mike said under his breath.

"It's Billy's guy."

"Let's go," Mike said as he started to put the car in reverse.

"No. I don't care if he's in there or not. If I can get what's in that safe, who gives a fuck?"

Mike stared at John for several seconds before shaking his head.

"This is suicide, you know that?"

"Better to die here than on a slab at a state prison, needle in my arm."

"Look..."

Mike gripped the steering wheel and sighed.

"The stuff between me and you... it ain't never been easy. I've been like I've been to you because... goddammit, you remind me so much of your daddy. Daniel was my pride and joy, I loved that boy something fierce. It hurt me so bad when Billy took him from me. Just looking at you reminded me of all that I lost and wouldn't ever get back. That's why I was never around, why I was so nasty to you. I never got over your daddy's death, and the last thing I want is to see you wind up the same. I... love you, boy. I do."

"I love you too," John said softly. "Which is why I hate doing this."

John brought the shotgun off the floorboard and struck Mike in the temple with the butt. The blow smacked him against the door and dazed him. He groaned and tried to form words as John climbed out the Cadillac. He walked towards the front door of Ray's with the shotgun in his hands. To John, this slab of concrete in the South Carolina backwoods looked an awful lot like the Alamo.

A little voice had started up in Gus' head the moment Sherry told him about the shooting at Spencer’s Tire and Rims, one he’d ignored until he’d been sat opposite Michelle Lewis as she answered the deputy’s questions. The way she’d shuffled in her seat, her rehearsed surprise, it had all made Gus feel a fool for having blocked that little voice out. Sherry couldn’t have known, couldn’t have seen it, but it was there in Michelle’s body language if you knew to look. Gus was no body language expert and nor was he a detective but he’d known Michelle for a long time. When clean he knew her to be an unshakeable woman that would stop at nothing to see her son safe. Her evasiveness when asked whether she knew Roland had all but confirmed it to the deacon. Something was going on and Michelle was in on it.

From across the table he stared at her unblinking in the hopes that she might confess to her sins. Perhaps every second that Gus didn’t go straight to the sheriff’s department with his suspicions was a sin of its own, but he wanted to hear the truth from Michelle’s mouth first.

“I might not know what’s going on here, Michelle, but I know you well enough to know there’s more here than meets the eye.”

Again Michelle took that faux-surprised tone that she had taken with Deputy Calhoun. “What are you talking about?”

It was insulting enough the first time but this time it grated on him enough that he had to bite his tongue.

“Where’s Roland?”

“How would I know?”

“Yolanda Thomas is dead,” Gus said angrily, prodding a finger into the table on every syllable. “That’s somebody’s daughter, somebody’s granddaughter, somebody’s baby, Michelle. If you know something you had better start talking now before there are any more bodies on your conscience.”

From behind them Antwan Dixon appeared, his face was a picture of confusion and distrust, he hovered in the doorway with his lengthy arms leant against the sides.

“Mom? What’s he talking about?”

Michelle smiled unconvincingly. “Go upstairs.”

Antwan stared at his mother, unimpressed, and stated as firmly as he could. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Gus watched Michelle’s face as it betrayed her nervousness once more. If he didn’t know better he might have believed that she was using again. She was uncomfortable, fidgety, but most of all she was insincere and that was something that for all her flaws Michelle Lewis usually never was.

“I said go upstairs, Antwan.”

“And I said I’m not going anywhere,” Antwan said forcefully as he walked towards the table and sat beside Gus. “You think I’m some sort of kid? I’m burying my best friend this week. For once in my life, I think I deserve the truth.”

Gus nodded in agreement. “The boy is right.”

The mask slipped for a moment. Michelle’s nervousness disappeared and was replaced with an anger that seemed more in keeping with what Gus knew of the woman. All the feigned surprise and mourning evaporated in seconds and she was pointing an accusatory finger at the deacon that shook with rage. “You don’t get to tell me what’s good for my son.”

Gus shook his head and leaned back in his chair a little.

“What are you mixed up in, Michelle?”

She gazed downwards into the ground and Gus watched on, trying to imagine what her thoughts must have been at the moment, the gears in her head were almost visibly moving into life. Was she trying to construct some lie? Perhaps she knew the game was up and would tell him what it was she was hiding? Whatever was happening in there, Gus had a feeling they were getting closer to the truth by the second.

Abruptly Michelle stepped away from her seat. “I need some air.”

She strode out of the kitchen, through the doorway, and shut the front door to her home behind her with a heavy slam. Gus and Antwan sat in the kitchen in silence for a few moments before Gus gestured to him to follow after his mother to make sure she wasn’t making an escape. Antwan nodded intuitively and left his seat. As he went Gus reminded himself that it had been mere days since Jayson Aaron had been shot dead and here Antwan was assisting him interrogate Michelle. He was a strong boy, much stronger than Gus had been at his age, and the little voice at the back of his head told him that Antwan would need that strength before the day was out.

*****

What the fuck was Spencer thinking? Chew had seen the look in Dante’s eyes that he’d seen that day in Georgia when Spencer told him he worked for Billy Brown and Chew had offered them and him a way out. Maybe Roland had been telling himself that he was the smartest guy in the room so long that he couldn’t resist telling Dante he knew his name. That stupid son of a bitch had ensured Chew and Dante were either going to have to put a bullet in his brain or bunker down and try to last this one out. After watching that girl’s brains being blown out Chew wasn’t sure he had the stomach for the first course of action anymore. That meant the two of them were stuck watching over Roland until the heat died down and with a body on their hands that could be some time. Thank God he knew the Bog like the back of his hand.

Amidst the miscellaneous sounds of the Bog came a violent buzzing noise followed by a piercing, repetitive ringing that Chew at once recognised to be the ringer of his cell phone. It was a huge brick of a thing but Chew had been on the inside for long enough that trying to work a touch screen cell phone would have been redundant.

Dante glared at him. “Are you fucking trying to get us caught? They can track those things.”

Chew fumbled around with the phone for a few seconds in an attempt to stop it from ringing before Dante sighed angrily and strode across the room, snatching it from him, and throwing it into the ground. It broke into several pieces on impact but he stamped on it for good measure.

“What’s wrong, Dante?” Roland said with a laugh. “You seem a little flustered.”

Without turning back to him Dante lifted his Glock and uncocked it again, his hand shook with anger as it settled on Roland, and it was clear the trigger pull was slightly back. “You shut your fucking mouth.”

The tire salesman did as commanded and Dante crossed the room and leant down to whisper into Chew’s ear.

“What are we going to do? He knows who I am, man.”

Chew knew where Dante was going with this. If he conceded that Roland knowing his name meant both of them were done, Dante would put a bullet in him without a second’s hesitation, but convincing him that there was another option was going to be a difficult task.

“There are probably a thousand guys called Dante between here and Jardin. There’s nothing to worry about. We wait until the heat’s died down, dump him, and then we get out of town for a while. A long while.”

Dante shrugged his shoulders. “Out of town? Norman’s all I fucking know, man, what am I going to do anywhere else?”

“You think I don’t know that? I’m in the same position you are.”

Chew was in a worse position when he stopped to think about it. He’d spent most of his adult life on the inside and what little of it he’d been a free man he’d spent in Norman. Outside of a few brief business ventures into some of the neighbouring counties and one that spectacularly failed into Georgia, Chew had never been elsewhere. Dante, Michelle, Antwan, and Gus Harris were the only people in the world he had some semblance of a relationship with and of them only Dante really counted. Truth be told he hated Dante’s guts. What life could he build outside of Pickett County? Not a good one, but the alternative was being dead and Chew was sure as hell certain that wouldn’t be an improvement.

Suddenly a wry smile appeared on Dante’s face and Chew knew it had finally dawned on him. “Why don’t we put a bullet in his head and get this over and done with?”

Chew shook his head. “What? Come on, man.”

“Shoot him, dump the guns, burn the car, and get the fuck out of here,” Dante nodded, more and more convinced with every word he spoke. “There’s still time.”

If only it were that simple. Chew looked up at Roland strapped there in his chair and imagined pointing his gun at him and blowing his brains out as easily as Dante had to that girl. Every time, every instance, he found himself incapable of doing so, dogged by flashbacks to Roland’s girl laid on the floor with her brains oozing out. Chew adjusted his balaclava as he tried to force the image out of his mind.

“No, there’s been enough killing,” Chew said in a voice that brooked no argument. “This won’t be another Georgia.”

*****

Antwan had caught his mother outside on the phone calling someone. The second she saw him there she’d put the phone down and tried to hide it from him. He wasn’t proud of it but Antwan, all six foot five of him, had wrestled it from his mother’s pocket and was stood over her with the phone in his hands. In the struggle he hadn’t even noticed Gus had come running out having heard the shouting or the long scratch mark along his left arm. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered, all that mattered was that his mother knew something about what had happened to Mr. Spencer and Antwan was determined to find out what.

His mother’s phone was password protected but Antwan knew her well enough to know what it would be. He typed in the numbers “1-9-9-8” and hit enter and the phone unlocked. It was the year of Antwan’s birth. He thumbed his way to the call long and stopped as he recognised the name that appeared time and time again.

“Chew? Why would you ring him?”

Gus sighed heavily at the mention of Antwan's uncle's name. “Tell me Charles isn’t involved in this mess, Michelle.”

Michelle looked up at them from the ground and didn’t say a single word.

Antwan bent down and grabbed his mother by the collar of her top forcefully. “What the fuck is going on?”

Gus placed one of his shaking hands on Antwan’s shoulder to calm him and he relinquished his hold on his mother’s top with a knowing nod. Michelle pushed her way to her feet and sighed wearily before running a hand through the curly black hair that sat atop her head.

“I asked your uncle to speak to Roland.”

Antwan shook his head. “What? Why? He doesn’t even know Roland, Mom.”

Chew had been out of prison for a fortnight and as far as Antwan knew the two men had never met. Even more than that, his mother had poured scorn on his uncle at every opportunity for as long as Antwan could remember but suddenly they were friends again? It made no sense. His mother smiled nervously as she opened her mouth to explain but Antwan knew before she even began speaking he wasn’t going to like what came out of her mouth.

“He wasn’t supposed to hurt him. I swear, he was only meant to scare him a little. After what happened to Jayson, the drugs, it was only a matter of time before you ended up dead because of Roland, Antwan. Can’t you see? He’d already taken you from me and he was going to get you killed too.”

Gus swore loudly from behind him and Antwan shook his head, this time more angrily before, and tried his best to push back the rising rage-induced bile that felt like it was slinking its way up his throat. “You sent Chew after him because of... Jayson? You think Roland had something to do with Jayson getting killed?”

His mother looked at him blankly as if she’d never once considered that Roland might not have been responsible for it. Besides him Antwan could feel Gus silently seething as he stared at his mother so intensely that she couldn’t bear to return his stare. There was an anger to him that Antwan had never seen before, one that dwarfed even his own, but he needed his mother to know how wrong she was about Roland, how wrong she’d been about everything. He walked towards her and stood close enough that he could feel his mother’s faltering breath against his skin.

“It was me,” Antwan shouted. “It was my fault. Roland had nothing to do with it. That boy, DeSean, I humiliated him in front of all of Norman and he wanted to make me pay for it. And Jayson paid for my mistake.”

A confused look appeared on Michelle's face. “I… what? I don’t understand.”

Antwan’s hands balled into fists. He stood there, staring down at his mother, and thought back to the countless times he’d found her near catatonic after having taken drugs and the time Mr. Spencer had taken him to Jardin to pick her up. Most painful of all was that after he’d spoken with Gus that day at the court, after he’d argued with his mother at home, he’d almost forgiven her for all of that and put it behind him. She had all but abandoned him as a child and left him hungry and without supervision and still Antwan had found it in his heart to forgive her for all of that. But this he could not forgive, especially if something had happened to Roland.

He relaxed his hands and took several slow, deep breaths. “Roland wasn’t involved.”

Michelle looked staggered by the revelation and she clung to the porch as she tried to process the information. Antwan turned away from her nonchalantly and threw her phone to Gus. His face was still riven with fury and he caught the phone without taking his eyes off of Michelle for a second.

“You’d better call that deputy back here, Gus.”

Gus nodded and pulled Sherry Calhoun's card from his pocket. He tapped in her cell number then took a few steps towards Michelle and deployed a voice dripping in wrathful contempt. “That girl’s blood is on your hands.”

Michelle started to sob quietly as Gus dialled the number and made his way down the steps of the porch. Antwan could hear Deputy Calhoun’s voice answering on the other side as Gus paced up and down the street, looking back at them from time to time, as he explained what had happened. Michelle’s sobbing drew loud enough that it drowned out her desperate, fawning attempts to plead with Antwan for forgiveness. He brushed her arms away and slammed the door shut behind him as he went back into the house.

John Norman clung tightly to the shotgun as he walked through the door of Ray's. He nearly ran into the back of the man shuffling towards the front door in reverse. Ray, Jed, and Scott Andrews all let out little noises of surprise as John leveled the shotgun in their general direction. Andrews had a gun on his hands, but it clattered to the floor after John struck him across the face with the shotgun's butt.

"Anybody makes a wrong move, they get shot in the head," John said cooly.

He kept the barrel trained on Jed and Ray as he hoisted Andrews up by his shirt collar and pushed him towards the bar. He stumbled, but soon recovered after John prodded him with the shotgun.

"You're fucking dead," said Jed. "I am going to personally snap your goddamn neck."

"Ray," John said with a look towards the old man. "Open the safe in the backroom."

"Go fuck yourself."

He squeezed the trigger. The shotgun bucked and a round of pellets blasted Ray's leg just below the knee. He yelled out in pain and collapsed to the ground. John racked another round into the gun and looked at Jed.

"Jed, open the safe in the backroom."

With Ray bleeding out, Jed stepped over him and opened the door leading into the backroom. John escorted him and Scott into the small office and watched the big man as his shaking hands spun the combination back and forth. It snapped open and revealed an interior packed to the brim with cash and drugs. Jed poured it out on to the floor and spread it out for John to see. There was no papers, no files, nothing but cash and drugs.

"No... where's the rest?"

"That's it, motherfucker," Jed snarled.

"Where's the blackmail Billy has on Parker?"

"The fuck you talking about?"

John felt his stomach go cold. Son of a bitch. Mike was right, this whole goddamn thing was a setup. He was about to say something else when he saw Jed flinch. A loud explosion, followed by a portion of the wall being blown into atoms, sent him down to the floor. Down but not out was Ray Champion. He lay on his side by the doorway, a large revolver in his bloody hands. John rolled away as another shoot boomed and blew off the side of Jed's face instead of his. Another cannon blast hit the back of John's leg and went into his upper thigh.

He squared his shotgun up on the ground and shot Ray in the face with buckshot. Before he could turn, Sott Andrews' big hands wrapped around the shotgun barrel and tried to wrestle it out of John's hands. The two fought and tussled on the floor to get the gun from the other. Andrews let out a grunt as the barrel was shoved into his stomach and Scott pressed the trigger. The blast ripped through Andrews stomach and peppered the other side of the wall with his guts.

John stood up and stumbled towards the bar as he heard Andrews calling for backup on his radio.

--

"Calling all cars, calling all cars. We have a report of shots fired, officer down at Raymond's Social Club on the highway."

Danny Johnson looked up from his desk at the scanner in the office he shared with Echols. The bored dispatcher from the 911 center repeated her words. Clint Land and four other deputies on patrol rogered that they were en route. Danny's partner was down the hall, grabbing coffee for the two of them. On both their desks were files on all the murders of the past week. And now, from the sound of things, something was going down again.

"Mark!" He yelled as he stood. "We gotta get to Ray's!"

--

John sat at the bar and drnk gin straight from the bottle. In the adjacent room he could hear Andrews dying, those last little gasps and rattles before death set in. In John's hand was Jed's cellphone, picked up from his dead body. It rang and he waited for the line to be picked up.

"Jed?" Carol Johnson said from the other end of the line. "Where are you, baby?"

John let out a little sigh, imagining it was he she called baby and not the dead man on the floor.

"It's John."

"John? Where's Jed? Why do you have his phone? What did you do, John?"

He ignored the questions and instead said what he called to say.

"I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to hurt you. I always loved you, even from the time we were kids I loved you. Always will."

He hung up as Carol was launching into another round of questions. John heard gravel on the parking lot outside Ray's and took one final pull off the gin bottle before rising, grabbing the shotgun, and limping towards the door. A small squad of armed deputy sherrif's met him outside, uniformed ones and two plainclothes detectives with pistols.

"Drop the gun right now," they all said in a loud din of commands.

John laughed and raised the shotgun up to his chest. On cue, the cops opened fire. In that last moment before the bullets tore apart his body he saw the truth of the whole damn thing. He was always going to end up like this. VIolence and untimely death were his birthrights. He was a Norman. Pickett County born, Pickett County bred, and now... Pickett County dead.

Sherry Calhoun felt like breaking down. She knew she wasn't the only one. The entire sheriff's department seemed to sag when county coroner Chuck Wood rolled in the gurneys that morning. Sherry was at home, sleeping when the call came in. The ringing of her cell woke her and Scooter up. She told her fiance to go back to bed, it was just work. It was Danny, telling her to come down as soon as she could. There were four dead bodies from that massacre at the bar. Everyone was doing something that night. While Mark and Danny did their usual crime scene sleuthing, Clint Land went with Ray Champion to the hospital. He called a half hour later saying he died at Abbeville Memorial, never regaining consciousness. Meanwhile Sherry and Sheriff Parker interviewed the deputies who arrived on the scene. As an officer-involved shooting, someone outside of the loop had to do the interviewing and half the PCSD took a shot at John Norman that night.

Nobody wanted to mention that a cop was dead. Scott Andrews, one of their own, had been gunned down by that son of a bitch. Her and Scott hadn't been that close, had fought just a few days ago, but he was one of their own. Sherry knew of John Norman more than she knew him. He was a little bit young than her in school, always remembered he ran with a bad crowd. She picked him up once when she first started working here, public intoxication at the football game. Parker dismissed it since, in his words, everyone at those football games were half-plastered. It was the only way you could watch the godawful thing Pickett High called defense.

The truth hit home with Sherry when she saw Chuck going to work on Scott's body. The coroner's office/morgue was in the same facility that the sheriff's department used. The cafeteria of the old high school was transformed into Chuck's office, he used the kitchen as the morgue. Sherry was in there with him as he pulled off the sheet and showed her Scott's face, or what was left of it.

"That him, darling?" Chuck asked while he peered over his reading glasses.

"You know that it is," she said softly.

"I just gotta go through the motions, sweetie. Scott ain't got no next of kin, so I just needed someone to give me a positive identification."

Sherry nodded as Chuck pulled the sheet back down. She heard the sound of boots clopping on the floor's scuffed linoleum and saw the sheriff coming up behind her. He put a big arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close. She could smell his chewing tobacco on his breath as he spoke softly to her.

"You alright, girl?"

"Yeah," she mumbled. "These past few days have seemed like a nightmare."

"I know," he said with a glazed look in his eye. "It's been hell on earth here in Pickett. We just got to keep pushing through."

"What was Scott doing at Ray's?" she asked. "That late at night anyway."

"He was chasing down a lead. We liked Norman for the murder that happened up by Reid's Creek the other day, guy named Beggs from out of town. You know Ray was Scott's snitch. Norman must have come into the bar and they called him. They're all dead, so we don't know what happened inside. Danny and Mark found a car outside the bar, an old caddy that belongs to Norman's granddaddy, Mike. It was there along with Norman's truck, so I sent Clint to see if he can find Mike Norman and get some answers out of him."

Sherry's phone ringing ended their talk. She slipped out of Parker's grip, excused herself, and left the cafeteria before answering.

"Deputy Calhoun? It's Gus Harris."

"Deacon Harris, good morning. What can I do for you?"

"No, Deputy, the question is what can I do for you? I have something to tell you."

--

"Mr. Cade? I'm Sherry Calhoun with the sheriff's office, mind if I come in?"

John Cade waved her in with a fat arm. His small Norman house was clean and organized. A large painting of Jesus being crucified hung over the mantel, its eyes seemingly following Sherry across the room. Cade closed the door behind him and flopped down on a well-broken in leather recliner.

"What's this all about, Deputy?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

Sherry pulled out her pen and notebook and remained standing as she spoke. "Chew Lewis and Dante Fulsome. You used to run with them back in the day?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said uneasily. "Some time ago, back before Chew went to jail. I soon found God and haven't looked back to those wicked ways."

She noted it on paper. "When was the last time you saw either Dante or Chew, Mr. Cade?"

Cade squirmed in his seat. Sherry let a small grin slip out. A man of God John Cade may have been, but he was very poor at hiding his feelings.

"Dante... I.. it's been years."

"And Chew?"

"What's that now?"

"Chew Lewis. When is the last time you saw him?"

Sherry stayed still and watched Cade come to grips with the two sides of his life. A good Christian would tell the truth, but a man of the street no matter how old he got didn't rat out a friend. Sherry prepared to ask the question again when--

"Last week," he said after what felt like a minute of silence. "He came to my door, wanting a place to stay but I... he declined before I could say no. The things Chew did, the things I heard about and saw... I couldn't say no to that man."

"Do you know where he is now?"

"No," he said with a shake of his head. "That was the last I spoke to him, haven't seen him since."

"You used to run with him, where was it he used to go if he wanted to... let's say, hide. Where would he hide?"

Cade sighed and looked towards the picture of Jesus on the cross. Sherry wondered if he was identifying more with Jesus' suffering, or the man who betrayed him.

"The Bog," he said. "Chew knew the Bog like the back of his hand. If he was going to hide out, he'd go there."