A Swollen Red Sun (8 page)

“Guess y’all made it home all right.”

Hastings laughed. “Hell if I know, Dale. All I know’s Mama woke my ass up in the driveway.” He looked up at Dale. “Then I carried Mama up to the house, and
it was on, baby.”

Banks let out a great snort and shook his head. “Hell yeah, son. The old man got some last night, too.”

Hastings laughed loudly.

“That’s right, the old man’s still got plenty of good fuckin’ left in him, boy.”

Hastings set his biscuit down on his plate and laughed until his face turned red.

They shared a few more hoots and chuckles, and Banks told exaggerated tales of past sexual conquests—some real, some imagined. Banks had been a real ladies’ man in his day to hear him speak.

Hastings finished eating and told Banks he thought he’d better go. Didn’t think he could tolerate any more bullshit that early in the morning.

“Yeah, guess we better get a move on, youngster.”

Before they could leave, Deputy Winkler walked in and nodded.

“Well, goddamn Winky, they’ll let anybody in here.”

Winkler said, “I was just about to say the same thing to y’all.”

Banks and Hastings exchanged glances, each silently daring the other to bring up the motorcycle that outran Winkler.

Banks had the seniority and made his move.

“Yeah, we’s just ’bout to roll out, Winky.” He patted Winkler on the back and mentioned in a low voice he had an extra roll of duct tape out in the cruiser. “Case you used up all of yours on that light bar.”

Winkler looked up, his face twisted into an ornery mess of frowns.

Hastings walked out before he lost it. Winkler looked at Banks and pointed.

“Fuck y’all, Dale. That son of a
bitch
was runnin’ damn near two hun’ert mile an hour.”

Banks grabbed his belly and staggered toward the door. “Two hundred, huh?”

Winkler followed, agitated though he’d seen it coming. Banks walked backward. Couldn’t stop laughing.

“He
was
doin’ over a hun’ert an’ eighty for a
fact
, Dale.”

Banks stopped at the door and put his hand on the butt of his Glock. “Don’t make me shoot you, Wink.”

They both grinned, and Winkler said, “Hundred and eighty, Dale. Black crotch rocket with a red helmet. You see that bastard, you shoot him.”

Banks promised he would and left.

Later, Banks was doing paperwork at his desk when Sheriff Herb Feeler walked up and took a chair. Herb was an aging cowboy with grand ambitions to go places he never went. He was fifty-four and slim with a tight, square face that looked like country.

Herb wore a ten-gallon hat and pointy-toed boots. His top lip was covered by a Fu Manchu, his salt-and-pepper head shaved close. Herb chewed a toothpick like he was angry at all times. His gun belt was cocked below the waist, and he sported a Glock on his hip like a six-shooter. His brogue was southern and slow, his eyes small and precise, like he’d just as soon force you to draw as arrest you.

“How you doin’, Dale?”

Banks held up a finger and finished reading the line he was on, then signed his name. He took off his reading glasses and said he was fine. Asked Herb how he’d been.

“Doin’ OK, Dale. Doin’ OK.” He pointed to the paperwork. “That for the smurfing case you got there?”

Banks nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Smurfing was the latest in illegal trends related to the drug trade. Tweakers would spend all day driving from one gas station to the next buying cold medicine, pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in methamphetamine manufacturing. Street value was high. A hundred dollars a box or trade for crank. Most would trade for crank.

A month earlier, they’d busted a van full of college kids at the Fuel Mart. When they searched the van, they found hundreds of pills from gas stations and drugstores. The kids had saved all the receipts and made Banks’s case easy.

“Listen, you know an old man named Olen Brandt?”

Suddenly, Banks could not swallow. It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to his windpipe.

“Well, yeah I know him, Sheriff. He’s got a farm out off Highway K—’tween Mount Sterling ’n’ Swiss.”

Herb nodded. “Yep, that’s him.”

Banks asked Sheriff Feeler why he’d brought him up.
Hoped it wasn’t because he’d just stashed a duffel bag full of money in his barn loft.

“Well, damndest thing, Dale. Somebody found the poor old sumbitch out there by that gravel pile last night. At the junction of K ’n’ F.”

Banks sat up in his chair. “Found him? What the hell you mean? He’s dead?”

Herb threw his hands up. “No, no, he ain’t dead. Not yet anyway. Tough old fart. A car come up on him ’n’ his dog layin’ out in the middle of the road last night.”

“In the middle of the road
?
What in God’s name you tellin’ me, Herb?”

Herb shrugged. “Well, nobody knew what the hell to think at first. He liked ta got hit by a damn car, Dale. He’s just layin’ there. Out cold. Covered in blood from a head wound, his dog beside him. Somebody shot her dead.”

“
What?
” Banks could not believe what he was hearing. “Hang on a minute here, Sheriff. Lemme get this straight. Olen Brandt was just layin’ in the highway with his dog beside him?”

The sheriff shook his head and continued to shake it while Banks talked.

“What the hell happened to him? Who shot his dog?”

Sheriff Herb Feeler pulled a smoke loose from his pack and struck a wooden match against the zipper on his Wranglers.

Banks took a dip of snuff.

“Nobody knows what the hell happened, Dale. He sure as shit wasn’t makin’ any sense last night. But ’parently he’s come ’round OK. Turns out he was haulin’ a pretty big load of anhydrous yesterday evening and somebody jacked his truck.”

Banks shook his head and spit into a Styrofoam cup. “Well, goddamn, Herb. Don’t that beat all?”

“Never heard of that b’fore, but I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“What’d they do to him?” Banks asked.

“Says he thinks he got outta the truck, but he can’t remember a damn thing after that. Hell, Dale, I don’t even know if he remembers steppin’ outta the truck. But somebody musta flopped him a good one at some point.”

“And the sumbitches shot his dog?”

“Killed her dead. Looked like she tried to protect him.”

Banks stood and said he was going to talk to Olen. “I been deer huntin’ on his place since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

Herb said that was a good idea. Go and talk to the old man. See what he remembered.

Banks thought about the money he’d stashed at Olen’s and hoped he hadn’t gotten his friend involved. He made a list of suspects, and Olen’s kin was at the very top. A nephew Banks knew ran with Jerry Dean.

If Banks was responsible for the old man’s condition, he would never forgive himself.

He’d been hunting with Olen Brandt his whole life. Was a friend to Olen’s boys, Wade and Gil. Grew up at the farm and spent many summers there. Before Gil died, before he and Wade grew old enough to drift apart, until Dale was a policeman and Wade was an outlaw stealing from river cabins and parked cars.

Banks had caught him once with stolen property and let him go. Told Wade he only got one pass.
Last chance to change your life
,
he’d said. But Wade didn’t listen.

A year later, he strong-armed a restaurant and fired a handgun. He did a good stretch in Algoa for that. Came out hard with a scar across his jaw. Said he’d changed. Started a tree-trimming business and turned his life around. But a few months later, he robbed a bait shop in a truck with his name painted on the door.

Dale and Olen remained close. They shared a passion for the outdoors and continued to hunt and fish. They hunted with compound bows and shotguns and muzzleloaders.

When Olen got too old to draw a bow, Banks bought him a crossbow and a new wave of excitement filled the old man. They hunted whitetail and turkeys. Trapped coon. Then Arlene got sick and everything changed.

Wade got out of prison and worked construction. Did carpentry. But a nine-to-five job was not in the cards for Wade Brandt. One day, he and Duke McCray inhaled cans of whipped cream and robbed a gas station and a kid got shot.

Olen and Arlene could not sit through Wade’s trial. A year later, she was dead, and Olen swore his son had killed her. When Arlene died, part of Olen Brandt went in the ground beside her, and a little piece of him died every day once she was gone.

Hermann Hospital was an old square building made of ancient red brick that sat a stone’s throw north of old Highway 100. Banks went inside and found Olen Brandt staring out the window in a bed that was cranked up tall. He watched him through the doorway for a spell before he stepped inside. He loved that old man, and he was going to find those responsible. Banks had ideas about that. Hoped he was wrong, but doubted he was. He knew Olen had a nephew named Jackson Brandt just dumb enough to try this kind of thing.

His knuckles rapped hard on the inside of the doorframe, and Olen startled.

“Olen, it’s me. Dale Banks.”

Olen shook his head and motioned for him to come in. He looked old and tired. Like he was ready to give up and call it a life.

Banks reached down and set his hand on the old man’s leg. “You OK, old-timer?”

Olen didn’t understand why he was still alive. Tom Cuddy was gone. So was Sandy. So was everybody. Last night, in the space of a half hour, he’d lost the only two things in this world he had left.

Banks felt his pain. It resonated in the air like the frequency to a country station and Olen’s life belted out a heartbreak song.

“I’m sorry, bud.”

Olen nodded. Said he knew. If the old man cried, Banks would have to leave.

“Can I get you anything? Soda pop? Shot of whiskey?”

Olen said he just wanted to go home. He wasn’t about to die in some damn hospital.

Banks gave him a grin. “You’re not gonna die, old buddy. You’re too dang ornery for that.”

The old man tried to smile but couldn’t.

“What do you know about last night, Olen? Who done this to you?”

He thought hard, but told Dale he did not know. He saw an old Chevy come out of the woods like the devil was after it, but that’s the last thing he remembered.

“Old Chevy?” Banks asked. “Think you can describe it?”

Olen said it was dark, but he knew it was a Chevy. Something old. From the 1970s. “It was beat to hell on the outside.”

Banks grinned and wrote. “Anything else?”

Olen said no. All he knew was that it didn’t have a tailgate and the bed may have been blue. Or black. He said it happened fast. It was almost dark.

Banks told him he’d done good. That was a hell of a lot to remember. Especially considering the whack he took.

“Why’d they have to go ’n’ shoot my dog?” Olen’s eyes filled with a watery glaze. They bulged and strained, but they held. “I’da give ’em whatever it was they was after.”

“Olen, I’m so sorry. I know you loved that dog.”

“She was my wife’s dog.”

Banks thought about things he needed to do around the farm. Outside jobs he could do with the boy. He had to take his mind off the old man and his ache. “I’m gonna find these sumbitches, Olen. I promise you.”

“You need to hang ’em when you do.”

Banks said he’d do his best. He hoped they’d resist, and at that moment, he meant it more than he didn’t.

“I wanna go home.”

Banks said he’d already spoken with the doctor. Olen would be free to leave in the evening. “I’m gonna get back to work and see if I can’t find these guys, OK? I’ll make sure I’m back up here by five sharp to pick you up, all right?”

Olen thanked him and took his hand. His grip was strong.

“Where’s she at?” he asked quietly.

“I went out there before I came here and made sure she’s layin’ under a shade tree. I’ll go ’n’ pick her up right now ’n’ take her back to your place.”

Olen said he was going, too.

“No, you need to wait. Let me do this for you. A man shouldn’t hafta bury his own dog.”

Olen let go and turned to look out the window. He watched a cardinal zip around, jumping from branch to twig. “Thank you,” he said.

Banks said he was honored to do it and felt his throat tighten up. He nodded. Told Olen he had work to do. He’d be back at five. Banks left the room and walked down the hall and felt a strong urge for a chew.

Hastings pulled up on the scene with caution and put his car in park. A domestic dispute between a felon and his wife at a trailer was the worst call he could imagine.

He opened the door and climbed out and patted his sidearm without thinking. Just making sure it was there. Because that was a good habit. The kind of habit that forms over time. Especially with a teacher like Banks to make sure.

Bo had been there before, at that mobile home. All of them had. Every deputy sheriff in Gasconade County had been to the trailer on Brockmeyer Road, and none of them volunteered to go back. It was a deputy’s worst nightmare. Remote, and parked on a dead-end road, so they always knew you were coming.

Hastings stood beside his car and listened. The air smelled like burning trash. He thought about Banks. About what he would do if he were there.
He would pull the chew from his pocket and thunk the lid with his finger and open it and withdraw a pinch and a half and stick the wad behind his lip and push it down with his tongue
.

Bo Hastings reached for the walkie-talkie on his shoulder and held the mic.

“Gasconade Central, this is 109. Show me on location. Appears quiet at this time. I’m headed up to the front door.”

“109, this is Gasconade Central. Let us know you need anything—case he gets outta hand.”

“Gasconade Central, this is 109. Will do.”

Hastings walked from the car and stood beside the driveway. What yard there was had once been dirt that became mud and was now sewage. There were planks of wood to step on and smaller patches of plywood that served as stepping stones. When Hastings, a solid kid with a broad back and wide shoulders, stepped on the first board, it sank a few inches and slid beneath his foot.