Dark River Road (29 page)

That was a shock. Chris looked mad and tense, pale eyes glittering in the dim light, his mouth flat and taut. He didn’t say anything, just stared hard. Chantry nodded acknowledgment of what he’d done. It didn’t matter where Chris had come from or why he was there or even that he was there, he was just glad not to have his guts hanging out onto the floor right now.

“Thanks,” he got out.

Chris might have said something then, but a sudden deafening boom like a shotgun going off sent people scattering like roaches in bright light. Somebody screamed “
Cops,
” and it was a race for the exits. Chantry jumped up and looked around for Donny but didn’t see him; then he happened to see Tansy still up on the stage, crouched down and frozen with fear, her eyes glazed.

He grabbed Chris’s arm. “Get her out of here. Tansy. Get her home, okay?” Chris gave him a strange look and he shoved him toward the stage. “Take her home, man.”

Chris ran up to the stage and grabbed Tansy by the arm, and she looked up at him with an expression of relief and gratitude and something like admiration, and Chantry wondered why he didn’t like that even as he turned around to go find Donny. They had to get out of here fast. If it really was the cops, he’d be in major trouble.

There was no sign of Donny. Just chaos. Finally, he ran for the side door that let out onto the backwash, and pushed through it. He had a glimpse of trees and freedom just before a deputy blocked his path, riot gun in one hand and back-up bunched behind him.
Oh shit.

Rafe had mean little eyes and that thin, sharp face, but he’d never been the worst of the two. It’d always been Beau who was the leader, older, bigger, and the favorite since he looked so much like Rainey. Their mama had the cancer just like Tansy’s mama, but where Julia Rivers had fought like a tiger to stay alive, Charlotte Lassiter had just faded so quietly into death that Eleanor Rowan said it was like she’d wanted to die. Chantry could well believe that.

Rafe grinned. “Get your brains scrambled, mama’s boy? Piss your pants yet?”

Chantry was at a distinct disadvantage. Rafe had his hands cuffed behind him, but his feet were free and he wore iron worker’s steel-toed boots. It wasn’t worth a busted leg just to tell him what he really thought, so he let his head rest back against the side of the van and kept his mouth shut.

That only made Rafe braver and meaner. He nudged Chantry with his foot. “What, did that yella gal suck out your tongue?”

Now Chantry’s head came up. He fixed Rafe with a cold stare. Rafe seemed to find that funny. Despite the split lip, he laughed, mouth twisting to one side.

“Mebbe there’s something you don’t know ‘bout that little gal. You ain’t the only buck in town. Huh uh. She got more on her line. You better take a number. That’s one busy little pu—”

That was as far as he got. Chantry lifted his cuffed feet and slammed them straight into Rafe’s face. It shoved his head back against the side of the van. Blood flew. Howls of pain and rage mixed with curses from the other men, and the van rocked violently from side to side as a full-scale battle broke out, the other men trying to keep Chantry from kicking Rafe to death, and Rafe trying to breathe without choking on his own blood.

No telling what would have happened if some deputies hadn’t noticed and come running to separate them. While Rafe ended up in an ambulance with some other guy that’d been cut with a broken bottle during the fight, Chantry was dragged roughly from the van and thrown to the gravel. He heard one of the medics say Rafe had a broken nose, maybe jaw.

Chantry got a ride to the Quinton County jail in the back of a police cruiser instead of the van, but it wasn’t especially comfortable since the cops had hog-tied him so he couldn’t move so much as an inch without risking a dislocated shoulder. He lay belly-down on the hard back seat and thought about Tansy, and Donny. He hoped they’d made it without getting caught. Then he thought about what he was going to say to Mama this time.

It was a busy night at the jail
so adults were put in all available cells, Chantry in with kids lumped into one cell. They took his belt and laces from his boots, then a guard took him down a short hall to the cell and unlocked the barred door to shove him inside with several other kids. He didn’t look at them, just went to sit on the edge of the metal ledge that offered seating.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they kept him here instead of sent him over to DeSoto County where they had a larger facility for underage prisoners. He didn’t want that. He’d heard enough about it.

Juvenile detention was supposed to keep kids away from hardened criminals, but Chantry knew most of the kids in juvie were worse than the drunks and petty criminals kept in the other side of the jail. They were tough kids from all over north Mississippi, many whose parents either didn’t know or care where they were, migrant farm workers’ kids, lifetime residents’ kids, and kids like Chantry who just didn’t give a damn anymore. Some had run away from group homes or other state fostered programs, and were just waiting transport to the next way station to wait out their time until they reached eighteen and freedom, or the confines of Parchman, the state prison.

But not here. Juvenile space was limited to an open cell across the concrete hall from the cellblock holding adults. Usually, kids were either quickly released to their parents, or transported to a larger facility. He had no idea which fate would be his.

Leaning back, he let his head rest against the concrete block wall and tried not to think about anything. It wasn’t easy.

Five other kids marked time in the cell with him. They were quiet for the most part, just waiting like him, two of them sleeping sitting up on the cold concrete floor with their heads back against the wall. It was noisy across the hall, the adults making a racket that brought the guards barreling down the corridor a few times.

One of the kids looked up at Chantry finally. “Heard there was a raid.”

Eying the wiry black boy of about fourteen, Chantry nodded. “Yeah.”

“So—you out there? At the Hideaway, I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Man, you gotta be stupid.”

“Yeah,” Chantry agreed after a minute. That pretty much summed it up.

He spent all night in that cell, watching as kids left one by one until he was alone. No one came to get him, not even the cops seemed to much care if he was there. They had bigger fish to fry with all the arrests netted in the raid. He caught snatches of talk between the guards, enough to hear that they’d been planning to shut down the Hideaway for a while.

Sergeant Gordon came to get him while he was still staring at his breakfast, a bowl of watered down grits that bore no resemblance to the stuff Mama made at home: hot and thick and with a big pat of butter slowly melting in the middle. This looked like slightly lumpy milk.

“We got some talkin’ to do, boy,” the sergeant said, and motioned for two of the guards to bring him out of the cell.

Maybe it was to make a point, but the guards seemed to take particular pleasure in being rough. One swung Chantry around and up against the wall, pinning him against concrete blocks with a leather baton pressed against the back of his neck while the other cuffed him. He’d already had his pockets emptied for him when he was brought in, but now they searched him again, hands patting him down while they discussed doing a full body cavity search. Chantry closed his eyes. It was a good thing he hadn’t been able to eat, because just the prospect of that made him sick to his stomach.

He was half-walked, half-dragged down the hallway to a large room at the end, and when he was cuffed to a chair at the table, he knew the body cavity talk had just been a threat. For now anyway. Sergeant Gordon came in a few minutes later, a clipboard in one hand, a tape recorder in the other. He sat down at the table across from Chantry and looked at him real hard.

“Consequences, boy. I told your mama you’d be back if she let you get by with it last time, and it looks like I was right.”

Chantry didn’t say anything. The fleeting memory of Rainey and his belt passed through his mind but he focused on the cop. Gordon had something specific in mind. He kept looking at Chantry like he was trying to figure out the best way to get what he wanted—with threats, or with promises both of them knew would never be kept.

After a minute of silent speculation, the sergeant set the tape recorder in the middle of the table and flicked it on. He gave his name, Chantry’s name and age, the date, and the time. Then he turned it off.

“You got a choice. Tell me what I want to hear now or after we beat the shit out of you. It’s that simple.”

Chantry eyed him narrowly. “I don’t know what you want to hear,” he said finally, and the sergeant’s lip curled back.

“The hell you don’t. That wasn’t your first time out to the Hideaway. You know what’s up. You’re underage and drinking. Doing drugs. I want names, dates, specifics.”

“I don’t do drugs. I don’t hang with people who do.” That was true. He’d tried smoking a little weed, but didn’t like the way it made his body relax to the point of comatose while his brain raced ninety to nothing. It left him feeling out of control, powerless, and he hated that.

The sergeant narrowed his eyes. Then he turned on the recorder.

“Right. You don’t want to keep playin’ this game. We could always bring up your prior and see to it that you spend the next few years as a guest of the state of Miss’sippi. You know what that means, don’t you?”

Oh yeah. He knew what that meant. He just didn’t know anything about names, dates, or the specifics the sergeant wanted to hear.

When he didn’t say anything, Sergeant Gordon slammed his hand down on the table between them and made the tape recorder fall over. “Don’t be stupid, boy. We got you this time for underage drinking and fighting. I’ll be willing to overlook any drug charges since we didn’t find anything on you—in exchange for information.”

Chantry suddenly realized that they couldn’t charge him with drugs. He didn’t have any in his system, and he hadn’t had any on him when arrested. All they could do was charge him with drinking and fighting. That wouldn’t be so bad. Not like drugs. Not like the sergeant wanted him to believe. That didn’t mean he wasn’t in trouble. It just meant he wasn’t in long-term trouble.

He sat back in the chair. “I don’t know anything.”

For the next few minutes he repeated that over and over, while the sergeant got redder in the face and the threats escalated. He kept coming back to the same point: Chantry wouldn’t have been at the Hideaway if he wasn’t there to buy drugs. He was there. He had money in his pocket. Everybody knew drugs were the only reason kids risked going out there.

Chantry thought about Chris Quinton. Then he thought about Tansy. And then he thought how he’d sent Chris to get Tansy and hoped he’d done the right thing. If Chris has been there to buy drugs, no telling what might have happened. He had to get out of here, had to find out if she was all right.

“I want a lawyer,” he said abruptly, breaking across the sergeant’s repeated threat about a lifetime behind bars if he didn’t cooperate. “Either charge me with something or let me go. You can’t keep me here.”