“Yessir.”
“Good. Then we got us one more thing to do, before we dress and drag out that deer you shot.” Cooper loosened the fisherman’s knot on his pack and pulled out an old army-surplus folding shovel.
He handed it to Gareth.
Cooper Burroughs sat and chewed tobacco while he watched his nine-year-old son dig his first grave. There was more lesson in that than in killin’ any eight-point buck.
CHAPTER
2
CLAYTON BURROUGHS
WAYMORE VALLEY, GEORGIA
2015
1.
Well, isn’t that how it always goes down? You spend all week, and damn near most of the weekend, too, either cooped up in an office shuffling paperwork or checking off the honey-do list, all for a few hours alone on a Sunday morning, just to have it shot to shit with a phone call.
I should have let it ring.
Clayton wheeled the Bronco into the parking place marked RESERVED FOR MCFALLS COUNTY SHERIFF. He stepped out and stood in the empty space his deputy’s car should be in—and wasn’t—and dropped his chin to his chest. The sun was nudging up behind the motor inn and post office across the street; not the way he wanted to take in the sunrise this morning. He should be hip deep in the creek right now. He let out a slow, disconcerted whistle of breath, hoisted his sagging gun belt, and walked into the office.
“Good morning, Sheriff.”
“Well, that’s up for debate, Cricket.”
Cricket, Clayton’s receptionist, was a tiny little thing in her early twenties, and somewhat of a hidden beauty. If the light hit her just right she might be worth a longer look, but most days, with her mousy brown hair pulled back tight in a librarian’s ponytail, she had the chameleonlike ability to become one with the wallpaper. She pushed her thick plastic-rimmed glasses up on her nose and closed out whatever she was doing on the station’s computer.
“Sorry to get you in here on a Sunday, sir, but we thought you’d want to deal with this as soon as possible.” Cricket stood up from behind her desk and handed Clayton a file folder.
“S’okay, Cricket. It’s not your fault,” Clayton said, thumbing through the papers in the file. “You got me out of having to go to church with the in-laws, so it’s not a total loss. I was hoping to do a little fishing, though.”
Cricket was all business, as was her way. “Our guest is in cell one.” She motioned down a short hallway leading to the two small lockups, a couple cells barely big enough to house a cot and a stainless-steel commode each.
“And where’s Choctaw?”
“He’s waiting in your office.”
Clayton peered down the hallway and then at the door to his office, contemplating which headache to tackle first. He chose the devil he knew.
2.
“Okay,” the sheriff said, and sipped his coffee. “Start at the beginning.”
Choctaw sank down in the chair opposite the sheriff’s desk and pushed his Stetson back on his brow. The deputy was the kind of skinny that made his skin look shrink-wrapped to his bones, and he squirmed in his seat like a high school student called before the principal.
“All right,” he said. “I was out a few nights ago with my buddy Chester. You remember Chester? We served together in Iraq. He come down from Tennessee a few weeks back, after he got home from his last tour. I brought him around the office when he first got here.”
The sheriff nodded. “Yeah, I remember the guy.”
“Cool. Anyway, we got a way of messin’ with each other that goes way back to when we were fixing Humvees in the desert—just clownin’, you know? Anyway, last week I bought me one of those blow-up dolls—”
The sheriff put a hand up. “Hold on, like a sex-toy thing?”
“Yeah, exactly. A Fuck and Suck Sally. Them things ain’t cheap, by the way.”
“Good to know. Where the hell did you find one of those around here?”
“The Internet, boss. I even got me one of those PayPal accounts just for that reason.”
“A who-pal-what?”
The deputy looked a bit dumbfounded. “A PayPal account . . . ?”
Static played across the sheriff’s gray-green eyes as he sat and stroked his beard.
“Look, it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. The point is, I bought this blow-up doll to mess with Chester. I should have bought a bicycle pump, too, because I damn near gave myself an aneurysm blowing the thing up.”
“What does any of this have to do with last night?”
“I’m getting to that. Bear with me. A few days after I bought the thing, I set it up all pretty-like in the passenger seat of Chester’s ride right before he come out of The Pair O’ Jacks—that joint headed up I-75 toward Roswell. You know the place?”
The sheriff nodded again. “Uh-huh.”