Night of Thunder

“No one knows less about sin than a Grumley. Y’all are basically animals. You may not even be mammals, I’m not sure. You just do what your instincts tell you, and in a funny way, it is God’s will. Lord, what snakes these Grumleys be.”

“Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here” announced itself for one moment, interrupting this important eschatological dialogue, and of course it was the Reverend’s cellphone, which he took out of the inside breast pocket of his powder blue Chinese suit.

“Hallelujah,” he said. “You sure? Hallelujah!”

He snapped the phone shut.

“It seems that damn girl’s father has showed up and is asking questions. Oh, Lord, another test.”

Fuck, thought Brother Richard.

“I will send Carmody and B.J. to watch on him. If we have to, we’ll have to take him down. He is old and harmless, can’t hardly walk straight, his hair’s all grayed out, but you never can tell.”

Another mouse, thought Brother Richard.

TEN

“Glad you came by,” said Detective Thelma Fielding, putting out a hand which turned out to conceal a strong grip.

“Should have worn a gas mask,” said Bob.

“Ain’t it the truth. You get used to it.”

She was referring to a strong scent of atomized carbon that filled the air and left a sheen of grit on all the flat, polished surfaces. Clearly it had drifted over from the coal yard next to the sheriff’s department, which sat in the old train station that had been converted three years earlier when the passenger service closed down.

“Nobody foresaw that when they started dumping coal there. Now we’ve had OSHA in here six days a week, and they finally decided to condemn this old building. A shame, it was a nice building once. Now it’s got grit everywhere and nobody can stand it. Next spring, we move into a new building across town.”

“Well, that’s something. Must be hell on white glove occasions.”

She laughed at his joke, which even he didn’t think was that funny. Then she said, “I have some news for you.”

“That’s great,” said Bob.

He sat at her desk in the sheriff’s department, seeing it was neatly kept with a stack of files in an ONGOING vertical holder. There were a couple of trophies as well, displaying a little gold man holding a pistol atop a plastic, imitation-marble pedestal, reminding him that Thelma had won some shooting competitions, which perhaps explained her fancy.45 in its strange plastic holster. He decided to try and get a gander at the inscriptions on them, but couldn’t from his angle. She was the same as before, khakis and a polo shirt, her gun held tight to her waist in that plastic holster, her arms oddly strong, as had been her grip. Her ducktail blonde hair had just been worked on and her face was tan, her eyes expressive.

“Also, Sheriff Wells is in, and I think you want to meet him, don’t you, Mr. Swagger?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well, the best news is, we got a paint and tire match from the state police crime lab in Knoxville. Just came in.”

She reached over, took a file marked SWAGGER NIKKI, INCIDENT REPORT CF-112, opened it, and took out a faxed form.

“They say it’s a color called cobalt silver, found on Chrysler Corporation vehicles, notably the Dodge Charger, the Magnum, and the Chrysler 300, their muscle cars. The tire is a standard Goodyear 59-F, and damned if that doesn’t coordinate with a stolen car of a week earlier, a cobalt silver ’05 Charger. Lots of Chargers go missing this time of year, because the Charger is the big hoss of NASCAR and every punk kid or crankhead is in a Charger kind of mood. So this one was stolen in Bristol, and my guess is, whatever kid did it got himself liquored up and went out looking for someone to intimidate that night. As I say, I have my snitches working. I will circularize, but usually folks don’t take stolen cars to body shops, so I doubt that will pay off. They just dump ’em in the deep woods and maybe we find ’em and maybe we don’t, and if we do find ’em, maybe we can take prints and maybe we can’t, and if we can, maybe we can ID the car and maybe we can’t. Probably can’t. But I know who steals cars around these parts, and I’ve got some fellas you wouldn’t invite to dinner or let your daughter date looking into it. So I’m sure we’ll come up with a name and then we’ll go visit him.”

“I hope you let me come along on that one, Detective.”

“Mr. Swagger, you don’t have some vigilante-kickass thing in mind, do you? We can’t let that happen and if you-”

“No, no, ma’am, an old coot like me? No ma’am, I know my limits. I just want to be as involved in this as possible.”

“Well, we’ll see. Can’t make any promises. Probably not a good idea, but I am noted for sometimes making the wrong decision. More to the point, when your daughter awakes, we’ll want to interview her. What’s the word on that?”

Bob gave her a brief summary of Nikki’s medical situation, leaving out the detail that he’d moved her, leaving out as well the results of his independent investigations.