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  OUTSIDE THE LAW

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  © 2017 Phillip Thompson All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 1941298990

  ISBN-13: 9781941298992

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253,

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  For my mother, who knows all the words.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A great many thanks are due to the excellent editing team of Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman. Also, my deepest thanks go to those tolerant few who provided the support, inspiration, and encouragement to keep going: Walt Bode; Grant Jerkins and Eryk Pruitt, whose South is as rough as mine, and who read as well as they write; Joe Clifford and Tom Pitts at the Gutter; Ames Holbrook, raconteur extraordinaire; and, finally, to Brenda, for her patience and tolerance, of course, but mostly for a smile and a gentle push when I didn’t even know I needed it—and because everybody needs a little sunshine.

  CONTENTS

  COLT

  HACK

  COLT

  DELMER

  COLT

  HACK

  COLT

  MOLLY

  JOHN

  HACK

  COLT

  MOLLY

  HACK

  COLT

  DELMER

  COLT

  MOLLY

  DELMER

  COLT

  DELMER

  DEE

  COLT

  HACK

  DELMER

  COLT

  MOLLY

  DEE

  COLT

  DELMER

  COLT

  HACK

  COLT

  MOLLY

  DELMER

  COLT

  DEE

  JOHN

  DELMER

  COLT

  HACK

  MOLLY

  COLT

  MOLLY

  COLT

  JOHN

  COLT

  HACK

  DEE

  MOLLY

  HACK

  COLT

  HACK

  COLT

  HACK

  COLT

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COLT

  He climbed out of the car and into the rain falling like silver three-penny nails on a moonless night. Fluorescent lighting bathed the gas pumps in the convenience store parking lot and cast weird splotches of light on the cracked, rain-slick concrete. He pulled on a brown sheriff’s department ball cap and squinted at the deputy cars that sat on either side of the pumps, their lights still revolving, slinging blades of vertigo-inducing blue light across the front of the store, which glowed from its windows decorated with neon beer lights.

  An engine screamed behind him, and he frowned when he turned to see the local TV station’s remote truck pull to a stop by one of the deputy cars. He started toward the store entrance, then spotted John standing near the door over a body—male, facedown, smoke still rising out of a blown-out hole in his back. John saw him, stepped from under the store awning, and met him at the pumps.

  He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the TV truck. “Get those assholes out of here,” he said.

  John turned his head and let loose a piercing whistle that brought a deputy to the door of the store. He pointed at the TV truck, and the deputy—this one in a brown vinyl rain parka with LCSD painted in yellow across the front—trotted over to corral the reporters. He was met by loud groans and a few profanities as they argued with him over the rights of the people and the First Amendment.

  He and John walked back to the body.

  “Wayne Freeman,” John said. “Owner. He was working the register.”

  He looked at Freeman’s body, the longish gray hair askew, his back now a bloody exit wound. His right hand still clutched a semiauto pistol. Nine millimeter from the look of it.

  “He hit anyone?”

  “Hard to tell in this rain. There’s a blood smear here,” John said, pointing to the window near the door. “But we won’t know whose it is for a while.”

  He nodded. “What we got inside?”

  John scowled. “Two wannabe gangsters—one dead, one beat to a pulp—and one very satisfied Deputy Reynolds.”

  He winced and, on reflex, glanced back at the TV crew setting up in what was now a steady downpour. “Shit. Why did it have to be the meanest deputy I got?”

  “If by ‘mean’ you mean racist, yeah, makes you wonder.”

  “Not now, John.”

  He stepped over Freeman’s body and into the convenience store, which was a rat’s nest of dry goods, groceries, kiosks of all kinds of shit, fishing tackle, and an array of lottery tickets four feet high behind the register.

  Deputy Tom Reynolds stood toward the back, in front of the wall of beverage coolers. Full uniform, of course, thumbs hooked into his gun belt. His eyebrows were nearly as big as his mustache, and he looked like a younger, uglier version of Mike Ditka, if such a thing were possible. Clearly satisfied with himself.

  At Reynolds’s feet lay a crumpled body that resembled a pile of laundry, except for the pool of blood the size of a trash-can lid that had gathered near the upper half of the torso.

  From where he stood, he could tell the corpse was young, black, male. Jeans, high-tops, bright T-shirt that had been yellow before becoming soaked in blood.

  Sitting behind Reynolds was another young, black male. Hands behind him, presumably cuffed. Dressed like the corpse, but with a blue T-shirt. His left eye was swollen shut, and his bottom lip was split. Blood had spilled down the front of his shirt like a Jackson Pollack painting.

  “Tom,” he said.

  “Sir.” Reynolds always called him “sir” on account of his Marine Corps time, but it still pissed him off. He let it slide.

  “What you got?”

  Reynolds cleared his throat. “The owner called in a robbery in progress at 2322. I was heading up Highway 69, so I took the call. Arrived here 2331. Encountered a deceased white male out front, apparently shot through and through with a shotgun. I called for backup, but the two perps inside saw me.

  “I entered the premises and ordered them to halt so as to arrest them. They were both armed.

  “This one,” Reynolds said as he pointed to the floor, “decided to take me on. I shot him in the head and a double-tap to the chest. That snub-nose in the blood there is his.

  “This one,” he said, pointing to the other kid, “is T-Rock. He dropped his weapon. That sawed-off over there by the potato chips.”

  He looked T-Rock over. Reynolds noticed his scrutiny. “He became combative and resisted my attempt to cuff him. I had to use additional, necessary force.”

  Bullshit. You couldn’t resist slapping him around. He squatted over the corpse and looked at T-Rock, who refused to meet his eyes. “Who’s your friend, T-Rock?”

  The kid winced. “This is bullshit, man,” he mumbled. “This some Dirty Harry bullshit is what it is.”

  “So, you’re telling me you didn’t come to rob the place tonight?” He glanced toward the chips and saw the shotgun. Twelve-gauge. Barrel sawed off down to the pump.

  Reynolds coughed. “Register’s empty, but there’s no cash on either of them, so I figure the owner chased one away, probably the one with the cash.”

  He squinted at T-Rock, who glare
d back at him, but nodded once.

  “Anything else you want to tell us, T-Rock?” he said.

  “I ain’t saying shit to y’all,” he said. “It’s bullshit. You got white boys running around robbing motherfuckers and y’all don’t do shit.”

  He stood and stretched his legs. “What are you talking about?”

  “C’mon, man,” T-Rock said. “Some dude, white dude, from what I heard, decided to take down one them oxy dealers the other night. Ain’t nobody looking for his ass.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Ain’t nobody called in a drug dealer being held up. Hell, maybe we ought to give him a medal. Besides, that shows a lot more balls than knocking over some old man’s store.”

  T-Rock huffed and looked away.

  He motioned with his head for Reynolds to follow him. When they were halfway down an aisle, he turned and nearly walked into the huge mustache. He stepped back. “Look, Tom, there’s a TV crew out there, so get this kid in a car and back to the station as soon as you can. Don’t even look at them. I’ll talk to you later about his ‘combative’ nature.”

  Reynolds’s eyes narrowed, but he said, “Yes, sir,” and turned away.

  Outside, he had just ducked under the crime scene tape headed back to his car when he heard a voice he didn’t want to hear.

  “Another shooting, Sheriff?” Craig Battles called.

  He stopped. Sighed. Turned to face the reporter. Battles was about his age, with a beer gut and a surly attitude. He had a rain parka on, but the only result it seemed to be having was to direct rainwater onto his notebook, which he was ignoring anyway.

  “We’ll have a statement for you in the morning, Craig,” he said, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “It was a robbery. One of my deputies intervened.”

  “So you didn’t shoot anyone yourself,” he said.

  You little shithead. “No, I did not, Craig.”

  “I guess that’s a good thing in an election year, huh?” He smirked and wiped rain from his brow. “I mean you’ve already shot, what, three, four guys in your first term?”

  He put his hands on his hips. He felt like shooting Craig Battles. “Look, Craig, you made your point last year with your story about my father. Everybody got what they deserved out of that, all right? Except maybe you. That story didn’t land you a job with the New York Times, but that’s not my problem.”

  Battles sneered. “Hey, Sheriff, what is your problem is the fact—and it is a fact—that there have been several shootings and accusations of excessive violence by your office,” he said. “Some folks are starting to wonder if that’s the way you solve all your problems.”

  He leveled a look at Battles. “I can think of a few that could be solved with violence. I’ll have a statement for you in the morning.” He turned toward his car. “Now I’ve got enough sense to get out the rain. How about you?”

  He flung his ball cap into the backseat and climbed in. Made a mental note to check around about drug dealers getting robbed.

  HACK

  The land in these parts was different. The terrain he had left an hour earlier was studded with low flat hills separated by wide swaths of rich river-bottom soil spread across flatlands punctuated by pine and oak and woven together by sluggish brown creeks and streams, smaller siblings of the Tennessee River.

  He stared through the windshield at this new land—new to his eyes, but familiar to his soul. He caught glimpses of the Tombigbee River, wide and deep, its surface a smooth cobalt blue, as he barreled down the highway headed south. It carved a meandering path not dissimilar to his own down the four-lane highway.

  He squinted when he spotted the dull gray Mississippi state trooper car squatting near a rest stop. His eyes flickered to his speedometer and back to the road, and his right hand, of its own accord, slid across the seat to the Ruger 9 mm resting on the passenger seat. His fingers wrapped around the handgrip, drew the weapon to his side, and slid it under his thigh. He drove past the rest area without a sideways glance.

  No, the land itself was different, yet at once familiar. Here, the hills in the north gave way to broad rolling prairies corrugated by decade upon decade of farming. Small, nearly forgotten towns of brick and wood buildings slouched at odd intervals on the shoulders of the road, and these hamlets seemed to serve only to break up the monotony of the farmland.

  Here, he knew, the people clung to the land and to one another, having long ago flung away hope and dreams. In the hollers and in the feed stores, men sought one another to tell stories, discuss the placement of deer stands, settle debts, or plot vengeance on those who did not. And at the center of all of these discussions, important or happenstance, was the reality of kin. The people here, he knew without knowing a single one of them, were loyal to one another above anything else, save the Almighty. To raise a hand against one was to raise a hand against an entire family and challenge generations-old loyalties oftentimes sealed with violence and blood.

  His ancestral land, farther to the north and east by hundreds of miles, the place in which he had originated and from which he had been ejected even as he rejected it, was one such as this. In his land, he had raised a hand against a man, and thus a family. He had left carrying only his name: Hack.

  Tonight, he would raise a hand again.

  He turned off the main highway onto a narrow macadam road that led into the shady lee of a low ridge on his right. After a few miles, the road ended in another, perpendicular to his route. To the right sat a claptrap one-story general store with a single four-wheeler in the dirt lot. A rusted beer sign took up the entire wall facing the road, the large words and pictures screaming to no one in particular. He turned left. The sun dropped lower off to his right and cast long shadows like lances across the fields of milo and soybeans.

  He drove through the countryside in the failing light until only his headlights illuminated his route. He headed generally east, and he met no oncoming traffic, even after nearly an hour of driving, and the land fell away under his car until it approached a smaller river north and east of the Tombigbee. Off to the right, on the near bank, sat a squat white building with a white sign atop a rusted metal pole, illuminated by a single floodlight. The sign proclaimed the establishment as Bill’s Bait Shop. He slowed the car and checked the rearview mirror once again for traffic. Seeing none, he slowed further as the car rolled onto the old steel truss bridge looming in the yellow glow of his headlights. The steel girders, painted green like the water below, angled up and across the still river like an erector set. He gazed at the serene riverbanks. The milky light of a half-moon shone on summer vegetation hugging the water’s edge, honeysuckle and Johnsongrass, willows arching like delicate fingers over the surface, kudzu blanketing every open space. The water here looked deep.

  He drove to the opposite bank and pulled in to the small, battered asphalt parking lot of a two-pump gas station and convenience store. No sign announced the owner, but in the halo of light caused by his high beams, he could see blue paint peeled from the concrete block walls. An ice machine hummed outside the double glass doors. One car, a maroon Chevrolet, sat to the right under a flickering fluorescent light. No customers, though interior lights indicated the store was open for business. The tin roof was painted in red, white, and blue stripes. The decor caused a wisp of a smile to appear on his otherwise grim face.

  He pulled to the left of the store, close to the wall nearest the road, and killed the engine. He hefted his pistol and ejected the magazine, then replaced it with another—this one loaded with shells filled with tiny pellets instead of ball ammunition—and replaced it on the seat.

  Within ten minutes, he saw the pinpoints of headlights descending the hill toward the bridge, coming from the same direction he had taken earlier. The high beams flashed once, then turned into the bait shop on the bank opposite him. He cranked the car and pulled out, taking his time approaching the bridge.

  He stopped his car halfway across the span. He holstered his pistol under his jacket,
smoothed his shirt, and checked his tie in the rearview mirror.

  The dealer appeared, on foot, at the edge of his headlights, a bulging eight-by-ten envelope in his left hand, smoldering cigarette in the other. He was short and beefy, with a face like a comic-book villain: wide, ugly, and festooned with a scraggly goatee. He didn’t appear to be armed.

  Hack killed the lights and climbed out. He closed the twenty feet silently, calmly. Nodded once. The dealer nodded back, nervous.

  “You would be Robert Pritchard, I presume,” he said to the dealer.

  Another nervous nod. “Ah, yes, sir. And I got it all—”

  He raised a hand. “We’ll get to that. First things first.”

  “Yes, sir,” Robert said.

  “Robert, you fucked up, but that goes without saying,” Hack said in a tone that could have been called friendly under different circumstances. “My employers don’t like fuckups. Causes them to question the reliability and competence of their employees. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Robert exhaled. “Yes, sir, I do. I surely do. But this was a one-time thing. I can guarantee you that. That guy came out of nowhere and jumped me. And I’m here to make it right.” He raised the envelope, which shook in his hand. “Double what was stole from me. That was the deal. Four thousand dollars.”

  He nodded, annoyed at the dealer’s groveling. “I see that. But, Robert, there’s a couple of things you need to understand. First, there was no deal. That money is your penance, for your sins, if you want to look at it that way. And, second, there’s no need to guarantee me anything, because I know this was a onetime thing.”

  He stepped toward Robert, took the envelope and drew the Ruger in the same motion. He pushed the muzzle into the short man’s belly, just under the rib cage and pulled the trigger twice. Robert’s eyes went wide for an instant, then blank as he slumped forward.

  He yanked the gun away and let him fall. The body crumpled facedown to the pavement with a dull thud, like a rolled-up rug hitting a hardwood floor.

  He stared through the near-total darkness in either direction. The only light for miles, besides the moon, flickered from lightning bugs cruising the riverbanks. He tossed the pistol over a girder and waited until he heard it splash. He bent over the body and went through the pockets until he found the car keys and then pulled the corpse upright by the collar and belt and wrestled it over the steel. He lifted it clear by the legs and let it fall into the river. The splash of the body shattered the stillness of the evening and echoed from the woods.