The Broken Places by Ace Atkins Read Free Book Online Page B

cabin, a big-ass log house, and tried the door. And of course the door was locked, but it wasn’t much for his elbow to break the glass and for him to feel inside for the deadbolt. They were in the kitchen, which hummed with electricity and big silver appliances. Bones was coming on in behind him, yawning, and rubbing his eyes. He pulled open the refrigerator and whistled. “Holy hell.”
    “What they got?” Esau said.
    “What they don’t got?”
    Bones opened a beer on the side of a counter and passed it to Esau. He cracked another one open, helping himself to a block of good cheese, and the men walked side by side into a great room fashioned of big pine logs running high and wide, maybe thirty feet into a ceiling. Someone had tacked ducks and deer heads and a stuffed wildcat or two on the wall. There was the biggest television Esau had ever seen, as flat and wide as one in a movie show, and when Bones punched it to life, he quickly recognized an old film he used to watch with his stepfather, 7 Men from Now , with old Randolph Scott. Esau finished the beer in three sips and cracked the seal on the Wild Turkey. The room was filled with a lot of thick leather furniture and lamps fashioned from antlers, a bar stocked with Scotch and bourbon so good that Esau handed the rest of the Turkey to Bones. He made himself a Glenfiddich neat and walked toward the far wall, finding a ten-foot section of glass set into the pine beams. He counted out twenty-two shotguns and rifles shining as bright and beautiful as the day they came from the smith’s hands.
    “Ain’t bad,” Bones said. “Ain’t bad at all. Yeah, this’ll work.”
    Esau nodded. “Tomorrow, we find Dixon.”

 
    It was nearing 0100 and the next wave of storms was blowing across Tibbehah County. Quinn had stopped at the sheriff’s office to refill his thermos and to check the storm online. It looked like they might have some flooding, but on a night like this, you could always bet on the accidents. Quinn drove his F-250 north of his farm onto the road that ran from Fate to Providence, beyond the hills and the National Forest. He got maybe a mile and a half down Horse Barn Road when he saw the lights on Kenny’s cruiser. Kenny’s yellow slicker worn over his thick and squat body flashed on the roadside, next to a couple flares lit on the road. Quinn slowed softly directly behind Kenny’s cruiser, since there were no shoulders on the rural roads.
    He stepped out into the wind and rain, wearing a tobacco-colored rancher and his official cap. He had an unlit cigar in his teeth, the nicotine keeping him sharp as he ran the roads.
    “I thought he was dead,” Kenny said. “Gave me a jump when he snorted.”
    A small white pickup truck had run into a tree, not hard enough to dent the hood but just enough to stop at a crazy angle off the hill. Quinn walked up with Kenny and opened the passenger door. The smell of urine and alcohol overwhelmed them. A man lay passed out across the bench seat.
    “Damn.”
    “I told you, Quinn,” Kenny said. “You know this son of a bitch?”
    Quinn looked at the young man’s gaunt, unshaven features. “Nope.”
    Quinn shook the man’s shoulder. His mouth was wide open, eyes rolled up into his head. In the full light of the cab, the man had at some point pulled his blue jeans down and exposed himself.
    “Don’t you wish Lillie had this call?” Kenny said.
    “Why’s that?” Quinn said.
    “Funny is all,” Kenny said. “Man flashing his junk to the world. Didn’t want to reach for his wallet. I’ll go get a stick or something.”
    “Got some rubber gloves in my truck.”
    “Guess he wanted to take a piss but couldn’t stand up.”
    On the driver’s-side floorboard was a pint of flavored vodka, the kind that tasted like cough syrup mixed with rubbing alcohol.
    “You look around for anyone might’ve been with him?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Quinn nodded and rubbed the comatose man hard on his breastbone. The man stirred