Lucas parked in the street and went to the door and rang the bell. No answer.
He didn’t want to linger, maybe warn somebody off, so he went back to his truck. As he started it up, he noticed a heavyset woman standing behind a screen door in the house across the street. Her arms were crossed in a defensive pose: either the self-appointed neighborhood watch or somebody to rat him out to the Pooles.
He drove back to the La Quinta, thinking about food. A couple of Tennessee Highway Patrol cars were parked at the motel entrance, the two troopers talking to a bearded man who stood outside an aged Ford pickup. The pickup had a camper back and a bumper sticker on the driver’s side that said “Vegetarian” over a green marijuana leaf, and on the passenger side, another sticker that said “Can’t we just all get abong?” The bearded man had a battered guitar case at his feet, but was not Willie Nelson.
Lucas nodded at the cops as he went by and one of the troopers called after him, “Excuse me, sir,” and Lucas turned and the two troopers were looking at him, their hands on their Glocks. The taller of the two asked, “Are you carrying a gun?”
Lucas’s.45 had printed through the jacket. He said, “Yes. I’m a U.S. marshal. I have an ID in my pocket on the right side of my jacket.”
The cops nodded and Lucas pulled open his jacket with the fingertips of his right hand, extracted his badge case with his left hand, and dropped it open. The shorter trooper looked at it and said, “Good enough for me,” and then, “Minnesota?”
“Yeah. I’m down here looking for a guy,” Lucas said.
The tall trooper hooked a thumb at the guitar player and said, “It wouldn’t be Rory Harris, would it?”
“Nope. He’s your problem.”
The bearded man said, “I know my rights.”
The tall trooper said, “And it’s your right to get stopped every two miles and asked if you got weed in your truck. You oughta lose the stickers. I’m not telling you that’s the law, I’m just saying, make it easy on yourself.”
“Don’t have that problem down in Alabama...”
The trooper looked up at the sky, around the parking lot, peered at Lucas, lifted an arm and sniffed at his armpit, then said, “You know, I’d swear this was Tennessee.”
Harris didn’t see the comedy in that and didn’t smile. The short trooper told him, “Get lost.”
Harris got lost, tooling away in the stink of badly burned gasoline, his marijuana stickers intact. The tall trooper said, “Dumbass,” and asked Lucas, who’d stepped away, “Who’re you looking for?”
“A guy’s been on the run the last ten years or so. Garvin Poole?”
Both troopers shook their heads. “What’d he do?” one of them asked.
“Everything,” Lucas said. “Including killing a little girl and a Mississippi state trooper.”
“Okay, that’s bad,” said the short guy. “You think he’s close by?”
“Some of his family are, but Poole himself? I got no idea. I suspect he isn’t,” Lucas said. “I’m just starting on him.”
“I know this area pretty good, I been out here eight years. I’ll look him up and if I have any ideas, I’ll give you a buzz,” the short guy said.
Lucas and the troopers talked for a few more minutes—the tall one was curious about how to get to be a marshal, and Lucas told him, “Fill out an application—there’s a whole thing about it online.”
The trooper said he’d do that and Lucas asked if there might be a decent rib joint around, and they pointed him to a roadside barbeque barn a few miles away. Lucas traded cards with them before they left, then went to eat.
—
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK,the barbeque ribs sitting uneasily in his stomach, he was back at the Poole place, still no lights, still the aging Corolla parked in the driveway. Lucas pulled in behind it, got out, walked up the sidewalk. He knocked, got no answer.
He knocked again, waited, then turned away and saw the heavyset woman across the street, behind her screen door. He went that way and as he walked up her driveway, she called, “Are you the po-lees?”
“I’m a U.S. marshal,” Lucas said.
“What do you want with the Pooles?” she asked.
“I need to interview them,” Lucas said. “Nothing they’ve done wrong, or anything. Have you seen them around?”
She stood silently for a moment, chewing on her lower lip. Then, “I tell you what, sir, I was thinking I might call the local po-lees. Margery’s car been parked there all day like that and Kevin’s car is in the garage, because I looked in the window and seen it. Hasn’t been moved. They tell me when they go out of town, so I can keep an eye on the place—but I didn’t hear a peep from them. I haven’t seen anything moving over there all day, but they were there last night. I seen them and saw lights. Today, I seen nothing. I knocked, but nobody answered. I’m a little worried.”
