Seated before Wilson’s desk this morning, Darren had to press his fist to his right knee to stop it shaking, and when that failed, he covered his knee with his Stetson.
“They don’t know where that gun came from,” Wilson said.
“Neither do I,” Darren lied.
He pictured the day years ago when he’d walked into Wilson’s office to see DA Frank Vaughn sitting before a snub-nosed .38 in a plastic evidence bag on top of Wilson’s desk, remembered knowing instantly that his mother, who’d been holding on to the gun as a tool of blackmail, was responsible for getting it into the hands of the district attorney. And he remembered the private tears he’d shed over her betrayal.
“Ballistics tell us that was the gun that killed Ronnie Malvo, but it was wiped clean of prints when it was mysteriously delivered to Vaughn. There’s no clear chain of custody, no way to prove that gun was in your friend Mack’s possession or that you did anything to hide it or try to protect him.” Wilson wiped grease from the corners of his mouth with a napkin Darren was fairly certain was on its second or third round of use.
“I’m aware, sir.”
The whole thing was a mess, an irony as bitter as chicory root.
When Darren believed that Rutherford “Mack” McMillan had killed Ronnie Malvo, an active member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, and hid the murder weapon on the grounds of Darren’s house in Camilla, where Mack had done odd jobs for the Mathews family for decades, Darren had looked the other way, tacitly hiding evidence. He didn’t want an elderly black man going to death row for ridding Texas of a known racist and a murderer, a man missed by exactly no one, maybe not even his own mama. But it turned out Mack hadn’t killed Ronnie Malvo; Mack’s nineteen-year-old granddaughter, Breanna, had — over a base entanglement between her and Malvo that involved both drugs and sex. A fact that Darren now realized was a precursor to his current feeling that the world as he knew it made no sense anymore, a first clue that America was a snake eating its own tail. Breanna was sleeping with a white supremacist; a white supremacist was sleeping with a black girl. But by the time he discovered this, the murder weapon had gotten into the wrong hands: his mother’s.
Darren eventually coerced a murder confession out of Bill “Big Kill” King, another member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, to close the Ronnie Malvo case — keeping suspicion away from Mack. And Darren himself. He had lied and manipulated evidence, had done a wrong thing for a right reason, sure. But, bottom line, he had lied.
He wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t deserve to be indicted.
Wasn’t sure either that he didn’t deserve a medal.
He could keep going like this, vigilante cop settling scores in his own way, meting out his own home-brewed justice, but there would always be a faint whiff of rot coming from inside him, seeping out of his pores. Because you will never beat them at their own game, his uncle Clayton was fond of saying. The man in the White House was also making up his own rules and look where that had gotten all of us. The debate over purity in battle versus rolling in mud had worn Darren down, had burned out the light in his heart. What he thought: He wasn’t sure if he was a good or bad cop, or even what that meant for a black Ranger, but he still believed he had a shot at being a decent man.
What he’d told the lieutenant: I’m tired.
Darren watched as Wilson grunted from the effort of sitting up from a reclining position in his office chair to grab the badge that rested between them on his desk. In one fluid motion, he slid the five-point star across the desktop, dropping it into the drawer, Darren hearing the metal lightly clink against something inside. Wilson looked not just disappointed; he looked like a man who was being abandoned, a wounded soldier left on the field. “Your uncle William would have thought this was the exact time the country couldn’t afford to lose a man like you,” Wilson said. He had served with Darren’s uncle, the first black Ranger sworn into the department, in the 1980s.
“All due respect, sir,” Darren said, “my uncle couldn’t imagine the times we’re living in.”
“No worse than what he and your family saw during the sixties, I bet.”
Wilson must have caught the fleeting look of annoyance on Darren’s face: And you would know this how? He closed the desk drawer that now held Darren’s badge. “This too shall pass, Mathews,” Wilson said, although he looked exhausted by the prospect of waiting out whatever this was that they were living through. He rubbed at the bags, both puffy and dark, under his eyes. “This country’s been through worse.”
“I’m not sure it matters, sir. We are where we are.”
“Could use you out there, all I’m saying. Now more than ever,” Wilson said.
Darren swallowed his guilt, then rooted around for his anger at being put in this position, at Wilson for invoking his uncle William’s name and legacy. Sure, it was a sentiment among black cops these days that “Black Lives Matter” meant a gun and the law had their purpose — safeguarding black folks in every corner of American life. But Darren felt resentful of the idea that black cops somehow bore the sole responsibility for this. Surely it was someone else’s turn to do the work of righting the country’s racial wrongs, case by trauma-inducing case. He’d devoted his entire career to ridding the state of Texas and the country of racists like the Brotherhood, had compromised his honor to do so, and now they were in every branch of government, sitting pretty.
Wilson gently cleared his throat as Darren rose to leave. “You don’t think this makes you look guilty, son, tucking tail and running?”
He was guilty. Of a lot of things.
He didn’t see it as running so much as saving his soul.
“No,” he said.
Wilson glanced back at the desk drawer that held Darren’s badge. He fingered the handle, flicking the drawer open an inch, then looking up with something like hope. “Give it some time, Mathews. Huh? Just asking you to think about it, son.”
Darren slid his Stetson on his head. “I did,” he said. “And I’m done.”
About the author:
Attica Locke is the author of Heaven, My Home, a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Bluebird, Bluebird which won the CWA Steel Dagger and an Edgar Award; Pleasantville, which won the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction; Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award and shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and The Cutting Season, a national bestseller and winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Attica Locke has worked on the adaptation of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere and Ava DuVernay's Netflix series about the Central Park Five, When They See Us. Attica’s latest book is Guide Me Home, the blistering, final instalment in the Highway 59 series.
