“Hey, girl,” he said. It was Danny Price, her first best friend, and also the first boy she’d ever slept in a bed with. The first boy she’d ever danced with until she was certain she’d drop from exhaustion or exhilaration. The first boy she’d ever seen stare at himself in a rearview mirror while applying mascara outside the Pterodactyl Club in Charlotte, strobe lights flashing on the other side of the building’s nearly blacked-out windows, the music pulsing through the walls and into their chests. They had just turned eighteen, and as Colleen had watched Danny swipe the makeup wand across his eyelashes, she realized that she had never felt freer or more certain about her freedom at any other time in her life.
Now, all these years later, Colleen smiled, turned, and leaned her waist against the counter.
“I was wondering when you’d call,” she said. She twirled the cord around her finger.
“I’m calling to check on you. Myra Page says you threw up at the Food Lion.”
Colleen laughed out loud now, the first real laugh that had escaped her body in what felt like years.
“Word travels fast,” she said.
“It does on this island,” Danny said. “You want to go out tonight, make some bad decisions? Give Myra and them something else to talk about?”
“I do,” Colleen said. “I do.”
Chapter 9
After getting off the phone with Sheriff Petty, Winston called Glenn and then Agent Rollins and told them what he’d learned. Both were happy with the news, but Winston could tell that neither one of them had high hopes that anything at the scene down in Horry County would prove to be connected to their own investigation. Sure, the cocaine from Petty’s bust might have been flown in on the airplane that now sat on the runway here in Brunswick County, but without fingerprints or ballistic evidence connecting the two scenes there was just no way to know. So, they’d have to wait until all the samples were turned in and tested and then tested against one another.
“We’ll know something sooner or later,” Rollins had said, but Winston didn’t have any use for later. He didn’t want to acknowledge the ticking clock of next week’s election, especially not to Rollins, but the ticking was there, even if he was the only who could hear it.
After hanging up with Rollins, Winston heard Vicki raise her voice out in the lobby, speaking loudly as if trying to get someone’s attention. “Sir,” she said. “Sir!”
Winston leaned forward as if being closer to Vicki’s voice would give him a better idea of what was going on on the other side of his closed door.
“Sir!” Vicki said. “You can’t go in there!”
Footsteps rounded the corner and pounded down the hallway toward Winston’s office. As if commanded by instinct, Winston stood and braced his body for whatever was about to come through his door, understanding that his gun hung just out of reach. Without thinking, he moved from behind his desk and readied himself to face the person that Vicki had been unable to stop.
He winced when the door flew open, not so much because the force of the swing made him blink, but because of the person the door’s opening had revealed: Ed Bellamy stood just a few feet away from him, breathing heavily, his face gleaming with sweat, from either anger or exertion, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. Neither man said a word, each seemingly surprised to be in such close proximity to the other after the stir Bellamy’s march into the station had caused. Winston could see Vicki standing in the middle of the hallway, her face a combination of fear and anger. Winston looked from her to Bellamy, and then he looked back at her. “It’s okay, Vicki,” he said. “It’s okay. I’ve got it.”
She nodded her head slightly and turned the corner to make her way back toward her office.
Winston watched her go, and then his eyes settled on Bellamy’s. He’d left one hand on the doorknob, and with his other he pushed his glasses back toward his eyes, and then he raised a hand and pointed his finger at the dead center of Winston’s chest. Bellamy didn’t say a word. He just stood there, pointing.
It was clear to Winston that Bellamy was not someone looking for a fight; he was very clearly someone who’d had the fight taken out of him: a father who’d lost a child, a man whose life had been destroyed in the course of a single day. Behind his thick glasses his eyes were damp with tears garnered by grief and rage, and in that single moment of silence that passed between them, Winston understood just how close and inextricably tied together the two emotions are.
Winston did not whisper, but he did speak quietly. “Ed,” he said, “you can close the door.”
Bellamy stood there for a moment, and then he pushed the door closed behind him, his other hand still pointed at Winston in what seemed like an accusation.
“What’s going on, Ed?” Winston asked. He stepped back, felt his desk brush his thighs. He leaned against it as if he were about to relax into a conversation with a colleague who’d stopped by to swap gossip.
“We’re not going to do this again, Winston,” Bellamy said. He waved his finger as if scolding a child, and then he folded his fingers into a fist. “We’re not going to do this.”
“Do what, Ed?” Winston said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He gestured to a chair in front of him, and then he bent slowly and picked up his hat where it sat on the seat. “You want to sit down? Talk this over?” He stood slowly and walked behind his desk to give Bellamy more room to do whatever he decided to do.
Bellamy did not sit, choosing instead to put his hands on the back of the chair and grip it as if preparing to throw it against the wall. He leaned toward the chair, his voice coming out even and clear.
“We’re not going back, Winston,” he said. “We’re not going back to night rides and gunshots. We’re not going to stand for it.”
“Jesus, Ed,” Winston said, “what in the world are you talking about? What gunshots?”
“Last night,” Bellamy said. “Bradley Frye and all his good old boys. They showed up at Rodney’s house and threw something through a window, demanded that boy Jay come out. They were driving through the Grove in the middle of the night in their trucks, revving their engines, shooting off guns. Had their rebel flags flying.” He pushed his glasses up again, and Winston saw that his hand trembled. “They came by my house too, and I was waiting for them. Anybody firing a weapon in front of my house is going to take fire in return.”
“Wait,” Winston said. “Wait, are you telling me that Bradley Frye came to the Grove and shot at people?”
Bellamy’s face changed suddenly, and Winston saw that, for the first time since he’d burst into his office, Bellamy was angry. He stepped out from behind the chair and pointed at Winston again. His voice was louder, more defiant.
“I’m telling you that he came into the Grove like the goddamned golden days of the Klan.” He stopped, his breathing coming rapidly, his forehead again damp with sweat. “And I’m telling you this too: we will not be run out of our homes. Not again. Not by him.”
“Jesus, Ed,” Winston said. “I had no idea.”