“Ed, I’m trying here,” Winston said. “I’m doing my best.”
“Yeah,” Ed said. “Me too.”
The two men were quiet for a moment. Then Bellamy turned toward Winston and pointed at the photograph of him as a young soldier in dress blues. “When’d you serve?”
“Nineteen fifty to fifty-three,” Winston said.
“Korea?”
“Yeah,” Winston said. “Army. I worked a supply station outside Busan.”
Bellamy turned back to the wall of photographs. “Ever see combat?”
“No,” Winston said. He paused for a moment, wondering about the track their conversation was taking. “You?”
“Oh, yeah,” Bellamy said. “Oh, yeah.”
“Vietnam?”
“Oh, yeah,” Bellamy said again. “Marine sniper. Plenty of combat.”
The room grew quiet again, but something had changed beneath the quiet; the air had become charged with something—tension or electricity or uncertainty. Winston looked at the carpet beneath his feet. He considered standing and facing Bellamy, asking him more questions about what had happened the night before, questions about what Rodney could have been doing on the runway in the middle of the night. But instead of doing those things, he decided to sit, and listen.
“They sent me to Marine Scout Sniper School because I knew how to handle a rifle,” Bellamy said. “The rifles were Winchester 70s, 30.06. Scope was something I had to get used to, but I knew how to shoot. I knew how to hunt, so I had no problem hunting in the jungle. But I knew something else that my white buddies didn’t know: I knew what it meant to be hunted.” He turned and looked at Winston. “I still know what it means to be hunted. All these years later, we’re still being hunted.”
Winston pictured Bradley Frye’s truck cruising through the streets of the Grove in the middle of the night, a man standing in the truck bed and operating a searchlight like a poacher looking for the glint of an animal’s eye in the darkness.
Bellamy folded his arms and sat down on the other side of Winston’s desk. “Back in ’Nam, I’d spend hours on my belly in the jungle, hunting. All of us would. Sometimes I’d be alone. Sometimes I’d have a partner with me. One of us aiming, one of us spotting, relieving each other while one slept and one kept lookout, a machine gunner in back of us, ready to cover.” He laughed to himself. Then he sighed and shook his head. “So many hours, Winston—days and days, weeks probably—spent on my belly, crawling through mud and briars, pissing myself, shitting my pants if I had to. One position to the next, just waiting. No matter how long it took, I’d wait. But I was happy to wait, because at the end of all that waiting I knew I was going to get that one shot that would make it all worth it.”
Bellamy stood from the desk and put his hands in his pockets. He walked toward Winston’s door, and then he turned and faced him.
“That’s what it feels like to be a Black man in America, Winston. I’ve been on my belly for years, looking up from the ground, getting stepped on while I keep on crawling forward. The only difference between then and now is that I don’t have that one shot to look forward to.”
Winston was uncertain of what to say, of what he could say. He stepped back behind his desk and set his hands on the back of his chair, thoughts careening through his head. “Ed,” he finally said. “I need to tell you that I’m not going to win this reelection. I know that.”
“I know that too,” Bellamy said. “And I need to tell you there’s still time for you to do the right thing.”
“And what’s that, Ed? I’m working to get to the bottom of what happened to Rodney. Aside from that, what can I do? Go after Bradley Frye? That’s not going to make anything easier on anybody, especially you.”
“You can get on your belly,” Bellamy said. “Crawl through the jungle with me. I can do the firing, but I might need a spotter, and I might need some cover.”
“I’m the sheriff, Ed, at least for now. I’ve got to follow the law.”
The two men stood looking at one another for a moment, and then Bellamy put his hand on the knob and opened the office door. He paused before stepping through it.
“And I’ve got to protect myself, and that means I might have to go hunting, because I sure as hell am not going to allow myself to be hunted. Not anymore.”
For the first time in the nearly twenty years they’d spent working together, Vickie left at 5:00 p.m. sharp without saying goodbye. Winston expected it, so he wasn’t surprised, but it still troubled him. The whole afternoon—even the news of the bust down in South Carolina—had troubled him. Not long after she left, Winston locked up the office and climbed into the cruiser and headed back out to the airport. The light would be gone soon, and he was curious to know what Groom had been able to get done.
Once he’d arrived at the airport and trudged across the expanse of grassy field, he saw that the aircraft’s tail had been jacked up and the broken landing gear removed. Agent Rountree stood by the plane, talking with one of Winston’s deputies and a couple of mechanics that Winston didn’t know. Glenn stood back, watching the scene. Groom was nowhere to be found. Glenn looked back at Winston and nodded at him as he approached.
“Looks like things are moving along,” Winston said.
“I’d say so,” Glenn said.
“I thought you weren’t on airplane duty until after midnight,” Winston said.
“I’m not,” Glenn said. “I just wanted to watch them jack this thing up. I’ll be back out here at two a.m.”
Winston sighed. “Deputy Englehart isn’t going to be working with us anymore,” he said.
Glenn’s eyes fell from the plane to the ground in front of him. He shook his head. “Does this have anything to do with what happened out at the Grove last night?”
“It does,” Winston said. He sighed again. “I’ve got a bad feeling, Glenn.”
Glenn looked at him, and then he looked back at the ground. “I wish I could tell you I got a good feeling,” he said. “But I don’t.”
“Well, I’m on call tonight if you need anything,” Winston said. “And tomorrow I’m going to take Englehart’s spot out here on the runway. Hopefully we can get this plane out of here soon.”
While Winston and Glenn stood talking, Agent Rountree wandered over.
“Your pilot seems to know what he’s doing,” Rountree said.
“He’s not my pilot,” Winston said, but Rountree ignored him.
“Said the aircraft is okay to fly. He plans on taking off day after tomorrow and setting her down in Wilmington. There’s a hangar waiting for it. We’ll take it from there.”
“It looks like you’ve already taken it,” Winston said.
“Yep,” Rountree said. “I reckon so.”
“Did you manage to find any prints?” Winston asked.
“We’re on top of things, Sheriff,” Rountree said. “Don’t you worry.”
“Did you hear about that bust outside Myrtle Beach?” Winston asked. “Rollins and I were thinking it might be related. Sheriff down there thinks it might be too.”