Red Dog by Jason Miller

and Galligan and that mess—they say you were right there in the middle of it, and they ain’t even ever accounted for all the bodies. Plenty of stuff since then, too. This thing recently with the chickens.”
    â€œI don’t like to talk about the thing with the chickens.”
    Lindley ignored me. He said, “I don’t even know what to say about that kind of a thing. Grown person behaving that way. I kind of wondered when you might bring your act into my county. Kind of wondered what I’d do when you did, too.”
    â€œSo what’s your decision?”
    He thought a little about that, consternation in his face. You could tell he wasn’t about to offer me five dollars and a yellow balloon. Finally, he said, “I got to think you’re on the hook for this. Whether or not I can charge you for it today, you’re on the hook. People have a habit of disappearing around you, Slim. Dying, too. And too many parts of your story plain old don’t add up.”
    He banged the table with his hand. Right on cue, a pair of deputies came back in and plucked me from my chair.
    â€œDo me a favor, would you?” I said before they led me out.
    Lindley looked at me with smiling eyes. He said, “Oh, gee, I was hoping you’d ask.”
    â€œCome on, man.”
    â€œSitting here this whole time thinking, why hasn’t Slim asked me to do him a favor? I wish he would. And now you have. Makes my night.”
    â€œOkay, please.”
    â€œWell, since you sprinkled a little sugar on top . . .”
    â€œCall Ben Wince.”
    â€œYour sheriff buddy over there to Randolph? He’ll vouch for you, that it?”
    â€œI like to think he would, yes.” But for all I know Lindley wasn’t listening. Some jokes weren’t worth more than one laugh.
    I never found out if he did my favor. They kept me seventy-two hours then kicked me loose when I didn’t cry on their shoulders and sign a confession. They couldn’t tie me to the murder weapon, maybe, but possibly there was something else.
    Even my cut-rate lawyer didn’t know. Maybe I should say especially my cut-rate lawyer didn’t know. You never met a person who didn’t know so many things with so much conviction. This was a kid from Red Bud, a farm boy who’d got his law degree at a college they advertise on television and who reminded you of nothing so much as a mobbed-up version of Huckleberry Finn. He had ragged red hair and an odd birthmark on his left cheek and a slight overbite.He struggled pitiably with courtroom Latin. The rest of his personal style he appeared to have gleaned from B-grade gangster flicks: double-breasted pinstriped suits from the Walmart, a black Lincoln Continental he must have inherited from a dead relative, and, in his imitation snakeskin briefcase, a Colt .357 Python. A volcano of a gun I liked to think he had never fired and hoped he never would. When he materialized near the end of my third day of incarceration, sporting a brand-new set of black eyes from a vacation to West Memphis, Arkansas, the cops acted like he wasn’t worth wasting a Kleenex on.
    â€œThe police are hiding something,” he said, and the desk sergeant winked at the two of us and cracked a theatrical grin as he handed over the manila envelope with my name on the front and my life inside, but the kid didn’t get it. He never got a joke, that I know of, not even his own.
    Lew’s truck was impounded in the car yard across town, so I got a lift from the kid, handed my ticket to a fat lady in a climate-controlled metal box, and in ten minutes was on the road back toward Tolu and the Mandamus compound. My head was full of worries, though, the dark arithmetic of murder, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to just set it all down and walk away. Whoever had shot Dennis Reach hated him so much that they’d killed him like an animal on a leash. I wanted to know who and I wanted to