The Ranger by Ace Atkins Page B

point as he made polite conversation, talking about losing his sermon and having to retype the whole piece last night.
    He was in his early forties, slight and graying. He had a soft, gentle voice and wore a basic blue suit and red tie. A piece of toilet paper had been stuck on a cut on his chin. “Did you find her?” he asked.
    Lillie shook her head. “Your daughter, Jill, was in Tibbehah County last month. We want to talk to her in regards to an ongoing investigation.”
    Quinn could tell Bullard assumed he was a deputy, too, and Lillie did nothing to try to set him straight.
    “What’s she done now?”
    Lillie shook her head. “Nothing. But a man she was seen with was killed. We just want to know more about him.”
    “I figured she was dead,” the pastor said. “We’ve been expecting that call for four years. I pray for her every day, but she has to make decisions on her own.”
    Lillie nodded. Quinn felt himself start to sweat.
    “Beccalynn was Jill’s second child,” he said. “She aborted the first. We didn’t know until later. There has been nothing but drugs and men ever since. We only have one child now and that’s Beccalynn, and we pray that her mother never again enters her life.”
    “Do you have any idea where she could have gone?” Lillie asked, her hands held tight in her lap. Quinn shuffled in his seat and put down the coffee, feeling hot in the small room with all its plaques and religious posters, a purple robe hanging on a hook by the door with two umbrellas and a baseball cap.
    Bullard shook his head and looked at his hands.
    There’d been a time when Caddy had gone down to Panama City with some friends and had disappeared for about eight days. Quinn’s mother about lost her mind, and Quinn had to get a special pass to leave Fort Benning. He and another Ranger who wanted to come along had searched in and out of every shithole along the Miracle Mile until they found her passed out in a daiquiri bar, two boys from the Navy base trying to ease her back to their car.
    He and his buddy nearly ended up in jail for whipping the shit out of those sailors. Four months later, Caddy disappeared again.
    “She used to call and ask for money,” the preacher said. “I didn’t even know that she’d been in Tibbehah County. I figured she was still in New Orleans.”
    “Does your wife know we called?” Lillie asked.
    “No.”
    “You think she might know something?” Quinn asked.
    “She knows less than me,” he said. “The last time I saw her was in New Orleans. I had wired Jill money at a grocery store on Royal Street. I waited till she came and picked it up, and followed her out. She looked just wild, with her clothes and hair. She didn’t seem to know me at first. When she did, she made wild accusations and said very hurtful things. She’s not my daughter. I don’t know who she’s become and would never want my wife to feel what I had felt.”
    Quinn stood, feeling like he could not breathe.
    “Now we have a name,” Lillie said, still sitting looking up at him. “We’ll try and run her through the system.”
    “You understand if I don’t want to be notified,” the preacher said.
    Lillie laid down her card and wrote her cell phone number on the back. “If you hear from her, please let us know.”
    Quinn shook his hand with speed and left the building, finding some comfort out in the chilled early morning air. He wanted to punch the shit out of something but tried to calm his thoughts with breathing.
    They always said that shit worked, and sometimes it did.
     
     
    Lena had spent the last three days at a women’s shelter in Jericho, where they fed her three meals a day and gave her a bunk in the basement of the Baptist church among rows of folding chairs, golden choir robes, and two Ping-Pong tables. The fat wife of the preacher had taken particular interest in her, coming down the steps late at night with cake or pudding, high on the glory of the Christmas season, reading