High White Sun Read online

  ALSO BY J. TODD SCOTT

  The Far Empty

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Jeffrey Todd Scott

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint lyrics from “Jesse James,” by Ben Glover, Kyle Jacobs, and Joe Leathers, © 2008 WB Music Corp. (ASCAP), Screaming Norman Music (ASCAP), Curb Songs (ASCAP), Jacobsong (ASCAP), Mike Curb Music (BMI) and Ghermkyle Music (BMI). Used with permission.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Scott, J. Todd, author.

  Title: High white sun / J. Todd Scott.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016051717 (print) | LCCN 2016041739 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399176357 (print) | ISBN 9780698408289 (EPub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Sheriffs—Fiction. | Motorcycle gangs—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.C66536 H54 2018 (print) | LCC PS3619.C66536 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051717

  p. cm.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_2

  For my chief deputies: Madeleine, Lily, and Lucy

  Aim higher.

  CONTENTS

  Also by J. Todd Scott

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  BEFORE Sweetwater, Texas | 1999

  Fifteen Years Later

  NOW, JULY

  PART ONE | THE GIRL WITH THE GUN Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  PART TWO | HOMBRES MALOS Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  PART THREE | SUNDOWN TOWN Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  PART FOUR | BLOOD OUT Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  AFTER La Chica con la Pistola

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “There is no peace,” says the LORD, “for the wicked.”

  —ISAIAH 48:22

  Sometimes I wanna be like Jesus,

  Sometimes I wanna be Jesse James . . .

  —BEN GLOVER, KYLE JACOBS, AND JOE LEATHERS, “JESSE JAMES”

  BEFORE

  SWEETWATER, TEXAS

  1999

  Goodbye stranger . . .

  He had the radio up too loud, singing along with the words he knew, blasting down Texas 70, when he saw the girl standing on the side of the road waving him down. The hood of her car was up, a two-tone Ford Fiesta he remembered from a few times before parked out in the gravel at the Aces High. It was a piece of shit, more rust than car, and he wasn’t surprised she was having trouble with it. He blinked his lights once to let her know he was slowing down, pulling over a few yards behind her in a cloud of quartz and dust, right where the macadam gave way to the tall, dry grass.

  * * *

  • • •

  HE FUMBLED GETTING OUT OF HIS TRUCK, feeling the heavy pull of all the Pearls he’d had at the Aces dragging him down like goddamn gravity. Truth to tell, there was a sixer he’d taken for the road still sitting in his passenger seat, and one already opened going warm in his lap. He’d planned to finish off the rest of them before pulling into his driveway; pitch the empties somewhere out in a ditch before he passed the farm-to-market road and got into town proper within sight of the familiar streetlights—now little more than gold smudges, hazy like fingerprints, stretching away into the night. But he’d also toyed with the idea of driving all the way out to Lake Sweetwater and parking out by the old Boy Scout camp and drinking ’em there, maybe even grabbing a couple of hours of shut-eye in the backseat of the cab with the windows rolled all the way down. Sometimes it was cooler out at the lake and sometimes it wasn’t and he could never say why. Probably had something to do with the wind . . . that goddamn wind . . . which sand-blasted the area most of the year. It was a living thing, had a wicked mind of its own, leaving fine dust on everything. You could open a closed drawer and find dust on your kitchen spoons. The wind could be so loud at times you couldn’t hear yourself think, couldn’t hear your own car radio, which is why he kept his turned up so loud—a bad habit. Tonight wasn’t like that, though. The moon was high and steady and filling everything up with its light so that the whole world glowed, and the wind was calm and relaxed, just barely moving the grass, ruffling it the same way he liked to mess up Danny’s hair.

  His shirt was stuck to his back, though, still so goddamn hot.

  He turned down the radio some, reached for his hat and adjusted his belt . . . his holster . . . and tried to look steady as he dumped out the beer and climbed
free of his truck and made his way to the girl.

  * * *

  • • •

  SHE WAS A SMALL THING, didn’t even cut a whole figure in the slip of a dress she wore—Chinese writing all over it—her tits no more than a handful, if that. She had big chunky wedges dangling from one hand, using the other to keep her hair out of her face and his headlights out of her eyes. Her makeup was a mess, and in the harsh light he couldn’t tell what might be mascara and what might be bruises. He’d watched her dance before, had seen her naked, but somehow she looked even more vulnerable now, standing on the side of the road in her bare feet, holding her shoes. She was haloed in pearl light and it revealed her whole truth . . . everything. It made her look her age and that bothered him; made him feel bad for thinking he might have found a companion for the lake tonight, and for some of the other things that had crossed his mind. For the wedding band that had grown too tight on his finger.

  Standing like that on her tiptoes, he imagined her on a stage somewhere else, in some high school play. Someone’s daughter.

  “Well, miss, what seems to be the problem?”

  “My name is Sierra,” she said, her accent all West Texas.

  He got close, casting an eye toward the raised hood, looking for smoke or radiator fluid popping on the engine. “Well, okay then, nice to meet you, Sierra.” He knew her name wasn’t Sierra. Maybe it was Sara or Becky or Catherine or something else, but it sure in the hell wasn’t Sierra. His sleeping wife’s name was Catherine.

  “She seize up on you? Run out of gas?” He gestured at the car.

  “Oh, that.” She followed his hands, as if seeing the Fiesta for the first time. She jitterbugged a bit, the hand not holding her shoes moving as if it had a cigarette in it, and in the light pooled at her feet he could see several spent butts, circled around her like dead moths. She’d been out here awhile. She kept on, “I seen you before, right, at the Aces? I dance there.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I come in from time to time. Thought you looked familiar. I was there tonight but I don’t remember you up . . . onstage.” He tripped on the last couple of words and tried not to look right at her.

  “Nah, not tonight. I wasn’t feeling so well. I’ll catch hell from Down Low, but you know, whatever.”

  Whatever. Down Low—Daryl Lynch—was the Aces’ owner, as well as its resident bartender and bouncer and pimp. Fancied himself a biker, too. He thought he was a real badass and maybe even a bit more than that, and he kept his brand-new Softail Night Train parked right up front near the bar’s door, where everyone had to pass it and it shined back twice as bright as the Christmas lights strung up year-round across the main porch. He’d known Lynch for a couple of years; knew also that he was a real shitheel and a snitch who sometimes passed him information, sometimes didn’t. Lynch had paid off that nice bike with some of the money that had passed between them, but it wouldn’t have been enough, not close. The Aces wasn’t a gold mine, either, so ole Down Low was a real goddamn entrepreneur, a self-made man with his dirty fingers in a lot of different things. He didn’t like the thought of that wannabe biker roughing up the girls, though. Maybe it was time to have another long sit-down with Lynch.

  “He do that to you?” He pointed at her eye.

  Her hand went up on its own, the one not holding the long-gone cigarette. “This? Nah, it was something else. You know, there’s always something else.”

  “Yep, there always is.” And goddammit, he did know it. He stared at her for long seconds, before turning his attention back to her car, trying to figure out what was wrong with it. The engine wasn’t ticking and he couldn’t feel any heat coming off it. It had been sitting a long time.

  “You a cop, right?”

  He nodded, turning enough to flash the badge at his belt. “Texas Ranger. Bob Ford.”

  She laughed, nervous. “I thought y’all rode horses.”

  He joined her. “No, not for a long time.” And just like that, he was tired, so tired, already dreading the hangover he’d have to face tomorrow. There’s always something else . . . there always is. He knew he wasn’t going out to the lake anymore, either. After he got Sierra or whatever her name was up and running, or gave her a lift somewhere off this highway, he was going home. He’d slip in quiet, quiet as the grave, and look in on Danny, who should be long asleep by now, although he’d probably stayed up as late as he could reading his comics with a flashlight beneath his sheets; fighting sleep, waiting for his daddy to come home. They were supposed to go fishing on Sunday, and tomorrow they were going to get Danny a new Zebco reel at Sears they’d picked out together. Then, after checking on his son, he’d try not to wake Caty as he fell into bed next to her.

  But before all of that, he’d chew a handful of aspirin he kept hidden in the downstairs bathroom and wash it all back with one last warm beer and try hard not to catch a look at himself in the mirror—at the gray feathering through his brush cut and his ever-expanding gut, pushing hard at the once bright snap buttons of his shirt.

  That goddamn mirror revealing his whole truth. Everything. And Bob Ford didn’t like it one bit.

  “Not for a long time . . .”

  * * *

  • • •

  HE LOOKED OVER THE COLD ENGINE, trying to make sense of it; puzzle it out, even if he wasn’t much of a mechanic and never had been. Sierra was now talking a mile a minute, her words rising and falling with the breeze, lost to the radio still humming from his truck. “Goodbye Stranger.” He’d always liked that song and remembered it from high school, from Midlothian. Remembered also sitting in the bed of his daddy’s Chevy and sweet-talking Caty, trying to get a hand in her shirt while she pretended she didn’t want him to; each of them with a Tastee-Freez cup filled with Johnnie Walker and Coke. And then, when their cups were empty and both of them were good and warm all the way through, how they’d stretch out hand in hand on his mom’s old quilt, searching for fading stars and listening to crickets, counting fireflies appearing and disappearing beneath the loblollies—a magic trick that never got old. Not now, not then, but when he worked the math and realized those nights were twenty years ago, maybe more, he didn’t want to think about them anymore.

  “Well, goddamn if I know what’s wrong here, little lady. Look, I can give you a lift back to Sweetwater. You can send someone out in the morning.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said, not interested in talking anymore. Not interested in her car or him. Not looking at either of them but instead far out across the gently moving grass, tipped silver by moonlight.

  It was north of eighty degrees, his bare arms slicked with sweat, getting in his eyes, when he realized that she’d dropped her shoes in the middle of the road, forgotten among all her burned-out cigarettes. She was shivering, watching the roadside grass.

  Shivering.

  Like she was freezing.

  Or afraid.

  * * *

  • • •

  SHE WAS ON SOMETHING, for damn sure—bathtub crank, pills, crack. If he looked through her car he might spy some wadded-up tinfoil or a burned-out lightbulb, some other type of homemade pipe discarded on the floorboard. If he got closer, close enough to feel the heat coming off her, he might also see the scars on her thin, bare arms. That explained it all. Down Low dealt out of the Aces, but Bob Ford had looked away on that from time to time—a necessary evil and the cost of doing hard business. The girl had been flying high all night and was finally coming down, just now staring at the earth rising up fast to meet her—too fast. She was going to crash and burn right in front of him.

  That’s why her eyes were all suddenly black and blown wide open, the irises like big windows into empty rooms. Her fluttering lids thin curtains blowing in the breeze.

  She turned and did a little dancer’s spin, one arm wide and the other tight around her stomach, protective. She was staring right at him and for one heartbeat he was staring right back
through those windows in her eyes and all the way through her, into his own bedroom far away, where Caty lay asleep and lost beneath the covers. Then on into Danny’s room, where his boy’s walls were covered in superhero posters, and the empty fish tank he’d just gotten for his ninth birthday sat up on the bookshelf, its bottom covered with brightly colored rocks. Danny loved his damn superheroes and wanted to be one when he grew up, but he never talked about being a cop; never about being a Ranger like his old man. He never thought one could be the same as the other.

  Then that heartbeat passed and he thought he heard her say I’m sorry . . .

  “Come again, what’s that?” he asked, shaking off all he’d seen, moving toward her to put an arm on her shoulder and get her steadied.

  Steady himself, too.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, clearer this time, and then she started to run.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE GRASS CAUGHT FIRE, scorched by muzzle flare from the side of the road.

  He turned just in time to catch that first slug under his right arm; just like getting punched damn hard, except everything important inside him, all the way to his heart, seemed to seize right up. His arm went numb, too, still attached but now hanging useless, so he fumbled to get at his SIG Sauer with his left hand.

  Spinning—falling—to his knees.

  Then he saw blood, a lot of it. More than he’d ever seen or thought was possible—a wash of it all over the road at his feet and sprayed high up on the raised hood of the Fiesta. If Sierra hadn’t rabbited across the road it would have been all over her face.

  The second slug got him clean in the gut and went straight through him. He heard it ricochet off the Fiesta, a metallic echo that carried off into the night. He said a crazy prayer that it didn’t hit the girl, who was on her knees now, too; one hand at her mouth, the other still around her stomach, watching him die.