The coffee maker burped and Keith got up to pour three mismatched mugs of joe from the carafe. He set the mugs on the table along with a thin carton of milk that he sniffed at first before setting down. He retook his seat. “I knew you were working for the GBI now, Dane, but I thought you were a glorified secretary or something. I thought you didn’t do shit like this anymore—you know, like real cop shit.”
“He doesn’t.” Roselita blew at the steam coming off of her mug and then sipped her coffee. She scowled. “And I gotta ask. Did I hear you say you know a man named Boner? As in hard-on?”
Dane sighed and Keith sipped his coffee. “As in, that’s his last name, yeah.”
Roselita shook her head. “Wow.”
“And who are you again, exactly?”
“Oh, allow me,” Dane said. “Keith Bell, Agent Roselita—don’t call her Rose—Velasquez here, as of yesterday, is my new partner.”
“We are not partners.”
“And as you can see, we’re already besties.”
Roselita shook her head and lifted her mug as a sarcastic toast to her and Dane’s newfound partnership. Keith did the same. “Okay, then,” he said, and then stuck out his hand. Roselita met it with a firm shake. Keith wasn’t expecting it. His arms were cut and vascular, and cluttered with tattoos. He hadn’t had all his work done at once, like a sleeve, but had big colorful pieces of old-school traditional art that looked like they came right off the wall of Sailor Jerry’s tattoo parlor. On his left forearm, a blue anchor wrapped in a red and yellow ribbon that displayed the date 3-13-10 took up most of the bare skin. The piece was prominent, and Roselita assumed the date must’ve held some significance for Keith, but she didn’t care enough to ask what it was. He also had some sort of branding or scarification on his upper biceps, but it was mostly covered by his T-shirt. Roselita was indifferent about tattoos. She herself didn’t have any, but she did find two of Keith’s worthy of her interest. They were matching circular symbols on the insides of both of his lower arms, right under the creases in his elbows. Both tattoos, each about the size of a half-dollar, were rings with triangles in the middle. She’d seen the symbols before.
“You’re an alcoholic?” Roselita said, still keeping her grip on Keith’s hand.
Dane’s chin dropped to his chest. “C’mon, Velasquez. Do you have to be this charming everywhere we go?”
“No, Dane,” Keith said. “It’s cool. And it’s a legit question. I’m not ashamed of it. But can I have my hand back first?” He looked down at his arms and Roselita let go of his hand. “Yeah, I am,” he said. “But I’ve been sober five years this coming October.”
Roselita leaned back and crossed her arms. “But Kirby told me on the way over here that you were the bartender for the place downstairs?”
“I’m the backup. Nicole is the main bartender. But yeah, I fill in sometimes. Mostly I do the books now that Harold is getting up there in age. His sight ain’t so good anymore.”
“And that’s not a problem for you?”
“What?”
“Being around booze all the time.”
“It actually helps, believe it or not.” Keith smiled. He had a good one. “Keep your demons close, you know? Shit like that.”
Roselita lost interest as quickly as she found it. “Whatever you say, buddy.”
Keith rubbed at the circles tattooed on his arms and gave his attention back to Dane. “Is she always like this?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s a real peach. She loves to be called darling, too. Try it out.”
“Um, I’ll pass,” he said, and Roselita took a big swig from her coffee cup, nearly draining it. She set it back down on the table.
“Look, I’m not trying to be a bitch here. I’m glad to meet you, Keith. Congrats on your five-year chip. That’s a long haul. My father was an alcoholic, abusive piece of shit who never made it through one of the twelve steps, so good on you. I’m not judging, but you have to forgive me. Me and your homeboy here are supposed to be working a multiple homicide and a missing person’s case that might—and that’s a strong might—have something to do with a place up here called the Farm.”
“The Farm,” Keith repeated, and looked at Dane. “You’re heading out to the Farm?”
Dane said nothing and Roselita ignored the interruption. “So I’m sorry for being curt, but that’s where we should be right now. Not playing nursemaid to a guy”—Roselita pointed a thumb over her shoulder toward the bathroom—“who may or may not have killed someone who has nothing to do with our case. We are nowhere close to the scene of any of the crimes under our charge, or out there interviewing people who might know something, or pursuing suspects involved, you know, real police work—instead we’re here drinking stale Maxwell House above a bar in Mayberry four hours away from where our original dead body dropped, chasing down a lead that has something to do with chickens and boners.”
Keith listened to Roselita rant, slightly impressed.
“So to sum up: People are dead. A lot of people. And more people are likely to end up dead while we sit here gabbing. And the longer this little high-school reunion takes, the less likely we are to find out who’s responsible for any of it—or find this kid Kirby mentioned, if he isn’t dead already. But it’s cool. We can wait for that asshole to take a bath—and you have to admit, that guy is an asshole.”
Keith leaned back even further in the unfinished pine chair and studied Roselita’s tight, impatient expression. “She doesn’t know, does she?” he asked Dane.
“No, I haven’t told her anything. You got any sugar?”
“Yeah, it’s in the cabinet above the coffee maker.”
“Told me what?” Roselita said.
Dane got up and opened the cabinet. He took out the small sack of Dixie Crystal sugar and grabbed a spoon from the drawer beneath him. On a whim, he turned the can of coffee in the cabinet so he could see the logo—Maxwell House. He tipped the can to look at the date printed on the lid and it read: BEST IF USED BY APRIL 2010.
He closed the cabinet and smiled before returning to the table and refilling Roselita’s cup of stale Maxwell House. “As you might’ve already guessed, Ned and I used to be pretty close—Keith, too, but Ned dropped off the radar coming up on a decade ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I can’t imagine why.”
“No, you can’t. You see, Ned used to be the one guy everybody knew was going to amount to something. We were all a bunch of losers growing up in a small town that didn’t leave a lot of options open for advancement, but Ned was smart, funny, driven, all that. He knew about computers and stuff like that before most of us even knew what the Internet was. He was college bound with an academic scholarship, and that doesn’t happen all that often up here. You’re born here. You stay here. You end up working in the granite quarries your whole life, you drink yourself to death, or you cook crank for the Burroughs up on Bull Mountain. But whatever road you take, it’s normally a shit life and in the end, you die here. As an adult looking back, that isn’t really true. In fact, being from a place like this is something you tend to be proud of once you get some sense about you, but when you’re a dumbass kid, all you want to do is get high and get out. Ned was getting out, and we all knew it. He’d be the one to put Waymore on the map—North Georgia’s first legal claim to fame. He was going to be the next Steve Jobs or some shit. Maybe the first Steve Jobs before Steve Jobs became Steve Jobs—or whatever. You hear what I’m saying.”