The Shameless - Couverture rigide

Tashi Coleman
Thin Air podcast
Episode 1: BRANDON
 
Last year, Brandon Taylor’s sister contacted me through social media with a simple but urgent question: WILL YOU PLEASE COME TO MISSISSIPPI TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BROTHER?
            It was just like that, written in all in caps, with little information about who she was or who her brother had been. She said she’d heard our earlier podcasts about missing people, murders, and botched police investigations. Over the course of the next several months, Shaina Taylor messaged me with countless newspaper articles, family photos, and details of candlelight vigils and walk-a-thons to find out who killed Brandon.
             On the last day his family saw him, Brandon said he planned to go deer hunting after school, a regular pastime in north Mississippi. He came home, grabbed a cold ham biscuit and a Mountain Dew and his Remington rifle. He parked his Chevy Apache pickup off a county road and walked into a large parcel of land that adjoined a national forest. He never walked out.
            For days, rescue crews searched the woods, crossing over the same thick forest time and again. More than a week later, Brandon’s body was found, ravaged by animals, time and weather. The local sheriff ruled his death a suicide after a brief investigation. His rifle was located nearby, fired once. A bullet in his skull.
His family and friends never believed it. His sister said every step of the police and forensic work had been a mess. A proper autopsy was never performed and possible suspects never questioned. Not to mention, she said, no one in their county ever wanted the case solved. The truth would only embarrass some powerful people and call into question the motive of the county sheriff, a good and decent old man named Hamp Beckett. Over a series of dozens of heartbreaking messages, Shaina Taylor turned to us and said we were her last hope.
We receive countless requests like Shaina’s every day from all over the country. Thousands of people disappear or die without solid answers for their families. Shaina said her brother lived an idyllic life in a small Southern town. She called him a normal fifteen-year-old boy, with loads of friends, a classic old truck, and a new girlfriend he’d met over that past summer. She said he was a great baseball player who hoped to play in the major leagues, a guitar player who idolized Garth Brooks, and a blossoming journalist.
            The last part of what got me. Brandon Taylor had been a student journalist and had been a valuable member of the yearbook staff. He could’ve been anyone on our team of reporters. His family deserved answers.
            So last summer, I packed up the few belongings that I have and met up with my producer, Jessica Torres, to drive from New York City down to Tibbehah County, Mississippi. It’s a rural county known for sweet potatoes and some recent sensational stories about drug dealers and a young crusading sheriff – coincidentally or not, the nephew of the old sheriff. Some real Walking Tall meets Faulkner kind of stories. As always, we tried to make ourselves invisible as we worked, talking to Brandon’s family members, friends, and local law enforcement, both retired and present. What resulted wasn’t quite the story we hoped to find.
Instead, we uncovered something much darker and more sinister, a true meditation on today’s society. What do we truly value? Lies or facts. Posturing or morality. But to explain all that now would be taking you way too far down the country roads of Mississippi.
            First, I must tell you about this boy, Brandon Taylor, and his 1955 Chevy Apache truck. It was a cold, rainy day in November 1997 and there was a rumor about the largest buck in the county wandering somewhere near County Road 334 . . .
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1
Lillie Virgil had been bird-dogging Wes Davis’s sorry ass for most of the summer, from Panama City to New Orleans and now back to Biloxi. The top-shelf turd leaving had left a trail of filthy motel rooms, unpaid restaurant tabs, and jilted strippers. The last one being his undoing, a cute little piece of tail named Twilight who he’d brought with him from Tibbehah County on his run from the law. He was wanted on charges of drug trafficking, racketeering, and the attempted murder of a close friend of Lillie’s, a one-armed trucker named Boom Kimbrough.
            “This is it?” Lillie said, pointing to the old neon sign reading STAR INN. It was early morning, not long past dawn, as the two had made the drive all the way from Memphis through the night to the Gulf Coast. Through the open windows, you could smell the salt air on the hot wind.
            “Yep,” Twilight said, playing with the ends of her bleached blonde hair, the tips tinged with a purplish hue. “We spent a week here last month. Eating shrimp po’ boys and drinkin’ Jim Beam. Now do I get my money or what?”
            “Depends on if he’s here,” Lillie said. “And sweetie? Would you mind not putting your feet on my fucking dash.”
            The girl took down her bare feet, with those stubby purple painted toes, as Lillie parked the gray Dodge Charger across the road, right outside the Sharkheads T-shirt shop, the entrance a wide gaping mouth with sharp teeth. Across the road, The Star motel sign advertised LOW RATES. JACUZZI ROOMS. CABLE TV & SWIMMING POOL. Real class with a capital K.
            “Did Wes at least spring for the Jacuzzi?” Lillie asked.
            “No, ma’am,” Twilight said. “That should’ve told me something. We got a cheap-ass room overlooking the fucking parking lot. I laid out on the beach every day while he lay in bed watching goddamn cartoons and smoking American Spirit lights. I’d get in as the sun was going down, thinking we were going for a steak dinner, and he’d just be lying there drunk as hell and wanting me to suck his peter.”
            “That’s some real romance right there, kid,” Lillie said. “Bogart and Bacall shit. Now would you reach in the back seat for my binoculars? I think I spot Romeo up there on the second floor scratching his nuts.”
            Five days ago, Twilight, whose real name was Tiffany Dement but went by Twilight to avoid professional confusion, checked in with her momma back in El Dorado, Arkansas. Lillie, a U.S. Federal Marshal, had visited Mrs. Dement back in June and made sure the woman kept her on speed dial if she heard a word from her daughter, a former straight-A student and churchgoer. Momma was worried sick, as her baby had left town six months before high school graduation, sometimes sending home money but more often just post cards from Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, Panama City Beach, or Graceland. The last one really impressed the woman as it contained a recipe for Elvis’s favorite meatloaf.
            “Looks like your boyfriend cut his hair.”
            “He ain’t my boyfriend.”
            “If you suck a man’s peter while he’s watching SpongeBob playing his fucking nose flute than y’all got some kind of personal deal.”
            “Damn, you’re hard woman, Miss Virgil.”
            “Just honest,” Lillie said, turning and reaching down in the console between them for a pack of Bubbalicious. She’d been chewing the hell out of it after she quit smoking. Damn, it hadn’t been easy.
            “Is that him?” Twilight asked. “Is that Wes with his shirt off? Can I see?”
            Lillie handed her the binoculars and reached for her cell, Lillie calling in the Biloxi police before making the arrest. She could easily handle it herself but would rather not have to deal with some local fuckwads complicating things. Twilight lifted the binoculars up to the railing, where it looked like Wes Davis was licking the frosting off a donut. He used to have a shaggy seventies-style look, an uglier version of Scott Glenn in Urban Cowboy, but now he was jailbird bald. Almost like he was resigned to his fate.
            “I don’t know what I saw in that man,” Twilight said, shaking her head. The early morning light catching the glint from the ruby stud in her pug nose as she shook her head.
            “Probably reminded you of your worthless daddy.”
            “How’d you know my daddy was worthless?” Twilight said, still twisting at the ends of her purplish hair, her face a wide question mark.
            Lille leaned into the wheel of the Charger, eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Bans with big silver lenses and just said, “Lucky guess.”
            “He didn’t touch me or nothin’ if that’s what you’re saying.”
            “Your daddy or Wes Davis?”
            “Daddy, of course,” she said. “Wes Davis humped me like a mangy damn dog first night we met. Took me back to the VIP Room at Vienna’s Place in Jericho and got five damn lap dances in a row. Had the DJ play nothin’ but some old band called Def Leppard. You know ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me,’ ‘Pyromania,’ all that shit? And then didn’t pay me a dime. Said what was between me and him was personal. Wish I’d known that arrangement before I started shifting his gears.”
            “Next time get paid up front,” Lillie said. “Don’t be anyone’s punch.”
            “Why are you so damn hard, Miss Virgil?” she said.
            “You know what?” she said. “I never gave it a second thought.”
            “You drive like damn Dale Jr. and keep a loaded Winchester 12-gauge in your trunk,” she said. “I seen it when you loaded up our bags up in Memphis. You’re taller than my daddy and most boys I know, got an ass like an NFL linebacker, don’t talk much except for when you’re cussin’ or telling folks what to do. You don’t back up for no man, do you?”
            “That’s enough, sister Twilight,” Lillie said. “My big ass is full of smoke. And I think I can take it from here.”
            “Money?”
            “In the dash,” she said.
            Twilight looked kind of sheepish about it until Lillie nodded to the glovebox and she opened it to find a fat envelope inside stuffed with cash. “Can I at least stick around and see how it goes down?”
            “Only if you shut your damn mouth,” Lillie said. “And promise to stay the hell out of the way.”
 
—
 
Senator Jimmy Vardaman arrived at the Neshoba County Fair that morning triumphant as hell after beating the establishment favorite two-to-one in the run-off in June. His long silver hair was slicked tight to his skull and he’d dressed for success in khakis and a blue-and-white gingham shirt rolled to the elbows. A real man of the people with a big toothy grin and a bright gold watch. It was a warm and muggy morning, Vardaman up on the dais as his supporters sat in church pews laid out underneath the Founder’s Square tin-roofed pavilion. He announced he sure was ready to dig deep into the muck in Jackson and serve the working folk on Mississippi. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
 Just the mention of the working man sent a sea of red bandanas swirling in the crowd, his symbol worn around the necks of his supporters. Rings of sweat bloomed from under his arms and across his chest as he spoke like an old-time preacher. His face was flushed with sun and heat like he worked outdoors, but he really just hung out at the Country Club of Jackson.
            “We’re all just foot soldiers in a long history of American exceptionalism,” Vardaman said. “This past year I’ve been called a racist and a radical. But let me tell you something, friends, don’t you listen to what the fake news tells you. We’re on a rendezvous with destiny this fall. Those people want to tear down our statues. Our flags. But that dog don’t hunt here in Neshoba. We know truth. We know honor.”
            Sheriff Quinn Colson turned to his wife, Maggie, her jaw muscles clenched so tight they looked like walnuts. Her pale green eyes scanning over the crowed, in anger and disbelief at what she was seeing and hearing, spinning her wedding ring over her finger.  “Jesus God.”
“Don’t give him any ideas,” Quinn said.
“I think I may puke.”
            Much of the crowd was on its feet, in the shade of the pavilions wide metal roof, waving the red bandanas and yelling, most of the yelling incomprehensible incomprehensibly as Vardaman spread his hands wide and soaked in the praise, palms outstretched. An elderly woman in a wheelchair, oxygen tubes going up her nose, held a WOMEN FOR VARDMAN sign decorated with the stars and bars of the Confederate flag. Sweat trickled from Quinn’s brow and he removed his Tibbehah County Sheriff’s ball cap to dry his face.
He’d been sheriff now for nearly a decade, and in that time he wasn’t sure the state was getting any better. That was the entire reason he’d retired early as a U.S. Army Ranger, believing he could make a difference, f...

Buried secrets, dirty lies, and unbridled greed and ambition raise the stakes down South in the lauded crime series from New York Times bestselling author Ace Atkins.

Twenty years ago, Brandon Taylor was thought to be just another teen boy who ended his life too soon. That's what almost everyone in Tibbehah County, Mississippi, said after his body and hunting rifle were found in the Big Woods. Now two New York-based reporters show up asking Sheriff Quinn Colson questions about the Taylor case. What happened to the evidence? Where are the missing files? Who really killed Brandon?

Quinn wants to help. After all, his wife Maggie was a close friend of Brandon Taylor. But Quinn was just a kid himself in 1997, and these days he's got more on his plate than twenty-year-old suspicious death. He's trying to shut down the criminal syndicate that's had a stranglehold on Tibbehah for years, trafficking drugs, stolen goods, and young women through the MidSouth. Truck stop madam Fannie Hathcock runs most of that action, and has her eyes on taking over the whole show. And then there's Senator Jimmy Vardaman, who's cut out the old political establishment riding the Syndicate's money and power--plus a hefty helping of racism and ignorance--straight to the governor's office. If he manages to get elected, the Syndicate will be untouchable. Tibbehah will be lawless.

Quinn's been fighting evil and corruption since he was a kid, at home or as a U.S. Army Ranger in Afghanistan and Iraq. This time, evil may win out.