A southern wind had blown warm, moist air up from the Gulf. As it crossed the frigid waters of the lake it formed wisps of fog that hovered on the surface. The effect was haunting, yet peaceful. It was moments like these that reminded Stroud why he chose this line of work in the first place.
His cell phone rang, interrupting the moment. Stroud retrieved it from his jacket and checked the display. It was Luther Duncan, his sergeant.
“Morning, Sarge.”
“Don’t get comfortable,” Duncan said. “We’ve got a floater.”
“No shit.”
“Two fishermen found him, called our office. They said it looked like his throat had been cut.”
Stroud now understood why Duncan had called his cell instead of using the radio.
“I’ve already called the Highway Patrol and the Sheriff’s Office,” Duncan continued. “But I need to have one of our people over there right now.”
“Where at?”
“About a hundred-and-twenty yards northeast of the turnaround at Ridge campground, right at the top of the inlet there. At least that’s where the body washed up.”
“Anybody on scene yet?” Stroud asked, wondering why he hadn’t been called first.
“Don’t think so. Sheriff’s dispatch said the nearest deputy was fifteen miles away. State Patrol is ten minutes out.”
“I can be there in five.”
“Good man. Update me as soon as you get there and assess the situation.”
“Will do.”
Stroud terminated the call. He spun the truck around and activated his lights and siren. It was going to be an interesting day.
Stroud pulled into the campground and made his way to the turnaround at the end of the road leading in. He had switched off the light bar and siren to avoid waking the campers and drawing a crowd. As he drew close, he could see that there was no need. Word had already gotten around. The Ridge was a year-round campsite. The few hearty souls who braved the January weather were already up and waiting for him. Clearly, the fishermen had notified more than just his office. He parked his truck and got out, nodding to the folks who were gathered.
“It’s over that way,” one man said, pointing in a northeasterly direction. “I can take you.”
Stroud waved him off. “Thanks,” he said, “but it’s a potential crime scene. The fewer people the better. You understand”
“Oh, of course,” the man replied, nodding his head.
Stroud started through the woods toward the area Duncan had described. He was familiar with it not just through the job, but also because he had fished that inlet many times over the years. Soon, he could see the two fishermen up ahead. They were standing, hands in pockets, looking down at what he assumed was the body. One of the men looked up and spotted him.
“Morning, fellas,” Stroud said when he got close enough for them to hear.
They nodded a greeting. “Morning, Ranger,” the older of the two added. He held out his hand. “Name’s John Holman.”
“Sean Stroud.” They shook.
“This here’s my son, Jason,” Holman said.
Stroud guessed the boy to be sixteen or seventeen years old, tops. Too young to be seeing something like this.
“Howdy, Jason.” Stroud said, extending his hand.
The boy took it. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
It was a kid’s response, awkward, but polite. Stroud could only imagine how difficult it would be for Jason to process this.
“We camped here the last two nights,” Holman said. “Planned to do a little fishin’ this morning. Then, well…”
Stroud nodded. He looked down at the body. It was onshore, just above the waterline. As with all floaters, it was distended, the accumulated gases of decomposition being what caused it to rise to the surface. Notably, the smell was only slightly diminished by the cold. Some of the skin had sloughed off. Still, it appeared to be reasonably intact, all things considered. The icy water likely helped with that. It could also mean that this, whatever it was, had been a relatively recent event.
“Did you two pull him out?” Stroud asked.
“We did,” Holman replied. “I hope that was okay.”
“It’s fine,” Stroud said. In truth, he hoped that they hadn’t disturbed anything of evidentiary value. It was a natural human impulse to want to do something in a situation like this. Stroud wanted them to feel good about their attempt to do the right thing. He, on the other hand, would refrain from touching anything until State Patrol showed up. They would have the lead on a possible murder on state land.
Stroud bent down to study the corpse. The body was lying faceup. He could immediately see the neck wound. A forensic exam would give a better indication, but it did appear that someone might have slashed the victim’s throat. It was a deep, seemingly even cut. Not the kind of injury that could have come from a boat propeller or feeding fish, though the latter did appear to have nibbled around the edges. The condition of the body made it difficult to determine, but there did not appear to be any obvious defensive wounds on the hands or other major injuries. Had the perpetrator come up from behind? One thing Stroud knew for certain, whoever this was had not been hunting or fishing. The clothing was all wrong. He guessed the age at early to mid-twenties. Stroud was used to the occasional drunken partier who fell into the lake, or the fisherman who was knocked out of his boat and drowned after hypothermia set in. This was something very different. What happened to you, he wondered?
“Highway Patrol is here,” Holman said, interrupting Stroud’s train of thought.
Stroud looked up to see two troopers about fifty yards off, marching toward them. They would quickly take over the scene. He turned back toward the body. That’s when he saw it, a piece of nylon rope tied to the ankle. It had frayed and broke just below the heel of the victim’s boot. Someone had wanted this body to stay submerged.
Click here to learn more about Deep Red Cover by Joel W. Barrows.
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Here is a preview from Rattlesnake Rodeo, the second book in the Boise Longpig Hunting Club series by Nick Kolakowski.
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PART 1: CLEANUP
1
After we blew up a few of the richest and most powerful men in Idaho, my sister Frankie wanted to stop for fries. We had a plastic tub filled with charred phones and wallets in the back seat of our stolen SUV, three pistols under the front seats, an AK-47 in the cargo area, and yet she felt calm enough to steer us toward deep-fried carbs and probably too many eyewitnesses. Ever since we were kids, Frankie was always the weirder sibling.
“We got a lot to do if we want to stay upright and breathing,” Frankie explained as she twisted the wheel, leaning into yet another mountain curve. “We’ll need all the calories we can get.”
In the back, my once-and-future wife Janine sorted through the bin, peeling melted driver’s licenses and high-end credit cards from blackened leather. We had found these personal effects in a locked metal box thrown clear of the explosion. The men we killed had used that box to secure their personal effects before trying to hunt us down, like how I would put my wallet and phone in my gym locker before a monster weightlifting set. I felt zero remorse over converting those sick bastards into piles of charred hamburger.
“Maybe we should toss these phones out the window,” Janine said. “Someone could track them, right?”
“We need to get whatever info off them we can,” Frankie said. “Then we’ll dump. There’s no signal up here, anyway.”
“I’m trying to find my phone right now, but there’s a lot of scrap…” Janine held up a charred lump of plastic and bubbly glass.
The road dipped into a valley prickly with burned trees, its rocky sides plunging into a narrow river foaming with rapids. Even steeper mountains beyond, the ridges patched with snow. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have found
the view peaceful, but my stomach was imploding, a black hole vacuuming up my body heat from the inside. When was the last time I had been this scared? Iraq?
We were dead. Although I didn’t want to say it out loud, I knew that our life expectancy had almost certainly dropped to zero, no matter what we did or where we went. When you carbonize a group of millionaires, politicians, and millionaire-politicians, the law never stops hunting you, and they make sure you’ll never have the chance to say something embarrassing at trial.
No. We would get through this. We had to.
We had a daughter who deserved to live. I took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled, feeling a little calmer. My side-view mirror framed the pickup with Frankie’s men, trailing a hundred yards behind, and that helped my mood, too. No matter what the odds, we had Frankie’s crew and whatever information we could pull from these charred phones. We had my experience as a soldier and bounty hunter, combined with Frankie’s considerable experience in doing terrible things to other human beings for money.
The satellite phone in Frankie’s lap buzzed, and she answered it one-handed. “What?” She listened for a few moments before ending the call. Smiling, she said: “My boys.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We got a little surprise at Redfish Lake. Maybe a good one.” She stomped the gas, bucking the SUV forward. “And they got that restaurant, right? At the lodge? Excellent fries.”
Once upon a time, the story goes, Redfish Lake teemed with so many salmon that the water gleamed red. Hence the name. The fish were long gone, but it was a popular place to party. Before we had our kid, Janine and I would drive up from Boise to bike the rocky trails and hang out with our friends on the water. “It’s Saturday,” I said. “Big crowd, lot of witnesses. Maybe a concert or two later. You think this is a good idea?”
Frankie cocked an eyebrow. “My IQ didn’t suddenly drop by fifty points, bro. Trust me.”
A phone beeped, and Janine said: “This idiot’s code was one-two-three-four-five. I’m serious.”
“Who’s the idiot?” I asked, spinning around to face her.
Janine tapped the shattered screen a few times. “Oh shit, it’s Ted Ryan.”
“Senators,” Frankie said, “aren’t exactly known for being a bright species.”
“See if you can find anything incriminating,” I offered. “Any leverage is good leverage, even after someone’s dead.”
“He better not have any goat porn on this thing,” Janine said, swiping through images. “If I’m mentally scarred, you’re the one who’ll have to deal with it.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said. Truth be told, I was glad that Janine was joking. A few hours ago, she had killed a man. The first time I ended someone’s life, I vomited my guts out, but she seemed pretty okay so far.
“No porn. Just, ah, a lot of food shots,” Janine said. “Maybe he’s got a second phone for his erotic barnyard thrills.” Tossing the device into the bin, she wiped her hands on her jeans, leaving faint, sooty smears, and tapped her kneecaps in a familiar rhythm: two fast, three slow. She stopped after that, which was another positive sign. Despite the stress of the past day, her OCD appeared under control, maybe suppressed by the shock and adrenaline.
I drifted a hand around her ankle and squeezed. She bent down, took my hand in both of hers, and squeezed back.
It was another forty-five minutes of high-speed driving to reach the lake. Turning off the main road, we found ourselves on a narrow drive made narrower by the trucks and cars parked in the ditches on either side. Picture-perfect families pushed strollers and toted colorful canoes in the direction of the still-unseen lake. For the first time since Frankie had pressed the button on the detonator that blew those powerful men to little bits, I wondered how we looked to strangers.
If we were lucky, the happy civilians slipping past our windows would assume we were hikers at the end of a long trip: dusty, exhausted, more than a little ragged around the edges. If we were unlucky, some paranoid mother would think we were vagrants looking to rob a few minivans. I had zero urge to explain myself to any cops or private security. Were fries really worth all this? What was this fabulous surprise that Frankie’s men had for us?
The drive opened onto a parking lot, and we slid into an empty slot behind a wooden maintenance shed. The pickup with Frankie’s men rumbled past, on the hunt for another spot. Turning off the engine, scanning the mirrors for anything suspicious, Frankie reached under her seat and pulled out one of the pistols hidden there, an M1911. She pressed the slide forward enough to verify a round in the chamber before lifting her hips and sliding the gun into her waistband. “My kingdom for a holster,” she said, grinning.
I knew how she felt. Jamming two or three pounds of metal next to your ass for a sustained amount of time is often uncomfortable, and the barrel has a nasty tendency to tangle in your underwear.
I reached beneath my own seat and retrieved a 9mm pistol, its frame plated with gold. I had found it on the ground after we killed everyone up north, and as much as I hated these flashy pistols that rich idiots sometimes bought, it was preferable to the third handgun in the vehicle, a short-barreled Ruger Super Redhawk that only held five rounds. Stuffing it down the back of my jeans—my kingdom for a holster, indeed—I booted open my door and climbed out.
The pickup had found a spot fifty yards from us, behind a small dirt mound that separated the parking lot from the brown-sand beach. Four of Frankie’s men stood beside the rear bumper: thickly bearded, dressed in black-and-blue windbreakers, their heads masked by sunglasses and baseball caps. While they all appeared unarmed at first glance, they no doubt had enough weaponry strapped to their bodies to fight a small-scale war.
I walked toward them on legs that felt weak, shaky. Exhaustion had left me a hollowed-out shell. The only cure was fifteen hours of shut-eye, but until I could find a safe bed, I would need to gorge on food to power through.
One of Frankie’s men, a redheaded bruiser named Benedict, stepped forward, his hand extended. “Good to see you, partner,” he said.
“Likewise.” We shook, and I pulled him in for a hug. Benedict had worked for Frankie for years, often driving loads of guns between Idaho and the Mexican border. The bottom half of his unruly beard was cinched with a rubber band, keeping it somewhat tamed. He was half Cherokee on his mother’s side and proud of it.
“Sounded like you messed some folks up real good,” Benedict said.
“That’s right,” I replied. The beach appeared empty of civilians. Two bright white boats drifted near the dock, loaded with sunburnt people cheering their own drunkenness. To our left, on the wide lawn between the main lodge and the water, the small stage where musicians would perform their greatest hits stood empty. We still had a few hours before evening fell and the concerts kicked off, drawing the day’s biggest crowds.
“Where’s my surprise?” Frankie asked, walking up behind me.
“You look like you had a hell of a night,” Benedict told her.
“Yeah, it was the polar opposite of fun, which is making me very, very impatient. My surprise?”
“We rented a cabin,” Benedict said, jutting his chin toward the trees behind us. “Little bit of isolation. In case things get loud.”
By this point, Janine had joined us. I noted the bulge beneath her loose T-shirt: the Ruger Super Redhawk. The Janine of even a day ago would never have dreamed of packing a pistol. Our lives had changed forever, and not for the better.
“Come on.” Benedict started across the lot, waving for us to follow.
“Get us some food,” Frankie told one of the other men, a blonde surfer-type with a scar slashing his left cheek. “Fries, burgers, chips, everything you can carry. We’re feeding everyone.”
“Anyone got dietary issues?” Surfer Boy asked us. “Gluten-free? It’s okay if you are.”
Benedict’s eyebrows rose above his sunglasses. “Cut it out with that shit.”
Surfer Boy shrugged. “Trying to be accommodating, man…”
“Meet us in the cabin,” Frankie said, gesturing for Benedict to lead off. As we crossed the parking lot, Janine tap-tap-tap-tapped the pistol grip through her shirt. I reached over and squeezed her hand. Things might have changed, but we were still here, still together.
The cabins, scattered in the woods behind the main lodge, had nice curtains of trees to block the view from the road and the parking lots. Ours had a dusty SUV parked behind it, with another of Frankie’s men leaning against the hood. Someone had piled several bags of laundry in the SUV’s front passenger seat—or at least I thought it was laundry until I came closer. The pile had a swarthy face, eyes closed and mouth open. Through the smeared windows, we heard faint snoring. The man on the hood waved as Benedict unlocked the cabin door and held it open for us.
“Welcome to your new home away from home,” Benedict said. We entered an efficiency kitchen that opened onto a living room with a small couch, a coffee table stacked with board games and children’s books, and a few wooden chairs. Thick curtains covered the windows, but a small lamp in the far corner cast a circle of yellow light on a large, scruffy man tied to one of the chairs.
“Hey, everything you need for a fantastic weekend in the woods,” I said. “Stove, shower, comfortable seating, and a hostage for when things get boring.”
“Who’s this guy?” Frankie asked, walking over to the captive.
“We hit Ted Baker’s house, just like you told us,” Benedict said. “Everybody had cleared out, but we found him in the basement. It’s Baker’s nephew. His name is Keith.”
“Hey, Keith,” Frankie said, leaning down until she entered the man’s sightline.
“I am not a god,” Keith said, tilting his head upward. His eyes drifted, unfocused. “I am a poet.”
“You hit him too hard?” Janine asked Benedict. “Why’s he babbling?”
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