THE HIGHWAYS OF THE DEAD
James Evan March
Roy Creed isn’t a cop. He’s not a licensed private eye. He’s an ex-soldier who comes home to the small town of Wayland, Texas in search of peace and quiet. But sometimes a big crime happens in a small town, a crime so heinous that a man with a conscience – and the right skill set – has to take action.
Prolog
Her name was Cindy Wells. She was twenty years and twenty days old when she disappeared forever.
Nineteen days earlier she had run away from home because home had become intolerable. It was bad enough that for the past few years her mother had become a zombie. That was what Cindy had called her, more than once, in a fit of desperate anxiety because mom had become addicted to OxyContin, what folks called “hillbilly heroin.”
But it wasn’t her mother’s physical and mental state that provoked Cindy into running away. Her stepfather was the catalyst for that decision.
The three of them lived in a rundown single-wide in a low-rent trailer park on the outskirts of a small town in northwestern Georgia an hour’s drive from Chattanooga. Cindy’s stepfather was a self-employed handyman who had earned a bad reputation for shoddy or incomplete work. And there had been that one occasion when he had made some unacceptable comments about a client’s teenage daughter. Thanks to the Internet, it wasn’t long before people in the area who were in need of a handyman stopped calling.
Cindy’s mother was getting welfare. But, between the costs associated with her addiction and her husband’s booze and cigarettes, it was hard to make ends meet. Giving up her dream of attending community college, Cindy had worked various jobs since her junior year in high school. She didn’t mind helping out, even though the kind of shifts she worked as a clerk or waitress made it difficult for her to keep a boyfriend.
Then, on the night of her twentieth birthday, she awakened to find her stepfather, reeking of booze and smokes, climbing into her bed. His excuses: that her mother had “let herself go” and was always in a drug-induced coma and never interested in sex.
But that wasn’t the reason Cindy ran away. What did it was her mother’s response when Cindy told her what her husband had tried to do. Her mother slurred something about how she needed to “just shut her mouth” and stop being so hysterical and that it was “no big deal” because it was “just sex.”
Instead of going to work the next day, Cindy hit the road. She carried a light jacket, a change of clothes, clean undies, and hygiene items in a backpack.
She had good luck, at first. A traveling Bible salesman gave her a lift all the way down Highway 59 to Birmingham, Alabama and then halfway to Meridian, Mississippi on Interstate 20. She got a ride with a trucker she met at a truck stop to Ruston, Louisiana. He was a nice man who told her about all the job opportunities in West Texas. The cities of Midland and Odessa were boomtowns because of all the fracking going on out there. Anyone could get well-paying work, skilled or not.
Cindy rode her thumb some ways down the interstate until a friendly couple with two pre-teen children made room for her. They were destined for Tyler, Texas to visit relatives. Cindy was envious of the kids because their parents were so friendly, upbeat, and loving. She wondered if she would ever meet a nice man and have kids of her own. One thing she knew for sure: she wouldn’t treat them the way her mother had treated her.
She was dropped off at a gas station and the woman gave her twenty dollars. She bought a map of Texas. She had no cell phone service and imagined that was her stepfather’s doing. This, and the fact that her mother hadn’t even tried to contact her cut deep. She felt very alone and depressed as she began to hitchhike on County Road 1954. A town called Wayland was 39 miles away. It was mid-afternoon and she was anxious to get there before dark and find a place to sleep, probably in a truck stop.
The April day was cool and sunny. She was heading west and every step brought her that much closer to Midland-Odessa. But neither fact did much to lift her spirits. What did was the red Chevy that passed heading west, then slowed and pulled over to the shoulder. She hurried to it. The man on the passenger side rolled down the window and smiled at her. He was Hispanic. The guy behind the wheel was white. He was the one who spoke to her, flashing a big smile.
“Where ya headed, sweetie?”
“Wayland.”
“So are we. We’ll take you there. Not much room up here though. If you don’t mind, hop in the back.”
Cindy would have been apprehensive about getting in the truck with the two men, but being told she could ride in the bed made her less so.
Twenty-odd miles further on they were passing through thick woods. Twilight shadows were lengthening when the red Chevy suddenly veered off the road and bounced and bucked over a rutted hardpack around a shabby wooden building that looked long abandoned. A faded sign read Bill’s Beer & Bait. She tapped on the truck’s rear-window slider as the Chevy circled behind the derelict store and skidded to a stop.
“Hey? Why are we stopping?”
The Hispanic opened the slider but it was the driver who spoke. “I gotta take a piss, can’t hold it any longer.”
He opened his door. When she turned her head to watch him the Hispanic reached through the open slider and wrapped an arm around her neck. She clawed at that arm, writhing and trying to scream but he cut that short as he tightened his hold.
The white guy lowered the tailgate and grabbed her flailing legs. He was strong. Grabbing her by the hair and the back of her jeans, he dragged her over the tailgate. Her hoarse scream was cut shut when he lifted her head and then slammed her face into the truck bed, twice. She went limp.
Her jeans and panties were pulled off and thrown into the truck bed. The two men took turns raping her, her unconscious body bent at the waist over the tailgate.
The Hispanic fetched a roll of duct tape out of the cab and Cindy Wells was bound hand and foot, then gagged with a filthy red cotton shop towel, with duct tape wrapped around her head a half-dozen times to keep the towel in place and blindfold her.
The two men got back into the cab and the Hispanic sat sideways on the bench seat so he could keep an eye on the half-naked woman in case she regained consciousness. The Chevy spun out from behind the old bait store and then headed west into the deepening night.
1
It was getting dark.
Another scorching hot August day in Texas coming to a close.
When working horses I don’t wear a watch. A horse can tell you a lot if you pay attention – when it’s tired or confused or has lost focus or needs something different. You can accomplish a goal in thirty minutes with one horse where another would require longer..
This one was a grullo, what some call a blue dun. He was a twenty-month-old AQHA registered colt acquired in trade for an eight-year-old strawberry roan gelding. The previous owner wanted a good trail horse and had enough money to be indifferent about getting equal value. She had taught the long yearling to lead well enough, and I had taught him to move away from pressure before we started the longeing.
The colt’s legs were my guide. This fella was a long way from being fully developed, and what we were doing put stress on his joints. When his stride shortened and his turns became a bit jerky it was time to call it a day.
Lopes had come over from the barn to watch the workout, arms draped over the top rail of the round pen and one booted foot planted on the lower rail. When he realized the show was over, he went to the gate and had it open by the time the colt and I got there.
“What you think?” asked Lopes. He was grinning, as he usually was. “Reiner or cutter?”
“Too early to say. Bring the others in, will you?” There were three horses grazing in the lower pasture under the century-old live oaks.
Luis Federico Lopes was about forty years old, a short and wiry Argentinian with a creased, leathery face. He looked older than his years, which was fairly common among Latinos. A jockey in his youth, he had run into some trouble, which was not uncommon in the South American horse racing and breeding industry. Coming to Texas illegally, he worked menial jobs here and there for cash under the table.
We had met nine months ago at a barrel race one county over. He was looking for work. I had been at the race because a girl I knew at the time was into that kind of competition, among other things, one of which I found much more enjoyable than watching cowgirls quirt and gut their horses around barrels.
At that time I had been in the process of building my cabin and needed a hand with the horses since there are only so many hours in a day. Lopes was a hard worker and knew equines. When the cabin was finished and I moved out of the double-wide I had been living in, I let him and his daughter Valeria move in. I paid the utilities and gave him more than enough to buy food, clothing and incidentals. Valeria headed off to the Arlington campus of the University of Texas and I covered most of her expenses since she was undocumented and ineligible for state or federal aid..
“It’s Saturday, boss,” said Lopes. It was his way of asking if I was going out.
“Yep. Taking Makker, too.”
Nodding, he flashed a toothy grin. He knew what that meant. I was going to see Nelly.
Penelope Rouse owned The Last Stand, the best watering hole in Wayland. It being Saturday, the place would be packed and she would stay there until closing time. I could look forward to drinking a couple of her legendary Bloody Bulls and maybe finding a few games of pool to pass the time. But most of all I was looking forward to spending quality after-hours time with the owner.
First I had to clean up. Leaving Lopes to turn on the barn’s big box fans, tune in a country station on the radio, and sweep out the runway one last time, I went to the cabin.
2
Makker, my Army-trained Dutch Shepherd, was sitting under the ceiling fan in the screened porch. He could see north, east and west from the porch since it was screened from floor to roof, the stainless steel, woven-wire mesh pulled taut and secured to four-by-fours. The screen door was ajar thanks to a strategically placed brick, so he could come and go as he pleased. He had spent the last couple of hours laying directly under the fan, watching me work.
“You’re a slacker,” I told him, “laying in the shade while I’m out there sweating like a one-legged hooker working both sides of the street.”
Makker -- it’s Dutch for “buddy” – huffed softly in response. It was his way of acknowledging me. Going inside, I told him to “kom hier” and he followed me in. He only responded to Dutch commands.
My new abode was a 525 square-foot cabin on high ground with a pitched roof, big windows along the front and clerestory windows elsewhere It was open front to back on the right as you walked in, with room for a table and chairs and an old brown leather sofa facing a stone fireplace built into the west wall with bookcases on either side. To the left was the kitchen, the bathroom with a full-sized tub, and an alcove that fit a full-sized bed. The only interior door was the one to the bathroom.
I built it not far from the site of the home in which I had been born and raised. That house had stood for almost a hundred years, a two-story, eight-room clapboard farmhouse which had in turn replaced a cabin that I imagine had been smaller than mine, built by the first Creed to claim this land and settled on it, one John Augustus Creed. That happened back in 1846 when, on his way home to Tennessee from the Mexican-American War, he decided he liked the land too much to just pass it by.
The farmhouse in which I had grown up was built in 1888 by my great-grandfather, Lucas Creed. It was burned to the ground in 1999 by my father, Joseph Creed.
I imagine he stood there watching for a while, knowing just how long it would take for someone to report the blaze and for the fire department in Wayland to get out to the property. When the volunteer firefighters arrived on the scene they found my father behind the wheel of the royal blue Cadillac that had been his pride and joy, brains and blood splattered all over the formerly immaculate white leather upholstery. The gun he had used to kill himself was on the floorboard.
That weapon had been my grandfather Simon Creed’s Luger, a weapon he had taken off the corpse of a German officer on the bloody ground at Aachan in 1944.
Some folks say that suicide is the coward’s way out. I’m not sure I agree. There was no cure for my dad’s brain tumor. But the doctors and the hospitals would have kept treating him until they had his last dollar and he had to sell his last acre. So I don’t think less of him for putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. I did, however, blame Dad for running my mother off due to his obsessive womanizing. She had hauled me off to live in a city, which I never liked.
Why did he burn the old house? Just about everyone in the county has speculated on that question. Some people believed it was because he had been made crazy by the tumor. Some said that he did it to deny me the house that had been such a big part of my family history, but that doesn’t make any sense -- he had made sure to give me this 188-acre tract of land in his last will and testament, at that time in the care and keeping of Ike Soames, a Wayland lawyer, who was also in possession of the genuine plugged nickel which was the only thing my mother was offered. I let Ike keep the nickel because he had always been fond of Linda Sue Creed.
When I was old enough to find out how my father had treated my mother I resented him for it. I didn’t get that information from my mom. She never badmouthed him. If you think my father sounds like a gold-plated bastard I wouldn’t argue. Some folks put much of the blame on my grandfather for not raising his boy right. Simon Creed sired seven kids, and only my dad survived past his twenty-first birthday. By all accounts Simon pampered his sole surviving heir and let him get away with just about everything.
So why had my father burned the old house down? I don’t think he was just being spiteful or that he had anything to hide. My guess is he did it for my sake. That place had a lot of bad memories for myself and most of the folks who had lived in it.
He had taken his own life about seventy-five yards away from the cabin but I never worried about his ghost haunting me. It would have, though, had I given up what was left of Creed land to go live somewhere else. Not that I had ever given much thought to doing such a thing.
The day my father pulled the Luger’s trigger, I had been in boot camp at Fort Benning. They gave me leave to attend the funeral. Joseph was buried alongside Lucas, Simon, John Augustus and just about every other Creed that had lived and died in the vicinity. The family plot is deep in the eighty acres of woods that cover the back of the property.
Eleven months ago, after sixteen years in special operations, which in Afghanistan, I came home for good.
3
I fed Makker, then showered and dressed in a brown button-down Panhandle shirt with a black yoke tucked into a newish pair of Levi jeans and fairly clean Justin work boots. I had a nickel steel folding knife an Army buddy had made for me carried in a leather case which I put on my belt. My wallet went in the right back pocket. Loose change went in the left front pocket, my Moto in the right. A Suunto Traverse was, as always, on my wrist. I grabbed my keys and locked the door behind me, leaving the porch light on. Before getting into my truck I activated the house security system via my phone. Reaching the Ford, I said “achterin” and Makker leaped into the bed of the gray 4x4 2010 5.4-liter V8.
The sun had dipped below the horizon, the orange-sherbet light it left behind slowly fading from a darkening blue sky. It was 7:59 PM. Summer days in Texas are as long as they are hot.
I climbed into my Ford. The remote
I kept in the truck unlocked and opened the front gate automatically. Turning west on County Road 1954, I crossed the bridge that spanned Wolf Creek, which marks the western boundary of my land. Two miles further on I reached FM 555 and turned right. Five minutes later I was rolling into town.
With a population of 53,000 souls, Wayland was the largest town in Creed County, which had been named in honor of John Augustus, I suppose because he was the first white person to settle in these parts and maybe because he had once laid claim to about one-eighth of the 1,098 square miles that the county contained. Nelly’s place was on the other side of town so the route took me through the square.
When I was a teenager the town square had been one of two social centers for kids like me. The other was the drive-in theater which showed old movies on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday nights. Most of them weren’t very good movies but what did we care? If we had a date and some wheels that was where we would go.
If we didn’t have a date, then it was the square. We would sit in or on cars parked around the courthouse and in front of the closed businesses occupying the buildings that lined the streets on all four sides. Most of the buildings were tall, narrow, brick-fronted, two- or three-story structures dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The businesses had included antique stores, a couple of attorney’s offices, the City Cafe, and the Paladium Theatre with its high, vertical, brightly-lighted sign that had been up and working since the Thirties.
Most of those businesses were still running, except the Paladium, where the local theater company put on plays. A recent addition was a millenial’s club called The Rockbottom. These days that’s where the kids would hang out. The drive-in had given up the ghost while I’d been away. These days, with the internet the venue for most social interaction, the square at night was pretty empty as a rule.
The Highways of the Dead (A Creed Crime Story Book 1) Page 1