The Righteous Path

by James D F Hannah

  The walk west was even hotter against the hovering sun through sand and clusters of dead scrub. He trudged as though through a low flood and eyed the larger spaces of shade where King would have been dragged by the coyotes or pack dogs that had killed him. He crouched to rest then walked back into the bare torch of sunlight and the dirty wind of ash and sand and smoke. Another hour passed before he noticed he was no longer sweating. Just burning.

  When he finally found King, he only recognized him by the shape of his body.

  The animal lay in a patch of charred sand, hairless with blackened flesh that glistened as though greased. His snout and both pairs of legs had been bound with wires. Weldon moved though the blowing smoke and dust, squinting, and urged himself to stand over King’s remains. He had his work gloves in his back pocket and he struggled in his trembling to pull them on. The sunset was stained with a haze of motionless brown gas and strings of skinny crows squalled in gradual escalation and vanished into the dimming sky.

  He crouched and took King by his front legs and turned him over and saw that his head had been crushed in at his ear. He stood up and yelled, “Hey!” He pivoted in every direction, stomping, and yelled, “Hey!” But he was yelling at nothing but hot, vacant nature.

  He wrapped King’s front end into one of the garbage bags and his back end into the other and carried him to the blankets and rolled and tucked them over the bags on all sides and hoisted him over his shoulder. The stink of gasoline and bad meat stung right through the bags and blankets. He winced at the odor as he dragged himself through the sand.

  By the time he reached the top of the switchback, he was gasping. He put the bundle of blankets on the seat beside him and kept one hand on it the whole way home and once he got there hung a mechanic’s lamp from the fence and got a shovel from the garage and forced the edge into the soil with the weight of his boot and hoisted out clumps and tossed them aside, the bundle of blankets lit with the chipped and rusted vigil hanging from the fence.

  It was nine when he finished filling the hole and after he did, he carried the shovel for a few steps then dragged it across the yard and slouched back into the house with his arms hanging. His telephone was ringing.

  A girl’s voice on the other end. “This Weldon Holt?”

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “Your daughter. Your daughter Tammy.”

  He gunned his truck to the San Bernardino Greyhound station, which had the only Western Union window open at that hour. Tammy had called him from a bus station payphone in El Paso, Texas. She needed to get to California and asked if she could stay with him for a while. He asked her what kind of trouble she was in and she said she had to hang up. A whole line of people waiting the use the phone.

  He wired her the money and when she got it, she called him back on the pay phone just like he’d told her to.

  “What time does your bus come in?”

  “Tomorrow some time. Maybe twenty-four hours they said.”

  “What time is it in El Paso?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have a watch.”

  “Look for a clock on one of the walls.”

  “It’s eleven.”

  “Ten here in California. Now I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

  “I can’t talk long.”

  “How long do you have?”

  “Five minutes. Three.”

  “Five or three?”

  “Five.”

  “All right. Then tell me.”

  “Mom strangled me with a radio cord.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “She strangled me with the electric cord on the radio.”

  Weldon squinted and squeezed the back of his neck. “You call the police?”

  “No, no. I was listening to the rock station in my room. I wasn’t supposed to be listening to the radio anyhow.”

  Weldon switched the phone from one side of his face to the other. A bus pulled out of the terminal and headlights like two moons crossed the window.

  “It’s because of church,” she said. “I’m only supposed to listen to the radio when Mom’s around, and only to the gospel station.”

  “When did all this happen, Tammy?”

  “Two days ago. She’s crazy. She found all my makeup and took it out to the driveway and broke it all. Just stomped on it. I have to go.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. I have to go.”

  “Call me as soon as you get in. Doesn’t matter what time. Middle of the night, I don’t care.”

  He watched the fires in the hills that night from his kitchen window drinking coffee at the sink. The flames twisted like banners that roared into orbs of yellow light. Out back underneath a patch of brown earth lay King. How many days had it been since he’d taken his last breath? Maybe he didn’t feel anything. Maybe they’d crushed the side of his head in first. He knew it had taken more than one to murder him.

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  Here is a preview from To Bring My Shadow, a crime thriller by Matt Phillips, published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books.

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  Part One

  Chapter 1

  I was drunk the night we caught the Castaneda case. Not too drunk, okay, but blitzed enough to ask Slade if he wanted to do the driving. When the call came in, I was staring at a hole in my bathroom floor. In one hand, I held a glass of mezcal and, in the other hand, a rusted monkey wrench. The dim light from the bathroom’s lone bulb gave everything a vague yellowish tint, like I was seeing the world from a different dimension.

  But why the hole in the floor?

  In the hall, wrapped in cellophane and cardboard, I had a new toilet to install, an American Standard. Picked it up from the hardware store after work. The old shitter, with its rubbed-off brand name and chipped porcelain, sat to one side, next to the tub. It was still dirty from six months of my morning routine.

  Uncleaned. Tarnished.

  I’ll admit it: When Miranda died, I let our little house go to absolute hell. At forty-nine years old, I was a lazy housekeeper, a mal-practicing Catholic, and a widower with only my own denial keeping me from being officially declared a drunk.

  Don’t worry—the detective knows he’s a cliché.

  It’s funny what death can do to somebody. It doesn’t matter what side you’re on—you could be a cop or a crook, but death will sink her teeth into you like a ragged mutt on a Tijuana street.

  My wife was dead. And I was depressed.

  Maybe I was a lazy housekeeper, but I worked my ass off at the old day job. And had been working my ass off for more than twenty years. My shitter was filthy—so what?

  My phone chirped again. I dropped the monkey wrench—it clanged like hell—and pulled my cell from my pleated slacks. Yes, unwashed and un-ironed since Miranda got put in the ground. Best I could tell, I’d been through my entire wardrobe six times since her funeral. Surprising how often you can wear a shirt if you’re careful with the salsa in your tacos. Or, in my case, if you ate less and less. I knew the call was from Slade, so I didn’t bother with formality. “Yeah?”

  “Frank, it’s me.” Slade’s voice came across the line like cotton through a straw. Man was probably half asleep, calling from the landline he insisted on keeping. Slade slept like an alligator—he didn’t need Mexican medicine. Not like I did.

  “What’s going on, Slade? We catch a body?”

  “Under the bay bridge. Street cop said to bring a cigar or two.”

  “Rotten meat, huh?” I stared into the black hole in my bathroom floor.

  Slade cleared his throat and said, “I get the impression it’ll kill your hard-on, Frank.”

  I grunted, choked down some mezcal. The hole gaped at me, black as a crow’
s eye. “You get any info from the guy, about the scene or whatever?”

  “You mean a pithy summation of the young man’s police work?”

  “Like that, yes.” Slade had his way with the dictionary, or thesaurus. He had some college.

  Slade took a long breath, chirped his lips, and said, “Sounds like we got a dead guy found his way into an oil drum.”

  “Now,” I said, “how in the hell did that happen? What was he doing in there, trying to find a heads-up penny?”

  “Could be it,” Slade said. “I guess I wonder why he cut off his own fingers with bolt-cutters though. Kind of hard to pick up pennies when you don’t have fingertips. You think maybe he cut off his dick so he didn’t have to piss in the barrel?”

  “Jesus H. They cut off the guy’s junk?”

  “What I heard from the street cop. Heard, too—they’re still trying to find it.”

  “What?”

  “The guy’s Johnson.” Slade chuckled. He was shaking off his slumber.

  I sighed from the swell of my belly up through my throat. The last thing I wanted was a whodunit drug murder down in the barrio. Another swim in the deep end for me and Slade, that’s what it sounded like. “Maybe we call the guy a homicide, but file a missing person’s report for the junk.”

  Slade gasped. I could hear him working that one through, sitting there in his jammies. “But the guy is there. And the junk isn’t another person, is it? I mean, shit, we got the guy. I never heard of a search for a dude’s junk. Not that I can remember.”

  “My junk,” I said, “ain’t never had trouble being found.” I moved toward the black hole, unzipped my pants. I gulped the last of my mezcal, set the glass on the toothpaste-spotted vanity. Miranda wanted me to replace that, too. And the old porcelain tub. And the Mexican tile in the kitchen. “You mind driving tonight, Skinny? I loosened a few screws when I got home.”

  “I’ll be over there in about ten minutes. Hey, you pick up that new shitter?”

  “I’m staring at a black hole in my bathroom floor.”

  “Another project that’ll have to wait.”

  I said, “Like making the world a better place, huh?”

  “That’s a job that’ll never finish.”

  I wedged the phone between my shoulder and cheek, whipped out my junk and pissed straight down the throat of the black hole. “Say, Skinny, you ever sit around and wonder…Are we pissing this life down the fucking drain?”

  Slade hung up without responding.

  Chapter 2

  Slade “Skinny” Ryerson had a criminal justice degree from an HBCU back east. Tiny college with a long name I never remembered. Man came out west for his juris doctorate, but along the way he got snagged for police work, found himself patting crooks on the back with a nightstick. Slade was too smart to be a cop—first thing he knew, an old school commander made him take the detective examination. Four years in and Slade Ryerson moved his badge from over his heart to a chain dangling around his neck. Became a stone-cold murder police.

  Like me. A homicide detective.

  Slade pretended—though he didn’t admit it—that he was a movie star cop. You know the type: Dude wore a black leather jacket, faded at the elbows. Had himself a nice set of expensive shades, a spare pistol—one of those .25s the movie star girls carry in their purses—tucked slim and sweet in an ankle holster. Left leg, always. The man sauntered like Denzel Washington, eye-fucked gangbangers while I smoked cigars and thought about my pension. Slade was fifteen years my junior and had a lot to learn about the human capacity for cruelty, murder and death. He smiled too damn much.

  But when it came to being a cop, I was the immature one.

  On this August night—clear, but with a hot breeze—Slade slid the black department-issued Ford Focus (fucking budget cuts) to the curb outside my house. This was what passed for undercover in our city. Fix Or Repair Daily, just like my soggy melon of a brain. Through the tinted passenger window, I made out Slade’s widow’s peak shining like a vampire fang. Slade never went anywhere without his hair slicked back, those precious black locks coated in Murray’s-brand pomade. Did I mention Slade was a ladies’ man?

  I opened the door and got in, ignored the seat belt. “Thanks for the ride, partner.”

  “You sober enough for this?” Slade slid his dark eyes over my face. I could feel his brain firing judgment down into his throat, but he knew what I’d been through. He knew how it went down with Miranda, my son and daughter, the life insurance policy. And my own sweet, precious little detective’s heart. Slade knew about the burn running through me, the fire, and he kept his righteous remarks to himself. That’s why me and Slade got along, how we did the job so damn well. “If you’re not sober,” Slade said, “we can stop for coffee and some eggs. Trust me, the dead don’t hurry, if you know what I mean.”

  I cleared my throat and said, “I could use a snort of tequila. Hit that dive bar down off––”

  “Coffee, Frank. We got a case to work.” Slade shifted into drive and the compact car accelerated, a rattle coming from somewhere under the dented hood.

  Slade drank too. Don’t think he didn’t. But Slade knew when to stop. Hell, he had a knack for how to stop. Not me. I’d put one drink down the gullet and I’d already have the second one ordered. The third would be waiting for me by the time I started the second. That way my whole life. If you asked me to be honest, I’d say it hurt me not to drink. It hurt me to be healthy. Sure, I was killing my body. But I was keeping myself alive.

  “Shit,” I said. “Coffee will have to do then.”

  Slade turned east on Market, drove for a few blocks and pulled into an empty parking lot. I lurched into a rundown McDonald’s for some cheap coffee. We lived in a coffee city, whatever that is, but most cops wear their taste buds through after a year or two. It’s the midnight shift that does it, all that 7-Eleven coffee and the bitter taste of human deviance. You’re a cop for a few years and the whole world starts to taste like hell. It’s pitiful when you say it like that, but here’s something to remember: a lot of us like that taste.

  When I got back to the car, Slade’s cell was pressed to his ear and his brow was crushed down toward his jagged nose. He grunted once, whistled a high note.

  “What is it?” I said, handing him a coffee.

  He took the coffee with one hand, waved me off with the other. “What do I think it means? Hell if I know. I’ll run it by Frank, see what he says. I guess it could be a cartel thing. Or, shit, maybe he upset a pretty little lady somewhere. Sounds like something a lady—”

  A voice cut him off, droned on for a minute.

  “I’m not saying a lady did the guy,” Slade said. “Only that it could have been—”

  Slade slumped back in his seat while the voice interjected. He sipped from his coffee while the lecture burned across the line. After a minute or two, Slade pressed the red end call button on his cell, tossed it into one of the cupholders in the center console.

  “Crime techs are on scene, huh?” I smirked at my coffee, sipped. There it is, I thought, that hellish bitter taste. “Those fuckers already telling us how to do our job?”

  Slade said, “They found the guy’s junk.”

  “You mean his Johnson?”

  “Yes, Frank.”

  “And?”

  Slade sighed, got that world-weary look on his face: fucking eyebrows drawn down into a V, his chin all wrinkled like a baby on the verge of crying. “And, they found it in a pickle jar, floating beneath the bridge. The jar was half-full with piss.”

  A yellowish tint, I thought. My turn to whistle. “Kudos to the techs,” I said. “Good find, man: some guy’s Johnson bobbing out there in the bay like a message in a bottle. Like searching for a needle in a…well, you get my meaning. You think it’s the guy’s piss?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Can’t rule it out,” I said. “Take a wee-wee and chop off your weener—can’t say I ain’t seen worse.�
��

  “Nope, sure can’t.” Slade started the car, slid us into the empty street. He made an illegal U-turn and headed west, toward the sea.

  Ahead, on the horizon, I made out the flared hump of the Coronado Bay Bridge cutting through the sea mist, yellow-orange lights spanning its length. The bridge ran for a mile across the open bay, landed on Coronado Island. Different jurisdiction over there—the island had its own PD.

  I wondered aloud: “They found the Johnson on our side of the bay?”

  Slade grunted. “You got it.”

  “No jurisdiction issues then,” I said.

  “It’s all ours, Frank. You and me and the weener makes three.” Slade loosed the half-hearted laugh of a tired detective. Hollow. Less than melodic.

  “The case of the missing weener,” I said. “How sweet is that?”

  Ahead, in the soft glow of the midnight horizon, the bridge rose above us like an inverted smile.

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