I hustled over and saw him pointing at… flat grass. ‘Is this some sort of mountain-man tracker thing? I don’t get it.’
‘Look at all the other grass.’
‘It’s grass.’
‘It’s standing. This is all laying down. Broken off.’
‘Okay, that’s weird, but I don’t see…’
He kicked the grass to one side, revealing a square of wood planks about three feet to a side. I gaped, just a little. He reached under one edge. I motioned for him to stop, pulled out the .32, nodded. He lifted the trapdoor. Looked like the spider-hole they dug Saddam out of. An aluminum ladder led into the darkness. I went in.
The light from the top made it damn near impossible to really see toward the back, but no one was in there. Knew that by the way I was getting not shot at. Looked to be about six by ten with a seven-foot ceiling supported by thick beams and plywood. A waist-level bench ran along the right and back walls in an L, a tarp covered whatever sat on top. A cot, camp stove, and compound bow with a quiver full of brightly-fletched arrows sat along the left wall.
‘What’s down there?’
‘I don’t know yet.’ I put the gun in my pocket and moved to the bench. Something stank. I lifted the tarp. Glass beakers, chemical jars, Bunsen burners. The black bag. I pulled that out, replaced the tarp. Inside the bag, something like twenty-five boxes of Sudafed. I tossed it up to Darren. ‘You got a lighter or anything?’
‘Yeah. What’s down there?’
‘Meth lab. How easy are these things to blow up?’
Pretty easy, turned out. I piled dry grass at the bottom of the ladder, spread it toward the cot and camp stove. Not so much as to be noticed (My, how much burned grass is piled in this burned-out meth lab, said the investigator), but enough to sustain a decent flame for long enough to get the cot burning. Darren stood ready with the trapdoor as I lit a grass clump and dropped it into the hole. He replaced the trap, and we ran like hell.
I had the bag of Sudafed over my shoulder.
A minute and a couple hundred yards later, a BUM-BOOM concussed the quiet woods. We hit the deck and I felt wood particles and dirt pepper my back and butt. I looked back to see a thick haze in the woods and a column of ragged black smoke rising above the treetops.
‘That’ll get attention,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
We reached the road and Darren’s truck a few minutes before the fire trucks showed. A couple other cars had stopped, their drivers gawking and taking pictures with their phones, but they hadn’t given any indication they’d noticed us.
Along with the fire trucks came a sheriff’s deputy. He passed Darren’s truck and our eyes met. The deputy who had questioned me at the hospital. Ah, hell. He pulled over and approached the truck. ‘Isaiah, right?’
I nodded. ‘Deputy….’
‘Black. Roland Black.’
‘Right, Deputy Black. How are you? Wow, it’s funny seeing you here.’ Yep, that’s me. Natural and easygoing as a wolverine in a laser-tag arena.
‘I was thinking the same thing. Care to enlighten me?’
‘Oh, we just saw the smoke and thought we’d stop and check it out. I live right over there.’ I pointed to the farm, a half mile south. ‘Or, my parents do.’
‘I suggest you go back there.’ He looked at Darren. ‘I know he’s your friend’s brother, but that don’t make him a good influence. This guy will get you in trouble. Keep your distance.’ His radio squawked and he turned to answer it.
I took that as our cue to leave. As we drove off I said, ‘Darren, he’s right. I shouldn’t have involved you in this stuff. Just drop me off and go home.’
‘I’m a big boy. I can make my own decisions.’
‘Um, no, you’re not. Not legally speaking. You’re a gullible teenager being led astray by a twenty-five-year-old scofflaw. That’s how the courts would see it. And the last thing I need is a charge of aiding the delinquency of a minor.’
‘Come on. I can help. I want to help! If we –’
‘Help? Help with what, exactly? What is it you think I’m going to do about this? I’m going to get in my car and drive to Sioux Falls to be with Annie. Don’t get stupid, Darren. You’re a good kid and I want to keep it that way.’
He glowered the rest of the way to the house. I got out, told him again to leave, and he did.
I found Kilpatrick’s address, tossed the duffel in my front seat and got underway. He lived a mile outside of Pedoka, opposite side of town from my parents. A fifteen minute drive. I recalled an episode of some true crime show or another in which this guy got into a fight and drove home to get his rifle. He killed the other guy and argued that it was some sort of manslaughter or minor murder charge, but the jury determined that the ten-minute drive constituted enough time to premeditate. He got the chair for first degree.
I fingered the gun in my pocket like it was a lucky penny.
Kilpatrick lived in a single-story bungalow with attached double garage, a quaint little country house on top of a rise and surrounded by looming cottonwoods. A silver pickup with DNR decals sat in the driveway. I pulled up behind it.
The bag over my shoulder and the gun in my pocket, I rang the doorbell. Kilpatrick, bleary-eyed and disheveled, answered a half-minute later. He wore plaid pants and a rumpled Vikings tee. ‘C’n I help you?’
‘Lose something?’ I threw the bag at his feet.
He blinked a couple times. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yeah, didn’t think you would.’ I shoved the gun in his face. ‘Go inside, hands where I can see them.’
He stumbled backward onto a wooden bench just inside the doorway. I followed and kicked the door shut behind me. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but there’s some kind of mistake.’
‘Mm, I don’t think there is. Unless it wasn’t you we have pictures of bringing this to a spider-hole meth lab two nights ago.’
He sighed. ‘Okay. What do you want?’
‘Names. Who you’re muling for. And just to satisfy my own curiosity, why.’
‘Or what, you shoot me?’ He let out a grunt that might’ve been a laugh. ‘I tell you anything, I’m dead.’
‘No, you tell me and you live. Maybe the bad guys come after you, but you still get a chance to get away. Me? Not so much. See, I haven’t slept in a day and a half, and my sister is in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest, so I’m not feeling real charitable right now.’
‘Oh, Jesus. You called in the poaching. That was you. Your sister’s the vic? Oh, God.’ He leaned forward and put his face in his hands. ‘I heard the call and I thought maybe – Oh, God, is she gonna be okay?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I’m sorry… I – I never… I’m so sorry.’
‘Sorry? You’re sorry? How can you be sorry? That gonna un-collapse my sister’s lung? Put her blood back in her?’
‘I have a family too!’ Kilpatrick stood, face flushed. ‘Don’t you tell me how I’m hurting people. I know!’
I waited for him to continue.
‘My son is three. He has cerebral palsy. My wife is a substitute teacher. Braden’s medical expenses are very high. My insurance doesn’t cover congenital conditions, and the community can only help us so much. As soon as he was diagnosed, we had a huge fundraiser put on by the church and local law enforcement. The money raised covered less than a third of the expenses.
‘That’s when… That’s when they approached me.’ He walked over to a recliner and slumped into it. I sat on a couch opposite, kept the gun trained vaguely in his direction. ‘One guy called himself Speedy Gonzalez, the other Gringo. A couple of cooks looking for a location. Apparently their stuff was pretty high-quality, so the distributor was willing to shell out to keep it coming. In return for a safe cook site, I got a couple grand a week. Enough to cover Braden’s medical bills, plus a good-sized donation to United Cerebral Palsy.
‘I knew what I was doing, what I was getting myself into. Thought I
did, anyway. Turns out Gringo has a thing for venison, so I’ve had to cover up a handful of poachings. And then a few weeks ago, they told me if I wanted to keep the money coming, I needed to do some legwork.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve been lying to my wife about where I go nights, where the money comes from. She thinks we were selected for a study, that some university out east is paying our bills in return for documenting our son’s condition.’ His eyes began to brim. ‘I have never felt so low, though, as right now.’
‘Those cooks, where can I find them?’
‘You do not want to mess with these people.’
‘Oh but I do.’
A car door slammed.
‘Stay put.’ I held the gun on the warden and moved to the window. Shit. Darren’s truck sat in the driveway.
‘Hey,’ Darren shouted as he pounded on the front door, ‘you in there? Open up!’
I shook my head at Kilpatrick. ‘Darren, whatcha doin here?’
He turned the knob, pushed the door open with the muzzle of a shotgun. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do, you son of a bitch.’
‘No, no, Darren,’ I said, ‘this is a very bad idea. Turn around and leave. Right now.’
‘Like hell,’ he said. ‘This bastard shot Annie. He’s gonna pay. He’s gonna fuckin pay.’ He raised the shotgun.
I didn’t think. Neither did Darren. Neither did Kilpatrick. I lunged for the barrel. Darren jerked toward me. Kilpatrick threw himself to one side. The double-aught buckshot went mostly wide. One of the pellets grazed Kilpatrick’s arm, the rest perforated the recliner and the wall behind. I jerked the barrel up and smashed Darren in the face with it. He dropped the shotgun and reached for his bleeding nose. I tackled him.
‘What are you doing?’ I roared. ‘Goddammit kid!’
‘Nooo!’ he wailed as he struggled against me. ‘He shot her, he shot her!’
‘No he didn’t!’
‘You were gonna do it too!’
I shoved him down and grabbed the .32. I pointed it at Darren’s head. Click. Click-click. He moaned, slumped over, and wept.
‘Come on.’ I pulled him up. ‘Get out of here. Now.’
He stumbled out the door.
I turned to Kilpatrick. ‘You hurt bad?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’ A smallish trickle of blood ran through the fingers he pressed over the wound.
‘I gotta go talk to the kid. Lab’s gone. I blew it up, made it look accidental. I’m not turning you in. Next move is yours.’
I grabbed the shotgun and left.
Annie was stable enough to bring back to Pedoka two days later.
‘Hey you,’ I said.
She smiled at me from behind the oxygen mask. ‘I am so friggin high right now. Morphine’s a trip.’
Darren was there too. He brought flowers. ‘Hey Annie. I, uh, I’m glad you’re feeling better.’
‘You feel better from a cold, you recover from a gunshot wound, dumbass.’ She grinned and took the flowers from him. ‘You sweet dumbass.’ He turned red, then beet red, then scarlet, crimson.
‘You two have fun, okay?’ I took my leave.
And smacked right into Deputy Black.
‘Do you know Jim Kilpatrick?’
‘Man, we just keep on running into each other. Crazy! Well, see ya later!’
He grabbed my arm as I tried to walk past him. ‘Answer the question, Anderson.’
‘Mm, nope. Don’t think so. Why?’
‘Jim asked me to return a document to you.’
‘Oh, that Kilpatrick. Yeah, yeah. And, ah, what document was that exactly?’
‘He said you’d know.’
‘Oh riiiight. That one. Why didn’t he bring it to me himself?’
‘I needed to talk to you anyway.’
Gulp.
‘You have this tendency to show up in all sorts of places you don’t belong, with neat little stories as to how you got there and it’s not what it looks like. And you’re either smart enough or lucky enough that those stories work.’
‘Yeah, I am huh?’ I put a grin on.
‘I don’t need your shit.’
‘Sorry. Okay.’
‘Point being, I know your type. You have this invincibility complex, you’re better and smarter than anyone around you and you’re just too damn clever to get hurt. And you know what? Whatever. It’s your life.’ He backed me up to the wall and stuck his finger in my face. ‘But do not involve any more kids in your bullshit. If your sister’s ribs hadn’t stopped the slug, if it had fragmented or shattered the bone instead of lodging there, she would’ve died. Keep that in mind next time you want to play cop.’ He walked away. Twenty feet down the hall he paused, took an envelope from his jacket, set it on a chair, and kept going.
I walked to the envelope. My document was a single line, typed: Speedy = Esteban Morales. Gringo = Ivan Burns. Distributor based in Minneapolis, alias Blue Man.
Excellent.
BLOOD OF THE SACRIFICE
by Mike Phillips
After watching the house for only a few moments, the man in dirty jeans grew impatient and crossed the street. As he went, his hand tapped an empty rhythm on his side, the animal part of his brain playing out some dull melody to quiet his fears. He was trying to affect carelessness, but even before he had taken two steps, the man let out a great breath of air and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
The house looked deserted, abandoned. The paint was sun bleached and peeling, weathered to a dull shade of what might once have been green. A window was broken, the remains of the glass hung in the frame like teeth. The grass surrounding the house spread threads of seed like the soft antennae of a moth, testing the night air for a mate. Flowers were crowned with dried blooms that dipped toward the earth, heavy with the reward of springtime romance. Trees grew jealously toward the sky, their leaves casting wild shadows that seemed to bode danger in the play of sun and cloud above.
When the man in dirty jeans knocked on the front door of the house, a car started its engine. The Buick was parked down the street, hidden behind the gnarled bones of an overgrown lilac bush. Exchanging a wad of cash for a small package in a plastic bag, the man in dirty jeans turned and started back toward the street as the Buick came to a stop in front of the house.
An old woman turned the corner, pushing a shopping cart down the sidewalk toward the man in dirty jeans, the house, the Buick. She was grossly overweight, with a massive bosom and rear which her floral print dress did little to hide. As she came, the old woman hummed a tune and complained to herself about the state of the neighborhood, how much things had changed since she was a girl, how bad things had become since the Delphi plant closed.
The car door popped open and a man jumped out, his face covered in a mask, his hands clutching a shotgun. The masked man ran toward the man in dirty jeans, crossing the unkempt lawn in moments, shouting orders in an almost girlish wail. The man in dirty jeans dropped to the ground, covering the back of his head with his hands in practiced quiescence. The masked man struck the other man on the base of the skull with the shotgun, knocking him unconscious.
Slinging the shotgun over his shoulder, the masked man lifted the man in dirty jeans into a seated position and began dragging him back to the car. The masked man was tall but gangly and it proved a difficult job for him. Before long, he began puffing in deep breaths and could only go a short distance before needing rest. After a great effort that brought him to the sidewalk, the masked man stood, bending over at the middle and breathing hard.
‘Carl Jenkins, you naughty little boy, what do you think you’re doing?’ cried the old woman. She slammed her shopping cart into the masked man, sending him sprawling to the ground.
The old woman smashed the shopping cart into him again, saying, ‘You wicked little monster, now get out of here or I’ll beat you within an inch of your life.’
Carl Jenkins, the masked man, screamed in agony as deep gashes tore his flesh.
‘Tell that master of yours that he’ll
find no truck here. No sir, he will not!’
Rolling over onto his side, Carl upended the cart, spreading its contents over the sidewalk. The old woman shouted all the more as her groceries were ruined, but Carl had made his escape. He ran to the car, hopped inside, and sped off.
‘Where is the sacrifice?’ asked Master Lefebvre. He spoke with the French accent of the Louisiana bayou, anger thickening his words until he was difficult to understand.
‘I have failed you master,’ Carl Jenkins began, dropping to his knees in supplication. ‘My life is forfeit in exchange.’
Master Lefebvre put a thick hand on Carl’s shoulder, the muscles in his arm tense and bulging, his skin damp with sweat. ‘Tell me what happened. How did the plan go wrong?’
‘Missus Parker, she came from nowhere.’
‘You let that old hag humiliate us again?’
‘My sincere apologies, Master,’ Carl whined. ‘She must have used some hex to weaken me. I barely escaped with my life. I’ll try again right away.’
‘Yes you will. Our time has arrived. The signs say it is so. The nation is in chaos. Banks and factories are going bankrupt. No longer are there enough police to keep the streets safe. People come and go looking for any sort of work and no one notices when they disappear. Now is the time for us to take what has been promised us. We have but to claim our rightful place in the domination of humanity.’
‘But what about Missus Parker?’
‘She can do nothing to stop us. I have magic of my own to use against the old witch. But we have to make an offering first, something powerful. For small magic small things, a chicken, a dog. But for magic like this it must be a human sacrifice.’
Master Lefebvre laughed, his handsome face ugly with malice. ‘But there is another magic, a deep magic from the old times. Make an enemy your victim, take that life. It is the most powerful magic of all. That is what we must do.’
The pot was an ancient thing of stainless steel, battered and dented over long years of hard use, but Mrs. Parker couldn’t bear the thought of replacing it. The pot had been a wedding present, not the most expensive one to be had in the big department store on Saginaw Avenue, but it was well made. The pot had been used for everything from the washing of her husband’s work shirts to the cooking of her daughter’s wedding soup, as much a part of the family as an object could be, an heirloom of inestimable worth like a grandfather clock or a dining room table.
Kzine Issue 7 Page 7