by Aaron Saylor
“I’ll you what next,” Elmer answered. He patted the crate gently, like it was a treasure chest. “Next, we gotta take all this stuff, and run it out of town. London, Corbin, Barbourville, Hazard, Jackson, maybe Pikeville or Whitesburg. And fast.”
He stopped cold.
“What?” asked Rogers, suddenly confused.
Elmer spoke towards the door. “I told you girls, you can’t come back here. Didn’t I tell you? What the hell do you want?”
Rogers turned towards the door and saw Alice, the skinny blonde from the party, standing in the doorway. Her eyes were big as tea cups. She was breathing heavily.
The first thing the deputy thought was, Holy hell, somebody’s O.D.’d in there.
But the truth was much worse.
Alice lowered her voice, not far from a whisper. “The sheriff’s here,” she said, and pointed out the door.
They could all see the flashing blue lights from John Slone’s cruiser, up near the front of the house. And right behind him was Boone Sumner.
SHERIFF
“Something I can help you with, Sheriff?” Elmer smiled. As he approached the cruiser, John Slone was just climbing out of the driver’s seat. Alice and Deputy Rogers watched from their position in the outbuilding, and hoped like hell that the sheriff didn’t come their way.
“I got a noise complaint,” said Slone.
Elmer smirked. He stretched out his neck until it went thawpp, a nervous release he employed often. He tried to laugh, but nothing really came out. “We ain’t bein’ loud. You can hear for yourself. And who called it in, anyway, since there ain’t nobody around here for five miles?”
“All I know is, we got a noise complaint,” the sheriff said again.
He looked towards the windows, saw the strobe lights in the living room blink steady but with different effect now. The silhouettes inside were no longer snakes writhing; they were zombies in shadow, frozen, watching their uniformed visitor.
With John’s arrival the party had shut itself down, sixty to zero on the odometer in three seconds flat. The revelers weren’t bouncing up and down, weren’t grinding, weren’t twisting into each other like snakes in a pit. No. They were standing still. The strobe lights pulsed in metronomic intervals and the dance music thumped on, but it was all sound and fury and nothing else, white noise for the suddenly tranquil masses.
“Yep, a noise complaint,” repeated Sheriff Slone. “I figured I ought to check it out.” He walked up the front steps of the house, crossed the front porch, and went in through the living room door. Elmer walked alongside.
Boone followed not far behind them, catching up quickly.
Two coffee–colored leather couches normally sat at a V in the middle of the living room, but for the party they had each been pushed against the wall nearest the kitchen, creating a mostly wide–open space that served as a dance floor. Of course right now there was no dancing at all, just forty or so strung–out kids slouched and silent with their hands in their pockets, wondering what they could tell their parents during their one phone call from the Seward County jail. As the three men came inside, the partygoers stayed flat–footed, except for a whispery parting of the human sea so the visitors could get through. After that, only their eyes moved, following Slone, Elmer, and Boone as the trio passed through the living room and towards the kitchen and back into the living room.
When they came back into the living room, Slone looked down at one of the couches. A plastic Ziploc bag caught his eye, one tiny corner poking out from behind a corner cushion.
When he pulled the bag out, he found it held two eighty–milligram Oxycontin pills. “Well huh. Eighties. Them’s serious. Wonder who these belong to?” the sheriff asked Elmer, holding the Ziploc at eye level.
“Somebody,” Elmer answered.
“Somebody is right.” John went to the person nearest him, a tall, thin young guy with shaggy brown hair busting out from beneath the tight–drawn hood of his Superman sweatshirt. “How about you? This yours?” he asked the kid.
The kid looked stupid, and said nothing.
The sheriff moved on to the next person. “You?”
Nothing.
Next. “You?”
Nothing.
Next. “You?”
Nothing.
On down the line went Sheriff Slone, holding the OC–80’s up in front of ten more people. High school cheerleaders, farm boys, college students, nomads, ghosts. He asked them all the same question – “You?” – and got the same stupid non–answer every time. With each successive instance, his voice raised a few decibels in volume, trying to intimidate into copping to ownership of the drugs, but it didn’t matter. Nobody was talking. This was no surprise; in Sewerville, nobody ever talked.
For the pure hell of it, John stepped back to the kid in the Superman sweatshirt and crumpled him with a big fist to the gut.
Nobody else moved.
A minute passed and it may as well have been a year. All the revelers watched in silence, not sure what to do but too nervous to move even if the thought of movement actually occurred. For the longest time, the Superman kid hacked in pain and that was the only sound in the room. The sheriff stood over him, cold glare locked in place, silently daring him to get up or even say something.
Like everyone else, Boone stood by, waiting to see how the scene might play. He’d tagged along on many of these late night ass–kicking missions with Sheriff Slone and seen how quickly things could get sideways. He didn’t want to spend tonight like he spent so many other nights, dropping somebody off at the emergency room with a fractured jaw or skull.
“I’m gonna go look outside,” he said, when he felt assured that the kid on the floor was at least smart enough to stay down there.
The sheriff snapped his head around, and spat out of the corner of his mouth, “What the hell for?”
“Just to see what I can find,” said Boone, trying to hide a sudden queasiness. “There ain’t no sense in both of us stayin’ here. Besides, it looks like you pretty much got this room handled.”
John offered Boone a quick shrug, like he couldn’t give less of a fuck.
“Go for it,” he said. Then, he turned to the rest of the partygoers, raising the baggie of pills above his head. “All right motherfuckers. These pills didn’t get in that couch by themselves. At least one of you motherfuckers is the proud owner of these green babies, and that motherfucker’s got sixty seconds to come get his property from me. If he don’t, everybody in this room’s going down to the county jail, I don’t care if I gotta rent a school bus to do it.”
Boone wandered away as the sheriff finished his speech. He knew full well what would happen next: John would begin a verbal countdown. After about thirty of the sixty seconds elapsed, one of the teenagers would step up and claim ownership of the pills, regardless of whether the OC–80’s belonged to said teenager or not, out of some misguided belief that it was better to sacrifice oneself rather than watch all of one’s friends get their heads cracked open. That this belief was misguided would then be proven when John Slone handcuffed the claimant and probably one or two of his friends, dragged them into the front yard, and beat them with his police baton until they shit their pants, which would happen. Boone had seen it happen. He didn’t want to see it happen tonight, though. Neither did he really have any desire to search the grounds and turn up other miscreants or meth heads who might provide further fodder for Sheriff Slone’s head crackin’ ways.
For Boone, volunteering to check outside the house was just a chance to get away for a moment. He could poke around the yard for a minute while the sheriff finished his business in the house. If anything of note popped up outside, Boone could deal with it as he saw fit. No sheriff standing over his shoulder, no bullshit, no problem.
So, he exited the house and went back outside.
As he stepped off the porch and went around the side of the house, the outbuilding at the edge of the backyard drew his attention. The shack’s windows were dark,
but in the glow of the security light nearby, he saw shadows rustling inside. Two people, maybe three. Knowing that in there with those shadows was a stolen crate filled with Walt Slone’s guns and drugs, Boone thought it wise to check the building out before John went and looked for himself. If the sheriff looked for himself, if he found that crate of merchandise, a shit storm would come that could not be contained. That was the last thing Boone wanted, so he headed to the edge of the yard and hoped like hell that nobody followed.
CHOICE
Nobody followed. Soon enough, Boone found himself inside the darkened shack.
Slowly his eyes adjusted around the outside security lamp’s pale argon illumination, what fuzzy bit of it came through the outbuilding’s dirty glass windows. He could determine a few details: glass beakers, rubber hoses, bottles of cough syrup, cleaning chemicals like Draino and Windex – the familiar junk of bathrooms and kitchens, chemistry class and meth labs.
Boone felt along the wall for a light switch, but didn’t find one. “Fuck.” He started a careful walk towards the back corner where he’d seen Walt’s crate, holding his arms out in front of him to ward off any obstacles that might have been moved out into the floor.
Ten steps in, he heard a shuffle on the other side of the room. Someone was here with him.
“Hello?” he whispered. Complete stillness answered. Yet, Boone felt that he wasn’t alone.
His heart somersaulted into the back of his mouth. He took one aching step, then another, and looked around a–jitter for more movement in the darkness. Although his eyes were better adjusted to the low light, it was still hard to make out any more than silhouettes.
A row of glass bottles in one of the window sills reminded him of a city skyline.
Halfway into another careful step, a shape moved quick in the darkness, knocked over a shelf and bolted past him, headed for the door amidst the clatter of junk.
Fuck, the sheriff’ll hear that sure as shit he will –
Boone leaped backwards and managed to get his hand around a flying body part. Felt like a leg. He tumbled and took his catch down with him. They slammed to the wooden floor, well short of any escape through the door.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Hold on!” somebody said, in a vaguely familiar whisper.
Boone stood up, but held fast on the leg, leveraging the other person down. “I’m gonna turn the light on now. I’ve got a gun inside my jacket. You make a move and I’ll blow your face out the back of your head, you hear me?”
“Hold on, Boone. Don’t turn the lights on, the sheriff’ll come out here.”
Boone stood up straight. Now he recognized the voice, straining its volume to stay within the realm of a whisper. “That you, Rogers?”
“Yeah, dammit! Hold on!”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Let me up, and we can talk about it.”
Boone let loose of Roger’s leg. He heard the deputy fumbling around in his own pockets, and then Rogers produced a small LED that put out just enough blue light to confirm his identity when he held it under his chin.
Boone put his hands on his knees and took a deep breath. “Fuck,” he said. “Holy mother fuck. Ain’t this a shit heap.”
“What are you doing here, Boone?”
“What am I doing here? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I can explain.”
“Are you the only one out here?”
The LED light flashed its wispy beam to the side of the room. In the redirected glow, Boone saw a thin blonde girl, standing there with her arms folded tight around her chest and her chin buried into her collarbone. Even with her head down, he could see the girl’s eyes open and wild. She was scared out of her mind, shaking like a broken washing machine.
“Who is that?” Boone asked the deputy.
“Her name’s Alice,” said Rogers.
“Alice who?”
“Fuck if I know.”
Boone took a moment and absorbed the scene. The girl was clearly one of Elmer’s crowd of partygoers. She and Deputy Rogers were out in Elmer’s drug shack, probably about to get it on if not already mid–coitus when Boone found them, and since this was Elmer’s place, they were as likely to be on meth or pills as they were to be on each other. Rogers was in his street clothes, too; that much could be seen in the pale glow of the LED. Sheriff Slone had relieved the deputy, the deputy had done a quick change out of his uniform and headed up here.
This could only be looked at one way: the deputy came for the party. It wasn’t like anybody did undercover police work in Sewerville.
So. Rogers was at Elmer Canifax’s party.
“I’m gonna ask you again, J.T.,” said Boone calmly. “What are you doing up here?”
“Nothin’.”
“Nothin’?”
“Nothin’.”
The deputy climbed back to his feet, and Boone drew his pistol, in case Rogers though of escaping before Boone was ready for him to go. When he saw the gun, Rogers held both hands up and made clear that he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Somehow I doubt you came all the way out here in the middle of no–goddamn–where for nothin’,” said Boone, tucking his pistol back in its shoulder holster, inside his jacket. “What do you think Sheriff Slone would say if he knew you come up here to see Elmer?”
Rogers tried to laugh but didn’t do a very good job of it.
“You did come up here to see Elmer, didn’t you?” said Boone.
The deputy breathed in deep, blew it back out, knew he was in a bad spot. “Why don’t you let the girl get on out of here?” he asked, motioning towards her with a quick nod of his head. “She don’t need to get involved in this.”
“Nah, she better stay,” said Boone. “If she goes wanderin’ back towards the house it’s more likely than not that she’ll tell the sheriff we’re out here. Either she’ll tell him, or he’ll drag it out of her. I don’t think either of us wants that. So she can just sit there and be quiet.”
The blonde whimpered at those words. Tears dripped out of her eye sockets, then streamed in wet ribbons. Boone knew she wanted to scream, for help or some other way out, and he was surprised when somehow she managed to hold it down. Surprised, but glad.
Rogers said, “You can’t tell them I was up here. Walt or the sheriff. If they found out I was here, ain’t no tellin’ where that might lead.”
Boone sighed. “You’re the second person this week that’s asked me to keep a secret,” he said. “And I gotta tell ya, I ain’t real big on secrets.”
Secrets. First Elmer, now Rogers. The outbuilding. Rogers, the party, the shack, the drugs, the guns, the crates in the corner. Of course.
Suddenly it all made sense.
The regular trucks come down from New York, full of Walt Slone’s merchandise, blowing past weigh stations and bribing DOT officials all the way. They get off the East Kentucky Parkway and roll out Highway 213, then met Deputy Rogers in the parking of the Sewardville Methodist Church. Not sure how, but somewhere between the eastern seaboard and the Sewerville rendezvous with Deputy Rogers and his U–haul trucks, these two containers full of drugs and guns went missing, and wonder of wonders, Walt hadn’t killed anybody over the whole deal yet.
Wonder of wonders.
Walt hadn’t killed anybody yet.
Yet.
Again the voice of Boone’s wife echoed inside him, from a time when they barely knew each other. You’re such a dumb boy. You dumb boy. Look what you got yourself into, dumb boy.
So Rogers took the two crates from the New York trucks and brought them here. Why, sure he did. He was in a perfect position to do it, as the man entrusted by Walt and John Slone to make the exchange with the connections from up East. He’d made the exchange all right – right off the U–haul and into Elmer’s outbuilding. A bold move, no doubt. Idiotic perhaps, but a bold move no less.
He could see the conversation between Walt and the sheriff right now:
“Wh
o the fuck around here would be stupid enough to steal from us?”
“Well, J.T. Rogers was the one carrying the crates around the whole time –“
“Nah. Surely not J.T.. Surely he would know he’d be the first one we’d ask if somethin’ turned up missin’ from one of those trucks.”
“I dunno. He ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer sometimes, you know? Maybe we ought to ask him.”
“Nah. He may be dumb, but he ain’t that fuckin’ dumb.”
But Rogers was that fucking dumb. Dumb boy.
Boone shone his LED straight into the deputy’s eyes. J.T. recoiled, held up his hand and did a clumsy tumble backward. He flung one arm out to catch his balance but instead knocked a bottle from one of the shelves to the floor, where it cracked and bounced, but didn’t shatter.
“You bring those crates up here to Elmer?” Boone asked.
Rogers hesitated. “What crates?”
“You know what crates. The ones over there in the corner, with all the merchandise in ‘em.”
Rogers held up his arms. He spoke louder now, straining the edges of what might be considered a whisper. “Hold on, hold on,” he said, waving his hands. “Hold on a second. Alice, why don’t you go ahead and hustle on out of here?”
The girl didn’t move. Boone directed his light towards her. She was looking towards the door, but showed no sign of going anywhere.
“Let her go and we’ll talk,” said Rogers.
Boone shook his head. “I told you, she’d better stay. If she goes inside, it won’t be long before she comes right back out here with the sheriff leadin’ her by the hand.” He motioned for Rogers to come closer.
Rogers obliged, slow and careful. When the two men stood less than a full stride away from each other, they each covered their mouths and talked in lowered tones, like baseball players hiding game signs from the other team. “I know you brought that shit up here,” said Boone. “What the hell are you thinking? Soon as Walt finds out, you and Elmer both are dead as four o’clock.”
“I know,” the deputy answered. “You think I don’t know? Of course I know. Me and Elmer got a plan.”