by Aaron Saylor
But with somebody taking a shot at Walt in broad daylight, Boone had a real tightrope to walk now. If anybody found out that he was hooked into Elmer to any degree whatsoever, it would get ugly quick.
“Elmer and Rogers aren’t the sharpest hooks in the tacklebox,” said Boone, “but still, I never thought they’d make a move like this. It’s stupid, even for them.”
John opened his eyes, sat back up straight. “The problem with those two,” he said, “is that they ain’t stupid at all. They’re worse than stupid. They think they got everything figured out, think they got the plan to beat all plans. That ain’t stupid, Boone. That’s dangerous.”
He stared into Boone, jabbed his finger at him. “Hell, after Dad got shot, you rode with us when we took Elmer down to the police station. You helped beat the fuck out of him, I stood right there and watched you. What did he tell us?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s right. Nothing. You know why? ‘Cause he thinks he’s got us nailed. That rifle he picked up, it’s got his fingerprints all over it, and we got two hundred people that’ll sign a statement saying he pointed it right at Walt. Guess what else we got? Forensics sayin’ that gun never fired a single goddamn bullet. How about that? Gonna be awful hard to match that piece of metal they took out of Walt to a rifle that’s never been shot, don’t you think?”
The sheriff’s gaze lingered, waiting for Boone to answer, but no answer came. Eventually John stood back up. “So basically Elmer might as well have had his thumb jammed up his ass, is what I’m saying.”
That stumped Boone. “Why is that?”
“Because, thumb on that rifle, or thumb up his ass, either way he’s cod locked for not bein’ the shooter. He knew he’d have been suspect numero uno if something happened to Walt, so he took himself out of the equation. Too bad for him, he didn’t count on you telling us he had a partner in the whole deal.”
Boone felt his pulse quicken in his neck. Suddenly he realized the terrible place to which this all led. He could see the future as clearly as if it were painted in blood on a canvas before him: the shot that took Walt down would not be the last shot fired. Somebody was going to end up dead. Probably more than one somebody.
“Okay,” said Boone through an exhale. “So I’ll ask you again. Now what?”
“Now we go after Elmer’s partner, that’s what,” the sheriff answered.
“This soon?”
“Hell yeah, this soon!” John shot back. His face conveyed a sour mix of anger, and disbelief. “Elmer and Rogers both are goddamn lucky we didn’t take their heads off five minutes after Walt went down! We need to move on Rogers now. He’s bound to know we’re coming for him sooner or later, and we’d better get on it before he makes a run for it. If he hasn’t already.”
Boone thought about it. He’d anticipated this day from the moment Rogers had shown him Walt’s crate in Elmer’s outbuilding. He’d thought he could play both sides against each other and come out clean on the other end. He just hadn’t expected it to happen this quickly.
Now, he sensed his best opportunity at hand. No more quarter machines, no more of Walt’s bullshit, no more Sewerville, no more nothing. Just maybe. Just maybe.
Still, Boone didn’t want to seem too anxious to go after Rogers. Better to follow along rather than be out front right now.
“I just think we might want to wait a little longer. Not draw too much attention to ourselves,” he said. “If a lawman gets killed, people are going to come ask questions. News people. Just like they did when you and Caudill got shot at the Bears Den. If people start taking bullets around here like this is the goddamn Wild West, it’ll stir up some major shit. You know how those TV people are.”
“Fuck the news,” John spit out. “Fuck them to hell. Walt’s shot, and we have to do something, and that’s just the way it is. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say maybe you weren’t with us a hundred percent on this. Are you with us, or are you not, Boone?”
It was not the moment for hesitation, Boone knew. The machinery was moving now. “Don’t worry, I’m with you on this,” he said. “I’m a part of this family, too.”
BLOOD
Boone rode with Sheriff Slone to the home of Rogers. Sharp mid–afternoon sunlight cut jags of light around the edges of the sun visor above his head.
He traced his finger along the steel barrel of a twelve gauge shotgun, and stared out the windshield with a grim look on his face. As the car bounced along the two lane road, it occurred to Boone that in all his years of working with and for the Slone family, never once had he ridden in John’s cruiser, until now.
“You could have really fucked us on this deal,” John said. “Say you took Elmer up on his deal. Let’s just say, you fell in with him and Rogers, started working against us. You could have really burnt our asses good. You know a hell of a lot about the family business and could have used that to your advantage. We’d have got you eventually, sure. But if you wanted, you had a chance there to really fuck some shit up, you know?”
Boone circled the shotgun barrel and gripped it tight with one hand. He focused on the dotted yellow line on the two–lane road, as they passed beneath the speeding vehicle.
“But you didn’t do that,” said the sheriff. “I guess we all got lucky there, huh?”
“I guess so,” said Boone.
They drove on.
J.T. Rogers sat on the couch, wearing the fatigues of the Seward County Sheriff’s department. With Sheriff Slone stationed down at Sewardville Medical with Walt, the deputy knew he’d be pulling some extra duty hours for the next few days. Just the way it was.
On the television, the Cincinnati Reds were smacking around the St. Louis Cardinals in the seventh inning. Rogers stared in the general direction of the game, but he wasn’t paying that much attention. Instead his mind followed the same track it had followed for the last twenty–four hours: he hadn’t seen or heard a solitary whisper from Elmer Canifax since all that shit went down at the Orchid Festival. That made Rogers nervous.
Beyond nervous.
Even worse, he hadn’t heard from John Slone or Boone Sumner. Karen, either. While part of him felt like that was just because he stayed more or less on a need–to–know basis, another, more nervous part of him thought it a good idea to sleep with a gun under his pillow.
Had Boone sold them out to Walt, or to the sheriff? The shots fired at Walt could have scared Boone into silence, or just as easily scared him into coming clean with the Slone family before he found himself on the receiving end of the next round. There was no way of knowing, not yet, but Rogers was sure that the situation would shift into focus sooner rather than later. Either Boone sold him and Elmer out, or he didn’t. Elmer would turn up, or he wouldn’t.
He heard a car coming up the driveway, towards the house. He looked out the living room window, and saw the sheriff’s cruiser roll to a stop behind his own police car. Moments later, the sheriff stepped out in full uniform, and Rogers saw that he already had the safety strap unbuttoned from his gun holster. Even worse, after that, Boone got out of the vehicle with a shotgun in hand.
Rogers grabbed his loaded pistol from the coffee table and went to the entrance of the house. He opened the door and saw John Slone standing with his knuckles raised and ready to knock.
“Hello, Sheriff,” he said, holding the weapon where the sheriff and Boone could see it.
“Hello, J.T.,” the sheriff answered. He checked the gun in his deputy’s hand. “You expecting some company, or what?”
Rogers walked out onto the porch, closed the door behind him. He made no effort to put the gun away. “Nah,” he said. “Just going out on my shift, is all. What brings you two up here? Anything change with Walt?”
John brushed the questions aside. “Walt’s fine,” he said. “Let’s just cut all the bullshit, shall we?”
A nervous laugh danced from the deputy’s throat. He forced a smile but his eyes betrayed him, jumping skitterish from one visitor to the other.
“What bullshit do you mean?” he asked.
The sheriff was unimpressed with his deputy’s ignorance. “Where were you yesterday, when Walt got shot?” he asked, in a calm voice that contrasted with the obvious edginess of Rogers.
“Same place everybody else in the county was,” said Rogers. “At the festival. I was on duty. You know that.”
“Where at the festival?”
“Sheriff, what’s this all about?” Rogers flexed his fingers tighter around the grip of his pistol.
“You know what this is about,” John said.
“I do?”
“Sure you do. You got a rifle in your cruiser, don’t you?”
Rogers just looked at him.
“I don’t suppose you’d care if we sent that rifle of yours up to Frankfort and checked it out against the bullets they pulled out of Walt.”
“Hell yeah I care!” Rogers blurted. Any trace of cool that he’d been attempting to show evaporated in an instant. “What the fuck, you think I shot Walt? What is this bullshit?” He paused, took a deep breath, shook his head from side to side.
“You know we talked to Elmer. Elmer gave you up pretty quick.” The placid demeanor of the sheriff never wavered.
It wasn’t true. Though they had talked to Elmer right after Walt’s shooting, he hadn’t said anything about Rogers. Karen served as their only source of knowledge about the plan of Elmer and Rogers, and of course she got her info from Boone. Not that the source mattered here; the sheriff just wanted to see if Rogers would crack if he thought Elmer had turned on him.
Then again, whether Rogers admitted anything openly or not didn’t matter, either. There was only one possible outcome of this visit. It could come quickly, or it could take a little longer, but this episode ended one way and one way only. And for Rogers, it would not be a happy ending.
The deputy said, “Elmer didn’t tell you shit. There’s nothing to tell.”
John nodded his head and let out a slow, disappointed sigh. He looked Rogers square in the face. “You sure about that? You mean to tell me there’s not a crate of guns and pills in Elmer’s outbuilding that belongs to Walt Slone, that you and Elmer stole so you two dumb motherfuckers could set up your own shop?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit.”
“Sheriff, I swear, I ain’t got no part of this.”
“BULLSHIT!” screamed the sheriff. He jumped forward, straight at Rogers, who in turn raised his pistol to fire at the sheriff.
Too late.
Before J.T. could get his gun even halfway to the height he needed, Boone pounced on him. With his left hand he grabbed Rogers at the wrist, behind the pistol, and brought his right fist down on the deputy’s outstretched arm with such strong and sudden force that the radial bone snapped and broke through the skin, like something out of a cheap action movie.
Rogers let out a sick howl and dropped the gun. Boone landed a solid punch in the middle of his face that shattered the deputy’s nose like a fortune cookie, splattering hot blood across the lower half of his face and a few flecks of red onto Boone’s jacket, too.
The deputy screamed. Boone grabbed him by the chest and took him down to the porch floor, Sheriff Slone headed back to the cruiser.
Boone wondered why he’d left them, but kept that question to himself. He pinned the struggling Rogers to the creaky porch wood, and muttered, “Hold on, J.T.. Just hold the fuck on if you want to get out of this.”
Rogers spat in his face. “Go to hell.”
The warm saliva dripped down Boone’s jaw, but he couldn’t free one hand to wipe it off without risking the deputy getting the upper hand.
“You motherfucker,” the deputy sneered, through the twin pains of his broken arm and busted nose. “You motherfucker, you gave us up.”
“Be quiet,” Boone said, trying to keep his own voice down. “I didn’t give anybody up.”
“You motherfucker. Motherfucker. Trying to save your own ass,” Rogers spit again, his words mixed with spit, and blood, and hatred. “I should have known. Fuck.” Pain radiated through his body, sapped most of his fight.
“I didn’t say anything,” said Boone. “Just keep your mouth shut. I’ll get us out of this.” He checked over his shoulder, looking for John Slone. He didn’t see him, but he heard the cruiser’s trunk lid creak open and then quickly slam shut again.
“What the fuck… was I thinking…” Rogers went on.
Sheriff Slone came back up on the porch now. “J.T., I gotta say, I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking.”
Boone heard the gentle slosh of liquid, and when John came back around to his front side he saw that the sheriff carried two metal gasoline cans now, one in each hand. Boone guessed from the sound of the sloshing and the tension in the sheriff’s arms as he carried the weight of the cans that they were at least three–quarters full.
Boone glanced back down at the man below him. Rogers breathed in quick gasps, with most of the struggle already sapped from his broken body. Still Boone pinned him down, though, just to make sure that Rogers didn’t find a second wind. That would really turn this into a shitty mess, if Rogers suddenly jumped up and started fighting again. Best if he just stayed down. Best for everybody.
The sheriff set the gas can down near his deputy’s head, then bent closer to the face of Rogers, steadying himself with his hands on his thighs. “Let’s try this again,” he said, again speaking in that flat, calm tone.
“His arm’s broken,” said Boone. “Nose, too.”
The sheriff smiled down at them.
In that awful moment, Rogers realized what everyone else in Sewardville knew: when John Slone smiled, bad things happened.
Boone relaxed his grip on the shoulders of Rogers, and Rogers barely moved. It was difficult for him to keep his eyes even half–open.
“I think he’s had enough,” said Boone. “Let’s take him down to the jail and let him think about it.”
“He ain’t had enough,” the sheriff interrupted. That flat, cold voice, just as flat and cold as the voice of a gas chamber physician. “You ain’t had enough, have you, J.T.?”
Rogers blinked his eyes halfway back open, in time to see John’s fist come crashing down into his pulpy broken nose. White starbursts of pain exploded in front of his face. He thrashed once more, managed a fleeting thought of escape, but Boone held him fast and fresh waves of pain crushed that notion.
“Let’s try it again,” the sheriff continued, as Rogers settled back down. “You know, and I know, and Boone knows, and everybody that needs to know, knows, that you shot Walt yesterday. I don’t know how you managed to pull it off, but you did. And the truth is, right here at this very moment, I don’t really give a damn about the hows and the whys.”
Rogers turned his head to one side and spit out thick red chunks. He fought to speak and managed, “Sheriff, I didn’t do anything.”
Sheriff Slone shook his head, and smiled once more. He stood back up, and without saying another word, hauled off and kicked Rogers square in the side of the head.
“Goddammit, John!” Boone protested.
“Shut up, Boone,” the sheriff said.
The next blow came so quick, the pain so sharp in his skull that all of Rogers’s senses were overwhelmed at once and at first he had almost no discernible reaction. His mouth dropped open and he looked like he was screaming, but he didn’t scream. He hurt in silence, as though the blow had rendered him incapable of crying out. Blood pounded in his brain. He recoiled to one side, but couldn’t go far because he was still held fast underneath Boone. He thought he would pass out. God, how he wanted to pass out.
“Are you working with anybody else?” asked the sheriff.
Rogers could barely see, let alone formulate a cogent thought. He stammered, “N–n–no.”
“ARE YOU WORKING WITH ANYBODY ELSE?” Slone roared.
Rogers hung on the precipice of unconsciousness.
When the sheriff real
ized that he wasn’t going to get anything else, he cleared his throat, and said to Boone, “Get up.”
Boone stood, and stepped back. He knew that the sheriff could explode over the edge at any moment.
Sheriff Slone extended one of the gas cans to him. “What do you want me to do with that?”
“Burn it,” the sheriff responded. Cold, flat. “Burn him. Burn it all.”
Boone backed away.
John looked at him in disbelief. “What, you’re gettin’ morals all of a sudden?”
“We can’t do this,” said Boone. “If a sheriff’s deputy turns up dead on the heels of all the other shit that’s happened around here, it’ll be a bigger story than either one of us wants to deal with. Let’s just turn him over to the state boys, let Walt’s friends up in Frankfort deal with him. We don’t need this shit.”
“Is that right?” the sheriff said.
“You know it’s right,” said Boone.
John Slone shook his head. A sour, disappointed look drew into his face. He pulled the gas can back and stood there, thinking.
Then he tipped it up and doused Rogers in fuel.
As the hot gasoline splashed over him, and the fumes burned into his nose and throat, and into his bloody wounds, finally Rogers could make a sound. A hell scream burst from his throat, risen from the pit of his mortal soul.
The sheriff didn’t care. He drew his pistol, nice and easy, and began whistling a slow version of “Hair of the Dog.”
Now you’re messin’ with
A SONOFABEEYITCH
Now you’re messin’ with a sonofabitch!
Rogers shuffled to his feet, gas dripping off him. His mouth fell open and he didn’t so much as speak, as the words trickled from his lips.
“Sheriff, don’t… don’t do this…”
“Don’t do what?” mocked Slone.
Boone stepped forward, in between the hunter and his prey. “Come on, John,” he said. “There’s no need for this goin’ down this way. Let’s take him back, let him rot at the jail for a while.”