Hunting Dixie

by James, Harper

  Chapter 8

  JACKSON SAT IN THE warden’s office, staring at a dirty stain on the wall while the warden droned on. He cocked his head, tried to work out what it was and why it hadn’t been cleaned off. Behind the warden, a clock ticked noisily, its hands jerking erratically like a cockroach that a small boy had pulled most of the legs off. Another five minutes of this and he’d be out. After two years, what were a few more minutes?

  All the usual platitudes washed over his head in the warden’s soft, reassuring voice, the calm, measured tones designed for talking at people of subpar intellect. The warden suddenly stopped talking, leaned forward. He rested his elbows on his desk, palms pressed together, like he was about to pray but his arthritic knees wouldn’t let him kneel. Jackson, aware of the sudden silence in the room and not sure if he’d been asked a question, glanced up into his earnest face. It was the sort of face you wanted to punch. To wipe away the patronizing smugness that said I get to go home every night. Yeah, right. Having seen a photo of the warden and his wife at a charity ball, Jackson thought he’d take his chances in the shower block, thank-you.

  Besides, today he was the one who got to go home.

  Wherever that was.

  ‘I’m not stupid, Delacroix. I realize you’re not the usual, run-of-the-mill criminal we get in here.’

  Jackson acknowledged the statement with a small shrug. Did the guy really think he was about to explain everything now, five minutes before he walked out the door forever?

  ‘The other prisoners knew it, too.’

  Jackson sure as hell couldn’t deny that.

  ‘What you went through in here . . .’ The warden shook his head sadly. ‘I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.’

  Jackson nodded in agreement although he didn’t see what he could add.

  ‘I don’t know what really went on here. Obviously access to that information is above my pay grade.’ He gave Jackson a conspiratorial smile, one that Jackson pretended he didn’t see.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean, warden.’

  The warden sighed heavily.

  ‘You had it hard in here. You didn’t go looking for trouble. You didn’t need to. But you didn’t back down either.’ He paused and looked away. Jackson followed his gaze, through the window to the world outside. The free world. Where he’d be in a few short minutes.

  ‘I just hope it was worth it.’

  Jackson let out a sharp laugh. Like a bark, almost deranged in its intensity.

  More worth it than you could ever know.

  ‘Are we done here?’

  He put his hands on the desk to push himself up out of the chair. The warden stared at his hands resting on the edge of the desk. A quick flash of disgust—or maybe it was disappointment—crossed his face.

  ‘Whatever happened in here, it’s a pity you had to do something stupid like that.’ He pointed at the tattoo on Jackson’s hand between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Why in God’s name did you want to get a permanent reminder of all this . . .’ He waved his arm, taking in the whole of his office and everything beyond it.

  Jackson was sure he nearly forgot himself, nearly said all this shit. But the warden didn’t use bad language.

  ‘Why remind yourself of what I hope for your sake turns out to be the two worst years of your life?’

  There was something close to despair in his voice. Jackson could relate to that. He imagined the guy getting up for work each day, sitting in a bright, sunny breakfast nook with his wife, imagined him eating a big bowl of cheerios drenched with ice-cold milk. He actually felt the way the guy’s heart sank as he contemplated the impenetrable brick wall ahead of him. Another eight hours banging his head against it, dealing with all the recidivists and perverts and baby-rapers, plus the occasional garden-variety murderer, all of them counting the days until they could get back out there and back to it.

  ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t get it in here. I’ve had it for years.’

  The warden twisted his head to take a closer look.

  ‘What is it?’

  Jackson shrugged, looked at it himself. He didn’t really see it these days.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  A pang of guilt pierced him before the words had left his mouth.

  The warden stood and fired his hand into Jackson’s. A little too eager perhaps, held longer than was strictly necessary, but a firm grip nonetheless that surprised him.

  Jackson wondered idly if he’d open up the paper one day and read how the warden had reached the end of his tether. How he’d used those strong, callused hands to strangle his ugly wife as she prattled on incessantly in her whiney voice in the bright, sunny breakfast nook, the fat that hung down from her arms like pregnant bellies quivering as he squeezed the life from her. Then buried her in the garden before driving to work like normal.

  Jackson liked having an active imagination. It made life more interesting. Even if it did make him a little unpredictable at times—as a number of people would soon find out.

  Chapter 9

  EVAN CHECKED HIS WATCH again. Where the hell was Carly? He tried the door handle. The feeling of unease intensified a notch as the door swung open. He let himself in, closed it behind him. The room was empty. It smelled of stale bodies and unwashed sheets.

  It had been searched. There hadn’t been much in the way of clothes in either the closet or the dresser, but what there was had been strewn across the floor. The mattress had been pulled off the bed. It was leaning up against the wall. A small suitcase lay open on the bed frame. A couple pairs of shoes had been kicked into the corner.

  The only other furniture in the room was a threadbare armchair with a couple of suspicious looking stains on the upholstery. But it was that or the bed so he lowered himself carefully into it to wait. Six thirty came and went. By seven it was obvious she wasn’t coming.

  As he often did when time weighed heavily on his hands, he got out the Zippo lighter he always carried with him, the one he’d found half-buried in the basement of a farmhouse owned by Carl Hendricks, a lowlife degenerate he helped put behind bars for the rest of his unnatural life.

  He ran his thumb over the smooth, worn metal, over the inscription which always failed to provide any inspiration or guidance. The lighter had been dropped in the basement by one of Hendricks’ ex-army buddies, Jack Adamson. Recently Adamson had promised to tell Evan exactly how he had originally acquired it—in return for Evan helping to keep him out of jail.

  The reason Evan gave a damn was simple. He believed the lighter had belonged to Sarah. It was the biggest lead he had in his search to find her.

  Until Carly walked back into his life.

  Now he had to weigh up his two options. Should he go with Adamson even though he couldn’t be sure it was Sarah’s lighter? Or should he go with Carly, a woman who made Lucrezia Borgia seem trustworthy.

  Having been in one fight already as a result of his enquiries on her behalf, added to her failure to turn up for their meeting, he was leaning towards Adamson.

  Pushing himself up out of the armchair, he crossed to the bed. He picked up the suitcase, a regular carry-on with wheels and a telescopic handle. On the outside there was a small, zippered pocket, big enough for your travel documents and a book to read. He unzipped it, pulled out a slim diary. It was like going back in time. Did anyone still use a diary? Did anyone under twenty-five even know what one was?

  It was five years out of date. He was on the verge of putting it back when a sudden thought blindsided him. He stared at it shaking slightly in his hand, a buzz of anticipation taking his breath away.

  Maybe he didn’t need Carly’s so-called help after all.

  He remembered back to when he’d kept a diary, back in the day, before everybody lived their whole life through their phone. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants, opened it up at the back. Sure enough, there it was, a removable section for names and addresses and phone numbers. A small envelope fell out onto the floor. He ignored it, pulled the a
ddress section free. It was obvious from the number of amendments it had been regularly updated over the years. He flicked through the A’s, stopped at B. There it was:

  Sarah Buckley.

  His hands were shaking harder now. Not so hard that he couldn’t see, right there next to her name, the address of the house they’d lived in together. Under that was the house phone. Last of all, a number for her cell phone, a number that stopped working the day she disappeared. There were no crossings-out, no amendments, no new number or address squeezed into the margins.

  He took a couple paces backwards, dropped into the armchair. He felt so stupid. As if Sarah, having successfully disappeared off the face of the earth, would give her best friend her new address, made sure she wrote it down in her diary for the whole world to find.

  He picked up the envelope that had fallen out. Inside there was a photograph cut in half. It was of Carly. He immediately knew what it was. He pulled the photo of Dixie out of his pocket. The two halves were a perfect fit. It was no big deal. He’d been pretty sure the person who’d been cut out of the photo was Carly. He had no idea why she’d cut it in half or denied it. It was the most natural thing in the world that a person searching for somebody might have a picture of the two of them together.

  They were on vacation, somewhere hot. They were smiling, having a great time. He turned the half he’d just found over. On the back was a name—Dexter’s—which sounded to him like a bar. Where the photo was taken, presumably.

  Turning it over again, something caught his eye. A nagging thought crossed his mind, a nasty idea about why Carly might have cut the photograph in half.

  It wasn’t about her at all.

  There was another woman next to Carly. On the other side to Dixie. All you could see was her arm around Carly’s shoulders. He couldn’t take his eyes off that extra arm. The way it was casually draped around Carly’s shoulders, the slim hand hanging down Carly’s front so the whole hand was visible.

  And the wrist.

  And the bracelet on the wrist.

  Fear spread down through his intestines. Up into his throat. Fear of having what he’d searched for these last five years suddenly in front of him. Fear of finally knowing the truth however ugly it might be. It flooded his brain until he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t form a single, clear thought that wasn’t distorted by what he wanted to see.

  There must be thousands of bracelets exactly like it. Maybe hundreds of thousands. That didn’t change the fact that he’d bought one just like it for Sarah’s twenty-fifth birthday. And to the best of his knowledge, she’d worn it every day since.

  Then, just as quickly, the excitement was gone, replaced by a feeling as if he’d just been had—by himself. He thought back to his last case. His client, Levi Stone, had come to him with a similar picture, a picture of a woman he believed was his wife—on the basis of a bracelet that was visible in the photograph. Levi’s wife had supposedly died five years previously but that wasn’t so different from Evan’s situation. But what made Evan feel so stupid about his reaction of a moment ago was the fact that he, along with everyone else, had told Levi he was mistaken, he was seeing what he wanted to see. Already he could hear the chorus of voices shouting the same at him.

  You’re mistaken. It’s not her.

  It was as if someone upstairs had decided to give him some of his own, see how he liked it.

  Trouble was, he knew himself, knew that once the hook had been set he was on that line for the duration. Ready and waiting for anybody who happened along—Carly seemed a good bet—to jerk him around and reel him in.

  Chapter 10

  THERE WAS NOTHING CARLY would rather have done than meet with Evan and explain everything to him. Unfortunately, that wasn’t one of her options at the present time.

  After José and the big guy—whose name was Victor—pulled her out of her car, they forced her to take them to her hotel room. They hadn’t found anything there, of course. Then they put a sack over her head, tied her wrists and stuffed her into the trunk of their car.

  They drove across town then hustled her into a building. One of them pushed her down a short flight of stairs into a basement. She stumbled and slipped off the stairs. Fell screaming through the air, unable to see where she might land or put out a hand to break her fall. The other one had been at the bottom. He caught her. They thought it was hilarious. Pricks.

  Then things got strange. And scary, although that came later. She imagined a basement with a bare light bulb and a hard wooden chair in the middle of an empty room. Some dark stains on the seat. Maybe a length of thick rope thrown over the rafters.

  She was wrong.

  They led her into a room, the sack still over her head. Immediately she knew something was different—different to what she’d been dreading the whole of the journey in the trunk of their car. She felt thick carpet under her feet, not rough concrete. The room was pleasantly warm. It smelled nice.

  Suddenly the sack was pulled off her head. She blinked into the light. Saw Victor standing in front of her, José behind him. Victor gripped her arm roughly, spun her around so that José could cut the ties off her wrists.

  She shook her arms to get the blood flowing as she looked around her. She was in a small home movie theatre. Two rows of comfortable-looking leather chairs were arranged in front of a large screen that filled the whole of the end wall. On it, a movie was paused.

  Chico sat in the middle of the back row, his arm draped along the top of the seat next to him. He was dressed in black pants and a black shirt, the sort of thing a priest would wear. She saw the white square of his roman collar at his neck. That was the first point at which things became a little less strange, a little more scary.

  Because she’d heard the stories, she knew what that meant.

  Chico waved her over, patted the chair next to him. She couldn’t move. Victor put the flat of his palm in the middle of her back, helped her on her way. She dropped into the chair next to Chico, her legs giving way. She pushed herself as far away from him as the chair would allow. It wasn’t nearly far enough. He put his arm around her shoulders as if they were a pair of lovers making out at the movies for real. She flinched as he stretched out his hand and touched the side of her face.

  ‘Do you like movies?’

  She nodded weakly. She’d expected where’s the money? or who helped you?

  ‘Me too. I’ve got an obsession with them.’ He sounded as if he was about to tell her a bedtime story. ‘It goes back to when I was a young man. Maybe I’ll tell you all about it one day. Or I can tell you now, if you like?’

  He waited for her as if he was expecting an answer, raising both eyebrows expectantly. Then he shook his head.

  ‘No, you’re right. Maybe another time. How old are you? Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then you weren’t even born in 1970, were you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘That was the year the movie Soldier Blue came out. Maybe you’ve seen it?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘Good. Because that’s what we’re going to watch tonight.’ He held his arm out towards the paused movie on the screen, then patted her knee. ‘But, there’s a lot of dull, boring stuff at the beginning. That’s why I’ve fast-forwarded to the best part. You’ll like this.’

  He hit play, then immediately paused it again.

  ‘You want some popcorn?’

  Her stomach lurched at the thought. He saw the look on her face.

  ‘No, maybe not. It’s quite bloodthirsty. They called it the most savage film in history. But that was back in the day. The US Cavalry soldiers attack a Cheyenne Indian village. Revenge for something or the other, it doesn’t matter. They do all kinds of dreadful things. Raping and killing. Children getting trampled by the horses. One woman gets her head chopped right off by a soldier’s sword. Then one of the soldiers catches an Indian woman. She’s naked of course—it was the 70’s after all. He wrestles her t
o the ground . . .’ He paused. Swallowed thickly, smiled at her. ‘Then he slices off one of her breasts with a knife.’

  He slashed the air as if cutting off an imaginary breast with a knife.

  ‘Damn.’

  She jerked violently in his embrace at the force of his cursing. Tried to pull herself away from him.

  ‘I’ve gone and spoiled it. I’m so sorry. But let’s watch anyway.’

  He hit play again. Drew her into his body, close enough for her to catch a lingering hint of soap. She could smell herself over the top of it. Knew he could too, the rank odor of her fear.

  ‘Here it comes,’ he whispered.

  She could feel the steady thump of his heart as he held her to him. She tried not to watch but couldn’t stop herself. It was exactly as he’d described. She screwed her eyes shut when they got to the part with the soldier and the knife. She was suddenly aware that he’d hit pause again.

  ‘You didn’t have to shut your eyes. They don’t show you. They leave it to your imagination.’

  Her imagination was running riot. But worse than that was the feeling growing inside her, the feeling that Chico didn’t need to rely on his imagination. Her head snapped around as she heard a noise behind her. Victor and José had moved, were standing directly behind them.

  ‘What did you dream of as a little girl?’ Chico said.

  The question took her by surprise. She didn’t see where it was going. Not until it was too late, anyway.

  ‘You can tell me. Don’t be embarrassed.’

  He waited for her to answer. The first vague idea of what he wanted her to say crept into her mind. And once it was there, there was no stopping it. Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.

  ‘I bet you dreamed of being a movie star, didn’t you?’

  He squeezed her knee. Behind them Victor and José took another step closer. She could feel the heat, the excitement radiating off them.