by Joel Goldman
The turnoff onto the gravel road leading to his house was at the top of a rise. He made the turn, his breath ragged. The cool chill from the rain had given way to a sickly sweat and queasy stomach. Combined with the pulsing pain in his chest, it was all he could do to hang on to the wheel. Even had he felt well, it would have been too dark for him to notice the pickup truck backed into the woods on the opposite side of the county road. The three men in the pickup waited until Eldon took off down the gravel road, the driver following him, lights off, relying on Eldon’s taillights to show him the way.
Eldon knew the road, knew each dip, curve, and turn as it wound through the woods, lower and lower toward his house. He’d come home drunk a time or two, navigating the passage without so much as a scratch on the paint, knowing better than to brag about it to his wife, even if she forgave more than most women would. But the paint was taking a beating as he sped past tree limbs and brush, getting too close. The truck careened from one side of the narrow road to the other until he rounded a bend, catching a two-hundred-fifty-pound, eight-point buck jumping across the road in mid-flight.
The collision threw Eldon backward, his head bouncing off the gun rack, his body rebounding against the air bag as it exploded out of the steering wheel. The deer catapulted over the hood and through the windshield, head first, its antlers piercing the air bag, impaling Eldon and pinning him against the seat. The F-150 skidded sideways to a stop, blocking the road. The trailer broke free from the hitch and rolled onto its side, the doors flying open, guns spilling out.
Eldon felt the buck writhing, trying to free itself, its antler digging deeper in his chest, surprised that he could feel anything at all. With his right hand, he groped across the seat, finding the Glock, wrapping his fingers around the grip, wondering if he could raise his hand and pull the trigger and, if he could, whether he should shoot the buck or himself, both of them needing to be put out of their misery.
He heard an engine, blinked when high beams invaded the cab, heard doors open and slam closed, one man saying “Holy shit,” another adding “Motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker.” He turned his head toward them and saw that the engine belonged to a gray Dodge Ram pickup. One of the men was wearing a ball cap pulled low on his face. Another man opened the driver’s door on the F-150, looking at Eldon, then at the deer, raising a handgun. It was the Redhawk. The man stepped back, firing once, a bullet to the deer’s brain. Eldon nodded and closed his eyes for the last time.
Chapter Three
Lucy Trent wanted a short end of ribs with pit beans, crispy fries, and cold beer. I wanted the same thing, the only difference being that I wanted it while sitting in my easy chair in front of my television. It was Sunday in October, a day intended for artery-busting barbeque and football.
We were at LC’s, a dive on Blue Parkway, a road that ran through Kansas City’s east side. The name was a misnomer; the closest parks were the ballparks where the Chiefs and Royals played, a few miles away off of I-70. LC’s sat next to Parkway Auto Brokers. LC ringed his place with wrought-iron security bars, Parkway preferring chain link and razor wire. They knew their neighborhood.
LC was behind the counter, ribbons of heat rolling over him from the open smoker as he checked slabs, briskets, and chickens, wiping sweat from his dark brown forehead. The fifty-inch television hanging from one corner of the ceiling was on the fritz, all snow and no football.
“Quit moping,” Lucy said. “You’ll be home in time for the late-afternoon game and the night game.”
“Yeah, but I’m missing the first game.”
“Who’s playing?”
“Who cares? What matters is that I’m not watching.”
“Poor Jack Davis. He lives a life of unrelenting cruelty.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“If you have to ask, it’s not nearly as much fun.”
“Order up,” LC said.
Lucy brought our food to the table carrying a tray in one hand and a brown bag, grease staining the paper, in the other.
“Simon’s dinner,” she said, setting the bag on an empty chair.
Lucy was an ex-cop, ex-con, and private investigator for Alexander Investigations. Her boyfriend and my best friend, Simon Alexander, was the owner. Simon specialized in cyber crime. Lucy worked the human side, investing her heart in her clients. I was her part-time gun. A convicted felon, she couldn’t possess a firearm, but I could even though I had a movement disorder that made me shake and had forced me to retire after twenty-five years with the FBI. Who said justice was blind?
“Simon gets barbeque and he gets to watch the game?” I asked.
“Yes,” Lucy said, patting me on the head. “And you got barbeque and a trip to the Municipal Farm to visit Jimmy Martin. Aren’t you the lucky man?”
“Luckier than Jimmy. Did you really think he’d tell us where he buried his kids?”
“Evan and Cara are missing. No one says they’re dead.”
“Evan is six and Cara is eight years old, and they’ve been missing for three weeks as of yesterday. How many of those kids come home?”
“Not many. I know. But that doesn’t mean he killed them.”
“Let’s see,” I said, ticking the facts off one by one. “Jimmy and his wife are in the middle of the divorce from hell. She threw him out and had to get an order of protection against him. He can’t see Evan and Cara unless it’s with a court-appointed social worker. The kids disappeared the same day he was arrested for stealing copper wire and tubing from a construction site.”
“I know. I know,” Lucy said. “We’ve been over this. His lawyer asked the judge to release him on his own recognizance since he wasn’t a flight risk because he wanted to be with his kids.”
“And?”
Lucy leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, reciting as if she was being coerced. “And, his wife was in the courtroom and whispered to the prosecutor to ask Jimmy where the kids were, and Jimmy refused to answer, so the judge said no bail and sent him to the Municipal Farm because the county jail was full. He didn’t even take the Fifth. Just acted like he didn’t hear the question.”
“That’s the great thing about the privilege against self-incrimination. You can’t exercise it without everyone thinking you’re a criminal. So, either he killed his kids so his wife couldn’t have them, or he’s torturing her by making her think he knows where they are even though he doesn’t. I don’t know why you were so hot to talk to him. If he won’t tell his wife or the judge what he knows about the kids, assuming he knows anything at all, he sure as hell isn’t going to tell us.”
“I get that, Jack. But it can’t hurt to try. Their mother hasn’t given up hope. That’s why Peggy hired us. So, I’m not giving up either.” Lucy slowly stirred the pool of ketchup on her plate with a cold french fry. “It’s just so hard to believe he’d let her suffer like that, make her wonder what happened.”
“Never underestimate an angry man’s capacity for cruelty. There was a case in Alabama where a father killed his four children, threw them off a bridge, to torture his wife.”
“Which is worse? Mourning their deaths or never knowing if you can?”
I took a deep breath, thinking about my dead children. “I’ve done both and wouldn’t wish the choice on anybody.”
“I know,” she said, taking my hand, “and that’s why I asked you to go with me to see Jimmy Martin. You don’t really miss watching that football game, do you?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Not for a minute. Eat your lunch before it gets cold.”
Chapter Four
Two women and a man were sitting at a corner table near the television. They had more on their plates than ribs. The man was facing us, the women giving us their backs; the other eight tables were empty. They gave off a vibe of bad news getting worse. I couldn’t help picking up on it, blaming too many years spent finding trouble before it started.
Their postures were stiff, their voices rising and falling, the buzz from the tel
evision muffling what they were saying. One thing was clear: They weren’t having a party.
The man’s totem head was square. His eyes were heavy-lidded, the left one lazy. His neck was short and squat, his shoulders rolled with fat. I put him at forty, maybe less. He drummed meaty fingers on the Formica tabletop, his lazy eye drifting my way, catching me watching them, his glare telling me to butt out.
The woman sitting on the end of the table pointed her finger at him. He grabbed her hand, squeezing until the woman sitting next to the wall pulled them apart, the man gritting his teeth, folding his beefy arms over his chest, the first woman slumping, elbows on the table, her face in her hands.
The woman who’d separated them came out of her chair like a charmed snake, the man flattening his hands on the table, staring up at her, his mouth a dumb scar. Purse on her shoulder, she turned and sauntered past our table, crossing the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum floor, chewing her lower lip and glancing at me before disappearing down the narrow hall between the open kitchen and windows blanketed with wrought-iron bars, heading, I guessed, for the bathroom. She was young, early twenties, slender with a ropy muscular build, sporting a lip ring and auburn hair streaked with bright red and cut close to a face midway between pretty and incredible.
“I think she likes you, Jack,” Lucy teased.
“My lucky day.”
“What do you make of them?”
“From the looks of things, I’d say they aren’t having a good day, especially those two,” I said, aiming a rib at the man and woman still at the table.
The man leaned toward the woman, whispering, hunching his shoulders, his arms wide, making a plea, the woman crossing her arms, shaking her head. The man pressed, chopping the air with an open palm. He wasn’t asking; he was telling, his my-way-or-the-highway message plain enough. The woman pulled back, turning away from him and toward us, her eyes widening, her mouth locked in a tight grimace.
“Why’d they have to pick LC’s to have a fight?” Lucy asked. “The guy with the lazy eye makes me nervous. Angry, unhappy people do crazy stuff, and I’ve got a bad feeling about them. Why did you have to leave your gun at home?” she asked.
“You know why. I couldn’t take my gun into the Municipal Farm, and I don’t like leaving it in the car. Besides, you see the sign on LC’s door, the one with the gun inside a red circle and a line drawn through it?”
“You think they look like the kind of people who care about a sign on the door?”
Voices rose from the corner table, drowning out the static from the TV. The woman turned toward the man, reached across the table, and slapped him.
“I won’t have it, Frank. I’d rather lose everything!”
She knocked her chair over as she got up, the man she called Frank matching her move, grabbing her wrist. She gave him the back of her other hand this time, her ring cutting a bloody groove across his cheek.
He let her go, wiped his cheek on his sleeve, and reached inside his coat, pulling a gun. The woman skittered backward, her hands raised. Frank fired once and she crumpled to the floor, faceup and dead, laugh lines and crow’s feet soft and slack, her gray eyes open, locked and puzzled.
Lucy and I froze in our seats. There was nowhere to hide. Frank gazed down at the woman and then pointed his gun at us, his hand wobbling, waiting for something to happen.
“Goddamn it, Frank! What in the hell is wrong with you?”
It was the woman who’d left the table before the shooting started, her voice behind us. I stole a look over my shoulder. She was standing next to LC behind the four-foot-high counter, a drywall pillar obscuring her head and shoulders.
“It wasn’t my fault, Roni,” Frank said, his voice quivering. “She started yelling at me—then she slapped me. Slapped me twice and cut me too.”
“You could have walked away or slapped her back. Why’d you have to shoot Marie? And where in the world did you get a gun?”
He shook his massive head, blinking at the body lying at his feet as if it had fallen out of the sky. “I didn’t mean to. It just happened, that’s all.”
“Is she dead?”
He nudged Marie with his shoe. “I expect so. I shot her pretty good right in the chest.”
“Well, that’s just great, Frank. Really, it is. Just great.”
The big man heaved and rolled his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Roni. I guess we better get out of here.”
“And go where? Look around the room, Frank. There are three other witnesses besides me. How far do you think you’ll get?”
“A lot farther than if we stick around. Now let’s get out of here!”
She stepped away from the pillar into the open, raising a gun at him in a two-fisted grip, her voice strong and steady. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
“Aw, hell, Roni. You’re not gonna shoot me. You never shot anybody in your life.”
“Every girl dreams about her first time, Frank. I just never figured it would be you.”
Frank leveled his gun at her, no wobble in his grip, his lazy eye closed in a squint. Lucy and I were trapped in their cross fire.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” he said. “But I’ll do it if I have to. And them, too,” he added, tilting his head at us. “And the colored guy.”
“That’s a lot of killing to have on your conscience, Frank.”
He swelled up, stuck his chest out, stretching his gun hand toward her. “I can carry the freight.”
“Now, Frank,” she said. “I’m a much better shot than you. I work at it, and I’ve never seen you at the range, not one time. With that lazy eye of yours, you’re just as likely to shoot yourself as anyone else. Only reason you hit Marie was she was standing on top of you.”
“Don’t push me, Roni,” he said, his voice low and hard. “That’s what Marie did, and you see what it bought her.”
“She couldn’t protect herself. I can. Do you have the nerve to pull the trigger a second time when you know I’ll shoot back?”
Frank was sweating, his neck red, his face purpling, the gun now bobbing in his hand as he fought to breathe. “I come this far! Don’t think I won’t do it!”
“All right then,” she said, bending her knees slightly, lining him up in her sight. “You better not miss because I got you dead to rights.”
They stood like that for a few seconds, Lucy and I flipping back and forth between them until Frank relaxed, lowered his gun, and turned sideways and Lucy and I started breathing again. Roni straightened, easing her stance, when Frank jerked his gun hand up and fired, missing her. She ducked and pulled the trigger, hitting him in the thigh. He dropped his gun, clutched his leg, and twisted to the floor.
“You shot me!”
She ran over to him and picked up his gun, sticking both weapons in her belt.
“The moon is pink,” she said.
“I can’t believe you fucking shot me!”
“The moon is pink,” she said, pressing her hands over his wound.
“The moon is pink! What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you weren’t listening to a word I said, you dumb son of a bitch. I told you I would shoot you. I might as well have been telling you the moon was pink for all the good it did.”
“I heard you. I just didn’t believe you.”
“Same difference,” she said.
She looked at me, her brows raised, her mouth open, asking for help without saying it.
“I’ll call 911,” I said.
She nodded. “Appreciate it if you would.”
Lucy knelt next to Marie, checked for a pulse, and shook her head at me. She traded places with Roni alongside Frank, pressing her hands against his wound, stemming the blood flow to a trickle. Frank turned pale and laid his head on the floor.
Roni stood, wiped her bloody hands on her denims, and walked to my table as I closed my phone and stood.
“Help is on the way,” I said. “I’m Jack Davis. Who are you?”
“Veronica Chase.
Everyone calls me Roni.” She reached for a cameo hanging from a gold necklace, rubbing the charm between two fingers, and looked at Marie and Frank, then at the blood on her hands and jeans, her face turning green. “Oh Lord, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
And she was.
Chapter Five
Roni was too weak to protest when I pulled the guns from her belt and helped her to another table. LC swabbed the floor where she had thrown up, handing me a damp dishrag to wipe the blood off her hands. He gave her a Seven Up to calm her stomach and gave me a carryout bag for the guns. His was a Bersa Thunder 380, and hers was a Beretta 8000 9-millimeter, both guns ideal for concealed carry and personal protection.
Her eyes were glassy, her movement slow, shock dulling her senses, staving off the whirlwind of emotions that sweep through people in the aftermath of violence. The coolness with which she’d confronted Frank was a good sign that she would be able to handle the replays that would haunt her sleep in an endless loop. Her color improved from green to pale as she watched Lucy tend to Frank. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow.
“Is he going to die?” she asked.
“Eventually,” Lucy said, “but not today.”
Roni nodded, saying “Bless the day,” and took a sip from her Seven Up, the fog lifting as she focused on me.
The internal pressure that erupts into my shakes and spasms burst loose, fibrillating my torso as my neck arched and stiffened, aiming my chin at the ceiling. I grunted like I’d been kicked in the gut, letting out a long breath when the spasm passed.
“What’s the matter with you?” Roni asked.
“I’ve got a movement disorder.”
She nodded, lips pursed, swirling her drink. “Ever wonder why you?”