Ed wondered how many of the others knew about Jinx's liking for little girls. Ed knew. Yes, indeed. He knew about Jinx's collection of kiddie porn, the sicko.
He smiled to himself as he entered the city limits from the west. U.S. 54 was called Kellogg in town, and he could take Kellogg all the way and make only one turn to get to the business district, or as Ed liked to call it, the financial district. He liked a city that was easy to navigate. He liked a city with lots of tall, dark parking garages downtown.
But he couldn't do that this time because that's what he'd done last time and his methods had to vary. That was one of the biggest rules: never do the same things twice, at least not in the same year.
He often wondered what methods Darwin Kimmler had used here—before he started paying off the council with profits from his stud farm to get out of the hunt.
Ed didn't think he was in any danger of copying the dear departed Darwin. Darwin had been a strange, brooding fellow with even stranger ideas, always wanting to change things. He'd grown up with everyone else and hadn't said a word about change then. It was when he married that girl he met on navy leave in San Diego that he began to talk about doing things another way. How he had the nerve to bring that woman back with him was something Ed could never get over. True, she hadn't stayed long, but Darwin had still broken the most steadfast rule in Denke: No strangers. Strangers didn't understand.
The rule was broken yet again when Darwin let those stubborn fool Callahans hang around. He'd still be alive if he hadn't. He knew better than to bring more strangers in. He for damn sure did. What happened to him was his fault.
Still, things were changing and there wasn't a thing anyone, not even Jinx Lahr, could do about it. They could squabble and squawk all they wanted, but Ed knew Denke wouldn't remain isolated forever. The events of the last year had shown him that much. And what about that big gray Buick Electra he'd seen at the highway turnoff that morning? The men inside the car sure as hell hadn't looked lost. If they had business in Denke, Ed didn't know about it. Not that he claimed to know everything, like the almighty Jinx Lahr.
He smiled to himself again. What he knew about Jinx, like how he had gotten his name, for instance. Gil Schwarz's daddy raped Erma Lahr while Frank Lahr was out in the fields one day. There was a shortage of females in Denke at the time and Gil's mama had just died, leaving Gil's daddy hard up for a woman. Erma Lahr did everything in the world to get rid of the baby conceived that day—even threw herself down the stairs at the old Denke place—but that baby had a will to be born. When Frank Lahr found out about the rape he called his wife a whore and took to sneaking around with little Coral Nenndorf's mama. Coral's daddy found out and shot Frank Lahr, who lived long enough to go home, get a gun, go back to shoot Coral's daddy, and then finish the last hour of his life by gunning down Gil Schwarz's daddy for starting the whole thing.
On the day of the funerals, guns were outlawed in Denke. And when Erma's baby was finally born, she called the hated little thing Jinx.
Ed's grandma, a gossipy old thing half bald and three quarters deaf had shouted the story to Ed one day after Jinx had beat him up for the umpteenth time. Ed never forgot it. He could still see his grandma's gums glistening as she laughed and drooled in the telling. The popular story was that Gil Schwarz's daddy went crazy in his grief over his wife and shot the others in cold blood. Since every Schwarz from time back had been slightly crazy, everyone who wanted to believe this version went right ahead and did. Thanks to his grandma, Ed knew the truth. And it made him feel better. He had one up on old Jinx.
He still did, though Ed sometimes wondered when he witnessed Jinx's treatment of his half-brother Gil. If Jinx knew Gil was his half-brother then he had to be pretty ashamed of the fact. Gil Schwarz was the craziest Schwarz to come down the pike yet. Big, mean, and crazy. After botching up every hunt, it was decided not to send Gil anymore. And age hadn't calmed him down any. It seemed, in fact, to have made him even meaner. Ed had seen the look in his eyes the night he sloshed goat's blood all over the inside of Myra Callahan's trailer. Old Gil had become frenzied at the sight of that blood and Ed lost more than one drop of pee in his pants when the big ox started waving that blade around.
Crazy. If everyone didn't know it already, they knew it when the silly dimwit punched the hole in the Mustang's radiator and drained the gas. Jinx had taken on a fit about that. How was she going to leave? Gil said he didn't want her to go. He asked if he could have her. Her and the genius boy.
Everyone knew he was brain dead then. There was no way, Jinx told him. Darwin said they were kin to rich folk, and rich folk tended to mind when one of their own came up missing. Hadn't they swarmed the place after Gil bludgeoned that Patrick Callahan fella in the ham? They came and took his body and his car away. Jinx didn't know why Myra and the boy stayed behind, but he finally got it into Gil's thick head that messing with them was too risky. He wanted them to leave so things could get back to normal around Denke. And for screwing this up, by God, Gil could just go on town cleanup duty for the next month.
Gil grumbled but didn’t argue. When Jinx took on a fit no one argued. Know-it-all or not, they needed him. He knew how to keep things running.
Ed sighed with regret at this silent admission and looked around to find he was passing a large shopping center. That would do. He would park, maybe doze a little bit, and wait until dusk to start work.
She was tall even without her heels. Maybe too tall for him, Ed thought. He was parked in front of what looked to be the most expensive place in the mall. He didn't know it from looking at the displays in the windows; he knew it by the cars parked in this particular section of the lot.
Damn, she was tall. He wouldn't be able to handle her if she fought. But the stores in the mall were closing and his choices were dwindling. She would have to do, he decided as she strolled past his car. She had all the essentials: a bulging purse, plenty of jewelry, and she was heading toward a white Mercedes. It wasn't as dark outside as he would've liked, but it was getting darker every minute. He had to act fast; she was opening the car door.
He opened his. "Uh, ma'am?"
She turned all grace and regality. Her eyes narrowed then returned to normal when she saw him: an old man. "Yes?" she said.
"I'm awful sorry to bother you, but, uh, well, I was wonderin' if you might be able to help me. It's kind of embarrassin', really."
She lifted one dark eyebrow. "Car trouble?"
"No, uh, not exactly. See, my wife is still in there somewhere…" He pointed to the mall. "And I been sittin' out here waitin' on her. While I was waitin', silly old fool that I am, I decided to get out and check the spare in my trunk— we're from out of town, see—and I dropped my damn keys in there. I'm farsighted, ma'am, and just this side of blind when it comes dark and I ain't got my glasses. My wife raised hell with me for forgettin' the fool things in the first place and she's just gonna love this—me with no flashlight, no glasses, and no keys. You think you could find my keys for me?"
The woman smiled and closed her car door. Ed looked as grateful as he could while she approached. He walked around to the trunk and showed her that it was open just a crack. She smiled again and stood back as he lifted the lid. "I think I dropped 'em around the spare somewhere. Ain't sure the fool things didn't slide under somethin'."
The woman leaned over the trunk and looked inside. Ed could tell she was relieved that it was clean. No grease or oil rags, just a large plastic sheet and a spare tire.
"Where are your suitcases?" she asked.
"In the back seat, ma'am. Wife is always thinkin' of somethin' she wants out of 'em. You now how it is. A lipstick or a nail file or a paperback she packed. I got tired of stoppin' and gettin' in the trunk, so I just threw 'em in the back."
"That's an idea," the woman said politely. She leaned in farther, and Ed put a hand in the jacket pocket of his lightweight summer suit. A syringe for the women and a syringe then a blade for the men. On his last trip Ed slit his prey's thr
oat and went about his business. When he stopped to dump the body, the man, not dead, had leaped out of the trunk and started running. He hadn't gotten far. A cattle truck ran over him and never even stopped. Ed had gone home and along with the others had himself a good hysterical laugh over the close call. Leave it to Jinx to construe the incident as poor workmanship on Ed's part.
"Up there," he said, squinting and pointing as he spoke to the woman. "Up by the spare there. Is that something shiny?"
Thank God for the big trunks of Pontiac Bonneville’s. Room for two or even three if necessary, providing the third was a small one.
When the upper two thirds of the woman's body were over the trunk, Ed looked around the lighted lot. Seeing no one, he jabbed the needle into her firm, shapely backside. Her head immediately came up, bumped on the trunk lid, and in the dimness Ed caught a glimpse of outrage mingled with fear in her face before she sagged and slumped over.
"Powerful stuff," Ed said to himself as he scooped her legs up and shoved the rest of her inside the trunk. The homemade solution in the syringe never failed to amaze him. He didn't know what it was—though he asked a dozen times he could never seem to remember what all Doc Stade said—but it worked, as Jinx would say, fantastically good.
He hummed as he slid the purse from her arm. He was still humming as he slammed the trunk lid and went to sit behind the wheel. He had seen her slip her keys in the front pocket of the purse before coming to help him. He took them out, removed gloves and a flashlight from his glove compartment then left the Pontiac for a quick search of her car. Disappointed at finding nothing of value, he returned to the Pontiac and went through her purse.
Drugs. The lady had one of those little plastic packets full of white stuff tucked inside a compact.
Shame on you, Ed thought as he pocketed the cocaine. How much did they have now? Jinx said he guessed they had about a kilo, whatever that was. Ed just knew they had a lot, with no way of knowing how to unload the stuff. He supposed that's how they were going to use Vic Kimmler. If Kimmler cooperated.
Her wallet contained a dozen credit cards, but less than eighty dollars in cash. Damn. The livewire he caught last time had been carrying over three hundred. Credit cards were a pain the kazoo.
Oh well, he thought as he closed the purse, the jewelry would be worth plenty. And that reminded him of his next stop. He had time to make it to at least one pawnshop before closing and get rid of the cheaper stuff Fred Bauer had come up with on his last Denver run. In the morning he would take the more expensive pieces to a jeweler and give the old medical-bills-forced-sale story. The gold jewelry on the lady in the back would go to Denver, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, the hated Tulsa, or maybe even Amarillo. Jinx decided who took what where.
And as for the lady in the back herself, well, he'd held off bringing one back with him as long as he dared and this one was a keeper if ever Ed had seen one.
"Darn," he said aloud after checking his watch. He'd better get moving. He wanted to be in a motel and get at least four or five hours sleep before it was time to start back. Damned if farming wasn't a hard life. Ed didn't think anybody understood just how truly hard it was to make a living from the land. True, he had his little barber shop on the side, and the others had their businesses, but it was like pin money and didn't amount to much. Basic costs rose with the national inflation, but there was no personal profit-making allowed on the essentials. Kent Vogel was the only real exception. In addition to staple foods and the post office, his store had nonessential items like tutti-frutti yogurt and movies to rent. Jinx let him charge what he liked for that useless crap, though he never charged as much as he could. Tom Hamm didn't make any money selling gas, but he could charge you if you didn't feel like changing your own oil. The folks in Denke were only charged for services or products that weren't a basic necessity. The town paid for everything else with crop profits.
But the last decade had been tough. So much so that some of the younger men weren't even interested in farming anymore, all except Len. His boy Len loved the land. And Ed loved him. So far he had resisted Jinx's attempts to initiate Len into their supplemental income business. And most of the others with sons had too. Ed believed that each of them, in their hearts, wanted to spare their children. Like Darwin Kimmler, some of the others had let their sons slip away to other places without argument. Fred Bauer's boy had gone off to Washburn University; Tom Hamm's boy was living in New Mexico and painting pictures for art shows.
Jinx spit, spewed, and snorted like a mad bull, but he couldn't make anyone keep their boys in Denke. Most of them, except for maybe the Nenndorf’s, lied to their wives and children about where the extra money came from. Ed did.
It was tradition to maintain the lie—at least until it was time to initiate the oldest son.
But now, well now it was like Ed and the rest of the boys were the last of the old guard, the old way of life. Sure, it was the way they had all been taught, and all their daddies before them, but times were indeed changing. They were all getting old, and even the thrill generated by the hunt had lost its excitement. Ed thought prime-time television was more stimulating.
Internet was probably responsible for a good deal of the changing. Jinx fought to keep it out of Denke for the longest time—said it would ruin their culture—but he wasn't the president or anything so people bought computers anyway.
Ed's wife loved Huffington Post.
Ed liked to watch the news, and from watching it he had come to hold the belief that the Denke way of doing things would die off with the childless Jinx Lahr. Jinx evidently felt the same and was already trying to avoid it by suggesting they recruit young Vic Kimmler. If no one else was going to bring young blood in then Jinx would do it himself. It was his Schwarzness showing, Ed told himself. The madness in Jinx’s blood was taking over with age. And how much longer would he last, five, maybe ten years? It was too long any way Ed looked at it. Jinx was a healthy man, healthier than Ed.
But that was a ray of hope in itself. With any luck, Ed thought, he'd be dead before Jinx could create the next generation of hunters. All he had to do was make sure Len was safely away before he went. Safely away from Denke, from Jinx Lahr and blissfully ignorant of his father's sins.
CHAPTER 15
"Is everything okay, Christa?" Myra asked as she took the still damp clothes from the clothesline and dropped them into the basket Christa held.
Christa looked up at the darkening sky and felt a raindrop plop onto her forehead. "I guess."
"That's not really an answer, is it?"
"I guess not. Daddy's been gone a long time now, hasn't he?"
"Just two hours," Myra said. "He'll be back soon. Are you getting hungry yet?"
"Not really. What are we having?"
"Fish. I went out to the pond last night and managed to catch a few white bass. Cal cleaned them this morning."
"A pond?" Christa said. "Can me and Andy go there?"
"It's too far from the house, Christa. And it's not for swimming or playing. I've seen snakes there."
"How come you went at night?"
"It's cooler. And sometimes the fish bite more at night."
"Did you go by yourself?"
"Yes."
Christa frowned. "Weren't you scared?"
"Yes," Myra admitted. "But I didn't want to wake Cal. He's been working very hard on the cars. It seems Nolan likes to teach rather than do."
"He's letting his hands get better," Christa said.
Myra looked at her, slightly annoyed. Then she sighed. "You're right. I'm being unfair, aren't I?"
Christa gave a little shrug. "He's a real meanie sometimes. I think Uncle Nolan likes to tease girls."
Myra smirked. "No kidding," She glanced up. "Let's get this stuff inside. The heavens are going to open any second now. Is Andy still in the garage?"
"Uh-huh." Christa relinquished the basket. "I'll go get her. She's probably still bugging them to fix her Barbie car."
The moment she stepp
ed away, Christa saw her daddy come around the side of the house. When he left he had been in a bad mood, but now he was smiling a big smile. She rushed over to him and was swept up from the ground. He hugged her and handed her a Baby Ruth candy bar and a package of cherry Kool-Aid. Christa clutched the candy bar and looked at him with delight. "Did you get one for Andy too?" She didn't want to share hers.
"Sure did." He put her down and took another candy bar from his pocket. "Make sure you give it to her."
"I will," Christa promised, and she watched in amazement as her father walked over to Myra and picked her up from the ground in a big hug. Myra squealed out her surprise and Andy came running from the garage, followed by Cal and a deeply frowning Uncle Nolan.
"Guess what?" Vic said to Myra.
She wriggled a little. "I don't have to. It must be good news."
"It is." He kissed Myra on the cheek before putting her down. "I've just had an offer that sounds too good to refuse. The boys in town want to lease my land for farming, buy the hay in the barn at a buck and a quarter a bale, and they want to board a few horses here. But that's not the best part. They also want me to become the new town law official. The pay is token, nothing great, but with the money from the lease and the boarding, we'll be able to stay here and live comfortably. Ed Kisner was out of town, but they assured me that he's been ready to retire from his position for some time now. And they all agreed that it would be nice to have someone with some law enforcement experience for a change. Is that great, or what?"
"Wonderful," Myra said, but Christa didn't think she meant it. Her voice sounded funny.
"Nolan, did you hear all that?" her father asked, and Christa looked to see Uncle Nolan nod. He was still frowning at Myra.
"Well, what do you think? Your old bud's going to be a cop again. In Mayberry, no less."
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