The Judas Murders

by Ken Oder

  Fighting through paralytic stiffness and fearing he might pass out again, he draped his coat over his bare shoulders. Breathe, he told himself. Stay awake. You’ve got to get away from here. He took deep breaths. In and out. In and out. The dizziness passed slowly.

  He looked out the windshield. Smoky clouds shrouded a yellow moon hanging low over a line of scrub pines. The truck was stranded in waist-high brush. Behind him Ballard’s house loomed over the clearing like a hulking ghost, dark and quiet.

  He started the truck, shifted into reverse, and backed out slowly. Five feet, ten, fifteen. The truck pulled free of the growth and regained the clearing. He flicked on the headlights. Cones of yellow flashed on the trench his truck had cut through the brush and bounced off the scrub pines beyond it. He shifted into gear, struggled to turn the sluggish steering wheel with one hand, and drove around the edge of the clearing to find the head of the driveway that ran back to Whiskey Road. His headlights washed over the wall of brush, lit up the dead mulberry tree, and fell on the house.

  He braked to a stop. Ballard lay on his side on the stoop. Ray scanned the clearing. The dog was nowhere to be seen.

  Fifteen feet this side of the stoop, the barrel of Ray’s Colt Python shone in the headlights. He looked all around again. No sign of Buck, but the clouds over the moon had darkened the night. The dog could be in the shadows or under the house.

  Ray looked at the gun and licked his lips. He eased the truck forward and stopped a few feet from it. Crusted blood stained Ballard’s thigh and the shoulder and chest of his shirt. The end of Buck’s chain rested beside his outstretched hand.

  Ray shucked off his coat. He reached across his body with his right hand and opened the door. He eased out one leg, keeping his eyes on the dark space under the house. He stepped off the running board and held on to the door to steady himself. When the dizziness passed, he stood still for a full minute, his knees trembling while he looked under the house and all around the clearing. No Buck.

  He staggered to the front of the truck, sliding his hand along the fender for balance. He stepped over to his gun, swayed, leaned over, propped his right hand on his knee, and steadied himself. He took a last look around, then grabbed the gun, straightened up, and gazed at Ballard’s corpse. Make sure of the kill. Walk over to him, put the gun to his head, pull the trigger.

  He couldn’t do it. Ray was so weak he couldn’t walk the fifteen feet to the stoop and back without support. The hell with it. He had his gun. The county wouldn’t find his fingerprints. That was the important thing.

  He shuffled back to the truck, climbed inside, and sat behind the wheel, breathing hard. His arm felt like someone had ravaged it with a chainsaw. He came perilously close to passing out again, but a full minute of heavy breathing cleared his mind.

  He knew he couldn’t survive without medical attention. He’d lost a lot of blood and his arm was badly infected, but he couldn’t risk going to a doctor for fear it would be reported to the sheriff’s office.

  He leaned back in the seat and wept softly. The project was almost over. The old lady, Leland, and Betty Lou were dead. He’d killed Ballard. Only one hit left to go, and he couldn’t finish. He leaned his head against the back of the cab and rubbed his temples.

  An idea fought to free itself from the shackles of his pain. Something about Betty Lou and the old lady. Betty Lou had come to the old lady’s shack after Ray killed her, and the drunk had followed her. Betty Lou and the drunk. Ray knitted his brow and peered into the night, struggling to push an elusive idea out into the open.

  And then it came to him. He cursed himself for not having realized it from the outset. The drunk was the answer.

  Drive to the rental house to get the drug, he told himself. Go to the drunk’s house. Force him to treat the wound.

  Ray sighed heavily. The effort would require all his strength and then some, but he would die otherwise.

  He took several deep breaths, shifted the truck into gear, and drove it out to Whiskey Road.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Toby’s Discovery

  March 3, 1967, Friday night

  Deputy Toby Vess was working the swing shift when dispatch reported gunfire at 42 Horsehead Road in Tinker’s Mill, a rural town in northeast Selk County, a little after ten p.m. He knew the address all too well: Grover Sipe’s house. Toby had responded to calls there four times in the last six months. In each case, Grover had drunk himself senseless and beat his wife while his two little boys cowered in the corner. The violence escalated with each incident, but Lurleen refused to press charges.

  Toby told dispatch to notify the rescue squad and sped to Tinker’s Mill, lights and sirens on. Five minutes later he slid to a stop in front of Grover’s squalid yellow shack. The storm door had been ripped off its hinges and lay shattered in the yard beside the concrete stoop. The main door stood wide open. Toby hopped up on the stoop and entered the house, then stopped cold.

  Grover and Lurleen sat at the kitchen table under a lightbulb dangling by a frayed cord. A sheen of sweat glistened on Grover’s bald head and naked chest and belly. Lurleen’s eyes were wide and fearful, one of them blackened and swollen. Her dress was on the floor and the broken strap of her slip exposed one sagging breast. Grover was gripping the trigger guard of a shotgun with one hand and pressing the mouth of the barrel up tight against Lurleen’s chin. His other arm rested casually on the table in a pool of blood.

  Tommy and Billy, eight and ten years old, short and chubby like their mom and dad, crouched in a corner behind a chair.

  “Go ahead,” Lurleen said through clenched jaws. “Pull the goddamned trigger! That’s what you want, ain’t it?” She sobbed. “Go ahead and get it over with.”

  Grover thrust the barrel against her chin, forcing her head against the wall with a thump. “You think I won’t do it? You think I won’t?”

  “You won’t,” Toby said, his service revolver drawn and pointed at Grover.

  When Grover turned to look at Toby, the mouth of the shotgun’s barrel slid off Lurleen’s chin. Toby crossed the room in three quick strides, jerked the shotgun out of Grover’s hand, and hit him over the head with his service revolver.

  Grover’s head hit the table and bounced up off of it. He sat up straight, looking confused, and grabbed his round pate with both hands. Blood slid through his fingers. He held his hands up in front of him incredulously. He scowled at Toby. “Look what you done. You had no call to hit me. It was just the liquor talkin.”

  Toby threw the shotgun out the front door. “Get away from him,” Toby said to Lurleen.

  She lifted the flap of her slip to cover her breast and edged over to the corner with the boys. They came out from behind the chair and grabbed her around the waist, one on each side.

  “Stand up,” Toby said to Grover. “Hands against the wall. Feet spread apart.”

  Grover looked stunned. “What the hell you doin?”

  Toby rounded the table, grabbed Grover’s arm, jerked him up to a standing position, and slammed his face into the wall. “Hands against the wall!”

  Grover did as he was told and Toby frisked his jeans. No weapon. Blood dripped from a deep long slit on the underside of Grover’s meaty forearm.

  “How’d you get cut?” Toby said.

  “He drove his fist through the storm door,” Lurleen said. “Showin off what a big man he is.”

  “It ain’t nothin,” Grover said.

  A siren wailed and flashing lights splashed through the open door. Two EMTs rushed into the room, Larry Graybill and a young man Toby didn’t know. Larry was tall and thin with a long face cursed with a perpetual expression of perplexity, as though he couldn’t quite believe what was happening, but he’d proved to Toby long ago he knew his business. In his fifties with thirty years on the rescue squad, he was as good as they got.

  Toby stepped back and Larry took charge. He sterilized and bandaged Grover’s arm and head and checked his vitals while the young EMT, a baby-faced boy with sa
ndy hair that fell to his shoulders, stood by idly, watching with saucer-wide eyes, apparently a new trainee.

  “Is he all right?” Toby asked.

  “He’s lucky. If the wound to his arm was a half inch to the right, he would have bled out before he got to the table.”

  “You need to hospitalize him?”

  “No. He’ll be fine if he doesn’t pick another fight with a storm door.”

  Larry went over to Lurleen and the boys to doctor Lurleen’s eye. When he pressed her ribs, she cried out. He lifted her slip to expose a purple bruise the size of a grapefruit under her breast. He probed it gingerly. She flinched with each touch. “You’ve got a broken rib.” Larry shook his head and looked at Toby. “You remember the Jayhews?”

  “I can’t forget them.”

  “Me either.”

  “Who are the Jayhews?” the trainee asked.

  “Some people we knew,” Larry said. “Long time ago.”

  Toby looked at Lurleen, whimpering, holding her slip over her breast, her black eye swelled shut, the boys clinging to her with blank faces. He turned to Grover, sitting at the table, looking utterly indifferent about the harm he’d inflicted on his family.

  “Stand up,” Toby said. “Face the wall.”

  “Why? You already ran your queer-bait hands all over me.”

  “Stand up!”

  Grover scowled and stood slowly.

  Toby unhitched handcuffs from his belt and pulled Grover’s hands behind him.

  “What the hell?” Grover said.

  “You’re under arrest.”

  “Wait a damn—”

  “Don’t lock him up,” Lurleen cried out. “He didn’t mean no harm.”

  Toby recited Grover’s rights to him as he pulled him toward the door.

  “You can’t do this!” Grover yelled. “She don’t do what I tell her. I had to teach her a lesson. It’s my right. She’s my wife, goddamn it.”

  “It’s true!” Lurleen said. “It’s my fault! I don’t mind him like he wants me to.” She ran over to Toby and grabbed him by the arm. “Please don’t take him to jail.”

  Toby pulled her hand away.

  “Please,” Lurleen begged.

  “She won’t go against me in court, Vess,” Grover said. “You know that. You got no case.”

  “He’s right,” Lurleen said. “I won’t go against him.”

  “You won’t have to go against him,” Toby said. “I will. I saw him put the gun to your head.”

  Toby dragged Grover out to his truck and shoved him into the cab.

  Larry came out to Toby’s truck as Toby climbed in. “I didn’t see what he did, but I can testify about Lurleen’s injuries. I’ll back you in court any way I can.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  As Toby pulled out of the yard, Lurleen stood at the front door with the boys still clinging to her, all three sobbing hysterically. Larry took her by the arm and led her and the boys toward the rescue squad van, the rookie EMT trailing along behind.

  “You know I’ll beat your bullshit charges,” Grover said.

  “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  It took Toby two hours to drive to Jeetersburg, book Grover, and lock him down in the county jail. Then he called Ramona Beasley of Social Services on her home number, waking her from a sound sleep, and told her about Grover’s assault. “Larry took Lurleen and the boys to Dolley Madison. They’re in a bad way, and Grover won’t be able to make bail so he won’t be bringing home a paycheck for a good while.”

  “I’m on it. I’ll head over there now.”

  * * *

  As Toby drove north out of Jeetersburg, smoky clouds floated across a yellow moon, casting the pastureland along the road in a gray hue.

  Two miles south of Fox Run, he slowed down at the site of the old Jayhew house and looked it over. Nothing remained but a stone chimney standing sentry over a pile of charred planks. Rumor had it that Cale Jayhew, the grandpappy of the family, burned the place down.

  Toby sped up and drove toward Fox Run, thinking about Cotton and Linda Jayhew, a short, skinny young man and a waifish girl with big round eyes, and their two little girls. Toby had responded to calls from dispatch about violence at the Jayhew place seven times over a six-month stretch. Each time, Cotton was drunk on moonshine. Linda’s injuries were minor at first, a purple spot under her eye, a split lip, a bruised thigh. Each time she claimed she injured herself. “I fell and hit my head.” “I ran into the door.” “I tripped on the steps.”

  The injuries grew worse, a broken nose, a nasty gash above her ear, a broken arm. Toby pressed her about Cotton. “He didn’t do nothin. I’m clumsy. It’s been my way since I was a little girl. Always gettin hurt cause I ain’t careful.” Toby knew better. Everyone knew better.

  Larry Graybill led the rescue team that responded to the last three calls. “You ought to arrest the sumbitch.”

  “She claims he’s not responsible. I don’t have probable cause.”

  The last call came on a Saturday night. An old couple down the road had heard gunfire. Toby sped to the Jayhews’ place with a sense of foreboding. No previous report had involved gunfire.

  He parked on the shoulder and knocked on the door. No one answered, but the lights were on and the house was eerily quiet. The door was unlocked, so he went inside.

  The little girls and Linda were facedown on the floor, each shot in the back of the head. Cotton sat in a recliner, his head blown off, a shotgun lying at an angle across his lap, the finger of his right hand still lodged in the trigger guard.

  That was fifteen years ago.

  Toby pulled off the road and cut the engine. He sat in the dark for a good while. He finally took off his hat and ran his hand over his close-cropped gray hair. Cale Jayhew was right to burn the place down. Toby would have done the same. He took a deep breath, started the truck, and drove on.

  * * *

  In Fox Run he turned left at Kirby’s Store and headed into Saddleback Cove toward his house. Four miles down Whiskey Road, he rounded a sharp turn and slammed on the brakes, wrestling his truck to a stop ten feet from a dog that was frozen in the headlights, its eyes glowing yellow. When it sprinted off the road, Toby got a side view of its brindle coat, thick chest, and sinewy legs. Walt Ballard’s pit bull, the product of a dogfighting ring he busted, his only worthwhile achievement as a deputy since Reba Emley left him.

  Toby sat in the truck staring at Walt’s driveway. It was strange that the dog was running loose. Walt kept him on a chain because of his violent tendencies; the dog hated most every living creature but Walt.

  Toby’s gut told him something was amiss. He turned onto the dirt road and jostled over ruts through dense brush to emerge in Walt’s clearing. He swung the truck around to point its headlights at the house.

  Walt lay on his side on the front stoop, covered in blood, not moving. Toby radioed dispatch, jumped out of the truck, and ran to the stoop. Walt lay in a large circle of blood, his clothes soaked with it. Toby knelt and put his hand to his throat. There was a faint pulse. He rolled Walt over on his back and saw that the bleeding came from gunshot wounds to his shoulder and thigh. The shoulder had stopped bleeding on its own. Walt’s belt cinched high on his leg had staunched a heavier flow of blood from his thigh.

  A high-pitched whine came from the edge of the clearing. Toby looked up. The pit bull stood fifty feet away, staring at him. Toby drew his gun. The dog walked slowly toward him. Toby cocked the hammer. “Get back!”

  The dog whined and crept forward. Toby stepped backward off the stoop, holding his aim. The pit bull stepped up on the stoop and licked Walt’s face, then lay down and rested his muzzle on Walt’s shoulder. A dark auburn stripe of dried blood ran down the middle of his huge head.

  Walt made a choking sound. The pit bull jumped up and barked. Toby thrust his gun at the dog. Walt heaved a deep breath and blew it out. Then he went still.

  “Get away from here!” Toby shouted.

  The
pit bull jumped off the stoop and crawled under the house.

  Toby stepped up on the stoop and knelt beside Walt again. He wasn’t breathing. Toby put his hand to Walt’s throat. Still a faint beat there.

  Toby set his gun on the stoop and opened Walt’s mouth. His breathing passage was clear. He lifted Walt’s chin to tilt his head back, pinched his nose, placed his mouth over Walt’s mouth, and blew breath into his lungs. Walt’s chest rose. Toby sucked in air and blew a second breath into Walt. He raised up and crossed the palms of his hands on Walt’s chest. He pushed down, counting the compressions. “One, two, three, four.” He picked up the pace, aiming for two compressions per second.

  At thirty compressions, Toby stopped and blew two more breaths into Walt’s mouth. He returned to the chest. Thirty compressions. Two more breaths. Again.

  On the fourth or fifth cycle, the pit bull crawled out from under the house. Toby thought about grabbing his gun, but he didn’t want to break the rhythm of the compressions unless the dog charged. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.

  The dog sat on its haunches and stared at Toby.

  At the count of thirty, Toby put his mouth over Walt’s mouth and blew. Once. Twice. Then back to the chest. One, two, three, four. The pit bull sat still and watched.

  Toby forgot about the dog. Thirty and two. Again. Thirty and two. Again. And again. And again. And again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Boyfriend

  March 4, 1967, Saturday morning

  Walt Ballard was in surgery when Cole arrived at Dolley Madison at four a.m. A short, pudgy emergency room doctor with a sallow face pitted with acne scars said Walt had lost almost 40% of his blood volume and had gone into hypovolemic shock. If he survived, he would probably lose his leg.