Daddy's Little Girl

by Ed Gorman

  “I just want everybody here to realize what we’re condoning,” the sheriff said.

  Another harsh laugh from Hoskins. “You’re too easy on us, Sheriff. Look what we’ve condoned in the past.”

  To that, Wayman could say nothing.

  He thought of other nights. Of the victims he’d seen, what they looked like afterward.

  Maybe Hoskins was right.

  Maybe they were so far gone that it no longer mattered what they did or condoned....

  Sheriff Wayman literally cringed.

  It was not easy for a man who’d always thought of himself as moral and upright to have to face the fact that he was neither of those things ... that in his most secret heart he was just as corrupt as the people he castigated as evil.

  The mayor brought the gavel down again.

  “Then let’s vote and get it over with,” he said bitterly.

  The voting began.

  There was little doubt about what the outcome would be.

  The only question was, who was actually going to do the killing after the vote was taken?

  2

  Given the tension of the moment, Sheriff Wayman had no trouble leaving the cabin—nobody seemed to notice him.

  He needed fresh air—or at least that’s what he told himself.

  He stood in the night outside the cabin watching the stars. The clear night reminded him of the days he’d gone fishing for small-mouthed bass in a cabin in Montana. You could see God in the sky on nights like these, at least up in the mountains you could.

  Here, however—

  He glanced back at the cabin and shook his head. He could no longer be a part of all this, even if it meant going to prison or—

  But, now, to talk to Beth Daye, to explain wearily how it had all started, and why it had been done in the first place, and where it had all lead.

  Sheriff Wayman walked over to his car, got in and drove away.

  Simple as that.

  Inside the cabin, several people looked out to see what was going on.

  3

  Laumer knelt next to a gnarled oak twenty feet away from the cabin where the discussion was going on, chuckling to himself. Where the hell was Wayman off to? Chickening out, no doubt.

  His fellow townspeople were a laughing lot, no doubt about that.

  He saw their indecision as typical of what had happened to the whole country.

  Laumer read a lot of history. His favorite men were Stonewall Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. Men long on action and short on talk.

  That was why he was sneering as he overheard the conversations inside.

  Take Hoskins, for example.

  Hoskins talked about what needed to be done, that the Reeves couple needed to be killed.

  But would Hoskins do it himself?

  Of course not.

  Even though it was the necessary and proper thing to do, even though Hoskins had a moral obligation to do it himself, Hoskins would come looking for Laumer and have Laumer do it.

  No, the country had degenerated hopelessly into a bunch of spineless whiners.

  Laumer stood up, taking the gasoline can with him. While he was still upset over Carnes and Beth Daye getting away, he knew he would have another chance at them later tonight.

  For now, he needed to concentrate as hard as possible on the joy at hand.

  He would need to move quickly and silently. All his years of reading books on jungle warfare were about to pay off, he felt.

  He had just started to move toward the cabin when he heard a footstep crackle the leaves to his right.

  Laumer whirled, pulling his bowie knife from his belt, and at the same time fading into the shadows and foliage.

  The visitor was none other than Sheriff Wayman’s incompetent nephew, Deputy Shanks.

  Shanks saw Laumer and the gasoline can he carried and froze.

  “What’re you doing here?” Laumer whispered.

  “Carnes tied me up. I was tailin’ him for the sheriff. I thought I’d better come here and warn everybody.”

  Laumer couldn’t help but laugh.

  Shanks was such a loser.

  But right now, Shanks was also something else— a dangerous man. He would be able to tie what was about to happen to Laumer. Laumer’s plan of total freedom would fail.

  “Come here,” Laumer said sternly.

  Good puppy that he was, Shanks obeyed.

  It was not until he was inches from Laumer that Shanks realized what was going on.

  Laumer slapped a hand over Shanks’s mouth so he could not scream.

  Then he drove the bowie knife into Shanks’s abdomen right up to the hilt.

  4

  Dave Evans rolled to a stop in front of the large iron gates in front of the Foster mansion and cut his headlights.

  Angie was on the other side of the car. Watching him.

  “I’ll bet you’re not really going to do this.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Dave said.

  But for the first time there was some hesitation in his voice.

  Thinking about doing it and actually doing it were two different things.

  Beyond the gates, sheltered by fir trees, lay the dark mansion.

  It reminded Dave of one of those gothic novels his mother used to read, a single light shining through the gloom in the tower room.

  “You’re getting scared, aren’t you?” Angie teased.

  “We’ll see in a minute, won’t we?”

  He tried to sound playful. It wasn’t working.

  “Remember now,” Angie said, “what you have to do is go up to the house and get something from it as proof that you were up there.”

  “Maybe I should steal their TV set,” Dave joked.

  “How are you going to get over the fence?”

  “That’s my business,” Dave said, trying to sound manly and mysterious.

  “You’ve got fifteen minutes to get up and back.”

  “I won’t need that long.”

  He thought of reaching over and trying to take her in his arms, but he was sweaty from anxiety and he didn’t want to let her know that.

  He stared out of the windshield at the silver moonlight that bathed the fir trees and created deep shadows in the surrounding woods.

  Forests were never like they were in the old Disney movies he used to watch.

  Instead of singing animals and happy glades, they were filled with menace, with things that bit you, with quicksand that tried to suck you down, with impenetrable stretches of woods that caused you to get lost.

  Suddenly he felt very young and vulnerable, but he knew better than to come on that way with Angie.

  She was the wrong woman for sympathy.

  But then, as he eyed her, his old resolve returned. He looked at her breasts, at the supple way they tilted up, at the suggestion of nipple pushing against the fabric of her blouse, at the dark crevice between her legs. He could just imagine what she’d taste like, sweet and hot and sticky in his mouth after she’d come.

  The old resolve was back, and so was the familiar erection that ripped at his pants every time he was around Angie.

  He opened the car door.

  That was when the sudden scream, coming from nowhere, caused both Dave and Angie to throw open the doors and flee the car.

  The laughter that came seconds later did not seem to slow them down.

  5

  On the way to the Foster mansion, sticking mostly to alleys until they were out of town, Carnes and Beth Daye saw a phone booth.

  Carnes stopped her.

  “I want to confront Mrs. Foster with every bit of evidence I can,” he said.

  He was convinced now that that night in the park in 1953, Dora Jean Williams had not been menaced by Kenny Foster. Instead, Foster had seen who had accosted her. For that reason, he had been killed by the truck driver, Harcourt.

  “What do you mean?” Beth asked, confused.

  “Maybe we should pay a quick visit to the truck driver. He may be the man we’re lookin
g for. He may be the guy who’s been killing those young girls.”

  He tried not to think of Deirdre.

  “It’s a long shot,” Beth said.

  She looked pale and tired in the drab light of the booth.

  Carnes went through the phone book quickly, “Where’s Amos Street?”

  She shrugged. “Not too far, I guess.”

  “That’s where he’s listed.”

  “You really want to go?” she said wearily.

  “We have to,” he said, “we have to.”

  Fifteen minutes later they stood behind a crumbling garage, staring at a small tract home. The flow of a color TV set played against the front windows.

  Carnes decided it was time to move.

  “Wait here,” he said to Beth.

  “Be careful.”

  He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

  The woman who answered his knock looked as though she had spent many years on the pro wrestling circuit.

  “I need to see your husband,” Carnes said. “I wonder if that would be possible?”

  She laughed a laugh filled with alcohol and cigarettes.

  “I hope to Christ you ain’t a salesman at this time of night. The old man would take a poke at you sure as hell.”

  She stood with her meaty arms on her meaty hips, glaring at him with contempt and amusement.

  The smile vanished quickly.

  “Just what the hell you want, anyway?”

  “To ask him a few questions.”

  “About what?”

  “About Kenny Foster.”

  Something died in her face. Maybe it was self-confidence. Whatever it was, she edged a little more back into the house, deeper into the smells of beer and cooking grease.

  A man appeared behind her.

  He carried a shotgun.

  Aimed straight at Carnes.

  “You get the hell out of here,” the man said, slurring his words. He was a huge man wearing a sleeveless tee-shirt and jeans. His face was a crosshatch of beard stubble and scars. He was missing a front tooth.

  “Are you Mr. Harcourt?”

  “None of your damn business,” the man said, waving the shotgun.

  “I just need to ask you,” Carnes said, knowing he wouldn’t have long, “if you remember anybody else being around the scene of the accident that night? Anybody who might have pushed Kenny into your path?” Carnes was just trying to buy time. He had no idea what he was going to do next. All he knew was that he had to keep Harcourt talking somehow.

  “Didn’t see nobody else,” Harcourt said grudgingly.

  Of course you didn’t, Carnes thought. Because you’re the one who ran over him—because he could identify you as the killer.

  “Don’t talk to him no more. You know what they told you—” the woman said.

  Carnes knew he had only one hope. A foolish, deadly hope, one he never could have considered if he hadn’t been so desperate.

  Lunging under the man’s shotgun, Carnes charged for Harcourt’s legs, the way he would tackle somebody in a football game.

  He upended the man.

  The gun boomed loudly, filling the ceiling with buckshot.

  Harcourt’s wife screamed, flailed a leg out at Carnes, catching him squarely in the mouth.

  Scrambling to his feet, forgetting the pain that shot through him, Carnes moved on Mrs. Harcourt, taking her by the thick wrist and slamming her into the table.

  So much for gentlemanliness.

  Not that, at the moment, he gave a damn.

  Then he turned back to Harcourt himself, who was trying to gather up his shotgun again.

  Carnes kicked him once hard in the groin.

  The man doubled over in pain.

  For good measure, Carnes kicked him in the ribs. It was important in the few minutes left before Mrs. Harcourt summoned the law that Carnes establish himself as the master here.

  He needed answers.

  Quickly.

  He pulled Harcourt upright by the hair, then smashed a hand across the man’s face, bloodying his nose.

  Then he shoved his head back against the door jamb and slammed it hard once against the wood.

  Obviously the much bigger man was amazed that somebody of Carnes’s slight build could accomplish all this.

  He lifted Harcourt’s face up and virtually screamed into it.

  “Who paid you to run over Kenny Foster?”

  “Nobody,” he said.

  “You’re lying.”

  Carnes, enraged, thinking of Deirdre, slammed the man’s head back against the door jamb again.

  “Who paid you?”

  No answer.

  This time before he raised his hands to shove Harcourt’s head into the wood, Harcourt held up his hands.

  “If you don’t want me to hurt you, then answer my questions.”

  “Nobody paid me to kill Kenny Foster.”

  Harcourt averted his eyes for a slight moment, just enough to warn Carnes that the woman was up again.

  She came at Carnes with a long-handled axe.

  He had just time enough to duck before she buried the weapon deep into the door.

  She cursed, spitting, her eyes crazed.

  Carnes’s attention was diverted long enough that he didn’t notice what Harcourt was doing.

  Peripherally, he saw it was time to move again.

  Quickly.

  Harcourt had picked up the shotgun.

  There should be one round left.

  Though Carnes had not gotten the answers he’d wanted, he knew it was past time to leave. Otherwise he would soon be dead.

  He dove through the door, ripping the screening as he went. He tumbled down steps, hurting his back, cracking his skull hard enough to see whorls of light.

  He reached his feet, running.

  Harcourt was running, too.

  “You sonofabitchl” Harcourt screamed, sounding like a hillbilly.

  He raced into the night, shotgun ready.

  Carnes breathless, found Beth in the shadows.

  She started to ask him a question but then she saw Harcourt chasing after them.

  Carnes and Beth vanished into the night, Harcourt still in pursuit.

  He remained in pursuit until his drunkenness caused him to run head on into the tree.

  His scream ignited the darkness like an explosion. What was left of his nose looked like Spam as he rolled around on the ground, holding his face.

  After a minute, from the gloom, Carnes appeared.

  He ran to Harcourt, who was wailing, rocking himself from side to side.

  Carnes leaned in and grabbed the man by the hair.

  “Who hired you to kill Kenny?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re the one who doesn’t understand, friend. I’m going to make you feel a lot worse if you don’t help me.”

  “They paid me to use my truck. To say I was driving it. Even though I wasn’t.”

  “Who?”

  “Laumer.”

  Carnes threw Harcourt back to the ground.

  He found Beth again and they took off running.

  6

  In all, the dousing took five minutes.

  Laumer couldn’t imagine that any Indian scout could have moved more stealthily.

  Then it was ready and he sat a few moments in the protection of the tree and listened to the last of the voting inside.

  The last vote was called.

  Pharmacist Budd Schultz said, “I vote yes.”

  He barely had nerve enough to speak up loudly.

  What brave men, Laumer thought bitterly. They voted for a man’s death, yet they were embarrassed by the vote.

  The mayor looked over at the Reeves couple.

  They had heard the vote.

  They knew what awaited them.

  “Where’s Laumer?” Budd Schultz said.

  “Yes, where is he?” Hoskins asked.


  Now that the matter had been decided, they wanted their executioner present.

  The mayor spoke up.

  “Three decades ago,” he said, “we made a mistake.”

  “Shut up, Bascomb,” Hoskins said.

  “We made a mistake. We should never have agreed to the bargain we made.”

  “If we hadn’t,” Hoskins said, “then we all would have been out of luck. Our children couldn’t have gone to college and there wouldn’t have been any hospital and there wouldn’t have been any municipal swimming pool—there wouldn’t have been any anything.”

  “It’s not going to stop here, you know,” Bascomb said. “We’re going to have to kill others, and someday it’s going to come out, anyway, what we did.”

  “By then we’ll be dead of old age, and it won’t matter,” Schultz said.

  Outside, in the gloom, Laumer smiled.

  If only they knew how little time they had left.

  Minutes.

  There was some sense of regret in him, of course.

  It could fairly be said that a few of these men were his friends.

  At least as Laumer understood friendship.

  He moved again, quickly.

  There was one door out.

  He stripped off his belt and thatched it around the knob, the way you thatched a raft you made in the wilds.

  Nobody could rip it away from the other side.

  Not in time, anyway.

  Then he set the fire.

  A single match did it. A trail of fire like a coral snake wound around the cabin.

  Suddenly, when the fire reached the gasoline can, there was a huge, lurid explosion and the fire caught in earnest, tall flames licking hungrily up the side of the cabin.

  Inside, the way he had known there would be, there were screams, shouts.

  Somebody tried to open the door.

  It didn’t work. Of course.

  Laumer moved back to the trees, to watch, to listen, to wait.

  When the fire hit the roof, the flames turned beautiful, spewing into the darkness like tracers in a combat situation.

  The screams were unbelievable now. And he could hear them kicking at the windows in a last desperate effort for freedom.

  One of them actually managed to wiggle himself halfway through the window.