THE INNOCENT: A Cowboy Gangster Novel

by CJ Bishop

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Wil laughed. “I have to get going. But be forewarned, now you’ve got me expecting something special. Don’t disappoint me.”

  “That’s the last thing I’d want to do,” Frank smiled, yet quite serious.

  “Not even possible,” Wil assured as he slid in behind the wheel. He looked at Frank and his friend stared back, his heart unveiled in his eyes for the first time in a long time. “See you tonight.”

  •♦•

  The bodies of the children were wrapped in the sheets and transferred to the living room. The men looked distraught as they carried the lost innocent ones into the room and gently laid them side by side on the carpet.

  Sanchez stared down at the children and shook his head. “This is fucked up. It’s like something straight out of a fucking horror movie.”

  “I wish it was just a movie,” Cruz mumbled with a sick knot in his gut. He turned to the cowboy, eyes deadly. “Introduce us to the guests.”

  “This way.” Clint led them back into the main room, instructed the bulk of the men to wait there, then took Cruz, Sanchez, and Cochise with him into the kitchen. The cook had come to and was in great pain. Olson’s leg was bleeding all over the floor and Barron lay still, chest heaving and face pinched as his useless legs stretched out rigidly. Tremors rippled through Barron as his breath wheezed down his throat and his eyes watered and drained down his temples. “Did you miss me, fuckers?” Clint walked over and rested his foot on Barron’s right ankle and slowly pressed down, grinding the sole of his boot against the man’s crushed joint.

  “Fuck!” Barron bucked and flopped half onto his side then back again.

  Clint released the pressure and removed his foot.

  “What the fuck happened to this one?” Cruz approached Vinny and stared at him with curious disgust.

  “Cooking accident,” Clint muttered.

  Cochise kicked the cooking pot out of the way. Vinny writhed and whimpered. He couldn’t see the Egyptian as his eyes were blistered shut and possibly boiled inside his head, but he sensed his nearby presence. Cochise pulled out his large knife and severed the cord tying the cook’s hands to his feet and hauled him up off the floor. He paid no mind to the slop coating the man’s clothes and shoved him toward the door.

  Cruz and Sanchez followed suit and sliced Olson’s cords. The man cried out in pain when they jerked him to his feet and his injured leg buckled. “You think you’re in pain now?” Cruz growled. “You don’t know what pain is.”

  Standing immobile, Clint looked at Barron. The other men paused at the swinging door. Clint picked up one of the extra cords he’d gathered earlier. “You’re the one who dumped the kids in the freezing room to die alone.”

  “Fuck…you.” Spittle sprayed from his lips.

  Clint ignored the man and fashioned a crude noose in the cord. The fucker couldn’t walk into the other room, so Clint would have to improvise.

  “What the fuck?” Barron wrenched away when Clint squatted down and started to slip the noose over his head.

  Clint grabbed a fist of his hair and smacked his head against the floor, knocking him senseless for a moment as he slid the cord around his neck. He stood up and looped the cord over his hand a couple times and nodded at the other men. Olson and Vinny were escorted out of the kitchen. Clint followed them, dragging Barron across the floor by his throat as the man gagged and wheezed and clawed at the cord embedded into his neck flesh.

  •♦•

  Axel had returned to the private waiting room with the girls when detective Jordan showed up. The man appeared genuinely concerned as he asked about Kelly’s little brother and Kelly herself.

  “Can you tell me how you came to be at the orphanage?” Jordan asked her. “Were you and your brother abducted from your family?”

  Kelly sat with her hands in her lap and eyes down. “No,” she whispered. “We…we ran away from our foster family.”

  “Why is that?”

  Kelly blinked as she stared at the floor. “My foster brother molested me. But he was our foster parents’ real son, so they didn’t believe me. After he did it a second time, I took Raimi and ran away.”

  “And how did you end up at the orphanage?”

  “A man found us sleeping on the streets, practically starved to death. He said he knew of a place we could go where we’d be taken care of.” She blinked and hugged herself. “I didn’t have any choice. Raimi needed food and shelter. The guy seemed nice. I-I thought he really wanted to help us.”

  Axel rubbed his damp eyes, his heart hurting at the thought of these kids just looking for someone to care, someone to love them…and then being tricked by the sick bastards out there in the world.

  “He took you to the orphanage?” Jordan presumed. Kelly nodded. The detective continued. “What happened when you arrived at the orphanage?”

  Kelly swallowed and looked up. “They treated us like animals. And they…used us.” Her chin quivered. “Both of us.” She hung her head and choked on a sob. “I should’ve stayed with the foster family. There, Raimi wasn’t being abused that way. Because I wanted to run away, he…” she tightened her arms around her thin waist and cried softly. “He almost died because of me.”

  “No,” Axel cut in. “Not because of you. Because of those sick, cruel men at the orphanage. You and Raimi are the victims. None of this is your fault.”

  Jordan nodded. “He’s right. You can’t blame yourself just because you were trying to get away from a bad situation. The men who hurt you and your brother are the ones at fault.”

  A few minutes later, Axel and the detective walked out into the corridor. Jordan checked his watch. “The kids should be arriving soon.” They took the elevator to the ground floor. The detective had alerted the ER staff of the kids’ impending arrival and what to expect when they got there. “You’ve seen the kids,” Jordan said. “Are they all as emaciated at the young girl upstairs?”

  “Yes,” Axel told him. “Some of them much worse.”

  “My God,” Jordan whispered.

  Axel asked, “Did Clint tell you about the other kids?”

  “Other kids?”

  Axel hesitated. “The ones I found in the backroom.”

  “Backroom…?” a look of dread came over the detective’s face. “No.”

  It made Axel sick to speak of that horror room. “There were bodies,” he murmured. “Maybe five or six, I’m not sure…piled up like…” His throat constricted. “Like bundles of trash.”

  Detective Wil Jordan’s eyes reflected the horror that Axel was feeling. “Bodies of…kids?” A film of tears formed.

  Axel nodded. “When the kids got too sick to…use…they put them in the back room to die.” He ducked his head and pressed his fingers to his eyes. “It was like a fucking freezer back there. The window was left open, probably to keep the bodies from…going bad too quickly. The poor little things…” He raised his head and looked away, blinking rapidly. “They were practically frozen solid.”

  The detective’s tears thickened, and he lost all “professionalism” as he whispered bitterly, “What kind of fucking monsters would do that to children?”

  Axel shook his head. “The kind I want to see wiped off the face of this earth,” he admitted. “I know you’re a cop and you have to do things by the book, but these people have no rights. They lost their rights when they turned on innocent children. The only thing they deserve is death.”

  After a hell of a lot of torture first.

  Jordan didn’t put an argument. He had a young son and Axel knew from having Jules and the twins in his life how one associated their own children with such horrifying events. How could a person not imagine these things from such a perspective? Axel expected Jordan to question him about Clint and whether or not he was taking matters into his own hands concerning the men at the orphanage, but he asked no questions. Maybe as a father, he hoped Clint was dealing with these men in his own special way.

  Axel
and Jordan went out to the ER entrance and waited. Within fifteen minutes, the truck arrived, driven by two of Cruz’s men. Axel hadn’t expected Clint to be with them. The two men exited the truck and walked around to the rear as Axel and the detective approached. They cast Jordan a wary look then unlatched the door and shoved it up.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Jordan breathed when he looked in on the small gathering of children, and helplessly queried again, “Who the hell would do this to them?”

  Axel glanced at the other two men and they moved out of the way as the ER team rushed out and began unloading the kids.

  “Did Clint tell you what happened?” Rodriguez asked. “With the little girl?”

  Axel’s heart shuddered to a halt, quivering in his chest. “What little girl?”

  Rodriguez and Matteo exchanged a heartbreaking look that terrified Axel. “The little girl…who died in his arms.”

  Chapter 26

  The cowboy dropped Barron’s leash and he gasped, clawing the cord loose enough to breathe again. Even then, he could hardly catch his breath for the excruciating pain ripping through his gut as a result of his busted hip. He twisted his head around with effort when he heard Olson exclaim, “What the fuck is that?” Barron didn’t have to search for the ‘what’—he couldn’t miss it. Three large crosses nailed to the wall!

  Oh, fuck…fuck.

  More men were gathered out here in the main room.

  “Did you get the spikes?” the cowboy asked.

  Spikes?

  “Yeah,” one of the men replied. “They’re crudely made but they’ll work.”

  Fuck! If the fucker hadn’t smashed his ankles and hip, Barron would’ve made a run for it, even through all these men. But he wasn’t going anywhere. He was about as fucked as he could get. There was no escaping, not now. He could barely think over the pulsating pain clawing up his legs from his ankles to join the unbearable throbbing in his pelvis. Barron couldn’t feel his feet at all.

  “The rougher they are,” the cowboy said. “The better. They’ll hurt more going through.”

  You’re gonna die—you’re gonna fucking die! Barron didn’t want to die; he had a lot of shit left to do. Fuck, he’d planned to take this place over from Olson and make it a thriving business. Olson didn’t know shit about running this kind of operation. He’d settled for chump change that came with local prostitution and the occasional sale. Barron would’ve taken it to the big times. To look at him, one might think he didn’t have the drive or know-how to get there, but he would have made it.

  Now it’s all shit down the toilet—and so are you.

  Barron stared up at the high ceiling, terrified but somehow remaining calm, he didn’t know how. The pain was so bad that tears leaked from his eyes in a steady stream. Still, he stared at the ceiling. Soon, he would be screaming, he was sure of it. Positive. Yet the calm remained. It wouldn’t last. Oh no, he could bet his shit on that—it wouldn’t last. Maybe this was the proverbial calm before the storm. Panic being his storm in this scenario, palpable just outside the perimeter of his calm. He could tell himself he wouldn’t scream, he wouldn’t beg for his life…but he would. They would hurt him until he did. They wouldn’t let him die until he did. That was their reward—forcing him to scream, cry, and beg…just as the kids had done. And like the kids, Barron would receive no mercy.

  He turned his focus from the ceiling to the cowboy. He wanted to kill the bastard—so fucking bad. One last trophy to take with him to the other side. Barron spied the handgun strapped to the cowboy’s hip. Fuck, he took the whole cowboy image seriously. If he could get his hands on that gun, just for a moment…

  •♦•

  “Hey…asshole…”

  Clint looked around.

  “Yeah, you…fucker…” Barron wheezed, his face a bruised, ugly mess and his eyes bloodshot and leaking. “You assholes gonna stand around all day yanking each other’s dicks or we gonna get this show on the road?”

  “Some people don’t know when to shut their cake hole, do they?” Cruz murmured.

  Clint walked over and stood above him. “You in that much of a hurry to die, motherfucker?”

  “Why not?” Barron rasped. “Might as well get it over with.”

  A low chuckle rumbled Clint’s chest. Get it over with? He squatted down and looked the man dead in the eye. “Fucker, it ain’t gonna be over with for quite a while. This little twinge of pain you’re experiencing right now? It’s nothing compared to what you’re about to experience.”

  Barron stared back at him. “I might go to hell today…” his words were thick in his throat, laboring to crawl forth. “But I’m gonna take you with me.” He sprang to life suddenly and his hand shot out, grabbing Clint’s handgun.

  Clint snapped his wrist before he ever got the gun free of its holster and smashed the man’s head against his knee, dropping him back to the floor in a limp, quivering heap. Clint stood. “I’ll go to hell one day,” he muttered. “But not today, and I sure as fuck ain’t making the trip with a piece of shit like you.”

  “Shit,” Cruz snorted. “Did he really think he was going to take out the infamous cowboy that easy?”

  With a stiff chuff, Clint instructed the men to set up three chairs. They scattered out and located some metal folding chairs and placed them side by side in the middle of the floor, about two feet apart from each other.

  “Sit them down.”

  The guests were dumped into the chairs. Barron gagged on his pain as his broken hip didn’t appreciate the new position. His feet folded inward, limp and useless. Vinny the cook wasn’t entirely coherent, but once they got underway, he would be brought to attention.

  Sanchez looked closer at the cook and indicated his missing ear. “This your handiwork?” he asked Clint.

  Clint nodded.

  Stepping back, Sanchez asked, “What else do we get to…remove?”

  “We’ll begin with the obvious,” Clint said. “Any man who rapes a child gets sent to hell dickless. Can’t use it properly…it comes off.” He looked at Cochise and the large Egyptian slid his knife from its sheath.

  “No…” Olson pressed back against the chair, his working foot pushing against the floor as he tried to shove himself and the chair away from the men.

  Barron slumped in his chair, his injured body not allowing him to sit upright. He clung precariously to his bravado. “You’re…you’re fucking bluffing. Don’t listen to them, Olson…they’re just trying to freak us out.”

  Olson didn’t look at all convinced that it was a bluff. Only a fucking fool would believe that at this point.

  Withdrawing his own knife, Clint sidled up to Barron’s chair. “After busting you up…” He ran his thumb along the edge of the blade. “…and boiling Vinny’s face, taking off his ear, and shooting your buddy here in the leg…you really think I won’t cut off your cocks?” He went to his heels and tapped the tip of the blade on Barron’s knee. “You rape kids. You kill kids.” He dragged the sharp tip along Barron’s inner thigh, scratching the fabric of his pants. The man went rigid when the knife ventured into his crotch and prodded his goods. “I happen to believe that children are special gifts from God. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re precious in his sight as well.” He added pressure and the very tip of the blade punctured the material.

  “Don’t…” Barron’s bravado evaporated the instant cold steel nudge his raw flesh.

  “Those children you threw away and left for dead…” Clint’s jaw tightened, the muscles in his face straining. “They’re up there right now, at God’s side, and they have judged you and found you guilty.” He thrust the knife hard, stabbing the man’s genitals. Barron screamed as blood instantly soaked his thighs, saturating his pants. He toppled off the chair, convulsing and wailing, smearing blood all over the cold tiles. Clint stood up and put the knife away. He nodded at a couple of the men. “Put him back in his chair.”

  Foamy spit bubbled over Barron’s lips and his eyes rolled back as the men reseated him in th
e folding chair. Olson stared at his friend in horror.

  “What…happened?” Vinny slurred and tried to open his blistered eyelids.

  “Don’t worry, fucker,” Cochise told the cook. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  •♦•

  Axel was numb. For a moment, his mind shut down and he couldn’t think as he stood deathly still before Rodriguez.

  “Axel?”

  Swallowing with effort, Axel blinked, focused, and looked at the young Spanish man. “How was he when you got there?”

  Rodriguez hesitated.

  “What?”

  “He’d nailed full-sized crosses on the wall and…” another anxious pause. “…and there were three…crowns…made out of barbed-wire and nails.”

  Axel stared at him. “What…”

  “He asked us to find him nine large spikes.” Rodriguez kept his voice low as the detective stood nearby while the kids were being unloaded from the truck. “I think…I think he’s going to crucify them. Like in the Bible.”

  Axel frowned, uneasy. “Has he ever done anything like that before? I know he tortures people, but…has he ever crucified anyone?”

  “I don’t know,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t think so. Even Cochise looked surprised.”

  Axel didn’t know if he should be worried about this or not. When people started implementing religion into torture…that was usually a bad sign. Of course, most of society would think the torture alone was a bad sign. Understandable. But Axel knew Clint and understood why he did what he did. Until now. What was the significance? Why not just kill these men in the typical torturous way? Why bring a religious aspect into it?

  “Do you think I should be worried?” Axel voiced his fears to Rodriguez.

  Matteo joined them. “I don’t think you have cause for alarm. To Clint, children are angels of God. I think the horror of what he’s gone through has reached to the depths of his soul. It kind of makes sense to me that he would do something like this in this specific situation.”