Badwater

by Clinton McKinzie

  Mungo seemed to want another meatball sub, so we drove to the sandwich shop for dinner. Then back to our surveillance point to eat. As usual, Mungo finished her sandwich before I could take the first bite of mine.

  When I was done with my roast beef on wheat, I pulled on a pair of grease-stained leather gloves. I didn’t think it would matter if I left fingerprints, but I knew the gloves would look intimidating.

  “Sorry, Mungo, but I get to have all the fun tonight. You can watch, though.”

  I got out of the truck and walked down to the parking lot, then to the brothers’ truck. The doors were locked. I jumped into the bed and tried the sliding window. It was locked, too. So maybe they weren’t quite as dumb as they looked. I smacked the edge of the glass hard with the heel of my palm and it cracked open. Maybe not.

  It was a tight squeeze, but a hell of a lot easier than Moriah. I wormed through and crawled into a pile of litter, tools, muscle magazines, and beer cans in the backseat. I took a pen flashlight out of my pocket and began to go through the trash, checking the rear door of the bar every ten seconds.

  I found a lot of interesting stuff. A set of hypodermic needles, several vials of human growth hormone from Mexico, a marijuana pipe, a bag of cheap shake to fill it with, and a beat-up but loaded .45 revolver.

  After a while I got bored. They didn’t seem to be coming out, not even for a toke. I lay down on the floor of the backseat and covered myself with jackets and debris. It seemed like a ridiculous place to do it, but I began the meditation exercises Rebecca had taught me. The purpose wasn’t to relax, or even focus. The purpose was just to empty my mind. Anything to keep from thinking about what I was doing.

  I was totally relaxed and totally remorseless when both front side doors opened. I was my brother’s brother, my grandfather’s grandson. Generations of bad men flowed in my veins, for all I knew.

  The dome light didn’t come on, although I expected it to. I was low enough and covered enough that it wouldn’t have mattered. The brothers staggered up and slumped together on the front bench seat, giggling. They talked as they filled their pipe with the dry weed.

  “Did you see that ho? Man, I think she likes me.”

  “Her boyfriend didn’t, that sawed-off little freak.”

  “Next time he looks at me like that I’m going to knock his teeth down his throat.”

  “Uh-uh, dude. We beat someone’s ass in there, they won’t let us in no more.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Speaking of beating ass, are you keeping your eye out for the motherfucker Burns? I’d love to run across that little spic tonight.”

  “Like Dad says, we got to stay away from him. But I say we kill his dog.”

  That cracked them up.

  In the backseat, I felt a chill. It wasn’t so much the threat to Mungo, but the fact that they weren’t talking about Brandy. I was sure it was them. It had to be them.

  They were debating ways of torturing and killing Mungo, as well as sucking on the glowing pipe, when I sat up.

  “Surprise,” I said.

  Then, as they both jumped and turned to look behind them, I grabbed their heads and smacked them together.

  They rebounded off each other with a solid thunk. I wondered if I’d done it too hard when there was no immediate reaction—the brothers just swayed woozily in their seats for a couple of seconds. I worried I might have knocked them out. Then, belatedly, they both made horrible grimaces and grabbed their heads. Tears began to stream out of their eyes.

  “Oh fuck, man. Oh fuck. My head!”

  Relieved, I lifted up the big .45 I’d confiscated from the glove box and loudly cocked the hammer.

  “Eeny, meany, miney, moe,” I said, pointing the gun at first one and then the other. “Which one of you losers should I shoot first?”

  I chose one—Zach, in the passenger’s seat, with the broken collarbone—and shoved the gun into his neck. I held the other side of his face with my free hand, and felt his body jump when I screwed the cold, wide barrel against warm flesh. I shuddered myself. Someone had once done that to me, and I still remembered the total weakness that had washed over my body at the time.

  “Where is Brandy Walsh?”

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Zach began gasping.

  “We don’t know, man. We don’t know!” his brother chorused.

  “You were in that forest last night. Tell me what happened there.”

  “We already told you! Mom sent us to look for our brothers. They’d gone out riding on their four-wheelers and didn’t come home until late. But we didn’t see them. They came home on their own!”

  I used the butt of the gun to put some pressure on Zach’s broken collarbone. He howled, but didn’t try to pull away.

  “I’m going to pull this trigger in five seconds. Blow your spinal cord right through this window if you don’t tell me. Where is she?”

  A bad odor began to fill the cab. Zach was slumping despite my tight grip. I pressed the barrel into his neck harder to keep him upright.

  Ned was screeching, “We don’t know! We don’t know!” just two feet from my ear.

  They were the wrong guys. The wrong brothers. Suddenly I was sure of it.

  Oops.

  thirty-nine

  It was dark when Bogey returned.

  The late-afternoon storm had put more than an inch of snow on the ground. The sky was clear now, all stars, but the cold hadn’t relented. If anything, it had gotten colder. Brandy had been shivering uncontrollably for more than two hours.

  Even without the crunch of hiking boots on snow, she could hear him coming from a long way off. She could hear him because he was making a lot of noise. He was huffing and puffing, and there was a strange sliding sound, as if he was dragging something heavy.

  She listened for a long time before he poked his face into the doorway. His skin was slick with sweat, his breath blowing steam. He stepped fully into view.

  “Well, Brandy. Have you been reconsidering?”

  She’d been reconsidering since he’d left her two hours earlier. Why not just tell him she’d go along with his plan? Sweet-talk him a little, tell him how brilliant he was, how she understood that things had gotten a little out of control. And that he was right—their client was the most important thing. She’d certainly keep quiet for Jonah’s sake.

  But she couldn’t do it. There was no way she could pull it off. Just seeing the man, the heat filled her eyes. He’d betrayed her, betrayed their client, led two young kids to commit a felony, destroyed her car, kidnapped her, and basically tortured her by chaining her up in these conditions. And he was doing all of it to promote his own celebrity. She knew there was no way she could go along with that. There was no way she could fake it. She was no actress. And Bogey was not an idiot.

  She’d have to ride it out. Like going over the falls on a wave you weren’t ready for. You just hold your breath, take the pounding, and hang on, knowing that sooner or later you’ll pop up out of the giant washing machine and be able to grab a breath.

  “Fuck you,” she mumbled around the gag.

  The man wouldn’t leave her up here forever. She could wait him out. She could last at least another day or two.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m sorrier that you’re backing me into a corner this way.”

  He ducked under the doorway and came inside, his amused eyes studying hers. He crouched down in front of her.

  She wanted to spit in his face. But she didn’t have any saliva, and even if she did, she wouldn’t be able to get it around the gag.

  “Last chance,” he said.

  He took a tape recorder out of his pack and held it up.

  “All you have to say is that it was your idea, that I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Now, I know what you’re thinking—it might not be admissible if you can prove it was made under duress. But it will be your word against mine. And as we’ve discussed, in our trial process the judge must do all he can to favor the defendant. Better to let t
en guilty men go free than to convict one innocent man, right?”

  She raised a foot to try to kick him. But he saw it coming and easily blocked it. She was getting weak, she realized. He’d better give her something to eat and drink or she wouldn’t last the night.

  “I’ve got something for you. Hang on a sec.”

  He ducked back outside. She heard the sliding sound again.

  The back of his Gore-Tex jacket became visible as he pulled something very, very heavy. She couldn’t see what it was.

  “Remember,” he grunted as he tugged, “what you told me after your romantic interlude with Burns? That he lives in the wilderness like a wild animal? That he lives with wolves and bears?”

  She couldn’t imagine why she’d ever told the bastard something so intimate.

  “Well, I’ve arranged for you to meet some of his friends.”

  Then she could see what he was dragging. It was a long, thin leg that he was pulling by the hoof.

  Bogey maneuvered through the doorway again and backed into the cabin, tugging on the hoof. It was the hindquarters of a deer. A dirty, bloody mass of muscle, exposed bone, and fur.

  “Don’t worry about this guy. He’s already dead. It’s the animals his corpse is going to attract that you ought to be worried about.”

  He sat down on part of the collapsed roof and wiped his face with a bandanna.

  “I’m just a lawyer, Brandy. I thought about it, but decided I don’t have the courage to kill you. Not even to shoot you. I didn’t know what I was going to do. And as I was hiking down out of here, I came across this guy. Someone had shot him—poached him, probably—and cut off his head.

  “Now, I don’t know if you know much about bears, but they hibernate all through the winter. About this time of year, they’re desperate to eat anything they can find to put on fat so they can make it through the winter. There’s no guarantee any bears are around here. But I suppose we’ll find out. I figure your chances are pretty good. But if I’m wrong, then as far as you’re concerned, I’m really wrong. Anyway, I’m going to give you until tomorrow to change your mind. You can either change it, or not. Either way, eventually my problems will be solved.”

  She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even look at him. All she could do was stare at the headless carcass in absolute horror.

  “Have a good night, now.”

  forty

  TV lights flickered in an upstairs window. I watched the blues and greens through binoculars from the edge of the forest a few hundred yards from the house. After an hour, the lights went out. And I still didn’t have a plan.

  This time I’d screwed myself. But maybe it was fatal only in a moral sense. I doubted the twins would go to the police. After all, they were both drunk despite their bond conditions, smoking pot, and they’d been humiliated. I didn’t think their machismo would allow them to admit to an outsider—especially not to the local police—what I’d done to them. Especially not in a case that had become so public. No, they’d be recovering with drugs and alcohol. Talking up their courage and what they were going to do to me. And there was no doubt about one thing—they’d be gunning for me even more now. I’d need to really watch my back. I needed to stay away from them.

  But after climbing out of their truck—using the door this time—I’d driven west on the highway then turned off on the county road that led to the Mann ranch. There was nowhere else to go. I’d already crossed over, so I might as well stay the course. I was pretty sure I’d figured it out.

  The meth in Cody’s blood, and the likelihood it had been given to him by his slightly older cousins, evidenced that they weren’t as young as their years. Then there were the four-wheelers I’d seen by the house, the tire tracks I’d seen near the burned-out shell of Brandy’s car, and the fact that the boys had been out late last night.

  It was the brats.

  I’d done the driving equivalent of a tiptoe onto the Manns’ property. Creeping along, with the headlights off. I even paused before turning onto their land to hop out and pull the wires that operated the brake lights.

  There was a full moon, though, and I was nervous. I didn’t know if the older brothers were headed back to the ranch or not. It would be very bad if they came up behind me while I was trying to feel my way to the house. By now they’d be recovering, getting high and getting angry. Really angry. And I’d left the .45 in the backseat after spilling the shells onto the pavement. That might have been a bad move. But I wasn’t a thief. I couldn’t have just stolen it.

  I’d rumbled past the fence and over the cattle guard. Then, instead of taking one of the high roads that led in the general direction of the house, I’d veered left and followed double-tracks leading into the forested valley, and left the Pig in there.

  I tried to formulate a plan, but all I could think about now was Brandy. She was out there, somewhere. If dead, her killer or killers needed to pay. If alive, she’d be praying for someone to do all they could to find her. I would be that one, whether she deserved my help or not. I wasn’t doing it for her, though. I was doing it because, whether or not it was official, I was at heart a cop. And I was fed up with all the bullshit surrounding the case. Thanks to intractable lawyers, the whole thing had snowballed into an avalanche of shit. If there was one thing I was going to do before my badge was finally taken from me, I was going to clean up the mess I’d made when I arrested Jonah.

  The upstairs light went off. The whole house was now dark, and it was only eleven o’clock on a Friday night. Maybe the boys were staying at a friend’s, or maybe they had a generous curfew and someone else’s parents were going to drive them home. I kept on waiting. If worse came to worst, I knew what I’d have to do.

  Break into the house.

  But a tiny beam of light spared me from that ludicrous danger. The light appeared in another upstairs window. I checked it through the binoculars and saw that the window was open and the beam was pointing at the ground. Something was hanging out the window, too, other than a black-clad arm and the flashlight. It was a line of knotted rope.

  These guys thought they were ninjas.

  The big one—Randy—came first. I suspected he weighed as much as his older brothers, although his mass was in the form of fat, not muscle. I hoped he’d secured the rope to something really sturdy. He must have, because he made it down. Once he was safely on the ground, his little brother, Trey, followed. Together they slunk across the lawn and made for the windbreak. As they entered it, both of them flicked on flashlights.

  The brothers reappeared, stealthily pushing their four-wheelers down the hill. I followed.

  They picked up speed going down the hill and jumped into their seats. I had to start jogging to keep up. The Pig was concealed down there, but I knew I would give away too much if I tried following them in the truck. I just hoped they weren’t going far, and that I wouldn’t trip over anything or step in a hole. Thankfully the moon was bright enough that I could see my shadow.

  At the bottom of the hill we entered the trees. The woods were open, interspersed with meadows. Here the brothers both fired their engines and flicked on their headlights. They gunned their engines toward the Shoshone National Forest boundary. I began to run. Mungo loped along easily at my side, but I was breathing hard. More from anxiety that I’d lose them than anything else. At least the noise from their engines made me stop worrying about being detected.

  Fifteen minutes later they crossed the boundary into the national forest. They were a half mile ahead of me now, but not gaining too much ground. I could hear the engines and sometimes see the glow of their headlights in the distant trees. I didn’t need Mungo to do the tracking, because the rough trail was obvious in the moonlight, as was the smell of untreated exhaust. Even when we crossed an old logging road, we didn’t hesitate. We veered left as one. I was running so easily now I almost felt like a stalking wolf myself.

  The road was familiar. After five minutes on it, I realized I’d been down it before. A minute later I remember
ed when. Four months earlier, on the day when it all began. I even remembered where to cut off into the trees. I could hear the river now. I could almost hear the screams that had attracted Mungo that day.

  On the double-track, I hissed for Mungo to slow. She immediately dropped into hunting mode. Lowering herself, putting head, chest, and tail all closer to the ground. I did my best to emulate what a millennium of woodland hunting had taught her ancestors.

  Ahead through the trees I could see some thin lines of light. Up there was the meth lab I’d been looking for at the beginning of the summer. The meth lab—one of so many—I’d stopped bothering to follow up on.

  At the same time I was stalking through the woods, Roberto was faking sleep. As he’d predicted when we’d talked earlier, tonight was the night. He could sense the violent energy all around him, swirling in the air like pheromones at a rave. The entire jail was aware of it. The two deputies kept peeking out of their station and chuckling in low voices. He could see the glint of dark eyes among the three illegals he’d befriended as they, like him, feigned sleep. The gringos were whispering and giggling like little girls at a slumber party.

  Roberto felt like laughing, too. He loved this shit. He couldn’t help it. For the last two days he’d been enduring headaches, the shakes, and cold sweats as the withdrawal symptoms set in. He desperately needed to have some fun.

  It was almost two hours after lights out before anything happened. Everything started then, when Smit slid back his cell door and held up his finger in a shushing motion toward where the gringos had grouped their cots. Roberto could see him quite clearly because of the emergency lights in the hallway beyond the bars and because he was the closest to the gringos. The other illegals all had taken cots as far from the gringos as they could. From his position, Roberto could see the cells, but not the gringos. But he wasn’t disturbed when a barefoot Smit padded silently out of his view to confer with his buddies. He would be able to see when Smit tried to enter Jonah’s cell.