The Southern Watch Series, Books 1-3: Called, Depths and Corrupted

by Robert J. Crane

  “I guess they stitched up all they could stitch up,” Reeve said. “They did a …” Even without turning, Arch could see Reeve’s brow crumple as he tried to recall, “some sort of … well, they pumped fluid into her belly, and it came out not bloody, which is good. So now she’s just got a lot of exterior wounds and some broken bones and a head injury to beat the band.” The sheriff made a slight slurping noise as he licked his lips. “Even without the threat of internal injuries, I guess she’s running against the odds here.”

  Arch felt his eyes inadvertently creep toward the IV bag he’d just hung. “Doesn’t sound too promising.”

  “No,” Reeve said, “it doesn’t.”

  Arch waited for an accusation, for elaboration, for anything. It did not come. He shuffled away from the bathroom door, heading for the other side of Erin’s hospital bed. The main lights were off, only a dim incandescent overhead bulb was shining on the scene. He could see the shadows on her face, on Reeve’s face, from the solitary light. The sheriff’s brow, in particular, still looked lined like something had dug trenches across it, shadowed in a darkness so deep he could not see how far down they went. “About what happened—”

  “You don’t want to start swimming across that particular river at the moment, Arch,” the sheriff said, clipping him off.

  Arch waited, mouth slightly agape, his bottom teeth testing his lip. He fought off the urge to bite in nervousness. “Pardon me?”

  Reeve’s eyes lifted off the near-lifeless body on the bed and searched him. “Rule number one when you’re in a deep hole is stop digging your ass deeper and put down the shovel.”

  Arch swallowed, he hoped unnoticeably. “I don’t understand.”

  “You sure you want to take that tack?” Reeve asked. He still held himself amazingly still, almost inscrutable.

  “What tack?” Arch asked, holding back that ounce of defiance he felt surging through him at the challenge.

  “All right, then,” Reeve said, lowering his eyes and nodding like it was some inevitability. “If that’s the way you want to play it.”

  “Play what?” Arch felt himself grow warmer. The shadows in the room grew longer with every lie, creeping around him as the room seemed to contract in his view.

  “I put a lot of faith in you, Arch,” Reeve said, averting his gaze and letting it fall on the TV hanging off the wall at the foot of the bed. The screen was black.

  “I know that, sir.”

  “I’ve known you for a long time, son,” Reeve said, laying it on thick with the “son,” even though he wasn’t looking at Arch. “So here’s what I see. I’ve got a deputy I’ve backed to the hilt, one I thought was an honest man. Now every other thing he tells me is a lie.” Reeve’s eyes flashed and they found Arch, coming off the darkened TV screen like a boxer coming out of the corner at the dinging of the bell. “Don’t even try and argue it. You’re an awful goddamned liar, though I think with the practice you’re getting, you might just be proficient at it before too much longer.”

  “What exactly are you accusing me of?” Arch heard his own voice, level steady, dead inside.

  “I’m not gonna peel this particular onion just yet,” Reeve went on. “But I will tell you this—if she dies, I will dig so deep into this incident that you won’t be able to hide in China. I will come after you, Arch. With everything I have.” Reeve still stared at him, combative. “You better pray she lives.”

  “I already was,” Arch said, too stunned to be defiant. He felt the burgeoning desire to club the man, to hit him right in the jaw solidly, to let the wrath take over. To throw it in his face what was being done, what he’d done. But he held it all back, and heard his voice get quieter. “I don’t know what you think I did—”

  “I don’t know what you did or didn’t do,” Reeve said, and his eyes were once more nowhere near Arch. “Maybe this time it is exactly as you say. Maybe federal agents did drag you two into something deep, something that ended with my car and my deputy flying over a mountain cliff. If so, then this is incredibly tragic timing.” His eyes flashed. “But that don’t take away from the lies, Arch. A whole damned mountain of them by themselves, one you could just about fall down yourself at this point.”

  Arch just stared at him, a ringing in his ears telling him that it was time to flee, time to run, not time to fight. He put a foot ahead of the other and walked away from the bed with its occupant, scarcely paying attention to that slow beeping, that sound of the respirator wheezing its breaths into Erin Harris.

  “I’ve seen good cops go corrupt before, Arch,” Reeve said as Arch was nearly out the door. The fluorescent hallway was like an oasis of light, an escape from the shrouding, crippling darkness he felt was surrounding him. “You know what another word for corruption is?” Arch didn’t turn, but he heard the hard edge in Reeve’s voice. “Rot. And there’s a hell of a lot of rotten things going on Midian lately.”

  Arch did not look back. He shuffled into the light of the hallway, out of the dooming darkness, and felt no better as he made his way slowly back to his car.

  ***

  They stopped at a waffle place south of Chattanooga near daybreak. Near as Hendricks could tell, the main draw was that it was open twenty-four hours a day. The aged, yellow tables might have started out as white or they might have been meant to match the sign, but either way they were a product of an older restaurant, designed long ago and probably in need of an update.

  Hendricks shuffled in behind Duncan, who had remained pretty well mum about any need for food. Hendricks reckoned he didn’t have a need for it, but that didn’t matter. Hendricks needed a bite, and now, so when Alison had suggested the waffle place, he’d jumped. It smelled pretty decent in the joint, too, that aroma of something good cooking.

  Alison slid in to the middle of her side of the booth and Duncan moved all the way over on his, leaving Hendricks with the conclusion he was going to be sitting next to the demon. When he brought it up with a quizzical look, Alison just shrugged. “I’m married,” she said, like it explained everything.

  “I went to a whorehouse with you,” Hendricks said with a certain smugness. Of course the waitress showed up right then.

  She got a load of his cowboy hat and the drover coat, taking it all in with a once-over before moving on to Duncan. The demon had switched it up, and his suit looked purple in the restaurant’s light. Hendricks felt himself hold his breath, then swept his gaze across to Alison, who was in jeans with a tight-fitting t-shirt with the name of—presumably—a band called Naked Prozac. Hendricks wondered, just idly, if that was in fact a band, and decided that if not, then the meaning was best left very, very unclear.

  “So,” the waitress said in an drawl, “is the circus in town?” She said it with great amusement, as though it were not an all-night restaurant at four in the goddamned morning and weird shit didn’t happen all the time. She had the look of a woman who had been on her feet for a long time and was taking her boredom out in the form of smartassery. Hendricks could empathize.

  “Carnival, actually,” Alison said. She had her menu up and was thumbing through it. “But we’re not with them.”

  “Y’all might be the most unlikely travel companions I’ve ever seen,” the waitress said. She looked to be near forty, just a couple of visible streaks of grey in her dyed brown hair, just a couple of wrinkles starting to escape the thick patchwork of concealer. Her name badge proclaimed her to be Marian. Marian, queen of the waffle place just across the Alabama line, that’s how Hendricks thought of her. “You fresh off the rodeo circuit, darlin’?” This she addressed the Hendricks, just the corner of her mouth turned up.

  “I’m a Texas Ranger, actually,” he lied.

  She made a low laugh, letting her eyes drift to Duncan. “And you?”

  “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,” Duncan said without missing a beat.

  Marian turned to Alison without missing a beat. “I suppose you’re FBI?”

  “Health Inspector,” Alison sa
id. “How are the burgers?”

  Marian showed the first sign of suspicion. “Friendly advice, dear.” She leaned forward. “Our graveyard shift cook tonight is a little new, so you might want to stick with the waffles. Let him get trained up with somebody else.”

  “I’ll take waffles,” Hendricks said.

  “Waffles,” Alison said.

  “I’ll have a burger,” Duncan said. “He’s gotta learn sometime,” the demon added with a shrug.

  “Suit yourself,” Marian said and gathered up their menus. “Drinks?”

  “Coffee,” Hendricks said.

  “Same,” Alison said.

  “Water,” Duncan replied.

  Hendricks shot him a look that was at least seventy percent frown.

  “You just dare to be different there, darlin’,” Marian said, giving them a last nod before she walked away, the weary motions of a woman who was only an hour or so from the end of her shift. When she got back around the counter she paused about two feet from the short order cook who was standing in front of the stove, the entire kitchen visible to everyone in the restaurant. The guy looked young, pimply and nervous, and the nervousness didn’t get any better when the waitress started yelling the order at him in some sort of code phrases less than two feet from his ear.

  “Well, that’s a little odd,” Duncan observed.

  Hendricks just stared. “Is that a local thing or Southern thing?” He shifted his gaze to Alison and felt Duncan do the same.

  “I dunno,” she said with a shrug, her chest’s movement causing the band name on her shirt to fold to read ‘Nad Prac.’ If Hendricks had been in a laughing mood, that might have done it.

  ***

  Mick had come shuffling in a couple hours before dawn, especially cognizant of the fact that most of his fellows were already in bed. He tried to be quiet, tried to tiptoe and shut the door near-silently. He was patient and he had excellent muscle control—mainly because he didn’t have any muscles, which made things easier. When he got to his bunk, however, both of those things were rendered pointless by the squeak of his mattress springs.

  He made the vault quickly after the first squeak, settling as fast as he could. He was on the upper bunk and hadn’t ever complained about it; three double-decker bunks in the trailer with five occupants, someone had to take the high beds. Mick didn’t mind, though he doubted his entry tonight was going to make his buddy Rex on the bunk below him very happy.

  He listened to the squeak fade under the gentle snores of Troy a couple beds down and Michael in between them. The aroma of feet and body odor was a little strong in the room, but it didn’t trouble him much.

  “How’d it go?” came the hushed whisper of Rex from below. He didn’t have that slick sleepiness in his voice; Mick could hear the keen interest of a man who’d maybe been waiting up.

  “Good,” Mick replied, just as hushed. Didn’t want to wake the others, after all.

  “I saw you with her on the square earlier,” Rex said, still whispering, hissing into the night like a snake. “Pretty little thing. How was she?”

  “Dunno,” Mick said, pulling his thin sheet across his body more out of habit than need. It was hotter than fuck in the trailer, like the humid swamp air had rolled up from Florida and taken up residence in the room, never to leave. “I’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “Hot damn,” Rex said, and there came a noise of him re-settling himself. “I’ll root for you, boy. Get yourself in there and get some of that young pussy.”

  Rex was a dirty old man by Mick’s reckoning. Not that he was older than Mick, but he had to be going on fifty. He stared at the young women walking around the carnival like they were filet mignon and he was a starving man. He was big around the middle, too, and Mick imagined his fat belly on a thin girl like Molly, sloshing around as he plowed in and out of her. Mick was vaguely aware that it was the sort of image that might cause disgust in others with human sensibilities. For him it was of no more interest than a math problem; quickly there, perused, and discarded once solved.

  He heard Rex’s breathing get a little more labored, heard the sheets move underneath him. Mick was used to this, too, living in a bunk room with four other men; their conversation was at end. He rolled over and didn’t pay much attention to the sound of Rex taking matters into his hands. For Mick, this was even less of a thought worthy of consideration.

  He focused his attention on Molly as the sound of Rex’s breathing came to a head below him. Tomorrow night—tonight, technically—would see the end of the tale. Relief, sweet and long sought, would be coming soon. It had been a long, long time.

  He listened to Rex finish with disinterest—it had been less than a minute by his reckoning—and drifted off to sleep as the pervert below him lurched off into a satisfied stupor of his own.

  Tomorrow.

  14.

  Dawn had broken a while ago, rays of light shining from the forest on every edge of the horizon. Pine needles and the scent of something smoking in the far off distance filled Alison’s nose as she stood before a rusted out, ten-foot-high chain link fence. NO TRESPASSING and KEEP OUT signs were posted at regular intervals. There was no gate built into the thing, and the road had been broken up, removed a half mile before they’d reached this point. It had been a trek based on memory—her memory—and the directions she’d gotten texted to her cell phone.

  “This fence has seen better days,” Hendricks commented, surveying the thing with hands on hips.

  “How long do you suppose it’s been here?” Duncan asked.

  “Twenty years, maybe?” Alison said, not really sure. “Maybe more. It was here the last time I came. Looked a little weathered then.”

  “You cross it that time?” Hendricks asked.

  “Of course,” she replied, and took a step forward. She hesitated, staring at the barbed wire across the top. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the little wire cutter she’d carried, clicking it together experimentally.

  “Let me handle it,” Duncan said, and extended his hand. She gave it to him and he was off, scaling the fence like it was no more difficult than the walk had been on Hendricks.

  “You look nervous,” Hendricks said, sidling up to her as they watched the suit-clad demon pause at the top of the fence, the sound of the cutters being applied to the barbed wire filling the air with a hearty click that echoed in the early morning.

  “I don’t have my rifle,” Alison replied. Carrying the obscenely heavy Barrett over uneven ground on her shoulder hadn’t been a proposition she’d been excited about. Then again, she wasn’t excited about facing whatever was waiting inside without it, either. “You probably don’t understand; you still have your sword and pistol, after all.” She had a pistol as well, a Glock she’d borrowed from her daddy at the same time she’d gotten the Barrett, but she was under no illusions about what it was: a holdout weapon, no more. It wouldn’t do much more than make a demon flinch back, if that.

  “Believe me,” Hendricks said with a sly grin, “as a Marine I know how important a rifle can be to a person.”

  “Okay, start climbing,” Duncan said, looking back down at them. He dropped the wire cutters to the ground and they bounced an inch or two before coming to rest in a patch of weathered, near-white grass.

  Hendricks just stared at them, lost in thought, before shifting his gaze to the two-foot gap in the wire at the top of the ten-foot fence. “Why didn’t we just have him cut a couple foot square out of the middle of the fence?”

  ***

  Arch was up early because sleep didn’t come. He’d waited for a while, hoping it would, but unlike last night when Hendricks and Alison had gone to the brothel, it hadn’t bothered to creep up on him. It hadn’t shown up at all, just stood him up and left him staring at the glowing red clock face, the puckered ceiling and the empty space in the bed next to him in turn. There was only so much of that he could take, so he rose at five-thirty and showered, dressing in his uniform. There was a peculiar certainty th
at clung to him, even after the confrontation he’d had with Reeve the night before, and it was centered on the idea that Erin would wake up and exonerate him. All the bad feelings and that cloud of suspicion that hovered over him in Reeve’s eyes would just be blown away like a cloud hanging over Mount Horeb on a windy day. That was the hope he labored under, anyhow.

  And it lasted until he walked into the sheriff’s station that morning and talked to Ed Fries.

  “Mornin’, Arch,” Fries called out as he entered the near-empty room. Fries sat behind the desk munching on a McMuffin. The portly deputy ate often, which was no surprise. Hash browns spilled out of his paper bag onto the desk next to him, leaving a greasy sheen on the dirty, nicked wood top.

  “Mornin’, Ed,” Arch returned the salutation as he passed through the counter’s gate. The air conditioner was cranking full strength, blowing lukewarm air out of the vent above Arch as he crossed over to Fries. “What are you up to?”

  “Holdin’ down the fort,” Fries said with a bite of his sandwich. His puffed cheeks moved in time like he was working on a full pack of bubble gum. “Took over for Mrs. Reeve a couple hours ago.”

  “So, you’ll be the voice at the other end of the radio today,” Arch said as he punched his timecard.

  “Didn’t know you were on duty,” Fries said with a frown.

  “Figured y’all could use all the help you could get,” Arch said with a weak smile.

  “I’d a thought so, too,” Fries said, pausing from his eating. “Especially with that fresh body that just turned up on Lincoln Avenue this morning.”

  Arch felt the tingle before he’d finished processing the words. “Got another one?”

  “Bloody smear on the pavement, yeah,” Fries said, and his stubby fingers snatched a greasy hashbrown the diameter of a nickel off the desk and popped it in his mouth. Arch could hear it crunch, and he didn’t know if it was Fries’s eating habits or the thought of another murder that he hadn’t even been called in on that caused his stomach to turn. He’d eaten lunch with Fries plenty of times before, though, and hadn’t felt like this, so he supposed he had his answer. “What do you reckon is doing this?”