Rockabilly Hell

by William W. Johnstone

  “I used to know every joint between here and Jackson, Mississippi, Captain. But most of your real good roadhouses were between here and West Memphis, Arkansas.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Really. I know, I made them all. I used to be a hell of a gambler. There were back rooms in most of those clubs, and the games got pretty damned high-stakes, let me tell you.”

  And tell it he did, entertaining Cole with all sorts of stories. At Sikeston, Missouri, Cole cut off of the interstate and took Highway 61.

  “I’m glad you did that, Captain,” the prisoner said. “Lots of old roadhouses on this stretch of highway.”

  “So I’ve heard. You knew them along this stretch, too, huh?”

  “Everyone of them.”

  “Well, I had another reason for taking 61.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.”

  At New Madrid, Missouri, Cole stuck the man in the county jail and slept for six hours, then was on the road again.

  “That was mighty cold of you, Captain,” the man bitched, once they were back on the road.

  “What’d you expect, Holiday Inn?”

  The prisoner thought about that for a moment, then chuckled. “You’re right. You want to hear more about the clubs?”

  “Sure.”

  The man talked about the clubs in New Madrid County, then about the club where Elvis played when he was just getting started, here in the bootheel of Missouri. “Used to call that one the Bloody Bucket. I remember it well.”

  They crossed over into Arkansas, and the man fell silent.

  “What’s the matter?” Cole asked.

  “Club used to be right down here a few miles. Brings back bad memories for me.”

  Cole felt a cold tingle in the pit of his stomach. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Over the years it had a lot of names. Stateline, the Spur, the Cowboy Club. I remember it as the G & K Club. Locals called it the Gun and Knife Club, all the shootings and killings that went on there. Mean bunch of bastards hung out there. And their women weren’t any better.”

  Cole felt slightly sick at his stomach as he recalled the sign over the club entrance in his feverish hallucinating. G & K Club.

  “You sound like it’s personal to you.”

  “It is. My first cousin was killed there. Man hit him on the back of the head with a cue stick. Fractured his skull; drove bits of bone into his brain. He died right there in the parking lot. Those sorry bastards and bitches just tossed him out the front door and left him. Oh, my cousin was no saint; he was mean as a snake himself. It’s just . . . well, kin, you know?”

  Cole didn’t trust his voice to speak. He nodded his head. Clearing his throat, he asked, “You remember the date that happened?”

  “Sure. October 1957.”

  Two

  Cole never mentioned his strange experiences at the roadhouse to anyone for at least two reasons: He was not at all certain the events had actually happened, and he didn’t want his friends on the sheriffs department to think he was a nut. But Cole never forgot that night at the G & K Club, either. He just tucked it carefully away in the back of his mind.

  Fall drifted into winter and the new year came and went. A month before Cole was due to retire, the sheriff walked by his desk and dropped an envelope in front of him. Pausing, he said, “Law enforcement convention in Memphis next week. You go. Hobnob with real people for the last time before retirement.”

  Before Cole could state his objections, and that he really didn’t want to go, the sheriff had walked on. Cole studied the brochure and decided the convention might be fun after all. And for a fact, it would be the last time he could get together with like-minded people and talk shop. He would miss that.

  Whether the department is large or small, cops belong to a closed club. You don’t wear a badge, you don’t get in. Period. If it’s a town of any size, cops have their own watering holes, and much of the time, cops associate with other cops. Us against Them mentality—it comes with the territory and goes with the job.

  Suddenly, Cole began to look forward to the convention. But getting away from the office and having fun was not among the reasons.

  * * *

  Cole wandered around the hotel until he located some law enforcement people from north Arkansas and southern Missouri. They greeted him warmly and immediately made room for him in their little klatch. After listened to this and that for a few minutes, Cole said, “I was through your part of the country a few months back, hauling a prisoner from Illinois. That ol’ boy told me some pretty wild tales about the old roadhouses in this part of the country.”

  The cops all smiled and nodded their heads, one sheriff from north Arkansas saying, “He was right about that, friend. Back in the fifties and early sixties, there were some wooly buggers along highway 61.”

  “Any unsolved cases that might involve those roadhouses?” Cole asked innocently.

  There was a moment of reflection, then the cops all started nodding their heads affirmatively. “Both directly and indirectly,” a deputy from the bootheel of Missouri said.

  “Disappearances, mostly,” a deputy from Arkansas said. “Why?”

  “I’m going to retire soon. I’ve been thinking about writing a book about these old roadhouses.” Cole lied easily; many cops are good at that, too. “And maybe some bizarre crimes that might be linked to them. You guys mind if I come visit and look through the old files?”

  They all assured him he’d be welcome any time. Then they joked about Cole retiring so young, exchanged business cards, and soon the group broke up, the men—and it was mostly men there—wandered off to seek out old friends and make new ones.

  “Bullshit!” the female voice spoke from just behind him and to his right.

  Cole turned to face the voice. “I beg your pardon?”

  The face behind the voice was interesting. She was not beautiful in the classic sense, but she was very attractive. Light brown hair, hazel eyes. Very nice figure. About five-five, Cole guessed. Her nametag read KATTI BAYLOR. She met his gaze and wasn’t about to blink first.

  “That was a very interesting opening line, Miss Baylor. I don’t believe I’ve ever been approached with that particular phrase.”

  “It’s Ms., thank you. And I don’t believe that book business.”

  “Wonderful,” Cole said drily. “Did you bring Gloria with you?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Were you slinging that bullshit at me, Ms. Baylor?”

  “Who is Gloria?”

  “Steinem.”

  “You’re pretty sharp for a flatfoot.”

  Cole laughed at that. “Ms. Baylor, the term flatfoot went out years ago. I believe it was replaced by pig.” He studied her name tag and let his eyes drift to what lay just below the name tag. That was even more interesting. “You’re a reporter?”

  “Freelance writer. Are you all through eyeballing my tits?”

  Cole met her eyes. “I’m sort of old-fashioned, Ms. Baylor. I never thought profanity was very becoming for a lady.”

  “Who the hell said I was a lady?” She studied Cole. Just a shade under six feet tall. Solid. Brown hair specked with gray. His eyes were so blue they were almost black. Big hands and thick wrists. Trim waist. No pretty boy, but handsome in a very rugged sort of way. A lot of character in the face.

  Cole smiled. “We’re really getting off to a lousy start, Ms. Baylor. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  She stared at him for a moment. “No. But I can buy you one. And the name is Katti.”

  * * *

  She was lost. And these damned Arkansas back roads were the pits. If they were marked, she couldn’t find the signs. She should have stayed on the interstate, but she wanted to see that historical marker and was pressed for time. She hadn’t found the marker and now it was dark and she was all turned around. Then she saw the lights just up ahead and her spirits lifted. Civilization at last.

  Pulling into the poorly lighted gravel parking lot, she
didn’t notice that all the cars and trucks were very old. But she did notice the music thumping through the walls of the joint. Hillbilly crap. God, she hated that country corn. She got out, locked her car, and walked up to the front door of the roadhouse. Just for a second, she hesitated, then opened the door.

  She stepped into Hell.

  * * *

  Cole found the article in the state and local section of the paper. It had come in just in time for the morning edition. The nude body of a young woman, between twenty and twenty-five, had been found by the side of the road about forty miles north and slightly west of Memphis. She had been brutally raped and then beaten to death. She was in a ditch just across the road from her car. Her clothing and purse had not been found. The police were withholding her name, until next of kin could be notified.

  “Find something interesting in there?” the voice jarred Cole out of his musings.

  He looked up and smiled at Katti. “Decided to take me up on breakfast, hey?”

  “Why not?” She sat down and poured coffee from the service on the table. She sugared and creamed and lifted the cup, her eyes amused and mocking him over the rim. “You didn’t hit on me last night, Deputy. Why?”

  “I told you, I’m old-fashioned.”

  “That is ... very refreshing in this era of jumping in and out of bed before you know someone’s last name.”

  “That’s what you do, hey?”

  Her eyes flashed and then softened, as she saw the smile on Cole’s lips. She laughed. “Okay. Touché. Truce?”

  “Sure. Order breakfast and then we’ll take a ride. That is, if you meant what you said last evening.”

  “About working with you on my book? And it is my book.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about writing books, Katti. But I’ll be a cop until the day I die. It’s your book.”

  “Fine. Where are we going?”

  “Eat. Then we’ll go.”

  Katti’s older brother had disappeared ten years back, when she was twenty-eight years old and working as a reporter for a Memphis newspaper. He was ten years her senior. His body had never been found. But his car had been found in the parking lot of what used to be a roadhouse a few miles off Highway 61. Katti had left the paper a few years later, after finding out she could make a living writing romance novels. But she still did short pieces for the paper and for various magazines. Because of the disappearance of her brother, she had compiled quite a list of people who had disappeared over the years, all of them either on or close to the old highway. But until now, she could not find a cop, active or retired, to help her dig into the mysteries.

  “Cops are swamped with work, Katti,” Cole had told her. “Everywhere. Big towns, small towns. Makes no difference. They’ve got to work on current cases. Something that happened twenty years ago might interest them, but they just don’t have the time to look very hard at it . . . or look at it at all.”

  “You never remarried, Cole?”

  “No. You?”

  She had confided in him about her own miserable failed marriage. She shook her head. “No. When I do find someone who interests me, he turns out to be gay, someone who misses his mother, wants to lay up in front of the TV all weekend watching sports and drinking beer and belching, or is unhappy about his fading youth or some such crap as that.”

  Cole had never really figured out exactly what women wanted in a man, so he had no comment to make. But he had reached the conclusion a few years back that most women didn’t even know what they wanted in a man. So how the hell was a man supposed to know?

  While finishing their coffee after breakfast, Katti read the article. “You think this has something to do with the disappearances?”

  “I don’t know.” He had not told her (or anybody) about his own strange experiences at the ghost club, as he had started calling it, some months back. “But we have to start somewhere.”

  “What about the meetings here at the conference?”

  “I’m retiring in a couple of weeks, Katti. I don’t care doodly-squat about these meetings. I don’t need some chair-bound cop to tell me we’re losing the war on crime. I know it firsthand. If I have to listen to some damn psychiatrist tell me one more time about the need for sensitivity training in dealing with minorities, I’ll puke. All people of any color have to do is obey the law . . . don’t get me started. Let’s get out of here.”

  Cole had driven his own vehicle to the convention, a new Ford Bronco. On the floor, between the firewall and the console, there was a bank of electronics: a scanner, a CB, a police radio, and a mobile phone.

  “You do come prepared, don’t you?” Katti said, eyeballing all the gear.

  “Just like a Boy Scout.”

  She arched one eyebrow and smiled. “My, my! All the time?”

  Cole sighed and pulled out into the street, heading for the interstate and, eventually, Highway 61.

  An area on both sides of the poorly maintained farm to market road were still sealed off—loosely speaking—with yellow and black CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape. The victim’s car had been towed off, and no deputies were in sight. The first thing Cole noticed was the long rectangular outline of concrete blocks just past the weed-grown parking lot.

  “Ten dollars says that used to be a honky-tonk,” Cole said.

  Katti stared at him for a moment. “Is that important?”

  “Yeah. It sure is.” He kept on driving until he reached the next town, population about fifteen hundred. He pulled into a self-service station and decided to gas up and get a little information. “Big doin’s down the road, hey?” he asked the old man who came out to watch him pump the gas.

  “Yep.”

  “I was through this part of the country some years ago. I could swear I stopped and got a beer at a nightclub back down the road.”

  “Prob’ly did.”

  “I think it was right about where all that yellow tape is.”

  “Yep.”

  “Can’t recall the name of it.”

  “Don’t matter now. It’s gone.”

  “Burned down, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “Fell down?”

  “Nope.”

  “Moved?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, what the hell happened to it!”

  “Bulldozed.”

  Cole blinked at that.

  “Man got cheated at cards there one night. Came back when the place was closed and splintered the damn place. Wasn’t enough of it left to use for kindlin’ wood. That’ll be eleven dollars please.”

  Cole paid him. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “That would make for a very interesting chapter in my book,” Katti said, once they were back on the road.

  “Old fart!” Cole muttered.

  And Katti laughed at the expression on his face.

  * * *

  Cole and Katti talked nearly every night for two weeks after the convention. But he still had not told her about his strange experience at the G & K Club. And while he had never so much as kissed the woman, something was building between them, and although neither would admit it, it scared them both.

  The sheriff’s department gave Cole a retirement party. He turned in any equipment he had that belonged to the department or the parish, and a day later had closed up his house and was on the road to Memphis.

  Three

  Katti’s home was unpretentious, but very nice and comfortably furnished, located about five miles outside the Memphis city limits, on the east side of the city, off I–40.

  “I’ll get a room at that motel just down the road,” Cole told her.

  She was making coffee and paused, looking at him. “You don’t need to do that, Cole,” she said softly. “Go bring your luggage in.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “Which bedroom is mine?”

  She turned back to her coffee-making. “That’s up to you.”

  That was the easiest decision he ever had to make.

>   * * *

  Cole spent the next several days going over Katti’s notes—they were extensive and detailed. When he finished, he leaned back in his chair and shook his head in disbelief. “Almost five hundred people have disappeared over the past twenty-five years. Five hundred men and women?”

  “It’s probably twice that, Cole. As you can see, I’ve only been able to verify two hundred and thirty-five. I’m positive of the others, but can’t prove it. But just think about the number of hitchhikers and hobos and so forth that have traveled this stretch of highway over forty years. No one to report them missing, or even if they had kin, odds were good the family had no idea where they were. Now figure in the number of unsolved rapes and assaults and murders over a twenty-five-year period, along a stretch of highway a hundred and fifty miles long, working say, twenty miles east and west from the highway, and you’ll see what I mean about the number being higher. We’re talking hundreds of square miles, several dozen counties, and two or three states, at least.”

  “This is incredible, Katti.”

  She sat down at the table and fixed her eyes on him. “Now you level with me, Cole. What about this fascination of yours with old honky-tonks?”

  He nodded his head and, as unemotionally as possible, told her about his strange experience at the G & K Club, and related to her what the prisoner had told him.

  She got up and walked around the table a couple of times. She stopped her pacing and said, “I ... have another set of notes, Cole. Just as extensive as those in front of you. They are reports of strange sightings, the paranormal, things of that nature.”

  “What the hell are we dealing with here, Katti?”

  She screwed her face all up, making a horrible expression.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Cole said.

  She smiled and said, “I guess we’re dealing with ghosts, Cole.”

  He stared at her for a moment. Sighed. Finally said, “Is it too early in the day for a drink?”

  * * *

  “Fifty or so years ago,” the cop said, “this area used to be called Frog City. I don’t know why, it just was.”