Rockabilly Hell

by William W. Johnstone

  “Look out, Win!” Nick hollered, the instant he spotted the chief deputy.

  “Kill the son of a bitch!” Victoria screamed at Win.

  “Kill Nick?” Win asked.

  “No, you stupid bastard!” Victoria hollered. “Gerald!”

  Win looked around, spotted Gerald just as the man was raising his rifle, and said, “Oh, shit!” The chief deputy was on the way to the floor just a split second before Gerald’s rifle boomed. The slug passed so close to him, he could feel the heat from the round as it passed about two inches from his head. The lead slammed into the wall.

  “Get off me!” Victoria squalled at Nick.

  Gerald pumped in another round and pulled the trigger just as Nick rolled off of Victoria and hit the floor, both of them yelling, for different reasons.

  Gerald jerked out his .45 and emptied a clip into the room, insuring that everybody kept their heads down while he exited the house.

  Win jumped up and ran after Gerald, but at the back door, a .308 round near his head, which sent wood splinters into his face, convinced him to give up the chase.

  A highway patrolman, driving out to pick up a license plate from a fellow who lived several miles up the road, heard the shooting from the road and whipped into the drive. He jumped out and ran into the mansion, through the open front door. He could smell the gunsmoke from the front porch.

  The highway patrolman pulled up short at the sight before him. “Good god!” he said, looking at the naked Victoria and Nick, and at Win, who was bleeding from the face where the wood splinters had buried deep into his skin.

  “I’m hurtin’ real bad,” Nick said, holding his erection with one hand.

  “Are you shot?” the highway cop asked.

  “No. I got to cum.”

  “What?” the cop asked.

  “I got the stone aches, man.”

  The Arkansas highway cop had visions of his captain reading this report and then thumbtacking it up on the bulletin board so everybody at the Troop could read it and have a good laugh—at his expense. He looked at Win. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Beats pullin’ license plates, I suppose.”

  “Call me an ambulance!” Victoria shrieked from the floor.

  “Where are you hurt?” the patrolman asked.

  “My asshole, you asshole!” Victoria screamed at him.

  The highway cop took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. “Why me?” he said, looking heavenward.

  * * *

  Sheriff Pickens answered the one phone left in the house that still worked after the attack. He listened for a moment and then asked, “You had to put stitches in her what?” A few seconds later, after the doctor switched from medical jargon to plain English, Al said, “Good god!”

  He picked up the suitcase he’d just packed and headed for the door, having hired a crew to come in and clean up the mess. He went first to the motel, where he checked in, then drove over to the hospital.

  Al rounded up a doctor. “She’s resting now. She’s still groggy from the surgery. That is an extremely profane woman, Sheriff. I don’t like her very much. Excuse me, I have patients to see.”

  The highway cop strolled up. “You want to tell me what in the hell is going on in your county, Sheriff?” the patrolman asked.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “That’s the second time today a cop has told me that. I’m sorry I asked the first time.”

  “We’re investigating a series of murders that we think were probably committed by ghosts,” Al said straight-faced.

  The highway cop stared at the sheriff for a moment, then closed his aluminum report case and tucked it under one arm. “I’m outta here.”

  He walked away without looking back, the heels of his boots clacking on the polished tile of the corridor. He was still muttering under his breath and shaking his head as he got into his unit and drove away.

  * * *

  “So Victoria got a taste of her own medicine,” Bev said, as the group gathered for lunch in the dining room.

  “She sure did,” Al said, sugaring his iced tea. “But we’ve got a heavily armed and very dangerous nut running around the county. We’ve got to find Gerald. Maybe he can be brought around and be lucid enough to give evidence against the people he’s trying to kill.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” Scott Frey said. “I think Gerald has gone completely around the bend.”

  Al nodded his head. “I sweated that deputy who took the call from Mrs. Wilson. He admitted that, at first, Win ordered him not to log it. I just fired Win. I figured Win would kick up a fuss about it, but he didn’t say a word. The look he gave me said it all. I put Tom Starr in as chief deputy. He’s in the process of cleaning house. Most of the deputies will be gone by this time tomorrow. I’ll have a clean crew, but they’ll be mostly young and inexperienced. However, they will be men and women I can trust.” He looked at Scott. “What happened to all the Bureau people? A few hours ago, you couldn’t walk down the street without running into one.”

  “Something came up,” Scott said, and would say no more.

  Cole and Gary had discussed the sudden disappearance of the agents and reached the conclusion that someone very high-placed had decided the Bureau had no business in the ghost-chasing business.

  “But George and me are still assigned to this area,” Scott added.

  “Did your superiors believe you about seeing the roadhouse and the ghosts?” Katti asked.

  “Not really,” George answered that one. “But who could blame them? I still have difficulty believing it myself.”

  Cole looked at first Scott, then at George. “Are you guys sort of, ah, out of the loop, so to speak?”

  Scott smiled. “That’s one way of putting it, yes. I have this suspicion that one day soon I will be sent to some small office in, say, oh, Montana, and there I will spend the rest of my time until I get my twenty in. Which, thankfully, isn’t that far off.”

  “And I will be sent only God knows where,” George said.

  Cole leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and said in low tones, “But there just might be a way for you two to come out of this as heroes, with your pick of assignments and/ or stations.”

  “Oh?” George immediately perked up.

  “I’m listening,” Scott said.

  “Break this snuff and kiddie porn film racket that we know is right here in this area, and solve the many disappearances in this area. And I think we can do it, if we all work together and are open and honest with each other.”

  Scott looked at George, and he received a nod of approval. “You got it, Cole. I can get some things done in a heartbeat from friends within the Bureau, that might take Al weeks to get done, if at all.”

  “Good. Let’s finish lunch and get to work.”

  * * *

  With Capt. Curtis Wood now dead, John Costa openly admitted that he had been the one who hired him to kill Sheriff Pickens. He did not know that any FBI agents were in the area. Had he known the agents were in the house, he would not have fired upon the people. As to why he had been hired to kill the sheriff, Costa said he figured it was about a woman . . . it usually was.

  Since the sheriff had been the primary target, the government quietly backed out of the picture, for the moment at least, and let the county DA handle it.

  “Chicken shits,” Frank Bruce said.

  Scott Frey shook his head. “The government is working out a deal with John Costa’s attorneys. He’ll go into the witness protection program, and all charges brought by your people,” he glanced at Sheriff Pickens, “will be dropped for his cooperation and testimony in other matters. You can bet your paycheck on it.”

  “I just might kick up a fuss about that,” Al replied.

  “Don’t. For it won’t do you a bit of good.”

  “How about the others with Costa?”

  “They’ll go with him. Just let it slide, Sheriff. You
are absolutely powerless to do anything about it.”

  Al shook his head in disgust. “This government of ours is just too damn big and too damn powerful.”

  “And arrogant,” Cole added.

  The day after George and Scott agreed to work with the ghost-chasing group, the county DA ordered Sheriff Al Pickens to turn over the prisoners to federal marshals.

  “Son of a bitch!” Al cussed.

  “Told you,” Scott said.

  Victoria was released from the hospital and sent home. Arlene immediately rushed over to take care of her.

  Albert Pickens and Nick Pullen settled down to work the farm, and stopped going to roadhouses and beer joints, or anywhere else, for that matter. It was obvious to all that Victoria had put out the word to settle down and stay down and wait it out.

  “What a nice pair of boys,” Sheriff Pickens remarked, the sarcasm in his voice as thick as sorghum molasses. “Next time we look up, they’ll be going to church and leading the choir in song.”

  “Any word from your wife?” Katti asked, trying to hide her smile at the expression on Al’s face.

  “Oh, yeah. She and that bunch she went over with love it so much, they’ve decided to spend the summer touring Europe. Hopefully, we’ll have this thing wrapped up long before she gets back.”

  A week had gone by since the federal marshals had spirited away John Costa and his cohorts.

  “And no one has spotted Gerald Wilson?” George asked.

  “Not that’s been reported to my department.” He glanced at the two FBI men. “Anything out of your office?”

  Scott shook his head. “No. It’s as if they’re trying to forget George and me exist . . . which is probably what they’d like to do.”

  “And it was suggested, quite strongly,” George added, “that we make no further reference about ghosts and roadhouses that appear out of the night. I told the SAC in Memphis about my tie, and he gave me thirty dollars and told me to go buy a new one and to shut up about it.”

  “What’s a SAC?” Katti asked.

  “Special Agent in Charge,” Scott told her.

  “That was a wonderfully colored and patterned tie,” George mused. “You could wear it with almost anything.”

  “George_____” Scott said wearily.

  “I know, I know,” George said. “Shut up.”

  “Right.”

  Al’s new secretary buzzed him. “Line four, Sheriff.”

  Al picked up the phone and listened for a few moments, saying only an occasional “Yeah,” or “Right.” Finally he said,

  “Okay, Buster. We’ll get on it. Yeah. I’ll get back to you ASAP. See you.”

  Al hung up the phone and turned to the group. “That was Buster Perkins. Sheriff up in the bootheel of Missouri. He’s got two missing girls. Been gone for forty-eight hours. Thirteen and fourteen years old. They were riding the bus down to Memphis to visit their aunt and do some shopping and so forth. Bus driver remembers them. Said they got off along the way, to get a soft drink or use the john or something, and didn’t get back on. He reported it to dispatch, and waited as long as he could before pulling out.”

  “Where’d they get off?” Scott asked.

  “About ten miles north of here. Pretty girls—blonde and petite.”

  “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars they’re out at the Staples mansion,” Tom Starr said.

  “We’ll never get a search warrant from any judge around here,” Al told them.

  “If they were grabbed forty-eight hours ago,” Cole said flatly, “they’ve been used and are dead. But what the hell happened to all the bodies over the years? Very few have ever shown up.”

  “Thousands of acres of woods around here,” Al said. “Plus dozens of old privy pits dating back a hundred and fifty years or more. They could weight them down with concrete blocks and dump them in the river. All kinds of ways to get rid of a body. ”

  “I’ve had Bert McClusky under surveillance for a week,” Tom said. “He hasn’t been near the Staples mansion.”

  “Black on white rape and snuff films,” Scott said. “Lots of kinkos like to watch that.”

  “Disgusting!” George said.

  Cole cut his eyes to Scott. “Would you people have a listing of all black actors making porn films?”

  Scott’s smile was fast in coming and going. “Unofficially we might be able to help you.”

  “Your security index files?” Jim asked.

  “Some people might call it that,” Scott replied, his eyes studying the ceiling. “I don’t recall ever hearing that particular phrase.”

  Cole smiled. “The file the Bureau keeps on American citizens who have broken no laws.”

  “Your words, not mine,” Scott said.

  George was very busy, completely absorbed in the close scrutiny of his fingernails.

  “You mean the FBI keeps files on citizens who have broken no laws?” Katti said hotly. “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “I sure wish I could find another tie like the one that redneck stole,” George said.

  “Somebody better answer me!” Katti said.

  “What was the question?” Scott asked, smiling at her.

  Cole held up a hand. “Can you get the information I asked for, Scott?”

  “I don’t recall exactly what it was you asked for, but I just remembered I have to make a call to a friend of mine in Washington. Please excuse me for a moment.”

  “Isn’t keeping files on Americans who have broken no laws illegal?” Katti was asking as Scott left the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Ask George,” Cole said.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” George said, quickly standing up and heading for the door. “And I don’t know anything about any files on law-abiding citizens.”

  “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” Katti called after him.

  Five

  The two young men were scared. Nothing like this was supposed to have happened. The sisters had willingly gone with them at the bus station; nobody had forced anybody to do anything. Well, at first, anyway. The girls looked like they were seventeen and eighteen years old. Then, after the girls had refused to give up some pussy, the young men had beat them up, raped them, and shortly after that, going through their purses, discovered they were both minors. Then the older one had tried to make a run for it. Jason had grabbed her and thrown her to the floor of the old hunting camp. He threw her too hard. She hit her head and died a few hours later. Then the younger one went ballistic and started fighting and biting and scratching them. That’s when Dean had hit her . . . and hit her. When he stopped hitting her, she was unconscious. The next morning, she was dead.

  Now the two cousins didn’t know what to do with the bodies.

  And to further complicate matters, the girls were all swole up and really starting to smell bad. They been driving around with them in the trunk of their car for nearly two days, and the cousins were afraid someone was going to smell them.

  Jason turned down the heavy metal music that was roaring through the speakers and vibrating even the seats in the car, and snapped his fingers. “Hey, I know! We can dump them out where we used to poach deer—remember?”

  “Yeah! All right! That old bitch that lives in the mansion never goes out there, and neither does anyone else. If they’re ever found, it’ll be months away, and this summer heat will have turned them into mush and slop. Great idea, Jas.”

  The cousins headed for the Staples mansion. They felt better already. Besides, it wasn’t really their fault the sisters were dead. No one forced the girls to go with them. They did that all on their own. And it wouldn’t have hurt them none to give up some of that pussy. They didn’t have to kick up such a fuss about it. That was real stupid on their part. I mean, the girls would still be alive right now, if they hadn’t-a been so snotty about a simple little friendly fuck. You know, man? Everybody does it. What’s the big deal?

  Twenty minutes later, the cousins had dumped the bodies in woods about two miles
from Victoria’s mansion, and were on their way back to town. They’d maybe get a case of beer and celebrate tonight. Hell, they might even get lucky and score with some pussy. You just never knew.

  * * *

  “His name is Carlos Washington,” Scott said, laying the fax on the sheriff’s desk. “His screen name is Brother Long Dong. He always seems to have plenty of money, but works only occasionally. I just spoke with Bob Jordan, and he checked with the Memphis PD. They have nothing on the man.”

  “Did Bob say where he’s been the past week?” Cole asked.

  “Just said he’s been chasing leads of his own that didn’t pan out.”

  “You know Bob is from this part of the country?”

  “We know everything there is to know about all of you,” Scott said. “We knew before we came in here. Sheriff, let’s get the group together and take a ride out into the country. I just don’t trust closed rooms.”

  Bob checked back into his old room at the motel and met Jim Deaton in the parking lot. “Sheriff wants a meeting out in the country. Come on, you can ride with me. Where have you been, Bob? You missed all the shooting.”

  “So I heard. I wasn’t far away. There used to be some roadhouses up in the bootheel of Missouri I wanted to check out. I spent a night—or at least a part of the night—at several of them. Nothing happened at any of the old sites. I got some eerie feelings, but that’s probably due to an overactive imagination.”

  The caravan of lawmen, FBI agents, ex-lawmen, private investigators, and one civilian drove out past the Staples mansion and turned down a gravel road. They drove for a couple of miles, and then pulled off to the left and stopped. Everybody got out.

  “The old home place,” Sheriff Pickens said. “The house used to stand right there.” He pointed. “Everything across the road for as far as you can see belongs to Victoria Staples. Victoria and I used to play together as kids. Hell, we were the only kids out here for miles around.” The sheriff looked in the direction of the mansion, several miles away. He shook his head. “There is something in the back of my mind about that mansion that I think might be important. But I can’t bring it to the surface. Maybe it’ll come to me.” He turned to Scott. “You wanted this meeting, Scott. What’s on your mind?”