The Brotherhood of the Wheel

by R. S. Belcher

  Walking, trying not to think. One foot in front of the other. About a mile up from the gravel road, she saw the beginnings of a small town. There were house trailers, and a few small shacks and cabins, some RVs parked among the wild, overgrown grass. She figured it was still a good hour or so before twilight, and she could find someplace to hole up. She slowed and a silent, shrill tone began in her mind. The garage she was approaching on the right had a sign, a grimy, rusting, sheet-metal sign hung on the roof. It read SCODE’S GARAGE.

  No, no, this wasn’t possible.

  A tiny sound escaped Ava’s lips. For a moment, she wanted to fall down in the road, but she didn’t. She looked across the street from the garage and saw the same trailers, same RVs, same trash on the side of the two-lane she had seen a few nights ago. She was on the south end of Four Houses, after walking north all afternoon. She heard the wheeze and grumble of the Scodes’ tow truck and watched as the truck pulled out of the garage parking lot headed north up the road. Scowling, Wald was at the wheel, and Toby sat beside him. In the rear of the truck were two people, sitting against the back window of the cab; both had old feed-grain bags over their heads. Ava recognized the goth clothing on the girl and the preppie shirt on the boy—it was Lexi and Cole. The truck was accelerating as best it could, and Ava summoned enough strength to try to keep it in sight as it headed north. All thoughts of falling down, of screaming until her mind fluttered free of her body, were thrown in the backseat. They were alive, and they were in trouble.

  Ava caught a break. The Scodes’ truck stopped a little ways up the road at the high, chain-link fence to the junkyard on the left. Ava recalled Carl’s and Barb’s warnings about the place as she watched Wald unlock the gate and then drive the truck onto the grounds. He then went back and closed and locked the gate. Several large, dark shapes moved about the grounds and barked at Wald as he went about his work. Black dogs, huge ones.

  The sun was dimming. Ava thought for a moment about how to get in there and help Cole and Lexi, and then she realized that she had to help herself first. She felt guilt again, just as she had the other night, when she ran and didn’t look back. She was a selfish bitch. She had known that about herself for a long time. But if she went in there now—no plan, no backup—she’d end up like them. No, she had to do this right. She walked past the junkyard, on the opposite side of the road, just as they had all done the other night. Ava saw the Scodes leading Lexi and Cole into one of the large corrugated-tin buildings that squatted between the teetering mountains of dead cars. She noted it and headed for Agnes’s house.

  On the way, she made a final stop. She visited the field where the shadows had first come on them. She searched the side of the road for Gerry’s body, but it was gone. She found his cap, dirty and wet. In the field, she found Alana. The bugs had gotten on her, and some bigger predators had visited the body as well. Ava knelt next to her and cried for a while.

  Agnes was waiting for her on the porch as she walked up the lawn. The old woman had the same expression she had this morning as she looked out the window—sadness, an inevitable knowledge that couldn’t be expressed, only experienced, shared.

  “I’m so sorry, dear,” Agnes said. “I’m so terribly sorry.”

  “Tomorrow,” Ava said, “I want to go get Alana. I want to bury her, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course it is, dear,” Agnes said, “We’ll bury her next to Julia.”

  NINE

  “10-43”

  “So this girl, this ghost—” Heck said into his microphone headset.

  “Vanishing Hitchhiker,” Jimmie interrupted, on his mike.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” Heck asked. “You keep interrupting me. It’s pissing me off, man.”

  They were driving up to Aurora, a city just outside Chicago, to meet a retired state cop who was a member of the Brethren. Jimmie’s semi was in the lead, with Heck’s motorcycle following a short distance behind. They had pulled up at one of the town-sized truck stops on I-57 and picked up a Bluetooth CB radio headset for Heck. They linked it to a portable base unit that looked like a thick brick of a walkie-talkie with a stubby rubber-covered antenna. Jimmie explained that the unit had a special chip in it that would allow them to communicate securely with each other and with other members of the Brotherhood. The base unit was now clipped to Heck’s belt and tuned to Channel 23.

  “I’m trying to teach you,” Jimmie said with a sigh. It was like talking to his own teenage daughter. “There are all kinds of ghosts, but this was a particular kind—a Vanishing Hitchhiker.”

  “What difference does it make?” Heck said.

  “Vanishers are an urban myth,” Jimmie said. “One of the ones that’s real. You pick up some poor woman or girl on the side of the road. She’s usually dressed in white. She asks you to take her somewhere, and you do, and then she vanishes right out of your car or truck. Sometimes she may say a few words about her death or the loved ones she misses. It’s the ghost trying to get closure, to get home. As one of the Brethren, it’s our duty to help shepherd them home. You need to know what they are, recognize them, and know how you can help them. That’s what I’m trying to teach you, Heck. This Vanisher, this girl, Karen, she was different from the usual Vanishing Hitchhiker, though. She gave me a warning about something hunting kids. She knew me, by name, and she had known this was coming a long time before she disappeared, before she died.”

  “Sorry,” Heck said. “Look, man, most of the creepy-crawlies I’ve hunted with the Jocks didn’t want to talk; they just wanted to rip your head off and lay eggs down your neck hole.”

  “You’re not hunting anymore,” Jimmie said. “You’re one of the Brotherhood. It’s different. We protect, not hunt, not unless we have to.”

  “So Ale was a member of this Brotherhood, and my grandfather, too?” Heck said. They were starting to hit the tail end of the Chicago morning rush hour. The truck and the bike slowed and drifted into the lines of sluggish traffic creeping through the suburbs.

  “Yep,” Jimmie said. “Like I said, I used to ride with the Blue Jocks back in the early days. It was about the same time I was squiring to my dad. There are lots of secret clubs, societies, orders out there that eventually lead back to the Brethren. The Jocks is one of them, and the roots between the two run pretty deep.”

  “So what, exactly, did I join up with?” Heck said. “Like I asked before, what is this Brotherhood, Jimmie?”

  “You’re impatient as hell, boy,” Jimmie said. “Like I just said, we protect people on the highways, on the roads. We guard the pathways of civilization. A cultu vivit, nec moritur a viis suis salutem.” His accent was pure Mason-Dixon, but his pronunciation was flawless.

  “Where the hell did you learn Latin?” Heck asked. “And what does that mean?”

  “The same place you’re gonna learn it, boy,” Jimmie said. “Your first homework is to work out what what I just said means. Now, get your head back in the game. We’re almost there.”

  Aurora was miles of strip malls, movie Googleplexes, fast-food chains, and subdivisions—grids of neat little suburban life. Looming over it all was the big bad wolf of Chicago—close enough to entice but far enough away from the gunshots to feel safe. Gil Turla, the retired Illinois state trooper, opened the door to his modest Cape Cod on Bangs Street when Jimmie and Heck knocked. Heck was impressed by the ex-cop’s taste in cars—there was a cherry ’57 Chevy Bel Air ragtop, powder blue, in pristine condition, parked in the driveway.

  Turla still looked like a trooper—tall, broad shoulders, and in pretty good shape for his age. He kept his gray, thinning hair in a tight military cut, and he still sported the cop “micro ’stache”—the only facial hair regs allowed. Turla was wearing a wrinkled button-down oxford and equally rumpled chinos.

  “Mr. Turla?” Jimmie asked. Turla nodded, giving Heck a quick threat assessment of a glance. It was the look every cop had given him since he was sixteen; he was used to it. Old habits died hard, Heck figured.

 
“Yeah,” Turla said.

  “The wheel turns,” Jimmie said.

  “The wheel turns,” Turla replied, with a wary smile, and offered his hand to Jimmie. They shook. “You Don Aussapile’s kid? Pleasure to meet you. You got a hell of an old man. Who’s your, uh, friend?”

  Jimmie smiled and nodded. “This is Heck Sinclair; he’s my squire.”

  Turla’s smile dimmed. He offered Heck his hand.

  “I got all my shots,” Heck said, shaking the ex-trooper’s hand, “and I’m mostly housebroken.”

  “Mostly,” Jimmie said. “You mind if we come in? We’re here about the missing-persons report—those kids. Karen Collie? I was told you could help us.”

  “Come in, please,” Turla said, stepping inside. “Get you fellas a cup o’ mud? It’s awful, but it’s free.”

  Jimmie and Heck looked at each other warily.

  “I don’t like getting the stink eye from cops,” Heck said.

  “Try to act like you ain’t scooter trash for ten minutes,” Jimmie said before he walked in.

  “Can’t count that high,” Heck said, stepping in front of Jimmie and entering the house first.

  * * *

  About a half block down, on the other side of the street from Turla’s house, Lovina Marcou sat in her Charger, sipped coffee, and took notes. She scribbled down the tag on the semi that had hissed to a halt in front of the ex-trooper’s home, and the motorcycle. Both were North Carolina plates.

  Russell had given her Turla’s name and address as the person who had accessed the Collie girl’s missing-persons file. Now he had an odd pair of guests from out of town showing up. She was glad she had decided to hang back and get a read on Turla before knocking on his front door. She’d wait, watch, and see where Bubba the Trucker and Goku the Ginger Biker led her. She picked up the phone to ask Russell to use his access to run the strangers’ plates.

  * * *

  The living room and the kitchen were divided by a wall of open shelves, most of them filled with porcelain chickens of various sizes, shapes, styles, and colors. The room was dark, with only a table lamp on next to a large brown leather recliner. The room smelled of mellow pipe tobacco. The kitchen was well lit, well enough to see a sink of dirty dishes next to a dishwasher. Above the arch dividing the kitchen and the living room was a small wooden plaque, handmade with a wood-burner tool, which said, “Welcome to our kitchen: it may be cluttered but that’s because it’s filled with LOVE.” There was a Formica-topped kitchen table with four chairs in the center of the kitchen. A thick brown folder sat in front of one of the chairs, next to a cell phone in a cloudy, sealed plastic evidence bag. Turla busied himself at a coffeemaker and gestured toward the kitchen table.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “There’s the file. I got to get it back to my old partner in the next day or so. I looked up as much stuff online as I could; they never rescinded my access.”

  Jimmie and Heck sat. “Much obliged,” Jimmie said. He pulled the thick folder in front of him and opened it. Heck reached for the plastic evidence bag; Jimmie grabbed at the bag and stopped him. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking it out,” Heck said. “Look, you want me to graduate from being your fucking squire, or whatever, then you got to let me do my thing, too, man. Let me see the cell.” Jimmie reluctantly released the bag, and Heck began to open it.

  “Don’t break the seal,” Jimmie said. “Chain of custody.”

  “Yeah, right,” Heck said, slipping out his buck knife and slitting the adhesive tag that sealed the baggie. “Like that doesn’t get fucked with all the time, anyway.”

  Jimmie looked back to Turla. The ex-cop nodded and shrugged, then went back to making the coffee and trying to find clean mugs. “We never recovered the Collie girl’s cell,” Turla said, “but these belong to the other kids. We found them in the car along with all their purses, car keys, backpacks. Weird. Tell me one teenager that ups and goes off without their damn cell phone. Things are practically glued to them.”

  Heck slipped the phone out and tried to turn it on. “Hey,” he said to Turla. “You, uh, you got a charger I could use?”

  Turla nodded. “Yeah, there’s one hooked up on the night table in the bedroom down the hall,” he said, gesturing toward the hallway past the den. “On the left.”

  Heck stood and headed down the hall.

  “You sure he’s okay?” Turla said softly to Jimmie after the biker was out of sight. “My skell sense is going off.”

  “Hey!” Jimmie said, turning to Turla. “He’s my squire; you watch your mouth. He’s the son of a good friend of mine—a Brother. Kid saved my life down the road, so yeah, he’s okay.”

  “No disrespect,” Turla said. “I just heard, you, know, how tough it’s been for us to find new blood. Most of these kids out there aren’t worth a damn. My son, I wouldn’t even consider him for a squire.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Jimmie said. Turla was silent. The ex-trooper set a mug of hot coffee on the table next to Jimmie. He placed another where Heck had been sitting. “There aren’t as many of us as there needs to be, for sure,” Jimmie said. “We’re still active in a lot of countries all over the world; we ain’t dead yet, but you’re right—we sure could use more warm bodies worth a damn.”

  “My daughter,” Turla said, “now she could hack it. She’s her mother’s daughter, bless her soul. Every so often I think I should tell her all this, give her the option, then I think about my little granddaughter and I … I just can’t imagine…”

  Jimmie nodded and raised the mug. “I hear you. Got a little girl of my own, another on the way. Hard to imagine putting them in harm’s way.”

  “Well, I hope this boy you got with you will make the cut,” Turla said, raising his own mug. “Seems pretty tough. Hopefully, he’s like his father.”

  “Stepfather,” Jimmie said. “Here’s praying he’s nothing like his real old man.”

  * * *

  Heck found the charger in the bedroom, next to a full hospital-style bed complete with oxygen tent, IV pole, and vital-signs monitors. The bed had a handmade pink-and-white comforter on it, neatly made. It hadn’t had an occupant for some time, but there was a wooden chair next to it, and a folded paperback, a pack of Marlboros, and a half-full ashtray of butts joining the charger on the night table. The room smelled of stale smoke. Heck took the charger and waited to give the two old guys a few moments to talk him out; he knew they would. He suddenly imagined Ale in a bed like this, and saw his mom in the chair, next to him. The anger rose, flush in him, melting the ice he worked so hard to maintain. He should have been there. He could have been there. He made his pact with the anger, as he had been doing since he came home—it would get its hour to run free, to devour, and consume, and destroy. And it stilled in him—humming, waiting.

  They’d had enough fucking time to critique him. With the charger in hand, he left this memorial to old pain as quickly as he could.

  * * *

  Lovina’s cell buzzed, and she answered it. “What you got, Russ?”

  “The bike is registered to a Hector Conall Sinclair. He’s got a minor sheet—mostly assault, drunk and disorderly, possession of concealed weapon. Most of those charges came in the last few months,” Russell said. “He’s a member of an outlaw biker gang called the Blue Jocks—a Scottish-American club out of Wilmington. I talked to a Wilmington cop; he said that the Jocks are pretty clean as MCs go. They bounty-hunt to pay the bills. Some minor drug and weapons charges, the usual biker nonsense, but no organized-crime stuff.”

  “And the semi?” Lovina asked, as she flipped to a clean sheet of paper in her notebook.

  “Registered to a Jesse James Aussapile,” Russell said. “He’s an independent truck driver, lives in Lenoir, North Carolina. Not much of a record, but it’s the absence of one that’s actually kind of interesting, given the circumstances.”

  “What do you mean?” Lovina asked. She noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye. A kid, a teen, walked slowly d
own the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from her. The kid’s hood was up, and the face was obscured. Lovina felt her hand leave the notebook and slide under her jacket for her gun. It stayed there.

  “Well, Mr. Aussapile has been arrested and questioned literally dozens of times over the past two decades,” Russell said. “He’s been charged with interfering with police investigations, tampering with crime scenes, trespassing, possession of concealed weapons. Get this, mind you—once it was wooden stakes and a hammer, and the second time it was an aluminum baseball bat covered in weird symbols drawn on it by a Sharpie. Oh, grave desecration, robbery, arson, and attempted arson. Every single charge was dropped, every time. But that’s not the best part. His file is flagged by the Feds, Lovina.”

  “What?” Lovina said, still tracing the hooded kid’s laconic gait down the street. The kid looked up, as if sensing the intensity of Lovina’s stare. He looked around—pimply face and normal eyes. Lovina felt her whole body relax. Her hand moved away from her gun. She was angry at herself for being so damned jumpy.

  “Yep,” Russell continued in her ear. “It logged me looking at his file, as a matter of fact. He’s been pulled in by the FBI several times in the last year for questioning in regard to murder investigations and missing-persons cases. Would you like to guess which task force it was that pinched him every time?”

  “The Highway Serial Killings Initiative,” Lovina said, circling Aussapile’s name in her notebook.

  “Give the lady a Kewpie doll,” Russell said. “This fella has been associated with all kinds of bad stuff all over the lower forty-eight for years, chère. No one’s been able to pin anything on him, though.”

  “And now he’s all interested in Karen Collie’s disappearance,” Lovina said. “Thanks, Russ. Can you see if he and this ex-trooper, Turla, have a history?”