The Slab

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Finally she left the Salton Sea behind her and drove into Brawley, the sugar plant rising up on her left, the town spreading ahead of her. She fished Ray Dixon’s driver’s license out of her jeans pocket and looked at the address on it. She had to drive around for a little while before she could find his apartment on Gilmour Street, but finally she did and she pulled the car to a stop in front of it and sat looking at it. The building was nothing special, a two-story stucco construction that faced onto a parking area and an empty cement pool. It looked like maybe it had been a motel once, though why on Earth anyone would stay here at the edge of Brawley if they didn’t have to was beyond her. Probably why it was a motel no longer, she guessed.

  From what she could tell sitting here in the car, the building was deserted this time of day. It was after ten now, later than she had hoped to arrive, but that sleeping-in thing had thrown off her whole schedule. It didn’t really matter, she supposed. She didn’t know much about Ray Dixon, but he had worn a wedding ring and in his wallet there had been a photo of him with a skinny brown-haired woman at least four inches taller than him, so Lucy assumed that he’d been married at one time, and maybe still was.

  She spotted the apartment door with the number 8 on it, upstairs, second door from the stairway. Not ideal, but she’d make do. She pulled the rifle from the car and carried it close to her side, hand down casually, keeping her body between the apartment building and the gun. At the stairs, she climbed quickly, and then hid the gun with herself again as she covered the walkway to apartment 8. There was a doorbell button in the center of the door, with a peephole above it. She pushed the button and didn’t hear anything so she rapped on the flimsy door, loud, with her knuckles. She waited. Nothing. She knocked again, and this time she heard a rustling from inside.

  A moment later the door pulled open to the maximum width that the inside chain lock would allow, and a woman—the one from the photo, just as scrawny and tall as she’d looked—peered out at her through sleepy eyes, her brown hair in matted clumps. “Yeah?” she asked. “I’m sleepin’, what do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you,” Lucy said calmly. “Let me in.”

  “About what? I don’t even know you,” Ray Dixon’s wife said. She hadn’t noticed the rifle yet. Shaking her head, she began to close the door.

  Lucy raised the gun and drove its stock against the chain, slamming it into the door and pushing as hard as she could. The chain snapped out of the jamb and the door flew open. Dixon’s wife turned and stared at her, eyes wide, and started to say something, but only “What—” came out before she saw the gun and her jaw shut with an audible thump. Lucy spun the weapon around so that the muzzle was pointed at Dixon’s wife, and stepped inside, backing the other woman up with the gun. Once inside the apartment she closed the door firmly with her foot.

  “Wh-what d-do you want?” Dixon’s wife asked, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t have any m-money.”

  “I’m not after money,” Lucy said.

  “Then what? Why are you here? I don’t have anything for you.”

  “Maybe you do. Is Ray Dixon your husband?”

  The woman sniffed and held a knuckle under her nose. She paused before answering, as if trying to decide what would be the best way to reply. Impatient, Lucy retrieved the driver’s license from her pocket and flung it at the woman. It hit her in the chest and she snagged it with both hands. She wore a tattered bathrobe over an oversized tee. “Is that your husband?” Lucy asked again.

  The thin woman fumbled with the license, but got it turned over and looked at it. She nodded and the tears started to really flow now, streaming down her cheeks and rolling off to fall onto the plain gray carpet. “What, are you sleeping with him or something?” she asked.

  “Where is he now?” Lucy demanded.

  “He’s…he’s hunting.”

  “Dove hunting.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I need to know who’s with him. I need names, addresses, everything. You got that?”

  “Why?” Dixon’s wife sniffled again. “What’s this all about?”

  Lucy wagged the gun at her. “Lady, you’re not in a position to ask a lot of questions. Do you have that information or don’t you?”

  The woman dragged her hands through her stiff hair and looked at Lucy as if measuring how far she’d go. He decision apparently made, she heaved a big sigh. “Ray is good about being organized,” she said. “A place for everything, everything in its place, you know?”

  “I don’t care about his personal habits,” Lucy prompted. “Just get me the details. Five guys.”

  Dixon’s wife nodded. “Okay.” She sniffled again and wiped her nose on the back of her ratty pink bathrobe sleeve. “It’ll take me a minute.”

  “Faster is better,” Lucy pointed out.

  “Yeah, okay,” the woman said, sounding resigned. She went to a little table underneath a wall-mounted telephone and opened the single drawer, taking out a red address book. She laid that on a kitchen counter and tore a piece of paper from a pad kept on top of the table, took a pen from beside the pad, and flipped through the address book.

  Lucy looked at the apartment as Dixon’s wife wrote. It was nothing special, she decided. The focal points of the living room were a widescreen color TV and a gun rack with a couple of empty spaces. The furniture was serviceable, but nothing more. A couple of framed prints that had probably come from a poster store, with no particular significance other than that the colors blended with the gray of the carpet and the tans and light blues of the couch, decorated the walls. Everything was neat and clean. The place felt like a model apartment, not like somebody’s home. Lucy figured that Dixon’s wife probably worked a night shift, and maybe Dixon worked days and they only saw each other in passing. The apartment reflected that kind of marriage, she thought, one in which the parties were husband and wife in name but not in much more than that. Their emotional lives were probably as barren as the walls.

  A minute or two later the wife held out a piece of paper with shaking hands. Keeping the index finger of her right hand near the trigger, Lucy let go with her left and took the paper, scanning it quickly before stuffing it into a jeans pocket. “If this isn’t right I’ll be back for your skinny white ass,” she warned.

  “Those are the addresses in his book,” Dixon’s wife swore. “He writes in pencil so when he has to change them he can just erase the old ones. He’s very meticulous.”

  Lucy started to back toward the door, but Dixon’s wife kept talking, almost as if she didn’t want to be left alone. “He’s really done it this time, hasn’t he?” she asked. “Screwed something up big time.”

  “You could say that,” Lucy said. Then the door was at her back so she pulled it open and slipped through, lowering the rifle back to her side as she did. She hurried to the Altima, got in, and sped off. Four blocks away she stopped and, with hands shaking even more than Dixon’s wife’s had been, she unfolded the piece of paper and read what the woman had put down there.

  The names of her attackers.

  Kelly Williams.

  R. J. Rocknowski.

  Vic Bradford.

  Terrance Berkley.

  Cam Hensley.

  She had some visits to make.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kelly tossed a match at a tendril of lighter fluid and watched the flames leap up. It wouldn’t be long before the ancient, bone-dry wood caught, and the propane cans—if they didn’t blow so forcefully that they knocked the cabin apart before it burned fully—should only help speed things along. He’d saved some fluid for the outhouse, too. Investigators would be able to, he was certain, find bits of DNA evidence around the place if they looked hard enough. He was hoping they wouldn’t bother to. He for damn sure didn’t have time to stick around here and sterilize. The Dove had been gone for hours and could be leading a posse back here even now. He shouldn’t have let the guys sleep as long as they did. But they needed it, he supposed, after the day t
hey’d had. He certainly felt restored.

  He’d caught up to them after they’d been gone about fifteen minutes, right before the propane cans went off, one after another like a stuttering bass drum. For the rest of the morning, he set the pace, cajoling and browbeating the others into keeping up with him. Eventually the sun glimmered on the Eastern horizon and then broke over the distant hilltops and the day began to warm, and with that, Kelly’s mood improved as well. He was where he liked to be: one step ahead of trouble.

  He couldn’t say as much for the moods of his fellow travelers. Terrance was virtually silent, almost completely shut down. He plodded along, his enormous bulk making him the slowest of them all. When Kelly poked or prodded he didn’t react at all, not a smile or a grimace or a growl. He just walked faster for a little while, and then slowed again.

  All in all, that was pretty much exactly what Kelly wanted from the fat man. He had broken Terrance Berkley, now he could remake him in whatever mold he saw fit. He’d lost Cam Hensley, who had money, and Ray Dixon, who had some skills. Terrance at least had a steady job and some brains, but he was physically useless and had never shown as much zeal as he should have. Kelly anticipated fixing those problems, shaming him into losing weight and working out, and transforming him into a kind of sidekick who’d do Kelly’s bidding without question or complaint.

  And it was all, Kelly thought, because of gender inequality. Together these men had killed thirteen women, and Terrance hadn’t suffered, so far as Kelly knew, a single sleepless night over it. But kill one man—one friend—and guilt destroyed him.

  That left Rock and Vic Bradford. Rock was his name—hard, solid, dependable, and with only a single other characteristic that mattered. He was a horndog of the highest order, which was how Kelly controlled him. Once triggered, he would soldier on until Kelly released him. Vic, though…Vic was another matter. Kelly thought he’d been seeing signs of defiance in Vic. Rebellion brewing, maybe. Vic would most likely have refused to kill Cam, even if he’d been ordered to. That was a problem.

  Kelly thought that perhaps Vic would not survive this particular Dove Hunt either. He’d just have to see.

  They found the house around six-thirty in the morning. It was a small, wood-frame job with a little dry yard surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, painted white. A red GMC pick-up idled in the drive, the driver’s door open. Kelly motioned the other guys to get down as he approached the house alone, staying low and keeping the fence between himself and the building’s windows. As he squatted in wait, a man came out of the house in a faded brown tee and jeans, carrying a metal lunchbox in his hand. Kelly gave him time to almost reach the car, then shouldered his M-4 and squeezed out one round. The crack was deafening in the quiet morning air, with only the rumble of the truck’s engine to compete with it, and seemed to echo for minutes. But it dropped the guy, his lunchbox breaking open and spilling into the dirt drive. Kelly gestured for the other guys to join him, and as they were running he scanned the house.

  What he was afraid of. A woman stared out the window at him, fear twisting her face and making her into an ugly crone. He raised his weapon again and fired a short burst in her direction. The window and her head exploded at the same time.

  “Jesus, Kelly!” Vic complained. “What are you doing?”

  Kelly pointed the barrel of his gun at the truck. “Hitching a ride,” he said. “What’s it look like?”

  ***

  He could have found Hal Shipp a whole lot easier, Ken figured, if the guy had stuck to preexisting paths or gotten himself lost in daylight, or both. As it was—even using the trick he’d so recently learned of closing his eyes and concentrating and looking at the landscape through Hal’s eyes—the sun had been up for hours before he finally tracked the old man down. During the night, looking through Hal’s eyes hadn’t done much good—starry skies and moonlit desert shrubs looked basically the same all over. Come daylight, he’d been able to recognize landmarks again—though not many, since Hal had crossed over onto the bombing range the day before and Ken had never spent time over there. But he got an angle of one of the more notable hills, a tall one with a sharp peak offset to the left and a sudden drop-off beside it, so he headed to where the view ought to be the same and eventually found Hal sound asleep in the shade of a smoke tree in the middle of a wash.

  At first he thought the man was dead. He spotted Hal from a hundred feet away or so, his blue shirt plainly visible against the brown earth. But he was under a tree, not moving, and he’d just spent the last afternoon and night exposed to the often-cruel elements. The deserts of the Southwest killed hundreds of people every year, most of them Mexicans crossing over in search of jobs and opportunity, using the empty spaces to dodge la Migra. But there was also the occasional Anglo hiker, too, lost in the wilderness without enough water, or too little cover for the cold nights. Anything could have happened to Hal out here. Ken started to run.

  By the time he reached Hal, though, the old man had awakened and started to shift his body. Ken called to him, and Hal turned over and opened his eyes, surprised to see Ken bearing down on him. His expression was at first closed off, defensive, but then he opened up.

  “Hal, are you okay?” Ken asked him. “You shouldn’t wander around by yourself, you know that. You’ve been out here all night?”

  “Think I don’t know that, young fella?” Hal replied. “I may be old but I’m no idiot. When the sun goes down and the moon comes up, that’s nighttime.”

  “Are you cold?” Ken asked. “Hungry?” He slipped a canteen off his shoulder and handed it to Hal, who had moved to a sitting position. Hal unscrewed the lid and tipped his head back, drinking deep. After a few moments he pulled the canteen away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ahh, that’s good,” he said, and then he launched into a coughing fit so severe that Ken was afraid he was going to vomit.

  “Easy,” he said. “Take it slow. You probably haven’t had any water all night, have you?”

  Hal brought his coughing under control, though when he looked up at Ken his blue eyes were teary. “No, I don’t…I don’t think so,” he said. “I guess not, anyhow.”

  “Come on, Hal,” Ken said. “Let’s get you back home. Virginia’s worried half to death about you.”

  “Virginia?” Hal asked. “Is that my sister?”

  And Ken knew that the Alzheimer’s had come back, with a vengeance—probably why Hal had roamed off in the first place, he thought. Poor guy probably couldn’t remember how to get home even if he’d wanted to.

  But he thought there was something he could do about that.

  He extended a hand to Hal. “Let me help you up there, partner,” he said. Hal reached out and clasped Ken’s hand with his own, and sure enough, it happened again, the magic coursing through both of them like a transfusion of energy and strength and wisdom, like all of his blood had been driven from his body and replaced with trumpet music.

  Hal felt it too. Ken could tell by the sudden focus and intensity in the older man’s eyes, the increased strength of his grip, the way he practically lunged to his feet in spite of a night lost in the wilderness.

  “What the hell are we doing here, Ken?” Hal asked, speaking with more vigor than he had exhibited just moments ago. “Where are we?”

  Ken chuckled. “That’s two questions, Hal. Number one, what we’re doing here is you took a little walk last night and got yourself lost. Number two is, we’re somewhere in the Chocolate Mountains bombing range.”

  Hal took a quick look around, as if to orient himself. “Guess I’m lucky I didn’t step on some unexploded ordnance, huh? Or make myself a target.”

  “Lucky, right,” Ken agreed. “Just the same, I think it’d be an excellent idea if we got out of here now.”

  “I’m with you there,” Hal said. “Lead the way.”

  As they walked, Hal told Ken what he remembered about his adventure of the night before, wandering away from the Slab, lost in thought and paying no attention to his
course or his destination. When they reached the hole in the fence, the sun now high in the sky and the morning heating up fast, Hal suddenly grabbed Ken’s arm and faced him with a worried expression.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  Ken thought for a moment that Hal’s memory had slipped again. But his eyes were still sharp and his grip strong. “Back home. Virginia’s scared to death about you.”

  “No,” Hal said adamantly. “I don’t want to go back to the Slab.”

  “But your wife’s there, Hal,” Ken said. “Anyway, my car’s parked there, I have to go back.”

  “There’s something bad there, Ken,” Hal said. “Something, I don’t know, wrong about that place.”

  Ken held the fence back for Hal to pass through. “What kind of wrong? You’ve lived up there for years.”

  “I know it, Ken. But…I don’t know. I guess I hadn’t touched you and had that…well, you know, that kind of electrical charge go through me before. It’s like it opened these shutters in my mind or something. I can hear lots of things—not really hear, but you know…”

  “I think I do,” Ken admitted, remembering the strange images he’d been able to call up since he and Hal had connected yesterday.

  “I call ‘em magic days,” Hal said. “When I think about ‘em at all. And these last few days, they’ve been magic days, for sure. But since you and I touched over there, on the Slab, the magic’s been even stronger than before. If I’m not careful I can hear all the things my neighbors are thinking about, and what they’re thinking, well, I don’t want any part of it. It’s foul, Ken, it’s evil. They’re thinking about killing each other, hurting each other, they’re full of anger and fear and misery.”

  “Seems like that’s true of most people,” Ken suggested.

  “No, more than that, though. Way more. Like wading through some kind of cesspool, barefoot and with open cuts on my feet. I can’t go back there.”

  Ken thought for a moment as they walked. The hike back hadn’t felt strenuous at all—he actually felt refreshed, as if he’d had a good night’s sleep and a shower. “Okay,” he said finally. “I left the car near Virginia’s place—your place. I’ll pick it up and I’ll stop in to tell her that I’ve got you but I’m going to take you to a doctor just to be checked out—that you’re fine but as a precaution I want someone to take a look at you. That way she won’t worry about you so much, and I’ll be able to come and pick you up in the car.”