Silent Approach

by Bobby Cole

  After twenty more minutes of tossing and turning, she got up to take a sleeping pill. She needed rest for tomorrow, since it was going to be a red-letter day. Before she could make it to the bathroom, Billy Joel had slipped back into the room and reclaimed his place on the bed.

  Her iPhone was plugged into the wall and charging, and as she was climbing back into bed, she grabbed it to see whether she had any e-mails from her boss. The phone glowed in her face as she checked her in-box. Thirteen e-mails awaited her, and as she browsed them, she noticed two from John Allen. She quickly opened the first.

  “I forgot to tell you I recorded the meeting with my phone. I just listened to it, and you can hear most everything. Hope this helps. JA.”

  Emma was thrilled. She was impressed with his ingenuity. It was brilliant. Excitedly, she clicked the attachment, and it loaded to play. Clicking the arrow, the sounds of the Pop A Top could be heard, and she listened intently.

  Annoyed at the noise, Billy Joel once again got up and strolled into the den, hoping for some peace and quiet.

  Runt was excited to be driving the Porsche. He hadn’t driven a stick shift since grinding the gears on his daddy’s Toyota pickup truck.

  The headlights shined across an overgrown field as he fell in behind Winston. He turned the radio to a Sirius rock channel and cranked up the volume.

  Their hunting club wasn’t anything fancy, but they loved to hang out there on the weekends in the fall and winter. There were about twenty members who all paid $1,000 annually for access to a big chunk of timber-company land they leased. There were thousands of clubs just like it across the South. Some were nicer—much nicer—and probably some were rougher, though Runt hadn’t seen any that were in worse shape. The clubhouse was an old dogtrot-style sharecropper’s house they used to cook and eat. The ancient fireplace was a gathering spot for telling lies, and for drinking coffee in the morning and hard liquor at night. The house hadn’t been dusted or cleaned since the club had been formed over twenty years ago, and it would surely freak out any female who saw it.

  Through the years they had purchased two repossessed trailers and moved them next to the clubhouse for members who wanted to spend the night. The trailers didn’t have good heat and had no air-conditioning. Red wasps had nests in the ceiling corners of every room, and each year they would find a skin from a chicken snake that hunted the resident mice. The trailers weren’t hooked to a septic tank, and the members lived in fear that they would be fined for dumping raw sewerage into the creek. Years of use had combined to generate a steady stench so offensive in the hot summer months that it would gag a person.

  No one visited the club during the summer, and they’d all long ago given up spending the night in the decaying trailers. The snakes, mosquitoes, and ticks were a constant threat, and with no air-conditioning, the July and August nights were too miserable to bear, even if the trailers had been habitable.

  Regardless, the hunting club still represented heaven to Runt. He had grown up roaming its woods all year-round. On the weekends and nights when he wasn’t digging for artifacts, he was hunting something in the woods. It was the one place where he truly understood what was happening around him. He knew the forest and its inhabitants; nature had a balance of give-and-take that he appreciated. The woods also fed him. Venison and flathead catfish from the creek provided meat for the year; and wild mushrooms, frog legs, muscadines, and wild plums added flavor. In the silence of the trees, he didn’t have a supervisor making certain he cut the chicken correctly, or Winston making him do all the manual labor. If only he could have a relationship with his girlfriend that was as good as the one he had with the woods.

  He loved where they were headed but wasn’t looking forward to what he was going to have to do. Winston would pay him handsomely for the work, though, and that alone was sufficient motivation.

  He texted his girlfriend, though he hoped she was asleep. A little dot-dot-dot text bubble popped up, though, and instead of blooming into a message, it vanished. This repeated every so often for a few miles, a pattern that he interpreted as an indication she was texting somebody else. Highly frustrated, Runt turned up the radio volume until it hurt his ears. The Allman Brothers Band was singing “Midnight Rider,” which was at least fitting for him tonight.

  John Allen struggled with the sock in his mouth until he finally was able to spit it out, then lay on his side and tried to determine his next move. He had no idea where Winston was taking him, but he assumed it was somewhere near Meridian. He figured Winston had “made” him as an agent and would likely stay on familiar turf while trying to cover his tracks.

  It was comforting to know that Emma and Hoss knew where he’d been and would immediately focus their attention on Winston, but that didn’t help him at the moment. Winston was capable of anything, according to Emma. John Allen had to figure out a way to escape. Again he tried twisting his wrists and kept at it until the white-hot pain shooting through his messed-up shoulder forced him to stop.

  He knew what he’d done—he’d reinjured the rotator cuff he’d torn playing college intramurals. He wasn’t going to break the zip ties as long as they were behind his back. He was wedged in so tight he could barely move, but nonetheless he pushed and contorted himself until he could see the bastard’s eyes in the rearview. They were smiling.

  “Give it up, Pretty Boy. It’s no use—you can’t break those zip ties. The Memphis Zoo uses them to restrain their gorillas,” Winston said with a laugh.

  John Allen’s head was pounding as his mind raced, trying to think of a way out. Talk—that’s all he could do. Maybe he’d learn something that could help him.

  “What’s this all about, Winston?” he asked, his voice rough with anger.

  The highway was deserted except for a few eighteen-wheelers. “Ah, I see you spit out Runt’s sock,” Winston said.

  “This is no use. There’ll be a lot of people looking for me in the morning.”

  “It won’t matter, bud. They won’t find anything.”

  John Allen sighed. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? You tried to set me up to buy that skull. I know you work for the Choctaws. You people have been trying to bust me for selling artifacts for years, and it ain’t ever gonna happen.”

  “How did you figure that out?” Anything to keep the conversation going.

  “It doesn’t matter. I have my ways.”

  It was a measure of the depth of his desperation that John Allen felt his best hope was to try to appeal to Winston’s rationality. “You don’t have to do this, you know. A violation of the Antiquities Act is not worth killing me over. If you let me go, we can just forget the whole thing. We can set something up so you can be sure I’ll leave it be.”

  “You have no idea how much money I have made and will continue to make selling black-market Indian artifacts. It’s going on all over the state, the South—hell, the country. So believe me, it’s worth killing you to keep everyone off my trail.”

  “They’ll figure it out. They knew I was talking to you, and this time the FBI is involved.”

  Winston didn’t believe that for a minute. They had much bigger fish to fry than chasing the underground artifact market. They had proven their lack of interest through the years, and he knew that these days they had more than they could handle. Nope, he was safe from the feds. John Allen was bluffing.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Look, I’ll agree you had a good cover. I believed you were a preppy accountant from Columbus, and the Porsche made me think you had access to cash, which I happen to need right now. I fell into your trap, but I know you’re just an Indian cop or agent or whatever you want to call yourself. This ain’t no federal issue.”

  “It is now that you’ve kidnapped me. Have you thought about that?”

  Winston nodded. This much was true, but it didn’t matter a bit. Kidnapping and killing John Allen was the only available me
ans to end this mess. It was necessary for survival.

  “Yeah, you may be right,” he said, “but they can look at me and investigate all they want. They’ll never figure it out. And without a body they won’t have a case.”

  “Is this how you killed the last agent?”

  Winston smiled. Maybe they knew—they had to know something for him to make that comment—but it didn’t matter. They didn’t have enough evidence. Feeling cocky, he looked in the rearview mirror and laughed.

  “Yes, yes, it is.”

  The confirmation didn’t shock John Allen, but the fact that he’d so brazenly taken ownership of it was sobering. All hope that Winston wouldn’t kill him had just evaporated.

  With nothing to lose, he shot right back at his captor. “What about Jim Hudson?”

  Winston paused. Maybe they did know more than he realized. But again, there was no way to convict him of that murder. Still, and not that it mattered since he was talking to a dead man, he chose to lie about that one. “No,” he said, “that was an unfortunate hunting accident.”

  “Yeah, I bet it was. People sure seem to die around you.”

  Winston continued to laugh. “Shit happens.”

  John Allen swallowed hard. He had to find a way out of this situation. Then he would beat Winston’s brains in with whatever he could find that would work.

  When Winston pulled up to the rusted metal gate at the Foggy Bottom Hunting and Drinking Club, he hoped the key still worked. He was late paying the annual dues, but he was late almost every year. He hated the nasty old club. He wanted to be a part of a fancy hunting club, but he couldn’t afford it right now. The club president didn’t like Winston, but he didn’t think he would go to the trouble of changing the lock on him and distributing new keys to everybody.

  When he got out of the truck, the overhead light stayed dark. Winston had customized his vehicle for crime.

  Soon headlights appeared in the back window, and John Allen recognized the sound of his Porsche’s engine, along with music being played loudly. He tried to sit up and look out the back window, but he was wedged against a spare tire and couldn’t get enough leverage. Without his arms and legs working together, it was impossible. Maybe if he had worked out more, like Sadie had wanted, and had done a few sit-ups . . .

  Sadie was in his mind now, and he didn’t want her there, didn’t want to consider the pain she would have felt to receive the news that he’d met the kind of end he seemed likely to at the hands of Winston Walker. She’d been spared that, at least. For the very first time, he found a positive reason for her accident.

  He could hear Winston and Runt talking. After a few moments he heard the rattle of a heavy chain and the screech of an opening gate. Winston jumped back into the truck, and they proceeded on. The headlights behind the SUV followed for a few feet, then stopped. Runt must be closing the gate.

  When they pulled up to the camp, John Allen didn’t have a clue where they were. He didn’t have his watch to time the drive. He’d listened, trying to learn whatever he could, but had learned exactly nothing. Now he was prepared to kick whoever opened the door.

  Winston cut off his engine and slammed the truck door. Within thirty seconds, John Allen heard his Porsche pull up and saw the lights cut off.

  “Runt, it’s late,” he heard Winston say. “I don’t think we have time to dig it out proper tonight, do you?”

  Runt replied, “Yeah, if I can get started tomorrow night about ten, I can get it done, boss.”

  “So here’s what we do. Let’s lock him in the back room of the trailer. Tomorrow is Sunday and you don’t have to be at work, so you can stay with him. We’ll go back to town after we get him settled, and you can drive back. That way you’ll have your truck, and it’s not suspiciously sitting at my house. I’ll stay in town and act normal, and we’ll figure out what to do with him.”

  “You wanna kill him tonight?” Runt asked, as casually as if he were asking whether Winston wanted him to run to the store. John Allen’s blood ran cold.

  There was a pause, then Winston said, “Hell, let’s ask him,” and threw open the back door.

  John Allen kicked wildly, barely missing Winston with the first blow, causing him to step back and laugh. He shined a flashlight into John Allen’s eyes and blinded him.

  “So we’re trying to decide whether to kill you tonight or tomorrow,” Winston said in a spooky voice. “What do you think?” John Allen heard Runt laugh.

  “Screw you, Winston!” John Allen screamed. “Untie me and let’s settle this between me and you,” he said with a grunt as he struggled to raise his throbbing head.

  Winston laughed. “Thanks. Sounds like fun, but I need to be in good shape for the meetings you say I have coming tomorrow. And to be honest, I have never played fair. It’s not my style.”

  “Untie me!”

  “I’m enjoying seeing him struggling with the future,” Winston said to Runt. “Let’s do this later. See if his attitude improves after a day in the hot box.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Runt said.

  “I’ll help you get him in there, then we’ll knock him out again. That’ll buy you some time.”

  Runt reached out of the flashlight’s glare to grab John Allen, who twisted to get away. “Hold still, you idiot,” Runt said. “Unless you want us to cut your throat right where you lie.”

  “Surely you’d like to get your legs cut loose and stretched out, John Allen,” Winston said. “Come on, now. But he’s right about us cutting your throat. We can just hose out the liner when we’re done.”

  John Allen finally stopped struggling and allowed Runt to cut the zip tie holding his legs together. Then Runt helped him to his very wobbly feet.

  Winston was tempted to push him over, just because he could, but they needed to get going. “Tomorrow,” he told Runt, “if he gives you any trouble, just kill him. Put a bullet between his eyes and one above his ear for insurance. You don’t have to wait on me.”

  “I gotcha,” Runt said. He had committed some awful criminal acts in his life, but he had yet to actually kill someone. Still, he would follow orders, and there always had to be a first time. “What about the car? It’s a fine ride, boss.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. I’d like to have it, too, but it’ll be a dead giveaway, and it’s too easy to spot. We’re gonna have to sink it.”

  Runt nodded his head, but he was disappointed. His girlfriend would’ve loved the car.

  “Let’s walk him down to the skinning shed and get him locked up,” Winston said. They’d be able to hose the blood out of that even more easily than they could’ve cleaned up the bed liner. The shed was made for such activities.

  Wrestling John Allen into the skinning shed had been harder than they’d expected. He somehow jumped, kicked Winston in the side of the knee, and knocked him to the ground. Once Winston got back on his feet, he was furious and beat John Allen unconscious.

  Afterward Winston could barely stand, much less walk, and he was ready to kill John Allen. They only thing that saved him was Winston deciding he wanted to torture him the next day when he regained consciousness.

  Winston popped three Advil for the pain while he watched Runt drag John Allen’s limp body the rest of the way to the shed, tie his legs together again, and lock him in. When Runt was finished, he walked back to where Winston stood, his face beaded in sweat from the pain and exertion.

  “You okay?” Runt asked him. “That looked like it hurt.” He could tell Winston was in severe pain. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he’d heard something pop or snap. It didn’t sound good.

  “Damn right it did. My knee’s tore up. It ain’t supposed to move in that direction. It’s already swollen,” he said with a grimace as he gingerly felt around it with both hands.

  Runt wiped the sweat from his own face with his sleeve. He had never seen Winston injured. He’d always managed to avoid any hard labor or fights.

  Winston set his jaw and looked up at him. “Go g
et in your race car, and let’s go.”

  “Where we gonna do it? Lake Tiak-O’Khata is close. That would be my choice.”

  “Too many people around that would hear the splash, and I don’t think the lake is deep enough right there by the road, anyway,” Winston said as he winced in pain.

  “Whatcha thinking, boss?” Runt asked, swatting a mosquito.

  “Lake Pushmataha is perfect. Follow me,” Winston said, then pulled his door shut and cranked the Suburban.

  The two criminals drove to Philadelphia, Mississippi, then turned onto State Route 16, going west past the Choctaw school, administration, and health offices. Along the way they passed a tribal police officer on patrol. Winston noted they weren’t speeding and didn’t worry about it. After a few more miles, he turned right on Goat Ranch Road. The route was lined with giant pine trees and curved around until they came to a locked gate. Winston rolled down his window and waved at Runt to drive forward. When he arrived, Winston handed him a pair of bolt cutters, which made short work of the lock. Once inside and after a few more turns, a giant tree-lined lake appeared in the moonlight. When they parked and turned the lights off, the only sound was that of the cicadas. Runt had never been here before but had always heard of the beautiful body of water.

  Lake Pushmataha had 285 acres of water that locals and tourists used for recreation. It was named after Chief Pushmataha of the Choctaw tribe, whom many considered the greatest of all their chiefs. He had been so revered as a diplomat that when he’d died, he’d been buried with full military honors in the Congressional Cemetery.

  Winston parked the Suburban and cut the headlights, knowing it was too early for any fishermen to be on the lake. He emerged from the truck feeling a bit better since the Advil had kicked in, but he was still hurting.

  “You see that levee there? That’s the deepest water. It’s plenty deep to hide the car. Cut the lights, pull out on the levee, and point the car downhill. Roll the windows down, put her in neutral, and let gravity do the rest.”