The Hunters Series Box Set

by Glenn Trust

  “What did he want?”

  “Not much I guess.” Lyn shrugged. “He was drunk.”

  “Your daddy is always drunk. Doesn’t mean he don’t want something.”

  They sat together in the car, stopped at the curb while the orderly world outside settled in for the evening. Parents called their children in for dinner. The glow of television sets could be seen through the big front windows of the houses.

  Ruby’s brain was spinning rapidly. Carl had honored the restraining order since the divorce. That fact provided little comfort. Knowing he was in Judges Creek, staying with his brothers was like living in proximity to a ticking time bomb. You didn’t know when it was going to explode and demolish everything around, but you knew it would, sooner or later.

  “I don’t know what he wanted, Mama. He said he wanted to talk to me. Donnie saw I was afraid and ran him off.” As an afterthought she added, “Daddy didn’t like that.”

  “I’ll just bet he didn’t.” Ruby started the car moving again.

  When would it end? When would the damage to her daughter stop? Her marriage to Carl Stinson had done nothing but bring hurt to everything he touched, to her children in particular. Sam had gone off to Afghanistan to escape and had died there. It seemed that Lyn’s suffering would go on forever.

  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel until she felt the blood pulsing through her palms. It wasn’t fair. Enough was enough. There had to be an end to the suffering some time. Goddamnit, it wasn’t fair!

  22. It Was My Turn

  Sprawled back on a worn chair, Bain stared dreamily into space while the head of the girl he had picked moved rhythmically in his lap, up and down to his grunts. Albert, standing behind his brother, looked down, sipped his beer, gave a mean sneer and turned the can upside down over Bain’s head.

  Sputtering, waving his arms, Bain started to jump up, thought better of it considering the precarious position of his privates. “Goddamnit, Albert! What’d you do that for?”

  The girl between his legs looked up, grinned at Albert and wiped the beer from the side of her face with a hand, running her tongue over her fingers. “Good beer. Shame to waste it.”

  “Here.” Albert reached into the case on the floor by the chair. “Plenty to go around.” He tossed the beer to her, forcing her to lift both hands to catch it, which she did smiling, abandoning her interest in the task she had been performing for Bain.

  “Damn it! Now I gotta start all over again.”

  Albert laughed. “Takin’ you long enough.”

  “This was my second go ‘round.” Bain reached into the case for a beer. The girl had lost all interest in him, turning up the can Albert had thrown her.

  “Second my ass. You ain’t seen the day you could get it up twice in an hour.” Albert smiled at the girl. “Even for a pretty thing like this. What’s your name little girl?”

  “Danny.”

  “Danny, huh. That your real name…Danny…a boy’s name” With a leering grin he asked, “You ain’t hidin’ anything inside them girl’s panties are you?”

  “Nothin’ you ain’t seen.” She shrugged sipping her beer. “Short for Danielle. I like Danny better.” She didn’t add that she liked it better when she was working.

  Albert smiled. “You from around here Danny?”

  “Uh uh.” She sipped the beer, looking into Albert’s eyes, flirting. “Tennessee…east side…hill country.”

  “Mama and Daddy know where you are?” He nodded at Bain’s still exposed, flaccid member and grinned. “They know what you doin’ to my baby brother?”

  “They don’t know and wouldn’t give a shit if they did.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why all the questions?”

  “Wonderin’ if you might be up for a little road trip.”

  Bain’s head swiveled. “Road trip? I ain’t done.”

  Danny ignored him and looked at the older brother, the one who seemed to be in charge. “Up for anything if the money’s there.”

  Albert reached in his back pocket and removed a wad of bills. “Got this. Looks like money to me.”

  “Me too.” Danny stood, pulled the bra she had pushed down for Bain’s benefit up over her breasts and raised the beer to her lips, downing it without coming up for air.

  “Jesus Christ! That ain’t fair, Albert.” Bain zipped his pants and stood up. “You could wait a goddamn minute ‘til I finish!”

  “Shit! We could be here all night waitin’ for you to finish.” Albert slid his hand down inside Danny’s panties and pulled her close. “Get dressed, sweet thing. We’re gonna party and then take a trip back down south. We got a brother that’ll be hard up for a taste of you.”

  It took Danielle McMurtry ten minutes to wash up and pack up. She didn’t bother to say goodbye to the old woman who ran the boarding house/brothel in a shabby southwest Savannah neighborhood. There was no need. There would be a new girl in the room before the day was done. The woman who owned the house asked no questions and the girls who rented there provided no information. All parties, including their frequent guests, preferred it that way.

  “Ready.” Danielle came out of the bathroom, pulling a tank top up over her breasts, now braless. A small bag, the sort that people carried towels and bathing suits in at the beach, was her only luggage.

  “That’s good.” Albert pulled her close, put his stubbled face to hers and ran his tongue from between teeth that had not been cleaned in weeks until he forced her lips open.

  In defense, Danny put her hand down the front of his pants and began stroking him. When he moaned, Danny managed to pull herself away from his rotten teeth and foul breath,

  “Come on boy. Let’s get you outside in that old truck of yours. I’ll make you groan for real. You ain’t gonna forget Danny.”

  She led him by the hand out of the room. Bain trailed, rubbing his groin and watching her bottom sway in the tight denim shorts.

  Dammit, he thought. It was my goddamned turn.

  23. A Rolling Boil

  Carl Stinson concluded his day the way he had started it…drunk and mean. After sleeping off his morning beers, he woke up and stumbled out the front door, another bottle in hand.

  “Goddamn!” The ripe decaying stench from the dead dog assaulted his nose. “Goddamn spotted dog!” He looked down at the carcass holding his breath. “Goddamn rotted dog now.”

  He laughed at the rhyme he made and swallowed down some beer. “Spotted dog…now a…rotted dog.” He gave another cackling laugh, took a high step over the dog’s remains, swarming with flies and maggots, and went to his chair in the yard.

  The evening sun had lowered to the point that it was not blazing directly into the yard making things tolerable outside. He would stay there until the stale, tainted air in the trailer cooled enough to endure being inside.

  Images floated through his alcohol infused brain cells. Brain synapses cranked to life, flashed and fired. He remembered Lyn standing outside Generett’s little office. That big man stood there and told him to go. Who’d that son of a bitch think he was? She was his daughter goddamnit! Who the fuck was he tellin’ him to get out!

  And her, just standin’ there, not looking at him. Just sayin’ ‘you need to leave. leave’…the little bitch. Emerging from his drunken torpor, Carl’s rage began to simmer again.

  It was all her fault…that bitch of a wife. Who the hell she think she was divorcing him? And the restraining order. That was too goddamned much. He lived in Judges Creek. Saw them go by the trailer every day. But go near them and he’d go back to jail. That’s what the judge had said…and the sheriff.

  Bullshit! He knew how to handle a bitch that turned on her own husband. He knew. He’d seen his daddy do it. He smiled remembering the look on Will Tandy’s face as Clyde had raised his hand with the pistol, black and cold looking, pointed at his head. You step out of line, you pay the price. That’s what Clyde had said.

  Yeah, Daddy knew how to handle bitches like that. He brought them up right…taught them the
lessons. The fire in his soul raised a notch, and the simmering rage increased to a rolling boil.

  24. So Many People

  There was a place he knew. Ghosts of the past, demons of the present, waited for him there. They were always there, anxious to torment. He should go somewhere else. He should go home…to Sharon.

  He didn’t. He was drawn to that place, to the phantoms that haunted him.

  The night air, fragrant with the combination of bursting life and molding death rushed through the truck cab’s open windows. George gasped at it like a fish out of water, struggling to survive.

  He had driven aimlessly after leaving Brunswick, lost in the anonymity of the traffic. Anaesthetized by his isolation, alone in the midst of the rush of movement, he tried to forget the demons.

  It was a strange thing to him. All those years away from his daughters, not actually part of their life, he had accepted it, told himself it was for the best…that they were better off. In the back of his mind, he always thought that one day, he would be there with them again, when they were old enough to understand. It was a fool’s dream, he knew now.

  Hearing it from Darlene, had felt like a cement weight bound to his chest carrying him under the waves. He let the aloneness in the truck numb him. He wanted to be numb.

  Outside, in the dark, all was quiet and still. It was as if the world had stepped aside, waiting while the ghosts pulled him ever nearer demanding his presence, forcing him to embrace them.

  He turned from the county pavement onto an old dirt road that led to a small farmhouse a quarter mile or so along the dusty trail. The truck coasted gently to a stop, and George stared out into the night wishing for the numbness to return. It did not.

  An owl swooped low across the road, landed for a second in the grass along the side and rose again into the night. Its broad wings lifted it rapidly to a nearby pine, some small creature, unidentifiable in the dark, struggling in its talons. George contemplated it silently. The owl did what it had to do to survive. He pushed the truck door open and stepped out.

  They were there, all gathered around him in the shadows, wispy specters, blurring and fading if he turned to look at them. They were always there, just at the borders of his vision, out of sight if he tried to face them. He stared straight ahead, across the misty brush to the trees and let the spirits gather close.

  The young girl, taken by the killer, bound and murdered in a cheap motel then dumped in the weeds, not ten feet from where he stood…she was there. He had seen the car go by in the night and had pulled his jacket tight around his shoulders to doze through the last hours of his shift. She was already dead then. He could have done nothing to prevent her death, but he could have stopped the killer then and prevented so much pain.

  The old man, Harold Sims, he was there too, knifed to death by the murderer, but still there. He had done more than George to stop the killer and had paid with his life.

  To one side was the jewelry store owner on the death list. George had warned him and then walked away. The man had died because he had not done more.

  So many others had paid the price for his failures...Ronnie Kupman, shot through the head in the backwoods…Fel Tobin, killed defending Sharon from men sent to kill George.

  Andy Barnes, Johnny Rincefield, the young girl, Lyn, the boy, Clay…Sharon…all of them nearly losing their lives because of George, they were damaged in other ways. No one blamed him. They all said that it was not his fault. He knew better. He was the one.

  It wasn’t arrogance, just the truth. George Mackey was good for one thing…being a deputy…an investigator…a hunter. It wasn’t arrogance if it was true, and yet, he was a failure at the one thing he knew better than anything else.

  Darlene’s words ringing in his ears, he faced his ghosts and knew the truth. He had failed…not only at law enforcement…at being a husband…as a father…with Sharon. So many people had paid the price for his failures.

  Part Two: Vengeance and Hell

  “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

  ~William Shakespeare~

  The Tempest

  ______________________________________

  "But I'm a superstitious man. And if some unlucky accident should befall him - If he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell - or if he's struck by a bolt of lightning, then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room, and that I do not forgive.”

  ~Don Corleone~

  The Motion Picture - The Godfather

  25. The Hell He Created

  The old house’s planks and floors vibrated with the resounding crash. The front door bounced off the wall, splintering the frame so that it hung from one hinge, tilted at a steep angle towards the floor.

  Stunned, Ruby jumped from her chair. Lyn rushed from her room on the other side of the wall. Both stared, horrified, at the shattered door, dangling limply into the room, swinging on its remaining hinge.

  Carl Stinson stepped from the shadows into the light. A wild grin spread across his face. “You gonna tell me to leave now you ain’t got that big son of a bitch here to take your side?”

  Drunk as he was, he covered the three steps from the front door across the small room with surprising speed. His arm arced back while he lunged forward. As he reached Lyn, the knuckles of his meaty fist caught her in the side of the face. She went down without a sound, unconscious before her head banged off the floorboards.

  Ruby threw herself onto his back, arms around his neck, trying to pull him away from her daughter. Carl stumbled and fell backward. As they toppled to the floor, Ruby was under him. Air hissed from her chest with the impact of his weight on top.

  Rolling off her, he staggered to his feet and looked around the room. Drunk, bleary eyed, a malicious smirk on his face, he examined his work. Blood trickled from Lyn’s lip making a small pool on the floor under her battered face.

  “Get out,” Ruby wheezed, trying to push herself up from the floor. “Get out now, Carl.”

  “The hell I will.” He reached down, took a handful of her long gray hair and pulled Ruby to her feet. “Ain’t finished with you.”

  Holding her up straight with one hand, Carl sent his fist smashing into his ex-wife’s mouth. She fell back to the floor and he pounced on her chest, raining blow after blow down onto her head and face.

  Bones cracked and splintered under the impact of his fists. Unconscious from the first blow, Ruby made no effort to move or defend herself.

  Again and again, Carl Stinson raised his arm, delivering destruction to Ruby. He punched until he could lift his arms no more, then rolled off her and lay on his back on the floor between his ex-wife and daughter. Warm in the afterglow of his rage, he stayed between the two unconscious women until he heard Lyn trying to pull herself to her feet.

  “Mama?” Hand against the wall, she pulled herself up until she was sitting on the floor. “Mama…where…” She stared in horror at her mother’s battered body.

  Carl rose from the floor and stood over his daughter. The terror in her eyes energized him and his leg went back and then forward so that the toe of his boot caught her in the ribs. Lyn groaned and sank back to the floor, curled in pain.

  “You tell no one who done this, you little bitch.” Carl’s finger pointed down at her as if from the hand of an angry god. “You tell anyone and you know what happens.”

  Mute, Lyn stared at her father through swollen, terrified eyes

  “Yeah, you know what’ll happen” He grinned. “We’ll come back here…me and my brothers…find you anywhere you think to run to…make it hurt bad.” He looked at Ruby on the floor. “Her too. We’ll hurt you both.” Then nodding as if it were a solemn vow. “We’ll kill you both.”

  Turning, unsteady on his feet, he surveyed the damaged room and the battered bodies of the two women. Satisfied with the hell he had created, he swung his leg in a final arc, striking unconscious Ruby in the side, then stepped over her and disappeared through the open
door into the night.

  26. I’ll Be Quick

  “C’mon Albert. Get off her. Gimme a turn at it.” Bain reached down and grabbed his brother’s shoulder.

  Albert knocked his hand away, continuing his sweaty, grunting, humping thrusts. Frustrated, Bain sat down on the tailgate and opened a beer. Son of a bitch been on her all night. He lifted his chin up until it pointed at the surrounding trees and poured down half the can.

  Spread eagle beneath Albert in the back of the old pickup, Danny stared up into the night sky. There were stars overhead, winking in and out between the needles of the swaying pines. Departing the low rent neighborhoods of Savannah, they had driven far out into the country for their party. She had no idea where or which direction. She only knew that she had made a mistake…a big one. Taking the offer of the road trip with the brothers was turning out to be one of the worst decisions of her life.

  Lying on the cold, hard bed of the truck with Albert pinning her down, covered in his sweat, she was trapped. A trail of saliva from where he had licked her across the face, cooled in the air and made her shiver. Who licked people like that? He had run his tongue over her face the way she used to eat lemon suckers at the fair, licking them and claiming them for her own. Albert made sure she understood her status. She was theirs…his. She focused on the blinking stars and tried to keep her mind off what was happening to her.

  Danielle ‘Danny’ McMurtry was a whore. She made no pretense about it, didn’t try to dress it up with fancy names like prostitute, or hooker, or call girl. She knew what she was. She sold her body to make her way in the world. She figured it was hers and she could do what she wanted with it.

  Her grandmother had tried to teach her the Bible…told her that all good things come from the good Lord. There were prayers, words they would recite together. It made her grandmother feel better about the life she was leaving for her granddaughter. The words meant nothing to Danny, but she said them for Grandma.