by Jen Blood
“That kind of would have killed my point, don’t you think? Anyway, I thought we weren’t supposed to be sharing a room. What happened to bunking with the boys?”
“It smells like a locker room in there. And Rick’s depressing the hell out of me. All that kid does is read the Bible and stare out the window. It’s creepy.” He scooted over to one side of the bed, nodding to the other. “Just sleep—I’ll be quiet. And I promise not to grope you unnecessarily while you’re out, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue. Instead, I lay down on the bed beside him, kicked off my shoes, and stared at the ceiling. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I pulled up some files I had, from researching Barnel a few years ago. Looking into his revival.”
My eyes drifted shut. “And?”
“I’ve got two thousand, three hundred and eighty-six names. Boys he branded during his sideshow.”
I sat up. “Are you kidding?”
“He’d been doing this since the ’60s, an average of maybe one a week—more during the summer camp sessions, less in the winters. You do the math.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How the hell did this guy get away with this for so long? I mean, it’s not like he was just dunking people in the lake or laying hands…he branded them. That’s assault. That’s…” I looked at Diggs helplessly, completely baffled. “I’m not nuts here. Why didn’t anyone shut him down?”
“This is a different world. His victims were all underage. All brought in by their parents. Around here, God’s number one. Parents are second in line. You don’t question either of them. Or at least you didn’t when I was a kid.”
“So, not once did someone try to press charges? Report him to the Feds? We were at his tent meeting last night—anyone could have come in. If the cops saw him…”
He shook his head. “Did you see anything last night that he could have been arrested for? The snake handling and the exorcisms and anything else remotely hinky were always done behind closed doors. Anyone in attendance was vetted first. In 1982, a kid named Wally Majors went to the police and the FBI investigated. Everyone clammed up. No one would testify. Six months later, the kid killed himself.”
None of this was totally outside my sphere of experience, of course. I thought again of what I’d flashed back to during Barnel’s revival the night before. Was whatever the Paysons had done on Payson Isle really so different from Barnel strapping kids down and branding them?
“What about you?” I asked. “You never went to the cops?”
He laughed with the same kind of cool distance he always assumed when I asked him something personal. “It was more a matter of pride at the time. No one wanted to be the pussy who couldn’t take Barnel’s treatment. Later, of course, the only evidence I actually had of what happened…” he faded out, though I knew where he was leading: The cross, ultimately transformed into the messy burn that he’d always refused to talk about just below his collarbone.
“How did you get rid of it?” I asked. “Barnel’s cross, I mean.”
“Divine intervention,” he said with an awkward, cloaked smile. And that was the end of that conversation.
Rather than press him, I looked over Diggs’ shoulder at Barnel’s endless list of victims. The names were color coded in red, blue, green, and orange, and listed alphabetically. “What do the colors mean?”
“Effects after the fact,” Diggs said. “Blue is no discernible effect. Green is mental illness. Orange is a criminal record.”
I spied Wyatt’s name in red. Guess I didn’t need to ask what that one meant. I scanned the list. Maybe half the names were blue, the bulk of the rest evenly divided between green and orange, with a lot fewer red scattered in among them. “How long have you been working on this?”
“A few years,” he said. “I started while I was living here. I kept it quiet, though.”
“Ashley wouldn’t have approved?”
“Ashley didn’t approve of much.”
That stopped me, if only momentarily. “Why marry her, then?”
“Oh, you know…” he said with a vague wave of his hand.
“Actually, I don’t, or I wouldn’t have asked.” My temper was rising again. It has a tendency to do that around Diggs. “We dance around this shit all the time. I’m tired of it. What did George mean the other day when he said you married Ashley because of me?”
His eyes darkened. “Sol—” he began, about to put me off again.
“You know, Juarez may not remember the first thirteen years of his life, but I still know more about his past than I do about yours, and you’ve been my best friend for seventeen years. Everything’s this deep dark mystery with you: the women you married, the scars you carry…hell, you won’t even tell me why you’re a vegetarian. I mean, Jesus, Diggs. Were you a cow in a past life?”
He frowned. It felt like there was a war waging in his head: what to say, what to hold back. “You know more about me than anyone,” he said. “You know that.”
“I know the things I was there to see firsthand. No more, no less.”
“Since when have you been all about sharing your deepest darkest, anyway? I mean, Jesus, Solomon. Have you joined a knitting circle, too? If you were looking for someone to help you get in touch with your feminine side, you’ve obviously picked the right guy.”
“At least Juarez treats me like something other than his faithful sidekick,” I bit out. My cheeks burned. I looked away, wishing I’d never brought it up. I focused on Einstein, my head ducked down, fingers moving through his fur. Somehow, it felt like I was the one who’d revealed something—which is the reason I don’t usually do this emotional crap in the first place.
“I don’t think of you as a sidekick,” Diggs finally said. His voice was even. Serious. I met his eye. Okay, maybe he didn’t think of me as a sidekick. It would have been a very different movie if Butch Cassidy looked at Sundance the way Diggs was looking at me just then.
I rolled my eyes, aware that my cheeks were now officially burning just a shade cooler than the sun. “I just think you should open up once in a while,” I mumbled. Before he could respond, I took the laptop from him and focused every ounce of my energy on the screen.
“All right…you wanna share, huh?” he asked. He lay back on the bed, arms behind his head, and started reading the paper. His voice had lightened considerably. “I could tell you about my first time. Now there’s sixty seconds worth remembering.” I shot him a glare. He grinned. “Of course, I remember your first time a lot better.”
“I hate you.”
“Who can blame you? Now, let’s see… I was thirteen. She was seventeen. Jessica Montgomery...”
He stopped. When he didn’t continue, I looked at him curiously. He was totally transfixed by a page-one story on Wyatt.
“What’s up?”
“‘Local veterinarian Dr. Wyatt Durham disappeared from Jackson Burkett’s farm early in March,’” Diggs read.
“So?”
He sat up and took the laptop from me. “They’ve been calling him Roger this whole time—that’s why I didn’t recognize the name.” He scanned through the list and came up triumphant, jabbing his finger at the screen. I read the name he’d indicated.
Burkett, Jackson R.
“You think that’s Roger Burkett?” I asked. “It could just be coincidence.”
“I doubt it.” He got up and grabbed his jacket.
“Wait,” I said. “Where are you going now?”
“The Burkett farm. It’s not like Sheriff Jennings is gonna keep us in the loop, and I’m sure the state cops haven’t put this together.”
I sat up and retrieved my shoes.
“You don’t have to come with me. I’m fine,” he said.
“You want me to send you out there alone? No offense, but your track record since we got to Justice isn’t that great.”
“I know you’re trying to turn over a new leaf,” he said with a smirk. I hate
that smirk. “If this is too much action for you…”
I slugged him in the arm. “Don’t push it, Diggins.”
He pulled his jacket on, smirk still in place. “Yes, ma’am. And I can tell you all about Jessie Montgomery on the way.”
“I can’t wait.”
There was actually a part of me—primarily in the lower intestine region—that was a little hesitant about heading to the Burkett farm with Diggs. I tried to appease my intestines by giving Mae the details of where we were headed and when we should be back, thus ideally minimizing the chances that we’d be butchered along the way. Or, if we were, at least we’d be found quickly.
I started rethinking my perspective about the time we left the outskirts of town for what appeared to be Deliverance territory, following a dirt road cut through a wall of trees in full bloom. I’d always lumped Kentucky in with the South, but the birches, maples, and oaks along the road were closer to the Maine woods than anything you’d find down on the bayou. It was still gray outside, a miserable drizzling rain falling. With the forest closing in, Diggs and my banter gave way to silence. Einstein stuck his head out the window, breathing in the fresh air. At least one of us was having a good time.
“You okay?” Diggs asked when we’d been on the Burkett road for a good five minutes. There were no cars in either direction—which could be a very good thing or a very bad thing, depending on your perspective.
“Yeah,” I said. I kept an eye on the road behind us, searching for some sign that the hooded man—aka Cameron—might be back there. I checked my cell phone. Miraculously, there was still a strong signal. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You look tense.”
I eyeballed him for a second, noting the way his hands gripped the steering wheel. His nose was swollen and his eye was purple. “You don’t look that hot yourself. Considering what happened the last time we were alone in the woods together, I think ‘fine’ would be asking a little much, don’t you? How about we just celebrate the fact that I’m not fetal in the backseat, and run with that.”
“Fair enough.”
Eventually, we reached the end of the road—literally. About fifty yards back from the driveway, obscured by an overgrown field, was a ramshackle white house that may have been nice at one point a long, long time ago. Now, the paint was chipped, a couple of shutters were hanging loose, and one of the upstairs windows had been broken out. Plastic was taped over it, but I couldn’t imagine it did much to keep out the draft. Or the beasties.
“Well, this isn’t creepy at all,” I said.
“Buddy said they found some tire tracks in the driveway,” Diggs said. “And Wyatt’s medical bag was still on the ground where he’d left it.”
He stopped the car and turned off the engine. “So, we check the house first.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“You want me to go alone?”
“Give me a break. Let’s do this.”
“Suit yourself.” He reached across me to the glove box, opened it, and rooted around for a minute before he came out with a gun. A big gun, too—much closer to a cannon than a pea-shooter.
“What the hell’s that?”
“It’s a Glock.” He checked the clip, slammed it back into place, and tucked it into the back of his jeans. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Teeth brushed? Check. Clean underwear? Check. Fully loaded grenade launcher in my back pocket? Check, and check.
“Well, yeah. Do you know how to use it?”
“Yep.” He got out without waiting for any follow-up questions. I scrambled out, snapped the leash onto Einstein’s collar, and followed Diggs toward the house. I didn’t want to be a dweeb, but up to this point in our lives, Diggs and I had navigated some pretty hairy situations without resorting to capping anyone’s ass.
“You really think we need that thing?” I asked when I’d caught up with him, halfway to the house.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’d rather not need it and have it, than not have it and die.”
When he put it like that…
Still, I was fairly sure the whole ‘If we’re all armed, no one gets hurt’ argument had proven fatally flawed more than once.
We reached the front door. The cement step up was split down the center and the house had drifted about a foot from it over the years. Diggs had to lean forward to knock. I started to say something more about the whole gun thing, but he stopped me with a look.
“I’m not going down without a fight again,” he said. Any trace of fun was gone from his eyes. “If someone comes after you—us—I’ll damned well be ready this time.”
I held up my hands in surrender. “All right, fine. Whatever. Just know that if you inadvertently shoot me, I’m gonna be pissed. And if you hurt my dog, all bets are off.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Diggs knocked again. Einstein whined at the door, pawing at the bottom. There was no answer, and I didn’t hear anyone screaming from the bowels of the basement or anything. I took that as a sign from the universe that we should move on.
“Buddy said the barn’s across the field there,” I said. “Maybe that’s where they are.”
“Could be,” Diggs agreed. “Up for a walk?”
We set out. Once we got past the house, an actual cleared path appeared within a few yards. Most of the land was fenced out this way—good, solid fencing that stretched all the way around, with no gaps that I could see. We followed the fence line over a couple of rolling fields, the grass surprisingly trim considering the condition of the house.
“Goats,” Diggs reminded me when I said something. “Grass doesn’t grow too long with them around.”
I looked around for any sign of these alleged goats. Beyond the fencing and the close-cut grass, however, I saw nothing. Einstein gave the ground a perfunctory sniff, but even he didn’t seem convinced there was anything to be found. The place was eerily quiet, interrupted by the occasional birdsong, a car engine off in the distance. Otherwise, I heard nothing. When we finally cleared the last hill, a bright red barn came into view. Diggs knelt beside a thick tire track deep in the soft earth.
“ATV,” he said. “Looks like it was carrying a heavy load.”
I wasn’t sure whether it was my own imagination, too much TV, or recent experience that made the statement sound so foreboding.
The double doors leading into the barn were open, and the barn itself was pristine. Shelves of stainless steel buckets lined one wall, while two barrels of sweet-smelling grain sat nearby. Molasses, I suspected. Bales of hay tinged with green were stacked neatly in the corner.
“Alfalfa,” Diggs said. He shook his head. “It’s pricey—not the kind of thing people usually feed around here. They might not have known what they were doing, but they put some money into this venture.”
All the stalls were mucked out, not so much as a stray goat pellet to be found. “Where are the goats?” I asked, going for the most obvious question first.
“No clue,” Diggs said. We walked to the other side of the barn, where another double door opened up on the other side. Diggs scratched his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I don’t see a trace of anyone—goat or human.”
“When did Buddy say they were out here last?”
“Thursday. The day after they found Wyatt.”
“That was a week ago. It looks like maybe they split. No cars, no goats, no sign of anyone at the house.” Roger Burkett was one of Reverend Barnel’s conquests. That had to mean something. I don’t believe in coincidences in general, but I especially don’t believe in them where crazy branding preachers are concerned.
We headed back to the house, still searching the horizon for any sign of man or beast. I thought of Barnel’s proclamation of an impending Armageddon. I had to admit, it did kind of feel like we were in one of those sci-fi movies where a mutant apocalypse has taken place while no one’s looking. Any second now, I expected a pack of freakish southern zombies to appear on the hillside, arms
outstretched, ready to save our souls and eat our brains.
“Maybe we should call Buddy,” I suggested when we were almost back to the house.
“I’ll call him when we’ve checked the place out,” Diggs said. He didn’t even slow down. Suddenly, I had a pretty good idea what he’d been dealing with from me over the past year. What a pain in the ass.
“What if there’s someone in there?” I asked when we reached the front door.
He knocked on the door. “If there’s someone there, they’ll answer. And if they don’t…”
I was familiar with the logic, having made the same argument myself upon occasion: If they don’t answer, we should bust in and make sure everything’s all right.
No one came to the door. Einstein whined and pawed at it, his nose pressed to the crack. Diggs started to knock again. His knuckles had barely grazed the wood when I thought I heard something coming from inside.
A whimper.
My skin crawled and my heart dropped toward my navel. Einstein nosed at the door, whining all the louder. “Did you hear that?” I asked.
Diggs shook his head. He tried the door, but it was just as locked now as it had been when we’d first shown up on the scene. I put my ear to the wood while he went around to the side, looking for a way in.
“Hello?” I called inside.
Nothing. Einstein was frantic now, scratching at the door with a steady, low whine. Two seconds passed. Then three. And then, again…
A whimper.
It was unmistakable this time—someone was in there.
I stepped back and jogged over to Diggs, who stood beneath a window that was open just a crack.
“There’s something in there,” I said.
“What do you mean, something?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It could be a person, or it could be an animal. It’s probably not a mutant southern zombie, but I make no promises.”
He gave me a look, lip twitching to keep from smiling, then retrieved a plastic milk crate lying in the grass. He set it beneath the window and stepped up, pushing the window up farther before he pulled himself into the house. Since I’d seen this movie before and I was fairly sure it ended with someone decorating their cave with our skins, I took that opportunity to call Buddy Holloway. It went to voicemail just as Diggs’ feet disappeared through the open window.