Smiley

by Ezell, Michael

  (Smiley had put the damnable pie tin downstairs afterward. Ignorant pride made him keep it where he could see it.)

  Garrett might become a problem, though. Not that he was smarter than Smiley, but he had a streak of his daddy’s stubbornness in him. Lamar Evans had privately droned on and on about his missing whore for years. The only reason Smiley put up with it was because it excited him to hear Lamar moan about missing her, and then go down to his trophy room after Lamar left and stroke her hair in the dark.

  He was firmly in control, as he always had been. None of these lesser people could touch him, he didn’t fear a one. He’d waited his whole life for things to come to him and he’d always been rewarded.

  Tracy Ellsworth walked out of the sanctuary and his patience was rewarded again.

  “Tracy, how the heck are you?” He smiled so big it wouldn’t have taken any effort at all to open a bit more and chomp her nose right off her face.

  “Hi, Smiley. Haven’t seen you at a Wednesday evening service in a while.” She hugged him and he smelled just paint and turpentine, no perfume this time. He got a good close look at her pert little nose when she pulled away.

  “I hope my barn lived up to your expectations,” he said.

  “Your barn?”

  “Garrett told me how you were going through a barn phase. He took some pictures of my barn for you,” Smiley said.

  “Oh. Oh, right.” She looked confused, but he could see her loyalty to Garrett lead her upstream behind him. “That is one heck of a black eye. I saw it when you walked in.”

  He let her swim away because he could. The Hunter could give as well as take. “Yup. Still smarts some. All these years of walkin’ on ice every winter, you’d think I’d have it down.”

  “Everybody slips sooner or later. I’m just glad you’re okay,” Tracy said.

  “Ain’t it the truth? Everybody does, don’t they?”

  She patted him on the arm while she talked. A toucher. “Do you remember coming out to our place when I was about eleven or twelve?” she said. “You had to pull a litter of feral cats out of the woodpile behind our barn.”

  “I do. Two of them little suckers liked to bit through my knuckle bone,” he said.

  They laughed together and he saw her white, even teeth, her pink tongue flexing and jumping behind them.

  “It always meant so much to me that you took them to the adoption shelter. So many farmers in those days did terrible things to feral cats. Even some that weren’t feral,” she said.

  “I’m sure those got some good homes,” Smiley said. “I better git, I got babysitting duties tonight. Do you need a lift home?”

  “Oh, no thanks. I drove myself today.”

  She gave Smiley another hug and he watched her say her goodbyes to everyone. He strolled to his truck, following Tracy in the corner of his eye, her scarlet hair a bright patch smeared across his peripheral vision. He imagined her kneeling at the head of his phalanx, stroking her hair in the dark, still smelling of the turpentine she used to clean her brushes.

  ***

  LaSalle examined the photo of Lamar Evans, Smiley, and the darted bear.

  “Jungle tribesmen?” LaSalle said.

  “I’ve heard crazier. He very well could have missed a shot one night. And if he’s taking them with tranquilizer darts, no wonder they vanish without a trace. Once they’re out, he can take them anywhere, do anything he wants. No evidence left where he took them.” The words felt sour in Garrett’s mouth, like he tried to dry-swallow an aspirin. His dad’s best friend, and the only man who’d ever really shown patience with Garrett.

  “You look like you’re not quite a believer,” LaSalle said.

  “And I shouldn’t be. What, a pie tin and a weird feeling and suddenly I’m thinking a guy who was around practically my whole life is a killer?” Garrett said.

  LaSalle ticked off points on his fingers. “We’ve got a missing girl’s bracelet alongside some tracks. Same kinda tracks your old man noticed when he also had a missing girl. We got ourselves a camouflaged parking garage for a snowmobile, with branches woven by a craftsman, and a baby crib made by the same kind of craftsman. We got a guy with at least the right treads on his machine and a similar pie tin to a missing lady in his barn. As a cop what do you think of all that?”

  Garrett didn’t have to answer.

  “Okay then, let’s do it,” LaSalle said. “You know what time he normally leaves for work. After he’s gone, go in and check the place out.”

  “Without a warrant?” Garrett said.

  “Last I checked, neither one of us were cops.”

  “Got me there. If we find something? How do we get the troops in there legally?”

  LaSalle tipped his beer back and didn’t set it down until it was empty. His turn to not provide the obvious answer.

  “No. He has to be arrested. We’re not assassins,” Garrett said.

  “And then? He gets to spend what’s left of his sorry life sitting on Death Row, three hots every day, and writing letters to the victims’ families?” LaSalle said.

  “They fried Bundy.”

  “He killed college girls, not prostitutes.”

  “We don’t know for sure Smiley killed anybody. And we can’t say your girl is connected to him at all,” Garrett said.

  “Which is why we investigate, right?”

  “Sure. And if he’s dirty, he goes away,” Garrett said.

  “Whatever helps you sleep at night, man.”

  ***

  Smiley brushed the knots from the newest trophy’s hair, taking care not to mar her scalp. The skin came out nice and supple, like they always did now. People-skin was harder to deal with than any other hide he’d processed, and it took years of frustration and failure before he hit on the kneeling body form and tanning method he used now.

  This one had the silkiest hair he’d felt so far. Not quite as luxurious as Tracy’s maybe, but it had a straight shimmering look favored by those skinny bitches on the magazine covers down at the grocery. He had her puffy blue coat tacked to the wall next to the red halter top his green-haired trophy wore the night she met the Hunter.

  A warm summer hunt, his ribs slick with sweat, his fingers sliding over her own sweaty skin as he tied her to the sled hooked behind his ATV.

  He sat behind the former owner of the blue coat in his straight-back chair. She was new, so she went first tonight and he counted a hundred brush strokes. He indulged himself by letting his rough fingers slide over the stitched areas where he repaired the marks he made on her with the hot steel and other tools.

  Because she’d been on his mind so recent, he shifted his chair over behind the one who Garrett’s daddy fornicated with. She had short black hair, which Smiley hardly had to brush at all. There was no wind to muss it in his trophy room, just a bit of dust he cleaned away with care.

  On impulse, he pulled his jacket to his face and inhaled. Tracy’s scent filled his nose from where her body molded to his during their hug. He felt stirrings, longings, an ache to be with her. Not to caress or penetrate in some foul act, but to bend to his will using sharp steel and the hard spirit of the Hunter.

  The speaker mounted high in one corner crackled and his heart skittered so bad he had to forcefully cough a few times to get it going right again. Damn thing. He heard the unmistakable sound of tires crunching gravel. He left his beauties in the dark and hustled through the passageways, turning off lights as he went.

  In the special room where he did his work with the living trophies, he checked the four monitors on his worktable. The cameras hidden under the eaves of the barn showed Misty’s truck parking near the front of the house. Microphones picked up the two doors slamming and Angela chattering away to Misty.

  A young fella came all the way out here from Morgantown to install those cameras and link them to screens in his house. Smiley watched close, so he could transfer the monitors under the barn after the young man left. It started with those little bastards he caught stealing Pa
pa’s old tools a few years back. He ran ‘em off with a little rock-salt and gunpowder, but afterward his paranoia gnawed his guts while he was at work, made him constantly wonder if someone had stumbled across his play area.

  The salesman was so happy about selling all those electronics he threw in a special little tower with a mobile Internet connection. The motion detectors would text Smiley if they were set off. Darndest thing. He remembered when only one house in town had a telephone.

  Smiley shut everything down and went upstairs to greet Misty and Angela. He had a brand new gallon of chocolate ice cream just for Angela. To help her weather the tragedy of Bradley’s death, and all.

  ***

  Garrett paced the house from front of back, stopping only to refill his bourbon. Hell, he couldn’t even think of it as his house, his dad’s spirit loomed so large in every corner. The glass eyes mounted in the head of a twelve-point buck regarded him from the wall over Dad’s favorite easy chair. The monster whitetail represented the first time he ever went hunting with Dad. Man, how the old man had laughed when Garrett lost his breakfast at the sight of deer guts. He put Garrett’s hands in the warm muck and made him help pull out the entrails.

  “Best way to face something you don’t like is to walk right into it with your head up,” Dad said.

  Garrett carried his bourbon into his old room; it had been turned into a home office for his dad, complete with a PD line. A little plug-in exhaust fan was mounted in the window that opened onto the backyard, but it hadn’t really helped. Stale cigar smoke would haunt the room forever, no matter how many times you painted.

  He’d already turned the office upside down in his earlier search, nothing new here. He made sure he put the picture back on the upper left corner of the desk, right where he found it. Dad always kept it there. Him and Mom in a classic Hawaiian sundown picture, looking tanned and relaxed. Mom had poked him in the ribs before the shot, so the laughing smile was genuine and spontaneous.

  Like the one in the other picture.

  An overwhelming sadness hammered Garrett down, down. He slid along the wall until his butt thumped against the carpet. Some bourbon slopped out and ran down his knuckles—

  And Michelle laughed as he spilled his Margarita on her shirt.

  He shook the thought from his head so hard it made him dizzy. Levering himself upright again, he paced back to the living room. The Box popped into his head and he wanted to be anywhere but the room where the closet was. The Box sat right behind the boots she bought him.

  He seriously needed to get his prescription refilled. This was not the time for cold turkey. His heart staggered for a beat when his phone rang. He nearly yanked it out of his pocket and threw it across the room. But he saw the number and answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Thanks for letting me in on the barn thing, asshole,” Tracy said.

  “Uh, I’ll warn you, I’ve been drinking, so... What barn thing again?”

  “Smiley cornered me at church and said you were taking pictures of his barn. For me.”

  “Oh shit.” He looked up at the reproachful eyes of his dad’s prize buck. “I meant to call you, I am so sorry.”

  “Sure, sure, but what’s up with that? Why not just tell Smiley you wanted some pictures of his barn?” Tracy said.

  Shit.

  “Hello?”

  “Listen...” He couldn’t get his thoughts together. So many details, so much to think about. “I want to tell you something, but I don’t want to. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just...”

  Even through the phone, her voice was gentle and soothing. “I’ve done my homework. I know. You don’t feel any situation is okay, or ever will be. But aside from the time I crushed your Popsicle stick farmhouse, you can always trust me.”

  He laughed at the memory and then he was talking, faster and faster, rubbing his temple, knowing she knew Smiley as well as anyone else around here and it would all sound—

  “That’s insane,” she said. “Smiley?”

  “Remember when I said I didn’t want to tell you?”

  As always, it was a matter of fact thing for her. “Okay, so you’re investigating. Find something one way or the other, but something solid.”

  He felt like she just reached down and pulled him up from cold, deep waters. “I will. And thanks for listening to me.”

  “It’s what I do. Do you mind if I do a little snooping for myself?”

  “No way. You stay far, far away from this,” Garrett said. No more funerals of women I love, he didn’t say.

  “Nothing dangerous. I’m curious about this arrest for peeping when Smiley was a teenager. I’m willing to bet one of the old libraries has some papers on microfiche.”

  “Microfiche? We do have them Intra-webs now,” Garrett said.

  “Artemis, West Virginia Public Library, sweetie,” Tracy said.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Come to my place for dinner tomorrow and I’ll give you my notes if I get anything.”

  ***

  From far away, Tracy looked like a red-haired Barbie pacing back and forth in front of a dollhouse window. The Hunter’s field glasses brought her into sharp relief, though. Talking to someone on the phone, twisting her luxurious red mane in her fingers.

  Smiley’s chest ached, but he knew it wasn’t his blood pressure. A pressure of another kind welled up from deep down there, where the roots of everything tapped into the earth’s blood. The Hunter felt his tendrils worming down, striking into the dirt as he lay here watching her.

  He imagined he could feel the tremors in the earth as she paced and talked, each step of her delicate—and oh wouldn’t it be nice if they were bare—feet sending a thrumming signal to the Hunter. Her Hunter.

  Not now. Too many people looking and talking right now. After the black private eye left, things would cool down. Go back to normal. And then the Hunter had things to do.

  20

  Smiley’s olive drab Jeep Willys hit the main road, turned west, and headed out toward the County Yards. He’d pick up his County truck there to make his daily rounds.

  Garrett watched him go through binoculars. Once Smiley was far down the road, he started LaSalle’s Volvo and followed him at a distance. He hit the button on his phone.

  “LaSalle.”

  “Okay, we’re on the road,” Garrett said.

  “Got it. I’m goin’ in.” LaSalle hung up.

  Garrett got onto the highway a good twenty car lengths behind Smiley, who drove straight to the County Yards. Smiley didn’t hang out, drink coffee, smoke, and bullshit like most of the other guys. He got the keys to his County truck and got on the road again.

  Yes, sir. That Smiley’s a hard worker.

  ***

  LaSalle moved the last few yards through the woods and checked the GPS on his phone. He should be right on the backside of Smiley’s property. He’d parked at the rest stop and made the by now familiar hump down the trail and past the hunting blind. He wore top of the line boots, but his toes were still wishing they were in a Brooklyn summer.

  Emerging from the thickest brush, he saw the fence around Smiley’s property line. A wood rail job with three rails, running for a quarter mile across the back of Smiley’s place.

  Easy enough to climb over, but something stumped LaSalle. How the hell would Smiley get a snowmobile through this fence?

  He checked the fence line for a good two hundred yards in either direction, kicking himself for wasting time, but unable to let it go. If he couldn’t get quick access, then it was less likely Smiley could do the things LaSalle and Garrett theorized.

  On the way back to his original approach point, LaSalle examined the fence itself. The posts were put here to last, weather-sealed wood sunk into concrete in the ground. It must have taken the old fart weeks and weeks of work to make the damn thing.

  Each post had been weather sealed and the fence was in great shape considering the elements it endured. A few posts were still a little rough and crac
ked, as if the West Virginia seasons were flipping the bird to the weather seal. He tapped each post as he passed.

  The first time along the fence, he’d been hoping for something obvious, like a gate. On the trip back he noticed the fence jogged up and down with the terrain as it went. But in one spot, two posts were on dead even ground, like it had been graded special. Up close, he saw the first of the two posts had been treated with some kind of clear resin. Not just weather-sealed, but impregnated under pressure. High-end stuff. To do every post like this would have cost either an enormous amount of Smiley’s time, or money. He went to the next post in line and saw the same thing. After that, the posts went back to normal weather-sealed wood.

  LaSalle stood back from the two posts, about eight feet from each other. He got close and looked for signs either post could move aside, but saw nothing. He brushed snow off the top of one post. Its top was polished smooth, flawless. An adrenaline dump hit his heart as he leaned in. A barely visible part line started at the top and ran all the way down the center of the post to the ground. What the hell?

  He ran his fingers around the post and felt the tiny line on the backside, too. It was like the post had been split and put back together, but with the kind of workmanship that would make a master carpenter weep.

  LaSalle tugged, pulled, and tried to rattle the post. It felt like it wanted to move, but he couldn’t see how to do it. Near the bottom of the first post, his fingers pushed through the drifted snow and found a sturdy eyebolt. It had nothing connected to it, which puzzled LaSalle. He tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. He pulled on it.

  And heard a small click from inside the post.

  With the pin released, half the post felt loose in his hand. He pushed and it slid smoothly upward about an inch, but stopped because of the crossbeams mounted to the opposite post. He saw a track system inside the post, like your kitchen drawer on steroids, expertly recessed into the post halves.

  “You clever, clever, motherfucker,” LaSalle said.

  He ran to the other post and found the same pin at the bottom. A quick pull and half of that post came loose as well. He went to the middle and gently tugged upward on a crossing rail. The whole fence section slid upward like a conjurer’s trick.