Smiley

by Ezell, Michael

  There was now an eight foot length of wood rail fence suspended about five feet off the ground. More than enough room to drive a snowmobile and sled underneath.

  LaSalle felt a chill, but not from the snowflakes occasionally dotting his eyelashes. This dude was smart. And patient. Like no one he’d ever chased before. He stepped onto Smiley’s property and put the “gate” back in place. Like new, just a fence. Son of a bitch.

  LaSalle hiked the rest of the way with a new caution in him. He checked his phone to make sure it was still on. He didn’t want to miss a call from Garrett and have Smiley roll up on him wearing the old .357 he toted around.

  ***

  Garrett parked a good quarter mile from the house where the eviction was taking place. He had his scanner tuned to County frequencies, so he’d heard this place had a ton of dogs in the back, crammed into a barn.

  Country folk don’t often take to evictions kindly, and the Sheriff’s Department had mounted a small army for this one. Garrett watched deputies mill around out front like uniformed ants. Red, blue, and yellow flashing lights turned the scene into a psychedelic stage show from this far back. He wished Tracy could see it.

  Before long, Smiley came out with a snarling dog at the end of one of those long poles with a loop of wire. He loaded it into a cage in the back of his truck and went back in.

  ***

  LaSalle crept up to the rear of Smiley’s barn, his scalp tingling. The snow crunched underfoot, making it impossible to be silent. He made his way around to the front and checked the lock securing the doors. A Yale. Come on.

  In less than a minute, LaSalle had the lock open and the kit back in his pocket.

  He expected a horror movie creak from the door, but it glided open as smooth as Smiley’s fence contraption. Once inside, LaSalle closed the door and again stood silent.

  The first thing he saw was the snowmobile under the tarp. He pulled up the tarp to expose the drive tread. He saw the crescent shapes down the middle. A Hacksaw Trail Track, Garrett called it.

  He moved on to the sled. He could already see the rails. He ripped back the tarp, not really knowing what he expected. This guy was too smart to leave blood, or hair, or anything else behind. Asking LaSalle the technical details on a sled would be like asking a rabbi what kind of bacon you should buy. This one looked pretty standard for all he knew. Something was carved into the front handle...

  Hunter.

  He used his phone to take pictures of the sled and the snowmobile tracks. He pulled a cloth tape measure out of his coat pocket and laid it on the floor behind the sled rails. Exact same size. He took another picture. From there, he moved to the outer walls and started a systematic search, side to side, looking for anything that didn’t belong in a barn.

  He saw the trash can Garrett talked about. No pie tin inside.

  What he didn’t see, high in the dark corners above, were the flat black motion detectors.

  ***

  Smiley had filled up half the cages in his truck. His back ached something fierce and his knees were cussing him. All the after-hours activity was taking its toll. He’d have to retire from his County job soon. Then he’d have all the free time he wanted, until the Hunter got too weak to take any more prey.

  Sharp buzzing came from his pocket. He locked a mangy Spaniel mix in a cage and retrieved his phone. The alert on the screen made him feverish and cold all at once. His motion detectors in the barn were going off.

  The deputies guarding the property entrance stared at him like he’d sprouted horns when he lit out of there. The dogs yammered and howled, but Smiley planted his foot on the accelerator and shot off down the road. They had no way of knowing his barn was calling him.

  Smiley had never been one of those stodgy old farts refusing to learn about computers and such. It opened his world up to new things like the bullfights sold over the Internet. He’d lived long enough to see Buck Rogers make-believe shit become reality.

  He didn’t even pay attention to the Volvo when it swung in behind him on the highway. He opened his glove box and took out his old Smith and Wesson. He’d left it in the truck in case it got jostled loose while he wrestled with the dogs. He holstered the revolver, but didn’t snap it down. If somebody really was in his barn, they were about to see the business end right quick.

  ***

  LaSalle felt deep disappointment. His search had yielded nothing. Just an old barn with a clean floor, not counting the oil stain Garrett thought belonged to Nadine’s car, and some musty hay bales in the back. He leaned against a support beam and slid down to sit on the floor.

  His tailbone scraped against something.

  A small length of PVC pipe, maybe three inches in diameter, painted flat black. It came out of the floor right alongside one of the big support posts. Now what the hell would that be for?

  He tried pushing and pulling it, tipping it to one side or the other. Nothing. He got down close and used his flashlight to look inside. A straight shot down into blackness.

  Something familiar made his arm hairs stand on end. He leaned close to the pipe and sniffed. The mild odor of human decay.

  He’d smelled it before. No mistaking it. LaSalle felt electrified. He wanted to jump up and scream. He had work to do, though. Searching for a trapdoor, some kind of access under the floor, he took one more quick trip around the barn. He wound up behind the stack of hay bales. Two bales were loose on the floor back there, but nothing unusual.

  He stopped and tried to relax his mind. Quit looking for the obvious and open the backdoor to the brain. He settled onto on one of the loose bales of hay. Smiley would have another switch somewhere. Like the fence posts. Nothing obvious. No Scooby Doo coat hook on the wall, but something clever and unobtrusive.

  The floor around his seat was littered with loose straw. Judging from everything else he’d seen about the man, LaSalle figured Smiley must have been in a hurry when he left. Otherwise, he would have surely swept the mess right up with the broom hung on its hook over there.

  Among the scattered straw, one small bit stuck straight up for some reason. LaSalle knelt down and saw it had fallen into a knothole in the floor plank. The hole was very close to another support column. The harsh beam of his flashlight showed the edge of the hole was worn black with oils from human skin. Someone had to have put their finger here countless times to have so much discoloration.

  He squeezed one of his clubby digits into the hole and his pulse throbbed in his neck. There was an eyebolt in there. He pulled it toward him and heard the slightest sigh, but nothing happened. Almost nothing. Perfect little join lines appeared in the barn floor. Those loose bales covered most of a square about three feet across.

  A spark of furious energy hit him and he shoved the two hay bales away. The trap door finished opening, nearly silent on hinges seated with such care and expertise. His heart ran wild like an undisciplined hunting dog. Despite the cold, sweat ran into his eyes. Narrow stairs put together by a master craftsman disappeared into the darkness.

  LaSalle clicked on his flashlight again and put a foot on the first step.

  His phone buzzed in the chilly silence and he almost dropped the light down the stairs. It was Garrett. “Yeah?” LaSalle said.

  “If you’re still in there, get the hell out. We’re almost on top of you.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, I thought he was taking some dogs back to the County Yards, but he just kept going once we got to the exit. We’re close. Disappear.”

  LaSalle hung up and weighed his options. Whatever was down there, he didn’t want a confrontation with Smiley in broad daylight over it. The law would likely get involved then.

  And the law had nothing to do with what he had planned.

  He pushed the door down, heard it click into place. Moving fast, he moved the hay bales back and scattered some straw. He took care to pluck the stray piece that led him to the knothole.

  21

  “You want to be real still,” Papa says. “Wa
it and watch, boy. A true hunter don’t ever let the animal see him.”

  Smiley sits in the blind on his twelfth birthday. He knows it’s not deer season, but Papa says a man makes his kill on his twelfth birthday by God’s law, and the law of man has nothin’ to do with it.

  Papa leans so close his lips touch Smiley’s ear, and he whispers three words reeking of moonshine and Viceroy cigarettes.

  “Thar she is.”

  A doe, fat from feeding on corn at a nearby farm. Smiley raises Papa’s Winchester and puts the front sight right on the pocket where the leg meets the body and up a couple of inches. His twiggy arms won’t hold the rifle up for long. He squeezes.

  The Winchester barks in the woods and the doe performs a graceless leap forward and to the right, crashing to the ground and never moving again. His first kill.

  Smiley looks to Papa for praise.

  “Least you didn’t inherit your mother’s walleye.”

  Still, Papa pats him on the back and after they slice—and doesn’t that feel delicious— into the skin and pull the insides onto the mossy ground at the base of an oak, Papa lets Smiley take a bite out of the heart.

  “Once you’ve tasted the heart of something you kilt yourself, you’re a true hunter, boy.”

  ***

  The Hunter wore the cold mask, the one the girls saw when he took them.

  Sitting below the barn in his workroom, Smiley played the video back again. The colored fella, Garrett’s friend, had snuck into the barn. Damn it to hell, Smiley had only installed cameras outside, so he could watch the yard while he played downstairs. The voyeur in him wanted to know what the man did while inside the barn. He didn’t fast-forward, he sat very still and watched the unmoving image of the barn door until the man came out again and put the lock back in place. Smiley had already stormed around the barn, looking for any signs the PI had found something, or left a bug device behind. Nothing seemed out of place.

  The coon would damn well pay, boy. Oh, how he’d pay.

  Smiley opened an Army surplus footlocker he kept behind the dentist’s chair. He found an antique Russian night scope in there among the various butchering implements, scalpels, and brands. Sometimes he liked to watch the girls cry in the dark, not knowing where the Hunter would strike from next.

  He planned on staying awake tonight, and calling out sick tomorrow as well. He’d guard his treasures until he could think of a way to get the black fella and Nadine together in the pit.

  ***

  “We should try again in a couple of days,” LaSalle said.

  Garrett paced the ugly green shag in LaSalle’s motel room. Only for high rollers, the Lazy Eight. LaSalle’s laptop sat on the table. Garrett clicked through the images LaSalle offloaded from his phone. The Hacksaw style snowmobile treads. The sled with the proper size rails.

  “Put this together with Nadine’s pie tin and we have...jack-shit, as far as anyone else is concerned,” Garrett said.

  “That’s why we should take another look.” LaSalle didn’t look at Garrett, he was too busy straightening the shirts in his closet. “And by the way, the dry-cleaning sucks around here.”

  LaSalle always had a way of pinning you with his eyes when he spoke to you. Was he looking away on purpose? Or am I just paranoid, Garrett thought.

  He glanced at Tracy’s painting of the collapsed barn with the tree growing through it. LaSalle had gotten the manager to let him replace the sailboat print originally in the room.

  “When are you gonna ship it home?” Garrett said.

  “I will, I will. I like to look at it in the mornings for some reason. Helps me get centered,” LaSalle said.

  “Centered, huh? I bet it’ll be the first time she ever got that review on her work. You should tell her tonight. I’m stopping by her place for dinner. Good old-fashioned steak and potatoes. Wanna come along?”

  “Nah. No third wheels tonight. You two need some time to yourselves,” LaSalle said. He glanced at Garrett out the corner of his eye. “I’ll even loan you my best Barry White CD.”

  “It’s not like that, man. And nobody plays CDs anymore,” The seventh-grade blush creeping up his cheeks irritated Garrett.

  LaSalle came over and shut his laptop. “What would be wrong if it was like that?”

  Good question. Garrett had asked himself before. “Nothing. And everything. I think I’d just fuck it up right now. I still have Michelle running around in my head, along with who knows what else. I need to get a lot of stuff sorted out first.”

  “If you wait until all your problems are sorted out, you’ll be dead. Trust me. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be all right. People can work with that.”

  “You sure you’re not a counselor?” Garrett said.

  “Counselor? Shit, I got a PhD in Love.”

  They both laughed and Garrett felt good. Good. He headed for the door. “Okay, then. You’re missing out, though. Tracy does a mean garlic mash.”

  “Bring me a doggie bag,” LaSalle said.

  “No promises there’ll be any left.”

  Garrett left him and hustled through the cold to get in the Mustang.

  “Hey, Chief.”

  Garrett turned to see LaSalle behind him, in his socks.

  “The snow is gonna ruin those argyles, big man.”

  “I got more,” LaSalle said.

  LaSalle pinned him with the trademark intense gaze he hadn’t used earlier. “I want you to know, I appreciate you helping me with this. I been to a lot of places with white country cops who didn’t have time for me, and plenty of places, country or not, where nobody had time for some missing hooker.”

  LaSalle gripped Garrett’s hand. “Don’t listen to these assholes around here. You’re a good cop, and you’re a good man. Fuck these people.”

  The emotional swell blindsided Garrett. He squeezed LaSalle’s hand and turned back to the Mustang to keep it under control. “Thanks, man. I’ll see you tomorrow, huh?”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow,” LaSalle said.

  He went back into his room and shut the door. Garrett fought down a feeling of doom at the slamming sound. He seriously needed to get his scrip filled.

  ***

  A bloody steak and garlic mashed potatoes were really what Eve tempted Adam with. At least Garrett thought so. He finished his off and eyed the other steaks on the platter.

  “I can’t believe I bought all that,” Tracy said.

  “In your defense, you thought I was bringing a grizzly bear with me.”

  “Party pooper. I can’t believe he’d rather go over case files than have dinner with us.”

  Garrett sipped some sweet tea, but she was too sharp for him. She noticed him being quiet. “What? He didn’t like me? I washed most of the paint off my fingertips the night I met him,” she said.

  “He, uh... He had this weird idea we needed time alone.”

  Her cackling laugh made him dance inside. She ignored what he said and started clearing dishes. He helped her carry things into the kitchen. “Well?”

  “Well what?” Tracy said.

  “What do you think about what he said?”

  She handed Garrett a Tupperware dish for the mashed potatoes and started foiling LaSalle’s two steaks. “Do we spend time together already?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “And is that okay with you?”

  “Is it okay with me? I don’t follow,” Garrett said.

  “There really isn’t anything to follow. Is it okay with you that we spend time together? A simple question.”

  “Yeah, of course it is,” he said.

  Tracy touched his cheek, lightly, her fingers cool. He hoped she didn’t feel the warmth boiling through him.

  “It’s okay with me, too,” she said. “Very okay.”

  She left him standing there with a plastic dish of mashed potatoes in his hands. He put it next to the steaks and followed her into the living room.

  This was the part he’d been dreading.

  He
had told her about LaSalle’s dry run, but she forbid him to talk about anything else case related until after dinner. The conversation ran to old times, Junior High classes, big hair for her and (embarrassingly) skinny jeans for him. A red-haired force of nature, she had pulled him along in her wake, guiding them where she would, whatever sprang into her quick brain. He didn’t mind.

  Feeling low, he watched her spread sheets of paper on her coffee table. Time for the horrible things to take center stage again.

  Tracy sat on the couch and patted the spot next to her. “Okay, come check this out.”

  He sat next to her and looked at the printed facsimiles of the Artemis Constitution, the oldest and only paper in town.

  “It didn’t mention Smiley by name, so I never would’ve found it if Mrs. Shotwell hadn’t spilled the beans. The police blotter just says ‘Local Youth arrested for peeping.’” Tracy said.

  “Not much for details back then, huh?”

  “Nope. I was disappointed at first. But then...” She pointed to a particular paper.

  Local Farmer Arrested for Assault.

  Garrett read the first few lines. “Grover Carmichael? Smiley’s dad?”

  “Yes. Again, the article doesn’t mention Smiley by name. It just says another farmer accused ‘Grover’s young son’ of killing a litter of puppies he had in his barn,” Tracy said.

  “Holy shit. Does it say how old Smiley was?”

  “No. Just that one bit. Anyway, the guy wanted some money, Grover got pissed and beat him down in front of numerous witnesses at Davis Hardware. Did two days in jail.”

  “A lot of killers start out with animals when they’re young,” Garrett said.

  “This is really giving me the creeps,” Tracy said. She hugged her own chest and got up to get a sweater. “If this is real...I mean, Smiley is a deacon at our church. No one will believe it.”

  We all have our masks we put on in public, Garrett thought.

  ***

  LaSalle trudged through the snowy field under the Cheshire moon, feeling like an asshole. He felt a kinship to Garrett, even though the guy had been a cop most of his life. It’s not so much what you did for a living, but what you did as a man in LaSalle’s world. They’d both been through some shit, and they both had their demons. Hard as it was, he had to set the personal bond aside.