by Ben Rehder
He needed something in the five minute range and he needed it quick. The song he was playing was thirty seconds from its cold ending. Rick didn’t have time to weigh the possible impact of any lyrics of a song that fit his time requirements, so he took the easy way out. He grabbed Abraxas and cued the sensual Samba Pa Ti.
57.
Rick walked into the station the next day and stopped dead in his tracks. Traci was sitting at her desk with the most elaborately made up eyes Rick had seen since the last Kiss tour. She tilted her head just so and said, “How did you know I love that song?”
“I’m a professional,” he said. “I just know these things.” Privately, he was thinking, Phew.
“That was the song that was playing the first time I . . .” Traci decided not to say the words, instead she made a happy thrusting motion in her chair that made the point. “Anyway–”
Both of them jumped when they heard a violent thud against the common wall shared by Clay’s office and the reception area. Rick imagined the dent Clay’s thick glass ashtray must’ve put in that old paneling. This was followed by the sound of muffled yelling, but not so muffled that you couldn’t understand Clay saying, “Goddammit, Lori! Look at what you did! I am so tired of this shit, I can’t tell you!”
Mrs. Stubblefield’s voice pitched to high indignation. “You’re tired? I don’t doubt it, all the ‘business’ trips you take! You think you’re so damn slick, but you’re not. Don’t think for a minute I don’t know what’s going on. And don’t think I won’t call that lawyer either!”
“Go on then, call,” Clay said. “You need a dime? Here’s a handful. But you ain’t gonna call nobody and we both know it, so just go on, get outta here. I got work to do. Jesus!”
Traci grabbed at the stack of mail on her desk and slapped a copy of Billboard into Rick’s hands. “Read!” He buried his face in the charts while Traci feigned a phone conversation. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I can fax a rate card right away. If you can hold while I get. . .”
Lori Stubblefield stormed through the lobby and hit the door at full speed, rattling the glass. A moment later Rick and Traci heard squealing tires. Rick went to the door to watch as she fishtailed onto the street. He turned and gave Traci a look of concern. Traci said, “Don’t worry about it. They do this every month or so.”
“Do they?” Rick looked back and forth between the hallway leading to Clay’s office and the front door. “Interesting,” he said, almost to himself.
Traci held up her hands. “It’s not my problem and I don’t ask.” She started separating the mail into different stacks. “Some people just think that’s a normal way to behave.”
Rick shook his head at that before saying, “By the way, there’s no W-9 on file for the contest winner.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Any time you give away over six hundred dollars, you’re required to get a signed W-9 and issue a 1099 at year’s end. I don’t think you’re required to get the W-9 immediately, but it’s usually done when you hand over the money, so it looks suspicious.”
“But it doesn’t prove the contest was fixed.”
“No, it doesn’t. That’s why I wanted to talk to Joni Lang who, it just so happens, paid me a little visit last night.”
Traci dropped the stack of mail and looked sharply at Rick. “She did? When?”
“Just before you called.”
“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”
“I was trying to get laid last night,” Rick said.
Traci fixed him with deadly eyes. “Trying to get laid by whom?”
“By youm,” he said, mocking her tone. “All that talk about kitty still needs some love and that sexy little cat noise you make. . . had me distracted or I’d’ve told you.”
“Did Miss Loblolly Pine have anything useful to say?”
“Better than that. She has some evidence.” Rick recounted Joni’s story about Clay palming the entry form. “She’s keeping it in a safe–” He stopped when he heard Clay’s voice. He was in the hall talking to one of the salesmen and it sounded like he was heading toward the lobby. “Film at eleven,” Rick said as he grabbed his mail. “I’ll be in production if anybody needs me.” He went down the hall toward his office and the studios.
There was a short stack of national spots to dub, some of which required local voice tags. As Rick prepped his work, something occurred to him and, for the first time since Captain Jack’s sister visited, he thought to look for a phone patch in the production room board. None of the pots were labeled ‘phone’ so he lifted the cover and looked at the guts. There were a couple of wires that had the distressed look of having been yanked out with no small amount of fury. He traced them back and, sure enough, they led to the phone.
It was more evidence but not the kind Rick thought he needed. What he needed was to find Captain Jack’s body stuffed inside the board with a note in his pocket explaining where to find the rest of the evidence. Then he’d have something to work with. A couple of frayed wires in a ratty old mixing board weren’t going to prove anything.
Rick did the first three spots and was about to lay down a voice track on a forth when the phone line for the production room started blinking. He paused everything, pulled off his headphones, and picked up the phone. “Production.”
“Rick? It’s Donna Moore,” she said in an urgent whisper. “Have you been out there yet?”
“You mean DeWayne’s house? No, not yet. I was thinking about–”
“Stop thinking and go,” she said. “He’s here right now. Renting equipment for a job he’s doing this afternoon.”
Rick threw all the production orders back to his ‘IN’ box and said, “I’m on my way.” He was out of the station in five minutes. Ten minutes later he was barreling down a county road looking for a landmark that Donna mentioned in her directions, specifically a double-wide trailer with a front door awning fashioned from the hood of a truck. That’s where Rick was supposed to turn right. Down that road three miles was the driveway Rick was looking for. He stopped at the mailbox. There was no name on it. He stepped out of his truck and looked inside. A handful of junk mail and an electric bill addressed to Mr. DeWayne Ragsdale.
Rick pulled in. He didn’t know if there was a Mrs. Ragsdale or a pack of junk yard dogs to deal with or perhaps both. He parked next to a rusting Plymouth Duster mounted on the traditional cinder blocks. As he sat in his truck looking at the property, he couldn’t help but think he’d been lied to. On more than one occasion, people born and raised right here in Mississippi had told him that nobody in the Magnolia State really lived in a place like this. “That’s all just negative stereotyping,” they said. But here he was, looking at it. Rick came to the conclusion that if anybody was guilty of perpetuating this sort of cliché, it was the likes of DeWayne Ragsdale.
It was a single wide, white with rusting trim. There were several tires on the roof and more strewn about the . . . what would you call it, Rick wondered, it wasn’t a lawn or a yard, it was just dirt, weeds, and trash under a canopy of pine trees. Mostly fast food containers, beer cans, and cigarette cartons. There was also a cheap bench press with 120 pounds on the bar and an olive green washing machine that had been tilted against a tree and used for frequent target practice.
Rick got out of his truck and went to the door. He figured if there were dogs they’d’ve been on him by now and if a woman answered the door he’d just act surprised, put on his best Hee Haw accent, and ask for Billy Bob. When no one answered his knock, Rick tried the door. It was locked.
He looked through the front window. The nicotine film coating the other side of the glass lent the living room an old-fashioned sepia tone appearance. Rick could see an old sofa in front of a big screen television. There was also a rack of expensive looking stereo gear and a tall stack of DVDs and CDs all of which Rick suspected DeWayne had acquired for less than the full retail price. Or maybe he’d used his cash prize for some of it.
Rick circled ar
ound the side of the trailer, checking each window but they were all locked. Peeking inside the various rooms, Rick thought of Neil Young and he began to sing one from the Harvest album. A man needs a maid.
He came around to the rear of the place and saw an aluminum tool shed and a big lump of camouflage in the back yard which turned out to be a car under an ill-fitting boat cover. He lifted the camouflage and found himself looking at a Corvette. As best he could tell, it was a 1996. Jet black. Rick checked the doors. They were locked. The windows were tinted but he could still see inside. There was a shoe box on the passenger seat, full of cassettes. Rick thought, Who listens to cassettes anymore? Then he had another thought. He pulled out the keys to his truck and scraped at the Corvette’s paint job. Underneath the jet black, it was torch red.
58.
Rick handed Traci a piece of paper and said, “This is the VIN number. See if your friend can find out if it matches the number of Captain Jack’s car.”
“Sure,” Traci said. “I’ll call him.”
“Thanks, I’ve got to go finish up in production.”
Traci pointed down the hall. “You gotta go talk to Clay first. He said he wanted to see you when you got back.”
“About what?”
Traci shrugged. “Didn’t say.” She picked up the phone as Rick headed down the hall. “Dubya-ay-oh-ahhr,” she said. “Mmm. Hold please.”
When Rick walked into Clay’s office he was surprised to find himself staring down the barrel of a Remington 870 Wingmaster shotgun. Clay pumped it once. “Jesus!” Rick backed up holding his hands palm-out at his chest.
“Oh hey, didn’t see you there,” Clay said as he rubbed the barrel up and down with a soft, oily rag.
Rick approached Clay’s desk from a safe angle, pointing all the while. “What the hell’re you doing with that thing?”
“Gettin’ ready for ‘coon season, man, whaddya think?”
Rick looked closer. “With a twelve gauge? Ain’t gonna be much ‘coon left if you shoot it with that.”
Clay smiled and said, “Ain’t that the truth?” He set the gun across his desk and looked at Rick like he was the one who’d called the meeting.
Rick waited a moment before he said, “So. . . what? You wanted to invite me on the hunt? Ask if you could borrow my ‘coon squaller?”
“Huh? Oh, no, nothing like that.” It looked like Clay was about to say something but then he seemed to change his mind about it. He said, “Hey, you find that carport yet? Thing can’t’ve blown that damn far.”
“Not yet,” Rick said. “But if I can get my production finished in time I’ll go out and look around this afternoon.” He noticed the dent in the paneling where Lori Stubblefield had thrown the glass ashtray, probably right past Clay’s head. “I’ll let you know if I find it.”
“Good.” Clay kept looking at Rick as if waiting for him to say something.
“Is that it?”
“No, there’s one other thing.” He gestured toward the bookkeeper’s office. “I heard you were looking in the W-9 file the other day.”
“I was looking for my paycheck,” Rick said.
“Yeah, well, don’t worry about that W-9. That’s not your problem.”
“Didn’t think it was,” Rick said.
“Good. ‘Cause I’d hate to have to start programming the FM.”
“I’d hate that too,” Rick said. “But I don’t see how one follows from the other.”
“I’m just saying, the programmin’s your business. The other stuff’s my business. I don’t mess with yours, you don’t mess with mine. That’s all.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Rick said.
“Thing is,” Clay said. “There wasn’t a W-9 in there ‘cause that old boy that won didn’t know his social security number so I just sent him home with the form. He’s gone mail it back.”
“Great. Anything else?”
Clay picked up the shotgun and looked down the sight. “Nahhh. Just wanted to get that straight. Tch.”
59.
Rick walked to the production room with the not-so-vague feeling he’d been threatened. He took it as a sign that he was barking up the right tree. At the same time, staring into the black hole that is a shotgun barrel made Rick realize he had to either rethink his hobby or find some solid evidence to nail Clay.
After finishing his work Rick went back to his trailer. It was around five when he stepped down from his truck. He looked toward the woods in the direction where his carport was last seen cartwheeling. What the hell, he thought. Take a short run, get some exercise, see if I can find the thing. He changed into shorts and put on an old pair of running shoes and then stretched for a few minutes before starting a slow jog toward the tree line.
Rick followed roughly the same path he had taken the day he went for his walk. The pine trees ahead of him had suffered some storm damage but nothing dramatic, broken branches and some stripped bark was all. But once he was past the tree line, things changed. About fifty yards into the woods Rick stopped and looked up. The tops of several pines had snapped off. One had landed on a section of that old split rail fence, laying it to the ground. He guessed the tornado had touched down here.
Rick had never seen destruction such as this. He had once cut down a pine tree with an ax, took him an hour and it wasn’t much of a tree compared to the big ones here. Rick knew that a humbling amount of force had moved through this space.
He found where the fence was still intact and he followed it toward the clearing he had seen the other day, where someone had been harvesting lumber. When he got there, he stopped and said, “Wow.” And he meant it. That big white oak near the creek was gone. And not to the lumber yard. Its hard wood had refused to snap like the pines so the storm had taken it whole. Ripped it out like a molar, roots dangling as it was carried off in a swirl.
There was a hole fifteen feet across where most of the oak’s root system had been, near the bank of the creek. When the flash flood came down that gully afterward, the embankment couldn’t take the pressure. It gave out and a torrent of debris burst through the gap eroding tons of the reddish soil in a matter of minutes.
After eight hours the waters had returned to a level below the break in the bank.
Now, as Rick squeezed between the barbed wires into the clearing, the ground was still soft. He saw where large branches had been picked up by the torrent and pushed to the trees where they formed brief dams and caught all sorts of rubble. A child’s bicycle with training wheels was bent around a small trunk. He looked down and saw the prints of racoons and possums and birds but no deer or big Russian pigs. And no sign of the carport.
Rick walked over to the breach in the creek bank where the erosion was deepest. He looked at the color and striations in the wall created by the erosion. It was like a blank slate waiting to be marked and something about it reminded Rick of that place between Jackson and Vicksburg where they cut I-20 through those hills and you’d drive between the big dirt walls left behind. People stopped and carved things like BB luvs CH 4ever in six inch letters but you couldn’t read them at sixty-five miles an hour so the only one anybody remembered was the only one you could read no matter how fast you were going. It appeared at some point after that motorcycle crash in October of 1971. Someone had carved, in neat square letters eight feet tall, the words, Remember Duane Allman. It was famous for a while and became a Mecca of sorts, standing for decades before the elements finally washed it away.
Rick was looking at the layers of earth revealed by the erosion when he came across a smooth white surface where everything else was rusty brown. It was hard to say with any certainty but it looked to be four or five feet below the original ground level. He looked closer and brushed away a little dirt. He leaned in and noticed a fine jagged line that sent a shiver up his spine. He picked up a stick and, with some trepidation, pried and scraped away more dirt until he was sure. It was the top of a human skull.
60.
It took Rick’s brea
th for a moment and he stepped back. He imagined the hollow eye sockets and the mouth gaping in its last scream. Rick gathered himself and got back to it. As he pried more dirt away he began to see hair and gray flesh and he realized this wasn’t a skeleton. It was a body that hadn’t been in the ground for too long. He assumed scavengers had cleaned the skin off the parietal bones that had been exposed by the erosion. The thin jagged line was where the plates of bone met at the crown of the skull. Scraping away a little more dirt, he saw what he assumed was a bullet hole. Rick stopped digging and thought for a moment. This had to be Captain Jack. What’re the odds that someone else’s dead body would be on this property?
Rick didn’t want anyone to find this before he was ready. If the killer or whoever was clearing timber off this property came back, they might see it. He went to the edge of the creek and scooped up two hands of muddy clay, then went back to the exposed skull and covered it.
Rick got back to the trailer just before six. He called Traci and Donna, then he grabbed a bite to eat before heading for work.
61.
Traci arrived around eight thirty and waited in the lobby for Donna who got there a little before nine. The two of them knew each other from when Donna was buying ad time on a regular basis. They talked for a little while, speculating on what Rick had to say. At the top of the hour, they went down to the studio. The ‘On Air’ sign above the door was illuminated so they waited there as Rick gave the station ID. When the light went off, they went into the control room and sat in the chairs underneath the big double-paned window.
Rick had just started Traffic’s Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys. He had War’s City, Country, City cued up which would give them about twenty-five minutes to talk. Rick turned down the monitors, looked at Donna, and said, “You were right about the contest. It was fixed.”