It was over pretty fast. Carl was drunk, but not drunk enough to come inside her. He pulled out and ejaculated onto her massive ass. She rolled over so that she could look at Carl, but he turned away and quickly threw his clothes back on. He told her he had to take a piss. As planned, he grabbed her large cotton panties on the way out.
Carl went and joined the boys. They drank and laughed and slapped Carl on the back like he was some kind of hero. They all watched and waited for Sue to get out of the truck. The fun wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. It had to be at least fifteen minutes before Sue got up the courage to get out of Carl’s truck when it was clear he wasn’t returning.
Finally she stumbled out of the cab. Her hair was messed up more than it usually was, and her shirt was twisted and untucked. By this time everyone at the party was in on the joke. They were waiting for her grand exit from the truck.
A roar of laughter erupted as she spotted her audience of classmates. A couple dozen kids stood around the bonfire, bent over laughing and pointing at her. A chant arose, initiated by Sokowski. Sue’s head buzzed from the punch, but it only took a moment for her to understand what everybody was saying.
“Sexy Sue! Sexy Sue! Ain’t no virgin and smells like poo!”
As the kids chanted, they all looked up at a tree beside the bonfire and howled even louder. Sue peered at what they were pointing at and laughing about. Someone had hoisted her extra-large panties into the air, and they hung like a soiled flag from a tree limb.
“Sexy Sue! Sexy Sue! Ain’t no virgin and smells like poo!”
Everybody was drunk, and they cackled and chanted over and over again for so long that it seemed surreal. But Sue stood paralyzed, unable to move her fat legs. She took in the mocking faces of her classmates, most of whom she had known since kindergarten. And it wasn’t just the boys who were laughing at her expense—girls were laughing at her, too.
Unable to contain herself anymore, she burst into tears and ran from the bonfire. Still drunk and uncoordinated, she tripped over her own feet and fell to the ground. She rolled in the dirt, which only made things worse. A new wave of laughter erupted around the party.
Carl stood in the middle of the delighted crowd beside Sokowski and remembered that Sokowski even had his arm around his shoulders. When Carl saw Sue on all fours on the ground, covered with dirt and grass, her face stained with tears, his smile faded a little.
A few weeks later, on graduation day, word spread around school about Sue’s suicide. That morning she had hanged herself in her father’s cattle barn. Carl knew why she did it. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out. She didn’t want to face her classmates on graduation night. It was just too much.
Carl and Sokowski never spoke about Sue or the suicide. Life went on.
Now Carl looked over at Sokowski again. Sokowski gripped the steering wheel and squinted to focus his drunken eyes on the road. They pulled in to Doc Pete’s driveway and parked the truck. Sokowski grabbed two rifles from the gun rack and handed one to Carl. Sokowski’s lousy grin was back.
Carl looked down at the rifle and said nothing. The same shit was happening again. People were dying because of them.
Scott & Skeeter Knolls
Scott was born three minutes before his brother, and he never let Skeeter forget who was older. Besides having a few minutes between them, the brothers had pretty similar personalities. They were both quiet men who didn’t have a whole lot to say. Always had been. They both liked to fish and hunt and work with their hands. That’s why they ended up opening their own auto-repair business. Cars and trucks didn’t talk, didn’t gossip about who was sleeping with who, didn’t nag them about what they were wearing, didn’t say boo. A good day was working under the hood of a Ford Mustang and fixing what needed to be fixed.
They were identical twins, and most folks around town had a hard time telling them apart, especially back in high school when they both wore blue jeans and red flannel shirts. Both stood an inch over six feet. Both weighed exactly one hundred and ninety-five pounds. Full heads of black hair, parted down the middle and feathered off to the sides, hadn’t turned gray yet. Neither one of them smiled much, looking like they were perpetually pissed off about something. Seemed like the only time you could catch them smiling was when they were off by themselves and feeling the easy comfort of being in each other’s company. Partly because they got tired of being mistaken for each other, Scott grew a mustache that had a hint of red in it, especially out in the sun. Skeeter opted for the full beard and kept it trimmed nice and short, using a pair of clippers every other day or so.
Neither one of them took to drinking either. They could thank their old man for that. Son of a bitch was a lousy drunk and a lousy father. When their mother told them what had happened out at Mindy’s trailer, they both knew he probably had it coming. He would have killed the sheriff and then turned the gun on the state trooper. Scott and Skeeter didn’t have to discuss this fact. They knew that’s what the other one was thinking. Twins were that way.
Mindy, on the other hand, didn’t deserve what she got. Sure, she was a bit too wild and too old to not be married and settled down, and she ran around with the wrong kind of men and partied a little more than she should. Pretty harmless stuff, but if she did what a sensible young woman was supposed to, she’d be taking care of a home and raising kids, not living alone in a shitty trailer. Neither one of them much cared for the deputy—he was bad news. Always had an edge to him. He was the kind of guy who would screw around on his wife. They thought Mindy could do better than him and told her as much, but for some reason she was drawn to the man and probably would have ended up marrying him. But Sokowski didn’t turn out to be the problem—that turned out to be Danny Bedford.
Scott pulled his truck up in front of the Wash ’N Dry and left the motor running. They got out and walked up to the front door, their stride and body language exactly the same. Both of them wore green work coveralls stained with car and truck grease, oval name patches above the breast that specified who was Scott and who was Skeeter.
“Think it’s open?” Skeeter said out loud.
Scott didn’t answer. He pushed on the glass door, and it swung open. They looked down Main Street to see if anybody else was around. It was a little before seven, and none of the businesses were open yet. Just a handful of cars were parked on the street, but it was all pretty quiet.
They stepped into the laundromat and moved toward the steps in the back that led upstairs. Neither one of them had ever been inside the laundromat before, but everybody knew that Danny lived upstairs. They took the steps two at a time, Scott taking the lead, and pushed open the door to Danny’s room. The bed was unmade, and the room was pretty sparse and depressing.
Skeeter looked around the room at all of Danny’s stuff. He noticed all the wooden figurines on the dresser and picked one up. A green turtle with a little smiley face. It looked like a collection of kids’ knickknacks. Being in here was tougher than he thought it would be. Seeing where his sister’s killer had lived and slept and planned her murder made him feel like throwing up his breakfast. Skeeter’s hands trembled as he turned the wooden turtle over in his palm.
Son of a bitch. Mindy was the only one around here who was nice to you, and you go and kill her.
“Don’t mess with that crap. We ain’t here for that.” Scott avoided looking at Skeeter but knew that his brother was close to tears. He wanted to stay focused. There would be time for tears later. Not right now.
Skeeter nodded and returned the turtle to Danny’s dresser, then opened up the drawers one at a time. A couple pair of mismatched socks, a pair of undershorts, and that was about it. He checked the closet next. A few shirts hung off hangers. He gazed over at his brother and shook his head.
“All his shit looks washed and clean. Ain’t gonna help us none.”
Scott fiddled with his mustache for a second as he glanced around
the room until he found what he was looking for. He walked over to Danny’s bed and picked up a pillow. He shook out the pillow and held on to the stained and threadbare pillowcase. He clutched it in his fist and looked to Skeeter.
“This’ll do. Let’s get the dogs,” Scott said quietly.
Skeeter nodded. He took one final glance at the green turtle on the dresser, then followed his brother out of the room.
Taggart
Taggart rarely spent time in the woods—out in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t get the attraction. If it wasn’t hotter than hell, with the gnats and mosquitoes going after your face, sweat rolling in your eyes, pollen, and God knows what else being sucked into your lungs, it was cold and too damn quiet. Quiet was the worst. Nothing to block out the constant tug-of-war between guilt and cravings that waged in his head every single day. Noise and chaos helped keep it at bay.
Taggart was a city guy. Maybe Towanda wasn’t exactly a big city like Philly, but it was big enough, and Binghamton was only an hour away and had more going on. Give him the traffic, the aggressive drivers, the steady drone of horns and music, and people screaming any day of the week. The call of ambulance sirens and helicopters was white noise to him and made him sleep like a baby. He’d gone camping with his father when he was ten and hated every second of it. Cooking hot dogs over the fire and sleeping in a tent didn’t hold any charm for him. The incessant call of the katydids filling his ears was memorable, as was the sound of his father snoring a few inches away from his sleeping bag that smelled like a raccoon had taken a crap in it. Taggart had never been in such close physical proximity to his father for so long before. His father’s breath stank of beer and cheap hot dogs. It was awful. And those memories were what now represented the great outdoors for him—nothing great about it. That was the last time he was deep in the woods. He had hoped it would be his last.
But now, here again, surrounded by nothing except trees and snow up to his ass, Taggart was reminded of the horrible silence. A few birds were singing, but even they didn’t sound all that happy to be there. God, he really hated the quiet.
If I weren’t drunk, I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. I would have confronted the man. Looked him in the eye to see if he was a real threat.
Taggart glanced to his right and caught a glimpse of the sheriff working his way through the trees fifty yards off. The sheriff had instructed him to make sure to maintain visual contact. If they got separated, the sheriff said that he would have to send out another search party just to find Taggart. He imagined the sheriff got a little thrill out of demonstrating his prowess in all things woods.
He and the sheriff had driven a few miles out of town to a spot where the sheriff thought they might find the suspect. The sheriff had said it was only a few miles away, but it took them twenty minutes of riding in uncomfortable silence up and down so many rambling dirt roads that Taggart had no clue where in the hell they were.
Taggart checked his watch again. It was a little after seven and they had only been out here for an hour, but it felt like it had been at least eight. He had sweated out a lot of the alcohol from his system and was feeling slightly more clearheaded.
You killed him, Bill. His daughter was murdered, and you made the poor man’s wife a widow.
Sobriety was letting the raw truth filter in more, and Taggart could hardly stand it. The truth about his entire fucked-up life started seeping out of his brain that he had worked so hard to numb and silence. He hadn’t felt anything in a long time except self-loathing. And there was plenty of that nowadays. He was a piece of shit, exactly like his old man told him he was.
Okay. Just take a breath, Bill. It’s going to be okay. This mess will sort itself out somehow.
He wiped a thin layer of sticky sweat from his forehead and rubbed it between his fingers. He felt like hell and wanted to crawl out of his skin.
You stupid idiot. You stupid goddamn idiot. You’re never going to change. You’re going to keep screwing it up and bring Shannon and the girls down with you.
He couldn’t take it anymore. Being in between drunk and sober was the worst. He couldn’t shut off his inner voice. It came in loud and clear and bared the naked truth that was just too brutal to handle.
Screw it.
He reached into his pocket and grabbed both of the flasks he knew he would eventually be going for. Starsky and Hutch. What a team they made. Starsky felt about half full. Hutch was running low to empty. A little bit swished around inside. That should do the trick for now. Starsky would be for later. Should be plenty to get him out of this day.
Taggart looked back toward the sheriff and saw the old man moving through the trees at a pretty good clip. Taggart ducked behind a large tree, uncapped the flask, and took a hard pull. The instant burn in his stomach was a welcome friend.
He took another pull.
Okay. Just stabilize. You’ll get through this.
And another pull.
Think about it. The sheriff said so himself. You did the right thing. You saw a situation with an officer in jeopardy and you reacted. That is what you were trained to do.
His stomach glowed, and his brain anxiously waited its turn.
Stay the course here. Track down this son of a bitch and get the hell out of this cow pasture of a town.
Taggart found himself smiling a little. His buzz was coming back.
There we go. One more nip for good measure.
He drank a little more and screwed the cap back onto the flask. He stepped out from behind the tree and took a deep inhale of the country air.
Not so bad after all. Let’s do this thing.
He looked to his right but didn’t see the sheriff. The forest was both still and quiet.
A moment of fear crept up from his stomach.
Shit.
He could feel his buzz intensify. He had a good one coming on. He looked to where he thought the sheriff was last walking.
Screw it.
He started walking. Not knowing where the sheriff was or whether he himself was going in the right direction. And not really caring. He felt something growing deep inside him. A growing anger, a growing rage toward Danny Bedford. It was all because of this Danny Bedford that he was in hot water. Danny Bedford was responsible for this—not him. Rage was burning. Rage he could deal with. He fed off it, in fact. Taggart was going to make the guy pay for the shit he was causing. He was going to make him pay in full.
Danny
He hadn’t seen the three-legged deer in a while. Danny figured she must have gone off to be with her family or something. Maybe she had a baby to tend to or was looking for something to eat. Or maybe the deer knew that Danny was nothing but trouble and the best thing for her would be to leave him lost in the woods to fend for himself. Seemed like everything he was around ended up getting hurt or worse. His folks. Uncle Brett. Now Mindy. He didn’t mean for people to get hurt, but trouble always seemed to follow him around. If he could take it all back and be the one who drowned in the pond that day instead of his parents, he would do it in a second.
Danny wished that the doe were still with him but understood why she wasn’t. Besides, how could a deer really help him? A deer was just an animal that was even dumber than him. An animal couldn’t help him figure out what to do.
But the doe did help him with something—she made him realize that he couldn’t fend for himself out in the woods alone and that he needed to find someone he could trust. Someone who was nice to him and would believe that he didn’t do nothing wrong. He felt bad for Carl and his kids and all, but he didn’t want to get in trouble for something he didn’t do. Aside from Mindy, Mr. Bennett had been nothing but good and honest with him for a long time. Mr. Bennett would know that Danny wouldn’t hurt no one.
Mr. and Mrs. Bennett had Danny over for dinner one time a few years back. Mrs. Bennett had made a meat loaf with mashed potatoes, buttermilk bi
scuits, and fresh wax beans. He had never smelled or tasted anything so good in his whole life. Danny had three helpings and could have had a fourth, but he saw the way they were looking at him and he figured he should stop. Then Mrs. Bennett brought out a deep dish of peach cobbler, and Danny thought that he had died and gone to heaven. If that was what heaven was like, Danny wouldn’t mind so much going there.
Danny remembered that they just let him eat his dinner and didn’t ask him a bunch of questions or make him feel dumb or anything. Mrs. Bennett thanked him for coming, said it was an honor having him as a dinner guest, and gave him a big hug before Mr. Bennett took him back to the laundromat. That was the first hug he’d had since his mama and papa went away. That was one of the best nights in Danny’s life for sure.
Danny noticed that his head was starting to feel funny. He put his fingers to his forehead—it was all slick with sweat and hot to the touch. That didn’t make sense to Danny. It was real, real cold outside, so how could his head be hot? His jaw still hurt a little, but his feet and hands felt far away from the rest of his body, like they weren’t even connected to him anymore. Maybe he had a fever. He remembered once when he was little, he had felt the same way. Kinda dizzy and light-headed. Uncle Brett made him go to school anyway, because he didn’t want Danny at home with him. Danny went to school and felt real sleepy the whole time. He had trouble keeping his eyes open at his desk, his head snapping back and forth when sleep would take him for a second. He sat at the rear of the classroom where Miss Bradley made him sit. She didn’t call on him like she did the other kids. She didn’t even make him take tests. She told him to color on a piece of scrap paper or look at a picture book while the rest of the kids took the test. Miss Bradley said that he wasn’t smart enough to take tests or do homework, so she acted like he wasn’t even there. She wasn’t mean or anything, but Danny could tell that Miss Bradley wished he weren’t in her classroom with all the normal kids. But on that day when he was feeling sick, he remembered that she put her soft palm that smelled like lotion on his forehead and gave him a look that he had never seen her give him before. She sent him to see Doc Pete straightaway, and after that he stayed at home for over a week. Doc Pete said that his fever was real high and he shouldn’t be around the other kids. Said he could be contagious. Danny remembered that big word because it rhymed with “outrageous.” Uncle Brett got real mad, because Danny was supposed to be in bed and not go to school, so Danny stayed in his room and tried not to bother him. He ate Cap’n Crunch cereal for a week, because Uncle Brett didn’t make him soup like his mama used to make for him when he was feeling sick.
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