by Chuck Dixon
“What will come of all this? Other than long hours and a shit-pile of reports?” Danny said. He flicked a ghostly white moth from his sleeve.
“Nothing good, sir,” Durward said. He stood stolid with thumbs hooked in his gun belt.
“Hey, Danny. You still lead on this?” A county forensics tech walked up to Danny.
“I am that place where the shit gathers, Elliott,” Danny said.
"It is a close one. Damn this humidity." Elliott Crabb took the fingers of his vinyl gloves in his fingers and popped them off. He pulled the zipper of his bunny suit down to reveal a t-shirt sodden with sweat. He removed tissue from somewhere inside the suit and wiped the condensation from his glasses.
“I think we’d all appreciate it if atrocities like this were committed on more clement days,” Danny said. A wince more than a smile.
“What we have is a white male. Middle-aged. Naked. Bound by the wrists. Up this way.” Elliott pointed north to where the road curved away around a rock face jutting off the sloping ground.
“We know who he is?”
“He’s printed. We’re waiting to hear back.”
“Cause of death?”
“Blood loss. Bled out.”
“Shot? Stabbed?” Danny said.
“It’s more complicated. Up there is most of the victim.” Elliott nodded north then pointed south. “His tackle is down there.”
“You mean he was castrated?”
“After a fashion.”
“You gonna make me beg, Elliott?”
“It’s only an idea, mind you. But I think he was being dragged behind a vehicle with some kind of line tied around his genitals. A rope or cable. Somewhere back where the body lies the man and his special purpose became separated.”
“Jesus almighty.” Danny eyed the trail of blood droplets spattered on the white line with a fresh understanding. He imagined the unknown man, hands bound behind him, running on bare feet to keep up. Finally falling or simply unable to keep pace. The line going taut.
“We found where the bits came loose from whatever brand of knot that secured them. Lucky for us no coyotes or buzzards came along to carry them off.”
“Any evidence of the vehicle?”
“There’s a partial tire track in a smear of blood. We might be able to work with that if it’s enough to identify the make.”
A vamp of music sounded from a pocket of Elliott’s bunny suit. Hawaii Five-O theme. He pulled out a smartphone and eyed the screen.
“Got I.D. from the victim’s prints,” Elliott said.
“Let me see,” Bill said. He motioned for the phone.
Multiple mug shots of a chunky, pasty looking guy with uncombed hair wearing an insolent smile for the camera. A list of felonies going back thirty years. Assaults. DUIs. Possession, manufacture and distribution of unlicensed alcohol. Possession of cocaine and other controlled substances. Manslaughter. Car theft. Criminal conspiracy. A few convictions led to time at Draper and Holman.
“Delbert Mathers,” Bill said.
“I’ve heard of him, sir,” Trooper Durward said.
“Me too. Not recently. I’m sure that’s not due to clean living or Delbert’s discretion though.” Danny scrolled down. No arrests in the past eight years.
Danny handed over his Galaxy to Elliott Crabb.
“Do what you need to do to get all that on my dingus here,” Danny said.
Elliott tabbed away at his own phone to move the pertinent data to the agent’s device. The Tennessee Three ringtone came strumming on Danny’s phone. Elliott handed it back.
“Let’s walk the scene, shall we?” Danny said. “Then I’ll work up a list of people who might have hated this son-bitch enough to go to all this trouble.”
Together they walked around the curve of the road, staying well clear of the yellow markers, to where the body of the late Delbert Mathers lay in a lake of his own blood. Flies swarmed over the pale ivory flesh and at the edges of the drying spill. Elliott led them south along the crimson trail to where a sad lump of tissue and sinew rested on the asphalt like some obscene afterthought. A female forensics geek crouched over the mess trying to lift it into an insulated container using tongs.
Danny was startled from the morbid hypnosis of the scene before him by the sound of his phone.
It was county dispatch.
"I was told this might be of interest to you, sir," the dispatcher said.
A second possible multiple homicide scene less than four miles from where Danny and the trooper stood. As the crow flies. A forty-five-minute drive on coiled snake roads. A property belonging to a family named Mathers.
“Looks like our day’s just getting started, Ralph,” Danny said.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Feel that? The air going still all around? It’s life taking a deep breath just before it shits all over you.”
28
Levon’s sat phone buzzed atop the workbench. He’d just pulled a piston assembly from an oil bath. He wiped the worst of the grease from his hands to pick up.
The readout told him it was Dale’s cell. He tabbed the answer key and put the phone to his ear. He didn’t speak.
He and Dale had left it raw the last time they spoke. Levon was not in a mood to apologize. He waited for Dale to open the conversation.
Only a hissing from the other end. Under the hiss a murmur of voices. No sound of breathing. Someone touched Levon’s number and was now speaking to someone else. He couldn’t pick out words, only sounds. Enough to know neither of the speakers was Dale. And both spoke a language that was not English.
Uncle Fern woke where he slept in his recliner, a book open on his knee. Levon was into his gun cabinet, selecting a bolt action with a scope and lever action.
“There something you need to tell me, nephew?” Fern said. He levered the Lazy Boy upright.
“Not sure. Stay in the house. Keep a shotgun handy. Bring in the dogs.” Levon picked up two boxes of shells and headed for the kitchen.
“Where you off to?” Fern said.
“Dale’s,” Levon said. He was through the screen door and out toward his truck.
Levon left the 4Runner parked by the wall of the floodgate at the foot of Dale’s holler.
He trotted into the trees and followed a familiar deer trail that climbed the slope and followed along the face of the hill. It was a place he knew well from back in the day when he and Dale played Indians in these woods. Their tribe was made up of local boys. They would stalk game and hunt imaginary enemies. The game would almost always end with Levon and Dale fighting for who would be chief of the war party.
The narrow path jinked around rocks and exposed roots in a lazy circle that hugged the incline all the way to a place above Dale’s double-wide and car barn. Levon squatted in a spot where he could see down to the two buildings set apart on opposite sides of a clearing.
He unlimbered the Remington 700 from his shoulder to fix his eye to the scope. He swept the lens over the property. Dale’s former county truck sat before the house. A second vehicle, a newer Camaro, was pulled up to the car barn.
Levon made his way down the slope under the shelter of the trees. He was careful not to snag branches on the barrel of the rifle slung over his shoulder. He moved silently past the scorched ground of Dale's trash burn pile. He used the cover of a rusting lawn shed he kept between him and the rear of the house.
He set down the rifle on the grass. His .45 in his hand, Levon levered the screen door open into a combination mud room and laundry. A fat woman in terry cloth slippers and a house dress was down before an open clothes dryer. She lay atop a heap of laundry dyed crimson from multiple stab wounds to her throat. A spray of blood climbed the wall to dot the ceiling tiles.
Dale’s mom.
Levon stepped around the body, avoiding the still tacky spread of blood on the tiles. He slipped past a utility room where the central air hummed and into the kitchen.
A man sat at the kitchen table eating ice cream from a
gallon tub. An owlish looking man with dark skin and broad white sideburns. The man’s eyes widened as he took in the big gringo approaching from around the Frigidaire. The man’s hand went to the pistol lying on the table.
Levon’s first shot took the old man through the head. The second punched through his throat as the chair tipped over under him.
The man lay on his back with one remaining eye still staring. The spoon clenched in his dead hand. His lips smeared white with melting ice cream.
Levon was moving fast through the double-wide. .45 held close in a two-hand grip. The front sides shifting with his line of sight. He cleared the six rooms within the house in seconds. The man in the kitchen was alone in the house.
The lot outside remained quiet but for the chirrup of birds. The two parked vehicles were empty. No shadows moved inside the car barn.
He returned to the laundry room and exited past the body of Dale's mother. The .45 went back into the clamp holster at his back. The Remington in his fists, he moved around the side of the house. Using the vehicles in the yard for cover, Levon approached the car barn with the rifle tight in his shoulder at a fast walk.
Dale was alone in the car barn. He sat on the floor secured to the leg of a workbench with tie wraps around his wrists and neck. Balls naked. Face raw and bleeding from blunt trauma. An oily rag shoved in his mouth. He was a map of bruises with a serious third degree burn to the toes and sole of one foot. The flesh was black, powdered with dead white tissue. The whole leg to the knee was angry red and swelling with fluid.
Levon swept the interior to make certain they were alone. He cut the tie wraps with a clasp knife before pulling the rag from Dale’s mouth.
“Shit, Goose. Shit.” Dale was panting. Hyperventilating.
“Where are they, Dale?” Levon said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“How many?” Levon cuffed Dale’s face to keep him conscious, focused.
“Three. Two young fuckers and an old man.”
“Elvis sideburns?”
“Uh huh.”
“He’s dead, Dale.”
“Good. Good. Fucker talked on a cell phone the whole time the other two were working on me.”
“What did you tell them?”
Dale turned away. His eyes were searching the floor as if the answers to Levon's question lay there.
Levon grasped his chin and pulled Dale’s face upright.
“What did you tell them?” Levon pressed his grip harder.
“Sorry. So sorry, brother.” Dale’s eyes welled up. His face turned red under the bruises.
“My name? Uncle Fern’s name?”
Dale nodded, his eyelids crushed together.
“Get up. Get your ass up.” Levon hooked an arm under Dale’s elbow and yanked him to his feet. Dale cried out when his scorched sole touched the floor. He stood hobbling on his good foot. He bit his lip against the pain as Levon helped him to the county truck.
“You’re going to drive to Fern’s. Tell him to fort up.” Levon helped Dale get seated in the truck.
“But I’m bare-assed, Goose.” Dale whined like back when they were kids and Levon won whatever game they were playing. Again.
“Nothing your uncle ain’t seen before.” Levon belted him in. He handed him the rifle through the window.
“What about my mama?”
“She’s dead. Sorry.”
“I ain’t sure I can drive,” Dale said. He sat angled on the seat to position his left leg over the pedals.
“I’m not staying here, Dale. If you want to wait here for those guys to come back then that’s up to you.”
Dale gunned the truck away in a spray of gravel.
Levon ran down the drive to the road then down to the floodgate. He picked up the sat phone from the seat of the truck. First, he called Fern to tell him to look out for Dale. He hung up while the old man was still firing questions at him. He keyed in Jessie's number. She picked up on the third ring.
“Where are you, Jessie?” He kept his voice level.
“I’m on a farm call up to Lewton. The funniest—”
He cut off her story. “Is Merry with you?”
“Yes. She wanted to come along. I hope it’s all right.”
“It is. It’s great. Can you keep her away from Fern’s until I call you?”
“I guess so. Sure. Is something wrong?”
“All I want is for you to keep Merry with you and not bring her back here till I tell you it’s all right.”
“I can do that, Levon. Can you tell me—”
He broke the connection, tossed the sat phone to the seat beside him, and brought the Toyota to life. He swung out onto the two-lane in a sharp loop in time to meet a big pickup coming around the curve. The truck hit him broadside and, joined in a T-bone, they careened off the road down into a brush-choked ditch.
Levon was thrown flying from behind the wheel and airborne across the cab. He slammed his back against the far door.
Glass exploded. He struck his head hard on the jamb.
Dazed, he rolled to drop into the narrow gap between the seat and dash.
A shadow filled the broken window above him. An arm reached in, spilling glass. Voices, emphatic, from outside.
A hand stretched toward him holding a quivering blue light. His head struck hard on the door.
Burning. Then numbness.
Then nothing.
29
“This is some sick shit,” Danny Huff said.
He said it as much to the world as to Trooper Durward and the gathered army of law enforcement in Delbert Mathers’ big-ass great room.
A lot of years as a highway cop, homicide cop and state bureau agent exposed Danny Huff to some bad stuff. There were things he wishes he could unsee. Stuff that could rouse him from a deep sleep. Not nightmares or even dreams; more like unbidden memories refusing to stay put in his past.
That time he was first on the scene when a busload carrying a youth choir back from Charleston got in the path of a semi that crossed the median. The time he answered a complaint of children screaming to find a mother sitting on the toilet reading a magazine with her three drowned children lying lined up by the bathtub in a neat row. The traffic stop turning into a gunfight leaving his partner dead on the street and Danny covered in the blood and brains of a driver committed to going out in battle with John Law.
But nothing like this. Nothing close to this. Nothing in the same universe as this.
The castle of Delbert Mathers’ hillbilly fiefdom was a sprawling rancher centered around a two-story tall great room. Looked like the waiting room of a Smoky Mountain resort.
Now it took on the appearance and smell of an abattoir. The only difference being that cattle and swine died quick merciless deaths at the blow of an air hammer between their eyes.
These people died slow. And scared. That much was clear.
They were slung up by their heels from the main exposed beam high up on the ceiling. A thick, load-bearing joist that could take the strain of near a half ton of additional weight on it.
Two men. Big old boys raised on biscuits and gravy. Two women. One slim. The other more on the porky side.
Someone had gone at them with some kind of blade. An ax. A machete. Something that was swung with furious intent to chop away fingers, limbs, noses, ears. Beneath the hanging forms was an untidy heap of parts staining the woven rug below. White bone. Pink muscle. Yellow fat.
Worse than anything else was the sight of cording used as tourniquets tied off legs and arms above the cuts. Some sick bastards, Danny couldn’t see how this was the work of one actor, tying off the arms and legs to slow bleeding. They wanted their victims to last.
Danny stepped outside to breathe in something cleaner. It wasn’t enough. He bummed a Marlboro off one of the forensics techs unloading the bus.
Once a two pack a day man, he’d quit smoking when he left the homicide division for the state bureau. Back when every day meant snooping around a murd
er scene, a long pull from a cigarette was a welcome change from the stench of blood, shit and piss that came along with the job. Some bodies got ripe enough to make him burn his clothes. No way to get the stink out. He’d shower till he wrinkled and his hair turned dry as straw and still smell it on him.
A local deputy approached. He leaned on Durward’s cruiser to pull off booties sodden with blood.
“I know the Mathers family. Arrested them enough,” the deputy said to Danny.
“That them in there?” Danny was crouched now, studying the growing tube of ash between his fingers.
“A few of them. Big clan. I think I can eye-dee Howard Mathers, Del’s younger brother. His Uncle John. His mother, Juanita. And Beth-Ann, his wife. Common law.”
“And Del turned into a eunuch out on Eight Mile,” Danny said. “Shitty day to be a Mathers.”
“The fobbits are taking prints. They’ll confirm what I’m telling you.” The deputy went to his own vehicle to answer a radio call.
Danny stepped away from the tangle of vehicles spread around the broad turnaround. The strobing light bars under the swaying limbs of a big willow. He stood looking up at the graying sky. He smoked the Marlboro to the filter and stubbed it cold on his boot heel. He put the stub in his shirt pocket. Maintaining site discipline.
Elliott Crabb trotted to him from the swirling lights. He was swinging a pair of oversized evidence bags. He held them up for Danny. Each held a black oilskin raincoat or slicker. Drover's coats. The clear plastic bags were smeared red on the inside.
“They wore these while they worked,” Elliott said. “Kept most of the blood off their clothes.”
“Those gonna give us any indication of the size of men we’re looking for?” Danny said.