by Chuck Dixon
“They will not be returning. Now drive.”
50
His phone rang and rang, jittering across the bedside table like an angry insect. He turned up the volume on the cheapjack motel TV. A game show with that guy who used to be fat joking and laughing with some woman who was currently fat.
Merle Hogue had no intention of picking up. It would be his cousin up in Missouri looking for news, an update. Merle had nothing promising for him. And Lou Bragg wasn’t a man to take bad news with a cool head. Or worse, maybe Lou had gotten wind of the total buttfuck this situation in Alabama had become and was looking to chew him a brand new asshole.
He hadn’t heard from Roy Mathers since late in the afternoon the day before. Same for Granger and Gary Bush. They went out looking for this half-brother of the ex-deputy and stepped off the face of the planet. How was he to explain a thing like that to Lou? Besides, his cousin’s most likely response would be to send him, Merle Hogue, after those old boys. And Merle did not fancy that, no sir. He wasn’t the least bit curious to find out where those old boys got to. And even less eager to join them.
The Mexes had not called either. Merle was not certain whether to take that as a good sign or not. Could mean anything. No one knew what got into the mind of a greaser. Maybe they'd already packed up and headed back over the border. One thing was certain; he had no desire to ever meet up with the owner of that voice on the other end of the phone. The one calling the shots in the background, telling the younger greaser what to say. The man sounded like he gargled Drano. Like he was speaking from the bottom of a grave.
He had a number written on a motel notepad. One of the Mathers' crew assigned to drive him around while he was down here in the sticks. A young kid with a crewcut and bad teeth. He dialed the number. The boy picked up, voice sullen with sleep.
“You sober, boy?” Merle said.
“Sure am. This Mister Hogue?”
“Damn right. I need you to come round here to the Roadway Motel, place you dropped me off yesterday.”
“How soon?” the boy said. Merle could hear a female voice drawling in the background. Drowsy and asking questions.
“Now, damn it,” Merle said. He hung up.
He went to the closet and pulled out his overnight bag. He plucked his suit bag off the hanging bar and laid it flat on the bed. He'd have the kid drive him to the municipal airport and hop a flight back to St. Louis. If it was to be bad news, Merle decided it would be best to deliver it in person. Less likely Lou would send him after the missing men. More likely Lou would send some of his guys more accustomed to the rough work. Merle thought of himself as more of a fixer than a fighter. He knew his cousin thought of him as an errand boy.
Packed up, he humped the bags out of the room and onto the lot. The kid was already there, the engine of his piece-of-shit Charger running. Merle walked out to meet him. The boy—was it Tripp? Trap? Troy?—stayed behind the wheel, not even getting out to help.
“Pop the fucking trunk,” Merle barked. He slammed the flat of his hand onto the lid.
A metallic click and the trunk sprung open. The kid was in the trunk. Travis? Squeezed in with his knees up against his chest. His spiky haircut matted with drying blood. Merle looked up over the trunk lid. Some Mex with a dark face grinned at him over the seat back from behind the wheel.
Merle moved to turn, dropping his bags. A sharp pain made him see white. He saw the ground rise to meet him, his reflection in the chrome of the bumper staring back at him with a lost expression.
It was cold when he woke up. Hurt like the devil when he opened his eyes. He raised his head and regretted it. His cheek was tacky with drying vomit. A gag rose up his throat to end as a dry wretch.
“El está despierto.” A voice behind him.
Merle rolled over onto his back. Above him was the curved roof of a metal shed powdered with rust. He realized with a sickening start that he was naked.
A face came into view. At first, Merle thought the man wore a mask. It was a face not fully formed. Like a sculptor had stopped halfway. Deeply scored with pits and scars and patches of discolored flesh. The mouth a lipless slit. The eyes bored into him from deep craters of ravaged tissue.
“Ayudarle a levantarse, Carlito,” the man with the dead face said.
Another face loomed above. The Mex he’d seen behind the wheel of the Charger. He lifted Merle first to a sitting position and then to his feet. Merle’s vision spun. The shed jiggled back and forth before his eyes. His throat contracted. He felt the urge to puke. Nothing came up.
The young man, Carlito, helped him walk to the center of the shed. A Quonset hut, Merle realized through the dull haze wrapped about his head like a blanket. There were probably hundreds of these government surplus shacks in these hills. Lots of hoopies used them to house stills back in the day.
Two barrels sat upright on the concrete floor. Steel barrels. Fifty gallons. One open. One sealed. A concrete block sat next to the sealed one. There was an orange box, cable and a gun sort of tool on a rolling metal cart. Merle recognized it as a spot welder.
As they stumbled closer, Merle saw fresh welds around the circumference of the sealed barrel’s lid. There was the scent of hot metal in the air.
The man with the dead face stooped to pick up the cinder block and move it next to the empty barrel.
“Entra en el barril,” the man with the dead face said.
“Get in the barrel,” the younger man said.
A sound was coming from inside the sealed barrel — a muffled shriek punctuated by feeble rapping on the interior of the steel shell.
Merle blinked, fighting to remain lucid, as the younger man helped him step up onto the cinder block. The younger man held Merle's arm to help him keep balance while he placed first one leg and then the other inside the drum. Gentle pressure applied to his head made him squat deeper, deeper until his hairline was below the lip of the barrel.
It all seemed like he was watching it from far away. Or on a movie screen. He scrunched his neck and canted his head painfully to look up. The opening was eclipsed by the barrel lid being fitted in place, leaving him in darkness. He winced as a rubber mallet banged atop the lid to set it firmly in place. The impacts echoed inside the barrel, sounding like rifle shots.
Now all was total dark. He strained his eyes wider. Only blackness through white lace. His only company was his own shallow breathing. A pop and hiss from outside. A wave of warm air washed down from above. The barrel filled with the oily smell of scorched steel. The heat turned from a pleasant glow to a furnace heat within seconds.
The change brought him back to his senses as the hiss and pop continued and the interior of the barrel became a sweltering oven.
And then he screamed and screamed and screamed.
51
Some kids, a pair of brothers, found a tricked out ATV under the shadows of the iron bridge that ran over Mosby Creek. They kept it hidden for a few days in the woods behind the Mason lodge. Their father caught them sneaking a can of gas out to it. He took it away from his sons and sold it on to a guy he knew down in Randolph County. Dad got eight hundred bucks cash. It was gone to Jim Beam, cigarettes and lottery scratchers inside of a week.
Two counties over, the body of a man, a white male, was found by hikers up from Samford University. They were communing with nature for a week before school restarted. Rather, they put up tents and got stoned out of their minds far from the prying eyes of parents and police. One of them left the giggling company to take “a wicked shit” and stumbled across the remains of a white male, stripped of his clothes and covered with bugs.
They argued for a day and a half over whether to do their civic duty and report their find or just say "fuck it" and head back to school. They gave themselves a day of abstinence to transform back into sober, dedicated pre-law students before calling 911. Their clothes still reeked of cannabis when the deputies arrived. The cops paid no heed. The stinking corpse lying naked in a copse of cottonwoods was enough o
f a paperwork headache.
The torso, face and legs showed signs of a severe beating with a blunt object or objects. Broken ribs, two broken legs. Animals, coons or wild dogs, had been at the face, buttocks and guts. Wild dogs most likely. That was the opinion of the deputies who knew from experience that dogs and coyotes started at the ass end of their kills. Raccoons were the culprit for the missing face.
The corpse’s hands had been severed. The hands remained missing despite a meticulous search for them in the surrounding woods. The cuts were the work of some kind of power tool. A reciprocating saw was the ME’s guess. He was certain the amputations were post-mortem. Not so the removal of every one of the victim’s teeth. The man had been alive for all of that. Bits of root still clung to the gums. The ME’s theory was the teeth were knocked out using a hammer and a chisel or even a flathead screwdriver.
The body was destined to be a John Doe for the time being. That changed when the ME performed a full autopsy and found a pair of teeth in the man’s stomach. Third molar upper. First molar lower. The victim swallowed them during the beating he’d received.
It was more than a week before the teeth came back as a match from records at a dental clinic up in Haley.
James Mitchell “Dale” Cade.
It wouldn’t be till spring that some boys playing hooky from the high school found two cars at the bottom of the quarry lake off Murdoch Road.
A Mercedes SUV and an El Camino sitting side by side in the deep green water as natural as if they were parked on the lot outside Walmart.
Things slowed to a crawl then a full stop in Danny Huff’s investigation.
Mass killings, fires, and random homicides of white males and Hispanic males fell off dramatically in the county. Concurrent with the cessation of incidents of violent crime was the evaporation of witnesses, persons of interest and any other parties who might have information useful to state CID.
“I think we took our last spin of the wheel, Ralph,” Danny said.
They sat in a booth at Fay's watching a man pilot a combine down what served as the main street of Colby. A dark man sat up in the air-conditioned booth. He wore a t-shirt with the flag of Mexico printed front and back. A Copenhagen gimme cap worn backward on his head. It chugged by slow with kids and old men standing on the sidewalk watching it pass.
“We gave it a shot, sir,” Trooper Durward said. He could see his own reflection in the glass and decided it was time for a haircut.
“What shot? We missed. Missed our chance to know just exactly what the fuck was going on around here. Missed by a long country mile.”
“What’s there to do? Every witness that might have been of use is unavailable.”
Danny barked and snuffled. He lifted his mug to his lips.
“You mean dead, missing or some other damned thing. Near’s I can calculate, your local bad boys, the Mathers and their ilk, tangled with some kind of cartel bunch. They had at it. Bunch of Mexican nationals turn up dead all over the landscape. As for the Mathers clan? They are gone as if taken by the rapture leaving us nothing but trailers full of widows and orphans who wouldn’t tell us what day it is if it was Christmas morning. And besides, they don’t know shit-all anyway.”
“It is the damnedest thing,” Trooper Durward said.
"And it's going to have to stay that way. I'm leaving for Mobile. That murder-suicide thing? You see that on the news? The guy offed his mom and his wife and went down to the Winn-Dixie to raise more hell until the store manager blew his head off with a twenty gauge."
“Mobile. At least you might get to see the ocean.”
“Might. Probably not.”
“It was an honor working with you, sir,” Trooper Durward said.
"Same here, man. Sorry, this whole thing turned to a dry hole on us," Danny Huff said.
They turned their eyes back to the combine. It lumbered away to the edge of town with a wake of kids on bikes following after. A pair of barking dogs ran with the kids until the big John Deere picked up speed and vanished into the distance.
52
“I can do this myself,” Merry said. She was on tiptoes in her wellies, brushing Bravo’s long black mane smooth.
“No trouble,” Uncle Fern said. He was filling the water bucket with a hose stuck through the stall posts. The ridgeback lay atop a stack of hay bales, pale eyes taking in everything.
“But I promised I’d do all the work myself,” she said.
“Well I notice you were nowhere to be found when your daddy and me gutted the barn and put these stalls in,” he said. He was smiling.
“I wanted to help.”
“Yes you did, honey. But all’s you were doing was getting in the way.”
He leaned on the top of the stall wall to watch his niece brush the bay gelding’s withers free of dust. She sprayed Bravo’s legs and tail with fly repellent.
“You think Daddy will get a horse?” she said.
“I do not. Horses are a frivolous thing and your father is not a frivolous man.”
“What about me? Why do I get to have Bravo then?”
"Because a girl needs her frivols. If that's a word. When Levon gets back, he and I'll put in a regular tack room."
“You don’t need to do all that for me. I can hang my stuff on the wall,” she said.
“Saddles and traps need to be out of the damp and dust,” he said.
“And the new concrete floor down the center aisle. That was a lot of trouble to go to,” Merry said.
He looked down at the fresh concrete walk he and his nephew poured the previous weekend. Four by four squares in a row down the center of the barn floor. The concrete was a foot thick and covered six feet of fresh, clean fill.
“That was just something needed to be done,” Fern said.
"We need to get a goat," Merry said. It was an announcement that broke Fern away from his thoughts.
“A goat?”
“To keep Bravo company. We don’t want him to be out here all alone, do we?” Merry said. A final loving pat between the horse’s ears. She stepped out into the aisle to swing the stall door closed and secure the latch in place, the horse in for the night.
"We sure don't," Fern said. He walked with her to the house past the empty carport and into the house for dinner.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“Never leave a friend behind. Never leave an enemy alive.”
53
It was Wednesday.
Hump Day, Lou Bragg thought to himself with a dry chuckle. That little joke of his never got stale.
He steered the Lincoln to back into the space, the license plate facing the wall of the garage. He climbed the stairs to the second floor, a tad out of breath as he arrived at the company condo. He unlocked the door with a card key of which there were only two copies.
Lou called Carlotta’s name. No answer. No smells from the kitchen either. She usually had take-out for him on Wednesdays. She reheated it in the oven in her own Pyrex dishes and made like she cooked it herself. He knew better but let her enjoy that little fiction. Lou wasn’t here for the girl’s cooking.
He cruised through the kitchen. Breakfast dishes still on the counter. She hadn’t been back here since she left for work. Not like her. She was usually here well before him on Wednesdays, showered and wearing something he bought for her.
Carlotta Poteet was miles away in the lot of an Olive Garden where all four tires of her company leased car had been slashed flat. She was speaking to a pair of understanding police officers who were filling out a report that she could turn into Gateway Realty and Title's insurance provider. A tow truck was on the way.
Lou Bragg had no idea about that. He got a glass from the cupboard and loaded it with ice. A bit of spring water from a bottle. A jigger, maybe two, of Maker’s Mark splashed on top. He made for the living room to kill time waiting in front of the TV.
A man stood in the living room before the drawn shades. He stood with a nasty looking automatic held in hands covered in blue surg
ical gloves. The automatic was trained on Lou’s head. The gun was a big bore but looked like a toy in the man’s large hands.
Lou's gaze went from the staring black eye of the .45 to the place where the big screen used to hang on the wall. In its place was a ragged square hole cut in the wall. In the middle of the room, in a mess of plaster dust, lay the safe that once filled the space behind the Sony. The rear wall of the safe had been peeled back. A power tool lay on the deep pile carpet. A thick orange cord ran to an extension on the wall. Packets of banded bills were stacked on the leather sectional. Other papers lay scattered about the room.
“Look, we can work out whatever this is,” Lou Bragg said.
He wore his negotiator smile, the one that brought him up from errand boy in the Dixie Mafia to one of its Big Men in the inner circle.
The smile was still fixed on his face when Carlotta found him lying on the broadloom with a single purple hole in his forehead.
Carlotta sighed and tabbed 911. She hoped the cops who answered this call were as cute as the pair who helped her back at the Olive Garden.
54
“Julian Hernandez, my dimpled ass. He doesn’t look any kind of Cuban to me.”
“And his Spanish sounds like he learned it from George Bush.”
A Miami-Dade detective lieutenant and a DEA agent stood looking through the one-way glass at a sad-looking older man seated at a table in the interrogation room. The man, according to himself, was one Dr. Julian Luis Hernandez. He was dressed in a polo shirt and khakis. They hung off him, a sign of recent weight loss. His skin was tanned to mahogany that set off his crown of white hair and ivory brows. A fringe of white goatee was around his downturned mouth.
“What’s his story? What’s my agency’s interest here?” the DEA agent said.