Pretty Like an Ugly Girl (Baer Creighton Book 3)

by Clayton Lindemuth

  I step out the tent with my bottle. Drink and whiz. Look Ma, no hands. Wander ’round to make the blood percolate and mebbe thaw out my left half. ’Spect at some point whoever keeps track the fella I shot’s gonna wanna know why he ain’t showed up for work. They was two fellas at the meat truck when they shot the boy, and only one come back to kill the girl. That other fella—he know his partner didn’t come home.

  I mosey off, let the mind puzzle it. Boy jumped out the truck, they shot him. Next they bring a girl.

  Was she in back the truck, earlier? Was she part the trouble the boy was in?

  My original think on it was the refrigerated Isuzu hauled illegals come up from Mexico to look construction work. If so, where the girl come from? She with the crew? Or was I wrong on the whole thing? Mebbe they’s only two Mexicans and they didn’t have nothing to do with one another.

  Or here’s a thought. Mebbe I killed the good guy. Who the hell knows? I take a pull off the bottle, help me think. Nah, they’s kids. Nobody ought shoot kids. Wait till they grow up.

  Been walking a wide circle, all the way ’round a massive flat plain with scrub and pine here and there, grass and dirt the rest. I come clockwise on the road, then up on the truck of the fella I took off his head. Another F-150.

  How much the world’s metal got FORD stamped on it?

  Now I’s close the vehicle I got the nerves on. Look for headlights ahead or behind and even the highway’s down to nothing. Must be close four five a.m., from the gray in the east. Got no gloves on, so I try the handle with my sleeve over my finger. Door pop open. Light go on. Half expect another kid or something, but nope.

  Look around. Climb up in the seat. Open the glove box and pull out a plastic folder. Got a business card from the dealership. Sheet a paper the length of three peckers with the sales and lease numbers. On and on it goes.

  Inside a plastic glove is an insurance card. Name and address.

  Fucker’s name was Cephus A. Graves.

  Cephus.

  Fuckin’ Cephus.

  Like the horse?

  Whoever named that boy sealed his fate. Someone was gonna shoot him.

  I tuck the insurance card in my pocket and make sure I ain’t touched nothing else. Give the likely places a rub down anyhow.

  Have to admit the truck seat’s fine. Been days without upholstery and truth told the drive from east to west accustom my ass and back to the accoutrements of fine living: cushions.

  Still, any second someone could come along and wonder why I’s in this truck. I get out, close the door. Wipe it off and head for camp.

  Almost time to make coffee.

  ’Cept at some point they come back and mebbe they bring the search party. These boys from last night wasn’t running they own operation. Not with the fella with dreadlocks being half the brains. The other couldn’t have enough to make up the difference.

  I come up on camp easy and get the lay, like old days in North Cackalacky. Overheard some Flagstaff hippy with the rainbow t-shirt call it that.

  No smoke from the pit. No snoring from the tent. No nothing.

  I unzip the tent flap.

  Joe eyeball me, cold on the nylon floor.

  Girl’s gone. Everything in the tent’s gone save Stinky Joe.

  “Joe—what the hell’d you say to her?”

  She just run off.

  “With everydamnthing?”

  See for yourself.

  “Ahhhhhh. Fuck.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  While Luke Graves changed the tire on the Isuzu, his wife, Caroline, drove to the Williams Taco Bell and bought enough burritos to feed the guests. She returned at midnight. Luke carried the fast food bags to the basement and unlocked it. Caroline followed. A dim light was always on. He flipped the main light switch and recessed fluorescent lights illuminated the basement. The girls moaned.

  Next, with a bottle of Equate sleeping pills tucked in his pocket, Luke carried a case of bottled water from the garage to the basement, and placed it on a fold-out table constructed of plywood and two by fours. Caroline organized piles for distribution: two burritos, three sleeping pills, two bottles of water per girl.

  In their language, she told the girls to form in line. Luke and Caroline waited as each followed a procedure that was for them in its second iteration. They took the pills, drank enough water to get them down, opened their mouths to show the pills were swallowed, then took their meals.

  They would be awake for a few hours at most. The recommended dosage of sleeping pill was one or two for an adult. During their transport from the border of Mexico to Salt Lake City, each roughly eighty-pound girl took six per day. The drug left them barely coherent.

  When the line passed, Luke folded and locked the table. Caroline told the girls they would resume their travels in the morning. They locked the girls in the basement and Caroline went inside the house to prepare for bed.

  Luke returned to the garage and sat on a folding lawn chair with the bay door open. The tire was fixed. He looked from his watch to the night sky and wondered why a simple job was taking Cephus so much time. His son had a long day ahead of him. There was no way he went to town for a drink or stopped at some woman’s for a quick poke. Cephus had the right priorities. He was the most responsible twenty-six-year-old Luke had ever seen. Pure ambition, had his head on right. Could think through complicated moral questions, pick apart the tripe big government and big business overlords used to manipulate the masses, and make decisions based on his family’s interests. Most people never learned those skills—that’s why they were slaves to the state. The fact that Cephus had taken Luke’s lessons to heart so young made him special.

  So where the hell was he?

  And where the hell was Finch?

  Luke stood, shivered, and dragged the lawn chair deeper into the garage where he’d be directly under the glowing heater. Thinking better of it, he replaced the lawn chair with a lounge from the front deck. He turned off the garage light and stretched out. Let his eyes close, and told himself he’d rouse when Cephus’s headlights arrived.

  Instead, the sound of Finch’s Mustang wheels on the gravel driveway woke Luke at dawn. Like the girls he drugged, he stretched and inhaled a sigh before cognizance came upon him.

  Cephus’s truck was not in the driveway. Luke lifted himself from the lounge and went to the door for an unobstructed look outside.

  Finch exited his car.

  “Where’s Cephus?” Finch said.

  “Was about to ask the same. You see him last night?”

  “Nah. Cephus don’t party.”

  “Yeah. So where the hell is he?” Luke went into the garage and found his cell phone on the tool table. It was dead.

  “You got your cell? Give him a shout. See what the hell he’s doing.”

  Finch dialed his brother. Put it on speaker phone and entered the garage. Voice mail picked up after four rings.

  “Text him.”

  Finch half smiled. He texted to Cephus the same message Cephus texted him on a near daily basis. “WTFAU?”

  Luke went inside the house and wove his belt through a holster with a .357 pistol in it. He also grabbed a .30-30 Winchester, a beat-up lever action brush gun he’d inherited from his father. Luke had a lot of pretty rifles with glassy stocks and perfect bluing. The Winchester was not one of them.

  Caroline had made coffee. Luke filled two mugs, figuring after a night of intoxication Finch probably needed it worse than him. At the garage he grabbed a shovel. Put the rifle on the window rack, lifted the rear seat, and placed the shovel across the crew cab’s cargo space.

  “Get in. Where’d you leave the body?”

  “Cool Pines exit.”

  Luke gassed the RAM truck. “If something happened to Cephus while you were off smoking dope, I’m going to leave you there with him.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Finch read the clock on his father’s RAM truck dashboard. 6:31. They traveled east on Interstate 40, the sun exactly ahead, glaring th
e sleepiness out of their brains. The temperature on the truck’s dash read twenty-eight degrees.

  Finch looked over at his father, behind the wheel. Bristling mustache. Weathered cowboy hat. Wrinkled face. He looked worse than his fifty-some years, staring ahead like a man bent on murder.

  Finch thought of the recording device on his chest—the futility of recording a conversation no one would ever hear.

  He’d long known his probable lifespan was short.

  He was twenty-eight, and the problem was, he didn’t want to die. He saw the movies where the war hero jumps on a grenade. He couldn’t fathom it. Or people jumping out the windows on 9/11. To Finch, deciding to die earlier than what fate demanded was insanity, not courage. He wanted every breath of life, and nothing was scary enough or important enough to make him want less of it. His life wasn’t terrific, but it was all he had. He dreaded the moment when his consciousness would go forever black. A universe without his awareness of it was an indescribably terrible and horrific thing.

  And yet when he thought about the suffering of other people, he empathized. When he gave one of the captives a key to the handcuffs, he knew Luke would probably end up handling him the same way he handled all his problems.

  Permanently.

  He also knew that in perpetrating the fraud of being a drug and alcohol addict, he was skirting a line with terrible things on the other side. For a man fearful of death, conscience kept him in intimate proximity.

  “It’s this one,” he said, looking ahead to the exit.

  Luke blinked, held his eyes closed.

  Finch watched the road.

  “Left after the exit?” Luke said.

  “Yes. Up to the T.”

  “Where’d you go last night?”

  “Charley’s.”

  “Got a girl there or something?”

  “Several. None in particular.”

  “Get any sleep?”

  “Enough.”

  “Good. Because the run to Salt Lake’s happening today, one way or another.”

  Luke took the exit and Finch lowered the window a couple inches.

  Luke raised the window from the control on his door panel. “If you want to change the temperature, adjust the air flow from the dash. Too early for noise.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  In a moment the truck crossed the bridge over Interstate 40 and, ahead, Finch saw Cephus’s truck parked very close to where they’d parked the refrigerated truck.

  “There it is,” Luke said. He accelerated, braked, swung behind it.

  Finch said, “We pulled in right along here, same as you are. It was the right front tire and we wanted the whole truck on the level. This is about where we were parked.”

  Luke exited, leaving the Winchester and shovel in the cab. He got up close to Cephus’s truck and looked in the back and front windows.

  “He in there?” Finch said.

  Luke climbed into the bed of the truck and with the higher elevation, looked a full circle. He stared a long time facing the direction where Cephus had shot the boy in the red jacket. The sun was to his right front. He shielded his eyes with his hand.

  “Ah Christ Jesus. No.”

  Luke opened the tailgate from inside the bed and sat on it. He slumped, lowered his head, removed his hat. He pulled the .357 from his gun belt and held it in both his hands.

  Finch crossed between slats in the wood fence and trotted toward where he’d buried the Mexican boy.

  Had the FBI sent someone out to investigate? Had agent Lou Rivers come out herself, and surprised Cephus? Finch tried to imagine the timing of it. Without knowing when Cephus returned to the location, it was impossible.

  What could he say? Someone had seen the body from Interstate 40—at night? How could he explain it?

  He saw the red jacket and a mound beside it.

  Cephus.

  Finch stopped walking, wondering if Luke would make the shot clean. Part of him wanted to stand still so he didn’t get winged. But another part of him considered taking off like a rabbit, a zig zag pattern that would make it difficult for a rifleman at two hundred yards.

  Finch looked back.

  Luke still sat on the truck’s open tailgate.

  As Finch watched, Luke jumped to his feet, raised the .357 into the air as if aimed at heaven, screamed and fired five shots, fast as the revolver cylinder could spin. Finch didn’t know a revolver could shoot so fast—like a single continuous sound. After the blast ended, Luke’s wail continued until it turned into a cry and died.

  Finch stood at his dead brother’s feet and turned at the crunch of his father’s long strides across the gravel. Finch again thought of running, but it would be an admission of guilt. He couldn’t run far enough. He had no way to support himself. He had to grit out the moment and hope for the best.

  Maybe the FBI had the whole area under surveillance this moment, and he was safe ...

  Finch studied Cephus, waiting for Luke to arrive. When footsteps neared he said, “They got him, Dad.”

  “Who got him?”

  “I don’t know. He’s shot in the forehead. And that isn’t how I left the other one. He was covered head to toe. Totally invisible.”

  Luke knelt by Cephus’s head.

  “Who’d he bring out here?” Finch said.

  “Just a girl.” Luke rolled Cephus and nodded at the back of his head. “No way. That skinny girl couldn’t lift the gun that did this.”

  Luke rested Cephus again on his back. Stood. “You smell that?”

  “What?”

  “Wood smoke?”

  “I guess. But it’s faint. Could be from anywhere.”

  “You walk out that way last night?”

  Finch looked toward the trees another hundred-some yards to their left.

  “No.”

  “Run back to the truck and grab my rifle.”

  “You think—”

  “Go!”

  Finch took off.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Luke kicked the dead Mexican’s head, bringing the top of his boot up under the boy’s chin, again and again, until neck meat ripped and exposed jagged flesh and bone. The body hadn’t frozen over night, but was long past bleeding. Very little blood transferred to Luke’s boot.

  He wanted more.

  Seeing Finch arrive at the truck and grab the rifle, Luke returned to desecrating the Mexican. Partly jumping, he brought his heel down on the boy’s head, but it glanced off the side. He lost his footing and landed on his tailbone and right elbow, bringing sharp pain to both places.

  He jumped back to his feet and pulled his pistol.

  “Dad—that isn’t good thinking.”

  Finch had arrived with the rifle. Luke let the sting in his elbow fade. He opened his revolver and replaced the cartridges he shot on the bed of the truck. Put away the wheelgun.

  “Chamber one.”

  “What?”

  “Put one in the barrel.”

  Finch worked the lever action. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Closest woods is that way.”

  “There was a dog yesterday, come to think of it. A white dog. Cephus shot it somewhere over this direction.”

  “I hope some hillbilly didn’t kill Cephus over a dog.”

  They walked, each careful choosing his steps. Luke motioned to his left. “Get a little distance between us.”

  Finch shifted.

  They crossed the terrain. Luke stopped. “Hold up. Got a boot print here.” He searched the area for another, and stepped forward. Halted, again shuffled forward. He craned his neck, searched farther ahead, then again at ground level.

  “Dad, see up there? It’s a tent.”

  “That’s where he was headed. Okay. No more talk. I’ll come in from the right, you stay lower on the left. Watch for my signal. When I tell you to stop, don’t move, say anything, nothing. We clear?”

  Finch nodded. “Got it. You think he’s still asleep after the five rounds you shot off?”

&n
bsp; Luke regarded his son. “No, I was thinking maybe we wouldn’t let him know we were right on top of him.”

  They continued forward with the distance between them widening. At the edge of the wood, Luke motioned for Finch to stop. A bright yellow backpacker’s tent had been pitched ten yards into the thin forest, located under the protective girth of a massive ponderosa pine. A few yards away was a fire circle with ashes and no smoke. Luke studied the woods beyond: more ponderosa; deciduous trees, bare of leaves; and Douglas fir growing dense like clumps of Christmas trees.

  Seeing no motion, no color out of place save the yellow tent, Luke made a fist signal to Finch, telling him not to move, then eased toward the tent. He stepped under the ponderosa’s wide ceiling.

  “You in there?” he said. “Come on out. Want to talk with you, get your take on what you saw last night. That’s all.”

  Luke waited.

  “Not here to give you any trouble. Come on out the tent.”

  He motioned Finch to approach.

  “My boy’s missing and—”

  Luke squatted and lifted a corner of the tent where a spike held it to the ground. He pulled the spike, then stood and lifted the whole corner of the tent.

  “Nothing inside,” he said. Luke stepped to the front and unzipped it. “Empty.”

  “Someone run off without his tent,” Finch said. “Maybe after all the shooting?”

  “Ease the fuck up.” Luke held his son’s stare. “I’ll shoot when I damn well want.”

  Luke paced the campsite with his gaze directed at the ground, seeking anything the camp’s occupant might have left that would provide a clue.

  “Maybe we could take that tent into Babbitt’s and see who bought it,” Finch said. “I know they sell that kind.”

  “Yeah. Tear it down.”

  Luke stood at the ponderosa trunk, unzipped his fly, and urinated. “We’re going to bury Cephus today. If anyone ever asks, say he ran off and we haven’t seen him. No body, no crime. No link to us.”

  “But how will they ever catch who shot him?”