Pretty Like an Ugly Girl (Baer Creighton Book 3)

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Mae see my face. Crowds Ruth. Take my hand. “Mom, would you go in my room and find the first aid kit we bought the other day?”

  Mae hold my right arm up, press here and there.

  “The bullet passed through. And it looks like it didn’t hit the bone or anything,” Mae say. “We’ll wrap this one so it doesn’t keep bleeding. It’s the leg that’s going to be a little more trouble. I’m sure a doctor can handle it.”

  Mae works while Ruth cast a sober on me. Been a good couple hour since I guzzled that Canadian booze. And I’s a little more accustomed the dope Tat give me. Ain’t bragging.

  “Was thinkin’,” I say. “I know a feller might have the wherewithal, locate a surgeon, maybe outside the system. Don’t much care for his smartass way, but you know what they say. Beggars don’t choose shit.”

  “I know someone,” Finch say. “I mean, I know of someone. I was going to get in touch with him about what I want to do in Salt Lake City, about the rest of the girls up there. He’d know a doctor, maybe.”

  “What girls?” Mae say.

  “Oh, his daddy runs a traffic operation,” I say. “Tat was one his kids up from Mexico. Tat shot him. I shot his wife and son. Both in the head. And once I mend, we’s all three gonna go up and shoot his other brother, so the girls can escape back home to Mexico.”

  Finch look at Tat. Tat look away.

  “Oh,” Mae say.

  Ruth come out Mae’s bedroom with a red nylon first aid kit. Unzip it as she walk.

  Mae say, “I met a man, Baer. A few nights ago. He’s pretty connected. People who can get things done without being official about it. I could call him.”

  “Good. Somebody call somebody, and if none of your people step up, my feller’s name is Nat Cinder. He’ll be across the street for breakfast in the morning.

  “I know Nat!” Mae say. “I mean, we went out a couple times. That’s who I was thinking of.”

  “You know Nat Cinder?” says Finch. “The Nat Cinder?”

  “Whoa, hold on,” says me. “You date him?”

  “We had a drink. He said he met you. How’d that happen?”

  “Hitch hikin’. Bought me breakfast. Fucked me on a gold coin.”

  Mae roll her eyes. “Should’ve asked me. Just a sec.” She pull out a cellular telephone. Press a couple places. “Hi, yeah ... I was thinking of you too. Hey listen, I can’t really talk. You know Baer—my dad—we talked about? Yeah? Well, he needs a doctor, but we can’t exactly go to the hospital ... He stepped on a punji stick. You will? Oh that’s so sweet. Okay. Bye.”

  Knock on the door. My head already pointed that way, so it’s no trouble seeing Mae open it. Nat Cinder enter with a pudgy Jerry Garcia-long hair frizz guy truck in after him. He carry a black bag like the ole timey doctor took payment in chicken and rhubarb.

  “Baer.”

  “Nat.”

  We nod like shaking hands. Nat look at Mae and she look at me.

  “You pokin’ her?”

  “Dad!”

  “Baer!”

  “What you say?”

  “Just pickin’. Hell. I hope y’ are. Check out this punji hole in my leg, doc. That little blackhair agin the wall shoved a plastic tube inside and fill it with Lysol. How ’bout that?”

  Doc Jerry puts out his chin, frowns. Tilts head left and right like he’s weighing earrings. “Might have saved your life.”

  Nat say, “For the record, Mae and I’ve had a couple beers and conversations. And I’m old fashioned enough, I’d have a word with you if my intentions got serious enough to warrant you sticking your nose in them.”

  “Well I figger a man that gets me over the barrel on a gold coin deserve a little ribbin’, and with these punji-type injuries, I’m sure doc here’ll say, I’s good as done fer. So in a sense, wouldn’t be right, I didn’t give you shit when I had the chance.”

  Cinder come over and swings a hand, holds it till I slap mine in it. Grab hard. He say, “You got a good girl. You shouldn’t say shit like that.”

  Jest what I need. Philosophy from a rapscallion think like me. “Aright, dammit. I know. I know. Mae, shit. Fuck. All right?”

  “Apology accepted. I’ll poke any damn body I want anyway.”

  Nat snort and Mae smile and Doc Jerry look back and forth and grin like he party the humor, and no one looking but me, Doc unloads his weight on his knees, set the black bag on the floor and open it.

  “Here.”

  He put a thermometer in my mouth. Take my calf in his hands.

  Shift the thermometer to the corner my mouth. “See how the Lysol been drippin’ out all night?”

  He lift the pantleg. “I need to cut this away.”

  “Hep yerself.”

  He pull a Leatherman tool from his hip. “Stop talking. I need a good read on that thermometer.”

  “Oh, sure. Yessir. Doc—you mind me askin? What kinda—”

  “Veterinarian.”

  “Ah. Good.”

  He open the blade and work it agin the cloth, all the way ’round.

  “Yeah, that was good thinking on her part. Of course, Lysol is a pesticide, in terms of its effectiveness. But only mildly toxic to mammals. I suspect you’ll feel sick when—I take it you’re on some kind of pain medication right now?”

  Tat say, “Fentanyl.”

  “That explains why you’re not on the floor crying in pain. Are you breathing okay?”

  “Hell. Suppose.”

  Doc pull the thermometer out my mouth. Look at it. “You have a mild fever. That’s normal. I’m going to leave this thermometer with you. Call me if the temperature goes to 101.” He look at Mae. Ruth. “Got it?”

  They got it.

  Doc Jerry pull away the pantleg and press calf meat. “That hurt?”

  “Not particular.”

  “Ah, wow. Almost all the way through. Did you realize that the stake almost came out the top?”

  “Sure did. Held it up agin the hole, after.”

  He nod. “Well, there’s a considerable amount of heat around the wound, but that’s likely from the size. The redness doesn’t radiate far, and the seepage is mostly clear. I doubt much of it at this point is Lysol. Were it a darker color, more greenish or brown, combined with a decaying smell, we’d have a serious problem. But as things stand, I think a heavy round of cephalexin — I brought you a couple days’ worth—ought to hold you over until my lab tech can work up a culture and see what we have that kills whatever bacteria are causing your infection.”

  I nod ’cause I don’t know what else make better sense.

  “So,” Ruth say, “He’s not going to die or anything? That’s what you’re saying?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It’ll take a few days of close supervision, but we ought to be able to eliminate the infection. I’ll take a sample, and be off. I’ll come back tomorrow and see how the cephalexin is doing. You should notice an improvement every day. If you feel lethargic, uh, that means tired, you might—”

  “I know lethargic. Is all.”

  “Oh, well. If you feel it, that’s a cause of concern. I’ll want to know about it.”

  “Fair ’nough. What I owe ya?”

  He shake his head. “Nothing. No payment, in any way. Last thing I need is word to get out, make people think I practice medicine on people. No sir, this is just friendly advice. Given, I might add, on account of my friendship with the next governor of the great state of Arizona.”

  I shake his hand.

  Cinder shake his hand.

  Doc Jerry look at his watch. Gimme a business card, got a horse on it. Mae come take it.

  “I’ll check in on you in about sixteen hours. It’s the earliest I can make it.”

  Doc leave and Nat step out with him. Keep the door open while he mumble. Come back inside, alone.

  “So,” Nat Cinder say. “You’re Finch Graves.”

  Finch look up from the floor.

  Cinder step closer. “What the hell are you doing here?”

 
; “I—Tat and I—brought Baer here.”

  “I know something about your family operation. I suspect the girl here, what’s your name, miss?”

  “Tathiana.”

  “I guess Tathiana knows something about you as well. So tell me what I don’t know.”

  Finch talk like a double-pussed cow cutting bladder on a rock.

  “I started informing to the FBI on my father and brothers almost two years ago. They kept wanting more information. I’ve been providing recordings of conversations. When I finally discovered what they’re really about—the killing—I told my FBI contact, and she tried to take me to my father’s. She’d been working for him the whole time. I guess they let me live because they knew they’d find out as soon as I put everything together, about what they were doing. Anyhow, when I was just in Salt Lake City, they tried to kill me, and I had to escape. It’s because I saw all the video evidence. All the pedophiles and murderers.”

  “Wait,” Cinder say. “Murderers?”

  “They’re selling the privilege of killing their prostitutes for a hundred grand a piece. So if I’d have let her take me to my father’s place, I’d have wound up dead. She’s in the trunk of her Impala, back at Dad’s house.”

  Cinder nodded. “Dead?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Cinder shake his head. “Mae, Miss Ruth? I hope you can appreciate this, but I need to have the room with Baer, Finch, and Tathiana. You understand? We’re going to talk about things. Or we can leave if you prefer.”

  “No, I’ll go check on the kids. Ruth. Let’s go check on the kids.”

  They leave. Cinder look around the room, listen a few second.

  “I’ve been through a round of this before. You said video of pedophiles and murders. When a criminal knows his shit, he gets evidence on the enforcer. It’s the only way a crook stays free, in the long run. They can’t evade the law, so they have to own it. The only way to do that is to own the enforcer. That leaves us with two options. First scenario, we forget about everything. Go our separate ways, and hope God forgives our part. The second, take down the evil, ourselves. There’s no one else’ll do it. Not with video being held on them.”

  “Less take them fuckers down,” says I.

  Nat look at me. “You ain’t doing shit but healing.”

  “We’ll take them down,” Finch say. “I was on my way to kill my father when I found Tathiana and Baer had already done it. Next is Wayman. I know how to get in, where he keeps what we need. I say we take him down.”

  “Tathiana?” Nat say.

  She nod.

  “Atta girl,” I say. “Toughest I ever see. You want that one.”

  “All right,” Nat Cinder say. “Let’s figure this shit out.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  It felt good to get it all off his chest. Maybe that’s why Catholic people confessed. He’d carried the guilt for years, participating in unspeakable evil, knowing what he was doing, not doing enough to end it.

  Not doing anything to end it.

  Because while he informed on his family to the law, nothing happened.

  He’d been trying to buy absolution at the cheapest price. By confessing his sins to the FBI, he’d sought to remove not just responsibility for his actions, but for being the solution. As Cinder had told him, you can’t turn over a problem to an agency that is part of it.

  Deferring your morality to someone else has the same consequence as having no morality at all, and no one gets a free ride. No one gets to hang out beyond the fray.

  You uphold the standard or you destroy it. Zero sum.

  Providing the details to Nat Cinder, Tathiana, and the ever-charming Baer Creighton, felt better than mere confession. Finch didn’t give the weepy, woe-is-me routine, and no one offered pardon. Instead he took a place in the group that would hammer out justice and save the remaining girls.

  Almost as a formality, they’d talked about turning over the details of the operation to the Salt Lake City police, instead of further trusting the FBI. But with Wayman bragging about owning the law, they doubted he would have overlooked the local cops.

  The locals would be trustworthy enough to go in and rescue the girls, but then what? One corrupt badge with everything to lose disappears the video evidence that puts away dozens, maybe hundreds of pedophiles and killers.

  No, Cinder had said. They needed to control the evidence. Saving the girls was nice, no offense Tat, but our first mission is to secure the evidence. After that, we save the girls. Then we distribute the evidence all at once to a hundred news organizations, and provide each with a list of the others. That way, instead of delaying while they call their money masters, they rush to publish. Raw capitalism would force the press to do its job.

  They’d formulated their plan based off everything Finch told them about the layout of the building and the location of Wayman’s office. Cinder had volunteered to bring the needed resources to complete the mission. They’d meet at eight, have breakfast, and hit the road to Salt Lake City.

  The last part of the plan, according to Cinder, was deniability. There were two unfortunate things about living in a corrupt society. First, justice was rarely served. Second, the people who went about securing it on their own were considered the bigger threat, not because they used violence as a tool, but because they upended the police cartel’s power.

  Long story short, Cinder said, “We do this, according to them, we’re the bad guys. And since I don’t want to die just yet, we can’t leave any finger prints on any of this.”

  With that, Baer— still drugged and drunk, but with glee that showed his true calling—related his part in the execution of Cephus and Finch’s mother, Caroline. He’d left no evidence he could think of that would tie him to either act of justice.

  Tathiana had killed Luke, and with fierce eyes, she’d displayed the weapon to Cinder. Baer explained the firearm had belonged to Caroline.

  “Okay, that works,” Cinder said. “Cops look for the path of least resistance. This’ll be murder suicide.” Cinder took the gun from Tat. “I’ll give you one tomorrow you’ll like better and can keep forever.”

  Cinder turned to Finch. “You said you choked the agent with the handcuffs on your wrist. That means your DNA is all over them. Where are they?”

  Finch pulled the handcuffs from his pocket.

  “Ideally, we’d clean the DNA from the cuffs and leave the chain alone. That way they have the murder weapon and can blame it on Luke. But any of your DNA at all, they’ll match it to you, whether they have a sample of yours, or not. They’ll know you’re family, and that’ll compel you to give a sample. So those cuffs have to disappear. I’d soak them in battery acid and bury them in the woods. You want me to do it, or you?”

  Finch tossed him the cuffs.

  “Any loose ends?”

  “My car,” Finch said. “It’s at my father’s place. I took it there the morning we found Cephus, and with everything that happened, never went back to get it. I drove Tat and Baer here in Mom’s Escalade.”

  “Okay. The Escalade probably has Baer’s DNA all over it. We don’t have time to give it a good cleaning. Take it back to your father’s place, dump a can of gas inside, leave the windows open, and light it. Remember, we’re leaving the FBI agent there in her trunk, so there’ll be plenty of confusion for them. A burned-out vehicle ... their skinny little minds’ll be working overtime to figure out why Luke Graves shot his wife, killed the agent, then half a day later, set his wife’s vehicle on fire, and killed himself. So long as no other evidence is in the mix to make them look outside that scenario, it’s as good as solved.”

  “You want me to do that?”

  “Yes, I want you to do that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Last thing,” Cinder said. “Baer, you’re out. You know that, right?”

  Baer looked wistful. Sighed. Shook his head, frowned. Then smiled. “They’s plenty other evil people. Shit. Fer later.”

  They adjourned, everyone to meet in
the same room the next morning.

  Finch drove the Escalade to his father’s. The garage door was still open, his Mustang parked where he left it. As he’d been instructed, Finch found a can of fuel in the garage, emptied it all over the upholstery, most where Baer had sat, and lit it.

  He drove home at one, opened the sunroof, cranked the heat, and put one hand into the opening above, like toes in cold water.

  He was on the right path. He knew it. He may never be right with God on the whole affair, but he damn sure wasn’t lining up with the devil.

  Finch pulled into the lot at his apartment, exited the car, and closed the door. The sound echoed off building bricks. When the silence returned, Finch leaned against the Mustang, listening.

  He felt peace.

  He climbed the stairs and unlocked the door.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Wayman’s cell phone buzzed. He put up his finger. Asger and the new guy Louie quieted.

  “Hey, Nick, hang on minute. I’m finishing a conversation.”

  Wayman pressed the face of the phone to his leg and looked at Asger. “You vouch for him?”

  “I know him.”

  “Yeah, well, you knew Tommy too, and he ended up shot by his own gun. Ten times. And now I have to handle it.”

  “Louie’s a good guy. We worked together before. Tommy—he wasn’t my guy. Your friend Dane introduced him and I said I’d take a look, but he wasn’t my guy.”

  Wayman closed his eyes. “Show him his post.”

  Asger and Louie exited the office. The nightclub thudded. Was quieted again with the closing of the doors.

  “Nick?”

  “Wayman, Nick Carpenter.”

  Wayman glanced at his watch. 1:00 a.m. “Hello, Nick. What’s wrong?”

  Carpenter had retired from the Phoenix police department years back and fulfilled a lifelong dream by moving out of the furnace to the cool high plain of Williams, Arizona. He bought a place a lot nicer than a retired cop ought to be able to afford and, from time to time, worked with Wayman’s father handling local issues where a retired cop’s connections could smooth things over. That graduated into occasional wet jobs, simple busting kneecaps kind of work. Except, in the meat business, it usually involved fingers and band saws. From there, the sky was the limit. Carpenter liked the tax-free income because it didn’t trigger more of his Social Security being taxed. Amen, brother. Nick Carpenter fit the Graves mindset just fine and, in the space of a decade, became a reliable freelance help for anything Luke Graves needed.