Dead As Dutch

by Rich Docherty



  DEAD AS DUTCH

  Rich Docherty

  Copyright © 2012 by Rich Docherty.

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0-615-60787-0

  Edited by Lindsey Alexander

  Cover by Streetlight Graphics

  This book is a work of fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For Kara, my inspiration…always.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  The scream echoed out from deep in the woods. It rattled around the treetops, lingered a moment, and exited as suddenly as it had arrived. The voice was high pitched and shrill, human and female. And she was in trouble. No one shrieked with such ferocity without a darn good reason. Yet the seconds of silence that followed suggested perhaps the problem, assuming there was one, had resolved itself. Maybe it was just a momentary fright, someone simply startled by the appearance of an animal darting across her path or a bird swooping across her face. The mild temperatures of late May in southeastern New York State attracted plenty of novice hikers often spooked by the most benign of creatures. But spotting a harmless garter snake slithering by or a red-tailed hawk taking sudden flight would more than likely prompt only a short, sharp outburst. No, this particular scream pierced and resonated with urgency. It was a cry for help. The approaching footsteps left little doubt about that. Someone was in a big hurry…and she was not alone.

  The unmistakable sound of running grew nearer to the wide, sunlit meadow just outside the tree line. Whoever it was inside the deeply shaded forest plowed ahead in a frenetic rush. Leaves crackled and twigs snapped beneath the incessant cadence of trampling feet. Grunts and gasps for anything resembling breathable air punctured the normal tranquility of this solitary setting. It was obvious: This was no race. It was a chase.

  She stumbled as she emerged out of the dense bramble. It was her lithe sprinter’s body that stood out first. Long, lean legs that seemed to beg for hurdles to leap over. A slim, toned torso that suggested crunches were not unknown to her. She wore snug-fitting jeans and a ribbed yellow tank top that contrasted perfectly with her silky mocha-hued skin and clung to her slender frame like a fresh coat of lacquer. Her sleek, leather designer boots, stylish African hoop earrings, and brightly painted fingernails did nothing but reinforce the fact that she was still twenty years old and blessed with a supple shape that could make even a blind man salivate.

  She recovered and broke into a full-out dash across the grassy field. The soft features of her face appeared contorted and distressed, her serious chestnut-colored eyes consumed with fear. As she glanced back over her shoulder, the reason for her terror broke through into the open as her pursuer began to narrow the gap between them. Her voice was strained and, for the first time, somewhat resigned as she pleaded with the stalker.

  “Nooooooo!”

  There was nothing physically intimidating about the man. He was rather short and somewhat doughy, hardly imposing in terms of size. But his manner of dress reeked with a combination of menacing and oddball, kind of like a version of the sinister bogeyman that creeped its way into a child’s nightmares or lurked in the bedroom shadows. There was the standard-issue rumpled, ill-fitting black suit. Cheap white button-down dress shirt. Skinny, dark tie. Laced wingtip shoes. Fedora hat. Sunglasses. He looked like he belonged in a The Blues Brothers movie sequel, with one exception: his flabby, pink cheeks and just the barest hint of whisker sprouts forming a light beard suggested he was about the same age as the girl he pursued. Late teens, early twenties at most. He was also out of shape as he huffed and snorted his way forward, flailing like a man who couldn’t swim trying to save himself in the deep end of the pool. Streams of sweat dripped off his forehead. His tongue drooped over his lower lip. This guy was gassed. But apparently, so was she.

  Up ahead, her pace had noticeably slowed, as though she had just hit the wall at mile twenty of a marathon. She started to trot. The distance between them contracted. It was almost like she wanted to be caught. Within seconds the yards that separated the two diminished in half. Improbably he was catching up, and she seemed unable—or perhaps unwilling—to escape his relentless pursuit. His stubby fingers reached out within inches of her shoulder blades. With one final lunge his hands dug into her back and crawled up toward her neck. But they would travel no further.

  “AAAAAAAAAAA!”

  He collapsed to the ground faster than a bowling ball dropped in a tub of whipped cream.

  The girl stopped and turned. She could see him lying curled up in the high grass. He clutched his foot and grimaced in pain. She stood motionless, then cautiously edged toward him and was greeted by his whimpers. As she gazed down on him with a combination of skepticism and pity, a shout from nearby grabbed her attention.

  “CUT!”

  Stanley Evan Heberling was ticked off and barreled out of the woods like a man possessed, a jumble of thoughts racing through his mind. This was not the way things were supposed to go. Not after he had spent months devising the plan. Not after the countless hours going over every detail. It was perfect and foolproof. He made sure of that. No loose ends. All contingencies accounted for. Nothing within his power that could possibly go awry or disrupt his meticulous schedule had been overlooked. It was as precise as the battle plan of a Prussian general. There wasn’t a single minute to be wasted. It was to be a tight, textbook operation and, ultimately, his crowning achievement. There was no way he was going to allow a prima donna like Bryce Fowler to screw things up for him, he vowed.

  At first glance, his camouflage cargo pants, military-style boots, and safari jacket gave the impression Stan was either a big game hunter on the prowl or a mercenary for hire. Even the baseball cap with the number 13 embroidered on the peak could have been interpreted as signifying some sort of covert group of black ops specialists. But, upon closer inspection, this was no grizzled, war-hardened soldier of fortune. The video camera in his hand and his backpack with The Matrix insignia suggested otherwise, not to mention his unimposing stature, which made him appear much younger than his twenty one years. That was the reason he had spent the last month cultivating the stubble on his chin, which, in his mind, not only made him look older but provided a measure of the credibility and gravitas he deemed crucial to his success.

  He marched up and perched over Bryce, who writhed back and forth in a fetal position beneath him as if in the final throes of death. The histrionics might have worried Stan more if he had not already borne witness to similar melodramatic “scenery chewing” from Bryce. Napoleon had his Waterloo, and Stan knew that if he dropped his guard even for a moment, his could meet his own d
ownfall in a battle with his actors: the one variable in Stan’s entire scheme that he couldn’t completely control or rely upon. Especially this particular one.

  “Okay, so what happened this time, Bryce?”

  Bryce made sure to emit an exaggerated moan before he responded. “Jammed my toe.”

  “So?” Stan countered, with about as much sympathy as a beggar hearing a billionaire complain about an ingrown toenail.

  “So it hurts.” To emphasize his point, Bryce made sure to remove his shoe and carefully peel off his sock as if to reveal a wound with fatal implications.

  Stan knew Bryce was a risk. There had been hints all along. Right from the get-go, as a matter of fact. At the very first rehearsal, he asked Stan for his own Winnebago trailer, claimed he needed complete privacy in order to, as he put it, “find his character.” Then he complained about the lack of catering on location, as if they were trooping off to Marrakesh for the weekend instead of two hours from campus. The clincher was the day during rehearsals he went ballistic and threatened to quit after word leaked that his wardrobe was cobbled together from Salvation Army hand-me-downs. It took two dry cleanings and the receipts to prove it to convince him to wear the vintage clothes.

  Still, Stan had faith that he could keep Bryce’s ego in check. It took only half a morning of starts and restarts, though, to realize what a monster it truly was.

  “Aliens don’t hurt, Bryce.”

  “Why not?”

  Barely 10 a.m. and Stan was already weary and fed up with the constant barrage of inane questions. Why did Bryce always have to challenge his authority? He was the director, it was his movie, and actors were supposed to do what they’re told. That’s just the way it was. End of story. Deal with it.

  “Because they’re immune to pain,” he explained.

  No surprise to Stan, Bryce wasn’t done. “Ever hear of an Achilles’ heel?”

  The historical reference rattled Stan. Achilles’ heel? He wasn’t sure where Bryce was going with his latest off-the-wall non sequitur. Stan knew enough about mythology and Brad Pitt, who portrayed the warrior in the film Troy, to recall Achilles as the Greek hero of the Trojan War. As the legend went, he was mortally wounded with an arrow in the one vulnerable spot on his body—the heel.

  “What about it?” Stan eyeballed Bryce like a teacher leery of an incorrigible, insolent student raising his hand in the back of the classroom.

  “This alien has an Achilles’ toe, all right?”

  It wasn’t so much that Bryce had somehow concocted the ridiculous, out-of-nowhere, poppycock invention of an Achilles’ toe that bothered Stan. No, it was the smug, rub-it-in-your-nose way he said “all right” that set him off.

  “NOT ALL RIGHT. NOT ACCEPTABLE,” Stan shouted. “Aliens do not, I repeat, do NOT have an Achilles’ toe in Letter 13!”

  It took all of Stan’s willpower not to jump on Bryce and beat him to a pulp. By the look on his face—somewhere between hurt and insult—Bryce got the message, but didn’t retreat without offering up a last-ditch defense.

  “I thought it was a good idea,” he griped. “Give my character a flaw. All the great ones had some sort of flaw. Remember that actor in Cowboy at Midnight? He limped.”

  Stan was in no mood to give up even a centimeter to Bryce. “Yeah, well, for your information, the correct name of the film is Midnight Cowboy, you’re not Dustin Hoffman, and you are not changing my script. Got it?” Stan poked him in the chest with his forefinger for emphasis.

  For once, Bryce didn’t have a comeback, just a grudging nod in Stan’s direction. There was nothing further to say. The damage was done—more time squandered—and as far as Stan was concerned, he had every right to seethe. After all, everything that had gone wrong so far on this first day of shooting Letter 13 could be directly blamed on Bryce. From the start, he threw a wrench into Stan’s production schedule. Stan had made it clear—he sent out texts and e-mails the previous five consecutive days as reminders—that the crew and actors were to meet that morning in the west parking lot at Eisenhower College at exactly 6 a.m. However, because Bryce strolled in forty-five minutes late (he swore a freak power outage hit his neighborhood overnight and shut down his alarm clock—something about his street being directly below a chunk of ice that fell from a passing airliner and crashed into a transformer at an electrical sub-station), the departure to the location was delayed and forced Stan to revise his carefully configured shot sheet.

  Soon after, Bryce insisted on a breakfast stop at Mickey D’s even though Stan specifically told him the night before to eat at home because there was no time to squeeze in any side trips. He tried to ignore him, but Bryce protested that because he was hypoglycemic (Stan tuned out the lengthy diatribe that followed as Bryce rambled on about the clinical details of a low blood sugar condition), and that he was prone to fainting spells or worse if he didn’t put some food in his stomach.

  “It’s a medical emergency,” he argued. “I could die. Then what? My father has lawyers. Lots of them. He’ll sue.”

  Stan knew his cojones were in a vise. So did Bryce, and it was clear he wasn’t about to let go. Stan concluded he had no choice but to concede, so he whipped in and out of the drive-thru like it was a Daytona pit stop.

  To top it all off, about an hour into the drive, Bryce barfed up his egg-sausage-and-cheese and double order of hash browns all over the rear seat of the van. He claimed motion sickness and was quick to identify the culprit responsible.

  “I told you to slow down, Stan. It’s YOUR fault,” he charged.

  This was the very same customized van that Stan had pleaded with his older brother, Chuckie, to borrow under the threat of a serious bruising if so much as a carpet fiber was out of place when he returned it. So Stan pulled over and spent twenty minutes scrubbing the puke off the upholstery with bottled water and an extra T-shirt he’d packed—his favorite one with Al Pacino as Scarface on the front. Still, the nauseating stench of spew remained, not to mention an ugly stain that Stan feared was permanent and all the evidence Chuckie would need to maim him. At that particular moment, though, the only thing that concerned Stan was how to get Bryce vertical and moving again.

  “Ready, Bryce?

  “Not yet.”

  “When then?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Stan was fully prepared to strangle him and put an end once and for all to the misery of Bryce Fowler ruining his dream. Problem was, and as much as he hated to admit it, Stan needed him. It was too late to replace Bryce. Without him, Letter 13 wasn’t going to get done. Like it or not, they were stuck with each other. The bottom line was that Stan chose him and had to make the best of a casting decision that, so far at least, had backfired as an epic fail. Fortunately, his instincts didn’t let him down when he selected Keisha Crenshaw as his lead actress. In Stan’s mind, she was the anti-Bryce: The pro to his con, the plus to his minus, the sweet to his sour. And, right about now, the cavalry that Stan hoped could ride to the rescue and get Bryce off his butt.

  “Bryce? I have an idea,” she cooed.

  “Yeah? What?” He looked up, more suspicious than encouraged.

  Keisha bent down and wiggled her tongue in a flirty, sort of come-hither way. “Want me to suck on it?”

  He stared back at her as though she had just spoken Swahili to him and offered up a piece of dung to munch on.

  “Ha. Ha,” he grumbled. Bryce was not amused nor apparently aroused by the prospect of Keisha providing oral relief to his throbbing toe. He did, however, begin to take on the color of a pomegranate and squirm like he’d just sat on an anthill.

  Stan wasn’t shocked. Keisha had that kind of effect on guys. He spotted her disarming allure the first time he saw her in a freshman lit class. She didn’t just walk into the room, she sailed in, like a sleek yacht, and every set of male eyes was glued to her like pining dogs watching the Thanksgiving turkey come out of the oven. Keisha was one of those people who didn’t even have to try to be cool, she just was.
For an entire semester, Stan gazed at the back of her head, inhaled whatever fragrance she spritzed on that day, and never came close to uttering a word in her direction. He had been shot down by girls who were out of his league plenty over the years; he knew the drill—window-shop all you wanted, but you didn’t touch the merchandise. Unless, of course, you were rich, a jock, or could offer access to certain physical assets of equine proportions. Stan was forced to concede that he lacked all three attributes. He was okay with that, though. Keisha was here with him now, and that was all that mattered, even if it was just for the weekend. Besides, not only did she just humiliate Bryce and shut him up, Stan felt newly emboldened by her support. It was time once again to resume command.

  Stan clapped his hands. “Can we get back to making a movie, please? Come on, let’s go. Positions everybody! You set, Irv?”

  Several yards away stood the gangly and lank, Irv Bell, casually attired in khaki shorts, well-worn hiking boots, and one of those Rolling Stones T-shirts with the massive red lips and a tongue sticking out. His wheat-colored hair was closely cropped and his fair skin tinged with the pink hue of a mild sunburn. He carried a boom pole with a cylindrical, foam-covered shotgun microphone attached, and his neck was draped with headphones and an audio mixer. An oversized backpack was slung over his shoulders.

  “Audio department is always ready,” Irv declared.

  Stan counted on that. “I’m glad someone is.” He glared down at Bryce, who had taken on the guise of a scolded puppy.

  It didn’t concern Stan that Irv’s verbal output was so minimal. In fact, he preferred his laconic manner, especially since he already had to put up with Bryce’s bluster—the less chatter, the better. Irv kept his mouth zipped and did his job, never complained, and, in Stan’s estimation, had the perfect demeanor for a soundman: always a calm presence, in spite of the myriad of unforeseen noises (already that morning a helicopter had buzzed overhead and an ATV had roared by) that without warning popped up to spoil the audio track and required a redo of the scene. Whatever other irritating challenges Stan had to deal with, at least he knew Irv had his back…something he couldn’t say about the remaining member of his production team.

  “Dana?” Stan twirled around and around like was stuck in a revolving door. “Dana!”

  He couldn’t see her, but heard the grating voice he knew all too well grousing from the woods.

  “Yeah, yeah. Coming, coming. Keep your shirt on.”

  “My shirt’s on, Dana. Get out here! Stan ordered.

  Dana Heberling tromped out of a thick grove of trees with a scowl on her face. She was cute in a tomboyish way, her petite features topped by spiky, raven-colored hair and accentuated with deep dimples cut into her cheeks and freckles spackled atop her nose. Her dark, Goth nail polish and eyeliner; the skull jewelry that dangled from her ears; gray zippered hoodie with a Dismember (a Swedish death metal band which sent her into a two-week tailspin of depression upon learning of its breakup) T-shirt beneath; ripped jeans; and punk platform combat boots, however, gave her an “I’m an angry teenager” look that warned “do not approach unless invited.” She also lugged a huge backpack that was half her body size and toted a video camera as she dragged herself up to Stan.

  “Where were you?” he demanded. “I told you to stay close.”

  “I didn’t think I needed your permission to pee.”

  “Well, you do.”

  “I didn’t get that memo,” she carped.

  “News flash, Dana. Just because you’re my sister doesn’t mean you can expect special treatment.”

  “Blah, blah, blah.” Dana rolled her eyes and trudged off.

  Stan often wondered how she could possibly be related to him. Only six years separated them, but it was hard for him to imagine that they shared even a morsel of the same family genes. Besides Chuckie, she was his only other sibling, and when they were younger, they enjoyed each other’s company despite the occasional brother-sister spat. But, over the last few years, after Stan began college and started living away from home in a dorm, Dana had begun her own personal rebellion. It was like she had snared herself in some perpetual web of rage with Stan as target numero uno upon which to unleash her wrath. Their parents assured him it was “just a phase,” but in the meantime, he did his best to avoid confrontations by steering clear of her path whenever possible. So here they were, together again, united for the two most important days of Stan’s life, and he had to depend on his snippety brother-hating sister to help bail him out. Based on the early results, he envisioned one very long weekend looming ahead. On second thought, he realized, it already was.

  Chapter 2