by R.M. Haig
September 9th, 2016. 9:20AM
Garthby, Indiana
"Get him out of here!" Boudreaux ordered, pointing his pudgy finger accusingly at Chucky.
At his command, two officers entered the small room and unlocked the chain that bound the prisoner to the table.
"Hey, take it easy with him!" Jacob snapped as the men unceremoniously yanked Chucky to his feet. He stumbled, nearly falling, which led the bailiffs to tug him up by his jumpsuit. "Is that really necessary?"
Boudreaux said nothing to modify his officers' handling of their quarry, just stood smugly in the door, looking like he truly believed that he was king shit of all the world. Chucky grunted and groaned at the rough treatment, crying ow as the handcuffs tightened around his wrists in the jostling. Seeing this happen broke Jacob's heart, his friend was such a gentle soul -- he didn't deserve this treatment.
"Come on, guys, he's special!" Jake offered, hoping to persuade them with that knowledge. "He doesn't pose any threat to you, you don't have to be so fucking rough!"
"That man," Boudreaux began, pointing that chubby finger again, "is a vicious, savage and calculated baby killer!" He paused for drama's sake, chopping Chucky in two with his razor sharp eyes. "If you had seen what he did to little Billy Marsh, I promise you, you would want us to handle him harder!"
Donnell was shaking his head, trying to support Chucky with his hands so that the arms of the bailiffs wrapped around him wouldn't exert full pressure in pulling him up. Once they had him squarely on his feet, they practically dragged him from the room. The shackles around his ankles didn't allow him to take strides wide enough to match the frenetic pace of his escorts, so he staggered and tripped with every step.
"Jesus Christ, Boudreaux!" Jake condemned the man. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" He asked, realizing finally why it was a good thing that his gun was back in the car.
The bailiffs pulled Chucky passed the sheriff, the man not moving an inch -- forcing them to push and shove the prisoner around him, manipulating him as though he were a piece wedged in an awkward spot at the narrow mouth of a klotski puzzle. The contempt in Boudreaux's eyes was palpable as they passed, and for a moment it looked as though he would spit in Chucky's face. When they were gone, his lips broke deviously into some semblance of a grin, his coffee and tobacco stained teeth glimmering devilishly behind his dark lips.
The smile didn't last for long, the Sheriff snatched it back the very moment he realized it was showing. The squeaks of Chucky's sneakers trying to keep up on the marble floor trailed off to silence, Boudreaux just staring at them menacingly until it was inaudible entirely.
Donnell seemed reluctant to pay the man the courtesy of looking at him, focusing, instead, on the surface of the table at which he sat. Jake, on the other hand, was glaring at him with a heavy loathing stirring in his guts.
Ron Boudreaux's was a face he'd never wished to see again. One he was glad to have forgotten and had hoped would remain sealed away forever. He had worked long and hard to see that the face and the deeds of Deputy Ron would exist as no more than ghostly apparitions, barely latent prints on brittle sheets of parchment, bound loosely in a musty and decaying volume. By force of will, he kept that volume stored away in a dark, forbidden chamber of painful memories in his mind... memories he never wished to relive or to remember. Memories which he tried consciously to banish into dust and remove from his reality entirely.
Every one of those intrusive anamneses came swirling back at the sight of the man, swirling, swirling madly in ashen afterimages of pain and sorrow... of betrayal and injustice, of lies and wanton destruction. His face projected all of this to Boudreaux, a look of disdain and disgust that Jake thrust at him like a razor sharp rapier in the hands of a champion duelist.
He piled upon Boudreaux's fat face the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar... as if his chest had been a mortar... as if his chest had been a mortar...
"You son of a bitch!" he fired his heart upon him. "You low-life fucking son of a bitch!"
Boudreaux was unmoved by the outburst, not phased by the glare or the feelings Jake poured out behind it. With his hands clasped behind his back, he casually waddled his way into the room and assumed the chair where Chucky had been seated. With his weary ankles relieved of the burden his girth placed upon them, he groaned with satisfaction that he surely didn't deserve.
"I think y'all need to listen to me for a minute, boys!" he said snidely. He took note of Donnell, still staring down at the table, and addressed him. "Donnell, I'm surprised at you! You ain't even gonna look at me, boy? Is this the thanks I get? The thanks for all the good things I done for you? This is how you repay me? Surely, I deserve at least to be acknowledged!"
He frisked Donnell with his eyes, and the frisking was an unwelcome violation. It sent a chill through him that was almost visible, coaxing him to take several labored breaths as he continued to focus on the tabletop.
"If not for me, boy" Boudreaux continued, "if not for what I done for ya', you wouldn't be sitting in that chair right now! Hell, you'd probably be sitting in this chair -- probably be chained up to this table, like an animal!" he paused to frisk some more. "If not for what I done for ya', I doubt you'd be wearing all of those fancy clothes that you're wearing... wouldn't be wearing -- this fancy watch!"
He fondled the golden band on Donnell's wrist, Donnell pulling it away sheepishly at his touch.
"My lord, son," Boudreaux exclaimed, "that's a twenty-thousand dollar watch! I know you didn't have things like that when you were growin' up back in Burlwood! I know your daddy didn't have anything like that! I would stake a bet that you still wouldn't have anything like that, if not for me and what I done! Now, given what I done, I should think that a man who's been as good to you as I been deserves -- deserves... oh, I dunno, perhaps a modicum of respect from somebody like you! From somebody who had nothin' -- wouldn't have nothin' -- if not for the kindness of someone like me!"
Still, Donnell didn't look up.
"I figure that someone like me is at least due the courtesy of a kind and reverent glance from somebody as indebted as you are! Don't you think that's right, Donnell?"
Knowing he wouldn't stop, that he would persist until he finally gave in, Donnell raised his eyes slowly, though his head remained down in shame and disgust. He made eye contact with the man, but only as much as would be considered enough... enough to make him drop it.
"Theeeeerrrrre it is," Boudreaux said, dragging the words out sarcastically. "And you, Jake," he continued, shifting his stare to the face of loathing he saw beaming back. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again." He paused, let it simmer for a second, took a deep breath and sighed. "Probably would've been better that way, wouldn't it?" he concluded.
The room was uncomfortably silent, the droning forced air of the cooling system not enough to break the tension.
"Now, I don't have a lot to say," Boudreaux said, "but I want you to listen very closely to the words I do speak."
Donnell was looking back to the table already, Jake still watching with disgust as the Sheriff put exclamations on his next sentence, jabbing out each word by pounding his stumpy finger on the table.
"This -- investigation -- is -- closed!" he said. "I have everything I need, I know exactly what happened, and there's nothing here that concerns either one of you! The two of you need to go home and go about your lives, because you have no business getting involved in what's going on here!"
The insinuation angered Donnell, and his frustration was evident as he spoke, though he didn't lift his eyes again. "Chucky has a right to an attorney," he said, "I am licensed to practice law and in good standing with the Bar, you cannot restrict my access to my client or hamper my efforts to --"
"To what?" Boudreaux interrupted. "To what, Donnell?"
The immediate answer was silence, so Boudreaux let it fester before he filled i
t in with his own assertion.
"To defend a guilty man? To look into a crime that's already been solved? To stick your nose somewhere it doesn't belong? To shove it way up my ass, right here -- in my yard? To shit on my investigation? Oh, no -- no, no, Donnell, that's not a very good idea at all."
"Guilty or not, he --"
"This ain't your playground anymore, boy, you left this place behind!" Boudreaux interrupted, yelling now. "And you need to keep it there, behind you! Believe me when I say that this deal is signed, sealed and delivered!" He gave three more exclamatory jabs at the table with this, then calmed and resumed in a normal tone. "All that remains, now, is to close the book and throw it at that no good piece of shit that you called your friend in another life! You can't help that man, Donnell, nobody can! He's going up the river, and he's going for a long, long time! If I have it my way, he'll never see the ocean because he'll have those lines in his arms and that burnin' in his veins! This is not a case for you, Donnell, this is a prime-time, grade-A loser! Being associated with it will only soil your good name, son, and you don't need it soiled -- not like this!"
Donnell said nothing, just kept staring at that table. Finished with that portion of his tirade, Boudreaux turned his attention to Jake.
"And you," he said damningly, pointing again. "You have less business here than this boy does!"
"Chucky's my friend!" Jake snapped. "I have every business being here!"
Boudreaux was silent for a moment, a look of surprise on his face. Then, he let out a congested, half-hearted laugh before responding. "Your friend?" he asked. "Your friend -- whom you haven't talked to or seen in almost twenty years? What kind of friend are you, Jake? What kind of friend of his are you?"
"I'm also a private investigator," he retorted, "bonded and licensed, and I intend to look into this investigation of yours and figure out exactly what you're up to here, Ron!"
"A private eye?" he laughed again. "By God, Donnell, we got us a regular old Richard Diamond here! A Philip Marlowe, a Rocky Fortune, a Johnny Dollar, a Sam Spade! A regular gumshoe, I bet, a hundred dollars a day plus expenses!" He laughed even more heartily this time, breaking out of it only when a cough born of many bourbon-dipped Backwoods cigars took over and sent him into a choking fit. Once recovered, he produced a hanky from the breast pocket of his uniform and spit a wad a phlegm into it. Wiping his lips, he put the hanky back and continued. "You say you're bonded and licensed, Jake, did I hear that right?"
"Yep!" he replied confidently. "You got it!"
"Well, tell me, Jake," he said condescendingly, "when you're travelin' around, peepin' on cheatin' husbands and watchin' people fake a limp as they walk into the chiropractor's office, what state are you generally in? Geographically, that is, in what state, exactly, are you licensed, bonded and, presumably, insured?"
Jake didn't reply, he knew what Boudreaux was getting at... knew that he was right, and that there was no way around it.
"Is it Indiana, Jake, because I sure didn't see your name in the database when I checked it this morning!"
There came no reply -- there wouldn't be a reply. Jake knew there was no reciprocity between Indiana and his adopted state of Michigan, and he knew Boudreaux was well aware of that, too. Legally, his license wasn't anything more than a piece of paper here. It was useless, powerless, and to use it in practice in Burlwood would be completely illegal. He was a private citizen here, no more, no less.
"That's what I thought!" Boudreaux smiled. "And believe me when I tell you, son, if I hear anything about you digging any dirt in Burlwood -- God as my witness, Jake, I will have you arrested and charged with obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence! If you don't believe me, just try it... try it and see what happens!"
"So, what?" Jake asked accusingly. "Chucky doesn't get a chance to defend himself? Nobody can investigate his innocence, because you already decided he is guilty? Is that what you're trying to say, Ron?"
"Not at all!" The Sheriff disagreed gleefully. "That's not what I'm saying, Jake, not at all! If Chucky's counsel, whomever it may be once Donnell sees the light and runs off, if he decides that there's any shred of merit in examining the evidence we put forth, he's free to hire an independent investigator to check it all out... an investigator licensed to practice in this state, that is."
Jake stewed for a moment, calculated his response. "What is it this time, Ron?" he snapped. "What are you hiding now? What are you afraid I'm gonna dig up this time?"
At this, Boudreaux's eyes exploded wide open, his face was overcome with rage. His fingers stretched apart, widening as far as they possibly could, and dug into the stainless steel tabletop as though they were prospecting for gold that lay just below its surface. If it had been constructed of any other material, Jake believed his clawing hands would've broken the entire table to little bits and crumpled it as he clenched his teeth and glowed with anger.
"You listen to me, Jacob!" he barked through his tightly locked jaw. "You keep away from Burlwood, goddamnit, you keep FAR away! You've got no business there, you worthless fuck! No business there at all!"
"You're right," Jake chuckled, amused at his ire and the turning of the tables. "I have no business there." Now it was his turn to pause for dramatics. "I'm just going home to see a few old friends, that's all!"
He stood forcefully, his chair rocketing out from under him and slamming into the nearby wall as he did. Reaching out, he brought his hand down hard on Boudreaux's shoulder and squeezed it tight, as he would do to share his strength and show appreciation of a close and trusted friend.
"...and I think I'll start with Clyde Rambo!"
Boudreaux was fuming, his fingers still trying to mine their way into the table as hatred bubbled inside him and seemed to spew exhaust from every orafice of his body. Without another word, Jake turned and stormed out. Donnell followed quietly, taking his briefcase gingerly to avoid rousing the angered giant.
When they were gone, Boudreaux cursed in fury, sweat dripping down and stinging his widened eyes. Paying it no mind, he shouted with all his being to the hallway beyond the door.
"Louie! Gitch'yer narrow ass in here! Now!"
THIRTEEN