Lake Charles (11 page)
His knees buckled as his grin fell flat. Blood dark as iodine stained the entry point of the arrow shaft. His fingers clawed in a feeble effort to grab and yank it from his flatlining heart. I heard the air shushing out of his lungs. He screwed down his eyes as if imploring me to do something. But I felt paralyzed. The last emotion stamped on his graying rictus was complete shock. Rage grabbed my emotions.
My hand was already jerking behind, my fingers digging. The steel lump scraped free from my waistband carry. Swiveling, I chopped up the .44. Only then did I see the killer archer, a tall man. Snapping his eyes down at his crossbow, he fussed with it to notch the next arrow—mine. The bastard cursed at me.
My reflexes were automatic. My arms jacked out, aiming the .44. Its barking muzzle jetted a spurt of flame. The Magnum slug chiseled off a bite of the tree bark. I’d missed the bastard, but I had a better feel for the .44.
His mouth lagging, the archer backpedaled, frantic to raise the crossbow and plant his next arrow in my heart. I didn’t give him the chance. He tripped, and I bulled ahead. Scrambling to his knees, he howled, his eyes stretched in terror. Desperate in his last stand, he hurled the crossbow at me, and agile as a matador I dodged it.
Again, I fired the .44. Its retort filled my ears. This Magnum slug drilled him in the sternum. I cheered at seeing my bullet hole. He froze stiff, his glassy eyes on me, and then crumbled into a heap. My two insurance slugs gouged two more holes in his chest. His blood frothed at all three holes. The gun smoke burned my eyes, and I coughed. Bitter tears flowing out scalded my cheeks. My nose was running. I spat the snot and tears from my mouth.
“First Edna and now this shit.”
My knees gave way as I knelt to the ground. No pulse throbbed in Cobb’s jugular. Using the bandana he’d given me, I dried my eyes. It was a shitty way to die. My boy didn’t go gentle into any good night. But then who ever does? I was able to wrench out the fatal arrow slick with his blood and wiped off my hands on the bandana.
Sheer willpower curbed the tremors of panic buzzing in me. Break it down, I thought. Use logic. Don’t freak as you did after waking in the motel bed next to the corpse Ashleigh. What do I know? I’m alive. That’s good. Three men—Mr. X, this archer, and Cobb—lay dead. What comes next? My bruised head was a painful reminder I’d had my fill of dirty sheriffs, so I nixed that idea.
I glanced at the archer. Cobb might’ve recognized him but I didn’t. The archer’s pockets yielded a Case knife, but like Mr. X, he carried no wallet or personal ID. The criminals at Lake Charles liked break the law and keep their anonymity. The Case knife sailed into the cedars.
When I flipped him over, I recoiled. Cobb’s .44 Magnum load had stamped a hole in the dead archer’s chest, tore through his lung, and exited, chewing the flesh into raw mincemeat. I retched before slamming the crossbow into a tree. My inclination was to ditch the dead archer in Lake Charles, but I’d no boat handy. Worse yet, I saw no leads pointing me to Edna. After all this grief, I still had nothing positive to show for it.
Crouched by the campfire, I set a stick’s glowing hot end to a Marlboro, inhaled, and did some thinking. My trial rolled up the Thursday after next. What a scream. I’d dropped enough corpses back there to film a Jonestown documentary. I took a final drag before the cigarette butt landed with a hiss in the pot of water. Then I upturned it to extinguish the hissing coals. I saw no gain to spark a fire in the dry woods. Next, I tugged out the bedrolls from the pup tent with mixed results.
The pungent body odor gagged me, but a sealed fifth of a mid-shelf whiskey rolled out. Cool. I fiddled with the knobs on the marine band radio but only raised static. I dropped the radio on a flat rock and disabled it. Inspecting the fishing outfits confused me. Two fishing rods meant two bubbas, and I’d killed the archer, so, that left me with Bubba Two.
My heart drummed as I trudged over to Cobb. The .44 lifted from his beltline was my backup weapon. His Buck knife might be useful, too. It was three o’clock, and I had to find Bubba Two and get to Edna. I used the Buck knife to hack off the sassafras branches and while layering them over both casualties, I sensed Bubba Two was deployed behind a blow-down tree some twenty paces away. Fair was fair. I’d arrange springing my own ambush. Acting casual, I scoped the campsite one last time. My eyes teared at seeing where Cobb lay. I pivoted and left, hustling into the firs.
How far did Bubba Two lag behind me? A hundred yards into the firs, I came to a fallen log. Hatching a plan on the fly, I plunked down on it as if to rest. Had I glimpsed a pants leg dodging behind the boulder a penny toss from me? I didn’t light a Marlboro. Nicotine left me too lazy. My hand was a visor at my eyes lifting to gauge how much daylight I had left. As if in a big rush, I bounded off only to fake my trip over a stone and wrenching my ankle. Grabbing it, I grimaced as if I was in crippling pain.
Dragging my bum ankle, I staggered back to the log and waited for Bubba Two. Would he take the bait and ambush a wounded man? I fisted both .44s and tensed to drop behind the log and rip out a heavy barrage of Magnum loads. My slow count hit twenty but nothing happened. A sheepish red then flushed into my face.
“Who’s out there?” I hollered.
Still nothing. I’d outfoxed myself because there was no Bubba Two. I returned to the shadows now engulfing the campsite. The two corpses in this heat smelled ripe. My more careful search pulled a green matchbook from the dead archer’s pocket. My eyebrows hiked as my thumb pad traced the gold bird embossed on the matchbook. I’d cadged a similar matchbook from the Bell canning jar in the Chewink Motel’s office. My curiosity in the dead archer bumped up a few notches.
I grabbed a shock of his greasy hair and wrested his zitty face to the direct sunlight. I still didn’t know him from Adam’s housecat. My eyes roved to the ganja curing bags lashed to the tree branches. It made sense this pot grower also smoked his product. So then where did he stash his boodle?
The pup tent drew me over. Its poles ripped out of the sand and, enduring the gamey body odor, I peeled away the ground cloth. The prone sleeper had left his foot, hip, and shoulder impressions in the sand. A wet patch of sand in the middle looked recently dug out.
“The fool buried his dope.”
I plunged in the Buck knife. Sure enough, its blade struck an object. My hands shoveled out the sand and unearthed a plastic baggie. I sniffed at its opening—oh yeah, badass reefer. I also scared up a packet of Zig-Zag papers, skinned me a fat joint, and struck a match to light it.
I stalled, mumbling. “Getting blitzed is a bad percentage play. I better not do it.”
Grinding out the match and joint, I rejected the devil’s weed. My kicking the fishing equipment was in frustration. The wicker creel basket rolled off, and the yellow parrot barrette thrown out gleamed in the sunlight. Joy swelled in me. It had to be Edna’s barrette. I held the proof in my palm she’d been here. Maybe she dropped the barrette on purpose. After taking the fifth of whiskey, I quit the campsite, moving out again under the firs.
After holding to a dogtrot for I don’t know how long, I hit a wall and flamed out. My eyelids grew leaden, and my knees wobbly. A chinaberry tree offered me some shade from the swelter. I flumped down on the soft moss and sobbed a tight gulp before a fitful nap overcame me. From the start, I sensed this dream favored the same motif.
Ashleigh Sizemore, a bundle of curves and sass in a tight lavender gown, was fussing in her matching clutch bag. She lit a rolled joint, puffed it, and offered it to me. “Brendan, let’s party.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need anymore grief.”
“J.D. told me in the van you’re a wimp.” She snapped shut her clutch bag. “Relax some, hey? I won’t devour you like Circe did Ulysses’ mariners after she cast them into a herd of swine.”
“I’ve never heard of her or them, but don’t you owe me a few explanations like on that train wreck you left me at the Chewink?”
“Honestly, this uptight and cranky, you’re a regular grinch. Okay, I’ll give you one revelation: you didn’t kill me.”
“I reached that conclusion on my own.”
“But you never heard me say it until now. You have a quest to go on.”
“What sort of a quest?”
“Simple. Find and catch my killer, and you can save us both.”
“Listen you, this is my life. Nothing makes sense in it since I partied with you. Fatal ambushes. Blood-chilling dreams. Pot gardens. Bum arrests. Sadistic sheriff’s deputies. I’ve just about had it with you.”
“Your nailing my killer is our way out of this.” She began fading to a temporary black.
“You don’t leave me much choice.”
Then a Eureka moment shook me awake. My heart banged high in my throat because I knew the right person to call and give me a hand. Matter of fact, he’d know how to get to the bottom of things, extra pronto, as he liked to say.
“Speak up
…
you say my boy is dead?”
The man’s growl erupted from deep in his chest. My palm capped the handset while my other hand swiped at the welling tears.
“Brendan? Are you there? Okay, that’s good. I thought you guys went fishing at Lake Charles.”
“We did but then we ran into some flak.”
“Where are you, son?”
“I’m still at Lake Charles,” I said, staring at the clapboard siding to the cash-and-carry store we’d driven by on Friday.
I heard Mr. Kuzawa snatch an audible breath. “Who the fuck did this to my boy?”
“I better not give out the details over the line. Meet me instead.”
“No sweat. Where?”
“Near the spillway at the Lake Charles dam there’s an old parking area the hunters and fishermen like to use.”
“I know it. When?”
“It’s got to be tonight, sir.”
“These same shitbirds also shanghaied Edna?”
“It looks that way to me.”
“I’ll see you there extra pronto.”
“You might want to come armed for trouble.”
“Ain’t no might about it. We’ve gone to war. This is a dogfight to the finish. Some motherfucker will pay. Big time. Over and out.”
I racked the handset and hauled up the phone directory on its chain. My shaky fingers struck another match, riffled through the sticky pages, and tore out the page listing the Tennessee State Police. Cobb had told me the state boys were pros, and I might need the pros on my side since the Yellow Snake law reeked of corruption. My knee nudged the telephone booth door to collapse outward.
As I stepped back into the muggy night, for some odd reason I visualized Angus placing phone calls and mailing me postcards at such a rural store in Valdez. I was at a loss to say why Valdez exerted its psychic tug on me, but it did, and it grew fiercer everyday. Could I drive there in three or four days? I could use a boost from him right now, but as always, he wasn’t there for either of us.
Alarm jolted me back to the present. Mr. Kuzawa and I were off to do whatever. ‘Gone to war,’ he’d said over the phone. ‘A dogfight to the finish.’ He growled like a junkyard dog, but wasn’t he venting? Just then, I heard a car engine drone out on the state road. A pair of headlamps stabbing the dark sent me scurrying around the store’s rear corner. I spilled to the dirt before peering out, glad to watch the threatening car chuff by the store, and me.
Simon the bait shop owner had told us their new packing factory ran a graveyard shift, so maybe a local was off to pluck chicken feathers for a paycheck. The car’s red taillights dissolved in the dark as I breathed again. I decided to break into the store, get my supplies, and pay for the damages. There was no rear door. So I used Cobb’s Buck knife to jimmy a window, crawled feet-first through the portal, and landed on my rump. I shut my eyes and reopened them, adjusting to the interior’s womblike darkness. The burlap I rose up from smelled fusty.
My lit match produced a candle stub’s glow as I did a 360. The nearest shelves displayed rusty plow points, horseshoes, and hand saws—our region’s antiques out for sale. Collectors flocked to the lowland emporiums for the sexy swag like family heirloom furniture. Our ancestors couldn’t afford to buy furniture, only plow points to till the rocky soil and raise beans—you know, to eat.
Two-cell flashlights were also out for sale. I used care not to play one’s beam over any window and tip off a passerby. A calico resting curled up on the countertop didn’t flick a whisker. I thought it stuffed by a taxidermist until I stroked the silky, purring fur. I missed Mrs. Wang’s Oscar, but this was a bad time to get sentimental over cats.
“We’ll need rations.”
I snapped out a brown paper sack from under the checkout counter and smelled the fruity whiff of pot smoke. The damn cannabis was everywhere. I bagged a few canned delicacies like sardines packed in mustard and the less appealing Spam. I stuffed in a fistful of beef jerky, but I skipped the granola bars sold to the leaf peeper tourists. The calico’s amber eyes gleamed at me. It did a subpar job as a burglar alarm, a point in my favor.
After I scribbled down my purchases with their estimated prices on a scrap of butcher paper, I computed the sum. I started rechecking my figures but figured nuts on it. An Andy Jackson, our state’s most lauded hero, went under the calico’s paw. The sleepy storeowner might grouch in the morning, but he earned a tidy profit without having to lift a finger. As an afterthought, I fattened the tip with a fiver, peeled open a sardine tin, and gave the purring calico another affectionate pat.
I polished off the sardines and pitched aside the tin. The same portal was my exit, and I left the store. Carrying both .44s in my pockets, I banged my shins on a rail fence while I moved toward the state road. My footfall slapped in a dogtrot over the asphalt while the dark hush grew deafening. The brutal image of a hostile arrow or bullet piercing my chest hectored me.
