Strawman's Hammock (24 page)

The mongrel whined once more and Jerry's foot lashed out as if on its own accord to kick the cage. A yelp. The stupid dog retreated to a corner and peed. Jerry smiled. He had intended to do this one as he had others in the past, with stills from his Mavica. But maybe tonight was his chance to move on to the next level. He could always rent a videocam.

Jerry scrolled to the freebie of the evening, clicking on the print icon for a still of the cat's agony. Jerry always saved his freebies on floppy; you could get twenty or thirty dollars for a disk, even with only a half-dozen scenarios.

Speaking of scenarios. The cat and kidnapped pup were forgotten as Jerry ran the mouse to his favorite link and jerked open the warped drawer of his desk. There were receipts inside, credit-card receipts. He selected a MasterCard. The idiots at his father's shop never bothered to think about how easy it was to lift their credit-card numbers from the manually pressed receipts his father produced on their antiquated equipment.

Jerry spread the wealth around. Most people wouldn't notice ten or fifteen dollars gone here or there. And what wife would believe the man who said, “Honey, I'd never spend money on
that
!” Jerry chuckled. Still, he had to be careful—there was so much to be had. For a while he was spending forty, fifty bucks at a pop. Sales at school would never keep up with that kind of passion.

This hard financial reality was what first prompted Jerry Slade to consider creating product for sale himself. Buying was not enough. He wanted to supply original material and make money from it.

Jerry knew he could do better, of course. His own site would one day blow away any of the stuff he was seeing here. They were always robbing his ideas—the teenager would occasionally find himself screaming at the computer's wavering screen.

Like this one! How could it be? Right here on his favorite site there was the tease: “Beauty & The Beast.”

The stolen receipt rustled in his hand. He was already over the month's limit. Still. This was choice. He reached for the mouse—

“Jerryyyy.”

The bawl floated in from the shed.

“What is it?”

“Goddamn time to feed my dog is what it is!” Rolly yelled to his son.

The newest rottweiler bayed on cue and the puppy cowered. Jerry gnawed the edge of his thumb. The big dog and the little dog? Some potential, for sure. Not bad for a premiere performance. Better than a burn.

He bet Harvey would go thirty bucks for this one.

Jerry saved the S&M teaser, added it to the same file holding the Raineses' puppy in digital limbo. Then he went back to get the burning cat on hard disk. Then he consolidated four stills from another file into ‘PUPPY-1.' He included Isabel in the stills, her face smudged, identity concealed.

Talk about a tease. It was the work of a master.

“Jerry!”

“I'm coming,”
Jerry yelled at the door.

“The hell are you doin', boy?”

“Homework.”

*   *   *

Barrett was sleeping like a log and Laura Anne counted it a blessing. No wearies in a week. She let Barrett sleep in, looking forward herself to a wonderful morning. The band was taking on
The Music Man
to support the senior play, and Laura Anne had been informed that she would conduct. She got to school early, ran through three periods and her planning period before skipping lunch to check in at the library. The computers there offered Net access; Laura Anne needed to acquire some sheet music for the coming production.

The sole computer available for faculty was in the librarian's office. From the office you could look over the periodicals and a reference desk to see the row of computers set for student use against the far wall. When Laura Anne entered the libray, she noticed Harvey Sullivan absorbed at the far end of that row. Harvey was not a student to miss lunch for academic pursuits. Games were not allowed on the students' computers. And only the librarian could get you on the Net. Laura Anne was about to go about her own work when she remembered the furtive exchanges in the hall—Jerry Slade to his circle of sycophants. Harvey was always there. She assumed that Jerry was showing off the photos he took in school. But Laura Anne also remembered that Jerry's camera could download pictures to floppy disks.

Was
that
what she had seen going from Jerry's knapsack to Harvey's hand?

Laura Anne paused at the library's interior door. Considered a moment. Then she made her decision. The rack of periodicals provided a blind for her approach. There was Harvey, completely absorbed before the glowing screen. Laura Anne stepped from the cover of the newest rack of
People
magazine and
Time
to see what had the teen's rapt attention.

A glance was enough.

“Harvey.”

He scrambled to kill the screen, to retrieve the disk.

“Take it easy, Harvey, I don't want to see you in trouble.”

She extended her hand.

“The disk.”

He hesitated a beat.

“The disk, or you can talk to Sheriff Sessions.”

“The sheriff?”

“I'm not going to fool with the principal, Harvey. It's a waste of time.”

“It's not my disk,” the freshman protested.

“Oh, really.”

“Watn't me stole your dog, either.”

“Pardon me?”

“The puppy. On the disk. Jerry said he was yours.”

*   *   *

Sheriff Sessions met Barrett Raines at Rolly Slade's shop. The rottweiler snarled at their approach.

“Whatchu want?” Jerry's father was sharpening a mulching blade for a five-horse Snapper.

Sessions displayed a warrant.

“It's a search, Rolly.”

“Search my ass!”

“Nope.” Sessions shook his head. “It's your boy.”

Barrett followed Sessions into the house, Rolly cursing in tow. The boy's bedroom wasn't hard to spot, its door littered with admonitions to
KEEP OUT
and that
TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.

Barrett saw his sons' puppy right away. It was unharmed but in obvious distress, whimpering in a pile of shit in a milk crate.

“The hell?” Rolly growled. “He tole me it was
his
dog.”

Barrett nodded to Lou.

“There's his camera. Floppy disks.”

Sessions frowned.

“We're gonna need to confiscate his computer, Rolly.”

“What?”

“Your boy's sellin' porno, Rolly.”

Barrett's concern turned immediately to the animal. He extricated the puppy gently, wrapped it in a T-shirt on the floor, and took it home, where he observed the animal closely.

The twins came home overjoyed.

Tyndall ran to his recovered puppy.
“Penelope!”

He reached down, hands extended to take the cowering puppy.

“Tyndall, careful—”

There was no warning.

The puppy leaped from the floor to bite Barrett's oldest and innocent son.

*   *   *

The rest of the day was miserable. Tyndall had to have a tetanus shot. There was some discussion as to whether the dog should be destroyed. Barrett was relieved when the vet offered an alternative.

“Let me keep her a while. See if I can turn her around.”

So Barrett and Laura Anne left the dog with the veterinarian. All the way home they debated how to bring the news to their children.

“We'll just have to tell them the truth,” Barrett said finally. “At least we didn't have to kill her.”

Laura Anne was in tears. “I hate what Jerry did to that puppy, Bear, I do, but a dog can be replaced. But
he stole our boys' innocence.
He needs to be put away.”

They weren't home an hour when Sheriff Sessions called.

“Bear, we been over that computer. Jerry Slade's?”

“Yes.”

“Something here you got to see.”

“First thing in the morning,” Bear offered.

“No.” The voice that came back was uncertain. Shaken. “I need you down here right now.”

*   *   *

There were hundreds of still images saved on the hard drive of Jerry Slade's computer and copied to the disks on his desk. Most were simple pornography. A fair number involved children.

“Two of these you need to see.” The Sheriff pulled up a chair for Barrett's benefit.

The first was of Isabel Hernandez. The girl was not hard to identify, even with her cyber-smudged face. The details of her dress and shoes, taken with details of the stall and Kohler commodes standard in the school, made identification easy.

“Plus the bows in her hair.” The Sheriff winced.

“We knew he had Isabel,” Barrett remarked. “That shouldn't be a surprise.”

“No. But this is.”

Sessions nodded to a deputy who clicked on another file. A thumbnail came up. Another double-click.

It seemed the same as the other bondage scenarios. A woman, face averted, was handcuffed in a stony dungeon to massive beams of wood. Gargoyles leered salaciously from perches on the wall as if entertained by the agony below.

“Wait a minute.” Barrett leaned forward.

The source of the woman's apparent terror was withheld in this frame, an indistinct smudge at the bottom of the screen. It could have been a man's head, or a woman's.

“It's a dog,” Barrett rasped, and then leaned in closer to inspect the grainy screen. “No. Maybe another woman. I can't tell. But I can see a crucifix. On her neck—you see, Sheriff?”

“I think so, yeah. Jesus, Lord.”

Barrett nodded. “Yeah. That's Juanita Quiroga.”

*   *   *

It was obvious to Barrett that Sheriff Sessions was dumbstruck with doubt. “I was sure we had the killer,” he said over and over. “But now look at this!” Sheriff Sessions was completely ignorant of the technology used to produce the images on Jerry's computer, but he knew enough to admit that the pixeled images in his possession could not have been created by an ignorant migrant worker. The computer-generated scenarios downloaded to Jerry Slade's computer were not the work of the Bull. But Sessions had no idea how to follow this cyberspace trail to its source.

“‘BruteMaster.'” He turned to Barrett. “What kind of goddamn name is that?”

“It's a place to start,” Barrett replied. “When you put something on the Web, you leave crumbs. Cookie crumbs, they're called. They have to lead somewhere. It may take some time, but we've got people who do this for a living. Let us help.”

Sessions's leather holster squeaked. “Take anything you want. Bring anything. But goddamn, bring it quick.”

Barrett pored over the scene generated by Jerry Slade's computer. It was impossible to say whether the images here were staged and consensual, or represented Juanita's actual torture. Similarly, it was impossible to say whether the original location had been a motel, a bedroom, or the scene of the girl's murder. What was obvious was that the original location was effectively camouflaged. The medieval wooden beams from which Jaunita hung on-screen, for instance, were obviously pasted in. The castle walls and stonework—all stock imagery.

The victim's body was not altered, so far as Barrett could discern; only the face was pixeled to obscurity, as if to say a whore was no person at all. And what was that unfocused image intruding from the bottom of the frame? Was it a dog? A shadow? The FDLE's cyber sleuths would have to crack that one.

But there was one remaining, ordinary detail that Barrett almost missed. It sat on the floor to one side of the frame, a vessel of some land. A pail, maybe? Bowl?

“See that?” Barrett pointed. “The hell would you put a bowl in a bondage scenario?”

“Water?” Sesssions offered.

Barrett leaned in close to the screen. There was something familiar to him about this bowl or pail or whatever it was. A substantial volume, flat, cylindrical sides. Composed of metal, certainly, not porcelain or clay.

“It's not for water.” He squinched. “It's a cooking pot, an old, cast-iron…”

And then Barrett felt his heart pounding in his ears.

“Sheriff.” He rebounded from the screen. “I need your help.”

“You
need?”

“I … interviewed a woman,” Barrett continued. “Didn't get much. I was going to drop it. But she lives in Strawman's Hammock, she knew both the victim and her uncle, and I'm not sure now that she told me everything she knows.”

“Hell.” Sessions reached for his hat. “It's better than nothing. And who is this mystery woman?”

“Some people call her a witch,” Barrett answered. “I've about decided they're right.”

Thirteen

Hezikiah Jackson turned a deerhide rocker to face the failing shade of her mimosa trees. Summers she loved to sit on the porch, admiring the evening fireflies that glowed beneath those twin parasols. But it was much too late in the year for those gentle creatures. The old woman pulled a shawl closer about her bony shoulders and reached to take the frosted glass of water pulled fresh from the pump in her sandy yard. Her potion pot sat handy, its blackened belly filled from the afternoon's labor with dog fennel and hemlock.

She was working on a potion now. A pod of pickled beets stained her lap like urine. A butcher knife was cradled in the thin fabric that sagged between the sticks of her legs.

Creak, creak. Creak, creak.

The rocker found its rhythm on the porch's widely spaced planks.
Creak, creak.
But then something artificial intruded on the evening breeze. An engine of some kind. Car. Truck. Hezikiah did not alter the cadence of her labor.

The porch steps squeaked with his weight.

“E'nin.”

She took hold of the knife.

“I figgered you might be back.”

*   *   *