CHAPTER SEVEN

Sandra called while Charon was having her lunch. “Hey Charon. How’s the good little witch girl?”

“Witchy as ever. How are things at school?”

“We’ve only been back for two weeks and I’m already dreaming of next summer vacation.”

“That good, eh?”

Sandra laughed. “It’s not really that bad. Always hard to get a new year started. Anyway, what were you calling about? I thought it might be important since you called during school hours.”

“It could be, Sandra,” Charon said. “Do you remember a while back when we were talking about Goth kids?”

“Oh yeah. We were discussing those two you saw in your store several times.”

“Right, and you said you knew who they were. One was Lynn Traylor, right?”

“That’s right. Is she in some sort of trouble? She didn’t shoplift something?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” Charon thought it best not to say that the girl was missing. “I was actually interested in the other girl. I think her name was Irene?”

“Irene Chandler. Sad case there.”

“Sad? How do you mean?”

“Classic case of low self-esteem. Never seemed to fit in anywhere. I think she only became a Goth because the requirements were so low.”

“Hey now.”

“Sorry. I keep forgetting you were a little Goth girl once.”

“I still am in some ways. Nothing wrong with my self-esteem though.”

“True, you’ve got Moxie to spare. What did you want to know about Irene?”

“You remember my boyfriend, Wade Griffin?”

“Mmm, do I.”

“Down girl. Griffin thinks Irene might be able to help him with a case he’s working on. He was trying to get in touch with her.”

“Oh, that’s bad.”

“How so?”

“Well Irene didn’t return to school this year. No one seems to know why.”

Charon felt a chill. There were any number of reasons Irene might not have come back for the new school year. She could have transferred to another school or she and her family might have moved. Charon said, “Listen, Sandra. Could you get me Irene’s home address?”

“I don’t know, Charon. That’s against school policy and all.”

“It could be really important. I can’t tell you more without talking to Griffin, but he really needs to talk to her.”

Sandra let out a long breath. “I’ll see what I can do. But you can’t ever tell anyone where you got the information or it could mean my job.”

“I understand. I really appreciate the help.”

“You’d better. Talk to you soon.”

* * *

Fry tapped his palms on the top of the steering wheel as Jimmy Reed sang Big Boss Man. Fry never got tired of that one. It had a raw, old-school blues sound to it that he liked. Not quite as unrefined as Robert Johnson, but still bone-deep blues. Fry had the windows up and the AC blowing as he rolled along the nameless back road. Or maybe it had a name, but Fry hadn’t seen any signs in all the time he’d been driving it and that had been a while. He liked to cruise out here. Helped him think.

Nothing but tall grass and pine trees on either side of the road. The area was still too rocky for much in the way of building, Fry guessed. The midday heat shimmered on the high brown grass and danced on the asphalt, making mirage pools on the black surface.

Fry slowed as he reached the crossroad. No road-name signs there either. There was a stop sign though, and Fry always obeyed stop signs. Best not to give old John Law a reason to pull you over. He rolled to a halt and turned the music up a notch as he began to dig through his stack of CDs. Thinking of Robert Johnson, it occurred to him that he ought to have a copy of Crossroad Blues somewhere in the car. Not the Clapton version but the old, old twangy Robert Johnson original. That was some serious shit.

The sound of a horn blowing brought Fry out of his blues induced reverie. What the hell? He was out in the middle of nowhere and this was his road. Who the hell was blowing a horn at him?

Fry glanced in his rear view mirror. Was that a fucking BMW? Damned if it wasn’t. Fry shook his head. Yuppies everywhere. Couldn’t get away from them. He reached up and put his car in park. Then he turned off the ignition, opened the door, and stepped out into the moist, hot air. Jesus, but it was hot. Whole damn summer had been a scorcher.

He put on his best ‘just folks’ grin and walked toward the BMW nice and slow. The driver was rolling down the window as Fry came. Perfect. Fry ran a hand through his hair in a practiced way. Just a good old country boy. Salt of the earth. No threat to anybody.

“What are you doing?” the driver said through the open window. “You’re blocking the damn road.”

Was that a northern accent? Yes it was, thank you Jesus. Fry could see some real estate signs in the passenger seat. Guy must be lost. Nobody had any land for sale anywhere near here.

“Hey, how you doing?” Fry said.

“I’d be doing a lot better if you’d move your mother fucking car,” the man said. Fry could see him clearly now. Not a yuppie. Too old. Early forties. A tad overweight. Nice, gray summer-weight suit. The jacket was in the back seat. Yeah, he was lost. Nobody to impress out here.

“Sure is a nice car you got there,” said Fry, all Gomer Pyle. Just let me get a little closer. Don’t think about being out in the middle of nowhere all by your lonesome.

“Thanks. Listen, guy. Sorry I spouted off. You don’t know where the Wickham place is do you? I think I might have made a wrong turn somewhere.”

He did not just call me ‘guy’, did he? As for the Wickham place, Fry had no idea. This fellow had definitely made a wrong turn. Fry smiled and leaned down, putting one forearm on the window. He said, “Wickham? Let me think.”

The driver leaned forward and Fry snapped his other elbow into the man’s nose. Blood sprayed as Fry grabbed the handle and yanked open the BMW’s door. He caught a handful of shirt and jerked the man forward to topple onto the asphalt surface. Fry kicked him in the side with the point of his steel-toed cowboy boot.

The man let out a wet gurgle and tried to scramble to his feet. Fry let him get up. Plenty of time to kick his ribs in later.

The man glared at Fry with wide eyes. Blood ran freely from his ruined nose. “What the fuck? Are you crazy?”

Fry kicked him in the balls. When the man bent double, Fry brought his knee up into the man’s face, causing him to stumble back against the car. Fry hit him with two quick shots to the gut. The guy started retching and Fry stepped nimbly back to let him vomit.

“What’s that, guy?” Fry said. “Crazy did you say? Crazy for being so lonely? Crazy for being so blue? That’s Patsy Cline you know. That woman could sing.”

The man held up his hand, palm out, imploring Fry to stop. Fry grabbed the fingers and bent them backwards until they broke. The man screamed and got another kick to the balls. Never got tired of that one. No sir. The man obligingly fell to all fours and Fry went back to work on the rib cage with his boots.

The man grunted and screamed and finally started coughing up blood. Fry just kept kicking until the man was sprawled on his belly on the hot asphalt. Fry smiled and began humming Big Boss Man under his breath. Just the right rhythm to stomp someone to death. Yes sir. Gotta love those blues.

* * *

Just after three and the day was getting hotter and hotter. The thermometer said the temperature was a mere ninety-three degrees, but Carl knew better. There was the humidity to consider and that brought the heat index up to a little over one hundred. “Just south of Hell,” he mused. That was what his father used to say when the worst part of the summer came around.

He was driving again. Always driving these days it seemed. That was what happened when you were the sheriff. You drove. In this case he was heading into Wayfield, Georgia, which was barely even a speck on the map. If it hadn’t been a part of his county he might not have even known it existed.

Normally he didn’t have to get out this way too often, but in this case they had something he wanted. They had the truck that belonged to Corey Phillips. The thieves had decided to leave the vehicle intact and while Carl wasn’t exactly the sort that didn’t trust his people to handle something like fingerprinting the interior of a stolen vehicle, this was a special case. He needed to see the truck to decide for himself if it was the one he’d seen the night before.

It was. He could tell in a matter of seconds by the wide fingered handprint in the rear passenger’s side window. Was there a rational reason to know so completely that this was the truck? No. But he felt it.

That said, he still took the time to very carefully dust the interior and lift the prints, sweating like a stuck pig the entire time. Deke Howard was chewing on a wad of tobacco as Carl worked. Deke was a short man who was leaning hard toward flab. His pants were the same size as Carl’s, but he wore them much lower and the belly he had trembled with each breath he took in the humid air. “Dunlap’s Disease,” that was another one of his dad’s favorite old sayings, as in ‘his belly done lapped over his belt’. Deke looked to be in the final stages of that particular disorder.

Deke wiped a handkerchief across the back of his neck, examined the sweat stains as if they might tell him the secrets of the universe, and then tucked it again into his back pocket. “Found this one just parked on the side of the road, right where we are now.”

“Been getting a lot of abandoned cars around here lately, Deke?”

“Goodly number.” Deke squinted at the sky and then spit a wad of black tobacco.

Carl closed his eyes, reminded himself to be nice and made a mental note to get on his deputies about personal hygiene, following the county regulations regarding weight limitations, and to reemphasize that tobacco use was to be limited to break times only. He’d let it go for now, but only because it was too damned hot to start an argument with Deke and the man loved nothing more than to argue over anything and everything under the sun.

“Yeah? Do me a favor and give me a list. Send it to my email, will ya?”

“’Course. You figure something’s going down?”

He resisted the desire to throw a snotty comment or two at the man. Deke was just bored and hoping for something exciting. Nothing much ever happened in Wayfield. That was one of the reasons he left the area for Deke. The man was harmless, and he certainly could handle the paperwork, but he wasn’t exactly super-cop.

“Might be. This truck was driven from Wellman. That’s a good-sized drive. I want to see where the other ones are coming from.”

Carl slid from the truck, satisfied that he’d gotten all of the prints that might be found. They’d get into AFIS – Automated Fingerprint Identification System – as soon as he got back to the office. Then he’d have to keep his fingers crossed.

“You get fingerprints from any of the other vehicles, Deke?”

Deke got a slightly startled and just-a-touch-guilty expression on his face. “I-uh, I think so. But if you want me to, I can double check on that and send the information to your office.” Yeah. Deke was going to be moving on soon. Maybe he’d be staying in town, but he probably wouldn’t be in charge of much beyond cleaning out the cells in the Wayfield Detention Center.

“Do that for me, okay?”

Ten minutes later, Carl was on the way back to the office. The air conditioning in the truck was straining to keep up, but that was all right. He’d stop somewhere along the way and get something cold to drink.

There was a lot to take care of. He had feelers out regarding the Phillips family. There was something that just plain wrong going on with them and he wanted to know what it was.

He stifled a yawn. Too many hours of working and not nearly enough sleep.

Too many bad things on his mind. A vacation was looking better and better of late. He was contemplating someplace where the temperatures never rose above seventy or so degrees when he reached the interstate and headed back for Wellman.

On the side of the road there were two cars pulled over. One of them had the driver’s side door open. The other had three younger men around the hood, and on the hood was the man they were currently beating the shit out of.

Carl felt his lips pull up in a smile for just a second and forced back the thought that now and then God answers prayers.

He pulled to the side of the road and started his flashers. What he should have done was called for backup, but now and then he just felt a need to handle things by himself.

If he had to guess, the boys were high school age. He climbed from the truck, moving at a brisk pace. Two of them were holding the man down, one on each arm, while the third looked like he was revving up to play the bongos all over the poor bastard they were pinning.

“Hey! What the hell is this?”

One of the kids holding the man in place looked his way and sneered. “Go back to your car, dickless.”

Seriously?

“Seriously? How about you knock that shit off.” It wasn’t a question. Two steps closer. The sun was too bright for them to notice the flashers, maybe, or they were just that stupid. Carl hated wearing his uniform and to that end he was wearing a blue shirt that said Sheriff ’s Department. He could almost forgive the idiot not noticing that.

The one that was speaking actually let go of the man he was holding so he could turn and face Carl. He had a look on his face that made clear he intended to cause trouble. The look faded fast as soon as he read the logo on Carl’s shirt. His eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open. Amazing, like he’d never in his life expected to run across a cop.

“I said knock it off!” This time Carl bellowed and the other two looked away from their good-time beating to notice him.

The first boy started to rabbit. His knees bent and he looked left and right in an effort to find the best way out of his situation. Carl jabbed a finger at him. “Move and I will drop your ass.”

Yeah. That worked as well as he’d expected. The skinnypup went left.

Carl grabbed his arm and wrenched it behind him. The kid screamed like he was being burned alive and Carl rammed him against the side of the car. Practice, practice, practice. Carl had the cuffs on the kid before he could so much as utter another profanity.

The second kid, the other one who was busily holding down their victim, tried a different tactic. He charged right at Carl, screaming out an incoherent battle cry.

Carl was willing to play it by ear. The first one tried to run, so he just subdued him. The second one actually attacked, and that meant Carl had to defend himself. Because his attacker was a kid, Carl just spanked him. He popped the kid in the solar plexus to slow his forward motion, and then, while the kid was gasping, he hit him a second time in the same spot. While he was folding over and trying to decide if he needed to vomit all over himself – he did – Carl swept his feet and dropped him to the ground.

Damned if number three didn’t want to up the ante. He pulled a hunting knife with an eight-inch blade off his belt. The blade was patently illegal unless the kid had a concealed weapons license and Carl would bet money he didn’t.

Carl stepped back and gestured the boy toward him. Better that the dumb ass come at him with the knife than at the man he’d been beating senseless. The kid took Carl’s backing up as a sign of cowardice and grinned as he came forward, swinging the knife in half arcs as if to ward off any attacks.

“Son, you can put that down or I can shoot you. Do the math.” Carl patted the weapon on his hip. He could almost see the kid’s neurons firing up in an effort to decide if Carl could draw before he could reach him. Most of the time kids who were suddenly that brave were on something. He didn’t doubt for a second that all three were indulging in something, and judging by the pinpoint pupils on the kid, it probably wasn’t a couple of beers that were making the kid courageous.

Worst case scenario, he could take the kid and disarm him with minimal damage. He just didn’t want to. Knives were unpredictable and the kid being on something only made the situation more volatile.

He waited for the kid to decide.

Dumbass charged.

The kid swung in a wild arc, and Carl stepped in closer, blocked with his left hand, caught the kid’s arm at the shoulder and then brought his right elbow into his attacker’s face. The first two he dealt with went down with minimal damage. This one got a shattered jaw for his troubles. That took most of the wind from his sails. After that it was just a matter of bagging the two. He called for backup, called for an ambulance, and then checked on the man they’d been beating.

The man was unconscious and his breathing was labored, but his pulse was steady. They’d pulped his face properly and he was having trouble breathing through his nose was all.

Carl resisted the urge to work all three of them over a second time, but it took an effort.

Now and then he envied the hell out of Wade. Wade took a few assholes down and he had a few minor issues – okay, sometimes because Carl helped – but Carl? Now on top of everything else, Carl had more paperwork.

He hated paperwork.