by Chris Bauer
“On your way to hell,” I told him. “Shut the fuck up and lie still.” Andy scolded my unladylike language with a sarcastic shake of his head.
“Sorry, but you guys should have gone heavier on the meds,” I told him. “We don’t need this chatter.”
The bloody meat-bag containing his severed specimen flapped against the crate’s steel bars with each bump and curve in the road, just above Randall Burton’s head. It gave new meaning to the phrase “in your face.”
When I asked Andy why he brought his junk with us: “No reason to clog the kitchen disposal. Hospital waste. To dispose of when nobody’s looking.”
Tess rested in the leg space in front of me, dozing at my feet. Randall Burton’s moaning broke an otherwise quiet ride. I didn’t feel like talking, and Andy wasn’t pressing me.
He’d called ahead to the hospital, explained what was coming in. I had no idea how the town intended to avoid questions. Or how they intended to explain the surgery. Or how they intended to address their victim’s personal account once he was able to verbalize the horror they’d perpetrated on him.
Or how much they would tell Trevor, Helen’s son, about his father.
So I asked Andy about it.
“Some playful seniors and a four-hour erection,” he said. “The way I see it, he was lucky my surgeon mother was there, waiting for me. But alas, her emergency surgical shunt went wrong. After that they did the best they could to save his life. The word of four senior women against a homicidal maniac. We’ll make it work.
“But the Trevor thing.” Andy looked in the rearview, to check on our cargo, him dozing again. “The damage that would do if Trevor ever knew… Promise me, Counsel, please, that you’ll never let that out…”
“I’m good with it, Andy. All of it. You have my word.”
On the record, from me, there could be no better punishment for this dehumanizing scumbag. If the authorities decided to examine Charlie, they’d rule her mentally incompetent. At times, nuttier than squirrel shit. Plus she was eighty-one years old. An elderly avenging angel. Nurses, retired law enforcement, and an entire town squaring off against a child-molesting, rapist serial killer. Risky on their part. But after decades of risky, who was I to second-guess their chances?
And for me, here was a chance I might not get again, sitting in the van right next to me.
I went for it. “Anything else of yours baggage-wise you think will shock me? As in a bad credit rating, or maybe you’re a vampire?”
“No to vampirism. The B&B is paid off, and I don’t owe any money to the mob. Otherwise,” he said, “one man’s shock may be another man’s redemption. There is something else.”
“And that would be…?”
“The Scranton restaurant executions.” He dished: “Me. With Dody and Penny.”
“Huh.” My response wasn’t an I’m-shocked huh or an I’m-impressed huh. It was a cumbersome, self-conscious, circle-of-life kind of huh. Not like I hadn’t heard this kind of confession before. My husband, a deceased cop, had also killed people.
“You deserved to know,” Andy said. “Now you need to forget I told you.”
“Fine. Never heard of that Scranton restaurant. Just don’t ask me to forget you. Because I won’t.”
“Maybe,” he reached across, gently squeezed my shoulder, “just maybe we can work it out, Counsel. After we know it’s not the meds talking, we’ll schedule some time. Let’s stay with a maybe for now, okay?”
At last call-in, Andy learned FBI Agent Van Impe was conscious. He and his other fed pals were eager to accept our present. We were eager to deliver him.
The van eased around another curve. The tools of my trade, snapped in place on clips around the cargo area in here with us, all jostled. Waist chains, cuffs, leg irons. Leashes, leather, Kevlar. They rattled against themselves, the metal walls, the roof. White noise to me when I was driving, me noticing it now because I wasn’t behind the wheel. The equipment resettled to a gentle sway when the curve straightened.
“… kill… me…”
I glanced over my shoulder to check him out. His eyes fluttered. Spit seeped through his drooling lips, mixing with incoherent dream-speak. I wanted this monster out of here.
“Five minutes,” Andy said, counting down. We leaned into another curve, this one up an incline.
“… go out… on my terms, you old cunts,” he managed, slobbering. “Kill me, damn it.”
He was aware, was remembering, was again grasping his desperate situation. The tires squealed a little. I watched the curve in the road, a little sharper than it looked.
“On my, mmm, fucking, mmm, terms,” he said, garbled. Something had gotten into his mouth. “… mmm mmm mmm…”
I shifted in my seat, faced him in the rear of the van. I wanted to shut him up. “Listen, you motherless fucker you, you need to be quiet—”
Christ, his lips, they were dripping with blood. His teeth, they were clenching the plastic bag with his genitals in it—
He’d chewed the bag above his head open, chewed a hole large enough for its raw contents to slip out, onto his face, into his mouth. He spit. His butchered penis landed on his stomach, so surreal, near his cuffed hands that were—shit, he’d worked them free of the bandages—
One of his hands opened, gripped the droopy meat. He waved it, taunted, “Come ’n’ get it, doggie… good poochie…”
Fungo left his open crate, was no longer growling, I could see this developing, couldn’t stop it. “Fungo, no…”
Fungo snatched the meat, was chomping it into pieces. He slinked off with the rest of the contents of the bag, but Fungo’s leash… it was unhooked, was now in Burton’s hand.
I tightened my hold on the pistol grip of the shotgun, needed to raise it now, bad leverage, only one good hand—
Burton two-fisted the leather leash up, arced it over the driver’s seat, over Andy’s head, the leash catching under Andy’s chin, lassoing his neck, the bounty jerking it into a death grip. Andy took a hand off the steering wheel, pulled at the choking leash, his neck pinned against the back of his seat. His body lifted and he arched his back, both hands on his neck now, desperate, gagging, the van nearing the crest of the hill, veering off the blacktop, leaning—
I one-handed the shotgun up. Tess jumped onto my lap, was ready to spring.
“… onnn myyy terms…”
Andy’s face turned colors. Tess sprang, sank her teeth into Burton’s scalp, but the leather around Andy’s neck stayed tight. Tires squealed, we careened off-road and onto the cindery shoulder, sideswiped trees, still moving too fast, high elevation… the mountain skyline dropped from view—
I leaned between the seat, dragged the gun with me, lifted it, pointed it, steadied it, my broken arm, owww, my broken fingers, needed to will them closed around the gunstock, agghhh—
Tess was attached to Burton’s head. “Tess! Move!”
No headshot there. I slapped the underside of the barrel against his chest, slid it down, jabbed it into his middle, gripped the stock tighter, pump action, shell racked, more pain, jammed it, held it there, my good hand glued to the pistol grip. A banshee yell, my fingers coiled the trigger—
The shotgun jumped. The blast shredded cloth and bandages on its way to blowing a hole through the sidewall of the van, but not the bounty. Andy was fading—fuck—shotgun empty, no weapon, I needed a fucking weapon—
I reached behind Andy’s arched back, him still fighting, still strangled, still dying, into his concealed holster, his handgun there. I unholstered it, shoved the barrel into Burton’s midsection—
I emptied the clip into him. Chunks of fleshy thigh and midsection and bone splinters ricocheted off the van walls, splashed up, stung my face while spattering Fungo and the floor and the roof in crimson. The van slid, left the shoulder, slammed sideways into rock, a wall, something. It teetered onto two wheels then dropped back down onto four. The engine stalled, the van coasted to a stop on a green lawn. I reached up front for Andy, pulled
the loosened leash away from his neck, let it drop.
“Andy. Andy—”
I shook his shoulder. He slumped forward.
His phone, in here somewhere, where the fuck was his phone—
I needed to get out, needed to get Andy out. I reached for the sliding door, one-handed the handle but it didn’t budge. I pulled harder, it gave a few inches, increased to a foot, enough to see outside. Through the crack I saw what stopped the van. A low, black granite wall. The coal miners’ memorial. We were at the town bank. The first silver-embossed name I saw: Maurice Prudhomme. I reread the etched message: The dust, the dark, the deep, and the damned. We stand tall against it all.
A burst of sun peeked above a mountaintop, distant, across the valley separating this peak from one other. If it weren’t for the granite, this memorial, this block of carved black rock no longer than a car length, in forty feet we’d have vaulted a parking lot guardrail. Another forty feet we would have been airborne, heading down the mountainside.
“—fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“—fuck you, fuck you, fuck you—”
Tess lifted my hand with her nose, licked it, licked my face, and calmed me into silence, refocusing my urgency. I climbed out through the back door and puked. I stumbled my way to the driver side door and grimaced in pain as I dragged Andy out of the van onto the grass where I delivered one-handed CPR compressions that seemed useless, worthless, hopeless… please, please, please—
He gasped, color returning to his face. I looped him into a one-armed hug. His arms lifted, and I got a weak, two-armed hug in return.
“You need a mint, Counsel,” he said, coughing.
The van started, me driving this time, with no argument from Andy. At six a.m. the bank was closed, the town we left behind still sleeping. I shushed my dogs. Except for my pain, lessened now that I was likely in shock, we were in less of a hurry.
Andy found his phone. He reported into the hospital, got on with an ER doctor, then the FBI. “We’re a few minutes out… No, Burton’s dead.”
One image lingered: the fucker had smiled. He mouthed a silent message then grinned, right through Tess’s savage shredding of his face and head and me blowing those holes through his groin and the floor of the van, some of his ass escaping onto the blacktop underneath. I read his lips before the smile. His message was a statement. “On my terms, fuckers.”
The next few hundred times that I would kill him in my nightmares, I hoped I would get the headshot that wouldn’t leave him with the last word.
We pulled into the hospital’s emergency entrance. Andy wanted me admitted. I pointed at the marks on his neck and said, “You, then me.” He scolded me, exited, and strode to the van’s rear doors. There he was greeted by nurses, doctors and a J. Edgar federal agent.
Fungo was back in his crate. Tess whimpered, wanted out of the van. Fungo did a nervous butt-wiggle thing, had to pee, probably more than pee considering what he just ate.
“Not now,” I told my little carnivores. Tess sat on her haunches in the passenger seat, attentive, loving. I planned to keep us all out of the way while the hospital folks and the FBI did their job. The van’s back door opened. In the rear view mirror I watched at least one nurse gasp, heard another say “slaughterhouse.”
Yes. Good luck with the autopsy. One satisfactory outcome of the carnage: dead men didn’t complain about unauthorized reassignment surgery.
I texted Vonetta on Andy’s phone.
Netta you there? This is counsel
You bet counsel. sup?
Bounty is delivered. DOA. It was him or us
OMG. You ok?
Arm’s fucked again. Heading into ER with Andy. He’s banged up
Sorry counsel. Bad?
Could have been worse. Almost lost him
Sounds like a special person. Don’t screw this one up counsel honey
I watched Andy in the side view mirror, talking to the nurses and an FBI agent. He leaned inside the rear of the van to supervise the exchange. Nearby, a car door slammed. Another agent approached, this one female, early thirties my guess, her badge clipped to the waist of her dark skirt. I exited the front seat of the van, favoring my left arm and shoulder. The agent and I arrived at the van’s sliding side door together. She gave the cargo area of the van a glance, did the same with me.
“Special Agent in Charge Escobar, FBI. You’re a mess, Miss—?”
“Fungo. Counsel Fungo. Pennsylvania state trooper, retired. Fugitive recovery agent. Just delivered my bounty to your men. Randall Burton, Stephen Linkletter, aka a host of other aliases. We also think he’s a missing person, part of an unsolved in Philly. A sixteen-year-old cold case.” The agent poked her head a little farther inside the van. I kept talking, to net it out for her. “Mr. Burton didn’t make it.”
“Yeah, I pretty much got that.” She leaned back out. “You need medical assistance, Miss Fungo. We can take it from here.”
And you can fucking have it. Excruciating pain hit my rebroken forearm like a lightning bolt. I weaved my way to the rear of the van, Andy there with Fungo, releashing him, him inside his open crate. I leaned against the rear door, needing its support or I was going down. Andy was quick to wheel around and grab me under my arm and shoulder. “Need a nurse and doctor here,” he called.
Special Agent Escobar grabbed me under my other shoulder. A sudden stark, cold awareness passed between the agent and Andy, both of them with pursed lips, with me in the middle; they knew each other. They finished sitting me on the bumper then straightened themselves up.
The resemblance… wow—
“Dad,” Agent Escobar said. “Your neck.”
“I’m fine, Teddy. Just… I’m fine.”
Principled, patriotic, protective. Damaged, dark, and beautiful. Andy was an enigma, with baggage that rivaled my own, maybe more of an enigma than I was.
“I’ll need to ask you some questions about this,” Agent Escobar said to him. “Now, preferably.”
“Can’t be now.” Andy resettled my arm in a splint that a nurse handed him. “And I’ve got a few questions for you too.”
A wheelchair arrived. The two of them worked together to ease me into it. Andy avoided looking at his daughter.
I remembered when I woke up in the ER before. My panic, Andy’s resolution of it by way of calming, responsive, therapeutic hands. Less calm on his face now, more discomfort. I saw the pain behind his eyes, him and his daughter not the best of friends. I moved his hand from my knee to the talisman on my belt loop, wrapped my mangled paw around his, had him squeeze the fuzzy keychain, for his sake. His daughter left us to check in with another agent and give us some room.
“You and your state trooper buddy Vonetta,” Andy said, his grip on the keychain gentle, like he understood it, like he needed it, “do you ever share your nightmares?”
My heart pounded for him. I wanted to sweep away whatever hurt was behind those eyes, and I wanted him to make room to let someone else in. I wanted that someone else to be me.
“She’s on speed dial,” I said. “We share all the time, day and night. It never fixes things, but having someone to tell it to, someone who’s been on the job, been through some of the death, the horror, someone who will listen and not pass judgment—trauma’s a little easier to handle when you have friends like that.”
His eyes softened. “If that’s all it takes…”
He retrieved his phone from me. After he keyed in a few numbers, he handed it back to show me what he did. My phone number was now number one, the pole position, numero uno on his speed dial. “Please pick up when I call,” he said.
I nodded. A few tears spilled onto my cheeks. “Just don’t forget to call.”
He leaned into my face, kissed me, let me kiss him back. “And I’d like my own fuzzy dog keychain,” he said.
“No problem. I’m on it.”
A nurse interceded, wheeled me up a ramp toward the ER entrance to the hospital. Andy shadowed us. I used his phone to key in another t
ext to Vonetta.
Andy wants a fuzzy keychain. Already I’m a bad influence
I admired the text, hit send.
You’re an idiot sarge. Happy for you. Be nice to him, my friend
I will
Love you counsel
Love you netta
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Find more suspense in Scars on the Face of God. Be sure to check out the following excerpt.
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SCARS ON THE FACE OF GOD
Prayers sometimes land on the Devil’s ears.
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“Scars on the Face of God is a brilliant novel. Congratulations on hitting one out of the park…” -Jonathan Maberry, NYT bestselling author and winner of multiple Bram Stoker Awards
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The year is 1964. A construction project in the town of Three Bridges, Pennsylvania unearths an ancient sewer. Inside is a mystery dating to the 19th century: the hidden skeletons of countless infants.
