by R. K. Latch
After a moment, they both looked down at Vernon, writing upon the ground. Surprisingly, Wade was the first to speak. “I reckon we got a place in the shed for him, don’t we?”
Chapter 17
Luthor stepped out of his office a little after two in the afternoon. The day was a scorcher, and the high blue sky was the color of faded denim and scrubbed clean of any lingering clouds from Sunday’s storms. Outside, in the street, a sheen of dust coated everything.
While his parking spot was situated to the side of the building, there was only entrances in the front and the back of the building, so he was subjected to a short walk to his car. For most people this would be no issue, but for Luthor, especially when in a hurry, it was impossible without being stopped at least once by someone walking down the sidewalk. Most of the time they wanted a conversation about nothing of any kind of importance. Usually, he was not averse to these intrusions and were a basic element of his façade of kindly businessman in a small town. He didn’t like them, of course, as he hated boring people and their boring problems.
Jan Booker, Esquire, an attorney that easily eclipsed the number of legal briefs he filed annually by the gallons of bathtub gin he consumed monthly, was coming toward him, and looked like he was about to launch into a long, pointless rant about nothing. Luthor dropped his head and grasped his temples with the thumb and forefinger of one hand and used the other to wave off old Jan.
The old country lawyer spoke and inquired over his apparent headache, but Luthor only grunted gruffly and walked on.
Five minutes later, Luthor was pulling down his driveway, his make-believe headache and Jan Booker forgotten. As an afterthought, he chided himself for not stopping by Lulu’s for fresh flowers, something he considered an absolute waste of coin, but he knew Gabrielle liked. He didn’t mind wasting the money, but he wasn’t about to turn around and go back.
He parked the Studebaker near the house and walked toward the back.
He rounded the house, saw the laundry basket, half filled, the other half secured to the line, laying on the ground. Thinking she must’ve stepped inside for something really quick, he headed on inside.
“Gabby, honey, I missed you so terribly, I took the rest of the day off,” he announced proudly and grandly when he stepped into the kitchen.
The hushed silence of an empty house was his only response as the seconds ticked by. Not the greeting he’d expected, but then again, he wasn’t expected at this hour.
That didn’t explain where she was.
Then he knew and his ire threatened to rise but he pushed it down as well as he could. Which is to say, not completely.
Luthor turned on one heel and strode back out through the kitchen.
He was headed for the shed but only when he was halfway there, did he remember the laundry, half done, sitting on the ground. Had something happened? Had something gone wrong? He didn’t think so and even if it had, his wife was more than capable of handling almost any conceivable issue that arose.
It was that boy, again. Her affection for him would be her undoing, he was sad to admit.
The door was closed but not locked and he pushed through. There they were, the two of them, the boy out of his pen, standing near the rear of the building. Luthor went into an unexplainable rage that he could no more control than he could change the color of his hair.
He stepped closer and they both turned to him. He stopped short. Their expressions were not those of fear or even surprise that they had been caught in what his mind was collusion. No, they wore expressions of absolute delight. Specks of blood covered Gabby’s face and the boy held something in his hand. It was a chisel and now that he looked closer, Gabby held her mallet.
“What in the…”
Looking past them, he saw a man, his arms overhead, suspended by a length of rope thrown over rafter and secured to a peg that Luthor had long ago set into the concrete for just such a use. The man was Vernon Crockett. Even if Luthor didn’t recognize the man as the aid for the electrician he’d hired last week, it was easy to recognize the Crocket lineage. They were infamous in the county as lowlifes and hooligans, and most were recognizable by a heavy brow and thick, coarse eyebrows. He was stripped naked, gagged and his ankles secured with another length of rope. His face was moist as even now his wide, fearful eyes leaked tears.
Large angry scrapes trailed down his chest and flaps of skin hung loose. But that was nothing compared to the ruin between his legs. Luthor could not even think how a chisel and mallet would be used in such a way, yet it had and Luthor was very glad he was not in the man’s position.
Luthor looked back to his wife and saw that beneath the speckled crimson, her face did not look as it had this morning. His lips were puffy as stung by a legion of bees. Her left cheek just beneath her eye was swollen and turning a sick yellow.
Slowly, he began to understand why Vernon Crockett was here, in the shed and his blood started to boil. He looked down at the boy. Gone was the frightened and disgusted look he’d worn the last two nights. That awful, weak glint that had turned Luthor’s stomach was gone from his eyes.
Before he could ask a thing, Gabby came to him, circling an arm around him. She motioned for Wade, and he slowly strode their way, his eyes meeting Luthor’s. Luthor was surprised and impressed the boy’s stare did not waver. He took Gabby’s hand. “Lou, I’m sorry to start without you. But this pervert snuck up on me. He was having his way with me when Wade here, well, he stopped him.”
Luthor’s assumptions had been correct. He was not completely surprised. He knew the well the depths of depravity and what a man like this was capable of. But how had Wade, caged and locked away, gotten loose to intervene. He guessed it really didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had.
“And it was Wade’s idea to do this,” she said nodding her head in the pervert’s direction.
“Is that true?” Luthor asked sternly, looking down at the boy.
The boy met his eyes and nodded. “Yes, sir. I got loose of the cage and…well, I was running off, see. But then…I heard Mrs. Duncan…Gabby. She yelled something awful. I saw what that man was doing to her.” He shook his small head in revulsion. “I decided she needed a wolf, not a sheep.”
The kid probably, once loose, could have gotten away, but he had not, he had rendered aid to Luthor’s wife, his love. Pride in another was something foreign, alien to Luthor Duncan and when it crept in and then filled his heart as he looked down at the young boy, he didn’t understand at first. Then he did.
“Wade,” he said, his voice hoarse from emotion, a rarity for him. “I’m glad you were here. I should have been, but I wasn’t. Thank you.”
The boy only nodded.
Luthor looked up at Vernon and his face changed then and his eyes glazed over. He stepped away from Gabby and Wade, and threw off his suit coat. Standing a few feet from Vernon, he took his time and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. His eyes never left the pitiful piece of shit in front of him.
“So, you think you can hurt my family, do you?” Vernon shook his head vigorously and excited murmurs flooded out around the gag. “Well, let me show you how the Duncan’s treat any threat to us or ours.” He turned away from Vernon then and looked at his wife and Wade. “Any threat, to any of us. Isn’t that right, Wade?”
The boy looked at him and then up to Gabby. She looked down at him, like a doting mother. Then Wade looked back at him. “Oh, he ain’t seen nothing yet. But he will.”
As Gabby and Luthor watched, Wade, the newest member of the Duncan family proved true to his word.
Throughout the afternoon into the dying moments of the day, Vernon Crockett saw plenty more and felt it all.
When his heart finally beat its very last time, and the time came to dispose of the body, Vernon did not go alone. Wade rode with him, clean and clothed and happy to have found a family finally, that loved him. And that he loved back just as much.
From that day on Wade was a Duncan, through and through.
