by Ron Fisher
We still needed to take care of the dogs at the junkyard. The first thing I’d done that morning was to call Doctor Earnest Whitmore, a veterinarian I knew. Whitmore was an honest and ethical man, beyond reproach, but I was going to ask him to break the law for me.
I hoped once he heard about what happened to Kelly, and why I needed an animal tranquilizer to find her assailants, his sense of right and wrong would supersede the law.
I planned to spend a while longer sitting by Kelly and holding her hand, then pay Whitmore a visit. I wasn’t sure holding Kelly’s hand did her any good, it was mostly for me. The warmth of her hand reminded me that even in her condition, she was still with me.
#
An hour later, I pulled in by Dr. Whitmore’s office at the back of his home near a stable. A young man was walking a horse around a small circular track to one side. The horse wore a splint on a leg. They didn’t shoot all horses that broke their legs, I guessed. I went inside to find the distinguished figure of Dr. Whitmore sitting behind a small, cluttered desk. His full head of silver hair was even more silver, if that was possible.
He came around the desk to greet me.
“Mr. Bragg, it’s good to see you. I hope you’re here under less-unfortunate circumstances than those that brought you here a year ago. The horse community here still hasn’t gotten over those events.”
His gaze settled on my eyes as if he were trying to read the reason I’d come to visit him.
I said, “I’ve come to ask you a favor. I want you to give me something to tranquilize two dogs. Adult Dobermans.”
He frowned at my request and took his seat back behind his desk. I took the chair across from him.
“Why do you want to tranquilize them?”
“I need them to sleep for an hour or so,” I said.
“I thought you lived in Atlanta. Have you moved up here?”
“No, I’m staying over in Pickens County for a while.”
“I can give you the name of a good vet over there who can treat your pets, if you’d like. As you know, my specialty is horses.”
“These dogs don’t belong to me,” I said, and saw his frown deepen. “Do you have a few minutes to listen to a story?”
He said he did.
“You need to tell this to the police,” he said, when I’d finished. “Not to me.”
“I have. But they need probable cause to search the junkyard, and I think I can get it for them. And I need to get into their junkyard without being seen. Two Dobermans stand in my way.”
“It would be illegal to give you what you want,” he said.
“I know that, Doctor Whitmore. Believe me when I say I don’t want to hurt these dogs. I don’t want them hurting me either. I hope you trust me enough by now to know I’d never tell anyone where I got anything.”
“I would know,” he said.
“I could easily get something off the street, but I don’t want to do that. I wouldn’t know what I was getting, or how much to give the dogs. I don’t want to harm them, I just want them to go night-night for a while. I love animals, but I don’t want to get eaten by one. These are real junkyard dogs I’m talking about here. And it’s a good thing I’m trying to do, not a bad thing.”
Whitmore got up and went to a cabinet. He brought back a glassine envelope containing pills.
“Six tablets, three per dog,” he said. “Enough to put them out for an hour or so. Crush them up into something the dogs would eat and give it to them. They should go down in just a minute or two.”
“Thank you, Dr. Whitmore,” I said, shaking his hand, and left with the tranquilizers before he could change his mind.
#
Back at Still Hollow I spent some time checking out the repairs on the place. Eloise had really cracked the whip on her construction guys. I couldn’t tell that the place had looked like a block of swiss cheese just a few days ago with bullet holes everywhere you looked. I almost felt guilty that I hadn’t pitched in and helped. Almost. They had done a great job.
Alvin called. He’d gotten bored earlier and staked out Doughboy’s pad just to see how he spent his day.
“How’d you know where he lived?” I asked.
“I followed him home from the Tiger’s Tail the other night. He lives in an apartment on the outskirts of town. And guess who showed up at his door?”
He didn’t wait for me to guess.
“Sonny Dollar. Driving that muscled-up black Ford pickup from the junkyard. He came bearing a package. And left without it.”
“Pills,” I said.
“Well, it wasn’t Doughboy’s laundry. Right after Sonny left, Doughboy hit the road. I didn’t follow him. I’m sure he was making his rounds, doling out his drugs. So, we still going into the junkyard tonight?”
I told him about getting the tranquilizers.
“Ain’t gonna hurt them, is it?” Alvin asked.
“The doc' says they’ll just go to sleep like babies.”
“Good, don’t want to be hurting them. These dogs just doin’ what they do.”
It amazed me that someone so prone to violence could, at times, be so tender-hearted. I guess like beauty, compassion was also in the eye of the beholder.
I said, “I’ll pick you up about six. Sometime after dark, we’ll take care of the dogs, and go in. So, dress for stealth.”
“I told you I pack for all occasions, bro, which includes a nice little all-black ensemble that’s perfect for this occasion.”
“You’re always a step ahead of me, Alvin. I had to stop by a Walmart and buy mine.”
“Be prepared or get fucked, is my motto. Just like the Boy Scouts.”
As an ex-Boy Scout, I didn't remember that being the exact wording. But I guess it was close enough.
“I’ll see you later,” I said.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Alvin and I sat in the blind until the sun went down and the junkyard was cast in darkness. If there was an underground lab behind the wall of junk cars and there was anyone in it, they had gone in before we got there. There had been no activity while we sat there, other than Sonny Dollar leaving again on his Harley, and Wade Dollar closing up the office. Benny didn’t seem to be working with his dad this afternoon. We didn’t see him, or anyone else while we were there. Wade had released the dogs as he’d gone to the big house and they were in their night-time home near the fence on our side, lying beneath the bed of the old rusty truck.
We finally got down out of our perch and made out way to the fence near where the dogs lay. They growled as I peeked through a small gap in the fence boards. They weren’t looking directly at me, but their heads were raised, and they had obviously heard or sensed my presence. Thankfully, they weren’t barking.
I opened the grocery bag I’d brought with two balls of doctored hamburger in it and tossed them over the fence in front of the Dobermans, far enough apart so that one dog couldn’t rush out and get to both of them before the other one got his share. It came off perfectly. They came out from underneath the truck, each hesitantly examining the hamburger, at first with suspicion, then recognition of something to eat. They gobbled down the meat like they hadn’t been fed lately. And from what I’d seen of the Dollar's treatment of animals—Laverne Dollar and the cat—they probably hadn’t.
I stayed and watched from my peep-hole and after about five minutes both dogs were asleep, one of them actually snoring. I gave them a couple more minutes, then motioned to Alvin. Before we climbed over the fence, I pointed to the thin wire that ran along the base of it. I was right about the fence being electrified to keep the dogs in.
Once over the fence, we headed toward the wall of wrecks. We found our destination easily and stood in the path between the walls looking for anything that could be an entrance to an underground room. Nothing stood out to either of us. The path didn’t fork back there, there were no small buildings, obvious trap doors, or cellar or storm doors visible. Nothing.
Alvin took the right side, and I took the left, look
ing between the rusting hulks of the cars. Alvin got my attention and pointed to a gap he’d found between two of the cars. I walked over and looked at it. It was just large enough for someone to squeeze through and led out of sight into the shadows behind the car bodies.
Alvin was down on one knee examining the earth leading into it with one of the cheap compact flashlights I’d bought us at Walmart. I bent and looked over his shoulder. The ground through the gap was well-traveled, but I wasn’t sure it was from humans, or from the junkyard dogs.
Alvin pointed at himself and then at the opening. He then pointed at me and the other wall, and I got the message. He wanted to check out the gap, while I should keep examining the other side. We didn’t have much time before the dogs would be up and around again, so I nodded. He disappeared through the gap, and I went back to the other wall.
I pushed at the cars on the bottom row of wrecks to see if maybe one would swing away to reveal a trap door beneath, but none of them moved. All I did was make a loud squeaking noise when I pushed on the rear end of an old Buick. I stood still and listened for a moment, but if anyone had heard it, they didn’t seem to be coming. At least that’s what I hoped as I continued my close inspection of the area.
Suddenly, I heard a creaking noise behind me. I turned to see the trunk lid of the Buick raise up, and Laverne Dollar emerge as if ascending the stairs from hell. He was holding a pistol pointed directly at my heart. He stood aside and motioned for me to get in the trunk.
“After you, Mother-fucker,” he said.
I’d found the lab. Unless Alvin had returned and was watching Laverne take me, he would have no idea where I’d gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
With his gun at my back Laverne Dollar pointed me down a short set of narrow wooden stairs, closing the Buick’s trunk lid behind us. At the bottom was a small room with a dirt floor, a table and chairs taking up most of the space. An automatic bill counter, one that counts and bands the bills into stacks, sat on the table. Surrounding it was a large pile of loose cash, and a gym bag half full of banded stacks of money, $10,000 stamped on each band. I’d obviously caught Laverne Dollar counting the take.
Beyond the table there was another room with the door standing open. The woman I presumed to be Dollar’s sister stood in the doorway, looking at me. A white respirator mask hung beneath her chin, and she wore elbow-length latex gloves. I could see a table along a wall behind her with something on it that could have been a pill press. Shelves above it contained what looked like supplies. I’d never seen one, but this was what I’d expect an opioid drug lab to look like.
“Come help me Delilah,” he said to his sister, and motioned with his gun for me to sit in one of the chairs. It was the first time I’d heard the sister’s name. Delilah. Samson’s downfall in the Bible. Befitting, I thought. She was about to help with my downfall.
Laverne took a roll of duct tape from one of the shelves, handed the gun to his sister, and began taping me to the chair. No one had spoken a word yet, so I broke the silence.
“You need to think very carefully before you do something you’ll regret,” I said to Laverne.
“Any regrets will be yours,” Laverne said. “All I’ve done is catch a trespasser on my property. I got the legal right to blow that trespasser’s fuckin’ head off if I want.”
As Laverne taped my ankles and arms to the straight-backed chair, the woman leaned against the door-jam and gazed at me. She was quite pretty, as I'd thought when we saw her from the distance. I suddenly realized that she looked familiar for another reason. She was the nurse I’d found in Kelly’s hospital room, who fled when I caught her about to give Kelly a shot. Only then, she was a brunette.
I turned my attention back to Laverne Dollar. He was standing by my chair, frowning at me as if contemplating what to do with me. There was a deadness to his light-blue, hooded eyes that suggested whatever he would do, I wouldn’t like it. He had tattoos, like Sonny, but Laverne’s weren’t as artfully done. Jailhouse tats, I guessed.
“Nice place you got here,” I said. “You dig it yourself?”
“My grandpa built it a long time ago. Storm shelter. He was a-feared of tornadoes.”
“So, what now?”
“First, you gonna’ answer my questions.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You will,” he said and grinned. He put on a pair of thick leather work gloves. It made him even more menacing if that were possible.
“Then ask your questions, and we’ll see,” I said, trying to sound tough. Inside, I was anything but. I was in a bad predicament.
“First question, why the fuck are you here?”
I looked about the room. “Looking for this place. Thanks for showing it to me.”
“How’d you know it was even here?”
“I didn’t, until you stepped out of that Buick.”
“So, why were you standing right there when I came out?”
“Blind luck,” I said.
He punched me in the face, filling my vision with shooting stars.
“Why were you standing right there?” he asked again.
I didn’t see any reason not to tell him. I probably couldn’t get into any worse trouble.
“I’ve been watching you from the hill behind the yard. I saw you go behind this particular stack of old cars, and you didn’t come out. I figured there was something back here. So, I came to see what.”
“Who knows you’re here?”
“Nobody.”
He hit me again.
“That’s the truth,” I said, when I was able, the bells ringing in my head.
“How’s that girlfriend of yours?” he asked. “We should have finished that job. But we’re gonna’ remedy that.”
I realized that Laverne had just confessed to Kelly’s assault, but I might never get the chance to tell anyone about it. And they would go after Kelly again. The thought of that, I couldn’t handle. Somehow I needed to find a way to warn somebody.
“You been talking to the cops about this?” he asked.
“I don’t talk to cops,” I managed to say, still a bit punch-drunk.
It wasn’t the answer he was looking for. He hit me again.
“Do the cops know about this place?”
I said, “Obviously they don’t. Or they would have been standing outside the old Buick and not me.” He seemed to buy that. He didn’t hit me again.
I heard the trunk door over our heads open and footsteps clamber down the stairs. I turned to see Sonny Dollar, one wrist in a thick white cast and held up in front of him to keep from banging it against the walls of the tight stairwell. He was holding a paper bag in his other hand. He stopped in his tracks and stared at me tied to the chair.
“Whoa,” he said. “What’s he doin’ here?”
Laverne said, “I caught him poking around the Buick. I don’t know why the dogs weren’t raisin’ hell. He must have silenced them somehow. He was by hisself as far as I could see. You didn’t see nobody out there when you came in?”
“Not a soul. It’s all quiet.”
“He says the cops don’t know about this place,” Laverne said.
They were talking about me as if I wasn’t in the room. A bad sign.
“You don’t believe him, do you?” Sonny said.
“I think I do,” Laverne said. “I think he’s just like his girlfriend. He stumbles around like a blind squirrel looking for acorns, but ends up sticking his nose in a yellow jacket’s nest. I ain’t taking any chances though, so we gonna’ move the lab until we find out if anybody else does know about it. If they don’t, we can come back.”
“Let me ask him,” Sonny said.
“Later,” Laverne said eyeing the bag in Sonny’s hand. “Is that dinner?”
“Cheeseburgers from the T-Tail,” Sonny said.
“Then let’s eat, we got a lot to do.”
Sonny passed out the burgers, they took seats around me and I watched as they ate.
“Sorry we
ain’t got one for you, asshole,” Sonny said to me. “But you’ll be having a knuckle sandwich later. I owe you for this,” he added, holding up his bandaged wrist.
Delilah giggled, and leered at me. “Don’t mess his face up too much, Sonny, he’s pretty.”
“She was as sick as her brothers, I thought.
Laverne said, “He ain’t gonna’ be around long enough to do what you’re thinking, so get it out of your head, you dirty little bitch.”
Delilah stuck out her lower lip, pretending to pout. “Y’all don’t never let me have any fun,” she said.
They finished eating and Laverne turned to Delilah. “You go on back there and start packing things up. Sonny, go help her.”
“I got something I want to do in here first,” Sonny said.
He got up and stood in front of me.
“Okay hotshot, I’m giving you one chance to tell me if the cops know about this place. You don’t give me a straight answer, and you gonna’ get some payback from that sucker punch you gave me the other night.”
“Sucker punch?” I said. “You came at me with my back turned.”
I saw Laverne glance up at his brother and grin.
“Is that right, Sonny boy?” Laverne said. “You try to sucker punch this boy and he still got the best of you? And you let that black feller break your arm. Thank God your brothers ain’t alive to see this. Mama must have stepped out on Daddy to have you. You can’t be a Dollar.”
“Don’t go callin’ me a bastard, Laverne.”
“If the shoe fits, little brother, wear it.”
