by J K Ellem
The old bank building in Martha’s End was one of the locations identified by the Sheriff’s department after viewing the videos on the hard drives, and the building was raided. Inside the vault room they found twelve barrels of acid containing the remains of other victims of the Morgan brothers. One of the barrels contained the partially liquefied body of an Edward Linton, a geologist who had gone missing several years ago after selling his business.
46
It was well past noon when Shaw woke in the upstairs guest bedroom. The window was drawn up and a light breeze ruffled the edges of the net curtain. Daisy carefully helped him sit up in bed, propping some large pillows behind him.
On the bedside table sat the open trauma pouch, several auto injector spent cartridges, and a glass of water. When they got back to the ranch before dawn, she took Shaw into the shower. They stood together under the scalding hot water, Shaw naked and Daisy fully clothed until he warmed up and had stopped shaking.
She dressed him in some of her father’s old clothes then helped him into bed. He told her which meds to give him and she injected him with another dose of painkillers, antibiotics and steroids. He fell into a deep sleep and was oblivious when the FBI first turned up at the front door hours later.
After Shaw was settled, she set down a breakfast tray and watched him eat hungrily. Shaw had made an amazing recovery. His face was still bruised, but his ankle and shoulder were on the mend thanks to the painkillers and other drugs. While he ate, Daisy filled him in on what had happened.
While she prepared breakfast she had turned on the television. Across all local channels it was being reported that an army of federal and state law enforcement agencies had descended on the private property of one of the wealthiest businessmen in the state of Kansas. A few of the national affiliates stations were also starting to air the breaking story. It had been rumored that several bodies had also been found on the property, and that a number of county officials and local police officers, including the Mayor, were being detained by the FBI at the scene.
“What happens now?” Daisy asked. She sat on the foot of the bed and watched Shaw as he finished eating.
“It will run its course. It will take months before the full investigation is finished. How’s Callie?”
“She’s doing fine, she called me from the hospital. She’ll be out in a few days. She said she owes you her life.”
Shaw looked out the window. It was a bright clear day, a new day. He wished he could have figured out sooner that Billy Morgan had taken Callie. He felt bad knowing that she was in that shipping container for days right under his nose and he never knew. He turned back to Daisy. “I did nothing. She owes me nothing.”
He looked at her and felt real sorrow for what had happened to her, for what Billy Morgan had done back in high school. “Daisy, I’m so sorry.”
Daisy paused for a moment, searching his face, seeing what he now knew. She fought back tears, not wanting to relive the memories of that horrible night. “Is he dead?” It was all she could say.
“All three of them are dead,” he replied. “And there will be others. The Morgan brothers were a bunch of murderous rapists. The police will find other bodies, their victims. I think they will find some down the old pit mine. They came onto your land, but I think they just used the mine as a place to dump the bodies, nowhere else I think on your land.” Shaw only hoped but he didn’t tell Daisy that.
Daisy just nodded, not wanting to know the details, content to know they were dead.
Shaw went on and told her everything he knew or had worked out so far. Daisy said nothing, listening. The shadows had moved far across the room by the time he had finished.
“The report by Edward Linton will be returned to you,” Shaw said. “It was addressed to your father, it belonged to him and as next-of-kin it now belongs to you. The police will locate it when they go through everything, I imagine. You don’t really need it anymore.” Shaw had told Daisy about the second report Jim Morgan had commissioned, the one Shaw took from the site office. Daisy could also just as easily engage someone else to investigate, but she knew now what was under her land.
“How big are we talking? The discovery,” she asked.
Shaw tried to remember the figures on the report. There were terms like source rock, hydrocarbon reserves, oil reservoirs. But on the last page the true scale of the oil field was revealed together with likely production capacities.
“Daisy, we’re talking of an oil field being the biggest find in history here. Billions of barrels, high-grade quality, billions of dollars. Enough for America to be totally self-sufficient just on your oil field for more than a hundred years.”
My oil, my oil field, Daisy liked the sound of that.
She smiled, “Maybe I can pay some of the bills now.”
“Are you crazy? You can buy all of Europe and more.”
“Why would I want Europe? I have everything I want right here.” But Daisy’s life was not going to be the same again, ever.
“Jim Morgan killed your father because of it.” Shaw said. “Your father had an idea of what was under his land and the Morgans found out.”
Daisy knew that Jim Morgan had killed her father. She knew when she saw her father dead at the bottom of the ravine on that frightful day. Call it gut instinct or a woman’s intuition. She just couldn’t prove it.
“The FBI will be back. They’ll search here, the ranch, this house,” Daisy said. By now she had figured out that he had some sort of loose connection with the authorities, a connection that he didn’t want to reveal or discuss. The woman who answered the phone wanted to know where Shaw was, she was persistent. But Daisy just passed on the information and hung up.
“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Daisy asked. She wanted to know more, but was also respectful of his privacy.
Shaw smiled, “No. It’s nothing like that. It’s just that there are things about my past that I want to leave be.” His expression became suddenly serious, he was running out of time.
Twenty-four hours. That’s what the woman last night had said. A clear threat. He didn’t want any harm to come to Daisy or Callie.
“I have to go,” he said.
Daisy just nodded. She understood. She had dreaded this moment, the moment she knew would eventually come—when he would tell her he was leaving.
“When?” she asked, wishing the answer would be days not hours. But she knew Shaw wanted to be gone before the FBI agents returned.
“In a few hours,” he replied.
Daisy felt crushed. During the last few days she had felt such joy and excitement just being around Shaw. But she knew it had to end. She had never felt so alive as she had in those intimate moments they had spent together, moments that had changed her as woman.
Daisy took a deep breath, “Then we still have time.”
47
It was slow, tender. They took their time. There was no rush. The last bus leaving town was still four hours away.
Daisy had to be careful, wounds had to heal. But they held hands, with her on top, her hips moving slow and rhythmic, with him deep inside her, her eyes never leaving his as she moved up and down, long and slow along his entire length. A late afternoon breeze came through the window, the sun slowly setting, a golden hue across their nakedness.
It was different than the other times she had been with him. It had more meaning, more emotion, more connection, not just physically, but that too.
His gentleness with her made her even more turned on, and it showed. She had never been so wet before, she was almost embarrassed. There was a moment of awkwardness in her eyes and she blushed slightly. That’s when he reached up and pulled her face towards his, and kissed her. A deep, long and tender kiss that went on forever.
With a new-found confidence she tilted back from him, pivoted her hips forward, arched her back, placed her hands behind her on his knees.
She opened herself up more to him, revealing everything.
He moved deep
er inside her, she tilted back further, brought her feet under her, pushing back and forth with her legs. The sensation was more intense. Then taking one of his hands, she guided his fingers between the juncture of where they came together, at her apex where her skin formed a tiny hood, like the pollinia of a beautiful orchid, her petals thick and engorged.
She took the pad of his thumb and guided it to where she wanted him to rub with each thrust in to her, small circular swirls, around and around, over the small erect nodule that had now shed its hood and was hard and swollen.
I’m the boss, she thought, before her own heat consumed her.
* * *
She watched the pickup truck, the Dodge, the one she had seen many times before. It pulled up in the dirt parking lot, kicking up a plume of dust before coming to a stop. It wasn’t really a parking lot, just a vacant plot of dirt boxed in between two abandoned buildings that was dimly lit by a single light pole. Apart from the Dodge, the parking lot was empty.
Two people got out: a man carrying a rucksack and the girl.
She was safe.
The woman watching was happy, if that was at all possible for her.
After completing the assignment on the ranch, she had packed up her equipment and withdrew to the small township. There was too much activity on the property now to stay, but they would find no trace of her other than the three bodies.
She adjusted the focus on the binoculars, watching her last assignment walk to the sidewalk, the girl following. He was doing as he was told, a few hours earlier than the deadline she had given him as well.
Good.
She liked a man who did what he was told. When they didn't, she made them disappear.
Permanently.
A few minutes later the Greyhound bus slid out of the darkness, its long silver shape dulled with road grime and exhaust dust. It pulled up just past where the man and the girl stood. The doors hissed open revealing a gloomy interior, tired faces leaned against the long bank of windows along its length.
The man and girl embraced, no kiss, just a lingering hug, more like friends than lovers, the girl holding on for a moment longer. They parted and the man stepped up onto the bus. The doors hissed closed and the bus lumbered off with a deep mechanical groan.
The girl waited until the bus was gone, then she drifted back to the Dodge, twirling her hair. No sadness, but an obvious glow of contentment in the way she walked.
She opened the door, then paused. She turned around and looked in the direction of the woman with the binoculars, hidden amongst the bushes, across the street.
The girl stared straight at her.
The woman shifted further back amongst the leaves and branches.
The girl turned and slid into the driver’s seat of the Dodge and started the engine. With a turn of the wheel, and a skid of dirt, the girl was gone.
The woman lowered her binoculars. She knew she hadn’t been seen, but it was still an eerie feeling.
Twice now.
The woman withdrew back through the bushes, returned to her car, and placed her binoculars in the trunk where the rest of her gear was neatly stored. She got in and started the engine.
On the passenger seat was a tablet device. She called up a file and punched a new address into the car’s GPS. She hit the gas, drove back along the short road, onto the main road and towards her next assignment.
She was glad to be leaving this small town. All her assignments here were complete.
It was nice town, with a few less bad people in it now.
THE END.
Prologue
They had never hanged a child before, but how hard could it be?
They would use the same ladder and rope as always. And the same timber beam that ran beneath the ceiling. After all, it had taken the weight of the woman they hanged a few days ago, and she kicked and twisted like a sack full of feral cats. The beam creaked and groaned, and she spluttered and struggled for a full two minutes until stillness and death settled over her.
The woman was tainted, so they had to leave her there, hanging for a full day and night. That’s what they had been told. They knew the process. She was on display, a morbid piece of dead artwork, a warning to all.
Only the tainted were ever taken to the hanging room. It was a cold, damp place of stone walls with a heavy door and a dirt floor. When the tainted came here, they were gagged and trussed, and a hood was placed over their head. It was the same hood used for everyone. The strands of its fibres were stained with the fear of all those who passed before them, and when the hood was placed over their head for the first time, and they smelt the fear of others, they knew their miserable existence was nearing its end.
In a break from custom, they had brought the others to the hanging room to see the woman, her skin pale and waxen, leached of all life, just a husk suspended from the rope like a carcass. It was an important lesson of what would happen if they ever became tainted like her. A lesson none of them would forget, especially the new arrivals, especially the children.
There was no escape.
There weren’t many women, just a few, young girls being the preferred.
On the second day they had taken her down, cut the bindings from her hands and feet and wrapped her in a plain white sheet. It took three of them to carry her up the many steps then out through the back door. It had to be done at night, to lessen the chance of anyone seeing them. They secured the body in the trunk of the car then drove until they found a secluded spot, not far, but just far enough outside the town limits, preferring to spread the bodies out.
The ground was soft under a fresh layer of snow and the forest of trees formed a natural screen while two dug and the third held the lantern. They paused only once and killed the lamp when the headlights of a car swept across the lower road, the noise of an engine laboring up and over the ridge before it disappeared on the other side and the sound of the car eventually faded.
It was just after midnight when they finally smoothed the surface, raking it back and forth to give it a natural, undisturbed look.
They stood for a moment and admired the care they had taken. There was no way of telling they had buried the woman here, alone under the soil except for the earthworms and microbes festering over her body. Come spring, the process would accelerate and she would be returned to the earth in full.
They packed up their shovels, folded the not-so-clean white sheet and placed everything back into the trunk of the car.
All three of them sat in somber silence during the drive back, consumed with their own thoughts and conscience.
The woman wasn’t the first, and she certainly wouldn’t be the last. The child was next. How she had become tainted at such a young age was not for them to question. It had happened and they had to deal with it, otherwise they would be taking the lonely walk to the hanging room and the hood would be placed over their heads.
In a few days, they would be making the same trip again, but with a smaller body.
1
Molly Malone claimed to have seen him first, a fact that would later be disputed, especially by Walter Pickens. Walt reckoned he saw him first when he was driving his old pickup truck up the mountain road towards Lacy.
The shoulder of the road was piled high with snow from the morning pass by the snowplows, but Walt saw him clearly through the swirl of snowflakes as he passed.
It was definitely a man, carrying a rucksack, hunkered down against the icy back-blast from the huge logging trucks as they rumbled past throwing a funnel of ice, grit and snow in their wake that was strong enough to pull you off your feet.
Damn dangerous, Walt thought.
There was only one main road in and one out of Lacy—it was that kind of mountain town, so there was no doubt in Walt’s mind where the man was heading.
The man moved like he was favoring one side. Maybe he had a limp. Maybe he had just come second place in an ass-kicking competition. Walt certainly knew all about that. He was married and had never come first
in all the thirty years of wedded bliss.
The man looked like he had on just a leather jacket pulled tight, his head under the hood of a sweat shirt. Not the kind of clothing one would wear for winter in the mountains. And they reckoned it was going to be a bitch of a winter this year. Walt guessed the man could have come from the logging camp, the turn-off for that was back down the road.
So later, over a beer in McKenzies bar, the only bar in Lacy, Walt would tell everyone that he had seen the stranger first, not Molly Malone. But Molly reckoned Walt was talking shit like he always did, worming his way into any new mountain news like he was the first to see this or the first to do that. Seeing a new face in town didn’t count, if you saw them from a distance.
Molly told everyone who would listen that she was, in fact, the first person to properly meet him, see him up close, and got to talk to him too when he walked right into her outdoors store, the only store in Lacy where you could buy a decent cold weather jacket without being ripped off, unlike the outrageously expensive shops and boutiques at the ski resorts beyond Lacy.
She had just opened her store. It was early but she already had a few customers in, browsing the racks of jackets and thermals, when the man walked in. He wasn’t exactly dressed for the first day of winter, but she guessed that’s why he was in her store.
Tall, lean, dark hair and dark mysterious eyes. Good-looking. Too good-looking for these parts, Molly thought as she watched him. She was supposed to move from behind the counter and ask him if she could help him, but she was happy just admiring the view from where she stood.
She was grief-stricken when she decided he was gay. He must be—after all, when he came to the cash register with a jacket he wanted to buy, he never once dropped his eyes down to Molly’s ample cleavage, and Molly, ever the opportunist, had undone an extra button at the top of her shirt just for his benefit. But he never looked at her boobs, not even a quick glance like most male customers. He just counted out the cash and thanked her.
