‘Hey, pendejos.’
They stopped arguing mid-stride. Turned towards him, not quite sure they’d heard that correctly. A gringo voice calling them pendejos?
Dixie swung at the side of Victor’s head like he wanted to knock it into the next zip code. There was a whistling sound as the bat sliced through the air. Then a sickening thump as hard ash came to an abrupt halt against flesh and bone. Victor didn’t make a sound. He crumpled sideways into José. Dropped to the ground as if a trap door had opened underneath him.
José staggered into a parked car like he was drunk, trying to keep his balance, leaving a bloody handprint on the gleaming paintwork. His jaw dropped open as he stared at Victor lying on the ground at his feet. He looked up to see who’d just poleaxed his compadre. Dixie swung the bat again. Caught him across the bridge of his nose.
Thwack.
What a beautiful noise. It made you look up to see where the ball went. You half expected to hear the roar of the crowd.
Instead, it was followed by the sweet crack of bone and cartilage, then a loud yelp from José as his nose shattered. His hands flew up to his face leaving his body unprotected. Dixie swung a third time, caught him in the solar plexus.
Thwack.
There was a long, gratifying ooooph sound as José’s diaphragm went into spasm. He couldn’t get any air in or out. You don’t need a doctor to tell you that ain’t good. He doubled over, his knees giving way. Before he hit the ground, Dixie caught him by the collar and dragged him back towards the van. Pulling open the rear doors, he bundled him inside. Then he climbed in after him, pulled the doors shut.
José was wheezing, trying to breathe normally. He wasn’t making a very good go of it. Dixie flipped him roughly onto his front. Put his knee between his shoulder blades, then wrenched his arms behind him. José screamed as Dixie inadvertently twisted his damaged arm. Then Dixie taped his wrists together, did the same with his ankles. He finished off with a length across José’s mouth.
José rocked back and forwards making a desperate noise in the back of his throat. His face was dangerously red, his eyes bloodshot.
‘What?’ Dixie said, sounding as if he’d just finished taking an elderly relative to the bathroom for the third time in under an hour and was hoping for a minute’s rest. It suddenly struck him José couldn’t breathe through his broken nose.
‘Trouble breathing?’
José nodded.
Reluctantly, Dixie took hold of his chin. He wouldn’t be any use to him if he suffocated.
‘Hold still.’ He pulled out his keys, poked at the tape with one of them, opening up a little hole and worked it into a bigger one. ‘Better?’
José rolled away onto his side, his chest heaving, air whistling as he sucked it through the slit. Dixie smacked the back of his head like he was a dog he’d caught eating his supper.
‘Ungrateful bastard.’
He climbed out of the van taking the duct tape with him. Jogged back to where Victor was still comatose on the sidewalk. He looked down at him, prodded him with his foot. Nothing. Maybe he’d overdone it, but, hey-ho, shit happens. He dragged him to their car, the back of his head bumping along the ground and down the curb into the gutter. Seemed to him it would’ve been a fitting place to leave him. Maybe turn on the ignition, let the exhaust fumes do the rest. Instead he trussed him up same as José, hoisted him into the trunk.
Victor was a big guy. Dixie had to bounce up and down on the trunk lid like he was trying to shut an over-stuffed suitcase to get it shut. Finally the lock caught and clicked shut, despite a number of bulges where bony parts of Victor’s body distorted the metal.
Dixie could relax now he didn’t have to worry about Victor waking up and coming after him. The feeling lasted less than a second as Victor’s words to José came back to him.
You went too far.
He couldn’t put off going to see what had happened inside the house any longer.
Chapter 22
THE FRONT DOOR WAS closed, bloody finger marks on the paintwork. Dixie felt a sudden clammy coldness on the back of his neck, a nagging dread that nothing good waited for him inside.
He walked slowly down the side passage to the kitchen at the back, the uncomfortable burning sensation in his chest building strength with every reluctant step. He looked through the kitchen window.
Jesus Christ, he wished he hadn’t.
He blinked a couple of times in quick succession. He wasn’t squeamish. He’d seen most things that one person can do to another in the name of love or hate or good old-fashioned evil. But that didn’t make it any easier. More so because it wasn’t some used-up junkie whore whose pimp had got carried away. It was an innocent young woman. One who used to be beautiful before the monster in the back of his van went to work on her. His stomach lurched. He put his hand over his mouth. Swallowed back the rising tide of salty bile, leaned his head against the window.
Pull yourself together.
Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he tried the back door. It too was locked. A couple minutes with his picks and he was inside, despite the shaking of his hands. Not that she was in a hurry. There was nothing he or anybody else could do for her.
She was taped to a wooden chair, her body still warm and pulsing—or was that only in his mind? How long had she been dead? How long had he sat outside in his van, drinking coffee and deciding what to do, watching a dog piss up a tree?
Don’t blame yourself, people would say, it’s easy with hindsight.
Well-meaning words to ease his guilt, make him feel better. The only thing he knew about hindsight was it sure as hell didn’t take any prisoners.
There was an expensive-looking kitchen knife stabbed into the table next to her, its wooden handle slick with blood. Her handbag lay on the floor, blood soaking into the soft leather. The contents had been emptied onto the table—car keys, cell phone, nail polish, a half-eaten doughnut wrapped in a kleenex, lip gloss, sunglasses, driving license . . .
Something about the driving license caught his eye—and it wasn’t the sticky red fingerprint on it. He picked it up carefully. Did a double take.
I never knew that, he whispered to himself. Her name wasn’t even Rachel.
He compared the photograph on the license to the dead woman’s face. Despite the bloody disfigurement, there was no question it was the same person. Did Jackson know? The name looked familiar but he couldn’t place it. He had a vague idea he’d come across it recently. It didn’t make any difference. Whatever it was she’d been running away from, whatever made her go under a different name, couldn’t hurt her now.
He dropped the driving license on the table, fished his phone out. He stood with it in his hand a few seconds, biting down on his bottom lip. Did he want to do this? He felt dirty. He put it back in his pocket. He looked at her again.
No, he had to do it.
He pulled it out again, found the camera. Spent a second framing the shot and took a picture of her sitting in the chair. His hand shook so badly it came out blurred. He deleted it, took another one. That was better. If better was a word that had any place in this kitchen.
He'd lost count of the number of crime scenes he’d attended in his life. This was different, personal. At a crime scene there was noise and activity, people running everywhere. But here, alone with her in the kitchen with his camera in his hand . . . it made him feel grubby and ashamed. He swallowed thickly, a pricking at the back of his eyes.
Christ, the world was a lousy place.
It made him sick to his stomach. Some people weren’t just wired differently, they were wired wrong.
He wasn’t entirely sure why he took the photograph at all, was in two minds whether to delete it. Something to do with making sure Carly fully understood what she’d got her friend into. He’d never make her feel like he did now, make her experience the full horror of being here in the room with the still-warm corpse. It was better than nothing.
Turning away from the body, he stuffed the
phone back in his pocket. He took a deep breath, stared up at the ceiling, his whole body shaking. He let out a scream, punched a hole straight through the wooden door of a wall cabinet, smashing the plates and glasses inside. He pulled it out and did it again. And again and again until his breath came in ragged gasps and his hand was a bloody mess.
Still shaking, he closed the window blind. Let himself out, re-locking the door after him. He made his way back along the side passage to the van. He didn’t bother checking the back. José couldn’t have got out. More than that, he knew the sight of him would set him off on his own murderous journey. He wouldn’t need much of an excuse—one wrong word or maybe the hint of a smile on José’s lips and the capacity for violence that had always lived in him would be set free.
He sat with his hands wrapped around the steering wheel as if somebody was trying to pry him away. He tried to get the picture of her out of his mind, couldn’t believe Carly had involved her friend in all this. Carly had made her own choices along the way, had ended up where she had as a result. You reap what you sow.
But this was different.
And he could have stopped it.
If only he hadn’t wasted so much time sitting in the van with his thumb up his ass, watching a dog piss up a tree and thinking for Christ’s sake, while a maniac carved up a young woman, opening her veins and spilling her blood onto a cheap linoleum floor. He’d never get a moment’s peace ever again.
He had to get his mind back on track. The fact that Victor and José had left the house empty-handed told him the money wasn’t in there. The fact that they’d left at all and weren’t still inside, busy cutting and slicing with their knives, made it clear she’d told them where it was. Then they’d killed her.
He smiled grimly to himself. The monster in the back had all the answers. He buzzed the window down. Pulled away. More than anything he needed some fresh air to clear his head. But it was going to take a lot more than fresh air to get rid of the image of what he’d seen in the woman he’d known as Rachel’s kitchen.
Chapter 23
EARL MUNROE’S OPINION OF the commie-loving faggot had done a complete about-turn. He sat and sucked hard on a filterless cigarette, feeling a little queasy and weak at the knees thinking about what he’d almost got into in the bar. After what he’d witnessed, he knew now he wouldn’t have been the one finishing it.
It had been different last night. He’d waited outside until the pair of them came out. He hadn’t been exactly sure what he planned to do, but his Colt M1911 figured in it somewhere. The guy had got into the back of a van parked at the far side of the lot and hadn’t come out again. He’d toyed with the idea of shooting a couple holes through the side to teach him a lesson. But it had been busy in the parking lot with people coming and going so he’d driven home.
Then this morning he’d been surprised to see the van still sitting there when he turned up for his regular cleaning gig. The guy was climbing out of the back as he pulled into the lot. He parked and sat watching in his mirror. The guy stretched and yawned. Then went around the far side of the van where Earl couldn’t see him. He reappeared a minute later zipping himself up, climbed in the front and backed out. Earl watched as he pulled away then headed after him.
That was when the fun really started.
He followed him to a quiet residential street where the guy sat in his van and waited. Just as Earl was getting bored, wondering if there was time to get back to the bar to finish cleaning before it opened, a couple of wetbacks came out of the house opposite. He watched in amazement as his man jumped out of his van with a baseball bat, snuck up behind them, then knocked the big guy’s head into the middle of next week. Earl swallowed a lump the size of his fist, a cold sweat sticking his shirt to his seat. The guy might be a commie-loving faggot but a pussy? No way. He sat transfixed as the guy creamed the smaller one without breaking sweat, then bundled him into the back of the van. After that he doubled back to stuff the big one in the trunk of their car.
‘Yes!’ Earl gave a quick fist pump. He leaned forward on the wheel and waited to see what happened next. It was better than TV any day.
He lost sight of the guy as he ducked down the side of the house they’d come out of. Much as he’d have loved to see what was going on down there, following him was a bad idea. He sat tight.
A couple seconds later, glancing in his side mirror, he knew he’d made the right decision. A woman with a butt the size of a Goodyear blimp was walking down the middle of the road, a dazed look on her face, the kind you got when you saw something you’d never expected, something you’d heard happened where other people lived, and now you’d seen it happen on a sunny day in your very own street. Like Earl, she’d watched the whole thing. But she wasn’t doing any fist pumping.
Earl watched as she crept up to the car and put her ear to the trunk. Nothing. He must still be out cold. No surprise there. She straightened up, carried on walking towards the house. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she got closer in his mirror. She was digging around in her bag for something. She came alongside him, didn’t even see him sitting there, as she finally found her cell phone and pulled it out.
A wave of panic swept over him. She was going to call the police. His guy would be arrested. He deserved to get a medal for cleaning up the neighborhood, not get arrested. Earl couldn’t sit and watch it happen. He’d never be able to look at himself in the mirror again.
The woman was almost at the house now. She stared at her phone. Held it up at arm’s length towards the sky. No signal. But she might get one another ten feet down the road.
He pulled away from the curb. Straightened up. She had her back and her big, fat butt to him. No way to miss a target like that. From the angry set of her shoulders he reckoned she was about to throw the phone on the ground and jump on it. It sure as hell wouldn’t work then. He stomped on the gas. The old pickup might look like a piece of junk but it was a different story under the hood. His good buddy, Billy Bob, maintained the engine for him. Hell, Billy Bob looked after the choppers in Vietnam, for Christ’s sake.
The pickup took off like a big, rusty BB shot coming out of a giant slingshot. It hurtled forward, the fender catching her in the middle of the back, flipping her over the hood like a cat playing with a mouse. She landed on her head, folding into a crumpled heap on the ground with that big ass facing upwards—like an invitation to park your bicycle. Earl kept going another fifty yards. Pulled to the curb. He looked back at her in his mirror. She wasn’t moving, wouldn’t be calling the police any time soon, the interfering tattletale.
He kept his eye on the mirror, fingers tapping nervously on the wheel. He didn’t have to wait long before the guy came back out of the house. He breathed a sigh of relief. Took a long drag on his cigarette. He didn’t want to be caught fifty yards from a hit-and-run victim with his front end looking like it did. That wasn’t the only relief either—even from this distance he knew he’d had a lucky break the night before. You didn’t want to get into it with a guy who had a look like that on his face, commie-faggot or not. The anger radiated off him in waves like heat shimmering above a hot pavement in the desert. Even though he hated wetbacks as much as the next guy, Earl couldn’t help feeling sorry for the one in the back of the van. He hoped he liked hospital tacos.
His guy was so absorbed in his thoughts he didn’t even see the woman’s broken body lying in the road as he got in the van and drove away. Earl didn’t see how that was possible—he almost had to step over her—but he didn’t know what went on inside the house. Earl waited for him to drive past, pulled out after him.
He’d never had so much fun.
Chapter 24
CARLY TURNED INTO THE street, feeling as if she’d walked around a corner into a door. Her head bounced backwards just as hard. Up ahead, an ambulance and a police cruiser were parked immediately outside the house. The wheel was suddenly slick in her hands, the clammy coldness on the back of her neck telling her she’d be sick if she didn�
�t get some air. She pulled to the curb. Swung her legs out and sat on the edge of the seat with her head between her knees. She stayed like that a long time. Breathing deeply, feeling like her bowels had turned to water.
She stood, her legs weak, looked over the car door. A stretcher was being loaded into the back of the ambulance. She set off towards the house, forcing her legs to move. She had to find out who it was.
A patrol officer was walking away from the front door as Carly got to the house. She stared past him at the door. Even from this distance she could see something suspicious on the otherwise immaculate paintwork.
‘Is this your house, Miss?’
She shook her head, her lips moving slightly as she tried to find some words, any words.
‘Are you okay?’
She nodded. Her throat had closed up. She couldn’t stop looking past him to what she knew was blood on the door. What else could it be?
‘It’s a friend’s house.’ It sounded like she had a mouth full of gravel. ‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s been an accident.’
He nodded towards the ambulance, like maybe she didn’t know what it was doing there—blocking the road for fun, perhaps, to irritate the local residents.
She swallowed, the tears pricking the back of her eyelids.
‘What’s your friend’s name?’ His voice was soft. He put his hand on her arm.
Her mouth opened but nothing came out at first. She tried again but he interrupted her.
‘Is it Theresa Edwards?’
She shook her head, relief flooding through her body. The cop squeezed her arm reassuringly.
‘Then it’s not her.’
Her whole body relaxed, collapsed in on itself. Her legs were about give way any second.
‘So why were you . . .’
She nodded at the door, unable to finish the sentence.
Hunting Dixie Page 10
