Bait Dog: An Atlanta Burns Novel

by Wendig, Chuck

  She cries. First just a little. Then great big gulping sobs. She yells at herself inside her own mind to be quiet, but that only opens the floodgates wider.

  It takes time to wind down. For the sobs to hitch and stumble and hiccup before eventually quitting. All the whole, she holds the bleeding dog close. The day is hot but she’s got the chills. Trauma. Shock.

  Soon, she’s still. And the forest is still. Noises of the Farm are present, but distant, as if in another world. Once in a while she looks over the stack of wood corded between prongs of rusty rebar and she can see the Farm. Folks are milling about. Crowd looks a little thinner but not by much. She doesn’t see anybody looking for her, but then, why would they? She can’t go anywhere. Whole property is fenced in. One way out, and it’s the same way she came in.

  They’re going to wait till the day is over. Then they’ll come find her.

  But she knows the cavalry will arrive long before that.

  Holger will bring her people and it’ll all be over.

  Except…

  Time seems to tumble forward like falling rocks and she can’t tell if it’s been ten minutes or two hours and still nobody’s coming. No Holger. No cruisers. It’s then the panic hits her guts like she just quaffed a shot of battery acid—they’re not coming. They’re not coming. The cops are crooked. Aren’t they? All of them. Petry was able to get ahead of it somehow. Here he was, walking around like he hasn’t a care in the world. Because he doesn’t. He knows he won’t get caught. Holger’s crooked. They’re all crooked.

  All in Wayman’s pocket same way they’re in with Orly Erickson.

  She suddenly feels very alone and very scared. With trembling hand she pops the Luger’s magazine, thumbs the bullets into her palm and counts—

  Three bullets left. Little golden 9mm’s catching dappled sunlight from above.

  Whitey stiffens. His head perks up and he starts to growl.

  Behind her, a radio squelches at the same time as a branch snaps.

  She wheels around—one of the three bullets rolls off her palm into the leaves. Panic makes her clumsy; she tries to press the remaining two 9mms into the magazine, but the first one she fumbles and it catches the spring mechanism and launches itself out of her grip like a jumping bean. She curses under her breath and presses her teeth together so hard she’s afraid they’ll snap—the final bullet slides into the magazine and she jacks it into the gun—

  Just as Ellis Wayman steps into view.

  His face is ashen and rage-struck, like he made a mean face and now it’s stuck that way. He steps forward. Whitey lowers his head but doesn’t growl—this is his old master.

  Atlanta points the gun.

  Ellis takes another step forward.

  “Stop where you are,” she says.

  “You called the cops,” he says, voice a haggard rasp.

  “What?”

  He holds up the radio. “Randy just called from the front gate. Said the cops are there.” As if on cue, she hears the distant sirens warbling. Gravel popping under tires. “And now they’re here.”

  Another step forward.

  Whitey starts to growl.

  “You need to stop,” she says. “I’ll shoot. I swear I will.”

  “I figure you will.”

  Another step forward.

  She pulls the trigger.

  Click.

  “You didn’t pull the toggle,” he says. She tries to rack it like a pistol, fumbling for the slide but suddenly finds there is no slide—her hands slide over the old German pistol and she doesn’t know what to do. He tells her. “You lift up on the bolt toggle, toward the back of the—“ He sighs. Waves her off. “Don’t bother. They’re here. It’s over. I don’t hurt little girls even if they want to kill me. Even if they steal my prize dog.”

  Whitey whines.

  “I…” she searches for words. All she comes up with is, “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugs. “I’m going inside the house. Get a glass of whiskey before they come. You want one?”

  “I don’t.”

  He starts to walk away but then he stops and turns back around. “I liked you. Still do. I thought maybe we had an understanding. But you screwed me pretty good here.”

  “This is a bad place.”

  “Maybe. I’m a bad man. Is what it is. I’ll see you on the other side, Atlanta Burns.”

  And he plods back toward his house, head hung low, big feet tromping over branches and briar. A bear heading back to his den to wait for the hunters.

  * * *

  Eventually she steps out when it seems safe. She leaves the gun hidden under a pile of leaves—last thing she needs to do is approach a shitload of police with an old German pistol in her hand. And hell if there aren’t a lot of police—three cruisers, two paddywagon vans, two animal control vans, couple unmarkeds.

  The first thing Atlanta sees is a true reward: as cops are loading folks into one of the vans she sees Melanie’s blood-crusted face in the crowd.

  Holger sees her. The detective’s dressed like it’s early March even though it’s hot and dry as the Devil’s own breath out here—Holger’s got jeans and a long-sleeve shirt on and a Phillies cap pulled over her too-short haircut.

  From there everything’s a blur—she feels relieved but numb. Holger sits her on the bumper of one of the unmarked cars, an old-school Crown Vic that look like it’s seen a thousand better days and none worse, and it’s there she plants herself for a good hour-and-a-half as the cops like termites start to chew apart and break down the wood of this criminal operation. Dogs in cages head to the animal control van. Cops seize drugs and guns. Two state paddywagons leave and a third—this one from two towns over—pulls up. She sees familiar faces—Karl the Nazi, the pock-marked fucker, Charlie the ref, John Elvis—all loaded into cruisers or vans. When they see her they all look at her the same way, each offering up a cold stiletto stare that says, You did this to me.

  Some cops try to take Whitey away but before Atlanta says anything, Holger calls over, tells them it’s okay. That’s Atlanta’s dog, she tells him. “Safe,” she says.

  Safe. That’s a good word.

  Atlanta smiles.

  “I guess you are my dog,” she says to Whitey.

  He pants in apparent acquiescence of this fact.

  * * *

  It’s not long before they bring out the big fish. Ellis Wayman. Trudging forward, hands behind his back, big head and bigger beard bobbing with each step. He sees Atlanta and gives her a boozy, woozy smile.

  “You missed out,” he calls over to her. “I broke out the good whiskey!”

  A booming laugh.

  They load him into a cruiser—which looks so difficult as to be comical, like they’re trying to shove a grizzly bear into a phone booth—but eventually they get him inside and he gives Atlanta one last look through the glass. She can’t tell if the look is sad or mean or just drunk. She wonders how much whiskey it must take to light up a man like that. One bottle? Two? A clawfoot bathtub filled with the stuff?

  As the cruiser pulls away, she realizes she still hasn’t seen Petry. That squirmy, slimy sonofabitch. He must’ve known what was happening and found a way out. She should’ve known he’d slip the noose.

  Holger meets back up with Atlanta, tells her, “You did all right.”

  “I guess.”

  “This was a big operation. Not pro league, but one rung down. Might let us trade up and catch some even bigger fish.”

  “Jeezum Crow, this thing has leagues?”

  Holger nods. “Amateur. Semi-pro. Pro. Big money at the top.”

  “That’s scary. And a little bit sick.”

  For a moment, Holger just looks old and tired. Like this is all she sees and it’s the cross she bears, a cross that weighs her down and pushes her closer to the earth day after day, year after year. She finally says, “It is, and sometimes it feels like you’re just kicking sand at the tide. But we did good today thanks to you.”

  “Will it make
a difference?”

  “It will.” But the way she says it, Atlanta’s not so sure. “Anyway, now that we’re wrapping up I should get you out of here. Thanks for waiting. You made us kinda busy.” She smiles.

  “I’m ready to go home.”

  “You mind coming by the station first? Make your report? I want to tie up all the loose ends on this thing.” Way she looks at Atlanta, there’s a flash of something: suspicion? Irritation? Straight-up confusion as to why a girl like her is here at fights like these? “I’ll be quick about it. Better to pull the Band-Aid off fast than rip it slow.”

  Atlanta hesitates—she really is ready to go home. But she nods. “Yeah. I can do that.”

  “I appreciate that. I’ll get someone to take you and I’ll be along soon enough.” Holger starts looking around, then her eyes fall on someone over Atlanta’s shoulder. “Petry! Petry, hey, c’mere.”

  Petry.

  Atlanta’s blood goes ice cold.

  And here he comes. Petry. In full uniform. He comes over, makes no obvious notice of Atlanta. He’s all business. “Detective. What’s up?”

  “Can you take Miss Burns here back to the station? I want to get through the paperwork.”

  Atlanta feels like she’s got a string of firecrackers under her feet but she’s forced to stand there as they go off. No. Not him. She runs through the possibilities, plays a series of mini-movies in her head, like the one where Petry drives her somewhere you can’t find on any map and puts a bullet in her head, bang.

  Whitey’s feeling it, too. Staring up Petry. Licking his chops.

  Before Petry can say anything, Atlanta blurts: “I can get a ride.” They both look at her. “I’ll call somebody. They’ll come. They can drive me.” Her words are short, clipped, a little breathless. All doing a poor job of masking just how her skin crawls, how her heart feels like a moth trapped under glass.

  Holger shakes her head. “Nah, this is fastest. It’ll get you on your way, then.”

  “How about the dog?” Petry asks.

  You leave my dog alone.

  “Take the dog too,” Holger says. “You can put Atlanta in my office and the dog…” She seems to think on it. “Break room downstairs, maybe. Give him a cookie or something.”

  Petry waves her on like he didn’t just have a showdown with her behind the Morton building. “Miss Burns, follow me, please.” Please. So polite for a psychopath.

  Atlanta looks to Detective Holger. Thinks to say something. Anything. Maybe just run. What if she tells them Petry was here? That he was a willing participant in all of this? That he threatened her? That she stole his gun and tossed it into the woods?

  Would they believe her?

  They’d take his word over hers.

  And saying any of that right now opens up a real bag of snakes. More snakes than she can kill right now.

  A thought strikes her: he can’t do anything to you. Not now. Not like this. Everybody will see him put you in that car. This is on the record. On the books. Holger knows.

  Holger looks at Atlanta expectantly. “You can go, Miss Burns. Unless there’s something else?”

  Atlanta wants to tell her everything else. All of it. But she doesn’t. Instead she pats her thigh to get Whitey’s attention and follows ten feet behind Officer Petry.

  The killer in a cop-suit, the monster in man-skin.

  He opens the door to a cruiser—his cruiser—and says nothing as he points toward it.

  It’s a little mini-prison, she knows. She’s seen movies and TV. Those doors close they only open for him. It’s a portable cage, a jail-on-wheels.

  Whitey hops in the back.

  Atlanta holds her breath—not by choice but because she can’t seem to let it out—and gets in too.

  * * *

  For a while the car just drives, humming along the back roads, occasionally rocking as one or two tires hop in and out of a bad pothole. Like before it’s all trees and barns and horses behind fences. The trees seem to sag and wilt. The paint on barns peels in long leprosy strips. All the horses look like the animals at the zoo on a hot day—tired, wasted, like they just want to lay down, roll over, and die. Sunlight comes through the trees, a bleach white light—not warm and comforting but empty and hot. The eye of Hell watching.

  Petry doesn’t say a word.

  Neither does she.

  Whitey doesn’t pant. He just stares forward, like his eyes are lasers burning holes in the back of Petry’s seat.

  The dog knows. Has a sense of the man’s maleficence.

  Atlanta feels trapped. Separating her from the front seat is a wire cage. Like she’s one of the dogs before the fight. Locked away in her crate until it’s time for something bad to happen.

  Comes a point when to head back to town, toward the station, Petry should stay straight on this road—Boxelder Road—but turns off instead onto Old Orchard Road. Not toward the town of Maker’s Bell in the valley but rather, onto a road that loops back up toward Grainger Hill. Toward the trailer parks and dead barns and shitty little ranch houses where grungy motorheads sell bad weed or crystal meth.

  That’s not good.

  She pulls out her phone. No bars.

  Whitey growls, real low.

  Finally, she says in a croaking voice: “Where are we going?”

  But Petry, he doesn’t answer. He just drives forward, eyes up front.

  Ahead, a dirt lot. He pulls into it, the tires conjuring up a plume of dust. Doesn’t turn the car off, but leaves it running, instead. Through the windshield Atlanta can see a burned-out house—a charred briquette that was once someone’s home and is now just a skeleton of black bones.

  Petry turns around. Faces her through the wire.

  “If you touch me,” she seethes with false bravado. But she can’t finish the words. She’s too scared.

  He says nothing in response. Instead he pulls out a phone—no, not a phone, but some kind of MP3 player. He’s already got it cued up to play what he needs. He thumbs a button.

  Sound fills the car. A conversation.

  First voice: “Something’s wrong with my son.”

  Second: “We’ve noticed that. Wondered if you’d come to us.”

  Two men. Atlanta recognizes both of them.

  “I worry that who he is… is who he is,” says the first man. Bill Coyne. Chris’ father. “That it’s something he can’t change, you know?”

  “He can change.” This one, Orly Erickson. “It’s a choice he’s made. Whether out of teenage rebellion or something else, I don’t know. I’m no psychologist. But I know that God did not make us this way. And I know that the Devil gives us choices and tempts us so that we choose poorly.”

  Bill: “I want something done.”

  Orly: “Are you asking me to do something about this?”

  Bill: “I… I don’t know.”

  Orly: “You are. Aren’t you.” A statement, not a question.

  Bill: “Yeah. Yeah. I guess I am.”

  Orly clears his throat, says, “I think we can get the boys on it. They got that program for troubled kids, kids who are law-breakers. Scared Straight, they call it. This is like that except far more literal. They’ll scare him straight, all right. Beat the faggoty feelings right out of him. Throw the Devil out the window and leave room for the goodness of God. We can do that, right, Petry?”

  A few moments of silence. Petry doesn’t speak on the recording—trademark silence. Probably just nodding.

  Orly, again: “It’ll cost you a little something. Not much. Since it’s for the cause and all.”

  Bill: “I can do that. I can pay. I’m happy to pay.”

  “Then thy will be done.” Orly laughs. Then the sound of a drawer opening. Glass against glass. Maybe a bottle pouring—glug glug glug—sharing a drink. “Hail victory.”

  Bill: “Hail victory.”

  Another clink of glass. A toast.

  Then the recording stops.

  Petry again says nothing. He just removes the MP3 player from
the cage.

  “I know all that already,” she says. She can barely keep from yelling. “You’re not telling me anything new.”

  “Oh, but I am,” Petry says. “I played that for him. So he could hear. I took him from his home. I drove him up to Gallows Hill, to the pear tree as it bloomed, and I gave him rope—already tied like it needed to be tied—and I played that recording so that Chris knew what his father had done.”