CHAPTER 5
I learned a couple more things about Grabowski that morning. Besides his unique taste in music, he loved dogs and had a stomach of steel. After leaving the morgue behind with its mutilated victim, he drove straight to a nearby drive-through and ordered two sausage, egg, and biscuit sandwiches for himself, and a side order of bacon for my dog. He looked my way as he unwrapped one of his sandwiches. “Sure you don’t want one?”
Cheese oozed over the edge of the biscuit like some viscous fluid as he bit into it. I looked away and stared out my window. A guy across the street was on standby with a Baggie in hand while his dog took a dump in the neighbor’s yard. “Thanks. But I’m not hungry.” Wilco sat up and whimpered, his nose twitching.
Grabowski tossed him a piece of bacon and swiped his fingers over a napkin. “Pregnant.”
“Yeah. I can’t believe it.”
“Why? She was seventeen. Almost eighteen. Engaged.”
“It’s just not common in our culture.”
“Teen pregnancy is common in every culture.”
“Not ours.” Except there is me—the child of an unwed teen mother.
He took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Explain that.”
“There’s very little mixing between Pavee girls and boys before marriage. People don’t believe that. They think we’re all . . .”
“All what?”
“Uh . . . people think that we live immorally. But that’s not true. They just don’t understand our ways. Especially how our young women dress.”
“And how’s that?”
“Heavy makeup, low-cut tops, tight jeans, high heels . . . provocatively, I guess. I don’t know why. It’s just for show. Fashion. It has nothing to do with sexuality.” Except when others made it that way. Little Birdie Rourke came to mind, Brigid was her birth name, but we all called her Birdie, which fit her dainty features and her helium-high laugh, which floated above the jukebox music that night. Talk of boys and makeup and movies, bites of ice cream, gooey and sweet, just the girls out having fun. No one noticed the man peeling off looks at us, greasy and hairy with pit stains and brown teeth. He’d singled out Birdie, cornered her in the back hall and felt her up. “She and that short skirt of hers were beggin’ for it,” he told the cop later after Birdie rushed out from the hall, her arms wrapped around herself, crying. We called the police. The cop gave poor Birdie the once-over, mumbled something about gypsies, and let the guy off the hook.
My phone rang. It was Pusser. “You still with Grabowski?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. A call came in on the Meath kid. Someone spotted his truck heading up Rich Mountain Road. I’m heading up there now with a couple units.”
“I want to be there.” I knew how the authorities could treat a Traveller as the victim—ask Birdie about that. A Traveller being hunted down by the settled law might not get a fair shake, either.
“Figured you would. But let’s bring this one in with both eyeballs intact.”
* * *
Sheriff Pusser tracked Nevan’s truck to Jack’s, a honky-tonk located off Rich Mountain Road. We caught up to the sheriff in the nearly full parking lot. He was standing at the back of his Tahoe, hands jammed in his trousers, head down and mouth working over a toothpick. Grabowski pulled up next to him and lowered his window.
Pusser leaned in. “ ’Bout time you got here. I was wondering if maybe this piece of crap you’re driving couldn’t make it up this road.”
“Hey, FBI isn’t as privileged as you county boys. We’re just damn happy they give us something to drive.”
“I feel for you, buddy.”
“Yeah. I bet.” Grabowski nodded toward Jack’s, which was nothing more than a giant metal barn with a wood façade made to look like an old shanty. A seven-foot statue of an ax-wielding lumberjack, who looked, weirdly enough, like my uncle Paddy, guarded the front entrance. “What’s the deal here? Why’s this place so busy? It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
Pusser yanked the toothpick from his mouth and tossed it onto the ground. “Hard telling. Used to be a decent place when the lumber mill down the road was still up and runnin’, but it shut down a couple years back. Now it’s a dive. Attracts all sorts of trash. I make a couple runs a month out here.”
I’d answered a few calls at Jack’s, too. Never a pleasant experience. And one I wouldn’t make without plenty of backup. The patrons weren’t the cop-loving type. Not to mention being drunk, doped, or just mean by nature.
Pusser motioned to his back hatch. “I’ve got a couple extra vests in the back. Why don’t you two park and get suited up.”
As I strapped on body armor, Pusser explained his strategy. “Thought maybe we could do this quiet-like. We’ll go in together, but you do the talking, since you know him.” He was looking at me. “See if you can convince him to come outside and talk to us. I looked at my dog’s face smashed against the Crown Vic’s back window. Pusser and I had an understanding. Wilco was under my command; what he did, what he was subjected to, was my call. Not Pusser’s. Not anyone else’s. Illegal activities at Jack’s ran the gamut: petty drug deals, prostitution, illegal gambling. You name it, it happens at Jack’s. I’d prefer to have my dog with me, but taking in a dog with a two-hundred-pound bite force wasn’t probably what Pusser had in mind when he’d said “quiet-like.”
For now, Wilco would have to stay in the vehicle. I slipped him a couple treats, cracked a window, and filled a portable bowl with bottled water—two things I always carried for my dog.
Pusser communicated back and forth on his radio for a couple minutes, then turned back to Grabowski and me. “Patrol’s in place down the road in case he makes a run for it. Y’all ready?”
I zipped my jacket over the vest and looked at Grabowski. He shot me a thumbs-up. “Yup. Let’s go.”
Inside, I blinked against the darkness and heavy, wafting smoke. Heads turned, patrons giving us a once-over before turning back to their drinks. Nevan wasn’t around. But the number of customers came nowhere close to matching the number of vehicles parked in the lot. Whatever was going on here was happening in the back room.
The bartender had one eye on us and was talking rapidly into his cell phone. I grabbed Pusser’s arm and nodded toward a small brown door in the back. Grabowski picked up on my signal and headed that way. I fell in step behind him. It took all of three seconds for us to cross through the room and reach the door, the bartender’s eyes following our every move. I kicked myself. Nothing about this was going to go down quiet-like. I should’ve brought my dog.
The door was closed. Pusser tried the knob. It turned. I looked over my shoulder at the bartender, but he was already gone. Others were making a run for it, too.
“Something big is going down here,” Grabowski said as he drew his weapon. I did the same.
Pusser drew his own gun and pounded on the door with the heel of that hand. “Sheriff’s department. Open up!” He pushed the door. It banged open. We proceeded inside, weapons out. The sounds hit me instantly: shouting, roosters crowing, metal cages rattling, splitting wood. Sunlight streamed through a boarded window and illuminated the haze of cigarette and marijuana smoke drifting over a pit in the center of the room. A pile of bloody feathers lay heaped in middle.
Grabowski pushed around me. “Cockfight!”
A jumble of maybe two dozen men scattered like scared rabbits. A man to my right ran for the door, dollar bills falling from his shirt. Pusser reached out and clotheslined him across the neck. He tumbled like a felled tree. Pusser straddled him and slapped on cuffs.
Grabowski nudged me. “You see Meath?”
I scanned the crowd. “No. He’s not here. Maybe he’s already run for it.”
Several officers burst through the back door with their weapons drawn. The runners stopped and raised their hands, one of them dropping a black case. Several wicked-looking metal spurs spilled onto the dirt floor.
I looked from the cruel instruments to the corner of
the room, where a pile of chicken carcasses lay, bloody bird on top of bloody bird, their mangled bodies twisted together like a heaping bowl of sauce-covered spaghetti noodles. I quickly looked away. “This is sick stuff.”
Pusser let out a string of cusswords and started barking out orders. The runners were rounded up and plopped on the ground, their backs to the wall, hands drawn and cuffed behind them. Nevan wasn’t one of them. Pusser addressed the group, all men, in boots and jeans, a few with dollars sticking out of their plaid shirt pockets like rural handkerchiefs. “We’re looking for Nevan Meath.”
No one moved. As far as I could tell, no one reacted at all.
Grabowski spoke up. “Come on, people. We know he was here. His truck’s here. The black Silverado, the nice one with the chrome accents.”
A head bobbed up, then quickly went down again.
I walked over to the guy, a scrawny young man with stringy hair hanging in his face. “You know something about the Silverado?”
No answer. Pusser and Grabowski joined me. Pusser snatched the guy by the arm and yanked him up. The guy glared at us, defiance and dirt creasing his brow. “We asked you a question. What’s your name, boy?”
“Smith.”
Pusser gritted his teeth. “Funny, wiseass.”
Grabowski joined in. “Yeah. I’m laughing so hard I might just pee myself.”
Pusser shook the guy. “The black Silverado. Where’s the owner?”
The guy looked at Pusser and smirked. “You’re looking at him. It’s mine. I bought it last night.” He rolled his eyes my way and gave me an up-and-down. “You like it, baby? I’d be happy to show it to you. We could go ridin’ together.”
Pusser shook him again. Harder. “Who’d you buy it from, Romeo?”
“Hey, man. Take it easy.”
“Answer me.”
“Some crazy kid offered me a straight trade for my 1997 Bonneville. Couldn’t figure it out. Thought the kid was stupid to trade. Then I come to find out it’s got an oil leak. Oil’s practically pourin’ out of that engine. Lucky it didn’t blow on me. I’m going to have to pile a shitload of money into fixin’ it.” He gave me a dirty up-and-down. “Them leather seats it’s got might be worth it, though. Don’t ya think, baby?” He licked his cracked lips. Gross.
Pusser pushed the guy down and stepped back, rolling his neck a few times. “We’ve been looking for the wrong vehicle. Meath could be anywhere by now.” He surveyed the makeshift arena. “This is a screwed-up mess. What a waste of time.”
I looked around. “Maybe not. There may be something . . .”
Pusser followed my gaze to the pile of rooster carcasses. “Those chickens we saw hanging from the trees?”
I shrugged. “They had to come from somewhere.”
Grabowski leaned over Smith, his lanky form shadowing the kid. “Who’s the cock supplier?”
“I don’t know nothing about that. I just come to bet.”
We’d be hearing the same story all afternoon. Running a cockfight was a felony. Betting at one made you a spectator, a misdemeanor at best. Most of these guys would get slapped on the wrist and sent home.
Pusser waved over another officer. “Anyone searched you yet, Smith?”
The guy deflated as the officer pulled him back up, then pushed him into a prone position against the wall and rummaged a gloved hand through his jean pockets. He handed Pusser a wallet. Pusser opened it up and extracted the guy’s driver’s license. “Well, what do ya know? His name really is Smith.” The officer also passed back a half-smoked joint and a small clear tube of whitish powder. Pusser squinted at it. “What’s this? A little crank?” Marijuana was not that big a deal, but any form of meth could land this guy in big trouble.
“What? You ain’t going to bust me over that, are you? It’s just recreational.”
Pusser narrowed his eyes. “Depends on whether or not you know who supplied these birds?”
Smith’s gaze skittered and he bit his lip. “Man. I don’t know his name. He’s down in Jefferson County. Got a big spread down there. Raises gamecocks and other birds. Most of these birds come from down in those parts, one way or another.”
Pusser looked at Grabowski. “Jefferson County’s out of my jurisdiction.”
“Not mine, though.” Grabowski’s long arm grabbed the guy by the sleeve. He towered over the kid, peered into his face, his eyes glistening, looking like a praying mantis about to eat its prey. “Seems like this is your lucky day, Smith. You’re going to get to take a ride with one of us, after all.”
CHAPTER 6
We’d always had the same loopy pile shag carpet, brown with gold flecks woven throughout. When I was eight, I brought a stray kitten home, an orange fluffball with green eyes. Li’l Tom I called him and dressed him in doll clothes and tucked him next to me every night with a lullaby and kiss. But Li’l Tom took to peeing in the corner behind Gramps’ chair. Then one day Li’l Tom was gone. “Damn male cats don’t stick around,” Gramps told me. But I’d secretly wakened early that morning to the soft sound of Gramps’ footsteps by my bed, and a minute later, watched through my window as he trudged toward the darkened woods with Li’l Tom tucked under his arm. I wondered why he’d want to take Li’l Tom for a walk so early in the morning, but then, right before he disappeared into the trees, fingers of sunlight reached over the horizon and glistened off the cold steel of the hatchet tucked in his back waistband.
I never brought another stray home after that. But I’d thought of my sweet kitten from time to time as I cared for Gramps in his final urine-sopped-sheets and poopy-butt-crack days. Lucky for Gramps, I gave him more compassion than he’d given Li’l Tom.
I shed my boots and parka at the door and wiped Wilco’s paws with a rag I kept in the coat closet. No muddy paw prints tracking up this thirty-year-old shag. I’d learned my lesson.
Gran greeted me from the kitchen. “I’ve fixed roasted chicken,” she said. “Your favorite.”
My stomach soured. Yet one more chicken thrown in the mix. I need a drink. I pulled a bottle from the back of the cupboard. Gran turned from the sink and shot me a look. “Early for that, don’t you think?”
“It’s been a long day already.”
She muttered something and hefted the roasting pan from the oven. I avoided looking at it, lowering my gaze to Wilco, who had curled at her feet in front of the still-warm oven. Gran rubbed her stocking-covered foot down his back—he nestled even closer—as she busied herself spooning flour into a jar to make thickener for the gravy. A comforting warmth washed over me. My fondest memories were of Gran in the kitchen. She was happiest when nurturing her family. But her hands, freckled and veined, now fumbled as she tried to hold the jar under the faucet for just-enough water. And her shoulders, burdened with grief and guilt, seemed to bear the weight of the world.
This year had taken its toll on her: my mother’s murder, Gramps’ illness and death, and . . . Dublin Costello. Dublin. Simply missing according to the police, but long dead, at the hands of my own grandmother, his trailer burned to the ground and his body disposed of somewhere in the surrounding woods. His name was never spoken in our home, yet loomed over us like an ever-present dark cloud, threatening to unleash a fury of storms that would forever ruin our lives. That threat weighed heavily on both of us.
Gran turned to our main course. She stabbed the browned breast of the chicken with a fork, pale juices running freely. Her knife grated across the crisp skin with a snapping sound and then she heaped the still-steaming flesh on a plate. Visions of bloody feathers, lifeless carcasses, withered combs, and eyes glazed over with death . . . all came rushing back at once. I gulped at my whiskey, the hot liquid pooling with the acid churning in my gut. “No chicken for me tonight, Gran. Just bread and vegetables.”
“No appetite?”
“Just a rough day at work.” I pulled my eyes from the platter and grabbed Wilco’s bowl, filled it with kibble to set on the floor.
She frowned. “Knew this job would be
too much.”
“I love what I’m doing, Gran.” I took another sip and closed my eyes, willing my muscles to unknot and my stomach to stop rolling.
“Don’t see how you can like doing that job.”
“It’s what I do. What I’m trained for. Both Wilco and me. What? Would you have me going back to cleaning toilets at the Sleep Sleazy?”
She frowned at my use of the local slang for our town’s only motel, the Sleep Easy. “It was a respectable job.”
“So is this.”
She plunked down at the table and crossed herself for a prayer, her brows furrowing in concentration. Less, I was sure, in thanksgiving for another meal, and more in petition for my salvation from what she’d deemed as an unholy foray into the settled world.
I waited until she finished. “Did you stop in on Ona today?”
Her shoulders shriveled even more.
“What is it, Gran?”
“I went to see her. To pay my respects. But she refused to let me inside.” Gran pushed food around her plate, but didn’t take a bite. Between the two of us, tonight’s dinner was going to waste.
“Because of Eddie?”
She put down her fork. “That boy will never be right again. He’s lost sight in one of his eyes.”
“He ran from us, Gran. When we found him . . . well, we did everything we could.”
“How’s he going to work half blind like that? And Ona, widowed with no one but her son to support her. And her only daughter . . .”
“That’s what we’re trying to do. To find her daughter’s killer. Bring justice to Maura.”
“Eddie had nothin’ to do with that. He’s her twin. They’ve always been close.”
“I don’t think he had anything to do with it, Gran.” I regretted the words right away. I knew better than to discuss my work with her. Especially a case that involved our people.
“Why’d you hunt him down like a rabid dog, then?”
“We didn’t. We’d gone to question Nevan Meath, and someone ran from their camper. We thought it was Nevan, but it turned out to be Eddie.”
Fractured Truth Page 4
