Longnecks & Twisted Hearts (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 3)

by George Wier

  “After a few employee deaths during early exploration, it became sort of company policy to keep it under our hats.

  “But then along came Terry Throckmorton, at that time a junior member of the Board of Directors. Instead of a hole in the earth that swallowed people, he saw dollar signs.

  “And that’s when the core rods started coming in.

  *****

  When Mike said the name “Terry Throckmorton”, I got another one of those long chills that physically shook me. I don’t think he noticed, as it was his fourth or fifth beer. Who was counting? I wasn’t. I was sipping my third. I think.

  Mike Fields was done talking. The three of us trundled back into the house, compelled by the growing dark and the over-powering smell of chicken frying. I was hungry. Also, I wanted Mary Jo’s company, her smile and her gentle nature.

  We all sat down at the kitchen table and ate. About halfway through dinner, when there was only the sound of forks on plates and men gobbling good home-cooked food, Mary Jo broke down into a fit of crying. Freddie tried his hand at consoling her — which was one of the oddest quirks of human nature I believe I’ve ever witnessed — but she wasn’t having any of it. She got up and headed for her bedroom and shut the door. I heard the latch click into place.

  Mike Fields just kept looking down at his plate. From that I gathered he was the kind of guy who couldn’t handle emotional outbursts or awkward social situations. I’d begun to feel a grudging respect for the man, and I felt a little embarrassed for him.

  When we finished dinner I got up and washed my dish and my glass and put them in the dish drain. I went back to Mary Jo’s door.

  “Mary Jo,” I said quietly, and tapped on her door with a knuckle.

  “Bill?”

  “Yeah. We gotta go, Hon,” I told her.

  “Where?”

  “To see Brad,” I told her. “Bring your jacket.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  While there may be a governmental entity locally referred to as the coroner’s office, in practice it was little more than a sterile, cold, and badly lit room in the bowels of a local hospital.

  It was just the two of us. I understood Mike Fields’ demurral to come with us, but still, I would have felt a little better about going in with the big man at my back.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” I asked Mary Jo. I knew I didn’t. The picture I had conjured in my head was bad enough, thanks to enough movies by George Romero and Stephen Spielberg.

  “I’ll be fine, Bill,” she said. A good liar, that Mary Jo.

  A young fellow, no more than about twenty-eight and wearing garish green and orange scrubs, got up from a desk across the cold room and walked towards us.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “This is Mary Jo Fisher. Her husband is Brad Fisher. Was, that is. She’s here to see the body.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Come on.” He wore a relaxed attitude and a jovial smirk like he wore his scrubs — too much and out-of-place.

  “Thank you,” Mary Jo said.

  We followed him to a bank of drawers and without checking to make sure it was the right one, he pulled on a handle low to the floor.

  *****

  Brad’s body bore not so much as a mark. He could have been merely asleep, had it not been for his bluish and steely-gray pallor.

  Beside me I heard Mary Jo’s sharp intake of breath.

  “Mary Jo?” I asked.

  “Why is he dead, Bill? He looks fine.”

  “Mary Jo,” I said. “Mary Jo. This is just the husk. Brad’s gone. I don’t know why.”

  It happened then. The floodgates opened. The dam burst. She was on her knees, her body thrown across his.

  I could make out only a few words of what she said between the wracking sobs: “Cold. So cold... my Brad.”

  I looked at the intern — doctor, whatever the hell he was. He rolled his eyes at the ceiling, and then met my gaze.

  I frowned at him. It was so much nicer than putting his lights out, at least for him.

  “You got a report?” I asked him. “Any kind of report?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “There was no autopsy. Just the coroner’s report.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “He had all the outward signs of high voltage. You know, frizzed hair, muscular contraction. This guy was jolted.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let me see a copy.”

  I noticed he was distracted by Mary Jo’s hovering over Brad’s body. She stroked his brow with her fingertips and whispered something to him.

  “Sure,” he said, finally, then: “Can you make her stop that?”

  I gave him a hard stare for a moment, and he got the communi-cation. He held up his hands: fine, sorry.

  I knelt beside Mary Jo.

  “Mary Jo,” I whispered. “Time to go.” But my eyes were on Brad’s face.

  Old friend, I thought, why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you let her call me?

  Brad said not a word, and I suppose that was fitting. He rarely had in life.

  “Mary Jo?” I pressed, gently.

  “Okay, Bill. I’ll be all right,” she said, quietly.

  “I know.”

  I helped her to her feet. She opened her small purse, removed a tiny flower and placed it on his bare chest. The bud of a passion flower. I wondered what the next person along to open Brad’s drawer would think. To hell with it.

  I reached down and pushed gently on the drawer, and Brad rolled slowly back into the darkness.

  “Goodbye,” I whispered to him.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here, Bill,” Mary Jo whispered to me.

  *****

  We left the hospital, two page report in hand, and wandered out into the parking lot. Overhead thick clouds were rolling in, piling up on top of each other. I could smell the rain before the first drop fell.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Core rods, Mike had said.

  The words moved around inside my head like a steel ball in a pinball machine.

  “Where are we going, Bill?” Mary Jo asked. “This isn’t the way home.”

  “To see somebody,” I said.

  The traffic was nervous with the anticipation of the impending downpour. A couple of thick drops thocked against my windshield.

  “Who?”

  “One of the guys Brad worked with. The token black guy.”

  “That would be Jones,” she said. “You know where he lives?”

  “Sort of. You got a first name?”

  “Irvin, I think. Something like that. Although I think he goes by some nickname.” Mary Jo took a look around her at where we were going. “We going to the plant?”

  “I hope not, but maybe. Today’s a Wednesday. He could be at work, but it’s after hours. Unless, that is, he works second shift.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Bill?” she asked as I pulled in behind a large concrete truck at the next red light. We’d be turning due east for awhile, then south.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because...”

  “Spit it out, Mary Jo,” I said.

  “Because every since Brad died, I’ve been feeling like I’m being watched. Just... every moment. That’s all.”

  There was silence in the car for a moment. I was expecting her to ask me if I had a sense that Brad was hanging out close by, checking things out. Instead Mary Jo lapsed into silence.

  “Okay,” I said.

  *****

  The rain came down in sheets.

  Along the highway a mile past the power plant entrance, there was a row of dingy houses. These were working people, I could tell right off. Through the rain I could make out old pickup trucks that had seen better days, rusted A-frames for hoisting engine blocks, blue tarpaulins covering God knows what-all, and cast-off toys everywhere.

  I pulled into the first driveway.

  “Wait here, Mary Jo,” I said. And stay dry.”

  I reached under my seat for my umbrella, and
not finding it realized that I had left it at my office. Great.

  “You’re gonna get soaked, Bill,” she said when I came away with nothing.

  “Yeah. Be right back.”

  I was on the front porch within a few seconds, but in that brief space I managed to get completely drenched. Water squished in my shoes.

  The doorbell hung from the wall on twisted wire. It looked dead.

  I knocked.

  The front door opened and I heard the babble of children’s voices in the background and a loud television — cartoons. I could smell boiling cabbage.

  “Yes?” the woman asked.

  She was very pretty but her face was implacably bored — a mid-thirty-ish looker with a light movie star complexion; she was the mother of all those voices inside.

  “I’m looking for the Jones family. Do they live close by?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  I didn’t have to think about it. People are usually able to spot a lie from a mile away, and truth is usually best, if uncomfortable.

  “Ma’am, my name is Bill Travis. I’m looking for the Mr. Jones who works at the power plant. His foreman, Brad Fisher, was killed, and I was Brad’s best friend.”

  I waited.

  She looked past me, out into the rain, then fixed her eyes on me, appraising.

  “Come in. I’m Dorothy Jones. My husband is home sick today.” She pushed on the screen door.

  I turned toward the car and tried to give Mary Jo the thumbs up, but I doubted she could see me through the pouring rain.

  The house was clean but for the toys scattered everywhere. On the couch there was a bored teen-aged boy of about fourteen, and on the floor three kids dismissed me with a glance and returned to watching some strange Japanese anime cartoon I’d never seen before.

  “Come on back to the kitchen, Mr. Travis,” Dorothy Jones said. “You can’t hear yourself think in here.”

  “Sandy!” Dorothy called out from the hallway to the kitchen, toward the rear of the house.

  “What?”

  “You got company.”

  “I’m sick, Dotty.”

  “You’re not too sick to sit and talk,” she replied.

  The kitchen was clean. On the stove there was a pot of black-eyed peas just starting to boil over and the cabbage pot with its lid starting to do a little dance.

  “Damn,” Dotty said. “Have a seat, Mr. Travis. Sandy’s gotta get his shirt on. You can’t leave food cooking for two minutes.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Iced tea?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Dotty Jones turned the fire down low on the peas, shifted the lid on the cabbage to let the steam blow off, and turned to the refrigerator and opened it.

  “You’re soaked, Bill Travis,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I’ll get you a towel.”

  She poured a glass of tea and set it before me and walked out of the kitchen to return with a clean towel.

  “You coming, Sandy?” she called out loudly.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming,” the voice was tired, hoarse, and resigned, all at once.

  She draped the towel over my shoulders and I used it to wipe my face.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Fiddlesticks,” she said.

  Sandy Jones emerged into the kitchen, buttoning the last two buttons of his shirt as he came. He was a tall man with a bit of graying grizzle in his sideburns.

  I started to stand, but he held up a long-fingered hand.

  “Keep your seat, stranger. We don’t stand on ceremony around here. You selling life insurance?”

  I laughed. “It would be easier if I was,” I said.

  “What are you selling, then?”

  “He ain’t selling nothing,” Dorothy Jones said. “This is Bill Travis, Brad Fisher’s best friend.”

  I watched his face as she said it, and it sagged all of an inch.

  “What you want?” he asked me.

  “Sit down, Sandy,” Dotty said. “Be kind. His best friend just died.”

  Sandy Jones sat down across from me.

  “You’re wet,” he said.

  “Yeah.” I did the best I could with the towel and launched into the questions before Sandy Jones had a chance to think of what he was going to say.

  “Can you tell me about core rods and the hole and how Brad Fisher died? And why?”

  “Shit,” he said. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” I said.

  “Look Mister...”

  “Bill,” I said, maintaining a thin smile.

  “Bill. Fine. Look... I’ve got a family to look after. I have to report to a parole officer once a week who doesn’t give a shit about me or my family. I can’t get caught up in anything.”

  “Sure,” I said. “If you are able, I’d like to know those three things, and then I’ll disappear back into the rain.”

  “Tell him, Sandy,” his wife said, hot pot of steaming cabbage in hand. “You can’t even sleep right. You’ve got to tell somebody. This fellow is your chance.”

  “He ain’t my chance if I lose my job.”

  “If you lose that damned job I’ll dance with bells on my toes. You’re a hard worker. There’s always a job for you, and maybe a job where somebody will appreciate you.”

  Sandy Jones signed, loudly.

  And then he told me.

  *****

  “Them things are scattered all over the place, and they’ll kill you if you get too close or stay too long. Core rods, you know. It’s the radiation. I was there when the first ones came through and I’ve seen the trucks come and go. I even know the name of the driver. They’re in the hole, deep down there. They have them placed in bundles of no more than five at a time. I think one of them is enough to kill a man. One is dangerous. Five? Don’t get me started. I’ve done some thinking on it. What can they do with those old rods that come from the nuke plants? It’s about money, that’s all. And the hole is just a little cave that leads down to a big cavern. There’s a whole series of those caverns. I spent a whole weekend down there one time, and found some stuff that shouldn’t have been there.”

  “What kind of stuff, Sandy?” I asked.

  “A lot of Indian pottery, arrowheads and stuff. Skeletons too. Then there’s the chests and the diary.”

  “What diary?”

  “It’s in French. I don’t know French.”

  “You got it here?”

  “Yeah. I’ll show it to you. Mr. Travis, you believe in ghosts?”

  I shivered, and not from my dampened condition. It was the second time that day I’d heard that question.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me, Sandy.”

  “‘Cause one of those chests is haunted.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I tried to piece together as much of the journal as I could, there in Sandy and Dorothy Jones’ living room. The book was written in several hands, beginning with the original owner, Louis du Orly. That name I could make out, but little of the remainder of it. My French was not good.

  I handed the journal back to Sandy Jones and got up and stretched my legs. I nodded to Dorothy Jones and headed for the front door.

  “Mr. Travis,” Sandy said. “Maybe you should hold onto this. I’ve got no real use for it.” He handed the journal back to me.

  We stepped outside.

  “Well, if it’s all right with you,” I said. “How about I make a copy of it and return the original to you?”

  The rain had slackened to a drizzle once again.

  “That’s fine. Whatever. Mr. Travis, I think you should see that hole.”

  “Call me Bill,” I said. “I do want to see that hole. But I’ve got a woman in the car who needs to get home. I’m not sure of her safety at this point.”

  “Safest place for her would be here with my wife,” he said, and I met his searching gaze.
<
br />   It felt right. There were things going on that I had no idea about. And I still hadn’t seen that investigator that Mary Jo had told me about. Mike Fields was probably on the job just now at the power plant up the road. I was unsure how safe Mary Jo would be at home without me around. Not until a few things were settled.

  “Sandy,” I said. “How safe is that hole? What I mean is, I’ve got a wife of my own at home with a baby coming, and she’ll be mad as hell if I come home in a pine box.

  “I know where all the booby traps are, Bill,” he said.

  I looked toward the car. Mary Jo yawned, caught sight of me, then gave a little bored wave.

  “When do you want to do this?” I asked him.

  “It’s right now or not at all,” he said.

  “Why ‘not at all’?”

  “Because, I’m supposed to be home sick. I’ve got to work tomorrow. After that, the only chance is the weekend, and that place is closed off tighter than a four by four shoved up a cow’s ass.”

  “That’s pretty tight, Sandy,” I said.

  *****

  Mary Jo was delighted at the prospect of staying with Dotty Jones and her kids while Sandy was to “show me a few things.”

  “You two be careful,” Dotty Jones called out through the screen door as we stepped into the drizzle.

  I turned back to her. “Mrs. Jones. I’m never careful. What I am, though, is thorough.”

  “Good enough,” she said.