by Harvey Click
She turned onto Vine Street and drove to the big blue house that used to be the Kirby Funeral Home. Now it had a big expensive-looking sign in the front yard:
RICHARD DILKENS
CHIEF OF POLICE
She parked in the newly-asphalted lot that once had been used by mourners and hearses. A sign pointed her to a locked steel door at the side. She rang the doorbell several times, and finally a voice from a speaker above the doorbell button said, “Who’s there?”
“Amy Jackson. I want—”
A buzzer buzzed, and she turned the doorknob and entered. All the doors off the foyer were shut except the first one on her right, and she looked into what used to be a viewing room and saw Dick Dilkens staring at her from behind a big desk. He was fatter and balder than he used to be but otherwise looked the same, round face with bulging brown pig-eyes and a tiny mouth always set in a wet leering smirk.
“Amy Jackson,” he said. “Ain’t seen you ‘round here for a coon’s age and a half.”
“My brother’s missing,” she said. “I came to find him.”
“How do you know he’s missing?”
“He hasn’t answered my phone calls for two weeks.”
“Don’t mean much of nothing, does it? Maybe his phone’s broke.”
“I went to his house last night. It’s obvious he hasn’t been there for a while.”
“Just a minute here. You mean you went inside his house? How’d you get in there?”
“I have a key.”
“That sounds like illegal entry, ‘less he invited you to come in.”
“The house is half mine. When our parents died everything went to both of us equally. There wasn’t much except the house and property, and since I wasn’t living here I told Billy it could be his place until we decide to sell it.”
“I see. Well, that’s convenient ‘cause it means you can give me permission to search the place. You wanna put that in writing so it’s all nice and proper?”
She thought about the marijuana on the coffee table and possibly some harder stuff hidden somewhere. “No,” she said. “I’ll have another look around the place myself.”
He smirked a bit harder and said, “Don’t make two goddamns worth a difference if you give me permission or you don’t. I can get me a warrant anytime I want. Tell me something, Miss Jackson, do you have any notion how Billy’s been making his money out there?”
“No.”
“He’s been cooking up meth, that’s how. Everybody in town knows it, and I got enough dirt on him to put him away till hell freezes over. He’s got a shed hid somewhere back in them woods where he cooks it up, then he sells it by the truckload to some shit-balls who haul it up north and sell it in the big cities. Now, if Billy really is gone it’s one a two things. Most likely he blowed himself up in that cooking shed, and so I’m gonna go out there and have a look at them woods. Otherwise some shit-ball he was selling his dope to popped a cap in his ass. Or else maybe he run off somewhere trying to keep from getting his ass shot off, and he don’t even want his little sis to know where he is. Now, which one a them possibilities do you prefer?”
“I want to file a missing person report.”
Dick Dilkens smirked harder and looked through his desk drawers until he found a form. He slid it across the desk and said, “Okay Miss Jackson, you go ahead and fill out this here form and be sure to put down your address and phone number nice and proper so I can know how to get ahold of you. Then you get in your car and go straight back to wherever you come from. These little towns ain’t like they useta be. Now they’re full a dopers and pillbillies, and if they see you poking your nose in things they’re gonna fill you so full a lead the pallbearers won’t even be able to lift your carcass. So I’ll give this case my full attention, and I’ll notify you just as soon as I find out what happened, and in the meantime you get yourself on outta here before noon. Is that a deal?”
She grabbed a ballpoint pen from his desk and glanced around in the room. There were a few chairs but nothing with a surface she could write on.
“Can I have a clipboard or something to write on?” she asked.
“Nope, you’re just gonna haveta stand right here and do it at my desk. Then you get in your car and get on outta here just like I said. Do we have a deal or not?”
She leaned over and started filling it out. She was more than halfway through when she glanced up and saw that Dilkens was staring at her breasts beneath the loose blouse. She snatched up the form, and as she was leaving she heard him say, “Hey, gimme back my ballpoint pen!”
When she got to her car she folded up the form, wondering if she should finish filling it out or not bother. As she was shoving it into her blouse pocket she noticed that there was another folded piece of paper already in there. She unfolded it and stared at some capital letters written in pencil: MMSEAOEEETCOEACPENTTRLN.
Amy immediately recognized the code that she and Marci had used when they passed notes in high school. It was Amy’s own invention, simple to use but clever enough that it fooled any teachers who intercepted their notes, and it probably would have fooled Buddy too if he had found it. She counted the letters, divided the number by four to know how many letters to put in each row, and then used Dickhead Dilkens’ pen to write them out one below the other in four rows:
MEET
MEAT
SECR
ETPL
ACEN
OON
Meet me at Secret Place noon.
Chapter 3
It was only 9:40, and Amy had plenty of time to return to Billy’s house for a second look before meeting Marci at noon, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead she drove slowly along every street of the little town, looking at the boarded-up houses with weeds in front of them and some other houses nicely painted with expensive cars in front of them. A few people were out and they all stared at her with suspicion or even open hostility as she drove by. Some of them looked emaciated, as if they spent their lives fasting, and all of them seemed to have strange, hungry eyes, as if their minds were half gone and the other half wasn’t working very well.
She drove south on Birch to the intersection of Main and turned left, heading away from the tiny downtown. Blackwood soon petered out with a few ramshackle vacant houses, and Main Street became Phillips Road. About a mile later a big one-story brick building appeared on her right, the old Howard Phillips factory. It had shut its doors back when she was fifteen, and she expected it to be falling into ruin now, but in fact it seemed to be in good repair, though the windows were covered with what looked like steel plates. A few new-looking cars were parked in the front lot, all of them gray.
The factory had once provided a decent living for most of the townspeople, especially after the coal mine closed. In the early twentieth century, Howard Phillips had grown quite wealthy from the soaps, shampoos, shaving creams, household cleansers, and dubious health elixirs that had been manufactured here and sold door-to-door all over the country. But by the twenty-first century Howard Phillips products were hopelessly outdated, and the founder’s descendants let the company go bankrupt.
About an eighth of a mile past the factory the old Phillips mansion sat well off the road, half hidden by trees. The sprawling two-story brick Edwardian house, with its red-tiled roof and long rows of stone-corniced windows, had been vacant ever since the factory went under because nobody in town could afford to buy it or maintain it. But it was vacant no longer—eight or ten cars were parked in the U-shaped driveway, most of them SUVs and all of them new and gray.
Beyond the mansion there were few houses on the narrow, windy road, just an unpainted shack or a dilapidated house trailer resting on cinder blocks every mile or so, but she kept driving anyway. Despite the impoverished shacks, the countryside was pretty if you ignored the old refrigerators and other debris discarded in the hollows. Nestled between heavily wooded hills were a few tobacco fields and the occasional rolling pasture with cattle grazing. The air seemed fresher
out here, no longer tainted with whatever grim sickness infected Blackwood, and she wished that she could keep driving until she reached some calm place in her heart where Billy’s disappearance would no longer matter.
But it did matter, and she eventually pulled into a driveway and turned around. She was feeling hungry—Buddy had thrown her out before she’d had a chance to finish her breakfast—and she wondered if Shawn’s Saloon still served food. Years ago the hamburgers there had been pretty good.
As she approached the Howard Phillips mansion she saw four men stepping out of the front door, all of them dressed in gray, and they stopped to stare at her as she drove past.
She parked in the narrow parking lot shared by Shawn’s Saloon and the barbershop just west of it. There was a hot, sticky silence when she entered, no jukebox music or conversation, though several men were seated at tables and two more at the bar.
They all stared at her with no hint of welcome, and she recognized two of them, but just barely. Jerry Jefferson had been her classmate from kindergarten through grade twelve, but now he looked twenty years older than he should. He had the hollowed-out look and emotionless eyes of a junkie, and in fact she could see track marks and bruises on his skinny arm as he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
Mack Riley, the man sitting across the table from him, was a couple years younger but didn’t look it. He had been a boozer even in high school, and he looked as if he hadn’t stopped drinking for more than an hour or two ever since. When he was done staring at her, he emptied what looked like a glass of whiskey and chased it with a gulp of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
She turned her back on them and sat at the bar. The bartender looked up from the glasses he was washing, strolled over, and quietly said, “Amy Jackson.”
It was Shane Malone, Shawn’s son.
“It’s still Jackson, isn’t it?” he asked. “Or did you get married?”
“It’s still Jackson,” she said. “I’m surprised to see you here, Shane. I mean, I remember you went off to college, so I thought…”
He smiled and said, “You thought maybe I’d amount to something, huh? Well, my father died a couple years ago and I inherited the place, so I thought it would be nice to run my own business for a change instead of being run around by everyone else. I’m surprised to see you back here too.”
“My brother has disappeared,” she said. “Have you seen him?”
“Billy? No, he usually stops in here a couple three times a week, but I haven’t seen him for a little while.”
“How long?”
He shrugged and said, “I don’t know, maybe a couple weeks or so.”
“You haven’t heard anything about him, have you?”
“No, not a thing. Would you like a beer? It’s on the house.”
“No thanks, just coffee. Do you still serve food here?”
“Sure do, same old menu as ever. Want to see it?”
“No, I just want a cheeseburger and some fries.”
“Sure thing. Do you want anything in your coffee?”
“Just some milk.”
Shane stepped through the swinging back door into the kitchen and soon returned with her coffee. He was a little over six feet tall, slender but muscular, with dark hair and a lean, clean-shaven face that was as handsome now as it had been in high school. Unlike everyone else she had seen here, he didn’t look as if he abused drugs or alcohol—his gray-blue eyes were clear and intelligent.
She sipped her coffee and watched him as he went back to washing glasses behind the bar. She was pleased to see him and disappointed at the same time. Disappointed because if there was one person she had expected to find success somewhere far from here, it was Shane Malone. He had always been the brightest person in his class—valedictorian, class president, basketball and football star. She’d once had a terrible crush on him, but he was already a senior when she was a freshman, and she doubted he had ever even noticed her.
A man came out of the kitchen with the cheeseburger and fries, and Shane took the plate and set it down in front of Amy.
“Ketchup?” he asked.
“Yes, please.”
He got a bottle from behind the bar and a fork and some napkins.
“Planning to stick around for a while?” he asked.
He was speaking very quietly, and she didn’t know if it was because he was soft spoken or because he didn’t want others to hear. But in this dead silence, anyone could hear, and though her back was turned to the tables she felt everyone was staring at her.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“There’s no point in it,” he said. “I’ll ask around about Billy, and if I find out anything I’ll call you. That is, if you’ll give me your number.”
She got Dilkens’ ballpoint pen from her purse and wrote her number on a napkin. Shane glanced at it and put it in his shirt pocket.
“Things can get a little rowdy around this town,” he said quietly. “It’s not a real safe place these days. I think you’d be better off going back home and waiting for some news.”
“That’s what everybody seems to think,” she said. “Look, I know there’s no motel in Blackwood, but do you know of any not too terribly far away?”
“No, there’s really no place to stay anywhere near here. Like I said, you’re better off—”
He was interrupted by someone coming in through the front door. Amy turned and saw the Blevin twins. They were short thick men with bulging beer bellies, no necks, curly red hair, thick red mustaches, and belligerent eyes the color of dog shit. They looked exactly alike except that Roy Bob had been missing his front upper teeth ever since sixth grade, when he had made the mistake of picking a fight while his brother wasn’t around to help him. It was said that neither one could fight worth a damn alone, but together they had a formidable repertory of dirty tricks.
They headed straight for Amy, and Ray Bob said, “Sheriff Dilkens wants to know if you’re planning to get your ass outta town just as soon as you’re done chewing that hamburger.”
“We seen your car in the lot,” Roy Bob said.
“We’re law enforcement officers,” Ray Bob said, jabbing a fat thumb at the deputy badge pinned to his gray shirt. “So if we tell ya to get your ass outta town, then you’re breaking the law if ya don’t get moving.”
“We like to maintain law and order ‘round here,” Roy Bob said.
“We’ll let ya finish that hamburger just so’s you don’t get hungry on the road,” Ray Bob said.
“And then bye-bye,” Roy Bob said.
“So long and sayonara,” Ray Bob said.
Out of the corner of her eye Amy noticed somebody tiptoeing past the pool table to the back door. The Blevin boys noticed him too.
“Who’s that doped-up trash sneaking out your back door?” Ray Bob asked Shane.
“Sure as shit looked like Jerry Jefferson to me,” Roy Bob said.
“Sure as shit did,” Ray Bob said. “You allow doped-up trash like that in your bar?”
“Sounds like a health violation to me,” Roy Bob said.
“We may haveta shut this shit-ass dump down,” Ray Bob said.
“Bet he’s sneaking off without paying,” Roy Bob said. “You allow that kind a trash free drinks ‘round here? Maybe you give him free dope too.”
“That’s against the law,” Ray Bob said, “sneaking off without paying.”
“Let’s go have a look out back,” Roy Bob said. “Bet we’ll find a great big sewer rat back there, Ray.”
They both stumped away and disappeared out the back door.
Shane glanced at Amy, shrugged, and went back to washing glasses. She finished eating her cheeseburger, paid and left.
As she was approaching her car, she heard someone in the alley behind the bar saying, “I tole you I can give it to you Friday. I promise.”
“Friday’s too late,” one of the Blevin boys said.
“Friday you won’t be alive no more, if you ain’t gave it to us before then,” th
e other one said.
“Dead men don’t pay,” the first one said, and both of them laughed.
Amy peered around the back corner of the bar. One of the Blevin boys was holding Jerry Jefferson from behind while the other one punched him in the gut. Jerry started to vomit down the front of his shirt. The one holding him grinned, and by his missing front teeth Amy knew it was Roy Bob.
“Now look at that,” Ray Bob said. “You take that junk all day long and look how sick it makes ya.”
“Look at that doped-up trash barfing like a little baby,” Roy Bob said. “Did ya poop your diapers too?”
He let go, and Jerry fell to his knees and vomited some more.
“Come ‘round the station with the money no later than 6:00 p.m. today,” Ray Bob said.
“And 6:00 p.m. don’t mean 6:30 neither,” Roy Bob said.
“One minute after 6:00 and you’re dead meat,” Ray Bob said.
“I know something that hasn’t ate for a while,” Roy Bob said.
Jerry Jefferson threw up again and began to whimper.
“Yep, I do too,” Ray Bob said. “I bet it’s getting real hungry right about now.”
Roy Bob noticed Amy peering around the corner and said, “Look there, we got us a peeping Tom.”
Ray Bob looked and said, “A peeping twat.”
Roy Bob gave Jerry Jefferson a sharp kick in the ribs and said, “Caught him jay walking. We don’t allow jay walking in this town.”
“We like to maintain law and order ‘round here,” Ray Bob said.
Amy hurried to her car. She pulled out onto Main Street, and as she was approaching the intersection she saw something being pushed around the corner in a wheelchair that was almost as shocking as what she had seen last night. Or maybe more shocking, because this time what she was staring at was undeniably human.
A skinny young man with scabs on his face was pushing the wheelchair, and sitting in it was what was left of a woman. She was wearing a soiled yellow short-sleeve dress, and the exposed skin on her face, arms, and legs had a greenish hue and was scaly. Her right leg ended in a blackened stump below the ankle, and the left foot was missing all of its toes and had a gaping ulcer on top with bones exposed.
