Townsend thought that was hilarious. “I remember him from school. Thought he was slick shit.” Jimmy’s hands appeared clean and he looked around in vain for a towel, finally deciding upon his soiled shirt. Townsend, hopped up on Mountain Dew and violence, was pacing the tiny kitchen.
“Go on outside. You’re making me nervous.”
“Sorry, sheriff. It’s just, Whew! What a rush, you know?” Mondale nodded his head. “You think we oughtta arrange something like this for Chowder Thompson too? I mean he ain’t likely to –”
Jimmy hit him under the chin with his forearm and pushed until the young deputy was on his toes against the wall straining not to choke. His eyes were wide and white.
Jimmy whispered. “Let that be the last time you suggest a move against Chowder Thompson so recklessly. That man is evil you ain’t even dreamed up yet, and his eyes and ears reach all the way up into your mama’s snatch to hear your thoughts before you’re born. So, for your own good and mine...”
He dropped the frightened deputy as Musil came strolling into the kitchen. “We’re all set, Jimmy.”
Mondale straightened and clapped his deputies heartily on the back and shoulders. “Good. Let’s light it up.” They walked toward the door, Jimmy pulling Townsend along, the young man rubbing his sore neck. He turned toward Musil. “Bob, you see the way young Townsend here kept his shit?” Musil nodded. “I think he’s got a future in gun fighting.” He placed his fist encouragingly against Townsend’s jaw and pushed. “Watch out, Doc Holiday.”
Townsend’s face turned red with pleasure, the parts that weren’t already that color with pain and fear. His eyes held confusion.
They’d found enough accelerants among the raw materials in the basement to make sure the whole wooden structure was consumed. They dragged the bodies down to the basement and dug out the bullets not lodged too deep into bone. The house was old and dubious enough to have collected all manner of leaden projectiles in its history, so they didn’t bother with the few misses scattered along the porch walls and roof.
When the explosion lit the fire, it went up bright and fast and the whole house was consumed inside two hours.
TERRY
What the fuck?
He’d been shot. That was what the fuck. Fuck. He coughed and tasted blood. He turned over and tried to stand up. No dice. So he crawled. He crawled over diapers and clothing and anything else that was in his way toward the front door. His strength, built on hate, propelled him toward freedom and independence.
He entered the hallway and tried to stand again. Almost. Not quite. He kept crawling. He focused on the front door, through which daylight beckoned. He’d get out and steal Jeanette’s car. He’d drive home and get his son. Wendell would jump at the opportunity to drive and they’d hit the road, maybe stop for the night at a place in Oklahoma he and Cal had been to before. He’d teach his son how to shoot, how to intimidate a convenience store clerk and they’d laugh about it. He’d get a new dog too. Let Wendell name her and when he was healed up they’d go to a brothel in Stillwater he remembered. He’d call Beth sometime later so she could stop having a shitfit. Don’t worry, the boy’s with me and he’s doing fine. He’s doing good actually. Takes after his old man.
The daylight in the door darkened and a figure cautiously stepped inside. Oh well. Maybe he was headed to jail anyway. He could do a stretch. A short one. He may have been insincere before when he’d offered up Chowder Thompson, but that was before the cocksucker had shot him. He’d help build a case against that asshole in a heartbeat.
Terry’s eyes couldn’t focus on the figure now approaching him, but he could hear the man speak. “Where’s the old lady?” he heard. If Terry could’ve shrugged, he would’ve, but he stopped crawling and lay on his back. The man moved past him and into the rest of the house. From the bedroom, Terry heard the man’s exclamation, “Shit. Aw, fuck.” And then he went through the rest of the house.
Terry closed his eyes and thought maybe he’d just take a nap. No sense in struggling any now. He’d wake up in the hospital or in an ambulance, already hooked up to a morphine drip. He could handle that. The man’s voice was loud and angry. “Colton!” Terry opened his eyes and made out another shape standing over him. A smaller shape. A child. The edges were fuzzy, but Terry made out the Karate Turtles on the dirty cotton t-shirt looming above him. “Colton, don’t touch him!”
Colton looked up to his father. “Call the am-blance?”
Colton’s father stepped over and looked at Terry and though Terry couldn’t say for sure, he thought the indistinct shape of the man and his voice were familiar. “Get out of here, Colton. Go home.”
Colton turned to go and asked again, as he left, “Am-blance?”
“Fuck no,” his father said. He looked down and Terry could’ve sworn he smiled. Terry felt the man’s foot push down on his chest like an anvil. Terry saw a red spray and felt the blood spurt out of the sucking hole in his chest in a fresh new geyser. As he slipped away he heard the man say, “Not yet. He’s still alive.”
CHOWDER
He drove through the hills with Hettie beside him, a bag full of money with his Glock on top between them. They pulled into the trailer park and all the way to the back of the lot. Chowder left the keys in the ignition and got out of the truck. “You fill the tank while I tie up some loose ends,” he told his wife, and he went up to Darlin’s office door. As Hettie pulled out of the lot he unlocked the door and went inside. It was empty and Chowder muttered to himself. If that was the way Irm was gonna run things that was her problem. He was out.
He moved quickly, dismantling the credit card machine and clearing out files, such as there were. He went through the refrigerator as an afterthought, grabbing something for the road. He took the phone out of his pocket and made a final call to the sheriff.
Mondale answered. “What is it?”
“You get yourself witnessed?”
“Sorta. We clear on your end?”
Chowder grinned. “I took a monster bowel movement this morning, Jimbo.” There was nothing on the other end of the line. “Yeah, we’re good.”
“Just keep your head low, for a bit, we oughtta be good.”
“Don’t let the Attorney get into your panties, alright?”
“Sure. You done?”
“Over and out,” Chowder said, thinking to himself, you have no idea.
He hung up and sat down on the steps to wait for Hettie to return. He looked at the phone in his hand and considered calling his daughter to say goodbye.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MONDALE
He stepped out of the shower and checked his fingernails. No blood or dirt beneath or around the cuticles. He checked his reflection in the mirror. The man staring back looked like someone else. The crow’s feet were longer and deeper than the last time he’d looked, his skin was loose, and the ends of his mouth pulled back, sending wrinkles shooting toward his ears when he tried to smile.
He’d killed again.
It’d been years since he’d had to kill anyone and he hoped that he’d never have to again, but he’d seen it needed doing, and done it. And now, now he just hoped it had bought what he needed it to. He wanted the peace to hold. He wanted Chowder to run pussy and dope in a regulated environment without competition and unnecessary violence, without women disappearing forever or only to be found later in various states of decomposition. He wanted to assure a reliable tax base for his community. He hated the thought of outside syndicates pedaling in his town, soaking up the scarce resources of his citizens and sending their money out of town, out of the country. Buy local. Yeah.
His phone rang.
Against every instinct he had, he picked up. It was Bob Musil on the line. “Better get down to the station, Jim.”
“Jim.” Right.
CHOWDER
Hettie picked him up and they left. On the way out of town, he felt really good for the first time in too long. Hettie put her back against her door and plopped
her feet into his lap. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and threw it into a creek as they passed over.
MONDALE
The station was a flurry of activity. Inside, Federal agents in tactical gear with DEA printed across their backs and expensive sunglasses were everywhere. Mondale’s mind raced for areas where he might be exposed, but he couldn’t think of any. Mentally he ran through scenarios to explain their presence in his station and he didn’t like any of them. He steeled himself for the worst and crossed the front room.
Bob Musil was at the center of a group of feds gathered around a map spread over a desk. He was drawing routes toward destinations marked in red. He looked up as Mondale approached. “Agent Harris, this is Sheriff Mondale.”
One of the agents, a bulldog of a man, five foot eight and a hundred seventy-five pounds of upper body mass and a gleaming shaved head, extended his hand. Jimmy took it and said, “What’s going on?”
Agent Harris spoke, “Sheriff, we had an undercover drop off the edge of the planet. His last communication put him in your back yard.”
Jimmy’s stomach dropped away. “Who was the target?”
The DEA agent said, “One Charles Thompson.”
“Chowder Thompson?” said Mondale. “What’s he mixed up in?”
Harris snorted, “Little of everything, it looks like, Sheriff.”
Musil interjected, he looked ashen, “That crank-lab fire today? Bodies inside? Looks like one of them was Agent Harris’s man.”
Mondale said. “Guess my vacation is over.”
Harris continued. “We’re moving on Thompson now. Like it if you could come with, Sheriff.”
“Of course,” said Jimmy. “Give me one second.”
He went to the bathroom and threw up in the bowl as discretely as he could manage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHOWDER
Hettie’s eyes lit up when they turned off the highway before they’d even crossed the state line. “What’s this?”
Chowder winked at her. “Proper honeymoon. ’Bout time, yeah?” Hettie looked unconvinced. “I got another stash house out here. You like it, we can hide from the world here a while. I got no powerful need to move, just to be gone.”
MONDALE
From the bathroom, Jimmy dialed Chowder from his own throwaway phone. No answer. Shit. Chowder must’ve dumped his already.
He splashed cold water on his face and left the bathroom. He stopped and donned a kevlar vest and grabbed a shotgun from a wide-eyed Deputy Townsend. The young policeman looked panicked and Mondale ushered him into his office and shut the door.
Townsend sat down and put his head in his hands. “Is it true Jimmy? Did we kill a federal agent?”
“Shut that down, son.” Jimmy hissed. “All you did was back up your partner. You were there. It was kill or be killed at that point.”
“But they say it was federal police we killed.”
“I don’t know if that’s true or not.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“You just wait till we’re out the door. You’re staying here, Deputy.” Townsend nodded and looked grateful and confused. “Can I count on you not to lose your shit?” Again, Townsend nodded. Jimmy left him sitting there and closed the door behind him.
When Mondale appeared in the front room again, Agent Harris called out to his men, “Sheriff Mondale will lead us out. This is his town and he knows the target.” He turned to Jimmy. “After you, Sheriff.”
Musil drove. Mondale sat shotgun and Agent Harris slid in behind them with the rest of Harris’s men following in an SUV. Agent Harris spoke from the back seat. “Last report our man said his connect was setting up a meet with Thompson. Said that they were going in hot – that Thompson’s reputation with the Kansas City syndicate was heavy, they’d been muscled out, as had Memphis, Little Rock and Tulsa.”
Mondale nodded, “We haven’t had any outside problems that I know about.”
Harris went on. “After my agent failed to check in, the fire was discovered at the meet and we put eyes on all of Thompson’s businesses. We picked him up, cleaning house. Looks like he’s making a run for it.”
Mondale and Musil traded looks.
“Tailed him to an unmarked road.” Harris reached over the seat and indicated the location on the map circled in red. Mondale squinted. He didn’t have any idea what Chowder might be up to there. He hadn’t driven that old mule path in years. Old cabin falling apart at the ass end of a winding, rut-pocked dirt road. “Pretty isolated, so we’re meeting up with the tail car at the road’s start. You have any ideas about his purpose in that area, Sheriff?”
“Not really. All I know of, if it’s still standing, is a cabin about a mile in. Land was bought up for back taxes by an out of town acquirer maybe five years ago. Never heard of anybody doing anything with it.” Mondale turned around to see Harris’s face. “Sorry as hell to hear about your man, Agent Harris.”
The agent’s features were hard and the action of loading his shotgun, rolling the cartridges between his finger and thumb were as automatic and ritualistic as a prayer. The fed looked back at Mondale without breaking the rhythm of his work. He shrugged. “We lost a good man today, and I, for one, am looking forward to this. Cocksucker’s getting what he’s got coming.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHOWDER
The cabin used to stand at the base of a hill, but Chowder might describe it as leaning, now. Hettie’s look said what the fuck? Her mouth said, “You’re the boss, boss man.”
Chowder chuckled. “I’m just fuckin with you. We’re not stayin here. We’ll cross the state line, find a motel with a porno box and mirrors on the ceiling. I just gotta tie up one last loose end.” He put the truck in park and got out. Hettie, behind him, slipped her shoes back on before stepping into the yard and stretching.
“Mmmm, just like old times.” She followed Chowder around the side of the dilapidated structure, careful to not strike a foot against any of the old and treacherously located rusting junk settled into the mud and patches of high grass, checkering the yard. On the shack’s far side she found her husband scanning the hill, then fixating on an irregularly shaped mound of earth. He began to walk toward it, picking up a discarded steel pole from the ground as he went. “What you huntin, Chowder?”
“Dale something.”
MONDALE
The entrance to the road was blocked by a black SUV. That one plus their own cruiser and the vehicle following them made three conspicuous vehicles clogging the tiny entrance. Musil stopped the car and Agent Harris jumped out. Mondale followed the DEA man to the agent waiting for them at trail’s head.
Musil came up behind him with a string of three more federal police bringing up the rear. Agent Harris spoke to all of them circling the hood of the first agent’s SUV. “Sheriff says there’s a cabin about a mile in. Says the condition of the road is poor. I believe that we’d make too much noise driving in. Couldn’t go more than ten or fifteen miles per hour anyhow. So everybody grab your gear. Agent Phillips stays here to cover the road and I don’t want any radio communication that isn’t strictly necessary.” Harris made eye contact with each man standing in the circle. “Make no mistake, gentleman: Agent Ryan spent a year undercover with Kansas City and today we will finish the work he died doing. We want a strong, clean case, but most of all we don’t want to spend one more good man’s life taking out the trash. Do not hesitate to use deadly force if you have to.” Each agent gave a nod of understanding and Harris slapped the hood. “Let’s go.”
CHOWDER
It had taken only twenty minutes of scratching the dirt with the steel pole to uncover Dale something’s remains. Fuckin Irm. Lousiest disposal job ever. Tate had found it easy enough. He’d probably dug him up then pushed the dirt back over just to demonstrate to Chowder what a joke it all was.
Dale was unrecognizable. Elements had been at him. The lime had helped, but it was still obviously human remains and inexcusably sloppy.
He told Hettie to go wait in the truck and she hadn’t taken any convincing. He tugged on the arms to pull the body out of the dirt. He yanked and the body moved just a couple of inches, yanked again and nearly lost his footing, a strip of flesh tearing away in his hands.
It took another twenty minutes, but he brought Dale’s remains into the shack in three trips, piling his bones on top of three bags of charcoal Hettie’d picked up from the Bait ’N More. He used a hammer to bust the teeth out of his mouth and picked what shards he could and threw them into the back yard. Hettie’d also brought a shelf full of lighter fluid, which he liberally soaked the pile with. He then went room to room spraying the accelerant over every surface. The fumes were making him lightheaded when he exited onto the sagging front porch.
Out in the air the smell was faint and he took a few moments to take deep breaths to clear his head, then he went to the truck for a box of matches. Hettie was dozing in the last lazy moments of sunlight and he put his hand on her shoulder, rousing her gently. “Hey,” he said, “Gonna miss the show.” He took the unopened box of matches and strode to the front porch and removed the cellophane casing. He removed a single stick. Struck it on the side of the box. The flare was bright and then died down. Chowder tilted it downward to coax the flame up, then dropped it into the box. Three seconds later a second bright flare followed by a quick succession of them and Chowder gently lobbed the flaming box into the front doorway and stepped back.
A tide of blue fire spread over the porch and he saw it traveling down the hallway. Chowder ran backward toward the truck, watching the pyro-show, and reaching the still-open driver’s door just as a brilliant flash burst through the windows, shattering what glass remained in the frames. Then, like the individual match, the flare died down and the burn commenced in earnest.
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