Ray's Hell: A Crime Action Thriller

by Matt Rass

  A sob blubbered out of Ray’s mouth without him knowing it was there as the first crack of thunder shook the surrounding air. “Oh Sammy,” he said. He quickly moved his hands over his brother’s neck, his fingers exploring the collar bone and soft tissue to see if the bullet had exited there, but it hadn’t. The bullet had stayed inside and they would be able to recover it for evidence.

  “The bullet is still inside,” Ray said, choking on the statement, the words not meant for anyone; not even sounding like his own.

  John Thomas and Lance started to approach Ray when they saw the big man shudder. They stopped. Ray tried to stifle it, but his whole body felt as if it was collapsing within itself. “Oh God, Sammy, I’m so sorry…”

  The guilt was crushing. Ray pulled his brother into his lap, cradled him in his arms, and rocked back and forth. He’d never held him like this. Not since Sam was a baby. Not like this. Not with pure love. Not with utter devotion. And in that moment he was aware that he had become removed from his own body, observing himself holding his dead brother the very same way the mother in Detroit was holding her dead son; praying: Please God, give me back my baby. Please.

  “I’m sorry,” Ray cried. “I’m so, so, sorry.”

  RAY HEALED BY MANDY

  John Thomas leaned across the passenger seat of his sheriff’s vehicle and looked up at Ray, standing outside, shielding the puppy from the curtain of rain falling around him. Ray looked sinister, like the killer in a Hollywood horror movie. “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait for you?” John asked.

  “No,” Ray said.

  “Okay,” John said. “How ’bout I pick you up in the morning, say nine o’clock?”

  Ray nodded.

  “And Ray?”

  Ray turned back to face his old buddy.

  “I’ve got some information on the downtown loft I think you’ll be interested in.”

  Ray shook his head. He no longer cared. He turned away and walked across the wet brown grass and up the corrugated front steps to Mandy’s trailer. He took a big breath and knocked at the door.

  The little boy Shane began to open it when his mom caught him prior to opening the second door and scolded him for not asking who it was first. “What if it’s a maniac?” she said.

  Ray must have looked like a monster to the little boy as he stared up at him in stone silence. When Mandy finally saw Ray with his swollen eye and bloody face, she gasped and couldn’t get the second door open fast enough. “Oh my God, Ray, what happened to you?”

  Ray entered the trailer like a drunk, barely able to carry his own weight. He released the puppy as the screen door swung closed behind him.

  Mandy led Ray to the couch and the puppy remained close to his side. “Get some towels, Shane… My God, Ray, you’re soaking wet. Did you walk here?”

  “No, I got a ride.”

  Mandy ushered him in and looked out the door—seeing the taillights of the sheriff’s car—before closing it.

  They stood in the center of the trailer staring at one another in silence, waiting for the boy to return with the towels. Ray couldn’t know what was going on in her mind—regret maybe. Sadness—but in his own he knew he wouldn’t tell her about finding Sam. Not now, anyway. Not tonight.

  “Here they are, Mommy,” Shane called, an armful of towels rising above his head and one trailing behind.

  Mandy stripped Ray’s shirt off over his head and asked if she could remove his pants.

  “Yes, please,” he said.

  First she wrapped the towel around his waist and unhooked his belt buckle and loosened the buttons on his jeans. “Hold this,” she said and Ray pinched the corners of the towel above his pubic area as she worked to pull his pants down to his ankles. “Kick off your boots,” she said.

  When Ray was undressed and wrapped in towels she led him to the couch. It was old and not at all used to his weight. He tried to raise himself, but sank lower and wasn’t sure how he was going to get out again.

  “What happened?” she asked again.

  “The Silvers,” he said.

  She dropped his boots near the entrance and returned to pick up his pants and laid them over the back of a dining chair. “I’ll put your clothes in the wash, but lemme get some ice and a wet cloth for your eye first,” she said and headed for the kitchen.

  Having scoured the trailer for food and not finding any, the puppy jumped onto the couch and settled back into Ray’s lap. Shane grew closer as a result, waiting for permission to play with the puppy.

  “Do you want to pet him?” Ray asked.

  Shane nodded.

  “Go ahead, it’s okay.”

  Shane stuck out his hand and the puppy licked his fingers.

  “He likes you,” Ray said.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Tommy,” Ray said. “Tommy Cruise.”

  Shane giggled. “That’s not a dog’s name.”

  “You’re right,” Ray said. “What would you call him?”

  Shane shrugged and Mandy returned with a wet towel, but hesitated as she watched Ray interact with her son before putting the puppy in his arms.

  “How ’bout Max?” Shane suggested.

  “Oh yeah,” Ray said. “That’s a cool name. Like Mad Max.”

  “Who?” Shane asked.

  Mandy joined them. “Hey, sweetie, can you go back to your room please.”

  “Take Max,” Ray said.

  Shane tiptoed off, cradling Max in his arms as Mandy dabbed at the crusted blood on Ray’s face with the cloth. “Now, tell me the whole story.”

  “I ran into a few of the boys earlier this morning at the Silver dealership,” Ray began. “This was payback, I guess.”

  “You guess? What happened this morning?”

  “Do you know Mike Silver?”

  “His dad owns Fillies? I’ve heard Sam talk about him before. He didn’t have anything good to say about him… Let me go wash this out again,” she said, holding up the bloody cloth.

  As Mandy rinsed the washcloth under the tap, Ray tried to fit the pieces of what it was he had learned about the Silvers, but his head was buzzing too much. He was concussed. “Pieces of Silver,” he said.

  Mandy turned off the tap. “What?”

  “I don’t believe for a second Sam took the seventy-five thousand—if it even existed in the first place.”

  Mandy picked up his clothes. “What seventy-five thousand? Dollars?” she asked, searching his pockets, putting his wallet on the kitchen table.

  “People are tryin’ to make me believe Sam took off with it,” Ray said. “But I don’t believe it.”

  Mandy searched the rest of Ray’s pockets, coming across the cell phone with the Lions’ protective case. “Where did you get this?” she asked.

  “The girl I was with stole it from a junkie at the Welcome Hotel.”

  “But this is Sam’s phone,” she said.

  “What?” Ray sat up. “The battery is dead. Do you have a charger?”

  Dazed, Mandy walked back into the kitchen, took the charger from the wall socket, returned to the living room and plugged the phone into the wall socket beside Ray. “I know his password, too,” she said. “Unless he’s changed it.”

  “How long do you have to wait for it to power on?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Lemme go put your clothes in the wash and I’ll try when I come back.”

  Why would the Junkie have Sam’s phone, Ray thought. And how the hell did he get it? This put everything in a different perspective. If they had sent DC to steal the phone and then kill the Junkie, then this must be why Sam was murdered. And whatever is on the phone—a picture, or video—will show Ray who is to blame.

  Mandy returned to the living room, her face a mask of shock. She picked up the iPhone and pressed the power button. “Nothing. It needs more time to charge,” she said. “You say a junkie at the Welcome had his phone?”

  “Joe something… Joe Locke. The girl was sent there to get the phone and give the
junkie a hot shot.”

  “To kill him?”

  Ray nodded.

  “And now she’s a friend of yours?”

  “She didn’t know it was a hot shot—or, at least that’s what she told me. Do you know a Joe Locke?”

  “No, I don’t. But you believed her? She’s a hooker, right?”

  Ray nodded again. “I thought she could help me, I dunno… Do you know anything about Sam recruiting girls for high-end sex parties?”

  “I told you I don’t know what he does anymore.”

  “Does that surprise you though? That he’d recruit girls for something like that?”

  “No. It’s not like he worked at the library.”

  “I guess not.”

  “You sound tired, Ray. You can sleep here tonight, if you want.”

  Ray looked down at the old couch as Mandy sat down in the recliner across from him. “You can have Emma’s room. She’s sleeping at her friend’s tonight,” she said, inhaling from a vaporizer.

  Ray looked at his watch.

  “Can I ask why you left me, Ray?”

  “C’mon, Mandy.”

  “No, please. I deserve an answer, I think.”

  “I left everyone.”

  “I loved you,” she continued. “I really, really loved you. But you never knew how to let anyone love you back, did you?”

  “Everyone I love gets hurt. I was tryin’ to protect you.”

  “You were just trying to protect yourself.”

  “Looks like you turned out okay without me.”

  “I didn’t want to turn out just okay, Ray. I wanted to turn out better than okay.” She sobbed. “You broke my heart.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ray said. “I felt guilty about getting with you in the first place. You were so young.”

  “You were only two years older than me.”

  “But I was eighteen. I was old enough to know you were still a kid.”

  “I wasn’t a kid. Emma’s a kid. I already had these boobs at sixteen. Well, both of ’em. I only got the one now.”

  “And that’s what got me.”

  They smiled together. Reminiscing. Sharing a comfortable silence before Mandy leaned over and checked the iPhone again to see if it would boot up. But it didn’t.

  “Remember when you used to put yourself between my boobs?”

  “Only place I could fit it.”

  She playfully slapped his knee. “That’s not true.”

  “When did you find out?” Ray nodded toward the flattened side of her chest.

  “About six years ago. I felt the lumps.”

  “Can I ask why you just kept the one?”

  “Money. I don’t have insurance for the reconstruction, and they don’t cut ’em off two for the price of one. Plus, there isn’t any cancer in this one, and the doctor suggested I keep it.” She shrugged and added, “And I guess I wanted to leave something for a man to play with.” She shook her single big boob and they both laughed at its pendulous free swinging.

  “You were always the funniest,” Ray said.

  “I remember you was, too. What happened to us, Ray?”

  “Life,” he said. “When it gets hard, so do you.”

  “It ain’t fair, is it?”

  “Nothing worth doing is ever easy.”

  “Bullshit. Lottsa stuff worth doing is easy. I’m tired of everything being hard.” She blew her nose into a tissue, balled it up, and threw it into a pile of other tissues surrounding a wicker basket. As if she had spent the whole day crying.

  “How did Sam fit into your life here?”

  “Poor Sam. He deserved better than to be stuck with me.”

  “I was surprised to hear you two were living together,” Ray said. “How did that happen?”

  “Four or five years ago? Shane was just born, so five years. You know Sam had a hard time all through his twenties. He didn’t know what to do with himself after he was released from the juvie center.”

  Ray shook his head on account of his own selfishness. He had heard about Sam’s troubles, but he never stopped for a second to check whether his brother needed his help or not. And now, of course, it was too late.

  “Things were different around here,” Mandy said. “I mean, look at this place; a trailer in the middle of nowhere. I found him on the street begging for money, so I brought him here to dry out, and for those first few years we were homebodies. He never left; never went to town. Then he started playing his mom’s old vinyls, and always upgrading his record players, then playing in the yard for the neighbors, and at block parties. He was really good, Ray. You shoulda seen him. Then he started scratchin’ like the real DJ’s did when we was kids... You woulda been proud. But then he got a job at that strip club, and everything got dark after that. I think if he woulda stayed the course with the turntables instead of, like, the CD DJ bullshit, he woulda kept his head out of the drugs and booze. He was all about creating sounds, but his whole future with music went down the drain when he started there. And then he started blaming me for his working there ’cos I thought he could, you know, make some money and start helping with the rent. He would get so nasty with me. Not come home for a weekend, then not for a whole week. And when rent was due, he’d just throw money at me like I was some bullshit girlfriend begging for his money.”

  “Is the boy his?”

  “He’s gay, Ray. Didn’t you know that?”

  Ray shrugged. “I heard rumors, I guess. But I didn’t think it was my business. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I never wanted to come back. I didn’t want to know, or didn’t want him to have to tell me. I felt that we had lived such different lives up to that point that it would be easier if we just continued our separate ways.”

  “There was a couple times we’d be laughing,” Mandy continued on her own thought, “and you know, have a bit of a swerve on or be rollin’ and I’d want to, you know, kiss him. And he’d get his back up like I stuck a finger in his ass.”

  Ray and Mandy laughed nervously.

  “It’s silly now, but I was so lonely back then,” Mandy confessed. “I guess it’s how I got mixed up with the meth and whatnot. Be close to people, you know? Hurt someone else. Get messed up.”

  “Little towns are hard,” Ray said. “Not much to do.”

  “Sammy told me he was just a kid starting to experiment with his, you know, being gay when he and Tommy were caught breaking and entering. They were so young. He said he never had a chance to learn about himself. And those old perverts at the juvie center took what little innocence kids like Sam and Tommy had. You know they say those bastards were targeting kids they thought were gay, or from poor families. Kids who didn’t know how to protect themselves. And how do you think those kids turned out when they became adults? The ones that didn’t kill themselves or get sent straight back to prison? They hated themselves for the way God made them. And they hated everyone else for not having to suffer what they suffered...” Mandy began to sob. “And did they get justice for what was done to them? No, you see those motherfuckers like judge Silver, now a congressman in a big white mansion… Someone should make them pay, Ray. Pay with some real pain for a change.”

  Ray took her into his chest, enveloping her in his arms. A tear escaped and threatened to roll down his cheek before he could force it back under his eye and blink the sonuvabitch away. And then Sam’s iPhone beeped.

  THE CELL PHONE

  Mandy unlocked the iPhone with her password. “We share the same password,” she said. “You know, in case something happened to the other person. It’s the birth days of both my kids.”

  “Check the call list,” Ray suggested. “The waitress at the Welcome said he took a call before he went out to the parking lot.”

  Mandy opened the Phone call list and they both saw Private Number as the last call received. “Eleven forty-nine,” Ray said.

  “Now check the messages,” Ray said. “Let’s see what the last ones were.”

  Mandy opened the iMessage app and Ray p
ointed to the first one listed. They both said the sender’s name at the same time: “Dwight.”

  “Oh my God,” Mandy said, reading the actual message. “He says he’s in the parking lot waiting for Sam.” She handed the iPhone to Ray and he read the message.

  “You know Dwight?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, her hand covering her mouth. “We were together years ago. He’s the one I asked to get Sam the job at the strip club.”

  “This is not your fault, Mandy. There’s still the Private Number. I don’t know about Apple phones, but if it says ‘Dwight’ here in messages, it would say the same thing for the caller if it was him that called, right?”

  “Yes. The Private Number is someone else.”

  They read the names and content of the remaining messages, but they were all basic conversations that had nothing to do with Sam’s final night.

  “Let’s check his photos and videos,” Ray said.

  Mandy opened the Photos app and scanned the photos. Everything was innocent and innocuous; photos of girls at the club, selfies of Sam behind the DJ tables. The video clips were the same: half-nude girls and Sam spinning records.

  “I don’t get it,” Ray said. “There’s nothing here but the message from Dwight. Why would someone go to all the trouble getting this phone?”

  “Wait a second,” Mandy said. “He’s got a voice memo...” She opened the app and saw a single recording file. “He recorded a voicemail someone left him,” she said.

  “Click it,” Ray said.

  Mandy pressed play and they listened.

  THE GOLF COURSE

  “Little Joe” Norman Park had been donated to the city of Benson Bridge by Arthur Norman and his wife, Catherine, in memory of their son who had died as an infant in 1917. Today, a significant part of that park is a private eighteen-hole golf course, and the congressman—having illegally used campaign funds to pay for his member fees all these years—had just crushed his ball off the seventh tee.