In the Valley of the Devil

by Hank Early

  I cocked my head to one side, feigning confusion. “Why’s that?”

  “You’ve never seen one of his movies before?”

  I shook my head. “I’m just a poor hillbilly.”

  She laughed and picked up her glass from the table. It was half filled with what looked like bourbon. She took a sip and held it out to me. “Want some?”

  I took two swallows and handed it back. It was the first alcohol I’d had in a while, and I immediately wanted more.

  “Does he have a place where he keeps his movies here in the house?”

  She gave me an odd look. “Are you serious?”

  “About what?”

  “Seems like you want to see one.”

  “Well…”

  “I think they’re sick.”

  “Then why do you work for him?”

  She gave me a little half smile, half snarl. “Seriously? Look around you. I get to live here. He doesn’t touch me, which is probably only because I heard he was secretly gay, but whatever. There’s always booze and drugs, and honestly, the job isn’t that hard, especially considering Hollywood ain’t calling anytime soon.”

  “So, where does he get all his money?” I asked.

  “You ask a lot of questions for a hillbilly who ain’t never heard one of the women he fucked complain. Maybe if you would shut up asking questions, you might have heard them complaining.”

  I laughed. I needed to slow down a little. Work the situation more. “You are really sexy,” I said. “Where are you from?”

  “Nevada,” she said.

  “How’d you end up in these mountains?”

  She shook her head, the way people do when they’re frustrated with their decisions. “I came because my options out there were limited to working the casinos or stripping. My brother lives out here. He told me there was a filmmaker who was looking for a discreet secretary he could trust.”

  I nodded. “And your brother? What’s he do?”

  “He’s an actor, supposedly. But working for Tag is a dead end. At least that’s what I tell him.” She shrugged. “He doesn’t listen to me. Even if I am the kind of secretary Tag thinks he can trust.”

  “Little Miss Trustworthy,” I said.

  She smiled, eating up the flirting. “I’m not that trustworthy,” she said.

  “For instance?”

  “For instance, I know where he keeps his private stash of coke. Wanna do a line?”

  “Now you’re talking directly to the hillbilly in me,” I said.

  She stood up and held out her hand for me to take. She led me around the couches and back down one of the hallways. We reached the end and she opened a door I’d previously thought was a closet.

  Lilac swung it open, and I saw yet another set of stairs. These were actually so steep, they could almost pass for a ladder.

  Lilac grinned at me seductively and said, “Ladies first.” She started up the steps, and I was treated to a view of her bare ass for the second time that night.

  At the top, she stopped to wiggle it for me a little, probably disappointed I had not yet made a mention of how nice it was. And it was rather nice.

  “Oooh,” I said.

  “Oh, I like that sexy deep voice.”

  She reached a hand out and entered a code onto a keypad beside the door handle.

  There was a beep and she opened the door. “Come on,” she said.

  I started up behind her, but when I reached the door, I pretended to trip. As I fell, I reached for the door handle and pulled it back shut.

  “Whoops,” I said. “May have had a little too much to drink.”

  I held the door handle tightly with both hands. She tried to turn it from the other side, but I was too strong.

  “It’s like it’s jammed,” she said through the door.

  “Probably a glitch. Tell me the code and I’ll bet it will open.”

  “I’m not supposed to—”

  “Just tell me. You were going to let me in anyway.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I felt her trying the handle again. “It really should open.”

  “It’s just stuck. Probably a computer error. Everything will reset when I enter the code in again.”

  “Okay,” she said. “The code is one-zero-zero-five.”

  “Got it.” I entered the code, and waited until there was another beep and then opened the door.

  We stood in a circular common space with three more doors. Beside each door was another keypad. Lilac led me to the middle door, and I watched as she entered the same code again.

  She opened the door so I could go in first this time.

  The room was larger than I expected. A huge window dominated one side of the space, the nearly full moon shining through the glass and creating natural light that revealed a semicircle of folding chairs around a large podium. I flipped on the lights, and my eyes were immediately drawn to the oversized framed photograph hanging on the wall just behind the podium.

  The photo had been taken in a cornfield, almost certainly Lane Jefferson’s. Twelve men stood in a semicircle, their faces somewhere between haughty and smug. I scanned them and wasn’t surprised to see Taggart Monroe and Lane Jefferson. The two men who were talking about the hunt were there too, looking like the assholes they were.

  I also recognized Frank Bentley’s beady eyes starting back at me, and Jason, the kid that had been killed by Old Nathaniel just a few nights ago.

  At the top of the photograph in big yellow letters it read, “The Agents of Change, 2015.”

  AOC mystery solved.

  I looked again for any faces I might recognize. And there it was. Mayor Keith. Shit. If it wasn’t the sheriff in this town, it was the damned mayor. Of course, I had to remind myself, it was actually both this time, though I didn’t see Patterson in the photo. Then again, he wasn’t even in town in 2015, which just meant he’d likely joined up later, after arriving.

  The same was true for Jeb Walsh and Preston Argent, though I had no doubt those men were intimately involved.

  These were the men behind the evil in Coulee County. Not only the snuff film, but also the ones who were making sure Jeb Walsh’s book was taught at the local middle school, the same ones who made sure Jeb Walsh had access to the library and the town square whenever he needed it.

  And I was pretty sure all of them stood to make money off Taggart’s latest snuff flick.

  “I always thought that photo was creepy,” Lilac said. “Who stands like that? None of them are even smiling.”

  “Yeah, do you know what it is? The Agents of Change?”

  “Old farts club,” she said. “Men that get off on power and cruelty.” She shook her head, looking at them. “I’ve been with over half of those guys, and nearly all of them have erectile dysfunction problems.” She gave me a meaningful glance. “You don’t have anything like that do you?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Good. The coke is in here.”

  I turned and saw her standing beside a little desk with a computer on it. There was a safe on the ground next to it, and she reached down to spin the dial.

  “He thinks I don’t know the combination, but I know more than I let on.”

  She knelt, as she worked the combination. She was turning the handle when the door outside buzzed again.

  “Oh shit,” Lilac said, “he’s coming. You’ve got to hide.”

  “Where?” I said, looking around the room.

  “Hell, somewhere. Do it quick or you’ll end up in the next movie.”

  I scanned the room frantically. Just as I’d decided to charge the door, gun drawn, I saw it. On the far side of the room there was one of those old movie projectors sitting atop a table. A checkered tablecloth hung almost to the floor. I didn’t waste any time getting under it.

  The fit was tight, and I had to draw my knees up to my chest and hold them there with my arms. I feared my boots would still show at the bottom, in the space where the cloth didn’t quite reach the hardwood. I heard
Lilac typing on the computer.

  The door beeped and swung open.

  47

  “What are you doing?” It didn’t sound like Taggart, but I recognized the voice.

  “I’m checking on something for Mr. Monroe,” Lilac said.

  “Well, get out.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Just let me log back out.”

  “Forget that. I need the room.”

  “Sure. I apologize, I was just—”

  “I like that dress.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Walsh.”

  “Call me Jeb.”

  “Thanks, Jeb.”

  “Are you the redhead Frank was telling me about, the one who wants to be in movies?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I heard you’ve got some demons in you, girl. The kind that need to be exorcized.”

  Lilac said nothing. I’d closed my eyes now and was literally praying she wouldn’t give me away.

  “Sometimes,” she said.

  “Next time you get you a demon up in you, let Taggart know. I’ll let you come over to my place and we’ll tie you down on the bed, see if we can work it out. You like being tied down?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I’ll bet you do. God almighty, I’ll bet you do.”

  There was a smack and the sound of the door closing. I was pretty sure he’d slapped her ass on the way out. Jesus, I wished so badly that I could crawl out from under the table to confront him.

  But I couldn’t. I’d never get out of this party alive if I did that. Hell, I might not get out of it alive anyway.

  I listened as Walsh paced across the room, going back and forth. He mumbled to himself, the words unintelligible. Finally, I heard the chair by the computer groan as he sat down in it.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Shit. He would get here as soon as I sit down,” he muttered. The chair groaned again and Walsh walked over to open the door.

  “Mayor.”

  “Jeb.”

  “Thanks for taking a minute to talk.”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “It’s about tomorrow night.”

  “You should have plenty of police protection, Jeb. They’ll be deputies on every street—”

  “I ain’t talking about that.”

  “Well, what are you…? Oh. That.”

  “Yeah, Taggart’s getting a little out of control. We agreed he’d only film if there was no heat.”

  “Well, to be fair, Sheriff Patterson has directed all the deputies to stay away from the cornfield. He managed to get the Atlanta police to finally stop sniffing around when he showed them the skull. And there’s going to be a counterprotest, just like we hoped, so the whole area will be free of disruptions.”

  “Who was responsible for killing Jason?”

  “Jason?”

  “The kid. The kid that got mauled outside of the abandoned house at the edge of the cornfield. The one Tag just had to have to film some kind of scene at.”

  “I don’t know who killed Jason.”

  “I liked that kid. He had potential. If it was Jefferson … shit. He’s gone too far. All of this Old Nathaniel stuff has gone too far.”

  “Well, I think Lane believes that something supernatural is at work.”

  Walsh laughed. “Supernatural? Goddamn, what kind of idiots am I working with? So you mean to tell me he thinks Old Nathaniel is real? I thought he was the one dressed up?”

  “He was … once. Now, I think he’s got somebody else. I don’t know. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it?”

  “What is the damn point, then?”

  “Tag and Lane’ve got the niggers believing it. They’re scared shitless. Not only that, people have been downloading the scenes they’ve already filmed like crazy. According to Tag, he’s already sold over ten thousand downloads, and once he gets the finale done, that’ll triple.”

  There was a pause, and I wondered if Walsh was trying to do the math.

  “How much per download?”

  “That’s the thing. Because it’s a cop, a black female cop who is also very attractive, he thinks he can charge ninety-nine dollars a download for the last part.”

  “People will pay that?”

  “Absolutely. Think about it. How often do you get to see a real person hunted and killed? And not just any person either. This is an uppity mulatto bitch with a hell of a nice rack. And a cop. It’s pure gold.”

  I was squeezing my knees to my chest so tightly I could barely breathe. In my entire life, I didn’t think I’d ever been so angry and not been able to act. It was killing me.

  I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out. The only thing keeping me from coming out, 9mm blazing was that I’d never get out of the house alive afterward.

  “That’s almost three million dollars,” Walsh said. “Shit.”

  “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. And, Jefferson’s sure that if the product’s good—which it will be—we’ll have a lot of repeat customers.”

  “I still say he should wait until things calm down. The longer she’s missing, the less people will think she might still be alive. And that would give us time to take care of her boyfriend.”

  “Marcus.”

  “He’s been poking around. Based on Frank Bentley’s description, the man who attacked him the other night was probably Marcus.”

  “And Sheriff Patterson had a run-in with him today.”

  “He did? I ain’t heard that one yet. Did he arrest him?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not? I told him to arrest him the next chance he had.”

  The mayor was quiet.

  “Answer me, damn it.”

  The mayor made a squeaking sound in the back of his throat, and I thought he was about to break down. “Lane wanted to try to film Old Nathaniel killing him.”

  “Jesus. Lane and Taggart are going to fucking blow this.”

  “They’ve got some kind of thing in their mind about needing one more murder to make the movie complete. It’s like the full moon shit.”

  Walsh paced the room. I saw his polished shoes under the tablecloth, drawing closer. He stopped at the table and pivoted. “Tell your boy that if he does something stupid like that again, I’m shutting the whole thing down. I’ll talk to Tag tonight.”

  “Got it.”

  “Anything else?” Walsh said.

  “Well, Marcus is still out there somewhere. And his damned blind friend. Shit, he’s leading the counterprotest.”

  “That’s okay. The counterprotests are good. Makes it more important for the police to be there and ignore everything else.” Walsh hesitated. “I don’t like that blind bastard, though. After the rally, I’m going to get Press on him.”

  “Make it clean,” Mayor Keith said. “Please.”

  “He’ll just vanish,” Walsh said. “The same way I’m going to make Marcus vanish. Hell, Press is supposed to be over at his place right now. I’ll feel better about everything once we’ve snuffed out that jackass’s candle.”

  “Me too.” Mayor Keith hesitated. “Well, do I need to talk to Sheriff Patterson about anything?”

  “Tell him I still don’t understand why he let the Thrash kid go.”

  “He said it would increase the chances of Marcus breaking the law, which would mean he could arrest him.”

  “Damn it!” Walsh exploded. “That’s the problem with all of you! You take the hard way every damned time. You want to arrest somebody, fucking arrest them.”

  “But the DA—”

  “I don’t give a fuck about the DA. I’ll handle the DA. Just tell Patterson to go arrest him. Next time he sees him. Either shoot his ass or arrest it.”

  “Okay. It’s going to work, Jeb. I’m telling you it will. And once it does, we’ll have enough to fund your campaign for the House.”

  “It’ll take more than three million.”

  “Your cut is only half of that.”

  Walsh laughed. “Well, that’s
negotiable. Now, get on out of here and tell that little faggot to wrap this party up. Everybody needs their sleep tonight. And, Mayor?”

  “Yeah, Jeb?”

  “Tell that little queer I’m going to borrow his secretary for the night. I don’t think he’ll miss her.”

  I waited until I heard both men exit the room before leaning forward and lifting the tablecloth enough to see. They were gone. I stood on shaky legs. My hip screamed with pain as I limped over to the computer chair and sat down, trying to get my breathing under control.

  I felt a little dazed by everything I’d just heard. At the forefront of it all was the knowledge that Walsh wanted me dead, which meant going back downstairs was rife with danger. I looked at the window above the computer.

  I reached around the monitor and raised the window. The cool October air came in, and I let it flow over me like a salve. I felt a little more relaxed, tasting the cool mountain air. Even Sommerville Chase hadn’t been able to corrupt that.

  I climbed on the desk and stuck my head out the window, craning my neck to see what was above me. The roof. I twisted around and tried to reach it. I was close enough. Just barely. When I was ready to go, I’d climb onto the roof. From there, surely I could find a safe way down.

  Or I could jump and take my chances. Even that felt safe compared to heading back down the stairs. I was beginning to realize just how lucky I’d been that no one had recognized me earlier.

  I slipped back into the room and slid off the desk. Sitting back in the chair, I wriggled the mouse until the monitor came to life.

  A clean blue desktop with two file folders on it greeted me. One was labeled “Paperwork” and the other “Cuts.” I looked around for a flash drive to save them on but didn’t see anything. Suddenly, I remembered the safe.

  I slid out of the chair and turned the handle. I felt a rush of relief when it opened. Lilac had managed to enter the entire combination. Inside the safe was a heavy, solid steel orb-like paperweight with Taggart’s name engraved on the side, two metal boxes, and a small stack of one hundred dollar bills. I moved the paperweight and the cash aside, placing them on the floor next to the safe, and opened the smaller of the two boxes. There were two Ziploc bags filled with white powder. I moved them out of the way to make sure there was nothing else. Placing the bags back inside, I closed the box and reached for the next one, which was larger and blue. It was locked. I sat it on the computer table and looked at the combination lock. I tried one-zero-zero-five, and it opened.