“You think he’d kill his own sons?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“Jesus, Henry, I don’t know...”
“Me and Jason used to play together when we was little. Back before I found out he was crazy. One day we found a German shepherd wandering around my Holler, barely more than a pup. I took him home and fed him. Sure did love that dog. Named him Skippy. Well, Jason got it in his head he wanted it. One day I come home from school and Skippy was gone. And Jason quit comin’ around.
“Couple of days later I went over to his house, and there he was, him and Skippy runnin’ around his back yard. I don’t know how the hell he got that dog to follow him home. Musta strung a hot dog weenie around his neck or somethin’.”
Fraley laughed.
“He saw me and grabbed that dog and hauled ass into his house. Came out a few minutes later and said Skippy was his dog now. Told me to beat it.”
“That sounds like Jason, all right.”
“Yeah, don’t it. Anyway, I went home and told Daddy what happened. He knew that dog was mine. I’d been takin’ care of it for over a week now. He drove us back up to Jason’s house, and Daddy told Jared Thomas what his boy had done. Jared didn’t give a shit. Got all huffy with Daddy and told him to fuck off.
“‘Til Daddy told him he could start buyin’ his gas somewhere else, that he could take his goddamn coal trucks across the mountain next time they ran dry. I’ll never forget how proud that made me feel, him standin’ up to that rich son of a bitch.”
“What’d Jared say?”
“The hell could he say—we had the only gas station in town.” Henry laughed. “Told Jason to get the dog and give it to us. Said he’d get him another one.”
“Bet that liked to have killed him—Jared, I mean.”
“Both of ‘em. Jason pitched a fit, but Skippy went home with me that day.”
“Well, good, Henry. Good for you.”
“Yeah, well, I come home from school a couple of days later and found Skippy layin’ in a pool of blood and guts in the field by our house, flies buzzin’ and swarmin’ all over his carcass. Somebody took an axe to him, split his head wide open and hacked him into pieces.”
“My God.”
“Somebody he trusted enough to let get close to him. Jason came up to me the next day, and said, ‘How’s Skippy?’ That’s just how he said it, too. I knew right away he’d done it. He killed my dog. He couldn’t have it so he didn’t want nobody else to have it either.
“So, do I think he’d kill his own sons? Goddamn right I do. ‘Specially if Missy was fixin’ to run off and take ‘em with her.”
“Huh.” Fraley frowned. He still didn’t see how anyone could do such a thing.
“You knew she’d been seeing Elmer Hicks on the sly, didn’t you?”
“Huh uh,” Fraley said. “How the hell would I know something like that?”
“Well, I guess you wouldn’t. Ain’t like they didn’t try to keep it a secret.”
“How do you know then?”
“Emmy grew up with Myra Johnson, Missy’s sister. They’re still close. She told Emmy, Missy’d been sneakin’ around to Elmer’s house every chance she got. Hell, she was the one drivin’ her. And you can bet they wasn’t playin’ Tiddly Winks over there.”
“Tiddly Winks,” Fraley said, chuckling as the two men continued down the sidewalk.
“No tellin’ what that prick might do if he thought she was leavin’ him. I know what he did to Skippy.”
* * *
Jason walked up Main Street, a pistol in the waistband of his trousers, a pint of whiskey in the inside pouch of his jacket, a little annoyed at how things had gone at Jimmy T’s. Bunch of ignorant hillbilly fucks looking at him like he’d done something wrong, whispering and pointing fingers. Sure, he’d killed Missy, but they didn’t know it—not for sure, anyway. So who were they to sit around on their dumb hick asses passing judgment on him?
At least Rita Mae had done him right, ‘til she started mouthing off about Missy, whining about how she was going to miss her cousin. Her cousin. Sure didn’t mind fucking her poor little cousin’s husband, or snatching up the wad of bills he’d left on her dresser.
Annoyed, but not that much.
With Missy and her two crumb-snatching brats out of the way, Jason was free to do as he pleased—not that he wasn’t before, but this was much better. The house might get a little messy, but that was one hell of a small price to pay. At least now he wouldn’t have to listen to Missy bitching and moaning, or those other two whining and crying: ‘Daddy give me this, Daddy give me that. Where you going, Daddy?’. Hell, they didn’t even look like him. Missy fucking that worthless hillbilly lover of hers, no telling how long she’d been sneaking around behind his back, or how many other poor white trash cocksuckers she’d been with. Anybody could have fathered those little bastards.
Elmer Hicks. Jason patted the bulge beneath his jacket and smiled. Good as dead. And he wasn’t worried about those two blundering cops anymore, either. Didn’t matter what they found. Daddy wasn’t about to let his only son go off to Moundsville.
“Murderer!” somebody called out.
Jason stopped and turned. A couple was walking down the sidewalk, holding hands as they passed two men standing in front of Natali’s bakery.
“You talkin’ to me?” Jason said, scowling at the men.
“Huh?” the shorter of the two said.
“You got somethin’ you wanta say to my face?”
The other man kept his eyes trained on Jason. “We didn’t say a goddamn thing, you fat son of a—”
Jason opened his jacket. Sunlight glinted off his pistol and the man’s eyes grew wide. “Hey, easy with that hogleg, Mister. We didn’t do nothin’ to you.”
“Yeah,” the other said. “We don’t want no trouble.”
Leering, Jason closed his jacket. “Goddamn right you don’t,” he said, and then continued along his way.
Approaching the Dime Store, Jason saw Henry Walker and John Fraley standing on the corner, next to a couple of teary-eyed women who stood in front of the display window.
That bitch, he thought, when he recognized one of Missy’s friends.
“Baby killer,” somebody whispered behind his back.
“Murderer,” somebody else said.
“Fuck ‘em,” Jason muttered under his breath. Can’t kill ‘em all, he thought, as he passed Walker and the banker. Damned if he wouldn’t like to try, though.
Vernie Borders, pointing a trembling finger his way, cried out, “You killed them. You monster!”
“Goddamn it, Vernie,” Jason said, taking a step toward them. “I did not.”
Katrina retreated until her back was against the window.
Crying, lips quivering, Vernie shook her finger at him. “You did, too!”
“I did no—”
“Yep, you killed ‘em, all right. Same way you killed Skippy.”
Jason turned, laughing at the gas station jockey. “Oh, you ignorant hillbilly cocksucker. Still whining about that mutt, are you?”
“You did it, didn’t you?” Henry said. “You killed my dog.”
“Fuck you.”
“You killed Missy and them two little babies,” Vernie said.
“Fuck you, too, bitch!” Jason said as he turned to face her.
“Hey! Sowbelly!”
Jason whirled to find Elmer Hicks standing before him.
“You son of a bitch!” Jason yelled.
He pulled back his jacket, wrapping his hand around the butt of his revolver as Elmer grabbed his wrist. Jason tried wrenching the pistol free but Elmer’s ironclad grip wouldn’t allow it. Elmer’s hand came up, sunlight glinting off the wide blade of the hunting knife it held as he shoved it into Jason’s gut, and Jason rose up on tiptoes, bellowing, air rushing from his mouth as a searing flash of pain ripped through him, his body stiffening, the hand gripping his gun trembling as blood bubbled up his throat and across his lips.
And Katrina, doubled over now, spewed vomit onto the sidewalk.
“You just had to do it,” Elmer said. “Didn’t you?”
“Stop,” Jason said. “P… Please.”
Elmer twisted the knife and Jason gasped. Bloody strings of saliva hung from Jason’s thick lower lip as Elmer sawed upward until blade struck bone, and then pulled it free and raced around the corner, toward the rear of the Dime Store.
Jason, crying out to God to help him, dropped to his knees and fell backwards, blood gushing from his mouth as severed coils of intestines spilled into his lap, splattering blood and gory bits of viscera onto his pants. He grabbed the slippery mess and tried stuffing it back into the gaping slit, and then rolled onto his side, blood pumping onto the sidewalk as he looked up, shaking and huffing for breath, his right arm rising, fingers opening and closing as if grasping for something just out of reach.
“God Almighty,” Fraley said. “They’ll hang him sure as hell.”
“Who?” Vernie said.
Fraley, visibly shaken, said, “Elmer.”
“For what?” Henry asked him.
Vernie shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t see anything. You see anything, cousin?”
Tightlipped, Katrina grimly shook her head.
“Henry?” Vernie said.
“I didn’t see a goddamn thing,” Henry said, nodding at Fraley. “What’dya say, John?”
Fraley, shrugging his shoulders, said, “Me either.”
Henry kicked Jason in the side of his head, shattering bits of teeth that tumbled onto the bloody concrete as his jaw snapped sideways. A groan bubbled up from within the dying man as his eyes rolled back into his head. Then his body gave one final shuddering heave, and went limp.
“That’s for Skippy, you son of a bitch.”
“No, Henry,” Fraley said, and then grabbed Walker by the arm. “Don’t.”
“Fuck him,” Henry said, looking up as a car screeched to a stop beside them, and Freddie Ledbetter jumped out, eyes bulging while people began pouring out of the Dime Store.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“We never found out who did it,” Alvie Ross said. “Hell, we never even found their bodies.”
They’d had a good laugh at Arleta Briscomb’s expense, had joked about it on the way back to the car and most of the way back to town. But the conversation turned deadly serious when Earl asked about the missing kids. It was a stunning revelation for the new sheriff, who up until yesterday had seen no crime in the small mountain community, other than the occasional drunken brawl over at Jimmy T’s.
“You mean to tell me…” Earl turned the corner at Eighth and Main. “What the hell?”
A car came to a fishtailing stop in the middle of the road, and Freddie Ledbetter jumped out of the front seat. On both sides of the thoroughfare, people were running down the sidewalks toward a small crowd gathering outside the Dime Store.
Earl barely noticed Vernie Borders and her cousin as he sped past them and pulled to a stop in front of Ledbetter’s car.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Alvie Ross muttered. At least a dozen people had gathered around, and through the mass of legs he saw Jason Thomas lying on the sidewalk, blood dripping off the curb and onto the street.
“Son of a bitch.” Earl opened the door and stepped out of the patrol car, and the two policemen strode side by side toward the crowd. “Gang way,” he called out. “Give us some room here.”
The crowd, backing away from Jason, did not take their eyes off him, or off the bloody mess spilling from his torn gut.
“The hell happened here?” Earl said.
“Pretty goddamn obvious to me,” Freddie Ledbetter said, nodding down at Jason’s body.
Smartass, thought Earl.
Alvie Ross looked at the pallid form, shook his head and grimaced.
“Who did this?” Earl scanned the crowd. “Well?”
A few shoulders shrugged, but most people just stared down at the body as if they hadn’t heard the question.
“How about it, Freddie?” Alvie Ross said. “Lester?”
Lester Hayes shook his head. “I don’t know. I just got here.”
“He was already like that when I pulled up.” Freddie nodded at Walker and Fraley. “I come drivin’ down the street and saw them two standing over his body.”
Earl looked at Walker. “Henry?”
“Don’t look at me. I ain’t done a damn thing.”
Earl couldn’t help smiling at the consternated look on Walker’s face. “Nobody said you did. But you must’ve seen something. Right?”
“Huh uh,” Henry said, looking up at John Fraley. “Me and Mr. Fraley here was walkin’ up the street. Found him layin’ just like he is. Right, Mr. Fraley?”
Fraley shrugged his shoulders, nodding his agreement. “That’s right,” he said.
The man Jason had threatened in front of the bank stepped forward. “I saw him comin’ up the sidewalk. He tried to pick a fight with me and my cousin.”
“When was that, Charlie?” Alvie Ross asked him.
“Five minutes ago, maybe?”
“Five minutes?” Earl glanced up at Fraley.
“Could’ve been a little more,” Charlie added. “But not much.”
“Let me get this straight,” Alvie Ross said. “This all happened in the last five minutes, but nobody saw anything.”
Henry Walker pursed his lips, and cut his eyes toward the sky.
Alvie Ross said, “In the last five minutes—”
“Or so,” Henry added.
“—somebody gutted Jason Thomas and kicked his jaw damn near clean off, and none of you saw anything.”
Henry smiled down at Jason. “That’s about the size of it.”
Earl looked around the crowd, then at their feet. Most of them had blood on their shoes from walking through the gore. Any one of them could have been involved. Or none of them at all, for that matter.
“How about this?” Alvie Ross said. “Have you seen Elmer Hicks in the last ten minutes?”
Walker said, “I ain’t seen a goddamn thing.”
“Mr. Fraley?” Alvie Ross said.
Fraley shrugged his shoulders and looked away.
“Goddamnit,” Earl said. “C’mon, Alvie Ross.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The truck rumbled down the hill, leaving a swirling cloud of dust in its wake, an old Ford with faded white paint, dents and rust spots all over it. A few of the worst places eaten all the way through. The driver made his way down to a five mile square parcel of flatland running parallel to the Guyan River, crisscrossed by dusty, unpaved roads. Rodent-infested shacks with dirt yards sat in various stages of disrepair along the streets. He flicked a cigarette butt onto the roadside, and shifted gears, slowing to cross over a set of railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill.
Here at the westernmost point of Whitley lay Slag Town, where the poorest of the poor dwelled in rundown shacks, beneath tarpaper roofs. Here lived worthless drunks, interested in earning only enough money for a night of boozing. Hungry children dressed in dirty rags played in these streets. Down on their luck coal miners between jobs trudged off at dawn, hoping to find a day’s work, while impoverished families prayed that God would provide them with one more meal. Five-ton coal trucks pounded deep ruts into these dusty byways on their way to the coal tipple at the far end of the poverty-stricken row. A place where fine, granulated particles floated through the air, falling to the ground like exiguous black snowflakes. Beyond the tipple lay the dump, where cat-sized rats raced through mountains of garbage.
The truck passed a group of playing children. One grimy-faced child raced another across a yard and grabbed the rotted wood of a porch railing. “One-two-three on Billy!” she shouted, while the other grabbed the spot where a missing newel post should have been, calling out, “Home free!”
The driver smiled as he continued down the street and rounded a corner. Off to his left, three boys passed through a thicket of trees,
two of them carrying cane fishing poles. The third, much smaller than his friends, carried a rusty old coffee can, leading the way down an embankment that would take them to the river. Jimmy Tomlin watched the tops of their heads drop out of sight as they descended the trail, and then looked back at the street, shifted gears and accelerated, pushing the truck by one last dilapidated structure before leaving the neighborhood behind him.
The road wound past the tipple, snaking its way out to another dirt byway that led to the dump. Tomlin followed it out to the wooden structure, past idle boxcars. He looked up at the rafters of a trestle, and thought about ending it all by climbing it and diving headlong to the ground. But he didn’t have the nerve for that.
He left the road, loose coal and chunks of gravel crunching beneath his wheels as he cut across a long stretch of flatland. Soon he was back on the road, headed back to the tenements.
How in the hell did I get myself into this? he wondered, and then stopped himself. None of that mattered now. He had a job to do, and hell to pay if he didn’t get it done. Tomlin found himself on the road back to town, heading toward the railroad tracks as a young boy came walking down the hill. A quick glance in the rearview mirror told him the street was empty, as were the porches lining it. He craned his head to the left, looking out the driver’s window as he slowed to a stop.
Then he turned back to the child, and forced himself to smile.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Pitch left Marty Donlan mumbling incoherently behind the counter in his furniture store, eyes wide and vacant, staring straight ahead as if he had no idea he was even in his store. He admired his handiwork for another long moment, and then stepped through the front door, into a crowd of people hurrying up the sidewalk toward the Dime Store.
“Somebody’s dead over there!” a man told another as the two made their way past Donlan’s place.
Pitch, following, paused long enough to look in the storefront window of Doc Fletcher’s office. He thought about stopping in, but he wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So he hurried up to Frannie Mitchell’s Dime Store, arriving just in time to see two grim-faced young men slam the rear doors of an old hearse. Ezra Butcher Jr. and his brother got in the front seats and closed the doors. Then the hearse pulled away from the curb, leaving Pitch staring whimsically at Doc Fletcher, who was standing in the middle of a crowd by a puddle of blood, and a blood-stained patch of sidewalk.
Lord of the Mountain Page 18
