The Deadliest Sins

by Rick Reed

  Now he had to wonder if this idiot driver had brought the kid and the dog along to the meeting. He’d seen a dog in the VW with the engine running. The kid might have been asleep in the car, and Coyote hadn’t gone near it because of the dog. It was the damn dog’s fault.

  The pompous cop on the news hinted there might be more evidence, and he didn’t seem smart enough to be planting false information. What other evidence might they have? He’d left nothing behind. Touched nothing except maybe the tip he’d left that old woman.

  The waitress stood behind the counter, punching buttons on her cell phone, smiling, ignoring him.

  In his deep gravelly smoker’s voice, he said, “Excuse me, miss. Can you tell the manager I need to speak to him?”

  Her smiled faded. “I don’t know if the manager’s here.”

  Coyote knew she was lying. Coyote pulled a badge wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open long enough to show a small gold badge. “Health Department.”

  Now she was paying attention. “Are you gonna complain about the breakfast? Because if you are it’s not my fault. I’ve been telling Billy to do ’em right. He’s such a jerk. He’s quitting anyway, but this time he’s gone for sure. Listen, you don’t have to pay nothing.”

  “Let’s go talk to this cook. If the manager isn’t here, we’ll call him in. You aren’t in trouble, but I need to talk to you, too.”

  She was mildly concerned now. “I guess the manager’s here. I don’t like working here noways.”

  Coyote pulled on his leather gloves. He hadn’t touched anything except the coffee mug. He picked the mug up and went around the counter, his other hand going to the bayonet sheathed at his back. He let the waitress lead the way through the swinging café doors and slipped the bayonet from its sheath. Her back was to him. His eyes took in the kitchen. Billy, the short-order cook, was scrubbing the iron grill top with the blade of a heavy spatula less than ten feet away. He turned to smile at the waitress.

  Coyote drove the bayonet down into the strap of muscle beside the girl’s neck. She flinched and gave a little grunt. He shoved the bayonet down a second time and severed her aorta. She gave a gasp and dropped like a rock. There would be little blood, except what was filling her chest cavity.

  Billy’s smile vanished, and Coyote could see confusion and a question forming in that slow mind. Coyote slammed the coffee mug into Billy’s face, smashing his nose.

  Billy’s eyes widened when his mind registered what was happening. He tried to raise the heavy spatula to fend off Coyote’s next blow, but he didn’t make it. Coyote smashed the heavy coffee mug into the side of Billy’s head hard enough to shatter the mug and leave a bloody gouge just under the cook’s eye. The spatula dropped and bounced off Billy’s grease-stained Keds sneakers.

  Coyote grabbed a fistful of the front of Billy’s shirt and drove the bayonet through his throat twice. By reflex the cook’s hands went to his throat, and he was swaying but somehow remained upright. Coyote scanned the room quickly and saw an office, the door open, twenty feet away. So far, he’d made very little noise.

  He pulled the bayonet out of the cook’s throat and drove it through his left eye hard enough that the tip skittered across the bone at the back of the man’s skull. Billy’s dying legs went rubbery. Coyote helped him to the floor.

  The waitress lay still as if asleep. Her order pad had fallen out of her smock pocket and was lodged under her hip. Coyote took the order pad, put it in his coat, and stepped over the waitress’s body. She was young and pretty. She was dead. He felt nothing. He’d write it in his journal later. His lack of feeling seemed important.

  Off to his right, the sounds of someone typing loudly and slowly and muttering obscenities came from an open door. He stepped in the room and saw a middle-aged woman hammering at the keyboard of a laptop. Her pink sweater stretched tightly over large breasts and an even larger stomach. She was sitting at a cheap steel desk, her side to him, concentrating on beating the laptop into submission with two fingers. She heard him and turned her head his direction. He moved in quickly with the bayonet raised overhead. She threw an arm up to stave off the blow, but it was too late. The point of the bayonet drove through her wrist and pinned her arm to the center of her chest. The blade struck something hard and lodged tightly. He tried to free it but wasn’t able to twist or yank it loose. He used the other hand, striking the butt of the handle, driving the blade through her back and into the chair. He twisted it and pulled it free.

  Blood filled the woman’s mouth; her eyes were open and staring at him. She sputtered, coughed up blood, and Coyote stepped aside. She grabbed his arm, but she was weak. She said, “You don’t have to do this.” He drove the bayonet down a second time, through her shoulder and deep into her chest. This time it did its work. Her eyes were open, staring, but stilled. She slumped in her chair. Her arms fell to her sides.

  He stepped back and examined himself for blood. He saw none, but there were scratches in the sleeve of his coat, and the heel of his hand throbbed from pounding it on the butt of the bayonet. He used her shirt to wipe the blood from the bayonet and sheathed it. A nameplate on the desk said her name was CINDI. “Sorry, Cindi,” he said, “but everyone has to make sacrifices. Thank you.”

  The office was small, not much bigger than a bathroom really, but every inch was crammed with boxes and bags and papers. The screen on Cindi’s laptop was an order for a bunch of food and napkins and other café type shit. A row of program icons spread across the bottom. Coyote clicked on one that looked like a camera. The screen changed to a four-way split view. One was the front door to the café. One was directly over the register. One pointed toward the booth where Coyote had been sitting. The last view was of the office. On it he saw a safe tucked under the desk. He could see himself.

  Cindi’s purse hung from the back of her chair. He took her wallet and cash and keys and went to the front of the café. He turned off the red neon OPEN sign, turned off the inside lights, and locked the door. He left the blinds open. He considered taking his dirty dishes to the back, but it wouldn’t really matter since he hadn’t touched the crap.

  Behind the counter, he began punching buttons on the cash register until the drawer opened. He collected the bills in the drawer, left the change, and went into the kitchen. He found a suitable box by the grill, tossed the cash in it, and took it into the office. He pulled the cords loose from the laptop. The laptop went in the box. He shoved papers and binders and a couple of miniature cactus plants to the floor. In the side desk drawer, he found a small lockbox. It rattled when he picked it up. He tossed it in the box. He pulled the remaining desk drawers out and dumped some of them on the ground.

  He searched the waitress and cook like a junkie or a robber would have. The waitress didn’t have any cash. He wasn’t surprised. She was a horrible waitress. The cook had an ID that showed he was on work release, no driver’s license, no money. He put the ID in the box and closed the top.

  He went to the front door, pulled a blind aside, and peeked out. The parking lot was still empty except for one older model SUV and his own Dodge Dart. He unlocked the front door, walked out, and used Cindi’s keys to lock the door. As he crossed the parking lot, a dark gray Dodge Charger with Missouri State Highway Patrol markings turned in and came directly toward him. Coyote put the keys in his pocket, and his hand slipped under the back of his jacket to rest on the handle of the bayonet.

  The trooper stopped not ten feet from him, and the driver’s window powered down. Coyote smiled at the female state trooper.

  “You coming or going?” she asked.

  Coyote knew she’d watched him pocket the keys. Her eyes were sharp. She’d seen his face. There was nothing for it. Coyote knew what he had to do. He drew the bayonet, hiding the action behind the box he’d taken from the office. He took a couple steps toward the trooper, talking to keep the driver’s focus on his face and words.

 
; “I got here just in time,” Coyote said in his deep voice. “Problem in the kitchen freezer last night I guess. Got me a box of patties before they went belly up though.” He held the box out where she could read the printed 48 ALL BEEF PATTIES on the side.

  He was five feet from the car. He was smiling at his supposed good fortune, and she was smiling along with him, but the smile began to falter and the eyes were once again sharp. The hand on the steering wheel disappeared down to her side.

  He continued to move in on her and said, “You ought to get some.”

  Her hand came back up, and she was holding her Smokey hat. “I hope you got a good deal. The woman in the office is a tough cookie. By the way, did you see the waitress? Young girl, seventeen, blond hair?”

  Coyote was at the car’s window. “She’s in there. The cook and manager too.” Her gun wasn’t on her right hip. She was left-handed just like him, which meant her gun was on her left side, against the door. Bad mistake. Instead of leaning into the window, she should have leaned away. Free up her gun hand. He asked, “The waitress in trouble, officer?”

  “Trooper,” she corrected him. “Maybe. I’m just making sure my daughter showed up for work. I can’t reach her on her cell. You know how kids are. Guess I’ll go in. Thanks.”

  She popped her seat belt, and Coyote heard the door click. She reached for the window control. Coyote dropped the box and grabbed the fur collar of her Tuffy jacket. He yanked her up against the window opening and drove the point of the bayonet down at her shoulder. Her heavy jacket stopped the blade from sinking in more than a few inches. He pulled the bayonet free and drove it down again with more strength. This time he aimed the bayonet beside her collar, into the throat, and the blade dove deep. The door latch popped, and the door opened an inch. She grunted, and he could hear her hand scrabbling for the gun that was trapped between her body and the door. Coyote pulled the blade free and drove it downward through the front of her throat with all of his strength. Her body shuddered, her legs kicked out. She stopped moving.

  He shoved the door shut with his hip, reached through the open window, and moved the body into a sitting position. He wanted any blood to stay inside the car. He opened the door just enough to power the window up. Her Smokey hat was lying against her leg. He put it on her head, tilted it slightly forward, and let her head rest against the seat as if she were taking a nap. The engine was still running. He left it. He didn’t think anyone but another trooper would approach the car and risk waking her.

  Chapter 20

  “It’s a three-hour drive to St. Louis, Bigfoot,” Jack said. “Do you want to run by your house?”

  “I already called Marcie, pod’na. You want to check in with Katie?”

  “I think Katie is at some event at school right now. I left her a voice mail,” Jack said.

  Katie taught sixth graders at one of the toughest middle schools in the city. These kids were on their “last” school before permanent expulsion. Instead of getting a degree, they got pardoned or paroled. She seemed to love teaching there, and he had to admit she did a good job of turning some of them around. One of her students had turned eighteen and was now a Reserve Vanderburgh County Deputy. Jack worried that the kid did it to carry a gun, but they didn’t get guns until they turned twenty-one, so maybe it would be okay.

  He drove west. He didn’t give a shit about the drivers of the trucks. They were transporting humans like cattle. They deserved what they got. But the immigrants had been sold a bill of goods. They didn’t deserve to die like they had.

  In past years millions of people had come into America illegally. Some had come to build a better life for themselves and their families. Others had come to deal drugs, flee from imprisonment in their own countries, or just to get lost in the crowd.

  This killer was carrying out his own agenda. Sanchez said there were five such incidents of mass murder now. All illegal aliens, all carrying phony green cards, and at least four of these were carrying foreign passports. Three of them were among the dead in Evansville. Two had burner phones. There was more to that, but he didn’t know what. Yet.

  And kids like Joe were caught up in greed on one side and hatred on the other. He was so lost in thought he didn’t notice his phone was vibrating in his pocket until Liddell said, “You going to get that?”

  It was Katie.

  “I heard about the deaths on the news, Jack. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  Her words made him pause. He hadn’t thought about how he felt, and no one had asked. That was police work. You did what you had to do until it was all over, and then you reacted internally. You made sacrifices. Other people, like Katie, made sacrifices so the job could get done. He didn’t want to think about how he felt right now.

  “I’m fine, Katie. I love you,” he said, and he meant the last part. She was the sunshine in his darkness. He wondered, and not for the first time since they’d divorced, how he could ever have given her up. He guessed he never had. This was where he was meant to be. She was...

  His thought was interrupted by barking in the background and Katie scolding Cinderella, his mutt.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Jack said.

  “I’m home, as you can hear. She had a pair of your underwear in the backyard burying them. Don’t worry, I’ll keep her in and fix everything.”

  “Fix what?”

  “I’ve got to go, Jack. She’s gone back to the bedroom. Call me when you have a chance. I love you. Be safe and come home soon,” Katie said, and the line went dead.

  “I heard most of that, pod’na. Isn’t it cute your dog misses you?” Liddell said. “And here you thought she didn’t like you.”

  “Maybe the mutt’s just wanting me to leave,” Jack said.

  “You’re so negative. You need to think happy thoughts. Maybe things will turn out better if you do,” Liddell said. “Look at me. I’m positive.”

  Jack was positive. Positive things would go to shit before they got better. Murphy’s Law says: “Anything that can go wrong will always screw you sideways.”

  * * * *

  They didn’t know enough to know what to question, but they were both energized by the enormous scope of the cases they were now involved with. Jack hated to admit it, but he liked the idea of not being stuck in Evansville city limits. Criminals had no restrictions and every advantage. Jack had gone outside his legal jurisdiction more than a few times before, but now he could do so legally and not have to worry about Double Dick’s wrath.

  The address Lt. Sanchez gave them skirted north of St. Louis proper and took them into the countryside. Even with the trees stripped of their leaves and patches of snow on the ground, the empty spread of land was breathtaking.

  Jack said, “You own land in Louisiana, Bigfoot. Have you ever considered moving back to Louisiana with your brother and niece? Or maybe moving out in the sticks somewhere around Evansville?”

  “All the time, pod’na. All the time.”

  “Why haven’t you?”

  “Why haven’t you?” Liddell asked.

  “I asked first,” Jack said.

  Liddell grunted. “I guess we just never got around to it. We’ve talked. Played with the idea. But now with the baby and school districts and the drive to work, I guess we stopped talking until we have a plan.”

  “Stopped talking about it, or stopped dreaming about it?” Jack asked.

  “Maybe both. Maybe family is what it’s all about. Maybe I want to be anywhere Marcie and Jane are, no matter where that is? I never put that in words before, but I guess that’s it. Now you,” Liddell said.

  Jack thought that over before saying, “I love my river cabin. I love the freedom I feel on the water and knowing that no one lives near me. I love the freedom to decide what to do and when to do it and not having to answer to anyone for the why or where. I love all that. I love Katie more than any of that. I’ll
tell you something if you can keep it to yourself, Bigfoot.”

  Liddell sat quietly.

  “I’m going to ask Katie to marry me. Again,” Jack said.

  Liddell punched Jack on the arm. “That’s great, pod’na. It’s about damn time too, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you, but you’re right. It is about time.”

  Jack was quiet and Liddell asked, “What’s the matter, pod’na? You didn’t already change your mind, did you?”

  “Not a chance. It’s just that I don’t know if she’ll have me back. I don’t know if she wants to risk it all again. I mean, part of me left her when the baby died. The divorce was just putting us out of our pain.”

  “Losing the baby was no one’s fault, pod’na. God called her home,” Liddell said.

  “Yeah. God. How could I forget?” Jack knew he’d been a horrible husband, and thought he would have been a horrible father. The job was his life. He gave it all he had. Thinking about it made him sick, but thinking about Katie, about starting over, that made him glow inside. He was a better man now. He’d learned from his mistakes. He could put the job second now. He wanted to be with Katie forever. They both wanted children. But...

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for it, Bigfoot,” he said.

  “What do you mean? Ready to marry Katie? Of course you are. You’re back home with her the way it’s meant to be. Hell, Marcie will be tickled pink if you two tied the knot. So am I.”

  Jack chuckled. “A pink Bigfoot. I’d like to see that. To be honest, I don’t know if I’m ready to try to be a father again.”

  “Hell, pod’na. That’s the fun part. The hard part is getting up all hours of the night and walking them around rocking them until they go back to sleep. The hard part is being interrupted by crying when you’re right in the middle of...”