“No!” Stu screamed. “I won't just turn myself in. Not like this.” The gun in his hand became still as his finger slid inside the trigger guard. He pointed it in Dale's direction. His sobbing continued, evolving into something between garbled laughter and howling. It reminded Dale of coyotes in the summertime.
“Okay!” Dale extended both hands forward, palms out. All of his law enforcement training seemed to escape him at the moment. He was riding on pure instinct and of course fear. “Take it easy, Stu. Tell me what you want then.”
“I can't let Margaret see this... this filth,” he replied. Pushing his chair away from the desk, he gave himself enough room to open a large desk drawer at his feet with his right hand. The remote control dropped to the floor as he pulled out a heavy canvas bag. He turned his swollen red eyes to Dale and said, “You take it and burn it.”
“Stu, I...”
“Do as I say, boy!” Stu ordered. He opened the bag and began sweeping discs and tapes into it with the hand holding the gun. Dale cringed as he saw that the finger never left the trigger guard. Stu worked frantically as if he were putting out a fire instead of filling a bag. He looked at Dale and slurred, “She's a good woman, my Margaret.”
“Yes she is,” Dale agreed. “But I can't just take these and not report them. You know me better than that.”
“Please, boy,” Stu begged. “I can't have her seeing this. It would break her heart for good.” The look on Dale's face told him that pleading was not going to work. The boy was just too by-the-book for his own damn good. He placed the gun on the desk and changed his tactic to one of bargaining. “The only thing these tapes will do is hurt her and the families of the others. The bastards who made them don't give a damn about that. If you let this filth get out it will rip open old wounds that have taken so long to heal. Don't let them destroy her all over again. I swear on my life that I will let you drive me to the station if you just take these filthy things away and promise to burn them.”
Dale thought about it for a minute, accessing the situation. At least the gun was out of his hand and on the desktop. He would have liked it better if Stu had gone the whole nine by handing it over, but it was a start. He watched as Stu finished filling the bag and zipped it shut. “You want to at least eat before we go? Margaret sent a plate in with me.”
“Does that mean you'll do it?”
Dale sighed. He could only imagine the grief he was going to get from both Hazelton and Sheriff Baylor for breaking the chain of custody with evidence. Seeing no other way to coax the distraught man out of his office, he put on his best fake smile and said, “Okay. I'll do it.”
“Promise me, no one will ever see these,” Stu begged as he handed over the bag.
“Okay, I promise.”
Stu settled back in his seat and let out a deep breath. He looked as if a thousand pounds had just been lifted from his chest. He thanked Dale repeatedly and cried some more. This time the crying was not accompanied by the desperate sobbing. Dale took the bag from him and started out the door, shocked by the sheer weight of the contents.
“Bring that plate back in with you, will ya?”
Dale smiled and walked out to his truck. He hoped that Margaret was not watching him from the house. The thought of her made him consider keeping his word to Stu. Maybe the old man was right. There would definitely be an investigation, but what would really become of it? The bodies of the perpetrators were already growing cold. That was assuming that Stu had killed the only ones involved. Somehow he doubted that was the case. Even so, what did it matter?
With no experience in cases like this, he could only guess how many resources would actually be utilized to identify the victims in the videos. Sadly, he thought to himself, more than likely very little. Like runaways, child victims in cases like this were unfortunately labeled as victims of their own devise. The only certainty was that Margaret Fisher's life was about to become undone. Exposing her to Stu's suspicions about her daughter's disappearance would devastate her.
He walked back to the workshop, already devising several plans on how to dispose of the bagful of smut. He was reaching for the plate of food when a muffled gunshot echoed throughout the building. Stunned, he let go of the plate and strained to listen. He wished desperately for Stu to call out a “sorry” or “oops” or anything that someone who didn't just put a round into their own skull might say. The only sound his mind registered was his own pulse whooshing through it. A watery gasp rose up in his throat as he silently bid farewell to a lifelong friend. Unable to tolerate any more bloodshed in one day, Dale cursed his own cowardice and stepped back outside to call 911.
After weathering the barrage of questions from the first responders and escorting a devastated Margaret Fisher to the home of a family friend, Dale found himself alone in his trailer once again. His throat stung from stomach acid and his head throbbed. Too weary to lift the bag, he dragged it into his dark room and shut the door behind it. I'll deal with that tomorrow, he thought to himself, but right now I need sleep. He knew that he should eat first, but his stomach threatened to erupt again at the mere thought. So he turned off the living room lamp and collapsed on the couch.
Sleep came almost at once but not without a price. His mind played out recent events, mixing them into a potpourri of chronologically out of order scenes. He was jolted awake several times by some of the more disturbing ones, especially those that defied logic. A spooning deer pawed at a plate of leftovers, while Tassler and Margaret Fisher played euchre against Stu and a smoldering Virgil Semler. They played hand after hand, sitting Indian-style around a deerskin rug. Semler coughed up smoke from holes in his body that should not have existed, chanting the words “Highdrugs” over and over as he dealt. Dale knew on some conscious level that euchre was not a betting game, but he was also aware that stacks of pornographic DVD's were being wagered like poker chips. Tassler and Margaret were winning by a considerable margin.
No matter how hard he tried, Dale could not escape the bizarre purging of mind clutter as he dozed. The harder he tried to let much needed sleep take hold, the faster the dreams came. They flashed behind his eyelids in fast forward like scenes from Stu's television set. Suddenly his heart skipped a beat and he sat upright. The DVD, the one in the player. There was still a disc in the machine when he had shut Stu's TV off. He had to get that disc, assuming no one on the scene had already discovered it.
He grabbed his keys and rushed out the door in such haste that he never bothered to lock it behind him. He looked at the clock on his dashboard. It was nearly midnight. Surely, enough time had passed that he would have the Fisher residence all to himself. The cover of the night was his best hope of saving his dead friend's wife a lot of heartache.
Chapter 25
Kyle Collins watched from his front step as the cop dashed out of his trailer. Hoping to remain unnoticed, he cupped a hand over the tip of his smoke and sat still. The cop climbed into his truck and spun his rear tires as he exited the trailer park. His attention appeared to be anywhere but on the spying neighbor across the lane. That suited Kyle just fine. He and his cousin had spent the better part of the evening matching each other, beer for beer. The last thing he wanted was to wind up in the county drunk tank.
He waited until the sound of the cop's truck faded in the distance before standing up. He considered waking his cousin, but quickly scratched the idea. Delbert had snorted up the last of his oxys days ago, long before his prescription was due for a refill. With the perv gone, there was nobody left to fix him up right when the well ran dry. Delbert was in a bad way and waking him after a drunk would be asking for a fight.
He looked around to make sure none of the neighborhood brats were outside. Then he ran across the lane as fast as his drunken legs could take him. With the bottom of his shirt covering his fingers, he tested the knob on Dale's front door. He was so shocked that the knob turned and the door swung inward that he stood there for a moment, staring at the room beyond it. He took one last look behin
d him and then he went inside.
By comparison, the cop's trailer was so much nicer than his own shabby dump. The carpet looked new and it did not have that propane fart smell that old trailers all seemed to possess. Hell, no wonder everyone in town thought the guy was queer. Nobody's place should look that neat and clean. Rage rose up from his insides as studied the room, fueled by alcohol and his deep hatred for the police. It surfaced in the form of a hawked up ball of phlegm, which he spat all over a mirror on the wall.
He did not bother to steal anything of value as he went through the rooms other than a few handfuls of loose change. The real purpose of his visit was to somehow defile the smug cop's perfect little castle, to remind him of who he really was and where he lived. He thought about lifting the back of the toilet, climbing up and taking a nice dump in the tank. The pain pills Delbert had, the ones he shared before running close to being out, always tended to stop him up. So that was out.
He could piss though. Drinking an eighteen pack of Old-Style saw to that, he thought as he proceeded to spray the walls of the trailer like a dog marking his territory. When his bladder was emptied he commenced to kicking holes in doors and walls, which proved quite difficult given his state of drunkenness and the trailer's tight quarters. He kicked the last of the doors in the hallway and found something that piqued his curiosity.
He first poked at the large bag with his foot. Whatever was inside was heavy and solid against his touch. The shape and color of the bag looked army issue, leading him to believe that he had just scored the cop's personal arsenal. He had a job lined up for the next night and some firepower would come in real handy. To think, he thought, a pig's guns being used in a dope grab. How priceless was that? He hoisted the bag onto his shoulders and made a mad dash back to his own trailer. He couldn't wait to tell Delbert.
Unaware that the remainder of Stu's final secret was out of his possession, Dale Scheck sat in the cab of his truck and laid his head back. He had parked along a quiet stretch of River Road and closed his eyes. The disc that was still in the player, where his dead friend had left it, was now at the bottom of the Cedar. For a moment he regretted not bringing the entire lot with him. He gladly would have tossed them one by one into the deep water and been done with them.
As soon as the thought passed through his mind, he realized how foolish that would have been. What if, by some freak chance, a fisherman happened to snag one of them? One disc in the water made that outcome a near impossibility. But hundreds of them? No, the only true way to erase them from existence was to burn each and every one of them. That was exactly what he intended to do, first thing in the morning.
He sank further into his seat and let the running water lull him into a deep slumber.
Chapter 26
They waited for the others to arrive at the campground, just down the road from the burned out remains of Virgil's property. Kori figured that it was for the best to meet at a neutral location, considering how Brenden felt about the two of them going out without him. It was not that his brother was angry that he and Todd were going along with Soup's plan to do a score, especially so far from home. He had never seen Brenden so at peace with himself since the day he had broken all ties with the Campbell's. The only time he had voiced any concern was after learning who Soup had brought into the fold in his absence.
Kori knew very little about Kyle or Delbert Collins, except that they came from a rough family, even more dysfunctional than the Campbell clan. He had heard stories about how Delbert had either shot or had been shot by a cop a few years back. He and his brother had beaten the cop and left him for dead after the altercation. Delbert had just been released from a surprisingly brief stay in jail and was chomping at the bit to make up for lost time. According to Todd, he was actually the less psychotic one of the bunch.
Kori was uncertain but he thought the cop was the same one who had supposedly killed himself the night before. It had been plastered all over the front page of his father's morning newspaper, along with the story about a deer hunting accident that happened a few miles from their house. They had watched the fire department pass back and forth by their place several times the day before. So far, the names on that one still hadn't made the paper.
A thought occurred to him as they waited in the fading sunlight. Since his return to Cedar Ridge, two people had died. Maybe more if the hunting accident turned out to be serious. That was pretty extraordinary for an area that claimed roughly two hundred residents if you didn't include the population of nearby Cameron. He considered the notion that maybe he had brought some kind of bad mojo back to the place. He tried to share his theory with Todd, but was brushed off immediately.
“Man, don't talk like that before a job. You're giving me the creeps,” Todd said, not really paying attention. He was hunched over a glass tray, manipulating a pile of white powder into neat lines with the edge of a plastic card. When he was satisfied with his handiwork he banged the card on the glass before licking it clean. Kori saw that it was a library card that he was using.
“That's what's giving you the creeps, dude,” Kori countered, pointing to the tray. Todd lowered a rolled up bill to it and made one of the lines vanish. He offered the tray across the seat and Kori shook his head. “No thanks. I'm nervous enough the way it is.”
“You sure? This will settle you down.” Todd continued to hold the tray in the air. Kori stared at the tray and back to him, doubtful. “I'm serious. A little bump won't hurt you.” He leaned over and snorted another line, rubbing his nose vigorously as he sat back up. He handed Kori the rolled bill. “Give you legs, bro.”
“How do I do it?” He took the bill and stared at it, wondering just how sanitary it was to touch something that had just been in another man's nostril. He steadied the tray with one hand as Todd held it in front of him, bent forward and inhaled. Instantly, the inner lining of his nostril felt as if he had just snorted fire. The pain subsided after a few seconds, but not before his eyes brimmed over with tears. He rubbed the side of his face and grimaced. He tried to speak but the drainage in the back of his throat stopped him. He swallowed hard and nearly gagged from the bitter chemical aftertaste.
“There,” Todd grinned, pulling the tray away. “Better?”
“No.”
Todd laughed, “You will be.”
He was right about that. By the time Soup's Impala came to a stop beside them, Kori felt a warm sensation of well-being wash over him. His scalp tingled and the hairs on the top of his head felt as if they were moving involuntarily. His nostril no longer burned, but the flesh around the sides of his face felt stiff and wet. His throat was raw and his tongue became very dry, making him regret not bringing along something to drink. Electricity ran through his muscles and he suddenly felt as though he could take on the world.
Kyle Collins exited the Impala, bringing with him a large canvas bag. He wrestled the bag into the back of Todd's vehicle and climbed in beside it. Todd handed him the glass tray and he greedily snatched it up. He deftly snorted up the remaining lines from the tray as Todd followed closely behind the Impala. The tray was passed back to the front but the rolled bill mysteriously did not make the return trip. Todd either didn't notice or at least did not let on like he did.
Kori became extremely verbal as the hour long trip progressed, so it was only a matter of time before the obvious question was asked. Leaning his head between the headrests, he ogled the bag with an enthusiasm that put Kyle Collins on edge. He poked a hand through the seats and pointed. “What's in that thing anyway?”
Kyle placed a forearm over the nylon straps, pulling the bag closer. He leaned forward and snarled, “How's about you mind your own business, fuckhead.” His lips curled back, exposing what was left of his drug ruined teeth. His eyes were wide and glassy, like an animal just starting to feel the effects of the tranquilizer dart sticking in its hide. The pendulum of Kori's high took a sharp downward swing as he quickly retreated back to the safety of the front seat. Kyle sniggered through his
nose and continued to stare at him.
“How about you mind who you're talking to in my car,” Todd said. His eyes blazed as he stared at his backseat passenger's reflection in the rear view. He gave Kyle a few seconds to respond before adding, “Fuckhead.”
Kyle laughed nervously and leaned back in his seat. He pulled the bag onto his lap so its weighted mass draped over him like a shield. He held it tightly against himself, despite the jagged corners of plastic that poked through the canvas and into his thighs. As with most bullies, it made him uncomfortable being outnumbered and not in control. He stared out the window into the darkening sky and scowled. “You and your girlfriend just stay the hell out of my way when we get there, maybe you'll both make it home tonight.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Todd replied, unmoved by the veiled threat. “Until then, shut the hell up and enjoy the ride.”
Kori was touched by the way Todd had defended him, but the confrontation had left him with a nervous buzzing in his head as the effects of the drug intensified. He still felt as though he could take on the world, but at the same time got the uneasy feeling that he was actually going to have to. Thoughts passed through his brain at such a high rate that they canceled each other out before fully registering. He felt paranoid, responsible for the tension inside the car and obligated to fix it. “I just wanted to know what was in the bag.”
Todd shot him an irritated glance. “I know, man. Now shut up.”
He wasn't sure if he could, but was willing to try. An endless ribbon of lines in the road zipped toward them, and then disappeared beneath the car. Each glowed brighter than the last as the headlights reflected from their surface. Kori focused on them, willing them to soothe him into a calming trance. He could feel his pulse on the side of his neck without even touching it. It was both fascinating and frightening to him. He wanted out of the car badly. He wanted a drink even more. Most of all he wanted to do another line.
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