They pored over their father's newspapers every evening after work, hoping to glean any information about the disaster that took place at the cookhouse. Reports were sketchy at best, focusing primarily on the suspected methamphetamine lab that was discovered in the rubble. It was believed that the alleged lab had exploded in the garage and caused the fire that spread to the nearby house. An elderly woman and her two middle-aged sons were listed as residents of the home. No bodies had yet been located, except for that of the dog belonging to one of the owners.
Similar articles mentioned the incident as the weeks passed by. The new details added little to the original story other than to list the names of the owner and her two speed cooking offspring. Each follow up was buried deeper into the back pages as public interest faded. Never once was Soup Campbell or the other missing members of that night's crew mentioned.
It appeared as if they had dropped off the face of the planet, but Brenden knew better than that. Not a single body was recovered from the scene, where at least nine people were known to have been. Even with a raging fire thrown into the equation, something should have turned up in the ashes. They may not have all made it out of there alive, but at least one of them did.
Word had it that Little Chris was slowly recovering from the loss of his left hand. The doctors were more concerned with the amount of blood that he had lost that night. Some of them even argued that the near-lethal levels of narcotics in his body had actually saved his life. He remained in critical condition, fading in and out of consciousness. Most of his waking hours were spent harassing the nursing staff and babbling incessantly about tinfoil badges.
Virgil's prized collection of tainted childhoods remained in the hayloft, stashed away between bales of musty clover. Bloodstains that had once saturated the canvas were now covered in a layer of fine dust. Bird shit spackled the exterior as mice padded their nests with gnawed off bits of the fabric. It literally loomed over their heads as they labored in the barn below. Although they never spoke of it, the mere act of possessing it weighed heavily on their minds. The idea was to wait until Todd returned from rehab. Together they would decide the fate of the miserable contents. A surprise visit from an old acquaintance abruptly changed that plan.
It was less than a week before Thanksgiving. Kori and Brenden had spent the morning in the doorway to the barn, mixing feed for the cattle lot. The process was simple enough, pouring grain and supplements into the hopper of the huge contraption until it was mixed into a coarse powder. The trick, Brenden explained, was to stuff in a few square bales of hay. The hay acted as a filler, cutting down the cost by making the feed last longer in the bunks. Kori did not question the practice. All he knew is that it was a dirty, noisy job.
Hundreds of hammer mill grinders whined at mind-numbing speeds as they stuffed layers of hay inside the hopper, filling the room with dust and dried plant matter. The debris floated thickly in the air before clinging to their sweaty arms and necks. The sound was so intense that Kori could not hear himself cough as his lungs rejected the dirty air. He stuffed the last of the hay into the hopper and watched as the grinders effortlessly pulled it in. Brenden climbed the ladder for another bale to add to the mix.
Beads of perspiration trickled down from his scalp and into his eyes. He pulled the front of his shirt over his face to wipe them dry. He had no idea that he was not alone until he felt the unmistakable sensation of a gun barrel pressing into his temple. He stood there, frozen, with the shirt still stretched over his head. His pulse drummed in his ears, nullifying all other sounds. He cringed and waited for the shot that he knew was coming at any moment, wondering if it would hurt or if he would even know it happened as the nothingness of death took hold.
“I believe that you may have something that belongs to me,” a voiced shouted over the whirring of the machinery. It was a voice that he did not recognize. Slowly, he lowered his shirt and found himself face to face with a tiny man in a tailored gray suit. He was keenly dressed, as if he were standing in a five star restaurant and not a barn with cow shit on the floor. He was bookish and reminded Kori of a professor that he once had a class with. His smile was bright, but his eyes were narrow and cold. “Where is the bag, son?”
Out of his peripheral vision Kori could see that it was Soup holding the gun. He barely looked like the same guy that he had seen a few weeks earlier. His face and forearms were splotched with partially healed burns, presumably from the cookhouse fire. Most of them were an angry red color, still weeping an amber liquid that was dried on the edges in sore looking scabs. His mouth was one solid blister, yet he managed to manipulate it into a passable grin. Two of his front teeth were broken off at the gum line.
Kori gulped nervously. The dusty air scratched at his throat as he spoke over the clamor, taking care not to turn his head as he did so. “Hey, man. You made it out, huh?”
“No thanks to you and your faggot friend,” Soup snarled. His deformed mouth and absent teeth rendered each consonant into a thhh sound. “Thanks for backing me up, douche bag.”
“It wasn't what you think, Soup. Todd and I, we were...”
“Shut up!” Soup hissed, pressing the barrel deeper into Kori's flesh.
The gun never wavered until a bale of hay crashed to the floor at the base of the ladder, followed by Brenden. Soup swung the gun in his direction and then returned it to the side of Kori's head. He wrapped a gauze covered arm around Kori's neck and pulled him backwards, through the doorway. The man in the suit stayed behind, smiling coldly at Brenden.
“If you have the bag here, then I suggest you get it quickly,” the tiny man shouted to Brenden. His voice was high-pitched and competed well against the noises. “Otherwise I cannot guarantee the safety of your brother for very long. Our mutual friend has had a rough go of it as of late. I find him very excitable these days.”
Brenden eyed the strange little man, reluctant to comply. “Who the hell are you?”
The little man laughed and spread his arms open, glancing around the interior of the barn. “I'm the one who helped you pay for this lovely place that we are standing in. The one that you have been working for all these years. A fine earner you have been from what I've heard, I might add. But sadly, it's time for us to end our previous arrangement. It's simple. You have something of mine and now I have something of yours.” His eyes narrowed as he nodded toward the doorway. “Now get me the fucking bag!”
“And if I say I don't have it?”
The little man pursed his delicately thin lips and whistled loudly. Soup reappeared with his arm wrapped tightly around Kori's neck. The barrel of the gun had migrated downward until it rested just below the jawline. A pleading expression of panic was on his Kori's face as he met his brother's eyes. The little man sensed this and was fully certain that now he had the upper hand. With a shrug of indifference he looked into the opening of the whirring hopper. “Then I guess the cattle will be getting a bit more protein in their diet this week.”
He nodded to Soup, who beamed with excitement. He carefully passed the gun to the little man and gripped Kori by the neck with both hands. Sparing a moment to glare at Brenden, he savored the look of anguish as he forced Kori's head into the opening of the hopper.
Kori instinctively planted both hands on either side of the metal lip as Soup pried down on the back of his neck. The rusty edges bit into his flesh as he stiffened his arms, resisting with all of his might. For a few minutes he maintained his distance from the spinning steel blades, but eventually his strength was no match for Soup's brute force. His face slowly lowered deeper inside the box until his head was past the top of the sides. The ceaseless whirring of the hammer mills blew against his hair and dried the sweat on his face. It was only a matter of time they made contact. He twisted his face to the side and screamed his brother's name.
“Okay, okay!” Brenden cried out. “I'll give you what you want. Just tell him to stop for Christ's sake.”
Soup released the pressure from Kori's neck. With what
little strength he had left in his arms, he backed away from the grinder and crumpled to the ground. He drew his knees into his chest and panted uncontrollably. The little man stared at him unsympathetically, tapping the gun barrel on the top of his head and ordering him to stand. At first he was unsure if he could, but with a little unfriendly persuasion he was coaxed back to his feet.
Brenden climbed the ladder and quickly reappeared with the bag. He plopped it at the little man's feet. A month's worth of dust exhaled from the fabric, settling on the pair of ostrich skin shoes. The little man was unfazed.
“It had better all be there. I'll know if it isn't,” he warned. He had no way of knowing how many copies were inside the filthy bag, but he was not about to let some smug little dirt farmer know that. After the fear that he had inflicted on them, he had no doubt that they would gladly surrender the entire lot.
“It's all there,” Brenden responded. He stood back, rubbing his palms together as if to suggest he was washing his hands of it. “Just take it.”
“Thanks, I think I will. Nice of you to offer,” the little man sneered. He leveled the weapon and fired one round into Brenden's midsection. He promptly handed the gun back to Soup, who stood there in frozen astonishment.
The impact sent Brenden backwards and he landed on his butt in the sparse layer of hay beneath the foot of the ladder. A spray of red escaped his mouth and he doubled over in pain. He tried to speak but only managed a croaking sound that came out in pinkish bubbles. He pressed his hands against the wound to hold back the blood as it seeped through his fingers. His chin quivered, tilting downward until it rested on his chest.
Kori wriggled out of his shirt and fell to the ground beside him. He pressed it into the spot where the flow seemed to be the worst. Brenden fought him at first, screaming as the fabric grazed his torn flesh. Eventually he was too weak to fend off his brother's advances and let his own hands fall limply out of the way. Kori covered the hole and applied pressure, alarmed at how quickly the blood continued to flow. Within seconds the shirt was completely saturated.
“Hang on, Bren. It's gonna be okay.” He knew that was a complete lie. Things were as far from okay as they could get. He stroked the side of his brother's face with his free hand and shuddered. Brenden's dirty neck was already growing clammy and cold. The rate of the blood seeping through the shirt was slowing down, but he knew it was only because there was less of it to lose. Panic filled him as he tried to think of something, anything to do. His brother was going to die if he didn't come up with something fast.
Shouting broke out over the sound of the machinery. Kori looked behind him to see a portly man squeezing past the feed grinder. A handgun was strapped to his huge rotund waist. The holster hung up on the door frame, forcing him to turn sideways to fit through. Beads of sweat formed on his bulbous nose and dripped onto his upper lip. His breathing came in labored gasps as he surveyed the room. “Aw shit!” he yelled at the sight of Brenden. His crimson jowls swayed back and forth in frustration as he approached the brothers. Towering over them, he pointed a fat finger and glared at the little man. “Goddammit, Sterling. This was exactly what I did not want to happen.”
“Oops.” The little man, whose real name was Benson Sterling, grinned sheepishly and stared at the gun as if he had no idea how it had gotten in his hand. Slight creases in his tailored suit coat appeared as he shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I guess it's fortunate that you are here, Sheriff. Seeing as how we will soon have a corpse that needs disposed of. I hear you were quite proficient at that back in the day.”
With surprisingly fluid grace for a man of his size, Baylor spun around and grabbed Sterling by the lapels of his coat. He lifted the smaller man until their foreheads almost touched. Sterling's feet dangled a foot from the ground, kicking frantically at the sheriff's shins. The urge to shake him like a rag doll until his frail little neck snapped was nearly impossible to resist. He twisted his grip until the stitching on the back of Sterling's suit began to rip apart. “What have you gotten me into?”
Anger flashed in Sterling's eyes. “You ignorant old drunk! You let it get to this point. All you had to do was shut Fisher up for good, but no. You said he wasn't going to be a problem for us. Look how well that decision has worked out for us.” He nodded toward the canvas bag to emphasize his point. “If you had just done things my way in the first place, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.”
Baylor let loose his grip and let Sterling drop roughly to the ground. “How was I supposed to know he would break bad like he did?”
Sterling calmly smoothed the wrinkles from the front of his outfit the best he could do. He rolled his shoulders a few times to adjust the back. The coat was undoubtedly ruined, as well as the shoes. No amount of cleaning would ever remove the vile smell of animal dung out of the material. Still, there was no shame in at least making an attempt at a presentable appearance.
Without looking up he said, “Of course you wouldn't have known. Only someone with more than half a brain would stop to consider that the man's daughter had disappeared on your watch. You run a county the size of a football field for Christ's sake. People are bound to start talking. It was only a matter of time before he put two and two together.”
Baylor's eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, on my watch?”
Sterling stopped picking unseen debris from his sleeve and looked up. “Weren't you the head swinging dick of this joke of a county then? As a father of three daughters myself, I'd like to think that I would have done the same thing if I were in his shoes. Only, I would have made you my first stop.”
“You have children?”
“Does that surprise you, sheriff?”
“That repulses me,” Baylor replied. “Anyway, don't you try to put this on me. I took care of my end just fine.” He nudged the bag with his boot, shocked by the weight of it. “Besides, we got what we came here for. Let's get the hell out of here before the old Jew shows up. I don't want to have to add another body to the pile. Big enough the way it is.”
“Speaking of which, we still have them to deal with.” Sterling raised his eyebrows and glanced over to the brothers, one bleeding profusely and the other frantically trying to stop it. They were both in a world of their own, oblivious to the discussion transpiring around them.
“What about them?” Baylor eyed him suspiciously and then held his hands up in protest. “Whoa, hold on there! No way. If you think I'm cleaning this up, you're more out of your mind than I thought.”
Wary of another outburst from the fat man, Sterling cautiously approached him and patted him on the back. “Mr. Campbell will assist you with whatever you need to get the job done. Don't worry about that, but the responsibility still falls on you to see it through.”
Baylor shook his head. “I didn't sign up for this.”
“Has it been so long since you've had to get rid of a body that you've forgotten how? Or is it that you're just not used to dealing with ones so grown up?”
“You're a real bastard, you know that,” Baylor snapped. “And in case you haven't noticed, they're both still breathing. I'm not doing anything to change that fact.”
Sterling nodded to Soup. “Care to do the honors, Mr. Campbell?”
Soup stared at him blankly for a moment then looked down at the gun in his hand. He looked back at his boss as if to make sure that he was understanding what was expected of him. He slowly approached the Woodson brothers and lifted the gun to the back of Kori's head.
“Soup, please,” Kori pleaded. He defensively covered his head with his free hand. The other stayed firmly planted over his brother's hemorrhaging wound. “You don't have to do this.”
“Shut up,” Soup hissed. His hand trembled, slightly at first and then so much that he had to lower it to his side. He took in several deep breaths and tilted his head back, steeling himself. He started to raise the weapon again when the shot rang out.
Baylor ducked with the same uncanny grace that he had displayed earlier. Inst
inctively, he reached for his own piece. Sterling, the natural coward that he was, ducked behind the sheriff's wide girth for cover. The gun tumbled from the fingers of Soup's hand which no longer functioned. The shot had torn through the back of his shoulder and punched out the other side, leaving a gaping hole. He danced on his feet in a diagonal direction until his legs finally betrayed him. Bewildered, he fell to the ground and writhed in pain.
Bobby Hazelton stepped into the doorway with his service revolver drawn. He fixed the sights on Baylor and inched forward, followed by three other agents. Dale Scheck brought up the rear. They systematically swarmed in and forced everyone to the ground. For the time being, everyone was considered a suspect. The details would sort themselves out later.
Baylor eyed Dale as he crouched over Soup Campbell with a pair of handcuffs. The deputy wrestled the Soup's hands behind his back, despite the shrill cries of pain. Infuriated that one of his own men had anything to do with the raid, Baylor slowly rolled to one side and eased his gun from under his round belly. If this was how he was going down, he'd be damned if that little Judas snot nose was going to walk away without seeing a fight.
“Just give me a reason to ventilate your fat ass, why don't you,” Hazelton growled, pressing a foot on the top of Baylor's head. He pressed the muzzle of his service revolver into the fatty roll at the base of the sheriff's neck. “Let it go.”
Baylor grunted and reluctantly complied. A curious sense of relief came over him as he relaxed his arm and let the weapon drop. Through squinted eyes he watched as Hazelton plucked it from the dirt immediately. Thirty years of constantly looking over his shoulder was finally over. He felt unafraid for the first time in a long while as the restraints were clamped down and he was rolled onto his back. He closed his eyes, smiled and felt his bladder let go.
Dimebag Bandits Page 19
