Dale called out to him, “Sheriff. I hardly recognized you in civilian clothes. The look doesn't really work for you. Maybe orange will suit you better. Easier to hide the piss stains.”
This got a chuckle from the other lawmen. Even Mathers, who considered a permanent scowl as part of his dress code, was nearly in tears over the remark. Baylor rested his head against the warm dirt and kicked his heels. The muddied crotch of his jeans clung to the skin of his thighs. He looked down, never wishing so badly that he could see past his gut.
Sterling took advantage of the short lapse in decorum to break free from his captor. He slipped from underneath the young agent on top of him and clawed his way to his feet. Before anyone could reach him, he latched onto the canvas bag and pulled it to his chest. With everyone else either laying or kneeling on the ground, he was able to make his way to the feed grinder untouched. He stuffed the bag into the hopper with so much force that he almost went in after it.
“Shut it off!” Hazelton screamed at the deputy closest to the door. He cringed at the sound of his evidence being rapidly chewed into useless fragments by the powerful machine. The agent stood stock still, unsure or unbelieving at what was happening. He was nearly knocked to the ground by Dale, who ran past him and leaped over the auger side of the grinder. He vanished through the doorway and was gone for what seemed to Hazelton like an eternity.
Finally the engine stopped. Seconds later the hammer mills ceased to spin. What was left of the bag once again became the inanimate object that it had been before the churning steel had vibrated it to life. Hazelton could hardly bear to watch as Mathers extracted it from hopper. Half of the canvas was still intact, but there was no telling how much of the contents had been lost. Please give me something, Hazelton prayed. Spare me one damn disc.
The look on Sterling's face was priceless.
At least two dozen discs crashed to the ground around Mather's feet, complete and undamaged. Only a few of the tapes had survived. Several more fell into pieces, ribbons of brown tape strewn across the dirt like shimmering guts. The remainder was pulverized to silver and black dust. Not the mother lode that Scheck had promised, but still enough to put them all behind bars three times over. They would bury the whole bunch of them under the jail with what lay at his lead investigator's overpriced shoes.
Sterling let out a weak sigh that was cut short by the two agents, who enthusiastically slammed him to the ground. A knee was planted at the base of his neck and another on the tender muscles above his knees. Handcuffs were clamped around his bony wrists, cinched so tightly that it would take until the arraignment for the bruises to fade away. The dapper little businessman from Lincoln gagged on the dusty remains of his own wares as the agents worked him over.
“Uh, Captain?” one of the agents interrupted. Hazelton broke his gaze from the pile of evidence to see which of his men had addressed him. It was Ramirez, the rookie that had allowed Sterling to make the slip on him moments before. His youthful face was slick with perspiration and as pale as a sheet. He backed up a step and pointed his thumb to the brothers. “Think we have a situation over here, sir.”
Hazelton stepped over the pile of smut to take a closer look. He recognized the brothers from the collection of photographs taken by Deputy Scheck. The younger one was holding his brother's head in his lap. He was gently rocking him back and forth, the way a mother would hold a child while coaxing it to sleep. They held hands, fingers interlocked and caked with drying blood. Fresher pools coagulated beneath them.
Without looking back, Hazelton ordered the rookie to make the call for an ambulance. He crouched down and placed a hand on Kori's shoulder. For a second the gesture drew no response. Then, as if finally realizing that they were not alone, he looked up with tears streaming down his dirty cheeks. “I can't get it to stop.”
“Hang in there, kiddo. Help is on the way.” Hazelton replied. He stripped off his outer coat to remove the cotton parka underneath. He offered it to Kori in the hope that a fresh, drier compress would help to ebb the flow. Blood gushed from the wound when Kori lifted his drenched shirt to make the exchange. “Jesus,” he muttered, realizing that the situation was much more dire than he had first thought. “Deputy! A little help here.”
Dale hovered over them, unsure of what help he could possibly be. It was surreal to see his old high school buddy, bleeding out on the floor of some barn. The same barn that they used to sneak drinks of bourbon that they swiped from his mother's liquor cabinet. The very place that he and Brenden tried unsuccessfully to get past first base with the Dauber twins in ninth grade. The twins were two years older and way out of their league. In retrospect, bringing two uppity girls to a shit-stinking barn was a surefire way not to get laid. They had fun trying, though.
Brenden lifted his chin from his chest and stared at Dale sleepily. His mouth slowly opened and formed something between grimacing and a smile. Efforts to spit the blood out, rather than swallow it had stained his teeth pink. Still gripping his brother's hand in his, he extended a finger out to Dale. He tilted his head back and looked at Kori. “It's okay, bro. The guy with the tinfoil badge is here to save the day.” He mustered a weak laugh and coughed up a mouthful of red.
Kori looked down at him, confused. “What does that mean?”
Before Brenden could answer him he went limp and was gone.
Chapter 30
Kori sat with his elbows propped on the table and leaned over his untouched plate of food. The restaurant was electric with the chaos of the lunch crowd. Booths and tables around them were packed with diners, frantic to choke down enough sustenance to carry them through the rest of their busy day. He could not help but to notice a group of elderly women in the booth across from them. They watched with disgusted fascination as Todd devoured the meal in front of him.
He ate everything but the plate itself without taking so much as a full breath. He sopped the greasy plate with the last of his fries and popped them in his mouth. He immediately leaned back in his seat and released a slow drawn out belch. It was partially stifled by the back of his fist, but still within earshot of the gray quartet next door. Kori offered the ladies an apologetic smile to lighten the mood. He received nothing but cold stares of unforgiving contempt for his efforts.
“For four grand a month, they couldn't feed you in that place?” he asked, shoving his own plate away.
“Oh, they fed me alright,” Todd replied. He reached across the table, plucked an onion ring from Kori's plate and popped it into his mouth. He smacked his lips and nodded in approval before dragging the entire plate his way. “Everything tasted like baby food, though. Some kind of healthy new age hippy crap. Supposed to purge the toxins that built up from all the junk I ran through my body. All it did was give me the shits.”
An exasperated murmur rose from the foursome across the aisle.
“Sounds delightful,” Kori said. He tried to sink deeper into his seat to avoid the harsh stares. He unconsciously began to fold his napkin into tiny triangles. “Seriously, though. I'm glad to have you here. It means a lot to me and my dad that you took time away from your rehab to be here for us. I mean, five hours on a bus just to get back for your best friends... well, you know.”
Todd stopped eating and looked at him thoughtfully. “I know, man. I know what you're trying to say, but I wouldn't have it any other way.”
“Well you don't have to worry about the bus thing on the way back. I'll drive you back whenever you need to go, no problem.”
Todd shook his head. “I'm not going back there. No way in hell.”
“What about your...?
“My recovery?” Todd waved, dismissing the notion. “Man, I could have gotten the same results by locking myself in a room for a month with a couple cartons of smokes and a few skin magazines. I spent most of the time either listening to some sandal wearing freak preach about loving myself or watching the staff trying to bang all the female residents.”
“Check, please!” one of the ladies cried
out.
“The girls in there were all fat and ugly or exclusively into black guys, most of them both. Although, I did get a hand job during one of these stupid one on one role playing exercises that they always had us doing.” He looked on either side of him and leaned across the table, but did not bother to lower his voice. “I was a little weirded out by the fact that I was supposed to be playing the role of the chic's uncle at the time.”
“Now!” the ladies yelled in unison.
They stood up from the table and Todd placed a pair of twenty dollar bills under his empty glass. He nodded to the mortified group as he placed his hands on his hips and arched his back. He grunted a few times and then patted his gorged stomach. “Ladies,” he said politely and walked toward the door.
Ashamed, Kori stared down at the floor and pulled out his wallet. He quickly fished out a hundred dollar bill and placed it on the edge of their table, barely looking up. The one who appeared to be the lead hen in the group snarled her nose and eyed it as if he had just defecated next to her Cobb salad. “Sorry,” he mumbled and hastily followed Todd outside.
Todd was asleep before they left the parking lot. He snored softly from the passenger's seat of his own car as they left Iowa City behind them. Kori followed the old highway that ran parallel to the interstate, taking in the scenic rolling hills as he went. Todd shifted uncomfortably in his seat and let out an airy fart. Kori just smiled and cracked the windows, happy to have his friend back home again.
It was not until they were five miles from the Ridge that Todd finally came to. He opened his eyes and squinted through the dirty window, trying to regain his bearings. They passed by Henson's fruit and vegetable market. The dilapidated shed had been there for as long as he could remember. It sat empty, abandoned for the winter. It was a sad sight to see, yet it still served as a welcoming landmark. He smacked his sleep-dried lips and yawned.
Kori noticed this and affectionately nudged him with his elbow. “Welcome home, man.”
“Thanks.” Todd lit a cigarette and stared at it thoughtfully. “So did you get ever get a hold of your mom?”
“No,” Kori replied. He gripped the wheel tightly. The fine muscles in the back of his jaw flexed as he stared at the road. “I've tried for two days. Her cell comes up as deactivated and Clayton's just goes straight to voicemail. I even tried the church office, but they just gave me some bullshit runaround. Told me they would try to relay the message, but the group was in the middle of some kind of isolation retreat. Whatever the fuck that means.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, I mean her own son is dead and she can't be bothered long enough to take a fucking phone call? It's not like I'm asking her to fork out any of her precious prayer money to pay for it. I just thought she might like to show up and for the...” He stopped, searching for the right words. “To see him off.”
“Damn, that's cold.” Sensing the growing frustration in Kori's voice, Todd immediately regretted bringing the subject up. The kid had been through enough over the past week. The last thing he needed was to be reminded of how sorry his mother was. He thought of his own family and how worthless they had always seemed to him, always drunk or busy trying to kill each other. At least they would probably bother to show up for his funeral, for the free food if nothing else. “You need help paying for the cremation? I hear that shit's pretty spendy.”
“No.” Kori shook his head slowly. “Well I don't think so. I've still got some money left from the pill run. Jens wants to pay for the whole thing, but I don't want to put it on him. He's done enough already.” He looked to Todd, eyes wet and on the verge of tears. “Thanks for the offer, though. Really, I'll be okay.”
“Damn right you will.” Todd studied him for a moment before saying anything more. He wanted to gauge whether the kid was holding anything back from him, how much Brenden had actually told him before he died. The blank stare on Kori's sad face said it all. “You don't know do you? No idea at all.”
“Know what?”
Instead of explaining himself, Todd instructed Kori to keep driving past the turnoff to Cedar Ridge and head to the farm. Kori followed him to the calving shed, a converted fifties era chicken house that Brenden sometimes spent long nights waiting to deliver the newborn calves. Nestled between the machine shed and Jens's house, the building looked as if the only thing keeping it intact was the mass of overgrown vines that covered its exterior.
The door resisted at first, its hinges barely kept it from dragging across the rotting threshold. Todd pried up on the handle and rammed his shoulder hard against the wood. The stale air tickled the back of Kori's throat as they stepped inside. His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness as he surveyed the tiny room. A roughly assembled bed frame was erected in one corner; the mattress stripped of any coverings appeared grungy and slightly stained. Aside from the bed there were only a few other furnishings. An equally primitive table and a pair of chairs summed up the décor. It was stocked with all the comforts of an efficiency apartment, complete with the musty paper stink of mouse farts.
Todd worked his way under the heavy bed frame until he was in up to his waist. He cussed and muttered for several minutes before inching his way back out, lifting his butt in the air as he did so. He grunted as he dragged a long metal foot locker out into the middle of the room. A combination lock was built into the center of the lid, which Todd deftly worked to unlatch. He tilted the lid open and stood up to reveal the contents inside.
“There you go,” he said, spreading his arms out. “The answer to your financial woes.”
Two piles of neatly stacked bills filled the interior walls of the box, separated by the familiar blue backpack that Brenden often carried. On top of the backpack were two manila envelopes. Kori unsealed the one with his brother's name printed on it and examined the papers inside. His heart ached as he read through the will that his brother had drawn up less than a year earlier.
“He left me his share of the farm?” In disbelief, he looked up at Todd and then back to the document in his hands. “But this was done last April, before he knew I was coming back.”
Todd shrugged. “I guess he knew you'd come back someday. He probably figured he'd get to tell you in person before you had a chance to cash in on it though. We both had wills made out last year when things started to get heavy. Wanted to make sure somebody got to benefit from our stupidity.” He pointed to the other papers and said, “Keep reading. There's a life insurance policy, too. Split between you and your old man. Two hundred grand, same as mine.”
“And the cash?”
Again Todd shrugged as if the piles of cash were nothing at all. “The pile on the left is mine. The other was his. Now it's yours. I don't know how much is in there, but I'll bet that it's enough to pay off the rest of the bank note and throw one hell of a wake.”
Kori closed the lid and pushed the box back under the bed. “Yeah, we could do that. Except there's one problem with that idea.”
“What's that?”
Kori grinned and punched him in the arm. “You, my friend, are in a fragile stage of recovery.”
A devilish grin came over Todd's face. “Oh, yeah. Almost forgot.”
Chapter 31
The following week Joe Woodson stood from a high bluff, overlooking the Cedar River. The bitter wind numbed his bare hands as he tightly clutched the ashes of his eldest son. He pried the top open and peered inside. When he had retrieved the remains from the funeral home, he was not really sure what he had expected to get. Whatever it was, a cardboard box that must have weighed close to five pounds was not it. He hugged the box against his chest so tightly that some of the grainy contents spilled over and onto his sleeve.
Kori watched from the edge of the clearing, allowing his father a few minutes alone. When he saw the old man begin to choke up, ashes pouring down around his feet, he rushed to his side. Together, they leaned precariously over the wooden rail and held out the upturned container. The powdered remains spilled out and drifted in the
wind. They watched tearfully as the last of Brenden Woodson floated out of view, falling to the churning waters below. Then, for the first time in years, his father wrapped his arms around him and hugged him tightly.
Jens and Todd joined them at the railing to pay their respects. The four of them seesawed between jags of tears and laughter, sharing memorable stories. Kori mostly just sat back and listened. Other than his childhood memories and the past few months, he barely knew anything about his brother. As fascinating as the tales were to him, he found his attention wandering elsewhere.
Some small part of him still held out hope that his mother would pop up over the hill at any time, tearful and grieving. Maybe he wanted her to show up just to let him know she actually cared. Maybe he just wanted her to feel some of the same pain that had weighed so heavily on his own heart for the past week. Either way, he did not care as long as she came.
The bitter sting of reality gnawed at him as he stared off in the distance. Deep down inside, he knew she would never come back to Cedar Ridge. Not even for a dead child.
He left the others to reminisce amongst themselves and walked the path back to the road. Cresting the hill, he saw Dale Scheck's truck parked behind the Corolla. Dale leaned against tailgate and patiently waited for him to approach. He pulled a hand from his jacket pocket and waved meekly. Without the uniform he looked different, out of place.
“Tell me you're not here to write us a ticket for littering,” Kori said.
Dale looked down at his civilian clothes and laughed. “I'm not exactly on duty right now, so I think I can turn a blind eye.” He cautiously stuck out his hand, almost fearful that the gesture would not be returned. They shook hands spent a moment sizing each other up. After a brief uncomfortable pause Dale added, “Sorry about your brother, Kori. I mean that.”
“Thanks,” Kori replied, numbly. “So, what do you want?”
Dale tucked the hand back into the warmth of his jacket and sighed. He gazed out at the treetops as if the answer was dangling somewhere among the leafless limbs. His eyes were watery and swollen. It could have been from the sharp wind, but Kori suspected that he may have been crying. “I just came to pay my respects. If that's okay by you, that is.”
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