Kori stared at him for a moment before answering. For some reason he could not help but to feel some sense of pity for the guy. There was an undeniable air of weariness about him. Even though Dale and Brenden were the same age, the man who stood before him looked decades older. He looked as if he were on the verge of a serious meltdown. “Yeah, sure. Everybody's still down there by the eagle lookout, telling stories,” Kori said, pointing in the direction of the path. “Dad will appreciate that a lot.”
“I appreciate that, too.” Dale shifted nervously as if he had more to say, but could not muster the nerve to get it out. Then he turned and started for the path.
Kori let him get just a few yards before calling out to him. “Can I ask you something?”
Dale stopped and turned slowly as if expecting something horrible to happen next. “Sure.”
“What does tinfoil badge mean?”
Dale gave him a peculiar look. What little color that was left in his complexion had drained away. “Come again?”
“You heard me. What does it mean?” Kori approached him. “I've heard that saying quite a few times in the past month. The last time it was directed at you.”
Dale reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. His trembling fingers sorted through the credit cards and other documents until he found what he was looking for. He stared at it for a moment and sighed, shaking his head. Reluctantly, he pulled out a laminated card and handed it to Kori.
“Internal affairs?” Kori asked, turning the card in his hand. At a glance it really did look as if it were constructed of tinfoil. The hologram background that surrounded the photo of Dale glimmered in the sun, even in the weak lighting of the overcast sky. The picture didn't even look like the same person that was standing in front of him. It was more like the younger version that still had no idea how fast the job would eat him from the inside out, starting with his soul. He handed the card back to Dale. “You’re a cop narc?”
“I guess that's one way of putting it,” Dale replied, flinching slightly at the term. To him it meant, traitor. Rat. He slipped the card back into his pocket without bothering to return it to his wallet first. “I was supposed to be flying under the sheriff department's radar, but somehow my recently deceased partner caught wind of it. I don't think too many others have caught on yet and I'd prefer to keep it that way for now. So let's just keep this between you and me, okay? I'd like to hold the bounties on my head to a minimum, at least until after the trials get under way.”
“Trials, as in plural?” Kori felt a lump rise up in his throat.
Dale picked up on his apprehensiveness and immediately went into damage control mode. The last thing he wanted to do was to scare his star witness into doing something stupid like skipping town before the trial even started. He put his hands in the air, motioning for Kori to stay calm. “Don’t worry. You're only going to be testifying against Sterling. There's no getting around that. You were the only one there who's not under indictment now.”
“Or dead,” Kori added. He glanced beyond the clearing where his brother's ashes had been cast into the wind. He could not help but to blame Dale for Brenden's death. He did not pull the trigger, but he sure as hell didn't make any effort to stop it from happening either.
“Um, yeah,” Dale replied, for a lack of anything better to say. “The rest of the charges don't involve you, at least not as far as the state is concerned.”
“Really?” Kori looked at him doubtfully. “And no one's asking how the hell that bag full of crap landed at our feet in the first place? How we ended up with eighty pounds of kiddie porn that belonged to the same guy that killed my brother?”
“Nobody has so far. They don't care how it landed as long as it can be tied to the whole lot of them,” Dale replied. “I wouldn't count out the possibility of Sterling's lawyers bringing it up though. You have to expect that, you know. I mean, he owns like half of the newspapers in Nebraska. He's not just going to check out without a fight.”
Kori frowned. “He's probably got a shit ton of high dollar lawyers in his back pocket.”
Dale smiled weakly and shook his head. “Don't worry about him. You've got an entire team of state attorneys on your side.” He gently nudged Kori's arm. “And you have me. You and me, we're not like them. We gotta stick together and take care of our own. Right?”
Kori looked down at his arm, the place where Dale touched him. He felt the sudden urge to punch the guy in the mouth and walk away. Instead he asked, “How long did you know that Sterling was in town before you showed up that day?”
“What do you mean?” The guilty look on Dale's face said it all, even more than the long pause before his response.
Kori moved closer, forcing Dale backwards until he was pinned against the door of his truck. Their faces came so close that Dale could feel the heat radiate from his skin, the hatred burning from his eyes. “I mean could you have stopped him before he got there or did you let my brother die just so you could make your fucking case?”
“Kori,” Dale started, measuring his words carefully. He knew that at any moment he might have a fight on his hands. “It wasn't my call to make.” He broke away from Kori's harsh gaze and stared at the ground. “I know this is no consolation, but I was just doing my job.”
“My brother and I, we were just collateral damage?” Kori hissed.
“Kori, I'm so sorry. You have to believe me. If there was any way to change what happened I would.”
Kori backed off a little, but the burning hate in his eyes remained constant. The look of fear on the deputy's face was somewhat satisfying. He liked the feeling and suddenly understood the rush that his brother and the rest of the guys felt while working a job. It was a feeling that he could see himself getting used to. “What about the others? What's gonna happen to them?”
A gust of bitter wind kicked up and left them both shrinking deeper into their jackets for warmth. Dale nodded toward his truck and said, “Come on, heater's not been off that long. Let's jump in before we both catch pneumonia. This could take a while.”
Despite the welcomed reprieve from the elements, Kori had a difficult time getting comfortable in the close confines of Dale's truck. It wasn't that he didn't trust him, or even that he was a cop. He just did not like him. It was something that he could not quite put his finger on, other than that he exuded some sort of nervous desperation. Dale was trying just a bit too hard to cover his uber cop image by playing the 'good old boy from the same neck of the woods as you' routine. It was not working for him.
He reminded Kori of Eddie Rupert, a kid he once went to grade school with. Eddie came from a really fucked up home and had transferred in during the middle of the year under some sordidly peculiar circumstances. He was just aching to get in everyone's good graces from the second his feet hit the linoleum. Then, after everyone finally started to get used to him, he started dumping his heavy dark secrets on them at the most inopportune times.
Nobody wants to hear about how some kid's old man wakes him up in the middle of the night with a hard on every time he comes home a little too drunk to see straight. Especially not while they are busy choosing teams for kickball. That kid will always get picked dead last every time, guaranteed. If he keeps talking long enough, he will eventually find himself becoming the kickball. Eddie became rather intimately familiar with the business end of most everyone's gym shoes until one day he quit coming to school.
Kori had to concentrate to differentiate between the pathetic little boy from his childhood and the spineless cop in the seat next to him. The cop who may or may not have been able to prevent his brother's death. He would have rather stepped out of the truck and not looked back, but he needed to know the fate of the others involved. It was for his own piece of mind as well as his safety. He needed to know which faces to look for every time he looked over his shoulder, every time he poked his head out the front door.
Dale told him the obvious first. Sterling was looking at a minimum of life between the mansla
ughter and the pornography. His trial was set to start in the next few months. Baylor would have a longer wait. Apparently he made a halfhearted effort to hang himself with the leg bottoms of his own pants while in county lockup. The weight of his own fat ass was too much for the threadbare jail issue fabric and he ended up with a concussion and a broken arm for his troubles. The last Dale heard, he was currently on suicide watch in a federal holding cell in Davenport.
“What about Soup and Chris?” Kori impatiently asked. They were the two that concerned him the most. Maybe Benson Sterling had innumerable minions at his beck and call, but the Campbell cousins were just as easily capable of exacting revenge on anyone they believed to have betrayed them. The devils that he knew struck much more fear into him than the ones he did not.
Dale shifted nervously before he answered. He grew up with the cousins and apparently shared some of the same apprehensions about them as Kori did. “They're both still in the hospital, waiting for transfers to Davenport. Soup will probably go as soon as next week. He had second degree burns all over his body when they processed him. We think he had something to do with that meth lab fire over in Oxford Mills, but we can't prove it. As soon as he's cleared by the docs he's headed for federal lockup. Sooner the better if you ask me. I sat in on his arraignment the other day. It was done via closed circuit from his hospital room. The crazy bastard threatened me right there on camera.”
“No shit?” Kori asked, feigning concern.
“Yeah. I don't know how he even knew I was there. The judge is the only one in the courtroom that's on camera, but he called me out like I was sitting right in front of him. Said for me to just lie back down if I smelled smoke in the middle of the night, because it would already be too late. Can you believe the balls on that guy?”
Kori shook his head. He had seen the most sadistic side of Soup over the past few months. He knew exactly how big his balls were, figuratively speaking at least. “Hmm. That's crazy. What about Little Chris?”
“Still in critical condition, last I heard. His infection got pretty bad and they had to amputate clear up to the elbow. Lucky for him that he made it to the ER as soon as he did.” Dale looked at him suspiciously. “You wouldn't have any idea how he might have ended up there that night, would you?”
“How much time are they looking at?” Kori asked, ignoring the question. Images of Chris lying across the windshield with his bloody stump in the air flashed though his mind. It came as a surprise that he lived longer than ten minutes after they had dumped him off at the emergency entrance. Even after everything that happened that night, he still felt a little guilty for leaving him like that.
“Not sure,” Dale replied. “Word has it that they are both singing like canaries, but it doesn't matter. There's so much video evidence on those tapes that the prosecutor wouldn't consider cutting them a deal, even if he wanted to. Pressure's coming from all sides to hang as many of these bastards as possible. Don't you worry about them. They are both going to be on the receiving end of prison justice for a very long time. Sex offenders always get it the worst in there, you know. Especially when kids are involved. I once heard about this pervert who got caught for...”
“Well, anyway.” Kori cut him off. He had gotten the information that he wanted and had heard about all the white noise he could stomach from the tinfoil badge carrying cop. If he didn't get away soon he was going to end up punching him in the mouth. He opened the truck door to step out before turning back to Dale one more time. “You know, Dale. On second thought, maybe it's best that you don't go down there right now. I'm not sure how my dad is going to handle it.”
“Handle what?” A hurt look spread across Dale's face.
“Seeing the guy who let his son die just so he could make a name for himself,” Kori replied, coldly. “And do me a favor. Forget what you said about having my back. I've already seen what good that will do me. I'll see you in court, but until then stay the fuck away from me and what's left of my family.”
He slammed the truck door shut and started back down the trail. The bitter wind bit at his ears and the back of his neck as he walked. The temperature must have fallen another five degrees in the short time that he sat in the cab. He could have pulled the hood of his jacket over his head, but he chose not to. He wanted to make sure that nothing muffled the sound of Dale's truck backing out of the parking spot and heading down the road.
It was the last time he ever saw Dale Scheck alive. Less than a week later a fire gutted his trailer in the middle of the night. The flames consumed the aging tinderbox so rapidly that Dale never stood a chance. When Kori heard the news he envisioned the cop lifting his weary head from the pillow and them just laying back down, waiting for the end to come. Despite his animosity toward the deputy, Kori hoped that the end was fast coming.
Chapter 32
Time seemed to grind to a halt during the months leading up to the trial. Benson Sterling's team of high dollar lawyers spared no expense when it came to jamming up the spokes on the wheels of justice. The last Kori had heard, the proceedings were not set to start until spring. The longer he was kept waiting, the more he dreaded testifying in court.
Todd made good on his promise to stick around until it was all over. By the middle of the winter they had settled into a mundane routine that consisted of little more than busy work around the farm. They were bored stiff. The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Jens. The old man had gone as far as to allow Todd to take up residency in a spare bedroom of his ancient farmhouse. It was a strange pairing, but both seemed to benefit from the company of the other.
At first Kori had his doubts about his ability to keep the business running without his brother to guide him. He soon found that the old man was a wealth of information and quickly those uncertainties began to vanish. Todd had spent a good many summers helping Brenden in the past and proved to be very helpful, even though he maintained that he was not farmer material. As the months passed, Kori began to get the feeling that his friend was never leaving, even after the trial. That was okay by him.
It was not until the first week of March that an unexpected visitor arrived, threatening to cast a dark cloud over the serene dynamic that they had developed. Jens was in the stockyard with Todd, sorting through the fattened herd for market ready prospects. They each waved long hickory sticks in the air above the confused animals, driving them this way and that. Kori waited behind the heavy gate, mindful not to spook the cattle as they pushed past him. They had just finished loading the trailer when the strange car pulled into the lane.
At first Kori thought that it was that state detective, Hazelton, again. He had stopped by several times since the trailer fire. At first he came asking a barrage of questions regarding the death of Deputy Scheck. He seemed genuinely broken up by the loss, but equally as pissed by the time lost in training someone who wound up getting roasted inside his own home. The other visits were thinly veiled as stops to check in on him, to see how Kori was holding up. It was obvious that he was just checking to make sure that his star witness had not blown town before his big day in court. Each visit ended with Todd telling him to get his ass off the property and leave them alone.
As the vehicle plowed closer through the slushy remains of the last snowfall, Kori noticed the absence of state issued license plates. The car was also far too extravagant to be driven by a cop, state investigator or otherwise. His heart skipped a beat and then sank when he finally recognized the face behind the wheel.
Walter Ross smiled smugly as he pulled the car to a stop. He got out and surveyed the property like a tax assessor picking apart a newly remodeled house. He produced a grossly oversized camera and began snapping frame after frame. He zeroed in on Jens's old farmhouse and pulled his face away from the eyepiece, snarling his nose in disgust. It was not until Kori approached him that he finally lowered the costly gadget.
“Kori!” he exclaimed. “Good to see you again, my boy. How have you been getting along?” He lifted a finely manicur
ed hand from the camera strap and held it out. His eyes were already looking past Kori's shoulder to the barnyard.
Kori ignored the gesture. He looked over his shoulder to see what had caught the doctor's attention. In front of the main barn stood both Todd and Jens. They leaned against the stock trailer with their arms folded across their chests, a blend of confused suspicion on their dirty faces. Kori turned back to his former employer and asked, “What are you doing here?”
The doctor's lips parted to expose the starch white rows of veneers beneath them. He placed a hand upon Kori's shoulder and stared at him, still smiling like a used car salesman. “Why I'm here to make you an offer that you'd be a fool to refuse, my boy. Then I'm going to invite you home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, home. To the city, where a gentleman can get himself a decent cup of coffee and not have to drink it in the company of men who reek of animal feces.” He leered in the direction of Todd and Jens, his face expressing the same contempt that he had held for the shabby farmhouse. He fumbled with the fancy camera for a moment and then placed it on the hood of his car.
“Where is my mother?” Kori felt the blood boil sensation of hate rising up from his chest. He had never wanted to hurt someone so badly. The urge to grab the good doctor by the collar, to shake him like a dishrag until that plastic smile fell off or disappeared, was almost impossible to resist.
“She and your stepfather are back in Des Moines for the time being,” Dr. Ross replied. “Their work is finished abroad and now it's time to focus on moving the church forward, closer to home. This location is ideal for that, Kori. Your stepfather has entrusted me with the task of making an offer to buy your share of the property. Although, if you ask me, I would think that the decent thing to do would be for you to sign over your share to the TEFL without compensation. Considering all that Reverend Cole and your mother have done for you over the years.”
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