Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery

by T. Blake Braddy

  The only thing that mattered was making it to that one person to catch up with her and tell her the thing stuck in my head. It was more than just a few words; it was a feeling that I had to get out of me. It was so intense, it felt like it was burning its way out of my throat.

  I wasn’t crying, but tears moistened my cheeks, electric against my skin.

  I fell again, and this time I was twisted around so that I was completely lost in this wood. I got up and saw what was knocking me down. It wasn’t the leg, after all.

  A beast straight out of Dante’s visions of Hell was pursuing me. It was a giant, multi-legged beast, a lumpy mound of evil with hundreds of eyes. It was ugly, and it was vile, and it wanted me dead.

  There was no escape.

  It approached, and I felt something deep in my chest. When I looked down, I saw that I had a fist-sized hole in me. My shirt caught fire and the flames spread up to my neck. I scrambled to my feet in time to feel another blast rip its way through my upper torso. The beast was no longer a beast but a set of men, and they were hunting me.

  I turned and ran, but I didn’t have the energy. My field of vision had been dimming, covered by thick, dark branches collapsing in on one another and making it impossible for me to see the road ahead.

  But still, I desperately ran forward, knowing that this was my last chance. The figure ahead of me was a series of white lines, or dots, like pixels, but I thought maybe that I was closer than before.

  Each time my pursuers knocked me down, I got back up, a bit slower each time. I could hear their voices, but they came out like a high-pitched buzzing, a colony of bees in my ears.

  All of a sudden, I came to a clearing and stumbled forward into the tall grass. My vision was a pinprick in front of me, and I headed toward it, desperately trying to convey one last thought, whatever it was. The words roiled inside of me, and though I could tell they were there, it was as though I had inhabited some other person.

  Another volley of gunfire knocked me horizontal, and this time I couldn’t get up. I crawled ahead, dragging myself on elbows roaring with pain. I looked down again and saw that the one hand was not gone but holding a sawed off shotgun. That’s why it seemed to dangle loosely beneath me.

  I struggled to my knees and then fell sideways. If only I could stay upright, maybe I could fire the damned shotgun. Balancing the barrel on one mangled forearm, I fired blindly. Three henchmen dropped unceremoniously, action figures toppled by an indignant child. The others marched ahead, firing in a sort of horrific, synchronized attack.

  More of me was flung into the air in a fine red spray, but I didn’t stop. I racked the shotgun with the crook of my arm and fired a second time. All but one of the men dropped to the ground as I readied yet another round. Click. Click. Click. Empty gun. Empty brain. My one remaining thought slithered off to another remote corner of my head, where the lights had been knocked out. I tapped the trigger again. Click. Not enough rounds left. Never enough rounds left.

  In the absence of gunfire, I heard a tiny buzz, like the sound of bees on television. It sounded artificial but was real enough to make me snap my head sideways. The buzzing transformed into a bizarre whirring sound, and I turned and crawled forward, trying to separate myself from the last of the men. If only I could make it to the edge of the field, maybe I could be lost among the trees.

  My eyes locked on the figure ahead of me. She had stopped to watch me, but she didn’t hurry back to help. She was a pale, willowy statue, concerned but held aloft by something ethereal, something I myself probably couldn’t see. Truth be told, she was all I could see. Everything else had gone dark, and I was quickly fading.

  So I crawled on.

  I felt the killer, his footsteps shaking the ground beneath me. He was no man but something else, and I thought that if I didn’t look back, if I only kept facing forward, maybe he couldn’t affect me.

  The woman was my focus now, though. I made my way toward her, and when I got close enough, I saw that she wasn’t anyone I knew at all. It wasn’t Vanessa, and it wasn’t my mother. When she saw the blood and the tears, she turned and ran. The last I saw of her was her back as she ran into a thick covering of bushes on the other side of the field.

  I couldn’t hang onto the words any longer, so I blurted them out in a single, dying breath. I had been hanging onto them for no reason, because in my haste to get them out, I slurred them together so that they made no sense.

  The muscles in my neck gave out, and I came to rest right there, face down in the grass. The last moment consisted of me feeling the hot metal of a gun barrel pressing against the back of my neck. I smiled because I knew I’d be dead before he could kill me.

  When I awoke, I went straight for the fridge and guzzled down two beers while standing in its dim, sickly light. My stomach turned, and I knew I’d be sick. Only a matter of time.

  It was then I began to believe in what both the old man at the fire tonight and Uncle K had been telling me. I believed in the idea of a wavy, unsure truth and also in the power of the magic that was “curing” me of drinking. I needed it for now, but I was thinking about taking it easy so that I didn’t ruin my chances of solving this murder.

  I’d just have to be sick when I had to be sick, I guessed.

  As I tossed the second beer into the trash, I saw the flash of a man in the kitchen, a tall, lanky figure in a hat and old suit, and the feeling of Emmitt Laveau’s presence washed over me.

  I broke down, kneeling and weeping until Vanessa appeared in the doorway. She put her hand on the back of my neck, and I wrapped my arm around her knees, breathing in deep the smell of her until she pulled away.

  “I’m thinking ‘bout going to a meeting,” she said, “if you want to go with me.”

  I shook my head and grunted under my own weight, as I found a seat at the kitchen table. “This isn’t about my drinking.”

  “Not for nothing, but everything is about your drinking. That’s why we was so perfect for one another. Back to back, we held each other up.”

  I nodded, because a part of me knew that, but it was a part of me that was in severe denial.

  Instead of talking about it, we sat on the back stoop and smoked cigarettes in silence, watching the wind blow rain clouds in our direction. At one point, she reached over and slipped her hand into mine, and I felt such an electric charge that I nearly let go out of instinct.

  “I wish the world hadn’t fucked the two of us up,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “We could have been happy, if there were worlds other than this one.”

  I stubbed my cigarette and flicked the butt into the distance. “Maybe there is another world out there,” I responded. I let that settle and then said, “We could be happy there.”

  “I’m so lost, Rolson, I don’t know if I’d be able to find you.” She sighed. “But hopefully that’s the point. If we spend our whole lives lost and searching for something, maybe we use up all the hurt and the pain, and we can be happy after it’s all said and done. I just wish it didn’t have to hurt so much right now, especially if we don’t know what comes after.”

  “Or maybe it doesn’t mean anything, and we have to find meaning in this world,” I said. “You and I have been dragging one another down into the darkness for two decades now. All the hurt that’s been heaped on you isn’t just applied to you. It applies to me, as well.”

  Her eyes were wet with tears, but she wasn’t sobbing and heaving the way she normally did. Maybe she was too tired for that, or she didn’t have any of that left in her.

  “I’m just sorry, so sorry, and I don’t know how to make things right. It’d be easy if it was a little bit, but I spent the last few years going through life like I was being controlled by somebody else. I don’t know that I could even count all of the bad shit I did. I mean, even to you. The list is so goddamn long-”

  “Don’t worry just yet about apologizing to me,” I replied, cutting her off. “There’ll be plenty of time for that, but d
on’t make anything up to me. I’m fine.”

  She nodded.

  “Matter of fact,” I continued, “don’t worry about making anything up to anybody for a very long time. You’ve been walking through a field full of burs, and there’s so many of them you can barely move. You try to pick them off, one by one, you’ll be doing that for the rest of your life.”

  “Well, what do I do instead?”

  “You tear off the clothes that are so sullied with those things, then people will notice that. They’ll forgive you by the sheer change you’ve undergone.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’ll trust me again. You’ll never trust me again.”

  I patted her on the leg. “Trust is a whole different beast, and yeah, you’ve got your work cut out for you there, but for every day you spend fixing yourself, you’ll be one step closer to regaining trust from all the people who want to trust you. All the people that don’t want to trust you, who want to hang on to the past, well, fuck them.”

  “And where do you stand?”

  “I want to be in the first group, but I don’t know if I am,” I said, and then I got up. “Let me know if you want me to take you to the meeting.”

  “Will you think about going with me?”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, and then I went inside.

  * * *

  The next day, I dropped in to try and see Jeffrey Brickmeyer, but the frumpish secretary told me he wasn't in. Something about her tone made me think differently.

  I tried to play it cool. "Where's he run off to? I had an appointment with him right about now."

  "His father's called him off to get some documents signed and notarized and" - she glanced at her watch - "he might not be back before two or three."

  "Huh," I said, propping an elbow on the counter. I started talking real loud. It felt like my Fletch moment. "Did he hitch a ride?"

  "I don't-"

  "Because his car's parked out back in the alley, and it's not like him to hide that car of his. You know it registers a hundred and sixty miles per hour?"

  "Mr. Brickmeyer, he just-"

  "Well, I tell you," and at this point, other people in the office began to stare, so I raised my voice, "he said something very interesting to me yesterday at the graveside service for Emmitt Laveau-"

  "Hold on a moment, Mr. McKane," the blond secretary said. She was from out of town, and I had never met her before. Her name was Debbie, and she looked like a child who has messed her pants and cannot find the courage to ask the teacher for a bathroom pass.

  However, she was saved from her lies, because the man himself appeared hastily in the doorway, sweating somewhat and bearing a wild-eyed countenance.

  "Rolson," he said, smiling, using his father's kiss-assy, phony political posturing. The man was politically illiterate. Or completely literate. I couldn’t tell. "Don't pester Debbie just because I told her I didn't want visitors.”

  “Covering for liars is not something that should go on her resume.”

  “It's not her fault a wolf walked into the building. Come on back."

  I followed him to a neat and sparsely-decorated office. Almost totally unexpected from the bedraggled man to whom the office belonged. It was a space entirely without style or personality, with only a lone portrait of his father hanging on the wall behind the desk. The eyes solemnly watched us from on high. I couldn’t imagine working eight hours a day with that hanging over me, but I guess Jeffrey really looked up to his old man.

  I seated myself across the table and waited for him to start. He scratched at his stubble, which was quickly turning into an unkempt beard. He watched me for a long time before he spoke.

  He said, "My father would castrate me with a rusted spoon if he caught me talking with you. In one of his offices, no less." He pulled a hand from under his chin and began to chew madly on a fingernail. "I feel like I'm being set up for something."

  "Aw, he's so busy, he doesn't have the slightest idea what you and I might talk about."

  "And what is that?" He sighed, but it rang hollow. "I'm so bored with the Emmitt Laveau thing. I've already said all I've got to say on the subject. Being the go-between is driving me crazy."

  "No, no," I said, shaking my head, feigning casualness. "That is the farthest thing from my mind at the moment. Like your dad, I'm a busy man. I've got a lot of interests."

  "Like what?" he asked, in a mocking tone.

  "Land."

  His eyes grew steely and opaque under the artificial light. "What kind of land?"

  "Stolen land."

  He made a skeptical huffing sound. "Give me a break, McKane."

  "What? Am I being too dramatic? Should I have brought a sad 40s orchestra with me?"

  He dropped his hands on the desk in exasperation. "You have done everything under the sun but call my family a bunch of slavers. Murder, land theft, political corruption. What are we not capable of?"

  "The more that is leveled at you, the farther you and your family recede into secrecy."

  His eyes gleamed. "And let you turn it into a witch hunt? If we begin to answer these ridiculous charges, they won’t stop until we've been caught in some tiny, insubstantial lie. If we don't drown, we will be put to death. If we drown, we are not witches. It is a no-win situation."

  I smiled. "Covering up for the old man is a bad idea, given the history you have with the Bullen family. He's a cop, and he's not going to worship at the Brickmeyer altar if he thinks he's been wronged. Just keep that in mind."

  "His father was a drunk who regretted giving away the one thing in his life that had value."

  "Giving?"

  "Selling. Whatever. Don't get caught up in semantics, McKane. You're not smart enough."

  "And yet, I'm the person who pointed out someone who might have enough of a vendetta against you to act on it. Most people, they lie down and take it because you're local royalty. Not Ronald Bullen. He'd do something about it."

  "So?"

  "So, you don't seem too concerned about it."

  He pulled a small trash can from underneath the desk and flicked a piece of nail into it. Then he started chewing on another one. He talked from behind his hand. "I trust the authorities. They've got the public's best interests in mind. You should know that."

  “And your daddy has got his political future in mind. I know that, too.”

  Jeffrey leaned up. He wasn’t being insincere before, but he put on his best sincere face for my benefit. “A lot of people want to see him fail. It isn’t a secret that envy shows pretty green on the townspeople’s faces sometimes, even though my family has brought plenty to Lumber Junction over the years.”

  “So then it must be that they don’t see what it is. If you can’t sell a product to the public, ultimately it’s not the public’s fault. It’s the salesman’s.”

  “You know how it is maintaining a public persona.”

  “Do I?”

  “Your name has been all over the local vent page, the web site where all the gossips go to air out their grievances.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Luckily, I don’t give a shit about the internet.”

  “Either way, they’ve got a lot to say about you, and I have to admit I’ve not been an advocate on your behalf. But I want you to understand something: people have got my family all wrong, especially my father. He’s not a bad man. He’s worked hard to overcome his upbringing.”

  “That big house must have gotten lonely.”

  Brickmeyer the younger glared at me. “My grandaddy was an old school southern kind of man-”

  “A racist.”

  “Well, yeah. He was better than his own grandparents, but each age is a progression. He wasn’t a monster, but he was no better than the men of his generation.”

  “So, your daddy had to shrug off all the black hatred indoctrination he suffered at the hands of your grandfather? That it? Is that your family’s big struggle? Trying to accept all human beings as human beings?”

  “That’s the South�
�s struggle, McKane. It isn’t out in public as much anymore, but it’s still there, and my father, as much as any man I’ve known, has agonized over how he was raised, and he made a vow years ago to change. Not out loud, maybe, but he’s a different man, changed in all the ways most people only wished they could be different. And he put that into me, so I’ve gone even farther than he has.”

  “Every man has his prejudices, Jeff. It’s not just your family that struggles with identity and race and all that, even in a small town.”

  “Brickmeyer Ag & Timber employs more minorities than any company in five surrounding counties. My father is polling at over half of the black vote, which isn’t bad for a man with an R next to his name.”

  “Let me change subjects. I hear that, in addition to giving back to the police force, the Brickmeyer family is committed to showing educators how charitable you are."

  "If you're referring to the teacher's dinner, yes, we try to have one every year, but with the way the economy's going we may have to skip it this spring. It's a shame, but that’s the reality of things these days."

  "Who handles the hosting and invitation duties?"

  He leaned back in the chair and interlaced his fingers. He debated a moment before saying, "It's a communal effort. Mama does some of it. I do some of it. Daddy handles other things. We have a party planner, too, so that's not a real easy question to answer."

  "But you are in charge of some aspects of the party, right?"

  His jaws began to work from side to side. "Right."

  "Are you the one who invited Emmitt Laveau a couple of years ago, or was it your father?"

  “So we knew him a little bit.”

  “It’s the cover-up and not the crime-”

  “He was one of a few dozen people there. You think any one of those people died in the last few years, and people would be tying our names to the death?”