“Somebody’s fixin’ to need help, all right,” the man snarled, unbuckling his belt and yanking it through the loops with seething, snapping sounds. He’d gotten home less than thirty minutes before, his arrival announced by the hiss of the Peterbilt’s air brakes, and he still smelled of the road — a week of diesel fuel and sweat and stale cigarettes and greasy truck-stop food — topped off now with whiskey and something muskier. Satterfield heard the air hiss as the leather strap swung overhead and then down, gaining momentum as it descended. It struck the mattress with enough force to shake the bed. “Don’t you lie to me, boy. That peephole ain’t nothin’ new. You been spyin’ on us a long time, ain’t you? Watchin’ us in the bed?”
“No, sir,” Satterfield whined. “Never.” The belt swung again, and again the bed shook, but this time the belt struck the boy’s buttocks, not the mattress, and he shrieked and began to sob. A few more blows, and suddenly the mattress grew warm and wet against him as his bladder let go from pain and fear.
His stepfather paused, bending over the whimpering boy, and sniffed the air. “Boy, did you just piss yourself?” His free hand slid roughly beneath the boy’s belly. “By God, you did. Twelve years old, and still pissing yourself. You little sissy-boy. You little piece of dog shit. You nasty little faggot.” A pause. “You know what happens to nasty little faggots? I’m fixin’ to show you.”
Satterfield heard the belt clatter to the floor, then heard his stepfather unzipping his jeans, then felt a searing pain. It took the boy two days to begin to recover.
A week later, the Peterbilt had hissed to a stop in the driveway once more, and the man and woman had disappeared into the bedroom and locked the door, and the sound of their groans had drawn Satterfield again to the peephole.
The peephole that his stepfather had made no effort to patch.
* * *
Satterfield studied the sunset through the passenger side of the Peterbilt’s windshield — the sky going red-orange and turquoise behind the silhouette of Birmingham’s blocky Civic Center and the I-59 viaduct — as he waited to hear the verdict from the asshole sitting in the driver’s seat.
“Drives okay,” said the asshole finally, but his tone was skeptical, as if what he really meant was “Drives like a piece of shit.”
The asshole — a beer-bellied, dumb-shit redneck of a prospective buyer — slouched behind the wheel, his hand rubbing the gearshift knob as if the truck were already his. They were just back from a twenty-mile test drive out I-59, which skirted downtown Birmingham on miles of elevated roadway, and they now sat idling beside the Sheraton and the Civic Center. To their left, traffic overhead rumbled and clattered across the viaduct’s expansion joints; to their right, the blank end wall of the high-rise hotel echoed every clatter a quarter of a second later, as if, in some parallel universe, identical cars and trucks were rumbling and clattering along an identical viaduct, in almost-but-not-quite-perfect sync.
Satterfield wasn’t staying at the Sheraton. He’d said he was, when he’d arranged the meeting with the asshole, but the moment the deal was sealed and the asshole was gone, Satterfield would jog beneath the roaring roadway to the Greyhound station, six blocks south, huddled beneath the forty-story BellSouth building. The next bus for Knoxville was scheduled to leave in less than an hour, and Satterfield was growing impatient with the slow-talking, slow-witted buyer.
“If it’s so damned good, how come you’re so hot to sell it?”
Satterfield shook his head, his eyes downcast. Don’t you even think about backing out on me, he thought. “It’s my wife,” he said sadly. “She’s sick. Real sick — breast cancer. Doctor says she’s got three months. Six, at the most.” He heaved a deep sigh, loud enough to be heard over the traffic and the clatter of the truck’s idling pistons. “We’ve got a lot of hospital bills. Got a four-year-old, too, that I got to raise on my own pretty soon.” He turned to look at the guy now, his eyes full of ginned-up sorrow and anger, daring the asshole to do anything but sympathize and cough up the cash. “That’s how come.”
The asshole nodded slightly, working the tip of his tongue into the crevice between two top teeth, digging for the bit of food that Satterfield had noticed was caught there. “Hmm,” the guy grunted, “too bad.” Satterfield felt a flash of fury at the lukewarm response. So what, if his tale of familial woe was totally fabricated, his tragic characters spun out of thin air? This guy had no way of knowing that. I got a dying wife and a motherless kid on my hands, and all you got to say is “too bad”? You coldhearted, little-dicked son of a bitch. “And you brought the title?”
“Got it right here,” Satterfield said, opening the glove compartment and removing a fat folder. “Maintenance records, too.” He handed the folder across, and the guy riffled through it, glancing at the receipts. “I haven’t put many miles on it this past year. Not since she got sick.”
The guy pulled out the title and studied the name on it. It was Satterfield’s stepfather’s name; it was the name Satterfield would sign, assuming the guy ever shut up and paid up. “And the title’s clean? No liens?”
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely clean,” Satterfield snapped. “I gave you the damn VIN number. Didn’t you check it? I told you to.”
“Yeah, I checked it. Came back clean. Just askin’. Just makin’ sure.” His tongue began rooting around in his teeth again, fishing for more scraps—Why’s he stalling? wondered Satterfield, and then he realized, Ah, here it comes. “Thirty thousand, that’s a lot of cash,” the guy said. He chewed his lip and shook his head, looking pained — like he really wanted the truck after all but just couldn’t quite scrape up the asking price.
“Thirty’s a damn sight less than forty,” snapped Satterfield. “This truck’s worth forty, easy, and you know it. If you want it, you put thirty thousand dollars cash money in my hand right now. If you don’t want it, get your ass out of my truck and quit wasting my time.” Don’t you dare fuck with me, fat-ass, the voice in his head hissed. I will gut you like a big-bellied hog.
“Easy, hoss,” said the guy. “I want it. But I’m a working man, and that kind of cash don’t grow on trees.” He waited, apparently still hoping Satterfield might cut him a break on the price. Finally, when Satterfield didn’t budge, he reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and brought out a fat manila envelope, as thick as a brick, the top of the envelope wrapped around the money and rubber-banded. Satterfield had already spotted the rectangle hanging heavy inside the coat; he’d considered killing the guy while they were out on the test drive — snagging the cash and dumping his body somewhere on the way back to Knoxville, maybe in Little River Canyon, up toward Chattanooga — but that seemed risky, given that the guy’s wife was waiting for him at a McDonald’s around the corner. No, better to take the money, let the guy drive away, and stay as far under the radar as possible. The truck could tie him to his dead stepfather, if that body was ever found, and it could tie him to the stripper he’d dumped in the ravine. The truck needed selling. Besides, the money would be useful; he could live for a year — two, if he had to — on the thirty grand plus the monthly infusions of cash his mother’s Social Security checks provided.
Satterfield took the envelope in his left hand, reaching into the glove compartment again with his right, this time feeling for his straight razor. Flipping open the blade, he slid the tip lightly across the rubber band to slice it, then laid the razor on his right leg, still open. He pulled the stack of currency — also rubber-banded — from the envelope and riffled through one corner of the stack, as if the bills were a deck of cards. The number 50 fluttered past many times, jerking and shimmying in small movements, like an animated drawing in a child’s flip-book. He tugged one of the fifties free and tucked it into his shirt pocket — he’d be paying cash for his bus ticket, so there’d be no paper trail leading from Birmingham — then tucked the rest between his thighs. He took a pen from his shirt pocket. “Okay, then. Hand me that title and I’ll sign it over.”
“Don’t you
want to count it?”
Satterfield looked at him coolly, holding the stare long enough to make the guy squirm. “Some reason I need to count it?”
Even by the last light of the sunset and the first flickers of the streetlamps, he could see the guy flush. Is he insulted, because he wouldn’t dream of shorting me? Or is he worried, because he actually did? “No reason, hoss. It’s all there.”
“Good.” Satterfield picked up the straight razor and angled it toward the light spilling through the driver’s window, sighting along the edge of the blade, inspecting it for nicks. He glanced up from the blade and smiled. “Be a real shame if I had to come back to settle up.”
CHAPTER 9
Brockton
Tyler and I were thirty miles northwest of Knoxville on I-75, the sun beginning to sink as we began to climb Jellico Mountain. An hour before, I’d gotten a call from the sheriff of Campbell County—“Sheriff Grainger,” he’d said on the phone, without giving his first name — asking if I could come recover a body from a creek bed. “It’s in pretty rough shape,” he’d said. “The TBI agent up here says this is just your kind of thing.”
“The TBI agent up there wouldn’t happen to be named Meffert, would he? Bubba Hardknot?”
“Sure is,” Sheriff Grainger had answered. “He covers Campbell, Morgan, and Scott Counties.”
“Lucky him,” I’d said, then realized the remark might sound offensive. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.” All three counties were mountainous and sparsely populated; coal rich but dollar poor. “Bubba be at the scene?”
“On his way over from Oneida right now. Reckon he’ll be along directly.”
“We’ll get there as quick as we can, Sheriff.”
* * *
“Look at that,” I said, pointing out the right side of the windshield. “Nature’s flying buttresses.”
“Huh?” Tyler followed the direction of my point. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Gotcha.”
“That’s it?” I shook my head. “A miracle of nature, and the best you can manage is ‘Gotcha’?” We were halfway up Jellico Mountain on a crisp, clear afternoon in late September; a hundred yards to the east of the interstate, a series of massive stone pillars — as plumb and parallel as stonemasons could have set them — jutted from the mountainside, each pillar rearing a hundred feet high against the reds and golds of the turning leaves. “Tyler, you have no poetry in your soul.”
“I’ve got no lunch in my belly, either,” he grumbled, “and it’s three o’clock. Hard to hear poetry over the growling of my stomach.”
“Not my fault you didn’t eat at noon,” I pointed out.
“It’s not? Wasn’t it you who told me to finish grading those exams by two?” He did have a point there. “Besides, we’ve passed a dozen fast-food places since we left UT.”
“Yeah, but the sheriff called thirty seconds after you finished grading,” I said. “And we don’t have a lot of daylight left.” I glanced again at the sun, already nearing the ridgeline. “A couple hours, tops, now that the days are getting short.” I did feel bad about dragging him to a death scene unfed, though. “Look in the glove compartment,” I told him. “I think there’s a Snickers bar in there somewhere.”
He pushed the button; the door popped open and a box of surgical gloves launched itself at him, latex fingers twitching in midair. Tyler rooted through the recess. “Papers. Registration, insurance, maintenance records, owner’s manual,” he itemized. “No Snickers.”
“Keep digging,” I said. “I could swear there’s one in there.”
“Oh,” he said after a moment. “Yeah. Down here in the Jurassic stratum, I think I’ve discovered a fossilized candy bar.” He fished out a Snickers, the wrapper rumpled and misshapen, and peeled it open. Inside was a cylinder of graying chocolate, misshapen from numerous cycles of melting and resolidifying. Tyler eyed it with distaste. “Oh, did I say candy bar? I meant coprolite.” I had to admit, the lumpy extrusion did look remarkably like fossilized poop. He chomped down on it and wrestled a chunk free. “Mmm,” he mumbled sarcastically. “Tasty.” He took another bite.
The traffic was crawling. The right lane was slowed by a flatbed trailer hauling a bulldozer up the mountain; I had no idea what a bulldozer’s top speed was, but I suspected it couldn’t be much slower than the snail’s pace at which the truck was transporting it. In the left lane, cars were bunched up behind a coal truck, which was creeping past the bulldozer at what appeared to be half a mile an hour faster.
“Wish they’d warned us about the rolling roadblock,” Tyler mumbled through the caramel. “We could’ve zipped in and out of that Hardee’s back at Lake City without losing any time. Forensic anthropology, NASCAR style.”
“If you want to jump out and run back, go for it,” I said. “You could probably catch up with me by the top of the mountain.” He grunted and popped the last lump of the Snickers into his mouth.
Just as we crept over the lip of the mountain, the coal truck eased into the right lane, allowing the long line of cars to begin passing. As we drew nearer, I noticed both trucks turn and lumber down an exit ramp. “Nice,” Tyler fumed at the coal truck. “Cause a bottleneck for dozens of cars, just so you can get to the exit two seconds ahead of the bulldozer.”
“No point getting mad,” I said. “Doesn’t get us there any faster, and it sure doesn’t hurt the truck driver. Just makes you feel worse. Don’t they teach you that kind of stuff in yoga? Ommmm and all that?”
Tyler turned and stared at me. “Where was that laid-back vibe two hours ago, Mr. Mellow, when you were flogging me to get those papers graded?”
“That’s different,” I pointed out. “Those trucks aren’t in my power. You, on the other hand…” I didn’t need to finish the sentence; Tyler knew better than anyone that “graduate assistantship” was synonymous with “indentured servitude.”
He tapped his window and pointed. “Classy,” he said. I looked out and saw the coal truck and the bulldozer-hauler both turning into the parking lot of a garish, neon-lit store — XXX Adult World — advertising books, videos, novelties, and Live Girls, Girls, Girls. “Also classy,” he said, now pointing to a corrugated metal building that was overshadowed by a gargantuan corrugated cross. “Not exactly Saint Peter’s, is it?”
“Not exactly,” I agreed. “But I suspect the Vatican’s art and architecture budget was a little bigger than these folks’.” Tyler grunted, glancing down at the directions the sheriff had given me.
A mile or so later, Tyler pointed to a road sign. “That’s our exit,” he said. “Stinking Creek Road. One mile.” I passed another lumbering coal truck, then signaled and eased into the right lane, just in time to catch the exit. “Left onto Stinking Creek.”
As we coasted down the ramp, Tyler leaned forward and looked out my window. “I’d like to build a house like that someday,” he said.
I glanced to the left, and then at the outside mirror. “What, a house filled with rock salt?”
“No, a house made from a Quonset hut. Actually, a house made from two Quonset huts, crossing in the middle, like a big plus sign. Like a cathedral, with a nave and a transept. Earth sheltered, for natural insulation; walls of glass at all four ends; a big skylight above the intersection, for plenty of natural light.”
“So,” I said, making a left at the bottom of the ramp, “the floor plan of a cathedral, the elegance of a drainage culvert? Classy. How does Roxanne feel about the idea of living in a burrow?” He frowned, which might have meant that he hadn’t asked, or might have meant that he had, and that she wasn’t wild about the idea.
Just then we rounded a curve and nearly rear-ended a Campbell County sheriff’s cruiser, which was parked at the edge of the pavement with its rear end angling into the road. In front of it was another cruiser and, ahead of that, an unmarked black sedan — Meffert’s TBI-issued Crown Victoria. Just beyond the Crown Vic was a bridge spanning a narrow gorge — a gorge carved, I assumed, by Stinking Creek. Midway across the bridge, a
figure I recognized as Meffert leaned over the railing, looking down.
I tucked the pickup behind the cruisers, trying to feel for the margins of the shoulder through the tires. Tyler opened his door and looked down, frowning. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Did I not leave enough room?”
“Plenty of room. For a mountain goat.”
The door of the nearer cruiser opened and a uniformed officer got out. “He’s here,” I heard him saying into the mic of his two-way radio, the coils of the cord stretched to their limit. “Just pulled up.” He released the mic, which the cord yanked from his hand, and closed the door. “Dr. Brockton?”
“That’s me.” I extended my hand, walking toward him.
“Sheriff Grainger.” He took a few steps toward me, and we shook hands midway between the two vehicles — a tiny patch of neutral ground. I’d never had any territorial squabbles with law-enforcement officers — any “whose-jurisdiction-is-bigger contests,” as Tyler called such things — but it never hurt to observe a few unwritten rules of courtesy and common sense. Meet in the middle, as equals; don’t kowtow to the cops, but don’t rub their noses in your Ph.D., either.
I introduced Tyler, and then Sheriff Grainger led us toward the bridge. A steady breeze was funneling up the narrow valley of Stinking Creek, spooling across the roadway and humming up the ridge. The temperature was dropping along with the sinking sun, and I was grateful for the sweatshirt I’d added beneath the windbreaker. I sniffed the air and caught the nutty smells of autumn leaves, fall acorns, and a faint, acrid scent that might have been sulfur from the creek. I didn’t pick up any trace of decomp in the air, but unless the two dozen buzzards overhead were badly mistaken, it was there; definitely there. Some of the birds wheeled above the ravine; others hovered, surfing the wind that rippled up the ridge.
Just as we reached the bridge, a shotgun boomed, loud and near. I dropped to a crouch beside the Crown Vic, and Tyler scuttled into the gap behind it. The sheriff laughed. “Sorry, Doc,” he said. “That’s just Aikins, shooing off the buzzards.” He pointed skyward, and I looked up just in time to see the last of the birds hightailing it over the ridgeline. “I should’ve warned you about that. My bad.”
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