Rockabilly Hell

by William W. Johnstone

  “Oh?” Victoria cut her eyes to the woman.

  “Yes,” Arlene said with a smile. Then began to outline her plan.

  * * *

  Cole picked up the phone in the motel room. “Cole. Al Pickens. Luddy Post and Earl Wilson just showed up. They’re over at the hospital now. Frank Bruce is with them. They’re babbling about being kidnapped by ghosts and seeing the devil and all sorts of crap. A farmer was driving by the old club site, when those two men suddenly materialized out of the air. Both of them naked as jaybirds. Like to have scared the shit out of that old farmer. He’s hospitalized, too, heart palpitations.”

  “Well, now. The ghosts spit them out. That is interesting.”

  “Spit them out?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Tossed them back. They weren’t keepers.”

  The sheriff was silent for a few seconds. “This is getting weird, Cole.”

  “Hang in there, Al. It’s going to get a lot weirder. UPS just delivered the package from New Orleans. I’ll see you at your house this evening.”

  “I can’t say I’m looking forward to this.”

  “None of us are, Al.”

  * * *

  Members of the strike force of federal officers from various government enforcement agencies were meeting in a motel suite in Memphis. The suite was electronically “swept” every day, as were the rooms on either side and the room above it. Two portable radios had been placed against the glass of the window in the rear of the suite, the radios playing rock and roll music. The slight vibration of the glass would distort the sound of their voices and help prevent them from being overheard by long-range shotgun or parabolic mites.

  “It appears that all activity has stopped in that area,” a postal inspector opened up the meeting.

  “Except for a bunch of damned amateurs running around muddying the water,” an ATF man said.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call Cole Younger, Bob Jordan, and Jim Deaton amateurs,” another voice was heard. “Between them they’ve got about a hundred years of law enforcement experience.”

  “Hick town cops and deputies,” a Bureau man said, scorn evident in his voice. But he was young and full of himself, thinking himself ten feet tall and bullet-proof. All that would soon be knocked out of him. By the most unlikely of persons and events. “What the hell do they know about anything?”

  “Knock it off, Steckler,” another Bureau man said. “You tangle with any of those three, and they’ll clean your plow before you can blink. And that gold badge won’t mean a goddamn thing to any of them.”

  “I doubt that!” the young FBI man said hotly.

  The older men in the room sighed, all of them thinking the same thing: George Steckler was a horse’s ass. The only person who didn’t know he was a horse’s ass was George. George thought himself to be the perfect FBI agent. He spent so much money on clothes, he had to eat most of his meals at MacDonalds or Burger King. To say that George Steckler was overcome with his own importance would be a classic understatement.

  However, George was soon to discover that he was quite human after all.

  For the strike force, this had been a particularly frustrating, year-long investigation. Wire taps, mail intercepts, and bugged rooms at a dozen homes had produced nothing they could take to court. The members of the strike force knew that Victoria Staples and Arlene Simmons were up to their asses in snuff films (among other very odious and illegal activities), as were about a dozen other members of that so-called club. They just couldn’t prove it.

  For all their expertise, all their resources, all the equipment at beck and call, occasionally the Bureau will overlook the obvious. As they did in this case. But that was all right. It was about to come to their attention.

  The strike force leader answered the ringing of a rather complicated phone in a large briefcase. He listened for a moment. “Are you serious, sir?” he finally said. “Oh. Yes. I see. Of course, sir. We’ll . . . ah, get right on it.” He set the phone back into the recessed cradle with a grimace and a slow shake of his head.

  “We’ll get right on what?” the postal inspector asked.

  “Not we, Paul. Us. The Bureau. Everybody else can go home. The investigation has been sidetracked for a time. Somebody put some pressure on. And we all know what judge that was.”

  “Everybody’s favorite, good ol’ Warren Hayden,” an agent said.

  “You got it. No more taps, no more bugs, no more mail intercepts. But I can assign two people to stay with it. Softly.” He looked at an older agent, a man with almost twenty years experience in the Bureau. Scott Frey. “Scott, you stick with this one. But don’t step on anybody’s toes. Okay?”

  “Right. You said two men?”

  “Take George with you.”

  “Shit!” Scott muttered.

  “I heard that!” George complained.

  Scott ignored him. “What was it that we’ll get right on?”

  “Ghosts.”

  Scott blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me. Ghosts. Somebody wrote the Bureau a long and rambling letter about ghosts being responsible for all the disappearances in that area over the years.”

  “Are you fucking serious?” Scott blurted.

  “I wish you wouldn’t curse so much,” George admonished the older man. “It isn’t becoming to a federal officer.”

  Scott looked at the younger man for a moment. He sighed. “George, why don’t you take a Roto-Rooter and stick it up your ass?”

  “I won’t even dignify that with a reply,” George replied. He looked at the strike force leader. “Ghosts, sir?”

  “Ghosts. The letter is being faxed to us. Soon as it gets here, you two pack and get gone. Don’t step on any toes up there.”

  “Yeah, and be careful around those ghosts,” another agent said with a grin.

  “Fuck you, Foster,” Scott said.

  George sighed and looked very pained.

  Fifteen

  “I have to go to a meeting this evening, dear,” Gerald Wilson told his wife. “It’s political. I’ll be late.”

  “Yes, dear,” his wife said, and gave her husband a peck on the cheek. “I won’t wait up.”

  Gerald was ecstatic; couldn’t believe the governor actually wanted to meet with him on the QT. He was sure the gov was going to ask him to accept some very important job in the new administration. What a feather in his cap that would be!

  Gerald drove to the motel in Blytheville, as instructed, and knocked on the motel room door. He straightened his tie while he waited. The door was opened and Gerald stood there for a moment, not believing his eyes. Win Bryan and Nick Pullen stood there, grinning at him. Gerald realized that he’d been set up. He opened his mouth to holler. But Nick jerked him into the room and slapped tape over his mouth, before he could shout his alarm. He was thrown on the bed; his jacket was pulled off and his shirtsleeve jerked up. Gerald felt the sting of a needle in his arm. A few moments later, he felt all cares leave him. He felt wonderful. Better than he’d ever felt in his life. He grinned foolishly at the two men.

  “Now the fun starts,” Nick said.

  Win grinned and nodded his head. “I’m goin’ to enjoy this.” They got Gerald to his feet and walked him drunkenly out to his car. Nick got behind the wheel. Win would follow in his own car. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Nick nodded and pulled out, heading for Victoria’s.

  * * *

  Frank Bruce had to leave the room two minutes into the first snuff film. He vomited into the commode, washed his face with cold water, took several deep breaths, and walked back into the den, taking his seat.

  Katti was a couple of minutes behind Frank in losing her supper, and she was followed by Bev. Cole, Bob, Al, Jim, and Gary had worked too many wrecks and had seen too much blood and gore, had swept up from the highway too many brains, teeth, hair, and eyeballs, to be sickened by what was taking place on the screen. The scenes disgusted them, made them angry, but did not physically sicken t
hem. They were long past that point.

  “There’s one of the kids that vanished!” Bob almost shouted the words. “Stop the film.”

  “Gladly,” Al muttered.

  The lights were clicked on, and the two pictures compared.

  “Sally Oldham,” Bev said. “Twelve years old when she disappeared.”

  The tape rolled on, the young girl being raped repeatedly. At the culmination of the scene, she was slowly strangled to death by what looked like a silken cord.

  Frank Bruce again hit the toilet with the dry heaves.

  The next tape showed Sally’s older brother Brian, fourteen years old, being sodomized. His screaming was difficult for all to take. And like his sister, Brian was strangled to death by a silken cord just as the last rapist was climaxing.

  “Jesus God in Heaven!” Frank whispered the words. “What awful, perverted, evil people.”

  “That’s Doc Drake,” Al said, hitting the remote pause button, stilling the tape and pointing to the wide screen TV. “I recognize that scar on his back. Farming accident when he was a kid. He’s not a doctor. That’s just a nickname.”

  “Have you picked out any others?” Bob asked.

  The sheriff shook his head. “Not yet. But it’s just a matter of time.” He punched out the tape and stuck another one into the VCR. “Here we go again.”

  * * *

  Gerald Wilson was naked, stretched out on a big bed. The injectable Valium he’d been hit with had produced a throbbing erection. He grinned stupidly at all the lights around the bed. He licked his dry lips as a young girl, twelve years old, crawled onto the bed with him. Her eyes were glazed from the drugs in her system. She was naked.

  The cameras were rolling.

  The girl fondled his erect penis, slowly masturbating him. She kissed his belly and moved her mouth to his balls. Gerald hunched on the bed. The young girl then took him into her mouth. Gerald groaned in heated pleasure, his face distorted by primal lust. As the girl mounted him, taking him into her wet tightness, crying out as he filled her, Nick Pullen crawled onto the bed, being careful to keep his back to the cameras. He stuck his dick into Gerald’s willing mouth. A silken cord was tossed onto the big bed.

  From that point on, it was all downhill for the three of them. Especially for the girl.

  * * *

  “This is ridiculous!” George Steckler groused, tossing his suitcase onto the bed in the motel room. “We are reduced to chasing ghosts!”

  “That’s not the reason we’re here, George,” Scott said patiently.

  “Oh?”

  “That’s just an excuse for us to continue the original investigation.”

  George sat down on the bed and thought about that. His face brightened. “By golly, Scott. You’re right.”

  “Thank you,” the older agent said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Scott glanced at George and shook his head. Then he grinned. “However, we do have to check out that letter. And that’s your job.”

  George’s smile vanished. “Gee, Scott. Do I have to?”

  “Yes. You have to. First thing in the morning. Now, I’m going to get something to eat. You ready?”

  “Not yet. I want to change my shirt. I feel a bit rumpled. I’ve had this one on all day.”

  Scott sighed. “Fine. I’ll be in my room. I need a drink.”

  “You shouldn’t drink even when we’re not on the job, Scott. Someone might smell the liquor on your breath. That would not make a good impression on the public. After all, we are FBI agents.”

  Scott paused at the door. “George?”

  “Yes, Scott?”

  “Fuck you!”

  * * *

  The group just could not watch any more of the tapes. To a person, they had seen all their minds could take for one night. The perversion, the degradation, the pain, and the killing. Cole suggested they get something to eat. Katti gave him a look that was guaranteed to melt titanium.

  “It was just a thought,” Cole said.

  “A bad one,” Bev said.

  “So what now?” Gary asked.

  “Nothing,” Cole said, and cut his eyes to Bob, who nodded his head in agreement. “We might be able to prove this Doc Drake was a part of it, but he’s small fry. We want to chop off the head of the snake. We think we know who they are, but so far, we don’t have any proof. We’ll just have to view all these films and any others we might be able to get our hands on. And hope that somebody made a mistake, maybe we’ll catch a glimpse of a face.”

  Al Pickens was deep in thought when Cole turned to him. “What’s on your mind, Al?”

  “That girl who was killed just before you folks showed up. She wasn’t strangled. She was beaten to death.”

  “I know. That one is a puzzle. Unless the death is not related to what we’re working on. You know the sheriff over in that county?”

  “Oh, sure—French—he’s a good man. And he is not now nor has he ever been a member of our . . . club,” he said the last with distaste.

  “How many sighting over in his country?”

  “Not many. But that was always a very quiet county. Only one roadhouse in the entire county. It was bulldozed some years back.” He said the last with a smile, and Cole remembered what the old man had told him while watching him pump gas. “French doesn’t believe in ghosts,” he added.

  “What puzzles me,” Jim said, returning from the kitchen with a can of beer, “is why the Feds haven’t been in here on this snuff film business. Unless they have, and you didn’t know it, Al.”

  “This is a rural county, Jim. I would have known it if they spent any time at all here. Strangers asking questions gets back to me in a hurry.”

  “But they could have come in and set up some wire taps,” Cole said. “That doesn’t even have to be done here. They could have bugged some houses. There are voice-activated bugs now no larger than a dime, that transmit for miles. And if the Feds had even a modicum of evidence on anyone in this area, they would be doing mail intercepts. They can duplicate an envelope in a matter of seconds.”

  “It would make my job so much easier, if I had only a tiny fraction of all that high-tech equipment,” Al said wistfully.

  “Dream on,” Bob said, a sour note to the words. “I quit hoping for some of that fancy equipment years ago.”

  Al reached over and stilled the ringing telephone. He listened for a moment, thanked the party on the other end, and hung up. “Two guys just checked into the motel about an hour or so ago. Both of them wearing guns. High-ride holsters.”

  “Bureau,” Cole said. “How were they dressed?”

  “Nicely. The younger one especially.” He glanced at Jim and smiled. “See what I mean about rural people letting me know things.” He rose from the chair. “Cole, you want to come with me? The rest of you folks, make yourselves to home. I’m the high sheriff of this county. Folks come in here carrying guns, I have a right to brace them and find out what’s going on.”

  Cole stood up and smiled. “If they are Bureau, they are not going to like this.”

  “Good,” Al replied, and headed for the door. He paused and turned around. “Oh, by the way. Stop by the office in the morning and sign your commission cards and give my secretary some money to cover your state bonds. Get your pictures taken and pick up your badges. You’re all being deputized. I want this legal.”

  “Even me?” Katti asked.

  “Even you, Katti. Come on, Cole. Let’s go see the FBI.”

  At the motel, Al asked the desk clerk the number of the older man’s room. Cole nodded his approval. Al Pickens was a good and cautious lawman. At the door, Al rapped softly, Cole standing to one side, ready to back him up if necessary. Scott Frey cracked the door.

  “Sheriff Pickens,” Al announced, putting a cowboy boot between the door and the jamb. “Keep your hands in sight and back up.”

  “I’m FBI, Sheriff,” Scott said, backing up. “Come on in. My partner is in the room next door. To your right.”r />
  Al looked at Scott’s ID, and all three men relaxed. Scott waved them to chairs and pointed at the bottle of bourbon on the dresser.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Al said. “This has been a long day for us. You want to call your partner in on this conversation?”

  “I’d rather not. Steckler’s an asshole.”

  Cole chuckled, liking the Bureau man almost instantly. Scott was about forty; maybe a couple of years over that. And he was the type of man who could get lost in a crowd of two.

  Drinks fixed, Al said, “Can you tell us why you’re here, Scott?”

  “In a manner of speaking. We’ve cleared you in this investigation. And you, Mr. Younger. Is that enough for the moment?”

  “Cole. Call me Cole. Yeah. That will do.”

  The Bureau man nodded and took a sip of his drink. “A Mrs. Doggett wrote the Bureau a letter concerning all the disappearances that have occurred in this area over the years.”

  “Alma Doggett,” Al said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did she tell you that ghosts were responsible?”

  The Bureau man smiled. “Ah, as a matter of fact, yes, she did.”

  Al nodded his head. “Well, she’s right.”

  Scott Frey sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the county sheriff. For the first time in many years as an FBI agent, he was, momentarily, at a complete loss for words.

  * * *

  “How’d my dick taste, Gerald?” Nick Pullen asked. “You were gobblin’ at it like a pup to a tit.”

  A now fully lucid Gerald had viewed the film and had promptly vomited all over himself. He had been taken to a bathroom, took a long and hot shower, and now sat in a chair, fully clothed, and said nothing. He looked at the people in the room. Victoria Staples, Arlene Simmons, Captain Wood, Win Bryan, Nick Pullen, and Albert Pickens. Several others he did not know. The people who had been operating the cameras were gone.

  But he was relieved that he had not killed the young girl with the silken cord. Nick Pullen had done that, while sodomizing the child. Her screaming had been hideous. Gerald was sure he would never forget that sound.