by Ed Lynskey
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I thought you said you woke up lying next to a naked corpse.”
“Exactly. She’d been dead for hours, and I’d snoozed right through it. Creepy as all get out.”
“Hey, I’d have fucked the corpse. Life is about trying new experiences.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Maybe not. Then what happened?”
“Well, dawn was just a shout away. When I pulled up the sheet over her face, the nickel bag slid out and landed on the floor. I knew I had to get rid of her dope. The bath drain sprang to mind. So I went in there, cleared the hairball from the drain, and stuffed in the dope. The running shower was supposed to destroy the evidence.”
He spat again into the fire. “Dumb fuck move.”
“And how. Busted on a reefer possession was the least of my worries. I was in a hairy jam. She was dead, but I knew I was no killer. The car doors thudded shut, and I flinched in my skin. No sirens had shrieked up, but I knew it was almost finished. My heartbeat pounded like the fist on my door.
“I jerked up from our bed, hurried over to the door, and squinted through the peephole. The two sheriff’s deputies had drawn their 9 mils. ‘Open up!’ one yelled in at me. While grabbing the doorknob, I heard the damn shower gurgling, and I glanced back. The drain clogged with the reefer had backed up, and the water spilled out from the bathroom door. Shit, I’d—”
“S-h-h-h.” Cobb rolled up from the blanket into an alert crouch. “A shadow just darted by, there down along the lane.”
“Where?” I arose to take a shooter’s stance, my .44 thrust forward. Straining my eyes, I also peered out to pierce our dark periphery. “Did you hear it, or see it?”
“Both.”
“Cobb, is this a damn leg pull?”
“Fuck no. I stuck an extra box of cartridges under your tool chest. Go get it. But be quick.”
My pulse wild as a jackrabbit, I scrabbled over to my cab truck. “How many?”
“Just the one box. Keep your voice down, too.”
“No, I mean how many shadows?”
Then my peripheral vision registered the pinkish spurt of muzzle fire, and a slug whined by my ear. More slugs spanged overhead. A low caliber rifle, I recognized. I vaulted over the side of my cab truck and pressed my gut down flat to its bed. My reaching hand groped under the tool chest and tugged out his box of .44 cartridges.
The staccato gunfire was one-sided until he raked out a rapid fire, defensive volley hurling lead shot downrange. In the deafening chaos, I leapt from inside the truck bed and romped back to him now prone behind a rise in the sandy terrain. I also hit the sand. My teeth clenched on the grit. The gun smoke stung my watery eyes. He rolled in a half-turn, and I fed him more ammo. As he reloaded, I eyed down my .44’s stubby sight. My finger squeezed the trigger, and my wrist jerked back. Having gained the .44’s feel, I kept a tight group of shots centered at where I saw the original muzzle flash.
Another round of rifle shots zinged by us before a lull I didn’t trust my punished ears to hear. We had to act, or they’d shove us back to die in the lake scum. I signed a hasty plan to Cobb. He nodded. My Rebel yell whooped out. We charged ahead, aimed low. No return fire punched us. Good, they’d come to just throw a scare in us. He flushed his quarry. Thrashing footfall beat it through the bush and, snapping off shots, he gave hot pursuit.
My foe was huddled in the bushes some twenty paces ahead. I crash-dove to the sand, reloaded, and leaped up to press forward. I deked left and then cut hard right. The man-form reared up like a specter. His muzzle flamed at the spot where I’d just stood. From the hip, I fired. His shriek assured me I was the lucky duck one still upright.
Scared, I stopped—all ears. My heart pinged behind my temples. Boots tromped up from behind, and I swiveled around. My finger hooked on the trigger pulled, and the falling hammer bit a spent cartridge. I heard the dull click, and I felt my gut sink over what I’d almost done.
“Yo, it’s me. Drop your aim.”
“Shit.”
“Shit?” Slicing his hands, he snorted. “You damn near shot my ass.”
“Sorry. I nailed one, I think.” My voice rang out metallic.
“Mine rabbitted off.”
“Did you hear a car start up on the state road?”
“Man, my ears are whistling too loud to hear much.”
Both of us waded into the bush until I stepped on a hard arm. My boot flinched back. Cobb lit a matchbook for a hasty look. The shot man lay double-tapped. My .44’s slug had penetrated his blood-drenched chest. Cobb toed over the dead man to show his exit wound’s gaping savagery. Nausea stitched my sides. The flickering matches singed Cobb’s fingertips.
“Zowie,” he said, licking at them. “Recognize him?”
“He’s Mr. X to me.”
“I don’t recall Mr. X’s name, but I’ve seen him around my dealer’s wikiup.”
“Your pot grower theory seems to hold water.”
“Yeah, and your voice seems too rough. Are you okay?”
“I’m a little swim-headed.” My knees wobbled.
“Jesus, Brendan, I can feel the wet blood on you. Mr. X must’ve winged you. Does this hurt?” Cobb touched what burned as a white-hot brand pressed just under my short ribs.
“Yeah, man!” I growled through my clenched teeth. “Is it bleeding badly?”
“Bend forward and slip up your shirttail … I’ll light another matchbook … good deal, the bullet just grazed you.”
“That is a relief.”
“You ain’t said shit. Just don’t black out on me, okay?”
“Help me gimp back to the campfire.”
“Here, brace your weight on me.” He looked over his shoulder. “Where’s my box of cartridges?”
“I left it lying by the blankets. But he’s bolted, Cobb, so let it go. He probably left in a car and won’t be circling back.”
Cobb’s brawny shoulder supporting me stiffened. “No way do I let it go, not after tonight. They drew first blood, and now it’s game on.”
“Lower me to the blankets, Bronson.” My blurry gaze tried to negotiate the pitch dark. I knew I had bigger crises to deal with than a bullet nick. “Where in the nine hells is Edna?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find her the first thing tomorrow.” He slumped down to sit by me on the blankets. “Better grab some shuteye, and I’ll stand our first watch.”
“Good idea. Did you find the box of cartridges?”
“Right here.”
“Lake Charles isn’t the sleepy dell everybody figures it is.”
“Didn’t I tell you the pot growers do business up here?”
Fading off to the black mist, I let him get the last word. The final pang I felt before sleep was a spine-jarring dread for Edna’s safety, and now ours.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Our lab boys found the angel dust in a sandwich baggie.” Deputy Wines’ smarmy face came too close to my nose. “You duct taped it under the bed table. What a dumb shit stash hole that was.”
They’d frog marched me into their interrogation stall after leaving the Chewink Motel in their cruiser. The urine and body odor fumes in the rear seat cage had gagged me.
“Clown, you killed Ashleigh Sizemore,” said Deputy Wines.
“I killed her? No, she overdosed.”
“Not in our book.”
“You think it was mine, and I gave it to her knowing she’d die?”
“That’s how the evidence reads.”
My pulse spiked to a new frenzy of pounding fright. They kept saying I was a killer. Bullshit. My sidelong glance took in the pair of stocky, cunning, and cold-eyed men in their early thirties. The harsh glare also left them squinting. I squirmed upright in the chair.
“We just smoked a spliff,” I said. “I don’t know jack on any damn angel dust.” Only the shadows on the grimy wall heard me.
“I recovered your contraband wedged in the bath drain.” Ramsey sucked between his black meerschaum
nubs for teeth. “Mark up another dumb shit move.”
“Sure, that was ours, but the angel dust? Uh-uh. A previous guest left it. Or maybe it was left by—”
“Whoa, careful, clown. Accusations that we manufactured evidence light our fuses.”
Ramsey rapped his hammy knuckles on the tabletop. “Jot it down on paper. The judges and juries go softer on self-admitted killers. It shows a decent bone still exists in your douche bag of a body. Plus Ashleigh’s heartsick dad can close the loop. Your signed confession is win-win.”
Uh-huh, I thought.
Wines resumed the tough cop script cribbed off Kojak reruns. “Or else Big Al at Riverbend shoves a leather mask over you and straps you into Old Sparky.” Wines gripped his chair’s armrests to show how tight Big Al cinched the leather wrist straps to Old Sparky. “At the appointed time, he flips the hot switch. Twenty-three hundred volts at seven amps of lightning zap through your skull and scorches down to your toes.”
“Poof.” Ramsey snapped his fingers. “Light bulb city.”
Chuckling like a fiend, Wines went on. “When the juice strikes the ticker, I hear the toughest punks shriek out for their mamas. Blood squirts out your mouth and oozes through your ribs. Your shit slops into a bedpan. After all that fun stuff, nobody sheds a tear except for the dyke nuns toting their protest signs outside the gate.”
“This is crazy talk,” I said, scowling at their incendiary glares. “I’ll burn that one phone call and get a lawyer.”
Wines’ eyes widened in mock surprise. “A lawyer? Why is that? We haven’t formally charged you, but then we also can’t cut you loose. Mr. Sizemore wants your liver on a kebab. You fear for your safety, so we’ll book your detention as ‘protective custody.’”
“You’re also a material witness in a homicide. Both are perfectly legal reasons to hold you,” said Ramsey.
“All I ever saw was the inside of my eyelids. I was fast asleep.”
“Don’t fuck with Mr. Sizemore, clown. He’s our next state senator, and his army will plant your punk ass at the bottom of a dark mineshaft.”
“Yeah, accidents are so common.” The legal pad of paper they’d slapped down on the tabletop nudged my wrist manacled to the O-bolt. “Write it up.” Ramsey nodded at me. “A little free advice. Don’t underplay how ripped up you feel inside. How you’ll lay awake and sweat blood every night, tortured over Ashleigh’s senseless death.”
“The last I saw that girl, she was alive.”
Ramsey ignored me. “How you pulled the stupidest blunder in your short, piece-of-shit life by going to the rock-’n’-roll orgy. With a lifetime of sorrow stretching in front of you, may the merciful judge show you even slight leniency. Juries love hearing remorse spewed from a clean-cut puke, but you gotta take the first step.”
My wrist flinched from the legal pad, and I straightened up in the chair. I know I’d done a ton of growing up over the past two hours.
“But I did not kill Ashleigh.”
“Tell the truth, clown,” said Wines. “Focus on what Deputy Ramsey took the time from his busy tour to explain. We’ll go.” Wines tapped a fingernail on the legal pad. “You scribble it down. Capiche?”
“Hey, can I bum a Marlboro?”
Ramsey held up the pack of cigarettes and flicked the butane lighter to flame. “Write it up, and you get your smoke. But not before then.”
Both deputies vacated the Star Chamber, and I sat alone with the cricket fiddling in the corner for company. I didn’t waste any time writing a mea culpa, but mulled over this latest news. Was the junk PCP—we called it angel dust—the evidence needed to nail shut my coffin lid? They hadn’t yet hung a narcotics rap on me. Odd. They probably saw it as a distraction in putting the bite on me for a homicide confession.
My thoughts roared on. Had Ashleigh died of natural causes? That would spare me. Say, she’d suffered a fatal heart attack. Girls got those. Would they check? Hell, no. Any autopsy was a sham, too. When was my phone call? Whom did I get for aid? Mama Jo? Edna? Cobb? Mr. Kuzawa? Jerry Kuzawa was a bad idea. He’d spill a bloodbath in his wake. Once I went free, I had to stay one jump ahead of Ashleigh’s lunatic father. I deserved better than rotting at the bottom of any dark mineshaft—
The door squeaked on its hinges and my slitted eyes lifted. Deputy Wines sidled in, Ramsey hot on his heels. They divided at the table and crowded each side of me.
“I see no writing,” said Ramsey.
“There’s no need for it because I didn’t kill Ashleigh Sizemore.”
“Deputy Ramsey, I’ve lost all of my patience.” Wines enacted a hand-washing ceremony. “We bend over backwards to let him come clean, and he jerks us off. Mirandize this clown for murder one.”
Shaking his head with pity, Ramsey whipped out his dog-eared card. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”
CHAPTER EIGHT
A short while later I sat on a bunk, hugging my knees, before I fell into a trancelike rocking. Echoes clanged off the hard prison walls. Light through the cell’s front bars striped me in zebra shadows. The stink of Pine Sol and urine sickened me. A nearby cough surprised me, but my shouted “hey, yo!” got no response, so I went back to my rocking.
Sheriff’s Deputies Wines and Ramsey had booted me into this shark cage, and left for the Elks Lodge to tie on a beer buzz. The next duo of sheriff’s deputies slated to take a whack at me hadn’t yet polished off their drip coffee and Krispy Kremes. Tired, I flumped back on the bunk too hard for sleep and tried to piece together last night. If only I’d planned my strategy at the motel instead of rushing out to call the sheriff. I bolted up from the bunk, paced three steps ahead, pivoted, and took two baby steps to the wall. The white blitz of images hurtled by in me. Okay, channel it, Brendan.
I saw Ashleigh and me in her red Jaguar skidding into the Chewink Motel’s parking lot. Right, sure. I remembered “OFFI’E” and “VA’AN’IES” sizzled on the orange neon signboards. What did I smell once out of her Jag? Quince in bloom spread the grapy aroma. Details, my man. Bury these peckerwood sheriff’s deputies in an avalanche of the details. What came next?
I skulked into the motel office. Again, what smells? Liver and onions had been sautéed on a hotplate or a Sterno can. Damn, I was getting good at this. I’d looked behind a waist-high beaverboard counter. More details. The signs of habitation included a cigarette butt left smoldering in an empty tuna fish can, a plastic spoon stuck in a cottage cheese tub, and a fizzy, half-empty bottle of Tab diet soda.
I cadged a complimentary green matchbook with a gold bird icon from the Bell canning jar. Later we’d use the matches to light our spliffs. My fingertip tapped the stem to the gizmo that dinged a bell. Nobody came out. Wrong signal, so I did two bell rings. No response prompted me to tap out a series of bell rings.
A chunky woman knotting the belt to her fuzzy bathrobe hulked in the rear doorway. “You ring once. I’m a one-woman crew, and I can’t run as fast as most can.”
“Sorry, lady. You got a room?” I asked.
“Surely and it’s Mrs. Cornwell to you.” Her lumbering steps halted at the counter. “I just accept cash. No checks or plastic.”
“I’ve got the money.”
“Single or double? Smoking or nonsmoking?”
“Double,” I replied. “Smoking will do.”
“With tax, that’s forty-four dollars,” she said without a trace of humor.
“That’s kind of steep, isn’t it?”
“What say?” She canted an ear at me. Seeing the wires to her hearing aid, I repeated it, only louder. She leaned her pudgy forearms on the counter edge. Slivers of coppery hair framed her meaty face. The five-and-dime store glasses dangled on a bead chain at her neck, and her smile turned mercenary.
“Let me guess. Your hot-to-trot filly sits out in your ragtop, but you’ve nowhere to race her except in the rear seat. Only your filly won’t have any of that. She has some class. Now here you be, your conundrum for me to solve. So, using my racetrack will run you fo
rty-four dollars.”
“Fine, you leave me no choice.” I culled out two twenties and a ten to stack on the countertop. “I’m in a rush. Keep the change.”
Mrs. Cornwell scooped up the three bills to fold and tuck under her watchband. “Unit Seven will get you to heaven,” she said, flicking a room key at me. She cackled at her double entendre or my dour frown. I cut out of the lobby back to Ashleigh in her red Jaguar. Too amped, I couldn’t fit the key into the door lock. She did it. We reeled inside the sin pit, shucked down, and set the sheets on fire …
Moaning, I sat on the bunk. No, in retrospect, our sex wasn’t that memorable. Our mad dash to the finish tape had to be kids’ stuff. I ran out of gas, crashed, and we fell asleep, hers a permanent one. When had she died? Scarier even, who’d brought in the angel dust? Who administered it to her? Big gaps broke up my memory. Filling in the big gaps was sure to make my life into a living hell.
* * *
The clack of metal on metal startled me. Keys twisted and doors dragged. Hearing the shoes scuffle heightened my awareness. My heart thudded behind my eyes focusing on a pair of men watching me behind the zebra stripes. One was a uniformed meatball, and the civilian came in woodsy Eddie Bauer.
“Is this the punk ass?” asked the civilian through his Van Dyke beard. Gray eyes alit on me as his fingers combed down the beard. His droopy lower lip quivered as if something mean and nasty gave him a hard on.
“Ready and waiting, Mr. Sizemore,” replied the sheriff’s deputy, a big fan of the Krispy Kremes Club.
“You got no confession yet, eh?”
“Not yet but we’re softening him up for you.”
“Much obliged.” Sizemore jerked a hand. “Cuff his ass.”
Eager to please, the sheriff’s deputy tromped into my prison cell and manacled me to the bunk’s steel frame before I could react. “Just bang his skull on the wall if you want out.”
