by Ed Lynskey
“If anything is left, I’ll do that.”
“He’s all yours. There’s no hurry. His bail hearing isn’t until Tuesday.” The sheriff’s deputy stitched on a sadistic leer before he turned and huffed down the hallway.
Ralph Sizemore, Ashleigh’s angry father, poured through my cell door. I coped with the same meltdown of fear as the residents at Three Mile Island must have on that scary day last March.
“You’re my little girl’s killer.” His eyes skittered left to right. We had no eyewitnesses here.
“Look, I only reported her death. It’d be stupid for me to kill her and then tip off the authorities.”
“Nice try but I’m a trial attorney.” He hulked inches away from me, and I recoiled from the whiskey rancid on his breath. “You phoned the sheriff to make it look good, but I can see through it.”
My babbling was uncontrollable. “Some physical evidence is there to prove my innocence. Fingerprints were left on the doorknob maybe.”
“You wiped down Room 7.”
“I did no such thing. I woke up, and Ashleigh was dead. I made a beeline to the phone outside and notified the sheriff. It even cost me two dimes. I returned and waited until the law showed and pounded on the door.”
“Touching. Why didn’t you fetch an ambulance?”
“I thought of it, but she’d been a goner for a while.”
His lip quivering, he tugged out a palm sap from his hip pocket. “I won this in a stud poker game at Fort Hood.” He gave the palm sap a practice swing and grinned like a giant raptor down at me.
I shifted, the handcuffs biting into my wrist.
“Better say your prayers.” He stepped into me, his arm slinging the palm sap with his weight hefted behind its swat.
I grunted at the monster pain exploding in a galaxy of pinwheels behind my eyes. The harder blows pummeled me. Maybe I heard a snicker. Then it was lights out. My splashdown into the inky black ocean of unconsciousness didn’t resurface to daylight.
No, I weathered a concussion in a Yellow Snake hospital bed. It was some hours before I saw daylight again. At an agonizing turn in the bed, I spotted the two shiny dimes left on the bed table. I’d had a visitor. He’d reimbursed me for the phone call I’d made to report his daughter’s death to the sheriff. I didn’t appreciate his perverse sense of humor.
CHAPTER NINE
Against all odds, I bonded out of the Yellow Snake prison with Herzog as my counsel. First, the intern doctor discharged me with a whopping bill, and I arrived early at the Yellow Snake courthouse for my bail hearing. A nickel-plated bracelet hogtied my wrists. A bulkier one reduced my ankles to an old man’s waddle. A belly chain jangled around me modeling the penal orange. A furtive peek at the courtroom’s Peanut Gallery revealed we played to a packed house. Pain ravaged my swollen head, and my lower back muscles felt tied in knots from the tension.
Sheriff’s Deputies Ramsey and Wines deposited me to sit at the defense table. A brass desk lamp illuminated it. Herzog wore his customary ashen gray poplin suit and hangdog look. Neither inspired a lot of confidence in me. Waiting, I sized up the oak jury and witness boxes before the elevated bench—they all looked empty as a coffin, me soon to fill it.
“What happened to your head?” asked Herzog, seeing my lumps.
He was my lawyer and didn’t know of my concussion and hospital stay? “I tripped on a bar of soap in the shower. That’s the official reason. Anyway, did Mama Jo and Edna ride up with you?”
“Yes, they’re sitting three rows back. Don’t gawk at them. Exercise some restraint.” He made a fussy adjustment to his necktie’s knot.
“Did Cobb and his dad Jerry come?”
“Yes, I topped off my tank at Kuzawa’s A-frame, and we rode together. He shared his ultra-liberal politics with me. He’s opinionated.”
“He’s a warrior,” I said, proud to defend Jerry Kuzawa before a fear hit me. “Did the guards screen you with metal detectors?”
Herzog blinked. “Why should they?”
Sweat oozed under my orange jumpsuit. “Cobb and Mr. Kuzawa strap Glocks. I guarantee it. I just hope this deal goes in our favor.”
“They brought Glocks into a court of law?” Herzog massaging his temples sighed. “This is bad—very bad.”
“Maybe not so much,” I lied. “We’ll see.”
“At any rate, your muster of support is impressive. Your popularity, however, doesn’t ensure your freedom. Do everything I tell you.”
“I got you. Who is this judge?”
He crooked a finger behind his necktie and loosened it. “Judge Yarrow has the reputation of a maverick. She always speaks her own mind.”
That didn’t bode well for us. “Did you say you’ve defended a murder case?” I asked him.
“Um, well, I . . .”
“All rise. Court is in session,” said the bailiff.
He prodded me in the ribs, my cue to stand. The punctual judge sashayed through a portal door marked as “Private.” She hitched the folds to her black robe, and I saw her red sneakers climb the carpeted steps to the dais. She liked comfort over formality. Judge Yarrow was also a fright. Her face was a peened triangle of tin. My closer look saw her scar tissue came from old second-degree burns. Despite confined by her court’s chains, I felt sympathy for her.
“Be seated and quit ogling,” he told me. I resented his bossy attitude.
“Just mind your shit, and I’ll watch mine.”
“Counselor,” said Judge Yarrow, cutting our sidebar short. “Is your client prepared to post bail at this time?”
His chair scraped over the floor as he arose. “Good morning, Your Honor. Yes, he is.”
Judge Yarrow’s stare gravitated from him to me. Fright welled up behind my breastbone. “Have you run afoul of the law before, Mr. Fishback?”
“Nope,” I replied.
Her frown stamped the crow’s-feet at the corners to her eyes and lips. He leaned to me, his whispering mouth at my ear. “It’s ‘No, Your Honor.’”
“Now you tell me.” I looked back at her. “I mean no, Your Honor.”
“That’s infinitely better. How do you plead on the count of first degree murder?”
“Not guilty.” He elbowed me, a not-so-subtle reminder on courtroom etiquette. “Your Honor,” I added.
“Do you deny Ms. Sizemore died in that sleazy motel room?” Judge Yarrow’s scars compressed into a truculent glare.
“Ashleigh was still breathing when we fell asleep, Your Honor.”
“No doubt she was. Are you mocking the Court?”
“Your Honor, permit me to clarify,” said Herzog. “Mr. Fishback means Ms. Sizemore had no reason to fear for her safety. After all, they were friends.”
“It seems to me they were more than friends.” Judge Yarrow’s scowl berated him as I heard a titter circulate through the Peanut Gallery.
Things had already run to shit. Bail was a pipe dream. Judge Yarrow the maverick had all but shipped my ragged ass back to the jug. Resigned to my fate, I listened in on Herzog.
“They both indulged, and it was consensual. He didn’t force her to go there.”
“How do you know? Were you also in the room?” Judge Yarrow sounded more clipped and impatient.
My yank came at Herzog’s dress jacket. “Sit down. We can’t beat this stacked deck.”
“According to the M.E.’s report, Ms. Sizemore’s body exhibited no signs of physical coercion.” Herzog took his seat.
“Don’t lecture me, Counselor. I’ve read the M.E.’s report.” She leaned back in her throne, intertwined her fingers, and shot her fierce gaze to the next table. “Mr. Prosecutor?”
A short, roly-poly man who was a dead ringer for Ned Beatty, he bellied up to the center podium. “Your Honor,” he spoke in a bland monotone. “The medical examiner’s report documents lethal amounts of PCP detected in the decedent’s system.”
“So it does. Do the People oppose Mr. Fishback’s bail?”
“Without question, we
do.”
She trained her attention to a row behind us. “Mr. Sizemore, have you anything to contribute?”
Standing, Herzog objected. “Your Honor, Mr. Sizemore has no business before the Court, and it’s improper.”
“Objection overruled. This bereaved father deserves to give his input. Be seated, Mr. Herzog. Mr. Sizemore, proceed.”
“Good morning and I thank Your Honor.” Sizemore’s next words would inflict more pain than his palm sap had on me. “Ashleigh was a vivacious, beautiful spirit whom this boy destroyed. He did so without expressing a shred of remorse . . .”
“Perhaps Mr. Fishback comes prepared to do so now.” Judge Yarrow shifted to train her facial deformities on me. “Well …?”
Herzog hissed at my ear. “Showtime. Throw yourself on the mercy of the Court and beg like a whipped dog.”
“Screw it.”
“You don’t have to be genuine. Just act sincere and contrite. Only do it now.”
“Screw it.”
“Brendan, this is no time to go soft in the head. You hear me?”
“Screw it.”
“Mr. Fishback, my Court adheres to a tight schedule.”
Rattled and sore, I scooted my butt to the front of the hard chair bottom, straightened in the knees, and ascended to my full height. Vertigo left the courtroom spinning around me, but I looked Judge Yarrow square in the eye. I ignored Herzog’s finger jabs and spoke with conviction.
“Your Honor, Ashleigh drove us in her sports car to the motel. I freely admit we did what teenagers do there. Then we fell asleep. When I later awoke, she’d been dead for some time. So I hotfooted out and phoned the sheriff. Since then, I’ve cooperated and told him all that I know. I didn’t cut and run. I could’ve, but I didn’t.”
As Judge Yarrow zeroed in on one salient detail, she raised her hand. “Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. Ms. Sizemore drove you from her house to the motel in her sports car?”
“Yes, it was her idea, Your Honor. Before that night, I’d never been near the motel.”
Judge Yarrow’s scabrous face lifted over my shoulder to skewer Sizemore. Her displeased voice rang out. “What is this I hear? The kids’ van arrives at your residence to discharge your daughter, but before you can say boo, she talks Mr. Fishback into her sports car, and they tool off to her love nest. She strikes me as a tart.”
Somebody, most likely Cobb, snickered. The roly-poly prosecutor yawned into his cufflink to fill the edgy silence.
“Your Honor, the boy is obviously a liar—”
Her hand chop cut off Sizemore. “Is he? I’ve a rap sheet sitting in front of me. Your daughter has a history with the juvenile courts. Arrested and booked on possession of pot and paraphernalia. Now I hear your party girl was also a tart. Frankly sir, I’m appalled.”
My fuzzy thinking caught on that Judge Yarrow had a hang up with promiscuous girls.
“Your Honor—”
Her grotesque features shrank into a glower. “Mr. Sizemore, I give you a platform to speak, and this is what I hear? Your round-heeled daughter entices the defendant to a tawdry motel and engages in fornication. Why, this is contemptible. Outrageous.”
Flabbergasted as I was by this turnabout of events, Herzog moved to exploit our advantage. “The Defense requests bail be set, Your Honor.”
“I quite concur,” said Judge Yarrow over Mr. Sizemore’s indignant protests.
Applause broke out in the Peanut Gallery with my grin of relief. Throwing my bail had emptied my bank account, but I bought my freedom, at least for now. I vowed to capitalize on it, too. When my glance traveled over the Peanut Gallery’s rows of seats, Mr. Kuzawa and Cobb patted the significant bulges made under their jackets and gave me subversive grins. I knew they came armed to fight it out and spring me, if need be.
Mr. Kuzawa came up. “Let’s tear ass out of here, son.”
CHAPTER TEN
I jolted awake, the bedpan muck from Lake Charles in my nose. I’d writhed on the hard-packed sand before a fitful sleep took me, but no dreams haunted me. Had Ashleigh reneged on our deal to get at the truth? Get real, I thought. She’s gone. The dead never speak to mortals. Whom had I been talking to all this time? If not her, then who?
“This is nuts. She lies six feet under,” I said aloud.
My wristwatch hovered in front of my eyes. It was six o’clock. My ears still whistled from last night’s firefight. My bullet scratch burned my side. I rubbed my eyes to erase the leering image of Mr. X’s death rictus. My kicking legs flung off the blankets, and I sat up, leaning on an elbow. After a beat, the vertigo lifted. Spitting didn’t expel the dead gerbil—bleah!—from my mouth. I wheezed and, after two tries, swayed but gained my feet.
“Crutches might help you.”
“Fuck you. Is breakfast fixed?” I turned to Cobb.
“No grub.”
“There’s more pressing stuff to do.”
“First we hide the corpse.”
“That dog doesn’t hunt, Cobb. I’ve decided we’ll bring in the sheriff.”
“Sure, get reamed up the ass. Great idea. You should patent it.”
His earthy sarcasm annoyed me. “We’ll say last night’s turkey shoot was self-defense like it really was.”
“Common sense says the sheriff will arrest us, but we can make this right.”
“How?”
“Flip a stone here, shake a bush there, and see what crawls out.” Heavy jaws set, he swept his hand at the overgrowth beyond us. “Edna out there needs our help.”
My hands, fingers spread, went up. “See, ink stains? On yours, too. We’re pressmen. Last night we’re lucky that we didn’t get hurt. But this shit is over our heads. The pros can play the heroes, not us.”
He sized up the sunlit boulder field and the craggy knobs. I also saw the distant brush fire’s smoke column climbing skyward. “We can make this right,” he said as if it was a vigilante’s mantra. “If we turn to anybody for help, I’d say we ask the rangers.”
My heart lurched for a beat. A sketchy militia contingent self-named the “Smoky Mountain Rangers” roamed the laurel hells, the leafy thickets blanketing our ridges and hollows. Stamped rough at the edges, they’d no hate ideology nor were they your garden-variety gun nuts, or even religious, but you respected them. If you called them ugly slurs like hill scoggins or redneck stump grinders, they’d staple your balls to your ears. A couple of Sheriff Buford “Walking Tall” Pusser’s deputies had signed on with them after the big blowout with organized crime downstate. The rangers’ leader, a fiery ex-Marine named Cullen, had a long association with Jerry Kuzawa, Cobb’s father.
“No rangers are in this. They’ll touch off a war.”
“Then you and I will go search on foot. A bass boat is too loud.”
“We’d also be sitting ducks out on the lake.” I scratched my collarbone. “Still I don’t know . . .”
“Brendan, this is our best move to make.”
I kicked the trailer hitched to my cab truck’s bumper. The green algae had dried, and I wondered how I’d make my bass boat shine again. My hands patted down my pockets. “Shit.” A Marlboro appeared over my shoulder, and I accepted it along with the matchbook.
“Mull it over, Brendan, but her trail grows colder. A whole night is gone, and we can’t just sit on our thumbs. Do something.”
Venting out the cigarette smoke, I suspected the sort of creeps with their portraits thumbtacked to the post office walls held her bound and gagged.
“All right, we’ll do it your way.”
Good thing the jolt of nicotine had sated my hunger pangs. I dropped the Marlboro butt and crushed it under my boot. I found Mr. X under the scrubby bushes. Eyes dull as twin lumps of solder he saw no light. His bowels had voided their shit. Experiencing death this close up left my gut to retch a vile, green crud I spat out on the sand.
“You look rode hard.”
“And you look up for digging.” I scuffed the ground with my boot tip. “This sand makes
it easy.”
“We haven’t got the time to bury him. Roll him up in your blanket. Add in the rocks for ballast. Ferry out his tied up bundle and chuck it into a channel. The carp will love you for it.”
My small shrug said I couldn’t top his plan. Although I ignored looking at the blood-splotched bullet wound, Mr. X had a rusty odor mixed with the shit smell. He carried a pouch of Red Man and thirty-seven cents in loose silver but no personal ID. In case his wallet had spilled out, I scanned the area near him but with no luck. I spread out my largest blanket. Then Cobb lifted up Mr. X by his armpits. I latched to the ankles, and we trundled our bulky load to the blanket where Mr. X and his .223 rifle anchored the leading edge.
We selected a dozen or so stones no larger than coconuts for the ballast, and I rolled it all up like a mummy. The lengths of bailer twine I cut up cinched Mr. X’s head, waist, shins, and feet. Then we unracked my bass boat, loaded on Mr. X, and launched it from the ramp. I slid beyond the crud zone to where my fishfinder radar measured an eighteen-foot depth. I toed off the mummy, and it plopped into the water. I also ditched the last bottles of our beer.
“Shameful waste,” said Cobb. “The beer, I mean.”
“Screw the liquor. Now we lock in and get Edna.”
“Absolutely.”
My bass boat fitted back on the trailer’s top rack. I nuzzled my cab truck and trailer over to park them behind a clump of sassafras bushes. I swung my hatchet to lop off some branches to thicken in the leafy screen. A constellation chart and a 1960s astrology text were the plunder from my tool chest. Neither had aided me in deciphering my dreams. The beef jerky sealed in its cellophane wrappers made for our breakfast.
I stood on the T-dock, chewing the beef jerky and studying my dumpsite. Bubbles effervesced from there. Did Mr. X still breathe? A scarier question asked would he breathe in my dreams of Lake Charles. The bandana Cobb tied to his forehead was yellow, and I pocketed the red one he gave me. We poured on water and snuffed out the campfire coals.
