Hogdoggin'

by Anthony Neil Smith

  Bladder so full he was dancing some. “Fine, yeah, I promise. Let me hit the head first.”

  Wasn’t even two steps towards the restroom when he heard a woman call out, “Franklin!”

  Not just any woman.

  *

  Desiree had landed fifteen minutes earlier than scheduled. One of the advantages of flying into such an unappealing destination, she guessed. Well, that wasn’t fair. Just the agitation and booze talking. After all, if it was called Sioux Falls, there had to at least be a waterfall and some Indians or some shit like that. Nothing out the window gave her much hope that she’d be sticking around to do any sightseeing, though. The vodka the flight attendant had sold her eased her regret. Hard to get too upset about missing much of the rest of the country when you lived in New Orleans.

  The airport was nothing more than a glorified garage. Tiny piece of shit. Made it easier to find her way, certainly. The plan was to drive up into Minnesota with the wife of a guy Franklin had been close to up here. He’d talked about fishing with him. Wyatt Bullerman. Wife’s name was Olivia, and more than happy to tell what she knew. Especially since Wyatt had been gone all night himself, off chasing down a phantom biker that led to a possible murder at a bar.

  So all Desiree had to do was rent a car, program the navigator for Montevideo, Minnesota, and maybe stop for lunch somewhere along the way. If Franklin ever got his head out of his ass and called her, how would that go? “Oh, yes, baby. Just so happens I’m in Minnesota, too. I’m not kidding. No indeed, mister.”

  First, a nice long trip to the ladies’ room. Goddamn flight was too bumpy to use the plane’s stall, so she held on until they landed and practically scrambled for the restroom nearest the gate. Stopped cold by the CLOSED FOR CLEANING sign.

  Duck into the men’s room? Not like there was anyone here right now. Not that the men would mind. No, no, don’t get noticed. Don’t get arrested.

  Beeline for the main terminal, where the restrooms were always larger anyway. Not hard to find at all, and that people-mover didn’t hurt one bit.

  About five minutes later, she stepped out of the restroom, about to turn towards the rental car desks, when she saw her motherfucking husband standing right there. Right there in the fucking airport terminal in the same clothes he’d put on right before leaving her high and dry the night before. Talking to some salt-and-pepper-haired white dude, looked like another cop to her. She had radar for cops after being married to one all this time.

  He wasn’t on the same plane, was he? Did she overlook him? No way. Not possible. Only twenty or so people on the flight in the first place.

  Franklin held up a finger for his friend. Dee heard him say, “I’ve got to hit the head.” And he turned her way.

  Like, what the fuck was she supposed to do?

  “Franklin!”

  *

  The three of them sat in Wyatt’s squad as he drove them out of South Dakota and on towards the crime scene. Once Dee appeared out of thin air, she had to come along. No other way around it.

  “You could’ve just told me. Thought we were done with all these secrets.”

  Franklin sat with his wife in the backseat. Wyatt kept peeking in on them. For a couple that had been married for as long as these two, and who were angrier at each other than he’d ever seen except in movies or on Dr. Phil, there was still a spark. It raised the hair on his arms. He wished he and Olivia could recapture that. They had plenty at first. She had been divorced with a kid. He’d been married with two. Slept with her a good six months before his wife found out. Goddamned divorce nearly drove him to swallow his gun, but Olivia was there the entire time, talking him through, comforting him. Yeah, like it was meant to be. Add twelve years and things had stagnated some. But, Jesus, if Franklin and Desiree could keep the fire stoked, why not Liv and him?

  Made a note: Got to ask Rome how he did it.

  And, hell, maybe the four of them could go grab some steaks when this was said and done. Seemed natural. Wyatt was stunned when Franklin introduced them and Dee said, “Olivia’s told me all about you.” How’d she pull that off?

  Franklin was cowed. Couldn’t meet her eyes. Bumbled through an explanation.

  Dee cut through that haze right quick: “Lafitte?”

  Okay, maybe Wyatt didn’t want his wife that sharp. A man needed a few things hidden in the gun safe, after all.

  *

  “Of course it’s Lafitte.” Franklin finally looked up. Then out the window. Fields. More fields. Black, straw-covered, far as you could see to the pale gray sky on the horizon. “It’s always been. You saw what he did to me. What’s that fucking thing the shrink said? Closure? Think I can get closure while he’s out there doing fuck knows what?”

  Raising his voice, pissing Dee off more. If not for Wyatt, they’d probably keep shouting in each others’ face and then pull over, run out into an empty field and fuck so loud that whatever hicks might be able to hear can listen as much as they fucking want to, because fucking Dee is the only thing that even came close to making him feel like a man again after getting beat down by that…that…fuck…that…goddamn it…Lafitte.

  Dee said, “You don’t yell at me, Franklin.”

  “I’m not yelling at you. I’m just yelling. Just fucking yelling.” He slapped the cage separating front from back. “Right, Wyatt? Yelling is yelling, right?”

  “Can’t say I’m enjoying it, buddy.”

  “Well, then.” One more slap. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  Desiree leaned forward and said to Wyatt, “You said we’re going to a bar?”

  “Yes ma’am. The owner showed up this morning, and there’s blood everywhere, plus some goo on the walls that could be brains, we think. From how it’s all spaced out, we’re talking several people.”

  “Oh, God.” Desiree said. “That’s where Agent McKeown was headed.”

  What? She knew a lot more than Rome had thought. Must have got in touch with McKeown on her own somehow. Maybe he had called looking for Rome. That changed things.

  “You talked to McKeown?”

  Dee nodded. “I was looking for you, so I tricked him into thinking he was calling you. He said he was following a lead. If Wyatt says he hooked up with that girl—”

  “Okay, I know that. Fine. But you actually talked to him?”

  “He was out on the country roads, couldn’t get a signal. He told me to let you know he was following a lead.”

  Rome sighed through his nose. “Shit.” Pissed at the kid, yeah, but scared for him, too. What the hell was he thinking going after Lafitte alone? To Wyatt, “What else?”

  “Then there’s the basement, where we think Lafitte was tied up. Puke and blood all over, plus some speaker wire that had been around his wrists, stretched and snapped. That’s what this kid Goof told us, the one out with his uncle and the uncle’s ex-girlfriend, the town slut I was talking about.”

  “Town slut?” Dee let that one out slow and loose.

  “Sorry, just…well, she was. Bought cigarettes and booze for teenagers in exchange for oral sex once they’d gotten drunk.”

  “Okay, fine, got it.”

  “Not sure if we’re right, but you’ve got to see this. We think Lafitte scaled a pole, then snapped the wire, then got out into the bar. Just unbelievable.”

  Franklin said, “But we’ve got no bodies, no DNA on the brains yet, no eyewitness, no security cameras, nothing.”

  Wyatt nodded. “On the nose.”

  Franklin turned to Desiree, all the shame on his face dried up. “See, baby? That’s why I won’t get over Lafitte until he’s dead, cremated, and his ashes scattered during a tropical storm.”

  She eased back into the seat, snugged her ass in. “My worry is that he thinks the same thing about you.”

  THIRTY

  Goddamn, Colleen thought. God…..DAMNitfuckfuckfuck.

  Should have killed him. Should have fucking killed him. Why the fuck didn’t I…?

  The hardest thing was that she was gr
ateful to be alive. She hated herself for it. Lightweight. Not cop material. Not Fed material. Just another shitty poseur.

  Took a breath through her nose, hard to do. All swelled up, broken for sure. Throb, throb, throb. Wanted to put some pressure on it, but her hands were tied behind her, one fucking broken, felt two sizes too big. She was on her stomach, hog-tied on the backseat of Perry’s Mustang. On the floor beside her, McKeown was dying slowly, had to be. Gut shot, not taking it too well, bleeding, coughing, weaker by the hour. Couldn’t have been more than an hour already. Didn’t even know where the fuck she was. Just knew that bitch in the fake fur coat drove them away from the bar, never said a word while Colleen bucked and cursed in back. Got someplace shady, got out, and that’s the last she’d seen of the girl and her giant.

  Worse, the giant had somehow shoved Fawn and Perry into the trunk together. Colleen didn’t even want to think about that right now. She was too busy working on keeping McKeown conscious, fighting, while she wrestled with the wire and duct tape around her ankles. Not even worth trying to free her wrists. Automatic lost cause.

  “Hey, hey, you’re still with me, right?”

  He was moving like he had bad cramps. Taped up wrists and ankles, but without the embarrassing extra cord keeping her arms pulled taut, calves curled up. She was born a farm girl and knew this position far too well. Had done it to many an animal herself.

  Should’ve killed him.

  Because….fuck…like this, she wouldn’t die for a long time. Pressure on her lungs after awhile would speed things up, but there was a good chance she could be here for days. McKeown would be dead by morning. The hicks in the trunk would start to rot, and then McKeown, and…Jesus.

  Turning her head to get a peek out wasn’t working. She thought about trying to roll to the side or scoot up through the space between the front seats. Open the door with her teeth or something. But every rescue fantasy turned bad when she thought about getting stuck, hurting herself more, suffocating.

  Embarrassing.

  Nate went out without a fight. Just screamed like a girl while the fire fucked him over. Not quick, not on his own terms. That fucking high-pitched spine-shivering scream, it was there to stay. Every memory of Nate was tainted by that noise bullhorning out of his mouth instead of “I love you” and “You’re the One, Sweetness.”

  Colleen didn’t plan on going out helpless. She came damn close to getting taken down by a badass biker with some heavy-duty artillery. That would’ve rocked. That, man, was it. Never been more ready to get her wings. Then that fucking Lafitte…

  She’d been holding her breath. Forgot. Let it out and coughed.

  McKeown wasn’t moving at all.

  “Hey!”

  Nothing.

  She craned her neck as far as she could, close to his ear.

  “Hey! Talk to me. Wake up up up up up! Come on, boy, stay with me!”

  “I’m good,” he said. “Please, don’t talk any more.”

  “We need to talk. Tell me a joke or something. Tell me your name.”

  “You know my name.”

  “Your first name. Like, I’m Colleen, you know. Or do all of you guys talk like you’re on the X Files? Last names even for people you’re fucking.”

  “No…damn it.” Even sounded pissy while gutshot. What a tool. He finally said, “Josh.”

  “Good, okay, Josh. Tell me about that guy in Memphis.”

  McKeown rumbled low in his chest, like laughing with his mouth closed. “You want me to talk about him?” Took a few breaths. “Best night of my life, maybe. Or close enough. What happens the next day? I’m going to die. Let me do that on my own, okay?”

  “You’re not going to die.”

  “You think? Can you do surgery with, what, psychic powers or something?” Another breath. Cough. A bad cough. He tried to stop the cough halfway through and it hurt even worse, Colleen could tell. Him coughing and saying “Oh god, no, no” and jumping like he’d been struck with an electric wire. She laid her head down on the seat to take the strain off her neck and waited him out. Nothing she could do. Goddamn Lafitte. Thought he was doing her a favor? Trying to be the hero again? Like he ever really was in the first place. Stupid Sheriff ate up his story like it was chocolate pie.

  McKeown eased back into a regular rhythm, in and out, in and out. She tried again.

  “I’ll have my legs free in a little while, I promise. I’ll get free and go get help.” No way. Not going to happen. The giant had done this plenty of times before, she could tell. He was experienced at killing and leaving for dead equally. Could be a caring man, like back at the bar when he washed her face, made her feel like she was a worthy adversary, some sort of chivalry. Vice versa, he could be a sadistic motherfucker, knowing damn well what leaving them in this car would mean. Not just the dying part, which wasn’t so bad, but the helpless part. The terror. The time to think. Sit and think what it would’ve been like if they hadn’t gone chasing Lafitte. If she had stayed at home after Tordsen brought her back. If she’d had a long cry and downed some heavy painkillers and slept until the funeral.

  Sit and think about when someone would stumble across their bloated, wormy corpses, dinner for the foxes and deer.

  If that man would’ve just pulled that trigger.

  “Keep talking,” Colleen said. Needed to keep her mind off it all, too. “This guy, what was his name again?”

  “Please, come on.”

  “Tell me.”

  She didn’t think he was going to. Nothing but steady breath from McKeown for a long while. Little coughs. Cleared his throat. Spit. But then, “Alex. He played in a band.”

  Pointless or not, hearing him talk got her working hard on freeing her ankles again. “Good. What sort of band?”

  THIRTY-ONE

  For a few glorious, sensory-deprived, echoing seconds, Lafitte thought he was dead. Free. Pure. Floating. At peace.

  And then he realized he couldn’t be dead because this felt too good to be Hell.

  Once the pain returned all over his body, he even imagined he might prefer Hell after all. Jesus. Fawn and Perry put him through the ringer. He’d been run through it before by wannabe terrorists, thugs, his own colleagues, and even that fucking Homeland Security agent, but this one might have been the worst. He couldn’t remember anything past breaking the wires and getting up those stairs. Dialing the number that had been burned into his memory. A blur of voices. Many blurs when his eyes would open a slit, not get what he was seeing, then going back into the haze.

  Except right at the end, a dream or something maybe, where Steel God had returned like Jesus in all his glory with this giant fucking sword except it was a gun instead and it wasn’t protruding forth from his angry mouth. Going to shoot Deputy Colleen in the face. Colleen. What the hell was she doing there? Colleen the Avenger? Some other guy on the floor nearby, shot but still kicking. Steel God was going to shoot her? What had she done that was so awful?

  Whatever. Lafitte told him not to. Silly, doing that to her. She spared him back on that road earlier, so the least he could do, you know.

  Kristal. Was she there? Sounded like her, felt like her. Held him so softly. Yeah, if Steel God was there, maybe she was too. But why? Not like God needed any help.

  Lafitte wondered if he’d had a heart attack. Body can only take so much stress. He was warm all over, the hurt parts not hurting as bad as they should. A little sting, though. That smell, couldn’t place it, like incense. And, what, a salty taste in his mouth, around his lips? Tried to lift his arm. He could, but it was heavy. Wet. Then suddenly it was free and cold and not so wet. Shocked him fully awake, eyes wide, staring at his hand. He was lying in a bathtub, steaming water right up to his chin.

  Looked up. A small bathroom, florescent lights, wide mirror. It was a hotel bathroom. And sitting on the toilet lid beside him, knees wide, elbows on his lap, was Steel God, holding a cigarette.

  “Here.” God lifted the cig to Lafitte’s mouth. Lafitte didn’t smoke, sh
ook his head. God kept it right there. “Not what you’re thinking. It’ll help.”

  Lafitte caught on. It was right there, so he toked. Coughed some but still liked it. Explained the odor, at least. He cleared his throat and tried talking. “Jesus, man, in a hotel room?”

  “There’s vents.”

  “Yeah, into the room next door. Don’t you know how this works?”

  God waited while Lafitte took another hit, then hit it himself.

  Said, “Look, Billy, I’m not usually like this, but I’m starting to feel, like, unappreciated or something. You call for help, and all I’ve heard from you is bitching.”

  Lafitte looked around some more. His clothes in a pile by the tub, looked trashed. His body warbling under all that water, looked tattooed almost. Bad tats, bled all under the skin. Bruises and cuts. But nothing broken, nothing gushing. Just a bad day, that’s all it was. Question was, could he have gotten through that day on his own?

  “I’m sorry. Really, I don’t mean to be an ass. Look at me, though.”

  “Oh, they took you to town.” Steel God pointed at Lafitte’s chest. “Looks like we’ve finally found a nickname for you.”

  Lafitte dropped his gaze to the scars. Once again, still there: “Baby Raper.”

  “Fucking hicks. Did you run into them?”

  A nod. “We got the guy. Think that FBI agent killed the girl. Don’t worry, though. We handled it okay.”

  “What are you talking about, FBI? You didn’t kill that cop, right? I told you—”

  Steel God grunted, waved the joint around. “She’s alive. They’re both alive. But, fuck, man, I couldn’t let them go, right? We wouldn’t have got this far if I had.”

  Lafitte sat up. “What happened? You hurt her? You didn’t need to fucking hurt her or anybody. We’ve got enough to deal with already.”

  Steel God rose up, chest puffed, but Lafitte held his ground. Guy could smack him, he supposed. Probably the worst of it. God said, “You ain’t dealt with shit. All you’ve done is get yourself caught by a couple country yokels near about put you in a coma. I told you, make that call, and you did. So how about stopping the goddamn lectures and get yourself in shape to ride?”