Widow Town

by Joe Hart

  “Love you too,” Ryan whispered.

  “Talking to yourself again?”

  Darrin’s voice startled him so much he spilled the half-full glass of orange juice across the table. The liquid pattered on the floor, the dripping reminding him of something else.

  “Jumpy,” Darrin said, moving to the fridge. Ryan stood and began to mop the juice up with a towel. Darrin pulled out a premade protein shake and leaned against the counter drinking straight from the bottle, his eyes on Ryan the entire time.

  “What’s going on tonight?” Ryan asked, his head still down.

  Darrin finished drinking. “A little jaunt that he wants Adam and me to do while Dad’s at work.”

  “What is it?”

  “That’s our business, little brother.” Darrin gave him a long stare. “How long’s it been since you did your chores?”

  Ryan swallowed and finished wiping up the juice. “A couple days.”

  “You know he won’t let you in on everything until you’re finished, you know that, right?”

  Ryan stood and paced to the sink where he deposited the sticky towel. “Yeah, I know.”

  Darrin stepped closer to him, the fetid stink of morning breath mixed with sweet protein drink washing over him. “Do it tonight, while we’re gone and Dad’s at work. You don’t have it done when we get back, I can’t guarantee what he’ll tell me to do with you.”

  Ryan nodded, his eyes averted, staring out at the morning light, a mockery of hope. “I’ll do it.”

  Darrin put the drink back in the fridge and slapped Ryan on the bicep, hard. “Good. You’ll enjoy it, little brother, you’ll see.” Ryan nodded and waited until Darrin turned away and climbed the stairs out of sight before sinking down into a chair, his eyes locked on the window and the world beyond. A bird flew past, a streak of yellow. There and gone.

  The morning ached with heat when he stepped outside. Small puffs of dust kicked up beneath his feet as he transitioned from the paved drive running before their three-story house, to the packed dirt turnaround that wound to the open fields. The corn stretched toward the sun, the unnatural green of the plants enhanced by the meager rain the night before. Ryan walked past an immense storage shed where their Churner sat, the machine scheduled for a bit of maintenance before it would be rented out again to another farmer needing to expose the rich phosphate sixty or more feet down in the ground. The shadow of the towering silo spilled onto the heated dirt and Ryan walked into its embrace, the air changing only a little in temperature. He readjusted his grip on the peanut butter sandwich wrapped in plastic as well as the glass bottle of cool water, already beginning to sweat beneath his fingers.

  The dirt track led around the side of the silo and turned right before petering out in the cornfield’s emerald mass. Ryan left the path and threaded his way between several maple trees, their leaves’ dry clicking filling up the morning air. A high stand of reed grass, trampled in places, stood past the trees and Ryan pushed his way through it until he felt his feet land on smooth concrete.

  A row of stairs cut into the earth.

  Their short steps numbering half a dozen, led down to a steel door set within a poured concrete enclosure, its top even with the rest of the ground. Grass grew in matted clumps from a layer of earth upon it, a hard fall for anyone who didn’t know it was there.

  Ryan climbed down the steps, not looking at the dirty, five-gallon pail filled with rusted instruments, their bladed smiles gleaming beneath clumps of matter gone dark with age. The memory of the pail’s handle in his palm nearly overwhelmed him and he rubbed his hand on his jeans to assure himself he wasn’t actually holding it.

  A sliding block of iron graced the front of the door, a shining padlock securing its end. Ryan set the food down and dug a single key from his pocket. The key shook and jittered against the lock’s cylinder face before sliding inside.

  He pulled the lock free and set it on the ground. He slid the shaft to the left, the rasping scrape of steel on steel grating against his eardrums. Picking up the food, he pulled on the door, letting the bright light of the day spill inside.

  The root cellar was only seven feet wide but over twenty feet long. Its smooth walls were dry and powder-white, helping the light from outside stretch farther in. The smell hit him as soon as he stepped inside and even though he braced himself, he couldn’t help the gag that spasmed in the back of his throat. The scent was a mixture of human waste along with body odor laced with fear. The latter was sharp in the close air.

  A tinkle of chains came from the far end of the cellar and Ryan waited for his eyes to adjust before he took several steps inside.

  A man lay on his side near the furthest wall, one arm tucked beneath his head, the other ran down to his hip where it ended in an ugly stump that oozed blood and pus through a soiled wrapping of gauze. He wore only a brown pair of underwear, once white, that barely hung on his emaciated frame. Scars, old and new, covered his legs and torso in archaic etchings of pain, their puckered mouths speaking silent agonies. Chains ran down from deep-set anchors sunk in the wall to a dozen oversized fishhooks that were embedded in the flesh of the man’s back and buttocks, their tips catching the light in evil glints.

  The man’s eyes were twin reflections of terror, their shine that of a beaten animal past the point of breaking. He shifted and tried to scramble back against the wall, but the hooks twisted in their fleshy moorings and he made a choked sound before lying once again on the floor, urine flooding the front of his underwear. The formerly vivid shock of red hair on his head was a matted maroon, looking like strands of old blood.

  Ryan cleared his throat and moved closer, trying not to vomit from the smell of fresh feces that lingered in the air.

  “I brought you a sandwich, Mr. Baron.”

  Chapter 12

  “We’re looking for a dried up swamp, Joseph.”

  Ruthers glanced at Gray as the cruiser lifted slightly over a hump in the road and then settled again, the car feeling like an airplane instead of a vehicle.

  “Sir, if you don’t think this man is the one we’re looking for, why are we going out to talk to him?”

  “Links of a chain, Joseph, links of a chain.”

  “Sir?”

  Gray looked at the deputy. “It’s something my mentor, James Dempsey, taught me when I was training in Minneapolis. An investigation is finding a chain. Even with all our fancy gadgets and technology, what we’re looking for will always be the same. People are links in the chain, objects are links, even hunches can be links. If you find a link, and it doesn’t have to be the first link but usually it is, you follow it to the next one, and the next one. Sometimes it dead ends and you have to backtrack until you know where to start again, but mostly you find whatever’s tied to the other end.”

  “You don’t think this is a dead end?”

  “Hard to say. Maybe.”

  Ruthers rubbed a finger against each temple and closed his eyes. Gray smiled a little. “Beer wreaking havoc on your brain pan, Joseph?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “There’s a bottle of pain killers in the glove compartment.”

  “Thanks.” Ruthers fumbled the small pill bottle out and deposited two caps in his palm before dry swallowing them.

  “You didn’t get any coffee this morning,” Gray said.

  “I’m quitting.”

  “Altogether?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “It all doesn’t taste like the stuff from the café, you know?”

  “I know, just thought it would be better for me. Your vegetables got me thinking about things.”

  “That sounded dirty, Joseph.” Ruthers busted out laughing and Gray smiled again. “How long have you been drinking coffee?”

  “Five years or so.”

  Gray whistled low as he slowed the car, a bleached, withering swamp approaching on their right. “That headache’s going to get a lot worse, Joseph.”

  A hacked hole in the thick brush appeared where the swamp�
��s wasted reach ended. The trail leading into the woods looked cavern-like, hewn by a machete or hatchet but not near large enough to accommodate the cruiser. Gray pulled onto the side of the road and shut the vehicle down.

  “We walk from here, Joseph, prepare to leave the map.”

  “Really?”

  “Links of the chain, Joseph, links of the chain.”

  The heat buffeted them in layers, each warmer than the last as the sun crawled toward noon overhead. They left the quiet highway for the dense thicket, sounds of the drying forest pressing in on all sides. Gray could hear it speaking to him, calling out for the teasing taste of water from the night before.

  “Is Minneapolis as big as people say?” Ruthers asked after a while.

  “Bigger. Some people are like flies, and the biggest cities are just heaping piles of technological shit.”

  “Can I ask you something, sir?”

  “Joseph, when have you ever not asked me something?”

  “How many cases did you work on there?”

  “Too many. That’s why I came back here. The homeland calls the blood no matter where you go.”

  The trail continued straight for nearly a mile and then made a sharp turn to the left. Daylight shone through the trees in bigger quantities, signaling a clearing was coming up. A hint of wood smoke rode the breeze to them and Ruthers placed his hand on his sidearm.

  “Easy Joseph,” Gray said, and stepped into the clearing.

  A sturdy house made from rough-hewn timbers stood at one end of the open ground, its roof a lashing of tin and shingles. A chicken coop sat next to a small shed that looked barely large enough to house the goat that poked its head through the doorless opening, its mouth chewing lazily. A fire ring in the center of the small yard smoked a yellowish haze into the air that quickly dissipated. A man wearing a sweat-stained set of coveralls knelt near the fire ring, poking at its contents.

  “What do you want?” the man said without raising his head from his work.

  “Just to talk to you,” Gray said. “We don’t mean any harm.”

  “Get walking in the other direction and I won’t mean you any either.”

  “Terry, do two things for me; turn around and face me fully, and tell your boy off the trail there to put down his gun, it’s shaking pretty bad and I don’t want him to accidentally shoot me or my deputy.”

  Terry Yantz stood and turned toward them. He had long, blond hair that hung nearly to his shoulders. A solid chin jutted forward and his eyes, so light blue they were almost colorless, inspected them with a sharp clarity.

  Terry waved his hand once at the left side of the trail and a boy no older than fourteen with his father’s shade of hair tucked behind two ears that stuck out like open car doors, moved into view. He held a lever action rifle that looked much too large for him, but his eyes never left Gray and Ruthers as he moved to his father’s side.

  “Good eyes, Sheriff, I’ll give you that, but my boy’s aim is steadier than the earth.”

  Gray smiled. “You’re right, I was more worried about him pulling the trigger intentionally than not. Is that a Winchester model ninety-four?” Terry nodded. “Beautiful gun, although the bore isn’t as appealing from this angle.”

  Terry nudged his son who dropped the weapon’s muzzle toward the ground. “What do you need, Sheriff?”

  “Information, that’s all.”

  “About?”

  “I’m guessing you heard about the Jacobses?”

  “I’ve heard rumors by sources I don’t entirely trust.”

  “Well then, you’ve heard enough. You didn’t know the Jacobses, did you?”

  “Not from Adam.”

  “But you haven’t had the FV5, am I correct?”

  “Nope. Don’t believe in messing with nature that way.”

  “By ensuring children don’t ever become sociopaths?”

  Terry glanced over his shoulder as the door to the house opened and a woman with chestnut hair came out to stand on the porch. A pudgy-faced baby holding an aluminum rattle that looked like Danzig’s handiwork, perched on one of her hips.

  “I’m raising my children right, sir, that’s the way you ensure that they don’t become sociopaths.”

  Gray nodded once and looked at the ground. “You wouldn’t happen to know of anyone else with your frame of thinking on the subject? Someone who avoided the Line too?”

  Terry didn’t move for nearly a minute and then shook his head. “Not presently. It’s not very common if you didn’t notice. My wife’s had the shots but none of our boys have.” He seemed to mull something over for a moment. “The last instance I heard about in the area was a friend of my father’s who didn’t have his son inoculated, but he died while the boy was young and my father told me later that the family who adopted him got him the jabs thereafter. I remember visiting them a couple times when I was young, but that’s it.” Terry shrugged. “Can’t think of anyone else offhand.”

  “I appreciate the information and taking time out of your day,” Gray said. “But I do have to say, you know there’s a burning ban right now, don’t you?”

  Terry glanced at the small fire. “I’m boiling sugar sap down to make rock candy for my kids, it’s the only treat they get. I mind the fire well.”

  Gray stared at the other man for a second and then nodded once. “Have a nice day.”

  Gray walked away from the clearing and the watching family with Ruthers a length behind. They didn’t speak until well out of earshot of the house and its residents.

  “Sir, with all due respect, can we really just let him keep that fire going when it’s so dry?”

  “Joseph, everything that man cares about is in that clearing. He would no more let the fire get out of control than I would let you drive my cruiser.”

  After walking another hundred yards Gray stopped and pulled out his wallet. He drew out a hundred-dollar bill and placed it on the ground, securing the edge with a small rock.

  “What are you doing?” Ruthers asked as they resumed walking.

  “You didn’t see the other boy behind the shed holding another rifle bead on us?”

  “What?”

  “He was there, and no doubt he and his little brother are following us right now to make sure we leave. They’re paranoid and right to be since they would be cast out as monsters when all they want to do is live naturally. They have three children to feed and next to no money to do so, Joseph. The cash’s just a thank you for talking with us.”

  Ruthers nodded as he kept abreast of Gray. “Dead end.”

  “It appears that way, but let’s keep this link in mind, you never know when a dead end will become a highway.”

  ~

  Gray slid the cruiser into his parking spot behind the station and shut the engine off. As soon as the air conditioning ceased, the heat crept in through the windshield, the unforgiving sun pushing its gaze into the car.

  “I could try looking up medical records for the county, start back about forty years ago and work my way forward. See if we can find a match between births in the hospital and an absence of FV5 from the records for the children?”

  Gray stared ahead at the individual bricks lining the wall before them. “That’s a good idea, but it would take forever, even in a little town like Shillings.”

  “I could feed the info into a program, run it to look just for that occurrence, I don’t think it would take more than a day or so.”

  “I don’t doubt you could, you’re way more suited to the computers than I am, but I think we would find nothing, or that if you found a match, the person would have moved away and got the shot eventually anyway.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You know how I said you start at the first link?”

  Ruthers nodded.

  “What would you say the first link is if we’re traveling under the guise of my little premise?”

  Ruthers thought for a moment. “I would have to say the Olsons burning up in their home.”

>   Gray shifted his eyes to the deputy. “What if it wasn’t?”

  “You mean another murder that was disguised?”

  “Maybe, or how about a simple disappearance?”

  “Like a missing person?”

  “Yep.”

  “But wouldn’t there be evidence of foul play in a situation like that, something that says a person was taken?”

  Gray opened his door to the full heat of the day. “Not if the circumstances were right and whoever took them was careful.”

  They went inside the building and Gray sighed as the promise of respite from the heat was denied.

  “Mary Jo, can we please put in a call to have the air conditioning fixed?” Gray said, wiping his brow. “And the thermostat needs to be replaced in my office also.”

  “Called twice to city hall, Sheriff, nothing back yet.”

  “What do you mean you called city hall?”

  “Didn’t you read the memo from last week?”

  “Apparently not, enlighten me.”

  “All expenditures, including repairs, must be run through the tasking clerk at city hall as of last Tuesday.”

  Gray shook his head. “Tell me some good news, Mary Jo, please.”

  The older woman tore her eyes away from one of the screens on the desk. “Greg Taylor asked me to the city dance.”

  “Congratulations,” Gray said, putting his hat back on.

  “I turned him down flat,” Mary Jo said, bringing her attention back to the screens.

  “Congratulations,” Ruthers said with a smirk.

  “Thank you,” Mary Jo said. “The man has an unsightly mole with hairs growing from the center of it in the middle of his forehead. If he’d like to date me he needs to start with taking care of his own hygiene.”

  Ruthers laughed and shrugged as Gray shifted his gaze from him to Mary Jo. “My God you two.”

  “You asked,” Mary Jo said.

  Gray shook his head. “Mary Jo, can you look up every missing-person report we’ve gotten in say, the last seven years?”