Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3)

by Trey R. Barker

  “Hypocrites of the worst order.”

  The afternoon blew a hot wind through his bones. Beneath his cowboy hat, he sweated.

  Those hypocrites allowed Johnny a vice or two but ran Bean out of town with threats of impeachment and investigations and jail and prison. It was just a matter of—

  When the man screamed, Bean’s balls thundered into his belly. It was a long, bellowing howl, torn from deeper inside a man than the Judge would have thought possible. He dashed back into Echo’s place, found Echo standing next to the cab of the truck, his dark skin gone angry.

  “What?” Bean said.

  “Shit mess? Did I say you brought a shit mess? Judge, goddamnit, you brought a fucking disaster. Who the hell is that?”

  “Who is who?”

  Echo pointed to the interior of the cab.

  When Judge Royy Bean, II looked, he almost pissed himself.

  A girl.

  Trying to hide her tears.

  Handcuffed. Shackled. Chained.

  9

  Fourteen years old? Maybe fifteen? Thin as a heroin addict. Hair disheveled. Make-up years beyond her age smeared across her face. Arms bruised. Squinting eyes blinking rapidly at the suddenly light.

  Tears streaking that makeup but something beneath those tears, too. Something that somehow reminded Bean of Mariana’s strength.

  “Holy balls,” Bean said.

  “Crap,” Echo said, finger over his nose. “Get a load of the stink, babe.”

  The odor of an unwashed body, musky and thick, sharp, yet so much deeper than just days out of the shower. This was also fear. Ripe and overwhelming and as bitter as ammonia.

  And that last scent? That last little layer of flavor over the top of it all?

  Hopelessness.

  You’ve worn that perfume, Jeremiah.

  Yes.

  Yet somehow she was immaculately dressed. A long white dress, of the sort Mariana had worn to her own confirmation and wanted their daughter to wear to hers. Gloves that ran to her elbows. White shoes with neat buckles on the toes.

  “Nope.” Echo shook his head. “Ain’t doing this. This is your truck, Judge, that’s what you keep saying. Your truck...your dope...so your girlfriend. Get her out—”

  “It was Bassi, my driver. He has a taste.”

  Surprise etched on Echo’s face. “You hired a pervert? What the fuck was that about?”

  “I thought—” Bean’s face flooded with hot, embarrassed blood. “I made a mistake.”

  “Sure as shit did. Now get her the fuck outta here. No kids. No little girls.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Ain’t shutting up, Judge. This is bad. Short-eyes bad.”

  “Sssssshut the fuck up.” Bean turned to the girl and tried not to see the specks of dried brown all around her inside the sleeper but specifically not on the dress.

  “What’s your name?”

  She tried to crawl deeper into her prison. A bar ran the width of the cab, down near the floor of the sleeper and deep inside the frame of the sleeper’s bed. Echo’s men had found it when they yanked the cushions and bench.

  No doubt looking for more dope, the Judge thought.

  And finding, instead, a chained girl with just enough room to lay on her side if she stayed in a fetal position. With the wooden platform and cushions over her, she was completely invisible to the world.

  Bean’s stomach rolled.

  Blue eyes, rimmed with tears, darted between him and Echo and the door on the far side of the cab.

  Echo jerked the Judge away from the truck, slammed the door. The bang bounced off the garage’s brick walls.

  “The fuck are you doing?” The Judge moved to reopen the door but Echo held it closed. “Move, Echo. I need to talk to her. I need—”

  “Ain’t your daughter.”

  The Judge froze. “What did you say? Repeat that.”

  “Your Honor, you know I love you. Taught me how’t’a be me. Dragged a man outta my mama’s boy. Stood tall, in front’a my bullshit year after year. After Mama got gunned, you kept me alive. Didn’t leave so good, but you got a spot in my heart...always. But that girl, whoever she is, ain’t your daughter.”

  Bean shook his head. “What the fuck are you—”

  “Your daughter is dead. You missed her birth because you were getting money to campaign and then she died in a house fire.”

  “I put her in that house.” He stared at Echo. “I set her to burn.”

  “Shit on that. You did no such fucking thing. You did what you hadda do. I cain’t imagine the hurt in your heart, but your daughter is dead. She ain’t coming back...ever. Your grief been eating you for years.”

  Bean turned away, fists tight. Lash out. Go ahead, beat Echo bloody and leave him unconscious on his own concrete floor. Because that would solve all the problems, wouldn’t it? That would be the perfect answer.

  The pathetic cliché was that the Judge was angry at himself, not Echo. The black man spoke a painful truth. Same fucking painful truth that put a glass of tequila in Bean’s hand most every night.

  And a needle in a vein for how many years?

  “Judge, listen to me, yo. You ain’t careful? That grief gonna eat you up the rest of your life.”

  Won’t be long, he wanted to say. He could feel his family’s madness coming.

  Jeremiah, it’s not coming. I keep telling you that.

  You do keep telling me, Mariana, but it is. Great granddaddy. Gramma. Daddy. Eventually me.

  “You gonna be fine, Judge,” Echo said.

  “You’re not listening to me. I will not live long enough to be fine.”

  Echo shook his head dismissively. “Okay, you be dead tomorrow, but right now? In this garage? We cain’t do this...with this girl. This is long gone beyond what I handle.”

  “It’s not yours to handle.” Bean took a deep breath. “Bassi found her and I hired him. This is my problem to handle.”

  How long had that girl been chained there? Bassi left Langtry West more than a week ago and had made stops all over the southern and western part of the state. When had he snatched the girl?

  Or bought her?

  “Yeah, but his shitmess got dumped on my doorstep.”

  Bean sighed. “I apologize about that. I had no idea about her.”

  Bean had accepted Bassi’s assurances. Sitting in Digger’s bar, the air conditioner blasting away, the smell of cow shit and dust heavy in the air. Bassi’s hair combed and clothes casual but clean and explaining patiently how all his bullshit was behind him, his urge for little girls long since gone, worked out in therapy and drugs and rubber bands around his dick. The son of a bitch had been so smooth. Polished as blued steel and just as deadly. Bassi had shown just enough hesitation in exactly the right places, had bled sincerity.

  The Judge ground his teeth until pain became a jackhammer in his jaw. Asswipe had probably already been packing a hard pole as he sat on the far side of the table from Bean; knowing he was getting over on the Judge and that soon enough, he’d have a private, mobile rape shack for at least a week.

  Plain and simple, Mr. Judge Royy Bean, II...you got played. By a weak sister who hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  “Well played, Bassi,” Bean said.

  “I’m talking, yo,” Echo said. “Whatever pervert driver you hired ain’t here.”

  The situation was gone shit to hell. Part of that was Bassi’s play for the dope. Part of that was bodies all over Johnny’s Barbeque. Part of it this little girl.

  Yet part of it, too, was the finger and the note and the plague carried within that note. The accusation was infectious and now ate at Bean’s equilibrium.

  Why did you lie to me, Mariana? Was the truth so terrible that you couldn’t share it with me?

  “Don’t care the who or the why.” Echo blew out a breath. “Just care that I got way too young a piece’a snatch in my garage.”

  “Boss?” one of Echo’s men said. “The fires are burning.”

  Echo no
dded. “Hang on, we ain’t there yet.”

  Bean eyed both of them. “What’s he talking about?”

  Echo’s man talked fast, casual. “We got fires, Judge. Nice and hot right now. Got a need later today.”

  Another of Echo’s men came from around the far side of the truck. He carried a medium-sized cardboard box. “Boss?”

  “Ain’t now, homey.”

  “Yeah, but...You gotta see.”

  “Daryl.” Echo spoke sharply. “Not now, man, I ain’t got time for this, I got dealings.”

  “Boss.” Daryl’s voice boomed in the garage. He dropped the box, hard, to the floor at Echo’s feet. “Ain’t got time not to see this.”

  Visibly grinding his teeth, Echo looked in the box. For a half a minute, there was nothing but his breath, faster and faster and whistling through his crooked nose like a train whistle while angry color filled his face. “Motherfuck me running.”

  “At least,” Daryl said. “Gotta be a hundred. Maybe more.” His voice dropped. “Got ‘Faith’ written on all of ’em.”

  Echo took a deep breath and Bean could see him trying to get control of himself. “That fucking driver of yours had some serious nastiness going on. You need’t’a see this.”

  “What?”

  “Pix.”

  “No.”

  “Judge, you have to—”

  “No, I don’t need to see them. I know what they are. I sent Bassi to Huntsville years ago. I know what he takes pictures of.”

  “Judge?”

  “If you’ve got fires, burn them. Wait.” Bean opened the truck door. The girl was crouched against the back wall, still cuffed and chained to the bar. “We found the pictures.”

  She stared at him, her face slashed by angry tears.

  “I don’t know if this is all of them, but we’re going to burn them. If we find more, we’ll burn those, too. I promise.” He looked at Echo. “Where?”

  “Furnace out back. That conveyor goes right to it. ’S how we dump shit out.”

  To her, Bean said, “I’m going to close this door. You’ll be alone. If you stand up, you can see the conveyor belt. It’s the best I can do.”

  He waited for something. A word or a nod, whatever simple acknowledgment she might give. She gave none.

  As he closed the door, Bean nodded at Echo’s man.

  “Him the judge,” Echo said when the guy hesitated. “Burn ’em.”

  “Damn straight, boss,” the man said. In a single, fluid motion, he grabbed the box, crossed the floor, and dumped the pictures in a trail on the conveyor belt. Then he tossed the empty box on top. “Good riddance.”

  The belt chugged the length of the wall and then around a corner and out of sight.

  “Had,” the Judge said.

  “What?”

  “My driver had a nastiness. He’s dead. I took my truck back. He climbed on the front and I ran him down.”

  “You ain’t feeling bad about that, are you?” Echo asked.

  “Not in the least.” He stared at Echo. “Though it does give you a problem.”

  Echo nodded. “Yep.”

  “Too hard to scapegoat.”

  Justice was served best when someone was easily served up. With Bassi dead, but dead five or seven miles from here, it would be tough to pin everything on him. If he were dead here, in this garage, it would be much easier. But as it was, this garage was full of evidence of his transgressions but also with men who had their own litany of bullshit strung out behind them as long as the day was hot.

  Bean glanced at the truck. She stood, deep in the cab, mostly hidden by shadows, and stared at the conveyor belt. A young woman, stolen from who knew where, raped repeatedly, the subject of pictures that were probably already on the fucking internet or floating through VPNs loaded and lined with pedophiles and pederasts.

  She—Faith—is the one thing of which we are all innocent and not a cop in the entire county would believe a word from our collective mouth.

  “Judge, this...” Echo shook his head, tore his eyes away from the truck. “I run me some drugs. Maybe fence some stolens. Whatever else comes along here and there. But this?” Echo took a deep breath, riddled with anxiety. “This is a whole different kind’a bad.”

  “And your suggestion is...what? Toss her on the street? Give her a sawbuck and wish her luck? Fuck that. I’m getting her home. She’s someone’s daughter and her parents damn fucking well have a right to have her in their lives. I’m getting her home.”

  To her mother, Jeremiah.

  To her mother, Mariana.

  Echo said nothing.

  Daryl stood near the conveyor belt. “Boss, fire’s hot.”

  Echo’s eyes, hard as the men Bean had sent to prison, held steady on the Judge. Neither blinked.

  “You’re not talking about my burning truck,” Bean said.

  The Judge shifted from foot to foot. His head pounded. The map in front of him was fuzzy, but he was beginning to see where the road turned. “I’ve never seen a garage with a conveyor belt, Echo. Or with constant fires.” Bean nodded toward the fan in the ceiling. “Or that.”

  “Wha’choo think this place is?”

  The Judge licked his lips. “Obviously not just a garage.”

  “Not even a garage.”

  “Julio didn’t tell me everything, did he?”

  “Julio didn’t tell you anything.”

  “What is this place, Echo?”

  From deep inside the truck, they heard the rattle of shackles. Steady and rhythmic, as though she was kicking against the side of the cab.

  Bean said, “That fire’s...what? Maybe fifteen hundred...two thousand degrees?”

  “Hot enough to do the job,” Daryl said.

  “Absolutely not.” Bean said it firmly, his old court voice, the one he used when sentencing people to prison.

  They want me to burn her, Mariana. They want me to kill her the same way our daughter was killed. I will not burn her.

  Good for you, Jeremiah. Get her home.

  “Judge,” Echo said. “We gotta do something.”

  “Something, yes. Not that.”

  “What, then?”

  “Give me one of your cars. She’ll go with me. We’ll be out of town in ten minutes. I’ll get her to Langtry West.”

  Echo shook his head. “Notta. Ain’t letting her outta here. She seen him, me, this place.”

  “You know Digger can find her parents. I’ll get this girl home.”

  “Find her parents? That a joke, yo? How long you been looking for Mariana’s shit? Four years? Five? Digger so good at finding, why cain’t he find that?”

  “That’s none of your affair.”

  “But this is.” Echo took a deep breath. “Judge, listen to me. That girl seen everything. And ever’body. She’ll dime us faster than that pervert driver found and raped her. You think you clean in this? Just ’cause your driver did the nasty? You hired him. You gave him that damn truck. Y’all prob’ly gave him some road money...for gas and whatnot. Ain’t no way five-oh gonna think you’re clean.”

  The Judge brought his full six-foot, four-inch frame over to Echo. “She’s a terrified little girl. She’s going to finger us? How in hell much do you think she’s even going to remember?”

  “No chances, Judge.” Echo didn’t back up, didn’t shrink. “She stays with us. We’ll do it clean.”

  Behind their silence was the hum and bang of the conveyor. It didn’t slow, didn’t stop, just kept waiting for something to feed into the burn.

  “You’re going to shoot her in the head and toss her into the fire? Echo, how can you even think like that? How is that even going through your head? What the fuck would your mother think?”

  “Keep Mama outta your mouth, you hear me? You lost that option when you left me high and dry. Do I wanna kill a little girl? Are you fucking crazy? Your daddy’s madness finally get into your brain? Fuck, no, I don’t. But I ain’t going to Huntsville on no short eyes conviction and there ain’t no way in h
ell any of us gets outta this clean. You killed our alibi. You killed the driver and we—” he indicated all his men—“all have records. The cops and district attorneys and judges won’t believe a single fucking thing we say. Damnit, Judge, you gotta listen to me on this one.”

  Moving quick, the Judge yanked the .380 from his waistband. Kept the barrel low, not on anyone. “She goes with me. I’ll deal with the problem.”

  Echo’s face relaxed, his hands came out. Calm and collected. “Judge, yo, take a breath. Everything’s cool. But we got us some know-how. We can do this.”

  “Yeah, old dude,” Daryl said. “Ain’t no reason to get crazy.”

  “Shut up, Daryl,” Echo said. “Judge Bean a good man. Do a thing ’cause he believes in it. You respect him or I’ll kill you myself.”

  “Hey, dawg, I just—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Daryl fell silent and Echo turned back to Bean. Even as Echo began to speak, Bean watched Daryl reach toward his back.

  “Son of a bitch,” Bean said.

  There was no slow motion, no fine-grain film that let the Judge see every move. It was quick and brutal and Bean saw only the blossom on Daryl’s chest and the smear across the conveyor belt as he hit it on the way to the concrete floor.

  “Damnit.” Echo’s voice banged through the garage. He stared at Daryl. “What the fuck you shoot him for?”

  “He was going street on me.” Bean lowered his .380.

  “Going street? The fuck does that even mean? He wasn’t packing. He didn’t have nothing.”

  “Look again.”

  Stomping like a petulant child, Echo went to the dead man. Turned him over with his toes. Something big and chrome was half-hidden in the man’s pants. “Damn.”

  “The girl goes with me.” A beat. “I’ll save her.”

  Echo’s eyes were bright and hot, like fires in his furnace. His breath was slow, though his nose bulged with the effort of keeping control. “You ain’t gonna save her...and you damn sure ain’t gonna save yourself. That ain’t your daughter, Judge. Your daughter is dead.”

  “Shut up. Damnit, you shut the hell up.”

  “You killed my best guy. You’re taking a girl with you who been raped and stolen and probably is an addict. She can put us all in the cut, you stupid son of a bitch.”