Savage Reckoning

by C. Hoyt Caldwell

  Step looked away.

  “You two bone-fucks were supposed to do a simple closeout, and you managed to turn it into a cluster-shit bag that I’ve been stepping on all goddamned morning!”

  “Gun jammed, Boss,” Kenny said.

  Boss balled his hands into fists and closed his eyes. He unsuccessfully attempted to calm himself before opening them and saying, “Did I ask for an excuse, shithead?”

  “No, sir,” Kenny said, returning to his puddle of spit on the concrete floor.

  Step, considerably less panicked than his bumbling partner, retrieved another cigarette from the pack in his front pocket. “We closed out Williams.”

  Boss turned to him with his teeth bared. “Do I have to tell you all the ways you fucked up? Are you that fucking stupid?”

  Step shrugged without looking at him and lit his fresh cigarette with the old one. Puffing the new one to life, he coughed out, “Like Kenny said, the gun jammed. We had to improvise.”

  Boss approached him. “You improvised us into some deep shit.”

  Step tamped out the old cigarette on the bottom of his boot. Enraged, Boss slapped the new cigarette out of his mouth. “Do you care how thin the ice is that you’re standing on right now, boy?”

  Any other man would have received a deadly response from Step, but raising a hand to Boss would not only get him killed, it would get Kenny killed, too.

  “You two idiots managed to get the state police involved. Do you know how far up my ass the Pikes’re gonna be once they get wind of this?”

  Kenny looked up over the desk. “Why would the state police care about two drunk rednecks getting killed outside a bar? That sort of thing happens near every weekend in this part of the country.”

  “They don’t give a shit when fuckheads like Williams get gunned down outside a bar, but their interest is tweaked a good bit when some goober-shit gets busted up by a truck and dragged to pieces down the fucking road. That kind of thing draws attention to a closeout we don’t need. Do you comprehend the pile of steaming shit you have left on my doorstep, brick brain?”

  “I reckon if we had time to think we could have handled it a good bit better,” Kenny said.

  “What did you say?” Boss asked, turning on him.

  Kenny returned to the brown mess on the floor. “Nothing.”

  “Let me tell you about the world we live in, boys. We live in a time where you can snap off a picture of something as easy as you can catch a politician in a lie. Them pictures get uploaded in a near instant to that goddamned Twitter bullshit and half the fucking world is looking in on my business with tweets and updates and fuck-my-day-up blogger horseshit. And do you know what kind of pictures get the most play in this kind of world?”

  Kenny didn’t dare respond, while Step didn’t care to know.

  “Pictures of a fat fucking hayseed’s intestines stretched from one block to the next! Do you know where that puts the Pikes?”

  Kenny almost felt proud to know the answer. He couldn’t help but say, “Up your ass?”

  “Exactly, brick brain! And do you know where that puts you and your brick-brained partner?”

  Kenny looked to Step for help, but Step simply reached in his shirt pocket for his pack of cigarettes.

  “It should leave both of you swallowing dirt in a hastily made hole in my backyard. And do you know why I should bury you in my backyard?” Kenny slowly shook his head. “So I can piss on both of you first thing every goddamned morning!” Boss pinched the bridge of his nose to squeeze back a headache.

  Step flicked his lighter to life and lit his cigarette. “You want me to talk to my cousin?”

  “Who the fuck is your cousin?”

  “Terry Randle. He’s with the Baptist Flats Sheriff’s Department. He’s liable to know what the state boys are up to. An ear to the ground, so to speak.”

  Boss thought it over. “You close with him?”

  “Close enough. We hunt together, hang out during holidays and shit.”

  “Talk to him. Put him on the payroll if you have to. I want to know who I have to kill, fuck, or pay to make this thing go away.” Boss felt his phone vibrate in his front pocket. He didn’t even have to look at the display to know who it was. He retrieved the phone, cupped it in his huge hand, and pinched the bridge of his nose again. “Get the fuck out.”

  Kenny straightened up. He’d done his best to scoop the spit back into the cup, but there was still a sizable stain on the floor. “I ain’t finished yet, Boss—”

  Boss quickly moved around the desk and kicked Kenny in the ass. “Get out!”

  Step ran out the door before Boss saw him laughing. Kenny hobbled along a few feet behind him. They heard Boss say, “I’m on my way,” before they exited the garage.

  Chapter 5

  Manfred T. Longwell stepped back from the podium and raised his hands in the air. A tightly packed audience of supporters in the high school gymnasium took to their feet and cheered as if he had just accepted his party’s nomination for president. He’d hit every note the group of God-fearing Southerners wanted to hear: The government needed to butt out of their lives. Taxes were too high. The assault on the Second Amendment was an assault on our founding fathers. Blah, blah, blah.

  He had given a speech to a progressive group of voters the day before that appealed to their sensibilities. We needed more social programs. Corporate America needed to pay their fair share. Something had to be done about the gun violence in this country. Blah, blah, blah.

  Longwell was a small-time politician taking a huge leap by running for governor. He’d spent six terms in the Tennessee State House, and he was itching to expand his political brand. He was ignored at first, but he’d eventually made some waves. Small endorsements started to come his way, which attracted donors, which attracted bigger endorsements, which attracted bigger donations. His star was rapidly rising. He was still small-time, but momentum was gathering in his direction.

  Dani stood at the bottom of the stage, doing her best to look authoritative. Most of the crowd had known her since the day she was born so they had a hard time buying that she was in charge of her own life, much less the budding politician’s security.

  As Longwell moved down the small set of stairs at the side of the stage, a woman hugging a framed photograph of a young girl approached. Dani hesitated as she grappled with what to do. She’d imagined she would stand next to the stage, listen to a crap political speech, and then watch as people filed out of the school. But now here was a woman with a look of desperation approaching the man Dani was assigned to protect. Worst of all, Dani didn’t recognize the woman.

  “Mr. Longwell,” the woman said. Her frazzled, dirty blond hair matched her disposition.

  Dani sheepishly stepped forward with her hand extended. “Step back, ma’am.”

  The woman ignored the deputy. She waved frantically. “Mr. Longwell, please, I need your help. Mr. Longwell.”

  “Ma’am,” Dani said with a faltering timbre.

  “My daughter’s gone missing, Mr. Longwell. The police won’t help. Mr. Longwell, I just want to find my baby girl.”

  Dani spread her arms and stepped in front of the woman. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step back.”

  The woman turned her tired eyes to Dani. “I have to talk to him. Don’t nobody else care. I just need somebody to care.”

  Dani was momentarily rendered speechless by the plea. The woman’s face was beyond pale. It appeared to have a faint gray tint that gave off a deathly glow.

  “Just one single solitary soul. That’s all I want.”

  Dani looked over her shoulder and watched as Longwell and his campaign manager disappeared into an area they had labeled “the photo op zone.” She turned back to the woman and scanned her deeply distressed face. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, ma’am?”

  The woman flared her nostrils and shook her head emphatically. “No. I done told the police. They ain’t done nothing.”

  “Y
ou filed a report with the police?”

  The woman nodded.

  “In Baptist Flats?”

  The woman wiped snot from her nose with the back of her hand. “No. I ain’t from Baptist Flats, I’m from Rock Hollow. I just come here to talk to Mr. Longwell. He’s got connections. I read about him. He used to be high up in the state police, and he’s got some time up at the capital. He can get done what needs to be done.”

  People filed past Dani and the woman. The deputy gently grabbed the woman by the elbow and guided her toward the emptying bleachers. “Who’d you talk to at the Rock Hollow Sheriff’s Department?”

  “The sheriff. Stan Rucker. Know’d the boy since we was in grade school. Thought he was a friend, but he ain’t done nothing. Shouts me down whenever I ring him up to get news on his investigation. Told me I’d have a better time of it if I just got on with things and left him be.”

  Dani subtly directed her to sit on the bottom row of the bleachers. Taking a seat next to the woman, she said, “I met Stan about two years back. Didn’t impress me much.” She studied the framed photograph. “That your daughter?”

  The woman nodded. “Kate…” She closed her eyes tightly to stop the flood of tears.

  Dani instinctively placed her hand on the woman’s back and attempted to rub away her sadness. It was what her mother had done for her countless times in her life. “I’ve always loved that name.”

  “Named her after her great-grandmother. She was a fine woman. Wanted my Kate to grow up just like her…” She placed the heel of her hand at the base of her nose and breathed deeply to steady herself.

  “Tell me what happened…I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Farrow…Miss Farrow…Laura.”

  “Laura, I’m Dani Savage.”

  Laura managed a weak smile. “You’re a real cop?”

  Dani nodded. “Going on three years now.”

  “You look too pretty to be a cop.”

  Dani squeezed Laura’s shoulder. “Tell me about Kate, Laura. What happened?”

  Laura stared blankly at the gymnasium floor. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I got a call from her at her job…she worked at the Biscuit Shack off the interstate. She loved that job, she really did. A lot of young people hate to work, but my Kate loved it. Wanted to be a manager someday. She could’ve done it, too…Listen to me talk about her like she’s done gone forever. I shouldn’t do that, I know. I’m fighting to hold on to hope, I swear I am. It’s just so hard when you know nothing’s being done.”

  “Sometimes police work can look that way—”

  “No, it ain’t that!” Laura barked. “I know ain’t a thing being done. The old gal that answers the phones there, Mrs. Johnson, she told me there ain’t even a file on it.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

  “I know what she meant! She was in her bed sick with the pneumonia. I went to pay her my respects, and she give me a confession right there that the police weren’t doing a damn thing! Not a damn thing!” The gray tint to her face was replaced by a fiery red.

  Dani wasn’t caught off guard by her anger, but she was moved by her sincerity. Laura Farrow believed the Rock Hollow police truly weren’t looking for her daughter. “Let’s do this. Let me talk to Stan Rucker and see what I can find out.”

  “Why, so you won’t do nothing about it neither?”

  The deputy squeezed Laura’s shoulder again. “You have my word I will get some answers, and if I don’t get answers, I will kick someone in the ass.”

  Laura hesitated and then nodded. “But if you don’t come up with anything, Ima go to the FBI or CIA or the NBC or CBS…wherever I have to, to get some answers. Can’t nobody keep me from that now.”

  “Keep you from it?” Dani asked as she pulled out her notepad and pen.

  The grieving mother shook her head. “It ain’t nothing. I’m just going on like a fool.”

  The deputy decided not to press her. “Your daughter’s name was—is—Kate Farrow?”

  “Kate Lynn Farrow.”

  “And she worked at the Biscuit Shack…”

  “That’s right. The one off the interstate.”

  “How old?”

  “She’d be twenty now.”

  Dani furrowed her brow. “What do you mean ‘now’?”

  Laura returned the perplexed look of the deputy. “It was two weeks past her sixteenth birthday when my Kate got took.”

  Dani’s stomach turned. She thought the girl had gone missing recently. How in the hell had she not heard about a missing girl? Rock Hollow was just forty minutes away. Rucker should have put a call in to every department within a hundred-mile radius long ago. He should have gotten the state police involved. Hell, he should have invited the FBI to take over jurisdiction. It was possible he had, but doubtful. The Baptist Flats SD would have gotten wind of the feds poking around for a missing girl in the area.

  Laura gasped and suddenly smiled. “You’re gonna find her. I know it in my heart. I just had a premonition come over me. You’re the one, Deputy Savage.”

  Dani wanted to tell Laura not to get her hopes up. She wanted to manage the anguished mother’s expectations so her soul wouldn’t be crushed if she failed, but the deputy couldn’t bring herself to do it. “I’m gonna do what it takes, Laura. I’m gonna get you some answers.”

  Chapter 6

  Step and Kenny stood on either side of the door to the walk-in freezer. The cooling system hummed, groaned, and occasionally sputtered as they waited. Step leaned back with one foot propped up against the cold exterior of the freezer. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. Smoke bathed his head in a toasted cloud of white.

  Kenny turned to the freezer wall and tried to get a glimpse of his hat in the reflective frosted metal surface. “You reckon Boss will come down off his mad anytime soon?”

  “He always does.”

  “Not always,” Kenny said. “Remember Tidwell?”

  “What about him?”

  “He pissed Boss off, and Boss shot him in the eye.”

  Step nodded and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth. “Yeah, but Boss wasn’t mad no more after he shot him.”

  “Well, good Lord, Step, I don’t want to lose an eye just to make Boss feel better.”

  “You ain’t gonna lose an eye. Tidwell was a different situation altogether.”

  “What’s so different about him? He does collections and closeouts for Boss just like us, and far as I know, he ain’t never fucked things up as bad as we did last night.”

  “It is true he ain’t fucked up a job,” Step said, watching the smoke rise from his cigarette. “He just fucked Boss’s daughter.”

  Kenny turned to Step, his mouth agape. “Julia?”

  “Heather.”

  Kenny’s mouth opened even further. “Heather ain’t even out of high school yet.”

  “A fact that earned Tidwell a bullet in the eye.”

  Kenny shook his head in disgust. “That is just all kinds of wrong. Ima stop feeling bad for Tidwell. He shouldn’t’ve took advantage of a young girl like that.”

  Step laughed. “He didn’t take advantage of her. Boss walked in on them and Heather was riding ol’ Tidwell like a wild Mustang. Poor boy was snockered out of his mind, mostly passed out. Little Heather torqued him up and climbed aboard.”

  “Heather?”

  Step stuck the cigarette back in his mouth. “Don’t know why you’re so surprised. Heather and Julia both are perilous whores who love to piss their daddy off by slapping fun parts with his employees, which would be all well and good except for the fact he don’t ever direct his anger at his girls. I can count at least a half dozen dumb fucks with small caliber slugs somewheres in their bodies because they got caught with their peckers buried in one of Boss’s daughters.”

  Kenny refocused his attention on his reflection. “Well, now I’m just all kinds of hurt. Neither girls has plied their horny ways on me.”

  Step looked at his wa
tch. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Kenny, so Ima just come out and say it. You’re ugly as shit.”

  “Hell, I settled into that notion a long time ago, but females don’t put much stock into looks and such. This is what’s known as a man’s world, Step. Means ugly on a fella don’t matter a bit.”

  Step flicked his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it. “Time’s up.”

  “Already?”

  “Fucking freezer’s cold as shit. He’ll up and die on us if we wait any longer.” With that, Step opened the door to the freezer and let a billowing icy haze roll out before entering.

  Kenny moved in behind him and gazed down at the naked man shivering on the floor. His feet and hands were bound with duct tape and stainless steel butter knives were laid out on his torso and forehead. “You hanging in there, Billy?”

  Billy Campbell was too cold to get out a coherent word. “Co-co-co-cold!”

  “I should think so,” Kenny said, squatting next to him.

  Step gently tapped on one of the butter knives. It was frozen to Billy’s skin. “They’re good to go.”

  Kenny slapped Billy’s shoulder. “Now you know what’s moved us to do this, right?”

  “Ma-ma-ma-money.”

  “That’s right, ma-ma-ma-money.”

  “Boss’s up our ass,” Step said. “We gotta come down harder on you than usual. That’s the way things go. Boss man’s day turns to shit, your day turns to shit.”

  “Of course, Step and me turned his day to shit, so we kind of feel bad you’re paying for our mistake.”

  “I don’t feel that bad,” Step said. “Billy’s missed two payments. He ain’t showing a whole lot of financial responsibility.”

  “Ki-ki-kid si-sick.”

  “What’d he say?” Step asked.

  “I think he said his kid’s been sick. You got medical bills, do you, Billy?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Well, that is something to consider,” Kenny said.

  “Why’s that?” Step asked.

  “He had expenses he didn’t account for. Your kid gets sick you gotta get him looked at by a doctor.”

  Step shrugged. “We done went to the trouble of freezing him up. Wouldn’t be very productive of us to let all that work go to waste.”