Savage Reckoning

by C. Hoyt Caldwell

  Rucker growled into the phone as he processed her statement. “Come again, Deputy Savage?”

  “Well, it seems like you’re getting a lot of calls about Kate Farrow, yet it took some thought on your end to recollect who I was calling about. You see how that can come off as curious?”

  There was a long pause before Rucker said, “You got any more questions for me, Dani?”

  “No…”

  “ ’Cause I ain’t got time to talk about a case that’s been closed down for near four years now. We real police officers gotta deal with up-to-date crimes and such. So, if you are through wasting my time with questions that don’t mean a damn to nobody, I’d like to get back to work!” His voice started off calm, but worked itself into a shrill by the time he got out the last sentence.

  “Sure thing. I ain’t got but one more question.”

  He sighed. “What would that be?”

  “What was the train line?”

  “Come again?”

  “What was the name of the train line that struck down Kate?”

  “Now, why in the hell would you need to know that?”

  “Well, I’d like to help out Laura Farrow if I could. Hate to see a woman go through what she’s going through. I figure if I could get an accident report from the train line it might help her come to terms with what actually happened. Better yet, maybe me and Laura could come in there in the next day or two, and you and me could talk her through this thing. Might help if we go through the evidence with her.”

  He was in an all-out fit of anger by now. “I told you I ain’t got time to mess with a case that’s been closed!” With that he hung up the phone.

  Dani stared at the Disconnected message on her phone’s display and giggled nervously. Laura was right. Stan Rucker hadn’t done a damn thing to find Kate. Her attention was diverted from the phone to the front door of the store as the two men from the truck exited. One of them was carrying a good-sized box that was labeled Porter 100. She blinked thinking she was seeing things. She couldn’t be this lucky.

  The deputy stepped out of her cruiser and approached the two men. “You fellas like Porter 100s, do you?”

  “Not me,” Kenny Fable said. “My partner over there smokes them like he’ll die if he don’t.”

  Step scowled back at the lady cop as he put the box in the truck bed.

  Dani smiled at him. “They a good brand?”

  Step shrugged. “Good enough.”

  “I only ask because I’m looking for a cheaper alternative. I hear Porter is the way to go.”

  Kenny leaned against the truck and pushed back his cap. “Now, you are much too pretty to be smoking, officer.”

  Dani batted her eyelashes. “Now, ain’t you a charmer.”

  Kenny turned to Step. “It’s a man’s world, Step. I told you.”

  “Step?” Dani said, trying her best to give Step a smile that would break his icy stare. “They call you that because you’re a good dancer?”

  Kenny laughed. “My boy can’t dance for shit. You want a dancer you need to come out with me. I can line dance like it’s nobody’s business.”

  “I just might take you up on that offer,” Dani said. “What’s your name?”

  “Kenny.”

  “Kenny and Step,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “Sounds like a couple of fellas that know how to show a lady a good time.”

  Kenny laughed even louder. “You’re a wild one, ain’t you?”

  “I’ve been known to get a little crazy.”

  Step opened the door to the truck. “C’mon, Kenny, get in.”

  Kenny groaned and shrugged. “Gotta go, pretty cop lady. You want to burn things up one of these nights, you look me up. Kenny Fable.”

  Dani reached into her shirt pocket and quickly retrieved one of her cards. Handing it to Kenny, she said, “Call me anytime, Slick.”

  Kenny beamed with pride as he took the card from her. He didn’t even have his door closed before Step peeled out of the parking spot and threw the truck into drive.

  As the truck backed away, Dani noticed the grill was damaged. She caught enough of a glimpse of the license plate to commit it to memory as the vehicle sped onto the road. When they were out of sight, the deputy squatted and examined the tire tracks. She couldn’t say for sure, but they looked awfully close to the tracks she’d seen earlier that day.

  Chapter 10

  The truck made its way down the interstate with Kenny examining a business card. “Dani,” he said with a big smile. “Don’t know what it is about a woman with a man’s name, but it gets me going.”

  Step drove with the heel of his hands on top of the steering wheel as he unwrapped a new pack of cigarettes with his spindly fingers. “She’s a woman cop with a man’s name. You get that, don’t you?”

  “So?”

  “So, a man in your line of work ain’t got no business calling on a cop for a date.”

  Kenny’s smile disappeared. “Why not?”

  Step extracted a cigarette from the pack and stuck it in his mouth. “Do I really have to explain it to you?”

  “She’s fine as hell, Step. Goddamn. She even looked good in a police uniform, a real police uniform, not the kind they have in the porno movies. That badge of hers was pointing straight up to the sky. To the sky, Step. Takes a talented chest to pull something like that off.”

  “I don’t care if she’s a nympho cop sporting a set of double-Ds, Kenny. There ain’t no way in hell you’re calling on her.” He turned away from the open window and quickly lit his cigarette.

  “Holy shit! You reckon she’s got double-Ds?”

  Step shook his head. “Are you even listening to me, dumb shit?”

  “You throw a thing out there like she’s got a huge set on her, and then you tell me I can’t call on her. I ain’t got no idea what you’re trying to do to me.”

  “Kenny!” Step said, pointing his cigarette pinched between two fingers at his passenger. “Get your mind off that cop’s lady parts so you can comprehend what the hell I’m saying to you. You are not to call on her no how, no way. Understand?”

  Kenny donned a sorrowful expression. “I get it. A man who does closeouts for a living ought not get involved with the law on a social level.”

  “It’s like putting a flame near a gas spill,” Step said.

  “That is true. I’ll grant you that. But, I’ll be honest with you, sometimes a man just wants to get burned.”

  Step held out his hand. “Give me the card.”

  “But she give it to me.”

  “Now, Kenny!”

  “I swear I won’t call on her. I just want the card as a keepsake, you know. So I can call up her double-D’s in my mind whenever the hell I want or need to.”

  Step rolled his eyes. “Get your mind off the double-D’s. She ain’t got near that. I was just trying to make a point by hitting your hot button. You want a gal with a set that big, Bones can fix you up with one of her dancer friends.”

  Kenny looked at him, confused. “You ain’t never offered such a thing before.”

  “I didn’t know how desperate you were,” Step said.

  “Y’aughta’ve. I go on about ladies in a sexualized manner all the time,” Kenny said, placing the card in Step’s hand. “I ain’t ashamed to say that’s because I don’t get a lot of female attention. I’d calm down a good bit if I had me a regular release.”

  Step put the cop’s card in his shirt pocket. “Hell, why don’t you just buy regular release? If it will get you off asking all kinds of dumbass questions about this and that, I’ll even pay for it.”

  “Paying for it ain’t nothing but a physical release. I need me an emotional release.”

  Step looked at him cockeyed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Human beings are what’s called pack animals, Step. Means we need others to bond with, helps us get along better, even adds years to our lives being with others. Ain’t nothing more important in a human pack than what
they call physical communion. Means sex with an emotional tinge to it.”

  “Goddamn,” Step said with a laugh. “Did you grow a vagina somewheres along the way?”

  “Laugh all you want, but that don’t change the fact that I don’t just need a hooker to hump. I need a lady that I can exchange emotional wherewithal with.”

  “I don’t get you at all, Kenny. You’re dumb enough to think there’s such a thing as a nobility prize on the one hand, but on the other, you come up with this pack animal, emotional communion bullshit that makes you sound halfway smart.”

  “First off, I’m sure as I can be about that nobility prize. Folks have been winning that thing almost every year for a few years now, and second off, I read up on things.”

  “Read? What the shit do you read?”

  “Stuff that was writ to be read.”

  “Like what?”

  “Stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “I got my daddy’s collection of magazines and the like when he died. It feeds my mind on various topics.”

  “Magazines? You mean Playboy?”

  Kenny smirked. “I recollect coming across an edition or two in his collection, yes.”

  Step shook his head. “So in between cranking off throughout the day, you read up on emotional wherewithal and other such nonsense in these pornographic periodicals?”

  Kenny shrugged. “I got a curious mind. I ain’t ashamed of that.” He fiddled with his cap. “Do you got that with Bones?”

  “Got what with Bones?”

  “Emotional wherewithal.”

  “What I got with Bones ain’t none of your business.”

  “How come you don’t like to talk on your relationship with that gal?”

  Step groaned. “Don’t get started on your questions. I ain’t in the mood.”

  “I give up the lady cop’s card. You can answer a few questions.”

  “I told you Ima get Bones to fix you up. That makes us square on the card business.”

  There was a brief moment of silence before Kenny started up again. “What about Angie? Only time you talk about her is when you’re three sheets to the wind.”

  Step’s blood went cold. He slowed the truck and pulled over to the side of the interstate. Staring straight ahead, he said, “Angie ain’t never gonna be a thing we talk about. You hear me?”

  Kenny was sorry the words had come out of his mouth. “I didn’t mean nothing by it. I just got all worked up. I won’t say nothing about Angie or little Nellie from this day on.”

  Step turned to him slowly with bloodshot eyes.

  “Damn!” Kenny said. “I didn’t mean to say that other name at all. Things just spill out of my mouth sometimes. I don’t want to stir up no bad memories for you. It’s this whole emotional release thing going on in my head. It makes me ramble on sometimes.”

  It took every bit of restraint Step had to refrain from wrapping his hands around Kenny’s throat and squeezing the life out of him. He threw the truck in drive, punched the gas, and merged back onto the interstate, nearly sideswiping a car in the process. Lucky for the driver of the other vehicle, he was too shocked to honk. If he had, Step would have closed him out without a second thought.

  Chapter 11

  The deputy sat at her desk in the station. The glow from her computer screen was the only light in the building. She watched the two and a half minutes of security footage from Crazy Carl’s over and over again. Surprisingly, Carl had had little reaction when Dani’d asked for the video. He’d barely uttered a word as he’d downloaded the footage to a flash drive and handed it to her. Unfortunately, he had no real information on either Kenny or Step. He just knew the two from their monthly visits to stock up on Porter 100s. They always paid in cash. Kenny was a bit of a chatterbox, and Step was all business.

  The truck was registered to a Stephen Walden Crawford. The address put him on the outskirts of Maiden Falls. The only priors were a couple of assault and batteries a number of years ago that didn’t stick.

  “Wha’cha watching?” her uncle asked from behind her.

  Dani screamed and turned quickly with the intent of throwing a punch, but in the turning she realized who the voice belonged to. “Holy shit, Uncle Otis! You just about gave me a heart attack.”

  “Well, it’s no wonder. All the lights are off, and ain’t nobody else around. You’re locked onto that computer screen like a fish staring at a worm.”

  She was too shocked to even attempt to hide the video on the screen. All she could do was pause it.

  “What is that? Some kind of ghost video or something?”

  She looked at the screen and then back at her uncle. “It’s a porno,” she said, knowing her uncle would want to watch if it were a ghost video.

  “Porno?” He looked at the screen closely. “There ain’t nothing but three fellas there.”

  Dani put on a fake grin. “I know. A friend sent it to me. Says it’s the darnedest thing she’s ever seen. You want to see?”

  He stood up straight and shook his head. “There’s a couple things wrong with that right off the bat. I’m not in the habit of watching pornographic movies with my sister’s little girl, and while I have no objection to the concept of a man diddling another man, I don’t particularly wanna witness a thing like that.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “What brings you down to the station after hours?”

  “You,” the sheriff said, pulling a chair over from Deputy Friar’s desk. “Got a call from an irate Stan Rucker close to supper time.” Otis sat in the chair and made himself comfortable.

  “Oh, that,” Dani said.

  “Yeah, that. You mind telling me what was going through your mind when you accused the man of botching up an investigation in his own backyard? A thing like that just shouldn’t be done, Dani.”

  “For the man to have botched up an investigation, there’d have to have been an investigation, Uncle Otis.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying a girl went missing in his jurisdiction, and he didn’t do nothing about it.”

  “First off, what’re you doing calling about a missing girl case in Rock Hollow?”

  “The mother came up to me at the rally at the high school.”

  Otis laced his fingers together over his belly. “Now there’s your first problem right there. Mothers of missing girls can get a tad unstrung. Emotions will make them believe and do unreasonable things.”

  “I thought the same thing, Uncle Otis. I swear I did, but I’m telling you right now I caught Stan Rucker in a lie. He fed me some story about the girl. When I called him on it, he nearly tore my head off.”

  “Rucker’s got a cactus-up-his-ass disposition. It ain’t hard to set him off.”

  “When I first called, he acted like he didn’t know nothing about a missing girl. Then all of a sudden he says he gets calls about her all the time. That’s two ends of a claim that don’t go together at all, Uncle Otis.”

  The sheriff pursed his lips and studied his niece’s face. “What’s this girl’s name?”

  Dani smiled. “Kate Lynn Farrow. Went missing about four years ago.”

  “What’s Rucker’s story?”

  “He says she got hit by a train. They found her remains two days after her mother reported her missing.”

  “Train?”

  “What?”

  “Well, if she was struck by a train in these parts, I would have gotten a safety alert from the state. Happens every time someone gets run over by a locomotive. Law enforcement is supposed to make the rounds to all the churches and schools with safety tips and whatnot. You know how our government is better at reacting as opposed to acting.”

  “So can you check to see if you got an alert around the time Kate went missing?”

  “I could, but I don’t have to. We haven’t had something like that going on five years now. A boy up in Locke County got run over. I remember it clear as day.”

  Dani clapped her hands and smiled
. “I knew it! I told you he was lying! That sneaky bag of shit!”

  “It is peculiar, little deputy,” Otis said, standing. “Get this girl’s mother on the phone. Ask if she’d mind a visit from me and you in the morning ’round about ten.”

  “Really?”

  “I wouldn’t put it out there if I didn’t mean it.”

  “It ain’t our jurisdiction.”

  “Well, as far as I know, curiosity ain’t got no jurisdiction. We’re just being good neighbors.” He started to walk away. “To that end, we’re going as civilians. No uniforms or black and whites. I’ll pick you up in your aunt’s Honda Civic.”

  Dani frowned. She’d rather go in an official capacity. Walking into the living room of a woman with a missing child as Deputy Dani Savage was much easier than doing the same thing as just plain old Dani Savage. The latter wasn’t very good at connecting with other people. But, her uncle was going out on a limb he didn’t usually go out on, so she wasn’t about to make requests that might cause him to back off. She quickly turned her frown to a grin and nodded.

  Chapter 12

  The Porter 100 was nestled between two of Step Crawford’s thin fingers, and the filter kissed a glass of mountain-made bourbon resting in his cupped hand. The smoke mixed with the rising aroma of sour mash settled his cluttered mind. He sat shirtless in a tattered chair that he’d picked up from the curb in front of his neighbors’ house almost three years before. The fabric was faded and torn, but other than that it was a perfectly serviceable chair. The thought that his neighbors would push something out the door before it had been worn beyond its use sickened Step. Three more glasses of whiskey and he’d likely tell them exactly how much it sickened him.

  Step did this a lot. He sat hating his neighbors and drinking his promise away. The most stable relationships in his life were with homemade brew and cheap cigarettes. They were always there, always altering his mind and mood. He could rely on them. He’d found them when he’d lost everything, and they helped him bury the old Step Crawford—the happier, meatier, bright-eyed Step Crawford—the one who had been blindsided by life.