Dani sat back, feeling as if she’d gotten the wrong preacher drunk.
“Had a strange encounter with a preacher in Cornwell once, I will say that. It was about a missing girl.”
Dani perked up. “Strange?”
“Very strange. June Hargrove, you know her, right? Her husband sells produce off the highway.”
“I know the Hargroves, yes, sir.”
“Well, she told me about a cousin of hers whose daughter went missing. Girl of about fourteen, if I remember right. June give me the name of the church where her cousin worshipped, and I put in a call to the pastor. Offered prayers, offered to raise funds, even offered to send up a group from the congregation to help in the search.” He took a drink.
“He didn’t take you up on your offers?”
“Not a one. Turned me down flat. Said the best thing we could do was not speak on it.”
“You’ll excuse me for saying so, Pastor, but that sounds like a heartless thing to say.”
“I agree. I do. I told the man as much, and he didn’t put an argument on it. He basically said his hands were tied on the matter. He had a benefactor he had to answer to, he said.”
“Benefactor? Who?”
Pastor Tom looked up as he tried to recall the benefactor’s name. “I’m not sure he told me. I do remember that he used the word ‘she.’ ‘She’s called on me to discuss the story of Jephthah,’ he said.”
“Jephthah?” Dani asked, the blood draining from her face. She knew the story too well. Judges 11. Her father had tormented her with it.
“Yes, and I have to say I don’t see it as a fitting message for such an occasion. It compounds the tragedy.”
Dani sat silently.
“Do you know the story?” the pastor asked, his words slightly slurred. “A father sacrifices his daughter to satisfy a vow to God.”
“I know it,” Dani said more sharply than she intended.
The pastor held his glass and studied the liquid inside. “It’s a vile message to deliver to a congregation that is grieving a missing child…not just a child, but a girl. I urged him to reconsider, but he said he couldn’t. The sermon was set.” He drank a little whiskey and then titled his head as he contemplated a thought. “I never did hear if they found the girl.”
Dani took a sip from her glass and then said, “They didn’t.”
“Then you do know the case?”
Her mind settled on an image of Laura Farrow. “I don’t, no, sir. But I’ve come to find that one is like the next. You can tack the same ending onto them all.”
Chapter 38
The house leaned to the right. White paint flaked in patches on every visible surface. The windows were yellowed with dirt and sported cracks from years of suffering the shifting extremes of temperatures in the high elevation. The sound of a broken wind chime hanging from the porch ceiling greeted Step and Kenny as they climbed the stairs.
“I don’t live in no swanky mansion,” Kenny said, “and I ain’t one to criticize another person’s home, but I can’t believe your girl lives here, Step.”
“She barely does. Spends most nights at my place.”
“I’ll be honest, it might do to just set a match to this place.”
Step pushed the door open and entered. He responded to the sound of high-pitched pings and bops coming from the living room and turned to discover the source. A skinny, shirtless young man with burn scars from his right shoulder to his wrist sat on a heavily stained couch playing a video game. He was so engrossed by the game he didn’t acknowledge Step or Kenny.
“Who’re you?” Step asked.
The young man didn’t respond.
Kenny moved into the living room and unplugged the video game console.
“What the motherfuck, dude?” The young man stood and puffed his chest out. His bloodshot eyes narrowed as he struck as threatening a pose as he could manage.
“My boy Step asked you a question,” Kenny said.
“I don’t give a fuck! You turned my motherfucking game off!”
Step approached him. “Who are you?”
The young man didn’t back down. “I’m the motherfuckin’ king of pain, motherfucker! You don’t want to come up in here and tank my shit! I will motherfucking fuck you up!”
“You sure ain’t got no respect for your mother,” Kenny said.
“So the fuck what?”
Step lurched forward and grabbed the young man by the neck. “I’m going to ask you one more time. You don’t answer, this ain’t gonna go good for you. You understand me?”
The young man swallowed against Step’s viselike grip. The closeout king noticed the burn scars went down the back of his neck and covered his shoulder blades.
“What is your name?”
“Burner,” the young man said, unable to open his mouth due to the position of Step’s hand.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just split some gravy with the bitch that lives here.”
“Gravy?” Kenny asked.
Step pushed Burner down on the couch. “Heroin.”
“Damn. They ought not call it gravy. That there’s a wholesome dish.”
Step moved to the stairwell. “Where’s Bones?”
“Bones?” Burner asked.
“The gal you split gravy with?”
Burner shrugged. “She was upstairs last time I seen her.”
“He don’t leave,” Step said to Kenny before climbing the stairs.
Kenny watched Step disappear up the stairs and then turned to Burner. “He must like you.”
Step reached the second floor landing and turned down the hallway to the left. The drywall on either side was peppered with holes. The dust-covered wood floor creaked with each footstep the closeout king took. He stopped at the first room on the right and peered inside; a debris of clothing littered the floor and a full-sized mattress lay empty in the far corner, save a lump of soiled bedding.
He heard a noise down the hall and moved to the next door. “Bones?”
A soft moan seeped through the sturdy oak door. Step attempted to turn the knob, but it was locked. “Bones?”
“Go away.” Bones’s voice was weak and barely recognizable.
“Open the door.”
“Go away…please.”
“Open the goddamn door.”
“I’m fine…I just want to be left alone…Go away.”
The closeout king stepped back to the opposite wall and kicked the door. Hearing a crack, he kicked again, again, and again, finally splintering the wood around the knob.
“Stop!” Bones cried all the while.
Step threw his shoulder into the door and fell into the narrow bathroom. He stumbled and caught himself on the sink.
“Leave me alone!”
“What the shit has got into you?” He turned and nearly gasped at the sight of her. Her right eye was red and swollen, and her lip was split at the corner. Dried blood covered the area from her broken nose to her collarbone. He knelt down. “What the hell? Who did this to you?”
“He tried to take my stash. I need it.” She grabbed his hand. “I need it, Step. He can’t have it.”
Step shook his hand free and stood before her, growling. His mind went blank. He somehow made it down the stairs without remembering a single second of his journey. He saw Burner sitting on the couch. The skinny young man scarred from a fire held up a hand. “I warned her she was gonna get a beat down. I told her she ought not push me. I can’t be blamed for her not paying me mind.”
Step blanked again. His brain exploded. He tore into Burner. His fists were wet with blood in a matter of seconds. He heard the sound of bones breaking and watched the skin tear open around Burner’s eyes.
Kenny stepped forward. “You aim to kill him? ’Cause if that ain’t your aim, you oughta stop beating on him.”
Step was startled by the sound of Kenny’s voice. He looked down at the bloodied face of Burner, his knee nearly crushing the young man’s naked chest. Step
backed away and floated toward the stairwell.
“Wha’cha wanna do with him?” Kenny asked.
“Put him out.”
“Where?”
Step didn’t answer. He stomped up the stairs to tend to Bones.
Kenny moved to the couch, lifted Burner up, and threw him over his shoulder. As he carried the young man out the door he said, “I reckon I was wrong. Ol’ Step don’t like you at all.”
Chapter 39
She was tired, but couldn’t sleep. She sat at her laptop in her motel room, listening to the night creep by outside her window and through the walls. A couple argued in the parking lot. Drunk hicks hooted and hollered from the bar down the road. The woman in the next room talked loudly to someone on the phone about ungrateful children and a useless husband.
Dani searched the Internet for a missing girl in Cornwell, but came up empty. She searched for churches in the area, but found too many to choose from. Pastor Tom had consumed too much of the homemade whiskey to recall the name of the church or preacher he’d spoken to about the missing girl.
She tapped away on her computer keyboard for hours, clicking on link after link, trying to find something, anything that would give her hope that a child couldn’t just go missing without anyone caring.
She sat at her computer using every search query she could think of, and still she turned up nothing. Just as she was about to give up she typed, “Jephthah, missing girl.” Her heart pumped a little faster when she got a string of hits.
It was a private message board that only members had access to. Membership required approval by one of the administrators. Dani quickly filled out the request form and groaned when a window popped up informing her that administrators would respond to her request within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
The room phone rang, and she looked at the clock before retrieving it. It was almost four in the morning. She stood and walked toward the ringing phone on the other side of the bed like she was being led to the gallows. She listened to it ring one more time before picking up. “Hello?”
Silence.
“Hello?”
Breathing.
“This is Deputy Dani Savage with the Baptist Flats Sheriff’s Department. Who is this?”
A warbled chuckle.
“Ima hang up—”
“Whore.”
She swallowed. “Who is this?”
“Daddy’s little whore.”
Her cheeks turned rosy red in an instant. “Daddy?”
“You ruined my life.”
“How did you get this number?”
“I had everything before you come along. Everything! I was the Word! I was the Heart! I was the Mind! I was the Path!”
She couldn’t bring herself to respond. There was no point. He was drunk. He wouldn’t remember even calling when he sobered up. If she was going to tell him how she really felt about him, she would wait until he could recall every word.
“As soon as everyone found out that my girl killed a baby, it was done for me. They kicked me out of town.”
She bit her lip and listened. She wanted to hear what he had to say so she could hate him even more.
“That man should’ve beat you dead.” She heard him take a swig from a bottle. “He was doing God’s work.”
“What do you know about God?”
“What do I know about God? I am God!” He took another drink. “I am God, and I condemn you to hell, you little cunt!”
Dani sneered back a grunt. “Ima hang up now, old man. You call me again, and Ima beat you dead. You hear me?”
He laughed, and she slammed the phone down over and over again until it cracked.
The woman next door banged on the wall. “Shut the hell up over there!”
Dani stood and stared at the wall. The thought of storming next door and beating the hate she had for her daddy out on the woman crossed her mind. She had a good idea that she’d get a great deal of satisfaction out of doing such a thing. She even made a move toward the door, but good sense grabbed hold of her before she took her second step. Instead, she collapsed to the bed and nodded off to sleep somewhere between visions of shooting her old man and dancing at his funeral.
Chapter 40
He sat with her all night. She tossed in fits, cried out in pain, mumbled in her sleep, and he observed it all. He couldn’t say for sure, but he felt as if it was the first time he had been with her past sundown without his whiskey. The sadness that had once drawn him to her now lay heavy on his chest. He had trouble breathing in her presence because it felt as if she would disappear at any moment.
Step now feared that he cared for her. He’d tried to will himself not to. He’d tried to convince himself that she wasn’t worth it, that she was on a path of self-annihilation, that there was no saving her, and even if she could be saved, it wasn’t his specialty. He lost and broke things. That’s why he’d considered Bones the perfect whore for him. She was lost and broken before Step laid eyes on her. Caring for her complicated things. He didn’t have the stomach or spine to deal with complicated.
The door to the bedroom flew open, and Boss stepped inside. “What are you doing in this shithole?”
Step stood slowly. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you and brick brain.”
Kenny stepped into the bedroom with his head hung low.
“She looks like shit,” Boss said, moving to the edge of the mattress. “Friend of yours?”
“She’s nobody,” Step said.
“Nobody? Bullshit.”
“I said she’s nobody.”
Boss studied Step’s face and then shrugged. “Fuck if I care.”
“How did you know we were here?” Step asked.
“I have my ways.” Boss surveyed the room. “Fucking dump.”
“What do you want?”
“I want Tidwell”—he held up a finger—“scratch that, I need Tidwell. You know who I’m talking about, right? Wears an eye patch, works for me…Oh, wait a minute, no he doesn’t. Not anymore, because you and brick brain retired him yesterday!”
Step sighed. “You heard about that, did you?”
“I heard about that? That’s what you say to me? I heard about that?” He grimaced. “You should be on your knees begging for your fucking life! You should be trembling in your goddamn boots.”
“He had it coming, Boss,” Kenny said.
Boss slapped Kenny. “Shut up! Don’t talk! You’re too stupid to talk! You hear me?”
Step suppressed his instinct to pummel Boss. “Kenny didn’t kill him. It was me.”
Boss shook his head. “You don’t get it. There is no Step and Kenny when it comes to the two of you. There’s fuck and up, and I’ve had enough.”
“Tidwell was a piece of shit.”
Boss narrowed his glare and poked Step in the chest. “Of course Tidwell was a piece of shit. That’s who I hire, pieces of shit. You’re a piece of shit, brick brain is a piece of shit. Every fucking idiot that works for me is a piece of shit. You think fine, outstanding citizens do the kind of work you do?”
Kenny chimed in. “We ain’t all bad—”
Boss slapped him again. “I told you to shut up! Why are you talking? Are you too stupid to know what ‘shut up’ means?”
“No.”
Boss slapped Kenny even harder. “Stop talking!” Then, to Step: “You. Talk. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you now.”
“Because you’re running out of pieces of shit,” Step said without a hint of sarcasm.
Boss smiled and grabbed Step’s face. “It’s a good point, but that’s not what I wanted to hear. Why did you kill Tidwell?”
Step’s eyes bounced back and forth as he struggled to come up with an answer. A germ of an idea came to him, and he spoke without thinking. “My cousin, the one with the Baptist Flats SD.”
Boss raised an eyebrow. “What about him?”
“He said Tidwell talked to a cop…a lady cop.”
/> Boss released Step. “About?”
“Me, Kenny, and the closeout from the other night.”
There was a moment of silence while Boss processed the information. “Tidwell?”
Step nodded.
“That ol’ boy was a lot of things, but I never figured him for a snitch.”
“She’s been up our shit.”
Boss nodded. “If it’s the lady cop I’m thinking about, she’s been up everyone’s shit lately.”
“We went to talk to Tidwell about it and…well, things just got out of hand. Like I said, Kenny didn’t kill him, I did.”
Boss considered the information and then slapped Kenny again.
“What was that for?” Kenny asked, rubbing his cheek.
“For letting Step do what needed to be done. You shoulda closed Tidwell out your ownself, brick brain.”
“But you said—”
“I said what I said before I knew the facts. Tidwell was due for a closeout.” He turned to Step. “Why didn’t you come to me with this?”
“Me and Kenny made the mess, we thought we should clean it up.”
Boss thought for a second and then smiled. “I like your initiative, but next time check with me.” He looked at Bones one more time. “Take her to the clinic in Rock Hollow. Doc Elliot over there owes me a favor. He’ll keep it off the books.” He turned to leave, but stopped. “About that lady cop, you talked to Bonnie?”
Step nodded.
“We might have to move up our timetable, given what you just told me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Boss exited.
Step held his breath until he heard the front door open and close. Letting it out in one long exhale, he moved to the window and watched Boss climb into his car. “You tell him where we were, Kenny?”
“Shit no. Less I see that man, the better.”
“How the hell did he find us?”
“Boss’s got eyes all over. No telling.”
Step moved away from the window and stood next to Bones. “We need to find Gunner.”
“What about Bones? Ain’t we gonna take her to that clinic?”
Step knelt beside the mattress. “You are.”
Savage Reckoning Page 16
