Bones by the Wood

by Johnson, Catherine

  Ferret answered almost immediately. “Yeah, boss?”

  “Brother, need some info on the pr....” Shit, Josh was in the room. He had to moderate his language. “on the guy who manages the store on Westway.”

  “The place Thea works?”

  “Used to work. Yeah.”

  Ferret paused for only one moment. “On it. Don’t hang up. My laptop’s right here.”

  Dizzy listened to shuffling, Velcro, a pause, then some frenetic tapping.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the clubhouse. Okay, I’ve got him. Dwight Rodgers. Got his car details, his home address, shit load of other bits and pieces. Nothin’ to catch the eye from what I’m seein’ on the face of it. What’s up?”

  “I can’t explain here. There are ears.” Dizzy turned away from the sofa and the TV and kept his voice low.

  “You’re at home, right?”

  “Yeah. Young ears.”

  “Shit.” There was a pause. Dizzy knew Ferret was putting together the pieces of the cryptic puzzle and wondering what could have happened that had resulted in Thea losing her job and Josh not being able to hear about it. Oh, and maybe also factoring in that his boss’s voice was tense with the need to break shit.

  “The little fuck tried somethin’, didn’t he? Boss?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Christ’s sakes. You are not fuckin’ goin’ there on your own.”

  “Wasn’t plannin’ to.” Dizzy said through gritted teeth.

  “Are you goin’ to his house?”

  Experience tapped Dizzy on the shoulder. Plan. Prepare for all eventualities.

  He sighed. “I don’t know whether or not he’s still at the store.”

  Ferret paused. “Right. Me and Easy will go to the dick’s house. If he’s there, we’ll hold him for you. That frees you up to take Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber to the store.”

  “That’s what I was thinkin’.”

  “Okay. I’ll call if we find him at his house.”

  “Thanks, brother.”

  “No problem, boss.”

  Dizzy ended the call and replaced the phone in his pocket. He turned back to the giddy trio who were still abusing his Xbox.

  “Scoob? Shaggy? Need you with me, brothers.”

  One look at him and they knew it was business. “Okay, boss.”

  Josh was about to complain about their fun being interrupted when Thea called through from the kitchen that there was food available. Her voice was louder than usual and full of a false brightness. Josh looked at Dizzy, and Dizzy saw that he got it. Something was happening and his mother was trying to distract him. Even though he couldn’t possibly have known what was wrong, he put the console controller on the table, scooted off the sofa, and went to his mama. He was a good boy, a smart boy.

  Scooby and Shaggy followed Dizzy outside.

  “What’s up, boss?” Scooby asked as they mounted their bikes.

  “Tell you when we get there.” Dizzy needed the ride, even the scant feeling of freedom that the journey through town would provide, to calm the fuck down. Dizzy twisted the throttle too hard and rolled out, his wheels kicking up clouds of dust. His brothers followed him.

  When he got to the store he was only marginally more calm than when he’d set off. He parked on the street, and the other two men followed suit. He didn’t want the loud roar of their bikes tipping the fucker off to their arrival. He led them on foot into the parking lot of the store, and found Cage casually perched on his own bike, waiting for them.

  “Ferret filled me in, Pres. I haven’t seen the guy. It’s the ditzy blonde workin’, but Fitz is round the back makin’ sure he don’t escape that way if he’s in there.”

  “Good.”

  He had good brothers. He had a good table. They had his back. He could rely on them. They were filling in the gaps that he had overlooked in his haste and anger.

  He walked into the store with three of his men at his back.

  “Heya darlin’.” The overdone blonde with her tits half hanging out of her top was leaning on the counter over an open magazine.

  She looked up, surprised, then she smiled in a way that she probably thought was alluring. She didn’t straighten, but she did push her elbows together, damn near pushing her tits out of her fucking top. “Hello, boys. What can I do for y’all?”

  “Don’t s’pose your boss is around, is he?”

  “Dwight? I mean, Mr. Rodgers?” Dizzy nodded. “Sure he’s in back. Should I get him?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, darlin’.” Dizzy laid the charm on thick.

  The blonde left through the door behind the counter that Dizzy knew led to the employee’s lounge and the back exit. She was soon back.

  “I don’t understand. I thought he was in there.” She leant over the counter, deliberately offering another flash of cleavage, and peered out of the glass doors. “His car’s still here. But he’s not in his office. He might be in the john.”

  “No problem, darlin’. We’ll drop by another time.”

  They turned and left, strolling casually in the direction of the street, but away from the store’s wide glass doors. When he was sure they were out of sight of the counter, Dizzy doubled back and led them around the side of the building. Sure enough, Fitz was standing there, calmly holding the struggling piece of shit by his shirt collar.

  “Hey, boss.” They might have been meeting at a bar for all the import in Fitz’s tone.

  “Hey. See you caught yourself a little somethin’.”

  “Yeah. You never know what you’re gonna find out here with the trash.”

  Dizzy nodded to the two biggest men. “Hold him steady.”

  The worm twisted frantically in Fitz’s grasp, but Shaggy and Scooby captured him in a grip he couldn’t escape. They held him between them, holding his arms outstretched. He couldn’t escape unless he ripped his own limbs off. Fitz stood back and let the big guys do what they were good at.

  Dizzy took his position in front of the piece of shit.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Rodgers.”

  “Let me go! How dare you! I’ll go to the Sheriff about this!” The short man was doing his best to be self-righteous.

  “No. You won’t. It seems we have a bit of a problem. A small misunderstanding.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t done anythin’.” He was whining now. That pissed Dizzy off.

  “Oh, I think you know what you’ve done. You know, or you wouldn’t have tried to run like the pussy piece of shit that you are. You tried to force yourself on my old lady this afternoon.”

  As he was concentrating on Dwight, Dizzy felt rather than saw, the ripple of reaction from his brothers. He saw Scooby and Shaggy’s massive hands tighten and heard the accompanying squeal of pain from their captive.

  “I didn’t! I didn’t! I swear! She’s lyin’! I caught her stealin’ from the register and fired her ass. I didn’t try nothin’.” Whining and pleading. The lying, spineless cunt had no balls.

  Dizzy’s fist whipped out in a jab. Dwight’s lower lip was suddenly split and bleeding.

  “Say again?” Dizzy gave him another chance to condemn himself further.

  “Okay, okay.” Dwight’s words were slightly thicker now, tumbling out past his rapidly swelling mouth. “She can have her job back.”

  Dizzy planted a solid left into the worm’s gut. If he hadn’t been held so tightly, he would have doubled over, but now he could only grunt and gasp.

  “You think she wants to come back here and work for you? Why’d you run, Dwight? If you’d fired her fair an’ square for stealin’, why’d you run from me?”

  Dwight was wheezing and shaking his head. Dizzy landed an open-handed slap square on his ear to hurry him up. The worm squealed.

  “Because.... because....”

  Dizzy’s tone was almost soothing and conversational. Almost. “Don’t lie to me, Dwight. I’ve no fuckin’ patience on a good day. I’m runnin’ extra thin today, since m
y lady comes home tellin’ me you laid hands on her. Tellin’ me that you would’ve laid more’n that on her if she hadn’t fought you off. And that you fired her to save your tiny pride. And Dwight, in a contest of who I trust, between you and Thea, the winner ain’t you.”

  “That fuckin’ whore.”

  A red mist clouded Dizzy’s vision, but he still managed to aim only one heavy punch in Dwight’s skinny gut. He had to jump back when the man spewed vomit all down himself and over the blacktop in front of him.

  “Say again?”

  Dwight apparently had no sense of self preservation.

  “Whore....fuckin’... opens... her legs... for anyone.... with a bike... but I... can’t get some.”

  Experience was tapping quite insistently on Dizzy’s shoulder now. Dizzy was about ready to take his gun out and shoot the little fucker, but his life had been saved many times by listening to the nagging little fuck, so listen he did. Yeah, he could kill Dwight, but that’d be counterproductive if he ended up in prison. Dizzy looked around. They were hidden from the road by dumpsters and the store itself. Scooby and Shaggy maybe not so much; it was probably possible to see those two massive bastards from space.

  “Hold him up brothers,” Dizzy instructed coldly.

  “Wait....wait!” Dwight pleaded.

  “For what? So you can insult my old lady some more? Boy, you ain’t got the sense you were born with.”

  “I’ll give... you whatever.... you want. Just....don’t.... hurt me....please.”

  Dizzy couldn’t believe the stupidity, and the lack of stones on this fuck. “Dwight, you have insulted my old lady, and now you’ve just insulted the fuck outta me. You are not one of God’s smart people, Dwight. Since you ain’t able to stop talkin’ bullshit, I’m gonna help you with that.”

  Scooby and Shaggy pulled the man’s arms out straighter and harder. They held him in a two-handed grip and hefted Dwight so that his toes barely touched the ground.

  Dizzy went to work.

  It was less effective than working the heavy bag in the club gym, because Dwight, soft, skinny shit that he was, just didn’t have the resistance to be an effective workout. But there were compensations, there were bones in the human body, which made it a more interesting exercise, made a person have to consider carefully where to land each punch. Quite a few of Dwight’s bones were fractured by the time Dizzy had finished.

  Dizzy shook the blood off his fingers, and then wiped what he couldn’t shake off on the tails of Dwight’s shirt that had come loose from his, now soiled, pants.

  Shaggy and Scooby dropped the bleeding and bruised man in a mewling heap in between two of the dumpsters.

  Dizzy was pleased that he wasn’t too out of breath. He wasn’t doing too badly considering he wasn’t a young gun anymore. He turned to his VP.

  “Cage, there’s a room, marked ‘Manager’s Office,’ off the corridor through that door. There’s an old VHS set up for the security feed.”

  “On it, Pres.”

  Cage disappeared through the door. He was back within minutes, brandishing the tape. “Got it. The twinkie out front ain’t any the wiser either.”

  “Good.” Dizzy nodded.

  “Thea and Josh settlin’ in okay, boss?” Fitz asked.

  “Yeah. She didn’t need this shit, but yeah.” Dizzy wasn’t going to tell them about the nightmares, or about Josh. The knowledge he had about Josh was a confidence he wouldn’t break. If Thea wanted the others to know about the dreams, she would tell them herself, but he doubted she’d want them to know at all.

  “Does she know she’s stayin’ permanently yet?” Cage asked with a raised eyebrow, eliciting chuckles from the other men. Dizzy hadn’t said anything, but he knew that they’d all made their minds up that now that Thea was in his house, she wouldn’t be leaving. He couldn’t say they were wrong.

  “Yeah, yeah. Yuk it up. Anyway, you shitheads are gonna have to learn to behave. I asked Thea to take over the office shit for the garage.” He might as well tell them now.

  “Oh thank fuck!” Scooby and Shaggy called in unison.

  “Ferret might actually sing the Hallelujah Chorus,” commented Cage.

  “Huh.” Scooby and Shaggy both looked completely nonplussed.

  Cage shook his head in despair as he translated. “He’ll be really, really fuckin’ happy.”

  “Come on, boss.” Fitz hitched his thumb over his shoulder towards the still whining heap that was what was left of Dwight Rodgers. “Let’s leave this piece of shit to rot.”

  “Yeah, it’s time to go home, boys.”

  Dizzy called Ferret to let him know that he and Easy could stand down, as they all walked to their bikes. Ferret voiced his and Easy’s opinion that they were happy that the punishment had been meted out without a hitch, but disappointed that they’d missed the event. Everyone was on a high from the adrenaline and the violence. Shaggy and Scooby were making plans to hit the gym for a workout, maybe a spar. Dizzy figured the club girls were in for a lively night.

  Some short time later, he parked his bike outside his house. He paused on the porch. Even from this side of the closed door, the aromas leaking out told him that Thea was cooking, and it smelled delicious. He could hear Josh shouting giddily at the TV. A feeling of complete and utter peace fell over him. This was all he needed, to be able to return to his family at the end of a day. His rage had been sated, his need for vengeance exhausted.

  He opened the door and walked in. His Stetson was still on the side table, right where he’d left it when he’d come home, responding to Shaggy’s call. The big man had been concerned that Thea looked even paler than usual, and that he’d heard the shower running for what seemed like forever, not good signs in his book. He’d been right.

  Josh was playing a Sonic game. The TV pinged as the blue hedgehog jumped and rolled through the lines of golden rings.

  “Hey, Dizzy.” Josh didn’t take his eyes from the screen. “Mama! Dizzy’s home!”

  “Hey, Dizz.” Thea called from the kitchen corner. He heard the clank of pans and the splash of something landing in the sink. “I’m cookin’ chili. It’ll be ready soon if you wanna clean up.”

  It was so normal, so domestic, so right.

  The blanket of peace balled up and lodged itself firmly in the center of Dizzy’s chest. Whether they knew they were or not, this was his family. He wasn’t going to let them go anywhere.

  He could wait. If it took forever, he could wait until they realized it, too.

  He headed to the bathroom to scrub the blood from his hands. It had turned out to be a pretty good day.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Thea snagged the piece of paper that was rolling out of the printer. It was still warm. She double checked the information on it, folded it carefully, and put it into the slot in the rack with the rest of the invoices that were waiting for the owners that were due to come and collect their vehicles.

  She had only been working at the garage for a couple of days and was still learning the ropes, but she was confident she could do it. She hadn’t spent years working behind a convenience store counter because she was unintelligent, only because it was, well, convenient.

  Ferret had spent Monday showing her around the computer systems. Thea wasn’t completely computer illiterate, she’d used the terminals in the public library occasionally, she just hadn’t had the opportunity to practice much. It had turned out to be simpler than she had feared. Ferret had said that her brain worked along the same logical path, which Shaggy had scoffed at. But Ferret had seemed impressed, which had done Thea’s bruised ego some good.

  It was unnerving, doing all the learning with the guys right there, being all proficient at fixing stuff, but she’d just tried to tune their presence out. Except for Dizzy; she’d really struggled to tune his presence out. Apparently that was a little obvious, and it had made Ferret laugh out loud more than once when he’d been explaining something to her, only to find that she’d been staring across the bays,
watching his boss.

  Dizzy had taken to working in the bay furthest away from the ‘office’ as the corner dedicated to the desk and filing cabinet was laughably known. Thea wondered if it had something to with the time on Monday morning when he’d dropped a hefty wrench on his foot and it had taken Ferret a full thirty minutes to stop laughing. He hadn’t seemed to want to be near Ferret since then, not at work, anyway.

  On the Monday afternoon, as they were closing the garage, Annelle had driven up. Thea still wasn’t sure who’d called her; no one would admit to it. Annelle had heard that Thea had a new job and had apparently decided that, like it or not, she needed a new wardrobe to go with it. They had a date to go to the mall in Westerton on Saturday. Thea was a little nervous. It had been a long time since she’d bought anything that hadn’t been from Goodwill. But Annelle had refused to take ‘no’ for an answer and Thea hadn’t found any support from any of the men.