Chaingang

by Rex Miller

  “I put a couple hundred in—you know—for interest or whatever. If you're penalized more than that, let me know."

  “No. Take that back. It wasn't hardly anything."

  “That's yours. I came out great. It's for the inconvenience. Don't give it back—I'll only waste it."

  She didn't even hassle him about taking the two hundred back, so he knew she wasn't with it.

  They sat at the kitchen table and he asked the usual question. She shook her head, telling him that Marty Kerns had called. Telling him the details of their conversation. As she did so, her pretty face registered worry, great anxiety, doubt, and suspicion—an assortment of quick despairs that blew across her attractive features like a chilling breeze.

  Marty Kerns. There were three salient features about the good chief of public safety, or chief of police, as everybody in the town still called the office. He was tough, corrupt, and stupid. Royce decided he'd start trying to really help this woman—whom he'd just taken advantage of without a thought to any possible consequences.

  “Marty Kerns isn't doing anything, Mary. Whatever gets done from here on, we're going to have to do—or some other law enforcement agency like the county or the Feds will have to do. Kerns couldn't find his fat ass without help."

  There was a moment like the old times that flashed between them in that heartbeat of candor, and he read an unspoken question in her eyes. He imagined that she was asking him—you think something bad has happened to Sam, don't you? And he tried to answer her on the same wavelength.

  “Listen,” he began, “let's start with what we know. Take it from the top. What was the biggest thing in Sam's life besides you? It was the land deal. Since the first time you told me about it, the thing has bugged me. Something doesn't play. Something wrong. I think that if we follow what Sam did in putting the land sale together, we might get some clue as to what happened."

  “I ... uh ... don't have any better ideas,” she said, shrugging. Telling him that she thought it was useless.

  “Go back to the beginning. When was the first time he mentioned the deal to you? Who was this guy—this Sinclair whatshisname? How did he get in touch? Let's start by calling the phone number in Virginia that Sam called."

  She took him through the whole thing, step by step. The walk-in who called out of the blue one day about wanting to purchase rural properties, not sounding like he was anybody who would actually follow through. Then showing up a week later and meeting her husband at a restaurant in Maysburg. Describing Christopher Sinclair later to Mary as having “pink skin the color of a baby's tush.” The big cash offers that whoever he represented intended to make to ten local landowners. Whoever he was fronting for had done their homework. They knew how to make offers that would be extremely tough to decline out of hand. Something that no outsider should have been able to do without spending a lot of time in research, Sam emphasized.

  There was supposedly going to be a major ecological research and development center located on this three- or four-hundred-acre circle out in the middle of nowhere. There were already rumors flying around the town about what the piece of ground was going to be used for.

  She told Royce about the big cashier's check that the man gave Sam to present to Cullen Alberson at that initial meeting.

  “Take me through the offers, Mary. How was it handled?"

  “Well, Cullen was first. Sam took the money out to him that evening and got a done deal, as he called it. Got Cullen to sign his piece of ground over right then and there. All it took was a look at the numbers on the check."

  “How much was the check for?"

  “Fifty thousand dollars!"

  “I shouldn't wonder. That's ten times what it's worth. My God!"

  “Sam said it was way out of line. But that's how he knew Mr. Sinclair was a legitimate businessman, when that first cashier's check went through without any problems. Anybody with that kind of serious money, you know, they have a way of getting your attention.

  “Next was Weldon Lawley. They sent a payment direct in the mail to him. I don't recall exactly—but it's all in the office papers. A few days later they deposited money here in town and had Sam finalize the deal with the Poindexters. And it went on like that until they had all the ground."

  “I want to get all the contracts, copies of abstracts, deeds—everything that Sam kept on this deal, okay?"

  “Sure.” They dug out the Alexandria, Virginia, phone number, and Royce dialed it. An intercept clicked on. It was no longer a working number. Directory assistance had no such party in any of the Alexandria or D.C. listings.

  “I think we should go to all these people and talk to them personally."

  “I already have—some of them."

  “I know. But let's start from square one and try to put this deal together just as it happened. See if anything holds up a red flag, y’ know?"

  “Okay. I want to put this money back. Let's go down to the office, if you want to, and we'll get all the stuff."

  “Fine."

  “Royce ... you don't need to waste any more of your time with this. I can ask around. I should never have got you involved. I'm sure you've got your work..."

  “I have nothing but time. Come on,” he said, and they left the Perkins house. After the bank, they got the papers, then Royce dropped off Mary at home and took everything back to study overnight.

  He wanted this to immerse himself in tonight. He did not want to have to be alone with the Royce Hawthorne who knew him so well, who knew what he'd become and what he'd chosen to do. He wanted no part of his own self-centered thoughts, and the last thing he wanted was time for any self-analysis. Tonight was not the night to look into his own soul. He would occupy his mind fully. So that he'd not accidentally look into himself and see the bottomless black hole that had once been a conscience.

  14

  BERTHALOU IRBY'S PROPERTY

  NEAR WATERTON

  Chaingang was tired, hungry, cold, angry, and irritants he could not yet precisely identify were tugging at him. He sensed three things simultaneously—none of them strong vibes—tingles, really, and hardly enough to evoke serious disquietude in the beast's gyro. Yet—anything that stayed at the edges of his mind continued to irritate him until his powerful awareness could pull it into focus.

  There was the fire upriver. He'd waddled down through the nearby wood line, covering his tracks from habit, and set traps for any searchers who might follow him. None came.

  That was number one. The second thing was the time factor—the hick fire department wailed onto the scene when the blaze had all but gutted Butchie's. Whatever postfire investigation had taken place was ludicrously cursory, and suspiciously inept.

  He heard Dr. Norman's admonition “You will be protected ... twenty-five mile radius of—” again, and these things triggered the sense of a hidden pair of eyes. He waited for the word to nudge him.

  W A T C H E R came back into focus. Only the suggestion of something: surveillance, an eye on high, an unseen manipulater. That was it—he was sensing their manipulation. It angered him this morning, to find himself doing a suit's bidding. It enraged him to think they considered him so easy to control. He would show them what control was, before this was over. He would feed their control to them, tear it from them with steel sawteeth, fill their orifices with it. Small wonder they gave him weapons. He was being watched!

  He had spent the night in a place the map indicated was Willow River Slough. It had turned surprisingly cold. At first light, wrapped in everything he owned that wasn't a tool, food item, or weapon, he waddled back half a klick or so and took down his cop-traps. During the night he'd amused himself watching a two-story frame house. It had caught his eye because it appeared empty of humanity.

  Chaingang returned to the site where he'd hunkered down for the night, repacked his gear in weapons cases and duffel, and continued to surveil the lonely home until the sun went under. He killed time by rigging a crude man-trap which he would leave as a parting gif
t—a surprise for whoever might chance to blunder along. The house continued to appear devoid of people.

  As he stood waiting in the last rays of the setting sun, cold and pissed, one of the things that had been pulling at him finally inched into view. There was something in the thick growth of wild honeysuckle beside him. Gingerly he reached a huge paw in and found the soft mass of rags and twigs. Until he pulled it out, he thought it might be an odd bird's nest of some kind, but he saw in his hand a mass of wriggling newborn mice. It had been the tiny heartbeats he'd sensed.

  His bloodlust had grown to such proportions that he almost choked on his own saliva flow as he popped one of the rodents into his mouth, chomping it in two and crunching it as if it were a piece of popcorn. It tasted foul and he spat it out, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and flinging the murid hors d'oeuvres away from him.

  Why would he—this lover of animals—try to eat a baby mouse? Because he was so fucking hungry, is why. It was a fierce thing that tickled his throat and made him slightly faint.

  The early darkness settled around him. He took a deep breath and gathered up his belongings, waddling up out of the slough toward the isolated house.

  He knocked at the door forcefully. Rang a silent doorbell. No reaction. In the distance a dog barked, but it was across the field from him. He penetrated the flimsy lock and closed the door behind him.

  His powerful flashlight's beam stabbed into the blackness, illuminating a room full of genuine American antiques. Chaingang, whose disinterest in monetary values—not to mention aesthetics—was organic and complete, registered the possessions in his computer.

  Swiftly he moved through the house, first determining the downstairs was empty, then negotiating the stairs in measured, surprisingly quiet footsteps as he eased his massive bulk up to the second floor of the old home. Nobody home, as he'd surmised.

  He began with the upstairs bedrooms, working his way through the closets, bureaus, and trunks, looking for those things that always piqued his interest. By the time he'd made his way back downstairs, he knew a bit about the house and who occupied it.

  Berthalou Irby, 67, female Cauc, widow of farmer Everette Irby, lived here with their only child, a retarded forty-one-year-old daughter named Imogene. Mrs. Irby had kinfolk across the river in Tennessee, and a sister in Bella Latierre, Louisiana, where they had gone to visit. He gathered they would not be coming back within the week.

  Counting insurance, farm proceeds after sharecropper deductions, Social Security payments, medical disbursements, certificates of deposit, bonds, and other income sources, Berthalou Irby was getting by on somewhere between sixty-five and seventy-five thousand dollars income per year, one tenth of which she tithed to the Holy Trinity Church of Waterton.

  The heat had been turned down and the house was like a tomb. He kicked it up to roasting and removed his clothing, careful not to track excessive dirt on the fine antique rugs. He'd already decided not to trash the house, his usual MO, for a variety of reasons—all of them self-serving.

  Nude, he took his massive fighting bowie, and went in and took a steaming hot shower.

  Once, during a period in which he was institutionalized, he'd heard a conversation about a motion picture in which somebody is stabbed while taking a shower. He was not a stupid man, and a thought tried to enter his head to the extent that such a scene was now ready to be played in reverse should an intruder enter this bathroom. But the thought was too close to normalcy and he rejected it as superfluous.

  He realized this house had pleased him, bringing him from a bad to good mood almost instantly.

  Nude but for his bata-boots, the heat feeling wonderful on his body, he ventured down into the basement to find the best treat of all—Mrs. Irby's food pantry! The larder was incredible. This woman liked to eat.

  The canned goods alone dumbfounded him. He stood, awestruck, trembling with pleasure at the gold mine of edibles.

  One wall of the large cellar was wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling Ball mason jars of canned foods, every jar with a neatly printed label. No art lover walking through the MOMA or the Tate or the Louvre ever thrilled at the beauty of a masterpiece the way the beast filled with appreciation at the colors and textures of such a display of food. No cocksman ever eyed an eighteen-year-old starlet with more unbridled desire than Chaingang felt as he lusted for munchies.

  The beauty and diversity, the symmetry and promise of pleasure, the sheer size of such a display—it was beyond anything in his experience.

  What a picture it would have made, the gigantic fat slob of a killer, mother-naked except for his combat booties, standing in front of the rows of waiting food: baked apples and applesauce, stewed tomatoes and potatoes, green peppers and green beans, corned beef and beef roast, chow-chow relish and piccalilli, cabbage and cauliflower, lima beans and pinto beans, baked beans and black bean soup, ham and pork sausage, grape jelly and apple butter, blackberries and peaches, pears and juice, peas and carrots, asparagus and broccoli, okra and squash and turnips and corn—everything cannable from chopped beef in gravy to Mrs. Irby's chili!

  He selected his dinner with the confidence of a gourmet, his mind taking each item through chopper, blender, pressure cooker, jar lifter, funnel, ladle, food mill, water-bath canner, strainer or colander, into those beautiful capped and dome-lid jars.

  Back upstairs, still nude, he cooked everything in a huge metal pot, black beans and beef stew, brussels sprouts, corned beef and cabbage—all simmered together, filling the kitchen with smells so rich, he almost fainted. He found a container of whipped cream in the freezer and ate a jar of baked apples with topping as he waited for dinner to cook.

  Folding his tarp into a huge napkin and hotplate, he ate directly from the big cooking pot, ladling great slurps of food into his maw and swallowing it down without seeming to chew it. Devouring it—inhaling it—absorbing the food directly into his life-support system.

  Afterward, belching expansively, he searched for beer or whiskey. Found cooking wine and tried some but spit it out. It was bitter. Baby mouse wine. Finally he located and prepared a rich cup of coffee, making it with three heaping spoons of Maxwell House and a preposterous amount of sugar.

  After double-checking his security, he turned two of the smaller lamps on in the house, ones that would not change the dark exterior appearance of the home, and he flipped through a couple of magazines, yawned, went into the downstairs bathroom and defecated. Tried the old woman's bed. Didn't care for it. Went in and plopped down on the retarded daughter's bed and was sound asleep within thirty seconds, snoring like a pair of chainsaws.

  In his untroubled slumber a three-headed dog named Cerberus came and stood guard, watching over him while he slept. Man's best friend at the Gates of Hell.

  The sturdy old home had been built back in a time when carpenters were artisans who took great pride in their craftsmanship, and in what they did for a living, rather than simply working to earn a living. The home was relatively soundproof, so he did not hear the light patting of raindrops on the roof over the second floor. But as the curtain of heavy rain drew nearer, the beast came awake just as thunder crashed in the field beside the farmhouse.

  Pleased he was not sleeping out in the thunderstorm, he immediately fell back into deep sleep, waking up two hours later, at early dawn with the rain still falling. There was no way he was going to leave this warm house. He went back to sleep again, and slept until midmorning.

  It was a gray, rainy day, and he was enormously pleased to remain where he was for the time being. He spent the day lolling about nude, giving the house and its contents a thorough investigation. From time to time he would go down into the basement to bring up more mason jars of canned food, and fix himself snacks. By afternoon the kitchen was filled with empty jars everywhere one looked, and he busied himself for a time washing out the jars and packing them away in cartons he'd found in the basement. When he left, he would rearrange the shelved goods so that things would not appear to have been tam
pered with.

  He spent a few minutes gazing out the windows at the wet, heavy sky and the muddy fields. There was no traffic whatsoever. His huge belly full, his body rested, he turned on the television set with the sound off, and became tumescent while watching a young actress on one of the soap operas. He started to masturbate, but it seemed like too much trouble and he stopped, realizing that he was going to have to have a woman very soon.

  After a while he turned the sound up on an obviously rigged game show, thinking what enjoyment it would give him to rip the host's heart from his fatuous body. The monkeys jumped up and down and squealed with excitement, and he shook his huge head in amazement.

  He was not a fan of movies or television, but on occasion he would watch TV, invariably transfixed by the spectacle of the monkey people and the small, strange window through which so many of them experienced the world.

  Was this really what they did each night in those cozy, snug homes in the suburbs? He was perpetually fascinated by the monkeys ... by their life-styles and Weed Eaters and miniature golf courses and county fairs. They were as remote a species to him as he was to the normal man, and he could drive through their clusters of tract homes at night and be vastly entertained just trying to imagine what their tax-paying, lawn-tending lives were like behind those ornate front doors.

  He had no frame of reference for “family.” No sense of common bond. No remembered childhood pleasures of the hearth and home. To his mind these gibbering, monkeylike fools were as alien as visiting other-worlders. He'd sometimes drive stolen vehicles through the suburbs of whatever city he was in, captivated by the warmth of the lights in those darkened homes.

  Often he would see a family watching the box, perhaps visible through their open curtains, and the sight never failed to mesmerize him.

  “—a way you can earn up to a million dollars a year just by letting your friends and neighbors in on the secret. And best of all—"