Dead South (A Bryson Wilde Thriller / Read in Any Order)

by R. J. Jagger

  He’d know it when he saw it.

  He kept driving.

  Sunshine filled the sky.

  Everything was fine.

  Wilde got in Blondie and followed the trail—the possible trail—south. A hundred yards went by, then another and another. No roads crossed, no train tracks appeared, nothing good raised its ugly face. The topography rolled on, more and more and more of the same, none of it shouting out that right there would be the perfect place to bury a body. Then a mile down the road an abandoned road intersected from the right, almost invisible. The weeds were overgrown and undisturbed. No one had driven down it for a long, long time.

  Still, someone might have walked down it.

  The ruts were too deep for Blondie.

  The road crested over a rise two or three hundred yards in the distance and then disappeared as it dropped into the other side.

  Wilde killed the engine, lit a smoke and got out. The sunshine went straight to his brain. He patted Blondie’s hood and said, “Start when I come back.”

  For a second he thought about turning the engine over, just to be sure it would start. The problem was, that might be the last start Blondie had left. It would be just his luck to use it up for no good reason.

  He locked the doors and shoved the key in his pocket.

  Then he walked west with the Fedora dipped over his left eye.

  Seed barbs snagged into his socks and sawed against his skin, as irritating as mosquitoes. Every twenty steps he had to stop and pull the worst offenders out. Over the crest, another two hundred yards in the distance, a small group of dilapidated structures huddled together, possibly once a small house and a shed or two.

  He picked up the pace.

  The biggest structure, once a small house or cabin, was now nothing more than an unhealthy version of its former self. The door was gone, the windows were gone, the boards were loose and dry-rotted, and the interior had been invaded by the weather and by animals for many years, if not decades.

  The other two structures, sheds, were actually in better shape.

  None of them had a body on the floor.

  Out back Wilde found a narrow well, three or four feet in diameter. An odor, possibly of death, wove up from out of the darkness.

  “Sudden Dance.!”

  No one answered.

  He dropped a rock in and got no splash, then did it again and got the same. The well was dry. It was thirty or forty feet deep, judging on how long it took the rock to land. The odor could be Sudden Dance. It could equally be an animal or nothing more than stale ground.

  Behind one of the sheds, in the dirt and weeds, was a coil of old rope. Wilde freed it, stretched it out and found it to be long, a hundred feet. It was in bad condition, frail and worn.

  Still, it might have enough left to hold him.

  He tied one end around a rabbit brush and tugged. The anchor was good. The rope had strength. He straightened it out and tugged at it from the middle and then the end. If there were any weak links, he didn’t detect them.

  He lowered the rope into the well.

  This wasn’t smart.

  If the rope broke and he got trapped, no one knew he was there. The saner thing was to come back later with proper rope, a flashlight and Alabama. That would take a lot of driving and time, though.

  He tugged at the rope one final time, detected no fatal weaknesses and then positioned himself at the edge of the well.

  Then he set the Fedora on the lip and began the descent.

  Halfway down the rope broke.

  His body went into a freefall.

  Then the impact came, hard, so incredibly hard, with the force of a King Kong slap.

  The air flew out of his lungs.

  His brain lost focus.

  Everything turned black.

  5

  Day Four

  August 6, 1952

  Tuesday Morning

  When Wilde regained consciousness he found himself on top of a cold lifeless body. His first thought was that it was Sudden Dance. His second thought was that he’d rot a slow, agonizing death if he didn’t get the hell out of there.

  The light from above didn’t filter down this far.

  The body had no discernable shape.

  He felt the sides of the well and found jagged rocks, the kind you get from blasting. The surface was forty feet above. The light filtered down halfway. The rope broke about fifteen feet down.

  The narrowness of the shaft worked to his advantage. He was able to wedge his body against the opposite sides and muscle up one painful inch at a time until he got a hand on the rope.

  Then he was out, on his back, too exhausted to stand.

  The sun never felt so good.

  A magpie flew overhead and eclipsed the sun as it went past.

  The shadow crossed Wilde’s face

  It felt like cold water.

  He got up.

  His clothes were destroyed but didn’t show any signs of dead goo. All the blood was his.

  The next two hours were a flurry of motion. He found a small crossroads farming town with a general store ten miles farther south. There he gassed up Blondie, purchased two lengths of ¾” rope and the best flashlight in the store.

  Then he headed back to the well and descended.

  The body belonged to a woman, but not Sudden Dance.

  She was naked, in her mid to late-twenties.

  The cause of death wasn’t apparent. No visible signs of shooting, stabbing or fighting showed.

  She hadn’t been dead long, two or three or four days at best.

  Wilde closed her eyelids, kissed her forehead and got the hell out of there.

  Back in Denver he swung by his house for a quick shower and change; then, at the office, he intentionally titled the Fedora to the right and shot for the rack.

  It sailed out the window.

  He ran over to see it disappearing down the street in the bed of a pickup truck. He didn’t care. He wasn’t stuck in the bottom of a shaft and that’s all that mattered.

  “Not that far to the right,” Alabama said.

  Wilde lit a smoke.

  The air was hot.

  The fan blew but seemingly in mockery of its own inability to do anything.

  He told Alabama about the dead women in the well. She listed with more and more disbelief showing in her face and at the end said, “Are you sure she wasn’t Sudden Dance?”

  “Positive. Plus she had no blood.”

  “What’s strange about the whole thing isn’t just that she got herself dead right around the same time as Sudden Dance, but that you found her body.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Are you going to make a report, to Fingers?”

  Wilde nodded.

  “Maybe he’ll take more interest is this one, being that she’s not an Indian.”

  “Do you think they’re connected? The two killings—”

  Wilde blew smoke.

  “They’re pretty close both in time and in place. My gut says, yes.”

  Alabama’s face brightened. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said. “Your little friend who dances suddenly was staying at the Kenmark, Room 207. She checked in under the name S D Smith and paid upfront until Wednesday.”

  Wilde blew smoke and wrinkled his forehead.

  “Smith my ass,” he said. “Is all her stuff still in her room?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “We need to get in there and find out what kind of trouble she was in.”

  Alabama hopped on the desk.

  Her skirt rode up.

  Her legs dangled.

  She leaned back, studied Wilde and said, “Do you want my opinion?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because here it is,” she said. “You need to cut her loose.”

  “Why?”

  “Besides the fact she isn’t a paying case?”

  Wilde grunted.

  That part was true.

  Financially the whole thing was a Mo
by Dick sized negative. Negatives didn’t pay the rent. Negatives kicked you to the curb and stomped on your head.

  He blew smoke.

  “Look,” he said. “Someone needs to tie it up. Fingers isn’t going to do it. So if not me, then who?”

  “But—”

  “I’m the one who sent her into the alley.”

  “Don’t try to trick me Wilde,” Alabama said. “You’re in love with a dead woman. That’s what’s going on here.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  Alabama shook her head.

  “It’s not healthy, Wilde,” she said. “Maybe it feels good but it’s not healthy. Just let the whole thing go.”

  Wilde walked to the window. Down below, Larimer Street buzzed, not like a well-oiled machine, more like a squeaky, rusty, ill-designed contraption that might kill you if you got too close to it. The pickup was parked. The Fedora was still in the back.

  “Caught a break,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He bounded down the stairs, made his way to the Fedora and dusted it off.

  Suddenly Johnnie Fingers appeared from out of nowhere.

  He was the same size as Wilde, that or possibly a tad bigger. Under the man’s suit was a muscled body that moved like a leopard. He got his face close to Wilde’s, clearly not in a good mood, and said, “I’m here about the woman you saw when you were driving away.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Fingers wasn’t impressed.

  He hardened his face and said, “Let me be absolutely, one hundred percent clear about something. If a single hair on her head ends up messed up, I’ll rip off your head and piss in the hole. There won’t be a place on this earth far enough that you can run to it.”

  He turned.

  Then he was gone.

  Halfway up the street he spotted Blondie at the curb and kicked the fender as he passed.

  Wilde lit a book of matches on fire then a cigarette from that.

  He took a deep drag.

  It quieted the shaking in his hands but not completely.

  6

  Day Four

  August 6, 1952

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Back at the office Alabama hardly looked up from her magazine as Wilde told her about how Fingers jumped down his throat. Five minutes later though, she closed the pages and said, “I think I might have a theory.”

  Wilde lit a cigarette and headed for the door.

  “I don’t have time,” he said. “I’m going to go check Sudden Dance’s hotel room.”

  “Just hear me out, first.”

  He paused and looked at his watch.

  “Ten seconds—”

  “Okay. Fingers said he was talking about the woman you saw when you were driving away, right?”

  “Right but I wasn’t driving away. I already told him that. I came out and the car was gone. It was gone and Sudden Dance was gone.”

  “Yeah, I appreciate that’s what you told him,” Alabama said. “He doesn’t believe you though.”

  Wilde frowned.

  “That’s his problem.”

  “Wilde, focus,” Alabama said. “I think he doesn’t believe you because there was a witness as to what happened in the alley. That’s the only thing that fits.”

  Wilde blew smoke.

  “That doesn’t fit at all,” he said. “If there was a witness, then Fingers would know not to focus on me. He’d focus on the person the witness saw.”

  Alabama walked over to the fan.

  She tilted it up, stood over it and let the breeze blow up her legs.

  “The alley was dark,” she said. “Pretend you’re someone walking down the sidewalk and you happen to look into the alley. You see two people in a scuffle, a man and a woman. They’re fighting about something. Maybe the man is trying to come onto her and she’s fighting him off. The thing is, you see something happening. Then the man pulls out a knife and stabs her in the gut. She drops to the ground and he stabs her again in the chest.”

  Wilde leaned against the door, picturing it.

  “Go on.”

  “It’s dark in the alley,” she said. “You can tell it’s a man doing the attack. He’s wearing a suit. He has a hat on. But it’s too dark for you to see his face.”

  Wilde sucked on the words.

  They felt like a disease in his lungs.

  “He throws her into the car to take her somewhere and dump her,” she said. “Now he’s barreling up the alley towards the street with the headlights on. He’s coming straight at you. You’re like a deer, frozen, staring with disbelief at the lights. At the last second you jump out of the way. He squeals around the corner and keeps going. But he got a good look at you, a real good look.”

  Wilde exhaled.

  “That’s a pretty complicated story,” he said.

  “Not really,” Alabama said. “At first, she doesn’t want to make a police report. She really won’t be much help because she never saw the man’s face. Plus she doesn’t want her name in the file. She’s afraid the killer will get it. She’s afraid he’ll think that she saw more than she really did.”

  “Then how would Fingers know about her if she never made a report?”

  “Because she changed her mind and decided to do her civic duty, or maybe she just made an anonymous call,” Alabama said. “Either way, Fingers now has a description of a man who may well be you, but it’s not solid enough for him to arrest you yet. So what he does is give you a warning to not even think about harming the woman you saw as you pulled out of the alley. He doesn’t care about the Indian but he does care about this other girl, the witness.”

  It made sense.

  It made dangerous, ugly sense.

  “I just had a bad thought,” Wilde said.

  “Which is what?”

  “Which is, the dead woman in the well could be the witness on the sidewalk.”

  “If that’s the case you better not get associated with her.”

  “You mean don’t tell Fingers?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Alabama said.

  Wilde paced next to the windows, framing scenarios and running them to their logical conclusions.

  “Maybe I spoke too fast,” he said. “The timing doesn’t fit. The woman in the well has been dead for at least a couple of days. When I talked to Fingers this morning, he could care less about the case. He didn’t know anything about a witness. That’s something he found out after I left, within the last couple of hours.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” Alabama said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning maybe he was just playing dumb this morning. Maybe he was just trying to give you enough rope to hang yourself.”

  Wilde mashed the butt in the ashtray.

  “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

  Then he was gone.

  7

  Day Four

  August 6, 1952

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Chasing a longshot, Wilde went to the Kenmark, where Sudden Dance was still technically checked in. The man behind the desk was a mean-looking guy Wilde had never seen before. Whether he would hand over the room key for a couple of bucks and a lame story was problematic. If this were the Metropolitan, the fleabag to end all fleabags, the answer would be easy. Anyone there on either side of the desk would do anything for a buck. But the Kenmark wasn’t the Met. The Kenmark kept her legs together. Wilde gave the mean guy one last look, didn’t like what he saw, and then hoofed it around to the back alley where he silently climbed the fire escape and accessed the room—207—through a window.

  There, he was in.

  The bed was unmade.

  She sheets were down and the pillow was crooked.

  The bathroom door was open. On the sink were the usual suspects—a toothbrush, hairbrush, half-used soap and the like. The hairbrush had a few long, black strands in it. Water spots marked the counter and the mirror.

  On the dresser, next to a pair of white sunglass
es, was a suitcase. Inside were clothes, some fancy and some comfortable. A few longer garments hung in the closet.

  The room looked like it belonged to a woman who had gotten all dolled up for a Saturday night on the town and then never came back.

  Wilde opened the door and checked the outside knob.

  As he expected, a Do Not Disturb sign hung on it.

  He closed it tight and made sure it was locked.

  The room had no secrets.

  Whatever trouble Sudden Dance had been in, the room didn’t know.

  Wilde lit a smoke, laid down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Usually he knew what his next play would be. This time he didn’t. He didn’t know where to look next, who to talk to next, what to think next or where to go next. Everywhere he looked, all he saw was dead end, dead end and more dead end.

  Maybe Alabama was right.

  Maybe he needed to cut the whole thing loose and get back to real clients who had real problems and showed their appreciation with real money.

  He took a long drag and blew a ring.

  On reflection, maybe he was wrong about the dead woman in the well. Maybe she wasn’t the witness. Maybe she was someone who was driving down the road and came across the killer when he was broken down out there in the middle of the night.

  Maybe she stopped to help.

  Footsteps and talking mouths came down the hallway. Wilde held his breath and listened. It could be Johnnie Fingers coming to take a look at the dead woman’s place, trying to find evidence to bring Wilde down.

  The voices came right up to the door and then just as quickly swept past.

  Wilde needed to get out of there.

  He sat up and in the process detected something weird about the mattress, almost as if there was something hard in it. He checked under the blanket and found nothing. Then he set the half-gone smoke in an ashtray and pulled the mattress up. Under it, tied to the bottom of the bed frame, was a thin briefcase. What he’d felt were the knots of the rope pressing against the underside of the mattress. The briefcase was positioned so that if anyone looked under the bed they wouldn’t see it, at least not unless they got their head right on the floor and then tilted their eyes up diagonally.