Rough Country: A gripping crime thriller

by T. J. Brearton

  “What?” The kid couldn’t hear over the music.

  “I said if you keep looking and moving around, it’s going to take me longer!”

  “Sorry!” The customer put his head back and stared at the ceiling. The artist muttered a curse under his breath, then wiped some of the blood away from the customer’s shoulder and kept going.

  When it was over, his back was stiff as he walked to the desk and totaled up the sale on his iPad. The customer was ogling himself in the mirror, turning his arm this way and that.

  The music changed to a hip-hop song, rattling the front windows of the garage. The artist turned down the volume, also using the iPad. The two large Bluetooth speakers quieted some, and the customer walked closer to the mirror. “I like it, man. You do good work.”

  “There’s beer in the cooler there if you want one.”

  “Yeah?” The kid was excited.

  “Go ahead.”

  The kid fished out a beer and popped the tab and walked around the shop, feeling cool, casting looks at himself every few seconds. The artist pulled out his iPhone and checked his texts. Quite a few of them. He scrolled to the latest, something from Minnie.

  You watching this?

  The message had come a little after five p.m.

  “I think I want to do a whole sleeve,” the customer said, looking at his arm some more. “Is it going to keep bleeding?”

  “For a little while. We’ll put something on it – just a minute.” The artist was distracted, reading more texts: This cop guy looks nervous. These people have no clue!

  Fucking Minnie.

  The artist deleted the texts with haste, looked at the other ones – his dad, a couple of times, wondering when he was going to be done. His girlfriend, wanting to know about tonight. Logan Terrio, sending the usual pornographic GIFs – this one showed a woman pooping on a plate. Classic.

  The artist deleted them all. He knew phones stored texts even after they were deleted. Tonight he’d hook the iPhone into his system and wipe the whole thing.

  “How much does an entire sleeve cost?”

  The artist slipped the phone in his pocket. “Depends. You done with your beer?”

  The customer looked at the can of Pabst, shook it, and drained the last few drops. He walked over as the artist pulled out his first-aid kit – really a fishing tackle box, but with all the post-inking necessaries. “Come here,” he said, and placed the gauze over the red, swollen skin, concealing the art. He taped it around the edges.

  The customer wiggled his arm, testing the bandage’s hold. “That’s it, huh?”

  “Unless you want a Percocet.”

  “Nah, man, I’m straight.”

  The artist almost rolled his eyes but didn’t, then picked up the iPad and showed the screen.

  “Oh,” the kid said, feeling for his wallet. He pulled it out (the wallet was connected to a chain, pretty retro, okay, maybe the kid wasn’t such a dick) and slipped out his credit card. Still holding the iPad, the artist waited for him to swipe, and they finished the transaction with the kid squinting at the screen, saying, “You charged me for the beer?”

  “Nothing free in this world.”

  The kid signed with his finger on the touchscreen and tried looking around some more, like he was going to hang out. “Don’t poke at it or anything. Let it set,” the artist said.

  “Yeah. Yeah, man, pretty fucking cool.”

  “All right.” The artist walked to the side door and opened it. “Thanks.”

  The kid finally got the message and left.

  The artist closed the door behind him and locked it. He put the iPad away and cleaned up his tools and washed his hands in the little bathroom off the back. A friend had donated a couch; the artist had scrounged the local landfill for a cushy seat and a coffee table, and the lamp was his grandmother’s. He sat down on the couch – practically no spring to it, you just sank into it like oatmeal – then took out his iPhone, which also controlled the Bluetooth speakers – and cranked the music back up.

  He put his hands on his knees. People were waiting for him, but he hated obligation and pressure. Let them wait. He picked up one of the coffee table books and leafed through it – some pretty sweet images in there, good ideas for tattoos. He warned people who came to his shop that you shouldn’t pick a tattoo on the day of – it should be something you really wanted – but they did anyway. So he’d designed a few of his own, too, and those cost a little extra. But people went for it, man. He was making over a grand most weeks, and he was only twenty-one. So they could all wait.

  He stretched out his arms and admired his own body work. Not done by himself, of course – that was a no-no. He had a girl he liked who had that badass ring in her nose like it was still 1995, and he liked that. His body work was a combination of some classic art – there was a piece of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights on his left arm (the third piece of Bosch’s triptych, the apocalypse), with more abstract and symbolic art on his right. It was apropos of his personality, he thought. Like being two people in the same body. The great thing about doing this kind of work was that they got to merge, a little bit. He felt whole.

  Finally, he shut the music off and got up to stretch. For a young punk, his back, man, his back was always a problem. Too much sitting; even with the lumbar support he used, it was a problem. He slapped off the lights and went out. He hadn’t even had a chance to get his vape out when his father turned up the driveway.

  The artist flinched when his father pulled up too fast and too close. He felt his heart knocking as the big man got out and strode across the asphalt. “Hey. I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “I had a client. He just left, like, two minutes ago.”

  His father put his hands on his hips and studied him. “So you’re done, or what? You’ve gotta get cleaned up. We have to go. Your mother and brother and sister are waiting.”

  “I’m ready.”

  A look up and down. “You’re not wearing that.”

  The artist checked himself over. Jeans, a black T-shirt. He needed a fucking tux for dinner with the family? But he didn’t say that to his father. He said, “I’ll change,” and headed for the house.

  “Hurry up,” his father called after him.

  9

  To speak ill of the dead

  The motel was called the Shamrock, consisting of small white-with-green-trim cabins scattered in a semicircle alongside Route 9, halfway between Elliston and Plattsburgh. Virginia had located it for him so that he was in proximity to things, but also at a little distance. Nothing around but woods. Smelled a bit moldy behind the fake-wood-paneled walls and beneath the threadbare carpet, but still. Just right.

  After showering and changing out of clothes tainted by that deep foulness of the morgue, he went to the Kinney store that his phone told him was three miles up the road. When he came back, he set everything on the bed: large, easel-sized drawing pad, scotch tape, pens, pencils, markers, straight edge. He had the BCI office at the state trooper barracks to work out of, but this was good for now.

  He sat down at the small desk in the single room and started drawing. First, doodling the hexagon, double-cross and letter W shape that formed the symbol carved into the victim’s stomach, probably with a medical-grade scalpel. Something pinged in the back of his mind: some long-ago college course and the idea that, in doodling, circular doodles were a feminine trait, square shapes masculine, and these were mostly straight lines and angles.

  College. Whatever.

  College for him had been a mixed bag. Not the kind of partying you associated with higher education – though there were definitely a few who tipped the bottle, even at divinity school. Maybe especially at divinity school? For Reed, it had been a profoundly lonely time and a deeply spiritual time. Ultimately, it had been a short time, since he’d dropped out after one year.

  He rotated a fresh page lengthwise and wrote “Kasey Stevens” in the center of the page, drew a box around the name, star
ed at it a minute. He’d always been decent with a pen, and his penmanship consisted of block-like letters common in drafting or cartooning. From the box he drew a line straight up, then wrote “Ida Stevens.” Then another line to “Andy Zurn.” Those two were the victim’s biological parents.

  A child who shared a surname with the mother; that happened all the time. Zurn might’ve been mostly absent, maybe a deadbeat. But there was no indication that he had relinquished parental rights. He’d signed the paternity statement after all. He’d been present for the birth. Maybe he just didn’t care.

  Reed drew a line from Andy Zurn off to the right and put Katherine Zurn there, his wife. And this was where it got weird: Katherine Snow was Daryl Snow’s sister, and Daryl Snow was in some kind of relationship with Ida. No one was really sure to what extent Ida and Daryl were a couple. On-again, off-again since high school? Late-night booty calls, or something more serious? Any way you sliced it, it was odd.

  Reed printed Daryl Snow’s name beside Ida’s.

  The diagram, then, was T-shaped. On top were the four coupled adults. Then Kasey below.

  Reed finished by circling Andy and Katherine Zurn, adding small lines that radiated outward to “Kasey Brother 1” and “Kasey Brother 2.” Then he taped the whole thing to the wall.

  With a fresh sheet of paper, he started on Tyson Wheeler. Tyson’s father, Dan, and his brother, Brayden, a fifth-grader. For the mother, he drew a dash beside Dan’s name, then underlined a blank space, added a question mark.

  He did the same with non-relations, working with a third piece of paper, his earbuds going with a little Soundgarden. He wrote in Kasey’s friend Aimee Hetfield. He stopped and thought about Aimee’s mother a little bit, and her displeasure and impatience, or so it had seemed, with her daughter’s interview. Also her legs. The kind of sensual vibe she gave off – hard to say what, exactly, but it had hit him right in the loins.

  Maybe her attitude had had something to do with her wearing that pricey-looking outfit. Not that he knew everything about clothes – but you could tell when someone had a little more disposable income to put into their wardrobe, their hair and makeup. It was a stereotyping thing, sure, but you had Ida, with her frizzed-out, flannel-clad, battle-worn look, and Dan Wheeler with his big belly, crooked teeth and corduroy jeans – you got the sense that these people weren’t attending the same functions as Julia Hetfield.

  To wit, Reed used his phone to look up Hetfield, and it turned out she was married to a psychiatrist. Hetfield herself worked as the executive director for County Social Services. Ah, the plot thickened. That made sense – for all Reed knew, she probably dealt with a good number of Elliston people on that basis. They came in to see their case managers and get their social assistance checks – Reed could picture Ida Stevens at the head of that line, no problem – and here’s Julia’s daughter palling around with Ida’s daughter. The girl from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. What will the neighbors think?

  Reed checked out the school website, then the Facebook page, and searched around until he got into some sports photos and found Tyson Wheeler: boxy chin, big smile shining from the shade of his football helmet.

  And would you look at that: very interesting pictures on Tyson’s Instagram, including a football field at dusk with a broken-down lawn tractor in the foreground, a fishing rod hanging from a tree with its line tangled high in the branches. Oh, and a single baby shoe lying just beside a storm drain, about to get sucked down – you had to have one of those.

  Reed stopped the music player on his phone and pulled out his earbuds. He looked at the three diagrams taped to the wall. Tyson over here, Kasey over there. Two of them posting depressing shit on social media. Did it mean anything? Maybe, maybe not. But you got this feeling of sad lovers. Sad lovers within twisted knots of family relations.

  What he needed was something from their phones, but Tyson’s was likely burned to a crisp, and crime scene had yet to locate Kasey’s in the woods, nor anywhere else. Ida had been asked by Kruse and had yet to come forward with one. Anna Tallman had already subpoenaed the carriers, but the problem there was, today’s kids didn’t call each other – they texted. And depending on the carrier, texts might only get stored for a few days. Virgin Mobile held onto texts for as much as ninety days, but up here it was almost exclusively Verizon country, and that meant five. Five days was at least something, though. He’d have that, hopefully, by midweek. A look at what Kasey and Tyson had been saying to each other in the days just before they died.

  Because to anyone with eyes and ears, it looked like Tyson Wheeler had arranged a meeting in the woods, where he’d strangled his girlfriend and carved her up. All Reed had to do was put a bow on this thing, go tell the DA what she wanted to hear, and head for home.

  But…

  Not yet.

  Sitting on the motel bed like this, he realized he was starting to feel the day.

  Sitting, then, turned into lying down.

  And lying on the bed quickly led to a loss of consciousness.

  He picked up his phone when it buzzed with a text: an hour had passed. The message was from Britney Silas, head of the crime scene unit that’d been working in the woods. Getting dark and we’re wrapping up here. Head to the Stevens house now?

  It was getting late, but they needed to see the victim’s room.

  He wrote back, Yes, I’ll join you.

  His tongue tasted like tree bark in his mouth.

  Ida Stevens’s house was mobbed with people. The woman herself was standing in the kitchen with a cigarette burning between her fingers.

  Beside her was Daryl Snow, the smoke from Ida’s cigarette drifting up into his face. Snow was a big man with a burly beard and hard eyes. One of those eyes – the left – was lightly bruised, like he’d taken a glancing blow to the face.

  Before Reed could ask about it, Ida was there in front of him, looking confused, maybe a little defensive. “What are you doing here?”

  “We’re here to have a look in Kasey’s room, ma’am.”

  “Her room?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “That’s it, right there.” Ida nodded at the door behind Silas. “I haven’t let no one in there.”

  Reed recognized a few other faces from that morning; the rest were unfamiliar. There was food everywhere – a giant bowl of baked macaroni, some kind of chicken-casserole-looking thing with brown edges, a meringue. It was like the stuff you saw at funerals, only Kasey hadn’t yet been dead twenty-four hours. Crazy, all that had happened already. And now it felt like people were too eager, too quick to proceed with the death parade. Something.

  Maybe it was just him.

  Ida added, in her gritty voice, “But I been in there myself.”

  Silas spoke. “You’ve been in there?”

  “Uh-huh. My daughter’s room.”

  “Have you altered the room in anyway?”

  “Altered?”

  Silas asked, “Ma’am, have you removed anything from room, added anything to the room, or shifted the position of anything in the room or in any way disturbed it in such a way so that it’s different now than it was before your daughter’s death?”

  Ida’s hard composure was suddenly crumbling. Daryl Snow was there as she did a sort of half-swoon; he took her by the elbow and she leaned against him. Snow glared at Reed. “What do you need to go in there for? She was found in the woods, wasn’t she?”

  “It’s procedure,” Reed said. “We need to look closely at her life, get a picture of things leading up to what happened.”

  “You’re not canvassing out there? By where she was found?”

  “We are. But as I’m sure you know – not a very populated area.”

  Snow kept that hard gaze on Reed, then looked around at the other people in the room. His eyes came back. “The kid killed himself. Burnt his house down, the crazy son of a bitch. What more do you want?”

  “I’d like you to respond to my phone calls, for one thing,” Reed said
. “And maybe you can talk a little about the shiner you’ve got.”

  Snow just stared. Ida pulled away from him and dragged on her cigarette. Her mind seemed elsewhere. “Don’t speak ill of the dead, Daryl.”

  “I’ll speak what I want to speak. Living or dead, don’t make no difference. Better dead anyway – he don’t know. We’re the ones that have to feel the pain he’s caused, not him. Tyson took the coward’s way out.”

  Reed waited, gave Silas a quick look, then said to Ida, “Ma’am, is it okay if we enter the room?”

  She didn’t look at him, just sucked on the cigarette and gave three quick little nods. Silas pulled on her blue gloves and turned the knob. The door swung in. Reed felt the heat coming off Daryl Snow when the man got close. Like he was trying to get a peek into the room himself.

  “We won’t be long,” Reed said. But he stayed where he was and looked at Ida. “Ma’am… Ida… you had words with Tyson Wheeler out here beside Mandalay Park, is that correct?”

  She answered only with her eyes.

  Reed said, “You left before I could ask you about it.”

  “I needed to get out of there.”

  “Understood. Completely. So let’s discuss it now. Can you tell me what you and Tyson talked about?”

  “Nothing. I asked him what he knew. He blew me off. Said he was going home.”

  “I guess I would’ve liked to have known that,” Reed said. “That he was going home. Maybe we could have helped him. But instead it seems that you two talked to each other and took off in a huff. Like something more than ‘nothing’ was said.”

  Daryl got in between them and glared some more. “Where do you get off, coming in here with your judgments? You think you’re better than us?”

  Reed drew in a breath and said, “I think you need to step back.”

  Snow’s eyes narrowed as he assessed the level of authentic threat. He said, “I heard you were up to the truck stop.”