by John Oakes
The big man reached the top of the stairway and walked past the first seaward window.
“It’s like that guy who ransacked the Spencer house,” Winton said. “He was almost catatonic at the clinic, but two nights before he’d been out here searching for drugs. It’s like they’re fucking zombies, man. Turning on and off.”
“Did you see this guy at the clinic?”
“I don’t know. They were all watching TV, facing away from me.”
“Why’s he here?”
“I’m guessing it ain’t good.”
They ran about making sure every door and window was locked, but the house certainly wasn’t impenetrable with its large windows that a man his size could easily get through. Julius pulled a knife out of the cutting block. “Are we fighting for keeps?”
Winton had broken out into a cold sweat. “This is Texas, baby. We can defend our castle.” He looked around for a weapon suited to his size and abilities. He found a recreation closet with beach umbrellas, fishing rods, and his uncle’s golf clubs.
Winton pulled out the 9-iron. He smiled to himself about times gone by and felt his old friend stir within him, hot and hungry.
When Winton stepped into the living room with his weapon at the ready, Julius asked, “Do you golf?”
Winton smirked. “After a fashion.”
“I’ve seen those eyes before.” Julius gave a concerned look.
Before Winton could respond, the window to the right of the door blew apart, and a barbecue grill crashed onto the floor inside.
Winton threw his arms up to protect his face. “Subtle.”
“Okay, then.” Julius held the knife in his fist, pointing down.
“Wait,” Winton said. “Find something blunt. If he’s drugged up, I don’t wanna kill him.”
“We got a choice?” Julius’ eyes looked feverish with fear.
“We can do this.”
The brute stepped over the shards at the base of the window frame into the house. As he brought his second leg over, it caught on a razor edge and sliced the front of his pant leg open. By the time his foot hit the floor, a red stain had begun to spread, but the man showed no sign of pain. He recognized Julius’s presence but seemed more interested in Winton. He smiled with a grunt and labored forward.
Winton charged at him, barreling into a sitting chair and slamming it into his knees, stopping the brute in his tracks. Before his foe could steady himself, Winton swung the 9-iron over the chair with speed and grace that felt unnatural to him and planted its heel into the brute’s temple with a cracking sound. The man ducked away, feet shuffling back into a coffee table, where he tripped and crashed down on it, shattering the thin wood legs.
Julius dove onto him before he could lumber to his feet and hammered his fist into the man’s head and meaty neck. The brute spun to his side away from the blows, where he met Winton who aimed a cracking blow across his thigh. The way the brute jerked indicated that his insensitivity to pain had limits. Still, he was able to muscle up to his hands and knees.
Julius sprang onto his back, and Winton hoisted his 9-iron, but just as Winton swung at his head, the brute lurched to the side putting Julius in the way. Winton checked his swing, but still hit Julius in a glancing blow off his ear.
“Yeow! Shit!” Julius put a hand to his ear.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry—hold on!”
The brute was looking to stand up and shake Julius free, but Julius held on with both arms, gritting his teeth in pain.
“Keep your head away,” Winton said, sizing up the brute’s skull for a spot to put the lights out.
“Don’t hit me again!” Julius squealed as the brute stood tall.
Winton straddled the broken coffee table to get close enough to clock the brute in the head and swung, but the brute turned again and the heel of the 9-iron thudded into Julius’s back under his shoulder blade.
Julius arched and yelled, one hand reaching back toward the pain.
Winton winced in apology again.
The brute twisted and hurled Julius over his shoulder into one of the big picture windows, blasting it into tiny pieces, and sending Julius spinning across the deck into the railing which cracked and leaned out with the impact.
Now the brute turned on Winton and growled. He caught Winton’s immediate blow and threw the golf club away before lunging at Winton. Winton sprang away, but a big hand clamped down on his ankle, pinning it to the ground. Winton kicked with his other foot, looking around desperately for a weapon. The knife Julius had dropped earlier lay only five feet away in the direction of the kitchen. Winton reached his arm out, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the floor.
Instead of dragging Winton, the brute seemed content to crawl over him and pin his much smaller body down. Having secured Winton, he blinked as if unsure what to do, then with a twinkle of the eye, reached into his pocket, producing a blister pack of white pills.
“Little man,” the brute said, uttering intelligible speech for the first time. “Pill.” Holding Winton down with his body weight, he worked a pill through the foil and poised it between two fingers, showing momentary and surprising fine motor skills. “Little man eat pill.”
He put the pill to Winton’s lips gently, as if he expected Winton to readily open up and swallow his death.
Winton’s one greatest tool in impossible situations was his mouth, but in that moment, if he made to speak, he’d have poison shoved down his gullet. Even if he could talk, how could he ever get through to the zombie-like brute?
“Little man eat pill,” the brute said again, sounding almost child-like despite his immense strength.
Winton clamped his teeth and lips together, wrestling his face away from the proffered pill.
“Little man eat pill,” the brute said in heated agitation. His thumb and forefinger pressed painfully into Winton’s mouth, so painfully he was afraid his front teeth might give way. Winton let out a high, keening moan, an animalistic sound of fear and hatred.
He couldn’t take it anymore. Like a drowning man knowing he was about to inhale seawater, Winton began to consider the inevitable.
Suddenly the brute jerked upward and his face twisted up in pain. He fell away, bucking his hips off the floor and making his own barnyard animal noises. Winton looked up at Julius, who now stood above him, holding an unfurled umbrella in both hands.
“What the…”
“We need rope to tie him up!” Julius said.
Winton struggled to his feet, fingers at his temples. Rope? He ran to check the recreation closet but there was none. He checked the kitchen drawers for duct tape.
“Winton. Hurry.” Julius picked up the 9-iron and blasted the brute in the stomach then in the back, as he got on all fours. “Winton!”
Winton found some twine. It would have to do. Winton ran toward them, as Julius rained down one blow after another to keep the brute from standing.
Shielding his head with an arm, the brute stood. He swung a back fist that Julius narrowly ducked, then swung a left with everything behind it. Julius jerked away, and the big fist whistled past his cheekbone.
Winton plowed into the brute just as his looping punch sent him slightly off-balance. The brute had to tap-dance to keep his feet under him. Julius sprang forward with quick reflexes and drove a shoulder into him. In a split second, the brute heaved through the already broken window, tumbled ass over teakettle across the deck planks and crashed through the feeble railing, disappearing over the side without a sound.
Winton looked up at Julius, taking a series of heaving breaths. “Holy shit.”
Julius frowned. “Come on.” They rushed through the side door and peered over the edge. The brute lay on his back, arms and legs bent at odd angles, looking up from his pile of kindling with no more life in his half-lidded eyes than in the wooden slats that had comprised the railing.
Winton looked at the ball of twine clutched in his fist and then handed it to Julius. “Guess we don’t need this.”
FOUR
TEEN
Winton and Julius descended the steps and crept around the house through the foggy air, barely able to see fifteen feet in any direction. When they neared the body, they poked and prodded it.
“Oh he dead,” Julius said.
“That railing needed work to begin with,” Winton said.
“Think he’ll sue?” Julius asked.
Winton brushed the joke aside. “What’d you do to him with that umbrella?” Winton asked. “To get him off me.”
“I stuck him in the muffler.”
“Dear god. Right up it?”
Julius shrugged. “In the vicinity. It’s a generally tender area.”
“Thanks for saving my life, either way.”
“What about this guy?”
“He was sure intent on killing me with the same shit that poisoned Beatrice. Supposed to look like I overdosed too.” Winton huffed and put his hands on his hips. “Those doctors tried to take me out.”
“So you weren’t as sneaky at the clinic as you thought.”
“Guess not. It’s weird, though. I went back that afternoon. Doctor Jansen could have poisoned me with something. Could have offered coffee or soda or water until I accepted. Boom, done.”
“But then you’d be dead in his office,” Julius said. “You give your real name?”
“I give my middle name as my first.”
“Well, they figured out who you were. Probably got spooked that your brothers and father were all cops.”
“Got to thinking I had something to do with the law, maybe for the wrong reasons.”
“I reckon we gotta do something with this fella,” Julius said. “No one can see shit in this fog bank. We could take him out to sea.”
“And the waves would push him right back on shore.”
“Maybe not right here, though.”
“Could dig in the sand,” Winton said.
“Or-or,” Julius said in a heavy sing-song tone. “Could just tell the police. You said it. It’s Texas. You can defend your home.”
“It might make the news. You and I certainly won’t benefit from publicity.” Winton made a turn and balled a fist. “I’m just saying it could backfire. And something in me wants to put these asshole doctors on the back foot.”
“How do we do that?”
Winton put his fist to his mouth. “Maybe we act like it didn’t happen. I wonder if we could drag him onto a tarp or something. He’ll fit in the storage room.” Winton pointed.
“You sure you wanna hide a dead body on your own property? Well, not yours, but close enough.”
“We’ll keep it locked. No one is looking for this guy,” Winton said.
“Except whoever sent him.” Julius dropped his arms, hitting his thighs. “Man, this is how it starts. It ain’t our job to be secretive. We did no wrong. We shouldn’t have to put ourselves in danger.”
Winton took a deep breath, wondering if his blood was still too hot from the fight to think clearly. Was he doing the right thing, taking it upon himself to rectify Bea’s death and perhaps even Ryan’s? Or was he unnecessarily putting himself in a dangerous situation out of some misguided attempt at working out his own problems?
Gulls called out to one another in the mist, sounding just as lost as Winton felt in the moment.
“Julius, let’s do whatever you think is best. I trust your judgment better than my own right now.”
“Let’s just leave him how we found him,” Julius said. “Then we call the police and pray.”
While Julius called the police, Winton called Heather and asked her to leave work so she could confirm to the officers who arrived at the scene that Winton and Julius were her guests. Once the first two officers at the house got the picture — an outright home invasion — they eased up on the suspicion and focused on taping off the scene, giving Julius and Winton polite instructions to stand aside and not go anywhere.
Winton filled Heather in on what had happened, and she reacted in a horrified fashion, the way any normal person would. Winton tried to tell her things would be okay, but she mumbled something about having to get back to work and left.
“We’re okay, though,” Julius said, as she stalked back to her Jeep through the ebbing fog. “Thanks for asking.”
“She’s just overwhelmed.” Winton ran a hand through his hair.
“I ain’t exactly sipping a rum and Coke with my feet up on this here beach.”
A black detective in a well-cut but broken-in suit arrived, conferred with the police near the corpse, then walked with some difficulty up the steps, as if afraid a trick knee might give out on him. He was followed by a brunette woman with wide shoulders and bowed legs, giving her an imposing gait and form. She wore jeans, a simple blouse and a tan leather jacket. The detectives eyed the scene above, while Winton and Julius did their best not to fidget, standing on the sandy grass.
After a minute, the black detective called down, “You fellas come on up here.”
Julius and Winton reported upstairs as ordered like kids called before the principal, trying not to look guilty.
The black detective took one last sweeping view of the house from the deck while puffing on a thin cigar. “Helluva fight took place here.”
It wasn’t a question, but he looked intense eyes at them and they nodded.
“I’m Detective Plimpton,” he said. “This is Detective Weischel.”
“Awful big fella on the ground,” Detective Weischel said. “How’d he end up dead, and you two unscathed?”
Julius rubbed his ear. “I wouldn’t say unscathed.”
“We didn’t know what was happening,” Winton said. “We just kept trying to fight him off. I had no idea what to do. But then he fell out the window and crashed right through that rickety old railing.”
“I take it the barbecue grill in your sitting room was his entry point?” Weischel asked. Her features were a little windblown, like an endurance athlete or motorcyclist.
“That’s right,” Julius said.
“How do you two know each other?” Plimpton asked.
“We’re both from New Orleans originally.” Winton left it at that. “The idea was to meet up and do some fishing, but it’s been a bad week for it.”
“Any idea who that man was or why he was here?” Plimpton asked. “He ain’t got no ID.”
“Can’t tell you his name,” Winton said. “But you noticed the pills?”
Plimpton and Weischel eyed him like poker players, betraying nothing.
“They looked an awful lot like the pills that killed my friend Beatrice.”
“Yeah, we already put that together.” Weischel adjusted her weight from one foot to the other and glanced at Plimpton.
So of course, they hadn’t.
“Kinda surprised y’all never came around and asked about her,” Winton said. “But since you’re here now, it went like this. Beatrice said some big hoss came and ransacked her house, after her brother committed suicide. A big fella like him.” Winton motioned toward the corpse. “But fitting a different description.”
“Why didn’t she file a report?” Weischel asked.
“That’s a great question,” Winton said. “After all, we told her to, but she wasn’t having it.”
Julius hummed along in agreement.
“Then after her brother’s funeral, she met with someone in secret, just out of town a piece. I’m guessing that’s who gave her whatever killed her.”
“No guesses needed,” Plimpton said. “Just the facts, son.”
“You think this was the guy she met?” Weischel asked. “He drugged her and then tried to drug you too?”
Winton cleared his throat in frustration, as Plimpton had just asked him to refrain from offering any subjective opinions. “No. I’ll just say it’s bigger than this dead fella and the man who came to the Spencer house.”
The detectives put their heads together, whispering.
“All right, we’ve seen enough here. Why don’t you two come down to the station so we can
get all this down on paper.”
“I’ve got paper here,” Winton said. “That way it’ll take me less time to tell you how to find who’s behind all this.”
Winton set his shoulders back and walked inside. He found a saucer Plimpton could use as an ash tray, then fetched a notepad and pens. He sat down and wrote out the timeline of everything that had happened since Ryan’s suicide, noting each important detail, omitting his visits to the clinic. As he worked, the detectives stepped inside and watched.
Winton put a period on his last note and looked up. “I think Ryan dumped his stash of pills — grip, or pinks, whatever you call them — right into the bathwater. They dissolved, and he absorbed it through his skin. Maybe he wanted to get high, or maybe he wanted to send a message.”
“How do you know what was in his system?” Weischel asked.
“I called and asked.” Before they could take any issue with that, Winton rattled off notes on Beatrice’s addiction to pinks, the way she pulled a man aside at the funeral and exactly how they spotted her making a clandestine rendezvous right before she died.
“I wrote Dr. Jansen’s name on the pills that were delivered to you recently.”
“That was you?” Plimpton’s cigar almost touched the table, as his hand jutted out.
“I knew you wouldn’t know me from Adam, and I figured there was some connection. So I gave them anonymously to keep you pointed in the right direction.”
“How the hell would you know that?” Plimpton said. “You coulda been wasting our damn time.”
“But you did go and talk to him and Dr. Kerala.”
The detectives exchanged a glance.
“Well, was it helpful?” Winton asked.
They both set tired, frustrated gazes on him that would have been more violent if they didn’t suspect Doctor Jansen of any involvement.
“Great. Now that we’re all friends, I can share some other things, no need for anonymity.”
“Like what?” Plimpton asked.
“Like, we were approached by some of Ryan Spencer’s former customers looking to score. We pretended to be in the game but temporarily out of stock. They threatened to go somewhere else to buy grip if we couldn’t deliver.”
