by Diane Kelly
I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” He shook a stick out of the package and ripped a bite off with his teeth. Amazing the guy hadn’t yet died from lung disease or diabetes given he subsisted on a diet of tobacco and processed sugar. “By the way, the deputies found a body in Fulton’s trunk.”
The gray dress pants sticking out of the trunk. Oh, God, I’d fingered the hem! I shuddered involuntarily.
“Fulton’s not talking,” the chief added, “but my guess is he was looking for an out-of-the-way place to dispose of the body.”
Jacksburg didn’t have much going for it, but the abundance of undeveloped land surrounding the town would make it a convenient place to unload a corpse. Maybe our Chamber of Commerce could seize on that as a marketing slogan–-Jacksburg, Texas: A Great Place to Dump a Body.
CHAPTER FOUR
PICKUPS AND DELIVERIES
The chief left and I set back to work. I’d hoped to get out on the highway again that afternoon to keep an eye out for the Ninja, but at four o’clock Andre radioed for help bringing in Lucas Glick on yet another drunk and disorderly. Dante was allegedly tied up directing traffic around a disabled car by the high school.
I grabbed my helmet and goggles and headed out to my Harley, mentally cursing Lucas for keeping me from my plans. Glick was a hard-core redneck who’d committed so many misdemeanors you’d think we were giving out green stamps with each arrest. Drunk and disorderly, destruction of property, public urination. You name it, he’d done it. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Texas led the nation in executions, the state’s prisons were severely overcrowded and judges were hesitant to give hard time to those committing minor, non-violent crimes, even if they were repeat offenders. Lucas had spent many a night in our freezer sleeping off a six pack or two, entirely unaware he was being punished. Before we released him, we made him take out the trash, scrub the toilets, and mop the floor as a penance. That’s justice in Jacksburg.
Truth be told, like most of the girls in our class, I’d had a huge crush on Lucas back in high school. I’d been intrigued by his shaggy hair, his rebellious swagger, and the mischievous glint in his eye. To a sixteen-year-old girl, those bad-boy traits were exciting. Now, fifteen years later, his hair looked stringy and unkempt, his swagger was more drunken than rebellious, and the mischievous glint in his eye had evolved into an enraged, hate-filled glare. Lucas was hardly a delight when he was sober and he was a mean, nasty drunk. I wasn’t looking forward to facing him this afternoon, especially when I’d hoped to play hide-and-seek with the Ninja.
I climbed on the motorcycle and headed down Main, George Thorogood and the Destroyers’ “Bad to the Bone” playing on my phone, the perfect song to accompany an arrest of Jacksburg’s resident screw-up. As I turned onto Renfro Street, a curb-less road lined with cockeyed clapboard houses a half century old, I noticed Eric’s delivery truck parked in front of the old Parker place. The once-white house had stood vacant since Roy Parker, the man who’d owned it, passed away in his sleep four years ago. He might still be lying dead in his bed if Chief Moreno hadn’t noticed the newspapers accumulating in the yard and stopped by to check on him. There’s something to be said for living in a place where people look out for each other.
Parker’s kids had long since moved off and had no use for the rundown house, so they’d put the home up for sale. Given that the house needed tens of thousands of dollars of work to be habitable, there were no takers. Not even the county wanted the house, refusing to foreclose despite the fact that property taxes hadn’t been paid on the shack in more than two decades. The rusty FOR SALE sign sat forlornly in the weedy yard, leaning back against a misshapen cedar as if it had given up all hope of attracting a buyer.
A yellow school bus came up Renfro from the opposite direction and stopped across the street from Eric’s truck. The red stop sign swung out and the lights flashed. I slowed to a stop behind the truck, put my feet down on each side of my bike to balance myself, and waited.
A gaggle of teenaged girls climbed off the bus, giggling and gossiping as they started up the street. They glanced over at Eric, sitting in his truck, and broke into fresh giggles. But, heck, who could blame them? I’d have found him attractive, too, if I were still that age.
Eric hopped out of his truck in front of me, a box tucked under his arm, and made his way up to the house, taking the sagging steps up to the porch two at a time. Eric placed the box on the stoop, inputting data into his tracking device as he stepped back to his truck.
This is odd. Who would send a package to a vacant house? Surely either Eric or the person who sent the package had the wrong address. But with Andre holding Lucas Glick, there was no time to stop and ask questions. Mental note: Stop back and check on the package once Glick’s in the klink.
The air brakes hissed as the bus driver released them and headed on past me to continue his rounds. I wove around Eric’s truck and drove on to the Watering Hole, the town’s only bar, a honky-tonk housed in a metal pre-fab building where local bands played classic country and rock standards in exchange for all the beer they could drink, sometimes forgetting the lyrics late in the evening when they’d paid themselves too generously.
Typical for this time of day, only a handful of cars were in the parking lot. I parked next to Andre’s cruiser and pulled off my helmet, hooking it onto the clip on my bike. Next to the cruiser sat Glick’s secondhand tank truck, the bright orange cab bearing a trim of rust and a fair share of marble-sized dings courtesy of some long-forgotten hailstorm. A 1,500-gallon hard plastic tank was mounted behind the cab. Both the tank and the back wheels bore splatters of dried mud. Lucas had made no attempt to keep the truck clean, but when your job was servicing septic systems it didn’t much matter, I guess.
I walked into the bar and paused inside the double doors to let my eyes adjust from the bright sunshine to the dark haze inside the bar. The smoke of a dozen or so cigarettes clouded the low-ceilinged interior and mixed with the odors of beer, sweat, and disinfectant.
Andre had Lucas’s lanky body bent over one of the bar’s four pool tables, his stubbly cheek pressed to the green felt. Even from across the room it was obvious Lucas was shit-faced. His bloodshot eyes were at half mast, his face slack. His faded blue T-shirt was half-in, half-out of the waistband of his jeans, the legs of his jeans half-in, half-out of his scuffed brown boots.
The stocky bartender raised his meaty hands in innocence as I made my way past. “I only served him two beers, I swear.”
“Don’t doubt ya.” The guy’d had more than his share of trouble with Lucas and tried to discourage Glick from frequenting the place by refusing to serve him more than a drink or two. But with no other bar in town, Lucas kept coming back. More than likely, Lucas had a flask of whiskey hidden in his boot and had snuck swallows when the bartender’s back was turned.
I stepped up to the pool table, noticing a stocky, dark-haired man wearing boots, jeans, and a western shirt with rolled-up sleeves standing off to the side. He held a piece of broken pool cue in each hand as if it were his turn at show-and-tell. His weathered face bore a thoroughly pissed-off scowl, his bottom lip protruding with a tell-tale bulge of Skoal chewing tobacco.
“See what that dumb fuck did? This here was a custom cue stick. Cost me six hundred bucks.” The man set one of the pieces down and picked up a clear plastic cup, using it as a spittoon. Yuck.
I took off my gloves and pulled a notepad and ballpoint pen out of my pocket to take notes for my report. “Did Glick assault you?”
The guy shook his head. “Nah, he didn’t touch me. Just grabbed my cue stick and cracked it over his thigh after I beat him in a game of eight ball.”
For all the times we’d dragged Lucas in on one charge or another, I couldn’t recall a single incident where he’d hit someone, though he’d taken many punches himself. I jotted down the man’s name and contact information on my pad. “You want to file charges?”
“I ain’t interested
in spending time in court. I just want my cue paid for.”
I radioed Selena and instructed her to contact my best friend, Savannah, a teller at the credit union where everyone in town banked. Savannah could issue the man full payment from Glick’s account. Sure, it violated banking regulations and exceeded my legal authority as a cop, but Glick would know better than to protest. He may be an asshole, but he wasn’t a total idiot. It was for his own benefit.
Lucas squirmed on the table, trying to free himself from Andre’s grasp. “Stinkin’ pig.” His whiskey-scented words were muffled by Andre’s hand, held firmly to his face. Lucas continued to struggle, but with Andre’s hulky body positioned across his back, he couldn’t lift himself off the table. His brows drew together. He was probably trying to think up another insult for the officer restraining him. You might expect a redneck like him to come back with a racial slur, but we citizens of Jacksburg weren’t so much divided by the color of our skin as we are united by the color of our collars—all blue.
Apparently unable to come up with further insults for Andre, Lucas turned his one visible bloodshot eye on me. “Fat sow.”
Andre jerked Glick’s arm up behind him. “That’s no way to talk to a lady.”
“Especially one with pepper spray on her belt.” If I’d had a Taser, I would’ve given Glick a few volts to the balls about then. I crossed my arms over my chest, partly in indignation, partly because Glick was ogling my breasts even as he verbally abused me.
It wasn’t the first time Lucas had talked nasty to me. The first time was a spring night our senior year of high school as we lay on a mildewed sleeping bag in the woods behind the baseball fields, Glick wrangling with the hooks on my industrial-strength bra strap, whispering naughty nothings in my ear. It had been our first and only date. He’d never asked me out again, even though I let him get to second base. The shame of it still smoldered inside me.
But for now, the shame was replaced with a flare of anger. Fat sow. How dare a loser like him talk to me that way? For some reason, Glick hurling insults at me was more offensive and hurtful than Fulton shooting bullets at me. But I wasn’t about to let this jerk know he’d got to me.
I bent down to look Lucas in the eye. “I’m not fat. I’m sturdy.” I stood and tossed my head defiantly.
Andre put his mouth close to Glick’s ear. “Listen up, Glick. I’m going to get off you and you better walk straight to my car and get your ass in the backseat without causing any more problems or you may not live to regret it. Got that?”
Glick didn’t answer, but at least he’d stopped squirming. Andre nodded to me and I pulled my cuffs off my belt, holding them at the ready. Andre warily eased himself off Lucas and yanked his hands up behind him. I quickly snapped my cuffs onto Glick’s wrists.
Lucas raised himself from the pool table and stood, swaying. Andre took hold of Glick’s upper arm to guide him, but Lucas twisted, wrenching out of the officer’s grip. He dropped to his knees and fell onto his side on the wood floor, running with his legs in a circle like a crazed break dancer.
Andre and I stepped safely aside to wait until Glick wore himself out. Andre looked down at the spinning man at our feet. “Can you believe this moron?”
“Unfortunately, this behavior doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Lucas continued to spin until he grew dizzy and ended up kicking the leg of a small table and knocking it over onto himself. The hard edge of the table smacked him squarely across the bridge of his nose. “Shit!”
I cringed. “That had to hurt.”
Andre and I pulled the table off Lucas and yanked him to his feet, dragging him out to the squad car and shoving him into the back. I climbed in the passenger side to ride back to the station with Andre. Glick had been known to pull stunts in the backseat of the cruiser, once pulling down his pants and mooning the mayor’s wife, who’d stopped next to the patrol car at a traffic light. We’d always cuffed him after that. Today, my eyes would be on him, making sure he behaved himself.
Andre backed out of the parking spot and headed onto the highway. I glanced back at Lucas, noting a purple-black circle developing around his left eye. “Looks like you’ve earned yourself another shiner, Lucas. How many does that make?”
Lucas frowned at me through the metal mesh separating the back and front seats, refusing to answer my question. Before he’d unexpectedly dropped out of high school our senior year, just a few days after our date and with only two months to go before graduation, Glick had shown up with a fresh black eye every month or two, bragging about how he’d kicked some dude’s ass over in Hockerville. He’d gained a reputation as a tough fighter even though nobody seemed to be able to locate any of his alleged victims and verify his version of the altercations.
When I turned my eyes to the road in front of us, Lucas gave the back of our seats a forceful, two-footed kick, jolting me and Andre forward. My seatbelt yanked tight across my bust, jerking me back against the seat. “Hey!”
Andre glanced at Glick in the rearview mirror. “Cool it, ass-wipe.”
Glick let loose with a primitive, guttural growl and kicked the seats again. Andre shot me a discreet look and I gave a small nod. We cops had special methods of subduing uncooperative prisoners, none of which you’d find in any official procedures manual.
Andre glanced back at Lucas. “Yo, Glick. You ever thought about becoming an actor in Hollywood?”
Lucas glared at Andre with red-rimmed eyes. “What the fuck you talkin’ about?”
“Marnie and I think you could be the next Brad Pitt. In fact, we’ve decided to give you a screen test.”
Lucas turned to me, his expression confused. He may not have known what was coming, but I did. I put a hand on the dash to brace myself.
Andre checked the rearview mirror then floored the gas pedal, sending Lucas and me rocking back in our seats. Once the speedometer reached eighty, he hit the brakes. Hard. Skreeeeeech! The cruisers’ tires squealed, leaving a black trail on the pavement behind us and sending up a stench of burnt rubber as we skidded to a stop. Momentum carried Lucas forward in the backseat. He slammed face-first into the metal screen. Bam!
“Shit!” Lucas flopped back in his seat, his forehead bearing red marks in the cross-hatched pattern of the screen. “’The hell you do that for?”
Andre stared straight ahead, a wry smile tugging at his lips. “Sorry. Dog in the road.”
Andre and I exchanged sideways looks and chuckled. I turned and glanced back at Lucas, expecting to be met with his standard scowl. Instead, he stared out the side window with lifeless eyes, a look of utter and complete hopelessness on his face, the same look I’d seen on my dad’s face when the doctors told us my mother had, at best, a month to live. A hot flush of shame rushed through me and I had to turn away.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE TRUTH HURTS
On our way into the station, we passed Jared Roddy, a squat, paunchy night officer, who was on his way out of the building to begin his shift. He took one glimpse at Glick and rolled his eyes. “Our best customer, back again.”
We deposited Glick on the bottom bunk in the freezer cell and removed an almost-empty flask of whiskey from his right boot. I emptied the liquor into the kitchen sink and tossed the empty flask into the trash. Technically, we were supposed to hang on to an inmate’s property, but I was sick and tired of this routine. Every few weeks Lucas would drink too much, raise some hell, and give us crap. I’d noticed his arrests were becoming more frequent, his attitude more reckless.
Lucas is on a dangerous path. This has to stop.
I stepped back into the freezer and held out my hand to Glick. “Empty your pockets.”
He stood and rotated his hips, leering drunkenly at me and pointing at his groin with both index fingers. “Why don’t you empty them for me?”
I wasn’t about to stick my hand into the front pocket of his jeans. I turned to Andre, leaning on the door jamb, his meaty arms crossed over his enormous pecs. “You want the honors?�
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