Crimes in Southern Indiana (11 page)

Sometimes J.W. climbed the tree once he spotted the coon's eyes reflecting the light while it hunkered up in the limbs. He'd knock the coon to the ground, let his hound battle the hiss and claw of it, get a good taste of battle before he killed it. Other times he'd shoot it from the tree. J.W. preferred both ways to keep his hound in check.

The more J.W. went
over it in his head, he realized every time Combs and he went hunting, Combs would be breaking him down, wanting to get him into a partnership. A deal that involved breeding Blondie with one of his hounds. Talking about how big a wad of dough the two of them could make off her bloodline with the pups, six to eight hundred dollars a dog. Even pressuring Margaret to sway him. Filling her head full
of false beliefs about getting rich from J.W.'s knowledge.

Telling her about his connection with a doctor, a specialist who had a second opinion about her insides. How extra cash could pay for surgery to fix her damage. The whole time J.W.'s telling both of them
no
.

Now J.W. surveys the surrounding hickory trees with leaves veined and green shading the rectangular sandstones of Combs's home,
the ferns that decorate the perimeters of attack like plants in a jungle. J.W. walking up next to Combs's black Chevy Bronco. Inside, a bag is packed, flashlights and power packs attached to spotlights, the rubber floor covered with mud. Bastard never offered to drive when the two of them hunted. But he can drive to J.W.'s home. Filch J.W.'s hound while he's passed out drunk. Pack up his Blondie.
J.W. knows what Combs is planning to do. Thinks he'll breed Blondie with different hounds for quick cash from state to state, charge a lot of money and a cut on the pups.

Up the creek-rock pathway, smears of mud draw J.W.'s eyes up the steps of the planed cedar porch, where dried gourds hang orange and yellow. Up by the front door an old cola machine sits red, white, and rusted with a cracked
glass side door. Down beside it lie muddy boots. Red Wing. Size twelve.

Up next to the side of the house, kneeling below the dining room window. Lip twitching into his eye.

Back pushed against Combs's home, J.W. turns and peeks in, seeing Combs's location, but no sign of Blondie. His heart's pounding with the influx of enmity. The bastard's seated at a table littered with newspapers and magazines.
Calm as a crustacean. That harelip smirk he postures as a stupid smile. Having his last breakfast. Shoveling chunks of egg into his mouth. Yolk cobwebbing down his thorny beard of a chin.

Kneeling back down, J.W. shakes his head, thinking Blondie was the only thing he had left from his dead daddy and Combs went and stole all that time and knowledge.

J.W. removes the cap from the can of gas,
staying low to the ground and walking backwards, saturating the perimeter of the home. Leaving space between fuel and sandstone. Enough to get his attention. Giving a gap. To get this Vietcong out of his hole, he's gotta give him some heat.

He takes a front-row seat to confrontation, standing in front of Combs's home, on his creek-rock path. Empty can of leaded fuel on the ground. Fox traps in
front of him. Open. Ready to bite.

Flint to flame. J.W. inhales his Lucky Strike. Lets it dangle from his lip, .45 Colt in hand. Safety in the unsafe setting. Taking a last deep lung-gagging draw, he tells himself, This is for my daddy, then he gives the Lucky Strike a middle-finger-to-thumb flick through the air to the fuel-soaked ground. The trail leading around Combs's stone shelter. Lighting
up in arcs all the way around the home.

Combs busts out of his front door, denim pants half buttoned and cream-colored belly hanging. Holding a singlebarrel shotgun. His energy's a big blast of napalm. Buckles down the steps of his porch barefooted. Mouth packed with food. Hollering, “Crazy son of a bitch, you done lost your mind?” Food particles rain like confetti with his words. He raises his
shotgun and his eyes meet J.W.'s.

Those huts. The way a Commie would come out screaming some foreign-tongued mojo. Never did a damn bit of good. Combs has no sense as he shuffles toward J.W. dumbfounded, left foot first into the center of a fox trap. Like a heavy book smacking a hardwood floor just right. Loud. Would send a shiver of numbness up a person's back. J.W. watches the metal break denim,
puncture flesh, dig into bone. Blood bleeds through. Combs is screaming like a boar hog being castrated. Drops the shotgun.

J.W. aims the .45 at Combs. The arc of fuel-induced flames is dying down. Smoldering. J.W. spits, “Planning a trip with my damn hound? Maybe breed her for profit?”

Combs's eyes water down his thorn-stubbled cheeks and he cries, “You dumb son of a bitch.”

Ready to give
a cold steel alignment to his speech, refresh Combs's tone, put a bit of truth back onto his tongue, J.W. says, “Last chance, Combs, where's Blondie?”

Whining like a pup being weaned from its mama's tit, he says, “I ain't got your damn dog!”

 

When J.W. asked why Combs did what he did, Combs said, “Money.” Combs had blown all of his daddy's inheritance. He started filching topbred coonhounds
for a guaranteed fifty-fifty split.

Seeing Blondie missing, J.W. was supposed to have gone into town to find Mac. Of course, Mac hides out and binges a lot of booze on Saturdays, and J.W. would never have found him; everyone would have been long gone by the time they got back. The only problem was Mac and he had fishing plans.

Combs thought he had time for one last meal before skipping town.
He more or less did.

Now, J.W. is back home. Out of the truck, .45 in hand, going into the house. Bloody footprints have redecorated the kitchen. A slaughtered steer.

He follows the trail of blood up behind the barn to Mac's cruiser. All around the trunk. The surrounding perimeter. Traces of red. Last option: go to the woods, up the hill, down to the Ohio River.

 

He reaches the bottom of
the hill. Winded. Mental state moving a mile a minute. One part focused, one part pain. Anger pelts his insides. Trying to hold it together, hoping he's not too late, glancing at the cabin his daddy built for fishing, camping out. To get away.

His heart's trying to find a way out of his chest. Foot to the cabin door. Bursting it open, .45 raised. Stepping inside. Glancing down, a wave of relief.

There she is laid out, those soft brown eyes weak, weeping to a muffled whine. She's still doped up, barely raising her head to acknowledge J.W., her salvation. Then he recognizes the hammer pull in the rear of his skull. Six rounds of a .357 Smith and Wesson. Mac's handgun. Followed by the words of a two-timing female. “Don't make me open your thought process just yet, J.W. Drop the gun.”

J.W.
drops the .45.

Her words are piercing and to the point. “Didn't see it coming, did you?”

All these years and she breaks their vows and he says, “How the shit could you do this?”

“Easy money. Combs tried to persuade you. You wouldn't give an inch. So we devised a partnership with a guy goes by the name Puerto Rican Pete. Deals in dogs for dogfighting. Does it by boat on the Ohio for the Evans
family, they been doin' it for generations.”

Not sold for hunting, sold for fighting.

The pressure in J.W.'s chest is a pitchfork stabbing a bale of hay. His mind still catching up, he says, “Made it easy seeing as how our property borders the Ohio River.”

Margaret tells him, “This morning figured you'd go to town and search for Mac, I'd be long gone 'fore you got back.”

How could this female
help train and care for Blondie, then just throw it all away? J.W. wonders how long he'd been living a lie. And Margaret says, “'Course, between you finding a boot print and Mac coming by, I had no way of warning Combs 'cause J.W. has no need for a phone.”

J.W. tries slinging some dirt her way and says, “Too bad about Combs, he had a hard time explaining all the details with his foot caught
in a fox trap.”

With no compassion, she laughs. “Poor Combs.”

Remembering the mess Margaret left in the house, J.W. tenses up, remembers the last words his friend said, “See you in a bit.” He asks, “What about Mac?”

She says, “Son of a bitch come in the house for some beer, I'm bringing Blondie from the basement into the kitchen. Tell him she's sick. He has his head in the fridge, grabbing
a few of your Pabst. I grabbed a butcher knife. Gave it to him quick.”

J.W.'s mind is quivering with loss, betrayal, and anger as he musters, “All this for some cash?”

She tells him, “More than money, for that doctor Combs told us about that could fix my jigsaw-puzzle insides, one you said we couldn't afford. Selling hounds done paid him in full. Sorry, J.W., your simple ways of living went
stale.”

She laughs again, tells him to turn around. “Wanna see how proud you are when I shoot you in your face.”

Before turning around, J.W. smiles at Blondie. She's all laid out on the floor, all that time using what his daddy taught him, all that knowledge waiting to be sold for a profit, his heartbeat matching the pounding of blood in his brain from hearing all the facts from his deceptive
wife's lips. He turns around. Face-to-face. She says, “Goodbye.” He closes his eyes. Grits his teeth. Balls his fists. Wants to react. To take all of his confused hurt and loss, use it against her when his ears go deaf. His face goes warm. But his knees don't give.

Mac radioed Duncan. Gave him the heads-up before going to J.W.'s house, told him he was on his way to the cabin for some
drinking and fishing. Duncan packed a handgun off duty, and seeing Margaret had put pressure between J.W.'s eyes with a .357, there was no time for second thoughts. Duncan aimed and pulled the trigger, made J.W. a widower.

J.W. got three to five in the Indiana State Prison for attempted murder. His residence, a six-by-six man-made concrete box with bunk beds. Steel bars. He'd get three squares
a day. Plenty of time to lift weights, read books, get free tattoos and enough male bonding to make a man sick. Duncan promised to take care of Blondie. Keep all that knowledge his daddy gave him safe.

Alejandro's knuckles sprayed backdoor glass across kitchen tile. His fingers twisted red on the doorknob and dead bolt. He maneuvered through the kitchen and down a dark hallway of family-framed walls with his scabbed skin and hair salved over his head in all directions. Stepped into a bedroom where a silhouette sat up from a bed. Alejandro's breath was suffocated by
the sudden movement like a large quilt smothering a fire.

A voice yawned, “You're home early.”

Tasting fear, Alejandro panicked, pointed the 9 mm. His chewed and blackened finger pulled the trigger once. Twice. Shadows fragmented upon the bedroom walls. The silhouette thudded onto the carpet.

Footsteps drummed like soldiers marching down the hallway behind Alejandro. He turned with the gun
raised, his free hand digging into his neck, scratching for a fix. He leveled the 9 mm on the small outline that screamed, “Mom!” Alejandro gritted his teeth and said, “Should not be here.” Warmed the child's insides. Silenced his screams.

Amphetamine hunger pained through Alejandro's brain as he pushed the pistol down the front of the jeans that hung on him like a used painter's cloth, rifled
through the dresser drawers. Socks. Bras. Panties. Nothing of worth. He screamed, “No, no, no!”

In the closet he found a Beretta .380, stuffed it down the back of his pants. On a chair in the corner he found a purse. Dumped it out onto the carpet. Saw the wallet, kneeled down, opened it. Found a wad of bills. Pay dirt.

He exited the bedroom to the hallway. Cleared the child whose lungs heaved.
Alejandro diminished like a dream.

 

Detective Mitchell's charred hair matched the bags beneath his vision of flesh gift-wrapping bone. His black tie hung loose from the open neck of the white button-up. The bottle of Jim Beam met his lips. Eroded his guilt.

“Should've stayed home that night,” he mumbled. He'd been catfishing in the late hours of morning down on the Blue River, checking the
plastic fishing jugs he'd hidden down in the deeper honey holes, when he heard the crunch of gravel and limbs. Saw the lights firing up the bank and surrounding trees. A truck engine stopped. A door slammed an echo down off the water. And then that familiar voice yelled, “Mitchell?”

Getting out of the water, tugging on the rope attached to his johnboat. Even without a flashlight the full moon
highlighted Sergeant Moon's complexion while his words hollowed Mitchell's being with the news.

Wife. Son. Shot by a burglar. DOA.

Though he policed a small town, Mitchell had seen a lot in fift een years of service. Bodies floating in the Blue River. Domestic disputes where beer-breathed men gave purple abrasions, cracked marrow, and lipstick-red welts to a woman's flesh with their fists. Cars
wrapped around trees where bodies were removed with no pulse. And in the past few years everything had become tense. Meth had scourged the land. Made working-class folk less human. More criminal. He'd even busted a member of the Mara Salvatrucha, which nearly cost him his rank for going behind law enforcement's back, doing his own intel without written consent from the higher-ups.

But at the
county hospital, seeing his son laid out like meat in a walk-in freezer, cold innocence removed of character, changed him. Then his wife. His crutch after a homicide, the person who rec orded his every word when he spoke of the unsolved thieving or killing of the innocent. She never offered judgment, only listened, gave him space when he needed it most. Now she was gone.

Mitchell shook his head,
taking in the hallway of his home. Two bullets opened the drywall where his son found his end. Dried innards smeared from wall to floor. Mitchell knew State Police Forensics had collected a mess of blood evidence. Ballistics would take a few weeks.

Entering the bedroom, Mitchell swigged the bottle of bourbon, saw the clothes hanging from dresser drawers. Looked at where his wife had dropped from
the bed, soiled the carpet. Forensics would never find who had done this.

Glancing into the open closet, he noticed the empty shelf, and it came as quick as losing his family. His backup gun was missing.

 

Alejandro was on all fours, mistaking carpet lint for crystal. Around him, bony-framed men whose faces reeked of malnourishment slept in sleeping bags on the body-soured carpet and matching
couch.

Scuff marks and fist- and foot-sized holes decorated the walls of the shack like second-grade graffiti.

Alejandro placed a piece of lint over the pin-needle holes on top of the aluminum can he held between middle finger and thumb. His other hand flicked a flame. His mouth huffed on the opening but got nothing.

His hair was the shade of creosote, melding to his potholed face and bored-out
eyes. He'd chewed the skin from his lips, creating miniature puddles of blood. Fingernails tracked up and down his arms, which had become like his lips. Sleeping was twitching until his crave jerked his orbs open, raising him from rest in a sweat-bathed shower of self.

He'd been holed up for a week with a new crop of illegals in the one-bedroom shack. Men with frayed ends and raisin features
plastered like the dead on a battlefield across the room. He'd tried sleeping in the day. Smoked his meth while others slept at night. Now the meth was gone, just like the money from the last robbery, of the woman and child he'd shot, though that didn't seem real. The only thing that felt real was firing the chemical and letting that jolt of electricity smoke his mind as he chased that feeling from
the first time.

On the couch Alejandro's hands patted through a man's pockets in search of money. The man blinked his bug-eyed whites awake with horror. He covered Alejandro's left eye with five knuckles. Falling backwards on the carpet, Alejandro pulled the 9 mm from his waist. Pointed it at the man, whose eyes sparked white. Two shots opened his chest.

The gunfire pierced the surrounding ears
and pulled their eyes open. Alejandro didn't quit pulling the trigger until the gun was empty.

 

It was a long shot, but Mitchell tossed the piece of paper on the counter of Joe's Pawnshop.

Dressed in a hole-worn Drive-By Truckers T-shirt, Joe blinked his razor-thin eyes and twisted the gnarly hairs of his ungroomed collie beard between index finger and thumb. Mitchell's bourbon breath irritated
Joe's face, reminded him of paint-thinner fumes as he picked up the paper.

“Serial numbers?”

“For a .380—”

Joe shook his opal skull, the shaggy braids that went from chin to chest. Cut Mitchell off. “Beretta. Polymer grip. Matte black. Seven rounds plus one in the chamber. I got the fiddle. You got the banjo. We can stomp down some sweet tunes.”

It was no longer a long shot.

“Who pawned the
son of a bitch?”

Joe glanced up about the wall as though he'd hidden the answer behind a radio or tennis racket and said, “Don't 'member his name.”

Mitchell laid his detective's badge on the counter.

“White? Black? Asian—”

“Mexican guy with a tweaker. Mexican was clean-cut. Runs that authentic restaurant up the hill. Usually there from daylight to dark. Got a kick-ass lunch special. Dollar
beers and Margaritas on Thursday nights. Never seen the tweaker before.”

“Where's the gun?”

Joe turned away. Unlocked a metal cabinet behind him.

“Shit fire, should've said you's a cop, I got it right here.”

“What about footage?”

“No smut tapes here, Officer.”

Mitchell wanted a make on the Mexican. Pointed up in the corner behind the counter.

“Surveillance footage of the guy who sold the
gun.”

Laying the gun on the counter, Joe answered in a confused voice, “Yeah, sure. But I done told you it was the Mexican guy from on the hill.”

“I need a positive ID.”

Mitchell picked up the gun. Matched the serial numbers.

“I'm taking the gun for evidence. Now, show me the footage of the Mexican. I'll need it and today's footage to take with me.”

“Take with you?”

“Yeah, I was never here
so we never had this conversation. These last few minutes have been one big fuckin' blur, got it?”

 

Alejandro pulled into the small town's pay-by-the-week flop, slop, and drop motel. He stepped from the idling Buick. His complexion was greasy dishwater with eyes floating in fire. His head twitched, shoulders jerked, while his hand went from etching open old wounds to fisting a door dotted by
body fluids.

A chain rattled. A lock clicked. The door cracked open with the television bouncing light and conversation. The smell of hot chemicals boiling in rubbing alcohol wafted behind a single brown eye spiked with blood. The other eye was missing.

“How much crystal you need?”

The white chalked-up corners of Alejandro's broken En glish said, “Another hundred dollar worth.”

The door closed.
Alejandro's hands balled into his sweatshirt pockets. He glanced down the concrete walk. Darkness hummed. Window curtains of connecting rooms parted in the corners. Eyes and noses smudged glass, breathing fogged it, making Alejandro's palms damp.

The door opened back up, a bit wider than before. One hand held a small brown paper sack. Another hand reached out, open palm, wiggling four fingers
minus a thumb. And the raspy chain-smoking voice said, “Cash.”

Alejandro slid his right foot between jamb and door. Pulled the 9 mm from his sweatshirt pocket. Pointed it at the single brown eye. The first shot added more decorations to the door. The body dropped backwards. Alejandro stepped on it. Entered the flop-drop meth factory. A shadow fought movement from the bed. The second and third
shots deformed the shadow, let it keep the bed weighted down.

Alejandro flipped the light switch on the wall. Plastic sandwich bags full of ice crystal covered a metal table next to the bed, beside wrinkled empty sacks. Sweating for a fix, he slid the 9 mm into his waist. Removed his hooded sweatshirt and piled the bags into the body of it. Picked the pockets of the ones he'd paid with bullets.
Threw their crumpled bills in with the bags. Tied the sweatshirt into a ball. Picked it up. Ran out to the Buick, already imagining the crystalline chunks ricocheting behind his eyes as the car turned out onto Highway 62.

Headlights flared off the yellow-and-green concrete building's glass windows. A car door drummed in the parking lot. The brass bell rang above the entrance door,
which Gaspar had forgotten to lock. He looked up from cashing out the restaurant's register and a gloved hand introduced his forehead to the butt of a .45-caliber SIG SAUER. His knees went liquid. His mind fogged in and out, feeling the twist of arms behind his back. The clamp and click of metal around his wrists.

Red warmed the parted flesh above Gaspar's blinking eyes. Metal burrowed into the
back of his neck, his face pressed into the still-warm surface of the grill in the kitchen. A handgun filled his view.

Mitchell's gloved hand tightened around the pistol. “I'll ask you one time. You and some tweaker sold the gun you're looking at to the pawnshop down the hill. Where'd you get the gun?”

Gaspar took a deep breath. Pondered the blood relation to the man he'd smuggled to America.

“I'm businessman. Come to America to run business.”

“Sure, the American fuckin' dream.”

Mitchell reached to his left, twisted the knob below the gas burner to high. A blue-orange flame hissed. He slid the Sig down his pants. Clamped both hands into Gaspar's black wad of grease. Slowly pressed his face toward the hiss.

Like a dog that didn't want to lead, Gaspar's head tried to fight Mitchell's
grip. Begged.

“No! No! Please!”

“The gun. Where'd you get it?”

With no answer, the orange hiss heated Mitchell's hand. Warmed his forearm. Gaspar's brown skin curled black like melted plastic. Tears fell and sputtered off the blue heat rimming the orange. Mitchell thought about his wife and son. Pushed Gaspar until he thought his leather gloves would ignite.

“My brother! My brother!”

He
pulled and turned Gaspar around. Mucus spread like poison ivy from nose to mouth. Tears ticked over the gooey gum-colored boil pushing from the black burn on Gaspar's cheek. Fear flowed hot down his leg. Puddled onto the floor. Mitchell grabbed the stolen gun.

“This gun you sold, stolen from my house. Your brother, where the fuck is he?”

 

In the shack, fluorescent lights hugged the loaded
needle trespassing in Alejandro's vein. No smoking tonight. He'd more than enough to shoot for days. His thumb pushed the plunger. Endorphins swam and multiplied in his brain. Eyes darted with black pupils hiding the hazel as he pulled the needle from his arm. His tongue ran over eroding teeth and said, “You guys need try. Some good shit.”

He waited for a reply from the bodies that lay scattered
and stiff against the walls, dressed with matching bullet holes, scented with the waft of bladders gone slack.