The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1) (21 page)

Chapter 44

Silence hung in the air. Dead silence between Al and Rusty. A vacuum of silence.

              Vivian knew something was up. She looked at one and then the other, but she didn’t say a word.

              Rusty could hear outboards humming in the distance. He even thought he could hear cars passing on the bridge downriver. He could hear someone holler something undistinguishable up the river, then a rebel yell. It was all far off and in another world.

              “Al,” Rusty said. Then he said each word slow and deliberate. “I’m going home. Get out of these wet jeans. Take a shower. Put peroxide on my arm and in my ears. If you two want to go with me to my house you are welcome.”

              If the tone of words could kill, Al Bolton would have been a dead man.

              “No, no,” Al said, in an apologetic way. “I just didn’t want to steal any of your thunder. You go on. Vivian and I will time it to be at the marina with the fish in about forty-five minutes. Gives you fifteen to get home, fifteen to clean up, fifteen to get to the marina.”

              “Sounds good to me,” Rusty said.

              Al clapped his hands together once, like they now had a plan.

              Rusty cranked his outboard and circled around and headed up the river. He reached down into the tackle box and picked up the cellphone. But he did not use it. Al would have his eye on him and if saw him making a call, he might just plug him in the back of the head. And sometimes in this area of the river, there was a dead spot.

              He gave up on the cellphone idea. But he was a good ways away now. It would take a lucky shot—from a moving boat to a target in another moving boat.

              Rusty came around the slight bend and the marina was in sight.

              He got closer. And as crazy as it was last night, he had seen nothing like this.

The weighing in of catfishes, the search for topless girl grabblers, and the catfish protestors and the topless protestors must have all dove-tailed. The marina was just one big shit pot of boats, pickups and trailers.

              He was going to head straight to the marina and get free of Al.

              He glanced around, Al was in sight. Vivian was behind, hauling the catfish.

              Rusty opened the throttle.

              By ESP, whatever, Rusty knew--
the son of a bitch has loaded the boat down with dynamite. If he sees me going to the marina, he’ll blow it up by remote control.

              Rusty kept in the channel and headed around the next bend. As soon as he edged around it, when he knew he was out of sight of Al, he punched in--not 911 or Sammy’s number--but Ray’s.

              The phone went dead. Not just a dead spot of reception, the phone itself was dead. What, it had expired right at this strategic moment? Rusty doubted it. In fact, he didn’t doubt it at all. There were no coincidences right now.

              He would go straight to his house, just like he told Al. But when he got there, he would get armed, lock and load. He felt under his thwart but didn’t feel any explosives.

              He looked up to see a large something on up river. As Rusty got closer, he saw it was old man Butler from across the Tennessee River. He steered his super-wide utility boat with double Johnson outboards, chugging up the Mussel real slow. The damn thing was practically a barge.

              He was headed to Rusty’s house to tow back some of the floating docks to his marina.

              Here was Rusty’s ticket. He could catch up to old man Butler and jump on his boat and he would be safe. Al wouldn’t dare take a shot then. Rusty could just jettison his boat in case it was wired with explosives.

              Rusty closed in on him. Old man Butler stood at the helm. His boat’s wake disturbed both banks of the river.

              “Hey, hey!” Rusty hollered. The son of a bitch was half deaf and couldn’t hear anything over the hum of his outboards. Rusty gave a shrill whistle. Nothing. Well, he would catch up to him in less than a minute, even if old man Butler didn’t turn around.

              Rusty could smell something weird. Over the odor of the river. Over the exhaust smell of Butler’s outboards. It was that acrid tobacco smell of Redd Oxx that Butler smoked in his little briar pipe.

              Then--Rusty’s outboard cut out. No cough, no jerk, no nothing. Just cut out like you pulled the spark plug wire.

              He stood up on his stern thwart, put his hands to his mouth and yelled as loud as he could. Old man Butler just kept chugging along, looking straight ahead.

              Rusty whistled. The old man never looked back.

              Rusty looked behind him. Al had not come around the bend yet. He looked ahead. He was about two hundred feet down river from the tip of Clay Island. Gloria and Rusty had left in a hurry and he’d never gone back to get their things--the air mattress, the cooler of food and drink, the radio. And Rusty’s other cell phone!

              He could abandon his boat and swim. But there was a slight current and it might take a while. What if Al came around the bend?

              Rusty turned around and popped the outboard cover off, tossed it in the middle of the boat. He checked the spark plug wire. Yeah, it was on good and tight.

              Then he saw it fixed onto the carburetor. Some little metal robot flap of a thing with a very small wire antennae on it. Shit! Al’s gadgetry. Al pushed a remote control button and a little nine volt battery made a flap move and cover up the intake to the carburetor.

              Rusty grabbed hold of it--the whole gadget was no bigger than two match boxes including the battery--and ripped it off, tossed it into the bottom of the boat.

              He put the cover back on, so the pull cord would work. Gave it a yank. It almost caught. He pumped the bulb on the fuel line. He pulled the cord.

              The engine cranked.

              Rusty opened the throttle up and headed back for old man Butler’s boat. Rusty closed in on him. He was right even with the tip end of the island, when the engine cut out again. Ripping the gadget off had changed the carburetor setting.

              Rusty veered the boat toward the island. He had enough speed left to get in the wake of Butler’s barge boat. When he got twenty feet from the bank, right at the tip of the island, he went to the bow, took the painter line and jumped into the water. It was barely waist deep.

              The Elk River side of the island was all tree tops. He took the rope of the boat and pulled it down to the tip of the island, pulled it on up between a couple of trees.

              He left the boat and waded through some weeds and then out of the water and through the canebrake. He came to the clearing. His wet shoes squished out river water with every stride.

              He jumped across the old locust log and then ran and rolled up onto the platform of the tree house. Thank God. It was there. All on the little crate. The old radio and his cell.

              He grabbed them and hopped back down onto the ground. He picked up the phone. But then he looked up.

              And only then did Rusty see him.

              Twenty feet away right on the other side of the log stood Al. He held a Glock in his right hand. Not pointed at him, but dangling down at arm’s length.

              “Don’t turn on the phone,” Al said.

Chapter 45

Rusty kept his eyes right on Al.

              In the bottom of Rusty’s vision, on the ground, on his side of the log, Rusty could see them. Two huge cottonmouths. The one Rusty recently saw and its mate.
Yeah, just step right over the log there Al and right down on one of those and get your lower leg nailed with some cottonmouth poison.

              “And why don’t you want me to turn on the phone?” Rusty shrugged. He put the phone in his pocket. He took the radio, put it under his left upper arm and held it there.

              “I want you to go with me to Ecuador?”

              “Why?”

              “I need to do a job there. We go together as business partners, we buy a palm plantation and I operate from there. It’s perfect. It’s providence. I need a cover. You speak Spanish. It’s perfect. Two years, max. My job will be over. You’ll net half a million. I guarantee it.”

              “You stole Elmore’s catfish,” Rusty said. He meant to say—you killed him.

              “Rusty, talking about providence, you’re not going to believe this…

              Then Al spoke in a low, calm tone. He spoke as if he were confessing his life story. He spoke as though he sat on the log with his elbows on his knees, looking down at the ground. But Al stood there, holding the Glock, as if it weren’t really dangling at the end of his right arm.

              The first Christmas after Al’s mother and father divorced, his father came to New York so they could spend the holidays together, for Al’s sake.

King knew Kate from high school. He heard she now had money and tracked her down. He wanted her to invest in a restaurant. His mother wasn’t interested. But his father was sold on the idea. His father was down to his last hundred grand. He thought it sounded like a sure fire way to get his funds built back up. He gave King almost every last cent he had.

              In Al’s mind, King stole it from him, conned him out of it. Instead of paying the money back, King put it into another restaurant, stalling his father for a couple more years, saying he would get more.

              His father had a weak heart and the stress put him in his grave. His mother was still in love with his father. Her love’s death sent her into a world of alcohol, uppers and downers. It took two years for the destructive lifestyle to decimate her kidneys. Then she died from a ruptured spleen.

              “Why did you tell Gloria your mother was from Bermuda?”

              “I did not want there to be any known connection to Winston County. See, I came here five years ago, to kill Elmore King, for revenge of my parents’ deaths. Yes, Rusty, I have my character flaws. I am not above revenge…”

              When Al tracked Elmore King to Florence, Alabama, he came to the Tennessee Valley five years ago to devise his murder. But Al happened to walk into the Davenport Marina, got one look at Gloria, and become enamored by Elk River life.

              “Ah, the Elk Riviera, Rusty. Then Providence played its hand. It was just one of life’s little serendipitous gifts. I was merely going to kill King, but one fine morning I was out on my dock having his morning coffee and I noticed something going on at the west bank. I got out my telescope and oh, coincidences of coincidences, there was Elmore King standing at the bow of a boat like Washington crossing the Delaware. Two boats, four men. I saw them disappear a huge fish into the water. I deduced what they were doing.”

              “So, you stole the catfish.”

              “Don’t get ahead of my story, Rusty.” For a moment Al looked as though he were going to put the gun away and step across the log right into the two cottonmouths, that were beginning to writhe around. But he stayed put.

              “King stole my father’s money. I would steal King’s catfish. I would torment him a bit. I knew who he was and from his stupid commercials. I knew he was media hungry. I would not only steal his catfish, I would hold it for ransom. I would get my father’s hundred thousand back. That became more important than killing him.”

              “You used the dynamite to stun Ole Blue.”

              “Yes. We do think alike, Rusty.”

              “You kept him in Doc’s old hatchery.”

              “Yes. And I began my negotiations over the phone. He finally said he would pay a hundred thousand.”

              “For a catfish?”

              “Ole Blue was more than a catfish to the Katfish King. It was his ticket to national celebrity. The payoff was bullshit. I suspected it to be. He was stupid enough to show up on a deserted dirt road by himself. First thing he did was pull a .38 revolver on me. I shot him between the eyes with a .44 magnum.”

              “The paper said it was a .45.”

              “I’m not responsible for what the authorities or media reveal to the people.”

              “You set me up. You somehow sent King to see me.”

              Al laughed. “No. Fate, Providence. I did nothing. Rusty we are connected in the spiritual universe. We are kindred spirits.”

              “You killed Compton! You set me how for that one.”

              “No.” Al held up his hands, the pistol still in his right hand. “I swear, I had nothing to do with that. I know nothing about it. Don’t accuse me of that, the same way the authorities accused you of it.”

              “You killed him?

              “I had no motive to kill him. I would never set you up. What? The man was worth sixty million dollars. Even if your wife only stayed married to him a year, she would have gotten a bundle. And Crystal would have eventually gotten part of that. Rusty, I would never take food out of your daughter’s mouth.”

              Bringing Crystal into it gave Rusty the creeps. Al let his arms down, still offhandedly holding the pistol.

             
Step over the log. Step over the log. Step right over the log right onto the snakes. They are getting restless.

              Al put his foot up on the log.

              The cottonmouths stirred. One coiled and turned his head back, opened his mouth, showing that trademark whiteness. And Rusty saw the outline of the two sticks of dynamite in the cargo pocket of Al’s shorts.

              “Come with me, Rusty. Help me in Ecuador,” Al said. “You will be such a perfect asset in the world of intrigue. You will fool them all. You come across as such a redneck. But you are a fucking genius. Yes, I said it, Rusty. A fucking genius. It was clever how you grabbed onto the Winston County connection like a pit bull and just wouldn’t let go of the notion. It didn’t bother me until you called Preston for the yearbook.”

              Step across the log your crazy son of a bitch.
“I thought we were friends, Al?”

              “We are. That’s why I have a proposition for you, my friend.”

              “Then put away the gun.”

              Al shrugged and stuffed the gun somewhere at the small of his back. Then he reached into a cargo pocket and got out a small black pouch and tossed it at Rusty’s feet. “I must ask you to take one of the pills in the bag.”

              “For what?”

              “So you will forget about me killing King. And so you will not change your mind about going with me to Ecuador and joining forces with me.”

              Rusty didn’t say anything about joining forces with him. “You want to drug and brainwash me?”

              “Oh, Rusty. Our life together will be grand. It will be me, you, and Vivian. After two years in Ecuador we will all go the South of France with Vivian and me. You know, Vivian has a thing for you. We would be very happy there. We would live in this place outside of Nice. Now and then I would have to go off into Europe to do a job, and you could keep Vivian company while I’m gone. And for about five years we will live happily ever after.”

              Rusty knew it. Al possessed some weird designs on him. He had created some kind of rapport. But for clandestine reasons of Al’s own warped making. Rusty asked, “What happens after five years?”

              “Historically, that is how long it takes me to get bored with any one scenario. Perhaps, after five years, I will go my way and you and Vivian come back here to Elk River.”

              Then Al took his foot off the log and stepped back. Shit. For a moment there, Rusty thought Al was going to step right into the cottonmouths.

              “Let’s cut to the chase, Rusty. I have had my eye on you since I came to Elk River. I’ve monitored all your communications since King came to see you. I know you want this. I know this is your destiny.”

              “I don’t think so,” Rusty said, meaning I know so.

              “I must insist you take the pill. Or else it’s this.” Al pulled a plastic box from his cargo pocket. At first, Rusty thought he was going to take out a Crippled Crawfish, that it was some kind of joke. It was no joke. It was a syringe. Al put it back in the plastic box.

              Somehow, Rusty knew what he was up against. With no confirming information at all, he knew Al was one of those guys trained in clandestine hand-to-hand. He was one of those guys who could kill someone silently with a number two pencil. That sort of stuff.

              Running was Rusty’s best option. But he had nowhere to run. He could sprint through the woods, to the end of the island, his terrain, and Al would probably never catch him. Then, it left the question, how fast and good of a swimmer was Al? Rusty didn’t think it was a good idea.

              Rusty was on his own territory. He had to best Al some way with what he had. The cell phone was worthless. Even if he could use it to call for help, he would be left to a showdown with Al first.

              Then Al made a move. He came toward Rusty, stepped right over the log. One of the snakes bit him right below the calf of the right leg.

              Al looked down, fright on his face. He saw the snakes, registered what happened. He reached at the small of his back and pulled out the Glock. He fired two shots at the snakes. All that did was rile them up more. The other snake—its mouth opened grotesquely, probably unhinged its own jaw—nailed him on the same leg right below the knee.

              Rusty backed away from Al, turned to get away from the crazy bastard.

              “Stop!” Al screamed. “I’ll shoot you in the back.”

              Rusty turned. He still had the radio under his arm. Rusty stepped closer to Al. Al had the gun aimed right at Rusty’s chest. With his other hand, he was taking his belt off. Rusty knew for the purpose of making a constriction band.

              “It’s over, Al. You need to get to a doctor.”

              “It’s not over. We’re just shorter on time.” Al put the belt around his leg, right below above the knee and pulled it tight. He got out the syringe and stepped toward Rusty.

              “You take another step, I’ll blow you up,” Rusty said.

              The statement confused Al. He did take another step.

              Rusty turned the radio on full blast. He began running the tuner the gamut of the frequencies.

              Maybe this was the stupidest thing Rusty had ever done. Something his old man used to warn him about:
Don’t be playing the radio near the nitro. Don’t be playing the radio near the dynamite. You can set it on fire if you want, but the right frequency wave will make it explode.
The truth was--Rusty had never seen a radio set off any dynamite.

              With gun still in hand, Al frantically reached into his cargo pocket and grabbed the dynamite. He tossed the two sticks and caps away from him as hard as he could.

              Thirty feet away, the dynamite exploded in the air. The shock wave hit Rusty. It knocked Al down.

              Rusty should have known it. Don’t ever bet against Rusty’s daddy. Even if he had been dead for twenty-five years.

              Rusty ran toward Al and took the gun from Al’s hand. He stood back from Al, pointing the Glock at him.

              The cottonmouths were gone.

              Al stirred. He moaned. He propped himself up on his elbow. His head bobbed around, like he was trying to rouse himself after a night of heavy drinking. He was not in a coherent state.

              Rusty looked at his leg. It was swollen up worse than Jenny’s were when she was eight and half months pregnant with Crystal.

              Al might not have been in a completely coherent state, but still Rusty said to him, “You shouldn’t have pulled the gun on me. Before that, I might have could have walked away from it all. You should never mess with a river Clay.”

              “I understand completely, Rusty.”