(II)
I’m not doing too bad here, no, sir, Trey thought.
Even with those couple of surprises at the last minute, Trey was
sure he’d done the right thing. Burying Sutter and Ricky Caudill
had been a cinch; Felps had left some holes already dug at the
condo site, as promised. And taking care of the docks, too, had
been easy and kind of fun. But I sure as shit
didn’t count on that fuckhead Ernie catching me at the pier last
night. Son of a whore followed me all the way from Judy’s
house! Trey had been caught by total surprise when he’d been
pumping twenty or thirty gallons of marine gas from the boat pump
all over the pier and the closest crabbing boats.
Ernie was a bigger,
stronger man, for sure, but Trey was harder. He’d jacked the
redneck out after not much of a tussle, busted some teeth, cracked
a rib or two, then knocked him out cold with a bop to the head.
Never did like that fucker. Shit, I shoulda
just let him burn up in the boathouse. . . . Why hadn’t he
thought of that? Can’t think a everything
every time. Instead, he’d hogtied Ernie and driven him out
to the abandoned shanty way off from Squatterville on the Point.
Nobody even knows about this place, he
thought, unlocking the front door now. He’d tried to look as
official as possible for the state cops and firemen once the
burning docks had been discovered. They’d all been out there for
hours. Close to nightfall, the state began wrapping things up, so
Trey took off in his patrol car to “start canvassing the
neighborhood. Try to get me a line on Ernie Gooder,” he’d
claimed.
Instead, he’d come
straight to the shanty.
“Howdy, folks,” he
proclaimed inside.
No one responded, but
how could they, with gags in their mouths? Trey lit the lantern;
light flowed around him when he proceeded to the center of the
room. “There she is, the little cutie,” he mocked Judy. Snatching
her last night couldn’t have been easier. She’d been stumbling
toward the edge of the woods beyond the cookout, drunk out of her
gourd. “Why, sure, Judy,″ he’d answered her blabbering request.
”I’d be more’n happy to drive you back to the house.” He’d driven
her back to the shanty instead, handcuffed and with her D-cup bra
stuffed in her mouth. Drunken bitch didn’t even know what he was
doing, she was so stewed. Now she lay on the floor, on her side,
tied up like a trussed goose. One ample breast had fallen out of
the torn blouse, the nipple large as a beer coaster. Trey, of
course, did the gentlemanly thing, saying, ”Ah, now, that ain’t
right. A gal can’t be havin’ a tit hangin’ out.” And then he ripped
back the blouse some more. ”She needs both hangin’ out. There, that’s better.” He gave
them both a good feel. Trey had plans for these breasts, and for
everything else connected to them . . . but not just yet. He’d be
setting her up for another psycho job; this one would look like
some of the clan did it, the ones who were running meth. Only Trey
knew that there were actually no
Squatters selling anything except fucking crabs—but that was beside
the point.
“You first,
buddy-bro.” Trey grabbed Ernie by the back of the belt and dragged
him to the car. He mewled beneath his gag, eyes blooming with rage.
Trey hocked on him once he got the cracker loaded into the truck.
“Time for a road trip,” the dutiful officer promised, then slammed
the trunk closed.
Trey cleared his head
as he drove, smiling to himself. The moon was just up over the
trees, gibbous, yellow as a grapefruit. Even closet sociopaths like
Trey found their moments of existential harmony. I’m gonna kill a couple more people tonight, and you know
what? I dig it. All part of the plan. He particularly liked
the notion that on the same day he’d unofficially become Agan’s
Point’s new police chief, he’d disposed of two bodies and was about
to dispose of two more.
I’m really gettin’ the hang of this, he
thought.
The spur he was
looking for sat about five miles north of the Point, inaccessible
to boats—due to rocks and a low-tide margin—and well hidden by a
wall of trees. When Trey was a boy, in fact, he’d come down here on
his own to drop chicken necks. The crabs were humongous and so
plentiful he could pull a half bushel in an hour. More of that same
existential harmony seized him now when he parked and opened the
trunk. Cicadas trilled, the moonlight bathed his face, and the
lapping water along the shore made him truly feel one with the
universe, the master of his own destiny.
“Out’cha go,” he
said, hefting Ernie out of the trunk and carrying him like a heavy
suitcase by the back of his belt. In the other hand, Trey carried
his crowbar.
“Ain’t no one to hear
ya way out here,” Trey said, and cut off his gag.
“You fuckin’ piece a’
shit, Trey,” Ernie wheezed, crooking his neck to look up. “I always
knowed you were a twisted motherfucker.”
“I did fuck my mother, Ernie. Lotsa times. And I’m
damn proud of it. Now let’s get you fixed up. Hot night like this,
you need a cool dip.” Trey shoved Ernie on his side, raised the
crowbar high, and—
Crack! Crack! Crack!
—hammered the
crowbar’s elbow hard between Ernie’s shoulder blades. Ernie grunted
a salvo of less-than-eloquent objections, then began to shudder.
Several more cracks between the shoulder blades sufficed to achieve
Trey’s purpose. He leaned over and cut the hogtie, watched Ernie’s
limbs slump.
“Are ya dead?” Trey
asked, slamming his shoe down on Ernie’s hand. There was no recoil,
no movement whatsoever. But Ernie’s eyes were still blinking, his
chest rising, and his throat gulping.
“I-I cain’t move,”
Ernie choked. “Cain’t move my arms or legs, ya motherfuckin’ sick
piece a’ shit . . .”
“That’s ’cos I just
paralyzed ya, dickhead.” Trey nodded a secret approval, like an
acknowledgment shared exclusively between himself and the night.
He’d fractured the spine high enough to cause total paralysis but
not quite high enough to kill. “You always were a noballs, do-good
hayseed, Ernie. Well, now you’re a quadriplegic no-balls, do-good
hayseed.”
Ernie drooled, only
his head moving. “You’ll burn in hell, so I guess that’s good
enough.”
“Sure, but you’ll get
there first. And when you’re down there suckin’ the devil’s dick,
I’ll still be here, havin’ a ball.” Trey chuckled as he took to his
next task. He tore open Ernie’s shirt, pulled off his boots, then
yanked his jeans down to his knees.
“What are you,
queer?” Ernie challenged. “I figured ya for a lotta things, but not
that.”
Trey guffawed. “Don’t
worry, Ernie-boy. I ain’t gonna pack your fudge. I done told
ya—you’re goin’ fer a nice cool dip in the good ol’ Chesapeake
Bay.” And then Trey dragged Ernie into the shallow water until the
water came over his chest.
“All you’re gonna do
is drown me?” Ernie managed. It could be discerned by the straining
expression on his face that he was trying to move his limbs, but
those nerves were no longer firing at all. “Figured a sick fuck
like you’d cut me up or hang me or somethin’.”
″Naw, Ernie, this is
much better, and no, I ain’t gonna drown ya neither.” Now Trey
leaned Ernie’s head up against a rotten log in the water. He
couldn’t move, and was braced enough so that there was no way he
might sidle over into the water and indeed drown.
A moment passed; then
Ernie figured it out, to his extreme misfortune. “Aw, no, God . .
.”
Trey grinned down at
his work: Ernie’s head and shoulders were propped out of the water,
but the rest of his body was submerged.
“Agan’s Point
crabs’ll eat good tonight,” Trey said, then walked back to the car
and drove off.