Jake Caldwell Thrillers Page 4

  As he crested the hill, all three blocks of downtown Warsaw rose up. Hole in the wall restaurants, corner bars, and the small-town standards of an attorney, drug store and bank. A side street dipped toward the lake, empty trailers perched on the asphalt while the boats flashed back and forth on the water.

  The road declined past a muffler shop, and squatty houses cropped up on either side, alternating between well maintained and borderline abandoned. He wheeled to the right at a fork and the ranch houses gave way to a used car lot, gas stations and a strip mall housing half a dozen businesses. The old Pizza Hut still operated in a bowl below the road. He’d managed to work there for a brief three days before the old man came in drunk looking for free pizza. When he didn’t get any, Stony broke a stack of plates along with the jaw of the store manager who promptly fired Jake through a mouthful of bloody teeth.

  Jake rolled down the window to evacuate the memory and gunned the truck south to the White Branch exit. He stopped at the T-junction across from the Headwaters Motel looking down the hill to some of Dad’s favorite watering holes. Memories flashed like lightning—his first kiss, his first slug of Jack Daniels in misty rain, the first time he found the value of a pool cue as both a money-making tool and a weapon. The Roadhouse Bar where he learned in a muddy parking lot how much pain he could both dish out and endure.

  He turned right heading past the Lake Hills Motel and the high school where Jake met the only girl he ever loved. After a series of twists and turns, Poor Boy Road lay ahead. Stony said someone named the road after a combination gas station liquor store ran by Howard and Madge Gardner in the fifties called Poor Boy Store. A Poor Boy Garage came and went next door, ran by one of his dad’s drinking buddies. Jake guessed the name just stuck.

  He turned, cruising slowly all the way to Turkey Creek Cemetery where generations of Ozark families were buried. He stopped at the entrance to the tiny cemetery, waiting for some feeling, any feeling to take hold. Instead, stone-cold silence. He drove through the empty lot and parked by the gate. As he climbed out the truck, a flash of brown nabbed his attention across the road. A beautiful auburn horse with a jagged white splotch on its forehead focused bowling-ball eyes on Jake over the top of a white fence. Nicky loved horses.

  Jake plodded through the gate and down the cracked, asphalt pathway. Ancient, pitted cemetery headstones mixed in with freshly covered graves. Born in 1827, died in 1866. Born in 1979, died in 2013. Side by side, the recent and the historic. Generations of families laying together forever.

  Jake walked a hundred yards to the back of the cemetery before stepping off the path through the mix of grass and thistles, past headstones gaudy and plain. He stopped before the simple black, granite tombstone of Margaret Anne Caldwell—died June 5, 1985. Nicky was ten, Jake eight and Janey five when their mother dropped dead of a heart attack in the family kitchen while making dinner. He didn’t remember much of her. Just a haze of a long-haired woman who loved him.

  Next to her marker was another that brought a flood of memories, not hazy this time but high-definition sharp. Flashes of laughs and screams, fists and fights. Tears burned inside Jake’s face, aching to be released. He choked back the pain. Caldwells didn’t cry. Heading back toward the truck, the plain, black, block letters etched into a generic, white granite marker burned in his retinas. Nicholas Caldwell. Born November 3, 1975. Died February 7, 2012.

  Jake had watched Nicky’s funeral from the safety of his truck, far down the road. There’d be too many questions he didn’t want to answer, and the anger still boiled toward his father—an emotionless robot by the graveside. Janey’s shoulders heaved with sorrow under a midnight black dress that belonged to their mother. He saw all the familiar faces and though part of him wanted nothing more than to go over, the shame for abandoning them pressed his foot on the gas as Nicky’s coffin was lowered into the earth.

  He stared at the tombstone a moment longer, checked his watch and headed back to the truck. His cell rang as he reached for the door handle. Keats.

  “Where are you?” Keats demanded.

  “Heading to the house to see my dad.”

  “What about Langston?”

  “I just got to town, Jason. Haven’t exactly had the chance to do any detective work.”

  His boss’s heavy breathing cracked the cell phone. “I want that motherfucker dead. I don’t care how you do it, just do it now.”

  “What happened?”

  “A box with a dripping head just showed up on my desk, that’s what. The head of his fucking brother.”

  Jake leaned against the truck and blew out a breath. “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, Jesus. That’s exactly who that crazy little son of a bitch is going to need before I’m through with him.”

  “Why’d he kill his brother?”

  Keats paused. “Don’t worry about it. You worry about putting him in a body bag. I know what you’re going through so I’m going to be generous. You got two days.”

  Jake stood, gripping the phone tight. “Two days? I don’t have a clue where this guy is and don’t even know what’s going on with my dad yet.”

  “Two days, Jake. Or I’ll send someone else to do it and they’ll be coming home with two body bags.”

  The line clicked and Keats was gone. He pressed his lips together and resisted the urge to throw the phone across the parking lot. He stared across the road to the horse.

  “What the hell are you looking at?”

  Jake climbed in his truck and headed toward home, the forty-eight-hour clock in his head ticking away.

  Chapter Seven

  Willie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for Howie in the clearing where the Skaggs’ trailer slumped. Shane wanted to meet at four o’clock and they only had five minutes to make it. He eyed the disarray around him. A rusted Coleman grill next to a makeshift fire pit holding the blackened aluminum shells of dozens of Old Milwaukee cans. Sonic and McDonald’s wrappers spilled from ripped and scattered trash bags, cardboard beer cases and empty cartons of cigarettes resting in front of the trailer where they were thrown.

  Howie Skaggs, skinny with auburn hair he probably cut himself using rusty scissors and no mirror, stumbled toward Willie’s truck, his hangover apparent as he squinted against the descending afternoon sun. He stuffed his lucky Green Lantern T-shirt into the front of his jeans before climbing into the back of the truck. Bennett, Howie’s brother and trailer mate, waited in the truck bed, chain smoking generic cigarettes and flicking his zippo lighter open and closed. A third character named Artie Thomas sat next to Bennett. Willie went to high school with Artie and occasionally used him, but he wasn’t a regular crew member. Willie didn’t trust the shifty-eyed asshat, but sometimes they needed a body for grunt work.

  Willie headed deeper into the country down Poor Boy Road. The wet winter had taken its toll on already marginal roads, and he bounced off familiar ruts for a few miles. They crossed Miller’s Creek with a splash and darted along a partially hidden path marked by a rusted blue, fifty-five gallon barrel hiding in the weeds. Fifty yards of winding, narrow path led to Willie’s trailer. The double-wide slunk back in the trees behind a dirt expanse adorned with a red picnic table on one end, and a rusted, steel A-frame swing from the sixties on the other. Worn chains without seats dangling in the breeze. Trash Willie had yet to burn neatly piled in bags next to a scorched drum.

  A new Lincoln Navigator waited for them, shiny and black save for streaked mud splashes on the lower frame. Willie parked under the shade of a gnarled oak. Shane came around the trailer by the picnic table, zipping up the fly of his black slacks. His biceps and pecs bulged through a thin, gray shirt two sizes too small. A used car salesman’s smile blazed through his black goatee and dark sunglasses. Willie put the truck in park and climbed out as Shane’s giant bodyguard, Antonio, emerged from the Navigator. Shane was a compact ball of muscle, like a pitbull. In comparison, Antonio was a black mountain who scared people into submission just being there.


  “Willie,” Shane said, offering a solitary, bone-crunching pump. Shane sat at the picnic table. Willie and Bub joined him as the three other mopes headed inside the trailer. Shane lit a cigarette, took off his sunglasses and set them on the flaking wood.

  “How you been?” Willie asked.

  “Good. Business is picking up a bit, money rolling back in as you know.”

  “Not as fast as I’d like.”

  “Not as fast as any of us would like, Willie. Patience.”

  “You must be doing better than us,” Bub said. “Nice Navigator.”

  Shane’s thick eyebrows drew together, and he inclined his head slightly toward Bub. Willie’s lips tightened.

  “Was I talking to you, Bub?”

  “No,” Bub whined, like a six-year-old who got his hand caught in the cookie jar.

  “Then keep your mouth shut until I ask you something. Nod that fat fucking skull if you get me.”

  Bub nodded and scratched at the table with a yellowed thumb nail, red faced and abashed. Shane’s clenched jaw released.

  “I got two things,” he continued. “One is the deal I mentioned. The other is a loose end we need to deal with.”

  At the mention of a loose end, Willie tensed, his asshole puckering shut like a time lock vault at the bank. Bub’s hand gripped the edge of the table. Willie and Bub had both witnessed the bloody way Shane dealt with loose ends.

  “Relax,” Shane said. “It’s not either of you. First though, the deal. We have an opportunity to supplement our product supply. Get back in the manufacturing business instead of playing middleman to the Mexicans.”

  “How?” Willie asked.

  “Got a connection out of St. Louis. He scored some bulk supplies we can use to make a ton of product.”

  Bub’s hand released and he raised it to ask a question, like a third grader in class. “What about Bear?”

  “Don’t worry about Bear.” Shane stubbed out his cigarette in a clay pot. “This is a finite supply we’ll set up in a temporary lab. We’ll cook it quick in a secluded area, and have the stuff bagged and ready for distribution. I take half of the haul for my other dealers; you get to keep half since you’re my biggest base of users anyway.”

  “Who cooks?” Willie asked. Willie could cook decent meth in small batches, but it wasn’t the quality of Shane’s chefs.

  “I bring up my guy from Kansas City. You, Bub and the Skaggs’ boys assist. My cook brings me my half, you guys sell the rest and I take my usual cut minus five percent.”

  “Minus five?”

  “Yeah,” Shane said. “You’ve been doing good work here, Willie. Times have been tight, but you stayed the course and didn’t bitch. Thought I’d give you a little bonus for this batch as a thank you.”

  “Appreciate it, Shane,” Willie said, allowing a smile to appear. “Where’s the cook going to be?”

  “Got an old house picked out on Poor Boy Road. Saw it on a helicopter tour over the area last month. Antonio checked it out a couple weeks ago and says it looks good. Even has a back-door trail outta there in case shit goes bad.”

  Willie was pretty familiar with the inhabitants of Poor Boy Road and couldn’t think of any abandoned house. It had to be hidden pretty well. Much needed dollar signs flashed. If it was a big enough haul, he could get the hell out of this racket and Warsaw.

  “Sounds good,” Willie said. “When?”

  “Tomorrow,” Shane said. “We get the lab set up and cook all day and night. My guy bails by Thursday night and you’re set with product for a while. We use the Mexican product to build up a little surplus, so the demand doesn’t outrun the supply.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Willie took a deep breath. “And the other thing?”

  Shane’s piercing black eyes bored into Willie’s soul. Made it like every thought he ever had was laid out on the table; one reason Willie never played poker with the man. That and Shane was the world’s worst loser.

  “You got somebody who can’t keep his mouth shut,” Shane said. “My insider says he’s feeding info to the narcotics task force Bear set up.”

  “That group’s done,” Bub said. “Cleared out last fall.”

  “You don’t know shit about shit, Bub. The task force didn’t go away. They’re just lying in the weeds, waiting to pounce.”

  “You trust your insider?” Willie asked.

  Shane pursed his lips. “More than most. I got a pretty deep hook in. Your guy is negotiating. He hasn’t given them names yet, but it’s close.”

  Willie considered his crew. Bub wouldn’t say anything to anybody. Howie and Bennett would be loyal up until the point where they got seriously squeezed by the cops and neither had shown a sign of that. There were a couple of guys who worked with them last summer, but one got locked up for stealing cars and the other moved out west somewhere. The one guy left with knowledge about anything was the one he never fully trusted.

  “Artie,” Willie said.

  Shane winked. “I knew you were smart, Willie.”

  “Shit.”

  “That’s exactly what he is right now,” Shane said. “He’s mine.”

  Bub shrugged off the demise of one of his cohorts, the fat rolls of his neck bulging out with the effort. Artie was a douche bag. If he disappeared, the machine would keep running. Willie didn’t want to think about Artie’s fate, but it wasn’t like he could do anything to stop it.

  “Fine,” Willie said. “He’s all yours. We can manage with the four of us. Gives us a bigger cut anyway.”

  Shane winked and stood. He brushed the dirt from the seat of his black slacks and pointed to Antonio, who opened the trailer door and disappeared inside. There were shouts and a rock of the trailer as someone smashed against the wall. A terrified Artie spilled out the front door and crashed to the dirt with a face full of blood. Shane bent over him and spoke in a low voice. Artie shrank back and screamed “no” over and over, scrambling away from Shane. He backed into Antonio who boxed his ears and slapped a dark bag over his head. He secured the bag in place with a couple wraps of duct tape. Antonio hauled Artie up by the arm pits and carried him to the back of the Navigator, throwing him inside like a sack of potatoes.

  “So, you start the cook tomorrow. Go get the place ready.” Shane wiped his hands with a handkerchief, then handed Willie a local map with directions to the cook house. “I’ll call you to make sure everything’s set, and we’ll be ready to roll.”

  Shane and Antonio climbed into the Navigator. They rolled out of the clearing and out of sight. Bub headed to the trailer leaving Willie by himself wondering how many pieces they would cut poor Artie into.

  Chapter Eight

  Jake turned off Poor Boy Road and up the lane to the house. He ignored the old mailbox stuffed with envelopes and fliers and rolled up the tree-canopied drive, wincing as overgrown branches scraped along the roof of his truck.

  The old homestead was a snapshot of when he left at eighteen. The brown ranch still needed paint and still gave off a “go the fuck away” vibe. Curtains drawn on the windows, porch light clinging for life by the wires, and a screen door hanging askew by the top hinge. The front door stood open, but it was dark inside. Jake parked behind a maroon Taurus, probably Janey’s, and got out.

  A late afternoon breeze rustled through the trees and across the face of the house, sucking the air from inside. A dead leaves smell of death and decay. Probably why Janey had the front door open. He climbed the cracked concrete steps to the door, stopping short of the last one. He still had time to get back into his truck and bust ass out of town before he got wrapped up with his father’s situation. But, even then, Keats’ two-day deadline wasn’t going away.

  Janey emerged through the door, a freshly lit cigarette in hand, as if she read his thoughts of bolting. Coming out to lasso him inside. She looked thin, even for her, in blue jeans and a white T-shirt under a red plaid button down. A pang of guilt stabbed his gut. His baby sister looked ten years older than he did. Her face brightened. She hop
ped off the front porch and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” She stepped back, taking him in. “You look good, big brother.”

  “Thanks…” Jake said. He started to say, “you too,” one of those automatic programmed responses people gave, but he didn’t want to start the reunion with a bald-faced lie, so he stuck with the truth. “It’s good to see you, Janey.”

  “It’s been awhile.” She dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out with a scuffed brown shoe. Jake last spoke to her a year ago, a few awkward moments at best when the tax bill on the family property was due. They used to be close before he split and left her stuck in that shithole.

  “Still working at the sheriff’s office?”

  “Still,” she said. “A monkey could do my job, but it pays the bills.”

  “And Luther?”

  “Same. Getting fatter,” she said. “They took him off the loading dock and stuck him in the office at the lumber yard. Assistant manager. A little better pay and hours. Gives him more time to make the rounds at the bars.”

  The arduous chores of taking care of her father and bailing Nicky out of trouble locked her fate in place at too young an age. Janey ended up marrying Luther Tully, a pot-bellied lug of marginal intelligence who managed to hold a regular job at the lumber yard in town. Luther hated to bathe as much as he hated to shave. They had a couple of snot-nosed little delinquents running around town: Eli and Willis. Jake couldn’t tell his nephews apart since he’d only seen their pictures from Janey’s sporadic Christmas cards. Though Janey could’ve done better than Luther, she also could’ve done worse.

  Janey used to be pretty. Not like she would ever grace the cover of Cosmo, but she was a natural beauty. Straight, white teeth and bouncy natural, red curls that compressed and released with every stride like dozens of little springs. In the wee small hours in his Kansas City apartment when he lay in bed counting the headlights from passing cars flashing across the bedroom wall, his thoughts would drift to her. The guilt of leaving his little sister behind with Stony lay across him like a suffocating blanket he couldn’t shrug off.