The Men I Sent Forward (Baer Creighton Book 6) Read online

  The Men I Sent Forward

  Clayton Lindemuth

  THE MEN I SENT FORWARD

  Clayton Lindemuth

  Hardgrave Enterprises

  SAINT CHARLES, MISSOURI

  Copyright © 2020 by Clayton Lindemuth.

  Published by Hardgrave Enterprises and Clayton Lindemuth.

  Clayton Lindemuth asserts his moral rights as author of THE MEN I SENT FORWARD

  .

  Edited By Gail Lambert and Chrystal Wilkins

  Cover By Didi Wahyudi

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at [email protected]. Nah, just kidding. Send it to Clayton.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  THE MEN I SENT FORWARD/Clayton Lindemuth

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Folks I Appreciate:

  Mags Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chicago Mags

  Chapter 23

  Chicago Mags

  Chapter 24

  Chicago Mags

  Chapter 25

  Chicago Mags

  Chapter 26

  Chicago Mags

  Chapter 27

  Chicago Mags

  Chapter 28

  Chicago Mags

  Chapter 29

  Chicago Mags

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue 1

  Epilogue 2

  Two Things…

  About the Author

  I would like to thank the following people for their enthusiastic help and wisdom. This book is vastly better because of their ideas and efforts. All errors are mine.

  STORY:

  Victor Shultz

  Dubhghlas Kraus

  EDITING:

  Gail Lambert

  Chrystal Wilkins

  LAW ENFORCEMENT/WEAPONS FACTS:

  Jerry Hanford

  For Georgena Lindemuth. Can’t wait to see you on the other side, Ma. But I will.

  “You see, the problem with materialism is that nothing real is material.”

  —Chicago Mags

  Chapter One

  Corazon sat on the commode lid and leaned against the tank. She turned off her cell phone and shifted her gaze to the linoleum floor. It was clean. The bathroom reeked of bleach.

  The motel where Baer Creighton left her and her sister Tathiana was an improvement over sleeping in a garage. The beds were better than cardboard on top of cement and the fireplace was pleasant.

  But after reading on the Internet that regular bleach leaves traces of DNA in blood stains, while oxy bleach does not, Corazon re-soaked her clothes and knife. Everything had been dry for hours but the smell lingered.

  Earlier she’d tried to relax in the hot tub with Tat. The sisters wore bras and panties but Corazon hadn’t felt comfortable. It wasn’t shame or fear of how others saw her. No matter how she perceived her body men and sometimes women wanted it. Instead, being in the hot tub under the stars, where motel guests walking to their rooms could look from the sidewalk and see her naked shoulders barely submerged… it felt like flaunting vulnerability.

  Corazon was not vulnerable. Nor was Tat. Each concealed her weapon of choice within arm’s reach.

  In tactical situations the sisters wore their weapons on their belts. But for times when they weren’t hunting they’d bought bags at a Navajo gift store outside Flagstaff, Arizona, not caring about how much makeup or pads each bag could hold, only how easily it would both conceal and yield a weapon. Tat carried a Sig Sauer P220 Elite .45, which she cooed at and stroked like an infant needing love. One time after Tat cleaned the pistol she stretched out on the recliner with it on her belly. Corazon shifted the Sig to Tat’s breast to suckle.

  Corazon also had a child — not one that she loved so much as put to work: a Microtech Navy Seal Scarab. She’d discovered it at a near-deserted pawn shop in Tuba City, Arizona. It looked cool and though she thought the shop owner was a thief, she’d asked Baer for the cash and he’d given her the hundred fifty dollars.

  Later she looked up the Scarab on her cell phone and discovered it was worth three to five times as much, depending on who was selling. Hers was the anodized model, built to withstand perpetual exposure to water. The three inch blade launched instantly out the front with the a press of the button on the side. She discovered one of the knife’s most endearing features while practicing with it one evening. The blade’s firing mechanism was illuminated with a tritium insert.

  Now, back inside their tiny suite, dressed and prepping in the bathroom for a wild night out, Corazon lifted a small spiral notebook from where she’d rested it on the sink.

  Her process since departing Flagstaff was simple. First she located a wealthy part of town on her cell phone using a real estate website: Bluff, Moab and Thompson Springs in Utah; Grand Junction and now Glenwood Springs in Colorado. Homes with high sales prices always clustered together. She scribbled the address of a property close to the center of the group, then entered the address into the search field on the government look-up-your-pedophile-neighbor website, with results limited to a one-mile radius. The website returned a list of sex offenders with addresses and photos.

  Some were young, some middle aged and some old.

  In her fifteen years Corazon had been penetrated by dozens of men. Most occurred in Salt Lake City during her abduction by Wayman Graves, who drugged her and sold domain over her body in one-hour increments. Freed by her sister, Tat, and journeyman badass Nat Cinder, who were set in motion by the wandering — what do you call him? — prophet, shaman, madman, murderer — Baer Creighton, Corazon next hid in an underground end-of-the-world shelter where she spent six months learning how to speak English like a native and how to exterminate pedophiles.

  Even after having experienced life as a sex trafficking victim — the daily drugging and being raped so often her resistance became less about sex and more about pain management and control of her body — Corazon saw only a sliver of the equation. That view expanded while she wintered in the mountain lair with Baer and Tat. The federal government and many states published websites with searchable lists of sex crime convicts, and these websites painted the rest of the picture for Corazon. She would have never guessed how many pedophiles surrounded her at any given moment. It seemed they were everywhere. She wanted to shrink and look over her shoulder. While some of the men’s photos suggested they were young, wild and probably made an innocent mi
stake fooling with a girl barely illegal, the vast majority were frightening specimens and Corazon surmised from their images that sex with them by any female on the planet, — regardless of her age — in any context — could only be forced.

  Remembering the men who paid Wayman Graves to experience making her weep, Corazon saw patterns. Regardless of race, they all had sallow skin. They were well groomed and smelled good. The last time she walked into a wall of strong aftershave — in a gas station — she grew sick to her stomach and her chest constricted. She hurried about the aisles until she found the cologned offender. He was young and muscled like a boot lace and Corazon’s anxiety receded. The men who abused her were always older. They wore suits and their shoes gleamed. When they bared their chests their skin hung.

  They were outwardly, but not inwardly, serious.

  They shined their shoes but didn’t do sit-ups.

  They wore watches that cost thousands of dollars but forgot the mouthwash.

  They were serious about appearing, but not about being: a nebulous concept Corazon wouldn’t have been able to articulate. She simply knew how to identify men whose worldview told them it was okay for them to compel others to have sex with them. To take a drugged child’s lack of fight as consent… she couldn’t think very deeply before anger derailed her.

  While scrolling the government pedo website, Corazon always found at least one man whose face easily substituted in her mind’s eye for one of the demons from Salt Lake City.

  She killed her first in Bluff, Utah and her second and third in Moab and Thompson Springs.

  Life was suddenly exciting and purposeful. Maybe if she exercised great care, she’d be able to murder them all.

  Corazon wrote an address and a name from the pedo site: Chester DeChurch. Tough break about the name. Regardless, Chester had the look. Although Corazon would provide him an opportunity to save his life, from his eyes she knew DeChurch would fail.

  She pulled a zip lock from her pocket, dropped in her cell phone and filled the baggie with sink water, sealed it and placed it on the floor.

  Corazon isolated each part of her process. Any reasonable home buyer might search for both new homes and pedophiles in an area they were considering purchasing, so she was comfortable assuming that performing both tasks from the same cell phone would not flag her for special attention. After her first two killings, she’d decided to search for local high schools as an added camouflage. After that her cell phone’s mission was complete. If she retained the mobile phone, or used the same device to research multiple killings, or worse, carried the phone on her person to each slaying, eventually the people who ran the world from behind their computer screens would catch on. They’d track her with the phone and be waiting for her.

  Corazon killed as many cell phones as men.

  She opened a giant Rand McNally map book and flipped to the page with the correct grid. She searched the street listing, found her location at the motel, then Chester DeChurch’s address. She pulled an orange highlighter from her pocket and traced a route, then ripped the page from the map book.

  Corazon stood with her eyes closed, remembering the layout of the motel, the parking lot, the street and the interstate highway. She imagined the map and the correct orientation, then opened her eyes. Outside the motel door she would turn right, then right, then left and on the road left again.

  She folded the torn page, tucked it in her pocket and exited the bathroom.

  Tat rested under bed covers with Stinky Joe curled at her feet. She’d bunched pillows to the headboard and was watching the fire. She turned her head toward Corazon.

  “Again?”

  Corazon nodded.

  “Want help?”

  Corazon shrugged.

  Tat threw back the top blanket — she hadn’t been between the sheets — and dropped her booted feet to the floor. She wore the black outfit given to her by Nat Cinder, the very clothes she wore when she had rescued Corazon. Tat pulled her Sig from her hip holster, held it aloft and made a face.

  Corazon strode to the door and turned. “You can come.”

  Tat grabbed her coat, dragged her hand across Stinky Joe’s head and kissed him on the nose.

  “You have to pee?”

  Stinky Joe stared.

  “Time to poop?”

  Stinky Joe sighed. Curled.

  “You haven’t pooped since this morning.” She looked at Corazon. “Do you think he has to poop?”

  “He said no.”

  Tat reached into her coat. “Aren’t you going to wear anything more?”

  “We’re running.”

  “How far?”

  “Six kilometers. Do you have the room key?”

  Tat patted her pants pocket. “Got it.”

  Corazon knelt at the door and retied her boot laces. “You should leave the key outside where either of us can use it. In case we get separated.”

  So far she had not experienced any close situations with law enforcement, but she knew if she continued her path, encounters would be inevitable.

  Corazon exited the motel room and Tat followed. Corazon looked around, heard a giggle from the direction of the hot tub and a low-toned voice. The hedge row blocked her line of sight. Corazon nodded and Tat tucked the plastic room key under the door mat.

  Corazon led. They jogged along the access road parallel to Interstate 70. She turned at an intersection and removed from her pocket the plastic baggie containing water and the cell phone. She opened the bag and dumped the mobile into a runoff drain.

  Navigating from memory, Corazon stopped a short distance from a street light and opened the map so her shadow hid all but the section she consulted. She turned the map and looked up the street and back.

  “Let’s go.”

  She folded the map as she jogged, taking in every light, every motion, every sound. Aside from a rare car on an adjacent street, they were alone. The evening was late and most of the houses with lights on were dark downstairs.

  That was okay. She’d wake Chester DeChurch if necessary. He’d be thrilled, until he wasn’t.

  She stopped at the last turn and after a moment, Tat stood beside her.

  “It’s up there. Third.”

  Corazon unzipped her jacket and pulled a travel-size plastic bottle intended for shampoo from her pocket. She unscrewed the cap and dumped the contents — Wild Turkey whiskey stolen from Baer Creighton — into her mouth. She swished the alcohol until it numbed, then spat it to her hands. She splashed the Turkey on her face, hair and top.

  She said, “I don’t know how he drinks it.”

  “If you swallowed it you would know.”

  Corazon knelt at the edge of the sidewalk and jammed her fingers through melting snow to the soft ground beneath. She curled her fingers, withdrew a clump and wiped mud across her cheek, getting some in her hair. She dropped and ground her knees through the snow until the cold numbed her skin, then standing, wiped mud on her elbow.

  “When he comes to the door, run past so he sees you.”

  Tat said, “And then?”

  “Wait behind his house. Ten minutes.”

  “And then?”

  “I’ll be out.”

  Tat shook her head. “I don’t — ”

  Corazon sprinted a diagonal path across three snowy lawns and slammed into DeChurch’s house. A dog yipped inside. Corazon knuckled the side window then raced to the front. She bounded across a wood porch and beat the door with the sides of her fists.

  “Please! Help!” Corazon pounded the door. “Please!”

  The door opened. “What’s this? Who — ”

  Corazon looked back to the lawn as a dark figure ran halfway across the lawn and stood, pistol in hand.

  “Oh God! Help me! Please!”

  The figure slowly pointed the pistol toward them.

  “Oh shit! Get in!”

  DeChurch grabbed Corazon’s shoulder and dragged her inside. The figure on the lawn bolted. DeChurch slammed the door and locked it.


  His voice conveyed surprise and fear but his hands were steady on the deadbolt.

  DeChurch’s face was normal size, but it rested atop a body of such size Corazon wondered a moment if she’d best back away.

  But…

  Life was in or out and required volition. She had to engage on one side or the other. She was either for child rape or against it. And just as there was no middle ground between evil and good, there was no way for her to know how to do something good and not do it. Maybe experiencing rape made her an absolutist, but the only result that mattered was whether there was a girl out there who would have a normal life because she wouldn’t be raped… because the man who would have done it showed his true self to a girl who said no more with a sharper edge than the women before her.

  Would Corazon’s action right now save a girl or not?

  She’d stay a minute and get a deeper sense of the situation. A large man wasn’t necessarily tough, wily, or especially dangerous and she’d already learned a million ways to use a man’s size against him. More size meant more to use to her advantage.

  It seemed like something Baer would say.

  DeChurch stepped into another room and jerked open a desk drawer. The dog that had been yipping trotted down the hallway and turned around and came back. A little nuisance pet, it pranced to Corazon’s feet and began yipping again.