The Mundane Work of Vengeance (Baer Creighton Book 2) Page 2
I wrestle the couch and on my feet, stoop low as old bones allow. Scoot to the kitchen. “They’s someone outside. Probly lookin’ me.”
Shit, they’s dead people everywhere … in the trees by now.
Boots on the steps. Two sets. The porch. Rapping at the door.
I got Mae’s forty-five in one hand and put Smith in the other.
Mae’s eyes bug wide.
Beating on the door.
Two hour ago I stood in the wood, death all around; saw the dreamland men strung up in trees, flopping on the ground, spitting and gasping, blind and going dead. I wanted free of it forever. Wanted to disappear from all mankind’s lying and treacherous ways. But the two archangels from the FBI musta had second thoughts.
“Mae, I done enough killin’ for one day and maybe two. So if you can get them to clear out with just your words that’d be fine as water.”
Mae blinks herself coherent. Nods. I lean agin the wall, rest my skull back comfortable. Got a broke down hutch to my right, and beyond, the kitchen entrance. I don’t get seen ’less they come inside the kitchen. That happens, I got the drop.
“Who’s there?” Mae says, door still closed.
“Open the door. FBI.”
“How do I know?”
“We have our ID’s out.”
“I can’t see ’em.”
“Open the door.”
“Yeah, right.”
Mae flips on the porch light and in the kitchen stands at an angle to the window. She pads back to the door. The handle clicks and the hinges croak.
“Let me see. Put them up close. And I got a gun pointed at you through the door.”
Bootsteps on the porch. They move apart, most likely.
“Miss, we’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the truck in your driveway belongs to a homicide suspect. He’s armed and dangerous. Let us in.”
“No.”
“Ma’am, we have probable cause to enter the house.”
“No you don’t. Just ’cause some asshole parks his truck out there don’t mean you can come in here. ’Sides. That’s Baer’s truck. He’s in town drinking.”
That’s right Mae, come clean. They’ll bite.
“Ever since Joe Stipe burned his house and still, Baer drinks in town. He’s down at the Town Pump, most likely.”
“Still, we’d like to check the house.”
“Fact is, he’s about worthless and you ought to haul his ass in. You know that old pervert tried to kiss me? My own uncle. Lock his ass up, is what I say. I got babies around.”
“Ma’am, step aside.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I got babies upstairs. And you need a warrant.”
“Ma’am, the suspect’s truck is in your driveway. That satisfies for exigent circumstances. Let us in. We do a quick sweep, and we’re on our way to the Town Pump.”
“No.” The door clicks.
I could slip out the back but the bigger problem is the truck in the driveway and two buckets of gold they’ll see soon as they look. They’ll grab my life’s work, truck, and dog, and I’ll be sneaking McDonalds dumpsters for food.
No I wouldn’t, but it’s the principle.
Got to meet these two head on. I don’t want to. But the problem with killing one guy is he ends up being two, and sooner or later thirty. Then the lawmen they send after. It never ends. I don’t want these men’s souls on my conscience. Near as I can tell, they ain’t pure evil like the others. But it’s looking like I die, they die, or I go to jail, and out of three shitty choices, only one preserves me, my dog and my truck.
Everyman’s troubles is a country music song.
Fact is, they could have this place swimming in red and blues in ten minute if they call the Gleason police. My choices slip from slim to none at that point.
Mae returns to the kitchen window. She whispers, “They’re talking to themselves. What do I do?”
“I’s gonna slip down the basement and unscrew the bulb. You open the door ’fore they bust in. Then get ’em down to the Town Pump.”
Walking easy on the sides of my feet, rolling slow, I make it to the downstairs door at the stairwell. Reach to the switch but think better. They’s a twelve-inch window top of the foundation. I descend the steps in the dark, feeling along, next the stone foundation where they’s less likely to creak. At the cement floor, I probe out one toe at a time, arms waving, blind, trying to recollect what shit Mae’s got piled in my way.
Footsteps above. Shoes with heels. Voices.
I reach up, find the joists, follow to the center I-beam, then toward the basement middle. I keep one leg out, probing, and one arm above my head till I find the bulb. Twist till it’s about to fall, then wait. Pull Smith and rest my thumb on the hammer, sort of stroke it while my mind wanders on about Ruth and Mae.
And all them bodies in the dream, hanging from trees, and how maybe it’s right and just that these FBI boys haul me in and bring me to account for the murder I done. Should I give myself up? Has my whole life been upside down, and it’s me the crazy one, and all the world’s lying and stealing from one another is the way things is supposed to be?
But I can’t get my brain around the thought these people’s rules have shit to do with me.
Nah. I’s not gonna rot in a jail so these liars and thieves can pretend to other liars and thieves they’s all good and righteous. I don’t enjoy shooting a deer or even throttling a chicken, ’less I’s hungry. But I do it to eat, when I gotta. These people think they make a fella subscribe to their bullshit and bluster ’cause they give theyselves a badge?
Fuck that, too. Righteous man has no friends and needs fewer.
I’ll kill what need killed.
Worked up for whatever come, I reach, find the bulb. Twist it back in. FBI come down here, I’ll take out they legs, then heads as they fall.
Boards groan above my head. One lawman’s in the kitchen and the other’s at the stairwell to the kids’ rooms upstairs. Basement door swings open and a shaft of light gives the lay of where I stand. I glide five steps to cover behind the oil tank, but Smith is in my right hand and it’s agin the wall with the oil tank in front. I ain’t worth a shit shooting lefty. I’d a been better in the middle the basement with some flexibility. But I’s here, so I wait.
One step. His leg rests, like he put it out to prompt a bullet. Then alla sudden the light flashes on and he’s descended six steps and he’s got his gun arm level and pistol ready to preach. He swings his arm back and forth so whatever he sees he’s already got a bead on it, but the basement light is a yellow forty-watter and his eyes squint. I could ease Smith over the oil tank and drop him if I wanted.
My nuts roll over and my stomach cinches. I don’t breathe while he looks left and right. His partner calls from somewhere above. He lowers his arm and climbs the stairs.
Chapter 5
Josiah Swain was ten when his parents died in a car accident in 1980.
Before they died, Josiah had a nightmare ... or a daymare, since he hadn’t been asleep. He knew his parents would die. Not in an abstract, someday sense, but a literal, near sense. Their fates were cast; his knowledge was certain, malleable like air, filling any mental void it found. The darkness of the thought corrupted anything that entered his awareness. Everywhere he looked, he felt his parents’ death.
Shortly after, as he walked to school, Josiah discovered a compulsion. A remedy to the certainty of his parent’s impending doom. The words: IF YOU TOUCH THIS SIGN, YOUR PARENTS WILL LIVE.
Even at ten years of age, Josiah knew his mind lied; the world didn’t work that way. He’d heard about people who moved objects with their thoughts, like in the horror movies on television when he snuck downstairs after midnight. He’d tried to move objects with his mind, and it didn’t work.
IF YOU TOUCH THIS SIGN, YOUR PARENTS WILL LIVE.
He stared at the yield sign he passed every day on the route to and from school. He hadn’t realized he had passed the intersection and walked ano
ther thirty feet, before being pulled back. As if whatever mysterious force informed on his parent’s demise also guided his steps, twisted him, lifted his head and whispered the words in his thoughts.
Josiah stepped toward the sign and stretched out his arm. Unfurled his finger.
But he didn’t close the final inch.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
Josiah put down his arm.
Grounded by his failed experiments with telekinesis, Josiah possessed an instinctive self-awareness that rejected the metaphysical power of his thoughts.
Though he would have failed to articulate it, Josiah sensed thoughts cause people to do things, but they do not cause things to do things.
His parents both dying—it was a vagrant thought, searching for an agent with the power to shift stones or light fires. He could reject it.
That afternoon, returning from school, Josiah saw the sign a quarter mile away and remembered his parents would die if he didn’t touch it. He walked past. Didn’t look up to read it, didn’t heed its warning.
The next day…
IF YOU TOUCH THIS SIGN, YOUR PARENTS WILL LIVE.
He continued to school.
On the walk home, Josiah was less certain. The idea was persistent. Several times during school, he’d revisited the magical connection between his failing to touch the sign and his parents dying. Had even been reprimanded for daydreaming. When he saw the sign a long way off, his steps slowed. He considered crossing the road.
Arriving at the sign, he stopped and stared up at it.
YEILD.
His mother had said it was a complicated way of saying STOP. More like, STOP AND LET OTHER PEOPLE GO FIRST.
The sign demanded politeness.
“Want a ride the rest of the way, son?”
Josiah spun, startled. It was his father, pulled to the side of the road.
“Sure!”
Josiah opened the back door.
“No, up front. Your mother’s not here. Sit next to me.”
“Whoa. Cool.”
Josiah sat with his bookbag on his lap. It was only another quarter mile home, but it was with Dad.
“How come you’re early?”
“I had an appointment near the house, and I’ve made my quota of sales for the week, so I’m coming home to surprise your mother.”
“Surprise her with what?”
“With me! We’re going on a date tonight. Sally will be over to look after you and your cousin Mary.”
“Mary?”
“We’re going out with Uncle Ernest and Aunt Emma. Going to see a movie.”
“Which movie?”
“It’s called Any Which Way You Can.”
“Why don’t you take us?”
“Because you’re too young.”
“Why don’t they make it so young people can see it?”
“Because young people don’t have any money.”
“Why can’t young people—”
“Josiah.”
“What?”
“Why were you staring at the sign when I pulled up? You didn’t even hear me. That’s dangerous.”
“I didn’t mean to be dangerous.”
“Why were you staring up at the sign?”
“Because the sign told me I had to touch it.”
“What?”
Josiah hesitated. “I thought if I didn’t touch the sign, you and Mom would die.”
“Oh, I see.” Dad pulled into the driveway. Turned off the engine and pulled the parking break out of habit—to keep it exercised, he once said. “What gave you that idea?”
“I don’t know. I just thought it.”
“Is this the first time you’ve had this thought?”
“No.”
“When did you first have it?”
“Yesterday.”
“Did you touch the sign?”
“No. I was going to but I didn’t. It didn’t make any sense. But I kept thinking about it all day.”
“Did you touch the sign today?”
“No.”
“Josiah.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“And your mother and I are okay, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Does that teach you anything about those kinds of thoughts?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s right. Next time something doesn’t make sense, but you think someone might be in danger, tell me about it, okay?”
“Okay.”
“But don’t worry about your mother and me. We’re not going to die. Not anytime soon.”
Later, after supper and before his mother and father left for their date, Josiah’s father sat beside him on the sofa. He lifted the Zenith’s remote and muted Happy Days.
“Son, I want to have a talk with you. A serious talk.”
“Okay.”
“Stop looking at the television.”
Josiah looked at his father.
“Nothing is going to happen to your mother and me.”
“I know.”
“But if something did happen to us, I want you to know that you’ll be okay. Do you know what I do for a living? Where I go all day at work?”
“Your new job?”
“That’s right.”
“You sell stuff.”
“I sell life insurance.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you know what that is?”
Josiah shook his head, no.
“Life insurance is money. If someone dies and they own life insurance, the life insurance pays the people who depend on the person who died. So if I died, your mother would get a lot of money. A lot of money, and she’d be able to take care of herself and you, just like I was still here.”
“How much money?”
“Five hundred thousand dollars.”
“Whoa.”
“That’s right. It sounds like a huge amount. But it would have to last the rest of her life, so she could take care of you.”
“But what if you both die?”
“Well, in that case, the money would go to Uncle Ernest, and you’d go live with him.”
“I don’t like Uncle Ernest.”
“Well, you don’t know him like I do. At any rate, I wanted you to know everything would be okay. That’s all. Nothing more to think about.”
“Okay.”
His father handed him the remote and Josiah restored sound to Arthur Fonzarelli.
That night, driving home after the movie, Josiah’s father and mother were killed. A man swerved his F-150 truck into the oncoming lane, throwing Josiah’s mother and father through the windshield. Neither were alive when first responders arrived.
Most people who suffer odd compulsions never have them verified by the future. The compulsions are forced to adapt.
For Josiah, the opposite occurred. His parents died, confirming the compulsion. The episode ended there. He had no special clairvoyance. The premonition didn’t transform into another premonition about the next to die. After moving in with Ernest and Emma Swain, he no longer walked by the sign, and in the tumult of his rapidly changing life, was never at a loss of other things to think.
By uncanny coincidence, Ernest Swain was not surprised by his brother’s death.
“You know,” he’d said to his brother Norman, days before the accident, “I’ve read those rice burners get horrible safety ratings—especially for head on crashes. There’s no metal there.”
“Too bad they wrote the article after I bought the car.”
“So you won’t be getting rid of it?”
“How can I? Oh, by the way. I wanted to talk to you about life insurance.”
“Not in the budget.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I was talking about mine.”
“Yeah?”
“I made you my contingent beneficiary. In case something happens to me and Sue. I should have asked you first.”
“No, no. I’m happy taking your money.”
Norman laughed. “Sure. What
I meant was the money’s to take care of Josiah. If anything happens to both of us, Sue and I want you to take Josiah and raise him right, you know? Would you do that?”
“Yeah, of course, brother. Of course. Just like he was my own son. Hell of a kid.”
“It’s just until he’s eighteen. After that, I’ll change the beneficiary to him. You know.”
“Yeah, sure.” Ernest was thoughtful. “You don’t mind me asking, how much is the policy? I mean, you got me thinking about how much life insurance I have, and I—”
“A half million.”
“Holy shit.”
“Well, you have to think about how much income your family will miss if you aren’t there to make it.”
The conversation devolved into the mechanics of life insurance.
After Norman and Sue died, Ernest stepped up. Josiah moved into the spare room and made it his own. He attended church with Ernest and Emma, who insisted on her Pentecostal denomination.
Ernest used the money from his dead brother’s life insurance not to take care of Josiah, but in an ill-conceived attempt to bail out his failing savings and loan.
Years later, as a young man, Josiah wanted to understand how his inheritance could have been squandered. He took a job as a life insurance salesman and learned how to estimate the appropriate death benefit of a life insurance policy. It was called Human Economic Value—and the insurance company made sure he could explain it to a prospect on his first day on the job.
Just like his father.
But when Josiah made his first and only sale before quitting, filling out the form, he found he had no idea how to answer the applicant’s question about how to name an appropriate beneficiary.
Just like his father.
Chapter 6
Mae’s at the window. I’s hunkered at the stairwell, bottom of the door, cracked open an inch.
“They gone?”
“One of them left. The other’s in a car next to your truck. I think he’s waiting to see if you come back for it.”
Time for a jailbreak.
I drop back, turn on the basement light. Take the steps sidey-footed at an old man run. Downstairs, fetch a fifty-foot extension cord I saw when the archangel flipped on the light.
Back upstairs. “Mae, we got but one shot to make a break for it. Right now, while his partner’s away. I want you to go out there—hold on.” I grab a mug, fill it to the rim with water, and sit it on a saucer. “Carry this to him. Once you get to the window, play a little coy.”