The jogger stood up and wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. He looked around, didn’t see anybody. “What the hell are you talkin’ about? That’s not funny.”
That’s when Bones took his rifle by the barrel with both hands and swung the butt as hard as he could. The brutal blow struck the man in his left thigh. Punk could hear the bone snap from where he was still hidden in weeds, and then the man screamed so shrill and awful and loud that Punk cringed and looked away as Bones’s victim collapsed on the pavement.
“Shut up, shut up!” Bones was screaming at the wailing, writhing jogger.
Punk looked around, but nobody was coming. The whole stretch of road was deserted, just like usual. Afraid to move, he stayed right where he was and watched Bones stuff his camo neck scarf in the man’s mouth and then drag him down into the thick undergrowth in the shade of some big oak trees. Punk wasn’t sure what he should do. He looked around some more, and then he slowly made his way through the weeds and bushes to where Bones had deposited his moaning victim. The man was holding his broken leg and trying to get up, but then suddenly, Bones raised up his weapon very high and brought the butt down hard right on the bridge of the man’s nose. After that, the jogger didn’t move a muscle. Blood pumped out of his nose and the gash above his eyes and ran down over his ears and made a red pool under his head.
“Bones, c’mon, stop this right now, you actin’ like some kinda crazy person. Let’s just get outta here before somebody shows up and sees us.”
“No way, bro, too late. He’s done seen me now. Want him to identify us? Huh? That what you got in mind, smart guy?”
“I’m gettin’ outta here. You do whatever you want with him.”
“Okay, then. I’m gonna take my good sweet time and I’m gonna break every single bone in his body. Even those little bitty ones in his ears, you know that one that looks like an anvil. I forget what the others are called. I never gotta chance to do that before. You do-gooders always wanna drag me off and make me stop. You hear me, Punk? I’m gonna snap ’em and pop ’em and hear them crack and crunch and break him all apart. Just like we do to them chickens and rabbits and that deer we trapped in that mud pit. Maybe some of this guy’s bones’ll even come out of the skin. I like that, when I can see my handiwork. But not to worry, bro, then I’m gonna kill him the rest of the way and bury him out at that mine shaft where nobody ain’t never gonna find him.”
“Are you crazy, Bones? What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Maybe, but know what? I like bein’ crazy. I like the way it feels on me.” He stared at Punk, grinning in a way that Punk had never seen before, his eyes all glassy and dark and focused. “Remember, I’m the Bone Breaker, just like Pa named me. I’m supposed to break bones. I live for it, and know what? I love it. The more broken bones the merrier, that’s my new motto.”
Punk could only stare at him. “This’s murder. You’re gonna murder this guy.”
“That’s okay. Nobody’s ever gonna know, and nobody’s ever gonna find him. You know back there where the end of that shaft goes down forever. Nobody’s ever gonna find him if I drop him down there, no way. I already got some stuff hid in those shafts for us to use.”
“What stuff?”
“Bones and tools and stuff. You think this’s the first man I went out and killed?”
Punk couldn’t believe his ears. “I’m leavin’ right now, you sicko. I’m not puttin’ him anywhere. You’re on your own with this guy. I ain’t goin’ to jail for nobody. Not even you, Bones.”
“Yeah, go ahead, you little sissy punk. Who’s always been there for you when you was gettin’ your ass whupped on good, huh? Me, that’s who. How many times have I showed up when you got yourself in a jam and needed somebody to come in and beat some guy bloody? Tell me that, you ungrateful little shit. You never were nothin’ but a punkass coward.”
Punk felt a hot streak of guilt then, and some anger, too, but he knew that was exactly what Bones wanted him to feel. Bones had tried to shame Punk before when he wanted him to do something that he didn’t want to do by himself, but what Bones said was still true. If Bones wasn’t there to help him from now on, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. They were born together. How could he live without Bones around? So Punk just stood there and watched and said nothing else.
Then a look of triumph lit up his brother’s face. Bones bent down and picked up a heavy rock and brought it down hard on the jogger’s face. It hit him with the most horrible crunch, and Punk looked away. He couldn’t stand this kinda stuff. This wasn’t no kind of fair fight. This was just killing somebody because Bones wanted to. He said so.
“Just shut up, and quit whinin’ like some damn little girl. Wow, did you hear the sound that rock made? Talk about awesome, man. Never heard nothin’ quite like that.”
“You broke all the bones in that guy’s face, man. That’s not right. Something’s gotta be wrong with you.”
Bones stood up and leaned over the unconscious jogger. “Look at him, just layin’ there, all still and quiet and bloody and barely breathin’. He won’t even feel it when I break the rest of his bones. I shouldn’t’ve killed him so quick. There won’t be no groans or moans or beggin’ or nothin’ fun like that.”
“C’mon, let’s just get outta here.”
“I’m gonna break his fingers. All of ’em. One at a time. Just bend them back until they give.”
“Let’s go, Bones. You’ve done enough to him.” Punk didn’t wanna watch him do that, so he looked up at the tree limbs high above his head. But the fingers took awhile, and he heard each and every snap, and all too well. Ten little sharp cracks, and every one sounded downright awful to Punk. But the man didn’t move. Maybe he was already dead and couldn’t feel a thing. That was probably for the better if Bones really was going to break every bone in his body. He stood there, gazing into the distance, feeling slightly queasy, and tasting bile at the back of his throat as Bones whistled as he worked and methodically went about the business of breaking the bones in the guy’s thighs and then in his lower legs and feet. Then he did his arms and then his shoulders and back. It was sickening, and the cracking, popping sounds were just horrible. Punk felt like he was going to puke.
“Know what, Punk. I’ve wanted to do this for the longest time,” Bones said conversationally, now on his knees and panting a little from the exertion. He brought the rock down on the guy’s kneecap. “It’s my best fantasy, and lookee here, it’s all come true. And I love it.”
“You really are sick in the head, Bones. This ain’t normal. I don’t do stuff like this. Our brothers don’t neither. You probably oughta go somewhere and see one of those head doctors.”
“Yeah, I think I am crazy. Crazy as a loon, because I do really love this kinda work. I could do it all day every day!” Then he laughed out loud, a long, satisfied kind of gleeful happiness that echoed way up into the sky and that Punk had never heard before. “Wanna come see my secret burial grounds down on the riverbank? It’s in that little quarry with the high rock cliffs all around it. Nobody’s ever gonna find it. Wow, man, this’s the start of something grand, ain’t it? It can be our own little secret, our hobby when we’re not fightin’ in the cage. I feel like one of them gods of old, like I decide who lives and who dies. You can have that, too. Just come with me, Punk.”
At that, Punk had heard all he could take. He just turned around and took off running through the woods, rifle clutched in his right fist, leaping over stumps and bushes, scared of his twin brother and sickened by what he saw and afraid that Bones would do it to him someday. He didn’t look back, didn’t want to see anything else, didn’t want to see that crazy look on his crazy brother’s face again, neither. He just wanted to get away from Bones forever and forget the fear in that poor jogger’s eyes when he realized that Bones was going to smash in his face with that big rock. He wanted to forget this day and everything that had happened.
Punk didn’t tell Pa or any of his other brothers anything about what Bones had done. But they all saw the TV news reports that search parties were out looking for that jogger who had simply disappeared into thin air. His name had been Tony Gabriel and he’d had a wife and three little kids, one boy and two girls. His wife was real pretty and blond and was crying really hard when she was on camera and talking about him not coming home that day. Man, it was a really hard thing to watch, and all that.
After that day, though, Punk kept his distance from Bones, too, and told him to stay away from him, and that he didn’t want to hang around with him for a while, not until Bones got his head on straight. Instead, he spent his time alone, hunting squirrels and rabbits and waiting for the pretty girl in the pink-and-white dress to come back. She finally did, and he couldn’t wait to climb over that fence and hightail it down there to talk to her again.
“Hello,” she said, looking all soft and sweet, and this time wearing a pale blue dress that matched her very, very pale blue eyes.
“Hello. I’ve been waitin’ for you every day for a month. Where you been at?”
“I was afraid I’d get in trouble. We aren’t supposed to be alone with strange boys much. Especially the boys in your family.”
“I ain’t strange.”
But Bones is,
he thought,
Bones is very, very strange
. He glanced up the hill at their property fence, just to make sure Bones wasn’t creeping around and watching where Punk went and what he did. Bones liked to do that kinda thing, too. Both of them used to do it with their other brothers. Spy on them, and stuff.
“No, you are not. I like you. That’s why I’m here again. And I brought you that pie I made.”
“That’s real nice of you. How about us takin’ a walk over thataway?”
“Okay,” she said.
Punk guided her along through some low-hanging branches of the apple trees where nobody could see them, even if they had binoculars, especially Bones. Hell, he was probably off killing somebody else, knowing him. Finally, they sat down together on a fallen log and smiled at each other.
“You ever kissed a girl?” she asked him suddenly, and then got all shy and blushing and wouldn’t even look at him anymore.
“Uh-uh. You?”
“Me? Kissed a girl? I don’t think so.” She laughed and he did, too.
“Think I could kiss you a little bit? You know, let us see what it’s like and if we like it and stuff?” Punk said, encouraged that she’d brought it up.
“I guess so. What do you do, just put your lips on mine and press down?”
Punk said, “Yeah, that’s what they do on
The Bold and the Beautiful
.”
“What’s
The Bold and the Beautiful
?”
“It’s a soap opera where there’s lots of kissin’ and sex and dumb people actin’ silly. We watch it sometimes when we’re eatin’ lunch. They got a lot of money and free time to talk and not have to work, and stuff like that.”
She laughed at that, but then she put her face up very close to his, and closed her eyes. Punk put his mouth on hers, real slow and easylike. She tasted so sweet and her lips were so damn soft that he felt all giddy inside and wanted to lick her so bad he could hardly stop himself. He moved his lips around on hers the way he’d seen Brooke Logan do it with all the guys on that show, and he felt her slide her arms up around his neck. So he put his arms around her waist and pulled her in closer until she was clamped against his chest. It all felt pretty damned wonderful to him, and now he could see why they did it so much on all those TV shows.
Then she pulled back and kind of pushed him away, but not real hard.
“You like that?” he asked her, his voice downright husky now. It wasn’t that way before he put his mouth on hers, but it sure was now.
“Yeah, I sure did. You taste pretty good.”
He felt thrilled when she said that. “Want to do it some more?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
So they did it lots more until they finally ended up down on the ground with him on top of her and trying to get inside her blouse like all those guys did to Brooke and the other ladies on that show. She stopped him from doing that, though, and right off the bat, too.
“Now you stop that right now, you hear me, or I’m goin’ on home.”
So he stopped that right now, but he sure didn’t want to. He wanted to feel her body all over and see what it tasted like. “I think I know how to make love to you. How about us doing that someday? You know, when you’re ready and want me to.”
“Maybe. But Mama says I’m not supposed to let a boy touch me like that until I get married.”
He thought about that for a little while. “I guess we could go ahead and get married if you want to. I think that sounds good. Then we could just do this all the time.”
She giggled. “Now you’re just bein’ silly. Let’s kiss some more. We’re way too young to get married yet.”
“Glad to oblige,” he told her. “Can I lick you a little, too?”
“Do it, and I’ll see if I like it, okay?”
So he licked her mouth and cheeks and swiped his tongue into her ear, and she shivered all over and said, “Yes, you can do that all you want to. It feels real good to me.”
After that, they met nearly every day unless it was raining. He’d watch for her on rainy days, too, but she never came when it was bad weather outside. But on nice days she always walked up to the orchard, and they talked and kissed and licked each other, and then kissed some more, but that’s all she’d let him do until they were old enough to get married. So right then and there, he decided that she was the girl for him, and that he was gonna marry this pretty girl who always smelled so good, and the sooner, the better.
Chapter Eleven
When Sonny Randazzo had asked her to follow him, Claire had glanced over at Black where he was reluctantly hobnobbing with his lowlife criminal acquaintances, and then she had followed the skeezy fight promoter through the crowds to the locker rooms. He had said that four of his fighters were ready to talk to her, and she figured Black wouldn’t just up and take off without her. Not with Petrov and his goons around. She certainly wasn’t going to go over there and get him. Not when he was getting cozy with a Mafioso and his minions in an arena full of screaming people. He had asked her not to, and now that Dazz had shown up, Claire had interviews to conduct.
Eventually they reached a black steel door where a huge guy with a broken-many-many-times nose, a bunch of white scars on his face, and a belligerent attitude stood guard. They stopped there beside him, awaiting admittance to the dressing rooms, and said idiot looked Claire up and down with enough lewdness to insult a skid row harlot. He had on a black plastic security nameplate that identified him as Roderick Lawson. “Got to frisk you if you goin’ in there, sweet lips. How about leanin’ up against that wall right there and spreading your legs real far apart? Don’t you worry none, I’m a gonna make it fun for you.”
Claire ground her teeth rather ruthlessly, but she remained decidedly polite. She lifted up her badge and held it in front of his squinty dark eyes. “Put your hands on the wall, asshole. And don’t you worry none, I’m a
not
gonna make it fun for you.”
“You a cop? Shit.”
“Yeah, exactly. Now get up against that wall.”
He did, and she patted him down and found a .38 revolver and a rather large bowie knife at the small of his back under his big tripleX T-shirt, the one with Mike Tyson’s picture on the front, replete with the fancy facial tats. Actually, the knife was in a pretty cool tan suede fringed scabbard. Maybe she ought to confiscate it. “You got a license for this firearm, sir.”
“Yes, ma’am. But it’s at home.”
“Well, you better run along home and get it. You’ll get this back when I see it with my own two little official eyes. Knife, too. If I don’t see it, I’ll just have the St. Louis PD pay you a call. Got that,
sweet lips
?”
Sonny Randazzo said, “Now, let’s all just try to get along. No need for all this nasty kinda talk.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Claire told the big guy. “You’re not a good role model for the kids who fight here.”
Huge Thug attempted a tough look. “You better watch yourself. Someday you gonna run up against the wrong fella.”
“Oh, is that right? Well, tell me, are you the wrong fella?”
Then he had enough sense to drop his eyes and the bravado and slink off through the crowd. Claire took a minute to unload the guy’s weapon and stick it in her waistband at the small of her back. She put the knife in her coat pocket. Extra lethal weapons always came in handy.
“Thanks for scarin’ off our security guard.”
“Maybe it’s time to get a new security guard, Dazz. Maybe an off-duty police officer with some couth. Your guy’s a real sleazebag who obviously gets off molesting women.”
Inside the heavy steel door, there was a long white-tiled hallway and the distinct odor of rampaging-young-male-fighter testosterone. Randazzo turned to the left, and Claire followed him past three closed doors. The wide corridor also smelled like co-mingled sweat and damp showers and disinfectant and the aforementioned potent male hormone. When they reached a door that stood wide open, Randazzo walked right in. Claire followed him and found four young guys, just kids really, sitting there in various states of undress but all decent enough for her to interview without being charged for child molestation. They all stopped talking and stared at her as if she were an alien creature come to take them posthaste far beyond the Andromeda galaxy.
“Here they are, detective. Just don’t stress ’em out. They all gotta fight later tonight so don’t need to get ’em all upset and nervous.”
“I need a private place to talk to them, and I want to see them one at a time. I don’t do group sessions.”
“You can use that office over there. I got DVDs of them in action, too, if you want to see them fightin’.”
“Yeah, I do. Any chance I can take those DVDs home with me for a private viewing?”
“Sure thing. They’re $9.99 each. We take credit cards, all of ’em.”
“Then maybe I’ll just borrow them for a spell. Or, if push comes to shove, I’ll get you a nice little signed warrant. I’m not about to spend my own money to watch juveniles beat each other up for my perverse enjoyment. Can’t imagine why.”
“To each his own.”
“Yeah. As long as you get your fifty percent cut, right?”
“Okay, okay, I know you don’t like me much. You do what you gotta do. Just don’t mess up my kids’ heads. I’ll get you the first one.”
Claire walked inside the small adjoining office and glanced around. It had an old gray metal desk with nothing on it, except for three bent paper clips. There was one fluorescent light in the middle of the ceiling. It kept blinking and almost going out. Very similar in appearance to aforementioned midnight alien visitations. The boys were really gonna be spooked. She sat down behind the desk and took out her notepad and Precise pen. There was one scratched-up folding chair on the other side. There was nothing on the walls, unless you counted the black scuff marks and some rather inventive graffiti scribbled in red ink. Or maybe it was blood from uppercut wounds. No other furniture. No windows. Just a lovely little place to relax and meditate and sweat young fighters until they told her the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The first kid showed up about two minutes later. He stopped just inside the room and smiled shyly. He was naked except for a pair of rather oversized dark blue boxing trunks that hung to his knees. Barefoot and gaunt thin, but with hard, compact, well-developed muscles. Dark brown hair, cut short, with a deep widow’s peak in the center of his forehead. He stood there like a figure on top of an ultra-featherweight boxing trophy until she broke the ice.
“Please come in and shut the door.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He quickly did what she asked but stood just inside the threshold. Obviously, this was a guy who needed step-by-step directions. She wondered if he required a Google map to find his way home.
“You can sit down now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s your name?”
“Doyle Carmichael, ma’am. Nice to meet you. I really do respect police officers. I think I’d like to be one someday. One just like you.”
Oh, brother. Polite, clean-cut, as ingratiating as Eddie Haskell on that old TV show
Leave It to Beaver
, and she was pretty damn sure he was phony, phony, and even more phony. Probably as mean as a gar, too. “Tell me, Mr. Carmichael, are you really mean to most people, maybe even a big bully? Am I right, or am I wrong?”
His eyes reacted. Noticeably, too. Shock, maybe? But his sweet little smile did not. “Oh, no, ma’am. I ain’t no big bully. I just like to make money so I can buy my mama nice things.”
“Is that right? What kind of things?”
“Oh, just stuff she’s always wanted down deep in her heart, ma’am.”
Claire had a fairly good idea that Doyle was now envisioning getting Claire’s head in a headlock and punching her in the face until it looked as raw and unappetizing as three-week-old ground beef. A kind of thrashing with which he was probably quite familiar. She had seen her share of psychopaths and she had a feeling this kid fit the bill. Too bad that Black wasn’t there to give his professional opinion. She was curious to watch this kid’s fight tapes and see how he performed inside the ring. See if he reminded her of Lucifer, or some other dastardly demon. Maybe he was for real, though, just taking good care of his mama like a good little son should. Yeah, right. This kid was messed up. She’d bet her gun on it. But not the shiny new Glock 19. She loved it too much. She should have loaded it and brought it along, too, but she had to sight it in first.
“That’s just so nice of you, Doyle. Spending your hard-earned cash on your sweet mama. We need more kids like you in this world. What did you get her the last time you bought her something special?”
Carmichael’s eyes narrowed a tad; his earnest smile did not waver. Yep, a baby psycho in the works, sans any conscience whatsoever. Take it to the bank.
“Why, ma’am, I got her a big white vase full of red roses. Dozen of ’em. She loves flowers. She grows them out in our yard. She’s got, why, I bet, she’s got a hundred of them pretty rosebushes that she tends.”
“If she’s got a hundred rosebushes in her yard, why do you need to buy her roses?”
Uh-oh, False Smiley wasn’t adept enough yet to answer pointed, and yes, trick questions. He couldn’t come up with a quick answer this time, but he’d get there eventually. But enough about his future criminal proclivities when she’d probably have to arrest him for serial murder. She was definitely going to remember his face, though, for when she scanned the Most Wanted websites.
“Okay, Mr. Carmichael, enough pleasantries, let’s get down to brass tacks.”
“Yes, ma’am. But just so you know, she ain’t raisin’ no
red
roses. They’s all white and yellow.”
Not exactly quick as lightning but a fairly viable answer. “Well, now, that explains everything, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned and looked sweeter than a mason jar full of golden honey.
“Did you fight at the Lake Inn the other night?”
“No, no, ma’am. Don’t go down there no more. That place is scary weird, man.”
“Scary weird?”
“That’s right. Guys go missin’ over there. Some guys call it the fight of no return. ’Cuz it is.”
Okay, now they were getting somewhere. “Why don’t you elaborate for me, sir?”
“So what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Tell me more about those disappearances.”
“Okay, first time I ever went down there? You know, the guy who won that night? He just flat out went missin’. Nobody ever saw him again. Just won that fight, collected the purse, left the building, and poof. He’s probably rotting somewhere out in the deep woods.”
“What was his name?”
“Morris Caplan, but everybody called him Moose.”
“When did he go missing?”
“I guess it was about two years ago. He was good, too. Won ten or more matches. That’s the last time I let Dazz set me up down there. That hotel is cursed.”
“Anybody else go missing on the circuit?”
“Well, nobody’s seen Paulie Parker since he won down there. That why you’re here? He dead, or somethin’?”
“Do you know something about Parker that I need to know?”
Like when and how you beat him to death
, she thought.
“Nope, but I can read between the lines as good as the next one. He’s dead, right?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Bummer. I kinda liked him, even though he usually beat the crap outta me and never wanted to hang out and have a beer, or nothin’.”
Claire asked him all the necessary questions, and then he left, still smiling, probably planning to surprise his mama with more roses. Black ones, perhaps.
Next up was Malachi Fitch aka Smooth Operator/Sex Addict/ Casanova in His Own Mind. He was big and strong with blue eyes and hair long enough and blond enough to give him free passage on a Viking ship. Oh, yeah, Malachi was a very handsome dude and spent most of the interview coming on to Claire. Claire had a feeling that whenever he had access to a mirror, he probably just stared wonderingly at himself and fluffed out his hair and congratulated his good genes. He also had a bright blue tattoo on his left forearm that said
Lick me. I Taste Good.
All written in fancy script inside a red heart. Cute as a button, yes, but a big-time whackadoodle.
His first words proved her initial assessment to be true. “How old are you, detective?”
“Too old for you, Malachi.”
“Call me Mal. I like it better.”
“You know what
mal
means in Spanish, kid?”
“No, what?”
“Bad.”
“Good. I like that. I am bad. So bad that I’m good.”
“Right.”
“Know what? I like older women like you. They like me, too. I’ve had a lot of them, already. I think you’d like me, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know what you mean. Go ahead, tell me what you mean in clear and precise English. Remember, of course, that I am a police officer with the power to slap you in cuffs and lock you up. And yes, throw away the key forever.”
“I do respect you. I like cops, and you are cop-alicious, to be sure, with that blond hair and those big blue eyes and that hot bod to die for. Those cuffs sound like a real turn-on. Been there, done that.” He was too antsy to sit down, so he moseyed around the room, looking at things, which included the desk and the door and the trio of paper clips because there wasn’t anything else to look at. Finally, he slouched down in the folding chair across from her. “I like to screw women, that’s all I can tell you. And the ladies like it, too. So would you, trust me. I could show you the time of your life. What’d you say?”
“How old are you, Mr. Fitch? I can’t really tell by your sophomoric remarks.”
He laughed. “Twenty-one. How old are you? Not that it matters. You are so damn hot that I’m breakin’ out in a sweat just lookin’ at ya.”
“I do believe that you are being disrespectful to a police officer. Something about that last remark, I guess. I’m not sure why, but it sounded a little off to me.”
“You’re too cute to be a police officer. You oughta be a stripper down in Branson at the North Pole Bar, maybe. I’d come. I’d pay to see you naked. And man, the thought of you twistin’ around on one of those poles in an itty bitty elf suit. I’m already reactin’, if you know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, she knew what he meant. “Didn’t know they had strippers in Branson. It’s a pretty clean-cut place down there with all those senior citizen tours and family Christmas shows. I’ll have to alert my colleagues at Branson PD to pay the North Pole Bar an official visit.”