Lucky's Girl (31 page)

After he’d escorted Kenny home earlier, Jerry had returned to the station to find Errol and Frankie looking out across Lake Elton at Grove Island. They looked every bit as drunk as they were, swaying while holding up the binoculars for a closer look.

Binoculars and double vision don’t work together, but it was obvious Lucky had taken things to the next level. What that next level was, they didn’t know. But he was out there on that pier having a night revival, the people responding with Nuremburg rally fervor.

Then Blackie the wolf had come out and people had started lining up to kneel in front of her while Lucky had stripped naked.

Jerry was having a hard time wrapping his head around that, but that didn’t matter because it hadn’t lasted long. Suddenly there was screaming and people running. Minutes later a mob, with Lucky in front, were carrying Kenny to the station.

Kenny was beaten half to death.

He had shown up to their moonlight revival really drunk with a gun screaming about his kids. Apparently Ellen had taken them there after Kenny hadn’t returned. It seemed like Lucky had talked the mob down, convincing them Kenny should go to jail in lieu of being hung.

Jerry had witnessed mobs before. He’d seen rioting. He’d seen groups of people give up their individual will to become raging mobs. It had happened in Detroit after he’d shot that kid. There’d been rioting when he was acquitted. What was universal was that look in the eyes which said, “Yeah, someone’s home, but only halfway, because something else is steering the ship.”

What he’d seen tonight had been different. These people were bug-eyed and drooling, hyperventilating between clenched teeth. Sweat and snot poured from faces. This was something he’d seen before, on the night he’d gunned down Christie Tellefsen.

Kenny was lying bleeding in the cell, eyes swollen, nose flattened, and covered in bruises. He should be in the hospital, but about a dozen of Lucky’s flock were watching the station from the parking lot of the bar. Frankie had gone back to his place and called; Fat Sally said no one had even entered the bar that night. That would be a first in Elton’s history. He’d sent her home, locking the doors after her.

He wasn’t about to leave his place with people acting so fucking weird. Every one watching the station was a regular at the bar, in fact they should’ve been drinking there tonight. Instead they were watching the station from the tailgates of trucks and station wagons. They’d said nothing to Frankie. Previously these folks couldn’t be kept away by any number of trips to jail, but tonight they weren’t drinking. They just sat out there, bug-eyed and silent, drooling like dogs.

But for Jerry, the worst thing wasn’t Kenny’s beating or the crazed mob, it was Ellen holding the hands of Kenny’s kids as they’d watched the mob fling him in the cell. As if they’d been watching a boring TV show and not their father getting beaten.

CHAPTER 9

Errol had pulled behind Frankie’s Bar with his lights turned off and the Beretta in his lap. He’d checked all the angles. The pack of retards who were waiting outside Frankie’s were focusing on that stationhouse. When he’d left the station he had ceased to be on their radar, and that was a damn good thing. They needed to have the product ready for their guy, who wasn’t one to fuck around with. When you move pounds of weed it ain’t a laidback scene, it’s every bit as hectic as moving blow or speed.

And when you move tens of pounds it gets real.

Errol had been running this racket for more than fifteen years and had never missed a drop, and he wasn’t about to let Lucky and his fucking cult make this his first. Guys who missed drops turned up missing or not at all.

Errol, Frankie, Sally and Wally had a really good thing going. All told, about an acre of very fine product. Wally was somewhere between a chimpanzee and a mongoloid on the IQ scale but he could grow weed. After he’d got busted by Jerry and his deputies about seventeen years ago with a surprisingly sophisticated grow room, Errol had approached Wally with an offer. He’d make those charges go away if Wally would apply his skills in a less conspicuous but more profitable manner.

Wally had a grow room in his cabin which you could smell across the street. Not good when you park your car in Lake Elton and walk home to sleep it off. The police came calling when you did things like that. Jerry and his deputies had come to issue a citation for stupid, but had ended up taking away plants, UV lights and a duct tape-and-bubblegum hydroponic grow rig.

Errol had made the charges go away by supplying Jerry with a surprise gift of Jack Daniels. Then he “lost” every bit of documentation regarding Wally Weed’s arrest. He recommended Jerry drop the charges rather than face any scrutiny on this. It just wasn’t worth it. It helps to have a hopeless drunk as town sheriff when you’re running a good-sized crop right under his nose.

Since then Frankie had made the drops, Sally kept tabs on Wally, while Errol kept tabs on Jerry, and they’d have a decent retirement if no one fucked up.

The light on the back porch blinked twice then paused, blinking twice again. All clear. Fifteen seconds later Frankie had locked the door and jumped in the jeep. Green hunting gear and a twelve gauge pump. Unlikely deer gun, but this situation was off.

Frankie looked over to him. “Did you get the emails?”

Errol nodded, holding up his iPhone. “Yep. Two in, one out, and nothing since. And it’s fucking dark outside. This is not cool. Maybe his car has broken down, or that fucking skull farmer got high and started jerking off.”

Frankie shrugged nervously. “Well, his wife does look like an ostrich wearing glasses and singin’ hallelujah.”

Errol looked at him askance. “You’re sure you saw him?”

Frankie nodded. “He didn’t come near the station or the bar, and Sally didn’t see him either, but I saw him and his ugly wife across the way. Church parking lot. I saw their car. She took him to that retard picnic to get saved by Prince Penis.”

Errol grimaced. “You think Lucky’s fucking them?”

Frankie nodded affirmatively. “She was in the bar the other day with Wally, and didn’t say nothin’. Just stood there like a stump. An ugly stump. Ordinarily she won’t shut up, which is tough because she’s as dumb as she is ugly.”

Errol sighed because he wished he didn’t believe any of this. “Penny is fucking Lucky.” He posed this as a statement disguised as a question.

Frankie nodded. “Yep – he’s fucking every single one of them. I’m the bartender here. This town revolves around me… or used to. You do this long enough you just know.”

Errol shook his head, lost, but unable to deny what he’d been seeing.

“Frankie, Lucky managed to brainwash these people in a matter of days. I wish I could say I don’t understand this, but I’ve seen it. Twenty years ago. That girl went buck fucking wild and killed three people. We
cannot
have that kind of attention here.”

They pulled off road and into the woods. Errol flipped off the headlights, then pulled out a set of night vision goggles. Frankie did the same. They took a few minutes to let their eyes adjust before rolling as fast as they could. They needed to limit their exposure at night. Even though they gave off no light they still gave off heat, especially at night.

Earlier, one car had driven past the camouflaged sensor, followed by another a little while later. Not long after one car had left.

The sensor was hidden, connected to a transmitter in a tree, high enough to get reception even out here. They’d received emails on their phones containing a bogus message telling them that Viagra could be bought online when someone went in and that Barack Obama is a Kenyan drag queen when someone left.

Why had only one left? And why weren’t either one of them answering their calls?

***

Elton looked exactly like it had always done, full of yokels and rubes and…

Doc Pete was pretty mad that he had to be here. He pulled off the highway, down the main thoroughfare, and into the “town” where the welfare gods had deigned to take a shit… He was
really
mad about being here.

He had heard about the ridiculous project to drain Elton Lake, but he hadn’t expected to be able to see it in the middle of the night from the light of a giant bonfire on the dry lake bottom. It looked like there were a hundred people ranged around the fire,
twitching
. And from what he could see, these folks weren’t wearing any clothes, but were covered in a cake of mud.

At least, he
hoped
it was mud.

He knew he was walking into something tawdry or shameful, possibly even illegal, but this scene had made him check his glasses. He shook his head, convinced his aging eyes were at fault until he’d got out of his car in front of the stationhouse.

There was a big bonfire with people assembled around its base. Were they dancing? Doing the fucking hokey pokey? He couldn’t make out individual features, they were definitely nude, covered in something he was now sure wasn’t mud.

He backed up slowly to the glass door, looking out towards the bar.

Men sitting in the tailgates of four pickups were staring back at him. These guys were close enough to be able to make out their features. He recognized a few of them,
sort of.
Guys out here got their healthcare through the ER. These guys looked sick and crazy, wild-eyed. They were staring like hungry, desperate animals.

He heard the lock click behind him. “Get in here quick, Doc.”

He didn’t wait, jumping straight through the door with Jerry locking it as fast as he could. There were no lights on, just the beam of a flashlight. “I’m thinking they’ll think no one’s home.”

Jerry held a big pump shotgun and was wearing a vest. He’d never seen Jerry in one of those before. He smelled of alcohol, sweat, and fear.

Jerry handed him a handgun. “This’ll make you feel better.”

Doctor Pete did feel better after he’d pulled the slide back to check the chamber, but he didn’t turn his back to the glass front door.

“Jerry, what in the flying fuck is going on here?”

“I only know enough to sound crazy. Apart from that I’m completely in the dark. But, Doc, I need you to go back there and patch up a guy in the cell. He isn’t like them, like
that
.”

One of the guys from Frankie’s Bar parking lot was at the glass, cupping his hands over his eyes and peering through. He looked unhinged, at minimum.

Jerry flipped the flashlight off and spoke quietly. “They can’t see through.”

Doc Pete tensed, gripping the pistol in a two-handed stance. “Jerry, we haven’t seen too much meth lately in the ER. Is this some kind of bad batch?”

The guy at the door was rubbing his face against the glass, leaving a sweaty slick behind, but he eventually faded into the shadows. Jerry stepped up to the door, peering out towards Frankie’s place. “You see that shit out there with the bonfire, Doc? Meth doesn’t do that.”

Doc Pete nodded, blowing out his breath. “Okay, Jerry, I’m sorry for everything I said on the phone. Can you tell me what you know while I patch up your friend?”

***

Frankie shook his head back and forth, hitting the rewind button. “Wally was always a fucking idiot, but he didn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

Errol looked back to Frankie’s stunned expression, nodding in agreement. Errol respected Frankie more than anyone in Elton apart from the Rev, but he was dead. “Well, it appears that Wally got himself a dose of the old time religion… or whatever the fuck Lucky’s peddling.”

Frankie spat on the ground, his eyes roving over the monitor divided into eight separate security camera angles. The cameras were small, discreetly hidden in the branches of trees, covering the road, an old logging trail (which had been unused for seventy years), the five parcels for growing, and this little utility shed. This was a good setup, working flawlessly. Errol had sent Wally out to northern California to buy it five years ago, but this was the very first time they’d really used it. The other times when they’d received an email from the system it had been because a herd of deer had tripped the motion sensors. Other than that it just told them of their own comings and goings. It was self-contained, solar-powered, and had shown Wally beating the living shit out of his sister then throwing her fat ass in the trunk of his car. Then he’d driven back out.

Frankie shook his head, but they watched it again. Wally steps out of his car, his sister greets him and he punches her out, gets on top and rains punches on her face. It was brutal and completely out of the blue. “Wally’s… not like this. I know him. I’ve known him for years. There was no beef between him and Sally.”

He stared at the screen, continuing: “I saw Lucky at the church the day we buried the Rev. No one gets away with walking into church in a toga made out of bed sheets and convincing everyone he’s Jesus. But then again no one has revivals in the nude with a pack of wolves.”

Errol shook his head, turning off the monitor. “Frankie… I always figured if we ran into trouble it’d just be a rival crew and we’d have to just move on down the road and set up shop elsewhere. We’ve avoided the rough stuff for almost twenty years. How much you got socked away now?”