B-Movie Reels (10 page)

He unloaded cleaning supplies from the back of his Bronco and set about sweeping the dining area when a breeze from the back area brushed across his body. Wayne didn’t recall keeping the back door open, or any windows.
 

Someone could be inside
, he thought.
 

Wayne’s reluctance to check the back room continued even after he hopped over the register counter and walked behind the empty chip racks.
 

“Anyone back there?”

It was a stupid question.
 

Dirty footprints caked tiles that should’ve been clean. Dust accumulated on the shelves and walls during the off-season, but there wasn’t any reason for footprints. He counted the list of people that could’ve entered the building, and the only one with a key was his wife, and she was out of town for the week visiting her parents in Illinois and coming back on opening day.
 

That left only one option.

An intruder.
 

Were they still inside, he wondered, clasping a broom and unscrewing the head. He carried it like a club ready to dash across the derelict’s head.
 

“I’m calling the police. This is your last chance to run.”

A wet slap.

What in hell was that?

Fear crept into voice. “There’s no money here, not even food. It’s not worth going to prison over, man, so just go. I’ll forget this ever happened.”

A faint odor of sweat and blood drifted thickly. Wayne inspected the counter where sandwiches were made. Nobody. Nothing. The sink and metal shelves reserved for canned items were untouched. That left the meat preparation table at the back of the room.
 

The soft skitter of steps and a cough—
whuh-whuh-haaaaack!
—warned him of another’s presence. The walk-in fridge door opened and shut. He rushed forward and wedged the broom through the notch for the padlock on the fridge door.
 

The intruder was trapped inside.

He turned around to discover the harrowing scene. It registered in fragments, so incomprehensible. The uncovered meat slicer, the blade glazed in red spatters and human hair, the smooth layers of purple-red meat stacked in the tray, the bloody footprints that brightened the tiles, the human pieces stored in the plastic bin where he recycled items—one the head of Junior Summers from the slaughterhouse; his expression was furrowed, his tongueless mouth open in an appeal of agony—and the headless body that drip-drained onto the floor upside down tied to the ceiling. The sink was spattered in random gore and hunks of coagulated skin. Wayne peered inside and gasped at the mess of intestines mixed with eyes and bones that were jam-packed into the garbage disposal.
 

He lost focus, on the verge of fainting. The blood glowed ultra-red on every surface. He was forced to walk slower on the slick floor. Piles of clothes were stacked at the back door. He peered outside and looked at the parked Ford pick-up truck. It belonged to Eddie Stolburg. The clothes were uniforms from Eddie’s slaughterhouse.
 

Wayne dialed the police, wasting no more time. The sheriff would be right there, he was told.
 

He didn’t hear the broom snap when the refrigerator’s door was battered open.
 

3

“I haven’t seen Dad since early last night.” Deputy Mike Stafford listened to Mary-Sue Jennings’ frantic explanation. She’d arrived at his front desk at the Anderson Mills Police Headquarters moments before in a panic. The facility contained four offices, a reception desk, and five iron-barred cells. “I’m really worried. Dad said…” she cleared her throat, “…he was going out for a late night drive. He was driving into town for something, I thought. Nothing special. I haven’t seen his vehicle or anything since then.”

Deputy Stafford had worked in Anderson Mills for five years. The crime in the area was simple, petty theft and vandalisms mostly, but when someone disappeared the small town had a way of overreacting, so he did his best to subdue Mary-Sue’s concerns. “Maybe your father visited a friend out of town. Doesn’t he hunt deer with Jacob Graham sometimes? He’s done that before unannounced. This isn’t the first time you’ve come here about your father. And he’s been dating Mrs. Johnston in Brush Creek. Maybe he’s left messages on your answering machine?”

She firmly shook her head during every word he spoke. “No, he didn’t do any of those things. He was going into town, and he said he’d be right back. And no, my dad hasn’t left any messages on my machine. I would’ve heard them.”

She was tense. The cherry luster to her face promised a potential outburst. The girl was digging her nails into his desk without realizing it.
 

“Please do your best to calm down, dear. I know you’re concerned. You’re a good daughter. Jimmy would do well to be pleased with you. But here’s my situation, Mary-Sue. I can’t form a search party and raise alarm if we’re not certain he’s really missing.”

“Damn it,” she cried out, balling up her fists and holding them up against her face. “It’s not what you think. It’s different this time.”

Her eyes darted from left to right in a scramble to make sense of her explanation, as if fact checking herself.
 

“If there’s something you’re not telling me, you’d best say it now. Do you have a specific reason to be concerned this time as opposed to the rest of the times Jimmy’s gone out for a fun night and forgot to check in with you?”

She closed her eyes, shaking her head. The grumble from her throat was the classic case of the beginning of a breakdown, but she contained it. “No, I guess not. How long will it be until someone
does
look for him?”

“I’ll tell dispatch to keep an eye out for him, okay?” The deputy scooted out from behind his desk and helped Mary-Sue to the exit. “Don’t worry about a search party, Mary-Sue. He’s not in trouble. If he’s not back by tomorrow, I’ll make the call and things will be set in motion. Promise me you’ll contact the station if he turns up.”

She didn’t utter another word, but instead, hurried to her
 
truck and drove back into Anderson Mills toward her house.
 

The deputy removed a Doral cigarette from his breast pocket. He watched the truck pick up speed down the road until it was gone.
 

Chapter Five

1

The locals recognized him, Andy gathered, as he roamed the shelves of Anderson Mill’s Florist and Grocery store two blocks south from where he’d finished his conversation with Walter. The stocking clerk gave him a dirty look as he lined cans of Campbell’s soup for a display. The older lady at the florist station, the name on her tag reading “Florence,” snipped a dozen roses at the stem when she raised her eyes up at him. A middle-aged couple sneered at him as they scrutinized the store’s selection of bread. Did his uncle have such a prolonged effect over Anderson Mills? He wondered if Ned encountered this problem on a daily basis.
 

This is why he wants to get the hell away from here. Everyone’s tagging the Ryersons as murderers.
 

He experienced the urge to shout “boo” at everyone. The fear of the patrons was an interesting phenomenon. The more he considered it, maybe Uncle James’s story deserved to be cleared up. It was dirty laundry swept under the carpet. He couldn’t let his uncle’s name remain in bad light. The murders were never proven to be the work of his uncle even though he was the prime suspect.
 

He was so thrown off by everyone’s expressions that he’d forgotten what he came here to buy. There was a refrigerator in the garage at the house, which Uncle James had used for beer storage. Andy decided to purchase bread, turkey meat and a slew of pre-prepared items like potato salad, fried chicken, pork and beans, frozen pizzas, two twelve packs of Coke and five candy bars—Snickers, his favorite.
 

He pushed his grocery cart to pay at the front. The cashier was an older man in a fishing hat with small hooks dangling from the brim with gummy green, red and yellow earthworm fish bait. An oak plaque displayed a picture of the cashier holding up a trout by Silver Lake—“Anderson Mills Largest Trout and Mackerel Catch 1984.” The smile from his face dropped when he eyed Andy. To make matters worse, Andy pointed at the bottle of McCormick’s whiskey on the shelf. “I’ll take one of those as well.”

“ID please,” Larry said, the eyes not leaving him until he studied the card. He mouthed the word “Ryerson” and handed it back to him. He gave him the payment, and the exchange was completed without any further words besides, “Have a good day.”

“These people are lunatics,” Andy grumbled after the door closed behind him. “It’s like they want to burn me at the stake.”

He shoved the two grocery bags into the trunk of the Fiesta and caught a girl in her older teens smoking a cigarette near the side of the store. She wore a blue apron that matched the other employees’ in the store, and the girl parted her strawberry blonde hair to look at him. “Are you related to Ned Ryerson? You look just like him. Are you Andy?”

“How can you tell?” he joked. “Don’t tell me you’re going to give me the look of death too. Those bozos couldn’t wipe the dirty looks from their faces with a power sander.”

She smiled. “You look just like your uncle, in a way. The smile on your face, it’s like you’re always happy about something, and that’s not a bad thing. Plus your uncle talks to me when he comes into town. He told me about you.”

“The smile is quite a deception. I’m really a ball of rage and fury.”

The girl was plain-faced with a bored expression. “Ned’s been shopping here off and on ever since…”

“The death of my uncle,” he finished for her. “It’s okay. I know all about it, believe me. My family won’t talk about it, except for Ned. Nobody wants to face the reality of it. I don’t know many people who’ve had a family member ever accused of multiple murders.”

“I’m Sue Rogers,” she said, flicking the ash from her cigarette. “That asshole on the register is my dad. He makes me work the summers without paying me. Says food and board covers the work, but he lets me off during the school year at least.”

“I’d join a union. I’m sure there are ones for small town grocery stores.”

Sue laughed again. “You’re a funny guy, Andy.”

“Hey, does everyone totally hold a grudge against anyone with the Ryerson name?” He jangled the keys at the driver’s side and unlocked the door. “Everyone in there including the customers gave me nasty looks.”

“You have to remember, everything with your Uncle James happened only eight months ago,” she said. “When someone gets pregnant in Anderson Mills, everyone hears the stork swoop in, so just imagine what murders do. And some of the people that died at the club were from here. The families are still taking it hard. My dad’s friend, Jamie, lost her daughter at that club, and it was her twenty-first birthday. And Suzie Elliot lost her husband and her son that night. What I’ve read in the papers, the whole scene was pretty gruesome. And since your uncle disappeared, there hasn’t been a trial or any sense of closure for anyone.”

“It’s still not a reason to believe that I’m a killer,” he defended himself. “But I guess I can’t expect that understanding from complete strangers who are still grieving. I appreciate you being nice to me, though. I’ll probably be back for more groceries later.”

Sue waved goodbye, stubbing the cigarette into the concrete steps of the front walk, and added, “Don’t take it personally, Andy.
You
didn’t kill anybody.”

2

Judd “Jewels” Hammock trained the muzzle of the M-16 on the empty cans of Hamm’s beer stacked across the sawhorse. He opened fire.
Brack-brack-brack-brack
! The cans combusted, jolted ten feet from their perch. “
Woo-eee! Woo-eee!
Fuck you!”

He stood in his backyard, which faced Black Hill Woods. He could fire and not be in range of campers or tourists. It was a backwoods privilege for Judd to empty a clip into handmade targets, the targets being sandbags nailed to trees, Suck-off Dolly whenever the blow-up bitch deflated, televisions he salvaged from the junkyard during his evening shift as a security guard on the premises, and his favorite target, empty cans of beer. Judd acquired the M-16 from his friend Hal at America’s Pawn in Coopersburg fifteen miles south of Anderson Mills for a hefty eight-hundred dollars, but since Hal was dating his sister-in-law, he knocked three-hundred dollars off the price.
 

It was one in the afternoon, and he’d returned from a double shift at Sal’s Junk Yard. Judd’s winding down procedure involved guzzling three to five beers, heating up a burrito in the microwave, and popping off machine gun rounds in the backyard.
 

Judd focused on firing the weapon again, ready for the next release. He created fake scenarios to get worked up about. He imagined Gilbert, his boss, startled awake inside his office trailer when he pounded on the door. “You asleep in there again? You whack-off to
Hustler
and fall asleep? Poor baby, can I get you a warm rag to clean off your prick? Oh, you’re going to fire me, Gil? Did I hear you right?” He lifted the machine gun and squeezed the trigger. “I’ll whack-off in your face!”
 

Brack-brack-brack-brack!