Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (3 page)

“You don’t know that,” Joe Rob
protested. “And if we don’t recognize the car, the driver probably won’t know
your truck.”

“All he’s gotta do is ask around.”
Skeeter slipped into his imitation redneck voice: “‘Old green Chevy with a
confederate flag on the front bumper? Sounds like Skeeter Partain, the
undertaker’s son.’”

“Fuck it. Once we bury the body,
nobody can prove anything. No point worrying about it now.”

Skeeter floored the accelerator,
wanting to put as much distance between them and the scene of the crime and the
Firebird as possible.

Joe Rob turned in the seat to keep
vigil through the rear window. He half expected the car to give chase. He
exhaled a sigh of relief when they turned off Nebula Road and onto the smaller
rutted road leading to the wolf’s den. The woods thickened and the trail
finally played out in a swampy thicket less than a mile from their destination.

They jumped out of the truck and
removed the canvas tarp, then Skeeter said, “You’re the weightlifter. You carry
Odell and I’ll get the rest of the shit.”

Joe Rob gave no argument. It was
his kill; he should be the one to carry the body. He pulled Odell to the edge
of the truck bed, bent down and pulled the corpse onto his shoulder in a
fireman’s carry. Skeeter hooked the gunnysack of rats over his own shoulder,
grabbed the shovel, the pickaxe and Odell’s rifle, then followed Joe Rob up the
path leading to the wolf’s den.

Breathless with exertion, Joe Rob
said, “I’m gonna have to bathe in the creek to get this shit smell off me.”

“Good idea.” Skeeter anxiously
glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was following them.

They trudged past the small
outcropping of rock that formed the little cave-like structure they called the
wolf’s den, waded across the narrow creek and stopped in the middle of a small
clearing twenty or so yards deeper into the woods.

Joe Rob bent over and dumped the
corpse off his shoulder. Skeeter was already testing the ground with the shovel.
“Ground’s pretty soft,” he said. “Let’s get her dug.”

“You sure you wanna do this, man?
It’s not to late to go to the cops.”

Skeeter thrust the pickaxe into Joe
Rob’s hands. “Shut up and dig. We go to the cops, we’re both dead and you know
it.”

Joe Rob lost himself in the
digging; his only thought was of making a hole in the earth. The rain ended,
and all that was left of the summer storm was an occasional flash of distant
lightning in the eastern sky. It was full dark by the time they had fashioned a
shallow grave in the ground, and Skeeter went back to the truck to get his
flashlight.

Standing there, alone in the dark
woods, Joe Rob was suddenly afraid. He spooked himself with the idea that Odell
Porch was going to get up and shamble toward him like one of those zombies in
Night
of the Living Dead
.

“Skeeter?” he called. “Hurry up
with that flashlight! I can’t see shit.”

What the hell could be taking him
so long? The truck wasn’t that far away.

    He tightened his grip on the
pickaxe, thinking irrationally that if Odell did get up and come after him, he
would bury the sharp point of the axe in Odell’s skull.

Then he saw the light bobbing
toward him through the trees.

“Stop yelling,” Skeeter called in a
loud whisper.

Joe Rob could’ve hugged and kissed
him just then. They had been best friends since the eighth grade, bled their
wrists in a blood-brother ritual, graduated high school together, and now here
they were playing out an incredible scene that was—as Joe Rob saw it—nothing
less than an ultimate test of their friendship. And Skeeter was passing the
test with colors flying, God bless him.

Skeeter held the light while Joe
Rob rolled the corpse into the grave.

“Rest in peace, you crazy fuck,”
Skeeter said.

Joe Rob tossed in Odell’s rifle,
then picked up the gunnysack and dropped it on top of Odell’s face. They took
turns shoveling the sodden dirt into the shallow grave, and when they were
done, they spread pine straw and dead leaves over the newly turned soil.

“Listen, man,” Skeeter said. “None
of this ever happened. We don’t breathe a word of it to any-fucking-body. No
matter what.”

“No matter what,” Joe Rob agreed.

“Blood brother’s oath.” Skeeter
arched his brows.

“Damn straight. Blood oath.”

Standing over the hidden grave,
they touched their scarred wrists together, then shook hands to seal the vow.

Then Skeeter summed it up for them:
“All we did was bury some rats.”

Joe Rob nodded, wishing he could
believe it.

“You look damn good for a dead
man,” Luke Chaney said to the corpse. He laid his hand on the open casket.
“Happy trails, old friend.”

He turned and walked softly out of
the flower-filled viewing room, made his way down the carpeted hallway and
emerged on the front porch of Partain Funeral Home. He squinted against the
brightness of the day.

“Hello, Luke,” said James Partain,
who had posted himself at the top of the porch steps like a somber, dark-suited
doorman.

A small cluster of friends and
relatives of the late Calvin Hull huddled at the far corner of the wrap-around
porch, talking in muted tones.

“James,” Luke said with a curt nod.

“We don’t see much of you these
days. What have you been doing with yourself?”

Luke shrugged. “This and that.”

“Enjoying your retirement?”
Partain’s deep-set eyes twinkled in his otherwise expressionless face.

“I’m getting used to it.” Luke
stuck his hands in his pockets. “You did a good job on old Calvin. All made up
like a movie star. He would’ve liked that.”

“I did, didn’t I,” Partain said,
speaking softly in spite of his obvious enthusiasm. “Took ten years off him. It
helped, of course, that he had strong features to begin with. Then it’s just a
matter of bringing out those features with subtle touches of makeup, shading
the flaws. I studied art before I went into mortuary sciences.”

“Is that right? I guess that
explains it. You’re a regular Rembrandt for dead folks.”

Partain winced. “I see you haven’t
lost your irreverent sense of humor.”

“But I’m dead serious,” Luke
quipped.

“Please, Luke.” Partain showed him
the palm of his hand. “I would appreciate it if you would be a little more
sensitive in your comments. The bereaved don’t like to hear the D- word.”

“The D-word?” Luke was beginning to
enjoy himself. He didn’t like funeral homes, and he didn’t much care for James
Partain.

“Yes. D-e-a-d,” he spelled it out.
“You used it twice in a matter of seconds.”

“Did I?”

Luke glanced at the huddle of
mourners, then leaned close to Partain, cupped his hand to the side of his
mouth and whispered, “You don’t suppose they think he’s only sleeping, do you?”

James Partain scowled.

“You take care, now, James,” Luke
said and slapped him lightly on the shoulder.

Luke sauntered down the porch steps
and jaywalked across 2nd Street. He briefly considered dropping in at the
redbrick police station, but decided against it at the last minute. He wasn’t
in the mood for chit-chat with his former colleagues, so he bypassed the
station house, crossed the alley and cut through the narrow passageway between
Howell’s Five And Dime and Grubb’s Hardware; he stepped from the shadowed alley
onto sun-baked Main Street.

The sinkhole that had killed Calvin
Hull was roped off with yellow “Caution!” tape, and through-traffic was blocked
by yellow-and-black saw horses affixed with battery-operated flashers.

He crossed Main, skirting the
killer hole, and went into City Drugs. The air-conditioned coolness and the
amiable smell of food cooking on the grill behind the lunch counter welcomed
him.

Doc Taggert was in the back,
filling a prescription for a woman Luke didn’t recognize. Of course George
Taggert was a pharmacist, not a physician, but most everyone called him Doc or
Doctor; it was one of many harmless small-town traditions. Luke had never
called him anything else. George Taggert
was
Doc.

He waved at Doc, then pointed at an
unoccupied booth opposite the lunch counter. Doc nodded assent from his little
alcove of shelves stocked with all manner of pill bottles. Luke slid into the
booth and ordered iced coffee for himself and hot black coffee for Doc. Betty
Lee the veteran waitress was too busy to share her latest tidbits of gossip
with Luke, so she shared a wink and a waggle of her long-nailed fingers.

“I was beginning to think you’d
dropped off the face of the earth,” Doc said with a smile half hidden by his
big white brush of a moustache. He sat opposite Luke and folded his hands on
the tabletop.

“Like Calvin? No, I’m still here.”

“Hell of a thing,” Doc said
soberly.  “Makes you think.”

“Yeah.”

“It could’ve been any one of us.
But it just happened to be Calvin on that very spot when the earth fell out
from under him. Jesus, can you imagine what that must’ve been like? Tooling
along Main Street in your new car, then
boom
. The street falls away and
the earth swallows you up.”

Luke shrugged his thick shoulders.

“Dr. Jackson said it was his heart
that killed him. His back was broken in two places, but he would’ve survived
that. It was the shock that got him.”

“Calvin was damn lucky.”

“
Lucky?
” Doc’s bushy brows
arched upward.

“Yeah. Lucky he didn’t have to
spend his remaining years in a wheel chair, collecting his shit and piss in
plastic bags. His heart knew his time was up.”

“I didn’t know you were such a
fatalist, Luke.”

“I don’t know about that. But when
your number’s up, that’s it. End of story.”

Doc took another sip of coffee, then
smoothed his moustache with his thumb and index finger. “You in town for the
funeral?”

“Nah. I don’t do funerals any more.
I just came to pay my last respects to Calvin. And to see how you were doing.”

“I’m doing fine. It’s you I’m
worried about.”

“Me? What are you talking about?”

“I know you, Luke. You can’t
bullshit me, so don’t even try. Ever since you turned in your badge, you’ve
practically been a hermit. This is the first time I’ve seen you in...I don’t
know how long.”

He waited for Luke to respond. When
he didn’t, Doc said, “This is about Monroe Shockley, isn’t it. And Fate Porch.”

Luke shook his head in a
noncommittal gesture.

“You did the best you could,” Doc
went on. “Even the state cops said there was just no hard evidence. Fate Porch
and his boys got away with murder and there’s nothing you or anybody else can
do about it. But you just can’t turn it loose, can you? You resigned because of
it, but you didn’t stop with quitting your job. No, you quit the whole damn
community. Just up and removed yourself from the whole shebang. Turned your
back on everything you stood for and walked away. So, you tell me, Luke. Did it
make you feel any better? Has your self-exile worked for you?”

“You talk real pretty, Doc,” Luke
said with a humorless grin. “But you got it wrong. Fate Porch ain’t off my hook
just yet.”

“Lord
God
, but you’re one
mule-headed son of a bitch. Is that plain enough for you? You’re the
stubbornest old fart in the whole damn county.”

 “You make that sound like a bad
thing.”

“What? You couldn’t get the goods
on him as police chief, so you’re going after him as a private citizen? What’s
wrong with this picture, Luke?”

“You tell me, Doc.”

Doc sighed. “That’s just the
trouble. Nobody can tell you anything. Nobody ever could. Everything’s got to
be your way. I swear, Luke, I don’t know why I waste my time trying to talk
sense to you.”

“We go at things a different way,
that’s all it is.”

“No. That’s
not
all it is.
You’ve not been the same since Jenny died. You’ve got—”

“There’s no need to get into that,”
Luke said with a cold edge of warning in his voice.

“All right. But you know it’s true.
And then when Shockley was murdered, you did your dead level best to hang it on
Porch and his boys, but you couldn’t do it.
No
body could. But being you,
you couldn’t live with that. So you resigned. I’m sure you saw it as a question
of honor. You failed to do your job so the honorable thing to do was resign.
But you know what? I don’t think it was honor at all. I think it was all about
your pride. You’re a prideful man, Luke. Don’t tell me you’re not. You couldn’t
feel proud about the way the Shockley case turned out, so you turned in your
badge.”

Luke downed a big slug of his iced
coffee. “Not bad for a pill pusher. But you’re making it more complicated than
it is. We all get a bad patch to hoe now and then, and the only thing to do is
put your back into it and work your way out.”

“But when you’re fifty years old,
your back ain’t what it used to be. A man has to know when to give up on a
particularly bad patch and go on to new ground.”

A cute blonde barely out of her
teens approached their booth hesitantly. The nametag on her blue smock said her
name was Missy. “Uh, Doc?” she said softly. “Phone call. It’s Dr. Jackson’s
office.”

Doc slid out of the booth and told
Luke he’d be right back.

Luke downed the rest of his drink,
left a couple of worn dollars on the table, and departed. He knew Doc was only
trying to be helpful, but some of his remarks had cut a little too close to the
bone, and Luke had no intention of getting into a superheated debate with his
old friend.

He stepped out into the street,
ducked under the yellow tape and stood at the edge of the sinkhole where a big
chunk of pavement had broken and collapsed a good twenty feet into the pit. He
stared at the slab of asphalt lying slantwise at the bottom of the hole.

“You ever seen the like?” someone
behind him said.

He turned, and there was Corny
Weehunt, his face scrunched up in a moronic look of awe. It had been said that
Corny was next in line for the unofficial position of town idiot, right behind
Otis Dellums, but Luke knew better.

“I’s here when they hauled his car
outer there,” Corny said with considerable pride. “Shoulda seen it, Chief. Ol’
Mr. Calvin was dead where he sat.”

“I’m thankful I didn’t have to see
it, Cornelius,” Luke said.

Weehunt looked puzzled by this,
then shook it off like a dog shedding water, and proceeded to describe how they
had winched the death car out of the hole. “Folks is worried now the whole town
might be swallowed up.” He pointed a bony finger down at the slab of Main
Street slanting into the deep pit. “Lookit that. Like a road to Hell, sho
nuff.”

Luke nodded absently, looking into
the sinkhole. He thought: Now
there’s
a bad patch.

***

He stopped at Suggs’ Supermarket to
do his biweekly grocery shopping. He loaded his rickety shopping cart with
meat, fresh produce, dog food and the usual staples. As he roamed the aisles,
he was haunted by memories of his dead wife Jenny. She had done most of their
shopping, but sometimes she would persuade him to tag along, telling him that
his company made it special for her, “like our first year of marriage when we
had so much time together.” Such simple pleasures had meant the world to her,
and Luke had not been one to deny her those pleasures, though grocery shopping
had always seemed like a boring chore to him. And now, two years after her
death, he somehow felt he was shopping for her rather than for himself. He
could almost feel her presence, more so here than at the home they had shared
for so long. She had died of complications following a routine hysterectomy.
The last time he had seen her alive was just before they rolled her into
surgery. She had looked at him with wet eyes full of sadness and apologized for
failing to bear him a child. “Hush now,” he told her. “I don’t care about that.
It’s too dangerous for you to be pregnant again. I don’t want to lose you.” And
she squeezed his hand and smiled through her tears. “I love you, Luke Chaney.”

Then she was gone, and he was
alone, except for the faithful companionship of his dog. To evade the wrenching
grief, he tried to lose himself in his job, but the crime rate in a town the
size of Vinewood made that almost impossible, so he finally stopped running
from his grief and let it overtake him. He got drunk, he ranted to the Heavens,
and even cursed God, but the anguish didn’t abate until he let himself cry. He
bawled like a baby for the better part of a moonless night, and awoke the next
day with an unexpected feeling of serenity. He still missed Jenny fiercely but
he knew then he could manage the pain; he could live with it.

A year later Monroe Shockley was
murdered—dismembered and beheaded in the stand of pines behind his farmhouse.
The head was never found. Luke worked the case like a dog worrying a bone. He
threw himself full-bore into the investigation and became convinced that Fate
Porch was responsible for the killing, but there wasn’t even enough
circumstantial evidence to bring charges against Porch and his ruffian
offspring. Fate’s hot-blooded boy Odell had started the whole mess by shooting
Shockley’s favorite hunting dog, and the situation quickly developed into a
full-blown feud. With less than two miles of woods separating the warring
homesteads, it was inevitable that the feud would escalate to new levels of
violence and end badly. When Fate Porch’s hound wandered onto Shockley’s
property and began rooting in his wife’s flower garden, Shockley cut the hound
down with a shotgun blast and dumped the carcass in Fate’s front yard.

A week later Monroe Shockley was
dead.

Luke was heading for the checkout
when he remembered he needed onions. He went back to the produce section and
saw Skeeter Partain restocking bananas.

“Hey, Skeeter,” he said.

The boy nearly jumped out of his
skin, dropping a bunch of bananas on the floor and bumping his knee on the
display table.

“Didn’t mean to sneak up on you,”
Luke said by way of apology.

“I guess my mind was somewhere
else,” said Skeeter, picking up the dropped fruit. He wore a blue apron over
his green-and-white-striped uniform shirt.

“I know the feeling. So how do you
like working produce?”

“It’s all right, I guess. Till I
get something better. I’m thinking about joining the Navy.”