PIKE (12 page)

“Now that could kill you.” Pike reseats the shotgun in the crook of his arm. “How did you know my daughter?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t.” He sits down. “I didn’t.”

“OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR!” Vollmann’s mother screams.

Pike flips the shotgun in his hands. “One more time.”

Vollmann scrabbles backwards across the floor, hitting the wall. “No. I didn’t. Krieger did.” He hides behind his knees. “Jesus Christ, man, I’ve been a cop less than a year. I’m not dirty. I did what Krieger told me to.” He gulps air to keep from puking again. He’s got all the equipment of manhood save the parts that matter. But remembering his half strangled wife downstairs, Pike has a hard time working up any sympathy for him. He has no doubt the kid isn’t lying, he did exactly what he was told, with relish. That’s why Krieger picked him as a partner.

“You ever heard of King Cambyses?” Pike asks.

Vollmann shakes his head, gulping like a drowned rat.

“He was a Persian king who learned one of his royal judges was corrupt. He skinned him alive and had a chair made of his hide. Then he made his son take his father’s place, literally. He was made a judge and ordered to preside from the chair made of his father’s skin. You understand what I’m telling you?”

Tears cut canals down Vollmann’s blood-slicked face. “I have no fucking idea.”

His mother pounds on the trap door in a desperate flurry. “I’LL COME THROUGH THIS DOOR! I’LL RIP YOUR FUCKING FACE OFF!"

“What did he tell you to do with my daughter?”

“No. Nothing. I’m telling you, we just found her body.”

“Why’d you write up the report?”

“Kreiger never wrote reports if he could help it. I wrote them all.” He draws up his T-shirt and dabs at the blood and snot that coat his face like an oil slick. “I never knew your daughter.”

“How did Derrick know her?”

“How would I know that? He never told me nothing.”

“How did he react to her body? When he saw it?”

“He was like he always was. He kind of looked at her, that’s all. I don’t know, I couldn’t ever tell what he was thinking.” He folds his hands in his lap. “Do you think I could have a beer?”

Pike nods. “COCKSUCKER!” Vollmann’s mother’s screeches behind him. “MOTHERFUCKER!” There’s another word, too garbled to understand.

The kid digs a fresh can of beer. “I’m sorry about your daughter.” He pops the tab. “If I’d have known she was your daughter I wouldn’t have said what I did.”

“Yes you would’ve. And you didn’t tell any lies.” Pike racks the action on the shotgun, ejecting shells until it’s empty, then tosses it on the floor. Then he opens the trap door.

Her cheekbones are bulging under the skin on her face and her fists are clenched and red. “You get out of my house right now. Or I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

P
ike exits the house feeling like he’s been beat all over with a tire iron, and wouldn’t mind beating something back. Then, just as he puts his hand on the door handle, he hears footsteps clattering towards him, too quick. He turns with a tired grin, gripping the handle of his .357.

It’s Marie, without the baby. “Please, mister.”

Pike’s grin disappears. He takes his hand off his gun.

“Please.” She stands in front of him, her breast rising and falling. “Was Christopher with your daughter? With her in a sexual way?”

“No.”

Her face deflates of tension like a balloon draining of air through a pinprick hole. “Oh good.” She pushes a long curl of brunette hair away from her cheek and crosses her arms over her breast, almost smiling. “Good.”

“You need to leave.”

She looks at him, curiously.

“Whatever’s going on between those two, you need to be out of the middle.”

“I am not in the middle.” She flushes and her eyes dart at the house as if she expects they have ways of hearing her. “I am his wife.”

“One of them is gonna kill you. Maybe both of them together.”

“Oh, no, sir.” She shakes her head vehemently and stamps her foot. “They will not hurt me. I am their family. My daughter, too, she is family.”

Pike turns to his truck. She’s the kind of woman who always ends up getting exactly what she asks for, and he doesn’t have the stomach to look at her anymore.

O
ver breakfast, Cotton offered Derrick a share in the Green Frog. Then proposed an expansion into other ventures. Marijuana is Kentucky’s number one export, and there wouldn’t be nothing to stop them from using Derrick’s connections to move it. They could sell it by the bale, north into Cincinnati and beyond. None of the local law’d bother them. Growing pot on the mountains is a hell of a lot cleaner than what the mining companies do to them. It’s a proposition worth thinking over, and Derrick does, spinning the steering wheel and leaning around a bend in the road, pulling a Miller Lite out of the cooler by his side.

This is how you think on things. One hand easy on the wheel, a beer in your lap, your car taking the mountain curves with quicksilver fluidity. Drinking and driving can be the most important thing in the world. It’s the answer for that high lonesome feeling you can’t shake any other way, it’s the only way out when you’ve got no way out at all. It was the only thing Derrick could do for two years after getting home from Vietnam. Driving these mountains, watching the tops get sheared off them, one by one. Then driving the hell away from them.

The fuel gauge has been dipping towards E for half an hour. Derrick sees a little gas station at the peak of a long ridge. He slides the Monte Carlo into the lot, pumps his gas, and heads inside.

An old timer in a battered ball cap and a pair of bib overalls sits behind the counter, smoking a Pall Mall, reading the local paper. Derrick takes a twelve-pack of Miller Lite out of the cooler, grabs a fistful of venison jerky from the rack, drops it all on the counter. The old timer slaps the newspaper shut in disgust. “You believe this shit?”

“It’s all the same shit to me. I don’t believe none of it.”

The old man shakes his head. “Yeah, but as young as that girl was? And them being football players, too?”

“Football players ain’t immune to young pussy. It’s an industry.”

“But eleven years old? And two of them eighteen? And them tying her to a chair?”

Derrick feels his face harden. He softens it. “I ain’t heard nothing about it.”

“They had this clubhouse, back in a hollow. Like a cabin. They didn’t tie her up sitting in the chair, either. They tied her up bent over it. You know what that was about. And when they were done with her they left her there two days. They say they clean forgot about her, what with football practice and all.”

“Nobody noticed she was gone?”

“Her parents ain’t worth a shit. Couple of damn druggies. Hell, they was probably glad to get rid of her for a day or two. She’d still be up there, I guess, but a hunter found her.”

Derrick nods. “So what’s happening to them?”

“Nothing but getting their names in the paper. They’re saying she was into it. And that they may have got carried away, but they’re real sorry about it. Hell, won’t nothing happen to them, as long as they’re healthy enough to play. We’re going to state with these boys.”

“And what does she have to say about it?”

“She don’t have nothing to say. She ain’t out of the hospital yet. She ain’t all right in the head, neither. Not from them, she was born that way. Her parents are suing, of course. A couple of them boys come from money.”

“So what do you have to say about it?”

“I say there ain’t no good way I can think of to tie a retarded eleven-year-old to a chair and hump on her. But I’m an old man. I might be old fashioned.”

“You might be. What do I owe you?”

The old man rings Derrick up.

Derrick hands him a bill. “They live around here? The boys?”

“Down at the bottom of the mountain.” The old man counts out Derrick’s change. “Anything else?”

Derrick looks out at his car through the grimy window. Then tosses a coin on the counter. “A paper. And your phone book, if you got one handy.”

T
he Long Drop Center is the first place you look when you go hunting for bums, especially if it’s wintertime and the bum’s a junky. So says Bogie. The staff makes a policy of not bothering to check the bathrooms when it’s cold out. Unlike most of the other charitable spots in Cincinnati, they’d rather bums get high on their toilet than turn into a icicle in some alley.

Inside, it looks like an ER waiting room on Christmas Eve, stocked with the suicidal and the deadly lonesome. The tile floor’s slick with filthy slush, heaving with reeking figures. Pike’s lungs contract at the shit and booze and vomit. He elbows his way to a moonfaced redhead behind the welcome desk. She sees Bogie and pulls a well-gnawed pencil out of her mouth. “I thought we found you a place.”

“You did.” Bogie smiles at her. “And I realized I never even stopped by to thank you.” He sidles up and leans an arm on the desk. “I even bought myself a bed. A real nice one, if you ever wanna stop by. You know ladies love outlaws.”

She snaps her pencil on the back of his hand. “Get off my damn desk.” She glares at him and sticks the pencil back in her mouth, chewing on it like a toothless hound after a piece of jerky.

Bogie flaps the wounded hand, looking around at Pike and Rory for sympathy. He sighs and steps out of the way. “Megan, meet Pike. He’s got a question for you.”

Pike shakes Megan’s hand. It’s like a greasy lukewarm steak. “What can I do you for?” she asks him.

“I’m looking for somebody.” Pike holds out the picture of Dana. “You know her?”

Her eyes trail the picture as he sticks it back in his pocket. “Are you a relative?”

Pike shakes his head. “Private investigator. Her grandmother died last week and left her some money. We want to make sure she gets it.”

Megan’s eyes narrow shrewdly. “I don’t believe you.”

“I can live with that. Where do you know her from?”

“I don’t think I should tell you.”

Pike leans forward a little. Her chair jerks backward, hits the wall. “No answer is not gonna be an option.”

“Is there a problem?”

Pike turns his head to find a blonde in a red and white snowflake sweater, with the plump look of a woman who’s yet to realize her good looks have long disappeared behind a layer of menopausal fat. “I’m Lisa Hatwell,” she says in a phlegmatic voice. “If you have something to discuss, I’m the person you discuss it with.” She points across the room at an office door. “Right there.”

Pike follows her in and sits in front of her desk. There’s a candy bowl in front of him. Bit O’ Honeys, with a thin film of dust over them, like no one’s yet had the nerve to take one. Lisa Hatwell doesn’t sit. She stands by her chair, white knuckles resting on the desk, her lipstick lumped lips working in a rage. “You don’t come in here and intimidate my staff,” she says, in a voice like sandpaper on Pike’s eardrums.

Pike puts the picture of Dana on her desk. “Do you know her?”

Lisa shakes a finger at him. “I fight like hell for my people. No one traipses in here and tries to intimidate them.”

Pike taps the picture. “Focus.”

Her eyes widen. “Am I not getting through to you?” Her voice quavers, rising. “You’re in my office. You’ll listen to me when I’m talking to you.”

Pike lights a cigarette and eyes her like a coffee table curiosity.

“You can’t smoke in here,” she squawks. Her face flushes gruesomely and her red lips twitch. “Jesus Christ.” She lifts the receiver of her phone. “I’m calling the police.”

Pike stands and takes the phone’s receiver out of her hand and places it back in its cradle. “I’ll bet you scare the hell out of your staff.”

His voice rumbles through the room. “Tell me where you’ve seen the girl, and I’ll leave.”

Her blonde hair helmet shudders. “Her name’s Dana. She comes in two or three times a week, for feedings.”

“Where do I find her when she’s not feeding?”

Lisa shakes her head. “I don’t know. There’s a man named Rondell who she’s usually with.”

Pike ashes in her candy bowl. “Tell me about him.”

“He’s an African-American. He has a mustache and he’s a Vietnam vet. His drug of choice is heroin, like her. That’s all I know.”

Pike turns to the door. “That’s all I need.”

He leaves her office, turning at the window for a last look. She stares after him, swaying a little like a thin fence post plugged into shallow dirt.

B
ogie chews his scarred bottom lip like he’s in thought, though all prior evidence should indicate otherwise. “Them Vietnam vets are weird. I don’t fuck with them much. They’re crazier’n hell, and they’d as soon scalp you as look at you. They’ve done it to one old boy, too. Took his whole scalp off.”

Pike pulls a baggie of heroin out of his pocket, taps it against the dashboard. The powder dances. Bogie tries to look nonchalant. His lips tighten over his teeth, his breath hisses out like a slow gas leak. “Mount Airy Forest. That’s where they hang out. Pretending they’re still in country.”

“You know how to find them?”

“Hell no. They’re like Tecumseh up there. Even the cops don’t fuck with them.”

Pike flips the baggie in his fingers like he’s inspecting it for quality.

Bogie’s eyes roll with the motion. He licks his lips. “Fine. Fuck you. There’s a bitch that used to date one of them. She hangs out over at the Dancin’ Bay. Right next to our hotel, matter of fact.”

Pike tosses the heroin to him and starts the truck. “Don’t even think about shooting it in my truck. Last thing I need is your blood splashing around.”

Bogie looks at the heroin, then pockets it. He raises his hand. “Can I ask something?”

“No,” Pike says.

“I want to know if I could maybe stop by and peek at my wife and kids? Seeing as how we’re right near the house.”

“No.”