Poor Boy Road (Jake Caldwell #1) (13 page)

“You’re going to end up in jail, man.” Bear cracked open his third beer. “Jail or dead. People who work for Keats don’t tend to have long life spans.”

They leaned back in matching stamped steel chairs on the deck of Stony’s place, the cracked wood frame table in between them. The crickets and bullfrogs around the pond sang a symphony, far more enjoyable and relaxing in comparison to Jake’s normal balcony experience in Kansas City of car horns and police sirens. Jake had spent the last thirty minutes sharing the past sixteen years of his life, except for the mission Keats sent him on. Bear could probably tell him everything he needed to know about Shane Langston, but Jake couldn’t figure out how to delicately launch into his orders to track down and kill the guy.

“Off the record,” Bear asked. “You ever have to whack anyone?”

“This isn’t the 1930s, man. Nobody calls it whacking.”

“Have you?”

“No,” Jake said. “When it came to getting deadly, Keats never sent me on those jobs. Guess he saw that line in me he knew I wouldn’t cross. Besides, he had gorillas who liked doing that kind of shit. I’ve got my anger issues under control.”

“What do you do with it? The anger.”

Jake shrugged. “Push it down. Compact it into a little ball that I shove into a corner.”

“What if the ball gets out?”

“I won’t let it. Not after last time.”

“What happened last time?”

Jake hesitated telling the story to a member of law enforcement. Then again, it was Bear. “Found a guy I was sent to collect on in Oklahoma. Found him in the parking lot raping a woman in the back of his van. I started swinging and it came to me how much he looked like Stony. Once I started pounding and kicking, I didn’t stop until the woman pushed me back. Last I heard he spent the remainder of his days drinking his meals through a straw from his wheelchair. Not saying the guy didn’t deserve it, but the fact I lost control like that scared the living shit out of me.”

“What would you do if Keats asked you to kill someone?”

“I don’t know. Guess it would depend on the reason. Would have to be something better than the guy owed Keats money. That’s for damn sure.”

“Even then,” Bear said. “Even for something the guy deserved to die for like that asshole in Oklahoma. Could you stand over a cowering man and pull the trigger?”

Jake took a long drink and drained the can, crushing the aluminum and tossing it on the table.

“Exactly,” Bear continued. “He may not have asked you yet, but it’s coming one of these days, man. And once you cross that line, there ain’t no going back. That will haunt you for the rest of your life, but it won’t matter because Keats will own your ass.”

Jake popped the top on his second can. “It doesn’t matter because I’m getting out. But this isn’t working an assembly line in a factory. I can’t just toss my tools on the floor and say ‘Fuck this job’ and head out the door. A person doesn’t up and quit on Keats. You have to exit gracefully.”

“And carefully,” Bear added.

“Very carefully. You have much experience with him?”

“Just some files when I was on the meth task force,” Bear said. “Keats dabbled in meth and other drugs, but the old standard of booze, cigarettes and loan sharking are more his MO. Lots of bodies dotted-lined to him, but no direct proof of anything. Seems like one of the old school types like you saw in
The Godfather
. There’s some rumors of gun running and extortion here or there, but nothing sticks to him. I ain’t got proof of it, but pretty sure he got a buddy of mine tossed off the KC police force on some trumped up charges he planted.”

“He’s got that kind of pull with the cops?”

“Got that kind of pull with a lot of people. That’s why you gotta be careful. I’ll be pissed off if I read some news article about your dumb ass getting dragged from the bottom of the Missouri River.”

“Whatever it takes, I’m out.”

“Doing what?”

“Who knows,” Jake said. “Maybe I’ll move back here and come to work for you.”

“You don’t want this shit.” Bear took another deep slug off his beer and belched loudly. “There’s some really good people down here, smart people, wealthy people, people who want to relax, maybe fish a little and enjoy the fruits of their hard-earned labor as they fade away into the sunset. Unfortunately, there’s also a bunch of shitheads who live for nothing but getting drunk or high. Think they’re already so screwed in life that it has nothing to offer. Why not do it stoned? I tell you, drugs are going to be the death of me and I’ve never touched ‘em. Got one in custody at the jailhouse with some red rock that’s completely new to this area.”

“Who is it?”

“One of the Skaggs boys. He’s a lackey for the local supplier. Some low rent lawyer showed up out of thin air and cut me off. Even when you get them, you never really get them, know what I mean?”

“Is that why the ‘Striving to be Drug Free’ sign is gone?”

Bear huffed, but his eyes were serious. He downed the rest of the beer in one motion and popped the tab on another.

“You’ll never get a town like Warsaw to be drug free. Too much poverty and the aforementioned shitheads. When I started, it felt like I was trying to build a sandcastle in the middle of a tidal wave. But, after a time, I had the meth production and distribution in vapor lock, man. It cost me years and a lot of blood, sweat and tears, but I locked up so many producers the Benton County Jail was about overrun. I had eyes and ears everywhere. You couldn’t whisper the word meth without me hearing about it. If you said it, it was your ass.”

“So what happened?”

A sneer crossed Bear’s lips. “Shane Langston. Thinks he’s the reincarnation of Scarface.”

Jake stiffened at the name. Did Bear notice?

“The problem,” Bear continued, “is he’s smart, he’s ruthless and he’s got connections. Nothing near what Keats has, but he’s got more than one person who he can call on for favors. I couldn’t get anyone to flip on him and those who even thought about flipping ended up dead. I worked with the Feds and we sat on him for over a year. Couldn’t get anything on him. The fucker was always one step ahead of us. Things quieted a bit before the Mexicans started carting meth up through Kansas City. It’s making a comeback along with coke. Hell, they just found a ton of it in a warehouse in Sedalia, but now I also gotta deal with prescription drugs. Oxycontin is huge down here.”

The Sedalia warehouse bust was good news. At least Jake’s call to the cops didn’t go unheeded. But he didn’t want to hear the news about Langston’s slipperiness. In his head, Langston was some skinny tweaker running product out of a backwoods trailer. If Bear and the Feds couldn’t get anything on the guy, how was Jake supposed to take him down? He couldn’t very well tell Bear he more or less just robbed Langston’s warehouse, so he decided to probe for more information.

“Where’s this Langston operating out of?”

“Got places all over Benton County. Hell, he has two houses we know about within ten miles of here. Has some car washes in St. Louis, a car dealership in Sedalia and owns a bar in Kansas City that his brother runs.” His brother wouldn't be running anything anymore unless he could do it without a head. Time to poke Bear and see if he jumped.

“What if this Langston met with an untimely accident?” Jake asked, slower than he intended and too deliberate to be an innocent question.

Bear picked up on it and his eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Jake shrugged off the question. “Nothing, just brainstorming solutions to your problem. Look, if you can’t take this Langston out or overrun Mexico to cut off the supply, why not cut the legs off his dealers? Make it unhealthy to work for him.”

“Easier said than done, my friend,” Bear said. “You know the Banks clan down the road a piece?”

Jake ran through his rusty mental rolodex. “Earl Banks was a few years older than us. Ran around with that dumbass Lanny Sikes.”

“That’s the one. Earl’s oldest boy, Willie, is Shane’s main distributor in the county. Drives around in a rusted-out-jalopy truck, but stays pretty low key. The kid is smart, stays out of my way. His muscle, though, is Bub Sievers and that asshole does not stay out of my way.”

“Related to Charlie Sievers?”

“Yup. You remember the ass whupping we put on Charlie and his buddies at the Valley?”

Jake held up his hand, pointing to the scar on his middle knuckle. He’d sliced it to the bone in a rainy, muddy parking lot outside the Valley Bar and Grill on the teeth of Charlie Sievers. Jake and Bear were eighteen at the time and had no business being in the bar. Charlie, a petty but big drunk, didn’t like the fact the barfly women paid more attention to Jake and Bear than him. After some alcohol enhanced jaw flapping inside the bar, the confrontation spilled outside. Jake and Bear managed to take down Charlie and four of his running buddies amidst a backdrop of honky-tonk music, lightning flashes and rain drops the size of quarters.

“Is Bub as big a dick as his old man?”

“He’s actually Charlie’s nephew on his sister’s side and he’s a bigger dick than his uncle ever thought of being.”

“I see you’re married,” Jake said. “Any kids?”

“Two. Jacob is eight and Madi's five. Don’t get to see them enough. Trying to keep my mother-in-law Buella from imprinting on them. She’s living with us.”

“Buella? Yuck.”

“Exactly, I think her bad mood comes from the name. Her husband Gene died ten years ago. I think it’s because it was the only way he could get away from the woman." Bear smirked. "Speaking of old men, how’s yours?”

Jake swirled around the beer can’s contents before setting it on the table. “Dying.”

“How you feel about that?”

“You a psychologist, too?” Jake asked.

“No, sir. We got one in town and he’s as bat-shit crazy as some of his patients. I was there, man. I know what he did to you.”

“Yeah, you, Maggie and Nicky are about the only ones. He recognized me today. We had a sixty-second conversation in the truck as I dropped him off at Hospice.”

“Anything meaningful?”

“Nope,” Jake said, “and we better not have any more. He can just die, rot in hell and I can get on with my life.”

They stared down the hill at the darkened mass of the pond. Could Bear picture Nicky on the dock? Janey said he'd cleaned up the mess.

Jake’s mind raced with a jumble of memories and half-assed plans of getting Bear involved with helping him take out Shane Langston. Keats wanted Shane dead, but Jake wanted out of the violent life, not to cross yet another threshold he couldn’t come back from. If he helped Bear take down Langston, Jake could get him out of Keats’ line of fire without having to do anything he’d later regret. But he had no idea how to enlist his old friend to his cause.

Bear drained the last of his beer and stood, stretching his arms high with a growl. “These chairs suck, Jake. Even the crooked ones I make in my woodshop would be better than these rusted death traps.”

“Yeah, I don’t think entertaining and worrying about the comfort of his guests was high on Stony’s list.”

“I gotta get home. It's great to see you again. Seriously, man. Since you might actually be here for a few days, we should go catch some fish. Got a new boat this summer. Might as well break it in.”

Jake stood, and the two clasped in a manly hug with pats on the back hard enough to knock the bark off a tree. Jake walked around the side of the house to Bear’s truck, still trying to come up with a way to spill the idea of teaming up to take down Langston. Every idea sounded too nefarious and he’d be forced to tell him the truth. Bear was his friend, but still the county sheriff. Bear swung one leg into the cab of the truck when Maggie ran across the yard toward them, a sprinting ghost in the moonlight.

Bear squinted into the darkness. “Is that Maggie?”

“Yeah,” Jake said, wondering why his ex ran in the dark toward him. “She left a couple of hours ago.”

“You don’t waste time stoking the old flame, do you?”

Jake opened his mouth to say something nasty, but the panic etched on Maggie’s face as she drew closer closed it. She’d changed from her scrubs into jeans and a University of Missouri sweatshirt, tattered at the collar. A few strands of hair had broken loose from a haphazard ponytail and pasted against her sweaty forehead. She stopped in front of Jake and Bear; fear shimmered in her eyes.

“Help me,” she said, voice trembling. “Halle’s gone.”

“Halle?” Jake asked.

“My daughter. She’s gone and I know something’s happened.”

Willie’s pickup rattled east along Poor Boy Road toward the small town of Hastain, the engine making an unhealthy clank. They smashed Halle between Willie at the wheel and Bub, who chain-smoked with the passenger window halfway down. Bennett lay in the bed of the truck under a blanket, guarding the stash of Devil Ice. Between the smoke, Bub’s body odor and the burning oil smell emanating from the engine, nausea and terror pushed Halle to the edge. She couldn’t hold back the tears much longer.

“This ain’t good, Willie,” Bub said, breaking a silence that lasted an entire two minutes since he last made the same statement. “Ain’t no fucking good at all.”

“You mentioned it…several times,” Willie said. “I’m telling you not to worry about it.”

“You’re in a dreamland, dude. Shane hates loose ends, and right now that’s exactly what we are. We need to take this load and get out of dodge. You and me hit the open road.”

“Rip off Shane?”

“That’s what I’m sayin’.”

“You wanna know what it feels like to have your skin peeled from your bones while you watch it happen? That’s what Shane’ll do to you, man.”

“Not if we get out of the country,” Bub said. “We sell this load off and head to Mexico.”

“What happened to Canada?”

“I thought about it. Too cold.”

“Well, good luck with your plan. Count my ass out. I ain’t crossin’ Shane.”

Halle listened quietly, keeping her eyes on the road ahead. Bub’s talk about crossing Shane and Willie’s loyalty might be information she could turn into some kind of bargaining chip to keep her alive.

After four miles of the two-lane blacktop, Willie turned north on State Highway M for another mile and back east down a dark, narrow road. The faint glow of the headlights revealed a patchwork of black asphalt with no shoulder.

“Where the hell are we going?” Bub asked.

“The barn.”

“And you’re going to let her see exactly where it is.”

“We don’t have much of a choice, Bub.”

“I won’t say anything,” Halle said.

“Just wait till Shane starts in on your pretty little ass, honey,” Bub said. “You’ll sing whatever song he wants you to sing.”

Halle shivered and leaned into Willie.

Willie reached behind Halle and smacked Bub across the back of his thick skull. “Quit trying to scare her, dipshit.”

“Don’t matter,” Bub said. “She either ain’t gonna live to see the sun rise or is gonna wish she didn’t.”

Halle had fought her fear throughout so far, tried to show a brave face. But, when Willie didn’t counter Bub’s pessimistic assessment, bloody images of her lifeless body flashed in her mind and the tears she’d been trying so hard to hold back began to flow.

                                                        #

“Whoa, slow down,” Bear said. “What makes you think something happened to her?”

“I just know.” Maggie shifted from foot to foot, a compact ball of nervous energy. “I just know.”

“Maggie, she’s a teenager. She’s probably out with her friends.”

“No,” she said. “It’s a school night and she’s always home before dark. Always. She knows it’s her ass if she doesn’t make it back or at least call.” Her eyes grew wet and her voice hitched. “Her backpack’s there, she was home.”

“Any sign something happened at the house?” Jake asked. “Some sort of struggle?”

“No, everything looks normal.”

“Have you called around to any of her friends?” Bear asked. “Driven around to any of the spots she hangs out?”

“I called everyone I could think of. I can’t drive around because my car’s in Sedalia.” She pressed her palms to her head, pushing in as if to hold back the nightmare scenarios that must be running through her head. “Nobody has seen or heard from her since school got out. Something’s happened. I can feel it.”

Jake placed both his hands on her shoulders, trying to settle her.

“Hey, we’ll find her,” he said. “Try and calm down and think. Where could she go? This town isn’t that big.”

“Tell you what,” Bear said. “It’s almost eleven. You and Jake cruise through town, go by the boat docks and the Swinging Bridge, and see if you can find her. I’ll head out to some of the local hangouts on some back roads and see if I can roust her. I’ll call you the second I learn anything. If we don’t find anything in the next hour, I’ll call in the dogs, but I don’t want to start raising hell if she’s out sneaking a beer somewhere with some peckerhead.”

Maggie typed her information into Bear’s cell phone. Bear patted her on the shoulder and climbed into his truck.

“We’ll find her, Mags. I’ll get the night deputies on board to keep an eye out.”

“Thanks.” Maggie wiped her eyes. Bear took off down the driveway and headed east.

“Come on,” Jake said, putting his arm around her shoulders and steering her toward his truck. Bear’s scenario with a beer and peckerhead sounded more feasible that something bad happening. Still, he wanted to support her and he always heard about trusting a mother’s intuition. “Let’s go find her.”

Thirty minutes later after combing through every side street, park and gathering place in Warsaw, they’d come up with nothing. Jake called Bear who reported the same news from the various backroad spots he hit.

“Busted Trey Tompkin’s kid with a six pack and a joint trying to get in Tammy Harrison’s pants in the back of his old man’s Chevy,” Bear said. “But that’s the only thing of interest I’ve seen. You check everywhere in town?”

“Everywhere but the Swinging Bridge,” Jake said. “After that, I don’t know where else to look.”

They promised to hook up at the police station in thirty minutes. Traveling back toward Main Street, they headed to the Swinging Bridge—an old iron structure crossing the sloughs. Maggie fervently scoured the streets as they drove, starting every time she saw something in the darkness—not a frequent occurrence considering it approached midnight.

They cruised through Main Street seeing nothing but a shadowed couple kissing on the hood of an old Impala outside a bar, before rolling down the hill and pulling into Casey’s parking lot. Maggie jumped out of the truck and went inside, exchanging words with an elderly clerk. She trotted back and climbed inside.

“Marge said a group of kids came in a couple of hours ago,” she said. “They loaded up on Red Bull and junk food. Halle wasn’t with them, but her friend Alicia was.”

“I take it you didn’t talk to Alicia before?”

“I tried calling her house but nobody answered,” she said, “and she and Halle are tight. If anyone knows where my girl is, it’s Alicia. Hit the road under the bridge.”

Jake gunned out of the lot to the highway. A quarter mile later, he turned toward the Truman Dam and took a sharp right on a road his old man called The Fill.

A group of six teens huddled in the shadows of the cloud covered moon in front of a silver, newer-model sport pickup and an old black Mustang. Curious faces squinted against the light from Jake’s truck, riding too high to be mistaken for a cop car. But it represented an unknown presence and they cautiously set bottles on the ground out of sight and extinguished smoking materials underfoot.

Maggie flung open the door before Jake even rolled to a stop and stormed a hard-heeled path toward a pale, dark-haired girl hiding at the back of the group. He couldn’t tell from her body language if Maggie was pissed off or anxious. Probably both. He climbed out after her. Maggie grasped the girl about the shoulders and the five other teens backed away. They weren’t sure where this confrontation headed, but they sure didn’t want to be involved.

“Please, Alicia,” Maggie said. “Have you seen Halle?”

The girl’s bloodshot eyes were downcast against the glare of Jake’s headlights. Drunk or stoned.

“Please don’t tell my mom I was here,” Alicia said. “I said I was staying at your house and she’ll kill me.”

“You give me a clue where my daughter is and I won’t say a word.”

Alicia opened her mouth to say something and then looked over to the boy by Jake. With an almost imperceptible tick of his head, Alicia’s mouth closed.

“Don’t tell her shit, ‘Lecia,” said a scraggly haired teen with zits the size of boulders exploding on his face. He glanced toward Jake before grabbing his open beer from the ground by the Mustang.

“Shut your hole,” Jake said.

“Or what, old man?” The shithead raised the can to take a drink.

Nothing lit Jake’s fuse more than outright stupidity. He could crush the kid with one hand. The kid didn’t seem to think Jake would do anything. Time to prove him wrong.

Jake’s hand lashed out and sent the beer can flying in a whirling spray of amber liquid and foam. He used his large frame to crowd the kid against the side of the Mustang, pressing in tight. The kid’s grin disappeared as he tried to stare Jake down.

“You don’t scare me,” the kid said, trying to appear tough but doing a piss poor job of it. Jake crushed in tighter. If the window of the Mustang was open, the kid would have tumbled through. Without breaking eye contact, Jake reached over and broke off the antenna and held the jagged edge in front of the teen’s bulging eyes. Jake wanted to cut the little smartass, maybe a nice line across his cheekbone to give him a permanent reminder of what being a dumbass could get you. Out of the corner of his eye, Maggie’s eyes widened. The snap of a finger bone and a little girl’s screams echoed in his head. Goddamn it. This was the kind of shit he was trying to get away from. But he had the kid’s attention and didn’t want to lose the momentum.

“I’d better scare you or you’re dumber than you look,” Jake said. “Now shut up or I’ll carve out those zits with this antenna and leave your face like the surface of a bloody moon. Got me, ass wipe?”

The teen gave a couple rapid head jerks of agreement, his eyes locked on the jagged edge of the antenna.

“Where is she?” Maggie asked Alicia again.

Alicia took one more glance at the shithead by Jake’s side and groaned.

“Fine,” she said. “After school she talked about going for a run and then we were supposed to hook up.”

“Where?”

“At my house and then we were going to our spot.”

“Where’s your spot?” Jake asked, stepping away from the kid, but holding the sharp end of the antenna at his head as a warning.

“An old house off Poor Boy Road. We found it in the woods one day. We go there once in a while to hang out. It’s not far from yours. A quarter mile past Skinny Hart’s place. You know, the house with those silly deer statues and gazing balls in front of it.”

“Who lives there?” Maggie asked.

“Nobody,” Alicia said, squinting like it was the stupidest question she'd ever asked. “Looks like nobody’s lived there in a long time. There’s a picture of a skinny guy next to a fat woman in the dining room, but that’s the only personal thing there.”

“So what happened?”

“She never showed at my house,” Alicia said. “I called her, but she didn’t answer. I figured you and her were doing something.” She finally caught the frantic look in Maggie’s eyes and softened. “You really can’t find her?”

“No, I can’t. Who else knows about this place?”

“Nobody, Ms. Holden. I wanted to tell some people and Halle said no. It was our little hideout.”

“If you hear anything about her, you call me. Now, go home.” Maggie grabbed Jake by the elbow. They climbed into Jake’s truck which he threw in reverse.

“You were going to cut him, weren’t you?” she asked.

He shook her earlier with his tale of his violent past and was afraid to say any more.
No way
perched on his lips, but he couldn’t lie to her. “Thought about it. A few months ago I’d have done it in a heartbeat. Seeing their own blood tends to be a big motivator to get people to talk.”

“What changed your mind?”

He glanced at her. “You. I don’t want to be that guy anymore.” He let the confession sit. “You know the place the girl was talking about?”

“Yeah, I think so,” she said. “Sounds like old Royce Weather’s place. Hell, he’s been dead for years. I kind of know where the turn off is, but I’ll never find it in the dark.”

“Call Bear,” Jake said. “Have him meet us at your place. We’ll swing past to make sure your girl hasn’t gone back home. If she’s not there, I bet Bear can find the house.”

He spun the truck around and started back out The Fill Road; the Swinging Bridge crossing the Osage River couldn’t support traffic any longer. He glanced in the rearview mirror. The teens resumed their drinking, and the shithead flipped him off with a full arm extension.

They rolled to Highway 7, stopped, and waited for a few cars to pass.

“Tell me she’s okay, Jake.”

“She’s okay,” he said. As she dialed, Jake hoped he wasn’t telling her a lie.