The Adventures of Slim & Howdy (19 page)

Slim and Howdy looked at one another like maybe Jake wasn’t their best suspect after all.

“I believe you two boys have a problem with premature accusation,” Jake said with a smirk. “Now I appreciate you thinking of me for a part in your big kidnap case and your chance at being heroes and all, but you got at least one major problem with your theory.” Jake held up his lanced and weeping finger. “Diamondback bit me six days ago. Somebody grabbed Jodie last night, it wasn’t me. I can’t pick up a garter snake with this hand, let alone grab a struggling wildcat. And I know from personal experience that Jodie will put up one helluva fight if you try to get her to do something she don’t want to.” He shook his head, thinking back to that night all those years ago. “Damn shame to find that out on the honeymoon, but what’re ya gonna do?”

Howdy gestured for the canister behind Slim’s back.

Slim shook his head, kept it out of reach.

“I wish I could help,” Jake said. “I really do. But except to pass her on the road, I haven’t seen Jodie in years. If she’s got enemies, I don’t know who they are. If I did, I’d tell you. Hell, if I knew someone was holding her against her will, I’d go over there myself with something poisonous, I swear. Of all my ex-wives, she’s the one I wished was still around, every now and then.”

“Jake, you seem sincere and all,” Slim said. “But there’s one thing you haven’t explained.” Slim held up the canister. “What about this?”

“Oh, that’s for anesthetizing snakes,” he said, pointing forked fingers at Slim and Howdy. “Now, are you sure I can’t interest you in that Mexican red-kneed tarantula?”

45

“JAKE, WE GOT NO USE FOR A TARANTULA,” HOWDY SAID.
“No matter what color its knees are. But if you’ve got a map, we could use some help finding this place.” He showed Jake the address taken from the box at Link’s trailer.

Jake pulled out a map and found the location of Link’s presumed dungeon. It was over in Kinney County, just south of Brackettville, about forty-five miles from Del Rio. “Spofford Junction,” Jake called it.

As soon as they were in the truck, Howdy said, “Jake may be crazy as a soup sandwich, but I think we can scratch him off the list of suspects.”

“What?” Slim shot Howdy a look of surprise and said, “Why?”

“C’mon,” Howdy said. “It’s obvious.”

“Not to everybody.”

“Even with two good hands, I doubt that boy could wrestle Jodie into submission, let alone get her into the trunk of a car.” Like that’s the way you’re supposed to do it.

Slim shook his head like he was the best detective in the truck. He said, “See, that’s why they came up with that word ‘accomplice.’ Jake doesn’t have to be the one who did the actual abduction. In fact, given his former—presumably tumultuous—relationship with Jodie, it’s the dumbest thing he could do. The prime suspect is always the ex. Husband, wife, girlfriend, whatever. Jake may be crazy, but he knows that much. He’d want an alibi. And that’s why he’d get an accomplice.” Slim paused before he said, “And what makes you think they’d stick her in the trunk of a car?”

Howdy shrugged. “Where else you gonna put a kidnap victim? Riding shotgun?”

“I’ve never done it,” Slim said. “But my point is: Rattlesnake Jake’s a good suspect.”

“Better than our boy with the whips and chains?”

Slim’s head rocked side to side as he said, “Yeah, well, I’m not saying we don’t track Link down. But, you know, he almost seems too obvious, don’t you think? Be foolish to eliminate Jake just because Link
looks
like a home run.”

“Are you kidding?” Howdy looked back over his shoulder and gestured with his thumb. “Did you forget the thing hanging by the noose in Link’s kitchen? And those magazines?”

“Listen, I got friends subscribe to
Guns & Ammo,
doesn’t make them killers,” Slim said. “Besides, what about the rope and the scratches and all that?”

Howdy held out his hands. “He had innocent explanations for everything.”

“Yeah, a little too innocent for my taste,” Slim said. “Sounded almost rehearsed. And did you notice how quick he was to pull that map and point us toward Link?”

Howdy shook his head. “You may be crazier than Jake.” He touched a finger to the brim of his hat, then pointed down the road. “My money’s on Link the kink.”

Slim shook his head. “You prefer a simple disgruntled former employee over a bitter, mentally unstable, drug-addled, paranoid ex-husband who sees his ex-wife getting ahead without him? His old flame leaving him in the dust, humiliating him for all of Del Rio to see? Probably been eatin’ at him ever since she came back to town. Sees her success. Knows his own failures.” Slim snapped his fingers. “The boy finally snapped.”

“I think you sniffed too much of that juice,” Howdy said. “It’s clouding your judgment.”

“Or cleared my head.”

“Right,” Howdy said. “Let’s get back to your accomplice theory. If somebody’s in cahoots with Jake, who is it?”

“No idea,” Slim said. “Maybe Duke.”

“Duke?”

“Why not? I’m just saying anything’s possible.”

They carried on like this for another ten minutes as they sped east on U.S. 90, across the Val Verde County line. Neither one of them wanted to say, “Do you think she’s still alive?” They were both thinking these words, had been for a while, but there was something about saying them that seemed wrong, like bad luck, so neither one did.

After a while, Slim said, “You know, I read this article one time that said something like ninety-five percent of kidnap victims—now I’m talking about adult kidnappings, not children. That’s a whole different ball of wax. Let’s not go there. But something like ninety-five percent of kidnapped adults are abducted by someone they know,” he said. “Except for, like, U.S. corporate executives in foreign countries.” Slim seemed pretty sure about this.

“This article say anything about the percentage that live to tell the tale?”

“Most of ’em, actually,” Slim lied. In truth, there was no article, just some vague memory of an FBI statistic on the news a year ago mixed with some wishful thinking. Slim figured they’d both feel better if they talked and acted as if Jodie would be all right as long as they kept looking for her.

Howdy pointed at the upcoming intersection. “Here’s your turn.”

Slim took the right onto the 131, heading south now, toward FM 1572.

Ten minutes later they rolled past the past in the form of the old Spofford Hotel, what remained of it anyway, and the depot for the Southern Pacific Railroad. A mile after that they reached the address they were looking for.

It was a crumbling mansion built by a Randolph P. Crawford in the early 1900s after the Kinney County irrigation canal turned the area into a thriving farming and ranch community. Mr. Crawford, who had inherited substantial acreage in the area, subdivided his land, made the proverbial killing, and built his Xanadu. Fifteen years later, somebody farther to the north with the money to buy better political connections got control of the water rights to the west fork of the Nueces River and that was all she wrote for Spofford. Within a few years, the population had all but blown away with the dust.

But the Crawford house remained, slouching a little more with each passing decade. It sat two hundred yards back from the road, an ominous silhouette looming on the horizon. According to legend, after the Spofford bubble burst, old man Crawford hung himself in the house. Locals said the place was haunted, and it looked like there might be some truth to it.

Slim pulled up the dirt driveway, stopped about halfway to the house. They could see Link’s truck and a late-model blue sedan parked up there.

Howdy turned his head sideways, said, “You hear that?”

“Yep.” The sound of a stereo, muffled, but obviously blasting somewhere inside the house. “Doesn’t sound like Perry Como either.”

Figuring no one would hear their approach, Slim drove straight to the front and parked between Link’s truck and the blue sedan.

Standing in front of the crumbling old manse, tilting his head back to look up at the onion-shaped dome atop the turret, Howdy said, “Bet this was quite a place back in its day.”

Slim nodded. “It’s an Eastlake,” he said. “Queen Anne–style Victorian.” He pointed at the fancy spindles and lacy, ornamental details. “See all that wedding cake stuff? Designer named Eastlake made that popular.”

“Just goes to show you,” Howdy said.

“Yeah.”

A couple of one-by-six boards formed a prohibitive X across the front door, so Slim and Howdy moved around the side. There was more noise, this time from the generator that was providing the power for the stereo that kept blasting the furious noise. They peeped in the windows, there was no one on the first floor. Howdy elbowed Slim and pointed at the door to the storm cellar. “Down there.”

They opened the door to a blast of industrial-strength death metal and the smell of sweat and leather. There was a sturdy flight of stairs going down to a landing, then a ninety-degree turn before the stairs continued to the dungeon.

They drew their guns and started down. No one would hear them coming, but they could still be seen, so they were careful how they approached.

From the landing they could see everything. It was the room from the Polaroids. The stool and the frayed wire with the lone bulb. The rack of flogs and whips. An empty body harness hung from the ceiling, like all that was left was the victim’s skin. Off to one side, a heavy table displayed an array of power tools and a branding iron.

After circling the room, as if trying to avoid the thing, their eyes finally came to rest on the cage in the middle of the floor. Inside, someone bound with latex, chains, and a full black leather hood. No way to tell if it was Jodie, the local Sweet Potato Queen, or the mayor of Houston, but it sent a shiver up Slim’s and Howdy’s spines that would have bucked a rider.

Link was standing next to the cage, cracking a whip, head back and howling. He looked like Lord Humungus from
The Road Warrior,
powerful and debased. His leather neck collar flaring at the shoulders. The shiny metal face mask with holes punched for air brought to mind a psychopathic hockey goalie from the Dark Ages. He bent down, shouting something at the person in the cage, but Slim and Howdy couldn’t hear it over the noise coming from the six speakers arrayed around the chamber.

It sounded like the Orcs of Mordor had formed a band and were still trying to get their shit together. The group was actually called Death by Infection, four terminally bored and musically inept kids from the suburbs of Denver who found their grinding, violent, ugly noise was the best way to annoy their parents and get chicks. Their mostly unintelligible lyrics hit the ears like a bludgeon. Something about political degradation and tendons between their teeth, but it was hard to say for sure.

Slim couldn’t take the noise any longer. He drew a bead on the stereo.

Howdy shook his head, pointed at Link.

Slim shrugged, turned, aimed at Link.

Howdy shook his head again and gestured for Slim to lower the .45 and just follow.

Because of the hood and all the noise, the woman in the cage—who they both hoped was Jodie—had no way to know they were crossing the room, heading for Link. The captive continued to struggle against the five-piece hog-tie set, to the point of testing its one-year limited warranty.

Slim and Howdy had to cross twenty feet of open floor to get to Link. They walked fast, just in case he turned around. As Slim passed the rack of cudgels and flogs, he holstered his gun and grabbed a Louisville Slugger that didn’t seem to get much use here in the dungeon. He choked up on it, one-handed, as he approached Link. He took one last step, bringing the target within reach, then he sapped the big son of a bitch on the back of the head.

46

LINK PITCHED FORWARD, LANDING LIKE A LEATHER SAND
bag draped over the cage.

The woman inside reacted like a blind mole rat, head tipped up as if sniffing for clues, aware that something had happened but having no idea what it was. The only thing missing was a set of whiskers.

Then the gunshot.

It scared everybody except Slim, who had fired it, killing the sound system and Death by Infection with a single shot. “There.” He holstered the .45 and said, “Enough of that.”

In the quiet that followed, the captive in the cage stiffened visibly, suddenly aware that others were here and something was going on.

Slim nudged Howdy, said, “Give me a hand.” They grabbed Link’s arms. Slim nodded at something nearby. “Over there.”

On hearing their voices, the woman began struggling and screaming, trying to say urgent things. But coming from under the mask, it all pretty much came out as “Mmmrrpphh!”

“Jodie! It’s me and Slim,” Howdy said, as he struggled with his half of Link. “Just give us a second.”

Squirming from the hog-tie position, she looked like an X-rated rocking horse, grunting all the while as Slim and Howdy—also grunting—wrestled Link into a kneeling position with his head and arms through the holes of some Medieval stocks, his legs in an ankle hobbler.

The captive kept struggling and screaming to the point that Howdy got nervous, started glancing over his shoulder. Was it a warning? Did Link have a nasty little apprentice lurking in the shadows with a hatchet?

After they secured Link, they found the keys to the cage, popped the lock, and swung open the rusty hinges. Howdy grabbed the legs and pulled. When he could reach it, he unzipped the hood and pulled it off. “There you go.”

Much to their surprise, it was a man. And the first thing he said was, “What the
hell
are you doing?!” He was furious. “You ruined the scene!”

Slim looked at him and said, “You ain’t Jodie.”

He had sunken cheeks and a pencil-thin mustache that gave him the appearance of a Depression-era carnival barker. Bowed up in the hog-tie position, the man wiggled back and forth. He was all red-faced as he shouted, “You have any idea how long we’ve been trying to get this shot?” The man looked over and saw Link, unconscious, in the stockade. “Oh, great.” He turned, looked up at Howdy. “Undo this thing, would ya?”

Howdy set the guy free and said, “What’s going on here?”

“What’s it look like?” The guy went to a space under the stairway landing and turned off the three-thousand-dollar Sony digital unit. “We’re making a film,” he said. “I’m the producer. Morgan Bryson. Bryson Entertainment.” He offered his hand but nobody took it.

Slim said, “You’re producing
and
you’re in the movie?” Like he knew that was a bad combination.

“I also wrote it,” he said. “Welcome to low-budget hell.” Bryson went over to get a closer look at Link. “You didn’t kill him, did you?” Link moaned, answering the question. “Good, my Brando lives.” Bryson unlocked the stockades and ankle hobbler, then stepped aside as Link flopped backwards onto the floor with a thud. He saw the bullet hole in the sound system, rubbed his hand across his face. “You idiots! There goes my soundtrack.”

Howdy grabbed Bryson by the arm. “Look, Mr. Speilberg, we’re not particularly concerned about your shooting schedule.”

Bryson jerked free of Howdy’s grip. “You’re killing me, you know that?” He gestured at all the equipment. “I’m renting this stuff by the day. Have any idea what that costs? No, of course not. What do you care? You’re not in the business. And what do you want, anyway? A part? You want to be in the movie? Jesus, everybody wants to be in show business but nobody wants to pay the dues.”

“We’re looking for a woman named Jodie Lee,” Howdy said. “I don’t suppose you know anything about her disappearance.”

Bryson wasn’t listening. He had pulled a BlackBerry from his pocket and was thumbing away at the tiny keyboard. “You have any idea how close we are to the deadline for Slamfest? If we miss it”—he set the BlackBerry down and crossed the room, disappearing into a shadowy corner—“we’ll have to premiere on YouTube.”

Howdy was running out of patience. You could hear it when he said, “Look, Mr. Scorsese, I asked you about Jodie Lee. You wanna hold still for a second and give us some answers?”

“My answer’s simple,” Bryson said as he stepped out of the darkness with a snub-nosed .38. “This is a closed set. You’ve assaulted my lead talent. If you don’t leave, I’ll assume you mean to assault me as well and I’ll be forced to shoot.” He thumbed the hammer back and wagged the gun at them. “Now let’s see the hands.”

“Great,” Slim said, as his went up. “All the producers in the world and we get the Phil Spector of the indie film set.”

Howdy’s hands remained by his side. Bryson wagged the gun again. “I said, put ’em up.”

Howdy tilted his head slightly toward Slim and mumbled, “On three.”

Slim cut his eyes sideways and said, “On three what?”

“One . . .”

“Wait a second. I don’t know the plan.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Bryson said, unsure where to aim.

“Two . . .”

“At least give me a clue,” Slim said.

“Three!”

Bryson fired a shot just as Slim dove to his right and rolled to cover behind a thick crate. Howdy jumped left and grabbed the tripod in a full nelson, holding his gun to the digital camera like a hostage’s head. He looked at Bryson, dead serious, and said, “Drop the gun or the Sony gets it.”

After a dramatic pause, the producer said, “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me,” Howdy said. “And while you hesitate to do so, let’s get back to the whereabouts of Jodie Lee.”

“I don’t even know
who
she is,” Bryson said. “Let alone where.”

“No? What about your big playmate?” Howdy said. “Jodie caught him stealing from her. She fired him. He was pissed off. And come to find out he’s keen on bondage and sadism. I’m thinking he knows something.”

“Speaking of pissed off,” Slim said as he came from behind the crate. “Next time you start countin’ to three without giving me more information—”

“You get hit?”

“No, but—”

“All right, then, let’s just focus on finding Jodie.”

Bryson kept his gun on Howdy. “I tell you what. Back away from the camera and maybe we can work something out where nobody gets hurt.”

“You don’t get the camera until we get Jodie.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Slim noticed Link’s hulking figure rising from the floor with the Louisville Slugger. He let out a roar as he charged Howdy from behind. Slim drew his .45 and squeezed off a shot that was meant to get Link’s attention, which it did, seeing as how it hit him in the hand. The bat tumbled to the ground as did Link, who was now howling like a coyote.

Howdy kept his gun on the camera as he turned to see Link curled up on the floor like a bear holding a wounded paw. Then he looked at Slim. “Nice shot.”

Slim gave a casual shrug like he’d hit what he was aiming at. Then he turned his aim on Bryson.

“One more time,” Howdy said. “Where’s Jodie?” He cocked his pistol.

“Okay, okay.” Bryson set the .38 on the floor and raised his hands. “Search the house, do whatever, just don’t shoot the camera.”

They grabbed the .38 and stuffed Bryson and Link into the little cage. Getting the door closed was like sitting on an overpacked suitcase. The two men were pressed inside like sardines in a can.

Slim and Howdy went through the old house from basement to attic. There was evidence of squatting and sordid behavior in most of the rooms. Sterno cans, cigarette wrappers, empty bottles, a broken crack pipe. One room had an old metal bed frame with burlap bags as a thin mattress and some rope tied to the headboard. But no obvious signs of Jodie.

After their fruitless search, they returned to the dungeon. Howdy seemed to be in a sour mood. Link was cursing and making threats while Bryson was bitching about cost overruns and distribution problems.

Howdy went over to the table where the power tools were laid out. He picked up the drill and squeezed the trigger.
Whrizzzzz.
He walked over to the cage where Link’s head was pressed to the bars, unable to move. Howdy said, “Link, I saw that magazine of yours.”
Whrizzzzz.
“The article on trepanation was damn interesting.”
Whrizzzzz.
“Now, I’m just going to ask one more time.” He touched the drill to Link’s shiny head.