The Wages of Sin

 

Dedication

To Patti Ross Salinas, my Bestie, with thanks for three decades of friendship

 

Epigraph

“For the wages of sin is death. . . .”

Romans 6:23

 

Contents

 

Chapter One

A string of
curses split the air under a bright blue September sky stretching over the Ozark hills. The unintelligible shout briefly muted the banjo picking that blared through the speakers of a battered black pickup truck.

A stone's throw from the truck, Chuck Harris huddled inside a blue nylon tent beside his girlfriend, Lisa Peters. She reached out and tapped him on the knee.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

He pulled an earphone from one ear. “What? Say what?”

“Did you hear? They're screaming again. And it sounds like someone else is pulling out.”

With a groan, Chuck rolled into a crouch and peeked out the mesh window. “They're leaving. The last sane campers.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can see the taillights. And their gear is gone. It's just us and the psychos.”

Lisa put her hands over her ears. “How many times can they play ‘Folsom Prison Blues'?”

“And ‘Dueling Banjos.' Gives me the chills.”

“Huh?”

“Dueling Banjos. You know that old movie?
Deliverance?
With the murdering hillbilly retards. I think they're making the sequel right now.”

“Don't say ‘retard,' ” she said under her breath; but he'd replaced his earphone.

They had arrived the day before, on a hot Friday evening, to spend Labor Day weekend at the scenic campground in Mark Twain National Forest, an unspoiled haven in the Ozark hill country. They had erected their tent under lush leaves, but their peaceful retreat was interrupted before nightfall by the arrival of a rusty pickup spewing noxious exhaust.

“It's just us and them now.” Lisa unzipped the fabric door partway and stuck her head through the opening.

Chuck asked, “Are they still drinking?”

Dozens of beer cans littered the neighboring campsite, blinking silver in the late afternoon sunlight. Two men sat at a dying fire, passing a pipe.

“Smoking.”

“God damn,” Chuck said. “I'm a prosecutor, a county official in McCown County. I'm a prisoner in this blue nylon womb. I can't go outside.”

“This isn't McCown County.”

“Okay, but still. I'm technically law enforcement. What am I supposed to do, if I'm confronted with their criminal antics? Run up and say ‘citizen's arrest'?”

Lisa reached into a duffel bag and pulled out a bottle of Fireball Whisky. Taking a quick chug from the neck of the bottle, she said, “I didn't see the little girl out there. Or the woman.”

“So they went home. Good for them.”

“Chuck, they all drove here together in that piece of shit truck. How could a pregnant woman and a little kid get home from the middle of the woods?”

“Well, maybe they're on a nature hike.” He slumped back on his sleeping bag. “This is not what I envisioned when you proposed this camping getaway.”

Angry voices drowned out the banjo music once again. Lisa crawled back to the mesh window.

The two men, one tall, lank, and bearded, the other stocky, with a tangled ponytail, remained at the fireside. But a woman had joined the circle. She was young, in her midtwenties, with long hair tinted a deep henna hue, bordering on purple. A gray sweatshirt strained over her abdomen. The bearded man was shouting at her; he jumped to his feet and advanced on her, his fists cocked.

“She's got to be about nine months pregnant,” Lisa said. “She could drop that baby right now.”

As Lisa watched, the bearded man shoved the pregnant woman, barking an insult. The woman stumbled, knocking over the cooler that sat beside the campfire, spilling ice and beer cans into the dirt. Her companions roared. She lumbered to an upright position and struggled to right the cooler, scrambling to pick up cans and toss them back inside. She bent to stop the movement of a can rolling away from the others. The tall man grabbed a handful of her magenta hair, jerked her up and backhanded her, sending her onto the smoking campfire.

When the woman fell onto the fire, Lisa screamed. She jerked at the zippered door of the tent, fighting to open it. Chuck snatched her by the arm.

“What the hell are you doing?”

She turned on him, her eyes blazing. “That fucker. Beating up a pregnant girl. He threw her on the fire.” She returned to the zipper, but it snagged in her shaking hands. “We've got to stop him.”

Chuck grasped her around the waist and pulled her away from the nylon door. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

Lisa fought him, panting. “Do you think I'll stand by and watch that go down?”

He pinned her on the Coleman sleeping bag. “Jesus, Lisa, what do you think you're dealing with? Those crackers are crazy. They're criminals. A guy who'd beat up a pregnant woman—­what do you think he'd do to you or me?”

They lay together in the tent for protracted, tortured moments as the screams rent the air outside.

“We have to call 911,” Lisa said in a whisper.

“We can't get a signal out here. No access. We're in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

They heard the man's voice again.

“I'm going to fuck you up, you fat whore.”

Lisa moaned. “Oh Lord, Lord, Lord.”

Chuck grabbed his backpack. “We'll make a run for the car. We can drive to Sparta, I think that's the nearest town, and contact the police there.”

Chuck peeked through the mesh, then they scuttled out of the tent. As they ran for the car, Chuck tripped over the lawn chairs they'd set by their own campfire and fell on the hard-­packed patch of dirt.

Lisa stood by the passenger door as he crawled to the car, saying in a hoarse whisper, “Hurry, for God's sake. Hurry.”

Once inside the vehicle, the ignition roared, and Chuck hit the accelerator. The car swung by the neighboring campsite, where the tall man had the pregnant girl in a headlock, just outside the circle of the campfire. Her gray sweatshirt was smoking. The man with a ponytail sat in a chair, watching, and lit his pipe.

As Chuck and Lisa pulled away from the campsite and into the woods, they saw the child, a little girl, standing by the side of the road. She was a skinny waif with scruffy blond hair, regarding them with an unblinking stare behind broken eyeglasses.

 

Chapter Two

Oh my God.
Let this be over,
Elsie thought, doodling on the page of a legal pad. Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Elsie Arnold had been tied up in Judge Carter's court for nearly two hours that morning, representing the State of Missouri in a preliminary hearing. The criminal defendant was charged with robbery in the first degree. Only Judge Carter, Elsie thought, would be coldhearted enough to subject her to a robbery prelim on the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend.

Public Defender Josh Nixon was grilling the bank president, Donna Hudson, in cross-­examination.

“So you were present at the time of the alleged robbery?”

“Yes—­I said so. In my office.”

“But isn't it true that, if you were shut up in your office, you did not have occasion to hear whether the defendant threatened any harm?”

“The buzzer sounded. I heard it.” The woman sat stiff, with righ­teous indignation in every wrinkle of her face.

“The alarm, right? But you didn't hear any statements made by the defendant, did you? Because you remained safely in the back of the bank.”

“I saw the bomb.”

A comical grin grew on the defense attorney's face; Elsie closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see it.

“The bomb?” he repeated.

“The box. The box with the tape.”

The criminal complaint filed by the prosecution did not allege that the defendant had threatened the bank employee with a bomb. The criminal charge stated that the defendant threatened the use of what
appeared to be
a bomb.

“Describe this box, please.”

“It was a box, about this size,” she said, making a rectangle shape with her hands. “And it was covered with duct tape.”

“Did the defendant detonate this deadly bomb? This dangerous instrument you described?”

The banker eyed the defense attorney with resentment. “You know what happened.”

“Tell me. For the record.”

“The bank teller gave him the money. Everything in her drawer. He ran out, left that box on the counter.”

“Then what happened?”

“The bomb squad came and took over.”

“What did they do? If you know.”

“They exploded it.” The lines deepened around the woman's mouth. “They blew it up. And the mess went everywhere.”

“Mess? What kind of mess?”

Elsie wanted to cover her ears to block out the answer that was coming.

“The chocolate, the cherries.”

Josh Nixon leaned on the empty jury box, nodding sagely. “So the bomb was not a bomb at all? It was—­what did you say?”

“A box of candy. Chocolate-­covered cherries. Wrapped in duct tape.”

“And for the record, Ms. Hudson: was the money recovered? The money from the bank teller's drawer?”

“Yes, it was. But—­”

Before she could complete her sentence, the defense attorney turned his back to her, cutting the witness off. “No further questions,” he said, and walked back to the counsel table. Nixon slid into his seat, stretching his long legs out in front of him and tucking his longish sun-­streaked hair behind his ear. He hadn't bothered to don a tie.

Judge Carter, a slim man in his forties with prematurely silver hair, peered at Elsie over his glasses. “Redirect?”

Elsie stood at the counsel table, looking at the bank president with an encouraging face. “But did it appear to be a bomb? When the defendant threatened the teller with it?”

“Objection,” Nixon said, sitting up straight. “The witness wasn't present, has no way of knowing other than hearsay!”

Elsie barked back. “You're the one who opened the door on this line of questioning. In your cross-­examination.”

The bank president rose from her chair, the picture of aggrieved fury. “What I want to know,” she said, “is who is going to pay? For that mess? The cleaning of the bank lobby?”

Judge Carter slammed the gavel. The bank president jumped, startled, and hopped back onto her seat on the witness stand.

“Ms. Arnold—­further questions?”

“No.”

“Any further witnesses on behalf of the defense?”

“No,” said Nixon.

The judge turned to his clerk. “The court finds probable cause. Defendant is bound over to Circuit Court on the charge of robbery in the first degree. Arraignment to be held Friday at 9:00
A.M
.”

When the judge left the bench, Josh Nixon turned to whisper with his client, a long-­haired young man with a bushy mustache. The president of Bank of the Hilltop, Donna Hudson, stormed off the witness stand and bore down on Elsie.

“How could I be treated this way in a court of law?”

“No one meant to mistreat you,” Elsie said in a soothing voice. “It was just cross-­examination—­the defense attorney gets to ask questions. I explained that to you before.”

“But I am the victim. My family owns the bank.”

“That's right, Donna. But the defense has the right to confront the witnesses against him.”

“Who gave that criminal the right to confront me? I am a taxpaying citizen.”

Elsie backed up a step, angling to make a getaway. “The US Constitution. Sixth Amendment.”

The banker's eyes narrowed; Elsie sensed that the woman didn't appreciate the finer points of the Bill of Rights.

“When will the court make him pay for the cleanup? The cleanup of the bank lobby?”

Edging closer to the door, Elsie shook her head. “Hard to say. You think this guy has any money?”

Mrs. Hudson's unhappy expression showed that the conversation wasn't over. But as she was about to speak again, Elsie's friend and coworker, Breeon Johnson, hurried into the courtroom and grabbed Elsie's arm.

“Downstairs,” Breeon said.

“Now? Right now?” Elsie asked.

“Just one darned minute,” Donna Hudson said. She opened a Louis Vuitton handbag and pulled out a Kleenex, rubbing furiously at her nose. Elsie eyed the bag with curiosity. It was probably the real article. Though as an employee of a rural county in the Ozarks, Elsie didn't have sufficient acquaintance with designer goods to distinguish the genuine product from a knockoff.

Elsie gave Breeon an inquiring look. “Can you wait a sec?”

Breeon tugged at her arm. “Can't wait. It's an emergency.”

Elsie could see from Breeon's face that she was deadly serious. “Okay,” she said. Looking back at the banker, Elsie spoke hastily. “The system is working, Mrs. Hudson. Your bank robber has been bound over; he'll be arraigned in Circuit Court, and his case will be set for jury trial. I appreciate your cooperation, and your testimony. But I have to get downstairs.” She looked over to the door; Breeon had just vanished through it. “Something major is going on.”

“But will he pay?”

The woman's voice rang in Elsie's ears, and she was tired of hearing it. Turning away, she said, “Yeah. Yes, Mrs. Hudson. He'll pay.”

“How?”

“The old-­fashioned way, I expect. With his liberty.”

The banker protested, her voice shrill, but Elsie departed at a fast pace, and scrambled down the worn marble staircase of the McCown County Courthouse, catching up to Breeon at the back entrance to the Prosecutor's Office.

“What?” Elsie demanded, as Breeon punched the security buttons to access the private entrance. “What is it?”

Breeon shook her head in disgust. “Another murder. They found the body in a trailer home, right outside the city limits. Can you believe it?”

“Again?” Murder cases were rare in rural McCown County, a small community nestled deep in the Ozark hills of southwest Missouri. Elsie had handled a murder case over the summer, prosecuting a juvenile for the death of a bus driver. A second homicide, occurring within such a short period of time, would shake the entire community.

“Yeah, another woman,” Breeon said, pushing the door open. “But a young one this time.”

“Aw, shit,” Elsie said.

Breeon gave her a look, righ­teous anger evident in her face. “She was eight months pregnant.”

The news stopped Elsie in her tracks. “A double murder,” she whispered.