Behind the Pines (The Gass County Series Book 3) (11 page)

Suddenly the phone behind him on the desk vibrated in rhythm, three at a time, the most reliable rhythm, until he picked it up and swiped his thumb across the glass and smiled at Melanie’s message: “You know she is cute. And no, you are not too old for her. Stop wasting time, Brody.”

He placed the phone in his pants pocket, grabbed his lunch box from the chair by the door, and stepped out of the building, not knowing what his next move should be.

Chapter Seventeen

Sunshine digested a questionably edible dinner. The beans in the pot simmered under the lid and, thanks to the bacon and brown sugar in the sauce, a trailer that usually stunk of musky fabric and old wood smelled like sweet baked goods. Brutus’s large frame took up space in the walkway between the seating area and the burner by the door. A canine feat of which she was jealous: sleeping wherever, whenever, with a rumbling snore.

Not even her steps above him made any difference. He slept and Sunshine enjoyed the bowl of heated beans she’d poured herself and sat down on the rough fabric lining the cushions on the couch. “At least it’s better than being outside,” she sighed and closed her eyes, pleased she had a nonleaking roof over her head and food in her stomach. “It could be worse.”

The trailer turned quiet and she noticed Brutus’s head no longer resting on the cold linoleum floor. Instead his ears moved, an intensity showing in his eyes, trying to locate a sound he’d heard but she obviously hadn’t. His nose puffed lightly and with a raised eyebrow he met Sunshine’s stare.
“What is it, Brutus? What do you hear?” She placed the scraped-bare bowl on the table and moved down on the floor next to her companion, his heat radiating through his black fur. She rested her head against his side and stroked his dark hair, letting it run smoothly between her fingers. “Should we stay, Brutus? Is this safe?” A branch cracked and they stiffened but before Brutus had a chance to bark she placed a solid grip around his mouth and pressed his face into her chest. “Sssh, not a sound. Quiet, be very quiet.”

“Yes, darling. Be very quiet.”

She whipped around and through the cracked-open window where she had recently sat enjoying her ever so casual dinner, the barrel of a revolver rested on the windowsill and, following the massive hand gripping its handle, the contours of a pale man’s face baring eyes glowing as the fires in hell stared at them and his hand pushed itself through, widening the window further. The revolver could end her days with a simple press of a finger, yet what was more frightening was the smile on the man’s face.

“If that dog jumps, I’m not saving my ammunition, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” she whispered and clamped her hand harder around Brutus’s mouth, holding it shut.

“Now, I’m going to come in. Where will the dog go?”

Her eyes followed the revolver as it swung around like a baton guiding its orchestra.

“Outside,” she managed to answer, swallowing down a desperate cry.

“I’m not sure what you’re waiting for, sweetheart. Let’s get to it, shall we?” His eyes aimed at Brutus tucked hard by her side.

“Sure, yes.” In panic she grabbed the thick fur at the back of Brutus’s neck, pulled down the leash from the hook next to the door and headed out into the darkening hours of the evening.

As she reached the end of the trailer, she wasn’t sure her wobbly legs could hold her upright much longer and she bumped into Brutus, who immediately found her eyes, looking for an answer or command, noting the level of distress in Sunshine.

“In, Brutus.”

“Lock it and come back to the trailer, now.” The voice shook, and with uneasy feet she stepped across the gravel and was met by the open door to her own home, which she for the first time didn’t want to enter. Gone was the sweet smell of baked beans; now the small space stunk of dirt, forest, and old-set moisture.

“Come sit down.”

She hadn’t dared look back at him yet. The few steps along the hallway felt heavy, not knowing whether an execution would present itself at the end. 

“Sit.”

The rough fabric stretched against her bottom as she slid herself onto the seat, watching her hands fold in her lap.

“Now, this is what we’ll do.” He lit up a cigarette and she was happy the smoke concealed the pungent smell he’d brought inside. Thin swirls of smoke rose in the air, the sound of burning paper at the tip when he inhaled sharply was the sound of crackling fire to her ears. Her eyes traced the small flakes of ashes landing on the table until she met his gaze across the table.

“There they are, the blue ones trying to hide.”

That was the last thing she remembered as the table smashed her in the face, a large hand pushing her down into it. The crackling of cigarette paper vanished and the echo of silence took over her world. She preferred it to what was at hand. It felt pleasant.

Chapter Eighteen

A hard lash of a hand across her cheek woke her. A view of darkened forest before her and when she looked down, she saw her hands wrapped in what must have been Brutus’s leash, itself tied to the car’s steering wheel. She tried to pull her hands away, shaking them, terror taking over every part of her body. A hand suddenly pushed against the back of her head, shoving her face against the hardness of the wheel.

“For being so pretty, you ain’t too smart. Can’t you see you’re stuck? It’s not my first time, miss. Leave it.”

Again the smoke of a cigarette took up space in her lungs, reminding her of burned leather. Her skin branded like cattle. She swallowed hard and sniffed in the smell of nosebleed. The gleaming orange light of a lit Marlboro dangled from the mouth of the man next to her in the passenger seat.

“Let’s go.”

“Where to?” she asked, her voice a faint whisper, wondering if he’d heard her question.

“None of your business. Just drive until I tell you not to.”

“People will wonder.”
“They will not,” he answered and flicked the lengthy ashes on the floor and stared out the window. “Drive,” he spat and pressed his cold hand onto her right thigh, pushing her foot onto the gas pedal.

Miles of familiar landscape flew by the window, orders of directions coming scarcely from Hemmerson. Distance was of more importance than direction.
Was it Canada he sought?
Saskatchewan, Manitoba maybe?
Stretched-out land and a chance for freedom
.

“Stop thinking so hard, blondie, just drive and turn that mind of yours off. You’re ruining my peacefulness. Do you know how it is to live inside a prison?” He turned to her, placing his knee on the console between them. “It’s crowded, it’s evil, and it’s a fucking pleasure for those lucky enough to find a mate.”

“Not your cup of tea, from what I’ve heard.”

A puff of air escaped his nose and she noticed him staring straight at her while she kept her eyes on the darkened cement road ahead. “So, you
have
heard of me. I guess my reputation proceeds me. Well, miss, then there is no need to tell you my preference. You already know.”

Chapter Nineteen

This is dumb, he thought, alternating pushing down the gas pedal of the patrol car, then hitting the brakes. Repeatedly for the next few miles of dark asphalt and slumbering forest, eyes looking for that one lonely turn-out leading down the gravel path dusted in growing weeds leading up to Sunshine’s bland, white trailer. To call it an RV would be taking it too far, there being nothing recreational about the vehicle, but trailer. Sure, it wouldn’t roll on those wheels any time soon but it was somewhere to keep warm.

He turned down the gentle slope off the road. Gangly, vulnerable seedlings whisked their green tentacles against the side of his cruiser until he reached a clearing ahead. Gravel mixed with weeds crawling from the forest and into the clearing, making a half circle dusted in cool pale rays of a night’s beginning. The sunshine stretched its tired arms in a last yawn before its disappearance. His cruiser rolled to a soft halt in the center and he noticed Sunshine’s car missing. He stepped outside and hung his sunglasses from the neck of his shirt and shut the car door behind him. No lights on inside the small trailer; maybe she was sleeping. Like an antelope, he jumped midair at the sound of a large bark from behind. Brutus. Damn, he thought and clasped his hand over his heart, asking it to stay inside his body. He would do anything to avoid that dark-haired colossal beast.

“What’s up, beast?” Brody stood back three feet or more from the feeble chicken wire holding the monster captive. He placed his hands on his hips and looked at the dog. “Trying to tell me I should let you out?” The dog’s nose pressed between the openings of wire, his wide tongue licking the metal like tasty beef thrown from heaven. His tail wagged from left to right every time Brody opened his mouth.

“Where is your mama, big boy?” He stood his ground and waited for a rustle from the inside of the trailer.

“Brutus,” he gruffed, getting the dog’s attention. “Sunshine? Where is
Sunshine
?”

Yes
, Brutus seemed to answer with a loud bark and sat his large bottom on the ground and stared straight through the wire and into Brody’s eyes.

“Damn it,” Brody cursed and shook his head in irritation, knowing it couldn’t be avoided. Let Brutus out. “Okay, hold on for a minute will you?” He walked over to the trailer and knocked on the door. No answer, as he had suspected. He tried the door, locked. He walked around the trailer, pushing gangly pine branches away from his body as he rounded the vehicle. No open windows and from what it looked like through the glass, no one inside.

“Hey, Brutus.” Brody walked back to the canine licking the wire once more and brought out a granola bar from his pocket. “You hungry?” Brutus sneezed at the scent in front of his nose and, with furry eyebrows playing a game of hopscotch, contemplated if the snack in Brody’s hand was trustworthy. “I know it’s not sausage, but come on, you’re either hungry or not. Trying to get a feel for the last time someone fed you, that’s all.” He stood back and placed the granola bar back into his pocket and raked his hand through his short hair.

“So,” he started and found himself feeling ridiculous, spending an evening conversing with a canine over edible items. “Sausage, bacon, sandwich. Does any of that ring a bell?” Brutus stood tall and alert as soon as the word sausage had rolled off Brody’s tongue and to Brody’s disgust a long drop of jelly-looking saliva dropped from Brutus’s mouth.

“If you promise not to eat me, I may be able to get you out of there and into my car. But you have to promise.” Brutus’s eyes followed as Brody pointed to the patrol car parked a mere ten feet away.

“Fine, here we go. Just don’t kill me. I don’t want to be remembered as the police chief who got mauled and eaten alive over a pack of breakfast sausage, okay?” This close to the gate, holding his hand on the metal, Brody realized how immense Brutus really was, but it was too late to back out. As soon as Brody unlocked the cage, Brutus forced open the wired door, pushing Brody to the ground in full speed. Before Brody was up on his feet, Brutus had launched in the air and landed on Brody, thumping him back on the ground, dust and gravel making its way into the back of his shirt.

“Don’t eat me! You promised!” Brody yelled, holding his large arm in front of his face should Brutus open his jaws. Something cool reached his forehead and slowly he lowered his arm and looked up. “Thanks for sharing your drool, Brutus, and for thinking my forehead shares the taste of breakfast sausage. Get off, you beast.”

Brody pushed himself from the ground, moving the dog aside as he did, and wiped his wet forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “You’re at least a hundred pounds, beast. You’re not riding shotgun.” Brutus was already at the passenger door, his head at the perfect height to sniff the inside of the car through its open window.

“Not there.” Brody opened the back door to the cruiser. “Here.” With a loud exhale, Brutus sat himself inside the car, looking back at Brody with displeased eyes. “You’re fine back here. Stop complaining.” Brody sat himself down in the front seat and turned to face the peculiar backseat passenger. “Look, no biting the upholstery. If you need to pee, tell me, and no drooling.” Brutus looked away, sneezed, and ignored the driver. Brody started the car and drove around the half circle before facing the highway once more. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, beast, I saw that.” Brutus yawned as a response to his boring fellow traveler and circled the backseat until he found himself a spot conformable enough to fall asleep, driving Brody crazy by rasping the upholstery he had polished two days earlier. “If it breaks, it’s coming out of your food deposit.”

Brody stayed on the couch for most of the evening, waiting for Sunshine to acknowledge Brutus being gone, but for nothing. He’d called her employer but received the answer that she was off for the day. He’d looked up her phone number from the police report he’d filed on her, over Brutus’s idea that chasing squirrels across crops was more fun than being caged. But who could blame him. Nobody wants to be locked up when freedom gives you everything. His mind ran from Brutus to James Hemmerson, a person who resembled the canine to some extent: a large- bodied lover of freedom with an eye for pretty women. His mind churned and his mouth felt dry as sandpaper in a pile of dust from the Sahara. His hands landed on his knees and he pushed himself into standing. Brutus eyed him from the opposite couch where he’d seated himself after running the length and height of Brody’s house, pushing himself through the door to the guest bedroom and onto the bed, scaring a half-asleep Wayne into hyperventilation.

Watching him now chewing away on a large ham bone Brody had picked up from Harold’s together with a large bag of kibble, Brutus owned the couch and the entire atmosphere around him. Brody walked across the living room and down the hallway to Wayne’s bedroom door.

“Wayne.” He knocked softly.

“Yeah, I’m awake, come in.”

Brody pushed the door open and was pleased to see his friend fairly dressed this evening, at least wearing a shirt and sweatpants to hide his birthday suit, his otherwise preferred outfit, on the bed, watching another Dirty Harry film.

“Can you fix my printer? I need to print something out.”

“And it can’t wait for morning?” Wayne looked questionably at his friend then returned to eating another handful of popcorn from the bowl next to him on the bedspread.

“Sorry, no it can’t.”

“May I ask why?”

“Can’t you just do what I tell you without questioning everything?”
“Oh, so is that how it’s going to be here? You bossing me around?”

“Just do it.”
“Why?”

“Fine.” Brody pulled his large hand through his hair in irritation. He hated to tell anyone that he might be curious of where Sunshine was, and see if Brutus could help aid his problem. “I want to print out a photo of James Hemmerson, that’s all.”
“The dude who escaped from prison whom you still haven’t found? That guy?”

“Everyone has to beat it in, don’t they?”

“I’ll take the opportunity if I can, yes. Police Chief Jensen, unable to—”

“Knock it off!”

“Fine, I’ll set up your printer. But only if you do something for me.”

“And what would that be?”

“Introduce me to Melanie Orchard.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen. And also, she’s gay.”

“I bet I can turn that around.”

“I think you can’t.”

“Maybe I can ask to be part of her and her special someone’s escapades. Just look, for all I care.”

“First, you’re an idiot. Second, I’m glad you’re back to being your idiot self. I’ll let the doctors know, and maybe you can find yourself your own place.”

“Kicking me out?”

“No, just fix my stupid printer!”

“Jeez, police. I will.”

Wayne tossed himself off the bed and threw the remote back on his pillow. “You sleep like a princess, with all that softness around you,” Brody teased.

“Hey, I didn’t buy it. You did. Who’s really the princess here?”

Brody followed Wayne down the hallway and into the office Brody had set up for himself in what used to be his parents’ dining room and which was still covered in the beige wallpaper with dainty red roses his mother had adored, with a dining room table moved against the back wall, eight chairs neatly stacked alongside of it. Wayne sat down in the rolling desk chair and moved himself between the desktop and the printer at the side, correcting the settings, and waited for the photo Brody wanted from the machine.

“Why is that bothering you?” Wayne said, interrupting his thoughts.

“What is?”

“Um, you readjusting the mouse and mouse pad every time I roll over here.” Wayne pointed at the printer spitting out ink across the white background.

“I just need things to be a certain way. My way.”

“Your way.”

“My house, my rules.”

“You can’t control everything, Brody.”

“It’s my job to control things. People. The city. The law.”

“So maybe do that instead of giving a shit about how I move the mouse.”

Brody swallowed hard and crossed his large arms over his chest waiting for the finishing product the machine was creating. Wayne and Brody both watched the rugged, mischievous face of James Hemmerson being expelled onto the desk, but neither of them picked it up.

“It looks like he’s smiling,” said Wayne solemnly. “It gives me the creeps.”

“Yep,” Brody answered, looking at the man on the photo.

“Why would he smile getting his mug shot taken?”

“He was pleased he was caught. He’d fulfilled his wish, prison would become his retirement.”

“What did he do, really?”

“Raped three girls for months, two escaped.”

Wayne swallowed and looked up at Brody. “And the third?”

“The third . . .” Brody chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Dismantled in a slaughterhouse next to pork chops. Her feet on the chopping board, her head in the deep freezer. Nothing else was found.”

Wayne said nothing and leaned forward, looking down between his legs.

“He’d painted her toenails after the feet were dismantled.”

Wayne’s vomit hit the floor in force and splattered the legs of the desk and his bare feet.

“I’ll get you something,” Brody mumbled and walked out of the room, rustling through the bathroom cabinet for a towel.

Wayne was on the floor, shirtless, cleaning up the eruption of internal fluids with his T-shirt when Brody came back to the office.

“Thanks,” he mumbled and accepted the towel from Brody’s hand.

“Go take a shower. I’ll clean this up.”

“No, no. It’s my vomit. With your job, I’m surprised there aren’t pools of your vomit everywhere. Things you’ve seen, people you’ve had to meet.”

“Your job was the same.”

“No,” Wayne answered, and sat back on his knees. “I saved people’s lives, you see everything beyond that.”

“The world is cruel, but it’s my job to not let it get close to Gass County.”

Chapter Twenty

The wooden floor of the office smelled of orange Murphy Oil. It had been scrubbed thoroughly and multiple times, until the vomit that had recently splattered the floor and the chair was nothing but a bad dream, vanished in the scent of fruit.

“Brutus,” Brody had ordered the dog on the couch, the canine having a hard time detaching his attention from the ham bone. “I want to show you something.” Brody sat himself down on the living room table and waited for the dog to turn his head.

“You know you’re speaking to a dog, right?”

“Thanks for clearing that up, Wayne, at first I thought he was you: more hair but just as interested in meat.”

“You’re damn right about that. Orchard meat, preferably.”

“If you can’t shut up, then leave the room.”

Wayne held the towel around his waist shut and sat bare-chested down on the armrest of one of the chairs next to the table.

“Brutus,” Brody repeated. “Sausage, bacon!”

Brutus’s sneezed and for a short time stopped the tedious cleaning of the bone under his paws. “Brutus, who is this?”