Side by Side (23 page)

58

The road Winter Massey had crashed his truck on wasn’t heavily traveled. It was Saturday night, and only a few people lived out that way, and it dead-ended into one of the few remaining farms that hadn’t been turned into a shopping center or a subdivision. The first driver down that road would spot his truck—rolled over like it was and lit up like a Christmas tree—and call the cops. Winter only hoped it wasn’t discovered until he was close enough to the Dockerys that it wouldn’t matter.

He was muddy and bruised from the dive he’d taken out of the truck’s cab when it left the road. He didn’t generally jump from moving vehicles, but he’d had little to lose by taking a chance that the ground would be soft enough to keep him from breaking his neck. Based on what the Tahoe’s driver said on his phone to Randall—if the wreck wasn’t found and broadcast over the police channels—Winter might have an hour before the men in black he’d killed didn’t show up wherever Max Randall expected them to meet him. Add maybe another half hour before Max got word to the bunch at the Westin. He might have additional time after that before anybody got word to the Smoots to tell them that Click
might
have ratted them out.

Clayton Able, who certainly knew Randall’s team was after Winter, would be monitoring local police radio channels for news of any incident. He would learn a wrecked truck had been found near the clinic, know it was Winter’s, and learn pretty quickly there were three bodies. That would set up the first alarm. Winter was counting on it taking some time for the bad guys to discover that none of the dead bodies was his. When they did, Clayton and company would know that Winter was responsible for the dead men, and they’d know it long before the cops put it all together. Police interest would be piqued when they discovered that one of the men in black battle dress uniforms without any insignia was packing an illegal automatic weapon. There would be a lot of explaining to do, and hopefully he could explain it with Fondren’s help and have the truth accepted over whatever cover story the military came up with.

It wouldn’t be the first whirlwind that had Winter Massey at its epicenter. If he had things figured correctly, Judge Fondren might not even be aware of Winter’s involvement. Once Hank Trammel got the message to the judge detailing what was really going down, maybe he could figure out some way to help Winter save his family.

59

Lucy Dockery heard Dixie close the bathroom door and sit heavily on the toilet. Through the uninsulated wall with cheap paneling nailed to both sides, Lucy could hear Dixie mumbling to herself just as clearly as if she were in the bathroom with her. Despite her father’s admonition, the woman sounded intoxicated. Lucy had read that the death camp guards during World War II stayed drunk or doped to the gills to better cope with the unpleasantness of their work.

Lucy went to the kitchen and lifted a ten-inch skillet from beneath the island made of two-by-fours topped with a slab of granite. In the TV’s uncertain light, she could see Elijah sprawled on his back in the playpen, motionless.

She slipped back into the bedroom and picked up the blanket she had vomited the chemical martini into. She lumped it on the bed and put the flashlight under the blanket so that the beam shone out and illuminated the wall. Then she picked up the skillet and moved to put her back against the wall beside the door. The iron utensil felt like the heaviest thing she had ever lifted, and she was sure it would crush Dixie’s skull like a bubble. How hard should she hit her? Too hard and it would kill her, too soft a blow and the musclewoman would take it away and beat her to death with it.

The toilet paper roll spun, the toilet flushed, and Lucy heard Dixie opening the door.

Lucy had never struck any living thing before, except a swipe on Walter’s arm when he beat her at Trivial Pursuit, a playful pat on his naked butt when her husband passed by on his way into the shower.

Raising the skillet over her head as far as the low ceiling allowed, Lucy moaned loudly and called out, “Come here, bitch!”

Dixie flung open the door. “Jeezuscryast,” she snarled, and stepped into the room, her gaze going from the lumpy blanket to the open window.

Lucy brought the frying pan down on the blond bouffant in an effort to drive the hairdo into Dixie’s neck. The large woman hit the mattress and lay there shivering like she’d chewed through a lamp cord. Then she stopped moving and was still. Lucy knew that she had killed her, but she couldn’t think about that until she was far away from this place.

Lucy ran into the den, grabbed up her unconscious child, clutched him to her to make sure he was breathing, then grabbed the thin blanket he had been lying on and ran. She passed the containers of gasoline as she made her way across the warehouse. Tenderly, she laid Elijah down on the blanket and tucked it around his tiny body. It was a sin to have drugged her baby, but she thanked God he was asleep. That way she could do this without worrying that he would make a racket.

Lucy ran back to the gasoline stash and realized that she had forgotten the matches. She picked up the jar and, holding it in both hands, carried it inside. Since Dixie was dead, she decided that she’d douse the living room. The trailer on fire would be a more effective lure than some flames in the dirt.

Lucy went to the shot glass filled with matches and dropped a dozen or so in the pocket of her T-shirt. She bent and started pouring the golden liquid from the pickle jar onto the floor, being careful not to get it on her bare feet. She sloshed it on the couch, then went into the bunkroom and poured the remainder on the floor there. She saw a camouflage poncho on the top bunk and she grabbed it and put it on, pulling her head up through into the hood. It would protect them outside, and hopefully make seeing her harder for the men coming in to fight the fire.

Lucy rushed from the room, feeling the cool fuel on the soles of her bare feet. She was at the door when a powerful blow caught her on the side of her head and knocked her reeling out through the door. She landed on her back on the steel porch. The hood partially obscured her vision, but she could see Dixie crawling on all fours toward her, blood covering her face like a wet curtain.

Dixie grabbed Lucy’s ankle and squeezed it so hard Lucy was sure the bone would snap.

“Geahbackinhere!” Dixie was dragging her back inside.

Lucy kicked out, striking Dixie’s collarbone, then the woman’s mouth with her heel. Dixie sat heavily, letting go of Lucy’s ankle and looking at the skinny woman who had tried to kill her with raw rage in her eyes.

“Youdead,” Dixie said. Her jeans were soaked with the gasoline she was sitting in. Lucy scrambled to her feet, her ears ringing from the blow to her head.

“Whereyougoingarunto? Killyouandyourdamkid.” Dixie stood and raised her hand slowly. There was a
snap
and a thick blade shot out from her hand.

Lucy brought her hand out from under the poncho.

Dixie raised the knife higher and smiled insanely.

Lucy struck the match in her hand on the steel railing and, while the phosphorus blossomed to life, she tossed it on the floor beneath Dixie.

Flames raced along the floor, consuming the fuel.

Lucy leaped over the porch railing, slamming painfully into the dirt.

Dixie stood on the porch beating at her flaming jeans with her hands. “YOULITTLEBITCH!” she roared.

Lucy grabbed the bucket at her feet and hurled its contents at the horrid woman.

When the wave of cool fuel hit Dixie, she froze, probably thinking Lucy was trying to put out the fire on her legs.

There was a fraction of a second before the flame reacted to being fed. Then the air, filled with vapor, went bright white as the liquid caught.

Dixie’s hair vanished. Her false teeth flew out of her flaming mouth, which had been open when the gasoline hit her. And she screamed.

Lucy had never heard such a howl. Lucy turned her back to the horror on the porch, ran to the gasoline drums, lifted the pickax she had placed there. Feeling like Superwoman, Lucy swung the pick like a baseball bat over and over, puncturing the drums. She stopped when she was sure there were enough holes to empty the drums.

Lucy didn’t look at Dixie until streams of gasoline were arcing out of the drums. Aflame, and bellowing, a whirling Dixie fell off the porch, landing on her back. It appeared that she was attempting to roll the flames out.

Lucy ran back to Eli.

Dixie’s screams echoed in Lucy’s ears, the fire a roaring monster trapped for the moment in the trailer. Dixie tried to get up on her hands and knees.

Lucy watched the dark stain growing from the gas drums—flowing toward Dixie.

God, there was so much gasoline.

And it was moving too fast.

60

Peanut Smoot had driven all the way back to Charlotte to get the dope from George the druggist and was a few miles from the turnoff onto gravel road when he saw a wide section of the sky light up orange-red like the sun was rising. Peanut stared openmouthed as a fireball blossomed above the tree line.

He hoped like hell it was the underground gasoline tanks or maybe the big propane tank at the Utzes’ store. But if it wasn’t the store, there wasn’t but one other possible source of an explosion like that one. He set his jaw and stomped the accelerator, shooting fuel to the Hemi. If this was Buck’s doing, his son was a dead man.

He roared past the store, noticing that the old couple who ran it were out in the parking lot under an umbrella staring over at about where his barn was located—a half mile off. He got out at his gate to open it, and looked skyward at the column of thick black smoke boiling into the clouds, illuminated from the ground. He was startled by a series of thunderous explosions that had to be the fifty-pound crates of black powder he had stored up in the trailer, and probably the propane tank for the stove. The whole warehouse was filled with crap that shouldn’t be in there if there was a fire, but that hadn’t ever seemed important before.

As he rounded the first curve in the road to the metal barn, he almost hit the twins. They were standing in the road with their backs turned—shotguns over their shoulders—watching the fire like a couple of cows.

Peanut hit his brights and smacked the horn. Burt and Curt bolted off into the weeds about a second before he would have run them both over. If he hadn’t figured he would need them, he wouldn’t have honked or braked.

“What happened?” he hollered out his window as it went down.

“Looks like it’s a fire at the barn,” Burt said.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Peanut hollered.

“You said to stay here,” Curt answered.

“Get in the truck!” Peanut snarled.

The twins scrambled into the bed and squatted, one on either side of the cab. As Peanut roared off, they put their faces out in the slipstream like dogs enjoying the wind.

Peanut roared along, braking to avoid hitting a group of deer. When he made it around the final bend, he involuntarily sucked in a deep bracing breath. The place looked like one of those fireworks plants on the news that ran plumb out of luck in the unfortunate-spark department. Twisted corrugated metal was scattered everywhere. Blackened sheets of the steel had curled away from the barn’s I-beam superstructure like the petals of an orchid. The steel skeleton—beams and ceiling struts—had come from a Winn-Dixie that had been damaged by Hurricane Hugo, which Peanut had bought from the insurance company for a song.

Peanut hoped the damned volunteer fire department didn’t show up and come on his land, but with the explosion visible for God knew how far off, he wouldn’t be at all surprised if all sorts of authorities came sniffing about, even knowing as most did that he didn’t allow anybody on the place he hadn’t invited. If the Dockerys’ bodies were in this mess, he sure as hell didn’t need anybody snooping around. Buck’s or Dixie’s corpse he could explain, but not the Dockerys’. He had to make some calls and head that off or get the hell out of there.

The shed was on fire. Inside, what had been the tractor, the four-wheelers, Buck’s 1500, the twins’ Blazer, and Dixie’s 1970 GTO were all part of the burning whatnot. Peanut wondered about how much insurance he could collect on all of it. Enough to rebuild. The agent would give him whatever he could think of that was or wasn’t actually in there.

“Buck! Dixie! Buck! Dixie!” the twins hollered out in a steady stream.

“Stop yelling,” Peanut told them.

“You think they’re dead?” Curt asked.

“Maybe Buck went off to do something like he does,” Burt said.

“Don’t know,” Peanut said. He didn’t either. Who knew what the hell Buck was liable to do when he got something in his head?

By the looks of things, Peanut figured there wouldn’t be much left of anybody that had been in the structures. Buck might have caused the fire and run off, knowing he’d catch almighty hell for it. Might have done it because he was pissed off. Peanut regretted he hadn’t let Buck have his fun with the Dockery woman, because at least this wouldn’t have happened.

He decided it would be best not to tell anybody about Dixie and Buck being here right off. Except for the insurance policies he had on them, he couldn’t see why anybody needed to know anything right off. He’d discuss how to get the policies claimed with Mr. Laughlin before he decided. Nobody he could think of would miss Buck enough to ask after him. The people from Dixie’s church would wonder about her, but he could say she moved to California or some happy crap. Wasn’t one in the whole congregation could out-think a rock.

Peanut saw the steel door frame was still in place, though the metal skin had been blown off. The padlock was still there. When his heel sank into something, he looked down and realized it was a blackened hand and forearm.

Peanut squatted down and lifted it up by the thumb to get a better look. Buck’s Jolly Roger tattoo that he’d gotten put on his forearm before going into the Marine Corps was easy to make out.
Born 2 Kill,
read the words in the banner under it. On Buck’s other arm he’d had a funny cartoon of a bulldog dry-humping a skull that read,
Devil Dog Sex.

Peanut held the limb up to let the twins get a good look at it.

“Holy crap!” Burt said.

“Daw-gone,” Curt muttered.

“Boys. It’d be best if you didn’t mention this to your mother. No point upsetting her.”

In the same manner a man would throw a piece of wood, Peanut slung the last of Buck off into the hottest part of the fire. For a few seconds he watched the fire and contemplated his two dead children. More than most, his kids knew how dangerous life was. It was a shame to die violent deaths, but he reckoned that it was all spoiled milk under a bridge. And the Dockerys were supposed to be killed anyhow, and it didn’t pay to worry about things that didn’t matter.

“Boys, y’all can remember that your brother and sister did their duty to the family. Want y’all to go on back up to the gate and tell anybody that thinks about coming in, that this is private property. Any those volunteer fire idiots show up, tell them our trailer and barn burned up and there ain’t crap to do about it but let the fire finish up. The woods are too wet to burn, and we Smoots handle our own troubles out here. Tell ’em if they try and come in, you’ll blow their damned heads off. Tell ’em if they don’t like it, to go screw a mule.”

“Walk
all the way back there?” Burt said.

“You could have just left us there,” Curt added.

Peanut just glared.

As the twins turned away to go back to the gate, Peanut opened his cell phone and made a call to Max Randall. Max would want to know about this development. He’d wait until later to tell Mr. Laughlin, because the lawyer had taken his firm’s jet to Miami and wouldn’t get back until just before court on Monday.

“It’s a damn shame about the dogs,” Curt said as he took his shotgun out of the bed of the Dodge.