LIFERS Chapter Two

The Middle of Nowhere

Seventy years later

After he past Martinsville’s defaced town boundary sign, Gregg swung his Taurus off Old Liberty Road on to what another sign informed him was Main Street; only it didn’t appear wide enough to be a street you’d label as “Main”, “Adequate Dusty Lane” seemed more appropriate.

He ran a hand through sweat-dampened, black, shoulder-length hair and looked to his right to see three derelict stores sandblasted by years of hot wind, each one, never seeing a lick of paint since before the moon landings. Farther along the road he saw a single, larger building, around dancehall size, and beyond, a garage with two fuel pumps that belonged in the nineteen-twenties.

To his left, and according to another sign, stood a combined police station and courtroom, where, parked at the side, was a dust-covered cruiser with the word “Sheriff” stencilled on the door under a six point star. The car was a late 1970's Plymouth Gran Fury, and for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on, didn’t look as it should.

Dust devils whipped up by the forefront of an oncoming storm pulled his attention from the vehicle as they swirled about the Taurus and brushed its flanks to lick at the paintwork, as though inspecting this strange visitor in their midst.

He rolled his window up against the sand and checked his map one more time, and just like the Brontrose woman had told him two and a half hours ago, “Old Liberty Road is there, Mr Pieroni, but I’m afraid you won’t find Martinsville on any map.”

And it wasn’t.

He switched off the engine and rubbed his face to find his four o’clock shadow had arrived a half hour early, the rasp of stubble volumous in the near silence of the car.

For all intents and purposes, this had to be the business end of the street, where all and any commotion might come to pass. But the place looked deserted, like some old mining town left to decay in the wilderness, with its long-since departed prospectors leaving no trace of life ever being here, save for the buildings they left behind.

On seeing no one in the immediate vicinity, Gregg started the car and drove the length of the street until he reached a T-junction where he saw a large wooden building, its hand-carved letters, although one was missing, identified it as the “Martinsville Town all”. To his left and right, the road lasted for about one hundred yards either way before trees dominated both ends, and still he saw no one.

He swung the car back around and returned to the bottom of the street to pull up at the side of the cruiser. He climbed out, slipped his leather jacket on, and, having to cup both hands at the sides of his face to cut the glare, he peered through one of the building’s windows, but all he could see in the dim room was a desk and chair.

‘Hey, mister.’

Gregg turned to see faded dungarees and a dirty orange vest loosely draped over a rake thin young man. His head had been shaved to the skin, all except the top bit, which stuck up like a hand. He guessed him around twenty-five.

Gregg nodded. ‘Afternoon, there.’

‘Help ya?’

He motioned the cruiser. ‘I’m looking for your sheriff.’

‘Yain’t around.’

‘Well can you tell me where he is, or how long he’s going to be?’

The kid pointed nowhere in particular. ‘He’s dealin’ with somethin’ way over yonder. Don’t know how long he’s gonna be, mind.’

‘Well is there anywhere I can get a coffee while I wait for him?’

The rake shook his head, and the hand. ‘Nope.’

‘Nowhere?’

‘Well there’s a town ‘bout twenny marls south o’ here,’ he said. ‘Ain’t never been m’self, but I know it’s there.’

‘Not quite what I had in mind, Mister…?’

The kid seemed to be working out how to answer that question. ‘Tain’t no business o’ yours,’ he eventually said.

‘Just trying to be polite, that’s all.’

‘Still ain’t no business o’ yours’

Gregg pulled his ID and the kid looked at it for five seconds before his face reddened, then he shrugged. ‘I don’t read so good.’

‘It says I’m a private investigator, son, and a very impatient one at that.’

The kid looked around, as though searching for assistance, or some form of escape.

‘So,’ Gregg said, ‘what’s your name?’

‘Billy, Billy Fisher.’

‘Okay, Billy Fisher, how long’s this sheriff going to be?’

‘Cain’t rightly say, sir, honest, but I could go find ‘im.’

Gregg smiled, put his ID away. ‘That’s much better. So, is there somewhere I can get that coffee, now?’

Again Billy shook his head. ‘Nope, and that’s the truth, Mister. Ain’t no way I’m gonna lie to no lawman.’

Gregg looked again at the cruiser, then back to Billy. ‘Okay, you go fetch the sheriff and I’ll wait right here.’

‘Yessir,’ he said, and ran off.

‘Wait a minute.’

‘Sir?’

‘Where is everyone?’

Billy looked up and down the street, behind him and behind Gregg. He shrugged. ‘They’s around somewheres,’ he said, then disappeared down the side of the sand-blasted stores.

Gregg took another look through the police station window, but its dark interior allowed him no more than it did earlier. He walked over to the cruiser and spent a few minutes studying it. Everything seemed as it should, yet it didn’t. Something just wasn’t right about it.

The interior was grubby and untidy, but not the same kind of grubby untidiness you might find in any normal police car. The usual doughnut and twinkie wrappers were non-existent, as were any signs that a burger-fest had been held in the car. But there were things on the floor and seats, things that looked like speckles of jellied meat, congealed brain matter if he had to guess, some of it encrusted on and around the dashboard and front passenger seat.

‘You lose somethin in there, friend, or you just pokin’ ya nose in where it aint oughta be?’

Gregg didn’t much care for the tone used, he straightened and turned to see Billy Fisher stood behind a man of around seven feet of solid muscle, and wearing a hat you could cover a small car with. His khaki uniform was in vogue with the cruiser’s interior, and the guy looked ugly enough to scare the crap out of dogshit.

Gregg didn’t see any point in showing his ID, or introducing himself; Billy would have done a fine job of that. ‘Afternoon, sheriff,’ he said.

The big guy looked him up and down and his expression revealed just how pissed he was to have an out-of-towner snooping around his turf. He thumbed backward. ‘Billy here tells me there’s some hot-shot PI with an attitude like a slapped pig wantin’ to see me,' he said, and pushed the front of his hat up. 'And seein’ as you’re the only one smells like pork round here, I’m guessin’ that hot-shot’s you.’

Strike one.

‘I just need to ask you some questions,’ Gregg told him.

The sheriff turned and looked Billy a look, who, not wasting any time in getting the message, nodded and left.

The officer strode past Gregg. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

Gregg did, and as he walked behind the man, he took his cell phone from his jacket pocket and slipped it inside his left boot. And if his gun and two spare clips had been small enough, they’d have gone in the right boot.

‘You’ll have to forgive the mess,’ said the big guy as he unlocked a barred gate over the door. ‘Don’t get many visitors this far out.’

Inside, the place looked nothing as bad as the cruiser’s interior, or as bad as the guy made out. A few loose papers scattered about the floor was the worst of it, which, if he was honest, bore some resemblance to his own little office.

There were two unoccupied adjoining cells against the back wall, and the one on the right had something on the floor that, if used, would more than infringe on a prisoner’s rights.

‘I’d offer you a seat ...’ the lump said, then took the only chair in the room.

‘If it’s all the same to you I prefer to stand; it’s been a long journey.’

The chair creaked in protest as the sheriff leaned back to place his feet on the desk. ‘And just what is it that brings you out on this long journey?’

‘Nine missing girls, but one missing girl in particular.’

‘And you think they, or she, may have ended up here?’

‘I have reasons to believe it’s a possibility.’

The sheriff smiled. ‘And you think I’d know all about it and do or say nothin’, is that what you’re thinkin’, hot-shot?’

Strike two.

Gregg planted both palms on the desk, leaned in. ‘If I thought that, you uncooperative ugly son-of-a-bitch, I’d have the FBI with me, and they’d be asking the questions.’

The big guy said nothing as Gregg straightened and tossed a photograph of a fourteen year old black girl at him.

‘Seen her?’ he said.

‘No, can’t say I have.’

‘You didn’t look.’

So he did. ‘Answer’s still no ... hot-shot.’

Strike three.

Gregg knocked the man’s feet from the desk and gripped his shirt-front to lift him from the chair just as the stationroom door flew open.

Billy Fisher was there, just a silhouette in the doorway with that stupid-looking hand on his head and two other silhouettes stood behind him.

Gregg smiled, shoved the man back in his seat. ‘Not tough enough to take me on your own, eh, big guy?’ he said, and then all hell broke loose.

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Still dazed, Gregg checked his watch by the scant moonlight as it flicked through the trees; it was one minute to one in the morning. The last time he knew what the time was was nine and half hours ago. So what the hell happened in that stationroom?

There were four of them, five if you count the big sheriff twice. But he wasn’t a sheriff was he? Not a real one.

He remembered the two silhouettes pushed Billy out of the way and ran at him, but a swift kick to the chin of the first put pay to him. Then the second one came in, his arm a wide arc as he got a punch off that landed hard at the side of Gregg’s head. He fell against the bars of the cells like he’d been hit with a two-by-four.

Again the second guy came in but Gregg ducked and dodged left and landed a hefty blow of his own to the man’s solar plexus, and, with a grunt of expelled breath, he joined his buddy on the floor.

Billy hadn’t moved from the doorway, he just watched as muscle-mutt picked something from off the desk and charged at Gregg and rammed it into his ribcage. Once, twice, three times. Each thrust produced an agony that pulsed through his body and caused sheets of lightning behind his eyes.

The grey concrete felt cold on his face. He shivered, no, he shook, shook in a violent way, the way you see the uncooperative ones shake just after you’ve tasered them. But this wasn’t a taser; it looked more like a cattle-prod with some kind of added extra near the handgrip.

Another jolt followed the first three, this one to his neck, more spasms, more sheets of lightning, then everything began to blur, sound became muffled. “You two,” he heard someone say in a slowed, sluggish tone. “Go fix yourselves up. Billy, you grab his legs.” And that’s when a veil of blackness moved in.

Once lucidity had decided to show its face again, Gregg found himself on a chair, a hard chair. His throat had never felt drier and he ached everywhere. Every fibre of bone muscle and flesh throbbed. His attackers had no doubt softened him up as he lay unconscious.

He noticed the room looked brighter than before, the lights were on. Sunlight had given up the day without him knowing.

He heard a woman’s voice.

‘Tilt his head forward,’ she said.

Then there was a pin-prick in the back of his neck.

‘Search him good and remove everything from his pockets.’ She spoke fast, melding each sentence into a single word. ‘I want nothing of this man ever being here. You got that?’

But who’s she ordering around? Billy? The sheriff?

‘Bad weather’s gonna be here soon and I want him fastened down in that cell and the hatch open. And once the injection takes hold we’ll let the rain finish him off. Where’s Hal?’

‘He’s outside, Ella, removin’ stuff from this guy’s car so’s he can burn it.’

That was Billy, unmistakable, but Hal? Was he the man-mountain? And who was Ella? Was she the one in charge?

‘When you’re done make sure you get to the town hall before the rain comes?’

‘Yes, Ella.’

Weighty footsteps clumped across the floor.

‘I’ll be givin’ Hal a hand if you need me.’

The stationroom door opened and closed again and Gregg felt Billy going through his jacket pockets, moreover, he felt movement in his fingers, his toes, he felt his cell phone as it pressed against his left ankle. Snug, safe.

His senses were returning. His smell. His taste. His touch. But what he couldn’t feel was the weight of his gun in his inside pocket.

He opened his eyes to see a bit of good news, his hands dangled loose, there were no ropes or any other form of binding holding his legs to the chair. And if that Ella woman and Hal were at his car, they’d probably be around the side of the building where he parked it.

He could get out the door and head left in the opposite direction. Billy would be easy to overcome; a swift strike to the throat would incapacitate and silence him at the same time. He may only gain a couple of minutes over them before the alarm was raised, but that would be long enough to disappear into the woods that surrounded the town.

From behind, he felt Billy tuck his arms under his and lift him. He might be a rake of a kid but he had no trouble in getting Gregg to his feet and drag him around the desk.

This would be his opportunity. He steadied his feet, took charge of his own bodyweight and snapped his head back to hear Billy’s nose crunch. Then he turned before Billy had any chance to scream out and buried the knife-edge of his right hand in the centre of his throat. Billy hit the floor like a marionette that just had its strings severed.

Gregg wanted his gun but had no time to search for it. Two seconds later he was out the door where he gave the street a quick once-over. Deserted, same as when he first arrived in town, but a hell of a lot darker. A full moon ninety degrees to his right clipped the trees but it wasn’t anywhere near bright enough to light his way through them.

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Back in the near black of the woods, Gregg kept the moon to his right to ensure his direction ran true. That said, the barking of maybe a half-dozen dogs giving chase, combined with incoherent shouts from their handlers gave him a fair audible field of direction to head in. He looked back to see the erratic dance of flashlights flick in all directions, he guessed he had three hundred yards on them, at least.

He moved his gaze once more to the moon but something else caught his eye, something lower, much lower. He stopped, listened, heard the low idle of an engine, then he saw it again, stationary headlights. It couldn’t be his pursuers; it would take too long for them to get this far out using the road.

As Gregg made for the car and a road he couldn’t yet see, the trees did their utmost to slow his progress, their branches got lower, their trunks wider, forcing him to duck and to detour left and right, and all the time the dogs and men gained on him.

He hit the blacktop and turned to see the car heading in his direction, its back-end swaying as its tires screeched in a bid to find purchase on the road. He ran toward it, both hands held up.