The Backwoods

if we’d gone a step further, Chief? I mean, what we did was illegal. You weren’t exactly keepin’ the Constitution in mind when you knocked that black dealer’s teeth out and busted his leg—”

Sutter was enraged. “You were part a’ that, too, so don’t ya go sayin’ that—”

“Chief, Chief, that’s not what I mean, so listen to me. We both fucked those guys up, and we took their watches and their cash—you and me. And we’ve done stuff like that before because—let’s face it—the common man don’t give a shit if the police steal from criminals and bust their faces in. Forget about the letter a’ the law—this is commonsense stuff we’re talkin’ ‘bout, stuff that all cops do, ’cos if we don’t take the law into our own hands when we can get away with it, criminals’ ll drag this great country of ours right down the shitter. You agree with that, Chief. We’ve talked about it. What it all boils down to is this: so what? We fucked up a coupla criminals. We stole from a coupla thieves. And in doin’ so, we did help make the world a teeny bit better, didn’t we? ’Cos those two assholes are probably still in the hospital. They ain’t never gonna sell drugs here again, right?”

Sutter’s blood pressure was starting to creep. “Right, Trey, so stop dickin’ with me and tell me what this is really all about.”

Trey nodded again, sticking to analogies. “Let’s go one further, okay? Let’s just say we’d killed those two losers in the Hummer. They kill innocent people with the drugs they sell. We know they’re guilty. Sure, the Constitution ‘n’ all says they’re innocent until proven guilty in court, but—shit, Chief—we saw it with our own eyes. We don’t need no judge to tell us. Those guys sell hard drugs, and folks eventually die from those same drugs. So say we killed ‘em to boot. That’s against the letter a’ the law, too. But what about the common man’s law? It ain’t that big a deal, right? We killed a couple of killers and the world’s a better place for it. Right?”

Sutter’s eyes shone hard on Trey. “What the fuck are you tryin’ to tell me?”

“What Trey’s trying to relate to you, Chief,” Gordon Felps stood up and said, “is that we’re all trying to make Agan’s Point a better place, while we’re serving our own better interests at the same time.”

“The Squatters,” Sutter croaked.

“Yes, Chief. They’re a negative element, and they need to go. I won’t lie to you. I want them gone so that I can make a lot of money by turning Agan’s Point into the clean, upscale community it deserves to be. Trey wants them gone so that he can benefit financially as well. The Squatters are slowly sliding away from acceptable levels of morality. They’re getting Into the drug trade themselves, which can only be bad for Agan’s Point. If the Squatters leave, then Judy Parker will sell the land to me and we can get on with the business of progress.”

“What Mr. Felps is sayin’, Chief,” Trey spoke up, “is that we want the Squatters gone . . . so we’re helpin’ ’em along.”

The silence seemed to tick along with the darkness, and with Sutter’s contemplations. “Helping ’em . . . along.”

“That’s right,” Felps continued in a monotone. “We knew that the Hilds were selling hard drugs, so I paid Junior Caudill to kill them, and to make it appear to be part of a turf-war scenario.”

“He jazzed up the facts,” Trey added. “To make it look more convincing to the state cops.”

“And then I paid Ricky Caudill to burn down the Ealds’ shack, because we also had it on good authority that they were running a meth lab out of it. Dwayne, too, by the way. He was the first contractor on my payroll. He killed about a half dozen Squatters who we also knew were working drugs.”

Sutter stood stock-still. Now it was all unfolding before his face and his very life. “Ah, and you say you knew that these Squatters were into drugs, so you were takin’ the law into your own hands by killin’ ’em. To make Agan’s Point a better place.”

“Yes,” Felps said. “And to serve our own gain.”

“So how did you know the Hilds ‘n’ the Ealds were into meth?”

“Street intelligence, Chief Sutter. The best kind, which, as a police officer yourself, you already know.”

“I’d been hearin’ about it for a while, Chief,” Trey said.

“Hearin’ about it from who?”

“State cops here ‘n’ there, and county. Plus just bits ‘n’ pieces I’d been hearin’ on the job. It’s all legit, boss. We wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t known it was rock-solid.”

“So what do you think, Chief?” Felps asked outright. “Are you going to join us? It will change your life if you do. Your financial problems will be over, and you will get to be chief of police in a much, much better place—the kind of job you deserve.”

Sutter stared.

“So what do you think, Chief?” Felps repeated.

The cards all fell down. Sutter turned straight to Felps and stared at him. “I think that you murdered them Squatters in cold blood. I don’t believe for a minute that the Hilds ‘n’ the Ealds or any other Squatters had anything to do with crystal meth. I think ya killed ‘em and flaked ’em with dope to make it look like they did. Just to get rich off the land.”

Felps’s lips could barely be seen in the darkness hovering over the desk. “That’s regrettable, Chief.”

Sutter reached for his gun, but—

Click.

—Trey already had his own revolver cocked against Sutter’s head. “Damn it, Chief. Ya done buggered everything up.” He reached around and hit his boss’s thumb snap, then took his gun.

“I can’t believe this,” Sutter said, remarkably stable. “You growed up white trash, Trey. I pulled ya out, gave ya work, trusted ya, and now after all that, you got a gun to my head? Are you really gonna kill me after all I done for ya?”

Bam!

Muzzle flash lit the station up for a split second when Trey’s piece bucked in his hand. A chunk of skull blew out of Chief Sutter’s head in a way that reminded Trey of the old JFK assassination footage he caught every now and then on the History Channel—the old melon shot. Sutter’s last act in life was to collapse before his own desk with a considerable thud.

At least he got to die with a bellyful of food.

“Good job,” Felps said. “An unfortunate happenstance, but there was no other option available. I need his body buried deep. Will that be a problem?”

“Naw. Won’t be the first time I been up all night.”

“Bury him and Ricky in the foundation trenches at my construction site. I’ll see to it that they’re cemented over. It’ll look like Ricky and Sutter were part of the meth network, too. Sutter let Ricky out of jail and then they fled. Be sure to plant some crystal in Sutter’s personal vehicle and Ricky Caudill’s house. In addition, that other job we discussed—the pier. I’d planned to have Ricky and Junior do that too.”

“But now they’re dead, so you need me to do it,” Trey finished what he already knew.

“Correct.” Felps looked blankly yet confidently to Trey. “Do you foresee any of this presenting a problem?”

“Nope.”

“Here’s something to tide you over for the time being.” Felps handed Trey a very fat envelope. “I’ll talk to you soon. And congratulations . . . Chief Trey.”

Yeah, Chief Trey. Trey rolled the title over in his head. I really like the sound of that.

Felps left the station through the rear exit. Trey pocketed the sheaf of cash, then began to mop up Sutter’s blood.

It would be a long night, but a productive one.

Thirteen

(I)

It was the last thing Patricia needed: another steaming, piping-hot dream. . . .

Faceless, well-muscled men spent themselves in her one after another. When one rolled off, another took his