The Backwoods

him when he proceeded to the center of the room. “There she is, the little cutie,” he mocked Judy. Snatching her last night couldn’t have been easier. She’d been stumbling toward the edge of the woods beyond the cookout, drunk out of her gourd. “Why, sure, Judy,? he’d answered her blabbering request. ”I’d be more’n happy to drive you back to the house.” He’d driven her back to the shanty instead, handcuffed and with her D-cup bra stuffed in her mouth. Drunken bitch didn’t even know what he was doing, she was so stewed. Now she lay on the floor, on her side, tied up like a trussed goose. One ample breast had fallen out of the torn blouse, the nipple large as a beer coaster. Trey, of course, did the gentlemanly thing, saying, ”Ah, now, that ain’t right. A gal can’t be havin’ a tit hangin’ out.” And then he ripped back the blouse some more. ”She needs both hangin’ out. There, that’s better.” He gave them both a good feel. Trey had plans for these breasts, and for everything else connected to them . . . but not just yet. He’d be setting her up for another psycho job; this one would look like some of the clan did it, the ones who were running meth. Only Trey knew that there were actually no Squatters selling anything except fucking crabs—but that was beside the point.

“You first, buddy-bro.” Trey grabbed Ernie by the back of the belt and dragged him to the car. He mewled beneath his gag, eyes blooming with rage. Trey hocked on him once he got the cracker loaded into the truck. “Time for a road trip,” the dutiful officer promised, then slammed the trunk closed.

Trey cleared his head as he drove, smiling to himself. The moon was just up over the trees, gibbous, yellow as a grapefruit. Even closet sociopaths like Trey found their moments of existential harmony. I’m gonna kill a couple more people tonight, and you know what? I dig it. All part of the plan. He particularly liked the notion that on the same day he’d unofficially become Agan’s Point’s new police chief, he’d disposed of two bodies and was about to dispose of two more.

I’m really gettin’ the hang of this, he thought.

The spur he was looking for sat about five miles north of the Point, inaccessible to boats—due to rocks and a low-tide margin—and well hidden by a wall of trees. When Trey was a boy, in fact, he’d come down here on his own to drop chicken necks. The crabs were humongous and so plentiful he could pull a half bushel in an hour. More of that same existential harmony seized him now when he parked and opened the trunk. Cicadas trilled, the moonlight bathed his face, and the lapping water along the shore made him truly feel one with the universe, the master of his own destiny.

“Out’cha go,” he said, hefting Ernie out of the trunk and carrying him like a heavy suitcase by the back of his belt. In the other hand, Trey carried his crowbar.

“Ain’t no one to hear ya way out here,” Trey said, and cut off his gag.

“You fuckin’ piece a’ shit, Trey,” Ernie wheezed, crooking his neck to look up. “I always knowed you were a twisted motherfucker.”

“I did fuck my mother, Ernie. Lotsa times. And I’m damn proud of it. Now let’s get you fixed up. Hot night like this, you need a cool dip.” Trey shoved Ernie on his side, raised the crowbar high, and —

Crack! Crack! Crack!

—hammered the crowbar’s elbow hard between Ernie’s shoulder blades. Ernie grunted a salvo of less-than- eloquent objections, then began to shudder. Several more cracks between the shoulder blades sufficed to achieve Trey’s purpose. He leaned over and cut the hogtie, watched Ernie’s limbs slump.

“Are ya dead?” Trey asked, slamming his shoe down on Ernie’s hand. There was no recoil, no movement whatsoever. But Ernie’s eyes were still blinking, his chest rising, and his throat gulping.

“I-I cain’t move,” Ernie choked. “Cain’t move my arms or legs, ya motherfuckin’ sick piece a’ shit . . .”

“That’s ’cos I just paralyzed ya, dickhead.” Trey nodded a secret approval, like an acknowledgment shared exclusively between himself and the night. He’d fractured the spine high enough to cause total paralysis but not quite high enough to kill. “You always were a noballs, do-good hayseed, Ernie. Well, now you’re a quadriplegic no-balls, do-good hayseed.”

Ernie drooled, only his head moving. “You’ll burn in hell, so I guess that’s good enough.”

“Sure, but you’ll get there first. And when you’re down there suckin’ the devil’s dick, I’ll still be here, havin’ a ball.” Trey chuckled as he took to his next task. He tore open Ernie’s shirt, pulled off his boots, then yanked his jeans down to his knees.

“What are you, queer?” Ernie challenged. “I figured ya for a lotta things, but not that.”

Trey guffawed. “Don’t worry, Ernie-boy. I ain’t gonna pack your fudge. I done told ya—you’re goin’ fer a nice cool dip in the good ol’ Chesapeake Bay.” And then Trey dragged Ernie into the shallow water until the water came over his chest.

“All you’re gonna do is drown me?” Ernie managed. It could be discerned by the straining expression on his face that he was trying to move his limbs, but those nerves were no longer firing at all. “Figured a sick fuck like you’d cut me up or hang me or somethin’.”

?Naw, Ernie, this is much better, and no, I ain’t gonna drown ya neither.” Now Trey leaned Ernie’s head up against a rotten log in the water. He couldn’t move, and was braced enough so that there was no way he might sidle over into the water and indeed drown.

A moment passed; then Ernie figured it out, to his extreme misfortune. “Aw, no, God . . .”

Trey grinned down at his work: Ernie’s head and shoulders were propped out of the water, but the rest of his body was submerged.

“Agan’s Point crabs’ll eat good tonight,” Trey said, then walked back to the car and drove off.

Fifteen

(I)

“It’s all beyond belief,” Byron said in a very low voice over the phone.

Patricia was looking blankly out the window as she talked, her cell phone to her ear. “I know,” she said. “I feel useless. I don’t know what to do. I came out here to help my sister, but now I don’t even know where she is.”

“Well, enough is enough. You have to come home now.”

She chewed her lower lip. She did want to go home now, but how could she? “Byron, Judy is missing. I can’t leave until I know she’s safe.”

Byron’s dissatisfaction could be sensed over the line. “At this point, I don’t even care. All I care about is you being back here with me. I want you here now, in our house—safe. I don’t care about Judy, I don’t care about those nutty Squatter people, I don’t care about docks and lean-tos burning down. People are getting murdered there, Patricia. So you get in your car—right now—and drive home. Now. This minute.”

It was rare for Byron to be this bent out of shape; he was even mad, something rarer. “I want to come home, too, Byron. But I can’t leave until I know Judy’s all right—”

“She probably passed out drunk in the woods!” Byron exploded. “Whoever’s doing these burnings—these drug people—they could burn Judy’s house down next, with you in it!”

“Honey, calm down,” she tried to pacify him. The sun from the window glared in her eyes. He was right, and by now . . .

By now, I’m sick to death of Agan’s Point and hope I never see the place again. “I’ll be home soon. . . .”

“Damn it! You’re so fucking stubborn!”

I know I am. But I can’t leave yet. “I’ll be home in three days, no more. I promise.”

“What if you can’t find her by then? What if she’s dead? I’m sorry if that sounds insensitive, but I don’t give a shit about your sister compared to you!”

Patricia sighed. “I’m sure she’ll turn up by then.”

“But what if she doesn’t?” Byron blared.

“Then I’ll come home anyway. I’ll come home Sunday no matter what.”

Now Byron sighed, too. “I just miss you so much, and I love you. I want you home, away from that crazy