The Backwoods

until the darkness expelled him into the blaring moonlight. He was shirtless, and unbuckling his gun belt now. Then he took his pants off. Patricia was grateful there was only moonlight and not the lamp; it reduced the details. Trey’s body was lean, like a jackal’s. The thrill of murder—and of what was to come—had already erected his genitals.

“Good, you’re awake,” he said. “Ain’t no fun pluggin’ a gal who’s unconscious. Let’s see if you’re a screamer like your sister. Yeah, baby, that turns me on. And ya can scream all ya want, ‘cos there ain’t no one to hear ya.”

Now the dread was piling up on her like a physical weight. Tears drew lines from the corners of her eyes. I should’ve gone home to my husband days ago. Why did I have to stay?

The moonlight painted one side of his body icy white, and left the other half black. He pointed to the window. “Bet‘cha don’t know that a buncha’ nights since you been back, I come up here and watched ya through the window. You are some sight, I’ll tell ya, all naked and tossin’ and turnin’, playin’ with yourself in your sleep. Dirty girl.”

Her nausea trebled. “Jesus, and I thought it was Ernie.”

Trey sputtered. “Ernie? That shuck-‘n’-jive piece a’ shit? I busted his back before I lowered him in the water . . . so he could. see the crabs eatin’ him alive. The fuck.”

“But he was helping you too, wasn’t he? He burned the docks last night—the state police told me.”

Trey frowned. “That redneck couldn’t burn shit. I burned the fuckin’ docks. He tried to stop me, so I whipped his ass, flaked him with dope, and let the crabs have him.”

Even in her horror, Patricia felt astonished, even relieved. “I-I didn’t know that.”

“Bet‘cha don’t know somethin’ else too.” Trey’s voice darkened. He reached up toward his face, and then . . .

Patricia squinted in the dark.

He took his denture piece out, a bridge of some sort. Patricia came close to swallowing her own vomit at the recognition.

Now Trey’s two front teeth were missing.

“You remember me now, don’t’cha?” Trey guttered.

“My God,” she choked, “I thought it was Ernie. His two front teeth were missing when the EMTs were taking him out of the bay.”

“Aw, shit, that ain’t nothin’. When me ’n’ him got ta fightin’ on the docks, I knocked a couple of his teeth out, busted a rib too, ‘fore I jacked him out the rest a’ the way. I don’t like Ernie gettin’ credit for my balls—so make sure you know that. It was me who split your cherry on Bowen’s Field that night.”

Patricia wished she could just die now.

“I done saw ya skinny-dippin‘in the water,” Trey admitted. “Couldn’t help it—hell, I was a young buck myself back then. Chick skinny-dippin’ in the woods at night, all by herself? She’s asking for it.”

“You make me sick,” Patricia managed, her muscles tensing against the bonds.

“You were quite a prize back then, and still are,” Trey said, feeling her body up with his eyes. “’N fact, you’re a damn sight better-lookin’ now. And ya know what else I remember, baby? I remember how much you liked it. . . .”

Trey stuck the tip of his tongue through the gap in his teeth, and then the rest of the disgusting memory swamped her: her clitoris sucked through that same gap over twenty-five years ago when she lay lashed to the ground in the middle of Bowen’s Field, much the same way she lay lashed to this bed now.

“Yeah, you liked it then, and you’re gonna like it again tonight,” he promised. “You ain’t gonna be alive much longer, so you might as well just lay back and get into it.”

He began to walk toward the bed. . . .

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Answer me one thing.”

He chuckled. “Guess it’s the least I can do.”

“Set me straight on something. You’ve been killing the Squatters and making it look like drug dealers were killing them. Right?”

“Yeah. And it worked.”

“So you’ve been killing them,” Patricia repeated. “But who’s been killing you?”

Trey fell silent in the moonlight.

“Come on, Trey. Tell me the rest of the story. Dwayne was murdering Squatters; then someone murders Dwayne. Junior Caudill murdered the Hilds; then someone murdered him. Right?”

Trey hesitated but said, “Yeah.”

“And what about Junior’s brother? He was working for you and Felps, too—you said so in the kitchen. He killed the Ealds, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. Burned ’em up in their shack.”

“Why do I have this funny felling that Ricky Caudill is dead now, too? Is he?”

Trey nodded. “He died in the town jail cell, some disease.”

“Some disease? What happened to him?”

Trey was growing flustered. “I don’t know—I ain’t a doctor. It had to have been some disease or somethin’. Nobody killed him—he was in his jail cell when it happened.”

“When what happened?” Patricia insisted.

“He lost all his blood, it looked like.”

“Really? And Dwayne lost his head, but there was no evidence of a wound, and Junior lost all of his internal organs. I saw Junior’s autopsy, Trey, and the inside of his body was empty. But there was no sign of an incision. How do you take a man’s organs out of his body without cutting him open first?”

“I don’t know,” Trey said.

“Ricky Caudill lost all his blood. Were there any cuts on him? Did somebody cut his veins?”

“I didn’t inspect his fuckin’ body; all I did was bury it.”

“You said he died in his jail cell. So I guess his blood was all over the cell floor, right? Right?”

“No!” Trey yelled. “The floor was clean, and there weren’t no cuts on him!”

Silence.

The clock was still ticking, and outside Patricia could hear the cicadas’ drone. “Answer me one more thing, Trey.”

“No. Fuck it.” He grabbed a pillow off the bed. “I got me a piece a’ your ass when you were sixteen—that’ll have to do. I’m just gonna smother your ass right now and be done with it.”

He raised the pillow and was about to position it over her face, then began to lower it.

“Did Ricky Caudill get a letter on the day he died?” Patricia blurted.

The pillow froze, then fell away.

“How did you know that?” Trey’s voice ground out.

“He did, didn’t he? A sheet of paper with one word on it, one handwritten word. Wenden, something like that, right? It looked like it was written in some kind of dust or chalk. That was the letter he got, wasn’t it?”

Agan’s Point’s new chief of police just stood there in the moonlight. He didn’t reply.

“Dwayne got a letter like that, too.”

“Bullshit!”

“He did. I found it in the garbage can in the den. The postmark was the day he died. Go look if you don’t believe me. It’s probably still there. And Junior Caudill got a letter just like it, too.”

“No, he didn’t!”

“Yes, he did, Trey! I saw it in an evidence bag at the county coroner’s.”

Now Trey stood with his jaw dropping and his eyes wide, contemplating something in utter dread.

“Trey?” Patricia asked.

Trey just stared.

“Trey?”

He looked down at her almost beseechingly.

“Trey, did you get a letter like that too? Did you get one today?”