Rigged (8 page)

“Are you kidding me? You’re robbing us too?”

Charlie looked back up at Dick. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly the good guy here, Dick, and even a guy’s gotta eat.” He pulled the cash out of the two wallets, folded it over, shoved it in his pocket, then he walked over to the counter to grab his hat.

“What the fuck are you doing? Aren’t you going to at least untie me?”

“Naw,” Charlie said as he grabbed an empty bottle from the counter and a pouch of pills from Dick’s backpack.

“Wait…what the fuck are you doing now?” Dick repeated.

“You already asked that,” Charlie said, “but I’m guessing it’s rhetorical.” Charlie dumped some of the pills into the bottle and added a few of the chemicals he found hidden under the sink. He also grabbed a few thumbtacks, screws and hanger nails that he found in a drawer, then set the bottle into the tumbler and placed the excess chemical bottles in a circle around it.

“Hold up, you said you’d let me live,” Dick said, squirming violently from his place on the table.

Charlie walked back over to Dick and looked down. “No,” he said, “I told you I’d kill the guy who didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. It’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.”

“You can’t turn that on. You’ll blow up anyone next door too,” Dick said in a brief moment of enlightenment.

“Don’t worry,” Charlie said as he stretched out a piece of duct tape. “If you notice, I didn’t fill that bottle all the way. I know explosives, and this one won’t be too big. That’s why I added the shrapnel. It’ll finish cleaning up the mess that the meth explosion doesn’t.”

“You can’t do this,” Dick said.

“I can’t?”

“You can’t kill me, man!”

“And why not? You’re just a
meth dealer
.”

“I did what you asked. Please, mister, I-I—”

Charlie smiled. “I suppose not all meth dealers are bad. What, you’re trying to make money for your family because you have a terminal disease or something? Just tryin’ to feed your kids?”

Dick’s eyes darted back and forth. “Yeah, yeah, that’s it. My family. My kids are starvin’, man, and I can’t find work, so I—”

Charlie clicked his tongue again. “Damn. Well, I hope you invested your money well.” Charlie then put the tape over Dick’s mouth, walked back to the entrance without looking back, and flicked on the tumbler just as he closed the trailer door.

Chapter 8

Sergeant Nikki Hamill walked around the perimeter of the trailer home that looked like the Coke can she’d left in her car overnight the winter before; the sides were pushed out, the insides a total mess. Perez had gone off to interview neighbors with a couple other officers, on the off chance that they’d seen something and the even more off chance that if they had, they’d be willing to talk about it with police.

The fire department cleared the area and chalked up the explosion as meth related. The fire chief made it a point to mention that the neighbors were lucky, as only a small batch blew.

Nikki took off her not-too-bad looking knock-off sunglasses looked around inside the trailer after she had the go-ahead from the fire department, who made sure there weren’t any fumes or other explosives around. From the blast pattern, it looked like the two dead guys inside had used a velocity tumbler to shake up the meth, a tool usually used to clean bullet casings. When Nikki pointed out that the two dead men were tied down when the bomb went off, the captain just shrugged and said something about a big loss for society.

“Well? What’s your best guess on this one?” Perez asked as he approached the trailer door.

Nikki looked to see Perez in one of the only three suits he owned, none of which fit him very well. His blue striped tie—and what remained of his thinning hair—twitched in the breeze, his white shirt looked wrinkled from sitting too long in the dryer without being ironed. Even though he’d lost about fifteen pounds in the six months they’d worked together, likely due to depression in dealing with his wife’s illness—not that he ever talked about it—he still had a little belly around the middle, but it didn’t look bad on him. Why did men always seem to age better than women? Nikki scowled at the realization that if she had a spare tire or muffin top like that, it’d look awful and she’d hear all kinds of jokes, but on him it looked almost distinguished.
Perez scratched the side of his head with his pen, right on the salt-and-pepper streak just above his right ear. Even though he was always clean shaven, and as handsome a man as he was, he never really looked put together, and the trend was progressing in a downward spiral. Nikki wished Perez would talk about it, but he wasn’t one for wearing his heart on his ill-fitting sleeve.

“Someone had an issue with these two,” Nikki said. “Whoever it was tied the two down and set the tumbler going.”

“Grisly way to make a statement,” Perez said. “Any idea who might have done it? Maybe a pissed-off neighbor, some vigilante who got tired of drugs in the park?”

Nikki smiled; she knew Perez was fond of hyperbole on investigations. He liked to make things sound more dramatic than they really were. She was pretty sure he did it on her behalf, making a mockery of her enthusiasm as some sort of repayment for her teasing way of calling him “Boss.” Regardless of their banter and good-natured ribbing—or maybe, in part, because of it—she liked Perez. They had been partners for six months, and he was the only guy on the force, married or not, who didn’t try to hit on her or give her shit about being a woman with a badge and a gun, especially since she’d traded in her patrol blues for a sergeant’s badge.  “That or maybe a fallout with an employer or buyer. You think Damon could have had anything to do with this?” Nikki asked.

“Let’s hope not. He hasn’t been seen around town for a while, small miracles, and I think he’s been pushing his stuff closer to the drills—not that we can ever get anything to stick to that slippery piece of shit,” Perez said, spitting on the ground.

Nikki wondered if it bothered her partner more that Damon was a dealer or that he was good at getting away with it. Ever since Damon had first shown up two years earlier, the meth possession rates had skyrocketed in their little slice of heaven. They’d only managed to snag a couple dealers, and most of what they’d seized came from other busts like drunk driving or assaults. Damon had a knack for covering his tracks and was clearly looking to revolutionize the business. There hadn’t been a meth lab explosion in months, and any that had happened previously had been linked to independent tweekers looking for a fast score. Damon played things too smart for Nikki’s and Perez’s taste; few things short of an airstrike or Navy SEALs Team Six would have been enough to get rid of Damon and his slimy influence in their community. He was a piece of shit, just like Perez had said, and anything that even came close to his person carried with it an unmistakable stench.

“I checked with the park manager,” Nikki said.

“And?” Perez asked.

“And she said somebody was over here asking about Dick and Clarence yesterday.”

“Dick and Clarence are the, ahem, victims, I take it.”

“Yeah, but she couldn’t give a description.”

“Didn’t have her glasses?” Perez asked.

“Uh, I think maybe one too many glasses would be more appropriate,” Nikki said, making a drinking motion with her hand, pinky and thumb extended.

The slow
crunch
of tires driving over the loose rock made Nikki turn to see a black Town Car slowly roll past the scene on a cross street. Perez caught her stare and turned to look as well. Two men in sunglasses exited the car. They were dressed plainly enough in jeans and sweatshirts, and they looked around impassively.

“Can I help you, fellas?” Perez asked in a half-yell across the way.

If the two men heard him, they didn’t react. They simply looked around the scene, then glanced at each other and nodded oddly, as if they were talking telepathically or something. Without a word between them or any answer for Perez, they got back in their car and drove away.

Perez shrugged at Nikki. “Meh, just tourists, I guess,” he said, “or rubber-neckers.”

“I guess. I’ll run the prints off these two,” Nikki said, “if there’s anything left to print after the chemical burns. Maybe I can find some kind of connection.

“All right,” Perez said. “While you’re at it, check into that tumbler. Maybe we’ll be lucky and find out it was purchased around here somewhere.”

“It looks old.”

“Even better. Maybe the meth-heads lifted it from somebody who can ID them. See if we can get a better ID on the bodies than just given names. I’m gonna do a few more door-to-door checks and see if anyone noticed anything or anyone in or around the trailer before or after it blew up.” He started to turn away, then stopped. “Hey, if you’re going back to the station to run those prints, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure, Boss. Shoot.”

“In the top drawer of my desk, there’s a coffee cup in an evidence bag.”

Nikki starred back at Perez with an arched eyebrow. “A coffee cup?”

“Yeah,” Perez paused, “I bagged it yesterday.”

Perez didn’t have to explain any further. He’d bagged the cup Charlie Kelly had drank out of when they talked to him about his friend’s death. He didn’t have any reason to have kept it. Nothing short of what he liked to refer to as his cop sense.

“You don’t have a problem with that, do you?” Perez asked.

“Of course not,” Nikki said, her voice restrained, professional. Though, it irked her to think that Perez thought so little of her; she would never let some guy she’d flirted with get between her and an investigation. “One thing’s for sure,” Nikki said as she walked back toward her car.

“What’s that?”

“If Damon is involved in any way, this isn’t over. You and I both know it’s just the beginning.”

“Yeah, I know,” Perez said, wiping his brow with a handkerchief, “and that’s just what I’m afraid of.”

Chapter 9

As far as Damon was concerned, the sun rose at his whim and set when he was tired of looking at it. That was what he told his crew, and he and they swallowed it whole.  As much as he distrusted new faces, he liked to do the dog-and-pony show; he loved to quickly put the new recruits in their place, make them feel small around them. The last thing he needed was for some little base-head to start thinking he could branch out on his own. Plus, he needed to fill the vacant spot his little learning lesson out on the prairie had created. It had taken almost two hours to bury the body. “Here’s the deal,” Damon said as he paced back and forth in front of the two new guys, neither of which looked like they were even old enough to buy him a pack of heaters. “You fuck with me, you’re dead. It’s that simple. No backing out now. You’re sittin’ here because someone vouched for you, because you slung a little White Bitch for us, and showed you can do the game.”

Damon made a point of stopping for dramatic effect and turning slowly; when he did, he made sure his muscles flexed and bulged out of his black tank top. Tribal artwork sprawled across bowling ball shoulders and spiraled down massive, veiny, stark-white forearms. He wore a light brown, almost red Fu Manchu and head shaved with clippers, not with a razor. He was often mistaken for a white supremacist, but Damon hated those illiterate, uneducated, poorly organized bastards. The one time he had done business with them, he’d ended up serving eighteen months of a five-year sentence. Never again, he swore. He’d do things his own way
.
Damon was twenty-six when he’d limped out of prison, and he vowed then and there that he’d never again darken a cell door. Now, a decade later, he had no intention of breaking the streak.

He stared at the two new guys as if they were new-born puppies, until they looked away from him. He’d been in the game a long time, and he knew if he didn’t break them early, they might feel like they could get away with biting the hand that fed them. He paced back and forth through the large converted barn he liked to use as a staging ground and home base, perfect because it was way out in the country, with no neighbors to poke their noses in his business or to send the cops to snoop around. The land around them was so flat that they could see the cops or feds coming a mile out, giving them more than enough time to stash whatever little bit of ice they might have lying around. Damon never kept volume where he crashed, he knew that would be bad business; he was nothing if not a businessman.

When he’d first seen the barn, it inspired him, and he paid for the foreclosed property in cash. The place was junk, but he put a couple of his boys to work, and it was pretty damn nice after its conversion. The insulation and drywall worked wonders for the place and was adorned here and there with pictures of naked ladies doing all sorts of nasty things. The livestock stalls were sectioned off into various hangout rooms. Some were even furnished with beds, in case the boys wanted to get frisky—not that there was much talent around who were willing to accompany them. Most of the strippers were uppity about giving up the spoils, especially in a barn, as if they were any better than whores. The majority of the barn was one long room, with a few couches and chairs here and there. Damon got a seventy-inch TV for the far wall so he could watch fights or whatever he felt like watching. His barn was a good place to hang out and blow off steam, and it was easy enough for Damon to order his boys to repair or replace anything that got broken or destroyed.

He walked over to the stereo and turned it up for a minute, wanting to hear a particular guitar rift. He had speakers wired all around the barn, as surround sound was really the only way to appreciate true metal. He was sick of hearing people talk about how great Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan were at playing the guitar; as far as he was concerned, there was no way either of them could even keep up with Alexi Laiho, even on their best day. Damon slammed his head up and down with the beat and took his time turning back to the two new dogs. “You gotta sling plenty of scud for me before you’ll earn my trust, but right now, you don’t get shit. You’re bottom of the motherfucking food chain and I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in your face and two feet of mud over your head at some dead drill site if you cross me or cause me any shit. You got that?”