Joe Lansdale - Waltz of Shadows

“One time we’re out on his boat fishing, and Jake starts talking about his daughter. I’m thinking it’ll be the usual thing. You know, how smart the kid is. The braces on her teeth. Her athletic ability. Stuff you hear parents say. And it started off like that, him telling me she’s ten, and he thinks she’s going to be a real beauty, you know. He talked about how she liked to sit on his lap and kiss him. How he liked to set up the camera and take a few pictures of her naked. Keep in mind, this wasn’t some scumbag. He had money, a good home and job. An attractive wife. He said his wife didn’t mind he took the pictures. She knew he liked to fool around with the kid some, and the kid didn’t mind that much either. They didn’t see it as a big deal.”

“Who’s telling you she didn’t mind, that it isn’t any big deal,” I asked, “this asshole Jake?”

“Cork yourself,” Price said to me. “Keep singing,” he said to the Doc.

“The more he talked, more I sorta, you know, ta, you liked it,” Doc said. “The idea, I mean. I had experienced those kinds of thoughts now and then. You know how it is. See a naked kid in a photograph. Out swimming at the pool, wearing little bathing suits-I’m not talking about boys, understand. I’m not talking anything strange.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’re some special project.”

“I don’t see the big deal,” Doc said. “You’re making a big deal.”

“You were saying,” Virgil said to Doc.

“I asked the guy a few questions, and pretty soon he’s telling me all of it. How he’s been showing the girl that love between a father and daughter, sexual love, isn’t so bad. Explaining how it’s a special relationship… I can see that, can’t you?”

“No,” I said.

Neither Virgil nor Price said anything. Price looked bored, and Virgil had on his lawyer expression, which could have meant anything or nothing.

Doc looked at his drink and lifted the last of it to his mouth and tossed it back. “Next time he came up, we went out on his boat, and he had a few pictures of him and the daughter. You know, doing it. They were really tastefully photographed.”

“That makes me feel better,” I said. “I’d hate to think they were grainy or blurred or something.”

“Go out in the hall again, Small, you can’t shut up,” Price said.

It was tempting, but I felt I needed to know all this. I had already fallen into the sewer by accident, I might as well spend a few more minutes bobbing about with the turds.

“So Jake says if I like this sort of thing, he can make some arrangements with his daughter, who does what he says. Get me kind of a date, you know? But it didn’t work out. I mean, I wasn’t going to do it anyway. I was just thinking about it. I just wanted to see the pictures.

“Anyway, Jake was murdered. It was all over the newspapers for a week. Whole family was rubbed out. Him and the wife and the little girl, and nobody was ever picked up for it. I thought that was the end of it. But one day this guy came by the office, like he was there for a consultation. I saw him in private, in my office, and I thought he wanted liposuction, way he looked. But he didn’t want anything done. He said he’d known my friend in Houston, and they shared some interests.”

“Fat Boy with a few pictures.” Price said.

“Yeah,” Doc said. “Just two or three pictures, then. One of them of Jake with his daughter. Couple other kids with adults. Fat Boy said he could provide me some stuff, if I wanted it. Though any more pictures would cost me. He gave me the pictures and told me a number to call. I got it on my mind I’d like to see more of what he had, so a week later, I called the number. Fat Boy met me after work, drove me out to a place in the woods around Busby. An old abandoned sawmill. I mean, this place was out in the boonies. I got to thinking maybe I’d gotten into something more than photos, and I was right.

At the mill, there was a guy with a snake tattooed on his head. Stunk like an outhouse. Couldn’t stand dn’t saround him without getting sick. Fat Boy told me it’s because of his stink, that this guy, Snake, has a place out at the sawmill. Got a generator for electricity. Big Satellite dish. Big tank for water. There’s a field out back Fat Boy uses for a landing strip. I could see a little plane parked there.”

“Enough of the Better Homes and Gardens tour,” Price said. “You were saying about Fat Boy and Snake, the pictures.”

“We went in the mill, and this one big room they let me into, it was like a store. Photographs all over the place. Boxes of them. Fat Boy said they sold tons of the stuff. That it wasn’t that unusual, what I liked, and I should look around and see if there was something that caught my fancy.

“I looked at what they had, bought an assortment of photographs for what I thought was a fair price, and right before we got ready to leave, Fat Boy said, ‘By the way, you ever see any of this?’

“He went over and got this box of photographs out of a locked desk drawer. They were dead children. Some recent dead. Some starting to rot.

“I asked Fat Boy where he got the pictures, and he said he bought them, and not to worry, and why didn’t I take a couple. I asked if the kids were acting, if there were special effects involved in the rotted corpse pictures, and he just shook his head. He said they were dead already, so what did it matter if I took a couple. It wasn’t going to change things for the kids. I took them.

“Week later, he comes by my office again, bold as hell, says he’s got something really special. I went with him, and when we got there, there was Snake with these two other guys. They were out to the side of the mill, had picks and shovels and were working on the ground there. I thought they were putting in plumbing. Fat Boy made a point of telling me the two guys were cops, and that he worked for the cops.

“I thought I’d been set up, and Fat Boy was going to arrest me for buying child pornography. But that didn’t happen.

“He walked me out to where they were digging. I could smell Snake before I got there, and something else. We got up to the digs I saw what the something else was. A child. A little boy. Eight or nine, I guess. He was naked, lying on his back in a hole about four feet deep. They had a camera and tripod out there, but I guess they were through doing what they were going to do, because time I got there and saw what was in the hole, they started shoveling dirt and old piles of crumbled sawdust on top of him. Snake said something like, ‘There’s a lot of milk cartons out there with pictures on them wasting space.’

“I realized then Fat Boy had been playing me like a fiddle. I could spring the cops on him, but if he and those guys were really the law, then I wasn’t sure how they could make things look. My reputation would be destroyed.”

“The cops.” Price said, “Can you describe them?”

Doc described them. Price said, “Descriptions like that. They could be anybody.”

“They all had guns,” Doc said.

“Lot of people got guns,” Price said. “Go on with it.”

“Fat Boy took me back up to e back uthe mill for a drink. He showed me some more pictures while I drank it. I could tell now the pictures were taken there. Some were torture shots. Taken in the mill. I asked him how he got the kids, and he said it was easy. They normally went out of town, Houston, Dallas, some place like that. Nabbed them by offering them free toys and stuff. Or just grabbed them in broad daylight. They had quite a system. I asked him how he felt about it, and he said he didn’t feel anything about it. He said Snake got something out of it, but what charged him was commerce and the deal. He liked putting something together. He told me he put me together. That he put Jake together. Said without people like me and Jake he might be an accountant. You believe that? Tried to lay their murders at my feet.”