Michael Gruber - Valley of Bones

“Nothing,” she says and hangs up. She listens, straining her ears, and there is another boom, and then only silence and the normal night sounds of the district. Her phone buzzes. Sheryl again, but she doesn’t answer.

They crawled low on the deck of Emmylou’s old houseboat and looked across the yards of dark water at Packer’s big box-on-a-barge. The windows

were illuminated cheerily by a color television screen, and they could see the shadow of a man moving about against that light.

“What’s that he got in there, a motorcycle?”

“Yeah, a big Harley. I guess he keeps it inside at night.”

“Smart fella. A lot of crime down by the river,” said Barlow.

“He’s got a pistol,” said Paz.

“Well, we’ll just have to take it away from him then.” Barlow reached into his pocket and brought out a pair of number one shells and slipped them into the old 16-gauge double-barrel Ithaca shotgun he was carrying. He also had a big revolver stuck in his belt. The clack of the breech closing seemed unnaturally loud to Paz. He worked the slide of his Glock.

“Now, let’s do this,” said Barlow, and in the dim sky glow Paz could see he was wearing his lynch-mob-leader face. Barlow jumped off the houseboat and started to run. Two steps on the deck of Packer’s barge and he was at the jalousied glass door, which he shattered to pieces with his boot and the stock of his weapon. He had just dodged around the Harley when he saw Packer moving, a flash of white shirt in the dim light of the TV screen. He was heading toward the bow, toward his bedroom.

Packer was just reaching under the mattress of his bed when the butt of Barlow’s shotgun cracked him hard over the ear. Then there was a knee in his back and the twin circles of steel pressing like a cookie cutter into the back of his neck. He went limp.

Barlow turned the man over and jammed the muzzle under his chin. Packer was paper pale and his eyes were rolling.

“What do you want? Money?” His voice squeaked.

“Shut up!” said Barlow. He pulled the pistol out of its hiding place, with his little finger in the muzzle and tossed it into a corner. He backed away, still pointing the shotgun, and said, “Get up!”

Packer rose and walked unsteadily to the living room of the craft. A trickle of blood flowed from the wound above his ear. The TV was still on, playing a car commercial. Barlow lifted the shotgun, pointed it at Packer’s head, and pulled a trigger, twitching the muzzle at the last half second so that the charge fired past Packer’s ear at the television, and scored a direct hit on a cruising Honda. Packer’s face contorted and he lost control of his bladder. A pool formed at his feet. Barlow grabbed a chair from the dining area and threw it at the man.

“Sit down, you goddamn piss-baby!”

Packer sat. Without taking his eyes off him, Barlow drew a six-inch hunting knife from a sheath on his belt. He put the shotgun on the dining table and took a roll of duct tape from his trouser pocket. When Packer was fully trussed, arms, hands, and feet to the chair, Barlow stood in front of him and began to sharpen the hunting knife with a small stone that he took from a pocket in its sheath. He spit on the stone and drew the knife across it again and again. Packer watched the motion as if hypnotized. He cleared his throat. “Who. Who are you?”

“Well, I am the husband of the woman that your boys broke into her home and pistol-whipped this afternoon up by Clewiston. And kidnapped a woman we had as a guest.”Snick, snick, went the knife on the stone.

“I had nothing to do with that,” said Packer. “Clewiston? I don’t know what you’re?”

The knife flashed out, quick as a snake strike. Packer felt a bite on his forehead and yelped. Blood flowed into his eye and he blinked it away.

“I swear to God…,” Packer began, but stopped when Barlow held the tip of the knife an inch away from his eye.

“None of that,” said Barlow, “we don’t hold with taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

Snick snick snick.

“What are you going to do?” asked Packer after several minutes had passed.

“Well, what do you think? What do you think is the right thing to do to a man who would hire hoods to beat a woman who never did an unkind act in her whole life? You got any ideas?”

“Look, I have money, a lot of money…I’ll make it right. I didn’t know…I never told them to hurt anyone….”

“I don’t want your money, you terrible chunk of dog shit,” said Barlow in a slow calm voice. “Blood’s been shed and has to be repaid in blood. I been thinking what to do driving down here and I guess I come up with something about right.”

Snick snick.

Barlow replaced the stone in its little pocket. He licked the back of his wrist and shaved off a swath of hair. He held this in front of Packer’s goggling eyes.

“Pretty sharp, huh?”

No comment from Packer. Barlow said, “What I come up with is I’m going to skin your head. That seem fair to you? My wife’s poor face, you ought to have seen it. It just broke my heart to look at her. They cracked her cheekbone, you know.”

“Oh, Jesus, oh God…”

“You hear what I said about taking the Lord’s name in vain? You don’t listen too good, Mr. Packer, that might be one of your main problems in life. My own main problem is anybody hurts my family I just go pure crazy out of control. Now I done this a bunch of times on deer, mostly when I was a kid, but I guess it’ll work the same with you. First, I’m going to cut a circle around your scalp like this….” Barlow drew the point of the knife lightly around Packer’s head, too lightly to draw blood.

“Then I can get my point under there and work your scalp off. I ought to have a skinner, but I guess this old Randall’s going to do the job good enough. It ain’t as if I’m going to mount it. Anyway, after that, I’ll cut in front of your ears, behind your jaw and on up. If I’m careful and slow about it and if you don’t buck too much, I guess I can pull the whole thing off in one piece. The eyelids are the hard part, them being so delicate. I’m going to tape up your mouth now, since you’re a goddamned coward who sends other men to beat up ladies in their own kitchens, which means you’ll probably bawl like a little girl, and I don’t want to wake up the whole town.”

Barlow applied the tape and then walked behind Packer and placed his arm under the wildly squirming man’s chin, pressing the back of his head against his own belt buckle. He placed the knife against Packer’s forehead and began to move it slowly across.

The boat rocked and Paz burst into the room, his pistol pointing. “Goddammit, Cletis! What thefuck are you doing?”

“Stay out of this, Jimmy!”

“Put down that knife! What’re you, nuts?”

Barlow put his knife on the dining table but picked up his shotgun and pointed it toward Paz, who pointed his pistol right back.

“Put it down, Cletis! I mean it.”

Barlow fired the shotgun. The charge of shot hit the tank of the Harley, puncturing it in half a dozen places. The room filled with the toxic-sweet scent of gasoline.

Paz said, “Okay, Cletis, you made your point but now you got an empty shotgun there. I don’t want to have to shoot you, but I will if you don’t put the damn gun down and get the fuck off of this boat. Go out and cool off! I’ll get with you later. Go!”

After a long moment of hesitation, Barlow placed the shotgun against a bulkhead and stalked out of the room. He climbed the stairway to the overhead deck and they could hear him pacing back and forth, reciting, “Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger; the Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them.”