Stuart MacBride - Sawbones

From where she’s sitting she can see that the car she’s in is one of about a dozen abandoned in a field, all of them axle-deep in the knee-high grass looking like they haven’t moved in years. Some have more glass than others, but they’re all older models, stained with rust. A graveyard for automobiles.

One of the girls from the Winnebago is chained up in an ancient Volvo. Next to that there’s someone else in a Volkswagen Beetle. Another one slumps in a rusty Dodge pickup. . There’s an old Ford sitting on flat tyres on the other side — the girl in that one’s dead. Her head hangs to the side, eyes open and glassy, flies clustering around the stumps where her arms used to be. Oh, Jesus.

Laura can’t twist round very far, not with her hands strapped to the steering wheel, but she can see other cars in the rear-view mirror. At least three of them have dead women in them. There’s only one girl still alive back there, chained to the seat of a rusty Cadillac. She’s nodding. Back and forth, and back and forth, like she’s listening to heavy metal, but Laura gets the feeling there’s something broken inside the girl’s head. Something that snapped when her arms were cut off.

The girl looks up and stares at Laura. Silently calling for help.

As if Laura can do anything with her torn-up leg and battered body. Like she’s not chained to some crappy old car in the middle of a field waiting for the Bastard to come back and hack off her fucking arms! She can feel tears start to prick at the corner of her eyes again, but this time they’re tears of frustration and rage as she tries to rip the steering wheel off the dashboard.

Laura doesn’t know how much time has passed, but the sun is still on its long, slow haul up into the clear blue sky when she hears the warning drone of the Bastard’s Winnebago. He must have been away somewhere, spreading his own brand of happy fucking sunshine.

A door slams and cheerful whistling fills the air, another bloody hymn. Two minutes later, he turns up in the automobile graveyard, a big shit-eating smile on his face and a girl over his shoulder. Now he has five again.

He stops and beams at them all, chained in their rusty cars. “Rejoice!” he says. “Rejoice for now we are ready to spread the Lord our God’s word!” And then he launches into a crackly baritone, singing about how great Jesus is and how he’s going to save them all in the end.

But Laura gets the feeling any help from the Lord is going to come too late to do them any damn good. Unless He smites the Bastard down with a big bolt of lightning right now.

The Bastard comes to the end of his uplifting hymn and gives them a salute, before carrying his new girl into a long, low barn that sits at the side of the field. There’s no door, just a hole into the darkness inside.

The singing starts again, but this time it’s all distorted — echoing inside the barn.

And then there’s screaming. High-pitched, terrified screaming.

The Fish Trap Lounge, Des Moines

It’s been nearly an hour and we’ve still not heard anything from the big guy in the Hawkeyes jacket. Henry’s on his third beer with a bourbon chaser. Jack’s nursing a grudge and a soda, staring up at a rerun of some baseball game on a crappy little television above the bar. And I’m giving myself an ulcer from drinking way too much coffee.

The bar-tender comes round again to see if we want anything, and Henry goes for another beer, even though it’s only eleven in the morning.

“Take it easy,” I say when the guy’s gone away again, “you’re going to be shit-faced by lunchtime.”

Henry looks at me. “We’re not talking about this again.”

“I’m just saying, is all.”

“Yeah, well, don’t.” But at least he makes this beer last.

I’m thinking about ordering more hot wings, or maybe a burger, when the guy in the jacket comes back. “This favour,” he says, sitting at our table, “it got anything to do with Mr Jones’s daughter going missing?”

Henry takes a swig at his bottle of Bud. “You got a name and address for us?”

But Jacket Man ain’t put off that easy. “I need to know if this is about that Sawbones guy.”

There’s silence for a moment, as Henry transfers his attention from the beer to the guy. “You got a name for us, or not?”

Jacket Man stares at him. “I got four brown Winnebagos in Polk County with National Guard plates.” He takes a folded bit of paper out of his pocket and places it on the table. “It wasn’t easy getting hold of these.”

Henry nods. “Favours for favours.”

“That’s why I gotta know — is this about that Sawbones guy?”

Jesus, he just won’t let it rest.

“Yeah,” says Henry, picking up the bit of paper, “you and me going to have a problem?”

The guy shakes his head. “You tell Mr Jones this info’s compliments of Bill Luciano. Some sick bastard snatches his kid we’re going to do everything we can.” He nods at the list in Henry’s hand. “You want a couple of guys to help?”

Henry stands and slips the note into his inside pocket. “You thank Mr Luciano for the offer, but we got some things we need to do that it’s probably best he don’t know about, if you know what I mean. Mr Jones won’t forget the help.”

“Any time.” He pulls a business card out of his wallet. “Anything you need, you give me a call.”

We say thanks and head out into the sunshine.

The first address turns up a little old lady with a filthy Winnebago sitting round the back of her crumbling wooden house. She says the motor home belonged to her son, but he got himself shot in Afghanistan, do we want to buy it?

We don’t.

Address number two belongs to a couple of junkies, living in a crappy motel with hot and cold running cockroaches. They got a pair of little girls, playing in the car park out front, wearing nothing but filthy underwear. Not even any fucking socks. Henry’s all for taking the husband out for a ‘ drive ’, maybe teach the guy it ain’t nice to let your kids go feral like that. But the Winnebago don’t got no hula Elvis, little Jesus, or bullet holes in the back, and we’re in a hurry, so it’s the guy’s lucky day.

The third address is for a farm out in the sticks. All the way out the road, Henry’s going on about how that asshole back at the motel doesn’t deserve to have kids, and how come fuckers like that can get enough cash together to buy drugs but can’t afford to get his daughters a pair of fucking socks?

Once we get out of Des Moines, Iowa turns into this huge checker-board of square fields — soy beans, then corn, then soy beans, then corn, then more corn. On and on for miles. It’s weird, like someone laid out the whole state with a ruler.

Every now and then we pass a wooden house with a couple of cars in the drive and another out the back, American flag flying in the yard. Mr Luciano’s guy wasn’t joking about that patriotic stuff.

Jack’s sitting in the backseat with the map, muttering to himself every time we pass a junction. “OK,” he says at last, “it’s the next right.”

I take the turning and the tarmac road gives way to gravel. The little stones pinging up into the wheel arches as I follow Jack’s directions. About five minutes later the gravel gives out and we’re left on a farm track full of potholes.

Jack points at a rambling wooden farmhouse off to the left. “There.”

I pull up, blocking in a new-ish looking pick-up. Henry’s first out, stretching the kinks out of his back.

“Frank Williams,” he says, reading it off the piece of paper Mr Luciano’s guy gave us, “he’s a chaplain in the National Guard.”

“Uh-huh,” I pull out my gun, check it’s loaded, then rack the slide back and stick the safety on. “In God We Trust.”