P. Parrish - South Of Hell

No one in the bar or the other gift shop knew Owen well enough to offer an opinion, nor had anyone ever seen him with a child. He had better luck at the real estate office. The woman behind the desk stood up quickly when Louis showed him the picture.

“Yes,” she said. “I know him. He called me once about selling that farm of his.”

“When?” Louis asked.

She opened a file cabinet behind her and came out with a thin folder. The single piece of paper in it looked like an appraisal.

“It was November 3, 1980,” she said. “He heard about the big food-processing companies that were trying to buy out the small farmers and he wanted me to come down and take a look and figure out how much he could get if he decided to sell.”

“Did you go to the farm?” Louis asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I remember we stood outside, and, well, just between me and you, the place was kind of decrepit. It was like just out in the middle of nowhere at the end of this dead-end road. I knew the big companies didn’t care about the buildings, and I could have used the commission. But I still remember wanting to get away from that place as fast as I could.”

“While you were there did you see a child? Or any evidence that a child lived there?” Louis asked.

“No,” she said. “But he wouldn’t let me inside.”

“Did you see a woman out there?” Louis asked.

“No.”

“So Brandt seemed interested in selling?”

“Very much so,” she said. “But about a month later, right after Christmas, I called him back and he said he had changed his mind. Said something about not wanting to sell something that had been in his family for generations.”

Louis thanked her and left.

Joe was sitting in the driver’s seat when he got back to the Bronco, leafing through some of the papers she had brought with her from Echo Bay.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“Just that Owen Brandt was looking to sell that farm in November, 1980, but a month later, after Jean disappeared, he suddenly changed his mind.”

Joe set the folder aside and started the engine. She did a U-turn in the parking lot, pulled up to the road, and stopped.

“We go left to get back to Ann Arbor, right?” she asked.

“We’re not going to Ann Arbor,” he said. “We’re going back to the farm.”

“Why?”

“I want to look through those storage boxes,” he said. “Kids need stuff. It couldn’t all just disappear.”

Joe shoved the Bronco into park and turned to face him. “Louis,” she said, “it’s bad enough you entered the house illegally once. Ripping open sealed boxes without a warrant is another thing altogether. You could jeopardize Shockey’s case in court.”

“I won’t be looking for evidence of a murder, just some indication that a kid lived there. No one ever needs to know.”

“And if you just happen to find evidence of a murder?” she asked. “What happens then?”

“Then I put it back, reseal it, and we find another way to expose it later.”

“You’re asking me to stand by and watch you break the law,” she said.

He held her eyes for a moment. “You can always go home.”

She turned away from him, hands resting on the wheel. Then, with a hard jerk of the gearshift, she put the Bronco into drive and headed south out of Hell.

J ust like Crazy Verna…

That was the first thing that came into Owen Brandt’s head as he stood in the doorway of the bedroom in a house on Locust Street in Hudson, Michigan.

The dead woman lay in her bed. Her skin was gray, her eyes sunken, her ragged black hair thin, giving her face the look of one of the those cheap rubber Halloween witch masks they sold at that souvenir place back in Hell.

He was glad her eyes were closed, at least. Death never bothered him, but he really didn’t want to look into his sister’s eyes when she was starting to rot.

Geneva… poor old Gen.

He hadn’t seen her in nine years. What a reunion.

They had never been close. Even though it was just her and him in the house most of the time. Even though she had tried to keep Pa from beating on him, even snuck him some food those times Pa had locked him in the barn. And after Ma died…

Died, shit. Ma had always been strange, but after that winter, when she ran all the way to Lethe Creek and tried to drown herself, things got really weird. “Crazy Verna,” the folks in Hell called her after that, and Pa had to keep her locked up in the attic until that day she finally did off herself.

Gen tried to take Ma’s place for a while. But the first chance she got, what did she do? She ran off at sixteen with that truck driver guy she met at the Texaco and never looked back. Left him there alone on that farm with that old bastard.

“Fuck you, too, Gen,” Brandt muttered.

He wiped his nose. The stench was getting to him, and he didn’t want to stay long in case smells like this got into his clothes. He didn’t have too many shirts and only one pair of jeans, and he didn’t want them all stunk up by some rotted corpse.

He nodded a goodbye to his sister and went back through the house, looking for her purse. He found an old leather thing sitting on a table in the living room. Nothing in it but an empty wallet and some pennies. He tossed it aside and looked around.

The sofa was stained with what smelled like urine and had towels draped over the back. He moved to the kitchen, remembering that Geneva used to keep money in coffee cans. The room was cleaner than he expected, all the dishes washed and stacked neatly in the sink. On the shelf above the stove was a Maxwell House coffee can. He opened it. There was fifteen cents in the bottom.

He set it back and scanned the room.

Where was the girl?

Not that it mattered. She was old enough now to be out on her own. Hell, after Pa died, he went out on his own, making his own money, spending most of his time on the street, and hustling cash. A girl could do even better if she knew how.

Brandt rifled through the kitchen drawers, gave the other rooms a quick search, and left the house. The green Gremlin was sitting in the driveway, puffing thick clouds of exhaust into the icy morning air. Brandt slid into the passenger seat.

“Did she give you any money?”

He glanced at the woman behind the wheel. Margi wasn’t so bad in the dark, but she looked like hell in the daylight.

“She’s dead,” Brandt said. “Let’s go.”

“But where we gonna get money?” Margi asked. “I only have twenty bucks. Where we gonna go on twenty bucks?”

“We can go to Hell,” Brandt said.

“Come on, Owen,” she said. “Where are we going for real? I’m tired. Where are we going to stay tonight?”

“I try to make a joke, and you’re too fucking dumb to even get it,” Brandt said. “Drive. Go back to the freeway, and head north.”

“I’m tired of driving. I’ve been doing all the driving ever since we left Ohio. How come you can’t drive?”

“’Cause I ain’t got no fucking license, and I’m on parole,” Brandt said. “Now drive.”

Margi set her lips and slapped the gearshift into park. “You promised me a nice hotel.”

Brandt backhanded her, catching her hard in the mouth. She covered her face, a small trickle of blood on her fingers.

“You bastard,” she whispered.

“Drive, or I’ll smack you again.”

Brandt looked out his window, fighting the urge just to toss the bitch from the car and leave her on the curb. But he had to remember — he was free but not completely free. Parolees weren’t ever completely free. He couldn’t break any laws, like driving this shit car. He couldn’t drink, and he couldn’t go see any of his prison buds. And he couldn’t throw a woman from a car. Not again.