Ken Douglas - Scorpion

There were several pairs of shoes in the closet, both men’s and women’s, but the men’s shoes were several sizes too small for Earl’s size twelve feet, so he put his own wet shoes back on. Then he made his way to the kitchen, scooping up his wet clothes as he went.

In the kitchen he made a beeline for the refrigerator, but stopped dead when he saw a ring of keys on a wall hook. People could be so stupid. Lock up the garage, then leave the keys in plain view. In the garage he found an almost new Jeep, gassed up and ready to go. Ten minutes later and still hungry he parked it behind his unmarked cruiser.

He wiped his prints off the wheel and the door handle before stepping out of the Jeep. He looked around. He was alone. He closed the door and hustled over to the unmarked. He looked through the open driver’s window and saw the briefcase and a surge of relief flowed through him. The money was still there. He tossed his wet and dirty clothes on the floor in the back. Then he stepped back from the car and moved to the side of the bridge, to the spot where Jackson had draped him over the rail, not so long ago, and looked down into the river.

Jackson was dead, Loomis was dead, the boy Darren and Johnny Lee Tyler were dead. He thought about Johnny Lee and he examined himself for signs of remorse and was surprised that he couldn’t find any. He’d killed for money before, but doing Johnny Lee wasn’t quite the same.

The first time it was a spaced out drug dealer that had been dealing to the kids down to the junior high. Earl had been so pissed off he put three shots into the fucker’s chest. Then Jackson had calmly gone to the car and fetched a throw down, fired it once and put it in the bastard’s hand. They split forty-five hundred dollars. There wasn’t even an investigation.

The other time was after a high speed chase. They caught up to the two out-of-staters that had robbed the Farmer’s and Merchant’s bank after their car slid out of control and crashed into a tree. One was dead, the other barely alive when they arrived on the scene. Without a word Jackson lifted the money bag from the back seat, and Earl smacked the driver on the back of his head with his pistol, hastening a certain death. Then they torched the car. They split thirteen thousand and again there wasn’t an investigation.

But Johnny Lee was different, it was hard to rationalize that. He’d known the boy all his life, and although he wasn’t a particularly good kid, he wasn’t a bad kid either. If he had it do to over he might not act so hastily, but when he saw the money he’d gone nuts. He supposed the first two killings kind of conditioned him.

He thought of the dead at the warehouse. He knew what had become of Loomis, but he wondered where the bodies of the two boys were. Did Jackson throw them in the river too? And he wondered how much trouble he was in. The boy Darren had been shot with Jackson’s gun, he’d killed Johnny Lee with Darren’s gun. He didn’t know how Loomis had died, but Jackson had probably done him with his own piece. Maybe he could walk away from all of this. Maybe all he had to do was claim that Jackson and Loomis cold cocked him and hightailed it with the cash. When their bodies were found it would look like one of them got greedy and decided he wanted all the loot for himself, they had a fight and they both lost. Not the best scenario, but not bad.

He needed to see what was what down to the junkyard and the warehouses.

It was dark when he got there. Clouds still covered the moon and the hot Texas air smelled like rain. The electric gate was closed. He parked to the right of it and got out of the car, leaving the headlights on. He whistled, but the dog didn’t answer. He wasn’t surprised. Loomis’ dogs were well trained. They would wait for him to enter, then be on him like a wraith.

Earl turned away from the gate, sniffed the air, looked at the sky, then quick stepped to the office. He tried the door. Locked and barred, a side thrust kick wasn’t going to get him in. Shit. There was no way he was getting inside the office without a key. Then he saw Loomis’ aging ’59 Chevy Biscayne.

The car wasn’t locked, no reason to, everybody knew that the driver’s window had been broken out years ago. The keys were in it, but usually that wouldn’t have made any difference, because usually it was inside the fence with the dog, and usually Loomis was asleep in the bedroom behind the office with that AK-47. But he wasn’t sleeping in his bed tonight and Jackson had forgotten to put away the car. Maybe he forgot about the dog, but Earl didn’t think so. Jackson wasn’t stupid, he would have wanted it to look as natural as possible. He would have let the dog loose.

He climbed into the car, started it up, took a breath, put it in gear, cranked the wheel, pointing it toward the gate, and floored it. The impact stopped the car, the gate held and the dog went crazy, barking and snapping on the other side of it like a saber-toothed hell hound. He threw the car in reverse and backed away. Then Earl looked to the office, put the car in gear and braced himself for a second impact. The barred door crumbled under the car’s onslaught. He backed away, climbed out of the car and started toward the office. The dog was howling now, angry and raging, sending chills charging up Earl’s spine.

He knew Loomis kept a pair of bolt cutters, so that he could remove the lock if your rent was two weeks past due and put his own lock on. If you wanted the key to Loomis’ lock you paid your rent. He found them behind the counter, next to the AK. He picked them up along with the rifle and started toward the gate.

“ Hey, you wanna fuck with me now, boy, you wanna fuck with me.”

The dog became silent as Earl approached, glaring.

Earl clicked off the safety, raised the rifle in a smooth one-handed motion and put a bullet between the dog’s eyes. It went down quiet and quick. Then the other dog, the junkyard mate, started howling like a werewolf, but it didn’t matter to Earl, because they were at least a couple of miles from the nearest human being. The fucking dog could howl itself to death for all he cared.

The lock snapped in the bolt cutter’s jaws like spaghetti sliced by a scissors. The stench hit him before he hit the light. Blood, urine, feces, but no bodies. The counterfeit CDs, the porno videos, the cocaine were still there, along with his weapon, sitting on an open box of compact discs. He picked it up, glad to have it back.

He didn’t know what Jackson had done with the bodies, but it was a fair guess they’d never be found. Not a bad plan. When Earl washed up at the bottom of the river with Loomis the investigation would eventually get the police to the warehouse and his gun. Still a good plan, only now it would be Jackson’s body along with Loomis’ floating in that river.

But then he thought about the broken lock, the dented gate, the smashed in office, and the dead dog. He had to destroy any evidence that he’d been there, and he remembered the two out-of-staters that he and Jackson had torched. He had a siphon hose and an empty gas can in the unmarked.

An hour later he was home, dying to get his aching muscles under a hot shower. A shower would also wash his conscience clean and clear his mind. Just a little hot water, that’s all it would take, because it wasn’t the first time he’d shot someone for the money. But before, a voice in his head told him, it was a drug dealer and a couple of robbers, men he didn’t know, with families he’d never see. But that time, he answered the voice, he’d only netted peanuts.

The briefcase in the back seat of his unmarked must have a half million or more in it. For that kind of money he’d go hunting with Johnny Lee’s daddy for six months of Sundays and never even think of the boy. He looked at his feet and frowned. He’d tracked in some dirt on the new carpets. He’d have to clean it up as soon as he got out of the shower. He wanted everything to be perfect for Maria when she got back.