Caden is Coming

CHAPTER 1

Late July, 2007.

HAL DUCKETT.

“Didn’t remember how much I hated the country ’til I came back out here. Every time I roll the window down it smells like cow shit.”

“Don’t sweat it, Hal. You’re not going to be out here long.”

“Damn straight about that. I don’t like this guy. Don’t trust him either.”

“You make it sound like he wants your vote. I know Burnett and can vouch for him.”

“Well, I don’t know this Burnett, but I do know that I don’t trust somebody who would take a job right in a man’s home, earn his trust and take his money, and then turn around and stab him in the back.”

“Not even when that knife in the back puts money in your pocket?’

“I love stealing, but I hate a rat.”

“That don’t make no damn sense.”

“Makes perfect damn sense to me; if your buddy, Burnett, that you vouch for so damn well, can steal from the man who gives him the cushy job of looking after his big house in the country, then what does that make him?”

“The man who’s going to let us walk right in the front door of that big house when we get there, that’s what it makes him.”

“It makes him somebody you can’t trust.”

“You’re thinking too much, it’s a piece of cake. Wait and see.”

Hal Duckett really did hate the country, but he loved money a hell of a lot more. Even so, when Larry Jones turned the Oldsmobile off the black top and onto the longest stretch of dirt road he’d ever seen, his gut instinct was to order Larry to turn the car the hell around and head back to Atlanta. The urban jungle was in his blood and there was something about the flat open countryside of South Georgia that made the hair on his neck stand up. Hal took pride in his well-developed street smarts, honed by two stints in the Georgia state penal system and many years of earning his living from B&E jobs. So, when an internal voice told him to watch his back, he listened.

“Turn this thing around and let’s get back to the highway.”

“Too late now, we’re almost there.” Larry sounded adamant.

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do, and besides, you’ve already invested the better part of a day gettin’ here, you might as well get something for the effort.”

Hal very reluctantly bowed to Larry’s logic, and he had to admit his partner had a point, especially when Hal remembered he was nearly flat broke with bills to pay. He hadn’t pulled a job in two months, not since he’d broken in through the back door of a gun shop over near Phoenix City in Alabama. That piece of work had netted Hal $526.47 in cash, a dozen hand guns, three Mossberg shotguns and a Winchester 30.06, all of which went for $1,500 on the street; all of it pure profit. And every penny of it was gone now.

But it was still better to be hungry and free than eating three squares a day behind bars and as Hal continued to watch the flat land go by, that thought dug itself into the back of his brain. The road had become nothing more than a dirt lane with grass in the middle, while verdant green fields, thick with either peanuts or soybeans, spread out for what seemed like miles on both sides. Far off to his right, Hal could see the edge of a pine forest, while far ahead in the distance, a clump of trees appeared. Behind them, a thick cloud of dust followed in the wake of Larry’s Oldsmobile. All this wide-open space only added to Hal’s broody sense of unease and gave him the vague notion that he was about to be stepped on by some great invisible leviathan.

“If this don’t smell right to me, I’m out of there, tell you that right now.”

Larry shook his head and kept his eyes on the road, which now resembled nothing so much as two parallel ruts. “Have I ever steered you wrong?” he asked. “One time, tell me? That doctor’s house in Decatur, best score you ever got, and who was it that set the whole thing up?”

Hal gritted his teeth, because Larry Jones was right and it was pissing him off. “What I am getting at is this, a third party complicates things,” he said, changing the subject. “And I don’t work well when I got to look over my shoulder all the time.”

“I got your back, remember that and relax.” At that moment the Olds ran up on a cattle gate, hitting the undercarriage on it as they passed over. They were almost to the clump of trees when Hal suddenly caught a glint of sunlight reflecting off a bright surface. In the next instant, he realized the trees were grouped about in a yard. The yard itself was spread out around a great house, a mansion really, with a barn and out buildings beyond it.

As Larry steered the car from the drive to a parking area out front, Hal turned his head to and fro, trying to get the lay of the land. Up close, the house truly was a mansion: red brick and built in the colonial style with double chimneys on both ends. A wide, high porch greeted them from the end of a long cobblestone walk. The reason why a visitor did not notice the structure until they were almost upon it, Hal realized, was that the mansion was very effectively camouflaged by the copse of great oaks surrounding it, and from a distance, the huge trees seemed quite small against the open country around it and the vast horizon behind them.

“Here we are and here we go,” said Larry as he turned the ignition off. “All we got to do is stay cool, do the job, and you can count the money all the way back to Atlanta.”

Hal gave him a grunt in reply, then reached underneath his seat and retrieved a small cloth bag with a draw string, from which he withdrew two pair of cotton gloves. He tossed one pair to Larry before slipping the other pair on his own hands; there would be no finger prints at the scene to do the cop’s job for them. Together they got out of the car and Hal felt the heat of a summer’s afternoon coil itself around him tight and squeeze. After half a day riding in the comfort of the AC, he wanted as little as possible to do with the great outdoors.

The first thing he noticed after the oppressive warmth was the unreal quiet. Hal was used to the clang and clatter of urban Atlanta, but standing there beside Larry’s Olds, he thought it sounded dead even for the boonies. A single raspy call from a blackbird, high up in one of the oaks, rang out, and not even the grasshopper’s shrill whine could be heard from the weeds. It was as if the heat of the afternoon had been too much even for them.

“Damnit Larry, you were supposed to be here before noon, that was two hours ago.”

These words broke the funeral silence and let Hal know they were not alone. Looking down at them from the top of the porch steps was a ferret of a man. Evidently, he had come outside without making a noise, for Hal was sure the porch had been empty when they’d driven up.

“Hal, this is Burnett Lowe,” Larry said, gesturing with his hand toward the little man on the porch. “And Burnett, this is Mr. Hal Duckett, who never met a lock that could stop him.” Larry reversed the hand gesture on the second introduction.

Lowe acted as if he hadn’t heard what Larry said. “When someone gives me a time, that’s when I expect them.”

“Don’t go and get your panties in a wad, Burnett,” Larry Jones answered “Some of us had a late night. Don’t forget Hal had to come out from Atlanta and you know what a bitch the traffic can be. Not to mention how far off the beaten path this place is.”

“We agreed you’d get here before noon.”

“Well, done is done and we’re here now.”

“We made an agreement and I took you at your word.” The little man was not giving an inch.

Hal felt like telling Lowe to go to hell and take his attitude with him. “I don’t need this shit,” he said. “You don’t want my services, then good bye and screw you.” He punched Larry on the shoulder and motioned towards the Olds, “Let’s get the hell going.”

“Hal, we’ve come a long way on a hot day,” Larry said. “And we don’t want to just turn around and pass on a good payday because somebody took a tone. Isn’t that true, Burnett?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Lowe answered. Hal heard the reluctance in his voice.

“So, tell Mr. Duckett here that you are sorry you took such a pissy tone after he had to come all this way.”

It amused Hal to watch as Larry put the little man in his place, he didn’t like vermin like Lowe on principle and somehow you always got scratched when you dealt with his type.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Duckett,” Lowe said after sucking in and letting out a deep breath, “that I took such a pissy tone with you after you made a special trip way out here to the middle of nowhere.”

Hal paused a moment, making sure Lowe was sincere, no snickering or sneering behind the words. “I’ll go get my tools,” he said at last and walked back to the Olds.

“You better watch that tongue,” he heard Larry tell Lowe when he reached the car. “He’s a professional and you’re making me look bad. You left it up to me to find whatever talent this job might need. I’ve done all the heavy lifting so far.”

“Don’t know how much more sorry I can be, Larry.” Lowe sounded like a man who’d swallowed his pride on a dry throat.

Hal retrieved the cloth bag from under the front seat; on the way back, he decided the little bastard had been sufficiently put in his place, it might be more productive to take a different tact. “This is a damn big place out here,” he said as he walked up the steps. Larry had joined Lowe on the porch. “How many rooms it got?

“Sixteen,” Lowe sounded like he’d made up his mind to be agreeable.

“Old too, is it not?” Hal thought he was sounding downright chatty now.

“Yeah, George Washington probably slept here,” Lowe replied as Hal reached the top step. “I think it was built in 1775 or something close to that.”

“Let’s get started,” Larry said motioning toward the front entrance. “You said your boss wouldn’t be back until after dark, that right Burnett?”

“Yeah, not until after dark,” Lowe answered.

“Then we got plenty of time,” Hal said. You little weasel, he thought. “What line of business your boss man in? Got to make the bucks to hold on to a place like this, taxes alone would eat you up.”

Lowe brushed his mouth before he replied and for the first time Hal noticed the pinkie finger on his left hand was missing up to the second knuckle. “He’s what you’d call ‘old money,’ I guess. The farm’s been in the family a long, long time.”

“And some of that ‘old money’ is inside waiting for us,” Larry was making an effort to sound impatient. “So why are we standing around?”

Once through the front door, Hal thought he’d stepped into a museum, or more precisely, one of the homes of the Founding Fathers, so perfectly preserved that he half expected to see Jefferson or Adams descend the staircase and offer greetings. Both Larry and he got no further than the front room, where a grandfather’s clock, standing against the wall, snagged their attention.

“I know an antique dealer in Macon,” Hal observed, “pay at least a thousand for something like this.”

“No shit,” Larry responded.

“What you came for is back here.” Lowe pointed in the direction of a hall that led from the front room to the back of the house. “We need to make time.”

They paid him no mind, but other things had grabbed Hal and Larry’s attention as the two men left the front room and proceeded to stroll into a large parlor directly to their left. “Look at all this,” Larry said, admiring the furnishings, not the least of which consisted of a colonial writing desk and a small piano with a set of silver candle holders perched on top. An oak card table fashioned in an oval style sat in the middle of the room. Against the far wall was a locked China cabinet, filled with porcelain, and next to it was a large straight-backed chair that seemed to reach more than halfway to the high ceiling. On a table in the corner was a set of crystal wine glasses.

“Somebody got some money,” Larry observed.

“Somebody is going to make some money,” Hal replied with a laugh. A thought popped into his mind almost without thinking, and in another instant, the thought became a plan. If things went well, and there was no damn good reason why they shouldn’t, Hal Duckett was going to be flush with cash for quite a while. As he pondered this, his eyes wandered to the space above the fireplace and the windfall in his mind suddenly grew larger. He bumped his partner’s shoulder and pointed upward.

“If that’s authentic, it’s worth a small fortune to the right collector,” Hal was pointing to a long sword mounted over the fireplace mantle. It appeared to be at least four feet in length, with a gold-plated hilt and scabbard. There was an efficient wickedness about it that bespoke a time when men charged across open farm land and killed each other face to face.

“Looks like something Robert E. Lee could have used,” Larry commented.

“Jeb Stuart more likely, that’s a weapon for a man on horseback.” Hal felt beads of sweat appear on his forehead and for the first time noticed the absence of a familiar cool breeze; there was no air conditioning in the house. The air in the parlor hung heavy and stifling with a dry, stale funk clinging to the walls.

“If you say so, Ken Burns,” Larry laughed.

“Got a complete set of that series when I cleaned out a pawnshop about 10 years ago; watched every damn minute of it twice.” Hal leaned over so as not to be overheard. “This place really is out of another time, maybe you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

“I just might be,” Larry replied in kind. “There’s a lot of money just lying around in here.”

“What you came for are back here, guys,” Lowe repeated from the front room, sounding very impatient.

Larry gave Hal a knowing wink before they turned and followed Lowe. He led them out of the front room and down the hall, stopping in front of an iron door, with a recessed lock and latch, making it flush with the wall.

“Can you open it?” Lowe asked.

“That’s what I came here for,” Hal answered as he bent down to inspect the lock. “Looks like a dead bolt made by Schlage, which is no problem. Is there an alarm?”

“No.”

“Find that kind of funny,” Hal said as his eyes met Lowe’s. “You got a big house out here in the middle of nowhere, full of valuable antiques, expensive furniture, and no security system? I’m living proof you can’t depend on a lock or a safe, but that’s all the guy that owns this place seems to have. Like I say, find that kind of funny, Mr. Burnett Lowe.”

“I’m the security system,” Lowe said without blinking.

“And now he’s the rooster in the hen house,” Larry said, slapping Hal on the back. “I’ve known Burnett since we went to high school. We got permanently expelled on the same day.”

“Well, I don’t know jack shit about him,” Hal said. “I’ve been doing B&E jobs for almost twenty years and in all that time I’ve done less than a year behind bars. And that’s because I don’t take anybody’s word for anything and I know when something don’t look right. I got no problem walking away; there will always be another payday for somebody with my skills.” Hal leaned in so that his face was close to Lowe’s. “And there is something here that’s not right, a little voice in my head told me that the instant I got out of the car, and that little voice is still telling me the same thing right now. I’d like to know why a man rich enough to own a spread like this is going to trust it all to a little shit like you? Tell me that, Mr. Burnett Lowe, before I pick that lock.”

“Go ahead, Burnett. Convince the man,” Larry said. “Tell him what he needs to hear.”

“My employer is a fool,” Lowe answered, “A blind trusting fool who always keeps $12,000 on hand.” He looked Hal right in the eyes, not blinking once. “He does a lot of business in cash. The only other person who knows how much he keeps and where he keeps it is me. If there is a robbery, I am the only suspect, the only one whose neck is on the line. You two guys got no connection to this place; you leave here with cash in your pockets and the road in front of you. I’m the only one looking at a jail cell. That ought to convince you, Mr. Duckett”

Hal returned Lowe’s glare while he turned over in his head what the little runt was saying. Something is not right here, the little voice kept repeating; it was in the air, the close, stuffy, no AC air that made the place feel like a tomb. But there was also another voice in Hal’s head, one he never talked about out loud; the one that told him he was flat broke, a Goddamn low life failure; a Goddamn low life failure who was standing in the middle of a house containing a small fortune, only an arm’s reach away. Both voices shouted for attention for a very long second before one went silent and everything fell into place.

“What’d you say, Hal?” he heard Larry ask. “Are we in business here?”

Hal gave Lowe one more long look up and down, before flashing him his best evil grin.

“I see what’s going on now, you two are queers,” he said with a laugh.

“What the hell....” Lowe stammered, his face suddenly beet red.

“All those antiques were a sure giveaway. Found yourself a sugar daddy here,” Hal continued, thoroughly enjoying Lowe’s discomfort. “You watch his house full of pretty antiques, keep them all nice and neat and clean and in return he gives you a bed to sleep in, only it’s a double bed.”

“It’s not like that at all!” Lowe shot back, and for a moment, he thought the little man was going to take a swing at him.

“I bet he’s some big old queen just like the ones I saw in the yard when I did that stretch up in Baldwin. And they’d always hook up with some scrawny little runt like you. Goddamn, what a freak show that was. You didn’t tell me he was a fudge packer, Larry.” Hal was quite amused with himself now.

“C’mon Hal,” Larry said with a chuckle. “I never known Old’ Burnett to swing that way, then again since he took this job, we sure don’t see him around much, and when we do, he sure clams up, never mentions this guy he works for. Maybe he is hiding something.”

Lowe shook his head, as if trying to will his anger away. “Say what you want, think what you want,” he said. “Just please open that door like you came here to do.”

“Sure sweetheart,” Hal said, very pleased with himself, “but first you two get the hell out of here.”

“What?” Lowe clearly did not understand.

“That’s the way he rolls,” Larry informed Lowe. “Never does a job with witnesses around.”

“You can’t testify to what you don’t witness, which means you can’t get on the stand and point your finger at me.” Hal explained. “So run along and let me do what I came here for.”

“We can wait back in the kitchen,” Lowe said, and with Larry in tow, the two of them quickly walked the hall and disappeared into a far room.

“And no peeking,” Hal called after them. “You hear me, sweetheart?”

“What an asshole,” he heard Lowe say from the kitchen, the sound carrying easily. Hal was sure the little queer knew he was within earshot.

Larry’s voice carried as well. “Hal’s very good at what he does, he can afford to be an asshole,” he said. “Remember, you’re the one who came to me, Burnett, and told me about this place with the room full of cash and how we could make a good haul if only we could get past a certain locked door.”

“He’s still an asshole, that’s all I got to say.”

By then Hal had gone to work. Retrieving the right pick (which at first glance could be mistaken for a dentist’s implement) and a tension wrench from the cloth bag containing the tools of his trade, Hal gently went about the process of manipulating the lock so that it would open without the benefit of a key. Methodically working the pick to find the right amount of force to move each pin, Hal did what he did best. All in the touch, all in the touch, he thought each time he felt a pin lift and the cylinder move. Once the fourth pin was done, he turned the cylinder all the way and heard the deadbolt retract. Fuckin’ piece of cake.

And that was the thing, for it was altogether a little too much a fuckin’ piece of cake. Among Hal Duckett’s well-honed street smarts was the ability to look a gift horse in the mouth and count every tooth. Then he remembered exactly how flat broke he was and just how long it had been since he had made a visit to his favorite brothel down in Panama City. “Hey Lowe,” he called out, “this lock opened up easier than your mother’s twat, so get your queer ass back in here.”

The door opened on a small windowless room, no bigger, Hal thought, than a prison cell, empty except for a wooden desk against the back wall. Sitting atop the desk was a metal lock box.

“If I have to pick that thing too,” Hal remarked, “then I want a bigger cut.”

“No way,” Larry said.

Hal dug in. “Yes way, extra pay for extra work.”

Lowe pushed between the two of them and pulled open a desk drawer, from inside of which he produced a small key. “No problem, no extra cut,” he made a point of saying to Hal. “This is what you came here for,” he said as he inserted the key in the lock box and flipped the top open, revealing the multiple faces of Benjamin Franklin in neat packs bound by rubber bands.

“This should be easy enough,” Larry said as he scooped up the bills and laid them out on the desk top. “Just give me a minute to count it out and divide it up.”

“Fine,” Lowe said, but his eyes were still on the inside of the box where a yellowed front page of the Atlanta Constitution was spread out to cover the bottom, but Lowe pulled it up to reveal a thick black bound book underneath.

“What you got there?” Hal said as Lowe picked the volume up, taking his eyes off Larry as he counted out each bundle into three neat stacks.

“It’s just an old book,” Lowe sounded disinterested.

Maybe a little too disinterested to Hal’s ear. “Lemme see that,” he said as he reached over and yanked the book from Lowe’s hand before the little man could protest. “Anything kept under lock and key gotta be worth something to somebody. Is this one of those rare editions?”

“Give it back,” Lowe demanded. “It don’t mean anything to you.”

Hal didn’t buy any of it. “What’s the story, Burnett?”

“There’s no story,” Lowe answered him.

“No story, except that you want it really bad,” Hal said.

“Forget that, both of you,” Larry said, finished with his counting and dividing. “It’s all there, $12,000, which breaks down to four grand apiece, all nice and neat.”

Hal looked down at the three stacks of Benjamins, one of which was his, and had no illusions as to how far it would last him. “Yeah, that’s all nice and neat as far as it goes,” he said, “but we can do a lot better than that, can’t we Larry.”

Larry looked first from Lowe and then back to Hal. “Yes, we can,” he replied, giving Hal a look that let him know they were on the same page, “shame to come out here and settle for a mere four grand when two, maybe three times that much is lying around just for the taking.”

Lowe’s face was the perfect picture of panic at these words. “This isn’t what we agreed on. It was only supposed to be a quick in and out, pick the lock and take the cash. That’s all.”

“Well, you can take your share and go,” Larry said, pointing to one of the stacks on the desk top. “That was what you planned to do anyway, Burnett. It’s no skin off your balls if Hal and me stick around and line our pockets a little more.”

“Fine by me,” Lowe replied and began stuffing bills into his pockets. “I just want to put a lot of distance between me and this place as fast as I can.”

Hal thought the sight of the little man, frantically filling the pockets of his Wrangler jeans with hundred-dollar bills, quite comical. There were four quite noticeable bulges when he was finished. “Why don’t you head down to Miami. I’m sure with that kind of loot you could buy your very own faggot, and be the sugar daddy for a change.”

Lowe ignored what Hal said. Instead, he stretched his hand out. “The only thing else I want is that book you’re holding.”

“No way,” Hal replied. “You just said the money was fine by you, so that’s all you get.” He was now convinced more than ever that the black bound volume was worth something, why else would Lowe insist on it. “You walk away now and take your share, nothing more. If you don’t want to loot, you don’t get any extra loot.”

“C’mon, the book don’t mean nothing to you,” Lowe pleaded.

“Be quiet, both of you,” Larry said as he punched in a number on the cell phone he always carried on his belt. A minute later he was in conversation with someone named Eldon, whom he instructed to not say a word, but to listen and follow his instructions to get a truck with a lift gate, not to mention a bunch of old quilts to use as furniture pads. After giving Eldon directions out to the house and asking him to recite his instruction back to him to make sure he understood what to do, Larry flipped the phone shut and put it back on his belt.

“Talking to my cousin Eldon,” Larry explained. “He’s the day manager at the Shell station back in town, soon as the evening man gets there, he’ll be right out here with one of his Ryder rentals and we’ll load up. Take whatever we can get something for”

“And this cousin can be trusted?” Hal asked. “Because you just put your future and more importantly, mine, in his hands, since he will be able to testify that we were on the premises exactly when it was broken into and robbed. Then there’s the matter of this motherfucker’s cut; it’ll come out of your share. That is non-negotiable”

Larry shook his head. “Hear what you’re saying, but Eldon is good people, he knows the score. He’s helped me out in a pinch before. And don’t worry about settling up, he’ll be glad to take whatever crumbs I toss his way. Got child support problems.”

Hal seriously doubted cousin Eldon would prove to be “good people” when his ass got hauled into an interrogation room, but it was a risk he would have to live with for now, after all, it had been his idea to help themselves to the mansion’s furnishings. Still, bringing in a fourth person had raised the risk factor exponentially. “We’ll clean out that China cabinet first,” he said. “Some of it looked like it could be Spode.”

“Spode?” Larry looked quizzical.

“Spode China,” Hal answered. “It has birds on it and it can be worth an ass load, providing its old enough. Do my kind of work for very long and you get to have an eye for this stuff. That card table could be worth well in the five figures.”

“No shit.” Larry sounded impressed.

Hal laughed. “Yeah, I could get a job on that Antiques Roadshow.”

“On what?” Larry obviously was not a regular viewer of PBS.

“Listen to me!” Burnett Lowe interjected; Hal had almost forgotten he was still there. “We’re already running late, all of us were supposed to be gone by now; that was the plan.”

“Well plans change, Burnett,” Larry responded. “Sometimes we got to be flexible.”

“Nothing keeping you here,” Hal added. “You got your money, hit the road.” The little bastard was seriously starting to get on his nerves now.

Adding to Hal’s irritation, Lowe was developing a serious case of the flop sweats. “You don’t have the time to wait for your gas pumping cousin,” he said, “much less help yourself and load up a truck.”

“And why is that, Burnett.” Hal got right in Lowe’s face. “And let me warn you, nothing shits on trust like a changing story.”

Lowe swallowed before he answered. “My employer might be back before you get through, don’t think you’d want that would you.”

“You said he wouldn’t be back until way after dark,” Larry said. “That’s not for at least five hours.”

Lowe’s eyes had been darting back and forth like a pair of stray marbles; a sure sign that the speaker was lying, a fact Hal Duckett knew from experience. One way or another, I’m getting the truth out of this little weasel. “I think Larry just caught you contradicting yourself.” Hal took a step closer and backed Lowe against the desk. “So, what is it, Burnett; when is your big, gay lover coming home? An hour? Two? Three? Or never? Something has not added up since Larry and me pulled up out front. Who the hell lives in a place like this, in times like this, and don’t have so much as a door alarm? And where the hell is the AC? It’s almost like an oven in here. People don’t live like this in the 21st Century, now do they?”

“I think you’d be surprised,” Lowe shot back.

“What surprises me,” Hal continued, “is how dumb you take me to be. Any amateur could have gotten through that lock with a paper clip and a lot of time, something you seem to have plenty of way out here.”

Lowe suddenly stopped his twitching and returned Hal’s stare. “Believe you me, Mr. Duckett, my employer is very real and if you ever met him, you’d understand perfectly why things are the way they are, and I shit you not when I tell you he’ll be standing right here in this room long before tomorrow gets here. And you really, really do not want to be anywhere near this place when he gets here. But if you want to take your chances, then like I said fine by me, all I want is to be a few hundred miles from here by then with the one thing I’ve asked you for, the book you’re holding. I don’t think that’s much.”

He always keeps coming back to the book. He had been holding it under his arm, momentarily forgotten, but now Hal took it in his hands and for the second time, gave it a good look. Nothing about its appearance was exceptional. It was bound in black leather without a title or inscription of any kind on either the cover or the back. The binding was solid and the spine unbroken, even though something about it suggested another age, an earlier time when the only book most families possessed was a King James version of the Bible, with its special section reserved for recording births, marriages and eventual deaths.

The lack of any clues on the cover only deepened Hal’s curiosity and hardened his conviction that it was far more valuable than its appearance let on. “This is what it was really all about, wasn’t it Burnett?” Hal held the book up high enough where Lowe could not reach it. “This is what you really wanted out of all this, not the money.” He waved it in the air. “Get me to pick the lock and we split the cash, while you walk off with the real treasure. A real hidden agenda, I think. Well, you’re busted, so time to ’fess up and tell the truth.”

For a moment, Lowe’s control slipped, Hal saw absolute terror flare up in his eyes and he was sure the little prick was going to collapse onto the floor at his feet, dissolving into racking sobs on the hardwood. But Lowe managed to snatch his nerve back at the last moment before it slid beyond his grasp. “Don’t you have enough already?” he asked in a surprisingly calm voice. Then added, “And you’d better think twice before demanding the truth, because sometimes the truth bites.”

Hal was through with Burnett Lowe talking his way around every question he was asked; there was one place he was sure to get the skinny. “Truth bites, hunh,” he said, “well let me see if there’s any teeth in here;” he said and flipped the front cover open.

Lowe’s reaction was immediate. “DON’T DO THAT!” he screamed and lunged forward in an attempt to swipe the book from Hal’s hands. Hal was way ahead of him and stepped back so that Lowe’s hands snatched at empty air. In the next instant he took a step forward and slammed his left fist into the little prick’s gut. It was like putting the beat down on a feather pillow; Lowe doubled over and fell back against the desk behind him, gasping for air.

“Hey guys, cool it,” Hal heard Larry say. “We got a good thing going and we don’t want to fuck it up.”

Hal ignored his partner, after Lowe’s reaction there was no force on earth that could keep him from finding out what was between those two black leather covers. But what he found on the front page was not something on the order of John Wilkes Booth’s true confession about who was really behind the Lincoln assassination. To his disappointment, what he found was written in a foreign language he recognized as French. The first couple of pages were laid out in a neat, almost elegant hand, blocks of indecipherable text, piled one upon another. Then on the third page, a list of names, also in French, began and continued on page after page as Hal leafed ahead.

“What’s it say?’ Larry asked.

“It’s all been written by some French fuck, couldn’t read a word of it if I wanted to.”

“Don’t read any of it out loud,” Lowe managed to gasp out. “For God’s sake listen to me on this.”

Hal was about to slam the book shut and give up, he even considered tossing the damn thing back to Lowe in frustration when he thumbed over to the middle of the volume and to his relief, discovered the handwriting had turned to English. It followed the same form as before, a few paragraphs of text, then row after row of names, written three across, covering the surface of each page. Hal skimmed a few sentences, hoping to catch the gist of it.

He silently read down half a page before stopping and calling over to Larry, “Listen to this, it’ll blow your mind.”

“Noooo!” Lowe wailed. “I’m beggin’ you.”

Hal paid him no mind and proceeded to read aloud from the book. “A Maker must never tolerate a brazen and deliberate insult or lack of due respect, for that reason I decided to make an example of Mayland Bantree and his tribe of harlots. In the hour before sunrise, I went alone to the ruin of his ancestor’s once great plantation and found him feeding and fornicating with members of what he called his ‘Arab Harem.’ Too besotted to resist me, I drug the wretch from his four-poster bed and nailed him upside down to his barn wall with my bare hands. Thereupon I slit open his throat, so that the blood of the murdered Angel, my wasted gift to him, would drain out upon the red Georgia dirt. There I left him, crucified in the manner of St. Peter, for the sun to finish my work My final act was to seal up the ‘harem’ inside the Bantree house and set the place afire, the despicable whores beseeched me for mercy, but such low living mortal vermin were beneath such consideration. Their screams as the fire took them did no more to prick my conscience than the mewling of a cellar rat caught under my boot. It is hard, but it is a right and necessary thing done to restore order to my clan.”

“Whoa,” Larry said when Hal finished. “That sounds hard-core; those old Ku-Klux guys didn’t mess around.”

“I don’t think he was talking about the fellows in the white sheets,” Hal said. Clan is spelled with a ‘c’ and the people you’re talking about liked to have neck-tie parties; doing as the Romans did was really not their style.” A shiver ran through Hal and it took a minute for him to comprehend how freaked out reading the passage had made him feel. He had seen some hard shit in his line of work, but the calmness with which the writer had put to paper the atrocities he committed was something beyond his experience. The ink is faded to brown, but I bet it was bright red on the day this page was written. Bright scarlet ink. For a moment Hal Duckett was seized with the urge to let the book in his hands drop to the floor and flee this great brick house in the country, to walk all the way back to Atlanta, if necessary, to put one foot in front of the other and not look back.

“Anything more like that in there?” Larry’s question broke Hal’s train of thought and he was back to being the best B&E man in the greater metropolitan Atlanta area again.

“Nothing for a few pages but a list of names, could be a register of slaves.”

“It’s a list of the damned.” Burnett Lowe was staring straight ahead at something only he could see, “the joyful and happily damned.”

“I’m getting good and Goddamn sick of you talk—” Hal’s words died on his lips for he was suddenly aware of a low moan, coming seemingly out of thin air, and for an instant he had thought Lowe was the source of the growling, but quickly realized it had a glottal and thick tone that no human could make.

“What the motherfuck?” He heard Larry exclaim.

Hal was about to reply when the growl suddenly ratcheted up into a snarl of rage, and his mind was filled with the image of a hairy snout, its ragged, drooling lips drawn back to reveal a row of jagged fangs as sharp and nasty as the teeth of a bear trap. Then abruptly as it had started, the snarling fell silent. Hal instinctively looked down at the floor and understood for the first time that what they’d been hearing was coming from beneath them.

“You woke them up,” Lowe whispered. “I warned you not to read any of it.” As if to underscore what he was saying, a hissing noise now rose up from the floorboards. Hal had to fight the urge to jump, for he expected to see a rattlesnake suddenly sidewinder its way between his boots. Then, just like the snarl before it, the snake like noise ceased just as abruptly.

“Lowe.” It floated up from below in the silence that followed, hoarse and grating but leaving Hal in no doubt as to what he’d heard.

“You son of a bitch,” Hal thundered as he reached down and grabbed the little bastard with both hands, tossing the black book aside in the process. “You said this place would be empty and we took your word for it. Is that your old queen of a boss down there? Trying to scare us away with stupid fuckin’ animal noises like we’re children?” Spittle sprayed across Lowe’s face as the little bastard winced.

“Run, right now!” Lowe gasped out, “You might still have a chance.”

“That wouldn’t do me a whole hell of a lot of good, because I’m looking at my third strike and that means if I go away again, I’ll be wearing depends the next time I draw a free breath. So, I don’t have much to lose in this situation and that means you would be strongly advised to tell me the truth. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Burnett Lowe?” In the blink of an eye the whole situation had turned to shit and Hal could feel his fury reaching a boiling point, but underneath it all, when he got down to the bottom line, Hal Duckett was absolutely terrified of going back behind bars. Prison life had not agreed with him and the thought of spending a good chunk of the rest of his life there was something his mind recoiled from as if the very thought itself was raw sewage.

“You got a hell of a lot more to lose than you think you got,” was Lowe’s reply.

It made Hal want to smash Lowe in the mouth, but suddenly Larry was standing beside them, the 9mm Glock he always kept under his front seat in hand; Hal hadn’t noticed his partner leave to go out to the Oldsmobile and retrieve it. “Hal, take it easy,” Larry said. “Let’s just take this one step at a time and the first step is finding out who the hell is down in the basement.”

The wheels in his mind turned, and in a millisecond, Hal knew what the last step was going to be, a bullet in the back of the head for cousin Eldon and (going to hate to do it) most likely Larry as well. Three can keep a secret only if two are dead. Something to that order had been on Carlos Marcello’s desk down in New Orleans and he was the Mafia boss behind Kennedy’s assassination or so one legend had it. And what was about to happen in this house in this shit-for-nothing spot in South Georgia was going to have to remain a secret if he was to stay on the right side of those prison bars.

“Where’s the door to the basement?” In his mind Hal knew exactly how it was going down and though he had never committed murder before, he absolutely knew it would no longer be true before the long day was done.

“Back in the kitchen,” Lowe answered.

“Show us,” Hal shoved Lowe forward and the three of them made their way down the hall to the kitchen. It was wide and spacious, as befitting a great house, but Hal saw that it was also noticeably clean and neat, not even a dish or drinking glass left to dry in the sink.

The door to the basement might well have been mistaken for a closet entrance if Lowe had not pointed it out. It was wooden and painted in the same dull lime green as the rest of the kitchen.

Hal let go of Lowe and turned to his partner. “You ready to do this?” Things were about to get hard core and he needed to know if he could count on Larry.

“Got your back,” was his partner’s reply as he took a stance with the Glock pointed dead center at the doorway, an obvious precaution in case the source of those animal noises decided to put in an appearance.

Hal nodded and stepped forward, turned the door’s knob and flung it open. In front of them a set of wooden steps disappeared into an almost impossibly inky darkness below. Anybody down there had to be stone blind.

“You down there, it’s time to show yourself,” Hal barked into the pool of black below. “And get your ass up here.”

A moment of quiet followed as Hal listened intently, half expecting a repeat of the animal snarl or the reptile’s hiss, but what he heard was neither of those; instead, a peal of laughter floated up from the darkness. The voice was unmistakably that of a young woman, to Hal’s ear it sounded like the clinking of wind chimes in a summer breeze. Something in it brought to mind the softness of white sand on a Florida beach and of intimacy in a darkened bedroom looking out on the Gulf of Mexico.

It would be like heaven.

Memories of long forgotten pleasures suddenly flashed in his mind. Almost without thinking, Hal reached through the door and flipped a light switch, and at the bottom of the steps a naked bulb, dangling from the end of a frayed cord attached to a crossbeam in the ceiling, came to life, illuminating the stairway just enough to allow him to navigate it without falling.

She’s down there...waiting.

He was nearly to the bottom step before Hal realized his partner was right behind him; Larry (I WILL have to put a bullet in his head now) had heard the siren’s laughter as well and followed. From far away came the creak of rapid footsteps on wooden floorboards and then the slam of a door and Hal knew Burnett Lowe was making good on his chance to get away. And for a moment, Hal remembered that he was flat broke in a house filled with riches there for the taking, not to mention the third strike that could put him away until he was so old he could no longer control his bladder.

“Don’t run away, we can’t have a party without the both of you.” It was the same young woman’s voice they’d heard earlier coming from the darkness. This time it hinted of desires far greater than strolls on white sand and bodies entwined as the sun went down.

Hal Duckett forgot all about big paydays and third strikes as his boots touched down on the hard concrete that constituted the basement floor.

LOWE.

Burnett Lowe ran as though his life depended on it because it was true; after all, it was his name that had been called out from the darkness down below. The instant Larry Jones and Hal Duckett disappeared into the basement’s stairwell he realized it was now or never and bolted from the drab, lime green kitchen. There was one quick stop in the windowless room where he retrieved the black bound book (Lowe knew it as “the archive,’ something he had not bothered to divulge to Hal Duckett) and with the archive under his arm, Lowe ran for the front door, not bothering to stop and take one last look around at the place he had known as home for nearly five years.

Once outside, he sprinted around to the rear of the house, there sat a faded garage, built back in the era of wide cars and big tail fins. Behind the garage sat a more modern vehicle, a 1992 beige Ford Tempo, which Lowe bought at a used car lot a few years earlier for $3,000 and—if things went the way he hoped and prayed—would soon be upgraded to a new red Camaro. As he turned the key in the ignition, Lowe remembered the Cadillac sitting inside the garage with the peeling paint and cursed himself for not coming out there earlier in the day to rip the distributor head from the engine and take it with him; it certainly would have been the smart thing to have done. Would have slowed the son of a bitch down, but too late now, Lowe thought as he put the Tempo in gear and nudged the gas. He guided the car carefully onto the gravel lane, past the ancient barn and rusted sheds off to his left. Lowe made a point not to glance in their direction, but he could feel a pair of eyes watching him as he went by; a pair of ratty little slits, peeking out from under a mound of hay, safe from the daylight. “See you in hell, Huey,” Lowe said to himself and accelerated the Tempo, it went over the cattle gate with a thump.

It was not until he could see the great brick house getting smaller in the rear-view mirror, did Burnett Lowe allow even the smallest hint of a smile to form. Goddamn it was close. Larry and Hal had nearly fucked everything up with their plan to ransack the place, well those bastards were about to find out that greed wasn’t so good after all. Of course, Lowe had to admit now after he had safely gotten away, that part of the blame fell on him, for he had badly underestimated the stupidity of his partners in crime. Looking back now, it was plain to see he’d had his head up his ass when he thought the two of them would be happy with merely splitting up the cash. Lowe nodded his head in regret; he should have remembered what a rat bastard Larry Jones was before approaching him about scoring a “big payday,” after all, the two of them had gone to high school together. And Hal Duckett, Mr. B&E, had nearly walked off with the Archive of the Clans, which would have ruined everything.

Lowe looked over at the thick black volume on the seat beside him. Hal would have shit if he’d known I had a buyer lined up willing to pay a hundred thousand for that thing. Mr. B&E had been right when he said an amateur could have picked that lock, what he didn’t know was that his real purpose and Larry’s as well, was to be a red herring; Lowe intended to leave a crumpled note with Larry Jones’ home address lying on the floor beside the desk where the lock box sat. It would have distracted Lowe’s now former employer and sent him off in the wrong direction long enough for Lowe to transact his business and get out of the country.

It had been a tight shave, and now the clan would be on his trail much, much sooner than anticipated; still, Larry and Hal had no knowledge of his plans, they couldn’t tell what they didn’t know, no matter what was done to them. I almost feel sorry for those two sons of bitches, Lowe thought as the big brick mansion disappeared in the distance and dust behind him.

Almost.

At length, he reached the road’s entrance and gunned the Tempo onto the asphalt. “Free at last, free at last,” Burnett Lowe shouted to no one as the needle edged up to 60. The sun was starting to sink lower in the warm afternoon sky and he had a lot of ground to cover and not much time in which to do it.

Then he remembered the $8,000 in cash Larry and Hal had carelessly left behind on the top of the desk. It had been right there for the taking, but he’d been so intent on escaping with the Archive that in his hurry that he hadn’t noticed it there for the taking.

There’s no going back now, no damn way. But he needed money, at least until he got where he was going. For a moment, Lowe felt nothing but panic over a problem totally his own creation. But just as quick as the panic came on, a solution popped into his head.

HAL.

The single bulb dangling from the ceiling at the bottom of the basement stairs cut out a feeble circle of light from the darkness. Hal Duckett did not care, for inside the darkness was Her Voice, and inside Her Voice was the promise of ecstasy unimagined. He did not care that Larry was right behind him; no doubt the horn dog was down there looking for the same thing. He did not care that his share of the $12,000 was lying out in the open or that Burnett Lowe had taken off, probably with that black book (Hal was certain it was worth some serious coin) he was so damned and determined to get his hands on.

No, Hal Duckett cared about none of those things, the only thing that mattered was to find the source of Her Voice and make all the fantasies in his mind come true. “Where are you?” he called out, sounding not unlike a child who’d grown frustrated with a game of hide and seek.

Her Voice flowed out of the blackness with an answer. “I’m right here if you can find me.” Then she added a giggle and Hal thought he would lose his mind.

“Oh, I’ll find you and then you better be worried,” he said and waded into the darkness, determined not to let another second separate them.

As he did so, Larry’s hand clamped down on his shoulder. “Not so damn fast,” he said. “Don’t forget we’re partners.”

“Fuck you,” Hal heard himself snarl with a surprising savagery and jerked his shoulder free. He lunged forward, letting the darkness swallow him whole, intent only on finding Her Voice, his boots making loud noises on the concrete floor.

On his fifth step, or maybe the sixth, Hal Duckett brought his boot down with the full expectation of connecting with the cement, but the only thing his Timberland connected with was the air. Far too late, Hal tried to correct and step back, but instead he simply plunged forward into nothingness with arms flailing and his stomach rolling up. Down he went into the pitch black, all thoughts of mating with Her Voice forgotten, replacing it was the terrible and absolute certainty that his time had come, that he would simply continue to plummet forever in total darkness. Just as this terrifying vision flashed across Hal’s brain, a hard and dirty surface rushed up and met him. Hal’s face slapped against what felt like solid rock.

There he lay, dazed like a bird who had mistaken a picture window for open air and slammed hard against the glass. Hal did not know if his eyes were open or closed, all before him was night, while the musty odor of an ancient root cellar assailed his nose, that and something else, something like the lingering aroma of broiled steak, only thicker. Blindly, he tried to move, fearful of feeling the sharp pain of a broken bone. Hal had no idea of how far down he’d fallen, only that it was not far enough to kill him outright. After managing to sit up without too much difficulty, he remembered he was not the only one to have ventured into the basement. “Larry?” Hal called out and tasted blood in his mouth where he’d bit his lip on impact. “Where the hell are you?”

His answer was a sudden movement in the darkness above. How high, Hal could not be sure, only that it was over his head. And he did not see anything move from above so much as hear it, or sense it. This was followed by a high-pitched shriek. That it belonged to his partner, there was no doubt. What came next was the sound of something being snapped and ripped, not unlike a drumstick being broken off from a fresh cooked roaster. At the same time, something hot and liquid—something that could only be blood—sprayed Hal’s face. He shouted out Larry’s name, but all he got in response was a loud slurping noise as though someone was going to town on a 7/11 Big Gulp.

Fear overran his pain as Hal struggled to his feet, he had to get the hell out of there, right now! His arms shot out and flailed about while his feet inched forward on what felt like a stone covered floor. “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!” he heard his mouth repeat like a mantra between gasps of dank air. After advancing an unknown distance, his hand brushed against what could only be a rock wall, his fingers gingerly walked upward against smooth cool stones until they climbed over a sharp edge at what he estimated to be shoulder height. It was a pit he’d fallen into after all and it would take some effort, but it would not be impossible to climb out.

A wave of air flitted across Hal’s face, making the hot liquid staining his features momentarily cool. It also made him realize for the first time that his eyes were open. Hal could see the source of the breeze, a small grate, no larger than a brick, blinked at him from a far wall. Through the holes, Hal could spy the bright Georgia sunshine falling upon the outside world. He caught the flicker of a shadow as a leaf heavy limb bobbed limply in the afternoon air. But the daylight barely made a dint in the darkness of the basement.

The sight of sunshine filled Hal with an overwhelming and frantic desire to escape, to crawl right through that narrow vent if that was what it would take. Some instinct unable to verbalize itself told him that if he could get to the daylight, he would be safe. At the same time, he noticed the silence, the slurping noise had ceased. Furiously, he grasped the edge of the pit and attempted to hoist himself upward. As he did so, something moved between him and the grate and Hal felt his right ear being tugged and then pinched hard, causing him to cry out and fall backward into the pit. A hand flew up to the wounded ear, but all it closed on was a ragged and sticky nub of skin while a torrent of hot liquid flowed down his neck, soaking Hal’s shirt. A coppery smell enveloped him and with it came the knowledge that he was covered in blood, his own as well as his partner’s.

Hal Duckett began to scream uncontrollably as he felt his sanity pull loose and threaten to fall away.

A hand snaked out of the darkness and clamped upon his jaw. “Enough of that,” a male voice snarled, as different from the one that enticed him into the basement as night was from day. “I will not listen to the prattle of frightened swine under my own roof.” It did no good, Hal continued to bray right through his closed mouth. In response, two ironlike fingers pried his teeth apart just enough for them to snake their way inside and grab his tongue in a pincer’s grip. Hal had no choice but to fall silent.

“That is much better,” his tormentor said as a rank, hot breath exhaled into Hal’s face. “In a minute I will take my hand from your mouth,” he continued. “You will then tell me who you are and why you have invaded my sanctuary, rousing me and my companions from our much-needed slumber. Be warned, I do not tolerate liars any better than I tolerate trespassers. And have no illusions, you are going to die; the only thing in doubt is the manner in which I send you to hell. If I am satisfied you have told me the complete and utter truth, I will end your existence with dispatch; a mere lightning quick slit of your jugular vein and you will bleed out in seconds without much distress. But if I decide even so much as one word from your lips is less than the whole truth, then I shall rip your lying tongue from your mouth and proceed on to other more delicate areas of your person. Do you understand me?”

Hal Duckett managed to nod his head and grunt something that sounded like an affirmative answer. At that moment, he would have gladly agreed to spend every hour of every day he had left on earth taking it up the ass in the biggest penitentiary the state of Georgia could build if in return, he could be rescued from that terrible place.

“Good enough,” the tormentor replied and removed his hand from Hal’s jaw and mouth.

“Oh Jesus, save me,” Hal wined between gasps for breath.

The tormentor laughed a cold cackle without the merest teardrop of mercy in it and then said, “No savior here, he turned his back when you came through my door.”

ELDON JONES

If Eldon Jones hadn’t been looking for the turn off, he would have driven right past it. A dirt road that led away from the highway through skillet flat grazing land and then disappeared into the distance was a common enough sight in South Georgia, and Eldon had no trouble finding it, although it was a sharp turn from behind the wheel of a rental truck. Larry had been specific about needing a truck equipped with a lift gate, but other than telling him where to find a private road off state Rt. 216 about15 miles south of Woodville and what vehicle to come in, his cousin had said nothing more. Eldon knew how Larry made his money and caution prevented him from talking too freely on a cell phone.

Money was the reason why Eldon had jumped when his cousin had called with only two hours left on his shift as day manager of the Woodville Shell. Blood was thicker than water, so when Eldon found himself in a financial tight spot a few months before, Cousin Larry had been there for him. In return for his generosity, all he asked for was free use of the small fleet of Ryder rentals that was a sideline at the Shell station whenever he needed it, day or night. Making sure the paperwork was right and covering up any absent vehicle had been Eldon’s job, at least until this day, when for the first time, Larry had involved him personally in his business.

As the highway disappeared into the rear-view mirror, the road narrowed. The grassy, dandelion filled center spread out, leaving two narrow ruts of dirt and gravel for the tires to find, forcing Eldon to slow the truck down to barely 15 miles per hour. Across one field and then another the road meandered, with no destination in sight. The sun was getting low in the west and the shadows were spreading, all of which reminded Eldon that he was late, a situation he could blame on Hollis Spiwak’s three-month-old son. Hollis was the night manager and his new born had come down with a sudden case of the colic overnight, so Hollis and his perpetually frantic wife had spent the better part of the day sitting in a pediatrician’s office waiting to get worked in

Hollis had been all apologies when he showed up an hour late and while Eldon had been pissed, there was nothing he could do about it. He considered calling Larry and telling him he’d be tardy, but thought the better of it, his cousin was one paranoid dude when it came to talking business on cell phones. He told himself Larry couldn’t have been in too big a hurry if he could afford to wait until the day shift ended before he needed him and the truck. Hollis believed the bullshit story Eldon told about having to deliver a truck rental on his own time, but as soon as Eldon was through the door, he was stopped in front of the station by a red eyed young woman saying she had run out of gas down the street and was going to be late for her job on the evening shift at Reed plastics. It was payday and she was flat broke without a penny or a credit card and could she please borrow enough gas to make the five miles to work. She swore on her life that she would pay him back. The knees of her jeans were threadbare and a big toe poked through one of her sneakers. Ordinarily Eldon was a soft touch for sob stories, but not on a day when he was late on a job repaying his debt to his cousin. He told her that if she had no money, then she was loitering and to get the hell off the premises and kept on walking. Looking around just before he pulled out onto Russell Avenue, Eldon noticed her walking away down the street, shoulders slumped in defeat.

He didn’t see the house at first, just the huge oaks in the yard as the truck approached from a half mile away, Eldon thought it was nothing more than a fat clump of trees surrounded by open land until the setting sun glinted off the tin roof. He pulled the rental into the yard and parked it beside Larry’s Oldsmobile. Seeing no one around, Eldon blew the horn, but this brought no response except the indifferent chirping of some robins perched high up in the trees. Getting out, he walked toward the house, expecting his cousin to appear at the front door. When Larry was a no show, Eldon paused at the bottom of the front steps, uncertain whether to go inside or go back and wait in the truck. It was already later than when Larry wanted him to get there and standing around was only adding to it. If Larry is in such a damn hurry, where the hell is he?

Looking at the silent house, he debated going inside. Save for the screen, the front door was open and inviting, not so the windows, thick curtains were pulled tight on both floors as if the wind was blowing on a winter’s day. He called out Larry’s name, but only got silence back in return. Glancing back at the truck, he considered leaving. So far, he had not taken part in any criminal act or spoken to anyone committing a crime, save for possibly being accused of trespassing. But all that would change if he climbed the front steps and crossed the threshold. The easy thing would be to wash his hands of it all and leave.

The problem with that was the money. It was always the money and Eldon knew it. If Larry’s car was here, that meant he was on the place somewhere and Eldon would just have to find him.

Slowly he climbed the steps and crossed the porch.

“Hey, Larry!” he called out through the screen door, but got no response. The shadows were settling in and he could see little of the interior in the fading light. Pulling the screen open, he stepped through and found himself in a front room surrounded by antiques. The Grandfather’s clock sitting against the far wall made not a sound. He called out again and heard his voice echo down the hallway and against the walls, but the only answer he received was silence. Wishing he had brought a flashlight with him, Eldon decided to make a quick check of each room, starting with the doorway to the left. Gingerly stepping inside, he could make out tables, chairs, a couch and bookshelves, illuminated by the waning sunlight. Taking another step, Eldon banged his knee against an end table, “Shit!” he exclaimed.

“Think we need some light here,” a voice spoke as a lamp came on. Eldon whirled around to find a man sitting in a high backed chair in the corner. It struck him that this man, dressed in what looked like a dark ensemble and wearing high top riding boots, had been sitting there all along, but not made a sound or movement that would have given his presence away. “It would be a shame if you broke your neck before we had a chance to get acquainted,” he said.

“I’m just here looking for someone, the fella who owns the Olds sitting out there,” Eldon said. “I don’t mean any harm.”

“You mean you are not another thief come here to rob me.” The man’s face had a bleached whiteness to it that surely would make him stand out in a crowd in the summertime where a tan was unavoidable in this part of the country. His eyes were hard and glistened as if made of glass, their gaze made Eldon want to turn away.

“No sir, you got it wrong,” Eldon was mentally flailing about, trying desperately to find the right words that would get him off the hook now that he was busted. “I’ve obviously made a mistake and should leave.” He was going to make a run for it and pray this man did not have a gun or if so, was not a very good shot. But before he could make a move, two figures appeared out of the shadows behind him to block any move. Like the man seated in the chair, they seemed to move without making a sound. They also possessed the same bleached white skin. In a flash one of them fished Eldon’s wallet from his pants pocket and took it over to the man; his pickpocket was a young woman.

“Your name is Eldon Jones and you live at 28 Water Street in Woodville, Georgia,” said the man as he read off Eldon’s license. “Are you related to a Larry Jones?”

He felt his heart sink; there was no easy way out of this now. If he had talked to Larry, then this man knew he was an accomplice to whatever illegal thing Larry was planning. The police had probably been called and the flashing lights would be racing up the dirt road any minute. “I’m his cousin,” Eldon answered lamely. “He’s why I came out here.”

“Came out here to rob us,” this was spoken by the other bleached white, the pickpocket’s companion who remained at Eldon’s side.

“I wonder if you taste like your cousin Larry,” the man said and picked up a crystal glass from the table beside his chair and stirred it with a fore finger. At first glance, Eldon thought the glass was filled with red wine, but when the man took his finger out and licked it, Eldon caught the distinct smell of bourbon whiskey that competed with a thick odor he could not place. “Or maybe you taste more like Cousin Larry’s fleshy friend.” This brought a laugh from all three of the bleached whites.

In a flash, Eldon knew that the arrival of the police was the least of his worries.

“Look,” Eldon stammered. “Breaking into this place was not my idea, because this was all Larry’s operation. I didn’t know one damn thing until this afternoon when he called me on the phone and told me to drive one of my Ryder rental trucks out to this location and meet him here. I don’t ask him any questions, because I’m in no position. I owe my cousin Larry five thousand dollars, which he loaned me to cover a bitch load of delinquent child support payments because I was out of work for a year. It’s not a crime not to want your wages garnished. I am not a thief sir, and I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Swear to God, if you let me go now, you’ll never see me again.”

“It’s not that simple,” the man said and licked his finger. “Many fools have come to my door with larceny in their hearts; you and your cousin are far from the first. Many years back I spent some time in one of the finer neighborhoods in Savannah, where one evening, a troubled young man crept through a back window to steal some rare coins I’d picked up in my travels. He fancied himself to be fast on his feet, but he was not faster than I, although it was close, he was halfway through the window when I caught him by his belt. One night a couple of years later, a woman and her son decided to acquire the Cadillac automobile I use to travel from one of my properties to the other. They also thought themselves to be clever and full of stealth, but they had picked up the modern malady of drug addiction. They would have stolen my beautiful automobile and wasted the money it would have brought feeding their foul habits. I smelled them coming a mile away.

“All of these people sought to wrong me, but I forgave them. In truth I did much more, for in my forgiveness, I opened my heart and my home and made these poor lost souls part of my family. They are still with me now, far happier than they ever were in their past existence. Perhaps you shall meet them, Mr. Eldon Jones.”

Eldon felt relief at these words, but then the man rose from his chair and strode across the room, stopping only when he was eye to eye with Eldon. “But I must tell you my heart has no forgiveness this night, because this time a thief has succeeded and taken something most dear to me.” Eldon did not understand, if Larry and whoever was with him did not make off with anything, then who did?

“Pride has been wounded,” the man continued, only inches from Eldon’s face. “Honor has been spat upon, because worst of all, this thief was someone I took in and trusted, who turned out to be a cur who bit my hand. That was why I had no mercy for your cousin and his partner, but you, Eldon Jones, may earn my forgiveness, because I have need of someone like you; someone who can do things at certain times of the day when I am indisposed. The job is yours.”

“I already got a job,” Eldon blurted out before thinking.

“In that case,” the man said as he held up Eldon’s wallet, “let me persuade you to join my employ.” The man pulled out a picture of a little girl, who sat smiling in front of her birthday cake.

“Who is this?” the man said. “I can see a family resemblance.”

“It’s my daughter,” Eldon replied, his throat suddenly went dry. “Sarah is her name, and that was taken on her fourth birthday, two months ago.”

“Very good,” said the man. “Then hear me now, Eldon Jones. From this night forward until I say different, your life belongs to me. You will do what I say, when I say and without question. And do you know what will happen if you do not agree to this?”

Eldon could barely rasp out a ‘no.’

“I will find your daughter wherever she is and I will open her throat and drink every sweet drop of precious blood in her young body. Then when I am finished, I will cut the head from her lifeless corpse to keep as a memento. I will make you watch me do this, Eldon Jones, and when I am done, I will leave you with her defiled carcass. My name is Lafayette Caden, and this I swear.” As he spoke these words, the man who called himself Caden, smiled, giving Eldon a good look at his teeth. For the first time he saw the incisors, long and sharp and he understood everything.

Oh Larry, what did you get me into? Eldon thought these words as sudden warmth spread out from his crotch as his bladder emptied.

“What will it be, Mr. Jones?” Caden said. “I do not have all night.”

In a daze, Eldon heard himself say yes and knew he had just thrown his soul away, silently he prayed to whomever was listening to look after Sarah. He had tried so hard to do what was best for her.

“Good enough,” he heard Caden say. “You will be very happy in our little family.” He then turned to the other two, who had been silent through it all. “Go find Huey and tell him to get in here right now. I’m going to need the whole clan to assemble, every last damn one of them, including certain ones who now think themselves too good to come when their Maker calls. Then I want you to find Lowe’s trail, find my Archive and give no slack to anyone who gets in your way. He has a head start, so travel in the day, stay to the shadows, but don’t sleep until you have his scent thick in your nostrils. There will be those who will pay a pretty penny for my book and you must get there before he can sell it. I will follow, but no harm is to come to him unless it is by my hand.” Caden waved them off and the two were gone without a sound.

“I have much to tell you,” Caden said as he turned back to Eldon. “And you have little time to learn. We will be on the road soon.”

Eldon Jones had never really believed in karma, but he did understand the notion of what goes around, comes around and it occurred to him that maybe he wouldn’t be in the situation he now found himself if he hadn’t been so quick to blow off the red eyed woman in the worn out clothes who asked him for help as he hurried out of the Woodville Shell to do his cousin’s bidding like a faithful dog.