Bad Things Read online

  His thoughts swing to New York. To his friend Louis Cody back in New York.

  “Okay.” Dibs pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ll go talk to her.”

  “Try not to screw her, okay, Chief? You hear—”

  Dibs switches off the radio, toss-drops the handset to the floor. Rubs his eyes so hard they almost pop out from his skull.

  Chapter Five

  “When was the last time you saw them?”

  Dibs stands outside the front door of the dentist’s office where Laura Christiansen is employed. She works a cigarette as if her life depends on finishing it to the filter.

  “Yesterday afternoon.” Her eyes are full, almost floating.

  Dibs can see the concern in her lost gaze. The tension in her shoulders. Feels sorry for whoever is in her chair today. All that tension and anxiety can't be good for a tender set of gums.

  “What makes you think they’re missing?” Dibs asks.

  “They missed their cleanings this morning.”

  Dibs raises his eyebrows. Shrugs his shoulders.

  "They're idiots, but they love their free shit. I was going to sneak them in early this morning before anyone else showed up. We've done it a few times. They never miss it."

  Dibs nods her along. Wants to keep her talking.

  “They’re such dumbasses.” She laughs, then takes a nervous drag. “They were going to stay out all night at that trailer doing their stupid shit.” Her eyes lock in hard, as if she let some words slip out that she shouldn’t. “I mean they were playing cards. They play cards.”

  Dibs nods. He knows about the trailer. He's heard. He can't get onto that damn land without a court order—private property—and the judge didn't appreciate it when Dibs got hammered one night in town and tried to go home with the judge and his wife to form a human pretzel. The wife had taken a shine to Dibs, and Dibs just thought that was how small-town life worked. He'd heard there wasn't much to do in these tiny places expect drink and screw, and he'd been drinking so…

  He was incorrect.

  “I’ve heard about the trailer,” Dibs says, giving her a look of warmth and compassion. “Let’s not worry about that. We need to find your brothers. Get them back safe.”

  Two birds, he thinks. If he can get Laura Christiansen to let him on the land—it’s a third hers; their parents left it to them years ago—then he can shut down the meth lab that’s eluded the elite squad of cops here in Stagstone for years. He’ll be a hero. Champion of the people. Righter of wrongs. He saved our children. All that might earn him a pat on the back in NYC and then it'd be screw you, get back out there and do it again. But here in Stagstone, Wyoming? That crap will buy him some substantial slack time around these parts. Stack up some goodwill that might last a lifetime. Stockpile some favors forever. Oh yeah, not to mention, find this poor woman's dumbass brothers.

  Laura goes back to the smoke. She’s shaking now.

  “So, you think they were last on your land, out past that old mine.”

  She nods.

  “Okay.” He makes with his eyes. They’ve served him well over the years. Gotten him in deep shit too, but this feels like the right way to go. Charm. Dibs charm. “Let’s go out there.”

  “I can’t.” She takes a long drag. “They’d kill me.”

  “Laura, whatever they’re into, that’s on them, not you.”

  She looks him in the eye.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She exhales. “I know.”

  “Maybe there’s something there that can help tell me what happened.” He can see he has her complete focus. He presses. “Those kids might have gotten into something. Something deep and dark that spun out of control. Maybe they’re in over their heads. I can’t do a damn thing if I don’t have information, and if that land holds any form of information…just sayin’.” He lets his words hang in the air for her to ponder. Lets the silence expand along with her thoughts. He knows he's getting to her.

  “I can’t,” she says, her voice shaking. “I want to. I know you’re right.”

  Dibs clicks his pen. “Okay.” He taps the brakes on his pressure. “Can you at least give me a description? Maybe something about what they were wearing? Anything that might help me get them back home.”

  Laura looks him in the eyes. She’s seconds from breaking. Dibs knows the word home does wonders.

  “Tommy.” She sniffs hard, fighting back the tears. “He wears this stupid Denver Broncos hat all the damn time.”

  Dibs’s eyes go wide. He thinks of the dog in the street this morning. The Broncos cap hanging from its jaws. The surgical mask wrapped around it. His cop brain pops then fires over to the cows. The bodies. Blood. The burns cut into the ground. The drag marks.

  He grabs her shoulders hard. Maybe too hard.

  “Laura, please, dammit. You need to take me to where those dipshits cook that meth.”

  Chapter Six

  Dibs parks his Blazer next to the Christiansen twins’ trailer.

  What’s left of it, at least.

  He’d decided that Laura didn't need to see whatever he might find out here. The last thing Dibs wanted was to go out there and find her brothers spread out, gutted like those poor cows. Laura had thought about it—Dibs hadn’t used the word gutted—and agreed that she would be better off letting him go check out the land. She hadn’t fought the idea at all, really. Gave him directions to the place, even though he knew damn well where it was, and handed him the key to open the locks on the gate.

  The land isn’t anything like what he saw at Rose’s farm. This is nothing to be proud of. Nothing to care for. Counted no less than fifteen beer cans that he ran over on the way down the hill and over the dirt road that led to the trailer. Trash decorates the landscape. There's a random couch sitting out in the middle of the field. A surfboard stuck in a tree. An inflatable sex doll fastened to another tree with a dog leash, and what looks like the remains of a rusted, wood-paneled station wagon from the mid-eighties. Resembles a crazy person’s garage sale.

  Stepping out from the Blazer, Dibs readies his gun. He didn't think about doing it, he just did it on a feeling. The hairs on the back of his neck stand straight. A tingle in his shoulders. Back in New York, he called it his cop brain kicking in. He hasn't officially made any connection between the field of murdered cows, a trashed Broncos cap, and whatever waits for him here, but without a doubt something is up in this sleepy little town. Something strange is going on in Stagstone.

  Gun-needed strange.

  “Dammit,” he mutters to himself. This isn't why he came here. Matter of fact, this is precisely why he left New York. To avoid stepping slowly into the unknown with a gun gripped tight in his hand. Yet, here he is, a few feet from a meth kitchen trailer that looks like it was ripped apart by a T-Rex fresh off its meds.

  The trailer has been cut in two. Torn in two is more like it. The right side has been tossed about twenty feet one way, with the left side looking like a pack of bubble gum that has been chewed up and spit out in the grass. Dibs feels like an idiot as he points his gun at everything. He knows there’s nothing here. The wind whistles, blowing the trees back and forth in a gentle wave. The chilly air fills his lungs as he breathes in deep.

  The peace and quiet is deafening.

  There's blood sprayed across the crumpled metal of the left side. The shower starts near what was once a door, and then trails off into the grass, leading Dibs’s eye to a finger.

  “Jesus.”

  Dibs scans the area. No signs of life. No dead bodies either. No skins of animals or the lumpy, meaty remains of the dipshit Christiansen brothers. When he first talked to Laura, he immediately thought that her brothers got deep into something not good and ran into some rival meth boys who didn’t appreciate the competition. That may still be the case, but it’s becoming less and less likely as he surveys the land.

  He finds a bloody patch. Finds another finger. A toe. The big one. Next to the toe, he sees a perfect cut, a slic
e burned into the ground.

  “Shit.”

  “You okay, Chief?”

  Dibs spins around, almost tripping on his own feet. He whips his gun into the face of Larson, landing it on the tip of his nose.

  “Dammit, you dick,” Dibs spits out. “I could have blown your stupid face off.”

  Larson stands with a dumber than hell grin on this face. Dibs’s gun still hovers less than an inch from his nose. Larson looks around the barrel to Dibs, then glances down to the ground.

  “That a toe, Chief?”

  “Yes.” Dibs holsters his weapon. “You got the truck? You got the kit?”

  “Yup and yup.” Larson looks around. “That a finger over there?”

  “Get that truck down here.”

  “Why?”

  “We need to get these digits bagged up. Something weirder than shit is up. You know these brothers very well?”

  “Little bit. They were a grade or two older than me.”

  “Yeah? They in deep with the Montana drug crowd?”

  “Think they were the drug crowd. Like all of the drug crowd. Stagstone isn't much of drug town. More like a beer, whiskey, and some pot kinda town, ya know?"

  “Yeah.” Dibs nods. “Get the truck down here.”

  Larson keeps looking around.

  “Now, please.”

  Larson takes off running up the hill.

  Dibs looks toward the tree line and something catches his eye. As he moves closer, he fingers the gun in his holster. The wind blows the leaves on the trees, making it hard to figure out the difference in the movement inside the woods. Just in front of the trees are more blood and drag marks. Smaller than what he saw at Rose’s land with the cows. Christiansen brothers aren’t cows. Humans are smaller.

  Behind him, Dibs hears the sound of tires spinning into the ground. He closes his eyes tighter with each spin. He knows what’s happening before he even looks.

  “Chief. Chief.” Larson pauses. “Chief Dibs. Truck’s stuck as hell.”

  Chapter Seven

  Dibs pulls up next to the guard at the gate.

  He rarely comes out to the USAF listening post. Never has much reason to. It’s pretty much a self-contained thing that doesn’t need his attention. Not sure what the technical name of the place is. Heard some folks call it that crazy satellite thing. Others call it a military base, and still others lovingly refer to it as that weird military shithouse outside town. What Dibs does know is that the place’s presence is what really helps keep a lid on Stagstone. Makes his job very easy. Not a lot of crime happens in a tiny town with a military presence.

  That was the whole idea behind Dibs coming here. Smooth, nice and easy.

  The Air Force servicemen and women who work here are good citizens and don’t even vaguely cause any kind of trouble. That helps in a town like this. The occasional presence of military vehicles rolling through town, along with folks dressed like this guard strapped with guns, also holds most of the town’s teenagers back from doing anything too wild.

  It's not heavily guarded, and aside from its lackluster color and massive satellite dishes on the roof and ground, you could probably go years without noticing it. They've built it so it's not on a main road, tucked away out of sight somewhat. At least as much as satellites can be tucked away.

  The guard walks up to Dibs’s window with his military-issue assault rifle hanging by his side. Dark shades rest below his helmet and he offers no smile. Dibs thinks of screwing with him, comes up with a few zingers, but decides he needs to keep this clean.

  “Daniels around?” Dibs asks.

  “You on the list?”

  “I am not.”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “He is not.”

  The guard stares at him. Dibs smiles a toothy smile with a hard wink.

  He’s seen the guard around town. The kid likes to push the boundaries of the town’s speed limits from time to time. Had a few too many the other night at the bar. He’s an outlier, albeit not much of one, from the aforementioned model military citizens of Stagstone. Nevertheless, Dibs wants the guard’s brain to spin a little.

  “You pay that ticket yet? That fifty in a twenty?” Dibs acts like he’s picking up his radio. “I can’t keep track. So many.”

  The guard holds his locked stance for a full five count, then sighs big before slumping back to his guard post. Dibs grins. Sure, the guard wasn't being a full-on douchebag, but Dibs feels he gets at least a point or two for effort.

  The gate goes up.

  Dibs sits at a table in a drab break room of sorts.

  Daniels sits down across from him and slides what looks like a crap cup of coffee in front of Dibs. Dibs has no idea what the man's rank is, but he likes him. Daniels is a big, grain-fed, all-American boy out of the Midwest. Blonde, blue-eyed wall of meat and muscle. What drew Dibs in was a large tattoo on Daniels’s forearm: a colorful portrait of two massive Saint Bernards humping.

  Dibs found it fascinating.

  They meet up every couple of weeks to shoot the proverbial shit. Dibs tells Daniels about what's going on around the town, Daniels tells Dibs what's going on at the base. It's a backdoor communication channel between the two groups and helps keep both of them in tune with what's up. Prevents one from stepping on the other's toes. Nothing official, but it works.

  Dibs did something similar in New York. Only there it was with the head of a criminal organization. They'd meet up for some bourbon at an out-of-the-way place and talk about how to keep the peace. Keep the streets free of unnecessary trouble. Some called it making deals with the devil, but Dibs knew this was how the real world worked. Talking helped save lives. Better to fire off insults and barbs than bullets.

  It worked for years. They'd give Dibs a bust, he'd tell them where not to be or where to leave and when. The way Dibs saw it, these guys were going to do what they were going to do regardless of what he did. He might as well keep innocent people out of it. Keep the innocents away from the dark. Again, this setup worked well for years.

  Until Louis Cody.

  An uneasiness washes over Dibs. He works hard to fight thoughts of his last few days in New York, but those troublesome memories do spike up from time to time. Unwanted thoughts have a way of doing that to a person. Comes at the strangest times, he’s found. When he least expects it. His hands begin to shake. Partly from fear. Mostly from rage.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” Daniels asks.

  “Huh?” Dibs shakes loose from his Louis Cody trance. “Yeah, hey, how you been?”

  “Good, man. I’m good. That why you came all the way out here unannounced?” Daniels grins. “To see how I’ve been?”

  Dibs rolls his eyes.

  “I mean it’s very sweet—”

  “Okay, okay, fine.” Dibs sips, choking down his godawful coffee. “Wanted to make sure your people aren’t getting involved with anything nefarious. Found a meth lab about a mile or two from here.”

  “You mean those dumbass Christiansen brothers?”

  “Yeah.” Dibs blinks. “Those.”

  “We’re aware of the situation. We’re fine.” Daniels waves to a couple of armed guards as they pass by, then leans in toward Dibs. “Want to try again, Dibs? What couldn’t wait until next week? Miss me that damn much? I am pretty as hell.”

  “You are. Can’t argue. But that’s not it.” Dibs sips again. Resets. Winces while he tries to think of a way not to sound crazy. “You seen anything strange on your screens and shit around here?”

  Daniels leans back, studying Dibs, not sure what to make of this.

  “I mean, I know you people watch everything up here,” Dibs continues. “Have you seen anything out of the ordinary pop up? Anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” Dibs thinks, struggling to understand what he even means. “Something outside our normal little lives around here. Anything weird. Any people wander in from out of town or any signs of strange things doing strange shit?”r />
  Daniels wants to laugh, but he doesn't. He can see that something substantial is on Dibs’s mind. "No." Daniels takes a sip of his coffee. He’s used to how much it sucks. “Haven't seen anything like that. Not sure what that is, to be honest."

  “Nothing?”

  “Zilch.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “No one north of strange rolling into Stagstone? Maybe some trucks full of meth warriors or some cow-slaughtering whackos on a bender?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry.” Dibs realizes he’s spiraling down in a hurry. “What I’m asking is, have you seen anything? Anything at all that might be out of the ordinary. Intercepted any cell phone calls that made you look sideways?”

  “We don’t do that.”

  Dibs looks at him. Really?

  “We stopped doing that.”

  "Okay." Dibs leans in close and lowers his voice to barely above a whisper. "Off the record, what do you know?"

  Daniels leans in, matching Dibs, and lowers his voice as well. “Dibs, nothing’s going on.”

  “Nothing?”

  “All green across the screen.”

  “Right.” Dibs leans back, slumping in his chair. “Would you tell me if something crazy was going on around here?”

  “Hmmm.” Daniels takes a second and pretends to think about it, holding his stare on Dibs. “Probably not.”

  “Dick.”

  “True.”

  They toast their shitty coffees.

  “See you at the grease pit next week?” Daniels asks.

  "Of course," Dibs says with a smirk.

  Chapter Eight

  Night falls early on the sleepy Wyoming town.

  Most of the locals are either cooking at home or eating in the diner.

  Dibs sits in a booth by the window in the town's favorite, and only, diner. Big Maria's is a greasy spoon with so much damn homespun charm it's almost sickening. The name might suggest an ethnic slant, but the food is straight up white-bread basics. Eggs, bacon, burgers, a damn fine club sandwich, pie and coffee so good it'll grow you a third nipple. At least that’s what Maria says. Dibs still only has the two, but he can’t argue with her.