Phil turned on another light and peered into the cell, to get a closer look at its occupant. The kid sat dejected on his cot next to a metal sink and toilet. Jeans, sneakers, baggy T-shirt, and a belly on him that rivaled Mullins’. Long, stringy brown hair dangled at his shoulders, and he obviously wasn’t given to shaving with any regularity. Just another fat, going-nowhere redneck, Phil suspected. But his name, Gut, rang a quick bell—one of Sullivan’s point runners, one of his “replacements.”
“So, Gut, what’s your story? How long you been in there?”
“‘Bout a month, I guess. It ain’t bad. Chief Mullins, he brings me in food three times a day, decent stuff from like the Qwik-Stop and Burger King, and takes me ta the shower ever so often.”
Qwik-Stop and Burger King, Phil mused. All the daily nutritional requirements for a growing boy. “Is it true you don’t want to leave here?”
“Well, yeah, it’s true.”
“Why’s that? Why’s a kid your age want to sit in jail?”
Gut ran a hand over his face, looking down between his feet. “I figure if I stays in here long enough, they’ll ferget about me.”
“Who’s they, Gut? The Creekers?”
“Yeah.” The kid gulped at the sound of the word. “The Creekers.”
Phil sat down on an opposite bench. Typical. Drug-induced paranoia. A common trait among chronic PCP-users. “And what’s this you say about them killing a buddy of yours? Would that be Scott-Boy?”
Gut looked up from between his knees. “Howdja know that?”
“I know a lot of things, Gut,” Phil said. “I know you’ve been driving drop-off points for some new dust lab backed by some money guy from Florida. I know you guys have been trying to take the local dust market from the regular supplier. And I know you’ve been working with Eagle Peters, Paul Sullivan, Jake Rhodes, and Blackjack.”
“Shit, man. Who’s been walking all over me?”
“Don’t worry about it. All those guys? They’re all either dead or disappeared. Your competition has been hitting them all, and they’ve been doing a damn good job. You should’ve seen Peters and Rhodes. Sullivan ever tell you why he took you and Scott-Boy on to drive points?”
“Naw. Why?”
“Because everybody they had doing the job beforehand disappeared. And there’s one more thing I know, Gut. I know that it’s Natter and his Creekers who’re making the hits. He’s been using Sallee’s as a distro point. I want you to tell me where his lab is.”
Gut looked suddenly perplexed, or just stupid. “Natter? I don’t know nothin’ ’bout Natter. Paul never told me exactly who we were selling against.”
Jesus, not this shit again, Phil thought. “Come on, Gut, don’t bullshit me. It’s nice and safe in there, but I don’t think you’d like the county slam. You ever heard the term ‘boy-pussy, cell-block bitch’?”
“I swear, man. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout Natter dealing in flake. All I knows is it was him who had the Creekers do the job on Scott-Boy.”
“You saw Natter kill your buddy?”
“He was there. I knows it was him ’cos I seed him with my own eyes. At first I weren’t sure on account of I was so shit-scared. But once I got out of there and turned myself in to Chief Mullins, I realized who it was. It was Cody Natter.”
Phil took a time out, to control his excitement. This was too easy. Five minutes ago I didn’t have a case, and now I got an eyewitness who can testify that he saw Natter perpetrate a drug-related murder. Guess I got up on the right side of the bed today.
“But it weren’t fer running flake that the Creekers jacked us up,” Gut continued, staring out from the darkness in his cell. “It was Scott-Boy, see? We picked up this chick hitchin’ that night—Scott-Boy had a mind to give her a goin’ over, ya know, we was out rucking. But it turns out this chick’s a Creeker. So’s Scott-Boy’s got her in the truck gettin’ ready ta do her, and all’s a sudden there’s Creekers all over the place, and they’se haul him out and slit him open right there in the dirt. It was, like, fer sackerfice or somethin’.”
Phil’s face drooped as he looked back through the cell bars. What the hell is he talking about? “Gut, you’re telling me the Creekers killed Scott-Boy as part of a sacrifice?”
“Yeah,” Gut replied with no reluctance—and, it seemed, with no lack of belief. “Cody Natter, he’s pure evil, see?”
“Pure evil?”
“That’s right, the evilest man I ever seed. Them Creekers, they worship themselves a demon, and it’s to this demon they sackerfice folks.”
Phil shook his head. “How do you know this, Gut?”
“I know it on account of ’cos Natter, see, he come in here and told me.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, Gut,” Phil caught him up. “You’re telling me that Cody Natter came into this jail one night and told you this stuff about sacrifices and demons?”
“Er, well, it weren’t like he came in here phys-ick-erty.” Gut, then, pointed to his temple. “He come inta my head, see? Most ever night. Sometimes while’s I’se sleepin’ and sometimes not. And he whispers ta me and shows me things, in my head. He shows me this demon, and he shows me hade’s place. Says he’s got hisself a special place fer me down there once he gits me.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake, Phil thought in disgust. There goes my eyewitness right out the window. I can see him sitting up on the stand testifying and then telling the judge that Natter comes into his head at night and shows him demons. Phil despondently put his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. “You know, Gut, that shit you do really fucks up a person’s brain.”
“What shit ya talkin’ ’bout?”
“Dust, Gut. Flake. PCP. It’s fucking horse tranquilizer processed through paint thinner and industrial solvents. It causes irreversible brain receptor damage.”
“Aw, but ya got it wrong. I ain’t smoked flake but maybe twice in my life, and that were years ago. Didn’t like it, so’s I never did it again.”
Yeah, right, and the Pope shits in the woods.
“Now I ain’t sayin’ we weren’t movin’ it. What me an’ Scott-Boy did, see, was we used ta wait behind bars at night and jack guys out fer their green. Scott-Boy, he had hisself a pair of brass knucks that’d do a zinger on the biggest of fellas. And we went on doin’ that some, when the pickin’ was ripe, but, see, we could make lots more scratch faster by running drops fer Sullivan and Eagle. Folks buy the shit right up, any town you can name from here ta Lockwood. Big money ta be made. ‘A’course, I knows now all that shit we pulled, either ruckin’ or working fer Sullivan, was bad. And I also know that’s why Natter wants ta git me, to send me ta hade’s place where I’ll have ta pay fer my sins. See, what he plans to do is snatch me when I get outta here, and then he’ll take me to the demon.”
Phil groaned. Why does this shit always happen to me? Why do I always get the live ones? So far, nothing jibed. Every time he got close, his leads turned to garbage. It was almost like this case had put a curse on him.
“It’s part of their religion,” Gut said.
Phil’s thoughts stalled a moment. Religion. What had Sullivan told him at the county lockup?
Something about the Creekers’ religion…
But that was ridiculous. Mullins was right: Gut was obviously suffering from a PCP-related psychosis. Crazier than a possum in a shithole, you ain’t kidding, Chief. Nothing Gut said could be deemed reliable. He wasn’t fit to testify, and never would be.
“Thanks for your time, Gut,” Phil got up and said. “You sure you don’t want me to let you out of there?”
Gut flinched at a sudden pang of fright; his belly jiggled. “No, man, please. I ain’t safe nowhere’s else. Please don’t make me leave.”