‘Relax.’ Carson splashed bourbon into glasses, shoved one across the table to Scott, and took up one of his own. ‘Have a drink with us, man.’
Helena bumped Scott’s thigh under the table. Scott got the message: she wanted to leave before things got out of hand. Scott was in agreement but couldn’t see how he could do that without drawing the ire of the Logan boys.
Helena offered a plausible get-out. ‘You’re driving, Scott. You’ve had enough to drink already. We can’t afford for you to lose your licence.’
Scott pushed the glass of bourbon back towards Carson. ‘She’s right. The cops have been after me long enough… don’t want to give them a reason to run me in.’
Carson shoved the glass back again. ‘One more won’t hurt.’
Brent’s eyes had fixed on Helena’s face since straying up from her chest. His pupils dilated as he watched the play of light on her dark hair. He reached up with trembling fingers and pinched a bunch of his coarse blond mane. Scott’s gaze flicked from him to Carson, then across at the third Logan. The stocky, dark-complexioned man merely returned the look, a faint smile playing about his thick lips.
‘OK,’ Scott relented, as he picked up the glass of bourbon. ‘But just this one, OK?’
He downed the bourbon in one long gulp then stood up and reached a hand for Helena’s. ‘C’mon, babe, we’d best git going.’
‘Sit down.’
Scott looked at Carson, but it wasn’t he who had spoken. It was the dark one.
‘I gotta go, buddy,’ Scott said.
Carson slammed his empty glass on the table top. ‘Samuel told you to sit down.’
Scott shook his head. ‘Look, guys, I don’t want no trouble, but me and Helena are leaving.’ He pulled his wife up beside him, but Brent mirrored the action and stood directly in front of her. He was still teasing the strands of his thick hair. Brent mouthed her name, mimicking Scott: ‘He-lena.’
‘We just bought you a drink,’ Carson said. ‘It’s only fair you do the same for us.’
‘Fine.’ Scott dug in his jeans pocket and pulled out a wad of dollars. He dropped them in front of the man. ‘Get yourselves a drink on me.’
Samuel Logan reached for the small stack of bills, and scrunched them in his fist. He tossed them at Scott and they bounced off his chest and on to the floor. Scott stiffened. Helena’s hand in his had also tightened up. ‘C’mon, Helena, we’re leaving.’
Brent stepped in front of Helena, while Samuel also came to his feet, blocking the other route around the table. Up close Samuel’s face was a criss-cross of old scars like white threads in his sun-parched skin. His hands were lumpy, as though his fingers and knuckles had been broken many times and had failed to set properly.
‘Oh, c’mon,’ Scott said. In the bar room the buzz of conversation had dropped to a hush. All around them was a static charge, like ozone building in the atmosphere before a lightning storm. Some customers left hurriedly.
‘You think you’re too good to drink with us?’ Carson asked as he refilled glasses.
‘No, I don’t. But like Helena said, I’ve already had too much and have to drive back to Indian Wells.’ He looked at Brent, just as the young man let go of his hair and reached for Helena’s. He pushed his fingers deep under her bobbed cut and cupped the back of her head. He pulled her towards him. Helena let out a gasp, at the same time as Scott grabbed Brent’s wrist. ‘Hey! Git your hands off my wife!’
Without warning Samuel lunged forward and slammed his curled fist into Scott’s solar plexus.
The air whooshed out of Scott and he folded, his grip falling from Brent’s wrist to the pain in his gut. Carson reached up and snagged a handful of his hair and pulled him across the table. With his other hand he splashed the glass of bourbon in Scott’s eyes. Scott yowled wordlessly and tried to wipe the stinging liquor from his face. Distantly he could hear Helena shouting, and he knew that Brent was still holding her hair in his fist.
Carson forced Scott’s right cheek against the table, using the leverage on his hair to hold him there. Scott struggled, but he’d no purchase with his feet to force himself backwards, and he felt Samuel’s hammer-like fist jab him in his right kidney. Something silver flashed in his vision, and when he blinked some of the liquor from his eyes he saw that Carson had laid a revolver on the table alongside his face. There was a hubbub in the bar now as people fled for the exits. ‘You really want to mess with us, boy?’ Carson asked.
Before he could answer, Samuel pressed a cheek to the table so he could meet Scott’s gaze. ‘Do it. Say yes. I will make you hurt everywhere.’
‘Jesus, God!’ Scott’s cry was because of the knuckle Samuel rotated into a nerve cluster on the side of his jaw. Scott had never experienced localised pain like it before. Words failed him, the noise coming from his mouth became an animal-like howl of agony.
Suddenly Samuel stopped pressing, and the grip on his hair was loosened: Scott reared back, his face flushed with anger and shame, and not a little fear. Carson slid the gun into his shirt front. When Scott searched for Helena he saw her a few feet away, and Brent taking a step back. Samuel had sat down again.
Two state troopers had entered the bar.
They stood silhouetted in the doorway. One of them had his hand on the butt of his sidearm.
‘There a problem in here?’ the trooper called.
Scott glanced at Helena again, giving a subtle shake of his head. Her face was pinched with fear, and a clump of hair stood out from the side of her skull from where Brent had held her. She smoothed it back quickly.
‘No problem, Officer,’ said the bar manager coming out from wherever he’d been hiding since the Logans entered. ‘None at all.’
The state troopers strode further inside. They were no fools, and they surveyed the small group arranged around the table, eyes slipping from one to the next. But they also knew that they were on to a loser if they expected anyone here to come clean about what had just happened. These kinds of bars, these kinds of people, they knew to keep their mouths shut and their problems to themselves.
‘See that things stay that way,’ said the trooper with his hand on his gun.
The other, reading the probable cause of the situation, pointed at Scott and Helena. ‘You two… I think it’s best that you get yourselves home.’
Scott saw the opportunity and snatched it. He took Helena by her elbow, whispering a warning to stay quiet, and led her towards the exit. Brent stood aside for them, allowing them to move past him, but he held Scott’s gaze. ‘You’re a pussy, Scott,’ he whispered. ‘And you don’t deserve such a fine-looking woman as Helena. She’d be far better off with me.’
Those were the words that told me the Logans were likely suspects in Helena’s subsequent disappearing act, little more than a fortnight after the incident in the bar. Scott had related the details to the police who were tasked with investigating her disappearance. However, the cops hadn’t placed much credence in Scott’s abduction theory. In fairness, they’d visited the Logans and made a cursory inspection of their property but had found nothing untoward. The family had all offered alibis that they backed up for one another. On their own, those alibis didn’t hold water, but they’d also got corroboration from a third party. Their friend, Doug Stodghill, a mechanic from Holbrook, swore that the Logans had all been at his auto shop working on their pick-up truck at the time Helena had walked into Indian Wells. The police suspected that Stodghill was lying, either on the Logans’ behalf or under threat, but with little else to go on, and no proof of a crime, their line of inquiry fell flat.