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  A silence somehow sodden fell over the room, such that all three men, first, experienced gooseflesh and then the hairs on the backs of their necks stood up. Moments ticked by, then moments more, in betwixt of which sobs and croaks and murmurs of despair could be heard. And just as it appeared that God had no intention of answering Helton’s supplication—

  The strangest noise erupted in the room.

  Helton, Dumar, and Micky-Mack leapt up, eyes darting, positions shifting, hands opened to futile claws.

  “The hail’s that?” Micky-Mack yelled.

  Dumar hooted at the loud, semi-rhythmic jangling that continued to spill sourcelessly into the primitive room. “Sounds like—sounds, like…sounds almost like the ringin’ of a telephone!”

  “Yeah!” Helton barked. “And we ain’t had a telephone in years!”

  The jangling, unnatural din drew on and on as the three men pranced about in utter confusion, trying to locate the noise’s source. But it was Micky-Mack—whose younger aural facilities were perhaps better capable of identifying proximity—who swept upon the box that the DVD player had come in. He reached down as if into a snake-pit, then, with eyes abloom, withdrew…

  “Look!” came Dumar’s hushed exclamation.

  Helton stared with all intentness.

  What Micky-Mack now held in his hand was a small rectangular object roughly five inches long and two wide. It was very slim. And there could be no doubt: that blaring, jangling, unnatural ringing was coming from the object.

  “What the fuck is that?” Helton voiced.

  “Unc Helton!” Micky-Mack shouted. “It were in the same box the machine come in and I think… I think it’s one’a them things they call…a cellphone…”

  A cellphone, thought Helton in all perplexion. He’d heard myths about such things: tiny telephones folks carried ’round in their pockets like a pack’a Luckys—telephones that mysteriously didn’t need no wires!

  It rang and rang. Micky-Mack, with a shaky hand, passed the cryptic device to his uncle.

  “Guess ya should…answer it, Paw,” Dumar figured.

  “How ya reckon I do that?” Miffed, he held the thing to his ear and said, “Hello?” but it just kept ringing. “Jesus! That noise is irkin’ me fierce! What I gotta do?”

  Still amazed, Micky-Mack stammered, “I’se think ya…open it, Uncle Helton. I seen a fella once in Crick City with one, and he somehow opened it…”

  Helton’s big, callused fingers fumbled with the Liliputian device, but eventually the top half lengthwise did indeed open, and the instant Helton achieved the feat…

  A thin, depthless voice from nowhere could be heard squawking.

  “Anyone there?” said the agitated caller in what was most likely a Jersey accent. “Jesus Christ, Argi, I don’t think these hayseeds even know how to answer a fuckin’ phone…”

  “Put it back to yer ear, Unc,” Micky-Mack suggested.

  Helton did so. “Huh-huh…hello?”

  “It fuckin’ took ya long enough,” the voice cracked back. It seemed to emit—again, impossibly—from a pinhole at the top.

  “You there, asshole?” the voice asked.

  “I’se here…”

  “Good. Now which goober is it I’m talkin’ to? Would it be Doooo-mar or Helton or Micky-Mack—” and then a tiny, etching laugh spilled from the hole. “Holy fuck, fella, where you rednecks get these names?”

  “I-I’se Helton—”

  “Well, good, fuckface. Now, you don’t know me but—”

  “Ain’t no one else ya can be ‘cept Paulie!” Helton roared.

  “That’s right, cracker, I’m Paulie, and it was me and my crew did the job on that snivelin’ little inbred kid of yours. You did see the movie, didn’t you?”

  Helton gulped, trembling in place. “Yeah. We shore did.”

  “Good. Fuck, I’ll bet it took you rubes three or four hours to figure out how to set it up—”

  “It didn’t take but one hour, you evil, low-down bastard!”

  Paulie laughed over the seemingly supernatural connection. “I’ll tell ya, Helton, we had a blast killin’ that kid! Man, it was sweet! Got all our dicks hard it was so sweet! Kid shittin’ and pissin’ himself, cryin’ for his daddy and his uncle, and we just kept tellin’ him ‘They don’t want you no more, ya little booger,’ and then we’d push his head in and pull it out, and push it in and pull it out—fuck, it was fun!”

  “Who in blazes are ya!” Helton roared. “Why you do that devilish shit to my grandson!”

  “Think about it, Gomer. I figure a rube like you ain’t got much of a brain from all that white lightning you all drink, so you think hard. And since I’m such a nice guy, you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna give you a hint…”

  The cellphone felt like a burning ember against Helton’s ear. “Ya damn well better ’cos I know full well I don’t know who ya fuckin’ are! And if I don’t know who ya fuckin’ are, there ain’t nothin’ I could’a ever done to ya to deserve what I just seen on that evil machine!”

  A pause. A chuckle. “Here’s the hint, Gomer—”

  “And I don’t know no Gomer neither, so whys you keep callin’ me that!”

  More tiny laughter billowed from the phone. “Man, you white-trash types are a scream! But anyway, dickface, here’s your hint.” Another pause, then the caller’s voice lowered and said, “Thibald Caudill sends his regards—”

  The connection went dead.

  Helton stood stock-still. It took a full minute to lower the wretched phone from his ear. Eventually he closed it, then calmly set it down.

  “Was it him, Paw?” Dumar raged. “Was it the man kilt my poor baby boy!”

  “Yeah, Unc Helton,” Micky-Mack quavered. “Was it this fella Paulie?”

  Helton’s stern eyes addressed his kin. “It was and we ain’t got time fer me ta tell ya ’bout it right now. We got important things to do first—”

  “But, Paw!”

  “Quiet!” Helton ordered. “Both’a yas!” and the power of the command sent Dumar and Micky-Mack into attentive quietude.

  “Both’a ya’s do as I say,” Helton continued. “Dumar, first ya go get the truck out the barn. Make sure there’s water in it’n gas and oil too,” and he pronounced “oil” as ole. “Then ya get the old fish-guttin’ table out’n ya put it in the back the truck, then ya get the proper tools and ya bolt that table down the middle’a the floor—”

  Dumar and Micky-Mack looked duped. “The hail ya want me ta do that?”

  Helton’s finger pointed, and he shouted, “Ya want your proper revenge or don’t’cha, boy!”

  “I want it, Paw! More’n anything!”

  “Then ever-thang I say, you do, and without no questionin’ or backtalk, ya hear?”

  “Yes, sir, Paw, yes, sir, I shorely do,” and then Dumar rushed out the back door to embark on his unreckonable duties.

  “Same goes fer you,” Helton told Micky-Mack.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “We’se goin’ on a road-trip. Collect up three sleepin’ bags and extra clothes.”

  “Right away, Uncle Helton,” but then the boy paused. “But…how many changes’a clothes should I fetch?”

  “Don’t rightly know how long we’ll be but I reckon it could be as much as a month—”

  “A month?”

  “—so’s ya better bring two changes’a clothes fer each of us.”

  “Right away, Uncle!”

  “Not so fast— After ya done that, I want ya to go up in the attic, and I want ya to tear that place inside-out till ya find a cigar box”—Helton pronounced “cigar” as see-gar. “You know what a cigar box is, boy?”

  “Uh, yeah, Unc, I’m pretty sure I do.”

  “Well, I know ya can read a bit and this box, it say King Edward on it, and’s got a picture of a fella from olden times with a beard kind’a like a toilet brush. You find that box, son, and you bring it to me.”

  “But, Uncle Helton. You don’t smoke cigars.”r />
  “No, I’se don’t but, see, there ain’t no cigars in this box. There’s somethin’ else. Now, the box is tied with twine, and it better still be tied with twine when you bring it to me. Don’t’cha be lookin’ in the box ’cos if’n ya do…I’ll give ya a whuppin’ worse’n the time I caught ya stealin’ watermelons from Bill Sodder’s field. You understand?”

  Micky-Mack gulped and nodded.

  “Now git!”

  Micky-Mack sprinted away with the determination and zeal that came with blessed youth.

  However, Helton remained stock-still in the middle of the room…

  He’d asked God to help him get a fix on this devil-lovin’ fiend named Paulie and shore as hail God had answered his prayer, because when the voice on that blasted cellphone had said Thibald Caudill sends his regards, Helton knew in the space of half-an-instant who Paulie really was and why he had murdered young Crory Tuckton so horribly.

  And for those on the edges of their seats wondering what the sinister King Edward cigar box contained, the author will completely ruin the element of suspense by making that revelation now.

  It contained several rusty and quite well-used 3 1/4-inch hole-saw blades.

  — | — | —

  Chapter 4

  (I)

  The crowd had gathered at the crime scene. “Step on back, folks,” Deputy Chief Dood Malone ordered once he’d disembarked from the patrol car. “Make way.” The crowd parted, the act of which led Malone through a fidgeting and enraged aisle of human bodies. It was one of the southside houses—the bad blocks—that the crowd congregated before, after Mitzy Crooker had spied the atrocity while walking her dog. She’d immediately run home and called the police, then subsequently blabbed her discovery to the entire neighborhood.

  Well holy jumpin’ FUCK, Malone thought, spinning the tips of his handlebar mustache when he saw the puppy’s head on the stake.

  One other county car sat parked right up in the yard; from the house, meanwhile, emerged Malone’s day-shift sergeant, a lanky, stoop-shouldered man with an overly large adam’s apple: Sergeant Boover.

  “Shit, Boover. Another one?”

  “Another one, Chief,” the younger man said and wiped his brow in spite of the chill. “Another dog head and another smack house. Place done full up with stolen insulin needles, spoons, candles, and empty baggies.”

  “But the house is clear?”

  “It is now. Must’ve been more cowboys just moved in, so Vinchetti’s bagmen sent ’em this warning. Then they took off.”

  Fuckin’ Vinchetti, Malone thought. The oddest thing. DEA had sent Malone the tip sheet: Paul Vinchetti III, big-time heroin and underground porn dealer from New Jersey. Mafia. But the guy was so insulated, no one could touch him. No evidence.

  Boover spat some chaw juice. “Just hard to figure, you know, Chief? Little town like Pulaski and we got a Mafia drug lord working the turf.”

  “That’s the way they do it now. They’re movin’ out of the big cities to set up shop in little burgs like this ’cos the law-enforcement budgets are so piss-ant. Kind’a makes sense. I mean, look at Pulaski. Sleepy little town, sure, but it’s sittin’ right in the middle of the bigger towns like Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Radford; then we got the cities like Roanoke, Richmond, Lexington, Charleston easy drivin’ distances. Shit, twice last month we caught middle-class white kids drivin’ all the way from Manassas to buy smack in Pulaski. Why? ’cos there’s no heat. DEA’s got their hands full just with crack and State’s neck-deep with meth. Meanwhile, smack slips back in between the cracks and grows and grows—it’s all the rage now, movin’ out the urban ghettos.” Malone nodded in angst. “Fuckin’ Vinchetti’s pretty damn smart. He’s gettin’ over on everyone, and even though we know he’s the guy, we got nothin’ on him. Every time the feds get close, Vinchetti cuts loose a bunch of lawyers like those guys who got O.J. off.”

  “The motherfucker could walk right by us and wink and we couldn’t do shit,” Boover observed. “Unless we had the balls to—”

  Malone cast a stern look and shook his head.

  “You ever seen the guy?” Boover asked, to change the subject they’d all thought about but never voiced.

  “Yeah, couple of times. Word is he bops between here, New York, and Jersey; when he’s here, he stays at the Caudill Mansion with his wife—”

  “Marshie Caudill,” Boover acknowledged. “There’s a match made in heaven. Best-lookin’ stripper in town winds up hitched to a fuckin’ don.”

  “And that’s where he met her, too. She worked that strip joint since she was 16 but then bought the damn place once her father died and left her all those mineral rights and money.”

  “You figure Marshie’s got anything to do with Vinchetti’s smack business?”

  “Naw. She’s just arm-candy and a piece of ass,” Malone felt certain, for as attractive as Marshie Vinchetti was, she was twice as stupid. “What I heard is they spend some’a their time at the Mansion, but most at some ritzy townhouse just out’a Newark. Don’t see as much’a Marshie, not since her baby died. Her first kid, that little snot ‘Becca, lives at the house here all the time while she’s in school. Gotta servant looks after her.”

  “Fuck ’em all,” Boover sputtered, arms crossed. He looked disgustedly at the staked dog’s head in the present yard. “And now we got this. One’a Vinchetti’s guys…killing puppies…”

  “Where’s the rest of the dog?”

  “Dude chucked what was left in the back yard by the door. He always puts the head on a stick in front and leaves the rest in back so when the cowboys split, they see that too. Yanked the skin right off the pooch, then slit its belly open. Cute, huh?”

  “And you know damn well the poor mutt was still alive while all that was happenin’.” Malone shook his head again. “Who the fuck could do somethin’ like that?”

  “Like the feds said. Probably a bagman from Venezuela—that’s where the dog-head thing comes from. Shit, they probably eat dogs in that shit-hole third-world commie dive.”

  Malone was getting depressed. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dog’s head: that of a tiny white poodle.

  “Whose dog is it?”

  “Adeline Parker—”

  “Shit.”

  “She’s over there, bawlin’ her eyes out.”

  “I’ll talk to her. Try to clear the rest’a these folks out,” and then Malone walked dejectedly to the fat, jowly old woman blubbering in the yard.

  “Aw, gosh dang, Adeline, I cain’t tell how sorry I am ’bout your little dog,” he began.

  The old lady was inconsolable, boo-hooing to such extremes—God bless her—that Malone fantasized kicking the unpleasant old blue-haired biddy hard in the ass. “You find the evil varmint done this to my little Fluffy! You find him, Chief! If’n you don’t I’ll use all my power in the community to see that you never get elected again.”

  Here we go. Malone put his arm about her shoulder and tried to urge her back in the direction of her house. “We’ll find him, all right, Adeline. I give ya my word, and when we do find him…he’ll up’n pay dearly.”

  “Aw, bullshit!” Adeline gruffed. “You police these days ain’t got the spine to do things right no more. No, no, not like the good ole days. If yawl had any balls, like real men, you’d catch this monster’n kill him! But, no, no, you’ll be more concerned with his fuckin’ rights! Makin’ shore he gets a fair trial! Anyone tortures a puppy ought’a be tortured hisself!”

  Jesus please us, Malone thought. “Now, Adeline, let’s have no more talk like that. Why don’t’cha go on home now, git yerself a nip and try ta get some rest—”

  “And where was you! Where was you’n the rest’a yer overpaid, lazy cops when this psycho was stealin’ my poor Fluffy? Tell me that!”

  “Just you get on home now, Adeline…”

  The elderly nuisance pulled away from Malone, then stomped toward the grim stick bearing the head of her pet. Still blubbering, she pulled the head off the st
ick—

  “Aw, now, Adeline!” Malone moaned. “That there’s kind’a what we call evidence! Ya cain’t just up’n take it!”

  “Stop me! Gonna give my Fluffy’s head a proper burial, and if’n you don’t like it, then kiss my ass!”

  Boover returned as the woman stormed off. “Forget about the head, Chief. Ain’t like we can take prints off it.”

  “Shee-it,” Malone muttered.

  “You got any idea how we might go about catchin’ this guy?”

  Malone tweaked his handlebar mustache. “I been thinkin’ ’bout it. You know how the feds do it, don’t’cha? They have thereself a sting operation.”

  “A sting, huh? How are we gonna do that?”

  “It ain’t gonna be easy but, see, I figure if we play our cards smart, we can catch this dog-killin’ piece’a shit, and once we do that, we might be able to catch Vinchetti himself…”

  (II)

  God, I love him so much, Veronica mused of Mike as she stood behind the camera counter. She believed in Providence—not the city or the basketball team—and she knew that it was God who’d placed Mike Anthon in her life’s path. Her heart pattered thinking about him—Mike, not God—and she also knew that her insistence to remain a virgin proved her faith beyond doubt. God KNOWS, He KNOWS, she thought. The certain venal sins—namely fellatio—that she committed with Mike were purely pragmatic in this new and restless age; and with those she skirted the far more grievous sin of intercourse out of wedlock. God, she knew, would forgive the fellatio, for He knew the true foundation of her resolve: to live and love in accordance with God’s Word.