Injustice for all

40

The biker who killed Hannah Mills raised a beer can toward the sky.

“To gettin’ ’er done,” he yelled. Cyrus “Red” Mc-Kinney was in a celebratory mood. “The job” had gone off without a hitch. The girl had been missing for two weeks, and the cops didn’t have a clue. He was certain they would never find her.

Sitting across the table from Red was his cousin, Ricky “Barrel” Reed. Barrel had been the only person Red trusted enough to help him with the job. Red knew what they were doing was strictly forbidden by the gang’s code, but he also knew Barrel would keep quiet about it. He’d cut him in for five thousand of the twenty thousand he’d collected from the Mexican. Barrel had wanted an equal share, but because Red had done the actual wet work, he figured he earned the extra money.

It was Saturday, the last night of Bike Week in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The news had quickly spread through the ranks of Satan’s Soldiers that the officers had negotiated a fat deal with a gang in Charlotte, and the booze and drugs were flowing. They were hanging out at a bar called Dante’s, a run-down hellhole in Garden City that they took over for a week in the spring each year. Rock music was blaring, bitches were dancing topless on the tables, and two dudes had already ridden their choppers through the place. Red had downed nearly a case of beer during the day and had made two trips to the bathroom in the past hour to snort crystal meth. He was feeling like a conqueror.

“Me and you are two badass motherfuckers,” Red hollered.

“Fuckin-A!” Barrel replied.

“That bitch was just the beginning! We’re gonna be the next Murder Incorporated. Hit men, by God! I always wanted to be a hit man. Fuck this Mickey Mouse shit we been doing! We’re going big-time, baby!”

“Keep your voice down, Red! People can hear you.”

“I don’t give a shit!”

Red rose from his chair and raised both fists into the air.

“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil,” he yelled, “for I’m the baddest motherfucker in the valley!”

It took less than a week for word to reach the officers. Inquiries had been made, meetings held. And now Red found himself in a barn in Unicoi County, tied securely to a metal chair, surrounded by men he thought were his friends. Barrel was next to him, whimpering like a child.

Red watched the man circling him. He was known as Bear, the president of Satan’s Soldiers. He was six feet tall and thick as an Angus bull. Muscles rippled beneath the tight black tank top he was wearing. Everything on him was covered with thick black hair-his head, face, shoulders, back, and chest-and he was wearing the gang’s signature black bandanna. The rest of the officers were leaning against a stall about ten feet away, watching as he toyed with a length of braided rawhide and the knot at its end. They were known as Turtle, Rain Man, and Mountain.

“Know why you’re here?” Bear asked.

“We ain’t done nothing,” Red said.

The knotted piece of rawhide smashed into his temple. Red saw a bright flash as pain shot through his head and down his spine.

“Don’t lie to me, Red. It’ll go a lot easier on you. That girl you killed worked for the DA. You think they’re gonna stop looking for her, you damned fool? Now we gotta clean up the mess you made.”

“Ain’t no mess,” Red said. “Ain’t nobody gonna find nothing.”

“We got rules. You break the rules, it affects us all. What the hell were you thinking? Going on your own. And a girl! She hadn’t done a damned thing to us. And now, all this heat.”

“There won’t be no heat. They ain’t gonna find nothing.”

“Won’t be no heat? How do you think we found out about it? Because you’re too goddamned dumb to keep your mouth shut. You and this fat lump of shit next to you.”

“We won’t say nothing, Bear,” Barrel cried. “I swear to God we won’t say a word.”

Red heard the whiz of the rawhide and the dull thump as it struck his cousin. Barrel screamed.

“Shut your mouth, lard ass!” Bear yelled. “Now, I’ve known the two of you long enough to know that ol’ Barrel here doesn’t have brains enough to get in out of the rain. So you must have been the one who set it up. Right, Red?”

Red nodded his head and closed his eyes. He listened as Bear’s boots crunched the dirt floor as he continued to circle.

“Who paid you?”

“Some Mexican down in Morristown.”

“What Mexican? How’d he get in touch with you?”

“Don’t know his name. I found out about the contract from another Mexican dude I party with. I told him I might be interested, so he gave me a number to call. I set up a meet and went to Morristown.”

“How much? How much did it take to get you to betray us?”

“I didn’t betray y’all, man. All I did was a job. It put fifteen grand in my pocket and didn’t cause nobody no harm. Like I said, they ain’t gonna find her.”

“What’d you do with her?”

The interrogation lasted another fifteen minutes. The more Red talked, the less hostile Bear’s voice became. Red told him everything: how they’d cased her place, how they’d killed her, where they’d put the body, what they’d done after the murder.

Bear squatted down in front of Red and put his hands on Red’s knees.

“Anything else you can think of?”

“No, man. I told you everything.”

“Good.”

Bear stood up and turned around.

“Rain Man, you and Psycho hook the chipper up to the pickup and haul it down to the pigpen. I want you to shoot these two pieces of shit, then shred ’em. The pigs will take care of what’s left.”