Loyal and faithful readers of this blog - which is irregular
at best depending on the news cycle and whether the feral hogs have decided to go on the offensive, and whether the creepy clowns rear their stupid heads again
– we have two events on the horizon. Two
book readings/signings in the near future.
September 22 from 4-6 pm at Murder by the Book in Houston, and October 20 at the
Fort Worth Book Fest.
One question I get a lot when I talk about writing is how I start
a book. I have a full time legal practice, so I don’t think about writing
fiction all day, nor can I write fiction all day. I write crime novels, so I begin with a
crime. I have characters that I want to
introduce. I don’t have a vision of what
characters look like, even in my own head, and don’t describe the physical
features of the characters unless it matters to the story, and only then to the
extent it matters to the story development.
I have characteristics and personalities, some minor details, and most
importantly the language they use. I
have the characters explain themselves to the reader through their action,
their words and word choice. By the time
I write the first chapter, I have a list of the main characters with their necessary
traits, the overall arc of the story, and all of the chapters of the first
third of the book listed out with three or four sentence (max) descriptions of
what will happen in the chapter.
And then I have to actually begin the story. How do you start a crime novel? I set the characters
into a situation that requires some sort of action and contains important
ambiguities, some that the reader will recognize while reading it, and some
that the reader may only discover later when the characters themselves discover
it. The opening scene may have action or
may just require action to take place after it.
The opening scene doesn’t have to introduce the main characters of the story,
though it can simply set up a scene that they will come into soon. What the opening
scene has to do is launch the action. I
set a scene, put in characters, then I see what they will do, discovering what the
characters will do as I write each scene.
My second book, Ghosts of the Mid-Country, is done and published. It is a continuation of the first murder
mystery/legal thriller, Devils Walk Through Galveston. The third book, now tentatively called The Hydra
and the False Prophet’s Creed (though
that will probably change) again follows the book that preceded it, bringing
back some of the main characters, with a new crime. It has to stand on its own
for people who haven’t read the prior books, and also has to allow loyal
readers to pick it up and be met with familiar characters at a point they remember
from the end of the prior story. It has
to give enough information that the new readers aren’t lost and the loyal
readers are not bored.
Here’s the first chapter
of the latest book, The Hydra and the False
Prophet’s Creed. Tell me if you like it. And come see us on September 22 in
Houston at Murder by the Book, or October 22 at the Ft. Worth Book Fest. http://fortworthbookfest.com/
1.
Ammonia
The Deputy Sheriff smelled cat piss
on the plume of white smoke rising over the trees behind crop fields. A hell of a lot of cat piss. It meant one of two things. It meant that there was gonna be a hell of an
explosion right quick or it meant meth.
He listened to the police band radio and heard nothing. He called into the fire department in De
Valls Bluff and got no report of any farmer’s anhydrous ammonia tank leaking or
on fire. He called he VFD in Watensaw
Township and got nothing there, either.
He called back to De Valls Bluff and said get the meth crew. He called the High Sheriff and told him to
bring backup. He wasn’t going in alone
to a booby-trapped meth lab that could have some lit-up motherfuckers wanting
to shoot while they were trying to salvage the operation or get out to the
backup lab. Fucking meth labs. He had about ten minutes or more before the other
deputies would get out there with a constable.
He drove around the area until he was sure it was in the woods and not
in back of some industrial barn with industrial sized tanks of fertilizer that
would blow up everything in a half-mile area.
The Constable met him at the
cross-roads where 217 met a dirt road down into the forest bordering the White
River. Near to the pretty birds that the
Yankees came down to see. Not near
enough to the river that some ornithologist would stumble onto them. He had an idea where to look. The Constable didn’t show surprise. He didn’t show knowing, either. He showed up in some rinkny-dink Pontiac
Sunbird ragtop that he’d owned before getting elected and was using the county
money to pay off, hoping that a criminal didn’t have a knife to cut out the roof
again and run away with his hands cuffed.
That shit was hilarious. It got
him a new roof on the county dime and the Commissioners laughed because the
dude was caught not far away. But the
Commissioners said they weren’t paying for another one so he’d better be damn
sure that anyone he arrested was free of sharp objects or he was paying for his
own roof the second time. He was still
butt-hurt over that. He was untrained,
but elected and got along with the black folks which was enough to get him
re-elected. He was brave and reasonably
smart, so he hadn’t gotten killed.
The Constable got out of his Sunbird
and walked to the driver’s window of the Tahoe and asked the Deputy if he knew
anyone cooking back there. The Deputy
took offense and said so. He told the
Constable to get back in his convertible and wait five minutes. They weren’t going in until they were damn
sure there wasn’t a fertilizer tank that was gonna explode.
Five minutes passed and the flames
kept their white plume going and the whole fucking countryside smelled like cat
piss. It was gonna permeate his uniform and his truck. His girlfriend wasn’t gonna fuck him for a
couple of days cause the smell was gonna get into his skin. Fucking meth heads. The fire brigade drove up and the Deputy made
sure they had their hazmat suits, which they did. They had a few extra gas masks, and passed
them out. The Deputy told them to drive
up behind him, a hundred yards back and not to come in until called on the
radio. He had to make sure no one was
alive back there with a gun pointed on them. He had to make sure that the path
they were taking, and the perimeter didn’t have grenades strung up on
fishing-line tripwires to blow up meth-heads seeking to steal junk, or Deputy
Sheriffs coming to arrest them.
Early December in east-central
Arkansas and the leaves were brown and getting ready to come down on the
deciduous trees. The pines still bright
green. The brown leaves on the ground
meant they weren’t coming in silent. The
Deputy told the Constable to get in the Tahoe and bring his 12-gauge pump. The Constable went to the trunk and loaded
the shotgun’s high capacity magazine with eight shells, putting an handful in
one of the pockets. The Deputy told him to put the extra shells back in the
trunk. They weren’t walking in like Mr.
Bojangles, clickety-clacking their way into an ambush. The Constable recommenced his red-ass routine
but did what he was told.
They drove in slow, careful to kick
up as little dust as possible, which was impossible. He noted a metric shit-ton
of tire tracks. At least one from a car
and at least twenty from motorcycles.
He’d ask the farmers and rich fly-fisherman, if the fly-fisherman were
here now, a couple weeks before Christmas, after Thanksgiving holidays. They got to the edge of the road and saw the
fire on the side. He handed the a
gas-mask to the Constable when they stopped, said, “Don’t fucking talk unless
you’re warning me of something. Touch my
leg with the barrel and don’t fucking shoot me.”
“Fuck you, man. I’m a professional.”
“Yeah…”
They
got out quiet and closed the doors quiet.
They walked over the drainage ditch and up into the woods. The wind was
still and they could follow the smell, staying five feet away from the
trail. Going real slow. Looking for fishing line between trees, which
you couldn’t see, but you could maybe see a passage for the line so some branch
wouldn’t set off a grenade and bring the cops in. He found two, hanging near tree trunks and
pointed them out to the Constable who was training behind.
They went a hundred yards in fifteen minutes, got close and he saw a
good-sized shed with two single-wide trailers attached, butted right up next to
them. A little shack set about fifty
yards away. The fire was coming from
behind the shed-trailer compound. He
motioned the Constable to take up a firing position where he could see the
front door to the shed and the front door to the shack and leaned in close,
telling the Constable – quiet – that if anyone came out, to take them out. He circled slowly around the back and saw a
barrel that was shooting flames in shades of red, purple, white and green. Some
toxic brew of the anhydrous ammonia and some other chemicals. The smell was
overpowering.
Whatever doubts he might have had that this was a meth cooking lab of
significant proportions was dispelled when he came across the first pit of
starch, six feet by six feet and god knew how deep, to deposit all the inert
filler from tens of thousands of pills of cold medicine when the ephedrine and
pseudoephedrine was leached out. Then he
came across hundreds of bundles of match sticks with their tops sheared off for
the red phosphorous. He knew he’d find
either a shit-ton of old shirts or coffee filters. Instead, he found discs of asbestos. Hard to get but more efficient and clean
filters, bought off some chlor-alkali plant or its supplier who wouldn’t mind
someone paying ten times the going rate for the industrial use. All the paper
plants down near Monticello in Drew
County, the far south-east, there was bound to be a chlor-alkali plant attached
to them to make the chlorine that would bleach the paper, and that would need
the last real remaining use for new asbestos in the country. He figured he’d find the paint cans and did,
to paint and repaint the sheetrock that would suck in and filter the smell when
the ammonia was being used in the cooking process and that would freak the hell
out of any farmer who thought his ammonia fertilizer tanks had been broken
into, had a valve loose and his whole family was about to blow up. He’d either guessed paint or kitty litter,
also a good sponge for the smell. This operation was big enough that there were
bound to be sheetrock panels standing vertical, eighteen inches apart, and
there’d be some pits in the woods full of them.
He guessed that the shed vented to one of the trailers and that it was
packed with sheetrock. He wasn’t so
worried about them right now. The hazmat boys would get them. But he knew they’d be there.
The fire was creating its own wind, sucking the air to itself, which in
another circumstance would be dangerous because they might be able to smell
him. But the cat-piss smell took care of that.
Finished circling the shed and came back in front. He kneeled on the
side of the near trailer and motioned the Constable to keep trained on the
front door of the shack as he closed his eyes to try to get them used to the
dark as he slow entered the shed and opened his eyes. This the most likely time to get shot. This entering on faith and prayer. And hate
at the meth these devils cooked up.
It was dark and hot, even in the cool early-winter weather. The chemical
processes creating their own heat. It
was empty of people and full of gleaming-clean chemical pot-stills. He came back out and circled back to one of
the sheds and entered it the same way, found the store room, shockingly neat
and orderly. Something he hadn’t
experienced before. It made sense. A half-assed outfit belching out cat-piss
smell would pick up the notice of bird watchers and fishermen and get to the
High Sheriff in ten minutes and it’d be taken down. A professional operation,
apparently not. He went into the other
shed and it was as he expected, dozens of sheet-rock panela standing in the
room and the walls with fresh coats of paint.
None of this made sense. No
professional cooker set fire to a waste-barrel out back. If the fire was an accident, it was a major
fuckup. If it was intentional it was a
warning, sure to bring in the law. Sure
to shut down the operation and start a drug war. Which might explain the motorcycle tracks in
the dirt road. If it was a shit-load of
bikers, they were gone now. Fuck, he
hated this part of the job. He wasn’t
raised in the Marine Corps and fed on adrenaline. He had a wife and kid. He should have become a fireman.
He came back out and motioned the Constable to come up slow to the
shack. He was gonna go in first. The
Constable would come in right behind and fan to the left, around the door. He knelt down and tried the knob. It wasn’t locked. He pushed the door a fraction. The deadbolt
was unlocked. He put up three fingers
and counted down to his fist and shouldered the door in from a crouch and
rolled in and to the right, leveling his shotgun. The Constable jumped over him and to the left
and dropped prone.
There was no movement. There was smell, though. The smell of blood and shit, mixed with the
cat-piss. His uniform would have to be
burned with his boots, sock and drawers.
They were in a decent-sized front room with a kitchen on the left, a
sofa and TV on the right and a large table in the middle with a half-naked guy tied
to the top of it belly-up with his hands and feet tied to the legs, still,
dead. He motioned for the Constable to
follow to the bedroom. He motioned that he would go high, the Constable would
go low, his gun barrel under the bed.
They did and nothing. The Constable stood and made to take off the
gas-mask and the Deputy shook his head hard, said, “No” loud. The Deputy pulled his radio up to the face of
the mask and said as clearly as he could for the firemen to come in, wearing
full hazmat, and call Little Rock to get a full clean-up team in. There was a
ton of hazardous waste to clean up, bulldozers to be brought in. First, they
had to put out the fire behind the house and the Deputy and Constable wanted to
be far away from it when they started.
They worked their way back to the road, along the path, double careful
now for trip-wires and found two and disabled them. One to a grenade. One to a cammo sawed-off
shotgun they hadn’t see before. They disabled them on the way back to the road
and walked the fire-crew up to the clearing single-file and while the fire team
worked on the barrel, fanned out to either side of the road to make sure no one
was watching and deciding whether to come back.
He called the High Sheriff again and told him about the body, as best he
could through the fucking gas mask, said to send some boys with a camera, CID
from Little Rock if they cared to come out. They’d not disturb the body before
they got word if this was a State affair, or DEA. They’d look, though, but not
disturb.
§§
The High Sheriff arrived ten minutes before the CIDs. The medical examiner in Little Rock had been
alerted that they might have someone to look at. The fire department boys and the hazmat boys
had put out the fire and let the air clear as best it could. They were itchy to start the cleanup. The Deputy wouldn’t let them. The Constable
was hanging around to give his part of the report as one of the officers who
initially encountered the crime scene.
Ten minutes after the fire was put out and the smoke had mostly cleared
the Deputy asked if he could take toff the mask. The firemen advised against it. It was stifling and he couldn’t see properly
in the mask that had an eye cover that was constantly fogging up. He asked if they had a half-face respirator
that left his eyes cleared. They advised against it but said they did. He and the Constable walked out to the road
and the firetruck and got on the half-face and walked back in. The Constable asked, “How many motorcycles do
you think was in here?”
“More than enough. No way to tell
now that our car tires and the fire truck and hazmat truck came in. But more than enough to set that fire and
kill that man.”
They walked back in, sure that whatever had been here was gone. They
approached and entered the shack again and the Deputy told the Constable not to
touch anything. The red-ass returned,
“Man, I know that much.”
“Good. You got a note pad in any
of those pockets or a recorder?”
“I got my phone.”
“You want that taken as evidence?”
“Yeah. It’s getting old. I need a
new one. Need an excuse.”
“Fine by me.”
The Constable pulled out the phone, put it on voice record and handed it
to the Deputy who noted the position of the body stretched out on the table
with the top of his coveralls pulled off the arms and chest, hanging around his
waist. The rope ligatures tying the
wrists and ankles to the table, very tight.
Tight enough that the man was either unconscious when he was tied or
wasn’t fighting at all. He either got on
the table by himself or there were at least two decent sized men to haul him up
there and get him set. That was the
normal part, or at least relatively normal part. The not normal part was that he had about
four superficial puncture wounds, not far enough into the body to pierce the
facia below the muscle and get to the organs.
There were thin slices all over his chest and one eye was hanging out of
the socket with some cuts to the edge of the socket. He made a note for the medical examiner to
check for wounds to the orbital bones of the eye socket, if there had been a
fight getting it out. They expected much
more of a mess around the eye but there was very little. There were cuts around the socket but they
didn’t look deep or jagged. Someone
could have taken it out with a thumb pressed deep.
He was bleeding out the mouth. The
Deputy stopped the voice recorder and looked for the flashlight app on the
phone and found it. He found the video recorder and turned both on and looked
into the guy’s mouth as best he could without disturbing the head and saw what
appeared to be a shattered roof. He
said, “Ten bucks there’s a small caliber bullet somewhere in that gray matter. Look here, there’s a little blood around the
ears but if he was shot through the mouth here, I don’t know how they got the
gun at the angle to do it. If it was
normal, they would have shot him in the back of the head or forehead. If they put the gun in his mouth to spook him
and it went off, it would have likely gone out his neck, not up, unless they
had his head jacked back. This is fucked up.”
Then the High Sheriff came in and asked for a report. They gave it.
He pursed his lips and looked around, said, “This ain’t right.”
They nodded. They milled around,
not touching anything or dictating anything anymore. The CID boys got there, in their half-face
masks and started taking pictures. Then they started dusting surfaces for
prints: the wrists of the deceased, his head, the table. They found smudges, but not prints. Whoever did this either had gloves on or had
wiped the place clean. There didn’t
appear to be large scale wipe-marks though.
So the theory was gloves. The
Sheriff asked the Deputy if he had been able to make out any tell-tale boot
prints. The Deputy said it looked like a
fuckin square-dance had broke out in the dirt part of the yard. Consistent with
all the motorcycle tracks in the road.
There were about four sets of prints in the room, on the floor when they
got there. They’d taken pictures. Some smooth, some with motorcycle boot
treads. The Deputy explained the
cleanliness of the cooker shed, not as neat in the shack, but then it could
have been professional work in the shed and kicking back in here. One of the CID’s did a walk through the shack
with the Constable, noting not much out of place. No one had turned the place over looking for
drugs to steal. They took it all in.
An hour later and the Constable had gone, his phone in the Deputy’s
possession, saying he could come into the Sheriff’s office the next day when
they’d cleared the pictures, video and audio files off the phone. The Constable said, “I thought you were gonna
keep it so I could get a new one.”
“You get a new one anytime you please.
I was fucking with you. You really
want a new one?”
“Yeah.”
“Get the new one and come in and transfer the files you want and we’ll
bag it up.”
“Cool.”
“On your expenses, not mine.”
The High Sheriff walked out to his cruiser and made a call to
Helena. He called the personal cell
phone of the Hawk, the bad and badass lieutenant in the furthest east town next
to the bridge over to Mississippi. Hawk
recognized the number and said, “What you got going on in the rice fields?”
“Got a meth lab out in the woods near the White River, cooker strung up
and shot through the mouth at the wrong angle, with one of his
eyes popped out of his head and a shitload of motorcycle tire tracks on the
dirt road.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. My guess is that some of
the boys you’re acquainted with had something to do with this. That lab was first class. Lot of product.”
“And in your jurisdiction, under your nose.”
“I don’t like messes in my yard.”
“I don’t get along with bikers. Those boys tend to be racist.”
“Spose you make a call about this fuckin mess.”
“As a favor to you and as professional courtesy, I’m happy to help with
your investigation.”
“Professional courtesy, my ass.”
A call to a cop in Cairo, Illinois. A call from him to a biker who either
knew or could find out. The Cairo cop
asked, “You know anything about a sophisticated meth lab out by the White River
in east-central Arkansas, cooker dead and laid out on the kitchen table?”
Red thought a minute. Thought a
long damn minute. Said, “I know a lab out there. And I know that the last time I visited the
cook was alive and somewhat pissed about being told he was gonna deal with
another transporter. I assured him it
was safe. That the prior holder of the
contract wasn’t gonna give him any trouble.
He was certain it was gonna cause trouble.”
“It did.”
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