This is part three of The Ties that Bind, a Deep South mystery. If you’re here by mistake, you can find the rest of the parts here.
Recap part two: Lee talks to the sheriff about the case and begins his investigation.
In part three: Lee wakes from unconsciousness in a familiar place with a familar person.
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Photo by Stephen Hocking on Unsplash
Me and the Devil, was walkin’ side by side. Me and the Devil, ohh was walkin’ side by side
-Robert Johnson
Lee slowly regained consciousness. He was seated upright in a large leather chair, unbound. His vision sharpened from the center out and the room came into focus. It looked like a hunting lodge. There were mounted mallard and pintail drakes in various stages of flight. A european style elk rack, the bleach white of the skull standing in sharp contrast to the dark green walls. The entire back wall of the room was a bookcase filled to bursting. Directly in front of him was a large black walnut desk with a thick lacquer. There was a small laptop computer with mouse and keyboard, a desk lamp, a copy of The Prince by Machiavelli, and a black marble ashtray with a still-lit Cohiba trailing a thin stream of smoke up to the painted ceiling.
Lee couldn’t quite turn his head to look yet, but he knew there would be two men flanking the door, each with a holstered pistol. He knew that because he knew this room. The chairs, the desk, the dead animals, the smell of cigar, and - while it might have been his imagination - the faintly copper scent of blood. He knew this room as he knew the man sitting across from him. The man with glossy black hair, black eyes, black ears, black teeth, and black hands, who was clothed in a black suit, dark as pitch. The man known by his subordinates as Boss Black and to his peers as Ulysses Blackwell, and to Lee as father.
“Welcome home, son.”
Lee let the comment hang there with the cigar smoke, loath to acknowledge the truth in the statement. Why was he here? How did he get here? His father’s estate was in Kentucky horse country, several hours from where he’d been taken. His confusion must have flashed across his face because his father continued.
“Shall I prepare the fattened calf? Shall I drape a robe across your shoulders and parade you across the grounds so that all who are here may see and rejoice that what was once lost has now been found?” He grinned without an ounce of mirth, the smile as far from the corners of his eyes as the Pacific from the Atlantic.
Lee set his face like a stone and did not respond. He’d forgotten his father’s voice. The lilted Alabama accent was syncopated, with particular words emphasized with a clipped tone, others being drawled out like molasses. His father fancied his oratory like a solicitor from the Old South. He knew the power of words. He could build worlds and he could raze a man’s soul back to dust..
“Why am I here?” Lee asked, biting off the end of each syllable.
“A valid question you raise. It would appear that you are my guest, though I hope you’ll excuse the lack of hospitality surrounding your delivery.”
Lee grimaced. So many damn words to say not a thing. It was a tactic his father used to keep people off-balance. He could spin you in circles and push you down a flight of stairs before you realized you’d somehow agreed to it.
“Now you have put me in an interesting quandary. You are my beloved son who might yet still be brought back into the fold and therefore, back into my good graces. Yet you defied me in a way that if any other man had done, he and everyone he loved would be exterminated like insects. So, tell me, son. What is a man like me to do when he must maintain the respect of his subordinates, while also lending ear to the quiet whispers of his own heart?”
“That question assumes two incorrect things: that you are a man and that you have a heart.”
His father’s eyes cracked like a pistol shot. One of the men struck Lee over the back of his head and he nearly lost consciousness again.
“Then let me be more direct, boy. Tell me why I shouldn’t bury you in the backyard next to your mother.” His voice was sharp as obsidian.
“I don’t even know how or why I’m here,” Lee shot back, desperately trying to regain his footing in the conversation.
His father smiled his humorless smile again, the mask returning to his face. “My dear son, you are here because of my two newest employees. They were busy attempting to collect payment from one of my more lucrative subsidiaries, when you came bumbling in. They obviously did not know who you were at the time, but took proper precautions and rendered you unconscious. As they sifted through your personal effects, they found the deputy’s badge in your back pocket. Needless to say they were fraught with concern that they had just assaulted an officer of the law. They did as I instructed all of my men to do when this particular situation occurs, and brought you to me. It was not until you were upon the threshold of the estate that you were recognized.”
Lee closed his eyes trying to track the progression of events. Before he could respond, his father spoke again.
“I am curious as to why you were in that woman’s domicile. And with a deputy’s badge no less.”
“I help the sheriff from time to time on missing persons cases. The little girl who lived there has gone missing.”
“Helping the law. My very own flesh and blood turned Benedict. Your ancestors are rolling over in their graves.” He spat the words out.
“You didn’t have anything to do with this did you?”
“What need would I possibly possess to kidnap a small child? I barely tolerated you when you were young. No, as I stated previously, I was looking to collect from the girl’s mother.”
Lee never really could tell when his father was lying. He lied so often that even his truths were tinged with the shadow of mendacity. He could tell you the sun had risen and you’d feel the need to check. Lee was conditioned to disbelieve anything his father said, but his father had never dealt in kids before. It wasn’t a moral code but more a matter of pragmatism. Boss Black believed kids made everything more complicated. He said the conscience has a tendency to rear its head in the most inconvenient way when children are involved.
It was a kid that had ultimately driven Lee from this house and his father.
“Look, I’m not trying to come back, and I’m not trying to get involved in whatever it is that you’re doing, so please just let me go home. I leave you alone, you leave me alone.”
“Ah yes. You wish to return to that ramshackle cabin in northern Alabama do you?” Lee blanched. “Oh I seem to have dissolved a particular illusion of yours haven’t I? It would appear that for a son who has disowned his father and his family, you still suckle at the teat of my good graces. Nothing happens in my business that I don’t know about, I am omniscient in that regard. It would behoove you to remember that.”
Lee was still trying to process how his father knew about where he was living when Boss Black signaled to his men. Lee had a moment to register the gesture before he was knocked unconscious and dragged out of the room.
He woke up on the front porch of the trailer, back in the clearing. If not for the raging headache, he might have been convinced it was all a dream. The sun had started to sink down below the tops of the trees, threatening dusk. He stood slowly, collected his feet, and walked to the little game trail he’d spied previously. He pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight, determined now to follow the trail.
What he saw a few paces in confused him. The tracks vanished. They didn’t deviate from the path or double back. They simply and abruptly stopped. He knew what he should do. But he felt especially loath to use the Gift after meeting with his father. The Gift was a constant reminder of everything that man was and everything that he couldn’t escape. Yet he was stuck, and the Gift showed Truth. He activated it. He could feel his awareness expand and the familiar – and not entirely unwelcome – warmth behind his eyes. There was a particular rightness he felt when he used the Gift. Things snapped into place and he resonated with the hum of the world around him.
As he walked back to the clearing, he halted. His breath caught in his throat. The trailer glowed. It wasn’t the source of light, but rather the after image of something brighter. Like if the moon had steeped in sunlight long enough that it became perpetually charged with the radiant cosmic energy.
He’d never seen anything like it.
“What the hell?” he asked himself. He’d heard of Rifts before. Places like Stonehenge and Machu Picchu where the ancient magic was much closer to the surface. Those places produced weird phenomena. But this clearing wasn’t ancient or out of the ordinary.
“Maybe it’s an ancient Indian burial ground,” he half-jokingly thought. He began to walk toward the house and turned one last time to the game trail. In his stupor about the house, he almost missed it. The tiny iridescent slit in reality right on the edge of the trail.
Hidey-hole.
Hidey-holes were tiny clefts of frozen time. Like closet doors that allowed someone who possessed the Gift to access the magical realm that existed behind this reality. There weren’t uncommon, especially in places where nature hadn’t been replaced with concrete. Places like Appalachia. Hidey-holes were how his family had been so successful during Prohibition. Even Al Capone’s speakeasies couldn’t compete with a magical storage locker that only a select few bloodlines had the keys to open or even see.
Lee slipped his fingers into the gap and extended his Will, slowly pulling the gap wide enough for him to stick his head in. He half expected to see the girl. But it was empty. He pulled back and withdrew his Will, allowing the hidey-hole entrance to snap shut. He turned to the trailer, but made a detour to the Land Cruiser to grab the pistol.
Fool me once.
He walked up the stairs to the porch with the pistol drawn. He opened the front door and strode purposefully inside, clearing the main room with a practiced sweep. He methodically made his way through every bedroom and closet, ensuring he had no unwanted guests. Once he felt confident he was alone, he holstered the pistol and walked into the living room.
Lee began a thorough search of the premise by doing the inverse of what he did outside. He began at the coffee table and slowly worked his way out, looking for anything that might be out of the ordinary. He could tell that his father’s men had been searching the place. He didn’t fully believe that his dad had nothing to do with the girl’s disappearance, and there was a definite connection between the girl’s mother and his father. Perhaps he could leverage that connection to find the girl.
The living room and kitchen had no secrets to share so Lee went to the mother’s bedroom. It had been tossed. Lee knew that his father’s men would have been thorough, but he had a small sliver of an idea. If Dove’s mother knew someone would eventually come to collect, she might have a better hiding place than under the mattress. He scanned the room with the Gift still active and noticed that the nightstand was much darker than it should have been. Like a shadow from the ether was draped over it. The Gift shows truth and truth is light. Secrets only exist in the dark. He pulled open the drawer and carefully ran his fingers along the inside corners. At the back edge he found a tiny lip. It was a secret compartment. Lee pulled the false bottom out of the drawer and emptied its contents onto the bed.
Five thousand dollars cash, wrapped in a rubber band. A small ziploc bag with what looked like fentanyl pills. And a business card for a laundromat the next town over. On the back of it was a name – Rico. Lee smiled for the first time that day.
He had a clue.