The Road to Hell Ch. 01

ALL CHARACTERS ARE ADULTS.

Hank Johnson waited till eleven o'clock, went outside into the night and pissed against the side of the old house, then opened a can of Spam, and sat on the brick steps eating it with his knife. He loved Spam almost as much as pussy.

Hank looked a lot like Harrison Ford at the same age, 65. Six feet tall, two hundred pounds, blue eyes. Mostly he looked fit and able. Mostly he wore Chippewa engineer boots, a black leather belt, gray JC Penny Big Mac work clothes, and a straw cowboy hat.

Full of his second favorite meat, at eleven-thirty he flipped open the case of his cell phone, called the state child abuse report hotline, and made a report that required an immediate response by the local sheriff.

Hank told the abuse-line operator that the children's drug-crazed father murdered their mother and fled with them to the trailer in the woods, and planned to flee to Mexico as soon as he could collect his pay from the boss.

Hank made the report anonymously, as the law allowed, but lied when he said he was a neighbor and co-worker of the father; he figured someone might get the idea to triangulate the cell phone's location, and he wanted things to look right to any snooper.

The sheriff got an 'IMMEDIATE RESPONSE' report from the abuse hotline and dispatched a road deputy, back-up, and a child abuse investigator to the scene. All of them cursed their rotten luck for getting a report so late as they were counting minutes till their shift ended at midnight.

The child abuse investigator spent thirty minutes collecting information from the state computers, and printing out a map to the report location forty miles from her office. Then she called sheriff dispatch with a request that the road deputies rendezvous with her at the Fort Lonesome Quickie Mart, ETA one hour.

That done, Hank walked up the trail to the county road, found his ambush hide, and waited for the players to arrive.

The deputies were parked together, bull shitting, when Angie Morton arrived at the Quickie Mart. Fort Lonesome was back of beyond, forty miles from town, where two state roads crossed. The area was mostly ranches, tomato farms, groves, and phosphate mines. Cell phone service was unreliable at best.

Angie got out of her Chevy Malibu and walked over to the deputies. "What we got?" The lead deputy asked her.

"Domestic violence, murder, drug use, kidnapping," she replied.

"Where we going?" He asked.

"Uh, 13269 State Highway 397," she replied.

Morton was a widowed single mom with two kids. Her old man was killed in Afghanistan when she was pregnant with the youngest child.

The deputy pulled up the map screen on his car's terminal and studied it. "There's nuthin there but woods, maybe a shack or two that fell down thirty years ago when it was groves. You sure you got the right place?" He wondered.

"That's what it says," Morton replied.

"Can you contact the caller? I smell a prank," he suggested.

"Sure, I'll call now," Morton said. She opened her cell phone and dialed the reporter.

"Hello?" Hank answered.

"Are you the person who called in the child abuse report for the Diaz kids?" Morton asked.

"Uh huh," he replied.

"Are you sure the kids are at the Hiway 397 address?" Morton asked.

"Yes, they're in the trailer beside mine," Hank replied.

"How do you know the family?" Morton asked.

"I work with the father, and he told me. He said he's headed back to Mexico as soon as possible," Hank said.

"The sheriff says there's nothing where you are," Morton said.

"It's woods. The trailers are temporary, the man we work for set them up so we got some place to stay while we work, but they ain't legal," Hank said.

"Do you have water and power?" Morton asked.

"Sure do. The owner hooked us up to his pump house, we get the water from there and the electricity too, the crap just goes in the ground where he buried a steel drum and connected a hose to it," Hank replied.

"How do you know the mother is dead?" Morton asked.

"The kids told me, Miguel don't know that I know," Hank replied.

"You won't tell me who you are?" Morton asked.

"Shit no, lady, if Miguel finds out and gets outta jail he'll kill my ass, too," Hank said.

"The deputies want to know if Mister Diaz has any guns?" Morton asked.

"Miguel always got a gun on him," Hank replied.

"Anything else you can tell me?" She asked.

"Naw, just hurry up and get here!" Hank whined.

"OK, thank you so much for the information," Morton said.

"You comin out here aintcha? You ain't gonna blow it off like you usually do? " Hank asked.

"No sir! We'll be there soon as possible, but we have three hours to respond, so we'll be there pretty quick," Morton replied.

"OK! But if you don't I'm calling the tv news," Hank said.

"Don't worry, sir, we're close by," she assured him.

"OK. Bye," he said and hung up.

The lead deputy scratched his head. "I dunno. I smell a fat rat. I think it won't hurt to drive over there and look around, to see what we got before we step in crap."

The trailer's address was on a board nailed to a tree. It looked new. Hank made it and brought it along to help the deputies. The deputies and investigator slowed, then turned onto the dirt trail. The lead deputy illuminated the address with his spotlight then aimed the light up the trail where he saw a car tag reflection. "Someone's out here by golly," he thought and alerted dispatch. "Dispatch this is Adam 12 and Bravo 9, we're 10-7."

The deputies drove up the trail ahead of Morton, the investigator. Hank waited for the deputies to pass, and shot at her first, to block the trail and lure them back. He took his time to shoot out her windows, one at a time, and shoot her legs when she opened the door to make a run for it.

The deputies braked and tried to get in position to assist Morton. One deputy tried to pull between Morton and Hank, Hank shot out his windows, then shot him as he tried to release his harness and get out of the car. The other deputy met the same fate.

Hank waited, and when things were quiet he left his hide to inspect each victim, shooting each one in the head with a twenty-two caliber pistol, to make sure. Morton was alive and trying to crawl away. Hank shot her first, in the head, then finished the others. That done, he left and walked to where his old Willys was hidden, cranked it up, and drove off. He rarely thought about the dead he left behind but wondered if one of the dead didn't step on somebody's dick. "Prolly the zone deputy," he concluded.

An hour later he parked the old Willys close to a dam across a man-made lake that spilled into the bay. Snook schooled in the shallow brackish water on the bay side of the dam. Hank opened the tailgate of the Willys and pulled out a cast-net to catch the Snook with. He caught a dozen and headed for home. He thought nothing of the fish, either.

Hank Johnson pulled off the highway and parked his old Willys-Jeep Panel Delivery beside his old 30 foot Airstream Sovereign at the lot he owned on the main drag through Sylvan Abbey, the bucolic county seat of Palmetto County.

Hank restored and modernized the trailer and Willys, both of which he got from old his daddy, Nelson, in 1971, after Hank left the Air Force to come home to earn a civil engineering degree at the local college.

The Fort Lonesome killings didn't get Hank's cherry. His first kill was a gook in Vietnam. Charlie was sneaking along a trail that went straight to the 315th Air Commando Wing encampment at Phan Rang Air Base. An attack was expected, and Hank was concealed inside a drainage culvert that afforded him a clear field of fire along the trail. Trouble was expected to come Hank's way. And when Mister Charles got close enough Hank shot him in the chest.

Killing the man didn't bother Hank, but the man's dying impressed him greatly. Death couldn't have taken more than an instant but seemed longer. The man's face registered surprise first, then intense rage that became equally intense fear followed by sadness, then nothing. That was in 1969.

About dawn Hank was at home, outside cleaning Snook when Rose came out holding a cup of steaming coffee. "What time did you get home?" She asked.

Hank kept cleaning the fish." What time is it?" He asked.

She looked at her watch. "Seven," she said.

"I got home about five," he replied.

"Looks like you did pretty good," she said.

"I got lucky," he winked at her. Luck had nothing to do with it, he used a cast-net to scoop up a dozen or so of the fish. He told her he was going fishing, and he never lied to her.

"Where do you plan to store all that fish?" She asked.

"How's about we go look at small freezers?" He replied.

"Silly man! Just where do you plan to put a freezer?" She looked at him like he was daft.

"I was thinking of next door," he replied.

"In the hotel?" She asked.

"In the hotel," he replied. "You're late for work aren't you?"

"It's Saturday," she replied.

"Don't run off, when I'm done I'll take you out to breakfast," he said.

Rose Miller was fifty-six, five-six tall, one hundred twenty-five pounds, strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes, size 6 pants with a small chest. Hank liked her small tits with their large, long nipples. She wore short skirts to show off her legs. She was blind without her glasses, and widowed.

She and Hank met after her old man died. The husband left her destitute, and she and Harriet were on the street when Hank put them up at his old hotel for free, and got Harriet a job with the sheriff. Harriet repaid his kindness with pussy. Later Rose did the same when it looked no other contestants were lined up to open their purses or pants to her.

Rose had her own place that Hank bought her but spent much of her time, and most nights, with Hank. Harriet lived with Rose when she wasn't shacked up with a local outlaw or ex-con fresh outta prison. The woman was a bum magnet; if Harriet liked a guy it was almost guaranteed he had done time or jail was in his future. Rose felt safer with Hank than with her cop daughter and Harriet's seedy friends.

After Hank finished the fish and cleaned the mess up, he came inside to shower and dress. Rose came in the bathroom Hank had made from the area at the ass-end of the Airstream, to shelve linen, and he saw her looking at his cock. "Don't go too far and you can have some of this in a few minutes," he said with a straight face.

For sixty-five he looked fit and healthy, and he didn't need Viagra so far. He liked to swim and lift weights, but mostly he liked strenuous physical labor. He couldn't fuck all night like when he was twenty, but he was good long enough to satisfy Rose, and recovered quickly. He called them 'double-headers.' "Eat plenty of eggs in the morning before the big game!" He said.

"I need a bath," she said.

"I like you when you're nasty," he winked.

"That I am," she assured him.

When they returned from breakfast the mailbox was filled with crap and a magazine. Hank unlocked the trailer door, took the magazine and junk mail inside, and tossed it onto the dining table while he pulled a bottle of San Miguel beer out of the refrigerator. A friend brought Hank cases of the beer from New York.

Rose picked through the mail looking for sale flyers. Hank picked up the magazine, parked his beer on an end table, stretched out on the sofa, and scanned the magazine for its content. Then he got a text on his cell phone.

The message was a nine digit number. "I'll deal with it later," he thought, took a sip of beer, and returned to the magazine.

Rose put her purse and shopping bags atop the dining table, then went over to Hank, leaned down, and offered her mouth and lips for a kiss. He pulled her down atop him, cupped her ass with his hands, and kissed her as she straddled him. "Didn't you get your fill before we left?" She asked.

"I never get enough of you," he said.

He unbuttoned her sweater and pulled it apart as Rose pulled it off her arms. Then he gently squeezed both tits. "Pull your panties off," he whispered.

"I'm not wearing any," she said as she unfastened his belt buckle.

Monday morning, Hank went to Woodrow Wilson High School and the locker listed on the cell phone. The other six digit number was the combination to open the lock. Hank was one of the school's prominent benefactors, and he dropped by the campus a lot. No one questioned his presence on campus.

Hank opened the lock, then opened the locker door. Inside was a manila mailer envelope. He opened the mailer in the back of the old Willys, pretending to look for something. There was a pack of used twenties, one hundred of them, and a sheet of instructions. The money, one thousand dollars, was the other half of the contract price for shooting the cops, plus a thousand for the new job; he'd get the other thousand when the new work was done. That's how it worked.

One name was listed on the instruction sheet. Hank wondered about it. "Don't matter," he thought. He followed the instructions and blasted whoever showed up for the fun. But Hank and Harvey Darling had things in common, especially fishing.

The instructions gave Hank all the essential facts and suggestions for finding Harvey. Harvey was an inspector for the town's building department. Hank knew him well since childhood. Harvey was like the patron saint of the anally retentive. Harvey almost hallucinated problems where none existed. And every time he red-flagged a construction job the red flag fucked things up all over hell, cuz a building code violation, however small and inconsequential, stopped work everywhere for the affected contractor. Most inspectors had the decency to warn you, and pull out the red stickers if the problem wasn't corrected by the next visit. But not Harvey.

To be honest, Hank liked catching fish more than drowning worms, while Harvey liked drowning worms and smoking pot. Harvey did both most Saturday nights at the municipal dam.

The sky was partly cloudy with a full moon when Hank caught up with Harvey. Hank parked the Willys close to the dam, and saw Harvey standing above the spillway. Another guy was there, too. Hank cast his unbaited line into the water.

The wind was right for smelling the pot, and the joint made a bright glow for Hank to aim at when Harvey inhaled. Hank was patient and waited.

After a while the other guy left. When he was gone Harvey fell into the water after Hank shot him with the twenty-two and a silencer. Harvey made a noisy splash, then slowly floated away into the bay.

The next morning Rose found Hank outside cleaning fish, Snapper. "You going to mass with me?" She asked.

Hank looked up at her and slid his stinky hand to the top of her leg. "I had something else in mind," he said, tracing her groove with his finger. "You're about as close to Heaven as I'm ever gonna get."

"You pull this every Sunday," she reminded him.

"I pull it every day," he reminded her. She felt moist.

A text on Monday came with the usual nine numbers. Hank drove over to the school. The packet in the locker contained two thousand dollars in old, dirty currency, and an instruction sheet. Two names on the sheet. A male named Leroy, and a female name Margo.