A Killing at the Creek: An Ozarks Mystery

THE BATTERED METAL door of the solitary confinement cell at the McCown County jail swung open with a squeal. The head jailer, Vernon Wantuck, loomed in the doorway, his girth filling the frame.

“How you doing, boy?” he asked.

At the sound of the booming voice, Tanner winced and shrugged in reply. He slipped the ballpoint pen he held into the pocket of his orange jailhouse scrubs.

“Look at you, working on your jailhouse tats like a big man. You’re a big shot now, aren’t you, you little fucker?”

Tanner looked at the jailer with hooded eyes. “Am I going to court today? I thought it was tomorrow.”

“Nah, you’re moving. Come along with me.”

A look of fear shot across Tanner’s face before he could hide it. “I can’t be in the population. It’s dangerous, the judge said so. They’ll attack me. The judge said it. In court.”

The jailer shifted to his side, feeling for the handcuffs dangling from his rear pocket. One of his suspenders had come loose in the back, making his Sansabelt pants droop and exposing the elastic band of his underwear. “Let’s cuff you up for your stroll to see your new friends.” When Tanner didn’t move from the bunk, the jailer’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Now! Move, you little fuck.”

Slowly, Tanner slid off the bed. When he reached the jailer, Wantuck stopped him with a beefy hand. “First thing, you’re gonna give me that pen.”

Tanner pulled it from his pocket with a jerk. As he set it in the jailer’s hand, he said, “The lawyer says I’m supposed to help with my defense. I got to be able to write.”

Wantuck grabbed Tanner’s hand and looked at the ink marks. “You been doing some writing. Just like the big boys. What’s that say?”

When Tanner didn’t answer, Wantuck released his hand with a snort. “Tell your lawyer to get you another pen. Bet they got a whole box of them in his office on the square.”

“He ain’t got shit,” Tanner said under his breath, so softly that Wantuck didn’t hear.

The walk from solitary to the general population cells was short. Wantuck and Tanner Monroe turned a corner and the catcalls began, whistles and jeers sounding around them as the jailer led the juvenile to his new quarters.

The facility had not been updated in decades, because the McCown County voters responded to tax increases with a resounding “No.” All inmates were grouped into the overflowing cells in twos or threes, exposed to full view of one another through the metal bars. Only Tanner would have a cell to himself.

The boy’s demeanor remained stoic, but telltale beads of sweat formed on his upper lip. He reached out with his cuffed hands and tugged at the jailer’s sleeve. In a low voice, he said, “The judge is going to be pissed. I want to talk to the judge.”

Wantuck wheeled on him with a confused look. “Judge? What judge?”

Tanner almost collided with the man’s belly; he backed up a step. “The juvenile judge.”

“The juvenile judge?” In the voice of a whiny child, he repeated, “The juvenile judge?” Then the jailer threw his head back and laughed with such delight, his belly shook like Santa Claus.

Wiping moisture from his eye, Wantuck said, “You ain’t no juvenile, son. Not no more. You’re an adult.” Turning to the men locked into the metal cells, Vernon said, “Ain’t that right, boys?”

The inmates roared their approval. The cinder-­block walls rang with the rebel yell.

Chuckling, Wantuck pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and shuffled up to an empty cell. A prisoner leaned his skeletal face, pocked with scabs, through the bars of the adjoining enclosure. “He’s no juvenile, Vernon. He’s a big man.”

With speed that belied his girth. Wantuck slammed the heel of his hand into the inmate’s nose, sending him back into the cell.

“Get your fucking head back inside your cage, you no-­account freak show.”

The inmate nodded, bobbing his bloody nose up and down. “Yes, sir.”

“I am Mr. Wantuck to you, you piece of shit. Now what’s my name?” he asked, punctuating each word with a bang of his fist on the metal bars of the cell.

“Mr. Wantuck,” the inmate said, wiping the blood from his nose onto his sleeve. “It’s Mr. Wantuck.”

“You goddamned right.”

Wantuck unlocked an empty cell and sent Tanner inside with a shove at his back. After Wantuck slammed the door shut, Tanner sat gingerly on the edge of a metal bunk. He picked at peeling black paint on the bed frame with a nervous hand.

The overhead light cast a garish glow on the scab-­encrusted face of the man with the bloody nose. He grasped the bars with mottled hands bearing blood blisters at the fingertips. His fingers bore tattoos, also uneven marks depicting spiderwebs.

The man’s eyes followed Wantuck as the jailer strode away with a heavy gait. When Wantuck disappeared, the inmate turned to Tanner with a smile.

“They won’t let you smoke in here.”

Tanner inclined his head in acknowledgment.

“Not even in the exercise yard, man. Don’t let you smoke for nothing. Fucking douche bags want to stomp out smoking. Like they stomp out crime.”

Tanner nodded, moving his head a fraction.

“They let you go to church, though. Send a preacher in every week to save us on Sunday. We don’t have to go. But I do.”

The inmate pressed his face against the bars of the cell. The metal pressed into his cheek. He said, in a hushed voice, “I go. To get away from the rats.”

At the mention of rats, Tanner’s eye twitched. He looked around the cell and spoke to the inmate for the first time. “I don’t see no rats.”

“Oh, there’s rats in here, big as a groundhog. You can hear them scuffling at night. Rustling around.”

The boy leaned back on his bunk and didn’t speak.

The other inmate opened his mouth in a wide smile, revealing bloody gums and decayed teeth. “And spiders. Shit, them spiders climb out of the toilet and into your ass.”

“If you say so, man.”

“They lay them eggs. Lay them spider eggs right in your insides. They’ll do it.”

Tanner narrowed his eyes, appraising the scabbed man. Slowly, he nodded in agreement. At the acknowledgment, the inmate giggled and said, “Then you got a mess. You’ll be all fucked up, shitting spiderwebs out your ass. That’s bad, man.”

Softly, the juvenile said, “I hear you, man.” After a beat, his mouth twitched with a smile. He said. “You’re like Spider-­Man.”

An inmate with a lank mullet ponytail occupied the cell with Spider-­Man; the man groaned and said, “Shut up, you crazy fuck.” He pulled a rubber flip-­flop off his foot and threw it at his cellmate. The shoe bounced off Spider-­Man’s head.

“Sorry, dude. Can’t help it, man,” Spider-­Man said in a whispered entreaty to his cellmate. “It’s them spiderwebs.”

“Talk about rats or spiders one more time and I’m gonna ream your ass.” The ponytailed inmate sat up on his bunk to address Tanner. “Wonder how come Wantuck didn’t double you up in here. Not like he gives a shit whether you’s a bitch or you ain’t.”

Tanner gave the man a rocky stare.

“Who’s your lawyer?”

Tanner shrugged.

“Don’t you know? You so dumb you don’t know your lawyer’s name? You got the public defender?”

“I got some old man,” Tanner said.

“Ain’t no such thing as an old public defender. We all got the public defender in here, and they don’t hardly look old enough to get they dick hard,” the inmate said. “My name’s Darren. You that Monroe kid, right?”

He nodded.

Darren leaned back in his cot, sucking his teeth as he contemplated. “Wantuck’s doing you a favor, shutting you up by yourself. Only time I saw Wantuck give a fuck about an inmate’s security was one time when a guy had hired old man Yocum. Is that who you got? Yocum?”

“Dunno,” Tanner said with disinterest. “He’s an old fuck. Smells like Ben-­Gay.”

“I don’t care if he smells like a shit sandwich—­I’d get Yocum if I had the green. Ain’t got it. But Yocum’s the ticket.”

Pulling down his scrubs, Spider-­Man crouched on the stained toilet in the cell he shared with Darren. He commenced scratching wildly at his backside, making high-­pitched noises. “Spiders, spiders hatching. Them eggs is hatching.”

In a low voice, Tanner asked Darren, “Is the spider guy crazy?”

“Crazy motherfucker. Just waiting for his court date. Even the goddamned prosecutor’s shrink says he’s batshit crazy. They’re letting him go NGI.”

“So he walks? Because the doctor says he’s insane?”

“Nah. He’ll go to the state mental hospital in St. Joe.”

“Is that better? Than prison?”

The man shook his head. “Dunno, kid. Ain’t never been. Psycho time may be easier. Just about have to be. But it ain’t gonna be no shorter. Callaway don’t let a crazy walk out of the hospital till he’s been there awhile.”

Tanner stretched out on his cot and surveyed Spider-­Man in the next cell. The inmate stopped scratching his butt and gave the juvenile a smile, revealing again the bloody gums and blackened teeth.

“Are you my friend,” asked Spider-­Man with a childlike longing in his voice.

“Yeah, man,” Tanner answered. “You bet.”