Cooch Read online

  “Is the Cuchulain family bad?”

  The sheriff leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling, then sighed. “They ain’t good. His old lady is a greaser who teaches at the local community college, Spanish probably, and his old man is a cripple. He’s from down the road a piece—used to be hell on wheels in a fight before he joined the marines and got shot up in ‘Nam. Got a bunch of medals over there, but the asshole won’t even join in on the Fourth of July parade, he’s so stuck-up. He was in this jail a couple of times, before my day.”

  Francis nodded, grimacing. “A bad war. You spend any time over there, Sheriff?”

  Huntley looked away from Francis and said, “Naw. I got my knee tore up playing football, and was 4F. I tried to join the marines, but they wouldn’t take me. It was a big disappointment to me, I’ll tell ya, Inspector.”

  “Okay,” Francis said. “Let’s have a look at Cuchulain.”

  Huntley picked up the phone and gave instructions. A few minutes later the door opened, and a large deputy pushed Alex Cuchulain into the room. His hands were cuffed behind his back.

  “Take off the cuffs,” Francis instructed and the deputy complied, after a nod from the sheriff.

  To Cuchulain, Francis said, “Take off your shirt.” Alex pulled his T-shirt over his head. There were some small bruises beneath his rib cage.

  “Turn around.” Cuchulain turned, and some vague, almost smudged bruises showed just above his hips, low down on the right and left side on his back. Francis looked at the sheriff, and raised one eyebrow questioningly.

  The sheriff looked a little embarrassed. “Them boys he attacked were right popular, Inspector, and one of them almost lost an eye. My deputies got a little carried away with him. He ain’t hurt bad, though, and nothing shows. I stopped it soon’s I found out it was going on.”

  “Hold out your hands, Cuchulain,” Francis said.

  Cuchulain held out his hands. When the cuffs were removed, they left a thin but conspicuous line of scabs oozing pus around his wrists.

  Francis looked at Huntley again and said, “Brave deputies.” The deputy standing by the door flushed, and looked down.

  “Young man, my name is Robert Francis. I am with the FBI, and I must ask you a few questions. It is in your interest to answer truthfully and to the best of your ability. I know you have been beaten, threatened, and that you are afraid. On the other hand, you have nothing to lose by answering my questions and may even help yourself. First, what made you think your sister was in danger and caused you to attack the two young men?”

  Alex looked at Francis coldly and a little scornfully. “Sir, one of them had my sister on her knees in the dirt with her arm bent up behind her back, and the other one was trying to force his dick into her mouth. She was fighting and crying. Somehow I thought she might be in trouble.”

  Francis looked at him calmly. “What was the date of the second young man doing while this went on?”

  “There wasn’t any other date. Harris picked my sister up at our house, all dressed up in a suit and driving his daddy’s Cadillac. They drove off to the high school for the big dance, and I followed on my bike, because I didn’t think he was going to take her there, him being a big shot in the school and all. When he got near the high school, he stopped at the corner; his buddy Billy Ray Sutter ran over, jumped into the car, and they took off. They went up to where the kids go to park and make out, but everyone else was at home getting ready for the dance. Besides, it was still light. By the time I got up there on my bike, they were at it. I just jumped off my bike and went after them.”

  “What made you follow them? Do you always follow your sister when she goes out on a date?”

  “Junior Harris has a reputation. He’s always bragging about doing it to girls who tried to change their mind at the last minute. I just decided to make sure they were really going to the dance, and that Harris was really going to be seen with Elena. I didn’t think he would want to be seen with a greaser’s kid.”

  “Did the sheriff inform you of the charges to be filed against you and that you were to be tried as an adult?”

  “The sheriff informed me that they were going to ship me off to the state prison for twenty-five or thirty years, or until I had sucked every black cock and been fucked in the ass by every nigger in the prison system. He told me he was real sorry he didn’t have any niggers in the jail right now, or he would have had one break me in, so it didn’t hurt so much when ten or twelve of them fucked my ass bloody the first night. He told me I would swallow so much nigger cum that my hair would turn kinky.”

  Cuchulain’s voice rose as he spoke. He glared at the sheriff, his breath whistling through his nostrils. Suddenly he stopped, as he realized that he had probably shot his mouth off enough to get another beating. He was already pissing blood.

  The deputy turned red and pulled back his big fist. “You shut your lying mouth, you little cocksucker, or I’ll beat your face in right now.”

  Cuchulain’s face went still as he dropped into a crouch and spun, ready to go after the deputy. “Watch out, asshole,” he snarled. “You’re supposed to put the cuffs back on me before you start pounding on me again.”

  “Stop it, Denton,” the sheriff roared. “You just stand there and keep your insubordinate fucking mouth shut.”

  The deputy settled back, embarrassed and angry. He glanced at Francis, then looked back again. Francis was still leaning back casually in his chair, but his face was pale and his eyes were weird and piercing, like those on a serial killer that the deputy had once interviewed at the state prison. The deputy felt a sudden chill and a strange, unreasonable fear.

  “Why don’t you take him back for now, Deputy? I may want to ask him a few more questions a little later, so keep him handy,” Francis said. The sheriff nodded at the deputy, who snapped the cuffs back onto Cuchulain and shoved him through the door.

  “That was one strange fuckin’ interrogation, Inspector. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a law enforcement officer conduct an interview quite like that. Let me have another look at those credentials, Mr. FBI Inspector. We checked with Washington once when you said you was coming down, but I believe I’d better have a chat with your supervisor and find out just what the fuck is goin’ on.” The sheriff’s face was flushed, and he was leaning forward in his chair with his hand out.

  Francis reached in his pocket and handed his ID wallet to the sheriff. The sheriff spun in his chair, reaching for the phone as he opened the little wallet. He glanced at Francis’s photo and read the name. He stopped suddenly.

  “What the fuck is this? Now it says you’re DEA, and not FBI?” He spun back to face Francis, who was just finishing screwing a professional silencer onto a Beretta 9mm pistol. Francis looked at him calmly, letting the silenced pistol stare directly at the end of Huntley’s nose. He reached into his pocket and flipped the FBI credentials open in front of Huntley, where they lay side by side with the DEA identity. Francis’s picture was on both.

  “You’ll never know quite who or what I am, Huntley. I am what’s known in the trade as a brick, thrown all the way from Washington. I’ve killed men in Europe, Asia, and one in Greenland—or maybe it was two—all for kind and gentle Uncle Sam. With a little work, you could be next. You and the shit-bag politicians that run this town have royally pissed off some powerful people. I can put a bullet right between your piggy little eyes right now, walk out of here, and tomorrow’s paper will say you committed suicide after you found out you were being charged with false imprisonment, forcible sodomy, and whatever else I feel like writing down.”

  Huntley’s forehead was beaded now, veins of sweat beginning to run down his face. He was unable to take his eyes from the unwavering black bore of the Beretta’s silencer. He could see the vents drilled in the fat tube, designed to silence the escaping gasses. It occurred to him that he had never before seen a real factory-made silencer.

  “You’re going to kill me over a fuckin’ kid?” Huntley croaked.


  Francis looked at him coldly and let his finger begin to tighten on the trigger. Huntley saw in his eyes the same cold, merciless ferocity that the deputy had seen, and felt his bladder release, sending urine scalding down his right leg. The acrid odor was unmistakable in the humid office.

  “You know that old cripple? The kid’s old man? The guy that married a greaser? His name is Mick Cuchulain, and he’s a pretty famous guy in the marine corps. He got that chair in Vietnam, doing his job. He did that job better than almost anyone could, so we the people of the United States of America gave him the Congressional Medal of Honor, and he’s spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair, trying to keep his pride on a government pension and an extra fifty bucks a month for the Medal.

  “As a further reward for Mick Cuchulain’s courage, a couple of local pretty boys with powerful daddies decide to rape and sodomize his daughter, and Audley’s scumbag leaders decide to prosecute a pretty courageous sixteen-year-old kid for using his head and coming violently to his sister’s defense. Who can blame these powerful daddies? The Cuchulain kid hurt their kids, so he’ll have to pay. He’ll have to get butt-fucked for twenty years to show everyone that it doesn’t pay to mess with the big guys in Audley. No matter that these spoiled brats might force almost anyone’s attractive daughter to suck their cocks some night when the pretty boys get bored.

  “Are you having trouble understanding why I like this particular job, Huntley?” Francis said. “Do you still not understand how much I’d just love to blow your worthless ass away? You and every one of those deputies who kicked the shit out of a handcuffed Medal of Honor winner’s sixteen-year-old son?”

  The urine was burning Huntley’s leg, and the ammonia stench filled the room. Huntley’s white shirt was soaked; the hair on his chest and bloated stomach showed through the fabric. The hostility that oozed from Francis terrified him.

  “What are you going to do, kill us all?” Huntley asked in a shaken voice.

  Francis stood up casually. The silencer dipped, coughed, then moved and coughed twice again; ejected casings bounced on the green linoleum floor. A thin ribbon of smoke wafted up from the holes along the silencer, and fumes of cordite competed with the stale urine stench. Sure he was dying, Huntley looked down to see where he had been hit. There was a small black hole in the chair an inch from his stained crotch, and two more in the chair, just beside each knee.

  Francis eased back down into his chair, the Beretta again casually pointed at Huntley. “If anything happens to that kid, you’re dead. If he gets hits by a car, if he commits suicide, gets killed in a wreck, maybe even if he falls and breaks his wrist. You’re not dead right away, though. First, I’m going to cripple you, just like Mick, except that I’m going to blow your balls off too. Look down at those holes in your chair again. I could have just as easily put those rounds into each knee and into your balls. A couple more into your elbows, and we have what I would call a nice start. Maybe I’ll gouge your eyes out.”

  Looking at the sheriff, a wide, delighted grin lit up Francis’s face. “Jesus, Huntley, I would just love to do it, because I hate your fucking scumbag guts. It makes me all tingly, like a kid on Christmas morning, just thinking about it. I think I’ll do it somewhere where they won’t find you for a while. My colleagues in the Irish Republican Army say that being kneecapped is the worst pain in the world. The elbows and balls are a little bonus just for me, because I think they might smart almost as much as your knees. I’ll come back and kill you real slowly a few years later, after I get to watch you suffer a bit.”

  Huntley nearly fainted. He didn’t know it was possible for anyone to be this scared.

  “Alas, Huntley, I’m just going to have to wait. Maybe the kid will have a heart attack.”

  Francis’s face grew cold and hard again. “Here’s the way it’s going to be.

  “First, get a doctor in here and get the kid cleaned up. I don’t want the wrists infected, and I want his kidneys checked for damage. Don’t hold out any information on me, or I’ll hurt you.

  “Second, put him in a cell alone and put a guard you trust outside the cell. Your continuing virility and mobility depend on him suffering no further emotional or physical damage.

  “Third, you will not discuss our meeting today with anyone, including your sponsors and your family. You will soon get a call from your sponsors in Audley, ordering you to release the Cuchulain boy at eighteen hundred hours today and to drop all charges against him. You will do so without comments or questions. You will tolerate no questioning by your staff.

  “Fourth, you will go to the Cuchulain house and make a formal apology to Mick Cuchulain and his family. You will now and in the future address him as Mr. Cuchulain and show his family the same courtesy. I expect you to grovel—to crawl. Any requests made to you by any of the Cuchulain family will be treated as if they came from me. Any trouble calls received by your office involving the Cuchulain household, the Cuchulain neighborhood, or a Cuchulain family member will be responded to with alacrity. Any arrests or possible arrests will be reported immediately by you—and not one of your staff—to a number I will provide to you. It is operational twenty-four hours per day. You will open the conversation by saying that the subject is Michael P. Cuchulain, and by the way, it is pronounced koo-HULL-an. See that everyone gets it right.

  “Fifth, when I leave here, you will gather your deputies and instruct them as to the future handling of the Cuchulain boy. Don’t fuck it up. You will also instruct all the deputies involved in the beating of the Cuchulain boy to go to Jim-Bob’s bar tonight at around nine. They are to go unarmed and out of uniform. One of them is to pick a fight with me and get me outside into the parking lot, and then all of them are to beat the living shit out of me to teach me a lesson for being a smart-ass. The deputy, Denton, that was in here with the kid should probably be the one to pick the fight, since I don’t think he likes me. If I get hurt, which isn’t too likely, you are to call the number I gave you, using the Cuchulain ID. Tell them Mr. Francis has been injured in a fight. Expect a couple of young and very large men to show up within twenty-four hours, to give it another try at Jim-Bob’s. They will be badasses, not old pussies like me.”

  Francis grinned that grin again, and Huntley shivered, the cold urine chilling his leg. He for sure did not want to meet a badass if Francis was a pussy.

  “Here’s the phone number and a sanitized summary of your instructions. Do you have any questions?” Huntley shook his head, and reached for the paper.

  Francis stood, unscrewed the silencer, and dropped it into his pocket. The Beretta then disappeared almost magically under his jacket and behind his back.

  As Francis walked around the desk toward him, Huntley let go a passing thought about reaching for his weapon. He stood to move to the door, when he sensed a flash of motion and a terrible shooting pain in his groin. Francis had driven his hand into Huntley’s crotch, encasing his penis and testicles in his grip. He was squeezing hard, their faces an inch apart. Huntley’s eyes were popping and he tried to scream, but only a high croaking sound came from his mouth. The veins in his forehead were bulging, and pain was shooting into nerves at the back of his skull. His eyes rolled back as he started to lose consciousness. Then the pressure suddenly lessened a little, but searing pain continued to flare into his legs and stomach.

  Francis slapped Huntley in the face with his left hand, snapping him back to full consciousness. From a distance of three inches, Francis breathed into his face, “If you fuck any of this up, scumbag, I will come back here on my own time to play with you a little bit.”

  Francis turned and opened the door. “I’ll find my own way out, Sheriff, and thanks for the little chat.” He strolled past the deputy, who was working on another chocolate-covered doughnut. “The sheriff asked not to be disturbed for fifteen minutes, Deputy,” he said over his shoulder as he walked out, wiping damp hands on his pocket handkerchief. She nodded, chewing.

  In the office, Huntley was bent over
his wastebasket, puking the last of his lunch. He was spent—his adrenaline long since exhausted, his whole body shaking uncontrollably, the pain in his testicles now reduced to a massive, throbbing ache. He found himself unable to move. As the stench assaulted his face, he resolved over and over again, almost as a mantra, to never again see the man who called himself Francis, whatever it took.

  MacMillan drove toward Audley High School, whistling softly and a bit pleased with himself. He thought the whole visit with the sheriff had gone rather well, if he did say so himself. The Cuchulain kid had been scared and hurt some, but showed balls. He’d seen men twice his age with far less poise. Cuchulain seemed like a good kid, but a little further investigation should give him a better sense of how to proceed. The DDO had been specific about making sure that this whole affair be handled as competently and completely as possible. “No wonder,” he mused. “It’s not every day that the DDO gets to have major owesies on the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

  A little later, Mac walked from the principal’s office and presented his Department of Education credentials to Mr. Webb, the wrestling coach. The coach was in his midthirties, fit and compact, sitting in sweats before his spring practice session began.

  “Alex is a good one, Mr. Francis. I just can’t believe he got into this trouble; it’s just not like him. He’s one of the most self-controlled kids for his age that I’ve seen. I tried to go to bat for him this morning, but the principal told me to mind my own business.” Webb shrugged and looked down. “I have a wife and two kids.”

  “Anyhow, I lost a pretty sure shot at an all-state wrestler,” Webb said. “Cuchulain is a natural; he’s fast, smart, and unnaturally strong. You see those guys once in a while, those strong ones. They’re just born that way, and get even stronger if they work at it. I lost to a guy in the NCAA regionals who was that way.”