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  KILL ’EM WITH KINDNESS

  CS DeWildt

  PRAISE FOR THE BOOKS OF CS DEWILDT

  “…full of masterful imagery from a provocative author at the top of his game, piled high on a bullet train of violence that demands that once you start watching, you don’t look away.” —Brian Panowich, author of Bull Mountain

  “DeWildt stands alone as a wicked wizard of crime fiction. Love You to a Pulp serves up heart and depravity in equal portions. Bold, brash, and completely original.” —Tom Pitts, author of Hustle

  “Chris DeWildt is the first honest-to-God heir apparent I’ve read to the rural noir master Jim Thompson.” —Joe Clifford, author of Lamentation and December Boys

  Text

  Copyright © 2016 by CS DeWildt

  First Down & Out Books Edition: Spring 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  an imprint of Down & Out Books

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Edited by Rob Pierce and Chris Rhatigan

  Cover design by Eric Beetner

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Kill ’Em With Kindness

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Down & Out Books Publishing Family Library of Titles

  Preview from Texas Two-Step by Michael Pool

  Preview from Precious Cargo by Linda Sands

  Preview from Saying Uncle by Greg F. Gifune

  For Sarah, Toby, and Ben

  ONE

  IT TOOK NICK a moment to recognize her when she hobbled into Nate’s place, and when he did he felt sick. He didn’t know her, not personally. She was a few years younger than Nick, and he thought maybe their time at Horton High School had overlapped, but he did recognize her from the bar. She was a regular, and she was Chad Toll’s girl. Her name was Kimmy Flynn, and by anyone’s regard she was beautiful. A real fucking knockout. Most days.

  Nick took her in with his beer as he tipped back his glass. Her face was purple on the right side. One eyelid stretched across her face, sealed tight and so swollen it looked like the slightest poke would burst it like an angry boil. Her right arm was in a sling and she moved with a limp, trying to hide it and failing.

  But the most striking thing, aside from her not being with Chad, was the metal halo screwed into her head. She walked only as far as the first barstool, lifted herself gingerly and sat with a pained sigh. Nate continued wiping a spotless glass behind the bar as he and Nick watched her pull a pack of Marlboros from her jacket pocket, reaching across herself with her good arm. She lit one with care, took a long first drag. The long cigarette matched her legs, which despite the rest of her, were perfect as they wrapped around the legs of her barstool, a creeping vine of smooth flesh.

  “Gonna get her a drink?” Nick said. Nate twitched out of his frozen state, shuffled sideways to the bottles that lined the mirrored wall behind the bar. Nate was old and twisted with the reminder of his childhood polio, but he moved without hesitation. He didn’t ask her what she wanted, just mixed her the usual screwdriver and put it in front of her. Nate stepped away then returned to her with a red swizzle straw as an afterthought.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Nick tried to focus on the ESPN Classic hockey game, the Wings and the Avalanche from back in 1996, but he kept hearing his mother’s voice telling him not to stare. Kimmy had been big-city beautiful, beyond the small pond of a town like Horton. Now she was a mess of bruises and swollen skin and metal. But her new face couldn’t take away from how Nick remembered her, coming into the bar on the arm of the lug, Chad, certainly the one who’d messed her up. Chad was king in Horton and Nick knew no one else who’d dare love her that way. Nick inhaled; she smelled like honey and antiseptic. Her gasps between long held breaths drew his attention as Russian-import Steve Yzerman glided on the frozen water of the Joe Louis Arena, transported across not only space but time, landing in front of them on the small screen of the old television atop the refrigerator.

  “Fuck yeah!” she shouted as the Wings went up three-to-two. She winced as Nate put another screwdriver in front of her. She sucked down the drink and Nick watched her smile into the bar. “I fucking love that man,” she said quietly.

  When the final buzzer announced the end of regulation, the Red Wings of the past had again spanked the Av 7-3 and Nick swelled with Kimmy’s happiness. His wife had been a fan of the Wings. A long time ago.

  But any joy Kimmy had inside was knocked out of her again as the door opened and the bowling league regulars stomped in from the cold rain. It was early August but a freak cold front had moved in and brought a freezing rain that made it feel more like February, the brutal wind-whipping tail of the Horton winter. Each time the door opened it was the same. Nick watched Kimmy attempt to turn her head, wincing against the pull of the screws in her skull, too drunk to stop herself until finally the door opened and Chad Toll stomped in, his crew and his canines in tow. The dogs were massive beasts, loyal, drooling Caucasian Mountain Dogs that went with him everywhere, black as the night and each of them easily over two hundred pounds. The men flanking him were less intimidating; bean pole Erik Babin and farm-dirty Russell Potter. But they were with Chad and that made them dangerous.

  Nick watched Kimmy open her mouth to speak but the words stopped cold as she noticed the pretty young blonde thing holding Chad’s hand, a petite sprite of a girl initially hidden behind Chad’s frame. The girl was the only one to acknowledge Kimmy, giving her a self-satisfied smirk and dismissing her completely. Chad looked past Kimmy and nodded to Nate behind the bar.

  “Beer for her,” he said, thumbing to the blonde. Chad’s gaze glanced over Nick as he led his cutie to the pool tables in back. Nate drew two High Lifes, left the bar to deliver the drinks. Chad Toll was the only person that could pull Nate from behind the bar. If anyone else, even the guys in his crew, had expected Nate to play waitress they’d get nothing more than a “fuck you.” But Chad was taken care of. Always.

  Nick watched Kimmy watch Chad and his new girl in the reflection behind the bar. Her face betrayed no jealousy or anger. The only clue she felt anything was the hard shake of her hand as she swirled her fresh drink, adding the clink of ice on glass to the cackling mix of warming voices and music and clicking billiard balls.

  Chad played a few games of pool, spoke loudly. Nick listened; Chad’s league team, the T-Birds, had rolled their way into the seasonal semi-final round. The girl with him laughed donkey loud at everything that came out of his mouth, joke or not. The blonde had her own crew in tow, a redhead and a brunette, both bar pretty, rough skin and wrinkles under their pancake foundation. Kimmy set her drink down hard on the bar and Nate was as quick to replace it as she was to drink it.

  Chad led Erik and Russell and the dogs away from the pool tables. The blonde girl attempted to drape herself on him, looking for Kimmy’s eye, but Chad dismissed her with a single hand and without a word, left her to stare at Kimmy before she
slunk back to the pool table.

  The crew of men and dogs stopped behind Nick, close enough that if they weren’t trying to intimidate him they either didn’t know he was there or found him inconsequential. As if to emphasize that point, one of the dogs lifted a leg on the feet of Nick’s stool.

  “Gimme the Maker’s,” Chad said. Nate grabbed the half full fifth of whiskey from the bar. “Nah. The unopened bottle.” Nate retrieved the new bottle without a word and Chad twisted the waxy red cap and tossed it to the bar, spraying the clean surface with tiny drops of whiskey that looked like spittle. Chad brought the bottle to his lips and opened a shadow-hidden door in the corner just beyond Nick’s seat at the end of the bar. The men and dogs descended into the basement, Russell Potter closing the door behind himself, making the door disappear into the shadows again, never even there.

  The bar was quieter after they’d gone, as if the jovial atmosphere was nothing more than a show for their collective benefit. More likely Chad had taken the mood with him, like the whiskey, like Kimmy’s beautiful face, like everything else he wanted.

  At the pool tables, the blonde who’d come in with Chad was talking to her girls, laughing, speaking quietly but loudly punctuating her secrets with “bitch” and “whore” and “skeez” and “slut.” Nick watched Kimmy in the mirror then watched with her as she stared at the reflected trio, their laughing and tossing of hair for the crowd of men swooping in. Nick watched the heavily mascaraed eyes at the pool table, how they found her with each dirty word uttered. He watched as Kimmy’s reflection slid off the stool, drink in hand. She moved as smoothly as the alcohol allowed, having traded her pained limp for the top-heavy, swooning sway of five screwdrivers. The bar went quiet and the buzz and prying eyes of the table outshone and out-hummed the bare fluorescent bulbs hanging high on the arched ceiling.

  “What the fuck you want?” the redheaded girl said as Kimmy approached. The redhead stepped in front of her. “Love your hat, cunt!” Nick held his breath as Kimmy seemed to shrink before him, and he felt for her, beaten, bruised, and now berated. He felt sorry for her, wanted to help her slip into one of the cracks in the wooden floor.

  Nick soon found his pity misplaced as the broken girl swung her good arm and smashed the glass against the side of the girl’s head, sending the redhead to the floor screaming and bleeding. She scooped up the cue ball from the table in a precise swipe, then set herself on the true target. The blonde’s eyes grew large and she put up her hands in a show of dovelike surrender. But her submission was futile as Kimmy’s next strike crushed the bridge of her nose, the wet crunch like footsteps in firm snow.

  The brunette backed away as Kimmy pulled her bad arm from the sling and grabbed a handful of blonde hair before slamming the billiard ball into her face, again and again. The blonde cried, begged the crowd for help until a smashed nose, missing teeth, and a mouthful of blood forbade it. She went to her knees but Kimmy wouldn’t relent, just kept beating her and when the girl finally dropped, Kimmy fell with the pull of the dead weight and straddled her, smashing the bloody blonde into unconsciousness and beyond. Less the hoots and cheers, no one spoke. No one tried to help the girl on the floor.

  Nick didn’t remember the journey, his mind seeming to come back to him only at his arrival on the scene, catching up with his body only after he’d grabbed Kimmy by the sleeve, pulling her easily from the broken mess on the floor. She didn’t fight him. She didn’t cry. She let herself be led away to a chorus of “boos” and “let ’em fight.” Nick led Kimmy out the door.

  Outside the rain still fell, the cold wind whipping up tiny droplets that stung like bees.

  “I want to talk to Chad,” Kimmy slurred. “I want to talk to him. I want to talk to that FUCKER!”

  “You got to go. Police will be here. You want to spend the night in jail?”

  “I don’t give a FUCK!” Kimmy screamed, but she barely resisted as Nick ushered her to the passenger side of the purple VW. Her silence was her concession as Nick fished inside her jacket pocket for the keys. He raised the fob over his head and pressed the unlock button over and over until her car’s tail lights flashed. Nick opened the Cabriolet’s door and helped her into the passenger seat. He shut her inside the car and listened to the rain, waited for the sound of sirens. He looked back at Nate’s, wondering if anyone had followed them. The bar sat silent but for the muffled music of the jukebox.

  Nick found an address on her ID and drove Kimmy Marie Flynn to her place at 1905 Beech Street, Number Two. He drove slowly, the VW’s bald tires spinning to a start, fighting the ice for traction. A bit unnerving, and the last thing he wanted to do was wreck Chad Toll’s girl’s car, but the tiny burg of Horton, population 5,706, was especially dead this time of night and Nick didn’t see another car.

  Nick found Beech and made the turn. Kimmy had been asleep, but Nick looked over and she was awake now and looking at him, turned to her side and hugging a knee.

  “The Wings win?” she asked quietly.

  “Yep,” he said, and started looking for 1905.

  “Good,” she said. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Thanks. But you don’t know what you did now.”

  “Oh, what did I do?” Nick laughed lightly.

  But she didn’t go on. As they pulled into the drive she said, “How’s he going to make me burn it? He wanted me to tell him ‘no.’”

  Nick helped her up the steps to the door of the apartment house.

  “I got it,” she said, fumbling with the keys then dropping them in the grass. Nick grabbed them, shook off the wet and unlocked the door for her as she held his shoulder for balance.

  Kimmy stumbled into a narrow foyer and Nick followed her to the dark apartment at the end of the hall. He unlocked the door and she entered, disappearing into one of the rooms. Nick waited a beat, tossed the keys inside onto the little table stacked with mail and a child’s artwork, handprints in finger paint. Another table further down the long foyer was knocked to the floor, a hole in the drywall about the right size for Kimmy’s skull. A fleeting glimpse into another dark room showed nothing but further disarray. The entire place smelled as if something had rotted in the trash while Kimmy was in the hospital.

  Nick continued to listen for a moment before locking her in and shaking the handle. He threw on the hood of his old tan parka and hit the street. The rain was slowing, but the air still cut through Nick’s layers. Since he was on foot, he wished for the long cold of true winter. A good freeze would cut Nick’s trip time in half, allowing him access to the onion and celery fields too soft to cross other seasons of the year. The only ones with that ability were the migrant Mexicans who passed through with the season and the crop. So Nick skirted the cumbersome fields in favor of the road. He tightened his hood against the wind but couldn’t keep out the smell of onions.

  Nick reached his house and only when the warmth of his home overwhelmed him did he realize he was exhausted. He wanted nothing but to kick off his boots and fall hard into oblivion, a good place to lay low.

  He traced his fingers over a series of photos that lined the long hall to the master bedroom. The affection soured and his fingers pulled the frames from the wall with such a nimble perfection, it almost seemed as if that’s all they’d been made for, or perhaps the pictures fell from his caress, repelled by his touch. They were mostly photos of Grete and him. Domestic shit he no longer wanted but didn’t have the energy to part with.

  Nick hit the bed but didn’t fall away from anything. Instead he found himself in a dark place like the one he’d come home to nearly five years ago when Grete had shut herself in the garage. Then he could see and he was with her in the Mustang, the Boss Shelby, same model her dad owned, shut away in the warm dark garage. Nick sat still and watched Grete slump over the steering wheel. He knew, in his dream logic, that he could open the door, save her, but he didn’t. Instead he waited to die. But he didn’t. He waited. And waited. Finally, confused by the fumes in the car, he tried the door and found it locked
. Knowing he was trapped, he began to panic. He kicked the glass, knocking dead Grete to her side. Between her legs he could see their baby, a prematurely expelled stillborn monster, troll-like and hissing. The thing looked at Nick and began moving toward him, climbing onto the seat from the floorboards. Nick kicked and kicked and kicked the glass. The thing moved closer. It spoke to him.

  “You killed her,” it said. “You killed her. You were never enough for anyone.”

  Nick continued to kick, frantically, a scream poised to jump from his lips, kicking the glass. Kicking the glass. Kicking. He woke with a start, legs still fighting the sheet. Nick lay still and though he knew it was a dream, the feeling that he was with his dead wife and monster child was slow to recede. He remained motionless until sleep grabbed him again and delivered him into the true blackness Nick wanted.

  The dream wasn’t new. He’d had it nearly every night for the first six months. Then it receded to just once a month. And now barely ever…but this was twice in a week.

  In his dark sleep he couldn’t care and, upon waking, he would remember it differently, an altered detail, possibly imagined, but branded into his memory as truth: It wasn’t Grete with him, but Kimmy Flynn in the car. No monster baby. Only Kimmy.

  TWO

  NICK WASN’T EVEN sure what day it was, let alone the time, when the knocking woke him.

  “Nick!” someone called from outside. “Nicholas! Wake up! I know you’re here.”

  Nick rolled over and sat up, rubbing his eyes and pulling on his pants as the knocking continued. “Nicholas!”

  “What? What!” Nick said as he opened the door. He knocked his knuckles on top of the man’s head. “Hobo! Hobo! Hobo!” Nick put a hand up and squinted into the sun, relenting to its heat. “What? What?” The man named Hobo stepped back and covered his head.