Switch Blade Romance

The Station Wagon.

February 19th, 2015.

Adler, Tennessee, sat fifteen miles from the Arkansas line like a forgotten tooth in the jaw of the Ozarks, half-rotted and waiting for the tongue of the river to push it loose. The woods around it were old—older than sin, older than the Bible stories folks still told in the clapboard churches—and they kept their secrets the way a grave keeps a body: quiet, patient, and final.
Kevin McLain walked those woods the way he’d walked them since he was eight, boots crunching frozen leaves that sounded like small bones snapping underfoot. Thirty-three now, camouflage jacket patched at the elbows, bright orange cap so no one would mistake him for game. He’d come with Uncle Roger and Cousin Brady every season since the world made sense, but this winter the cold had teeth. The ground stayed hard in patches, the kind of cold that makes your breath hang like cigarette smoke long after you’ve exhaled. He didn’t feel like hunting today. He felt like getting it over with, getting home to Sarah, to the warmth of the kitchen where the coffee smelled like home and not like pine needles and regret.
He pushed on anyway. Habit. The rifle slung easy across his back. He reached the clearing and there it was: the buck. Not just any buck. A monster. Rack wide enough to rock a porch swing, tines like blackened forks. Kevin froze. Heart kicked once, hard, then steadied. He dropped to one knee, slow, quiet as a prayer. Brought the scope up. Crosshairs settled on the broad chest. Finger tightened. The shot cracked sharp and flat against the trees.
The buck snorted—a wet, surprised sound—then bolted. Blood sprayed, bright against the frost, but not enough. Not a kill shot. Just a wound. Just pain.
“Fuck,” Kevin muttered. “Now I gotta call Roger and Brady.”
He fished the phone from his pocket. Signal thin as a whisper this far out, but it caught. He dialed. Uncle Roger’s voice came through crackling.
“Wait for us, Kevin. Don’t go chasin’ it alone.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said, already knowing he wouldn’t wait.
He hung up. Stared at the blood trail snaking into the trees.
They’ll want their share. Hell, they’ll take the whole damn thing if I let ’em. This one’s mine. I hit it. I finish it.
He followed the blood. The smell hit him first—copper and iron, warm against the cold. The drops started fat and dark, then thinned, faded to pink smears on the leaves. A mile in, maybe more. Legs ached. Breath burned. Service long gone. No bars. No way to call back.
Why the hell doesn’t Roger use dogs? Everyone in Adler uses dogs. This is bullshit. Pure bullshit.
He almost turned back. Almost. Then he saw it: the buck, down on its side in front of a tangle of deadfall. Storm must’ve knocked the trees over years ago. Kevin laughed, short and sharp.
“Holy shit. Got the son of a bitch.”
He stepped closer. Leaned down.
The buck kicked.
Hooves flashed, close enough to feel the wind of them against his chest. Kevin screamed, stumbled back. The thing wasn’t dead. Eyes rolling white, chest heaving. He raised the rifle fast. Second shot. Head shot this time. The buck jerked once and went still.
“Fuck you,” Kevin whispered. “You God-damned deer.”
The bullet clipped an antler, ricocheted wild. A sharp, unmistakable shatter of glass.
Kevin froze.
Glass? Out here?
A branch shifted—slow, deliberate—and what he’d taken for deadfall resolved itself into the rusted shape of a car. Buick station wagon. Old. Forgotten. Back window blown out in a starburst of cracks.
Who parks a car a mile into the woods?
He stepped closer. The smell hit him then—thick, sweet-rotten, the kind that coats the back of your throat and stays there. He gagged. Covered his mouth.
Uncle Roger’s voice drifted faint through the trees. “Kevin? You out there?”
Kevin ignored it. He leaned toward the broken window.
Inside: Romona and Burt Greenwood. Or what was left of them.
Romona’s head lolled at an impossible angle, throat opened to the spine like a second smile. Burt’s belly had been split wide, guts pulled out and arranged in a neat, glistening pile across the seat like someone had been trying to repack a suitcase and given up. Flies droned lazy circles. The smell was a living thing now, pressing against Kevin’s eyes.
He screamed. Backed away. Tripped over a root. Fell hard.
The woods went quiet after that. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that listens.
Later—hours, maybe; time gets slippery when your mind is trying to crawl out of your skull—Scott Teller stood beside the Buick with Mark Woodland, the county coroner. Deputies and state police moved slow around the tape, flashlights cutting pale tunnels through the dusk.
“Jesus fuck,” Scott said, voice low. “Someone tore those poor people up.”
Mark nodded, face gray. “Woman’s head was damn near off. Husband’s guts… arranged. Forensics got anything? Prints? DNA?”
“Not yet,” Scott said. “But Jeannie radioed. Partial print match. From a missing-persons case in Texas.”
“Texas?” Mark’s eyebrows climbed. “Why the hell would someone from Texas be in a car with folks from Oklahoma?”
Jeannie’s voice crackled over the radio. “Scotty, if you’re near the sheriff, tell him we got a hit. Andrew Grant. College kid. Missing over a year. Prints in the wagon. And there was a note wedged in the front seat.”
Scott walked over. A trooper held up the paper, bagged, edges curling.
“Who handles missing persons in Texas?” Scott asked.
The trooper shrugged. “Jeannie’s waking them up. Annabelle, Texas.”
Nine-forty p.m. on the nineteenth. Juanita Anthony sat at her desk in the Annabelle PD, fluorescent light buzzing like dying flies. A knock. She looked up.
John Henry.
She smiled despite everything. Beckoned him in.
“Hey, John. How you holding?”
“As well as can be expected,” he said. Tired eyes. “Mrs. Grant called today. They asked her to ID a body found up in northern Mississippi last week.”
Juanita’s heart dropped through the floor. “Was it—”
“No,” John said. “Thank God.”
She exhaled. “Poor woman. Poor husband. I can’t even imagine.”
John’s phone rang. He answered. Listened. Face changed.
“Yes, I’m still here… You’re sure it’s his prints? And a note? … I’ll try to get up there first thing. I’ll need to coordinate with local PD.”
He hung up. Looked at Juanita like a man who’d just been handed a live wire.
“They found Andrew’s prints. Inside a station wagon. Owners murdered. Hunters stumbled on it today in Adler, Tennessee. There was a note.”
Juanita felt the room tilt.
John rubbed his face. “I’ve gotta call Rachel. We’re going up there. You and me and her.”
“Where’s Adler?” she asked, voice small.
“Thirty miles from the Arkansas line. Fifty from Manitou Falls.”
John stared at the wall like it had just whispered his name.
“He’s gone back,” he said. “Back to where it all started.”
Outside, the night pressed against the windows like something hungry, patient, waiting for the light to go out so it could come inside and finish what it began.