Free Lake Charles by Ed Lynskey

motel and engages in fornication. Why, this is contemptible. Outrageous.”
    Flabbergasted as I was by this turnabout of events, Herzog moved to exploit our advantage. “The Defense requests bail be set, Your Honor.”
    “I quite concur,” said Judge Yarrow over Mr. Sizemore’s indignant protests.
    Applause broke out in the Peanut Gallery with my grin of relief. Throwing my bail had emptied my bank account, but I bought my freedom, at least for now. I vowed to capitalize on it, too. When my glance traveled over the Peanut Gallery’s rows of seats, Mr. Kuzawa and Cobb patted the significant bulges made under their jackets and gave me subversive grins. I knew they came armed to fight it out and spring me, if need be.
    Mr. Kuzawa came up. “Let’s tear ass out of here, son.”

CHAPTER TEN
     
    I jolted awake, the bedpan muck from Lake Charles in my nose. I’d writhed on the hard-packed sand before a fitful sleep took me, but no dreams haunted me. Had Ashleigh reneged on our deal to get at the truth? Get real, I thought. She’s gone. The dead never speak to mortals. Whom had I been talking to all this time? If not her, then who?
    “This is nuts. She lies six feet under,” I said aloud.
    My wristwatch hovered in front of my eyes. It was six o’clock. My ears still whistled from last night’s firefight. My bullet scratch burned my side. I rubbed my eyes to erase the leering image of Mr. X’s death rictus. My kicking legs flung off the blankets, and I sat up, leaning on an elbow. After a beat, the vertigo lifted. Spitting didn’t expel the dead gerbil— bleah! —from my mouth. I wheezed and, after two tries, swayed but gained my feet.
    “Crutches might help you.”
    “Fuck you. Is breakfast fixed?” I turned to Cobb.
    “No grub.”
    “There’s more pressing stuff to do.”
    “First we hide the corpse.”
    “That dog doesn’t hunt, Cobb. I’ve decided we’ll bring in the sheriff.”
    “Sure, get reamed up the ass. Great idea. You should patent it.”
    His earthy sarcasm annoyed me. “We’ll say last night’s turkey shoot was self-defense like it really was.”
    “Common sense says the sheriff will arrest us, but we can make this right.”
    “How?”
    “Flip a stone here, shake a bush there, and see what crawls out.” Heavy jaws set, he swept his hand at the overgrowth beyond us. “Edna out there needs our help.”
    My hands, fingers spread, went up. “See, ink stains? On yours, too. We’re pressmen. Last night we’re lucky that we didn’t get hurt. But this shit is over our heads. The pros can play the heroes, not us.”
    He sized up the sunlit boulder field and the craggy knobs. I also saw the distant brush fire’s smoke column climbing skyward. “We can make this right,” he said as if it was a vigilante’s mantra. “If we turn to anybody for help, I’d say we ask the rangers.”
    My heart lurched for a beat. A sketchy militia contingent self-named the “Smoky Mountain Rangers” roamed the laurel hells, the leafy thickets blanketing our ridges and hollows. Stamped rough at the edges, they’d no hate ideology nor were they your garden-variety gun nuts, or even religious, but you respected them. If you called them ugly slurs like hill scoggins or redneck stump grinders, they’d staple your balls to your ears. A couple of Sheriff Buford “Walking Tall” Pusser’s deputies had signed on with them after the big blowout with organized crime downstate. The rangers’ leader, a fiery ex-Marine named Cullen, had a long association with Jerry Kuzawa, Cobb’s father.
    “No rangers are in this. They’ll touch off a war.”
    “Then you and I will go search on foot. A bass boat is too loud.”
    “We’d also be sitting ducks out on the lake.” I scratched my collarbone. “Still I don’t know . . .”
    “Brendan, this is our best move to make.”
    I kicked the trailer hitched to my cab truck’s bumper. The green algae had dried, and I wondered how I’d make my bass boat shine