“I do!” Nostril agreed. “I do, one hundred percent! You scared the shit outta me, I'd never do anythin' to get on your bad side again, you can count on that!”
“Uh-huh,” Keith continued. “So that's all fine, an' we're gonna go ahead an' unlock you in a few minutes an' take you to the hospital. That sound good to you?”
“Great! Perfect! Wonderful!” Nostril chanted with the fervor of a former sinner accepting Christ as his savior. “I knew you were a good guy, I knew it, I knew it!”
“Sure I am,” Keith agreed. “But before we do, there's just one tiny thing you gotta do for us. You gotta stop lyin' about not knowin' who did this an' just tell us the truth, okay? We ain't mad at you or nothin'. We just need to know so we can figure out what we're up against an' how it needs to play out. Once you help us out with that, we got no more reason to keep you here.”
“But I don't know!” Nostril whined.
Keith shook his head sadly. “That just ain't good enough, Nostril,” he said, picking up the pair of alligator clips from the car battery and clamping them on the metal bed frame.
“Please! I'd tell you if I knew!” Nostril shrieked, tears streaming down his face. “If you let me go, maybe I can even find out for you, y'know? I know people, lots of people, I got my ear to the ground...”
Keith bent down and turned the switch on the battery.
Nostril's back arched as a long, gurgling scream ripped from the back of his throat. His arms and legs shook violently, rattling the short chains on the handcuffs. His eyes bulged in their sockets, and his mouth opened impossibly wide, displaying every rotten tooth all the way back to his molars.
Keith let the electricity run for a few more seconds, then switched it off. Nostril slumped against the bars, his muscles still twitching beneath his skin like writhing snakes. Keith smelled urine, and realized the dealer had lost control of his bladder. He lifted the battery and took a step back to make sure he was a safe distance from the thin yellow river on the floor, and Bones and the other Eagles did likewise.
“Come on, man,” Keith said. “Just give us a name an' you're free to go.”
“I...please, I just...I dunno,” Nostril whimpered.
Keith turned the switch again.
Nostril's body was wracked with spasms as he thrashed against the bed frame, squealing pitifully. The ball of bloody towels fell from his abdomen, revealing the deep exit wound. Tiny blue arcs of electricity jumped and jittered between the cuffs and the frame with a series of small pops.
Keith let it run a bit longer than last time before switching it off. Bones stood off to the side and nodded his approval, the blue lights dancing in his icy eyes.
“Last chance,” Keith said. “Next time, I'm just gonna leave it on 'til yer eyeballs fry outta yer head, an' by then I won't even give a fuck what you tell us or don't.”
“C-c-can't,” Nostril wheezed, his teeth clenching and chattering. “H-he'll...k-k-k-kill me...”
Keith lost his temper and dropped the car battery to the floor. He reached forward, slamming his rough fist against Nostril's stomach wound. Nostril howled with agony, and Bones exposed his straight white teeth in a horrid grin as the other two Eagles looked away.
“I'm the one you should be afraid of, you slimy fuckin' cum-ridden turd!” Keith yelled, punching the wound again. “Give me a fuckin' name or I'm gonna pull out yer insides an' make you eat 'em!”
“GASPAR!” Nostril screamed. “GASPAR GASPAR IT WAS GASPAR FUCKIN' GASPAR SET YOU UP!”
Keith stepped back, bent down, and snapped the battery on again.
“I'm gonna go tell Hunter,” he said to Bones. “Leave the thing on. If he ain't dead after five minutes, cut his fuckin' head off.”
Bones nodded again.
But as Keith left the room, wiping his bloody hand on the seat of his jeans, he knew Nostril would be dead long before then. The gash in his belly was tearing open wider with each new spasm.
As far as Keith was concerned, it was still better than the little zero deserved.
Chapter 9
Missy
Missy had waited for several hours, sipping watery coffee from a paper cup and flipping through magazines that were six months old while Cain got scanned and stitched up. When he was released with a cast on his broken arm, she drove him to a pharmacy to get his prescriptions filled. By then, the sun had been up for quite some time, and her eyelids were getting heavy.
Now Missy pulled the car up in front of Cain's place—a narrow one-story house on the edge of town with cloudy windows, dirt-caked yellow aluminum siding, and an overgrown front yard littered with beer cans.