Definitions

By Paul Hennrich

Following a harrowing undercover operation, burnt-out DEA agent Kent Baker is on a leave of absence from work. His boss considers him a loose cannon, as any criminals who come between him and his job end up 'quick dead'.

Baker decides to live a solitary existence in his gloomy St. Louis apartment.

Then he saves a beautiful woman being assaulted along a highway. Coming to the rescue of the lady seems like a good idea until people start dying in nasty ways. When Baker and the woman become the next prey of vicious killers on a senseless rampage, he is plunged him into a warped drama involving a crazed doctor, a cunning loan shark, a hard-nosed homicide detective and thugs who want their victims to suffer.

Kent Baker is forced to find out who is perpetrating the butchery...and why...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Hennrich
• Release date: Apr 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476167640

Paul Hennrich

I have always loved to write. My third grade teacher read my very first short story to my classmates. In it, I had a head tumbling down a staircase. I have always had a thing for the rough stuff, at least in fiction.Over the years I continued writing. I have written an epic novel over a thousand pages long about a group of young friends, carrying their lives through their childhood years before the Civil War and then in to the war itself, finally dragging them and their relationships into the following Indian wars in the American West. It's titled The Reach and is now available within Smashwords.But first I published DEFINITIONS (Smashwords and Amazon), followed by the second and third adventurers of the of Kent Baker series. In order of publication they are SCAVENGERS (Amazon), and ENTERTAINMENT (Rocking Horse Publishing and Amazon).A fourth caper, KINFOLK, is in the formatting stage and will soon be released at Smashwords.For more info on theses novels and their availability, along with any other news concerning future releases, please go to my website listed below.That is my story as an author. I sincerely hope you find my novels enjoyable diversions -- (we all need diversions, now don't we?).My own more important story is that I’m a happily married man with a beautiful wife and big family that includes a daughter, a son, five grandchildren, mother, son-in-law, brothers and sisters along with their spouses, and a basket full of nieces and nephews. Life is great.

Book preview

Definitions

By Paul Hennrich

Copyright 2012 Paul Hennrich

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Funk & Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary (Harper & Row, 1985) is the source for all chapter-heading definitions with the exception of igits.

# # # # #

Words. You gotta love them.

I like words. They’re easy and, damn it, they don’t ask for much.

I love the way they can mean more than one thing. Like people. Like endings.

I’ve been thinking about words a lot lately, about what they say. I do that sometimes to help make sense of the senseless.

I find I need them as a crutch in the hope they’ll help explain the carnage, shade my mind, keep me engaged. Possibly, push me past the darkness.

Maybe, just maybe, dilute the blood.

~~~~

inertia (in ur sha) noun: the property of matter by virtue of which any physical body persists in its state of rest or uniform motion until acted upon by some external force.

~~~~

Chapter 1

It all started the evening I went cruising for the first time in months into the fragrant, fraudulent world of the Friday night toads, and suddenly came across a man beating a woman on the grassy slope just off the interstate.

A senseless moment of life when you look over, look back to the highway, over again, back again, lost between the idiocy of what was happening and your mind saying:

…put a blind eye to it, blind eye to it…

I might have made it by if I hadn’t seen my moronic reflection in the rearview mirror.

Shit, I said.

Fact was I had been looking forward to the night out. I had been holed up in my depressing apartment for two months, having solidly planted my bare feet in the ancient, brown carpet ever since I’d taken my leave of absence. Watching the guy get his tongue cut out had dropped me so deeply into a funk that I hadn’t even bothered to call the bosses to say when I’d be returning. They knew better than to call me. I didn’t need them and they were well aware of it. They were first on the long list of things I didn’t need.

But, finally, I couldn’t take any more of the sitting, eating, TV’ing. So there I was going out after something I thought I did need, those rutting toads, who would most assuredly be putting in an appearance on a Friday night, prancing about in all their glory. They may hole up on Saturdays, popping their Tylenol, but never on any weekend’s first night.

I wasn’t looking to interact with any of them or, heaven forbid, latch on to one. Far from it. I just needed to sit at a bar and watch them buzz and strut and emit their musky scents. Any type toad would do, even the clean-cut ones who walk and talk close to normal.

The best of the lot, the ones I most needed, would be yakking louder than necessary in the hope someone was listening. They would be the pretty girls trying to look ugly and the droll boys with their multiple earrings and tailored fingernails, each and every one plying their wares.

All of which prompted my affectionate name for them—toads, as in horny toads.

Cut me some slack, I was tired when I thought of it.

Being in a pinch, I might take the clean-cut, office-bound computer males, airing out their rich-someday pretensions to a bright-eyed young lady with normal hair color. But, in the end, it was really the vacant heads that I needed, replete with their stupid ramblings and mind numbing come-ons. The ones that could make even me feel superior and perhaps a little smart, two things I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Yes, sir, I had a big night planned.

But, here I was, barreling down St. Louis’ I-170 inter-belt, northbound, trying to ignore the dapper fellow six feet from his Lexus who was busying himself pounding a woman’s face. Everyone ahead of me was doing a proper job of ignoring. Brakes on to take a look. Then, damn, isn’t that something, brakes off to continue on their merry way.

You can do that, too, Kenyon, I thought. Just keep your mind on the Kinks on the golden oldies station. Get back to seeing how fast you can name the songs. Ignore all whackos, especially that one. He’ll wear down in a bit and before long they’ll fall into each other’s liquored arms and not long after that be flouncing about in a well-stained bed. They’d wake up in the morning wearing stupid grins and wondering about all the bruises. So go easy, boy, just brake like the rest and drive on. She’ll be fine. It’s not as bad as it looks.

But then it happened…

That crinkled, portable screen rolled out on the rear of my eyeballs and that unstoppable projector popped up the nineteen-year-old Kodachrome stills one at a time. Click. Click. They were clear and they were precise, despite the screen.

Saw myself in Grandpa’s battered ’85 Olds, a big ugly brutish machine that he grudgingly let me drive. Had just gotten my license and was rocking down an open-country interstate listening to music and feeling proud of my independence when up ahead there appeared a crusty, rusted pick-up, gun rack in the back window, parked at a stupid angle in the emergency lane. Standing just outside the open passenger door was a guy without a shirt, crustier than his truck. He was red-faced and screaming at a little girl fifteen feet down the hillside. Only seven or eight, she was crying, her small, gaping mouth crooked with saliva and fear. The man’s face was hard and his eyes were burning as he motioned for the girl to come to him. He stepped towards her and she made two small steps away, stumbling in the weeds. That made him angrier still. The only thing between him and her was a woman, a small gal and a brunette like the little girl, her hands held out to the man, pleading with him, trying to calm him.

Click. New picture, same scene, only closer. Man roars and steps closer, girl pushes farther down into tall weeds. Click. Now I’m even with the truck. Click. Same scene, but this time things are reversed because of my rearview mirror. Man bellowing, woman holding open palms to his chest, girl mouth screaming in silence at my closed windows. The man looked big to a sixteen-year-old boy, though really he was the smallest of creatures. Should stop, Kenyon, shouldn’t you? But he really wouldn’t hurt her, though he looked damn mad. He was just the type that puts on a big act. And Mom was there. Surely he’ll listen to her. Surely. Click. Click.

Then I went over the rise and they dropped from view like visions in a deep dream. That’s when, so many years before, I turned up the radio and began thinking harmless thoughts.

Wonder if Jake will be in town tonight? Maybe we can find someone to buy us some beer so we can cruise and party. Maybe Julie will be out with her friends. Like to see Julie. And what to do tomorrow? Have you thought about that yet, Kenyon?

At sixteen you force your mind onward, thinking about this, that, anything else but. All of sixteen, and feeling sick to your stomach. The projector shuts off, the image fading from black to gray to white.

It’s years later and you’re braking, pulling up behind the black Lexus, first night out or not. Not sixteen anymore, and you’ve had enough of that damn projector.

Checking my sideview mirror, I waited for a break in traffic before exiting my pathetic little Mazda 626, year of manufacture, 2000. It looked hunkered and embarrassed behind the Lexus.

I eased down the field side of the two cars, feeling the wind of the passing traffic rushing up my back. He had her a couple of feet away from the passenger door about even with the front windshield. His left hand had a rough grip on her right shoulder and the nails were biting into as much skin as material. She was wearing an expensive blue dress and had long pretty legs. I noticed the long and pretty in spite of their kicking. The nylons over those legs were coming apart. One shoe had already fallen down the bank. I couldn’t see her face because her long auburn hair covered it, but I could see blood splatters on that pretty dress. She grunted as he hit her and seemed too concerned about protecting herself to holler. Or maybe she was being tough. Maybe she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was hurting her.

Whackos, I thought. The world was a rusty bucketful of whackos.

Fact was the hurting part could have been worse. He was trying to make some roundhouse blows, reaching back to the south forty as Joe Frazier use to say, which would have been okay if this nitwit had been Joe Frazier. As it was, by the time his swing got to her she had moved or he had slipped and the better of it was glancing by. If he’d ever fought for his life he would’ve known that short, compressed blows, backed by every muscle above the waist, were the most damaging. And he would not be aiming for the skull. Things break easily around the knuckles and skulls are hard. You want the damage done to the other person, not you, so you hit soft places. Try the throat or the kidneys.

But, no, this stupid goober had grown up on TV and movies, had seen reruns of the Duke and the Lone Ranger in action and, by golly, knew how to hit somebody!

Just watching how he was doing it was making me as mad as the doing. I stopped within arm’s reach of him.

That’s enough, I said.

Hell, I’d seen the Duke, too.

He gave me one short, nauseated look, as if I were hanging nose litter.

I gauged him. Five foot eight or ten, regular face more round than long, expensive slacks and shirt, with the start of a gut popping over his belt. Cute bald spot making a mockery of the back of his head, along with feet clomping around in shiny black loafers. All in all, just a regular Joe, out on the town, taking a few moments to strut his masculinity.

Get the hell out of here, he said, dismissing me before going back to his business.

He must have been lost in his anger or he would have noticed that I had him by six inches and at least thirty pounds. Or so I figured. Later, I found out that his attitude was probably habit. In his world, when he talked, people generally listened.

He popped her one more time on the side of her head, then brought his arm back for another.

Inertia is defined in several ways. One type is mental. You’re way down deep into something, at the end of your rope, when finally the body and brain grind down and the last sparking message you receive is right; wrong; indifferent; damn it, do something! That’s when you’re hit by mental inertia.

On June 5, 1944, they had storms closing in on Normandy with only a slight chance that there would be enough of a break the next day for the boys to go in, and a decision had to be made or it would be weeks waiting on the tides. They say Ike walked the room after hearing and rehearing everything again and again until finally it came to the point where his mental inertia said it had to end. His mind stopped. He stopped.

We go, he said.

And the beaches ran red, and the war was won. Mental inertia.

There is also purely physical, mechanical inertia. As this man’s arm came back for the next swing it reached the end of its arc just above the door of the Lexus. At that point the muscles for going back were relaxing and those for going forward were tightening and neither was really doing anything and everything was slack. At that precise moment of inertia I chopped him with the side of my right fist between his wrist and elbow. He tumbled back, his right hand making a crunching sound against the sideview mirror.

Two separate moments of inertia, both only seconds long and sixty-some years apart. Both paid for in people dying.

Your body count may have been considerably higher, Ike, and your cause infinitely greater, but on cold nights it doesn’t make me feel any better.

He fell to the rough asphalt, rolling and screaming. She was on the grass, cocked up on an elbow, her eyes glazed. The eyes were green. The left one was puffing shut. I started to help her up, gripping her armpits.

Can you hear me? I said.

Wha…huh?

I’m going to help you up.

No…wha?…no.

Come on.

She wasn’t a big woman, but a slack body of any size is a load. I gave up trying to lead her to the Mazda and picked her up.

No…no. I’m…I’m all right.

I ignored her. About the time I got my passenger door open, the man had rolled over onto his back and was looking back and forth from me to his right hand.

Ahhh, you stupid son of a bitch! You ignorant bastard, you’ve hurt my hand! God damn, my hand! My hand, you stupid son of a bitch!

I ignored him, too. I was getting my fill of the both of them. I slammed the door behind her and clambered behind the wheel. I backed up enough to clear the rear of the Lexus, then goosed into traffic as soon as an opening presented itself. She slumped down on the passenger side, her temple where the glass disappeared into the door. The left eye was almost closed and several other spots about her face were discoloring and swelling. I reached over to lock her door. She lifted her pathetic face on a rubbery neck and tried to look out, as if realizing for the first time we were moving.

Where…we going?

To a hospital.

No…no…I’m all right.

Shut up.

She gave me what I think was a puzzled expression. It was hard to tell, the way her face was looking.

I tried to get my bearings. The business areas along I-170 had dropped away several exits back and now both sides of the highway were covered with apartment buildings. I tried to concentrate on where I needed to go. I was thinking if I took the next exit in an eastward way and then took a main drag south, it would bring me out close to some hospital named after some saint. At least that’s what I thought. I hadn’t been in that part of town for a while and the dwindling light wasn’t helping. It was the middle of October and the roadside entertainment had occurred in the early minutes of dusk. A few of the bigger stars were spitting light.

I took the exit to the east and knew immediately that I’d made a mistake. A row of domino stoplights faced me for as far as the eye could see. Traffic would be a slow go. She moaned a little and cleared her throat before starting to talk. She was making an effort to sound normal.

I’m okay. Really. Please take me back.

Don’t make me say it again.

Please, I—

Shut up.

She did for a while. She straightened in her seat and the effort caused her to catch her head in her hands and for a moment took away her ability to talk. Finally, the spinning must have stopped because she spoke.

Is Waite…is Waite all right?

That your friend’s name? Last I saw he was hunky-dory.

You sure?

Shut up.

I wish you wouldn’t—

A new song came on the radio, the intro upbeat and full of horns.

‘More Today Than Yesterday,’ I blurted out after the first three seconds, snapping my fingers and giving her a fast point. Vanity Fair.

What? she asked, taking her hands from her head.

I gave her a quick glance as I edged around the slow drivers.

The name of the song. And the group. Vanity Fair. I’m an expert at guessing them fast.

She put her hands back to her head.

Oh, God, she said.

After five more minutes, I was ready to ditch the street I was on for one less used, one with fewer stoplights. I exited onto a street with nice homes riding its edges, the ones built eighty years earlier and carrying more personality than a half dozen of the new vinyl-sided ones. Stoplights became stop signs and I could get through them a lot quicker. Most married folks had arrived home an hour or two earlier and were already burping roast beef. The streetlights had popped on and beyond them it was pure dark.

I had gone maybe a dozen blocks when I saw the headlights of a car closing in fast. They looked low and square and suspiciously like those of a Lexus, closing even though I was going twice the speed limit in a residential neighborhood—a narrow street with maybe kids and joggers. I didn’t like the looks of it. If it was him, I doubted he wanted to take me on one to one. My guess was that beating on a woman was the extent of his bravery. I glanced over at her huddled on my passenger seat.

This Waite, he own a gun?

Wha—

Her lips had to feel like a sack of mulch.

Your boyfriend, he own a gun? Have it in his car?

I think for a while, yes, he did. Why?

Just wondering.

One way to find out. I turned onto a side street with cars parked on both sides. I eased forward. Ten seconds later, the car jerked onto the same street, skidding as it took the corner.

Great, I said, giving my meaty Mazda the gas.

A guy walking his dog on the sidewalk gave me a dirty look. I felt like stopping and seeing if he wanted to take her. At the last moment, I turned left onto another street. The car fell in behind me and closed fast. In seconds, he was behind me, his lights washing the Mazda’s interior with a sallow light. I gripped the wheel tighter and blinded myself by keeping my eyes glued to the rearview mirror, thinking he wanted to run me over. After all, a guy who assaults someone along an interstate in front of a hundred people can’t be overloaded with sense. If his plan was to ram, my plan was to jerk sideways at the last second—if the road allowed—and let him tumble by. Then the flashing light came from the driver’s side and I felt the punch in my upper back. I slammed forward, weaving, glass breaking behind me, the woman screaming beside me. I quickly got it under control after swiping one of the curbside cars.

I felt the familiar numbness at the impact point and a burning sensation in my left shoulder and down my left arm. But, somehow, as always, I stayed calm. Adrenaline, yes, but no desire to scream, no urges to panic. Long ago, I found out that’s what got you at dirt level and assuming ambient temperature. I hadn’t much to live for, but less to die for. So it was calm and easy and take it as it comes—thinking only oh, damn, not again, someone tell me not again.

What’s wrong? she asked with her hands on the dash.

I’ve been shot.

Shot! How? Are you all right?

I stomped the gas pedal. He was weaving as much as I was. It couldn’t have been easy, hanging your left arm out of a moving vehicle while trying to steer with a bum right hand. But, then again, not being easy doesn’t mean impossible. Five seconds after the first shot, a loud, slamming thud erupted from the Mazda’s metal roof. I saw the flash again and this time picked up the tight, crisp pop of the gun. Tight, crisp equals small caliber. One tiny break for the good guys.

The lady had forgotten her discomfort. As the second shot clunked around above us, she threw her hands over her head and screamed in earnest.

Oh, my God, he’s killing us!

If it hadn’t been so pitiful, I would’ve laughed. Here I was, a law enforcer on leave, cruising around without a gun, being shot at by some idiot who quite possibly had the legal right to conceal and carry—even if he didn’t have the sense to have that right. The only thing more moronic than my present condition was the possibility of a state full of angry-at-the-world Bubbas ready to slap leather if somebody dared stop them from whupping their woman.

I saw a turn up ahead, shifted down to get more traction and jerked into the turn without brakes, hoping he would fly by. He didn’t. He came in right behind. The only streetlights were at each end of the street, which meant the middle section was dark as a womb. Hit two potholes in a row and the Mazda bounced. Two more light flashes and two more pops from the car behind, just as he hit the potholes, the shots flying God knows where.

Forget the ridiculous situation, forget my shoulder and forget the yelping female next to me, now I was pissed off! I laid on the horn and put on the brakes for a slow stop. He damn near rear-ended me before reversing it and dropping back.

Outside lights snapped on up and down the pleasant, maple-treed street. By the time I had completely stopped, a few heads were peeking around a few notched front doors. I reached for the door handle.

What are you doing? she asked, her voice squeaking with panic.

I didn’t answer. I clambered out and turned towards him. He stopped thirty feet back, still inside his hidey-hole, the vehicle dark except for the headlights. I waved my good right arm at him.

Come on, you chickenshit son of a bitch! I bellowed, slapping the middle of my chest. Here I am! Shoot, you pencil-dicked piece of crap! Shoot! Show us how damn tough you are, you gutless, wormy little punk! Shoot, damn you, shoot!

What’s going on out there? yelled a voice from behind one of those pretty, weather-treated doors.

What’s the matter? I went on, flinging my arm about. Hey, little big man, what’s wrong? Shoot or get off the damn pot!

Nothing from the car. It just sat there, motor idling smoothly, the square yellow headlights like cold deadly eyes. Like those of a cat in the bushes.

Another voice came from a different house.

You, out there, move along! We’re calling the cops!

I could hear that crisp autumn air flittering over the changing leaves. I waited for his hand to snake out the open window, ready to dive for the curb if it did. The Lexus idled away while he took his time deciding. Then, two seconds shy of me walking in his direction, he threw his expensive transmission into reverse and backed up. It wasn’t a pretty job of backing. He was going fast, which put him to lolling side to side. But, finally, he made it to the end of the street and right-angled it onto the next. He sped off, a black hulk sandwiched between headlights and running lights.

I turned and plopped onto the front seat. A man who owned one of the earlier voices got up the gumption to step out onto his front porch, directly across from me.

Do me a favor, I said loud enough for him to hear, call an ambulance to go with the cops.

He waved his hand to let me know he understood and went back inside.

I leaned into the seat and put my right hand behind my left shoulder as far as it would go. Felt some blood, but not a lot. Pain coming on as the shock induced numbness subsided. I closed my eyes and tilted my head to my passenger.

Doing all right? I asked her.

What is wrong with you?

Since I’m having trouble finding it, I think we’ll let the hospital come to us.

Sirens in the distance. Since I hadn’t answered her question, she fell quiet. It looked like it was up to me to make small talk.

What’s your name?

I kept my eyes closed. It took her a while.

Mariah.

Oh. Like the wind.

I sang it out, way off key.

"‘We call the wind Mariah.’ From ‘Paint Your Wagon.’"

Oh, God.

Twice she’d oh-Godded me. That was enough. I had a pinhead’s worth of pride. I sat in silence and thought about the new hole in my body.

You’re tough, inner Kenyon said. Getting shot ain’t nothing new to you. So gut it up and impress prissy missy two shoes, cause you a man, strong as unbent nails.

But, damn, it’s a sick feeling to know an alien object has entered your body, always has been. Makes your stomach queasy, first off, and after the stomach comes the shakes.

But don’t let on to her. You’re a tough guy. Macho. Yes sir-ree,