Deep and Dirty: A Novel

By Douglas Dell

Robert Winchester abruptly parts life as an investigative journalist in New York City with no firm plans for the future. After inheriting his uncle’s home in the North Florida backwoods he uncovers the dirty secrets of a drug ring, three ritualistic murders and a sheriff’s department plagued by corruption and links to a powerful drug

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bulldog Publications, Est. 1980
• Release date: Apr 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781946522504

Douglas Dell

Douglas Dell spent four years in the Deep South uncovering the dirty secrets of a drug ring and its far reaching tentacles in a small rural community that could little afford its presence. Dell lives in Florida focusing on his writing of the Robert Winchester Series of books. Deep and Dirty is his first Novel.Subscribers to my VIP list receive 20% OFF my debut eBook ONLY on Smashwords.comPlease subscribe via my website DouglasDell.com to receive your VIP coupon code!

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DEEP AND DIRTY

A NOVEL BY DOUGLAS DELL

Bulldog Publications, Est. 1980

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Copyright

© 2019 by Douglas Dell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Published by Bulldog Publications, Est. 1980

An imprint of Tough Tribe Publishing, New York.

www.DouglasDell.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout © 2019 Cover design:

Rusty & Winnie| for Bulldog Publications, Est.1980

Deep and Dirty, A Novel by Douglas Dell

1st ed. ISBN 978-1-946522-50-4

Library of Congress Control Number is available and on file with the publisher

23 22 21 20 19 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to those who fight for change and strive to make a difference, and to the woman who lived the nightmare and features heavy in my dreams.

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTERS:

Chapter 1 - Middleton and Ninth

Chapter 2 - The Funnel

Chapter 3- The Way We Live

Chapter 4 - Chemistry for Kids

Chapter 5 - The Disconnected Journalist

Chapter 6 - A Night Out

Chapter 7 - Dawg Fights among Dogs

Chapter 8 - Swappers, Swingers and Isolation

Chapter 9 - Flying School and the Barfly

Chapter 10 - Melons

Chapter 11 - Dirty Business

Chapter 12 - Spuds

Chapter 13 - The Rescue

Chapter 14 - Sinking Lewis

Chapter 15 - The Corruption of Don Smith

Chapter 16 - The Truth and Nothing But

Chapter 17 - The Shuffle

Chapter 18 - Chapter 1 - Gangs and Grass

Chapter 19 - Billy’s Bond

Chapter 20 - Profitable Law Enforcement

Chapter 21 - The Ritualistic Murders

Chapter 22 - The Best Offer

END

Final Word

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

Our senses collect more memories than we can ever write down, from childhood to a millisecond ago, sight, sound, taste and aroma, breathtaking moments, the protracted waits and the brutality of tragedy. I can still smell the market at Mateo Bluff, thick with the rank odor of slaughter. Obvious in a way, still nothing like the sanitized version you find in your average grocery store meat counter. It found its way into my clothes, soaked through the skin like maggots in a dead thing and up my nose where a graveyard of bones still thick with butchered flesh haunted my thoughts. The Walton family keeps the worst stuff at the back, the quarry of occasional hunters, poachers and road rage. Deer taken on the hoof, a gamey tragic death offering the glazed eyes of a child’s toy, only with a vacant mist covering the once alert aqueous surface - no more fighting with night traffic or drunken concealed carriers. Rabbits are plentiful, enough to keep a fastidious furrier in full swing; they reek of urgent sweat and putrid piss, a curse at the bottom of the inevitable hardhearted food chain. Birds are hung high, wild turkeys mostly, like creatures from another time lacking the obvious connection to our mammalian family, the gift of flight robbed from their weary vibrant wings forever. Occasionally dinosaur meat shows up, the closest thing anyway, alligators are on the menu here, their slaying seems closer to vengeance than simple hunting, they’ve got a bad, even if rather unjustified reputation, making them fair game for an occasional disgruntled hunter. Even snake, opossum, armadillo and crow arrive from time to time, but that’s another story entirely.

The funny thing about The South in general is that it’s pretty, an odd choice of word but highly practical, take away the disasters sitting on almost every other corner and you’ll notice nature has this way of battling human influence by blotting out those ghastly sore spots. She throws up gorgeous red maples, seasonal holly, amazing grandfather oaks, draped in perpetual Spanish moss, then at the right time of year there are the beautiful and typically charming southern magnolias, you can’t help but fall in love with their waxy bottle-green broadleaves and impossible creamy flowers, al-most out of place on a tree, later followed by primitive cone-shaped fruit. In the winter the evergreen live oaks secretly shed a few of their small leaves forming a crunchy carpet under foot and the yellow jessamine vines convince you it’s not winter at all, yet in those simple scented flowers even nature has a message, the plant is rich in strychnine. Looking back the romance of nature’s bounty had conned me into believing I might change things or at least carve my version of paradise in the midst of an endless swamp. But then again The South is an enigma to most people, those who’ve always lived there only see what I’ve described, like blinkered plow horses, those blooms and branches conceal the things they know exist but don’t really want to believe. In much the same way if I traveled around New York City in a chauffeur driven limo and never walked or used the subway, I’d have missed the ugliness too, the disenfranchised and the kind of filth that lurks in big city gutters everywhere on earth.

CHAPTER 1 - MIDDLETON AND NINTH

A damp dirty mist crammed the sky, concealing a new gap on the horizon. The night was passing, the sun attempted a play for space hauling up the scent of grazing cows, the paper mill and murky power station output, leaving the odiferous potential of bog mud, drifting marijuana tainted cigarette smoke and cheesy cheap air fresheners, the kind that dull the brain into believing every-thing is clean and fresh – it was far from it. Otherwise it was a particularly ordinary Monday in mid-March. For most folks the week was raring to go and they weren’t even close. At six thirty-five with another five more work days of drudgery, the yellow and black school buses began to trudge, flashing lights blazing, along Middleton Road in the small north Florida county of Brown Springs, close to the St. Johns River and home to a divided population of about sixty thousand souls, where nearly thirty percent of them existed well below the poverty line, nobody was sure exactly what that meant, perhaps the words dirt poor summed it up better.

Earlier that morning ten-year-old Johnny-Ray Tanner complained of gut ache, his mom assumed it was a Monday ruse to duck school, particularly after he’d been bullied. So after avoiding breakfast she walked him to the end of the muddy 9th Avenue to meet the bus. It arrived earlier than usual. Johnny-Ray climbed aboard, he was scruffy, with unkempt hair and ill-fitting clothes, the other kids immediately jeered and passed judgment.

The bus moved off, but within a minute he was tapping the driver’s shoulder. Ah’m gonna barf ma’am, he whispered fighting back the urge.

Ok Ah’m gonna pull over, she said with an almost unwilling sigh and stopped the vehicle abruptly in the middle of the dirt road. Johnny-Ray ran for the ditch, after adding to the stagnating collection of mosquito larvae, trash and empty beer cans he noticed something unusual, the tattooed forearm and mutilated hand of person otherwise face down in the foul smelling sludge. This provoked a second bout of spewing as the other kids began to groan, giggle and comment on the morning adventure. Johnny-Ray scampered to the bus. Ma’am there’s sumpm in the muud, he said trembling.

The driver frowned. What d’ya mean sumpm Johnny-Ray?

Ah saw a dead guy Ma’am, in the muud.

Ya sure he’s dead?

Yeah Ma’am he is.

Ya better not be cuttin’ the fool awraht, she said standing up.

No.

The driver left the bus and walked to the ditch, Johnny-Ray Tanner was correct, she ushered the boy back to the bus and immediately dialed 911 on her cellphone. The call was routed through to Jerry Shores the deputy on duty; he was about two miles away at the time and headed over to Middleton without delay.

Sergeant Jim Carpenter was Shores supervisor; he’d been out of uniform for two weeks, on nights, handpicked for a special assignment, the graveyard shift, watching the activities of a smalltime drug dealer and his connections in bloodsucker hell, where undercover work was close to a living nightmare. The drug dealing under observation was based in an abandoned mobile home close to a place known locally as The Triangle, so described due to the odd wedge shape of land that interfered with the generally agricultural surroundings. Carpenter and a small group of deputies operated from a satellite office away from the main sheriff’s department, closer to the community, scattered over about six-hundred acres, with second-rate trailer homes. It was originally populated by a group of families, all agricultural laborers from Mexico, Puerto Rico and South Florida, the farming plan never panned out. Now a couple of heavy industries dominated the local skyline instead, they started out as major employers, mainly unskilled blue collar workers, yet over time increasing automation reduced the need for human hands.

With rising joblessness and little promise of any-thing new, the few homes that weren’t abandoned survived amid their derelict cousins, many housed amateur methamphetamine labs, a handful of dealers and other good people. The backwoods and dirt tracks were a weekend retreat for drug takers, drinkers and mud bogging teenagers from town. A kind of no-man’s-land for the sheriff’s department, it was where bad stuff happened, everyone knew that. Their laissez faire attitude resulted from a squeeze on resources elsewhere, the don’t fix it ‘til it’s bust mentality meant nothing here, it was not only broken beyond repair but morally bankrupt, one of several dirty corners in the county, a failed opportunity with little to protect.

Criminals operated with near impunity, drug dealing was rife and a regular deputy’s vehicle couldn’t make it more than a few hundred feet be-fore getting jammed in the mud. Conceivably that worked both ways, each side of the law opting for an island mentality, they only met on the journey in or out. The sole reason to even pursue a person was with a warrant, beyond that the numerous trees and tracks guaranteed a matchless hideaway for anyone on the run. Calls for assistance were rarely followed up, the only guarantee of the sheriff’s presence was if one of their own got hit or stuck. When there was a citizen death, natural causes meant filling in the right forms and getting the body out of there as quickly as possible. This catastrophic mistake in the woods was once a green and pleasant creek, before the advent of trucks, ATV’s and mobile homes you’d imagine something peaceful, without the omnipresent Floridian mosquitoes more or less pleasant.

Carpenter was dead beat, rubbed his eyes and studied the clock; it was seven, time to call it quits after a night watching the delinquent folks traveling in and out of the woods trading with three meth dens, in particular the home of Billy Williams a thirty something nobody who’d taken a short cut by adding to an already monstrous drug scourge. Carpenter knew the law had to be upheld but the department was undermanned, undermined and fighting an epidemic sized crisis well beyond the realms of rural enforcement. He’d need to start breaking eggs to make any substantial impact or every lead would fizzle away like a faulty July Fourth firework, breaking heads was a better option, unfortunately that meant visiting the past and crossing the proverbial modern day line. The odds of being caught in the act were higher than any self-respecting cop would like to chance, not quite lottery high, but high enough, even at the bottom rung of the ladder there were plenty of phone’s with cameras.

The minor backwoods operation was fairly straightforward, a dozen or so bog trotters stole just about every pill they could lay their grubby hands on, men and women worked with makeshift labs in a handful of rundown trailers. Billy Williams was one and sold his output to numerous callers, the remainder was scooped up a gang of shabby dealers, selling their baggies in smaller rural towns, where those below the dearth marker attempted chemical escape. Carpenter was convinced Williams lacked a mesencephalon, his head was truly hollow in the center, something important missing. The gene pool in Brown Springs County was closer to a puddle, the rain rarely diluted it further, just about everyone was related in some way, it made DNA sound like a wise acronym for ‘Do Not Abbreviate!’ The sergeant forever faced dead ends when investigating the Williams family and others, the plan to investigate came quietly right from the top where the sheriff, Wade Nelson, loved to offer something at each of his monthly press conferences. He was big on PR and enjoyed telling the local semi-interested media about how he’d taken down the latest bunch of gangbangers. The last detailed their involvement in finishing the 2nd Street gang. The State Attorney showed up and boasted how the felonies carried thirty year sentences for RICO offenses, even a Federal Mar-shall helped confirm the importance of the bust, they made the gangbangers sound like Al Capone’s closest relatives, not bad for three guys in the hood pushing stolen prescription drugs, living large and driving around in dated cars with brand-new shiny wheels and loud rap music. They never learned the word discretion or its meaning at school. The entire write-up about these fools was so incredulous you’d imagine an arrow pointing out their operation and whereabouts from the clouds above. Even Carpenter’s immediate superior Lieutenant Brett Lewis and his Captain Don Smith had little to say about the sheriff’s approach.

Jim Carpenter studied the dregs of coffee in a Styrofoam cup, crushed it in his palm whilst picturing someone’s neck and launched it at the trashcan like a honed basketball player, it missed. He scribbled a few notes on a yellow legal rule pad, drummed his fingers on the desk, slumped back in the chair and studied a flickering fluorescent tube above his head. How the hell did I end up chasin’ these local fuckin’ fools, there’s gotta be more to life than this BS? he said righting himself to study his grimy fingernails. The phone began to ring; he combined an answer with a deep sigh. Carpenter?

Mornin’ Sir, Jerry Shores.

Hey Jerry how ya doin’? he said reaching into the desk-tidy for a nail file.

I’m okay sir, I’ve got a DRT in the ditch on Middleton and Ninth, I’m first on the scene.

Carpenter sighed heavily again. Yeah, I was just goin’ off, so what’s the deal?

Sorry sir, I forget you’re on nights now, I couldn’t raise anyone even Cap’n Smith.

Captain Don Smith was often absent, he lived alone after the death of his wife and regularly went on drinking and drug taking binges, he’d managed to hide it from the sheriff and knew none of his men would breathe a word above his head, still speculation was rife, they privately called him Captain Coke, it was rumored he used it instead of coffee.

You never can these days, he’s prob’ly at that tittie bar on the Highway One ya know Lil’ Sweethearts chattin’ to the hookers.

Shores chuckled. Most of the ho’s at that dump are seniors! What should I do sir?

Hold everythin’ Jerry, I’ll be over, notify the ME, remember before eight thirty it’s still the after hour’s number and try and raise everyone else ya can for me will ya?

Sure thing sir.

You know it’s kinda weird Jerry, I drove along there this mornin’ around six, it was dead, not a whisper, not even the usual shit.

Somethin’s sure dead now, but to be honest, looks like this guy’s been here for a day or two; the vultures or even the dogs might’ve had a go.

Black and Turkey Vultures show up at every kill site, they smell blood and gore from miles away, circle to begin with, casting shadows of six feet wingspans upon the ground like a forewarning of their inevitable presence, once you see them clinging to the tree branches like Christmas ornaments you know something’s stinking dead nearby. Carpenter glanced at his watch. Shite Hawks yeah, still they’ve got plenty of ‘dawgs n hawgs’ out there Jerry, give me eight minutes.

That’s a bit precise sir!

Yeah well I drive that road every day I’m still watching that asshole Billy Williams the drug king and those other losers in the woods for the sheriff!

Not much goin’ on in his head, the king of shit I think! added Jerry.

Carpenter chuckled. Yeah, I don’t like him much either, someone’s protectin’ his ass too, I’ve got an idea who, but not on the phone, I’ll be over soon, he said ending the call abruptly and heading to the restroom for one and half of his promised eight minutes. Taking care of matters in advance came from bitter experience, there was nothing worse than being caught wanting at the crime scene, particularly with a rogue photographer nearby. He studied his weary face in the small poorly lit restroom mirror; someone had drawn an obscene picture with a black sharpie on one corner, he attempted a smile. Crow’s feet were part of his busy facial landscape, his brow fur-rowed like a recently plowed field after heavy rain; he ran his right hand and fingers over forty-eight hours of stubble, then glanced down at his lack of uniform and general informality. You’re a mess James Carpenter, a total fuckin’ unmitigated mess, he said pausing and pinching both plica semilunaris towards his nose, what the hell happened to you? he drenched his face with cold water, oh well I s’pose duty fuckin’ calls, he said shuddering, drying his skin with a fresh paper towel and then using it to push open the restroom door. Carpenter was five-ten, lean, maybe even too thin from a caffeine rich diet and little else, junk food filled in the gaps, he was never a glut-ton, a gaunt face and intense blue-grey eyes told a story as did the scarred top lip and chin. He’d been ready to resign after fifteen years of sluggish promotion and even made a premature and futile run for sheriff a few years back, but was now struggling to get to lieutenant or captain, either way the ‘next’ sheriff was decided way ahead of the election in Brown Springs County, the good ole boy network guaranteed that. Jim was scraping forty-three, looked fifty-five and was dedicated to the core, he lived alone following an acrimonious divorce, the ex-wife spent more time at the gym rather than with Jim, met an enthusiastic personal trainer half her age and ended up moving to Huntsville, Alabama to start a new life, it didn’t work out, the trainer quickly discovered new opportunities. She arrived back in town a year later and knocked on her ex-husband’s new door, Jim didn’t bother answering. Forgiveness did not come easily to a man who’d been cuckolded in a small town; the shit was still fresh on his doorstep. Now the department was the only reason Carpenter had any will to live, he’d totally immersed himself in life as a cop, gave it his all, at ground level and in the back of beyond. It guaranteed plenty of unpleasant scrapes, part of it for a career cop, he’d never signed up for the flashing lights and high speed of TV land, only to end up dis-heartened, working in a grocery store a year later. Carpenter was a navy vet from the Mid-West, never trod on anyone’s toes to get ahead and took care of his people in the same way, a selfless lead-er, unlikely to climb much further up the promotion ladder. Captain Don Smith his ultimate command superior was a roadblock, close to the cop version of a made-man, a born and raised Brown Springs guy, in the south that meant every-thing, he went to the right kind of church, associated with their charitable causes and his fingers were deep in the local blueberry pie. Just about everyone knew he was as corrupt as they come, but knowing people in a place wrought from its own distinctive brand of history was all he needed to survive. The Smith family claimed a few street names and even a school building, his father was mayor of Brown Springs City in the sixties and his granddaddy a perennial county commissioner long before the concept of term limits. They’d taken a serious dive financially after The Savings and Loan crisis in the eighties, Don was the first cop in the clan. The name still held some local currency, but only with the older residents, he climbed the ranks faster than most, talent took second place, even third.

Jim Carpenter fished through a pile of keys from the office drawer, in the morning light his head began to throb, he walked outside and climbed in-to a scruffy black dented, otherwise unmarked Crown Victoria, it fitted in amongst the shabby backwoods collection, handed down like ragged clothing through the department over several years and well overdue for replacement. Carpenter usually drove it home and didn’t want to use the undercover SUV he’d been running round in. He started the engine, fished around the center con-sole for an ibuprofen bottle and popped two under his tongue. After hitting the lights he headed for Middleton Road, six minutes even though his eyes were smarting from a lack of sleep and the rapidly rising, intensifying morning sun. He reached over to the passenger seat for his shades, the foot-well beneath was a veritable trashcan, burger wrappers, coffee cups, empty chip packets, the all-hours cop diet, rich in salt and sugar, caffeine assisted with the unwilling eyelids. The road ahead was dull and uninteresting, the siren would’ve added to his headache, so he stuck with headlights, the partially concealed front flashing red and blue’s and those on the rear parcel shelf, crossing the river bridge the speedo was showing ninety. The stench of the nearby paper mill outfall consumed his nostrils and thoughts; the acidic repulsive sulfurous brew was too much to bear. He pulled over and copied Johnny-Ray Tanner in an early morning vomiting session. Once back in the vehicle he glanced in the mirror, checking for any undesirable remnants and stuffed two sticks of double-mint gum in his mouth, Carpenter then followed the river road to the scene of a crime. A dead body was no real emergency; he’d rather not be first to a rotting corpse. On the short and final stint, whilst pausing twice for the sluggish school bus parade, he re-called the last body he’d been called to, that of Abigail Moore, an attractive server from Hamp-ton’s Seafood Restaurant. Carpenter dined there every couple of weeks for supper, he had a crush on Abi despite the age difference, but she left suddenly, the next time he saw her was face down naked, in the murky shallow tree root infested tea-colored waters of Shaggy Creek. After years as a cop there wasn’t much that troubled him, gruesome road fatalities, the kind of brutal injuries ordinary people inflict on each another and plenty of everyday cases that called for the ME or attending physician. Then out of the blue something like this showed up, an ugly sight and one that haunted his memories. Abi’s death was far worse; he could put a name and a once vivacious personality to a now lifeless form and had the unpleasant task of handing her next of kin the horrendous news, Abi’s father lived across the street and he’d never put two and two together until after the event.

The last school bus moved on, there was the turning for Middleton, on a dangerously sharp bend a few hundred yards down Jerry Shores’ white Chevy was blocking the unmade road. Carpenter parked alongside and wandered over. Shores was in his early thirties, five-seven, stocky, solid, with strong almost muscle-bound arms, some premature signs of later spread were forming around the belt region. A sandy military cut topped him off and dark brown alert eyes studied the approaching sergeant from an amiable face. Shores was clean shaven and kind of held on to the pudginess of a child, a small nose with rosy cheeks, made him look much younger, yet he wasn’t the kind of guy you messed with and came out smiling afterwards. He’d been on full strength for the Brown Springs department for nearly three years. Not bad, eight minutes just like ya said sir!

Carpenter nodded. Yeah not bad at all Jerry an I got held up on the way, so who found it?

A school kid, Johnny-Ray Tanner, they stopped the bus so he could barf and he saw it in the mud.

Oh yeah he’s Chester Tanner’s kid, ya remember the guy that drowned in Cooper Creek last year, his mom’s raisin’ the boy now.

Jerry Shores frowned for a moment. Yeah I re-member he was fishin’ got drunk and went in the water.

Yep that’s him, always smashed, if the bus hadn’t stopped we’d not’ve known about the body for days, ‘cause I’ve never seen anyone walk down here before, they all drive like crazies tearin’ up the dirt night and day!

Yeah sure, they’ve flattened any evidence by now too, added Shores.

Did ya call the ME and crime scene folks Jerry?

Yeah but no sign yet, nothin’ from Cap’n Smith either.

They’re all still in bed, right where I should be now, Carpenter added with shrug.

Yeah it’s a long shift.

So what’ve we got so far?

Nothin’ special, a tattooed arm an what looks like a busted hand, he’s face down I haven’t touched him, he’s well dead obviously.

Let’s take a look, said Carpenter as he walked over to the semi-submerged corpse. He lifted his sunglasses to study the details and tapped the corpse with the tip of his shoe; he looked at Shores with a broad grin, are you sure he’s dead Jerry?

Shores chuckled. "I guess so, he aint smilin’ that’s for sure! he added.

Jim Carpenter crouched on the ground whilst using his right forefinger and thumb