River Creed

By Kelly Coleman

RIVER CREED is the final novel in a trilogy that traces incest, rape and murder in the Ozarks. It’s a dangerous track. About one-third of Missouri is covered by forests and rivers. It’s easy to hide the bodies …. Enough is enough. A small band of maverick outliers determine to put an end to the wicked. Bullets are on the menu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796072334

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Copyright © 2019 by Kelly Coleman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/29/2020

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, thanks to Carolin Van Abbema for her untiring effort to edit and word process this publication. Her faith was only matched by my daughters; Amy, Audra and Cassie. Thanks goes out to the engineer at the Water Department, Boonville, MO. And, thanks to Debi Rowe, Courtney Backues, Copies Etc., Lakisha Williams Eckhoff, Barb Combs, Allison the RN, L.L., MD., John Absinthe, and Lady ‘K’, the psychologist and counselor. Salute to T.J.S. for her candid account of the homeless life style. Much appreciate De Ann Ege’s review of manuscript.

Thank you, Mitch, Rhodes, Cash and Race Leonard for the reviews. And, my thanks go out to all the well-wishers, for the ‘high fives’, and words of encouragement.

The area of Central Missouri in which this story unfolds is idyllic. The good folk therein are fair, square, unaffected and ‘true’ as I’ve met in the journey called life. Thank you.

Cover Model

Kisha

For N.J.C.

Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Thomas Gray

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

In Missouri, sheriffs are elected at county level.

CHAPTER 1

Spring 2019. Central Missouri, Little Niangua River area.

The sky is blue as the back of a jay bird, a bright blue. The sun is lifting loose of the eastern horizon, a blazing orb transforming the night dew into a low, flat strata of mist over this northwestern rim of the Ozarks. The caw of crows is in the air and the lone hoot of an owl drifts out the mint green forest of shagbark hickory, oak and hackberry.

Earlier, in the dark AM, John J. Cooper parked his pickup down below on a dirt sideroad in Licking Horse Springs and hiked up here to his tower building. The tower is atop this steep precipice overlooking miles of forested hills and patchwork fields.

Few, if any, residents in the unincorporated community of Licking Horse Springs would recognize John’s red Dodge pickup parked in the weeds amid the old singlewides, faded RVs, tiny shacks and junk cars. And, very few are early risers in this rural Missouri outpost …. Then, there’s the random barking dog.

Before first light, beneath a gazillion stars, John hikes up to the abandoned water tower building which he has recently purchased. He wears a lightweight leather jacket, LEVI’s and well-worn Timberland hiking boots, and brings a thermos of coffee. John intends to be ‘on site’ when the welders arrive. He’s never met the outfit, only worked a deal over the phone. He is somewhat skeptical given the low bid and where the crew originates from…. Like, this guy is from Cadillac Hollow. John knows this north lip of the Ozarks like the back of his hand. He’s a land broker and familiar with Cadillac Hollow. There are upscale areas out in the counties where the well-to-do live; there’s where the regulars, the middle-class tend to buy and build; and there are areas where lower income are dominant. Numerous outliers checker this neck-of-the-woods. Then, there’s Cadillac Hollow, where the outlaws live cheek by jowl with a motley assortment of addicts, felons, ne’er-do-wells, and dipsomaniacs. Cadillac Hollow is different than Licking Horse Springs. Generally speaking, Cadillac Hollow is the preserve of the lawless; Licking Horse Springs is mostly a retreat for the rural poor.

John has an unorthodox job here and the reputable welding businesses wanted an arm-and-a-leg to do it. Using the ‘he-said and I-heard’ approach, John reached out to GremStone Welding, Cadillac Hollow. He has yet to meet Grem Stone, the owner of GremStone Welding. There is no finesse required for this job, and it should be a simple handshake deal. John is here to shake Mr. Stone’s hand and clarify his expectations. This is not a construction job, it’s a demolition and cleanup job. John wants the steel water tank removed from the tower.

About the tower. What John has here is a three-story, 30 by 30-foot masonry building, constructed of a hodgepodge of brick, concrete blocks and rock with a shed roof atop solid rough-cut oak rafters. The roof is accessible by ladder stairs going up to an 8 by 8-foot observatory. There is a door opening from the observatory onto the tarred roof. The front of the building faces the gravel driveway coming into the property and the back is on the edge of the cliff. The base of the cliff is strewn with boulders and chunks of loose rock. The roof slopes to the back of the building and is absent railings. The tower was built to house the large cylindric steel tank standing longways from bottom to top (as a monster culvert setting on end, with the ends welded closed, thus making a watertight tank). The tower was constructed around the tank for protection from weather. The tank in the tower building, on this high point of land, originally provided a gravity flow water supply for Licking Horse Springs but was subsequently antiquated by a drilled well within the community. As the tank nary requires the entire size of the interior of the tower, it sets to one side of the building, with the stove and stairs to the opposite side. Going up the stairs, one reaches a second floor built around the tank. Continuing up the stairs, one reaches the third floor, also constructed around the tank. The last stretch of stairs leads up to the box shaped observatory opening onto the roof. The stairs and wood floors are built out of rough-cut oak planks and each floor has window openings.

As earlier noted, the concrete main floor includes a large coal stove (burns wood), which was used during winter to keep the water in the tank from freezing. This was the purpose of the building in an earlier era.

In modern time, water tanks are perched up in the air on steel struts or ‘legs’, exposed to the weather. The continuous flow of the water facilitated by many users, the larger volume of water in the tank (500,000 gallons, more or less), mixing systems, vents and the slow swirl of the water keep the water from freezing.

Always creative, John plans to cut the tank out and fill-in the open holes in the second and third floors. He has a straightforward plan for dismantling the cylindric steel water tank. His plan is for the welders to start cutting the steel tank into pieces, working from the top down. They will cut the top off first, into pieces that can be manhandled and pitched out the windows or carried to the roof and dropped to a common location on the driveway. Some pieces, cut out the top, may fall inside and to the bottom of the tank, which can be removed when the welders reach the bottom. The process should be safe and practical given the stairs and the floors around the tank. The floors provide a base for ladders and access to torch the steel into manageable pieces. Following the dismantling of the tank, the welders will load the scrap metal onto a truck and remove it from the property, selling the metal for a bonus. At this time, John will contact a reputable contractor to fill in the holes on the second and third floors. The end result being a tower with three 900 square foot floors, serviced by stairs going up to the roof. John’s plan includes a large deck on top with railing. The interior will be finished in John’s manner of choosing to manifest his personal Ozark ‘castle getaway’.

The first order of business will be the removal of the vintage WARM MORNING coal/wood burning stove from the ground floor and setting it aside from the anticipated scrap metal pile location. John plans to restore the antique stove.

Drinking coffee on the roof under a rising sun, John watches a furry marmot forage in the rocks far below…. Hears a woodpecker rapping on a hollow tree back in the timbers. ‘I don’t know doodly-squat about these guys… if they ever get here …. Likely a sketchy crew straight from the black hole of Calcutta … Cadillac Hollow.’

Grem Stone is steering the GremStone company welding truck through Licking Horse Springs. It’s a bona fide rattletrap. He’s got his favorite beer-guzzling nephew, Richard Crease, with him. In fact, the rail-skinny Richard is swilling a beer at the moment. This 30-something is a real piece of work. He’s about 6 foot and 160 pounds, with a head shaped like a football on end atop his shoulders. He’s got a buzz haircut ’bout a month old and hasn’t shaved for over a week. Like always, he smells like last year’s dirty laundry.

Grem is bringing Richard up to date as regards this Cooper job. This guy is some high-roller, ain’t that for sure. John Cooper, shaking his head, whirling the loose steering wheel around. Got FOR SALE signs posted all over deep backcountry. Farms, hunting property, cattle ranches, you name it. Most’em end up with a SOLD tag…. A backroad realty whiz-bang. Never met him, just told him hundred dollars an hour…over the phone…. He thinks using hillbillies gonna save him money. Guess he ain’t for pay’en big operators with new trucks and equipment…. I got how this jerkoff operates, and I ain’t never met’m. We’re not bust’en a gut try’en to finish, I’m just say’n, shifting the truck down for the hill ahead.

Richard, with disgust, Fuck’m. We’ll work our own pace, throwing his empty on the floor in front his seat. I’m tired.

They’re up to the tower and backing the truck into a clear spot, away from the building. The truck’s a mess of oxygen and acetylene tanks and torches and hoses, welding rods, welder, toolboxes, coolers and empty beer cans…. All the necessities for this low-end portable welding crew.

Grem shuts the truck off, gets out, slams his door several times and lights a cigarette. Looks like the old boy is late. Neither is aware of John’s presence on the tower roof.

John is sipping coffee from his thermos and listening. The conversation reaches him clear-as-a-bell.

The banter continues below. Richard cracking another beer.

What the hell you so tired for? Grem stretching his greasy, stocky self, screwing-up his puffy face.

Fucking those horndog girls all morning, Richard shaking his head, throwing his empty down, getting in a cooler off the back of the truck.

Grem stops stretching, watching Richard pulling on another beer. Your old lady’s daughters?

Who do you think retard? They come and get ‘n bed with me the minute she leaves for work. I got ’em trained.

How old they get’n to be now? Grem grinning at his scruffy nephew.

14 and almost 13. I got both cherries…. It’s like this Grem, you take the cow, you get the calves. Richard drawing down on his beer.

Grem laughs loudly, Old enough to bleed, old ‘nuff to butcher, and cuts a loud fart. No wonder you’re draggin’. ‘Bout a month ago, I got some green stuff. I was clearing brush off this yard round a vacant bungalow at the edge of Shanghai. Down in Hickory County. This little bit came up from an ole house ‘round the corner. Had a T-shirt on and short shorts. She started talking to me while she kept pulling this long stem rose through a circle she’s made with her thumb and index finger, real sexual like. She kept asking me if we could play hide-and-seek in the house. Weren’t anybody around. I took her in, and she gave me a blow job good as a 200-dollar hooker. She’d had some practice. He looks up at a honking formation of geese overhead, Little late in the season for them. Going back to uncoil some hoses off the rear of the truck.

Richard carrying his beer towards the doorway into the tower, I’m going to check this fucker out.

Several minutes later, while Grem is laying hoses out, he hears dissentious voices from up on the tower. Then, a short terrifying scream.

CHAPTER 2

The blue Jeep creeps through the darkened hills of eastern Benton county. A fleck of illuminated headlamps winding through the timbered highlands at near 11 PM. When she reaches the low-water bridge crossing the river, she parks the short, 2-door Jeep into a river rock opening in the woods. The headlights go off, the windows up, and the girl puts the stolen pistol underneath her seat and gets out. She pulls a designer bookbag backpack out the vehicle and closes the door, standing still, facing an onslaught to her senses. A partial moon hangs overhead among an infinite spray of stars stretching from horizon to horizon. These horizons are jagged shadows of timber tops ranging the hills, splattered around this lonely spot of geography. She can see the moon’s sheen spreading down the river’s rippling surface and the gray slab concrete low-water bridge. There’s the hint of skunk and an overwhelming smell of rich newly green soilage and sodden riverbanks. Reminds her of sperm. She seems to taste it. There is this dampness, and she can hear the continuous pulse of the river. Now the dense blanket of insect noise and the chorus of bullfrogs, punctuated by the hoot owls and bark of coyotes and grunts of invisible critters …. Like some Morphean dreamland or lost hemisphere in outer space.

She walks down to where a corner of the bridge merges with the river. She steps off the bridge onto the loam banks and crosses to the large spring propelling water into the river. It has its own sound – a sort of deep purr. She dips a cupped hand into the dark cold spring waters and brings small amounts up to her mouth. She returns up the bank and walks to the center of the bridge. She sets her bookbag backpack down on the cool concrete, unzips the center pocket and pulls a new black plastic trash bag and wallet out, shakes the bag open and puts her keys and wallet inside. She stands up straight, facing down the gleaming river channel and begins to undress. As she takes off her T-shirt, stringy cut-offs, panties and sandals, she puts them in the trash bag, then knots the bag closed tight. She puts the bag in her canvas pack, then rises to attention, facing downriver with the pack over her shoulders.

120 pounds perfectly stacked to 5-1/2 feet tall. Her luminous body as a chimera ceded from the shores of paradise. Her pink toenails on an even diagonal from the tip of her big toe to the tip of her little toe. The arches of her feet smooth and gentle. Ankles like a thoroughbred colt, even, gentle calves into soft knees and an hourglass torso from here up to wide shoulders. An inny bellybutton. A sleek neck giving way to an oval face with ears laid back into rust-red gossamer, shoulder-length hair matching the equilateral triangle pubic patch, and with modest breasts having small pinkish areolas and nipples. Her nose a mild upward tilt ‘tween large brown eyes giving way to full lips and a soft chin; features of her unwrinkled face…. She jumps into the downriver side of the Little Niangua.

Once in the current, the girl rolls over on her back, heading downstream, both straps of her pack over her shoulders, and begins her alien midnight passage of this watery traverse. Her eyes are open to the star-spangled sky above; she floats slowly away from the bridge, passing into dark shadows.

Sometimes, persons in desperate straits, seemingly consigned to oblivion, make absurd decisions that conclude in deliverance. It begs the question whether there is an ‘old brain’, a pre-Stone Age mind, that in extremity leads to survival…. Or, maybe it’s simply intuition, primal intuition, cogito ergo sum.

A buck-naked float down the Little Niangua in the spring after midnight by a lone female teenager is not without its issues. For one thing, the water is cold because of the time of year and the big spring feeding the river. Hypothermia could be a hazard. A second safety issue on this section of the river is a sharp turn in the channel a short distance down from the bridge. The sharp turn creates a whirlpool, a vortex, causing a powerful downward suction. A strong adult swimmer had drowned here previously. Thirdly, the further one floats beyond the spring, the warmer the water becomes, increasingly more hospitable to the cottonmouth pit viper, and these aggressive snakes glide the waters in mass at night. A fourth troubling issue is that most wild animals are nocturnal and often come down to the river. This includes the predators, such as coyotes and the occasional mountain lion. And five, the river is permeated with fast floating debris moving at high speed in the current. There are also broken tree limbs buried in the bottom, with sharp spears pointed upward below the surface.

At one point in her drift, there is a large rent in the trees stretching uphill from the river. The girl slides over into a sidestroke, facing the moonlit opening. She sees this dark fortress-like silhouette…then part of a deck and a yellow light from a window. The building seems to be round. Huge, dark and round…. She’s thinking it could be R4. ‘It could be Jake Boss.’.

Hey, she yells out unintentionally against the din of wilderness. Going past, she yells again, Hey.

The girl floats in and out the shadows, passing down the river. At one point, she hears a loud crack in the brush on the bank, and in other locations passes through swarms of winged insects. She seems oblivious to the brush edged into the river, silky submerged organisms therein…. She flips over into a hard freestyle before she’s caught in the vortex at the tight turn in the channel.

In less than an hour, she is approaching another low-water concrete bridge and gets over on her stomach paddling towards a point where the bridge hits the road bank.

Leaning over, naked, the gritty dirt squeezing up between her toes, dripping wet, with the pack yet on her back, she carefully tiptoes up to the road surface.

She’s breathing hard as she walks out into the moonlight at the center of this bridge. She gets her pack off, and lays down beside it, on her stomach, hands under the side of her face. She’s laying out here nude in the center of a low-water concrete bridge over the Little Niangua at 1 AM, crying.

About 1:30 AM, the girl stops crying and stands up and brushes the grit off. She gets the trash bag out of her pack, tears it open, and gets dressed. Puts her wallet and keys in her cut-offs. She slips her sandals on, wads the trash bag up and stuffs it into the pack. With her pack hanging over her shoulder, she stands out here in the center of the moonlit bridge midst the dense wild sounds and drone of insects. She has this greasy awareness that to follow the gravel road south will take her back to the first bridge and the Jeep. She’s chilling and turns south to make the walk, in sandals, on this isolated county gravel road.

As she moves along the road, she’s conscious of the ditch weed and sagging barbwire fences on both sides and meadows beyond, rinsed in moonlight. She spots an old barn back in a field and sees a huge tree in the background of a pasture with a thick clutch of egret nests high up. A dampness is moving over this river plain, and the girl thinks of getting in her Jeep and turning on the heater.

By the time she reaches the Jeep, her feet are sore and dirty. She falls into the Jeep, drops the designer bookbag/backpack onto the passenger seat and starts the engine, then the heater, and closes the door. The sounds of the river and wilderness are muted, and the tension diluted. Not knowing what she’s doing (consciously) and knowing what she’s doing (unconsciously), the anomalous girl drives across this bridge to follow the backroads around to the giant darkened saucer-shaped edifice she had seen up high on the hill above the river. R4.

It’s 3:30 AM, and this stray fairylike girl is at the front door of R4, ringing the doorbell, her blue Jeep parked beside the only other vehicle in the mammoth parking lot, a storm-gray, crew cab pickup. Jake’s pickup truck. The parking lot dusk-to-dawn light eclipses the light of the partial moon far to the West.

After looking through the peephole, a disarranged Jake Boss opens the door. He’s ‘bout half asleep, barefoot, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and has a S.&W. 357 MAGNUM snub-nose dangling to his side. The din of nighttime wilderness, compact and diverse. Jake glances out past the girl, then looks the girl in the eye, Can I help you?

The girl doesn’t notice the handgun. You used to come in the Early Bird with Catcher and John Cooper.

Jake struggling for some sense of the situation. Aren’t you the girl that read the poem at Catcher’s funeral?

Yes. She’s trembling. I need a friend.

CHAPTER 3

It’s the break of day and the first slat of sunlight is shining through Marco’s house-bus out here on the backside of beyond. He’s in a red T-shirt and baggy blue jeans sitting at this makeshift table, Hereford House coffee cup in hand, staring out the long flat bank of school bus windows, listening to a vintage box radio. Midst Toby Keith and Kid Rock and news graffiti ‘bout weather, high school scores, car wrecks, unlawful possession and domestic and assault arrests, molestation charges, etc., he hears about the fatal plunge of Richard Crease at the abandoned Licking Horse Springs water tower owned by John Cooper. Marco’s remembering who John Cooper is and that Cooper was friends with Catcher, thinking Cooper, Catcher and Jake were coffee buddies frequenting the Early Bird in Warsaw, before Catcher was killed…. He pours another cup, ‘good riddance of Richard Crease, a white-trash, low-life alky-addict, out there with that woman and her daughters, should have been shot a long time ago.’

He’s watching several deer flitting through the fescue meadow across the rock road, up where Big Track was bumped-off. The man is in accord with the natural world unfolding roundabout his bus headquarters. The dew-glazed soilage has a fresh green smell and a mystic haze lifting off in the heat of the sun. The grassy patch across the road is ringed by sycamore, cottonwood, hackberry and cedar.

Marco is enjoying a leisurely arising, drinking coffee and sensing the increase of light as the rising sun has a direct bead on the solitary bus positioned off to the side of this most isolated road. He can hear the crows…. Straightening a stack of National Enquirers on the tabletop, he pushes a bone handled hunting knife over next to a whetstone and moves a box of 22 LONGRIFLE bullets aside, picks up his cell phone and punches in Jake’s number.

Five rings and Jake answers, Hello, brusque.

Morning Jake, Marco here.

I know who you are Marco.

I was calling to see if you still want me to paint this morning?

I want to paint Marco, but let’s wait till another day. I was up most the night. I know I said today, but I have some unexpected company.

OK. I’ve got plenty to do. We’ll talk later.

Yow. That works.

Talk atcha later, and Marco puts the cell down on the table…. Getting up and standing in the narrow aisle. ‘Oatmeal and Eggo time’, moving over to his narrow counter with the sink, mini-fridge, hotplate and microwave.

Finishing breakfast, dirty dishes in the sink, Marco puts on work gloves and moves outdoors. The temperature is about 60 Fahrenheit and a woodpecker is rapping on a hollow tree back in the woods. ‘Get the pick and throw some loose rock out of the bomb shelter,’ getting down in the squarish hole envisioned as a future shelter.

So Marco is down in the mostly square hole next to the bus and near the road, trying to square a corner nearest the road. That’s when he spots it, a red plastic cell phone laying in the weeds near the road. He gets out of the hole, picks up the phone and leaves his gloves on the steps going into the bus.

Curious, he turns it on …. Sitting at this table now, he takes a swig of cold coffee. He scrolls through a menu. The phone screen remains blank except for 1 photo. It is an unclear photo of a girl flanked on one side by a man and on the other side by two men. Three men and girl holding a fish up. She looks to be about 14 and the men to be in their 30’s or 40’s.

Marco leaves the table to search through a wood crate under his improvised bed. Gets the wood box up and onto the table. He rummages through same, looking for a magnifying glass…. ‘Voila.’ The glass is in a plastic frame with a handle amongst nails, nail clippers, tubes of glue, shoe strings, screws, bolts and nuts, leather conditioners, screwdrivers, pliers and hammers, playing cards, rulers, keys, scissors, pocket knives, lighters, matches, curled up photos, ballpoints, belt buckles, rolls of wire, Zane Grey paperbacks, business cards, arrowheads, bullets and all kinds of minutiae. He lays the magnifying glass on the table and replaces the wooden box under the bed.

Back at the table, Marco brings the photo up again and begins examining it through the glass. Because of the long rows of windows on both sides of the bus, the light interferes with his ability to detect much detail on the low definition photo. Yet, a few details are obvious. Looks like the girl is holding a catfish. ‘Something kinda strange …. The photo is of a young girl flanked by three middle-aged