Side by Side by John Ramsey Miller Page B

that planned killings were man’s work. Dixie did whatever her daddy said to, and if he told her to cut somebody up and throw the pieces in the river, she could do it as well as her brothers could. What did testicles have to do with getting bloody?
    Dixie’s instructions had been straight. Peanut said she was to watch the pair until he said kill them. She was to make sure that none of her brothers messed around with the woman because it wasn’t right to do it to her under such pitiful circumstances. But Peanut didn’t tell Dixie she couldn’t teach her a lesson or two.
    Dixie looked down at the sleeping child and, despite telling them to get it done, she’d bet the damn twins were out looking for deer signs, and hadn’t yet put a shovel blade into the ground.

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    Clayton Able, who had taken a break to go to his own room, returned. He opened another file. “You’ll want to take a look at Smoot family members and known associates and which rocks you might have to turn over to find them.”
    Clayton placed the pictures down faceup, one at a time, like a salesman showing his product to prospective customers. The first picture was a mug shot of an unpleasant young man in his twenties.
    “Here’s what you’d get if you crossed Jay Leno and a silverback,” Clayton said. “Stanley Smoot, Jr., who goes by the very original tag of Buck. Peanut’s firstborn. Twenty-nine and trouble with a capital ‘T.’ Graduated high school at twenty due to a few teachers he couldn’t scare the crap out of. Tried team sports, but Buck was prone to collecting personal fouls and generally considered a negative influence on his teammates. He could have been a poster boy for the Young Sociopath Club if there’d been one in his high school.”
    Buck bore a striking resemblance to his father, Peanut, but the son’s scalp was accented by mogul-like waves—as if the skin on his skull was doing an impression of wavy hair. Buck’s face was filled with small skin eruptions. He wore three heavy steel hoops in his left ear. His head was supported by a neck so thick that it would have looked at home on a rutting elk. He reminded Winter of a maniacal version of a long-jawed simpleton cartoon character from Mad magazine.
    “This picture was a police-sponsored portrait to commemorate the occasion of an arrest for aggravated assault, charges dropped.”
    “Who’d he assault?” Winter asked.
    “Exotic dancer by the name of Kitty Breeze. Kitty initially told the cops that Buck bit her nipple off, flattened her nose, broke her jaw, and shattered her eye socket. After he was arrested and placed in a lineup, she couldn’t identify him and said the man who actually did it was a Mexican.”
    In a surveillance shot, Buck was standing beside a truck in his boxer shorts. Buck’s shoulders rippled with muscles; his arms and hands were massive. Below the muscles, Buck had a swollen belly, his legs were amazingly thin, and his feet appeared to be too small and narrow to support him. It was as if he’d been put together out of the parts of two people and one of them had been a middle-aged accountant with a penchant for beer.
    “Four months in the Marine Corps before they kicked his ass out. Seems the Corps didn’t pay proper attention to his psychological profile. Except for thumping heads and scaring people, Buck would be jobless. He’s a product of blending suspect genetic material, the brain of a Neanderthal, physical exercise, and chemical abuse. Suspect in at least a dozen killings for hire, and more than that many young ladies over the years—all of whom his family was associated with on some level. Dancers, prostitutes, employees of shady businesses.”
    The next set of pictures was of a very large pair of men in football regalia. Feature-wise they resembled Buck and Peanut, but each was half again Buck’s size.
    “These young men are the Smoot twins, Burt and Curt. This is a newer picture.”
    In the next photo, the twins had