The Dead Boys

AFTER

“Jesus…” Deputy Dwayne stood frozen in place, face ashen. Quiet horror wafted off him like a heat wave. It took a lot to rattle Rick Dwayne, but what lay before them was a lot.

Sheriff Kate Hunt fell in beside him and his horror became her own.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Deputy Dwayne mumbled as his palm slid over his mouth. His breath sifted from his nostrils, steaming the chilly morning air. “Not around here. Stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen out here.” He shifted his feet, his boots crunching against the dead, frozen pine needles that blanketed the forest floor.

Rick Dwayne came to them from Chicago, leaving the big city behind for a quieter, less stressful life in a small town. Over the last two years since relocating, his life had been just that. The occasional drunken brawl and DUI were the worst this town had to offer. Until now.

When Dwayne first arrived, he projected a leftover tension from the city. Over time, the deputy relaxed and the tension faded. Standing beside him now, Kate sensed it returning.

“Neither have I,” Kate murmured, feeling queasy and alarmed. What happened here was no accident .

“Who could’ve done this?” Duey Johnson came through misty woods, a sickly pallor about him that gave him a ghostly appearance. At age twenty-three, Johnson was the department’s youngest deputy. Born and raised in rural Garlin, the young man wasn’t accustomed to such carnage.

Kate shook her head and stared at the dead bodies—hung by the neck and swaying in the chilled breeze; three young men naked and castrated with their severed genitals stuffed into their mouths. Disemboweled, their innards dangled from the gaping wounds, some piled beneath their suspended feet. Massive contusions marred each body as if brutally beaten before castrated and gutted.

“ Fuck…” Deputy Johnson choked and turned away, vomiting on the ground.

Deputy Red McCoy came to Johnson’s aid and moved him away from the slaughter. McCoy was a few years older than Johnson and had known the younger man long before either joined the department. Rumors drifted around about the two deputies and the context of their relationship , but both men were consistent in their claims that they were “just friends.”

Kate didn’t care, it wasn’t her business. Just as her personal preferences were no one else’s business. If there was credence to the rumors, she understood why the men put up a front. Garlin wasn’t the most alternate lifestyle friendly town—why Kate kept her private life to herself.

Deputy Harry Watts approached Kate. Watts was a man of few words, but he knew his shit. Though Kate and Watts occasionally butted heads, she trusted him. And trust was everything when it came to her deputies.

Watts squinted, furrowing his brow beneath his brown Deputy cap. “What is that?” he mumbled and walked forward, drawing closer to the bodies.

“Be mindful of the crime scene,” Kate cautioned as she followed him, taking careful steps. When Watts halted before one of the bodies, Kate frowned. “What is it?”

“Something…” He stretched out a finger, pausing an inch or so before touching the corpse’s chest. “… words.”

Kate looked closer. With the dirt, blood, and contusions… it was easy to miss. But now that she saw it—she couldn’t unsee it —four words, carved into the dead man’s chest: Your Body, My Choice.

Watts checked the other two bodies, each bearing the same inscription.

“What the hell…” Kate breathed as an eerie feeling tickled her insides. She’d heard this quote before. A recent “epidemic” of men—most of whom were part of the political cult that elected a horrible man into office—had taken it upon themselves to “put women in their place”, claiming women no longer had rights to their own bodies and the men could do as they please with them, stating – “Your body, My Choice.”

The first time Kate had heard of such an incident, it enraged her. It felt as if the country had taken a sudden huge step backward toward a time when women were little more than property. Some of these men were even picketing college campuses and such, their picket signs listing forms of property—with women and slaves as the first two items on the list. It was frightening how emboldened these men felt, that they would take such stances right out in the open—as if they were convinced their new “leader” would condone and validate their behavior.

The scary part was— he would. It was because of him that these men felt emboldened.

Which put women’s lives at risk.

But it isn’t women hanging here dead, gutted and castrated.

What the fuck had happened?

Kate stared at the swaying corpses and the crudely carved inscriptions.

What did you men do?

“First, those two girls last week,” Deputy Dwayne said. “Now this. Do you think the two are connected, Sheriff?”

The two girls…

Assaulted. Brutally raped and left for dead. One still in a coma. The other—dead by suicide.

Your Body… My Choice.

“Sheriff?”

The eerie creaking of the ropes straining against the thick tree limbs sifted across the brittle air, adding to the haunting atmosphere of the misty woods.

The phone recording. Women crying and screaming. Men laughing.

These men? The male voices hadn’t been identified.

Maybe someone identified them.

This crime scene reeked of premeditated acts of violence. Revenge .

“We can’t rule it out,” Kate mumbled, her voice hollow.

Someone out there was pissed. But who…?

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Kate’s heart thumped against her ribs, gaining speed and force.

I know who did this.

You could be wrong. The worst mistake a cop could make was jumping to conclusions. How many times had a prime suspect turned out to be innocent? Kate couldn’t allow herself to make assumptions without irrefutable evidence. Simply because this person had the most cause for revenge… it didn’t mean they acted on it. What happened to those men…

Kate shuddered.

Not everyone—regardless of how angry they were—could go so far, and commit such brutality, even for revenge.

And what if they did? What if you’re right? What then?

Kate would do her job. That’s what the cop in her insisted. The woman inside… struggled with the answer.

Are you sure there isn’t more to your struggles?

Kate put the thought out of her mind as she drove back to town. She couldn’t allow anything to get in her way of exacting justice on the guilty.

The guilty.

Images of the dead bodies filled her head. Castrated. Genitals stuffed in their mouths.

Your Body, MY Choice.

Perhaps the truly guilty ones had already been punished.

“You can’t look at it that way,” Kate whispered. “Despite what they may have done…” What? The letter of the law must be followed? Vigilante justice could not be condoned? And when the law failed to uphold its end? What then?

Stop justifying violence.

Not a decade ago, Kate had walked away— ran away?— from a world that justified violence, that used brute force to settle debts. She hadn’t wanted that to be her life. Kate wanted stability, structure, and lawful solutions. But she had learned early on that the law was flawed. Badly so, in many cases. Recent events on a political scale revealed such flaws in frightening clarity, leaving an entire nation at risk… endangering women and other minorities.

Now, more than ever—the “marginalized” could not rely on the powers that be to defend or protect their rights as human beings. Rather, those rights were in grave danger of being stripped away one by one, and in terrifying haste.

Was it so hard to understand why some “at risk” people fought back, refusing to surrender to a new, abusive master?

“You can’t make excuses for this,” Kate whispered. “This can’t be the way to justice.”

Kate wanted to believe there was another way. But as a new, ominous leadership loomed over the nation, about to wage war on democracy… would this become the only way to establish liberty and justice for all?

Kate drove home, intending to grab a couple hours of sleep before plunging back into this brutal case. The bloody images lingered in her head, stirring unsettling memories from the past. Something else also stirred inside her, but Kate resisted it, fought it —too afraid to let it resurrect.

Pulling into her driveway, Kate shut off the Bronco and stared at her modest home. One-story, two-bedroom, one bath. The house was flanked by towering evergreens and the morning fog lingered, spilling out of the trees to blanket the lawn. The windows were dark, the only light coming from the porch light that illuminated the fog with an eerie glow. Kate rubbed her eyes and exited the vehicle.

The crime scene team and the coroner would be a while. She had time for a short nap. The thought of falling asleep set her on edge, though, as she feared the return of the nightmares that not so long ago had plagued her slumber. They had finally faded out a couple of years ago. Kate had hoped they wouldn’t return. Since last week and the case of the female victims, the nightmare images were trickling back in.

Kate entered her home and turned on the entry hall light. Maybe this time her exhaustion would pull her into a dreamless sleep. Kate removed her jacket, boots, and gun belt, and walked into the kitchen in her stocking feet. Her shoulders felt heavy, and her body weighted as thoughts of duty plagued her mind.

You can’t allow distractions to prevent you from doing your job.

For a moment—a split second—Kate had believed the universe was finally offering her something good… rather than taking it away. These newly developed circumstances suggested otherwise.

You don’t know that you’re right. Maybe they aren’t the one.

Kate clung to that tiny thread of hope… even as it swiftly unraveled in her grasp.

She’d witnessed the rage and indignation—the need for justice and revenge. These eviscerating emotions weren’t foreign to her—in the past, she’d seen them staring back at her from the mirror. They were the emotions of a woman wounded; a woman angered; a woman scorned. And she knew what those “emotions” were capable of.

Kate fixed herself a cup of tea, resisting the urge to splash in a bit of the hard stuff. She was technically still on duty and never drank on the job, regardless of how much she might need it at times. She took her tea into the living room. Heavy drapes covered the windows, deepening the shadows. Kate placed her cup on the end table near the sofa and unfastened the front of her uniform shirt, peeling it off. She dug under the remaining tank top, unsnapped her bra, and removed it without taking off the tank.

“Much better,” she whispered as she turned on the end table lamp.

“I agree.” Though soft, the feminine voice emanated strength.

Kate jerked upright and instinctively went for her weapon. It wasn’t there—still stuffed in the holster hanging in the entry hall. “Who…” Kate started when the hooded figure seemed to materialize out of the shadows. The amber lamplight only partially illuminated the intruder’s face, but it was enough… Kate would recognize those lips anywhere.

Jade Palmer.

Kate’s number one suspect.

“Ms. Palmer…” Kate remained calm, outwardly. Inside, her heart pounded, and butterflies filled her stomach. “What are you doing in my house? How did you get in?”

Jade Palmer, twenty-four—five years younger than Kate—moved with casual grace as she took a few steps toward Kate. Cloaked in the loose, oversized hoodie, Kate had no issue imagining the slim, curvaceous body hidden underneath—as she’d met the young woman just days earlier following the assault on two college girls. One of whom was Jade’s younger sister.

“No need to be so formal, Sheriff,” Jade murmured with just enough sensuality to make Kate’s skin tingle. “You’ll arrest me for murder before the day is through. That’s rather personal. We should be on a first-name basis, don’t you think… Ka t e?”

The emphasis on the T sent a jolt through Kate, spiking her erratic pulse. “Why would I arrest you?”

“You’re a smart woman, Kate. I know that you know.”

She did it. A sliver of nausea wormed through Kate’s gut, and she realized how tightly she’d been grasping that thread of hope, that small chance that Jade Palmer wasn’t guilty.

“I could have gotten away with it,” Jade said. “I’m a smart woman, too. Even if I was a suspect, you wouldn’t have found any evidence against me.”

“Then why are you here… confessing?” Kate wondered. “And how do you know those were the men who assaulted your sister and her friend? We had no lead, no evidence.”

The young woman came closer and slowly pushed back the hood of her sweater, revealing her lovely face and intense jade eyes. “Because I didn’t tell you the full story.”

“What?”

“I had the evidence,” Jade whispered, gazing into Kate’s eyes. “I knew who they were when we spoke before.”

“What?” Kate blinked. “Then why…” She frowned, confused. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have arrested them.”

“No,” Jade murmured, a hardness creeping into her stare. “It wouldn’t have been enough. Not in this new, blossoming world of ours. They need to know that this behavior is not acceptable.” Her full lips twitched as fury sparked in her eyes. “That we are not their property. We will not pardon them. They will pay for their sins against us.”

The cop in Kate wanted to argue that men who commit such vicious crimes against women would be held accountable for their actions. She wanted to argue that point. But how could she when such a man held the highest office in the country—an abuser of women facing no consequences, rather awarded full control of a nation? And why? Because he was a rich white man who emboldened the misogynists of the country to follow him, to worship him… promising them liberties to do as they please, without consequence.

“You know I’m right.” Jade touched Kate’s face, tracing her fingertips along the sheriff’s high cheekbones. “I see it written all over your face. If we don’t fight back hard… they will keep taking from us until there is nothing left.”

Kate’s throat worked; she had no argument. Yet, how could she as a law officer condone vigilante justice? She understood the depth of rage and anguish that coursed through Jade Palmer—it had once coursed through Kate as well.

And how did you handle it?

Kate swallowed the emotions welling inside her. “Tell me…” her voice rasped lightly, her face tingling beneath the young woman’s fingertips. “… what you left out of the story.”

Jade brushed her soft lips over the corner of Kate’s mouth. “On one condition.”

“What?” Kate whispered with a tremor.

“Before you arrest me…” Jade gently sucked her lips and trailed her fingers down Kate’s throat and lower, tenderly cupping her breasts through the thin tank top. Her thumbs rubbed the suddenly stiff nipples. “… you make love to me.”

Kate shivered, her breath shuddering into Jade’s mouth. She couldn’t lie—she didn’t want to wait. The moment she’d laid eyes on Jade Palmer, she started falling… faster and faster with each passing minute. The reality that this alluring young woman had taken three lives with the very hands that now caressed Kate’s body had no dulling effect on the intense stimulation she incited.

“ Yes…” was all Kate could manage in response to Jade Palmer’s request.