The Beasts of Juarez, R.B. Schow [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

slider, and slipped inside. Jackson pulled his cell phone from his pocket, found the enhanced picture of Keegan from the security footage, then looked at Scotty and nodded.

Scotty reached down, nudged the man’s foot. Keegan didn’t wake up. He knocked the man’s foot a little harder. The scumbag gave a bit of a grumble, but he didn’t move. Scotty looked around the room then mouthed the words, “Let’s clear the house first.”

Jackson nodded in agreement.

The two of them went through the house, finding it empty and in a severe state of neglect. On the kitchen counter, Scotty accessed Keegan’s cell phone. There he found the Images folder, took a breath and opened it. The second he saw the folder titled Alabama, he tensed up like a grenade was about to go off in his heart.

As he scrolled through Alabama’s photos, grenades went off inside of him, weakening the structure that was his sane mind. And then he saw the picture that turned all of those grenades into an Atom bomb. He showed it to Jackson with revulsion in his eyes.

Jackson looked at the picture and frowned. He turned and stared at the man on the couch. “This is one sick son of a bitch.”

Instead of trying to peacefully wake Keegan and ask him questions about Alabama, Scotty walked over in front of him, unzipped his pants, and started pissing in the man’s face. When Keegan’s eyes flashed open and he tried to shoot up off the couch, Jackson shoved his head back down and told Scotty to finish.

Gotta love those Marines, Scotty thought about Jackson. Nothing bothers them but the downtime.

When Scotty was done urinating, when he’d given the General two solid shakes, he tucked himself back in and zipped up his fly.

“You’re going to tell us everything we need to know about Alabama Hargrove, the girl you took years ago, or we’re going to pull your guts out with a claw hammer,” Scotty snarled. “Now start talking, or start dying. It’s your choice.”

“The wife took her because I got her pregnant,” Keegan confessed as he wiped the urine off of his face.

“We saw the photo you disgusting pervert,” Jackson said.

“So you took Alabama from her family, treated her like a junkyard dog, and then you had sex with her,” Scotty continued. “Is that right?”

Keegan looked down like he was embarrassed. Reluctantly, he nodded.

“And as if that wasn’t enough,” Scotty said, “you gave her a baby.”

“A-yuh,” he muttered, face beet red and hair still wet.

That Atom bomb inside of Scotty was just about to blow. Any second now, he was going to beat this man to death.

“Where is Gabrielle?” Jackson asked as he wiped his pissed-on hand clean on the edge of the couch.

“Gabby’s with my mother, that crazy bitch. But she’s gone, so you know, good riddance and all.”

“I need a current address and recent pictures of your wife.”

He didn’t move, so Jackson grabbed him by his piss-soaked hair and hauled him up. The guy started screaming like a girl.

“Move!” Jackson roared in what sounded like a drill instructor’s voice.

Keegan power-shuffled to the back room, took a framed picture off of the nightstand, and handed it to Scotty. The photo looked like those old family portraits you got on special at K-mart in the seventies. Scotty broke the glass on his knee, pulled the broken pieces out then removed the photo.

“Very chic,” Jackson said sarcastically.

“Give me your mother’s address,” Scotty said through clenched teeth.

Keegan went into his office, dug out an old address book, and copied down the address. Before he handed it to Scotty, Keegan sheepishly asked, “What’s going to happen to me when I give you this address?”

“If you hand us that address now instead of making me or my friend come and take it from you,” Jackson said, “it will be much better than the alternative.”

He handed over the address.

“I’m thinking he needs to use the bathroom,” Jackson said.

“I’ll take care of that,” Scotty said, “and you do the other thing.”

Scotty drove an uppercut into Keegan’s solar plexus hard enough to bend the guy in half. He tried to breathe, but he had the air knocked out of him. Scotty then soccer-ball kicked him in the nuts.

“No more kids for you, asshole,” Scotty growled.

Keegan stumbled forward on weak knees. Scotty grabbed his ear and dragged the gasping, hobbling pedophile into the bathroom. When he was in front of the toilet, Scotty lifted the lid then kicked out Keegan’s knees and slammed the man’s face into the toilet seat.

“Is that a pubic hair near your nose?” he asked.

Keegan tried to push his face off the hoop, so Scotty grabbed a hold of the back of his pants and gave him a violent wedgie. His face slammed back down on the hoop loud enough to send Keegan into a crying jag.

When Jackson returned, he was carrying a heavy chain with a keyed padlock, a pair of pink feather handcuffs, and a length of rope.

“Interesting,” Scotty said.

“Watch and learn,” Jackson replied.

Jackson shoved Keegan forward, grabbed his hands, and wrapped them around the base of the toilet close enough to cuff them. He then draped the chain over Keegan’s neck, pulled him right into the toilet seat, and padlocked it in place. Keegan couldn’t even lift his head at that point.

“This is bad news for you, Keegan,” Scotty said.

“I’m not done yet,” Jackson replied.

The former Marine then used the length of rope to cinch Keegan’s knees up against the front of the toilet bowl, making it so he couldn’t move his hands, his legs, or his head.

“Snug as a bug in a rug,” Jackson finally said, standing up.

“What now?” Scotty asked Jackson.

Jackson looked between Keegan and Scotty, and then he said, “I say we leave him until the client says what he wants to do next,”

“This is bullshit,” Keegan