Also by Reavis Z. Wortham

The Red River Mysteries

Burrows

The Right Side of Wrong

Vengeance is Mine

Dark Places

Unraveled

Gold Dust

Laying Bones

The Sonny Hawke Contemporary Western Thrillers

Hawke’s Prey

Hawke’s War

Hawke’s Target

Hawke’s Fury

Copyright © 2011, 2020 by Reavis Z. Wortham

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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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Originally published as The Rock Hole in 2011 in the United States by Poisoned Pen Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wortham, Reavis Z., author.

Title: The Rock Hole : A Texas Red River Mystery / Reavis Z. Wortham.

Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, 2020. | Series: Texas Red River mystery | Originally published as The Rock Hole in 2011 in the United States by Poisoned Pen Press--Title page verso.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020014561 (print)

Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3623.O777 R63 2020 (print) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014561

Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Author’s Note

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Read on for an excerpt from Burrows

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Reading Group Guide

A Conversation with the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Cover

This book is dedicated to the three women in my life:

my daughters, Chelsea and Megan,

and the love of my life, Shana.

They keep me grounded and in the real world.

Introduction

The Rock Hole: A Journey into the Shadow Lands

By Joe R. Lansdale

Now and again you come across a book, an author, that has something beyond a good story to tell, something outside of filling a few hours of reading time. Certain authors can make you feel something else in their stories beyond plot. They have experience, and they can draw on that experience and feed it into their work, stuff it with authenticity.

That’s The Rock Hole, by Reavis Wortham, which takes place in 1964.

Ned Parker, Reavis Wortham’s protagonist, is a combination of many of the old men, lawmen, day-to-day folks, farmers, and blue-collar workers that the author grew up with. I know. I grew up with similar people.

The same can be said for the man Parker enlists to help him catch the mysterious, creepy-crawler killer that is scarring the simplicity of rural life. This man is one John Washington, a black deputy, who is legendary for his abilities as a lawman. Parker realizes early on that what he is dealing with is well beyond common experience, and therefore he’s going to need Washington’s skills to stop the perpetrator of a new kind of murder, done for fun, boiled in hell. Their combination is better than the blue plate special with a side of pie.

Reavis Wortham’s world is full of bleached-bone afternoons, sweat so thick and heavy it could fill a bath towel, crawling purple shadows and whistling winds; a land of small communities, salt of the earth folk who are slowly discovering that the world may in fact be darker than originally assumed; that there are things worse than homicide. And, as is often the case in small towns and communities, the perpetrator may be closer than anyone might have assumed.

Less said about the plotline, the better. That way there’s no chance of giving too much away, and besides, in my case, the plot is best remembered for what its story engine carries with it. I prefer a novel where you can hang interesting characters, situations, meaty dialogue, and human revelations on the plot, and not read merely for it.

What really intrigues me with these sorts of books, and this one is a prime example, is the slow realization that the order we impose—schools, churches, and work—only give us the illusion that the world is logical, that we can manage the chaos. Because if you scratch the bucolic surface, you might just find a swirling black hole filled with incomprehensible motivations; meaning it is what it is, but what is it?

How many times have we seen some horror on the news, some nefarious deed that seems so far beyond our own life and value system, that we have thought, why did they do that? What motivates them to do that? How and why does this satisfy them? What is wrong with them?

Suggesting that such actors are merely crazy doesn’t cut it. They frequently aren’t. Yet, they are indeed different, and there is something else, something darker. It’s this. The fact that any human, under the right circumstances, the right influences, could turn out and be exactly that same way. We could be that way. I think that’s the real fright. This internal recognition that the domestication and socialization of Homo sapiens may be nothing more than surface varnish, a myth carefully constructed over time. The knowledge that there are people who make others cruel by their actions, and that it is akin to a disease passed from one to the other, is a terrifying revelation.

But I don’t want to get too far out in the weeds here and will try and stay on the mowed path. Not set the tone for you. Reavis will do that. And he will do it well. I should also add that The Rock Hole is not all dark and nasty. It’s funny too. It’s full of interesting characters, many of them quirky in a recognizably human way. Reading about them, I kept saying to myself, I know (or knew) someone like that.

The Rock Hole is one of those deliciously hard to define novels. It is part exploration of the past, part morality tale, a Western, a mystery, a suspense novel, a novel of corrupted manners, and much more.

The simplest way to brand it is to say I recommend this as one of my favorite novels. I can also recommend all of the books that follow in the Red River series, though I won’t lie. This one is my favorite. Of course, there is Burrows, and then… You think about one in the series, you can’t help but think about the others, and then you question your original choice as best. In one way, they are all of a whole.

The Red River Mystery series is one of my great discoveries, as is the author, Reavis Wortham. I envy your discovery, and I have no doubt that after reading this one, you will need to read the others. And here’s hoping if you do, and I expect you will, that you go out and pull another reader’s sleeve, and say, Hey, you want something to read that’s really good? Have I got a recommendation for you.

Author’s Note

Lamar County, Paris, Texas, and Hugo, Oklahoma, exist, but they are used fictitiously in this novel. The same is true for certain businesses and other places that have passed with time. Center Springs exists also, but it is the original name of a small community called Chicota. Other geographical references are correct. The Rock Hole on Sanders Creek was still there the last time I visited, but that was thirty-five years ago. All the characters, with the exception of Cliff Vanderburg, are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Writing this novel, I was careful to be loyal to the time, place, and the good people in rural Northeast Texas. The setting of The Rock Hole in 1964 was a time of civil strife as race riots gripped big cities while the United States was making strides toward space travel beyond the Earth’s orbit, and in a lighter note, the Beatles took America by storm.

I attempted to maintain a balance between good and bad, tradition and (then) modern change, and human interaction. Though their language was evolving, residents in that part of the country had a distinctive accent and way of speaking that identified the region. Older folks still used such words as caisson for tires, dykes for wire cutters, and bobwire for barbed wire.

Racism was unfortunately still prevalent in both rural areas and the cities. I’ve been asked about the use of the N-word in this work and respond by saying it was never used as a descriptor through narration, but only in character dialogue included for historical context, which also identifies the voice of the individual who is speaking. As distasteful as it is, I feel that the use of this derogatory term is necessary to establish the setting of time and place, and I took great pains to ensure its inclusion was socially, historically, and regionally accurate. Without detailed explanation, it also shows that the character was raised by a deeply racist father, and likely his ancestors before that.

All towns and communities have stories and are bonded together by the people who live there, who drop by and only stay for a spell, and who pass through on the way to some other place. All have an impact on those with whom they have contact. Those stories are collected in memory and are spun around kitchen tables, in front of the fireplace, on porches, in deer camps, or up at the store. Kids flow through these venues without notice, but they are sponges, and they absorb the stories as they are told. Eventually, they grow up and tell stories of their own.

With that said, step back with me in time to the good and bad of rural life at the end of an era. Welcome to 1964.

Chapter One

We’re from up on the river.

I came to live with my grandparents up on the Red River in the summer of 1964. Their hardscrabble farm sat exactly one mile from the domino hall in Center Springs, a one-horse settlement named after the clear-water spring that feeds Sanders Creek, which then drains into the Red.

When I climbed down the metal steps of that hot old bus outside the Greyhound station in the much larger town of Chisum, Grandpa and my grandmother, Miss Becky, were waiting on the blistering sidewalk. I was so proud to see them I could have busted, Grandpa especially. There he stood in his sweat-stained old straw hat and overalls, with a tiny badge pinned to his blue work shirt.

I knew a revolver was in one of those big pockets, because he was the Law in Lamar County, though you couldn’t rightly tell if you didn’t know.

He hugged me against his big belly. Miss Becky was nearly dancing with excitement when he turned me loose to throw my suitcase into the truck bed among the baling wire, empty feed sacks, and loose hay. He’d parked right at the curb, and the bus’s front bumper was almost against the tailgate. When the bus driver stopped a few minutes before, I could tell he was aggravated because the truck was in his way, but he didn’t say anything.

Why, Top, you’ve growed a foot since we last saw you! When Miss Becky hugged my neck, she smelled like the bath powder she kept in a round tin on her dresser.

C’mon, Mama, we have to go. Grandpa opened the door for us. Get in, hoss, and let’s go look at a dead dog. He was always in a hurry to get out of town and back to the country. I crawled onto the dusty seat full of holes, and Miss Becky gathered her long skirts and climbed in behind me.

Ned, Miss Becky softly scolded him when he pulled away from the curb.

Aw, Mama, it ain’t nothin’ but a dead dog, and we’re liable to see two or three in the same condition on the side of the highway before we get back to the house. It won’t hurt him none.

Well, y’all can drop me off at the house first, then.

I intend to.

Ten-year-old boys are always up for an adventure, so twenty minutes later, we let her out at the house, and fifteen minutes after that, I followed him through a field of chest-high corn. Grandpa led us between the rows with a hoe thrown over his shoulder and a ’toe sack dangling from the back pocket of his overalls. I wasn’t sure how he knew where we were going until I looked down at his brogans and saw footprints leading through the rows in the sand.

He heard me cock my Daisy air rifle he’d remembered to bring. The BB gun’s barrel was hot to the touch from the blazing summer sun. Glad we have a gun. He always enjoyed kidding me. You never know if you’re gonna run across a booger-bear out here.

I rattled the air rifle to see how many BBs were left. Is this your corn?

Nope. It belongs to Isaac Reader. I usually don’t like being alone in another man’s field. It feels like trespassing, but since Ike called me, here we are.

Turkey buzzards drifted on the thermals high above the thick cornstalks surrounding us. Locusts sang in the trees at the edge of the field. Grandpa stopped and wrinkled his nose at the edge of a tramped-down area in the corn. Sheew. That stinks.

I almost gagged. The sight of what lay at our feet nearly made me fall out. Someone had used a heated two-handed screwdriver to torture a poor bird dog lying beside the cold remains of a fire. Dark stains on the blade and the German shorthair’s wounds told us what had happened in the clearing. Burn marks made crisscross patterns in the animal’s hide. Deep puncture wounds from the once red-hot blade still oozed fluid.

Despite the heat, a chill ran up my spine. I’d seen dead dogs on the side of the highway, but I’d never seen one intentionally mistreated. My stomach rose, but I choked it down. The stink made my asthma act up, causing me to wheeze. I dug my puffer out of my jeans pocket, stuck the atomizer end in my mouth, and gave the bulb a squeeze. My lungs tickled deep down inside, and I began to breathe better.

Bastard. Grandpa had a habit of talking quietly to himself. He hooked the sharp blade of his hoe under the stiff corpse and lifted it off the ground. Flies rose and buzzed all around us. This one makes five now.

Five what, Grandpa?

Just you never mind.

I waved flies out of my face as he knelt on one knee and pulled a damp scrap of paper free from the sand. He unfolded the raggedly torn advertisement from The Chisum News. I got a peek at the drawing of a boy and girl playing catch.

He stood with a grunt and backed off a step.

I’d never seen anything so horrible in my life, and I wished Grandpa hadn’t brought me. Center Springs was always my safe place, where I didn’t have to worry about anything except running outside, hunting, and fishing. That’s part of why I came to live with them up on the river.

Another truck rattled down the dirt road and pulled into the shade beside ours parked under a huge red oak where folks used to rest their mules. Grandpa slipped the folded clipping into the deep pocket of his overalls, removed his hat, and wiped the sweat from his bald head with a blue bandanna. That’s your Uncle Cody’s bird dog someone stole out of his pen last week. But you don’t say anything to him about it. I’ll tell him.

Why?

He stared down at me with those pale blue eyes of his. Because I said not to.

Behind him, I saw the tops of several cornstalks twitch, but there was no wind. I started to say something about it, but a man got out of the truck and hollered across the field. Had I known someone was creeping through the field with us that morning, I could have told Grandpa, and we might have ended what was coming for us right then and there.

He also might not have had to do what he did.

But at the time, I didn’t know I’d been slapped square in the path of a maniac who had it in for our family.

Chapter Two

A cold feeling of dread grew in Ned’s stomach as he absently folded the piece of newspaper. Animal mutilations were stacking up in the river bottoms, but for the first time, the threat pointed toward children.

Ned shivered at the future in his sun-browned hands. Crows called in the distance. Blinking sweat from his eyes, he wondered if he’d soon be staring down at a child’s body.

He rose with a grunt and slipped the paper into his pocket as Isaac Reader slowed to a stop in the shade beside Ned’s own pickup. It was Isaac who found the dog the evening before and called Ned on the party line. Isaac slammed the truck’s door and hurried into the field.

Dammit. I hoped I’d get through here before Isaac showed up. Ned rubbed a damp bandanna over the back of his neck. Sweat plastered the faded blue shirt to his back. Top didn’t pay much attention, watching instead the cornstalks moving behind his grandpa.

His youthful imagination in overdrive, Top pointed the muzzle of his BB gun toward the booger-bear Ned had warned him about. It was a perfect way of avoiding the corpse at his feet. He shot at a cornstalk and cocked the gun again. Ned glanced down at his grandson, then back at Reader.

A short, talkative man, Isaac Reader moved with quick, jerky motions, as if he’d been weaned on caffeine. He matched Ned in a way that only comes from a lifetime of farming together. Dressed in faded overalls and soft blue shirts, both men wore straw Stetsons which fell under the absolute necessity category like a tractor, plow, and a good sharp hoe. With the first norther of autumn, they traded the breathable straws for a warmer felt.

Isaac talked as he bulled his way across the rows toward Ned, breaking and shoving through the cornstalks without consideration toward his own crop. I told you on the phone last night it was something!

Waiting until Isaac was within conversational distance, Ned drew a long-suffering breath and stared at the distant tree line along the nearby Red River. He hated to be yelled at, and any conversation with Isaac drained all of his energy.

Isaac soon joined him in the rough clearing. Gosh a’mighty! That stinks, don’t it?

He’s pretty ripe, all right.

The little farmer noticed the youngster holding his BB gun. Hidy, Top. What are you doing here? Before the youngster could answer, Isaac pointed to the dog. Listen, I couldn’t believe it when I found that thing laying here. It weren’t here three days ago, because my hands chopped this entire field. I believe if they’d seen anything, I’d have heard about it.

It probably happened night before last. He swelled pretty fast in this heat.

"I don’t give a fiddler’s fangdang when it happened. I don’t like what happened."

Well. Ned pondered the dog’s corpse.

He thought about burying it right there in the cornfield, but he knew Isaac wanted the animal gone. I’ll carry it off a ways down to the river, but don’t you tell Cody how we found him. You know how he is. He doesn’t need to know how his dog was killed. I’ll find the right time and tell him you found it already dead somewheres down here. I don’t want anyone to know about this.

Listen, I ain’t telling nobody nothin’.

The trio stood in uncomfortable silence for several long moments.

Isaac hated silence between men when, in his opinion, they should be talking. It’s a crying shame. Who would do such a thing?

I cain’t call anybody’s name right now, but I’m afraid we probably know him.

You don’t say.

I do say. Strangers can’t come in here like this without being seen by someone who’d talk about it.

I can’t believe anyone in Center Springs would do something like this. Who’d wire up a dog and burn it with a screwdriver like that? And why pull its toenails? It looks like he wanted to make a necklace out of it.

Ned agreed. It ain’t nothing but pure-dee meanness.

Listen, look at it. The poor thing’s been halfway skint. Why would anyone peel an animal’s hide back thataway? Do you think it was alive when he did it?

Ned cut his eyes toward Top, who didn’t seem to be paying attention to their conversation. He was busy shooting at cornstalks. I can see it right there, Isaac. You don’t have to tell me to look at it.

Listen, listen, you reckon it’s them circus people over there in Hugo? Isaac never did like the Carson and Barnes Circus folks who wintered across the river in Oklahoma.

They’re not there in the summer. Ned knew Isaac had always been suspicious of circus people because he’d been afraid of clowns since they were kids running the bottoms in Lamar County.

I know it, but there’s always a few of those people still hanging around all year long. Maybe it’s one of them freaks they carry with them, like the feller that bites the heads off’n live chickens.

Now you’re thinking about those little carnivals that come to town. Any other time, Ned would have laughed at the familiar conversation. The circus just has elephants and clowns and such.

Isaac shivered despite the heat. I hate clowns. People can hide under all that paint and colored hair, and you don’t know what they’re up to. I bet there’s a lot goes on over there we don’t know about. Maybe one of ’em went crazier than usual, and they left him behind.

I doubt it.

Listen, don’t tell Joshua or any of my coloreds about this. I’m ’possa have thirty hands here in a week to gather my corn, and this could scare ’em off. I have enough trouble getting good hands as it is. They’ll probably think it’s voodoo or something. You know how them niggers are. They’ll think this field is haunted.

Ned nodded toward Top and frowned, hoping the man would get his intent. "Joshua is as Baptist as you are, Isaac. His mama got the name from the Book of Joshua in the same Bible you carry in your hand to the white Baptist church every Sunday. Besides, they’re just folks like you and me, only their skin is a different color."

Well, listen, I don’t care. All I know is that none of his people need to hear about this. They’ll think the bogeyman lives out here, and then I can’t get anyone to ever hoe this field again.

You’re right. No one needs to know, black or white. I won’t tell anyone, and you don’t neither. Neither will Top, will you?

Nossir. Top pointed his air rifle toward the still cornstalks and pulled the trigger. Satisfied with the snap, he cocked the rifle again. Neither farmer paid any attention to the youngster’s shot.

Suddenly tired, Ned didn’t want to talk any longer while stewing in the disgusting odor. He drew a ’toe sack out of his back pocket and handed it to Isaac. I’ll have to study on this some more. Here, hold this open.

Isaac knelt, making a face at the odor of decay. Ned took a long piece of baling wire out of his pocket and looped it around the dog’s hind feet, then used both callused hands to lift the corpse into the sack. Isaac waved flies away from his head. One flew into a nostril, and he jerked back in revulsion, shuddering and shaking his head. He gagged for a moment.

Top giggled at the sight.

The loose weave of the burlap was no relief from the stench that settled deep into their sinuses. The shade called as they filed down the rows, Ned silently leading the way. Isaac followed, staring intently at the dry ground. Top brought up the rear, turning around now and then to be sure whatever had been moving in the corn wasn’t coming after them and likely pretending Indians were stalking the trio of pioneers as they made their way through the wilderness.

In the shade, Ned settled the sack gently beside the tree and exchanged the hoe for a shovel from his cluttered truck bed. Much to Isaac’s agitation, Ned dug a hole in the soft sand beside his truck.

I thought you were gonna take him down to the river.

I thought about it, but it’s too hot to go off down there. Burying him here in the shade won’t hurt nothing at all. Ned lowered the dog gently into the bottom of the hole.

Well, I declare. I could have done the same thing myself.

But you didn’t.

Ned was thankful that Isaac had called when he found the dog. The scrap of paper would have probably been overlooked by anyone else, putting Ned’s quiet investigation one more step behind. Finished, he refilled the hole and kicked the sand around until it looked relatively normal.

Sweating profusely despite the shade, Ned stepped over to a hand water pump jutting three feet above the ground and primed it with leaf-stained water from a nearby rusty barrel. The water pump had been there most of his life, a place to get a drink during a hot day or to put fresh water into an overheating engine.

He worked the handle until pure, cold water gurgled up from below. He immediately felt cooler after rinsing his sweaty face in the icy water, then handed Top a dipper. You want a cold drink of water?

Yessir. Top held the dipper under the stream.

Isaac couldn’t take his eyes off the drying sand of the fresh grave.

Finished, Top handed the dipper to Isaac. Can I pump it for you, Mr. Ike?

Sure.

Top used both hands to work the handle.

Now I mean it, Ike. Ned dried his hatband with a bandanna and put the Stetson back on his bald head. Don’t you say anything about this here killing or what we found today. No one needs to know but us. I’ll tell Donald and Judge Rains later, but it don’t go no farther.

For the past three years, Sheriff Donald Griffin served the office, but Ned had little use for the man. Griffin was more politician than lawman, and Ned considered him a criminal to boot.

In his opinion, there was nothing worse than a crooked lawman.

Ned intended to watch Sheriff Griffin as closely as possible, especially since he was a first cousin to the most notorious former sheriff in Lamar County history, Delbert Poole.

Judge O. C. Rains was the cantankerous county judge and a good friend to Ned Parker. The white-haired old man scared Isaac more than clowns. Using his name was a calculated move to quiet the farmer’s loose tongue, though it probably wouldn’t last. Isaac might keep his mouth closed for a day or two, but sooner or later, he’d mention it up at the general store or at the domino hall next door, and then it would be all over the county.

Listen, I won’t sleep a wink now for worrying. Isaac swallowed. I reckon I’ll need to keep the shotgun beside the bed for the next few nights. The introduction of a new idea on a subject often led Isaac into fits of worry that lasted for months.

Well, it never hurts to be ready. Ned absently toed the dirt, watching a red harvester ant search for a way around his brogan.

"Listen, listen. I heard Top here had come to live