Kinfolk

Kinfolk

By Paul Hennrich

Copyright 2017 Paul Hennrich

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this book. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Other titles by Paul Hennrich at Smashwords

The Kent Baker Mystery / Suspense Series:

Definitions

Scavengers

Entertainment

Also, a Civil War Era Historical / Fiction Novel:

The Reach

Blurbs and the information concerning the availability of these novels can be found at the end of this Kent Baker Adventure.

* * ~ ~ ~ ~ * *

Kinfolk

Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.

George Henry Lowes

Chapter 1

It is not every day that you get a call from a complete stranger who says you are the only person in the world who can save their life.

Huh? I thought. I don’t have time for this crap.

You got all the time in the world, Inner-ear Kenyon said.

He was right. So I did not hang up. Instead, I trolled faces of old friends through my spider-webbed cranium to try and figure out who it was messing with me. Not much time was burned up getting that done as those particular creatures were a scarce commodity. Finally figured I might just as well play along for a short while.

Excuse me, I said, what did you say your name was?

Ferd Geber.

I had him spell it, then,

And Ferd, you say your life is in danger and that I can help you out with that?

Yes, I’ve been told you’re the one who can help me.

His voice was small and sad, pinched up as if he was shy about it coming out of him.

Thing is, Mr. Baker, he was saying, it’s not really that−

Call me Kent.

Say what?

You can call me Kent.

Oh, okay. Will you call me Ferd?

Why, sure enough, Ferd.

He seemed a bit taken back by my skeptical banter, something that really can be hard to get use to as I am nothing if not a cynical grouch.

All I got from him for a very short while were three or four tinny breaths. Then he found a way to get on with it.

What I was saying was it’s not really that I’m gonna die or anything, it’s just that my life is being ruined and, and I don’t know what to do about it because I haven’t done anything wrong.

I was getting the sluggish feeling that maybe this was not a prank call. There was a genuinely heartbreaking tenor in his voice. I began visualizing him as a harmless little gnome lugging along with what he perceived as a real problem. But, then again, I have now and then been known as a gullible sort, if being dense can spawn the problem of being naive.

Or, just maybe, he could have been putting on a good act.

First things first, I said, who was it that told you I could help you.

Another hesitation.

I can’t say, Mr. Baker.

Kent. Why can’t you say, Ferd?

Promised not to.

I see. Did this person say why they wanted that promise?

No, not really. And thing is, Kent, I think too much of the person who told me about you to not keep my promise.

My turn to take a few time-killing breaths.

Ferd, I said then, you have to know that I’m kind of puzzled about all this. I don’t know you, you don’t know me and somebody who wants to stay in the dark gave you my name as a person who could help you out of this big, big problem. You see why I’m kind of confused?

Yeah, I guess I do, but I really need help bad and I just know you’re the one to help me. Please, I just know it.

I leaned back in my very uncomfortable kitchen chair and stared at the tabletop in front of me.

Life is a perplexing excursion. You put your head down and plunge ahead over rocks, rivers and sand, rush-rush-rushing through it all to the abyss patiently waiting at the end, sporting a surprised look on your face when you arrive there. You think you are making full use of your time but, in reality, you waste nine-tenths of it. When you finally plop onto your back on that very last bed sheet you will wonder where you should have gone in a different direction with your frittered away days. Among other things you might wonder why you passed up a chance to listen to a gnome, just because what he was saying made no sense.

And, well hell, I had the time to listen as Inner-ear had inferred.

Okay, Ferd, okay. Tell me about it.

Oh gosh, it’s really hard to talk about. I could maybe get through it better face to face. I feel terrible asking you this but could you come here to my place and see me? I could talk easier here and I would pay for your gas.

Now he was not pitiful anymore, he was getting me aggravated.

Just tell me what your problem is, Ferd.

I, just can’t, I −

Goodbye.

No, wait, please!

Goodbye.

I live on Goose Lake Road. I’m just a few houses off of Bluff Road just outside of Prairie du Rocher, Illinois. You know where that is?

Yes, I know the town.

Don’t get confused cause my place ain’t that hard to find.

I’ll try not to.

I’ll pay for your gas, Kent, I’ll pay you whatever you want. You need to come here because you’ll want to talk to other people after me. Please, I don’t know where else to turn.

He sounded close to crying

Listen to me, I said, spacing my words for effect. I’m not doing anything until I know what the problem is. Would you?

He was sniffling.

No, no I guess not, he said when he could. I’ll tell you but you have to believe me when I say it’s not true.

Ferd!

All right, all right. They say I sexually molested this young girl, but I didn’t.

Son of a bitch, I thought.

I had only recently gotten through a nightmarish state of affairs where a young girl had been raped, where people had been maimed and where people had died. I wanted no part of another such goings-on, just could not stomach it, not even a tiny bite.

And when you think about it a lot of guilty people sound pathetic. They are feeling sorry for themselves, the only being many of them have the capability to pity.

Who was to say Ferd was not one of those folks? And if not, why should I care? His predicament was readymade for the local badge luggers, the ones who no doubt knew both him and the victim.

I can be a cold bastard when I want to and this time I wanted to.

Sorry, Mr. Geber, I can’t help you.

Just come around tomorrow, for just one day!

I got to work tomorrow. Goodbye.

I hung up before he could say anything else.

Chapter 2

A lot of folks who know me would have been surprised about my saying I had to work. I had not held a regular job since getting booted out of the DEA several years earlier and most of my acquaintances were probably thinking Kent Baker was going to bum around until his calloused butt cheeks were thrown into the flames.

I had not bothered earning a living since being deemed a loose cannon and expelled from said government agency. But what you have to understand is I had money, after all, and can be very good at being a lazy lout, living within my own thoughts and prejudices. All that is required to be such a person is to own a scabby soul, and that I had. As far as money goes, I had a healthy inheritance left to me by my grandparents and had banked a majority of my DEA wages.

It was an easy thing to do, banking wages that is. I lived on the road, had never owned a house, barely owned a car and was incapable of owning a wife and kids. On top of which my needs were few: food and booze, along with a thread and needle to close the toenail holes in my white socks.

So yes, anyone who had the dumb luck to know me would have been surprised about me claiming to have a job. My best friend, Kevin Ringle, the finest shyster in St. Louis, had succinctly summarized his surprise upon my telling him about it.

Will miracles never cease? Maybe now you’ll survive a few days longer, he had said.

Being a lawyer, he is a capable man of well-spoken words.

And why did I decide to make something out of my days? I cannot really say for sure. It would have been nice to be able to say I was bored but that would have been fudging the issue. I just woke up one day and threw my bed clothes in the washing machine and then wondered if maybe I had not just washed them the day before? Or maybe two days before? Or maybe not at all for the last two weeks?

It was then that it came to me within a glaring flash of brilliant logic.

You’re in a rut Baker, and a deep one at that.

A few hours later, while trying to fight a desperate battle against thinking about it, I finally realized what was needed was a change in my routine. But how?

Should I take up a hobby, like maybe wading the creeks and feeling for snapping turtles under submerged logs? Should I walk the neighbors’ yards and grub up dandelions? Or, dare I wonder, should I go to work?

In the end, the answer was work for which there would be no pay. It needed to be some type of a volunteer job type thing or another. I figured on leaving the paid work for those who needed it. And, what were my options as far as drawing a paycheck?

No way, no how, was I ready to go back to law enforcement. My ex-boss at the DEA had a while back made it abundantly clear that that particular door was closed, nailed and welded at the hinges, something that was fine with me.

So, one rainy day I made my way to a nearby church. No particular reason for the one I picked other than it was not too big and not too small and had a cross in front of it. I walked into the preacher’s office and found a middle-aged man with a pleasant, questioning face. After the introductions, I pointblank asked him a question I already knew the answer to.

I’m here to maybe do some volunteer work. Do you ever get calls from people needing help? Not monetary but physical help. A little electrical work, a sticking front door, you know what I mean?

He smiled a smile with even teeth.

Yes, he said, I do.

And there it began. I actually did end up doing a little electrical work. First job concerned an elderly man with limited means who had lost juice in his kitchen outlets. Ended up he had a faulty ground fault outlet, and I paid for the outlet. It was not volunteering otherwise.

Other times I mowed lawns for people in the hospital after buying my very first lawnmower at a garage sale, one that you pushed.

Had a blast rebuilding some outside entrance steps for another person, and so on and so on.

I got to say it was fun, and for good reason.

It seems that so far in my rough and tumble life I had, in one way or another and without regret, put down quite a few people. It was a pleasant chore to pick some others up. It was also nice to actually see folks happy to have my beat-up Mazda pull up into their driveway.

The exceptionally nice preacher man over and over again invited me to attend Sunday service but I never took him up on it. Maybe I felt the need to perform considerably more penance first. Maybe I’m just stupid.

And so, long story short, it was not a lie, me telling Mr. Ferd Geber that I could not take on his problem because of work, for the day after his early morning call I was asked to go to an elderly lady’s home look at her malfunctioning stove.

The house was old and encircled by red bricks, while the roof held discolored tile from way back when.

I had found her sitting in a sunken easy chair in her living room watching one of those game shows where the contestants have to answer questions in order to win anything. She told me she could not answer most of the questions herself but she liked watching the show just the same, for what reason she was not sure.

Her husband had been gone twenty-two years now, she informed me without any prodding. Good man, worked hard and made honest money, but now the money was gone and she was living on her social security. Not that she was complaining, mind you, but that’s the way it was.

She was a tiny thing, her white, puffed up and well-kept hair looking as if it should cause her head to tilt. But her voice was strong and she was outspoken, no problem with her vocal cords.

While I plugged away at the stove she continued talking.

First off, she just loved her pastor, the fellow who had sent me. He preached an honest sermon and was not out to condemn anybody, though by her thinking there were a few hypocrites within the congregation who needed condemnation, not that she was one who was going to gossip about their shortcomings.

Her kids and grandkids, I was informed, were a mixed brood, some of whom were Gods great gift to the earth and some of which she thought considerably less.

She also gave me her unfettered opinion about politics and politicians and it was obvious she saw little good there, especially with those who wanted to mess with her social security check. She did like her own representatives and senators, however, both state and national, a common rationale in this country. Even if I could have found the chance to break into the conversation I did not have the heart to tell her that some of her favorites wanted to mess with her social security check.

Most days nonstop chattering puts me on a jagged edge, but not with her. She was ninety-five and I was jealous. No way was I going to make ninety-five, not if my roughhousing past was an example of my future experiences.

Added to that was the fact that something else was keeping me from putting out any replies to counterbalance her chattering. The rear side of my brain was trying to push something forward with the help, no doubt, of good old Inner-ear Kenyon, my aggravating little friend. (Kenyon, by the way, is my given name. A name, to my way of thinking, that will live in infamy, which most likely leaves you the impression I don’t like it. Therefore, Kent.)

What was being hammered to the forefront of my gray stuff was the voice of Ferd Geber. I simply could not shake it.

The tones of misery it held, I had finally come to realize, were plainly for real. No way could the call have been a prank. Not even the best performer could have maintained the pathos without finally breaking into laughter. Yes, a sleepless night had told me that Ferd Geber, accused of a heinous act, was for real.

And yet I did not know what to do. If he was guilty he could tumble down the stone steps and rot in hell.

But what if he was not, because the sincerity had come through strong and plaintive?

As I worked on the little old lady’s stove problem, her prattling falling around me like the cuttings of hickory nuts being dropped through the tree by a hungry squirrel, my thoughts went back and forth to Kent Baker’s pending decision on whether to try to do anything about Ferd.

A screw on the back of the electric stove that held down an eyed connector on the end of the heavy extension cord had worked loose due to the many years of carrying current, taking away one leg of the two hundred forty volts needed to make the thing work. I cleaned the connection, dangerously black from arcing, and retightened the screw. Afterwards I cleaned up the accumulated mess that had gathered under the stove, something you will find in the cleanest of houses. After pushing the stove back into place, covered with dirt and sweat, I made ready to leave.

The boney, ripened lady gave me the mandatory offer of money for my troubles even though she knew I would not take it. After I gave the mandatory refusal she smiled and nodded.

Well thank you so much, she said.

You’re welcome, I replied, no problem at all.

Her face curled up in a serious sort of way before she spoke again.

Oh, no, you should say it’s a blessing.

And there it was, something I came to grasp on my drive back to my apartment, straight from a ninety-five year old lady’s wholesome lips:

...it’s a blessing.

And you, Kent Baker, Inner-ear was blabbing over and over again, most certainly need to be blessed.

Chapter 3

The next day my tattered Mazda was pointed north after backing out of my rental duplex driveway that sat within Monroe, Missouri, the town which I had decided to call home the last year or so. I had moved there from St. Louis and don’t ask me why. It just seemed it was time.

Looking over the tarnished hood of my little car as it was puttering along I wondered for perhaps the hundred-tenth time why I had not gotten rid of it. The abuse it had received over the last couple of years would have been enough to get me arrested were it a living thing.

It had bullet holes in it that were camouflaged with stick-on fake bullet holes. I had driven the front passenger wheel off a concrete highwater bridge in order to block a guy who needed killing from getting away. That particular little maneuver had messed up the front wheel drive shaft, an expensive mistake.

Other dents and bruises covered its listless body. I should have gotten rid of it before having the wheel shaft repaired but in the end that new damage was part of the reason I could not bring myself to part ways with it. There were some deep guilty feelings about its mistreatment, most probably the only thing in my ill-defined life I felt blameworthy about.

After traveling a while on an interstate me and my shimmying friend exited onto a state road and before long crossed the wide Mississippi into Illinois. Not too far into that side of the river I trundled on into the town of Parkdale, my old stomping ground. There, on a bluff overlooking the river, sat the county courthouse wherein resided the Sheriff for said county, a county whose jurisdiction included Prairie du Rocher.

As a former cop I knew one thing as a stony certainty. You do not drop in unannounced into another cop’s area of authority and start kicking under the rocks without talking to him first, especially if you are a former cop with no such right to do so. It is not against the law of the land, mind you, but is most assuredly against the law of respect.

My computer had informed me that Prairie du Rocher, population five hundred twelve, had two cops and one cop car.

Mr. Ferd had mentioned that his home was just outside the city limits, which put him under the authority of the Sheriff. And, even if what happened had occurred within the city limits, with only two officers available there could be no doubt the Sheriff would have been most needed to join in on the fun. So, sure enough, this boy made it a sure thing to talk to the man and find out if there was anything to what Ferd Gerber had put out.

The man was Sheriff Wade Phillips. Probably in his early sixties, he had been there forever and a day, going back to when I was a boisterous teenager. He had, in no uncertain terms, tamped me and my rowdy friends down a time or two and yet, in a way, that garnered more respect in us for him. Velvet gloves and spit, I suppose one could say.

Wade, white haired and tall, greeted me with a crooked smile as I entered his office. I could tell he was a glad to see me and yet was a trifle wary, and for good reason.

Well, son, you’ve come back for another visit. How you doing Kent?

Fine, Wade, you?

Oh, fine, fine.

That was to be the extent of the small talk. He sat down to indicate that, motioned me to a chair in front of his desk and silently waited on me to commence the conversation.

Well, Wade, I said, it’s true I’ve just got a few questions for you if you got the time.

More of that than money.

I nodded.

Thing is, I got a call from one Ferd Gerber. He said he needed my help, something concerning an accusation of some sort of sex crime. You know about it?

This time he nodded.

Sure, it’s in my county. Known Ferd for years, been involved with the case.

Anything to it?

Mind if I ask you a question first?

Nope.

You know Ferd?

Nope.

Then why did he call you?

Said somebody told him he should, said this person told him I could help him.

Who was that?

He wouldn’t tell me. He claimed the person told him not to and that he had promised he wouldn’t.

Wade Phillips took his elbows off his chair’s armrests and locked fingers over his stomach.

This is kind of confusing, Kent, you know that?

"Yes, I know. My only thought may be that this person doesn’t want to