Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery R.M. Wild (inspirational books .txt) 📖

I closed my eyes and tried to let the rhythm of the road calm my heart.

It didn’t work.

The last time I remembered looking at the clock in the dashboard, the digits had been glowing 1:13 AM.

I stirred when my phone buzzed in my lap. I looked at its clock. The digits now read: 1:45.

I must have fallen asleep.

Kendall glanced at my lap. “I’m surprised you’re getting a signal out here.”

I picked up my phone.

“Put it down. Don’t answer it,” Kendall said.

I ignored him and swiped the screen alive.

My heart slid into my stomach.

“At some point, I’m going to need you to trust me,” Kendall said. “If you keep ignoring my advice, I don’t know how I’m going to get you through this. We’re standing on the banks of a major legal swamp and it’s going to get thick and cold and dirty. We’ll make it through together, not alone.”

“It’s just a text.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know. Someone sent me a link.”

“Do not click it,” he said.

I clicked it.

“I swear to God, Rosie. You are going to give me a drinking problem.”

The link sent me to my own Facebook page. There was another video posted.

The caption read Dark Haven’s Finest Barbecue.

“Oh God.”

Kendall glanced at my screen. “Don’t watch it.”

“It’s already playing.”

“Then put it away.”

I couldn’t help but watch. But this time, the footage was not of the visitation room; instead, it was black and white video of a jail cell, one resembling solitary confinement.

In the video, Mettle was shirtless and dressed only in his boxers. He was on the floor doing pushups. The angle was high, so there must have been a camera mounted in the corner of his room.

“The leaker must have posted this,” I said. “I bet it was Caesar.”

“The same guard you blamed before?”

“Yes.”

“How would he have been able to get ahold of the footage?”

“I don’t know, but who else would have posted this?”

“If a guard was behind the executions, then how could he have planned them for the moment you were there? How could he have known you were going to show up?”

“I don’t know,” I said, still watching Mettle’s muscley back ripple as he did his pushups. He did over a hundred straight. I touched the screen, wishing he was real. The video made him feel alive, as if nothing bad had happened.

Already, below the video, the comments were piling up in real time.

They triggered an idea.

“The website,” I said.

“What?”

“Each time before I visited the prison, I had to submit my information to the state’s website. Someone who had access to that information could have passed it to Caesar.”

We looked at each other.

“God,” we said in unison.

“Hold on, was that an exclamation? Or a revelation?”

“Exasperation,” Kendall said.

On my screen, Mettle stood and flexed. He looked at his biceps, gripped his hands behind his back, and flexed his triceps even harder, hitting different poses as if he were showing off for the security camera.

The comments kept coming:

Boy, he’s hot!

I’d do him in a flash!

Talk about a super trooper.

Mettle then bent over the single bed. It looked as if he was resting on his elbows, but then I noticed that he was putting his nose to the thin mattress, maybe sniffing it.

He looked back to the camera, made sure his wide, V-shaped back was covering the view, and then he slid his hands under the mattress. From behind, it looked as if he was lathering himself with something. I remembered how sweaty he had looked in the visitation room.

The comments continued:

Is that oil?

You’re in prison!

This is not a bodybuilding competition.

What a vain jerk.

A moment later, the door opened. A guard came in and handed him a bundle of folded clothes. Mettle glanced up at the camera. It was black and white, the footage stuttering, but I could have sworn he gave me a wink.

The guard followed his gaze up to the camera.

His haircut was unmistakeable.

Roman Caesar.

Mettle followed Caesar out the door. The time stamp at the bottom of the video was today’s date, only a few hours ago, only minutes before Kendall and I had arrived in the visitation room.

32

Where’s the next video?

The comments kept coming.

Is this guy gonna go up in smoke too?

It was only a matter of time before the leaker posted the next video. Whoever was doing it had found their audience. On my page. My page had become witness to one of the worst ways a human being could die.

And the audience loved it.

Unable to stomach Mettle’s death again, I turned off my phone and shoved it into my purse.

“You okay?” Kendall asked.

I said nothing. I turned away to watch the woods.

The moon made its debut sometime around 3:00 a.m. The stars sharpened and brightened and the moon shadows in the woods changed their direction like a forest made of gnomons.

The only thing I could tell was that we had traveled far away from civilization. The farther we went, the thicker the trees. The prickers along the blank highway were rough and uncut, and the air, even filtered through the vents, was as crisp and clean as walking into a greenhouse.

At one point, we crossed a large field that had been divided down the middle with barbed wire. I wondered if we had crossed the Canadian border, if all the speed-limit signs would turn to kilometers.

“Where on earth are we going?”

“Sit tight, we’re almost there,” Kendall promised. “Do you not know where we are?”

“The Yukon?”

He laughed. “No, we’re still in Maine. We actually haven’t gone that far. The trip out always feels longer than the trip back.”

“To tell the truth, I haven’t spent that much time in Maine.”

“I figured. You couldn’t wait to get out of here.”

“I think everyone should leave their home state at some point in their lives.”

“Agreed,” Kendall said. “Do you remember Bobby Trickle?”

“The other ginger? How could I forget?”

“In junior high, I once asked Chris Clemens about you and he said, ‘Keep dreamin boy-o, she’s already betrothed to Bobby Trickle.’”

“Us red-heads have to stick