“What is it?” Dane and Roselita said in unison.
“My girlfriend here was spot on.” O’Barr winked at the young forensic technician. It clearly made her uncomfortable and she excused herself to walk back into the room.
August stared at her backside all the way through the door. “Damn, boys, if I was thirty years younger.”
Roselita had reached her limit. “No disrespect,” she said, “but can we please stay on task here?”
August’s face tightened and he gave Roselita his full attention. He never broke his smile, but something hot flickered behind his dark brown eyes that made everyone uneasy. Dane had been wrong. O’Barr wasn’t flippant. He was just good at keeping the horror show hidden behind that carefree persona of his, and Roselita had just scraped back enough of that top layer to let some of that ugliness bleed through. It made the hair on the back of Dane’s neck prickle. He wanted to go home.
“I’m sorry, Rosey,” August said in a tone that was all business. “Allow me to skip right to it then. It’s a piece of a stick, like the young lady said, but not just any stick. This is a splinter from a baston.”
“And what is a baston?”
“It’s a weapon—a deadly one when used by someone trained with it. They are normally part of a set, and made from bamboo. More importantly, bastons are traditionally used by martial artists and overall bad motherfuckers mainly from the Philippines.”
“So you’re saying this guy was gutted by a Filipino martial artist?”
“Gold star for Kirby. He’s beginning to get it.”
“No, August, I’m not.” Dane shook his head and took in a big chestful of the warm late afternoon air. He was getting tired. August dug into the paper bag and pulled out a burger wrapped in greasy wax paper as a 747 passenger jet pushed off the tarmac at the airport and roared into the distance. Dane stood and watched the plane lift into the sky as they all waited for the noise to subside. He really wanted to go home. Roselita stood with her hands in her pockets and watched August stuff the burger into his mouth with the same disgust Dane was feeling. At least they were on the same page about something. Dane stood on the curb, focused on the airplane lifting itself higher and higher into the tangerine sky until it was too small to make out and eventually it disappeared into the clouds. He pulled at the loose thread on the pocket of his T-shirt and wheels in his head began to spin. “The Philippines,” he said to no one in particular.
“What?” Roselita said, and sidestepped Dane onto the parking lot.
Dane laughed. “Goddamnit.”
“He is getting it,” August said. “Finally.”
“That guy in there.” Dane pointed at room 1108. “He’s got a Cobb County address.”
“Yup.”
“And he just flew in from Atlanta.”
“Yup.”
“And he was killed by a couple of Filipinos who just flew into the country a few days ago, right?”
“Four days ago, to be specific.”
Dane looked back at the door of room 1108. “That guy is a cockfighter, isn’t he?”
“Another gold star,” August said in an enthusiastic tone.
“And he just hit it big at the Slasher, didn’t he?”
August grinned. “And that makes three. That should also inform you, Special Agent Kirby of the GBI, as to why you are here.” O’Barr stepped off the curb and chewed at a second bite of the greasy burger. He spoke with his mouth full. “Sorry for being so vague, but I had to be sure, and I wasn’t until just now.”
“He did, didn’t he?” Dane pressed, but he already knew the answer.
“Yes, he did. I may not look like it, but I follow these things. Call it a hobby. His name was all over the Internet, but I had to make sure it was the same guy. It’s a common name. It was, and not only was he there, but he won.”
“How much?”
“All of it. He took the whole damn thing.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Not anymore.”
“What’s a Slasher?” Roselita asked. Neither Dane nor August bothered to answer her. Dane just kept shaking his head and gnawed at his lip.
“And the Slasher was hosted this year in McFalls County. My home. Run by a guy you think I might know. So you had me flown down here to school your boys in how to survive in outlaw country.”
“Yes I did,” August said and chewed his burger.
Dane shook his head. “Son of a bitch.”
August stuffed the wax-paper wrapper back into the paper bag and rolled it up tight. “Kirby, when I first got a hunch about who Blackwell was, I immediately called my man in the Georgia office, Charles Finnegan. He told me about a guy he had wasting away behind a desk who knew the area like no one else did, who would be thrilled to help me close this horrible murder. That guy was you. So here you are—a highly recommended detective with ties and deep connections to the notorious Farm. The same Farm that two Filipino high rollers just flew into for the biggest game in town. Filipino high rollers with a reputation for using bamboo bastons to get their point across if shit doesn’t go their way—no pun intended.”
“What the hell is a Slasher?” Roselita asked again. She was getting angry enough for the small V-shaped vein in her forehead to protrude between her neatly trimmed eyebrows. August and Dane might as well have been speaking Greek and Roselita might as well have been invisible. “Somebody needs to tell me what is happening here,” Roselita said. “I’m serious.”
Dane ignored her a second time—to his detriment. She lowered her head and scuffed one foot across the asphalt like a bull about to charge a flag. Dane tipped his hat back on his head and stuck his hands down deep in his pockets. For the first time in years, and despite his recent news, he wanted a cigarette. Roselita, at full tilt, pushed her way in between him and August and waved her arms in the air. “Hello? Is somebody going to fill me in here?”
“Just calm down a second, Rose.”
“Don’t call me Rose,” she snapped. “And forgive me, Kirby, but I’m not going to calm down. This is total bullshit. I’m the one working this case, and before I can even begin to do my job, my partner is sidelined, your hillbilly ass gets brought in with zero experience in the field—in a state you have no jurisdiction in—and now the two of you are talking about fucking chickens, for God’s sake. You both are clearly keeping me in the dark about something while whoever sliced open that guy in there and set him on fire gets farther and farther away. So no, I’m not going to calm down, but what I will do is go above this whole boys’ club thing you two have going on and report the way this is being handled.”
Dane let the moment sit a little longer before speaking. The breeze was salty. He wasn’t sure if that was just how Florida smelled or because of all the blood in the air. “Okay, Roselita,” he said. “I’m out here because your dead guy in there just got back from something called the Slasher. It’s the biggest cockfighting tournament in the US. The name is stolen from the big tournament held annually in the Philippines, where it’s legal. It’s bigger than the Super Bowl over there. Here, it’s held in secret, in different parts of Georgia, Tennessee, and sometimes North Carolina depending on who puts in the lowest bid. This year it was held in McFalls County, up in North Georgia, where I’m from.”