by Chris Bauer
With the Chevy’s top down, the wind in her newly rinsed blonde hair, and an attentive man at her side, she for sure felt like a million bucks and decades younger, the day ahead full of possibilities.
“And right now,” she said, her drunk smile greeting Randall’s glances, “I’m not feeling all that ladylike. And I was never little in two places that count, as I know you’ve noticed.”
Her warm eyes looked at him expectantly. She moved closer to him in the seat, dragged a pudgy, red-manicured finger sensually up and down his forearm. Her hand went to his lap, creating a stirring in his pants.
He willed his arousal to cease. This would happen on his terms, and his terms only.
Home at her place in fifteen minutes, he reminded her. “It’ll be worth the wait,” he said.
In her bedroom, he delighted her by the largesse of his package in both length and girth, but her delight wasn’t how he intended their intimacy to end. Their second time would all be about him. She screamed in panic as he choked her with his belt. He punched her unconscious after he climaxed. Randall dragged Loretta to her garage, secured her wrists and ankles together with plastic cable ties, then duct-taped her mouth. He lifted and dropped her into the Chevy’s trunk, banged her up a little on the way in, slammed the trunk lid shut. If she were found dead, her body left in her house, he’d be the prime suspect. With the both of them missing, the wheels of justice would take longer to turn. Now he went about gathering up his packed clothes and garment bag and arranged them in the back seat of the Chevy, all of this premeditated. In his pocket was a prepaid cell phone with double minutes. He tossed an unzipped gym bag onto the front seat, the bag filled with stolen IDs, fake credit cards, a laptop, a handgun, another prepaid cell phone, and yesterday’s issue of People magazine. He pulled out the magazine and put it next to him on the seat, its front cover facing up.
The last exit on the northeastern extension of the Pennsylvania turnpike was Clarks Summit, near Scranton. Coal country. Loretta was making noise in the trunk; Randall chose an exact-change lane to avoid attention. He dragged her out of the trunk behind a convenience store and crushed her skull with the car’s tire iron. Her body went into the store dumpster.
Meticulous about these things in the past, he was no longer being careful. It was obvious, even to him. He was dying, for Christ sake, so why do otherwise.
3
In this business, if you run, you’re guilty.
So there was this certain jackass, Vonetta told me, who bolted on an Allentown arrest for attempted rape of a minor. He was charged and jailed, made bail, then ran, just before his court date. Finding and returning Mr. Stephen Linkletter to the legal system was worth a thousand bucks to me, two grand to Vonetta’s bail bond company, and five grand, maybe even her life, to the woman who arranged his bail. Like the bail-jumper himself, the woman was missing.
Midmorning, and I was headed north until my van ran out of turnpike, the Allentown-Bethlehem interchange up next, the Lehigh Tunnel after that. A pleasant drive, little traffic, the sunroof open, tousling my pixie cut newly rinsed in an espresso brown. Hills, trees, farms; overpasses; an occasional billboard. My K9 deputy Tess snored on the floor in front of the van’s passenger seat, my other deputy Fungo doing likewise in his crate in the back. I had a loose grip on the steering wheel, a firmer grip on my takeout coffee. The name scribbled on the front of the cup was Cuntsel, not Counsel, the male barista at the counter capitalizing on my Tourette’s outburst. Another perk of this disease. Difficult for everyone afflicted, but worse for a woman.
The name on the cup put me in full contemplation mode.
My hands were pre-arthritic marvels, their bones set and reset too many times, one knuckle scarred and bulging bad as popped corn. Too many rash decisions over the years, mostly from a bad temper and ballistic reactions to other people’s ignorance. About women who could handle themselves. About women who were different—women outside normal expectations. About women who had Tourette syndrome. It was tough fighting against society’s expectations all—the—damn—time.
By the time I turned sixty I would need help toileting. And today, like so many days, I noticed my fingernails the most. Ragged in spots, with me trying to get past a few days where I didn’t nervously shred one or more of them. Multiple stops at salons for acrylics, whenever I felt like pampering myself. Never better than a C in Health Habits all eight years of Catholic elementary school, and a target for the nuns. Strong female types were like lepers to them. Yes, I had a chip on my shoulder. My voice, my attitudes, sometimes I just didn’t give a fuck, but all the time, I was aware. None of it matched the veneer, which was easier on the eyes than my cynicism would ever admit.
My dogs and I were powering through a two-hour-plus ride into Pocono country. Where the turnpike ended, it would be ten miles west to Rancor, Pennsylvania, my new center of the universe, until I caught my bounty, if he was still there. Call it kismet, but Rancor had just received some national press, a significant mention in a People magazine article open on the seat next to me:
People’s Top Ten Safest US Towns List, Lowest Crime
#10, Glens Falls, NY…
#2, Rockingham County, NH
and #1, in the Pocono Mountains, small-town venue Rancor, Pennsylvania…
Snapshots of Rancor surrounded the list. A bowling alley. Side-by-side photos of Rancor Savings and Loan Bank fifty years apart, showcasing identical breathtaking views from the bank’s perch atop the town’s highest elevation. I had parts of the Sunday edition of a suburban Philly newspaper fanned out under Tess’s butt on the floor. In it was a teaser front-page sidebar reference to People’s “Safest Towns in America” article plus a second curiosity, a page-seven story on a cold Philadelphia suburbs case, “Whatever Happened to Bunyip Deveraux?”
I already knew Deveraux’s story. The Bunyip was a pissant pimp with kangaroo ears, a platypus face, bubble nose, and scraggly brown hair. Nuclear-accident ugly. His “Bunyip” namesake had been a mythical 1950s local Philly TV hand puppet. Deveraux hung out his pimp shingle in the Philly suburbs, stayed out of the police crosshairs, played up the Bunyip angle by branding his girls with a distinctive tattoo: the bunyip puppet’s head. Rumor was no girls ever quit him alive, a rumor he’d started himself, to keep them all in line. When he went missing a few of his women did report it. Lots of whore and drug traffic for a few years running and then poof, he was gone. Poof into fairy dust or a black hole, or cement shoes, or another pimp’s blade, no one in the business knew for sure, but he ceased to exist as a player on Philly’s suburban streets or elsewhere.
For the record, I never did drugs, and I never smoked. I liked to drink, and I only liked men, having done both in excess after my divorce. Each pursuit dulled my senses when I needed it to. Trying to limit my intake. Too many indulgent lapses.
Tess’s tail stub wiggled. She had a sixth sense in her Bull Terrier blood, especially when it came to me.
Yeah, I’m looking at you, Tess, you head case.
In Tess’s dog brain: Ditto, nut job. She climbed onto the passenger seat.
With my other deputy in the back, it was a lot less complicated. An intense eighty-pound black-and-tan German Shepherd, Fungo stayed crated for road trips and liked it that way. Stayed in the crate even with its door open, was always leashed; the leash was short. Crate and leash were nods toward his previous living arrangement: chained night and day to a doghouse outside a Levittown, Pennsylvania, home, protecting a crystal meth operation. He had to be tranquilized when Animal Control liberated him. Aside from his crate and leash as security blankets, Fungo liked four things: food, family, fucking up criminals, and fucking in general. He wasn’t fixed.
A lot of Fs in that last sentence. Alliteration. I often went off the chart when it came to my uncensored subconscious expressing itself, barking orders because of the Tourette’s. When the pressure built between my ears, my diuretic mouth opened to relieve it.
Lucky for me, relief was in the seat next to
me. Tess’s ears felt silky smooth between my fingers, which she started licking. All better now.
Tess was a law enforcement veteran like me, a working dog, part of the Pennsylvania State Police’s K9 Unit, and my partner. When I retired I bought out her contract so she could retire with me. Cost me twelve grand, which approximated what the force would need to spend to train a dog to replace her. Money well spent for me, her being a combination apprehender, heat-seeking missile, and therapy dog rolled into one.
She and I rescued my shepherd Fungo from a shelter. I bailed him out after discharging a gun loaded with blanks near his cage, to see how he’d react. Other dogs in the shelter went berserk. His look at me said, What else you got?
The rest of the People list’s footnote: As a bedroom community to Scranton, Rancor earns the top ranking for the following anomaly, a testimony to small towns everywhere: No—repeat, NO—violent crimes have been reported within its jurisdiction for the past fifty years.
I hoped things would stay that way, except for the one promise I’d made to myself about Mr. Linkletter: his apprehension would include a tune-up that might border on the criminal. With me, this underage shit was way personal. A brother-sister thing, my older brother doing the protecting, and me doing the watching and the wincing, too young to fully understand the depravity and the sacrifices he’d made on my behalf.
We passed the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, interchange.
What my bounty Mr. Stephen Linkletter didn’t know was that the red-and-white classic 1961 Chevy Impala he’d helped himself to had a GPS tracker on it. Law enforcement might not have had the time to track him down, but his bail bondsman did, hence the reason why said bondsman—bondsperson—and premier State Police trooper pal-o’-mine Vonetta Posey bugged the cars her clients had access to. I got a call from Vonetta yesterday, me catching some rays in a tank top and cutoffs out back of my house, a rancher on a small lake outside Philly. Mr. Linkletter had missed his court date, which was troublesome for Vonetta.
In response to my hello:
“This, my pathetic, white, piece-of-shit, retired canine sergeant honey, is Vonetta.”
“Woof, Sergeant Posey.”
“Woof, Sergeant Fungo.”
More beer.
My full name is Counsel Abigail Fungo, née Drury. Retired sergeant, Pennsylvania State Police. Something Vonetta and I had in common, both of us busting our balls to make that rank. And yes, I named my stud male dog Fungo after me, the difference in our sexes be damned. It was early in my civilian narcissistic period, begun right after my twenty-and-out state trooper retirement. Unlike my well-honed trooper narcissism, my civilian narcissism was a work in progress. People, men in particular, told me I was already good at it.
After Vonetta put in her twenty, she and her husband bought some pastureland upstate with a few goats and cows and whatever other animals a person needed to have property taxed as farmland. The civilian world was Vonetta’s oyster. For me, the civilian world was more like the fish I forgot to bring in from the car.
Back to her call. She’d asked for help. I’d never heard of Rancor, Pennsylvania. I worked mostly in and around Philly and Willow Grove, thirty miles outside of Philly, near the naval air base the feds had closed.
“The landlady’s vintage Chevy is up there somewhere, Counsel. She came to me for Linkletter’s bail. We bugged both cars, his and his landlady’s. Hers moved, his didn’t. His trial was supposed to start today. He didn’t show, and now the Chevy’s on a road trip. The dude’s got this thing for minors. Right up your, you know, alley, so to speak. Sarge? Fungo? Counsel, honey?”
Fungo, Sarge, Counsel; I normally answered to them all. Some dead air hovered between us after her comment about minors. Vonetta knew a lot about me; she took liberties. I let her hang a little.
“Counsel. Sweetie. You gonna help me here or what? Miss Fungo? Hello?”
When Vonetta stepped into any of my personal minefield crap I usually let her leave with all her limbs and our friendship intact. The next bit of dead air filled with the neurologically defective mental asshole bullshit baggage that I carried, in rapid-fire, head-spinning fashion.
“—shit-fuck-piss, you need to look at this.
—cock-a-doodle dance gonna twerk it on your pants.
—shit-fuck-piss, you need to look at this…”
If some other woman ever had thoughts like this, they’d never make it out of her mouth. With me, an embarrassing difference. I repeated this declaration three, maybe four times before I was able to stop myself. “Sorry, Netta,” I told her. The apology wasn’t needed. Not with Vonetta.
I told her I’d take the case.
“Great. Glad to hear you’re still as gifted as ever, Sarge. Music to my ears, hot stuff.”
Far from music; my crosses to bear. Diseases with unpronounceable words. Coprolalia, or compulsive profanity, and copropraxia, performing obscene gestures. A double-C psycho-cocktail subset of Tourette syndrome. I wished I’d never heard of them.
It ran in the family. My brother Judge Drury, eleven years my senior, was similarly afflicted.
“Yes, still occasionally thrilling the general citizenry. Send me the bounty’s info and I’ll get on the road.”
As a teenager I tried to keep my mouth shut and my hands in my pockets. An impossibility, and the reason my hands were so buggered up. Being an afflicted young woman—a big afflicted young woman, who became an even bigger afflicted adult—sometimes meant physical confrontations. Our introductions, with Vonetta and I billeted next to each other as trooper cadets at the State Police Academy, escalated with the first words out of our mouths:
“Vonetta Posey, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.”
“Counsel Fungo, Philly. Nice to—nigger nigger suck a trigger—meet you.”
Vonetta demanded an apology, said she’d knock my tits through my shoulder blades if she didn’t get it. I knew how to box; a physical response to her threat might have cost her a broken jaw. My verbal apology was what she deserved and got. She and I became close; the best of friends ever since. A testament to the State Police and to her, not to me. She was an aggressive woman when it came to strays and lost causes. For me, friends were a rarity. I almost moved to Bethlehem because of her. Regardless, I wanted to live near Philly, where I spent my childhood, difficult as it had been.
I learned the hard way not to be the aggressor when it came to people making fun of me. A few schoolyard assaults, giving and receiving, became suspensions. I graduated high school a year late, enlisted in the army before the Tourette’s took hold. Got me some armed services discipline after almost washing out of basic training. Put in four years, did two tours, decided that was enough.
Early summer in the northeast, and I had the crotch rocket in tow behind the van. A red Suzuki Hayabusa 1300. Livin’ large at age forty-nine. Mr. Linkletter’s mug shot and newspaper accounts of his arrest were with me for the road trip north. A female Allentown cop posing as an underage runaway at a bus terminal had reeled him in. After jumping bail, Mr. Linkletter now had his landlady’s car. The landlady was also missing.
Coming up on the last exit of the turnpike, Clarks Summit, an hour and a half north of Allentown. A bit more highway, then we would head into the Pocono woods.
About the dogs. I had one as a child in our home in Bryn Mawr. Mom took in a stray when I was five. Dad, at that time only a corrupt Philly union official, “got rid of it” a few days later. Fast-forward to basic training and my drill sergeant, a compassionate SOB who used some of his Zen/Dalai Lama mojo on me. When I told him about my afflicted brother’s success as a marine MWD K9 officer, he agreed to try the K9 unit as a placement for me. Military working dogs became my army life—detection, deterrent, detainment, sometimes destruction—and canines became my salvation.
I wished I’d known as a teenage girl how therapeutic pets were. For me, at least. For the bounties I chased, not so much.
A concrete bridge tall as a western state’s railroad trestle finished off my turn
pike travel. We curled around to the tollbooths, curled some more before we slid into traffic on a four-lane strip in Clarks Summit, only minimally commercial. Ten minutes later we were inside Rancor town limits, cruising Rancor Boulevard. Woodsy, dense, hilly. A feed store, a landscaping business, a John Deere outlet, a Greek diner. A post office. A single-story cinder-block bingo hall and the aforementioned bowling alley. There were three or four bed-and-breakfast establishments in the region, but one B&B was all I needed. A big B&B fan. Just another thing I had in common with my brother, like bounty hunting, working dogs, and Tourette’s.
I’d always been a soft touch for comfy beds and homemade food; the fugitive recovery business supported my B&B habit. Too many stakeout meals while I was on the force, too much diner food later, after I lost my ex-husband, who’d remained a good friend.
We pulled into the Willow Swamp Farm B&B. Two other vehicles in the lot. The inn was a restored Victorian on three acres per the website, with tall ladderback rockers and a two-person swing on a wraparound porch filled with wicker. Full breakfast, afternoon tea. The clincher: pets were welcome. My new home until I found Mr. Linkletter.
I walked Fungo and Tess, cleaned up after them, gave them some water, and put them back in the van for now, windows and sunroof open. Fungo moved into his crate. Tess sat in the passenger seat stiff and observant, would stay that way and not leave her post. A custom conversion in black and gold, the van was designed for fugitive recovery, not tourism. Leg irons, handcuffs, waist chains, a baton, leashes, dog harnesses, Kevlar, night goggles, some weaponry. An open concept interior that looked like a traveling BDSM wet dream. No bulletproof glass or other barrier separated the bucket seats from the cargo area; that would have been too confining for the dogs. We typically caught and held our bounties until I could call them in. I let the experts handle transport.