“Damn,” I said, “I think it’s safe to say these boys are not in the real estate business; that is one ugly house. The sofa out on the front porch takes the cake. Even Northern rednecks don’t do that.”
“Hey, living room furniture out on the front porch, that’s practically a Southern redneck tradition. Now what?”
I wasn’t sure. The brothers were most likely inside discussing my little note. I had wanted to hear that conversation. See if one of them admitted to anything. My inner voice screamed they were guilty, but that’s not exactly the kind of evidence one can use in court. We needed to hear what was going on. I volunteered to run up and place a microphone on one of the windows. Boyd talked me out of it. There was not one tree, not one bush of any kind in the yard. Nothing I could use as cover. It was too risky. I would have to wait for the cover of darkness.
Our wait did not last as long as expected. Junior and Jackson came out of the house and piled into Jackson’s car, a nondescript blue four-door Buick. Even from our safe distance, we could see that Jackson had a handgun in his waistband.
Boyd turned to me to see if I had seen the handgun. I nodded. “We following them?” I nodded again. Even though neither Junior nor Jackson had ever seen the Jeep, it did not mean following them was easy. Jeep CJ-7s were not exactly common vehicles, and traffic was not exactly heavy on the country roads. Not to mention, my windows were not tinted.
Jackson was heading south into Mississippi traveling just slightly above the 55 mph speed limit. We had been following them for 15 minutes when I noticed Jackson slowing down to make a left-hand turn an empty field. The car stopped at the entrance into the field. They were waiting for something.
“Crap,” I said, “I think they are pulling over to see if we are tailing them. Quick, turn away from them.”
If Jackson was just sitting there in an open field looking for a tail, then he was a crafty son-of-a-gun. I pulled the cap I was wearing down harder on my head and floored the Jeep, driving past the parked car as quickly as possible. Once past them, I noticed in the rear view mirror that both men had their heads turned in our direction.
“Boyd, I’m beginning to think Jackson is smart. That was how to spot a tail 101. Don’t drive fast, just do the unexpected. If we had done anything other than blow on by them, they would have known someone was following them.”
“Yeah, and now we have lost them.”
“Maybe not. I’m starting to get a sneaking suspicion I know where they are going. We’ll drive on ahead and get in place.”
Another 15 minutes later, Boyd realized where we were heading. We did not know for sure where Jackson was headed, but in light of recent events, it made the most sense. An hour later, Boyd and I were trying to find an inconspicuous place to park the Jeep outside our target location. I could not hide the Jeep, so I dropped Boyd off and continued driving another half mile before finding a suitable location to park the Jeep. In high school, I could run the 40-yard dash faster than all but one player on our football team, but that did not mean I enjoyed the half-mile sprint back to Boyd’s location. I arrived out of breath and perched behind a foul smelling dumpster. Six cars were in the parking lot. Boyd was not visible. He was probably hiding on the other side of the lot.
I had guessed correctly. The Estes brothers arrived shortly. How were they going to play this? It was a Monday evening, so although the bar was not busy, neither was it empty. Yesterday, when I did the same thing, Strasser’s bar was closed.
Neither brother wasted anytime exiting the car. From my vantage point, it was evident Jackson still had the handgun in his waistband. Junior appeared unarmed, which seemed highly unlikely. Maybe I injured his shoulder too much for him to hold a gun. One could always hope.
The brothers strode into the bar, out of my sight. Unless I wanted to crash the party, it was anyone’s guess what was going to happen inside. Hopefully, I would not need to call 911. Then again, maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad.
I spotted Boyd perched behind a car in the parking lot. He looked my way and shrugged his shoulders questioningly. I returned the gesture. Boyd did not sit long, though. Instead, he walked over to Jackson’s Buick and opened the driver’s side rear door, fumbled through his pocket, then bent over and reached inside the vehicle. He closed the rear door and started to walk away when Jackson and Junior came back out the front door of Strasser’s bar. Fortunately, the brothers were preoccupied, or else they would have spotted him.
The brothers were exiting the bar walking backward. Jackson had his arm around a man’s neck, the same man I took the cheap handgun from. Jackson’s gun was pointed at the man’s head, while Junior had a small handgun pointed towards the front door. From the look of things, Jackson’s visit had not gone as planned.
The man was scared. He didn’t even try to struggle loose. Jackson opened the driver’s door and pushed the man across the front seat with his gun still trained on him. Junior crawled in the rear passenger door while Jackson turned to watch the front door. Once Junior was situated with his gun aimed at the man’s head, Jackson got into the car and sped out of the parking lot. That was the third one of Strasser’s men to have been taken captive in as many days; Boyd and I had the other two trapped in a panel van in the woods.
***
I kept an eye on the front door of the bar expecting to see Strasser’s men exiting in hot pursuit. But they didn’t. Boyd must have expected the same the thing because he remained hidden behind some cars and motioned for me to get the Jeep and pick him up. This meant another half-mile sprint. I was still out of breath when I pulled up in front of Strasser’s a few minutes later.
Boyd immediately climbed in and starting barking orders. “Gun it, man. If they are heading back the same way they came, then you might be able to catch them.”
“I don’t give a crap about saving Strasser’s man.”
“Me neither. I threw a bug up under their seat. If we get close enough, we will be able to listen to what’s going on inside their car.”
That explained why Boyd had walked up and opened the back door. Boyd was coming through again. Now I just had to hope I could push the top heavy Jeep fast enough on the winding road to catch up with Jackson. Horsepower was not the problem. I had made modifications to the AMC 258 engine, an inline six known for having decent torque at low RPMs; the year before I rebuilt the engine and squeezed an extra 60 horsepower out of it. The problem was that no one in their right mind thinks of a Jeep CJ7 with a four-inch lift kit as being particularly well suited for a high-speed chase on a curvy, winding road. In every curve, the tires squalled and squealed as I pushed the Jeep to its handling limits. After the first ten miles, I decided I would never complain about the handling in the Mercedes ever again.
Thirty minutes went by before I gave up. If we were going to catch them, we would have done it by then. Jackson was probably pushing his Buick just as hard as I was, or he had taken a different route. Boyd was disappointed, but he understood why I slowed down to a safer speed.
“Well, look on the bright side,” I said, “Now that the Estes boys have kidnapped one of Strasser’s men, we don’t have to hold Brent and Daryl any longer.”
“So we just let them go?”
“After I break their fingers on their gun hands?”
“Do you think that is necessary? It would be a show of good faith to Strasser if you let them go unharmed. Keep Strasser’s wrath focused on the Estes boys.”
Boyd had a great point. I kidnapped them because they attacked Ellie. No doubt Strasser would understand that. But if I broke their fingers after I had called a truce, then maybe he might not be so understanding. On the flip side, someone still needed to pay for running Ellie off the road in the first place. Maybe I would just break one finger a piece. Trigger fingers only. Better yet, thumbs. Take the opposable digit away, and that would render them useless in a gunfight.
Boyd was watching me mull it over. “You don’t agree?” he asked.
“You make a great poi
nt. It’s just that, you know when you watch a movie, and the good guy has a chance to take the bad guy out, but he goes all soft. So the bad guy gets away only to attack the good guy again later, and the good guy has to kill him after all. Well, if I break their thumbs now, then they shouldn’t have to be killed later.”
“So, you’re thinking of Brent and Daryl’s safety?”
“Of course, I am a doctor. Think of this as an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
“I can never quite tell if you are serious or not.”
I informed Boyd that I was quite serious, but my mind was not made up yet. We were about an hour out of Emmettsville, which gave me plenty of time to decide and to listen to Boyd’s side of the story. Boyd had the skill set to be a top-notch investigator. He was clever and insightful. He made good deductions. He had access to some wonderful toys. The only thing I questioned was his ability to make tough decisions. I would never have given up my gun when Tyler and Junior approached me. I probably would have shot Brent or Daryl, or both. And now he was worried about breaking their little fingers. Maybe he still had too much cop left in him.
***
We were 20 minutes from Emmettsville when I noticed a set of headlights approaching quickly from behind. It was too dark to tell for sure, but my inner voice was yelling at me regardless. “Hey, what’s the range on that microphone you put in Jackson’s car?”
“Probably a quarter mile. Why?”
“Humor me. Turn it on?”
“Sure.”
Boyd pushed some buttons, twisted a dial or two. A voice came across the speaker. “That fucking Jeep up ahead look familiar to you?”
I looked at Boyd, gave him a big thumbs up and warned him about looking back. Jackson and Junior were directly behind us. I loved my inner voice. At times it almost made me feel clairvoyant. “You know, Boyd, sometimes it’s even better to be lucky than smart.” He just smiled.
Once again, the sound quality from Boyd’s tiny microphones was superb. The company he worked for made excellent equipment. Junior answered his brother, “Yeah, that’s the same damn Jeep we thought was followin’ us on the way to Tupelo. Look at it, white CJ7, chrome package, brown hardtop, lift kit. No doubt about it, same Jeep.”
“So we agree it’s the same Jeep, then. Seems strange to run into it twice on the same day, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, but we both agreed it wasn’t followin’ us earlier, and we came up behind it just now, not the other way around. Same Jeep, but has to be a coincidence. Maybe they were headin’ to Holly Springs in that thing earlier, and we just happen to catch them again on the way home. Why, what you thinkin’? Strasser’s men?”
Jackson said, “Hell no.”
“Then what?”
“Ten to one, it’s that fucking doctor. He’s smart. Too smart. I think the deal with that Graham fella was all part of his master plan. Although, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why he had him selling liquor in our county. Seriously, what did he hope to gain by that?”
“Why you askin’ me? I’m still not convinced he’s actually a doctor.”
Jackson said, “Really? So you think he just parks his pretty red sports car outside the hospital for fun? Besides, how else do you think he can afford a car like that?”
“Okay, okay. You made your damn point, bro. It’s just that he told us that he used to arrest Marines, which meant he must have been a military cop, and now he’s some kind of bad ass doctor. Kind of a stretch, don’t ya think? Hell, he even went all Kung Fu on my ass in the shed. He could have ripped my shoulder out; I know it. And you know me, bro, I don’t lose fights. Ever.”
“Sorry for getting all smart assy with you. Everything is just getting out of control. Strasser steals our booze. Even leaves a note, then denies it when we show up in his bar. Instead, he starts accusing us of kidnapping two of his guys. You ran them out of our office, but we didn’t kidnap them. Strasser is acting weird, man. Plus, he mentioned something about meeting our doctor friend. What the hell did he mean by that?”
Junior must not have had an answer to his brother’s questions because all conversation ceased for a couple of minutes before Jackson resumed the conversation. “I’m still wondering if that’s the doctor up ahead of us. Maybe he knew we were on to him on the way down to Tupelo. Maybe he knew we were heading to Strasser’s, or, at least, guessed. Don’t look at me like that. I know it doesn’t explain why he’s in front of us right now.”
The two brothers argued for the next couple of minutes concerning the coincidence of seeing the same Jeep on the same stretch of road a couple of hours apart. Neither was able to convince the other of their viewpoint. Both brothers were yelling after a couple of minutes of arguing. It sounded like the stress of their situation was getting to them.
“You know,” yelled Jackson, “If you had handled things with Deland like I told you to, none of this would be happening.”
Junior replied, “Brother, I told you to stop bringin’ that up. I shot the son of a bitch. He’s dead. I didn’t mean to, but there’s nothin’ we can do about it now.”
Boyd and I whipped our heads towards each other in amazement. Over the last ten days, I had run into Junior on three different occasions, each time I had seen Junior as a hindrance, not a suspect. Not once had I suspected Junior’s involvement in Paul disappearance and death; that is, until Boyd overheard him talking with Strasser’s men two days ago. Only then had I started to suspect anything. It was why I had delivered the note to Jackson. By telling them that I knew they did it, I hoped they would talk about my note while Boyd taped them. However, that had not worked. Instead, they were following us with a bug under their seat talking away while we heard the whole thing. No tape, but we now knew everything we needed to know. Boyd and I had found our man.
The irony of the situation was not lost on me. If Junior had left me alone from the beginning, maybe I never would have suspected him in the first place. If he had not kidnapped Boyd, then we probably would not have set up the laser microphone outside their office. They could have laid low, and my investigation might have gone right over them. But that’s not what happened. Over and over, they brought attention to themselves. I doubt Boyd could have slapped the smile off my face as I contemplated our success.
Boyd said, “We frigging got ‘em. You hear that. We got them. Hot damn!”
“We find the gun Junior used, and they are screwed. To hell with us finding it; let’s tell the Chief and let him get a warrant, and he can find it. Our part is nearly over, Boyd. Way to go, Bird Dog, I never could have done this without you.”
Our celebration was cut short as Junior’s voice started over the microphone again. “What we gonna do about Strasser?”
“Since we didn’t hurt his man, I say we just give him 15 grand and move on. We’ll admit to nothing, of course, and tell him it’s worth it to us to just put it all behind us. Then one day, when he least suspects it, bam, I’ll make sure he pays for stealing our booze.”
Junior yelled, “I don’t like it, bro. We had 10,000 in liquor in there, at least. We’re out 25,000 if we pay him. Not good, bro. Not good at all.”
“We’ll only be out 10, Junior, because you’re still gonna collect from the little twerp’s family. I’m not eating 25,000. Hell, I’m not eating 10. We’ll just get that from Strasser at a later date. If we don’t get it, then fuck it, I’ll blow up his bar and call it even. That piece of shit bar couldn’t have been worth much more than that.”
“Okay, I’m followin’ you. But what about the doctor? He ain’t gonna let us just waltz in there and collect from Paul’s old man.”
Jackson said, “How about I just pass them on the next straight away and if it’s them, we take care of him and his friend once and for all.” Junior liked the idea.
“Well, shit,” I said. “It looks like things are going to get all climactic here in a second.”
“You think?” Boyd’s voice had the tiniest tinge of nervousness in it. “You going to
let them pass?”
“Sure. Boyd, you got your MP5?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Set that thing to full auto and let me have it.” Boyd wanted to know why. “Because I’m going to hang it out the window and shoot their car all to hell. They think they got the element of surprise. Well, 30 rounds of 9mm Parabellum flying their way should rid them of any notion they have about being in control.”
“I got a better idea,” said Boyd. “You can drive better than me; I can shoot better than you. Stop them in the middle of the road, and I will jump out and shoot their tires and radiator. Leave them sitting there while we go see the Chief and tell him what we found out.”
Now that was a plan I could not argue with. My driving, his shooting. The element of surprise. They were screwed. Boyd grabbed his H&K MP5. I saw him set the selector switch to 3-round burst mode. Boyd must have had some excellent connections to get his MP5. His model was an MP5-N, a version developed for the United States Navy in 1986. The ambidextrous Navy trigger group included the 3-round burst mode. The MP5-N also had a collapsible stock, a tritium illuminated front sight, and a threaded barrel to outfit it with a suppressor. It was one heck of a gun.
Boyd looked a little nervous as he turned his hat around backward. For all his talk about shooting at someone, he did not seem too keen on the idea of firing on Jackson’s Buick. Secretly, I think he just wanted the keep the gun out of my hands. “Ready!” he yelled. I jammed the brakes while steering towards the left side of the road. Before coming to a complete stop, I turned the wheel hard right, twisting the Jeep sideways in the middle of the road. Boyd jumped out and began firing. The first burst went directly into the front of the Buick.
“Oh shit, oh shit. Back up! That son of a bitch has a machine gun. Shit!”
From the speaker, we could hear Junior yelling. Both men were yelling a string of obscenities as Boyd fired off another round of shots. The second 3-round burst hit the front tire on the passenger side. The Buick lurched backward as Jackson threw the car into reverse. With the front tire blown out, he was losing control of the vehicle, although he did not let up on the gas. The front end of Buick was violently swaying back and forth. Boyd fired off another 3-round burst. I could not tell if he hit anything.
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