by James Tarr
“He’s not here. And if he was, I’d be telling him the same thing I’m telling you. We are not giving him to you.”
Colman stopped. Okay, this wasn’t just pigheadedness on the part of local law enforcement, which he’d experienced more than a few times. This was something else. Did they know something? How could they? He normally knew more than everybody else in the room, and didn’t like this feeling one bit. He glanced from the detective to the old cowboy deputy and back to the sheriff.
“Ah, I confess, I’m at a little bit of a loss at your lack of cooperation, Sheriff. But,” and he waved a hand over his shoulder, “I did bring some gentlemen to help move Mr. Anderson to our holding facility. These men are agents with the Department of Homeland Security, and if you get in their way you will be interfering with federal officers. If your men interfere with these agents trying to do what we came here to do they will be arrested. I didn’t want this to be confrontational, but….”
The Sheriff eyed the bulky men with their armor and slung carbines. He imagined that they would have already pushed past him if they weren’t outnumbered better than two-to-one. “If your men try to take Anderson I will have them arrested,” he said flatly. “They seem rather heavily armed for guys just here to take an injured kid into custody. Sam, what do you think?” he said, turning to his second.
“Maybe trying for a bit of shock and awe,” Wheaton said, sounding neither shocked nor awed.
“All right, I’ve had about enough of this shit,” Colman said, finally reaching the end of his rope. It had been a long goddamn week. “We’re taking the kid. We’ve got the warrant, so I’ll politely ask you to get out of the way. I’ll leave a copy of the warrant for you, don’t worry.”
“Your men try to get anywhere near Mr. Anderson and I will have them killed where they stand.”
That brought everybody up short. The four tactical agents had been standing there looking variously threatening and annoyed, with their hands leisurely resting on or near the rifles slung across their chests, but after the Sheriff made that statement everyone in the corridor went still. The men on the DHS team moved their hands back to their rifles. Not ready to shoot, they didn’t really think that would happen, but….
Colman chose his words carefully. “Sheriff, do you really want to start a gunfight with federal agents in the hallway of a hospital? Are you looking for an excuse to go out in a blaze of glory, put that cherry on the top of your very public career? Are you dying of an inoperable brain tumor and want to hasten the end? I must admit your sense of humor is lost on me.” The detective behind the Sheriff looked surprised by the threat as well.
“You’re right, I have been very lucky in my life,” the Sheriff admitted. “And I have become a very public figure, even though I never wanted that. But because of that, most everyone here I’m assuming has heard the story of how I found Jesus Christ and came to the Lord in Vietnam. Shot six times, laying there on that riverbank in the A Shau, waiting to die. Surrounded by the dead, by the bodies of the men I’d come to know as my brothers. And those we’d killed. Laying on their intestines, watching fish eat their eyes. I waited to die. And waited.
“For two days I was in agonizing pain, and kept expecting for the end to come. But it never happened. In fact, my pain grew less. And I came to realize that was because the Lord had saved me. And if he saved me, it goes to follow he must have a purpose for me. He has a purpose for all of us, but I never realized that fact before that moment. I vowed to myself on that day that if I lived, I would be a good Christian for the rest of my mortal life, and I would treat every day above ground as if it was my last day on earth. Make every decision as if my life depended on it and God was looking over my shoulder, judging me. And somehow He gave me the strength to walk out of there, to walk miles to my unit, through jungle infested with the enemy, with wounds that should have killed me.
“Every day since then I have strived to do my best. While I know that the eternal reward is waiting for me, every day above ground, Mr. Colman, is a good day. Since that day I lay on that riverbank and waited to die, I have had fifteen thousand days above ground, and every one of them has been a good day. A glorious day. Not roughly fifteen thousand, mind you; I’ve been keeping count. Counting every day. Yesterday it was fourteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine. Today, today I have received the gift of fifteen thousand days that I would not otherwise have had were it not for the Lord. Fifteen thousand is a good round number, a miraculous number for a man who should have died forty years ago but was saved by the hand of God. So if today is my day to die, sir, then it is a good day to die, and I go forth with a light heart.”
Colman heard the click as the Sheriff disengaged the safety of his shotgun. It was perhaps the loudest sound he had ever heard, echoing up and down the hospital corridor. “Sam,” Osterman said, “will you sing at my funeral?”
“It would be my honor,” the cowboy beside the Sheriff drawled, his hand on his holstered pistol. “If I ain’t layin’ dead beside you.” He popped the thumb-break on his holster with a thumb that looked like it was made of aged and stained walnut. The sound of safeties going off up and down the hallway was ominous.
Jesus Christ, thought Colman, blinking rapidly. The hell did I fucking walk into? The deputies were lined up along the walls, in open doorways, in a defensive formation, hands on their guns. Colman realized just how many of the Sheriff’s men were carrying shotguns and rifles.
Shotgun John…how many men had the Sheriff himself killed? Something like six or seven, most of them with a shotgun. Maybe the same battered one he was holding now, which wasn’t quite pointed at anyone. Colman could sense the DHS agents behind him, getting squirrelly, and they were all combat vets. Shit, he was getting squirrelly. “Look,” Colman said, raising his open hands, hoping they couldn’t see him sweating, “I know you might think he is, but he’s not safe here.”
“Even if I believed you,” the Sheriff said, “you can’t move him. He’s been shot three times and has bad burns on his hands. He can’t be moved for days, if not weeks. He still hasn’t regained consciousness from the surgery yesterday.”
Bad burns on his hands? That was news. That was……“Can I see him and speak to his doctor?” Colman asked, still keeping his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. “My men can wait here.”
Without taking his eyes off Colman, Osterman said “Ginny? You want to call Doc Brennan?”
The nurse released the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and paged Dr. Brennan. “He shouldn’t be much more than a minute or two,” she told them nervously.
“We’ll wait right here,” he told Colman. And then just stared at him, not saying anything, not fidgeting, just holding the shotgun. Safety still off, finger alongside the trigger guard.
It was closer to five minutes later when they all heard the ding of the elevator. When the doctor stepped out he stopped at the sight of so many men and guns in the hallway of his hospital. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“This gentleman from Homeland Security would like an update on Mr. Anderson,” the Sheriff told him, holding out a hand for him to lead the way to the young man’s room. “If you wouldn’t mind, Doctor. Sam,” he said, giving his second a pointed look, “keep the rest of these gentlemen entertained.”
As the Sheriff, the detective from Detroit, and the suit from Washington walked down the hall behind him, Sam Wheaton smiled grimly behind his moustache, then stomped his boot on the floor. Then again. And again. By the third stomp every deputy on the floor was stomping their feet in time to his. The beat was slow, foreboding. The DHS guys looked at each other. They were already rattled…now what the hell was happening?
Outside the door to Anderson’s room, Colman turned and stared back down the hall at the deputies stomping their feet solemnly, and then of all things the cowboy deputy began singing slowly, in a classical, trained baritone—
“You can run on, for a long time
Run on, for a long time,<
br />
Run on, for a long time,
Sooner or later gotta cut you down
Sooner or later gotta cut you down.”
It was eerie, the other deputies were stomping their feet, keeping time for the mustachioed old deputy. He stared directly at the DHS agents with their guns as he sung in a deep, gravelly voice, and every other deputy in the hall stared at them expressionlessly as they stomped. Every one of them had their hand on their gun.
“Shall we?” the Sheriff said to the distracted Colman outside the room.
“Um, uh…”
“Go tell that long-tongued liar,
Go and tell that midnight rider,
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back-biter,
Tell them that God’s gonna cut ‘em down,
Tell them that God’s gonna cut ‘em down.”
The Sheriff pushed open the door to Anderson’s room and Doc Brennan entered, followed by Colman, who seemed distracted. He suddenly turned to the Sheriff and said, “This is what you sang to the man on death row. You taunted him.”
“If you mean Henry Lee Miller, who killed a woman, her child, and two of my men, and laughed about it all through his trial, then yes. He was a cop killer, and my men sang to him as he was led into the execution chamber,” the Sheriff corrected him. “We weren’t taunting him, we were educating him, lettin’ him know what he had to look forward to.”
“And the Attorney General sent you a letter of condemnation,” Colman said. “Signed by the Governor as well. I remember. Demanding an apology to the family of the convict. Citing cruel and unusual punishment. You think you’re a king down here?”
“I am no king. I was duly elected by the people of this county. Six times, now. And the Attorney General of the United States is a tool of Satan, of that I have no doubt,” the Sheriff told him. “The only question I have is whether or not he is a willing tool.”
Colman could feel the stomping in his feet, it was coming up through the floor. He stared out the door at the deputies staring at his men like zombies, stomping their feet like robots as the cowboy sang about death. Jesus fuck, it was creepy as hell. What was it Time Magazine had said? Oh yeah, his men displayed “an almost cult-like devotion” to their Sheriff. Colman felt sweat break out all over his body.
“..I’ve been down on bended knee,
Talking to the man from Galilee
He spoke to me in a voice so sweet
I thought I heard the shuffle of angels’ feet
He called my name and my heart stood still,
When he said ‘John, go do my will!’”
The old deputy could sing, that was for sure, and his steady voice was echoing down the corridor eerily. Colman had apparently stepped into a Twilight Zone episode, and had completely lost control of the situation. Not that he’d ever really had it…which wasn’t like him, not at all.
“How many lawsuits has the Justice Department filed against you and your department?” he asked the Sheriff, trying to regain lost ground.
“Nearly as many as we’ve filed against it.”
Colman stopped at the foot of Anderson’s bed and looked down at him. He was unconscious, an IV in one arm, sheet up around his waist. There was a large square bandage on his upper right arm, near his shoulder, and his hands were thickly wrapped. One side of his head was bright red and shiny, hair burned short and completely missing in patches. A large rectangular bandage covered the other side of his head from ear to neck.
“Give him the Cliff’s Notes version, doc,” the Sheriff said, shotgun still in hand and, perhaps not unintentionally, pointing at the open doorway.
Dr. Ethan Brennan looked at the Sheriff and the man in the suit, not liking the tension in the room, but said, “The patient had surgery yesterday, and is currently in serious condition. None of his injuries are immediately life threatening, but he’s got a lot of them. He lost a lot of blood. He suffered a gunshot wound to the right upper arm which required a number of stitches to repair. He was also shot in the left thigh, I believe with a rifle bullet, which passed through-and-through and somehow did not hit bone or any major blood vessels.
“He was also shot in the face. The bullet skimmed along the jawbone, breaking it, and took a piece out of his neck. Very painful, I imagine, and ugly, but no major blood vessels were hit. Setting his jaw and stitching that up took us the most time yesterday. We’ve got an oral surgeon coming in tomorrow to look at that, because of the way the jaw was cracked. He also suffered first- and second-degree burns to the other side of his face which, compared to his other wounds, is a minor issue. The injury that has me the most concerned are the burns to his hands. His fingertips, to be more precise.” Brennan didn’t even mention the piece of drywall screw he’d found embedded in Anderson’s left shin.
“His fingertips are burned? How many?” Colman said. “How did that happen?”
The doctor shook his head. “All his fingers. I’ve no clue how it happened, although if I remember correctly from the news reports his house did burn down. They’re bad burns, at least third degree. As if he was holding onto something that was on fire and couldn’t let go. He was semi-conscious when they found him, but non-responsive. There’s a burn specialist coming up from Phoenix today to look at him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he needed skin grafts.”
“That bad? So there will be…scarring?” Colman asked.
“Scarring? I’d be surprised if he doesn’t have range of motion issues. We might have to amputate the ends of some of his fingers, I don’t know. It’s really outside my area of expertise. This boy’s fingers have been cooked, literally.”
Colman stood there staring at Anderson for almost a full minute, thinking. “But he’ll live,” he said finally.
“There are no guarantees in life, but yes, unless he gets some sort of nasty infection, there is no reason why he shouldn’t completely recover from his wounds.”
“Minus his fingertips.”
“Yes. Well, he might not lose them, but his fingers will be scarred for life.”
Colman stood there and stared at the young man for a few more minutes, looking thoughtful, then turned to Osterman. “Okay, he’s yours, you can keep him here. But I might want to interview him in the future. I’m not done with him.”
“I would recommend calling ahead of time,” the Sheriff said drily.
The DHS agents were soaked in sweat when he rejoined them, which was perfectly understandable. They’d been surrounded by stone-faced cops stomping their feet while another cop with the voice of a cowboy poet sang about how God was gonna cut them down. Nobody saying a word, everybody’s hands on their rifles and shotguns.
“Let’s go,” Colman said to them, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He waited to make a call until he was back out in the parking lot, standing away from the tactical agents who stood beside their black Tahoe. They were trying to look like it was just another day on the job, but they looked as freaked out as he felt. He was pretty sure the Sheriff’s deputies would have been happy to slaughter all of them in that hospital corridor. Probably while singing gospels. God and guns and mental illness—he hated Arizona so very fucking much.
“I don’t think our issue is an issue any more,” he told the person who answered the phone. “It seems to have resolved itself.”
“Really? How did that happen?”
“Burns,” Colman said. “Bad burns. Self-inflicted, I think. He did a John Dillinger. Wasn’t it Dillinger who removed his fingerprints with acid?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said the voice on the other end. “I’m not quite that old. So are we done with this?”
“Not quite. They seemed to know I was coming. I’m not sure how. The fact that he did a Dillinger tells me that he knew exactly what his problem was, and I’m not sure how he came into that information either. And since I don’t know, I’d feel better if we cleaned as much of this mess up as possible. The people who caused this mess are still out there…..”
“And are not grocers, or t
ruck drivers.” He heard a deep sigh. “You’ll need to be circumspect. Subtle. Accidental, given their occupations.”
Colman smiled past the phone at the parking lot and the waiting tactical team. Shows of force were not his usual style, but you did what the job called for. He’d be happy to go back to being the gray man. “Accidents, as you know, are my specialty.”
“I need to move out here,” Aaron muttered to himself, staring at the departing backs of the DHS agents. The thumping beat of the deputies’ boots and haunting words were making a few of them visibly twitch. He glanced over at Sheriff ‘Shotgun John’ Osterman, who as soon as the elevator door closed looked much more tired. Ringo was there standing next to him. “Right the hell now.” He flicked the safety back on his Colt, and removed his hand from the stainless steel grip. His hand was shaking. And sweating. He’d thought for sure that standoff was going to end in a whole lotta dead bodies. At least EMS would be close……
“Well, that was something,” Ringo told Osterman. His shirt felt soaked through. He glanced at the old deputy who’d been singing, who now resnapped his holster and then pulled out a toothpick and went to work with it. “I don’t even know….” He stared down the empty hallway toward the elevator.
“I’ve known Sam here for almost thirty years,” the sheriff said almost absently. “Ran into him at college. He’d just gotten out of high school, and I’d been out of the army for a few years, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. We both ended up going into law enforcement.” The Sheriff paused. “Although we both minored in Theater.”
That made Ringo’s head snap around. “Geez. Theater? I….uh…..wow. You really had me going there.”
“Oh, I meant every word I said,” the Sheriff let him know. “I’m a true believer. I would have blown him out of his socks right there and been happy to go meet the Lord, if that’s how it worked out. The problem is making the other fellow believe. Sometimes, for that, you need a little…..showmanship. Warriors have been chanting to unnerve the enemy for millennia. War paint, battle cries, and chanting. It’s one of those proven, old-fashioned things I’ve been trying to bring back into fashion, like actually punishing criminals.”