by Stephen Frey
Sara wasn’t at the Saloon when I stopped in there fifteen minutes ago and Ike claimed he didn’t know where she’d gone. He was back in the kitchen making hamburger patties and he was in a foul mood. I don’t know if it was me and the meeting tonight or because he and Sara had an argument, but he barely said a word and he wouldn’t look me in the eye the entire time I was there. His face looked bruised, but I couldn’t tell for sure if it was. After I left the Saloon I headed west out Route 7 to their house. I didn’t like Ike’s answer when I asked him where she was, and I have to talk to her as soon as possible, anyway. So going to their place seemed like the best thing to do.
Their house is two miles this side of Bickerstaff Lane and Shawmut Lake, and it’s always seemed odd to me that they live west of town when the general store and the Saloon they own are on the east side of Bruner. It’s a quarter of a mile off Route 7 down a rutted, gravel road that snakes through some thick stands of hardwood trees—mostly poplars and oaks with some maples mixed in there, too.
Ike and Sara’s home reminds me a little of Caleb Jenkins’s place, because there’s junk strewn all over the front yard. Old car bodies, tractor tires, snowmobile parts, and tools lie on the ground like dead soldiers after the suicide charge of an epic battle. They’re everywhere. Right now it’s all covered by four inches of ice and snow—all that remains of the massive storm that hit us since the warm spell that followed up got to it.
Ike and Sara’s yard looks like Jenkins’s yard, but their house is much nicer than his. It’s two stories and though it could use a fresh coat of paint and a few bricks at the top of the chimney, it’s in pretty decent shape. As I climb out of the Cherokee I spot Sara’s ATV beside a tree to the left of the house. The four-wheeler is on its side, which strikes me as strange. You leave it like that for long and gas and oil go places they shouldn’t in the engine. Sara knows that.
“Sara!” There are three other homes on the same gravel driveway this house is on, but they aren’t visible from Ike and Sara’s place, even in winter. The trees grow too close together here. “Sara!” My voice echoes through the forest. Most of the time Sara rides that ATV to town on the side of the road—it goes up to twenty-five miles an hour—but sometimes she uses a red pickup that’s parked on the other side of the house from the ATV. She likes the ATV better, she says, because she can go anywhere with it any time she wants and therefore bother anyone she wants to any time she wants to. Point is, both of her standard modes of transportation are here, so she should be here, too. Unless Ike’s done something very bad. I hate to say it but it wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t think it would surprise anyone around here. Sara can be a damn tough woman to deal with, and Ike isn’t the most stable soul around. “Sara!”
As my call to her fades into the cold air, I hear something that sounds like footsteps crunching through the snow. The noise is coming from behind the house, and it sounds like two separate sets of steps. I pull my 9mm out from beneath my coat and take off. As I race past the pickup I spot Sara and another figure—a man—heading away from the house. One moment they’re in the backyard and the next they’re beyond the tree line. I only saw them for a split second before they disappeared, but it looked like the guy was holding a pistol to the back of her head. And it looked like Caleb Jenkins.
I turn and head for the nearest point of the tree line. I’m out in the open here and I’m very vulnerable. I expect Jenkins to start shooting at me as I race for cover but he doesn’t. I roll behind a tree and come up on one knee with my gun aimed at the place where the tracks cross the tree line. I’m only fifty feet from that spot, and I can see the two sets of footsteps in the snow disappearing into the forest.
“Sara!”
There’s still no response.
I sprint along through the brush just inside the tree line, hunched over like a running back barreling through the line of scrimmage as I tear through the briars and the brambles that claw at me. It reminds me of my high school football games when I was trying to avoid tacklers. And the lack of visibility reminds me of the other day when I was following that girl and the two guys who were chasing her through the thick stuff out on the Campbell estate. Of how vulnerable I was then, too.
I’m getting close to where Sara and Jenkins disappeared into the forest. He could be waiting for me behind any of the trees ahead with his gun drawn and I wouldn’t have time to react if he took a shot at me.
So I stop. And listen. And hold my breath. And listen some more.
But I don’t hear anything, not one damn sound. It’s as if I’ve gone completely deaf it’s so, so quiet in here. I don’t hear anyone breathing or moving. There’s still snow on the forest floor and the top layer is icy, so I ought to hear Sara and the guy crashing along if they’re moving. But I don’t.
I may not hear Jenkins—but I feel his presence. He’s close, I know it. He hasn’t gotten far. Sometimes I just know these things. It’s a good trait to have as a lawman.
I take several deep breaths, then stand, with my back to a sturdy oak tree and my gun pointed toward the sky. I take another breath, then bring the gun down and swing around the big tree in one smooth motion. Sure enough, there he is. He’s just twenty feet away across a small clearing, staring at me with his stringy hair, bad teeth, and that hungry look in his eyes. It’s Caleb Jenkins all right, and like the awful coward he is, he’s using Sara as his human shield. He’s aiming a .50 caliber Desert Eagle pistol at me and grabbing Sara tightly and roughly around the neck with his left arm. Sara’s eyes are wide open and there are tears streaming down her face.
I’ve been in a couple of close-range shootouts in my life, and I was able to survive both times because three things happen to me all at once in these situations. First, my mind goes clearer with a gun pointed at me than at any other time; second, everything in my field of vision seems to physically slow down except for me; and, third, my hand goes dead still so my aim is deadly accurate. I don’t try to turn these things on, they just happen automatically. And they give me an amazing advantage over my opponent.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that the most important things to remember in a close-range gun battle are: stay calm, think clearly, and take your time aiming. Don’t fire wildly, just make each shot count. The reality is that Jenkins’s only real chance to hit me is with his first shot, because after that Sara will be dead or running, he’ll be naked without his shield, and I’ll put him down. He’s trying to seem calm to throw me off, but I know his blood’s pumping so hard and fast he can barely see me. As long as I have faith in myself and all those things that happen, I’ll win. It’s that simple. He should have taken a shot at me as soon as I came out from behind the tree, but he didn’t, and that’s when he lost any advantage he might have had. The very fact that he didn’t take that shot tells me a lot about his confidence—or lack of it.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” Jenkins says in a raspy voice. “I’ve heard all about how good you are in a gunfight, how you stay so calm.” He grins defiantly. “Well, we’ll see about that.”
The barrel of his huge pistol is shaking hard and he sees that I’ve noticed, which makes it shake even harder. A .50 caliber pistol packs one hell of a punch and the Desert Eagle is an awesome gun. If he hits me I’m going down, there’s no doubt about it. But that gun’s heavy, and not only do you have to be strong but you’ve also got to be practiced with it to be any kind of accurate. Plus, hitting a target twenty feet away with any pistol is tough, and though Jenkins handles guns a lot, they’re mostly rifles and shotguns. Based upon what I saw at his shack, anyway.
The thing is, I don’t want to kill Jenkins. I want to take him in alive, because I’ve got a lot of things I want him to tell me about the cult. Plus, he could end up being an excellent witness later on, since he strikes me as the type who’ll cut any kind of deal he can to save his own ass. “I guess we will see about that, Mr. Jenkins. Probably a lot sooner than you’d like to.”
Jenkins tightens his grip on Sa
ra’s neck and she whimpers. “Before I kill you, Sheriff,” he says, “I want to tell you something.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” His smile turns into an arrogant smirk. “I watched that little blond bitch you love so much die. I watched her clothes come off and her hands and feet get nailed to the floor and her throat get sliced open real, real slow with the knife from your kitchen drawer. I watched her blood pour out all over her papa’s mansion, and I listened to her try to scream with her neck all cut open like that. Then I watched the life seep out of her.” He chuckles. “How does that make you feel, Sheriff? Huh?”
It ought to make my blood boil and thus the gun I’m holding shake—which is exactly what Jenkins wants. But I already came to grips with everything he just told me when I watched the video I took from his house. They taped her murder—it’s the last thing on that second tape—and I forced myself to watch it even though it made me physically sick to my stomach for thirty minutes afterward. “It makes me sure I don’t want to kill you out here,” I answer evenly. “See, if I can take you in alive, then the state of Wisconsin can lock you up for the rest of your life and they can tell your prison mates that you’re a child molester.”
“I’m no child molester,” he snaps angrily.
“Oh, no? Well I carried a seven-year-old boy back from that cabin you all burned down the other day. He died because you left him in the cold to suffer. I’d say that’s molesting.”
“Hey, I didn’t want to—”
“You know what happens to child molesters in prison?” I watch the fear push his eyes wide open. “That’s right, Mr. Jenkins, those big boys inside the pen will torture you every day you’re in there. It’ll be hell on earth, and every morning when I get up I’ll think about you and I’ll—”
He squeezes the trigger, but right before he does he moves slightly, exposing his shoulder. I shift to my right, making my shot at him a little more difficult for me, but his shot much more difficult for him. The big .50 caliber round blows past me into the trunk of the oak tree a foot to my left, and it’s almost like I can actually see the bullet fly by because everything’s slowed down so much in my field of vision. A millisecond later his shoulder explodes in red with my shot and the Desert Eagle flies into the air as he tumbles backward. The moment I see he’s hit, everything around me accelerates to normal speed.
The gun lands in the snow a few feet from where Sara’s crouched, and she’s on it in a heartbeat. Before Jenkins even starts screaming in pain as he lies sprawled in the snow.
“Don’t do it,” I warn her. “I mean it.”
But she doesn’t aim the Dessert Eagle at me like I thought she was going to. She points the barrel of the huge gun down at Jenkins and cocks the trigger.
“What the hell are you doing, Sara?”
“He knows everything.” The fear’s gone and now her face is twisted in rage, and what is obviously a desire for revenge. “He knows I took you out to the cabin. He knows I saw you the other night. He knows everything. I don’t know how he knows but he does. I can’t let him live.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, giving Sara a wide berth as I hustle around her to where Jenkins is writhing on the ground. I don’t want to do anything that might make her squeeze that trigger, but I have to make sure he doesn’t have another weapon on him. I kick him a few times in the right spots, and I’m confident he’s unarmed, so I holster my weapon. Then I’m careful to back off a few steps so he can’t lunge at me if he’s faking about how bad the pain is. Now I’m only a step away from Sara, who’s still pointing that Desert Eagle down at Jenkins, both hands wrapped so tightly around the big gun’s handle her Native American fingers are almost white. “Sara, this guy’s going to be locked up for the rest of his life. He can’t—”
“You just don’t get it,” she whispers. “You just don’t get it, do you?”
“Talk to me, Sara, tell me why I don’t get it.”
“He’ll have me tortured. Whether he’s in jail or not he’ll get a message to them and they’ll find me. They’ll chop off my fingers, my toes, my hands, my legs.” She shakes her head. “You can’t understand how terrible it would be.”
“Who? Who’s going to do all that to you, Sara?”
“If I’m going to die, I’m going to decide when and where. I won’t let them torture me to death. Not like they did to Cindy.”
“I’ll protect you, Sara.” For the first time since Jenkins went down she moves her gaze away from him and she looks at me. She looks at me the same way Cindy did at the mansion when I followed her home from 681 that afternoon Jenkins and his gang played their parts in her drama of the day. Sara looks at me like I’m her knight in shining armor. “Just tell me who’s behind all this.”
“You’ll protect me?” The gun drops slightly. “You promise?”
“Of course.” She moves to where I’m standing, so she’s right in front of me and she’s staring up at me with those big, mahogany, almond-shaped eyes. God, she’s beautiful. The skin of her face is perfect and her jet-black hair glistens in the sun. “I’ll always protect you, Sara. You know that.”
“But will you love me?”
Somehow I knew she was going to ask me that. “Did you kill Cindy?”
She blinks and lets the gun fall to her side in her right hand. “I love you, Sheriff,” she whispers. “I’ve always loved you.”
“Did you tell Ike that?”
She nods slowly and her eyes close halfway, as if she’s suddenly been drugged. “Of course I did,” she says. “I had to. I had to tell him the truth.”
No wonder he wouldn’t look at me back at the Saloon. “Did you kill Cindy?” I ask again. It wasn’t clear to me who was doing the cutting on the tape. They were all in robes and all I could see was a woman’s hand committing the unspeakable crime. “Did you?”
She reaches out and takes my hand in hers. “What do you think?”
My question clearly didn’t surprise her. I guess I have my answer. “Tell me, Sara. Did you?”
“I’m a Chippewa, Sheriff. When I want something, I get it. And I want you. I’ve always wanted—”
I go for the gun. I lock the fingers of my left hand tightly around her right wrist and try to shake the weapon loose. But it doesn’t happen, and instantly I know I’m in trouble. As slim as she is, she’s strong. I can feel the power of her passion surging through her body. I’ve underestimated my opponent and I don’t usually do that.
The gun goes above her head as we struggle, then we fall to the ground and flail in the snow. She’s screaming so loudly in my ear as we struggle it almost busts my eardrum, but I’m finally able to slip my finger behind the trigger and fire over and over until the clip’s expended. When it starts clicking, she slams her forehead to mine, jumps to her feet, and bounds away.
Just as Jenkins makes it to where I am, and instantly I’m in another battle for my life, because he’s yanking at the Glock in my holster. Despite the shooting pain in my forehead, I’m able to cover the holster with one hand and hammer his shoulder with the other. Then I give him a swift knee to the groin and he’s writhing in the snow again. This time he’s down for the count.
I struggle to my feet and search for Sara, but she’s gone. The forest has swallowed her up and even if I follow her tracks I know there’s no way I’ll find her now. This time she’s gone for good.
28
“SHERIFF SUMMERS. Sheriff Summers!”
Maggie Van Dyke hurries toward me along Main Street’s darkened sidewalk as fast as she can, as fast as her sturdy legs will carry her, calling out my name over and over. I’m still two blocks from the church, but at least fifteen people who are heading to the meeting as well are within earshot and I cringe at how loud her voice seems. It sounds like the wail of a fire truck on a clear, cold night and I want to stay anonymous as long as I can, at least until I walk into the church. Even when I get there I’m going to stay in the back until I absolutely have to say anything. And I will have to speak
, I will have to defend my actions—if I expect to survive.
I just got back to town from Ike and Sara’s place after a long afternoon. Jenkins was no help at all, not that I really expected him to be. All he wanted to do was get into the ambulance and be whisked off to the hospital in Superior. I tried to interrogate him even as the EMTs were tending to him inside Sara’s house where I’d helped him walk from the clearing. And I used the old line that if he shot straight with me right away, I’d try to reduce his charge from the attempted murder of a police officer to something less serious. I mean, I really pressured him. But Jenkins just kept repeating that he wouldn’t say anything until his lawyer was present—and maybe not even then. It was like his mantra, like someone had schooled him on what to say and how to react if he was ever arrested. Even the bit about my leaking word to the prison gang that he was a child molester wasn’t working, though I reminded him of it twice more.
Finally, I had to let the paramedics take him away. Jenkins shouted at me as they lifted him into the back of the ambulance on the stretcher that he was going to sue the county and me personally for waiting an hour to call for medical attention. I almost shot the bastard again.
“Yes, Maggie.” Even though it’s dark and I can’t really see them staring, I feel the eyes of the people on the street boring into me. Davy Johnson and Mrs. Erickson have screwed me royally. I sense a wave of sentiment building against me even though I’m still two blocks from the church. “What is it?”
“Sorry to bother you, Sheriff, I really am. I know this is a bad time for you and all, but have you heard anything about Karen, anything at all?”