Shallow Creek

by Alistair McIntyre

  “Alright, son,” he said, moving his hand over his gun holster. “I’m going to uncuff you and let you get dressed. Don’t give me any trouble. My partner’s right outside the door and won’t hesitate to put a slug in you if you get crazy on me.”

  The nurse removed Brendan’s IV and then left the room as the officer unlocked the cuffs both from the bed and from Brendan’s wrists. The restraints hadn’t been particularly tight, and he’d stayed pretty immobile the whole time, so he didn’t even have any redness or soreness as souvenirs. He stood up and immediately fell forward, catching himself against the wall. The nice officer hadn’t budged an inch to help him.

  “Easy there, fella,” was all he got out of the cop.

  Brendan removed the hospital gown and noted the staff had left his boxers on. Nine years spent in the Marines had revealed his junk to many people, so some folks would probably figure there was no harm in one more dude seeing his package, but civilian life was different. It wasn’t any kind of weird homophobic thing; it was just the way it was. Privacy was suddenly an achievable goal.

  As soon as he’d got his pants on and pulled on his long-sleeved shirt, the cop ordered him to face the wall and put his hands behind his back. Brendan complied and the man slapped a pair of cuffs on him. He had to assume this was the hospital in Shallow Creek, so hopefully Kim wasn’t working the desk on this shift. Although, if she was, she already knew all about the customer in this room being held under police guard.

  “Alright, big fella,” the cop said, urging Brendan into the hallway with moderate force. “You’re going to stand between me and my partner here, and you’re not going to give us any trouble. Am I right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. That’s what I like to hear.”

  They marched solemnly down the hallway. The cops nodded to every patient and staff member they encountered. Brendan focused on staring straight ahead. Moving around so much promoted his headache to full-on marching band as he allowed his escorts to lead him through the small medical facility. At the front doors he checked the receptionist desk and saw three women manning computer terminals, none of them Kim, thankfully.

  One cop stepped through the door and held it open for Brendan as he trudged through with the second cop in tow. The one holding the door had his free hand hovering over his pistol the entire time. Brendan considered his chances of escape as somewhere between nil and none. No amount of combat and evasion training would get him out of this predicament, especially in his current maligned condition, but circumstances were always in flux. Just because he was down now, that didn’t mean he was out yet.

  The flashing lights of a county police cruiser greeted Brendan at the curb of the sidewalk. A pair of sheriff deputies exited the waiting vehicle, and the prisoner exchange went off without a hitch, resulting in Brendan resting uncomfortably in the backseat with his hands still cuffed behind his back.

  “Sir,” he said politely as the cruiser pulled away from the curb. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Shut up,” barked the driver.

  “Sir, I’m not trying to cause any problems,” Brendan insisted. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  The driver ignored him, but his partner leaned back. “If only I had a dollar for every time we’ve heard that line.”

  “I’m really not wanting trouble. Are we going to the sheriff’s office?”

  The passenger cop smirked a little at this.

  “Yeah, we are,” he said. “But it’s not the sheriff you’ve got to worry about, son.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The deputy driving looked back at Brendan in the rearview mirror.

  “You got bigger problems than Sheriff Troy today, young man,” he said. “DEA wants to talk to you.”

  Brendan sank back in his seat.

  “Yup. You’re screwed,” the other deputy added before turning away.

  With the way things looked, he was probably right. Brendan stared out the window as their short trip to the sheriff’s office drew to a close.

  Chapter 35

  “I’m no expert,” Brendan said, rubbing his raw wrists, “but shouldn’t I have been read my rights at some point?”

  The deputy who’d just removed his shackles smiled, but said nothing. The guy backed up into a corner of the interview room and watched Brendan intently. Brendan sat behind the plain grey table and stared into the giant mirrored wall. Was someone even behind that thing, or was the sole purpose to intimidate those under interrogation? He’d worked behind enemy lines in the sandbox, so he’d received ample training on resisting even the craziest tortures. These assholes didn’t stand a chance at flustering him.

  The only door to the room opened and in strode the last person Brendan had ever expected to find here. She wore blue jeans, boots, and a plain white polo. Her long strawberry blonde hair was pulled up in a tidy ponytail. She took a seat opposite him, shuffled some papers on the table, and then dismissed the extra cop.

  “Are you sure, ma’am?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Yes, I’m sure. Thanks.”

  The big man shrugged and exited casually. Now alone with this woman, other than whatever audience hid behind the two-way mirror, Brendan appraised her appearance and bearing while he waited for her to initiate the conversation. She wore almost no makeup, but she was pretty and still young enough to pull that off. No jewelry on her fingers, wrists, ears, or neck. Sitting across from Brendan didn’t faze her, at least not outwardly. She was a cool one, alright.

  “Is Casey your real name?” he asked her.

  She didn’t address him until she finished organizing her file, which took an excessive amount of time.

  “I’m Special Agent Casey Spee with the DEA, working in conjunction with Sheriff Troy and his deputies,” she announced pleasantly, unclipping her badge from her belt and showing it to Brendan. “I have a few questions for you, but hopefully we can clear these concerns up without any hiccups.”

  Her smile chilled the room. Brendan smiled back while suppressing his natural instincts to subdue her and then bolt out the door.

  “You are Brendan Rhodes, correct?” she asked.

  “Are you going to act like we’ve never met before?”

  “Just answer the question so we can continue.”

  “Have I been charged with anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m leaving.”

  He stood and took only a solitary step towards the door before she started talking. “You could do that, but I’ll have a warrant out for your arrest in an hour.”

  Brendan paused at the door. Spee wasn’t grinning or lording this over him. She was every bit the consummate professional.

  “It might be better to just clear this stuff up now, you know, to avoid all those legal problems later,” she said.

  Resigned to his fate, Brendan returned to his uncomfortable plastic chair.

  “You can have a lawyer present,” Spee continued. “Either your own, or we can provide a public defender.”

  “I have nothing to hide, Casey.”

  “You can call me Agent Spee, Mr. Rhodes.”

  “You got it.”

  “I’ll make note that you have refused representation.”

  “You do that. Was all that shit about your sister true?”

  “That was part of my cover.”

  “I’m guessing this little revelation here means that you’re no longer undercover?”

  “I’ll be asking the questions here, Mr. Rhodes.” Spee regarded her notes one more time before the fun began. “Why did my men find you locked in the basement of a barn that looked a lot like an upscale methamphetamine kitchen?”

  “I followed someone out there because I suspected they were involved in the drug trade.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I’d say I did.”

  “If you want to prove your innocence in all of this, you’d better give me more than that, Mr. Rhodes.”

  Brend
an leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. What did he have to lose at this point?

  “Fine. I followed someone out there and staked the place out. When a crew of hostiles exited the barn, I snuck in and scoped the place out. A couple of them came back and pinned me in. I needed somewhere to hide, and the only place was the damn basement.”

  “Not your best idea, I’m guessing,” Spee said.

  “No, it wasn’t, but then I knocked myself out looking for the gas leak.”

  “So you were overcome by fumes?”

  “Uh, no,” Brendan said, reluctant to admit to his own clumsiness. He rubbed the bump on the back of his head, which stung at the slightest touch. “Not exactly.”

  “But you say there was a gas leak?”

  “If your men have half a nose between them, they can corroborate that easily enough. It probably stank up half the barn when they cracked that trapdoor open. I can’t have been down there that long before your troops showed up, otherwise I’d be brain-dead or something now.”

  “So your story is that you followed someone out there, watched the barn until it was empty, entered the barn, and then got locked in the basement?” she asked a bit incredulously. “All because you thought they were involved in drugs somehow?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s the long and short of it. Those bastards installed the lock while I was down there. I was setting up to break out and take them down, gently of course, when they got the padlock on there and trapped me.”

  “Did they know you were down there?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I could hear them talking,” Brendan said. “They didn’t know I was there. My plan was to incapacitate whoever came to check on the place in the morning, and just hope only a couple of them came down.”

  Spee tidied up her pages of notes and slid them into a manila folder. Very deliberately, she closed the folder and brought her gaze up to Brendan.

  “Who did you follow out there, Mr. Rhodes?” When Brendan said nothing, she asked, “Was it your brother, Grant?”

  Against his better judgment, a sense of brotherly loyalty held Brendan’s mouth shut.

  “Would it surprise you to find out you’re the deed owner for that property, Mr. Rhodes?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It would.”

  “In that case, you should read this.”

  With that, she opened her folder back up and leafed through it to find the document she desired. She turned it Brendan’s way on the table and slid it to him.

  “As you can see, your name is featured prominently here, and has done since last year, about this time.”

  Brendan didn’t bother looking at the piece of paper.

  “That’s impossible,” he said flatly. “I was still enlisted.”

  Spee retrieved the document and replaced it in her files.

  “I’m well aware of that, but if we can’t come to some consensus on why your name is on the deed, I’m going to hold you in a cell until the answers magically appear.”

  Brendan stared her down. “You don’t think I have anything to do with this.”

  “And why is that, Mr. Rhodes?”

  “Because if you did, you’d have arrested me already, or at least kept the cuffs on me.” He pointed at her files. “To a stupid person, this little detail would look like evidence, but anyone with two working brain cells could figure out I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Mr. Rhodes, we found you locked in the basement of your own property, a property that we removed two unsavory characters from moments before finding you,” she explained. “What am I supposed to think?”

  “You only caught two guys out there?” he asked.

  “Yes, how many should we have caught?”

  “I counted seven leaving the barn before I entered, but none of them were—”

  He stopped talking before implicating Grant. Spee wasn’t about to let that end stay loose.

  “None of them were what?” she asked. “But none of them were your brother?”

  Still Brendan couldn’t answer that question. Spee sighed in response.

  “Mr. Rhodes, your brother bought land in your name and built a meth lab on it,” she stated, much more aggressively than before. “That is what this looks like to me, because I’ve been investigating him for a while now. I don’t know what more motivation you need to wake up and accept your brother is a criminal, but I suggest you come to terms with it soon.”

  Chapter 36

  The situation was far from clear, but Brendan now had a sneaking suspicion that if Grant had doctored one legal document with his name, more were sure to follow. The bastard had probably plastered Brendan’s name all over the place either as a poorly thought-out decoy, or to implicate Brendan in everything and make his life that much more difficult. And he did it all with a brotherly smile on his face.

  “How are you so sure Grant’s involved?” he asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss those details with you here,” Spee said, suddenly telegraphing all kinds of signals.

  “Fine. I followed Grant out there.”

  “What made you do that?”

  “I spoke with some people in town,” he replied. “Some people who’ve had suspicions about Grant for a while.”

  “I’ll need their names.”

  “You already talked to Kim.”

  Spee made a note. “Who else?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “I need to talk to them.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “We’ll come back to that. What kinds of things are suspicious about Grant?”

  “Same stuff Kim talked about at her apartment: The expensive vacations, all the nice stuff in their double wide.” Brendan sighed. “I know that doesn’t sound like hard evidence, but Michelle doesn’t work and Grant sells chemicals to farms. There can’t be that much money in it. Oh yeah, and he drives a damn nice new truck, too.”

  “What do you know about Michelle?”

  Brendan paused. What didn’t he know about Michelle? Thankfully his unfortunate love life wasn’t on trial here.

  “Just that we were friends in high school and then she married my brother,” he said guardedly. “Not much other than that. I haven’t really seen her for the last nine years.”

  “Okay, Mr. Rhodes. You suspect your brother because he lives beyond his means, basically?” Brendan had nothing to say to that. It was thin reasoning, to be honest, but deep down he knew he wanted Grant to be into illegal shit. He wanted to bring his brother down. “Lots of people rack up large amounts of credit card debt to live a lavish lifestyle,” Spee suggested.

  “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter why I checked him out, ma’am. He was there, and that’s enough justification for me.”

  Spee regarded him for a moment. “One problem with your story is that Grant wasn’t at that farm,” she said. “And neither of the two men we picked up claim to have any knowledge of your brother.”

  “You’ve already played the Grant card,” Brendan said evenly. “You suggested him as my target earlier, so you know he was there.”

  “Very good, Mr. Rhodes,” Spee said with a nice smile. “But he still wasn’t there when we arrived.”

  “Maybe someone tipped him off.”

  She watched him closely, her eyes more grave now. “Maybe someone did. Like his little brother who showed up right before the cavalry rode in?”

  “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

  “Do I?”

  “Quit playing games. Why would I warn Grant? How would I even know the police were coming down on him last night?”

  “Deputy Armstead is an old friend of yours, correct?”

  “Marcus didn’t tell me shit about this. He’s the one who told me to quit snooping around and leave it to the DEA.”

  “I’d take his advice, if I were you.” Spee shifted gears. “Why would your brother want to, allegedly, falsify titles under your name? Do you guys have a history?”
/>   “How long have you been in town, Agent Spee? A month?”

  “Long enough to hear some stories about the kid who ruined the town’s only shot at a State Championship run.”

  “You spent much time in Texas?”

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  “Do you know how much high school football means to a little place like Shallow Creek? There’s not a hell of a lot else going on around here.”

  “I get the gist of it,” she said.

  “Then you should understand why my brother hates me.”

  Someone rapped on the door and Spee went to answer it. Another plainclothes cop stood on the other side and beckoned her out. Without another word to Brendan, she went into the hallway and closed the door behind her.

  What a joke this was. They obviously had nothing solid on him, he knew that much, but her mention of Marcus struck him as odd. If they were worried about a leak, he guessed the DEA would first look at the local cops assisting in the investigation. It was too easy to pin the blame on the other guy.

  Spee marched back into the room, but didn’t take a seat. Brendan took this to mean he was about to be escorted from the room, either to a cell, or to the street as a free man.

  “How did you get out to the farm?” she asked.

  “I rented a Ford Ranger and stashed it in the bushes.”

  “Okay. You’re free to go.” She held the door open and motioned for him to get out.

  “That’s it?”

  “Sure is. My associates found and verified the truck. Hiding the truck suggests you weren’t exactly invited out to the party last night.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” He stretched his stiff neck. “Can your associates return the truck for me? Would save me some time, and I don’t really want to be seen out in that area again.”

  “Sure. I don’t really want to see you out there either.”

  Brendan stood, but before he left, he had one more question. “Did the two guys you arrested see me?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s possible they saw someone getting loaded into the ambulance, but you were surrounded pretty well, so I doubt they saw you.”

  That was good enough for him. When he stepped past Spee, she put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.