by George Wier
I rolled down my window and listened as the Judge tromped up onto the ancient, oddly-canted porch and knocked smartly on the door.
“What do you think?” Lief asked me in a hushed whisper.
“Like the Judge says, I don’t.”
A light came on in the bedroom on the right; a bare bulb hanging loosely from a long cord appended to a high ceiling. No window shades.
“Who is it?” We heard from inside.
“Rogan Sinclair. That you, Tate?”
“Judge? What the hell?”
“I need your help, Tate,” the Judge said.
“Just a minute. Let me put on my clothes.”
Judge Sinclair stepped down off of the dark porch and into the pale moonlight.
A minute later the front door opened and a man stepped down from the porch. The two shook hands.
Tate Lancing was a black man, skinny and narrow-waisted. Also, I could see that he sported a scraggly goatee.
“You got time for a ride?” the Judge asked.
“Sure. What’s going on?”
“There’s a safe that needs cracking.”
“No shit?”
“None.”
“Well... Inside job or outside job?”
The Judge laughed. “Maybe inside, maybe outside. You’ll see when we get there.”
“Alright. Um... I need to get―”
“I know, Tate. You’re not supposed to have it, but it’s okay. Right now it’s needed.”
“I’ll be damned,” Tate said. “Cracking a safe for the Judge.”
“I know you’re reformed, Tate. Don’t worry. Let’s go.”
“Give me a minute.”
*****
On the road again, to quote Willie Nelson, the four of us, headlights picking up details one by one and discarding them behind us. The traffic was practically non-existent and the pale, misty landscape looked eerie and other-worldly. I was glad for the company. From the back seat Judge Sinclair did his best to field a series of questions for an excited Tate Lancing. There were few answers that he could give, and when it came out that I was the only one of the crew that had been near the safe, the questions were diverted to me in the front of the Range Rover.
“You say you felt of it? Measured it?”
“Four to four and a half feet tall. Two to two and a half feet wide, three deep. It was dark.”
“Okay. Okay. The dial. How big?”
“Size of your hand,” I told him.
“Were the notches raised or indented?”
“Uh...” Again I groped back inside the barn in my mind, felt the object that had reflected in the headlights. “Indented, I think.”
“Shee-it,” Tate said.
“What is it?” Lief asked.
“It’s old. One of two or three companies that made those. Late eighteen hundreds. What’s inside?”
“That’s what you’re here for, Tate,” Judge Sinclair said.
“Okay. Okay. How do we split it? Cracker gets first pick or first third. Them’s the rules.”
“Tate. Tate,” Judge Sinclair said. “There aren’t any rules. There may be nothing. This is not a ‘Job’. Okay?”
“Awright. If you say so. Big as my hand, huh?”
“Yep,” I said.
We made good time getting back to Hearne and past it. As we had the Judge with us, as well as Luke’s twelve gauge shotgun, we took the direct approach, turning down the same county road we turned down as the sun had set that very night.
I wasn’t so afraid of Sheriff Noonday, now. I had an image in my mind of a rambunctious, red-faced kid shouting threats and obscenities over his broken lawn-mower, and while that might not be a true picture of the man he had become, he was at least no longer an unknown quantity. It’s the unknown that scares us the most.
We again passed the dead-ended Highway 119 and I slowed us down.
After a moment we came to Lief’s truck parked on the side of the road.
CHAPTER TEN
The driver’s side window was broken out on Lief’s truck. Little cubes of safety glass were everywhere―on the dirt outside the truck and on the seat and floorboard inside.
Willie Nelson was still there but Lief began cursing when he couldn’t find his Johnny Cash collection. Also the plat map for the property with the barn and the safe was missing from where I’d left it rolled up on the passenger side floorboard. The court order, however, was on the seat.
Judge Sinclair and Tate Lancing stood in the middle of the road, talking. Their backs were to us and they were looking at the thick brush and dark woods of the property.
“Bill, is there another way in there?” Judge Sinclair finally asked.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Good. I don’t mind a good walk, but I don’t want my wife yammering at me about getting scratched up from going through the brush.”
“That’s okay, Judge. We know the back way in.”
Lief got in his truck and drove it back to 119 and left it under Luke’s guard. We were waiting for him when he walked back through the barricade.
“Mr. Prescott,” Judge Sinclair began, “I’m rescinding that order. You and your boys can start your bulldozing after sunup.”
“Really?”
“No lie. In fact, would you do me a favor and make a good road all the way to that barn?”
“Yessir,” Lief said. “It’s right in the middle of where this highway is going.”
“Fine,” Judge Sinclair said. “When I get back to the courthouse I’ll cut a new order. Now let’s go crack that safe.”
*****
It was 5:30 a.m.
There was a dim glow on the eastern horizon behind us. We got onto the property without seeing another soul and I drove the Range Rover down the power line cut until I felt that we were on a line south of the barn, whereupon I turned us into the trees and picked my way. There were a few places where the brush was too thick and the trees stood too close together in our path.
“This is better than riding in the prison rodeo,” Tate Lancing said from the back seat.
I backed us up carefully and probed again and again until we came through to the clearing with the wrecked helicopter.
And there was the barn.
The sky grew light. Dawn was coming on.
I stopped us in the field next to the helicopter and we all climbed out.
“Is the safe in that barn?” Tate asked, pointing.
“Yep,” I said. “But let’s go slow and easy. There may be surprises.”
And, of course, I was right.
*****
Odd things begin to happen when you near the extremity of exhaustion. Reality begins to distort. Little motions at the corners of your vision become things they are not and rivet your attention until you blink them away in exasperation. The mind plays funny tricks.
The sky overhead was gray and the dawn air was cool, much cooler than the previous night. The wind was up now in the tops of the trees and I felt a chill.
Four men tromped through high weeds toward a lone building in a clearing in the woods. Two of them, Lief Prescott and myself, had had no sleep. Lief walked at my side while the Judge and Tate brought up the rear.
For some reason I felt as if the woods around the clearing were sinister; that they meant us harm. I shivered.
The doorway to the barn was open. Inside: blackness.
We stopped outside the door.
Judge Sinclair thumbed his flashlight on and shined it inside. He stepped forward.
“Looks clear,” he said.
“Okay,” Lief replied.
We went inside.
The safe was there, but this time it was in the center of the room. It had been manhandled around and shoved away from the back wall where it had been before. There
was a pile of heavy chains on the dirt floor nearby.
“Someone is getting ready to vacate this safe,” Judge Sinclair said.
“Judge, can you hold that light still for a minute?” Tate asked.
Judge Sinclair centered his beam on the safe. Tate squatted and set the little case he’d retrieved from his house in Calvert on the hay-strewn dirt floor beside him.
“Hot damn,” he said. “I was right. This things older than my grand-daddy.”
“Your grand-daddy is dead, Tate,” the Judge said.
“Yessir, God bless ‘im.” Tate wore a wide grin on his face. His teeth shone brightly in the light. “That’s how old this here thing is.”
“We believe you,” Lief said.
Tate Lancing flipped the catch on his little box and with a note of reverence, opened it. Inside was a stethoscope, a piece of chalk, something wrapped up in duct tape about six inches long and a few inches wide, a nine-volt battery and a Hershey’s chocolate bar.
“What’s the candy bar for?” Lief asked.
“Steady my nerves,” Tate said. “Now ya’ll back up some.” He put the stethoscope around his neck and picked up the piece of chalk. “Judge, keep that light right here, uh, sir.” He pointed at the dial. “And ya’ll keep quiet.”
We gave him some room.
Outside the breeze was whipping up, making the treetops dance. The light was growing out there. The sun would be putting in its appearance soon.
We watched, intent.
Tate gave the dial a spin around several times.
“It’s a little sticky,” he said. “Ain’t been opened in a long, long time.”
“Problem?” I asked.
“Naw. Hush up.”
He began turning it more slowly, his brown fingers appearing to move now in slow motion. He slowed even more. For an interminable moment it looked as though he had stopped. I peered more closely, narrowing my eyes. The turning of the dial was there, but almost imperceptible.
Tate removed his hand, picked up the piece of chalk and wrote “L42" on the front of the safe near the top.
He reached into the kit at his feet and took out the chocolate bar, opened it and broke off a section of the end neatly and popped it into his mouth.
He looked up at us and grinned.
The Judge motioned with his flashlight, as if to say: “Get back to work.”
Tate wiped his hand on his old, threadbare trousers, shook his right hand, put the stethoscope back to the side of the case and began turning the dial slowly back the other direction.
“This is gonna take all day,” Lief whispered. “I can’t stand it.”
“I hear you,” Tate said.
“Shh,” the Judge noised off.
About two more minutes ticked by.
Tate stopped and wrote “R16" after the first figure.
Outside there was a howl of wind and I heard a tree-limb snapping.
Lief looked at me, his eyebrows framing concern in the odd light.
I nodded an ‘it’s okay’ at him.
In another two minutes there was another figure written after the first two: “L2".
“And one to grow on,” Tate said. He lightly touched the dial again and moved it, this time the same direction.
I felt it then. Something wasn’t right. Something ― I didn’t know what ― was dead wrong. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I felt as if the floor were about to drop out from under me and that I would start sinking downward into the black earth beneath the barn.
I wanted to speak up, to say something, but there was Tate’s chiseled hand moving the dial of the safe ever so slowly around to the final and last notch.
The wind outside died away.
Eyes. I had felt unkind eyes on the back of my head, not unlike the way a pretty girl knows when her body is being ogled and appraised by a man with unwholesome thoughts in his heart. But the eyes had passed by me.
“Listen to me, Tate.” I said. “Don’t move. Don’t move a muscle. Don’t write that last number. Tell it to us and act as if you are still turning that dial.” I had put sufficient fear into my voice and the others must have caught it the way a kid will catch the flu at school. My eyes never left Tate. A rime of sweat sprang up on his brow.
“What is it, Bill?” the Judge asked.
“This isn’t right,” I wasn’t sure what else to say, but I plunged ahead anyway. “We’re being watched. I’ve been seeing movement out of the corner of my eye where I later thought it was just the wind. It wasn’t. Our sniper is back. When Tate writes that last number, he, or one of us, is going to be very dead.”
“Shit,” Lief said.
“You got that number, Tate?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he whispered without so much as moving his lips. “Left forty-two again.”
“Okay,” I said. “Judge. On three I want you to click that light off. When that light goes out we dive further into the barn. If you can, get behind a hay bale and flatten.”
“Jesus,” Judge Sinclair said.
“Alright. One. Two. THREE!”
The light snapped off and we were all in motion at once.
A phhht sound went past my left ear.
I tripped over Tate and went flying headlong into a bale of hay. It was much harder than I thought it would be. For a moment there were bright spots and a searing pain, then I had my wits about me again and was moving, scrambling around the other men on the hard-packed ground.
The report was little more than a distant pop.
“Damn, Bill,” Lief said in the dark. “You were right.”
“I know,” I said. “Sorry. Still have that shotgun?”
“Yeah. A scattergun won’t do us any good in here though. Not against a high-powered rifle.”
“I’m too old for this,” the Judge said. “Tate? You here? You alright.”
“I... I cain’t... breathe.” The voice came from the other side of hay bale from the three of us, no more than a few yards from the safe.
“Tate? Tate?”
We heard gurgling sounds.
The Judge started to move but I put up my arm and blocked him. “Stay down, Judge. I’ll see to him.”
I crept around the hay bale on all fours, encountered another one and went around that.
Tate lay with his back to the bale and his feet spread out in front of him, directly in line with the growing light from the doorway.
His breathing was labored. I felt his chest. His right hand settled on my knee.
“I get... first pick,” he said.
“Stop talking, Tate,” I said. I felt upwards, encountered wetness. I traced the blood higher and found the hole in his neck. There was no spurting blood, but I had no illusions about his chances for leaving the barn alive if it wasn’t within the next ten minutes.
“Or... first third.”
“You can have it all, Tate,” I said. “Please, just stop talking. Lief, give me a rag, some cloth, anything.”
“Oh God,” the Judge said in a hoarse whisper.
I heard another whooshing sound over my head and the tin at the back of the barn panged.
“I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch,” Lief said. He was suddenly standing up.
I felt something hit my face. A sock, one of Lief’s dirty socks. It was better than nothing and so I took it and pushed a corner of into the hole in Tate’s neck.
“I’ll be back, Bill,” Lief said. “With somebody’s head.”
There was a rush of wind past me and a shadow framing the doorway for an instant. Then he was gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“What’s this blue light?” I heard the Judge ask.
“What?” I asked.
“A cellular phone. I’ll be damned. Mr. Prescott left us a ticket out of here.”
> “Oh yeah. I’ve got one too. Who can we call, Judge?” I asked. I held the sock pressed to Tate’s neck. It was soaked with blood. His breathing was shallow but smooth.
“We can call my granddaughter.”
“What good will that do?” I asked.
“She’s a policewoman in Hearne. I’d just as soon she not come out here, though. It isn’t safe. She does, however, know the right people.”
“People who don’t work for Scott Noonday?”
“Right,” he said.
“Judge, keep that phone behind that hay bale. If that sniper sees a light he’s going to shoot it.”
“Will do.”
I waited. A shaft of golden light appeared in the rafters overhead.
“Sunup,” I said.
“It’s ringing,” the Judge said.
I waited and listened to Tate breathe. Also I was watching the woods in the distance. After a moment I saw movement. An instant later there was another “pop”, followed by an even louder “Boom!”
That was Lief, I was sure.
“Hello, Darla? It’s grandpa. I’m in a fix.”
There was movement on the ground to the right of the hill we had hid behind the night before. A man was running. It wasn’t Lief.
There was another, even louder “BOOM!”
“Yes, Darla. That’s gunfire. I’m in a barn off of County Road twenty-one. We’ve been pinned down by a sniper and he’s shot Tate Lancing.”
I heard a loud, electronic voice, but couldn’t distinguish any words.
“I’m alright. I need help, though. We have to get Tate to a hospital. It’s where the new highway dead-ends on the county road. There’s the woods opposite. We’re in a clearing in those woods in a barn.”
Then aside to me he said: “She’s coming. With reenforcements.”
“Tell her not to use the police radio. The Sheriff will be listening.” Sometimes I can think.
“No radio, Darla. The Sheriff is involved. I know, not a nice fellow. No lights and sirens. Okay? And don’t tell Mother.”