9 More Killer Thrillers

by Russell Blake

  Weber followed the doctor down the hall to the examination room, where Bridget was propped up on two pillows, with an array of monitors connected to her arms and chest. Weber was pretty sure that the fact that she was busy throwing a tantrum would probably skew any readings the machines could pick up.

  “There you are,” Bridget shouted when she saw the doctor. “Where the hell have you been? I’m dying here!”

  “Calm down, you’re not dying, Mrs. Harrelson. I was busy saving your father’s life.”

  “Stupid hick doctor, what do you know? I want to be airlifted to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale where I can get professional care.”

  “You don’t need to be airlifted anywhere,” the doctor told her. “Besides, the only helicopter in the area is on its way down with your father.”

  “And what are you going to do about all this?” Bridget demanded when she realized Weber was there, too.

  “Me? Not much I can do, Bridget. I don’t know how to fly a helicopter, even if we had one.”

  “Not that, you dumbass! What are you going to do about that maniac that shot my daddy?”

  “Deputy Trask? He’ll be off for a few days while the State Police review the shooting, but his actions were justified.”

  “Justified? He shot my father in cold blood!”

  “Your father was pointing a loaded gun at your husband. I was about ready to shoot him myself.”

  “That’s man’s not my husband! I’m divorcing that ungrateful bastard. After all I’ve done for him, he takes up with that little whore and destroys my store. I want him arrested!”

  “He’s the store’s manager, I don’t think I can arrest him for trashing his own place. I think the best I could probably do is disturbing the peace.”

  “What about that little whore of his? I want her arrested for alienation of affection.”

  “Look, Bridget, nobody’s getting arrested at this point, okay? And if anybody was, I’d be inclined to arrest you for disturbing the peace and assaulting three of my deputies. And I’m pretty sure your father’s going to be looking at assault with a deadly weapon before this is all over.”

  “What? Why you stupid idiot, I’ll have your job for that! When I get through… “

  Weber’s week was already ruined, but he felt like he didn’t need to add to his woes, so he left Bridget to the tender ministrations of Doc Williams and his nurses.

  Chapter 14

  “Damn, Jimmy, I go off and leave you alone without adult supervision for one day, and this is what happens,” Parks said as he plopped himself down in the chair next to Weber's desk. “What's this town coming to? Two barricade situations in a week’s time? If I wanted this, I’d have stayed down in the big city. I came up here to Dog Patch to live the laid-back mountain lifestyle, but you hillbillies are getting pretty rough!”

  “Yeah, it's just like you, Parks. When I need you, you’re off on the Reservation playing with the BIA folks.”

  Part of Parks’ job was to be the FBI’s liaison with the White Mountain Apache Reservation. He had spent the day with the Bureau of Indian Affairs investigator, Gordon Hahn, searching for a series of suspected meth labs on the reservation. Hahn was a thoroughly dislikable, florid-faced man who tended to bull his way through life, counting on his bulk and bravado to cover up his lack of professional skill and social grace. He failed at that as badly as the mints he constantly chewed on to hide the alcohol on his breath failed to do their job.

  “Hey, I'll trade you a crazy man throwing office supplies over Gordon Hahn any day of the week,” Parks said. “I spent the day riding around with him looking at those supposed labs and I’ll tell you what, Jimmy, I'd rather breathe in whatever they're cooking than the air in Hahn’s car. I don't know what that man eats, but if it’s as nasty going in as it is coming out, we need to take him to a veterinarian.”

  “He is a delightful human being, isn't he?”

  Parks shook his head and said, “That man makes me embarrassed to be a Federal employee. Hell, he makes me embarrassed to be a human being! He has absolutely no business being in his job. We’re in a little restaurant down there in Whiteriver having lunch, and it’s all I can do to gag my food down, sitting there in the booth with him. My pappy’s got hogs back on the farm that have better table manners. And all the while he's talking about the Apaches, calling them things like blanket asses and war whoops. I'm surprised the waitress didn't spit in both of our plates; mine just because I was with him!”

  “So did you find the meth labs?” Weber asked him.

  Parks shrugged his shoulders and said, “Who knows? I think I could be cooking meth in Hahn’s living room and he wouldn’t know it. The man's just a waste of skin.”

  “So it was just a wasted day, huh?”

  “Not at all! It made me appreciate just how much I love you and how much you mean to me,” Parks said, batting his eyelashes at Weber. “And speaking of true love, I want all the dirty details on Harrelson and that little gal of his. What set this whole thing off?”

  “Well, it looks like Julie got herself pregnant, and when she told Harrelson about it and asked him to do the right thing, he hemmed and hawed like he does about everything in life. So she told him if he wasn't man enough to take responsibility for his baby, she was done with him and walked out. Old Frank didn't know what to do with himself, so he wigged out. He started trashing the store, then he called his wife and her daddy and told them both he was finished. Told them all about Julie, and that if he couldn't have her, he didn't want anything. He had an old beat up Taurus .38 in his desk drawer and he was trying to work up the courage to blow himself away. I'm glad Julie showed up when she did, because I think he was just about ready to pop a cap himself.”

  “So what happens now?” Parks asked.

  “As far as I know, they're going to get married and live happily ever after,” Weber said. “It's a long shot, he’s at least twice her age, but who knows? It's not exactly like I'm an expert on personal relationships, is it?”

  “Well, the good news is, old Wyatt Earp finally got to shoot somebody. I bet that made him happy.”

  “Not really,” Weber told him. “For all his macho ex-Marine, SWAT team bullshit, Wyatt lost it after he shot Anthony Wilson. He was shaking so hard that I had to have Dolan drive him home. I told Dolan to stay there with him for a while, just to make sure he's okay.”

  “There's a big difference between shooting holes in paper or knocking down silhouette targets and shooting a real person,” Parks said. “Maybe the boy got himself an education today. Hopefully, it'll make a better law officer out of him.”

  Weber's mind flashed back to the shooting of Steve Rafferty, and he said, “Yeah, there's a difference.”

  Parks watched his friend's face carefully. “Are you okay, Jimmy?”

  Weber looked past him at the wall for a moment, and then said, “The other day, Molly asked me if it came down to the wire and I had to pull the trigger on another person, could I do it. I told her then that I really didn't know. But I was just about to do it today when Wyatt shot that guy. So does that mean I'm okay?”

  ***

  Weber left the office a little after 5 p.m. and drove to the small apartment that Wyatt Trask rented. It was located in a quickly thrown together two-building complex that, in the sheriff’s opinion, was as much of an eyesore as Thomas the Turkey had been.

  Dolan answered his knock and let him in.

  “How is he?”

  “He hasn't had much to say,” Dolan told him. “Except to ask me a couple dozen times if I thought Wilson was going to make it or not.”

  Wyatt sat on his couch, staring at the television, but not really comprehending anything he saw. The sheriff sat down in the chair near him, but Wyatt didn't acknowledge his presence.

  “Wyatt? Are you okay?”

  Weber had to repeat himself before the deputy looked up. “Is he dead?”

  “No,” Weber told him. “I just talked to the hospital down in Phoenix, and he’s goi
ng to live.”

  Wyatt breathed a sigh of relief. Then the tension drained from his face and he broke down, crying loud, deep sobs. Weber moved to the couch and put his arm around the deputy, who buried his face in the sheriff's shoulder and let out all of the pent-up emotion he'd been holding inside since the shooting.

  Dolan looked on with concern, not sure what to do.

  “It’s been a long day, why don’t you take off, Dolan,” Weber told him. “I’ll sit here with Wyatt for a while.”

  ***

  “How's Wyatt doing?” Robyn asked when Weber walked into his cabin three hours later.

  “He's pretty shaken up,” Weber told her.

  “And how about you, Jimmy,” Robyn asked him with concern in her eyes, as she wrapped her arms around him. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay, Robyn. I really am. I learned something about myself today. Something I needed to know.”

  Her head was nestled into his shoulder, but Robyn pulled back to look at him. “What?”

  “I learned that I’m still a cop. I learned that while I’ll never forget killing Steve Rafferty, I’m getting past it. I wasn’t too sure if I could ever use my gun again if I had to, and that’s a really scary thought for a cop. But today, I was ready to do it. I didn’t want to, and I’m grateful as hell that I didn’t have to, but I could.”

  Robyn pulled his face down and kissed him. The kiss lasted a long time and when they finally broke apart, Robyn asked him, “Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah, I’m hungry,” Weber told her. “But not for anything I can get in this kitchen.”

  “I bet the kitchen is more comfortable than the back seat of my squad car,” Robyn said.

  “I know a better place,” Weber told her, and led her into his bedroom.

  ***

  Weber woke up at daylight with something nagging in the recesses of his mind. It wasn’t another nightmare, for which he was grateful, but it was something. He lay there trying to figure out what it was, but it was a phantom and wouldn’t come to him. Beside him, Robyn stirred and opened her eyes.

  “You okay, Jimmy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Robyn got up and padded her way across the room to the bathroom, then came back to bed and snuggled up to him. “Hold me,” she whispered,

  Weber did, and as she fell asleep, whatever was troubling him faded just out of his grasp. Eventually he drifted off, spooning Robyn, his hand cupping her breast.

  Chapter 15

  “Man, how can a girl that looks that good, smell that bad?” Chad Summers asked as the ambulance door closed on a young woman who seemed totally oblivious to the fact that she was strapped down to a stretcher.

  “If I were you, I’d drive with the windows open,” Weber advised Pat Price, and the paramedic just shrugged. “I’ll take a stinky hippy over a floater from the lake any day, Sheriff.”

  Chad and Weber had responded to the Mountaintop Pharmacy about a shoplifter, and arrived to find the woman sitting on the floor in a semiconscious state. Three empty bottles of cough syrup lay beside her, and she held a fourth that was only half full.

  “I tried to get her to leave,” said Angela Templeton, wife of the town’s only pharmacist, who also happened to be the senior member of the Town Council. “But she just ignored me and started drinking the cough syrup. So Kirby said to call you. Is she going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s just stoned,” Weber said. “I’m gonna run out to Bugle Meadow and see if anybody there knows her. I’m pretty sure she’s part of that crowd.”

  “Well, I think it’s just disgraceful,” said Angela. “Coming in here smelling like the inside of a garbage can and stealing from honest businesspeople. And that’s what it is, too! It’s stealing, Jimmy!”

  “I know, Angela, and I’m sorry.”

  Her husband approached them and said, “Angie, Donna needs your help at the cash register. She can’t get the receipt tape to load.”

  “Oh, that girl! I must have shown her how a hundred times,” she said with exasperation. She laid a hand on Weber’s arm and said, “Thank you, Jimmy. You take care out there, okay?”

  “Will do,” Weber told her, tipping his Stetson.

  As she walked away, Templeton asked, “Do you have a minute, Sheriff?”

  “I’ll wait in the car,” Chad said, and Weber and Templeton moved to a quiet corner of the pharmacy.

  “What’s up?” Weber asked.

  “The usual. Chet Wingate has a list of your sins to present at the Council meeting tomorrow night. Now, the stolen sculpture, that’s nothing to worry about. Fact is, if we took a vote, I’m betting we could get enough citizens to agree that it’s the best thing to happen in town in a month.”

  Weber nodded. “Yeah, well, you know Chet. He’s not happy unless he has something to get all fired up about.”

  “I wish that was all it was,” Templeton told him. “What was that scrape between Buz Carelton and Dolan Reed all about?”

  “It was a family issue that spilled over into work,” Weber told him. “It was handled and I told them both to apologize to Angela and everybody else that got caught up in it.”

  “They did,” Templeton said. “So Billy Carelton’s going to be a daddy, huh?”

  Weber looked at him and Templeton chuckled. “You can’t put much over on the guy who runs the only drug store in town. Gina Reed and Tiffany Woodenhouse were in here a while back acting all nervous, buying a home pregnancy test. They said it was for a friend.”

  Weber chuckled and shook his head.

  “Anyway, Chet sees that as proof that you can’t run your department. It’s an embarrassment, but it’ll blow over. But this thing with Deputy Fuchette, he’s going to make a real stink over it.”

  In spite of himself, Weber felt his face redden and his jaw clench.

  “Easy, big guy,” Templeton warned him. “I know you think it’s your personal business and all that, but you’re wrong. There are some people in this town, and on the Council, that frown on that sort of thing.”

  “So what’s going to happen?” Weber asked him. “Because I’ll tell you right now, Kirby, if I have to choose between Robyn and this job, I’d rather go drive a school bus or dig ditches.”

  Templeton regarded his longtime friend. “So it’s like that, is it?”

  “Yeah, Kirby, it’s like that,” Weber told him. “It’s exactly like that.”

  ***

  Chad and Weber started seeing the first signs of the Enlightened Love Movement’s gathering three miles from the turnoff to Bugle Meadow. There was a scattering of long-haired men and women of all ages alongside the road; some hitchhiking, some walking, some just standing watching the occasional car or truck passing by. Without fail, most of them acknowledged the two lawmen with a smile, a wave, or a nod of the head.

  The closer they got to the turnoff, the more evidence of the group they saw. Cardboard signs with ELM or peace symbols painted on them; people and dogs, and at one point they had to slow down for a flatbed truck that had a wooden shack built onto the back. The truck was barely moving and black smoke billowed from the exhaust pipe. Thirty yards down the road it came to a stop in a cloud of smoke and steam.

  Weber steered his Explorer around the truck and stopped beside the driver’s door. A giant of a man with long red hair and beard, wearing bib overalls with no shirt on underneath, was climbing out from behind the wheel

  “Do you need any help?” Weber asked.

  “No sir, I appreciate the offer,” the big man said, “But I’ve been patching this thing together with spit and baling wire for so long that I have it down to a science.”

  Three young children, who could have been boys or girls but all had their father’s red hair, looked out at him from inside the truck and smiled and waved. Weber waved back, nodded to the man as he pushed the truck’s hood up, and drove on.

  They turned off the highway at the graded Forest Service road and drove another two miles through the trees to where Bugle Meadow opened u
p in a five mile wide swath of grass with Artillery Creek winding through it. Local history said that in 1872, a twelve-man U.S. Cavalry detachment had camped at the creek while guarding a supply train of six wagons. When a group of renegade Apache warriors had ridden out of the trees at the edge of the meadow, a single shot fired from the light cannon accompanying the wagon train had convinced the Indians that attacking would not be a good idea, and they went off in search of an easier target.

  This day there were no blue-clad Cavalry troopers or war-painted Apaches to be seen, but the sight that beheld the two small town lawmen could not have been any more bizarre. An assortment of wildly painted vans, school buses, and old cars were parked in the meadow in no particular order, with a large crowd of men, women, and children milling about. Some were in small groups, others seemed to wander about aimlessly, and others lounged on the ground or sat cross-legged. Most had long hair and their ages ranged from young children in cloth diapers to a few who looked old enough to have been at Woodstock back in 1969. A few flashed peace signs at them, but most just regarded the police vehicle with mild curiosity and went on about their business.

  “Damn, Jimmy, there’s a bunch of them,” Chad said with a whistle. Just then, two women and a man strolled past, all topless and passing a small brass pipe. The pungent smell of marijuana wafted on the air. To their left, four naked women joined hands and danced in a circle.

  “Put your eyes back in your head, Coach,” Weber said, addressing the older man with the title he had earned when he had coached Weber’s Little League team years before.

  “MaryAnn never has had a problem with me looking,” Chad told him, “just as long as I don’t touch.”

  They got out of the Explorer and a chubby young woman wearing tattered jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of Bob Marley on it smiled warmly at them. Her hair was tied in two braids that hung over her shoulders and she wore a silver ring on every finger. “Welcome to our encampment. Would you like some herbal tea, or something to eat?”