by Adam Bender
“Look, man, I’ve got a hangover, too, but we’re going to get through this together, all right?” Charlie held his ear up against the door to hear if he could detect any movement. With an exasperated groan, he’d stalked down the off-white hall to the elevator. He paused at the open door of another room, where a pretty young maid was busy stuffing linens into a metal cart with the faded green logo of the Old Inn. “Hey, girl, can you help me out a sec?”
She bit her lip, and he noticed her checking out his biceps. With a flash of his old, dependable sex eyes, Charlie explained, “My friend and I partied a bit late last night, and he’s not answering the door. The thing is, we’ve got to get to a funeral. Do you think you could —?”
“Which room?” she replied at once. When they reached the Wanderer’s room, though, she looked skeptical. “This one?”
“Yeah, would you mind opening it so I can go in and —?”
“I clean this room before. Customer check out already.”
There was a boiling feeling in Charlie’s stomach, like he sometimes got when he realized that he’d forgotten something important. “Naw, girl. That can’t be right.”
She slid her card through the lock and pulled the door open, releasing a soapy cocktail of Tide and Windex scents into the bounty hunter’s nostrils. He stared in disbelief and didn’t fall out of his daze until the elevator doors opened on the lobby, and Rosa marched up to him with hands firmly dug into her hips. He tried to smile, tried to make light of the situation, but he couldn’t find a way. The reporter shook her head in disappointment and marched straight to the front desk. He watched her argue with the receptionist until a woman who looked like a manager appeared to call off the employee. She pulled a piece of paper out of a drawer and handed it across the desk. Rosa took the note, read it quickly, and sighed in disappointment.
Charlie approached the reporter cautiously. “I mean, he can’t have gone far, right? He wouldn’t miss this. He can’t just —”
He cut himself off as Rosa held the note out for him to read:
Sorry, but I just couldn’t stay. Rosie, you wrote a mighty fine obituary for Lindsay, and I hope you’ll read it today. Kid, you’ll be a hero if you keep fighting the good fight. Hope to cross paths again with the both of you someday.
Best of luck,
Errol
*
“Heat’s gettin’ to you,” the Wanderer mumbled to the cluster of flies bouncing around the empty bus depot. Drunk on sunlight, the dark insects careened around the room, crashing occasionally into the tall windows and the flat TV screen showing a daytime soap opera. Two bugs bumped into each other, then parted with an angry snap. One fly looped forward. When it landed on the brim of the Wanderer’s Stetson, the bug ceased its nasal whine. He thought about brushing it off, but he liked the quiet.
He studied his ticket. He’d crinkled it without realizing it, and now shoved it deep into a jeans pocket to prevent further damage. The bus was due in twenty minutes, though he had his doubts. There was a reason he preferred the train. Buses might go to more towns, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one show up on time.
The last time Errol had taken a bus was the day he’d left Vegas. It had left an hour later than scheduled, then proceeded to break down on the highway. The bus driver had called for assistance, but a posse of Red Stripers had showed up instead. Errol watched from his window as the gangsters forced the driver out of the bus and held a Breck 17 to his head.
Earlier that morning, Errol had shaved his trademark mustache and beard so that he wouldn’t be recognized as the son of Al Breck. He’d also bought a Stetson hat from a tourist trap near the bus station. It had reminded him of the heroes from his favorite Westerns, and as soon as he’d put it on, he’d started talking like them, too. All morning he’d felt as though he was wearing a silly disguise, but when he’d seen the four gangsters outside the window of his bus, something changed inside of him. He’d stood up from his seat not as Errol Breck, but as someone else entirely.
While the other passengers panicked, he strode forcefully down the aisle with the good gun in his left hand. One of the gangsters was on his way in, presumably to collect jewelry and other valuables from the bus. The Lassiter had fired, and the thug fell down the steps onto the pavement. The man who used to be Errol Breck leaped out before the other Red Stripers could react, pulled the trigger three more times, and it was over, just like that.
He remembered the stunned bus driver staring at him a long time, soaking in every detail of his face, but not recognizing Errol Breck.
“Wh-who are you?” the driver had whimpered.
“I ain’t nobody,” he’d said, hiding his true voice with the rough-riding twang of a Hollywood cowboy. Then the rogue gunman had hopped on one of the gangster’s motorbikes and sped away. It had felt good saving these people, but Errol Breck was still far from redemption.
“The next bus will be thirty minutes late,” droned a melancholy announcer over the loudspeaker, snapping Errol back to the present.
The Wanderer eyed the station entrance distrustfully. He stood up, sending the fly on his hat screaming away, and strode toward the window to peer out at the parking lot.
Empty. So no one had followed to come stop him. With a deep sigh, he returned to the same wooden bench where he’d sat before. A dusty fan hanging in one corner whined toward him, but he couldn’t feel its breath. The Wanderer closed his eyes in hopes of meditating, but at that very moment, tinny pop music burst from a radio in the ticket booth. A bored-looking woman with a lined brown face fiddled with the controls, firing bursts of static and music into the Wanderer’s ears until she found a local news station.
“— according to neighborhood watch. That said, they’re tellin’ us folks shouldn’t panic yet. This kind of thing happens from time to time, and it usually ends real peaceful-like. The Red Stripers are probably just passin’ through. Only reason we’re getting an alert this time is because there’s more of them than usual. About six bikes all together, spotted about five minutes ago heading toward the cemetery in Founders Spring —”
The Wanderer jumped to his feet. Stalking toward the exit, he pulled the ticket from his jeans pocket and dropped it on the floor.
*
Rosa averted her eyes as the first clump of soil landed with a thunk on Lindsay’s coffin. The minister said a few words she didn’t hear. She looked over at Charlie, saw the pain in his expression, and began to cry.
Another pile of dirt fell on the coffin.
She wanted to say that she couldn’t believe the Wanderer had left, but the truth was it wasn’t the first time Errol Breck had skipped a funeral. When things got too personal, the Wanderer ran. She had a bad feeling he might keep on running for the rest of his life.
“Do either of you want to say something?” the minister asked hopefully. He seemed desperate for someone else to speak. The funeral had been put together hastily, and she’d had to do a lot of convincing to get him to do the ceremony on such short notice.
Rosa pulled up the obituary on her phone. She wondered about Errol’s note. Obviously he had read what she wrote, been touched by it. So why wasn’t he here? Charlie had seemed to take Lindsay’s death the hardest. After all, the girl had died in his arms. And yet, the young mercenary was still here to see her off. He hadn’t run away.
As Rosa read aloud about Lindsay’s bravery, she saw Kid Hunter smiling. But when she reiterated the tragic details of her death, his brave front crumbled, and he covered his eyes. She choked up a few times, too, but managed to keep her eyes fixed on the text and keep going.
She hadn’t yet finished when the drum-brush rhythm of falling soil abruptly ended. The grave was not complete, but the digger had stopped filling it. Looking up, she followed his frozen stare to the parking lot. There were five motorcycles — no, six — and the Red Stripers were already headed their way. The gangster in the lead wore two bandannas on his face — a white one over the top of his head and a red one cover
ing his mouth. Together, they formed a disguise that left only his burning eyes exposed. The rest of his body was cloaked in black.
The Kid gritted his teeth. “Who’s Mr. Mask?”
Before Rosa could answer, the masked gangster lifted a Breck 17 and fired. She shut her eyes and screamed. Metal clanged against rock. When she peeked out at the scene, the digger’s dead body filled the remaining few feet of Lindsay’s grave.
With a yelp, the minister bolted in the opposite direction, hopping over a few gravestones and scrambling over a fence to make his escape. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Charlie fingering his gun, but she reached out and held back his wrist. “There’s too many,” she told him.
Mr. Mask aimed his gun at Rosa and bellowed, “Thought you could run from us, huh?”
Rosa held up her hands. “I’m unarmed. We’ll do whatever you want.”
The masked man stared for a long time, before pointing his pistol at Kid Hunter. “Drop the gun … and the bracelet.”
Despite his clear frustration, Charlie did as he was told. The Red Striper gestured to two of his followers, big men with tattooed arms and bushy beards. They stepped forward while the remaining gangsters kept their guns on target. Rosa cried out as her wrists were wrenched hard behind her back and bound with a razor-sharp plastic tie. Kid Hunter yelled. The gangster nearest to him responded by slamming the butt of his gun against the mercenary’s head. He slumped to the ground, limp and useless. The Red Striper took Charlie by the wrist and dragged him toward the bikes.
A gangster shoved Rosa from behind. She lurched forward. With her hands tied, she was unable to break her fall and crashed hard onto her face. As the Red Stripers cackled, blackness reached out to suffocate her. The reporter submitted to its cold embrace.
*
The Wanderer could see he was already too late as soon as his taxi reached the graveyard. Even so, he jumped out of the car and sprinted toward the plot of land marked for Lindsay. The gunman gaped with horror at the body resting atop the unfinished grave. The man was lying on his stomach. For a terrifying few seconds, he thought it was Kid Hunter. “Charlie!”
He knelt down and took the dead man’s body in his hands, felt the stiffness of the corpse, and rolled it out of the grave. Upon seeing the face, he sighed with relief to see it wasn’t his partner. Sweating, he picked up the shovel and filled the tomb the rest of the way with dirt.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Lindsay’s grave. “I’m so sorry.”
The Wanderer didn’t need his eyepiece to figure out what had happened. The Red Stripe Gang had found out Rosie was in Founders Spring, and they’d come to take her. Either the Gang had captured Kid Hunter as well, or the Kid had gone after her by himself.
Errol spiked his Stetson into the grass and bellowed at the heavens. He was stupid to leave them, stupid to think Rosie would be safe in this town. What had he been thinking? It was bad enough losing Lindsay. Now he had lost them all.
Well, he’d just have to find them.
As the gunman bent over to pick up his hat, a small black strap sticking out between the leaves of grass caught his attention. Picking it up, he realized it was the Kid’s wristband. A few feet away, he found Charlie’s smart gun. So they had captured him, too. He tossed the gun into his knapsack and was about to do the same with the bracelet when he had a sudden inspiration. The Wanderer flicked on the band and waited for it to boot up. “C’mon, Kid,” he muttered, “show me you’re as smart as you think you are.”
The device displayed a map with a blinking dot moving steadily west on a highway. Grinning, the Wanderer traced the road several miles west until his finger landed on a place called Union. Well, that finding sure wiped the smile off his face. He recognized that place — Union was a Red Stripe town. Shoving the wristband into a jeans pocket, he studied the cemetery’s parking lot. The taxi was long gone, but there was one car: a mud-smeared pickup truck with spades and other tools for grave digging in the flatbed. The Wanderer turned to the dead man and searched his pockets. Sure enough, he had his keys on him.
Guilt pulled him back once more to Lindsay’s gravestone. He removed his Stetson, revealing a matted haystack of hair. “Good-bye, Little Wanderer,” he said, voice cracking just slightly at the end. He leaned forward and carefully placed his hat on top of the fresh grave.
The digger’s key unlocked the black truck. Easing himself into the driver’s seat, Errol took a few minutes to study the vehicle’s controls. Tentatively, he slipped the key into the ignition and turned. The engine roared to life. He tried to shift the vehicle out of park, but the black lever wouldn’t budge. Shaking his head in frustration, he looked around again at the labyrinth of levers spread around the vehicle. Closing his eyes, he thought back to a driving lesson with his father.
“Turn the key, press down the brake, and then shift into reverse,” he recited in a low mumble.
He pressed the brake and got the truck out of park. Feeling a little glad that Rosie wasn’t here to see this, he brought the truck slowly out of the space, took a deep breath, and shifted into drive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A Citizen’s Arrest.
Ben Martin grabbed the burned waffle as it popped out of the toaster. It was too hot to handle, so he dropped it onto the dusty kitchen floor. He froze for a few seconds, considering what to do. The Liberty police station hadn’t been cleaned since the mayor took away the department’s funding and condemned the place. Oh, well, at least the dirt matched the burn. He picked up the waffle, plopped it on a Styrofoam plate, and brought the breakfast downstairs to the holding cells in the basement.
“Hate to be the one to tell you,” Martin told the prisoner, “but we’re clean out of butter. Syrup, too. Real shame.”
The big man in the cage grunted. There were scars and a sweeping red rash splashed over his face where Rosie had struck him with her coffee pot.
“Figured you might not be in the mood for a cup of joe,” laughed Martin as he slipped the plate through the steel bars of the cell.
The prisoner took the breakfast. “You ain’t gonna keep me in here.”
“Why’s that?”
“You ain’t got the authority. There ain’t no law.”
Martin preened. “In Liberty, I am the law.”
“They’ll come for me!”
“Who will? Oh, you mean your buddies in the Red Stripe Gang? You think they’ll come for you, huh?” Ben Martin laughed a deep belly laugh. “You think they’ll come for you after you failed a job catching a girl?”
The gangster crunched slowly on his waffle.
Ben Martin leaned forward. “Now you going to tell me yet why you were after Rosa Veras, or should I leave you down here another week?”
“Fuck you.”
“Another few weeks, then?”
“Fuck you.”
The sheriff spat on the ground. All this time, and he still hadn’t gotten anything out of the prisoner. Maybe he’d lost his touch. Well, at least the piece of human waste was talking today. Ben Martin worried about Rosie. She was with that Wanderer, which meant she was still in danger. He hoped to God she’d return safely. He’d called a few other towns where he had friends and he thought the Wanderer might take her, but no one had seen either of them. He hoped someone would call back today. In the meantime, there were still answers to get from the prisoner.
“Why don’t we start with something easy. Tell me about the Wanderer. What’s your connection to him?”
The gangster looked confused. “The who?”
“The Wanderer. He’s the one who shot your friend. And he shot a few of your other buddies in Freetown.”
The gangster shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Martin grumbled. “How’s that waffle anyway? Gritty at all?”
The prisoner didn’t respond.
Ben Martin stood up. “Okay. Well, chew slowly. It’s going to have to last you the rest of the day. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
He
took the stairs back up to the ground floor, cursing as soon he was out of earshot. The gangster wasn’t going to be cooperative, he could tell. But what the hell was he going to do about it? He’d have to let the thug go eventually, but he couldn’t just free the bastard without getting something out of him, or at least punishing him for what he’d done to Rosie.
Ben’s phone beeped. He had a message.
Armed outsider sighted on Main St. Engage?
The message came from Larry Wilkins, a friend of Joe Lin, and one of the new recruits to Martin’s Militia. The sheriff thought about calling for more details but decided against it. He reckoned it would be a sign of good faith to trust his men’s instinct. Also, the smell of that toaster waffle had made him kinda hungry.
Martin tapped out a brief reply in the affirmative.
*
Jack freed his hair from its rubber band dictatorship and leaned back against a tree in the park. It was a beautiful day in Liberty. Warm but not hot, partly cloudy skies. The green wasn’t big — it could only really be considered a park in the urban sense — but it was still nice. There was a fountain, a bunch of trees and a well-watered lawn where kids like to run around and play tag.
It was great for people watching, actually. Jack observed a harried mother chasing an enthusiastic toddler around the playground. Then he watched a teenage couple lingering in the shade of a young tree, leaning in every few seconds for a chaste kiss, then checking around to see if anyone was looking. The boy pushed away the girl upon seeing that yes, another teenage boy in a baseball hat had seen them. He was sitting at one of the other park benches and laughing.
Chuckling to himself, Jack took off his glasses and wiped the round lenses with a white cleaning cloth from his pocket.
“Hey, man, get off me!”
Popping his frames back on, Jack saw that the yelling was coming from the kid in the hat. There were two men standing over him. One of them Jack recognized as Larry Wilkins, who’d been a football jock in his high school class. The other was Ryder Klein, a professional drunk. They both used to be policemen.