by Gideon, D.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t grow up here in friggin’ Mayberry, either,” she said, waving a hand towards the ceiling. “She’ll work through it. But he’s got to let her work through it. He can’t keep her caged up like he’s tryin’ to do. Either she’ll crawl into a shell and never come back, or she’ll go postal.”
“Maybe we should leave it alone,” he said. “She went out this morning-”
“She snuck out this morning. Not from Dad, but from Corey.” Mel called Ripley’s parents “Mom” and “Dad”. According to Corey, she’d started it the first time Rip had brought her home from college to visit with them.
“Mr. Miller was okay with it?” Marco asked.
“Well, he wasn’t thrilled, but when she told him and Mom last night that she was going, we all ended up talking about it. You know, the buddy system, keep your head on a swivel, that kinda thing. Then Dad just told us to be safe and go armed. Corey would’ve flat-out told her no, he wasn’t going to let her.”
Marco had to agree. When Corey had stuck his head in the bathroom this morning and learned that Mel was coming scavenging today, the first thing he’d done was to catch Marco’s eye and shake his head no. Marco had ignored him.
Mel found an open pack of gum on a shelf and stuck a piece in her mouth. She shoved the rest in her pocket. “He’s gonna give her hell for it when she gets back. Then I bet you ten to one he clamps down even harder. He’ll probably try to switch rooms with Thomas to keep an eye on her.”
“Mr. Miller won’t let that happen.”
The sleeping arrangements at the two houses had been…difficult, those first few days. They’d started out with Ripley in her own room and Mel in the Millers’ guest room, but Ripley’s screaming nightmares had woken everyone up in the dense quiet of a powerless night. Mel had switched to sleeping with Ripley, and that seemed to improve things. At the least, she wasn’t waking the neighborhood up anymore. Thomas had moved back into the Millers’ guest room so that Corey and Marco could stop sharing a bed. Marco had offered to be the one to move, but Mr. Miller had put down a firm boot on either of the younger men sleeping in the room next to the ladies. It would be interesting once winter came and they were all under the same roof.
“Either way, he needs to back off. You can talk to him, or I can just shoot him in the ass. It’s up to you,” she said. “As thick as he’s being, that still might not get his attention-”
“Shh,” Marco said, cutting her off. He slipped off of the mattress and hurried to the stairs.
“What is it?” Mel stage-whispered.
He climbed up the stairs and grabbed the edge of the trap door, swinging it down and closing it gently above him.
He kept his voice to a whisper. “I thought I heard someth-”
Three hard booms reverberated through the silence. Shadows passed by the little vents, and they could hear boots moving through the high grass on all sides. Someone stomped up the back steps. There was a thumpa-thumpa-thumpa sound as whoever it was tried rattling the door open.
The booms sounded again.
“OPEN UP! SNOW HILL POLICE!”
Preacher
Preacher briefly wondered if it was possible for two people to argue each other to death.
As Dotty and Teddy walked in front of him, bickering enough that he’d thought they would come to blows once or twice, he almost wished the Sheriff had asked him to ride along when he went to alert the others about the flyers. By the time he’d gotten done talking with the Sheriff and Father Bill, these two still hadn’t moved from in front of Teddy’s store. Ripley had given up and was sitting back underneath the tree, just watching the empty street. He’d been able to at least get them all moving towards home, but they’d continued their feisty exchange along the way.
“You are too damned old, and that’s all there is to it, Theodore,” Dotty said.
“Speak for yourself,” Teddy snapped. “It’s been months since you put in a full day’s work.”
“That’s because you fired me!”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
Preacher had another ring of keys in his pocket now, to both a store and a house he’d never set foot in. Teddy had just handed them to him as if they’d known each other for years, without so much as a threat about anything missing when he was done.
Dotty had given him her spare to the back door the night she’d brought him home, apologizing profusely that she didn’t have one for the front. It had taken her a bit to realize that his silence wasn’t from being offended that he didn’t rate a front-door key, but shock that she’d given him one at all.
And now Teddy had handed his keys over after nothing more than sizing him up and bitching at him for ten minutes.
For a man who’d been in a cage a week ago, it was surreal.
The last time he’d had keys to a house was when he was sixteen. When his new step-father had moved in and kicked him out of his mother’s home—there could be only one man in his house--he’d gone to the city and lived on the streets for months before one of the Brothers had taken him in. From that point on, he’d lived in a room in the old industrial building the Brothers used for their clubhouse. It was never locked; there was no need. Everyone knew better than to come through those doors if they weren’t invited.
He’d even been the one to teach a few idiots that lesson.
Now here he was, set free by a lawman who thought Preacher would do the right thing. He was pushing a wheelbarrow behind two people old enough to be his grandparents, that fought like siblings and handed him the keys to their homes as if there was no question he was trustworthy.
It sure as hell made him want to do the right thing. But for a man who’d been caged for years, running out his life around the fence line like a wolf trapped in a zoo because once upon a time he had done the right thing…
“What’s going on here?” Dotty asked, halting the group and breaking his reverie.
They were close enough now to see the tree line at the edge of the Millers’ yard, and a couple of pickup trucks sitting in the road. There were men standing on the front steps of the house across the street—the one Preacher had seen Marco coming out of a few times. All of the men were armed, and one of them was beating on the front door of that house with a closed fist.
“That looks like the Undersheriff,” Teddy said.
“Ripley,” Preacher said, making a motion with his head indicating the wheelbarrow. “Gun.”
“No. If they’re armed, I want to be armed,” she said.
“Use your head,” Teddy said. “You don’t go into something like this showing all your cards. You’re out-gunned, and you need to find out what they want. Then you decide if it’s time to shoot them.”
Ripley glared at them both, but unslung her rifle and slipped it under the tarp. “With martial law being declared, that stupid no open carry law should be suspended, too,” she said.
“Never shoulda been a law in the first place,” Teddy said.
They passed the line of trees bordering the Millers’ yard and found two more people standing on Dotty’s porch, with another walking across the yards back towards them. There was a fourth in the double driveway between the houses, writing on a clipboard. From inside Dotty’s, Preacher could hear Jax barking up a storm.
“This one seems to be empty too,” the man coming from Ripley’s house called out. “No answer, no dogs barking.”
“Check the back yard,” one of the women on Dotty’s porch called back. “Verify the outbuilding. And we know there’s another dog, so be careful.”
The man nodded and jogged towards Ripley’s back yard. Clipboard Man walked between the trucks, going out of sight.
There was another dog, Preacher knew. And he’d bet money that dog was silently watching them right now, not giving away his presence. King was scary smart.
Across the street, one of the men with guns had started spray painting something on the front of the vacant house. Another was knelt down, fiddling with the door lock.
“Can I help you?” Dotty called, her voice sharp. The women on the porch turned, startled. One of them frowned, while the other quickly pasted on a smile.
Preacher recognized the one with the frown. She was Cathy, Dotty’s next-door neighbor. He hadn’t hit it off too well with her. She’d tried to talk to him when he was outside; if “talking” was leaning on the fence and asking a lot of nosy questions. He’d just not answered when she’d asked something she had no right to know. That must have given her the impression that he was either hard of hearing or mentally challenged, because she’d started loudly commenting on his physique as he worked to bust up the firewood. He hadn’t been sure if she was flirting or just thought he didn’t understand, so he’d just ignored her.
It had become almost routine. Every morning, a few minutes after he started chopping up the wood, she’d come out and lean on the fence to watch. She’d talk about how nice the scenery was these days, how strong he was, how she just loved to watch a man like him do his work. How there were all kinds of things around her house that she needed a real man’s help with.
The fifth day she’d thrown those hints around, he’d stopped and looked her in the eye.
“Where’s your husband?” He’d asked her.
“He’s up at the roadblock with Thomas,” she’d said, suddenly all smiles. “He won’t be home for hours.” She’d drawn the word out to emphasize it.
He had pointed at her wedding ring. “Go tell him you forgot what that means. Maybe he can remind you.”
After staring at him for a minute with her mouth hanging open, she’d stormed off, and he hadn’t seen her since. At the time, he’d thought it was a good thing.
Seeing her on Dotty’s porch next to someone with a clipboard and an air of authority, he wasn’t so sure.
“Miss Dotty! What a fortunate coincidence! We were just here to talk to you,” Smiley-Face said. She didn’t move from the top of the porch steps. Cathy leaned in and whispered something in the woman’s ear. Smiley-face’s gaze jerked to him and did a quick appraisal. She whispered something back to Cathy.
Yep. Pissing off Cathy definitely hadn’t been a good thing.
“Mom should be in the house,” Ripley said, her voice low. “She would’ve heard him knocking.”
“Hush, child. Your momma’s smart,” Dotty murmured. She stopped walking a few feet from her mailbox and crossed her arms. “We can talk out here on the sidewalk, Cindy. Or should I say, Lieutenant Mayor?”
Cindy’s face twitched but she didn’t lose that red carpet smile. “There’s no need to be so formal, Miss Dotty. We’re all neighbors here.”
“Then get those boys back up here where we can see ‘em,” Teddy said. “Neighbors don’t go snooping in other neighbors’ yards.”
“They’re just helping me follow up on some things for the City-” Cindy started, and Dotty cut her off.
“So you are here as Lieutenant Mayor,” Dotty said.
“Well, yes, I am,” Cindy said, and gestured with her clipboard. “The City’s received some disturbing reports about numerous code violations on your property, and I’m here to get that straightened out.”
“And you’ve got to fill out the survey,” Cathy added, holding up a slim stack of papers. “Everyone has to fill out the survey or-”
Cindy jabbed her elbow into Cathy’s arm and made a shushing noise. “So if you can just come up here Miss Dotty, we can discuss the matter in private,” she said, her face as pleasant as if she was offering lemonade on a hot day.
“I prefer to discuss City business on public property,” Dotty said, indicating the sidewalk. She put on a big, winning smile of her own. “We wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea that I’d invited you and your men to trespass on my private property, would we?”
The man who’d gone to the back of Ripley’s house re-appeared. “Verified. They’ve built an outhouse back there. Some kind of animals on the back porch, too. Another structure with chickens in the yard behind that one, and big things like hot tubs full of water on both houses. Those might be attached.” He followed Cindy’s stiff gaze to the group and stopped.
“Yes, hello there,” Teddy said, giving a little wave. “We’re the people you’ll be wanting to give your search warrant to. You’ve got one of those, don’t ya?”
Cindy looked across the street to the group of men, still huddled around the front steps. “Frank? Frank! We’ve got a problem over here.”
“Get that wheelbarrow off the sidewalk, son,” Teddy murmured.
Preacher moved the wheelbarrow a few feet into Dotty’s yard. Behind him, Ripley also stepped off of the sidewalk into the yard.
“Don’t approach my men,” Cindy warned. “You touch them and I’ll have the officers arrest you for assault.”
“What officers?” Teddy asked.
“Me,” said a man crossing the road, one hand on the butt of his holstered pistol. “Me and the other officers here.” He was well-built, but not too tall, in jeans and a t-shirt covered with an assault vest. He walked like a cop, stopped and stood in a pose like a cop, took them all in at a glance like a cop. Preacher hadn’t ever seen the man inside the prison, but it would’ve been obvious even if he’d been standing at a grill flipping burgers.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Teddy said, “but I recall the Sheriff firing you. Right in front of the whole town, even. You’re not the Undersheriff anymore, Mister Stalls.”
“It’s Chief Stalls now, of the Snow Hill Police Department,” The man said.
“Snow Hill doesn’t have a police department,” Teddy said.
“It does now. City Council made it all official three nights ago.”
Teddy puffed up. “Funny…I don’t recall voting on that.”
Cindy spoke up from her spot on the porch. “Extenuating circumstances. Mayor Wilhelm saw a need, held an emergency session, and the Council took care of it. Now instead of relying on the Sheriff—whose forces are obviously stretched too thin to give us the kind of protection we need in these dangerous times—we have our own City Police Department.”
Teddy’s brows went up and he started to say something else, but Dotty silenced him with a hand on his arm. “It’s good to have police officers here,” she said, smiling at the Chief. “I came home to find these people on my property without my permission. I’ve asked them to leave and they won’t. Will you please remove them?”
The Chief didn’t even look towards the house. “We’re all here on official business, Ma’am. I assure you, this is all above-board.”
Dotty cocked her head. “I keep hearing that, but no one’s given me a warrant. Surely you’ve got a warrant, Frank? Or perhaps your wife does? I’d just like to see it.”
Frank frowned and glanced towards the porch, giving a little shake of his head. Cindy huffed and came down the stairs, her low heels tapping hard on the paved walk. Cathy stiffly followed her. Frank waved a hand, and the man who had been in the backyard joined them.
“We’re not here to start problems,” Frank started, but Preacher cut in.
“The other one, too,” he said.
Frank turned a hard glare at Preacher. “Did you miss the part where I was speak-”
“Behind the Beetle,” Preacher said, pointing. “He goes, too.”
“Beckett, get out here,” Cindy snapped. The man stood from where he’d been crouching behind Ripley’s Beetle, his face flushed red, and scurried to join everyone on the sidewalk.
“And whatever he was writing down about those vehicles can stay,” Teddy said.
“What he was writing is official City business and it will not stay,” Cindy said. She turned to Dotty, not bothering to hide her irritation. “Miss Dotty, we’ve received numerous reports of serious code violations on your property.”
“If I’ve violated any codes, I had no idea I was doing it. Who gave a report?” Dotty asked.
“There were multiple reports, and they were anonymous,” Cindy said smoothly. She looked down at her
notes. “Let’s see. New building structures without permits, altering the structure of a home in the historic district without approval, permits, inspections…all of that. Possible bypass of city sewage lines…which would not only violate code, but would be illegal on a state and federal level, and bring with it serious environmental fines. Also, livestock within City limits, at least one unlicensed dog—possibly more, and possibly classified as a ‘dangerous breed’, which are banned statewide. And finally: using a residential property as a commercial short-term rental in exchange for money, goods, or services; which the City banned years ago when that whole AirBnB mess got settled.”
Cindy looked up from her paper. “The City needs to investigate these accusations, Mrs. Parker. These are serious charges that carry very heavy fines,” she paused, and pasted on a fake sympathetic look. “And, I’m sorry to say, possible eviction from the property.”
Preacher
“That’s bullshit, is what that is,” Teddy said, pointing a finger at Cindy’s clipboard. “Have you missed the part where all of the electricity is gone and the toilets don’t flush?”
“You can’t evict me,” Dotty said, her voice firm. “Only my bank can do that.”
“If you don’t follow the regulations and restrictions for a historic home, we most certainly can, and will, evict you,” Cindy said. She flipped through the papers on her clipboard. “And I don’t recall seeing a property tax payment for that truck.”
“Then you should be speakin’ to your Treasurer, not me. My taxes are paid, and I’ve got receipts,” Dotty said.
Across the street, a little cheer went up, and the front door swung open.
“Hey boss, we finally got it,” one of the men called out.
“Good. Clear it, safeties off. Then start the inventory,” Frank called back.
“Inventory?” Teddy said, pointing at the house across the street. “Those men are breaking and entering, and you’re telling them to take inventory?”