The Bleeding Edge

by William W. Johnstone

  “If you actually believe that, I’m not sure there’s any point in continuing this conversation.”

  There was no point in continuing to watch it, Stark thought as he pushed a button on the TV remote and banished the two talking heads.

  Several days had passed since the Battle of Shady Hills, as some were starting to call it, but people all across the country were still talking about it. Arguing about it, rather, because there seemed to be no middle ground on the issue. Either the residents of the park were courageous American heroes, or they were bloodthirsty racist vigilantes, depending on the political outlook of whoever was offering an opinion.

  And opinions, Stark had reminded himself more than once, were like a certain portion of the anatomy: everybody had one.

  He didn’t fool himself into thinking that just because he and his friends had repelled one attack, the danger was over. He knew the cartel wouldn’t accept such a stinging defeat. Sooner or later they would be back, and because Stark knew that, he had pressed the residents to continue guarding the park just as they had done before. Everyone went along with that without complaint.

  Except the ones who had moved out. Six more mobile homes had been packed up, the skirting taken down, water and electricity connections taken loose, and trucks brought in to haul them away to some other location. Stark couldn’t really blame those people for wanting to leave the danger behind and go somewhere safer, but he didn’t really understand it, either.

  He supposed the Good Lord just hadn’t included any backup in his nature.

  Along with the continued vigilance among the residents of the park, the other matter occupying Stark’s attention these days was the death of Hallie’s friend Josh Mumford. He had kept up with the stories about it in the online editions of the Washington newspapers, and he had spent hours searching the Internet for everything he could find about Mumford. The man had had his law degree but was a career bureaucrat, having worked for the Justice Department for more than twenty years. He was divorced, with a couple of grown children, and seemed about as bland and non-threatening as he could possibly be. There was nothing to suggest that his death was anything other than what it appeared to be, the natural result of a life spent drinking too much and working too hard.

  Except for the fact that he’d been helping Hallie and had found that mysterious computer file named “Silence.”

  Every time Stark thought about that, something prodded his brain, some elusive memory that told him the name should mean something to him. But it didn’t, and he had given up thinking about it in the hope that whatever it was would pop into his brain. So far he hadn’t had any luck with that.

  He was about to start pondering what to fix himself for supper when he heard footsteps on the porch stairs. A moment later someone knocked on the door.

  Stark picked up the .45 automatic from the little table beside his recliner as he stood up. These days he didn’t go to the door or much of anywhere else without at least one gun handy. He tucked the automatic behind the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back.

  The gun wasn’t necessary, he saw as he opened the door. Hallie stood there, along with her dad, Fred and Antonio Gomez, and Jack Kasek.

  “Looks like somebody sent me a delegation,” Stark said. “What for?”

  “Why, John Howard, aren’t you glad to see us?” Hallie asked with a smile.

  “Sure.” Stark stepped back. “Come on in. Can I get you folks something to drink?”

  “This isn’t a social call, John Howard,” Alton Duncan said as the group walked into the mobile home. “We’re here because Hallie’s had an idea.”

  “I’m sure it’s a good one. Sit down and tell me about it.” Stark nodded to Antonio. “How are you doing, son? Haven’t seen much of you.”

  “I know, and I’m tired of hiding, Mr. Stark,” Antonio said. “There’s no need for it anymore. Nacho and the others know I’m here. They’ve known ever since that first night they showed up. I don’t think they’re interested in me anymore.”

  “Probably not,” Stark agreed. “Oh, they’d come after you fast enough if they got the chance, but this has all gotten a lot bigger now than you witnessing what you did and running out on them.”

  Antonio grimaced.

  “Don’t remind me. I never should have run.”

  “Then you would have died with those other two young people,” Fred said. “We’ve talked about this before, Antonio. You shouldn’t feel guilty.”

  “Maybe not, but I always will. That’s why I want to do whatever I can to help everybody here. It’ll be a start on making up for what I did.”

  Alton said, “We’ve gotten off the track here. Hallie, tell John Howard your idea.”

  “It’s pretty simple, really,” Hallie said. “What’s the main complaint that certain people have with what happened here? What have they been calling us ever since that night?”

  “Vigilantes,” Stark said. “I’m getting pretty tired of it, too.”

  “We all are,” Alton said. “That’s why Hallie’s idea is such a good one.”

  She went on, “They say we didn’t have any authority to do what we did, and technically, I suppose they’re right. Although we were able to justify our actions as self-defense, we weren’t really legally empowered to do that.”

  Stark frowned in thought and slowly nodded his head. He said, “I think I see what you’re getting at.”

  Hallie smiled.

  “I thought you would, John Howard. What we need to do is incorporate Shady Hills as a town, and once we’ve done that you can have your own police force with the legal authority to defend the citizens. That way no one can accuse you of being vigilantes anymore.”

  “It’s a fine idea,” Stark agreed. “I’m not sure why you came to see me about it, though. I can’t really help much with the effort. I’m not a lawyer.”

  “But you are a hero,” Jack Kasek blurted out, “and that’s why, once Shady Hills is an actual town, we want you to be its mayor!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Stark’s eyebrows rose in surprise as he leaned back in his chair.

  “Mayor?” he repeated. “I think you’ve got the wrong man, Jack. I’m about as far from being a politician as you can get.”

  “You’re not afraid to tell the truth,” Jack said. “Isn’t that what we need more of in our politicians today?”

  Hallie said, “We’re getting ahead of ourselves here. It’s true, John Howard, that your name came up as a possible candidate for mayor, but we have to get the town incorporated first. Which means an election for that before we have an election for mayor and city council.”

  “So I don’t have to make up my mind today?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Okay, in that case I’m all for the idea of making Shady Hills a town. It’s a good way to shut up all the people who are yelling about us being vigilantes.”

  “Exactly,” Alton said. He beamed with pride as he looked at Hallie. “My little girl is pretty smart.”

  “Dad, I haven’t been a little girl for forty years.”

  “You’ll always be my little girl. Don’t you know that by now?”

  Stark asked, “So what’s our next move?”

  “We’re going to form an organization called Incorporate Shady Hills and hold a press conference to announce our intentions. Then we’ll have to collect signatures from a sufficient amount of registered voters on a petition for incorporation that we’ll present to the county judge. He’ll have to certify the petition, but once he’s done that, he’ll set an election date.” Hallie smiled. “Then we’ll have to hope that incorporation wins.”

  “It will,” Jack Kasek said. “I can practically guarantee it.”

  “There are no guarantees where politics is concerned,” Stark said. “Except that no matter what you do, somebody won’t like it.”

  Stark was right about that. The news conference announcing the formation of Incorporate Shady Hills was well-attended, with representa
tives of the media from all the major cities in Texas, plus correspondents from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, a number of cable news networks, and even an influential blogger or two.

  And the coverage, also not surprisingly, was overwhelmingly negative.

  TEXAS VIGILANTES TRY TO MAKE IT LEGAL, screamed one headline. Another proclaimed, A CITY BORN IN VIOLENCE AND HATRED. Pundits on the news shows explained that what Shady Hills was trying to do was in fact legal under the laws of the state of Texas but left no doubt that they thought it was wrong. Editorialists noted solemnly that this movement was likely to lead to still more violence.

  Meanwhile, the residents of Shady Hills couldn’t sign the petition drawn up by Hallie fast enough. In less than twenty-four hours after the news conference, the document already had enough signatures on it to be submitted, but Hallie advised the committee to wait a few more days. The more signatures they collected, she said, the more public opinion would be on their side. Having to worry about things like that instead of simple right and wrong annoyed Stark, but he knew they had to deal with the world as it was, not how they might like it to be.

  An unexpected development cropped up a couple of days later. Stark was at the community center with Hallie and the rest of the committee, going over the signatures to make sure all of them were legitimate. The ACLU had already demanded to see a copy of the petition when it was turned in to the judge, to “make sure there was no effort to disenfranchise minorities,” as they put it. Since the signatures included a large percentage of Hispanic names, along with a number of residents who were black, including one of the volunteer captains, that effort to interfere with the process wasn’t likely to fly, but Stark and the others wanted to be sure it wouldn’t.

  Several men Stark didn’t recognize came into the building. They were roughly dressed and he tensed for a moment, thinking that they might be there to cause trouble, but then the spokesman smiled and said, “Howdy. We’re lookin’ for the people who want to turn this into a town.”

  “That would be us,” Stark said as he got to his feet. His friends were wary, too, and he figured most of them had their hands close to the guns they were carrying. “What can we do for you?”

  “We want to be part of the town of Shady Hills, too,” the stranger said. “We’re from the Dry Wash community.”

  Stark was familiar with the area a couple of miles farther on up the highway, going northwest from Devil’s Pass. There was an old mission there, along with the arroyo that gave the place its name, and probably two dozen houses and mobile homes.

  Jack Kasek said, “We figured the boundaries of the town would be the mobile home park—”

  “But there’s no reason they have to be,” Hallie put in. “There are different requirements for incorporation depending on the size and population of the proposed town, but there’s no reason Shady Hills couldn’t take in more than just the park.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?” her father asked.

  The spokesman for the visitors said, “Look, my name’s Ben LaPorte. Ever since y’all had that trouble up here with those drug smugglers, a bunch of us have been gettin’ together and sayin’ that we wish we could’ve been down here to give you a helpin’ hand. I’ll be honest with you. We’re not a fancy bunch. Just good ol’ hardworkin’ common folks. We try to abide by the law. And we have trouble with smugglers and illegal immigrants all the time. Everything that’s not bolted down gets stole. And the sheriff . . . well, I ain’t sayin’ that Sheriff Lozano’s a bad fella, but I don’t think he cares overmuch about what happens to folks in Dry Wash, neither. We’d be happy to pay some city taxes if it meant we’d get some honest-to-God police protection out here.”

  Stark stood up and went over to shake hands with Ben LaPorte and the other men in turn, then said, “I’m glad you boys came to see us today, Ben. I can’t make the decision myself, but I can sure promise you we’ll discuss your suggestion.”

  Ben looked at his companions, then nodded.

  “That sounds fair enough, Mr. Stark.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Pretty hard not to,” Ben said with a smile. “Your face has been all over the TV for the past few days.”

  Stark chuckled and said, “Yeah, and I’m not too fond of it. For some reason those folks seem to think I’m newsworthy.”

  “Somebody standin’ up for what’s right, after so many people been apologizin’ and excusin’ what’s wrong for the past thirty or forty years, yeah, I’d say that’s newsworthy.”

  Stark put Ben LaPorte’s number into his cell phone and promised to call when a decision had been reached. The men from Dry Wash nodded and left the community center. Stark went back to the table where they had been going over the petitions and sat down.

  “What do you think?” he asked the people gathered around the table.

  “I don’t know,” Jack Kasek said. “Dry Wash is a pretty rundown area.

  Alton said, “Not really. It’s just old. The community got its start as a way station on the old Butterfield Stagecoach Line, back in the 1850s. There’s never been a town there, just a church or two and some houses, and they even had a little one-room school for a while, but there was never any reason for the area to develop much. People take care of their places pretty well, though. I saw that when I was handling insurance claims in this area.”

  “They don’t cook meth in some of those trailers?”

  “Now you’re jumping to conclusions, Jack,” Alton said. “Everybody here in the park lives in a mobile home except you and your wife. Nobody here cooks meth.”

  “Yeah, but we’re all a bunch of old geezers,” Jack protested.

  Stark said, “Yeah, and with the economy the way it is, there might be some young men from Dry Wash who’d jump at the chance to be cops. I don’t see a problem with including them. We can draw the boundaries of the town any way we want, can’t we, Hallie?”

  “As long as the area included doesn’t exceed nine square miles,” Hallie said.

  “There are a lot of towns in Texas bigger than nine square miles,” Fred protested.

  “Not at the time they were incorporated, which might be well over a hundred years ago.”

  Fred nodded and said, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So after Shady Hills is incorporated, we can annex more land if we want to?”

  “As long as we do it legally.” Hallie looked around the table. “Shall we put it to a vote? Do we want to include Dry Wash in the city limits? There would be that many more signatures to put on the petition.”

  “I suppose that would be all right, if the rest of you think so,” Jack said.

  They didn’t need a formal vote. Everyone nodded and spoke up, voicing their support for the idea.

  “But the town’s still going to be called Shady Hills, right?” Jack asked.

  “That’s all right with me,” Stark said. “Something I’ve always wondered about, though, Jack . . . how come you to call this place Shady Hills?”

  Jack grinned and said, “Would you want to live in a place called Flat and Blistering Hot?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  It didn’t take long for the news to spread about the community of Dry Wash being included in the proposed boundaries for the new town of Shady Hills. Once the media got hold of it, they blew the story out of proportion as usual, blaring headlines such as VIGILANTES SEEK TO EXPAND LAWLESS EMPIRE. Stark just shook his head in disbelief at that one, and Hallie commented wryly, “I guess once the town’s incorporated you’ll have to run for emperor instead of mayor, John Howard.”

  “If I was emperor there’d be some changes made, that’s for sure,” Stark said.

  “You remember the story about the emperor’s new clothes? He was naked, as I recall.”

  Stark changed the subject in a hurry.

  The story wasn’t done evolving, of course. A few days later, Stark got a phone call from a man named Carlos Arizola, who introduced himself as the principal of Jose
ph P. Gonzalez High School, which was down the highway between Shady Hills and Devil’s River. Stark had passed the school dozens of times, but he had no idea what the principal wanted with him.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Arizola?” he asked.

  “I’d like to meet with you and your friends, Mr. Stark, and talk about this new town of yours.”

  Stark managed not to grunt in surprise.

  “Just what is it you want to talk to us about?”

  “You may not be aware of this, Mr. Stark, but the school isn’t in the city limits of Devil’s Pass.”

  Stark hadn’t ever thought about it, but he knew that Gonzalez High was a couple of miles north of town. It had been built there to accommodate new growth in the area when the school district’s student population got to be too big for the original Devil’s Pass High School. School districts in Texas never liked to split their students between two or more high schools, because the new schools always dropped into a lower classification athletically. But sometimes the numbers made it impossible to do otherwise, and that was the case in Devil’s Pass. The new high school, Gonzalez High, had opened several years earlier, before Stark moved to the area, but he had heard about it.

  Principal Arizola went on, “The new housing developments that have grown up in this area aren’t in the city limits, either, but Devil’s Pass has its eye on annexing all of us. We don’t want that, Mr. Stark. If we’re going to be part of a city, we’d rather it be Shady Hills.”

  “Shady Hills isn’t even a real town yet,” Stark said. “What in the world could we offer folks like you?”

  “You intend to have a police department, don’t you?”

  “Well, sure. To be honest, that’s the main reason we decided to incorporate.”

  “What about a fire department?” Arizola asked.

  “I don’t know when we’d be able to afford a real fire department. I imagine we’ll have to rely on a volunteer department for a while, just like we do now.”

  “With a greater tax base, you could at least afford some equipment of your own. Taking care of a town costs a lot of money, Mr. Stark.”