by Anne Hagan
Holly’s eyebrows rose. “What does Dana think?”
“Dana understands what she’s gotten into with me and with this job.”
“Does she?”
I nodded. “Sure she does. She’s been right there in the mix a couple of times with me...with us; you know that. Still, Chloe’s partly right. I could be a little more...I don’t know, attentive? Is that the word I’m looking for?”
“Attentive, yeah, or how about romantic?”
I pulled a face. “The romance stuff just isn’t me. It’s like a whole other language to me.”
“You really never had a serious relationship before you met Dana, did you?”
“No.”
“Mel, don’t take this wrong, okay? You’re a woman yes, but you’ve always thought more like a man. Since I’ve known you, you’ve never been girly or liked girly things.”
“True. You’re right.”
“Dana’s a tomboy but she likes girly stuff too. Remember how she reacted when you got her that bracelet and when you got Boo back?”
I nodded.
“She seems to like romantic gestures like that. That’s what you should aim for. It doesn’t have to be big and fancy. It will mean the most to her if it’s from your heart.”
###
3:30 PM Monday
I took a call down in Philo that thankfully turned out to be routine. We were having a mini-February heat wave. The temps had climbed into the upper 40’s and the calls had been off the hook. I had more people in getting overtime than I had on regular, scheduled patrol.
By the time I climbed back into my county SUV, the radio was mercifully quiet. I hoped that meant whatever craziness had swept through the county was finally dying down.
After a minute of thought, since I was already well south of town, when I crossed the Muskingum in Duncan Falls, I headed east instead of West. I was only fifteen minutes from the farm.
As much as I now knew I’d been neglecting Dana, I was even more aware I hadn’t spent more than a few minutes with my parents, here and there, since Christmas. Dad’s health hadn’t been the best lately and I felt guilty for not checking in on him and for not being out there to help with all of the usual winter chores.
Thank heaven it’s been a mild winter and thank heaven for Cole. He’s such a big help...
Turning into the drive, I didn’t have far to go to find my dad. He was in the lower field putting out salt blocks for the livestock.
I stopped my county SUV on the driveway and got out into the sunshine and warmth of what should have been a cold, snowy day.
“Hey there,” my dad, a man of few words, called out.
“Hi Dad. How are you?” I stopped at the fence. Climbing over in a gun belt didn’t sound like a good idea if it wasn’t necessary.
He nodded, indicating he was okay. I wasn’t going to get a soliloquy out of him anyway. “Haven’t seen you for a while. I just thought I’d stop over and see if you needed anything.”
“Naw. Got everything I need.”
Dad didn’t like asking for help or taking help from anyone but he’d be the first one to offer help where he saw a need. That’s just the way it is with him.
“Your ma says the scanner’s been going all day.”
I grinned. My mother had her nose in everything. She’d had a police scanner ever since I’d joined the force. “It’s been a busy one. Must be these warm temperatures.”
Dad mounted his quad, fired it up and steered it over toward the fence. When he reached me, he asked, “Are you coming up to the house?”
I shook my head no. “I really should head back into town but I think I’m just going to head home. I’m whipped. It seems like things have settled down a little.”
“You need to take it easy. Let your deputies do the work. That’s why you have ‘em.”
“I know but it’s hard for me to ask them to do things I’m not willing to do myself.”
He just shrugged.
A thought occurred to me. “You know Valentine’s Day is coming up.”
Dad tipped his head at me like Boo does when me or Dana talks to her.
“Are you doing anything special for mom this year?” I’d never really paid any attention to whether or not my parents celebrated the holiday but mom always seemed happy. Her world revolved around Dad and the farm.
“She don’t go for no fancy stuff. I just get her flowers and maybe a card.”
“Oh. She likes that?”
“Just what are you fishing for?”
“Honestly? I’m kind of stuck on what I should do for Dana. I figured maybe you’d have some wisdom for me.”
“Women like anything you do for them.”
Right, okay. So much for help from my only male role model.
Chapter 4 – Warfare
Mel
Monday Evening, February 9th, 2014
“On my way but my ETA is going to be about 30 minutes.” I put down the dish towel I was holding and looked at Dana who was rinsing the last of the silverware.
“I’m so sorry babe. The last 36 hours have been off the charts and, just when I thought it was over, it starts again. Now they’re smashing shop windows and looting in downtown Zanesville.”
“Looting?”
I spread my hands. “I don’t know what’s going on but if I don’t get back out there, I’m never going to be able to figure it out.”
I rolled slowly through town, my broadcast PA turned on. Darkness was now falling but, here and there, windows were smashed and debris was everywhere. The culprits had struck in daylight, just after everything closed, up and down Main Street.
My cruisers were scattered here and there and Zanesville PD had an even heavier presence but that wasn’t stopping the opportunists from running store to store, taking what they could from what hadn’t already been taken that had any value at all.
Shane Harding’s personal vehicle was parked at the curb a block ahead of me, it’s portable blue light flashing. He was standing at the corner, under a still working street light, notebook in hand, speaking with an older man. I pulled over and parked behind him.
“Sheriff,” he said by way of greeting. “This is Mr. Jenkins. He owns the tobacco shop.” Shane tipped his head toward the small storefront at the corner with shattered windows and a door hanging only from its bottom hinge.
“What’s left of it, which isn’t much!” Jenkins said.
“He says he’d locked up for the evening but he was in the back working on taxes when a bunch of bikes rumbled into town.”
“They shot out my windows. I barricaded myself in the back but nobody came back there. They just took all the cigarettes they could carry and they moved on. I called 911 and then I stood up front with a bat to keep anyone else from taking what wasn’t theirs to take. I work hard and barely get by! They all just want something for nothing!”
“You really should have stayed in your office, Mr. Jenkins. You could have been seriously hurt or even killed.”
“And let them take everything? You’re crazier than I am if you think I would let them do that! My insurance will pay for the windows. I won’t get a dime for my inventory.”
“Since you came out here,” Shane asked, “did you get a look at anybody?”
“Motorcycles...men on motorcycles. That’s all I can tell you.”
My radio leapt to life. “Shots fired, man down, 500 block of East Elm. Any units in the vicinity please respond.”
I shot a look at Shane. “That’s about a mile north of here.”
“I got this Sheriff. Go.”
Before I could even key my mike, a female voice came over the airwaves, “Unit twelve responding.” I’d forgotten that Mason had taken a patrol shift today. I keyed in too, “Unit one responding.”
I hopped back in my SUV and ran lights and sirens to the scene. As I drove, both motorcycles and low riding sedans drove past me, fleeing in the opposite direction. A lone Zanesville PD cruiser was giving chase to the last in the lot.
PD seemed to be getting their quarry under control so I hustled over to Mason and Gates. Relief flooded my face as I realized the middle aged man on the ground, though obviously shot and bleeding from his left hip, was alive and alert. “What do we have.”
“We’ve got gang war bedlam Sheriff.” Indicating the man on the ground, Gates continued, “He’s all victim; just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A squad is on the way.”
Directing my question at the man, I asked, “Do you know who shot you?”
He shook his head no. “Never saw them before.”
“Them?”
“A car full of guys.”
“I already got a description of the vehicle from him Sheriff,” Gates said. “Zanesville put out an APB.” His eyes flared with what I knew he wasn’t about to say in front of the victim. There wasn’t a lot of hope for us or for PD to nail them. Every officer on duty was just doing what they could to stop the bleeding. Actually corralling anyone and pinning anything on them wasn’t very likely.
A sound in the distance drew my attention. As I looked up, a news chopper flew overhead. “Great,” I muttered under my breath. “Just what we need.”
###
By the time my deputies and the Zanesville guys gained some semblance of control back over city and I got home, it was after midnight. Dana was sound asleep sitting half propped up in bed with her bedside light on and a book in her lap. Boo was curled up on the bed, at the foot. She looked up at me but then laid her fuzzy little head right back down.
I felt so bad about having had to leave earlier and about the fact that Dana obviously tried to wait up for me. As gently as I could, I picked up the book and placed it on the nightstand. She wasn’t much for thrashing around in the night but, if she did slide down and try and get a little more comfortable, I didn’t want the book hitting the floor and jarring her awake.
As quietly as I could, I undressed and slipped into bed. My plan was to catch about four hours of shut-eye before I headed back into the station.
Since PD had managed to collar the low level gangbanger I’d witnessed them trying to cuff at the shooting scene, they planned to interrogate him. I knew they’d work the biker known on the street as Maggot until they got something useful out of him. I wanted to be at my desk and available to receive the lowdown when they broke the guy.
###
Early Tuesday Morning, February 10th, 2014
Sleep was pretty elusive. My brain worked overtime trying to figure out what had triggered the gang war and the sudden widespread rash of crime in the county. I was at a total loss. All I could do was pray that whatever it was, it had played itself out and the two warring factions would go back to hibernating until spring.
When the clock registered 4:00 AM and I knew trying to catch a half hour more time in the sack was useless, I got up. As I gathered a fresh uniform and underclothes in the dark, I stole a few glances back at Dana. She stirred but didn’t wake. Boo, on the other hand scooted to the edge of the bed and was watching me like a hawk but she didn’t bark or indicate she was interested in getting up herself just yet.
I tiptoed out of the room and waited to see if she’d follow me then breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t.
After a quick shower in the main bathroom so I didn’t wake my wife by using the one in our room, I started to ready myself to leave. A glance at the clock told me it wasn’t even 4:30. The county roads into town will be deserted for another hour yet. I have time to refocus for a few minutes.
With Valentine’s Day being Saturday, I knew I really wanted to do something special for Dana. Her mother’s call left me feeling like I’d been neglecting her completely and me coming home and then turning around and leaving again, I’m sure, didn’t help my case with her one whit.
I didn’t have a clue yet about what to do Saturday but I had an idea for right now. I detoured into my den, sat down and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. I thought for a minute about what to say. Finally, I just tried to pour my feelings out onto the paper but, in the end, I wasn’t sure what I said didn’t sound corny or forced. All I really wanted was to be with my wife.
Ten minutes later, not full satisfied but feeling like I’d managed to bare my soul a little, I signed it off. After scrounging an envelope, I scrawled Dana across it and carried it with me to the kitchen.
The buzzing of my department cell distracted me. Duty called. Instead of leaving the letter on the table for Dana to find when she got up as I’d intended, I ended up carrying it outside with me. While my truck warmed up in the morning chill, I walked up the driveway and put it in the mailbox. That’ll be more fun for her to find it there anyway...
Holly was at her desk by 5:30, a scant 10 minutes after me.
“We have to stop meeting like this Mel. All these crazy hours, people are going to talk.” She grinned and I grinned back.
“I was just looking through the overnight blotter,” I told her. “It looks like it quieted down a little.”
“It probably got too cold for ‘em all to keep at it out there. It is February, after all.”
“What’s the high supposed to be today?”
“Low thirties, I think,” she replied.
“Good, more normal. Let’s hope that cools their jets a little bit.”
Chapter 5 – Regroup
Victor Voll - Chief
Z Renegades Clubhouse, Abandoned Farm, South Zanesville, Ohio
“What the hell was all that shit?” I thundered at the full assemblage of patched in members sitting around me in the damp living room of the old farmhouse. “That was bullshit; that’s what that was; the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Whose bright idea was it to create mass hysteria, get another gang gunning for us and bring the law, the news...all those stupid fucks raining down on us and chasing us around?”
Nobody spoke.
“Is this how you’re trying to impress me to earn the right to stand here and give you clowns hell? I’m not fucking impressed! That kind of shit stops right now! Right fucking now!”
I looked over at Traveler, “Get another plan old man. This one’s done.”
“But Chief,” he whined back, “it wasn’t even my idea...I wanted to...”
I cut him off. “You’re my number two. You want to be Chief, fucking act like it. Take charge of this shit and do something that actually helps your club, otherwise, you may as well just kill me after all.”
Pinch laughed loudly.
“You got something to say?” I asked him.
“That ass can’t do anything useful, is all.”
“Then you figure it out. Somebody needs to do something.”
I looked around the room, catching several faces in my gaze. “Some of you weren’t here Sunday morning. I’m going to say this one more time in case the message didn’t come across then or you weren’t here to get it. Ya’ll can ally yourselves with certain brothers if that’s what you want to do but one man, ONE MAN, gets to be Chief. That’ll be the man who impresses me the most. Period. Figure it out. You want my position; you need to aim a lot higher.”
I shivered involuntarily. “Figure out how to get some heat in this shithole too. It’s fucking freezing in here.”
I looked around the room at all of the men just sitting there staring back at me. “Don’t all jump at once!” Disgusted, I told them, “I got shit to do. I’m out of here.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pinch eye-balling Traveler as I walked out the door.
###
Dana
Morelville, Ohio
I grabbed the mail out of the box as I walked back to the house after pulling a morning shift at the store. Boo was circling to go out as soon as I hit the door so I dropped everything on the kitchen table, hooked her to her long retractable leash instead of her short one we used for walks and I ran her outside.
“Still can’t trust you to stay in the yard,” I half scolded her as we stepped out into the brisk late morning air.
While she did her business at one end of the lead, I unlocked my little writing hut while hanging onto the other end, then reached inside and flicked the knob to turn up the heater Mel had put in to keep the hut at a more comfortable level for humans. I had some ideas for the book I was working on and I wanted to see if I could get them down before they flitted away.
When Boo was finished, she charged back toward me, then passed me and propelled herself right into the hut. She took up her customary place on the floor about a foot in front of the heater.
“Well then, all right little lady. I guess we’re going right to work today.” Getting a little lunch first forgotten for now, I sat down in my chair, booted my computer up and lost myself in the pages of my novel for a couple of hours until my bladder was screaming.
“Let’s go Boo. Mama needs to potty now.” I wonder what it would cost me to put plumbing out here?
While I nibbled a sandwich, I leafed through the mail I’d forgotten about earlier. I almost didn't recognize the handwriting from the letter I ran across at the bottom of the stack. It wasn’t postmarked or stamped, it just had my name on it.
That’s Mel’s scrawl, I think. She must have put this in the box before she left for work...
I opened the note expecting a reminder about picking up something at the store or some such thing.
Dana,
I’m reminded that Valentine’s Day is coming soon. I want to do something special with you that night; even more special than being with you, married to you, is each and every night. I love you so much – more than I could ever possibly put into words. You’re my whole world baby and I never want to be away from you, not even for a minute.