Outside the Law

by Phillip Thompson

  He grabbed the bag and stepped out of the car, making sure he slammed the door. He hoped Harper heard it. He didn’t want to do this alone, not now, not ever.

  Across the bridge, both doors of the car opened. A black guy—he recognized him as the guy he shot—stepped out of the driver’s side, wearing jeans, high-tops, and a Memphis Redbirds jersey. A pistol filled his right hand. From the passenger side, a tall white man stepped out. In a suit and tie, of all things. His white shirt practically glowed in the dark. He looked like a businessman or a maybe even a preacher—calm, clean-shaven face, hair cut short. A look of serene confidence that he found totally unnerving. He appeared unarmed, and his hands rested at his sides.

  He stopped at the edge of the bridge. He waited, unsure of the protocol. He hoped like hell Harper and that big-ass deputy were behind him.

  “You Hack?” he called across the twenty yards of concrete that separated the two cars.

  The black guy eased behind the open driver’s side door. The white guy smiled.

  “You may call me that, yes,” the white guy said. “And you are Delmer Blackburn, thief and murderer.”

  He nodded his head toward the driver. “How do I know he won’t kill me?”

  “Because that’s my job,” Hack said. Still calm. Never raised his voice. “I presume that bag in your hand contains the money you stole from my employer.”

  “Yeah, I got your money, but not until you tell me our deal is still on.”

  “You are not in a position to interrogate or negotiate, Delmer. But I can assure you that the terms upon which we agreed are still valid.”

  “Whatever,” he said. “Long as we got a deal.” He noticed Hack was no longer paying attention. His face now glared at him, no, past him, his eyes shining like a predatory animal.

  He was about to turn around when he heard it: footsteps behind him.

  COLT

  “Let’s go,” he said, stepping out of the truck into the suffocating humid night air. He clicked the door shut and waited as John climbed out. He stepped up the shoulder onto the dirt road.

  “Damn, it’s still hot,” John said. “I’ll never get used to this shit.”

  He smiled, then stepped toward the scene on the bridge, which was illuminated by butterscotch halos of parking lights. He saw, and heard, Delmer talking to two men.

  “Hear that?” John said.

  “Yep.”

  “That kid is sounding way too jumpy.”

  “Yep. We need to move.”

  They strode abreast through the darkness. Old, nearly forgotten sensations crept into his body and mind, and he knew John felt it, too.

  They got to the bridge as Delmer trembled and swore under his breath after Hack told him something about a deal.

  So, Delmer, you little shit, you think you got all your bases covered tonight.

  He unsnapped his holster and kept his hand on his pistol. The car on the far side faced away, both doors open, a young black man behind the driver’s door and a tall man in a suit in front of the passenger door—Hack, in a different, but no less expensive, suit.

  “John,” he said.

  “Got it.” John moved off to his left, closer to Delmer.

  Hack and the other man saw the movement and peered at them. He stepped onto the bridge and nodded at Delmer. “Evening, Delmer,” he said.

  The kid looked stricken. “Uh, evening, Sheriff,” was all he could manage.

  He pointed at the driver. “You,” he said, “I can’t place, but you”—he swiveled his head and pointed at Hack—“I’ve met. I believe you introduced yourself to me as Hack.”

  Hack looked at him with unabashed curiosity, as if he were unaccustomed to being addressed so directly.

  “You are correct, Sheriff Harper,” Hack said. “You will, of course, excuse my speechlessness at your unexpected appearance.”

  The black kid snapped his head toward Hack. “That’s Harper?” he said. “The fuck is he doing here?”

  “Close your mouth, Dee,” Hack said.

  “You don’t sound speechless to me,” he said to Hack. “It seems you are still after something of great value to you. Is that how you put it? I’m going to guess that would be that bag of money Delmer has with him. But that money’s not going anywhere.”

  Hack shifted his weight.

  “Keep your hands where I can see ’em,” he said. The black kid focused his attention on Delmer, and he realized the black kid must be the guy Delmer wounded.

  “I also understand you been asking a lot of questions about me,” he said, still talking to Hack. “Now we don’t know each other all that well, so what seems to be the problem?

  “Sheriff, allow me to be brief, seeing as you interrupted a business transaction,” Hack said. “The problem, as you call it, is that my employer places a certain value on his employees who provide certain services. If that employee is no longer available, it costs my employer money, in terms of both revenue lost and overhead to replace him. You made one of those employees unavailable. My employer decided that you should bear at least part of that cost, and he sent me to see that cost passed on to you.”

  He couldn’t believe this guy. “Jesus,” he said. “You always talk like this? That’s a shitload of words to say you aim to kill me for shooting that dirtbag Kenny Jenkins.”

  “If you prefer, then,” Hack said. “Yes.”

  From the corner of his eye, he could see that John had moved to the side of Delmer, who seemed to be coming apart at the seams. He was practically quaking, from fear or rage, he couldn’t tell. John, on the other hand, was ready, cool, and alert.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think you have costs of your own coming. For the murders of Robert Pritchard and Rick Munny.”

  Hack smiled. “Based on what? The word of that little thief on the end? I’m afraid that won’t hold up. You can arrest me, but you know I’ll be out of a jail cell before you can lock the door.”

  “I didn’t come out here to arrest you.”

  Hack’s eyes widened at that, and his smile dropped a tiny bit. “You draw a hard line, Sheriff. And you are as I suspected,” he said.

  “How’s that?”

  Hack resumed his smile. “You enforce your own moral code rather than the one you were elected to enforce.”

  “I do my job,” he said. “At least I have a moral code.”

  “Ah, but your insinuation is flawed,” Hack said. He still stood, hands at his sides, as if he had all the time in the world. “I, in fact, do have a moral code, and I make no excuses for it. Nor do I try to hide behind the supposed nobility of the law. As alike as you and I are, on that point, we differ.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” he said. He was growing tired of the conversation. Hack continued to smile at him.

  “Do you really believe that, Sheriff?” Hack said. “Do you not see that the only difference between you and me is that badge you wear? That even though your entire purpose for being in your position is to uphold and enforce the law, you operate outside the law whenever it is convenient for you or suits your own purposes?”

  From the corner of his eye, he caught movement to his left. Delmer took a step toward Hack’s car. The black guy leveled a pistol in his direction, and all hell broke loose.

  The black kid fired three rounds. Delmer screamed and doubled over, then collapsed face-first on the bridge span.

  John moved like a cat, in a crouch, toward Delmer, firing as he went. Bullets tore into the car and ricochets howled off into the night. The black kid continued to fire from behind the car door.

  He pulled and fired at the door himself, but shattered the window instead. He swung his aim back toward Hack, but the man had dived into the car, yelling at the kid.

  He started moving left, toward John and Delmer—John crouched in a pool of blood collecting around them. Delmer lay prone and trembling, his head down on the bridge boards, moaning and blubbering.

  He heard the car engine turn over and jerked his head toward
the sound. The engine roared and smoked, and the car shot off into the blackness like it had been launched from an aircraft carrier. He spun and fired three shots, blowing out a taillight but not slowing the car one iota.

  He scrambled to John, who had rolled Delmer over and now cradled his head in his lap. A bullet hole in his belly, just below his sternum, poured a steady flow of blood on the boards of the bridge, even as John tried to stanch it with his hand. Both Delmer and John were drenched in blood.

  “John?” he said as he knelt.

  “It’s bad.”

  Delmer’s face contorted in pain. “I knew this would happen,” he said.

  John gave him a look, and he returned it. John was right—it was bad. Delmer was close to bleeding out.

  “Delmer,” he said. “Get your shit together. We’re going to get you to a hospital.”

  Delmer’s body convulsed, and his head rolled back and forth.

  “OK,” he said. “Let’s roll. Come on, John, let’s get him in his car.”

  John nodded. “Right.”

  They carried Delmer, who was out of his head from the pain and slippery as a fish from the blood, and loaded him into the backseat of his car.

  “Take him to the ER now,” he said to John.

  “Me? What the hell are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go find that chatty fucker.”

  John’s eyes narrowed, and he started to say something.

  “Go,” he said.

  John started the car, put it in gear, turned around, and sped off.

  He ran to his truck. It was a long shot, he knew, but he wasn’t giving up that easy. He floored it across the bridge and back to the highway, seeing nothing but darkness and vague shapes. He gunned the engine, pushing his speed as much as he dared on the narrow two-lane highway. After twenty minutes of futility, he backed off the accelerator, turned the truck around, and headed back toward the bridge.

  Goddammit. you’re not getting away from me, you son of a bitch. I’ll find your ass and put a fucking bullet in your head. Which is what I should have done as soon as you started running your mouth with all your stupid moral code bullshit.

  I should have done it. Why didn’t I? Because I got a little carried away with myself. Face it, Harper, you wanted him to piss you off so you could have a reason. But he didn’t. And you got so involved with that, you let that kid shoot somebody you were supposed to be protecting.

  His cell chimed, startling him and breaking his train of thought. He pulled the phone from his shirt pocket and saw that it was John calling.

  “Yeah, John, how’s Delmer? Y’all made it to the hospital?”

  “Just got to the ER. Colt, he didn’t make it,” John said. “Doctor said he lost too much blood before he got here.”

  He gripped the wheel and gritted his teeth. This one is all on me.

  “Colt, did you hear me?”

  He blew out a breath. “Yeah, John, I heard you. I’ll be there directly.”

  “Yeah.” John’s voice sounded as if it was floating across a chasm, faint and light.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He threw the phone to the seat.

  Oh, this fucker is going to pay.

  He pulled to the shoulder, slammed on his brakes, and he felt the truck fishtail in the loose gravel. He threw the gearshift into park and bailed out, then reached behind the seat for a hickory ax handle he’d had for as long as he could remember.

  He stepped across the highway and climbed a low dirt embankment to a stand of pines, none bigger around than his leg. He slid his hands up and down the ax handle, feeling the gouges caused from years of use. He picked one tree at random and swung. The blow rattled his teeth and made his hands hurt. He grunted and swung again, sending bark flying. He could smell sap seeping from the gash he’d opened up in the flesh of the tree, and he cursed the night air as he bashed it with a violent rhythm that fed on itself. His mind clouded, and he felt as if he were bludgeoning himself, thrashing away years of practiced indifference to a world he cared as little for as it did for him, a flimsy armor of insouciance he’d encased himself in for as long as he could remember to insulate himself from the very darkness he felt closing on him right now, the darkness that wanted to take his very mind and soul. He battered the memories—and the faces—the darkness brought him: his father, the men he’d killed. And the years of the impotent rage that not even the justification of a badge could assuage. His breath came in ragged gasps, and sweat flew from his arms and face.

  He ceased his assault and staggered back, nearly losing his balance and tumbling backward down the embankment. His hands throbbed and his lungs felt seared. The ax handle was slippery with sweat. The blond wood of the tree, exposed and shattered like bone, gleamed against the darkness and oozed sap in thick globules that shined in the moonlight.

  He took a step back as—unbidden and at the vortex of the chaos of his mind—his mother’s voice came to him again, singing of divine joy and blessed peace in her hymn as she stood in the cemetery. He gulped the hot night air, and shook his head, tried to rid his mind of the music, but again he heard her voice, clear and strong and beckoning him to an eternal refuge.

  His shoulders sagged, and he calmed himself. He swiped his face with his forearm and turned, crossed the road, and climbed into his truck. His anger would not be wasted. He was angry at the right man at the right time and in the right manner.

  HACK

  The pistol tucked under his left armpit was a temptation as strong as lust, but he stilled the urge to wrap his hand around it and point it at Dee’s head. He would not kill the boy, much as he wanted to right at this moment. At least not tonight. Not until Dee made up for his childish action.

  “You were stupid,” he said. “I can tolerate certain personality defects. Inexperience, slow-mindedness, even repressed anger—the latter of which you clearly possess. But I cannot, and will not, tolerate stupidity. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Dee kept his eyes on the road and twisted his hands around the steering wheel, making squeaking sounds that competed with the thumping of the tires on the cracked asphalt.

  “Yeah, I understand,” he said. “As long as what I understand isn’t that I’m about to get my eyes shot out.”

  “Which is exactly what you deserve.”

  Dee didn’t answer; he concentrated on the highway ahead of him, checking his rearview as if Satan was chasing him.

  He turned his mind to his next step, which he realized was the same as his original step—get the money back from Delmer Blackburn. Even so, he could hardly believe his good fortune at Colt Harper showing up on that bridge, though he now knew that Harper had been in control of that situation, not he, and that realization angered him further. He should have paid more attention to that. He underestimated Harper. At this point, however, it mattered little.

  He placed his hands on his thighs to deny his temptations and thought more of his next move. He smiled—fortune was with him. He had another option, one that he was sure a man like Harper would be unable to let go unanswered.

  “The woman,” he said to Dee. “What is her name?”

  “Woman? Oh, you mean that one I had to go look up? Rhonda Raines.”

  “That’s right.” He would use this woman, let her bring Harper to him. Properly motivated, she would do exactly as ordered.

  He needed to plan this, and he needed reinforcement. He turned to Dee.

  “Return to the house,” he said.

  Dee sighed and draped a wrist over the wheel, slouching into the drive.

  They rode in silence for several miles, the humming of the tires punctuated only by the staccato of insects smashing into the windshield.

  As Dee made the last right-hand turn onto the road leading to the house, the cell phone in his left jacket pocket vibrated—his personal cell, not the burner he used for business. He pulled it out and recognized the number. He frowned and noted the time.

  “Hello, Mr. Brooks,” he said as he ra
ised the phone to his ear.

  “I don’t customarily make calls at this hour,” Brooks said, his words like darts in his ears. “But seeing as I’ve heard nothing to indicate that you’ve done the job you were hired to do, I’m calling to ask you just what in the hell I’m paying you for.”

  He stared at the roof of the car, clicked his teeth. Drew a breath, let out half.

  “You’re paying me to recover that which was taken from you and to take care of one other nettlesome entity.”

  “Hack, I never know what the fuck you’re saying.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “You’re working on it? What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that both of your problems are about to be solved, probably at the same time. Within forty-eight hours by my estimate. And that’s all I care to say over a cell phone.”

  Silence. Then a cough. “Dammit, Hack, this better get done, and it better get done fast.”

  “Or what?”

  “Don’t push me. Or you’ll find out.” Brooks broke the connection.

  He put the phone away. He looked forward to doing just that. But first things first.

  Dee glanced over at him with renewed interest. “So,” he said, “it’s on, then? You really going after that sheriff?”

  “I’ve been after him, as you put it, since the first time his name came up. The neutralization of this particular sheriff has always been my higher goal.”

  Dee smirked. “Seriously? I thought you was down here to teach them stupid dealers a lesson. Why’s this guy so important to you? I mean, other than the fact that he shot one of your boss’s dudes a while back? That ain’t no skin off you, right?”

  He looked at Dee. “The elimination of Sheriff Harper will ensure the restoration of my status with Mr. Brooks. My redemption, if you will.”

  “Redemption? Shit, man, that’s heavy,” Dee said. “That redemption shit could also bring down a ton of heat on you and your boss. Naw, you got some other reason for that, right?”

  He turned the air conditioner up a notch. “Not that I owe you or anyone else an explanation, but Harper is an obstacle. An impediment to the furtherance of commerce in this area. And he will not be intimidated or persuaded to move aside. And nobody stands in my way. No one. Ergo, he must be eliminated.”