by John A. Daly
“Drop the pipe and kick it over here,” he instructed Sean.
“No,” Sean said brazenly.
The man’s eyes widened, urging Sean to appreciate the situation he was in. “Excuse me?”
“If you were gonna kill me, you’d have done it already.”
Clearly angry, he gripped his gun tighter. “Sean, no one wants to kill you, but let me assure you that I will pull this trigger if I need to.”
Sean’s eyes narrowed. “You will, huh?”
“Yes. I will. You’ve gotten yourself mixed up in some serious shit that doesn’t concern you, and you’ve put us in a pretty tough spot.”
“Good,” Sean sneered.
The man shook his head in disgust and repeated his order for Sean to slide over the pipe.
Sean ignored him. “What did you do with Andrew Carson, you son of a bitch?”
He glared at Sean for a moment before responding. “He should be the least of your worries right now. Now, if you don’t want to spend the rest of your time in here wearing a bullet in your gut, you’ll toss over that pipe right now.”
Sean returned the man’s glare, unsure of what to read from his demeanor. Back at home, the man hadn’t come across like a professional. He certainly wasn’t someone who could handle himself in a physical situation. He was, however, clearly desperate and thus unpredictable. He might actually be willing to do what he was threatening.
He side-tossed the pipe to the man, who managed to snag it in the air without deviating his attention from Sean. The man tossed it behind him onto the floor outside of the freezer. It landed with a series of clangs.
The room behind the man was barely lit and there wasn’t much to see. The edge of a wooden table. A couple of broomsticks leaning up against a wall. Beyond them all, however, Sean was sure he could make out the first few steps of a staircase leading upwards in the dark. He had to be in a basement. The man’s body obscured the rest of Sean’s view.
“Don’t try any more of this bullshit,” warned the man. “We’ll know if you do.”
“What’s your plan here, ace?” asked Sean. “Am I supposed to live down here?”
“For now,” he answered. “Just be thankful we didn’t tie you up.”
“Just be thankful you’re still breathing,” Sean retorted. “The next time I get my hands on you, you won’t be.” He fixed a wicked glare on the man to let him know that he meant it.
The look on the man’s face suggested that he believed Sean. He began slowly inching his way backward, keeping his gun trained forward. Sean’s stare continued to burn a hole right through him. Once the man was standing in the doorway, his hand latched onto the freezer door and prepared to close it.
Sean spoke again. “When do I get to see Norman Booth?”
The man froze, his eyes growing larger. “What?” He took a step forward as his hand shook.
Sean’s question had clearly struck a nerve. “Booth. I know he’s here. When do I get to see him?”
There was a crackle in the man’s voice—an unmistakable sense of breathlessness that dropped from his mouth. He asked quickly, “What do you know about Norman Booth?”
Sean smiled at the man’s disheveled demeanor. “I know that he’s the man calling the shots, and that you’re just his monkey.”
To Sean’s surprise, his words evoked what seemed to be a sense of relief in the man’s posture. His lips curled at the corners. Whatever leverage Sean had earned by bringing up Norman Booth’s name appeared to have swiftly disintegrated. Sean didn’t understand why.
“Enjoy your stay, Mr. Coleman,” the man spoke confidently. “If you behave yourself, you’ll get out of this unharmed.”
He exited the freezer.
As the door was closing shut, Sean was half-tempted to try and rush it, but the plan seemed too risky, especially with him being unarmed. The door closed with a click, followed soon afterwards by a muffled snap that Sean guessed was created from a padlock being secured.
“Remember what I said, asshole!” he yelled with his hand cupped to his mouth. “What you got last time was just a taste!”
The man said nothing in return. His response came in the form of the overhead lights inside the freezer going dark.
Sean’s penance for misbehaving.
Chapter 19
Oldhorse was slumped awkwardly along the backseat of Joan Parker’s car. Wrapped in a sun-bleached, woven blanket with one of his legs outstretched to the side, the desperately weak man fought through the immense pain of his injuries. He grimaced as he spoke carefully, telling the police chief in spurts of breath that it was Alex Martinez who was responsible for what had happened to him. He had smelled the scent of Martinez’s aftershave just before the blast.
“It was revenge,” he uttered. “He knows what I did to Montoya.”
Toby nearly cut him off, out of breath himself. “Ron Oldhorse wouldn’t let us take him to the hospital until we brought him here first, Chief Lumbergh. He needed to tell you about Alex.”
The boy explained how they had stopped by the cabin with a dish of peach cobbler, which was Oldhorse’s favorite—a fact that the boy was irritatingly adamant about. They had found his home in ruin and Oldhorse lying unconscious behind it, a bloody mess. Joan took over the telling of the story when her son got too caught up in its irrelevant details. Both Parkers’ swollen faces showed that they had been sobbing most of the way back to town.
Oldhorse was barely recognizable to Lumbergh. Dried blood coated much of his weathered face. What looked to be a large, white t-shirt—stained crimson red—was wrapped around his forehead. Sections of his long, mangled hair were singed from the blast. The chief could only imagine what the rest of the rugged man’s body looked like under the blanket.
Lumbergh told Oldhorse that Martinez was already in custody, then he and Redick carefully moved the injured man into the sheriff ’s car. Joan and Toby got inside with him.
“I’m sorry I can’t see this through with you, Chief,” muttered Oldhorse.
“It’s all right. You’ve done plenty. Just get yourself taken care of.” Lumbergh considered telling Oldhorse about Sean, but decided not to. He felt his friend didn’t need to worry about it. He also didn’t want to further upset Toby, who idolized Sean.
Lumbergh was about to close the car door when he heard Oldhorse speak his name. He poked his head inside to hear what his wounded comrade wanted to say.
Oldhorse leaned forward as best he could. “A shark doesn’t let a pilot fish kill its prey.”
Lumbergh squinted at the cryptic statement, letting its meaning soak through his head.
In no time, the deputy who had previously been watching Martinez was sitting behind the steering wheel of the sheriff ’s car. He sped through the parking lot with his three passengers inside and tore up the largely melted road toward Lakeland. Sirens howled away.
Redick received a radio call seconds later, before the men even had a chance to step inside the police station. Another deputy, Bartels, was on the other end, one that had been sent to Lakeland. He was reporting in from the motel that matched up to an orange key that had
been discovered in Martinez’s pocket during his pat-down.
With the possibility of Sean Coleman being held inside the room, there was probable cause to enter—along with the emphatic consent of the motel’s owner who had had his own reservations about the quirky tenant.
“The guy’s a nut-job, Sheriff,” said the deputy from inside the motel room.
“Tell us something we don’t know, Bartels,” replied Redick.
“He’s got a hard-on for Lumbergh. All kinds of photos of him in here. Some are from newspapers. It looks like he even took some of them himself, from a distance, probably without the chief ’s knowledge.”
Lumbergh shook his head, angry with himself for never picking up on any suspicious behavior from the young man he had had over to his house several times for dinner and cordial conversation.
The deputy continued. “He scribbled some Spanish shit all over a bunch of this stuff. A single word with red pen or marker.”
Lumbergh snatched the radio from Redick’s hand. “Does it say mentiroso?”
“Uh. Yeah. How did you know that?” came Bartels’ voice.
“Son of a bitch,” Lumbergh whispered. He then asked, “What else is in his room? Anything that can get us anywhere on Sean?”
“Yeah. He’s got a bunch of video tapes in here. Hold on. There’s already one in the VCR. This thing’s been beat to shit. I hope it still works.”
Lumbergh and Redick exchanged pensive glances. A moment later, the chief heard his own voice blast out through the radio speaker.
“This is the first I’ve heard of this allegation. I’m certainly willing to discuss this topic with the county sheriff if there are any facts that need to be ironed out.”
“It’s a press conference, Chief,” the deputy’s voice weighed in. “You’re standing outside your house in it.”
“Is that where the tape was when you started it, Bartels? You didn’t forward it or rewind it all, did you?”
“No, sir. Sir, I’m also seeing some building material in here, laid out on a nightstand. Pipes. Wiring. He might have been trying to make a crude bomb.”
“Yeah,” answered Lumbergh. “He did.”
“Sir?”
“Does anything else stick out in the room, Bartels? Anything obvious? We can go through the pictures and tapes later.”
“Well. . . Other than what I’ve already described, there’s not much in here. The place looks like it was barely lived in. That’s odd, because the motel owner tells me he’s been staying here for months.”
The deputy’s statement jarred Lumbergh. He’d been led to believe that Martinez had lived in an apartment with roommates while he took criminal justice courses at a community college. He even had an address on file somewhere, which had to be fake. Being that Martinez was an unpaid intern, Lumbergh’s office was never compelled to verify the address at the time of his hire.
“I’ve got some clothes hanging in the closet and folded in some of the drawers,” said the deputy, who was continuing to work his way through the motel room.
“Anything that would fit a larger man than Martinez?” asked Lumbergh. “Any women’s clothes? Is there any sign at all that more than one person was staying with him?”
After a few moments, the deputy answered. “I don’t think so. The clothes all look like his. There’s only one bed in the room. He’s got a busted lamp here in his trashcan, along with a McDonald’s bag and some candy wrappers.”
Lumbergh could hear the sound of crumpling papers.
“The receipt stapled to the bag only shows a single meal. Egg McMuffin Combo. With cheese.”
Lumbergh rolled his eyes.
“There are some other receipts in here,” continued the deputy.
“From where?”
“A couple from a diner in Winston. A gas station in Lakeland. Wait a minute. Here’s one that looks to be for the bomb supplies, at least some of them.”
Lumbergh asked where the items were purchased.
“A hardware store in . . . Las Cruces?”
Lumbergh’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “Las Cruces, New Mexico?” he breathlessly asked.
“Yes. NM.”
“Cash or charge? Is there a name on it?”
“He charged it himself. Alex Martinez.”
“What was the date of the charge?”
When Bartels answered that it was January 7 of the current year, Lumbergh tossed the radio to Redick, who was unprepared for it, fumbling it in his hands and nearly letting it drop to the snowy ground.
The chief briskly jumped up onto the porch at the front of the police station and raced inside. He snagged a clipboard off a sidewall above the reception desk and slammed it down flat. Quickly licking his thumb, he fingered through the short stack of papers pinned to its base. He soon verified that the three days Martinez had taken off earlier in the month for a family emergency spanned from January sixth to the eighth.
The sheriff reentered the station, meeting Lumbergh’s enlightened glare with confusion.
“What is it?” Redick asked.
Lumbergh didn’t answer. Instead, he hurried to the small, barred holding cell where Martinez had been placed. The intern was sitting on a short metal bench bolted to the cement floor; his legs sprawled out in front of him and his fingers interlaced behind his head as if he were relaxing.
Lumbergh glared at him, his chest throbbing along with his pulse, watching the hint of another snide smile begin to form on Martinez’s lips. He didn’t let him finish it.
“You’re not working with Lautaro Montoya at all,” he began.
Martinez’s eyes glazed over as if his hand had just been caught in a cookie jar. The smile slowly dissipated.
“You don’t know any more about where he is than I do. He doesn’t know you. You don’t know him. You don’t even know if he ever left Mexico, do you?”
Martinez was silent.
“Those calls I received. The threats. They didn’t come from Montoya. They came from you—from a cellphone you bought in Las Cruces. That pig strung up at the back door. What happened at Oldhorse’s cabin. It was all you. Nobody else.”
The intern turned his face to the side, suddenly unable to make eye contact with Lumbergh. Redick watched from beside the chief, not saying a thing.
“This isn’t about Alvar Montoya at all, is it?” Lumbergh continued. “It’s about some sick obsession you have with me.”
Martinez shook his head, seemingly in annoyance. A deep sigh left his mouth, followed with an unexpected giggle.
Redick cringed at the nonsensical reaction.
Lumbergh’s patience had been expended. “What do you want?” he roared in a voice so loud that the two other men in the room jumped. A vein protruded at the center of Lumbergh’s reddened forehead as his body shook.
Martinez’s unfocused eyes nervously darted back and forth. When they stopped, they rose to meet the raw anger in Lumbergh’s face. Martinez slowly rose to his feet and walked to the steel bars that separated him from the lawmen. He rested his forehead at the center of
two of the bars as he glared at Lumbergh.
“I’m not the one who was obsessed with you, baby pig,” he said in a tone that carried a lifetime of exhaustive torment.
Lumbergh and Martinez stared at each other intently, neither man’s eyes revealing a hint of subservience.
Redick broke the stalemate. “Who was obsessed with him then, Martinez?”
Martinez’s eyes narrowed. His face shifted into a sneer. “Mi madre,” he uttered with unfiltered disgust.
The chief didn’t visibly react to his words, but Redick’s face tightened.
“Jesus H. Christ,” the sheriff said. “Fantastic. A nut-job with mommy issues.” He threw up his hands and turned his back, walking a few steps away while he rubbed the base of his skull with his hand.
Lumbergh asked Martinez what he meant. The intern took a step back from the bars, lowered his head, and clenched his forehead in his hand. He turned his back to the lawmen and placed his other hand on the back wall of the cell. He seemed to be drained of emotional energy.
“She wanted me to be you!” he bellowed, shaking his head. “An old woman’s dying wish. She told me to go to Winston and learn from the man who slayed Alvar Montoya. The Great Chief Lumbergh. The legend. She told me to learn to be the man that I wasn’t that day.”
“What day?” asked Lumbergh, holding his temper.
Martinez began to sob, his head bobbing up and down. After a few moments, he regained some composure. “The day my father was killed.”
When Martinez spun to face Lumbergh, his eyes were red and wet with tears. He peered at the chief with an expression that suggested he was waiting for a response.