by Mark Reps
At the back door the man went right to work. First things first. The electrical box that fed the building and controlled the alarm system and surveillance cameras was padlocked shut. He was prepared for this. He grabbed his cutters, sliced it off, and put the padlock in his pocket. Reaching inside the box, he flipped off all power to the gun shop. He shut the electrical box cover and slipped a duplicate padlock in place. No sense arousing suspicion if someone wandered by. The gym bag was on the ground. In went the metal cutters and out came a thin piece of metal. He knew there was enough space to slide the metal tool through the small crack between the door and the jamb. In it went. He felt for the resistance of the wood that sat in the U-hooks. With a quick, hard, upward jerk of the instrument he dislodged the two by four piece of wood. He heard it crash to the floor. If there was a secondary alarm system, it either hadn’t been triggered or was a silent one.
He returned the tool to his gym bag and grabbed another tool of his trade. This one was more sophisticated and perhaps even one of a kind. The man had made it himself. It was also a thin piece of metal with a small hinge six inches from the end. When a trip mechanism at the opposite end was pushed, the hinge flipped to ninety degrees and the self-locking mechanism made it rigid. It slid through the narrow space. He pressed the end and heard it click into place. He maneuvered the tool, something he had practiced hundreds of times, to precisely where he wanted it. With a simple twist of the wrist the dead bolt flipped open. He pushed on the door and was inside. No alarms sounded. He smiled victoriously.
He dropped his tool into the small gym bag, picked it up and carried the tools of his trade inside. The door behind was quickly, noiselessly shut. Making his way from the back of the store to the sales room, he kept his eye on the street. Much to his satisfaction there was no movement out there. He walked deliberately to the front door and flipped over the open sign. With the lights off and closed sign showing anyone passing by would assume the owner was still at lunch and likely not lean against the glass to peak in.
He made a bee-line to the case that held handguns. It was locked. He knew smashing it might cause an alarm to go off. Reaching into the large outer pouch of his pack he grabbed a glass cutting tool. Placing the suction cup on the countertop, he arced a perfect circle, clicked the release and removed a six inch diameter piece of glass. His shopping took a matter of seconds as his gaze fell upon his personal preference, a .38 Colt Diamondback. He grabbed four of them, fondling the first for a few seconds. He then wrapped each, before carefully placing them into the small gym bag. The .22 was a no brainer, a Walther P22. It was for his partner. It needed to be small for his little hands. He turned to the case that held the ammunition, grabbed what he needed and stuffed that into the gym bag. A display rack held some gun cleaning kits. The Otis Elite was an easy choice. He eyed a wide variety of holsters. One grabbed his attention. It was a special military style that held two guns. It was perfect for a man who might get into a shootout. It disappeared into his gym bag too. He glanced at the clock. Eighteen minutes had passed since he entered. Two minutes to spare.
With one last look around he headed for the back door. Something on the owner’s chair in the back office caught his eye. It was a Kevlar flak jacket that appeared brand new. Grabbing it, he chuckled, “Frosting on the cake.” With that he was out the door. On his way to the Camry he hurled a glob of tobacco laden spit at a board that covered the window of the abandoned building. It hit dead center, precisely where he had aimed.
The chemicals in his brain lit up. Just one more thing he did perfectly. Life was great and it was about to get a whole lot better. Self-congratulations were in order.
7
Almost two days later Delbert had yet to regain consciousness. Doc Yackley said his vitals were stable. Other than that he told the sheriff all they could do was wait.
“Delbert? Delbert can you hear me?” Little could Sheriff Hanks know that his voice landed on deaf ears and a badly damaged brain. Nothing was registering. The hodgepodge of signals coming from the command center of Delbert’s brain was functioning only enough to keep him alive.
“Delbert? Delbert, can you open your eyes?”
It seemed like such a simple request. All Delbert had to do was flip up his eyelids. But somewhere between Zeb’s directive to perform such a basic task and the reality of putting it into action laid an unseen barrier.
“Jesus, Doc, his eyeballs are fluttering beneath his lids. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
Zeb’s voice seemed to stir a reaction from Delbert.
“Look, Doc. Look at that damn silly grin he’s got on his mug. I’d be willing to bet you lunch that he knows I’m standing right here by his side. Hell, yes. He knows it.”
Doc Yackley looked glum. “Say something else to him.”
“Delbert? Delbert, it’s Zeb. Just relax and open your eyes. Come on, Del, old buddy. You can do it.
Delbert’s eyelids may as well have been cemented shut. He could not produce a single voluntary action. Frustration flooded every inch of the sheriff’s being. He felt tremendous guilt, as though Delbert’s injury was totally his fault. Somehow this seemed even worse because the injured man was not only his deputy but also a longtime friend.
Mrs. Corita Funke, Delbert’s mother, stood helplessly by, watching her son.
“Corita, why don’t you stand on the other side of the bed and hold his hand? Grip it tight,” said Doc.
“What are you going to do, Dr. Yackley? Is it going to hurt my boy?”
“Don’t worry, Corita. I am going to use a bit of horse sense. It’s nothing I learned in medical school.”
Doc Yackley placed his thumb and first finger over his patient’s shoulder muscle and bore down with the power of a vise grip. Nothing. Not even a reflex reaction. The expression on Doc’s face, if anyone had been looking directly at him, turned from glum to downright dour.
His mother tried again. “Delbert, honey, you are lying in a hospital bed. Just keep your eyes shut and listen to me. You have suffered a concussion. You were hit in the head by a flying brick. You have been unconscious for two days. Del, my son, did you hear what I just said?”
Nothing. Not even a single muscle twitched on the injured deputy.
The attentive doctor watched closely for the smallest of reactions from his injured patient. A signal from Delbert’s injured brain moved his eyes making the eyelids appear to flutter by some purposeful act. His mother and the sheriff felt a ray of hope. Doc Yackley knew better than to be optimistic. Corita Funke placed her cool hand over her son’s forehead. She caressed it with all the love a mother has to give her only son. She was certain her calming assurances would quell his pain, help heal his damaged brain and bring him closer to consciousness.
“I’m staying right by your side, Del,” said Corita. “You are going to be better real soon. I can feel it in my bones.”
Delbert did not move a muscle. Delbert could not move a muscle.
8
“I’d say you have a lucky star shining over your head. Maybe even a guardian angel or two. For sure the Ga’an are keeping their eyes on you.”
Eskadi Black Robes, tribal chairman of the San Carlos Apache Reservation, shut the door to Deputy Kate Steele’s office and wrapped his arms tenderly around her. The blunt truth of his comment about the Apache Gods keeping an eye on her sent a peaceful awareness through her. A flying brick had missed her head by inches. Broken pieces of brick had struck her face causing a small cut over her right eye. Her uniform had been splattered with dust and shattered bits of concrete and clay. Both she and Sheriff Hanks had only minor injuries.
“You are right, Eskadi. Someone or some greater power was looking after me.”
Josh Diamond was not quite so lucky. Now, almost two days after the explosion, Josh was fresh out of the hospital with three fractured ribs, a broken wrist and enough cuts and bruises to make him look like he had been sucker punched in a street fight. Doc Yackley had made him stay the extra day as he was c
oncerned about possible internal bleeding and organ swelling. Deputy Funke, according to Doc Yackley, took a direct hit from a ten-inch brick to the base of the skull and has a skull fracture, a severe concussion and maybe worse.
“You must have the luck o’ the Irish, eh, lassie?”
Eskadi’s attempted Irish brogue left more than a little to the imagination.
“I don’t know what it was, the Ga’an or leprechauns or…” Kate patted her left shirt pocket. Inside was her inherited good luck charm, a baseball card of Lefty Mathewson, the great New York Giants pitcher from the early 1900’s.
“Whatever it was that saved you, I, for one, am awfully glad about it. What do you hear about Deputy Funke? Is he doing any better?”
“The sheriff just called from the hospital. Delbert’s the same. Dr. Yackley didn’t give the sheriff any good news. Sheriff Hanks said Doc sounded uncertain as to any progress Delbert might make any time soon.”
“How about the other guy? The one with the bloodhounds? What’s his name, Jim somebody?”
“Josh Diamond.” Kate was sure Eskadi knew Josh’s name.
“Josh Diamond,” cackled Eskadi. “Now there’s a White man’s name for you.”
“Josh is okay. He just got released from the hospital according to Helen. I guess they wanted him to stay one more day, but he wouldn’t have it.”
“Tough guy, eh?”
“Independent might be a better word for it.”
“He’s new around here, isn’t he?”
“He’s an old border patrol friend of the sheriff’s. They worked hard to bring in some very bad people who were trafficking both humans and drugs across the border. You sound like you don’t like him?”
“He’s just another White man living in Indian Territory as far as I’m concerned.”
Kate knew it was time to change the subject.
“Can we get down to business?”
“What? It’s not good enough for me to come into town just to see you?” asked Eskadi. “We have to do some business together?”
“What’s with you? You come in sounding like an Irishmen and the next thing I know you’re sounding like a Jewish banker.”
“Good one, huh? I’m just getting in some practice for the Morenci Rodeo Days talent contest. I’m going to mimic as many different tribes of White people as possible,” laughed Eskadi.
“You never let up do you?”
“A guy has to have his shtick.”
“Okay, funny man, let’s have a listen to the tape. I want to know if you recognize the voice. I know it’s a long shot, but everyone around here seems to think the person is at least part Mescalero.”
Eskadi Black Robes stood silently staring out the window, hands clasped behind his firm muscular back, as Kate played the tape.
“Play it again, please.”
Kate admired Eskadi’s physique. His shiny, black hair traveled over his broad shoulders, stopping near his waist and firm buttocks. The sleeves of his black tee shirt stretched tightly over his upper arms exhibited perfectly formed triceps.
“It’s definitely not the voice of a San Carlos Apache. The man does speak like a Mexican, excuse me, Hispanic, who spent more than a little time conversing with Apaches. He has stolen a little inflection from our dialect. I do have to say, he does have a Mescalero accent.”
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me you recognize the voice?”
“I can’t help you with that. That is going to take real police work. That is the reason you make the big money and the rest of us just scratch out a living.”
“You’re a laugh a minute,” chided Kate.
“I’ll bet you anything he speaks Hispanic with a Mescalero accent, just like he does English,” said Eskadi.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Kate. “You also mentioned you might know something about the stolen cars?”
“I’ve heard some talk that might interest you. It’s one of those little stories one person mentions to another and another until finally it passes through enough people it make its way to the tribal office. Sometimes I feel like I live in gossip central.”
“That’s the way the whole world works. Please tell me what you have.”
“By the time the story reached me it went like this. Eugene Topy was fishing for small mouth bass over at the big lake. He fell asleep and dreamed of wild animals. In his dream he heard a coyote howling. Naturally he woke up and looked around. After he realized it was a dream he noticed his rod and reel were missing. To hear him tell it, some big fish nabbed it and took it right to the bottom of the lake. Hannah Udom, his cousin, told me about it. She claims it serves him right because he was probably drunk anyway. I talked with Eugene. He says he only had two beers and was as sober as a White man at work.”
The absurd human details of Eskadi’s stories were endearing to Kate.
“It started to rain pretty hard and Eugene decided to go home in case a big storm was coming in. He moseyed over to his truck and took a back road home. He wasn’t in any particular hurry because his wife’s twin sister and her five kids were staying with them. He knew he would catch holy heck from the both of them when they found out he lost his fishing gear. Eugene had been bragging earlier about all the fish he was going to bring home. Now, not only was he empty-handed, he had to find a way to scrape together a few dollars to buy some new fishing equipment. His wife controls the money, and Eugene says she’s pretty tight with a buck.”
Kate knew Eugene Topy. He and his wife ran a little burrito stand at community gatherings on the reservation. He was a big man, four hundred pounds and six and half feet tall. His wife, Melina, couldn’t have been five feet tall and was as thin as a reed in a dry lake.
“When Eugene pulled up to the house, they figured out pretty quickly that he had been skunked at the lake. They put on an act like they were practically starving to death and ready to eat any old bottom fish he might have been able to drag up. Melina, her sister and all those kids were sitting there at the table with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other. They were pounding on the table, making a great big scene. When he told them he didn’t have any fish, they chased him out of the house. He said they were screaming that they were going to cut off his leg, cook it up with some sour greens and eat it for dinner. Poor old Eugene hopped back into his truck, rolled up the windows and locked the doors. He was sure they had gone crazy. He started honking the horn and shouting at them. Finally, he got up enough courage, opened the window just a crack and asked them if they had eaten locoweed. When those sisters heard that, they started laughing so hard they fell down on the ground and started rolling around. That’s when Melina noticed it.”
“Noticed what?” asked Kate.
“When she was rolling around on the ground, she looked up and noticed the license plate on the truck was missing. Eugene bought the truck over in Tucson. He never bothered to get new plates when the old ones expired. Maybe he didn’t want to pay for them. Maybe his wife wouldn’t give him the money. Who knows? He never got arrested because he only drove the back roads from his house to the lake.”
“But now without any plate at all, Melina figured he might get pulled over?” asked Kate.
“Exactly,” said Eskadi. “I guess she scolded him so bad it didn’t take him long to make the decision to come into the tribal office and tell me about it.”
“What did he think you were going to do?”
“He figured if he told the tribal police he had been driving the truck for over three years without legitimate reservation plates, they might run him in. He asked me what to do. He wanted me to straighten out his mess for him.”
“What did you tell him?” asked Kate.
“I told him if he brought me the truck’s registration, I would help him get some valid plates. He didn’t have the registration card. I don’t think he even knew what it was. So we got the vehicle identification number off the truck and I called the motor vehicle department in Tucson. That was yesterday morning.”
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“What exactly is this leading to?”
“You were telling me about all the stolen cars. It seemed ironic to me. Whites steal cars, Hispanics steal hubcaps and Indians just steal the license plates. Now that’s what I call progressive poverty.”
“Is that part of your shtick for the talent show too?”
“It wasn’t. But now that you mention it…”
Kate rolled her eyes.
“About the DMV?”
“The DMV called me back this morning. They wanted to know who owned the truck. I explained all I wanted was to transfer the title. I told them since it was a reservation vehicle it was none of their damn business who owned it. Which, it isn’t. I was polite as punch. They demanded to know who owned the truck.”
Kate shook her head.
“I’ll just bet, knowing how much you like government officials, nothing they said sat too well with you…especially after how you tried to be so cooperative.”
“When I wouldn’t kowtow to their jack boot style of questioning, they got all huffy. I hung up on them. All ghost skins want to do is make life miserable for the rest of us.”
“Did you ever hear the old saying, ‘You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar’?”
“Why should I be nice to them? When was the last time the government did anything to help America’s First People?”
Kate knew Eskdai had a bit of a point. “Was that the end of it?” asked Kate.
“Hell no. About two minutes later a detective with Arizona Highway Patrol called. He asked me a bunch of questions about the truck. According to him it wasn’t possible the plates had just been stolen. He claimed they were in the hands of the Tucson police and had been for over a week. The detective said the state was going to send an investigator down to talk to me. I’m sure they think it’s my truck.”