by J. M. Hayes
“Is that you, Dave?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Why, it’s me, Dave,” the sheriff said, and then realized Dave and Marian Porter didn’t really know him well enough for that to be sufficient. “Sheriff English,” he added.
The Porters were quiet folks. He’d see them doing their shopping in town occasionally. They’d always taken the time to speak politely for a moment, the sheriff inquiring about Marian’s family—Dave had none surviving, and they had no children of their own—and how Porter’s crops were doing. The Porters, in turn, would ask after the sheriff’s daughters or suggest he seemed to be getting around better and that they were pleased to see it. Then both parties would go their separate ways.
“You aren’t welcome here. Not if you’ve come to disarm us. You should know we are prepared to defend our rights. We will not give up our guns.” And then Dave Porter read the sheriff the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
After that, the only sound was a faint hiss from the cheap speaker and the wind sweeping through Porter’s trees. This being Central Kansas, where the wind always blew, it sounded like silence.
What the hell was going on here? He’d come to ask about a rumored assault on a flag decoration and was being met with a recently fortified farm yard and the broad hint he might be shot if he were to trespass on their property.
“Why on earth would you think I’ve come to take your guns?”
“Because I’ve heard the Obama confiscation has begun, and that you, as a representative of our new totalitarian government, are going about the county seizing arms.”
“Have you been talking to Don Crabtree?”
“I will not reveal my sources to the representative of a tyrannical regime.”
“Dave, somebody urinated on Don’s yard this morning. A bad joke is all I think it was. But Don decided the Conrad boys did it and threatened to kill them. I was about to arrest Don, until his daughter gave me his guns and begged me to let her and her mother keep him for the holiday. That what you’re talking about?”
“That’s not the way I heard it.”
The sheriff shook his head. “No, I don’t suppose it is. But if I were out running around the county seizing guns on the order of the federal government, do you suppose I’d be doing it by myself? Check the sky, Dave. There aren’t any helicopters up there, black or any other color. It’s just me out here in my old station wagon, sitting at your gate.”
The sheriff looked at the berm again. The earth, where the most recent snow hadn’t stuck, was quite fresh. Surely not, he thought, but he couldn’t help from asking. “This gate and your earthworks, you didn’t throw these all up for me, did you?”
Dave Porter read him the Second Amendment again, then added, “But no, I graded and built that gate earlier this week. Installed the speaker yesterday.”
“For God’s sake, Dave, were you expecting me to come seize your guns, then?”
“I been expecting someone to come try and take my guns since this Marxist-Fascist government seized power. But I hear you’re well-armed for the task now. That you’ve got automatic weapons with you. All of Crabtree’s weapons, for that matter. That gives me pause, Sheriff.”
So that Uzi was an illegal weapon. The sheriff decided he would give Don Crabtree reason to regret its purchase. Less for having it than for spreading wild rumors.
“I’m carrying that same old .38 Smith and Wesson I’ve had for years. Nothing else. If I’ve got automatic weapons, they’re Crabtree’s, and they’re locked in a jail cell back in Buffalo Springs. I’m not here to take your weapons, Dave. I came because I heard someone shot out some lights on a decoration you put up and I thought it might be the same person who caused this morning’s troubles. If I can determine who that is, I might be able to keep the Conrads and the Crabtrees from killing each other. That’s why I’m here. Though I decided I should inquire about your upside down flag, as well.”
The silence returned for a few moments, and then Dave Porter stepped around his earthworks, threw his shotgun to his shoulder, and fired. The sheriff almost fell on his butt from surprise. Trying to jump to a shooter’s stance so he could draw his gun and defend himself proved more than his bad leg would allow and he ended up leaning against the side of his Taurus.
“Damn coyote running down the middle of the road, bold as brass,” Porter explained. “And I clean missed him.”
The sheriff finished checking himself for fresh wounds. Besides the shotgun, he noticed, Porter had a pair of pistols strapped to his waist. At least he wasn’t pointing anything at the sheriff.
“Jesus, Dave. I thought you’d killed me.”
The man had the good sense to look embarrassed. “Well, I apologize. For the less than gracious greeting, too, especially on the day of our Lord’s birth. But until I reassure myself, I’m not letting you in.”
“You don’t have to. But can you tell me, please, if someone shot at some decorations you put up?”
“They did. Five nights ago. Put out a bunch of bulbs in the Old Glory display I hung up on our front porch.”
“Were you or Marian hurt? Those bullets, did they penetrate your house? Are they embedded somewhere I might recover them? They could point me to the culprit. And, once I’ve found him, I’ll convict him.”
Porter looked down at his boots and scuffed the dirty snow with one. “Well, they weren’t bullets, exactly.”
“But you said…?”
“Rocks. Smooth river pebbles. From a slingshot if I had to guess.”
The sheriff spread his arms, taking in Porter and his guns and gate and earthworks. “And so you….”
“Well,” Porter confessed, “I may have overreacted a little.”
***
Sergeant Parker wouldn’t normally have spent Christmas at Tucson Police Headquarters, but that’s where she was when Mad Dog called. In the usual scheme of things it would have taken a bomb to get her there on Christmas Day. That was because she was the star of TPD’s bomb squad.
This Christmas was different. She, like virtually every off-duty officer in Southern Arizona who’d heard, had headed for the office to be useful or hang around and wait for news. It was a catastrophic day for law enforcement when an Arizona governor-elect got himself assassinated, especially in such a spectacular fashion.
At least the media didn’t have the story yet. Or the few reporters who’d heard hints had been persuaded to sit on them.
When Mad Dog’s call went dead, Parker slapped a Post-It with her cell number on the entrance to her cubicle and ran out. She grabbed a bomb squad buddy, jumped in her personal car, a Ford Focus, and pointed it west. They were only a few blocks from the gentrified part of residential downtown where that yellow Victorian house stood. She could drive there faster than she could get a unit to respond on a crazy day like this.
“Where we going?” Anderson asked. Anderson was a compact little man who thought fast and moved slow—unless the situation required otherwise. A good combination when your job obliged you to handle materials that could leave nothing behind but bone shards and tooth fragments to put inside your flag-draped coffin.
“A friend of mine’s in trouble.” Parker knew Mad Dog and his brother thanks to the events that ended her first stint with TPD. A routine traffic stop turned into a domestic situation on steroids. A man had rigged a bomb to his wife. It killed her. So Parker ran away and took the law enforcement job least likely to put her in a similar situation. She became one of Englishman’s deputies in Benteen County, Kansas. Just in time, of course, for a series of bombings. She’d saved some lives, regained her confidence, and turned herself into the person you wanted around when an explosive de
vice turned up.
Sergeant Parker knew a bunch of stories about Mad Dog and his wonder wolf. She began lining up the best ones for Anderson, after she told him what this was all about. But Anderson’s mind was elsewhere.
“Are they positive that skin was the new governor’s?”
“That’s what I hear.” It was a subject she wanted information on, too, but she had to get Anderson ready for the situation they faced. “We’re looking for a big guy—six-two, bulky, shaved head. He was threatened by someone with one of those Mossberg Taser shotguns. You know what they look like?”
“Sure, like a toy.”
“If I got the address right, it’s going to be somewhere around Railroad and 15th. In view of a yellow Victorian with a Santa Claus on the balcony.”
On any day but Christmas, Sergeant Parker couldn’t have crossed downtown Tucson in a hurry without lights and siren. But the streets were as empty as she had ever seen them. The houses were probably packed—people opening presents and sitting down to holiday feasts. A few new bicycles wobbled down the streets, but no cars. And, when they got there, she found no sign of Mad Dog or his assailant. Parker cruised around the block. Then another.
“What I heard,” Anderson said, “was Governor Hyde came down to go hiking with his daughter. Now he’s flayed and she’s missing.”
“You sure, or is the missing daughter a rumor?” Parker turned another corner. Kids played football in a yard and a UPS truck crossed the street a couple of blocks down. Nothing else.
“Hell,” Anderson said. “Nobody’s saying anything officially, but I heard about the daughter from a Captain who ought to know.”
Hyde chose a trophy wife for his second marriage. His first wife had given him a daughter who should be about eleven or twelve now. That wife lived up in Oro Valley—a long way from the Sewa Reservation where Heather English, Mad Dog’s niece of all people, had apparently found the governor’s skin. The connection between Heather and Mad Dog was one reason Parker had taken his wild phone call seriously.
“Don’t see how they can keep this thing quiet much longer,” Anderson said.
Parker agreed. She was on the verge of deciding this was another wild Mad Dog chase and returning to headquarters. She circled around to the original location she’d thought Mad Dog might be calling from for one last look.
Then she saw the cell phone at the foot of a fence. This was a paved alley. It bordered on back yard fences and the fronts of guest houses and garages. In the midst of a financial crisis that had struck local government about as subtly as an atomic weapon, the paving here was strewn with pot holes. The edges of the alley were difficult to define, but the phone was a little too geometrical and a little too shiny to blend with broken asphalt.
“What?” Anderson said as she slammed on the brakes and piled out of the car. She pulled a plastic glove out of her pocket, picked the phone up, and checked the last number called—hers.
“Your friend’s?” Anderson was right behind her, hand on his service weapon, surveying the alley and the yards beyond.
“And possible evidence of a kidnapping,” Parker said, “that might be related to the governor’s case.”
“You’re shitting me,” Anderson said.
She didn’t explain. Something she’d just seen didn’t make sense.
“Say?” Parker said. “Does UPS deliver on Christmas?”
***
Heather wished she had time to dress more appropriately for Elvis and the jungle room—anything but her tribal uniform. Wished she could exchange her marked Sewa patrol unit for something that didn’t shout cop. But a delay could spoil this. Even the time it would take to check in with tribal authorities and explain where she was. Besides, they’d probably tell her to get the hell back to the reservation.
For now, they were busy with the governor. That was clear from the radio chatter. Though the chatter took care never to mention their VIP corpse. They were trying to keep this from making the news as long as they could. So, once she got Elvis’ address, Heather simply switched her radio off. Left her cell on—set to vibrate, which seemed appropriate for the jungle room. Captain Matus and the tribal police still had a way to contact her, but she could decide whether to answer.
The place turned out to be a junkyard. And not a well-organized one. There wasn’t any sign to indicate a business name or sales office. The yard was filled with old cars and abandoned appliances. No collector’s items, and no people. She cruised slowly past and pulled around a fence leaving her four-wheel-drive out of view from the lot. She stayed behind the fence, as best she could, and approached the yard’s battered chain link gate. It hung crooked and open. The only structure on the property was a trailer—old and tired, its once jaunty-pink siding now sunburned and peeling, its tires flat and rotting to shreds.
A stack of concrete blocks stood in front of the trailer’s door. Heather avoided them, moving to the side from which the doors opened—out for a screen door that would no longer stop flies smaller than a microwave, in for a main door that looked to have been kicked in more than once. She listened for a moment. Music. Blue Hawaii inside. Tan Arizona out here, but for the touch of green of a paloverde tree sprouting from where the motor of a sixty-something Ford should have been. The car had to have been parked there for at least a decade. Heather reached up and knocked on the door.
“That you, Angel?”
Heather made a noncommittal noise and the door swung in. A man opened the screen and stood there in a bathrobe. Polyester, covered with a bold paisley pattern designed to induce nausea. The man was short and skinny, except for a protruding belly. Pale, scrawny legs and knobby knees beneath his robe. Dirty toenails completed the romantic effect, in a pair of mismatched flip flops. And he held a tray on which stood a pitcher and saguaro-armed margarita glasses.
“Where…?”
Heather grabbed the hem of his robe and tugged. Not hard, but the thing was already arranged to be open enough to display his hollow chest. And its belt must have been loose, for Angel’s convenience. It pulled open and displayed something even scrawnier than his legs.
“What…Who…?” And then he spun and tried to dart back into the trailer. The margaritas rained onto the concrete blocks and the pitcher and glasses tumbled into the dust. He didn’t get far. Heather still held the hem of his robe and it pulled away from him—revealing a skinny butt adorned with pimples—before he reached the end of the cloth. His feet came out from under him and he fell hard. Heather followed him inside. Belatedly, he tried to cover himself. For which Heather was grateful. He had small hands, but no problem hiding his miniscule manhood.
“You can’t come in here,” he squeaked. “I know my rights.”
“Flashing is against the law,” she told him. “I witnessed a crime in progress. That gives me the right.”
“But…” he stammered, “but nobody was supposed to see me except Angel. Where is she?”
Heather shook her head. Elvis was something else. Something from the rodent family, maybe, except that was an insult to rats.
“I’ve got no idea where Angel is,” Heather told him, kicking his robe so that it covered a little more of his repulsive nudity. “If she’s lucky, she’s having a root canal instead of a date with you.”
He gathered the thin fabric closer.
“You tore my robe off. If I was exposed, it’s your fault, not mine. Now what do you want?”
Heather took another step inside. Close enough to loom over him, especially since she was taller and a lot more muscular. Close enough so one of her boots was on the hem of that robe, making it certain he couldn’t go anywhere. She put her hand on the butt of her service weapon and let her eyes take in the trailer’s interior. A dusty iridescent nude painted on black velvet and a spread—unfortunately, precisely the right word—centerfold of Miss October, 2006, decorated his walls. That
was the classy stuff. His furniture deserved to be out in the yard with the other junk. The place appeared empty except for him. And he cowered in a way that made it seem unlikely he thought anyone would come to his rescue.
“Let’s start with that ring you ordered from Colors.”
His expression changed. Before she could decide what that meant he kicked her in the knee and grabbed for something behind the door. Something, Heather thought as she stumbled, that looked very much like a MAC 10 .45-caliber machine pistol.
***
When Mad Dog’s mind and body reconnected, he was in the rear of some kind of vehicle. A van, he thought. He was on a metal floor, and it hurt whenever they went over bumps. He lay on his back with his arms behind him. He tried to move them and discovered they were secured that way. His legs were bound, too.
“Why are you doing this?” Mad Dog called to the driver. It didn’t exactly come out clearly. Mad Dog’s mouth and vocal cords weren’t as fully in touch with his brain as they should be. Still, the kid who’d tasered him answered.
“I’m the only one who can hear you, so stuff a sock in it. If you don’t, I’ll come back and literally stuff a sock in it.”
Mad Dog decided to be quiet. The kid had proved to be a man of his word so far. If Mad Dog pushed his head back, he could see the top of the windshield at the front of the truck. And out of it, not one damn thing that was useful. Just clouds. He couldn’t even tell where the sun was to get an idea of what direction they were going.
The van came to a sudden stop. Mad Dog slid forward and bumped his head on something. The truck started again, turned, and palm fronds swept across his view. No help there. Palms like that were all over Tucson. But there was something about the sound of the truck that seemed familiar. He’d heard it before. In fact, he’d heard it that morning when the horn sounded and he got out of his sweat lodge to see who was there and it had been a brown truck, almost lost to view. UPS, he’d thought then. And UPS, he thought now. He was in a UPS truck, or something like it.