Server Down

by J. M. Hayes

  That couldn’t be. The Millers lived out of town. Isaac Miller couldn’t know where the sheriff was. Or couldn’t know from home. But he might know if he were at the We Fix It shop on Main. The sheriff hadn’t thought of that. Ed Miller, the man who’d bombed his brother’s place and the courthouse, had lived in a converted shed out back of the shop. Isaac Miller and his family lived out near Mad Dog. But evidently Isaac was at the shop.

  “Keep him busy, Mrs. Kraus,” the sheriff said, spinning a U-turn in front of the courthouse and pointing his cruiser toward Main Street.

  “You bet I will,” Mrs. Kraus said. “I just shrunk him down to pint-sized and stuffed a rancid weretoad up his nose. He ain’t doing much threatening at the moment.”

  The sheriff should have activated his lights and siren on the two blocks back to Main Street. But he was already yanking his door open and maneuvering himself, his walker, and a sawed-off shotgun out the door before he thought about it. There were lights on behind the blinds drawn over the windows in the front of We Fix It. And excited voices exchanging blame just inside. The sheriff reached down and tried the door knob. It wasn’t locked.

  ***

  Mad Dog was faintly aware of movement. He was in a car, but he couldn’t remember why or where it was going. And then the car stopped and someone opened a door behind him and did something to his feet. They closed that door and came around the car and opened another door. Someone applied snips to a plastic cord attached to his hand cuffs. Where had the hand cuffs come from? In fact, where was he and how had he gotten here?

  “Get out of the car.”

  That would be the cop who’d decided not to kill Mad Dog. It was beginning to come back to him now, or bits of it. One of the things he remembered was the cop had never told him he was under arrest or read him his rights. He thought about complaining about that and then remembered the taser.

  “Get out of the car, I said.”

  Mad Dog tried and couldn’t get his muscles to cooperate. He only managed to topple over on his face. It hurt, but he already hurt so many places that this new one didn’t matter much.

  The cop grabbed Mad Dog by his collar at the nape of his neck and dragged him out the door. Mad Dog managed to get his cuffed hands under him and keep his face from dragging along the sidewalk. But even when the cop tried to lift him, Mad Dog couldn’t get his feet under himself in order to stand. Finally, the cop gave up and left Mad Dog kneeling. He watched a drop of blood fall from his nose and splash on a cracked sidewalk through which a few bits of dry Bermuda grass poked and waited patiently for rain.

  The cop stepped away from Mad Dog for a minute and then there were two cops. Each one grabbed Mad Dog by a shoulder. They dragged him up an ancient flight of concrete stairs to what seemed to be a loading dock, then over to a battered wooden door that a guy in a suit held for them. There was a hall, and at the end of it, another door. Inside that, an office. At least that was what it said on the pebbled glass that made up its top half. No one had labeled offices this way for the last half century and that made Mad Dog think he probably wasn’t someplace they were going to offer him a phone call or an attorney.

  Mad Dog didn’t get much of a look at the place before the two men shoved him. He lost his balance and ended up on his hands and knees, facing a scuffed wooden floor. His muscles wouldn’t cooperate yet, but his mind had begun grasping details again, and trying to sort them out.

  “He was as good as dead, Chief, then he started shouting lawsuit. Got some citizens interested. So I brought him in, like you said.”

  Chief? Mad Dog didn’t get it. If the police chief was here, Mad Dog should be in jail, getting fingerprinted and photographed and having his belt and shoelaces confiscated.

  “No problem,” someone said. “I know what we’ll do with him.”

  Mad Dog managed to raise his head. He could sense the two cops who’d carried him in, one at either shoulder. They were both in uniform—shoes, pleated slacks. A big man in a cheap suit leaned against the edge of the desk. Another, in the kind of suit you couldn’t get off the rack, sat behind it. The standing one opened his mouth and spoke—a smoker’s voice.

  “So, Dempsey, you got someone else in mind for him to kill before we nail him in the act?”

  Dempsey? Was he the guy behind the desk? Was he a police chief? None of this made any sense.

  “Yeah. He’ll kill another cop,” the man who might be chief said. “I’m thinking he’ll make another attempt on Parker. And succeed this time, though we’ll take him down in the process.”

  ***

  Parker’s cell rang, interrupting her discussion with Captain Matus. She’d swung by University Hospital to see what was happening in the hunt for Mad Dog and found the captain in need of a ride. And, more importantly, the captain had become an ally, someone else who wanted to find Mad Dog for a reason other than to gun him down.

  They sat in her car near the Campbell Avenue exit, comparing notes and planning strategy. So far, they’d come up pretty much blank on the strategy thing. Campbell was dead empty. No one had gone by recently, not since a little silver car flew past heading north.

  Parker’s cell rang and she snapped it open and answered. All she got was lots of static.

  “Hello,” Parker said. “Anyone there?”

  The static crackled back at her in a way that almost sounded like words.

  “You’re breaking up. Say again.”

  She held the phone away from her and checked the caller’s number. It was showing a Kansas area code.

  “…arker? Is…you?” her cell phone crackled.

  It sounded like a woman’s voice.

  “Hello, Sergeant Parker here,” she said, but the signal was gone again, lost to static and finally silence.

  “I think that was Heather English,” she told Matus.

  “Good,” he said. “She’s got my car keys.”

  Parker’s cell rang again. “Heather?” she answered.

  “Who? Is that you, Parker?” Assistant Chief Dempsey’s voice held all the warmth of deep space.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I understand you’re in the field looking for this Mad Dog guy.”

  Parker turned and looked at Matus. “If you’re speaking of Mr. Harvey Edward Mad Dog, Chief Dempsey, yes. Captain Matus of the Sewa Tribal Police and I have joined up to try to locate him.”

  “Matus is with you? Well, that’s fine. Real fine. Anyone else?”

  “No,” Parker said.

  “Good. I think I can put you on this Mad Dog’s trail,” the Chief said. “He’s been spotted in the downtown area. If you get right down here, you and Matus may be able to help us talk him in.”

  Dempsey was the guy who’d issued the force’s coded shoot-to-kill order. Had he changed his mind? Had he decided she and Matus were right and Mad Dog might not be a killer after all? The man was a misogynist and a fool, but he hadn’t risen through the bureaucracy by making catastrophic mistakes like this one with Mad Dog.

  “We can be there in five minutes, sir.”

  “Good,” Dempsey said. He gave her an address and told her he’d meet them out front. “Hurry. I need you here before the SWAT team assembles. You understand?”

  She did. “On our way,” she said.

  “Mad Dog?” Matus’ eyebrows raised with the question.

  Parker nodded, folding her cell back into its holster.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Parker hit the accelerator. There was only one vehicle moving anywhere within sight and it was on the far side of the street. She didn’t bother turning on her flashing lights or her siren, and never gave the old flowered VW bus a second glance.

  ***

  The sheriff went into the Fix It shop behind his shotgun. It wasn’t necessary. There were no armed people inside. Not unless you counted the one on the monitor. Mrs. Kraus’ avatar, towered over a teddy bear-shaped imp with Fig Zit’s face. The mini-Fig Zit ran around in circles while hearts and flowers bloomed in the air about
its head.

  Inside the room, two teenage boys remained completely oblivious to the sheriff and his shotgun, shouting back and forth at each other across a pair of keyboards and enough ultra-modern computer equipment to launch a global nuclear war.

  “How could…?”

  “Why won’t…?”

  “Got to…”

  “Security wall…”

  The sheriff made his way into the room. “Step away from the computers,” the sheriff said. “Lie flat on the floor and put your hands behind your heads.”

  “Analyze code…,” one said.

  “New hack…,” the other interrupted.

  The sheriff thought about putting a round through their monitor to see if that might get their attention, but the screen went suddenly blank all by itself. A flashing LOST SIGNAL message appeared and shut off the flood of their voices.

  “You’re under arrest. On the floor. Now!” the sheriff shouted.

  “Cable’s down,” one said.

  “Can’t be.” The other kid actually jumped to his feet and ran past the sheriff to the door without appearing to notice anyone was there. “Somebody cut it.” He shoved some blinds aside and peered out onto Main Street. A familiar engine started out there. The boy confirmed it. “Frank. Frank Ball cut it at the pole.”

  The sheriff leaned over and slapped one cuff on that kid’s left wrist. He attached the other to the handle of a roto-tiller that, according to the tag, Pete King had brought in for repair.

  “This can’t be happening,” the remaining boy chanted, over and over, like a mantra. The sheriff used his spare set of cuffs to fasten the kid to the swivel chair he occupied.

  That finally got the boy’s attention.

  “You didn’t have to do that, sheriff,” he said. “It’s only a game.”

  ***

  Bobby Earl Macklin was proud of his little ten-thousand-square-foot ranch-style house in the Catalina foothills. North of Skyline, of course, with the back of the property butting up against the Coronado National Forest and far enough from the new La Encantada shopping center for privacy. It sat on twenty acres of prime foothills real estate, fenced, posted with warnings, and equipped with better security than the new fence along the nearby Mexican border. He had a little private army for just in case, and a number of sound-proofed rooms—office, bedroom, his wife’s bedroom, and, of course, the hobby room.

  When he admitted it, Bobby Earl was on the back side of sixty, While he had lost most of his interest in Mrs. Bobby Earl, despite all the nipping and tucking those ridiculously expensive cosmetic surgeons had done, he still lusted in his heart after the young ladies. The very young ladies, actually. Considering his lofty position in Tucson’s society, and state and national politics, that lusting was best kept out of the public eye. He’d made some special arrangements with his security folks. Didn’t hurt that his wife wasn’t even aware of the underground hobby room, either, or its very private entrances and exits.

  Bobby Earl had spent the night in that hobby room. Took him longer, these days, to indulge his hobby. Even when a spectacular Lolita dropped by after he rose from a healthy post-dinner nap. With some designer erectile “function” drugs, as he preferred to call them, and a high-dollar contract with the young lady’s manager guaranteed to make her eager to please, it had still taken four and a half hours of sweaty effort before he satisfied his needs. Only then did he notice how exhausted and unsatisfied his young companion actually was. He would have thought she could manage a bit of pretense for what he was paying, and maintain it long enough to be escorted out. He was mentally lowering the tip he’d planned to reward her with as he buzzed for his social secretary. Time to get the real girl out of here so he could concentrate on the memories—her perfect little body, her truly amazing flexibility—and forget her clear disappointment in his performance.

  “Bobby Earl Macklin, I presume?”

  The voice was not his social secretary’s. Nor any of his security team members.

  “And your granddaughter?”

  The wise-ass comment made it clear the man didn’t work for him, or wouldn’t after tonight.

  The girl giggled, shimmied back into her pleated jumper, and pulled on her Mary Janes. Bobby Earl decided she wasn’t getting any gratuity whatsoever. He sat up in the satin sheets of his mirror-surrounded bed and found the reflection of half a dozen small, trim, and generally uninteresting men standing over in the room’s main entrance. Of course, no one who’d entered this room uninvited or unescorted could be truly uninteresting.

  Bobby Earl sucked in his gut, rearranged the sheets, and scooted to the edge of the bed as he turned to face the man. Bobby Earl kept a Taurus .454 five-shot pistol in a secret compartment on this side of the bed, just in case a Cape Buffalo happened to get in here, or some human he didn’t care for. This guy was so small the Taurus would probably cut him in half.

  “You her pimp?” Bobby Earl saw no reason to be polite. Under other circumstances, he would have used the term manager. But he didn’t deal with managers. His social secretary took care of those details. Where the hell was that man, anyway?

  Bobby Earl couldn’t imagine how any stranger other than the girl’s manager could be on his property. The girl had come with an escort of course—her manager, or what Bobby Earl had just called him. Bobby Earl supposed his security people must have relaxed a little and let the bastard slip in. Heads would roll. He pushed a button under the edge of the mattress that would bring them running, then felt for the hidden spot where the .454 resided.

  “No. I’m not her pimp. I’m your fix it man.”

  That didn’t clear anything up for Bobby Earl. The girl, dressed now, sat on the edge of the bed and sucked a thumb while she waited for whatever might happen next.

  “Fick’s Internet Technologies,” the man explained. “You and they arranged for me to fix it. And I did. I paid a visit on your elections man. And I took care of that item at Pascua Yaqui Village.”

  If this man was who he claimed, well, Bobby Earl wanted that Taurus in his hand in the worst way. He grabbed for it and suddenly found himself bent over backward across a stack of pillows beside an assortment of velvet whips. The girl had looked much better in the reflections his mirrors showed when she was in a similar position an hour or so earlier. And when Bobby Earl appreciated those reflections, there had been no small trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth.

  “You ’bout to regret that,” Bobby Earl said. The small man’s reflection didn’t seem concerned. In fact, he wasn’t paying attention. He was speaking to the girl.

  “Hi,” he asked her. “What’s your name?”

  Bobby Earl would take special pleasure in what his security force did to this guy. He had a couple of former special ops people, one with experience in interrogations in Afghanistan. He’d let them get creative with the intruder. They’d know how to make the guy suffer…. Only, where the hell were they? Two armed men should have come busting in here less than sixty seconds after he punched that button. Surely it had been longer than that already.

  “My name’s Taylor,” the girl said.

  Taylor? Where the hell did she come up with a name like that? Bobby Earl wondered if maybe he should have asked her name himself. Not that it mattered now.

  “Taylor,” the stranger told her, “you’re a very pretty girl. And you’re likely to stay that way and live a long and healthy life.”

  Bobby Earl sat up. The trim man never even turned to look at him.

  “That’s especially true if you don’t know what happens in this room in the next few minutes.”

  “I could leave,” the girl offered.

  “I’d like to let you go,” the man said. “But there’s a man sitting in a chair in front of a ruined security console upstairs and I’ve got it fixed so, if he moves, he’ll ground a live wire and electrocute himself. I’d rather you didn’t go through that room and disturb him.”

  “What about…?”

  “Your friend? The one who br
ought you here? I’m afraid he and the rest of Mr. Macklin’s security people are in similarly awkward situations. I’d let you leave, but I’m sure you understand I can’t have you wandering around in the desert when I don’t have time to keep an eye on you.”

  The girl stared at him with a puzzled, dull look. The kind that wasn’t unexpected on a pre-teen you kept up until just before dawn. “You want me to hide under the bed or shut my eyes or something?”

  “Shutting your eyes would be good. And duck your head under the covers. Put your fingers in your ears. Maybe hum your favorite song so you can honestly tell people you don’t know what’s about to happen between Mr. Macklin and me. Do that until I come get you or you count to ten thousand, whichever comes first. All right?”

  “Okay,” she said. She crawled under the down comforter at the foot of the bed and began humming something Bobby Earl thought was probably rap. He hated rap.

  “So, what is this?” Bobby Earl asked. “Billy and his Kansas kiddy corps turn on me, decide they want a bigger piece of the pie?”

  The plain man turned toward Bobby Earl, reached under his jacket, and pulled out a serrated knife that gleamed in the room’s soft, indirect light. He leaned over and looked straight into Billy Earl’s eyes

  “I want to know every single thing you can tell me about Fick’s I.T. And, if it relates, Billy and that Kansas kiddy corps. Show me that courtesy, Mr. Macklin, and I’ll keep quiet about the election you rigged. You’ll have the option to do the same, or not, your choice, because I won’t have cut your tongue out.”

  Bobby Earl Macklin had been buying and selling for decades. Property, food, cars, homes, people. He knew a bottom-line offer when he heard one. He spilled his guts, including every detail about Billy and Fick’s this stone-cold killer could possibly want to know.

  ***

  “So this is the guy who led us on such a merry chase,” Dempsey said, coming around the desk and standing over the bald Kansan. “Doesn’t look so tough now, kneeling there, drooling on the floor.”