Server Down

by J. M. Hayes

  “Why won’t he just send some of that muscle to gun you down?”

  The killer adjusted Bobby Earl’s head slightly. “Because I’ve already taken out most of the people he could use. Even in a city as corrupt as Tucson, there are only so many people willing to kill for you. Fewer, once things start coming apart. And, since they are, Dempsey has to worry that I’d tell them something they could use against him. No. Dempsey has two choices. Come for me, or run.”

  “And me? Why am I here?” At last, the question Mad Dog had been avoiding.

  “I don’t know. Just seems right, somehow. This whole bungled mess started with you. Macklin and Dempsey, and the Kansas Macklins, have been using me to set you up to get killed since you got here. With the tables turned, maybe I owe you the pleasure of seeing one of the men who tried to kill you die.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I go after Fick.”

  Headlights rounded the corner north of them and a large unmarked Ford pulled in behind the Mercedes.

  “But first things first,” the killer said. “Dempsey’s here.”

  ***

  The sheriff was surprised to find the last two mines so close to the porch. Their tripwires were strung where they would be disturbed by anyone taking the most natural paths to rescue young Cole. Considering that they were designed so a small explosive charge propelled them above the ground to a height where they would cause maximum damage to surrounding troops, there wasn’t much chance Cole would have survived if anyone set off either of them.

  And finally the sheriff was past them, safely on the porch. Duct tape was wrapped clear around the boy’s head. The sheriff used his pocket knife to saw through the tape and was none too gentle when he peeled it away from Cole’s mouth.

  “Can you put a stop to what’s going on in Tucson?” English asked.

  “Not without a computer. Maybe not even then.”

  “Why?”

  “Our assassin’s running himself,” Cole said. “He knows we tried to shut him down. Now, the best I can do is find him and put together a strike force to take him out.”

  Cold words. The boy was talking about a man’s life. Cole was what, fifteen maybe?

  “Frank,” the sheriff shouted. “Can you put Cole’s computer and this house back on line?”

  “No, sir. I blew the cable where it comes out of town and then wrecked their satellite dish. No way to get on from here.”

  “Where’s the nearest working computer?”

  “Billy,” Cole said. “My brother’s got a satellite phone link for his laptop. We could use that.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “Airport’s just down the road. In the time it took me to cross your lawn, Billy could have driven to and from there half a dozen times. They’ve had plenty of time to leave.”

  “They’re waiting for me,” Cole said. “Billy told me. This is just a trial I have to pass. A way to make me prove I’m worthy by stopping you and getting loose to join them.”

  “A trial?” The sheriff lost it. “You were supposed to let me get killed. Jesus, kid. People died because of you tonight. This is real, not some stupid quest out of a computer game.”

  Cole shook his head. “I kept you safe, and Billy wouldn’t actually leave me.”

  “Look, Sheriff, I know it’s real,” Cole said. “But only sort of. Billy set it up so we use paintball guns and cherry bombs instead of the real thing. I don’t know why Ed would…”

  “Are those real mines or firecrackers you just walked me through?”

  “Real. We get some of the real stuff to play with now and then. I thought that was weird, when Billy and his girlfriend planted them. But then I figured they were probably disarmed.”

  “What if we really fixed elections?” Frank said from the driveway. “What if the money we transferred is real, or our assassin hasn’t been playing paintball tag? I was in town, Cole. Ed Miller didn’t use a cherry bomb. He’s really and truly dead.”

  “But, Billy….”

  “Shut up, kid,” the sheriff said. He laid the boy’s Adirondack over on its side facing the house, then he tipped over a redwood table and shoved it between the boy and the yard. It would be a long shot for a sawed-off, but at least a shotgun had the advantage of throwing lots of lead. He picked a target.

  “Frank,” the sheriff said. “Duck your head around the far side of the house for a minute.”

  “Already have, sir.”

  The sheriff crouched behind his fortification, sighted, and pulled the trigger. The night lit with fire. The sheriff’s headlights and windshield blew out. Chips of wood and broken glass from the house rained on them as the sheriff bent and got in Cole’s face.

  “Was that mine disarmed? How do you survive the trial your brother set for you if I trip a mine anywhere near this porch? That shrapnel would have torn the life out you, boy, and you know it.”

  Cole didn’t answer this time. Instead, his eyes got large and filled with tears. He began to whimper.

  “Could Billy or that laptop still be at the airport?” the sheriff called to Frank.

  “No, sir. I don’t think so. Billy’s a better pilot than Mr. Macklin. None of the others were checked out to fly a jet, not that I know of. Most likely, the nearest computer is the one Mrs. Kraus has back in Doc Jones’ office.”

  The sheriff sawed through the tape binding Cole’s legs and started on his hands. “Then we’ll hightail it back to town. Put Cole on the internet and see if we can find out what’s going on. What we can do to help. And I can get out some kind of alert on that plane.”

  “You don’t have to do that, sir. Look east.”

  The sheriff stopped cutting duct tape long enough to glance toward Frank, then beyond him, across the farm yard and the stock pens beyond. Dawn was close. He hadn’t even noticed, but you could see the infinite horizon out there, backlit where the sun would soon rise.

  “What?” the sheriff said. And then he saw it. A cloud of thick smoke climbed the endless sky, its source hidden behind a distant row of Osage Orange trees. Two, maybe three miles past the airport, he guessed. “Is that…?” he started to ask Frank.

  “Yes, sir. I borrowed one of the mines before Billy and Dana set them out here. Right after I came to the office…when I realized this might be real.”

  “You rigged an explosive device on that Cessna, Frank?”

  “I did, sir. I got one of those mines and went to the airport and put it where, if they took off and raised the landing gear….”

  Frank Ball began to cry, too. “I didn’t think they’d actually go. In spite of everything, I still thought this had to be a game. But, if it was real, I knew they’d take that plane and….”

  “My God,” the sheriff said. “You blew them out of the sky?”

  “Yes, sir,” Frank said with a forlorn little chuckle. “In our game, Billy would have had to give me extra points for pulling a successful coup d’état.”

  ***

  Heather was the first one out of the car. Matus had provided directions, and kept his pistol in Dempsey’s gut to make sure the assistant chief didn’t interfere.

  “Like the Energizer Bunny,” the psycho quipped. “You keep coming and coming, don’t you?”

  “Are you all right?” Heather asked Mad Dog. Her uncle was her first concern.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” the psycho said, playing with her.

  Mad Dog nodded and she turned her attention back to the strange man who’d planned to mutilate her, then briefly turned into a partner of convenience.

  “And, thanks to me, your uncle is fine, too. As you can see,” he waved a hand toward the rack of candles beside him, “I found Bobby Earl Macklin. We had an interesting discussion about the ethics of fixing elections, then turning on the people you employ to clean up the resulting mess…until he lost his head.”

  Heather had thought it was some kind of gargoyle-like decoration—part of this odd, open-air holy place—a piñata, maybe. But a second glance told her it was real.
That was the face she’d seen on the billboard and in the photograph on the dead doctor’s desk. A wave of nausea swept her and, if the psycho hadn’t been watching, she might have doubled over and vomited in the street. Instead, she did her best to hide any reaction. If she paled, the lighting here wasn’t good enough for him to notice.

  Matus climbed out of the other side of the Ford, pistol at his side. It took the psycho’s attention away from her and she brushed cold sweat from her forehead.

  “Another surprise,” the psycho said. “I hate to complain, Captain, but I was hoping for Chief Dempsey instead.”

  “He’s here,” Matus said, “but I don’t think he wants to get out of the car.”

  “He didn’t come voluntarily, then?” the psycho asked.

  “No more than Mr. Macklin,” Matus said, “though he’s kept himself more together.”

  The psycho laughed. “Perhaps I can correct that. Ask the chief to step out here and join us, won’t you?”

  Matus had told Heather about this place on the way over. It had sounded quaint and intriguing. Bobby Earl Macklin’s head and the psycho’s presence transformed it into something bizarre, like a set from a bad horror movie.

  “Why?” she asked. “I think, rather than meet you, Chief Dempsey might prefer to turn state’s evidence.”

  “A deputy chief of police probably wouldn’t do well in prison,” the psycho replied. “That’s one reason. The other is I have a gun, too,” and he did, though Heather wasn’t quite sure how the thing suddenly appeared in his hand. “If Dempsey doesn’t get out of the car, I’ll use it to kill your uncle.”

  “In which case,” Matus said, raising his pistol, “I’d kill you.”

  “Don’t be too sure, Captain. I’m extraordinarily good at my profession, as you probably know by now, and that includes killing people and preventing them from killing me.”

  It all sounded very macho, but Heather knew he wasn’t bragging. “Get out,” she told Dempsey, and he did, though she couldn’t understand why. Maybe it was because the chief believed this man, too. Maybe Dempsey hoped he could buy his way out of this. Or maybe he believed waiting in the car only delayed his certain death—together with Matus’ and Mad Dog’s and hers, as well.

  Heather remembered the five stages her mother had gone through when she learned her cancer would be fatal—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Dempsey must have rushed through the first two on the way from the parking garage.

  “You’re a professional,” the chief said before he cleared the door. On Heather’s side, she noticed, so maybe he was still clinging to a little denial, keeping the car between him and the psycho. “You don’t kill for pleasure. You kill for money. That means you must be willing not to kill, as well, if the price is right. So tell me what you want. I’ll see it’s paid.”

  The psycho smiled a peculiar smile and Heather thought Dempsey was wrong about the man killing only for profit. The psycho enjoyed his work. She started around the front of the Ford, hands raised to show she wasn’t a threat.

  “Look,” she said. “You’ve had your revenge. You got the man who ordered your death. Give us my uncle and step back and enjoy a stretched out version of Dempsey’s suffering—public humiliation, the courts, prison. Do that, and you can walk away from here.” She dangled the Ford’s keys. “Drive, actually, in a Tucson police car. And that’s probably the only way you can get away from this spot, even if you kill all of us. They’ll be looking for Macklin’s SUV, and downtown is crawling with police. Some of them are probably on their way here by now.”

  The night was filled with sirens but the psycho’s shrug was casual. “You’re right, I suppose.” He met her at the front of the unmarked police car.

  “Ten million, Dempsey. If I don’t get it I’ll come back and….”

  He snatched the keys with his bad hand and dodged the flying kick she launched, catching her other leg at the knee with a leg sweep that dropped her like a stone. His gun went off at the same time and when she looked up he had managed to get to Matus and disarm him. The psycho’s pistol pushed against the captain’s temple.

  No one else had moved. Mad Dog looked dazed. Dempsey just stood in the street. He seemed shocked. The disbelief phase, maybe, since he slowly raised his hands to his stomach and looked down at the bloody horror he found there.

  Matus tried to throw an elbow and there was a moment when Heather thought she could rush the psycho. It was over before she managed to get to her feet. The psycho smiled and shook his head and she knew she couldn’t do a thing to him before he killed her and Matus. And Mad Dog, who, by then, would be trying to tear the psycho limb from limb with his bare hands, no matter what the odds.

  “I should probably eliminate you all,” the psycho said. “But you’ve been a big help to me, Heather. I owe you for Bobby Earl and Dempsey, and now the car.”

  His knee lifted off Matus’ back and the gun left the captain’s temple. The psycho started around the Ford to where Dempsey now sat in the middle of the street, watching blood well from between his fingers. Three steps from the door, the psycho froze. Heather didn’t understand why, at first. And then she knew what he’d heard, even over the symphony of sirens that filled downtown. It was Hailey’s throaty growl.

  ***

  Mad Dog wasn’t surprised. Nothing Hailey did surprised him anymore. Including, seeming to materialize here at the shrine as if by magic.

  “Call off your wolf,” the killer said. “I don’t want to have to shoot her.”

  “I can’t tell her what to do,” Mad Dog said. “And I don’t think you have to worry about shooting her. You’re fast, but she’s greased lightning.”

  Hailey growled again. She had crept closer to the killer, past Heather. No one else had moved and Mad Dog thought that was a good idea.

  “I think she wants everyone to stay where they are,” Mad Dog said. “And Mr. Whoever-You-Are, I think she wants you to drop your gun.”

  “Won’t happen,” the killer said. Had he pivoted just a little? Hadn’t the gun been down at his side a moment ago, not at his belt, its muzzle tracking toward Hailey? “I’m getting in this car and leaving and I’ll shoot anyone or anything that tries to stop….”

  The gun came around fast. Hailey rose from the ground like a missile and hit the killer in the throat. The gun might have reached Hailey if Heather hadn’t gotten to if just before it exploded. A bullet scored the Ford’s roof and went screaming into the night. Killer, niece, and wolf tumbled onto the street behind the Ford and Mad Dog vaulted the vehicle’s hood as Matus ran around the trunk. Dempsey just sat in the street and bled.

  By the time Mad Dog cleared the Ford, it was over. Heather had relieved the killer of his gun. Hailey had the man by the neck, though she hadn’t clamped her jaws tight. Not yet. The killer was on hands and knees. No matter how efficient he might be at dealing death, he seemed to understand he couldn’t hurt Hailey before her teeth severed arteries, veins, windpipe—maybe even spinal cord.

  Heather put a little distance between herself and the killer. Mad Dog stepped back as Hailey suddenly pulled away, pausing for one quick nip before trotting to Mad Dog’s side. Something hung from her mouth. He bent and took it. It was his medicine bundle.

  The killer slowly climbed to his feet. He still had the keys to the Ford in one hand. “I won’t let you take me in,” he said. “I’m leaving in this car now. That or you’ll kill me.”

  “Hailey’s right,” Mad Dog said. “Let him go. We don’t need to kill him.”

  “Just cripple him,” Matus said. “Blow off a kneecap.”

  Mad Dog held up a hand. “No. The only people he’s injured here deserved it, more or less. He won’t hurt anyone else. Hailey knows that or she would have finished him.”

  “But…,” Matus sputtered.

  “You’re sure, Uncle Mad Dog?” Heather still had the man covered, but he knew she wanted a reason not to pull the trigger.

  “Yeah,” Mad Dog said. “I just had a co
nversation with the spirit of this shrine. Nobody dies here. Nobody else gets hurt. Hey, all of us even get what we want. Except Dempsey.”

  The killer opened the door, shook his head at such silliness, and put the key in the ignition. “I wished for ten million, you crazy asshole. Am I getting that, too?”

  Mad Dog shrugged. “If El Tiradito decides you deserve it.”

  The man laughed, but there was a hollow sound to it. The Ford roared to life, smoked tires, and disappeared into the night.

  “Shit,” Matus said. “We should have stopped him.” He had his phone out and was dialing 911.

  “No,” Heather said. “I don’t think so. Crazy as it seems, I trust Hailey and Uncle Mad Dog on this one.”

  “Maybe,” Matus said, then paused to tell an emergency operator they needed an ambulance right now at the Wishing Shrine.

  “Anyway,” Matus told Heather, “that was impressive. The way you disarmed him. I know you’re about to become a lawyer, but if you ever change your mind and want a job in law enforcement….”

  A marked police unit careened around the corner and squealed to a stop. Doors flew open and two officers came out behind them, guns drawn, shouting instructions.

  Heather tossed her weapon away before they were out of the car, refrained from reaching for her badge, and raised her hands. “Deputy sheriff,” she shouted. She nodded toward Matus and added, “Tribal police.”

  “This what you wished for, old man?” Matus asked Mad Dog as they followed the officers’ orders and lay face down in the street.

  “Can’t tell you,” Mad Dog said. “Otherwise it might not come true.”

  ***

  Mrs. Kraus opened the door to the sheriff’s office. The electricity was on, just like the man from the rural electric company had assured her. The ceiling lights glowed, though with the sun up for a good twenty minutes now, they weren’t really needed.

  The janitor had come in and swept up the shards of broken glass from the windows. He’d even covered the bottom half of one with a clear plastic sheet. The rest were open to the chill air that left her producing little clouds with every breath.