Rockfall

by William Allen

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Wednesday was the day set for the closing, and I appeared at the real estate agent’s office bright and early for the ceremony. I was acting as my own agent and since the closing for the Bonner property was a short formality with the cash deal, I was out of there in under thirty minutes. With the proper paperwork in hand, I walked the documents over to the county offices to get the deed recorded. That done, I went back to my office, checked over my appointments for the rest of the week, and sent Barbara home for the balance of the day.

  Driving home, I was careful to obey all the posted speed limits and in general operated my car like the proverbial little old lady. Butch’s warning had set me on edge, and I flinched every time I passed a deputy in his cruiser. None of them lit me up, but the sense of being watched was nerve-wracking. I knew not all of the deputies were corrupt, and I wondered just how many of the good people of Albany County knew of his side deals and corrupt practices.

  I’d listened to Wade’s nasty comments about the Sherwood family, and his assertions about the sheriff and his chief deputy, Ansel Steward, but I’d never expected to come face-to-face with even circumstantial evidence of the sheriff’s wrong-doing, or that he might be involved in something as heinous as kidnapping or murder. Turning a blind eye to bootleg liquor distribution and allowing illegal chop shops to exist seemed par for this part of the world, maybe even raiding the evidence locker for confiscated weapons and drugs or letting meth cooks do their business was one thing, but this was a whole other league.

  By all accounts, Sheriff Landshire didn’t start out that way. I’d done some research on the man after hearing Wade’s allegations about the sheriff when we’d first met. Bernard Landshire had a decent though unspectacular start as a beat cop in Houston, then took a sergeant slot down in Beaumont for a few years before moving up to New Albany and working for his predecessor, Shorty Tomplait, for nearly twelve years before the old lawman retired to his fishing cabin up on Sam Rayburn. Landshire didn’t have any obvious dings on his resume, but in the last ten years, his reputation took a nosedive as whispers and rumors of turning the other way in exchange for envelopes full of cash began to crop up. Then the Polinsky case became front page news in the local rag, the Albany Daily News, and quickly spread to other papers in the area as the story took on a life of its own.

  The story was all-to-common in this day and age. A fourteen-year-old girl was walking home from a friend’s birthday party when she was snatched from the side of the road and driven to a remote hunting cabin. Once there, her captor kept her blindfolded and locked in a closet for three days, except when her captor dragged her out and repeatedly sexually assaulted her on the rotting mattress left by previous renters. When the man left on the morning of the third day, the girl had managed to pick the crude lock on the closet and escaped into the woods.

  The girl was African-American. Her attacker was a white male, about five and a half feet tall, and if she noted any identifying marks on her rapist, they were never disclosed to the public. The Albany County Sheriff’s Department picked up Rudy Polinsky, a thirty-year-old white male, in his room at the Courtyard motel in New Albany.

  He was driving a car with out of state plates, had no visible means of support, and had been in the hotel for four days. That aroused suspicions when the report of the kidnapping came in, so of course the sheriff and his deputies wanted to talk to this guy. Yes, very thin and no other law enforcement organization would have given him a second glance, but for some reason Detective Ralston zeroed in on Rudy.

  Of course, once he was questioned, he explained he was an electrician on contract from an equipment manufacturer in Michigan, and he was waiting for the shutdown scheduled for the next week at the Evadale paper mill. Even though his story checked out, Rudy was arrested for a whole host of charges including rape, kidnapping, forceable sodomy, and on and on.

  Rudy’s arrest was splashed all over the local news, and he was thus tried in the media before he was even arraigned. I didn’t like it right off the bat, and the more I heard, the less I liked. The cabin was eventually located, but nothing connected Rudy to the cabin, and in fact, the secluded, isolated nature of the location argued against him. In fact, the only tire tracks leading to the old cabin came off a common variety of pickup truck, where Rudy drove a Mazda hatchback. That was before Detective Ralston found a DNA sample under the passenger side floormat that supposedly matched the victim.

  Yes, the whole setup smelled to high heaven, and I was the first to approach Butch in confidence about trying to help where I could. I had no skills in the criminal arena, so I started a defense fund to help, opening with a donation of five thousand dollars to aid in the young man’s defense. I knew his employer had cut him loose and his family was scrambling to raise the money, so I did what I felt was the right thing. Rudy was being railroaded because he was the wrong color and he was an outsider, and neither fact sat well with me.

  Thinking about the Polinsky case made me wonder deeper into that mess. The sheriff was feeling the heat from the African-American community to solve the crime, but why frame up Rudy in particular? When the truth came out about Ralston falsifying the evidence, going back and adding the sample over a week after the initial testing, I thought it was overzealous police work.

  At the time, I was still leery about Sheriff Landshire, but in light of the attempted kidnapping of the Schneider girl, where the alleged gunmen had zeroed in on her in particular according to the statements Butch could access, I was sold. The timing was too coincidental. This just reinforced what Mike always said about coincidences. To quote one of his favorite authors, Emma Bull, ‘Coincidence is the word we use when we can’t see the levers and pulleys’.

  The frame-up of Polinsky was shoddy, and the outcome so muddied the waters that I doubted the true perpetrator would ever be found. I thought on that as I turned into the driveway, and the image of Matt Sherwood crouched down by the control panel. Then realization struck and I stopped the car in the middle of the road.

  It wasn’t a frameup. It was a coverup. Whoever had kidnapped and raped that girl was not only local, but also carried enough financial or political clout to pull the sheriff into the mix. Unless the sheriff himself was the perpetrator, I added to myself.

  As I pulled through the gate and wound my way up the driveway, I noticed Mike was out at the mobile home, elbows deep in the battery box next to the side of the wooden porch. With the water running so high in the creek, the only off-grid power going into the mobile home originated from the small solar array arranged on the roof.

  “You digging for gold, brother?”

  Mike grunted, then withdrew his left hand from the narrow gap between the batteries.

  “No, just correcting a fault here. Wire came loose and that back battery wasn’t getting a charge.”

  I looked up at the overcast sky. No rain at the moment, but I knew more was coming. Watching the Weather Channel was a farmer’s entertainment, but these days, everybody was doing it. Even with limited internet back up, the WeatherApps were far from being reactivated.

  I didn’t need the meteorologists to tell me we’d already received more than our expected annual rain output, and we still had the second half of the year to go. In addition, the brilliant sunsets and wide bands of clouds told me more of the story than I probably wanted to know. Our air was still filled with thousands, maybe millions, of tons of particulates thrown up by the initial impactor and the subsequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Which reminded me…

  “Anything more on the volcano outside Mexico City?”

  “You mean Popocatep…fuck, I can’t even say it right. That one?”

  “Wait, is there more than one in Mexico erupting right now?” I asked, the news making my hands flutter a bit as I helped Mike replace the heavy wooden cover over the batteries.

  “Yeah, there’s that one and Ceboruco, which is close to Guadalajara. They both started spewing this morning.” Mike explained. As a science t
eacher, he better understood the different types of volcanoes and their relative risks, but he knew he was no vulcanologist. In days past, we could have just Googled it, but the current anemic search engine was less than helpful. Plus, we thought it was designed to make finding certain files and sites more difficult.

  “You get through the closing with your skin intact? No last minute ‘gotcha’ clause in there?”

  “Yes, all done, and you wound me with your doubting my abilities. I can read the fine print with the best of them. Just a tad over ninety acres, with all the real and personal property on site.”

  “That means we get to keep the tractor? And all the other stuff in the barn?”

  “Yep. All included.”

  On closer inspection, we’d found quite a stash of old, horse-drawn farming equipment, including a plow, harrow, and planter. The leathers were all rotted and unusable and some of the wooden parts would need replacing, but I still counted this a bonus that might come in handy in the future. Provided we could continue to feed the horses.

  “So what’s the verdict on the trailer?” I asked, changing gears. “If we lose main power, are we getting enough juice from solar, or do we need to reinstall our waterbug?”

  “For winter conditions, no. Not enough power to run the electric furnace. Couldn’t do it even with the little turbine in place. But, with an outside wood furnace installed, we could easily heat this trailer,” Mike explained, taking on the siding for emphasis as he spoke. “This model might be smaller, but I like the insulation they used. Much better than that crap they used when we were kids.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Where are we going to get one of those? And could we use the wood burning stoves in place of a furnace?”

  “Sorry, the wood stove will help, but not enough for what we think is coming. Could get an outside woodburning furnace from several places, like Lowe’s…”

  “Don’t have one in Albany County,” I shot back.

  “Or Home Depot,” Mike countered with a grin.

  “Don’t have one of those either,” I popped back.

  “Or Ace Hardware,” Mike concluded.

  “Okay, got one of those in town. Think you and Wade could go pick it up?”

  Mike gave me a hard look, and I shrugged before looking away. My eyes fixed on the distant pasture and I focused my eyes on the small herd of cows browsing the rich grasses. The rain didn’t seem to be affecting the plant growth any, but I knew the deeply-soaked fields would make harvesting hay a real chore. I could just see Wade bogging down next door, trying to run a tractor through the waiting hay crop. I didn’t say anything for a few moments, my thoughts still a jumble from my earlier ruminations.

  “What is it? Somebody give you trouble over the closing? Or about what the D.A. announced?”

  I shook my head, then turned back to give Mike my full attention.

  “I did get a few looks in town, from people who seemed a bit shocked to see me running around on the loose. But no, that’s not it. I was just thinking more about what Butch said yesterday.”

  “That you’ve got the sheriff’s crosshairs on your back over what happened? I know Butch is well-connected around here, but that just sounds crazy.”

  “No, I think he may be on to something. I also think that whole Polinsky mess what more than just a setup. I think the sheriff planned on railroading that poor kid in order to cover for the real rapist. Either because he was paid to, or because he had business dealings with the real perpetrator.”

  “Damn, and you call me the tinfoil hat conspiracy nut,” Mike shot back, but he didn’t say anything after that kneejerk reaction, and I left him alone to think.

  “So how does that lead to you taking a pass on this trip? You trying to lay low?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” I admitted. “Driving home today, I got a chill that ran down my spine, and the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. I felt like there was somebody watching me, and you know I don’t spook easy.”

  Mike fished a rag out of his back pocket, mopping the sweat from his face and wiping his hands. I didn’t want to tell him all he’d managed to do was smear a trace of dirt across his face like some kind of jungle camouflage. I’d leave that up to Marta. The idea raised my down mood, anyway.

  “Think it might be friends of that gang? Or is it locals got you riled?”

  The three would-be kidnappers were quickly identified as a pair of brothers, Paul and Jeffrey Pinter, and their cousin, Gary Swanson. None of them were over the age of twenty-five, and yet they’d managed to run up five felony convictions and an unknown number of misdemeanors just since they’d reached eighteen. Since the day of the California Quakes though, the three had embarked on a crime spree that made their prior bad acts pale in comparison. The one thing that stuck out to me though, was their prior busts for running opiates and the carload they’d managed to pillage from the four pharmacies they’d hit before getting to the Urgent Car clinic.

  “I’m not too worried about any of their buddies coming after me. Like I said before, I think they were there for the girl they tried to snatch.”

  “I just don’t see how the sheriff was supposed to have gotten these three goofballs to come hit a specific location at a certain time to snatch one particular young lady.”

  I gave him a crooked grin as I raised my fingers to count off a few things.

  “What were they also stealing?”

  “Drugs, cash, cell phones.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  Mike shrugged before answering.

  “I don’t know. The good stuff. Any kind of narcotics, I guess.”

  “Codeine and fentanyl,” I said. “Opiates, because this whole distribution mess along with the loss of the Asian suppliers has cut into the supply on the street. And do you remember what Keith Sherwood got busted for about six months ago over in Jasper? Do you know what he was distributing?”

  “Drugs? Heroin or some such, I guess. I’m not all that hip to the drug scene, you know.”

  I paused for effect before answering my own question.

  “Fentanyl. Keith’s reputed to be a courier for the big boss for this area. They busted him with product but almost no cash, which supports that theory.”

  “Where did you come up with all that?” Mike asked, skeptical.

  “Well, let’s just say, if Butch doesn’t represent a specific alleged criminal, he can be downright chatty about them.”

  “If you say so, but I still don’t trust the guy. I mean, all he does is hang around with criminals all the time.”

  “You’d change your tune if you were facing three homicide charges, Bubba. That can change your perspective real quick.”

  “Glad that’s behind us,” Mike admitted. “And you never had to worry about dropping the soap.”

  I gave Mike a playful shove as we headed across the yard, and I noted the water was almost over the tops of my shoes.

  “So you want to talk to Wade about getting that furnace? If his sister-in-law is going to live here through the winter, we’ll need it.”

  Mike bobbed his head in agreement, then pointed out at the ground next to the mobile home.

  “We can do that, but I’m sure the thing requires a concrete pad for a base. How the hell we going to get it to cure if this rain never stops?”

  “Build an ark?” I popped back. “You’re the science guy. Maybe use cinder blocks, if you can get them to stay level? That’s all I got.”

  “Cinder blocks? That’s your answer for everything!” Mike exclaimed with mock frustration. I knew my brother, after all. He would just take this as another engineering challenge. He headed off to the machine shed, intent on some other chore. In truth, having Mike stranded here was a relief, as his mechanical skills helped keep the place running. Added to that, I felt an immense sense of relief having so much of my immediate family close at hand. Now if we could just figure out a way to get Patrick loose, we would have the band back together.

  I went insi
de, removed my soaking tennis shoes in the mud room and entered the main part of the house. I’d gotten in the habit of carrying my ‘good’ shoes in a plastic bag at work and exchanging them for the sports shoes whenever I needed to go out in the rain. Adaptability is important when the world as you know it is changing every day.

  The Mexican volcanoes erupting couldn’t exactly be covered up, not with radio stations close to the border providing around-the-clock coverage as Amateurs in the area rebroadcast translated versions of those reports. What was going on in the wider world still remained a bit of a mystery, and with the sanitized and regulated internet via Netfeed, I could only access a few of my old standby news sources. The Feds seemed to be working hard to keep us in the dark as to the full extent of the damage, which in itself suggested we were facing a disaster of monumental proportions, but we had little in the way of hard data. Hell, they still hadn’t acknowledged the meteorite that had started this whole mess.

  Stepping through the kitchen, I found Nikki and Marta busy at the sink, chopping up a bucket of cucumbers from the garden.

  “Get it done?” Nikki asked, not looking up from the cutting board as she worked.

  “All finished. Just taking the rest of the day off from the office,” I replied. “You ladies need any help?”

  “No, thank you,” Marta responded. “Got plenty of backup on this. Mom’s out back with the kids, setting up the canner and the jars. She’s mixed up a batch of her prize-winning bread-and-butter pickles, so we’re just prepping the cukes in here to save space.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. “I need to work on some things in my office, so just holler if you need anything.”

  “You mean holler when lunch is ready,” Nikki teased, and I had to admit she was probably right. Her mood had improved these last few days as she’d settled in and decompressed. The kids mimicked their mother in that regard, and them being around Tamara and Tommy probably helped.

  I know she still worried about her husband, but he had been adamant about getting them somewhere safer. He’d told Nikki he could do a better job taking care of himself if he wasn’t so worried about their safety as well. That might sound harsh to an outsider, but Nikki understood what he’d meant. I guess Patrick had been married to my sister long enough to figure out her quirks and preferences, and Nikki wasn’t one to want the sugar-coated version.