by Mark Johnson
Poor Troy never should have married into the Colt family. He’s the only one I was able to convict for the theft of the Fletcher fortune, because the Colts eventually put it all on him in written, signed, and sworn statements and convinced him to submit his own written confession to me. Troy told me he was doing so solely for the sake of his and Candy’s infant son.
“Troy Junior’s gonna need a family,” he said tearfully. “He won’t make it if we all go to jail for this,” he declared with a sniff of noble self-sacrifice. Shortly after Troy went off to prison, DHS found Candy to be unfit and placed Troy Junior in foster care.
I was unable to recover much for Fletch. Troy wrapped the Charger around a concrete pillar on his way back from the casinos in Biloxi, totaling the car just six days after he bought it. It netted $150 at U Pull It auto salvage, after the towing and impound fees. And Candy turned over seventeen hundred-dollar bills to me that she said she found in one of Troy’s hidey-holes.
When Fletch signed for the recovered cash, he was in a bad way. He told me his beloved Sarge had been missing for three days, and he was certain the Colts had kidnapped the crippled old hound. Fletch died a few weeks later, as much, I think, from sadness and despair as from cirrhosis and renal failure.
I had arrested Travis and Wesley several times in the past, and this latest rash of waterfront larceny had their names all over it. The Colt boys had been staying at Little Ricky’s place since Grandma Colt and Brandy and Candy had kicked them out after the Fletcher fiasco. (I had tossed Grandma’s place twice looking for Fletcher’s cash, and Granny’d had it with the boys.)
I head down the parkway and radio for backup to meet me at the intersection of Gill and Riverside. I have no plan other than to look around the Stedman property for a stolen John Deere or boating and fishing equipment, and to arrest anyone on the premises for it—preferably the Colt brothers.
Veteran patrolman Frank Black meets me at the spot, near the Stedman place but not visible from it. Frank has patrolled the Parkway for more than a decade, has busted the Colt boys and Little Ricky at least as many times as I have, and has written a couple of the recent theft reports himself; he knows what we’re there for.
“I walked up the driveway this morning when it was still dark, right after roll call,” Frank says. “Didn’t see any drivable cars around, so might not be anybody home. But that John Deere’s parked up there right by the front door, sorta behind some bushes, so you can’t see it from the street. Didn’t go around back ’cause the dogs started barking. If anybody was in the house, I didn’t wanna give ’em the opportunity to shoot me for a prowler. But I’m guessin’ we’ll find the boats and tackle back there along the bayou.”
“Right. Well, let’s just leave our cars here and walk on up there and knock on the door. If any of the boys answer, we hook ’em up. If Mama Stedman answers, we ask if we can come in to look for the Colt boys or Little Ricky. If nobody answers, we walk around back to see what we can see.”
“Sounds like a plan, boss,” Frank says.
There is no response to our knock on the door, other than the loud yaps, growls, and barks of the mutts inside. The John Deere is parked right where Frank had seen it; a busted left headlight and scratches in the paint on the mowing deck match the description from the report. We peer around the corner of the house and observe a yellow kayak, an aluminum canoe, and a wooden rowboat lying in the tall weeds along the bank of the bayou. A couple of blue tarps are also stretched over piles of unknown objects.
“Bingo,” Frank says. “Shall I start the Impound truck to come pick this stuff up?”
“Not just yet,” I reply. “C’mon, let’s just walk back down the driveway like we think nobody’s home. I wanna see if they come out after they think we’re gone.”
At the end of the driveway, no longer visible from the house, I tell Frank to wait for me there while I walk down the neighbor’s driveway and peek through the slats of the fence to see if there’s any movement from the house. I’ve done this before; the neighbors keep no dogs and they both work, so I can creep along their fence line undetected. I see no movement in the Stedman front yard. I continue around the neighbor’s house to the backyard to get a look through the fence at the rear of the Stedman place. As I round the rear of the neighbor’s house, I catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye and see a palmetto leaf waving among thick flora. I draw my weapon, approach the palmetto, and spy a blue-jeaned leg sticking out of the hedge row.
“Let me see your hands and come on out slowly. Is it Wesley or Travis?”
“Don’t shoot, Detective Johnson, I’m comin’ out. It’s Wesley. Don’t shoot, sir. I’m not gonna run or anything.”
I cuff Wesley and pat him down, and we walk down the neighbor’s driveway toward Frank.
“Why are you hiding under a bush in your neighbor’s backyard, Wesley?”
“I was just scared, Detective Johnson.”
“No need to be scared of the police unless you’ve done something wrong. What have you done wrong, lately, Wesley?”
“Nothin’, Detective Johnson. I just ran outta habit, I guess.”
“Wouldn’t have anything to do with that John Deere in your front yard, or the boats in the back?”
“What? Whaddaya mean, Detective? I don’t know anything about any of that. It must be Little Ricky’s stuff, or his mama’s. It’s their place, Detective. I don’t even live here, really. We just came over to chill, and maybe smoke a blunt, I’m bein’ honest. I admit I smoke a little weed, Detective Johnson, I won’t lie to ya.”
“Who’s ‘we’? You said ‘We just came over to chill.’ Is Travis in the house?”
“Huh? Did I say we? I don’t know who’s in the house. I just got here before you showed up, and when I saw you I ran. I don’t even know who’s inside.”
We meet up with Frank out by the road and put Wesley in the cage.
“Stay here with him, I’m gonna take one more look through the neighbor’s fence.”
I return to my first spot with a pretty good view of the Stedman front yard just in time to see Brandy Colt emerge from the house with Travis. She’s telling him to hide in the rafters of the detached garage. I run back down the neighbor’s driveway, tell Frank what I’ve just seen. We jump in his car with Wesley in the cage and roar up the Stedman driveway. Frank pounds on the front door while I check the garage for Travis.
To my surprise, he’s not in there. Brandy comes to the door acting like she’s just woken up and doesn’t know what’s going on.
“Don’t gimme that shit, Brandy. I was on the other side of that fence just five minutes ago and I saw you telling Travis to hide in the garage. So where is he?”
“Okay. I’m sorry, Detective Johnson. But if he’s not in the garage, I really don’t know where he is.”
“Mind if we check the house, Brandy? If he’s not in the garage, he’s in the house.”
“Go right ahead, Detective. He’s not in the house. I just came out of there. But feel free to search inside all you want. Just let me go inside and get the dogs out first.”
“Right. How stupid do you think I am, Brandy? I’ll come in with you for the dogs. Frank, go around and cover the back—I don’t think Wesley’s gonna try to kick out your rear window and escape.”
“Let’s just make sure,” Frank says, and walks over to his squad car, puts a pair of shackles around Wesley’s ankles, and straps him in with the seat belt. He mutters something to Wesley that Brandy and I can’t quite hear, but Wesley’s assurances that he “ain’t about to try anything stupid, Officer Black, sir” are clearly audible.
Frank disappears around the corner of the house to cover the back. As Brandy and I enter the house I tell her, “You better control your animals, Brandy, or I’ll shoot ’em, I swear.” (A lie. I think I’d hate to shoot a dog, even an aggressive one, more than a person.)
The dogs who’d sounded so fierce and berserk earlier seem to consider me no threat when Brandy accompanies me ins
ide. I toss the place pretty thoroughly, checking under every bed, inside every closet, even looking in the attic, the kitchen cabinets, the clothes dryer, and kicking my way through a waste-high mountain of smelly dirty clothes. No Travis. I did, however, make a mental note of the bong, some seeds and stems, and a glass crack pipe in plain view on the kitchen table.
We exit through the backdoor, and Frank and I check under the kayak, the canoe, and the rowboat in the tall weeds down by the water. Mired in the muck next to the bulkhead is a small, half-sunk sailing sloop that’s been there since before Big Rick died. I step on board and shine my flashlight into its water-filled cabin. No Travis. Under the tarps, as expected, are outboard and trolling motors, marine electronics, life vests, tackle boxes, coolers, batteries, rods and reels and coils of rope, but no Travis.
I’m losing my patience. We check around all the overgrown clumps of shrubbery along both property lines and finally return to the front of the house. Wesley’s still in the cage, and when I ask him about their hiding places, he only suggests places we’ve already checked. Brandy, of course, has no idea where Travis could have gone, nor how all that stuff in the backyard got there or who it belongs to; she feigns exasperation with her mischievous boys, remarking, “It looks like they’ve been up to no good again.” She’s become a chatterbox as, one by one, all the obvious hiding places turned out empty. She’s not very effectively concealing her relief (or pride?) that her eldest has eluded capture.
“I guess he musta just ran off, Detective Johnson,” she offers brightly. “I don’t know how he dipped out so quick, but I promise you, when I see him I’ll make him turn himself in to you.”
“You will, Brandy? You’d do that for me?” I say.
“I swear I will, Detective.”
“But I don’t think you’ll be seeing Travis anytime soon, Brandy.” I grab her forearm and slap a cuff on her wrist. “Turn around for me, please. You’re under arrest for Hindering Prosecution.” I put the cuff on her other wrist as she wriggles and twists, sputtering, “What? What the fuck? Wait just a goddamn minute here! ‘Hindering’? This is fuckin’ bullshit!”
“Stop buckin’ on the detective,” Frank warns, “or he’ll add the Holy Trinity: Resisting Arrest, Disorderly, and Failure to Obey.”
“Not to mention the paraphernalia, weed, and rock on the kitchen table,” I add. “Go ahead and put her in the cage with Wesley, Frank.”
“Hell, no you ain’t, motherfucker! You got nothing on me! That shit in the kitchen ain’t mine! I don’t even live here! This is Little Ricky’s place! You ain’t got shit on me! This is fuckin’ bullshit!”
Frank pushes and pulls her to the squad car and opens the rear door. Even Wesley, cuffed, shackled, and strapped up in the cage, is yelling, “Mom! Stop it, Mom! You’re makin’ it worse! Just tell ’em where Travis is!”
“Hold up a minute, Frank,” I say. Then, to Brandy: “I’ll give you one more chance. Produce Travis in five minutes, or you’re going to Metro with Wesley.”
She starts yelling, “Travis! Traaa-visss!” It’s ear piercing, her wail. “Travis, get your thieving ass here, now! Or they’re takin me to jail! Traaa-visss, you motherfucker don’t you dare put me in jail, you little bastard! Traaa-visss! I’m gonna beat your punk ass with a shovel if you don’t come here right nowww!”
Even Wesley joins in, from the cage: “Travis, I’monna kick your chickenshit ass if you let Mama go to jail! Traaa-vis!”
They keep it up for the full five minutes. I time it with my watch. I didn’t really think it would work, but Frank and I got a kick out of the pathetic display.
I tell Frank to go ahead on to the precinct with them. He drives off with a load of Colts in his cage, and I walk down the long driveway to fetch my car on Riverside Drive, pissed at myself for letting Travis get away.
Just as I turn the ignition and start to roll, I picture one place I failed to check, where Travis might be hiding. It’s a long shot, but I radio Frank to tell him to circle back to the driveway and wait for me while I look in one more place out back. Then I retrace my steps down the driveway, around the house, and to the waterline.
I hop onto the top of the sunken sloop’s cabin and step to the far edge, on the bayou side. Peering over the side, I look down into the murky water. To my shock—and his—I’m looking directly down into his face. Just his face, that’s all that’s visible. He sitting or squatting in the mucky bottom of the bayou, all but his face concealed in the brown water, his head cocked back so he can breathe, the water forming a ring around his chin, cheeks and forehead, so that his face looks like a floating Mardi Gras mask.
For a moment we just stare at each other, motionless, speechless. Then I draw my Glock and point it directly between his eyes as he slowly rises from the muck, both hands up. He had been crouching in water that barely reaches his waist when standing.
“Don’t shoot, Detective Johnson. I surrender. Please, put the gun down.”
“Step around the boat and come on out of the water,” I say. “Don’t do anything stupid.” I feel the old adrenalin kick in. The thrill of victory. The rush of apprehension. Only, it’s heightened, literally and figuratively, by my elevated position several feet above him on the dry white cabin roof of the sloop, in my charcoal gray suit and tie, my badge on my belt, in my polished black boots, poised in the ready-fire position, weapon trained on his center mass, as he unsteadily, haltingly emerges beneath me from the black primordial ooze.
The moment’s all the sweeter precisely because it has taken so long to get here. We’ve been at this for more than two hours now since I first nabbed Wesley under the neighbor’s palmetto. Then my sneaky spying on Brandy and Travis through the fence, all the searching, all the stolen loot recovered, the bonus bust of Brandy, with all its high-volume drama, and then, finally, when lesser men might have called it good, called it a day—and a good day it had been with two felony arrests and thousands of dollars in recovered stolen property—I go the extra mile, acting on instinct, on a wily hunch, switching from the mind of the predator to the prey to visualize the unlikeliest concealment, divining the ultimate hideaway, and make the collar!
I feel like Dirty Harry Callahan. I square my jaw and affect the Clint Squint.
“Please, Detective Johnson,” Travis whines as he struggles to free himself from the sucking muck. “Just put the gun down, I surrender. Look, I’m trying to get to the shore.”
“I’ll put my gun away when I put the cuffs on you,” I growl, Clint-like.
But then Travis pauses. I can see the wheels turning in his scheming criminal mind. He takes a step back, away from the shore, away from the sunken sloop.
“Don’t shoot, Detective Johnson. I’ve got my hands up.”
I can hear the synapses popping in the limbic system of his reptilian brain. Slowly he steps backward, away from the shore, away from me. Into the depths of the channel he retreats, the water slowly rising, now above his waist, all the while intoning, almost chant-like, “Don’t shoot, Detective. I surrender. Don’t shoot.” He keeps creeping away from me into the bayou, his hands still up in the air.
“Don’t be stupid, Travis!” I bark. “Come back this way, now!” My mind is racing. The conniving little shit knows I can’t shoot him, not under these circumstances. For me to take a legal shot, he’s gotta be a threat to me or somebody else. He’s clearly no threat, he’s just a petty thief, and he’s getting away. And he’s betting I won’t come after him. Is that the little curl of a smirk I see forming on his lips?
“Don’t shoot, Detective Johnson,” he says, in the soothing, almost singsong voice one might use with a snarling dog behind a fence. The little fucker’s not worth ruining my suit and boots over, that’s for damn sure. I’ve left my damn radio in the car, so I grope for my cell to call Frank and tell him to drive around to the other side of the bayou, where Travis is headed. The adrenalin is at full throb now, and I fumble with my gun-free left hand for the pesky little device.
Splash.
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My cell disappears into the watery murk. I look back to Travis, now midstream and grinning broadly as he starts to backstroke away. He still calls out to me, “Don’t shoot, Detective.” In a fury, I decide to make a dash for my car in order to race around to the other side of the bayou myself. I slam the Glock into my holster.
Blam! A gunshot!
Instinctively, I crouch and scan my perimeter 360 degrees, then look back at Travis, who has stopped mid-stroke, equally stunned by the shot, trying to make sense of it. He raises both hands in the air. Where did the shot come from? It was fucking close! Loud as hell!
Then I smell the gunpowder and look down. There’s a hole in the roof of the sloop’s cabin, barely an inch from my right foot. Then I see my tattered pant leg. From the bottom of my holster, there’s a ragged tear about six inches long, aligning directly with the hole by my foot.
My Clint Squint turns into a bug-eyed look of horror and shame. I have become Barney Fife.
25
Colt’s Capture
and the Metro Amends
Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to.
—Mark Twain
I’m hoping Frank hasn’t made it back to the scene yet, hoping he didn’t hear my shot. Then it’ll just be Travis’s word against mine, and Travis is probably on his way to Mississippi by now.
But Frank is waiting for me at the end of the Stedman driveway, on Riverside Drive, his cargo of caged Colts wild with terror, grief, and rage. Wesley is yelling, “He shot Travis! Mama, he shot Travis!” And Brandy is wailing and weeping incoherently. Clearly, my accidental discharge had been heard, and when they see me approach without a prisoner, Brandy and Wesley assume the worst. Frank is leaning against his hood, arms crossed, muttering to himself and shaking his head.