by R.M. Haig
September 14th, 2016. 11:40PM
Gartby, Indiana
"I knew it wasn't right, Ron, I just knew it!" Miss Ferguson congratulated herself as Deputy Bailey parked his cruiser in her driveway.
Sheriff Boudreaux had arrived five minutes before his backup and was already approaching the barn when he turned at the sight of Bailey's headlights. He'd been in a foul mood before Miss Ferguson placed her call to him, and what she had to say was certainly nothing to help lift his spirits. As it stood, he had a deputy in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the chest, and a perpetrator in custody who looked like he fell a lot harder than most of the people his officers arrested. He would have to explain the man's condition to a judge in the morning, and he was likely going to have to explain the department's survivor benefits to a woman he knew quite well once her husband succumbed to the wounds he suffered in the evening's shootout. Those things together spelled bad day, but adding the invasion of his warehouse by unwelcome and prying eyes changed the verbiage to something more sinister, perhaps nightmare or disaster.
"You say you left the door unlocked?" he asked her in a state of shock and anger after nodding to Bailey as he stepped out of his patrol car. "So he didn't break in, he just opened the door? Why in the name of sweet Santa Muerta would you have done that?"
Miss Ferguson cleared her throat anxiously, knowing that what she'd done was wrong and hoping this wouldn't impact her monthly rent payment. "Yes, Ron, I opened it on Monday because I expected that someone would be coming."
"And when no one did, you just left it that way?" He asked in his surly irritability.
Miss Ferguson chose to remain silent, figuring it the best defense, and let the man stew in his anger for the time being. She knew that Detective Harris, whom the sheriff had informed her did not exist, had explored the barn, but it wasn't as though he had taken anything away with him. Therefore, in her mind, everything was okay on the whole because everything was still right where it belonged. No harm, no foul, she figured. It was clear in Boudreaux's attitude, however, that this simply wasn't the case.
"You're sure he said Detective Harris, right?" He continued in his interrogation. "And he was a tall, thick and in shape looking man with black hair?" he specified to confirm.
"Yes, and he had a bit of a widow's peak," she added.
"That's him, Lord Jesus," the sheriff complained. "That little prick, sticking his nose where it doesn't belong! I should've known he'd do something like this! Did Louie come by afterward?"
"Louie Rambo?" She asked. "No, I haven't seen or heard from him since you sent him in your place back in March."
"Where in blazes was he?" Boudreaux snapped beneath his breath. "Should've been right here!"
They reached the entrance to the barn and stopped to wait as officer Bailey approached, and the man squeezed himself between the sheriff and the woman to effectively separate them. He knew of the sheriff's anger, which he was only allowing shades of to show through to the old woman, so he felt he was doing her a favor in creating space between them.
Boudreaux took a deep and nervous breath as he reached for the doorknob, wondering exactly what he was going to see once the door swung open. He thought for a moment about dusting the knob for prints, but figured there would be more to find inside anyway. The place could be a total wreck, Jake could've torn it apart and made off with documents that would be very hard to explain. That would certainly make the day equal a disaster, if it was the case. On the other hand, he could've just taken a brief look around and learned nothing from the experience. That option was highly unlikely, and Boudreaux knew it.
There was a brief sigh of relief when the door opened and he saw that things seemed to be in the same shape they'd been the last time someone had made the monthly exchange, but then he stepped inside and noticed some issues. There didn't seem to be many on the surface, but the fact that there were any meant that the place had been given at least a cursory once over. That spelled trouble -- perhaps big trouble, and everything inside would have to be thoroughly examined to gauge the damage.
"Shit," he cursed, approaching the pallet with the FGSI Services boxes and seeing that the tape on them had been cut.
"Got some over here too, Ron," Bailey reported as he examined boxes on the Leo's Construction end of the warehouse.
"This is trouble," the Sheriff complained verbally. "This is big fuckin' trouble!"
"Oh Ron," Miss Ferguson cooed from the doorway, "I'm so terribly --"
"Just get out!" He ordered loudly, spittle flying from his mouth.
She took his advice, her heart heavy with his disappointment in her. Trying to hold back the tears, she turned and walked off toward the house, where she would wait and hope that he might forgive her and continue with their arrangement, which had been very lucrative to her for a very long time.
In her absence, the sheriff looked around more. He saw little in the way of further issues, but even the two or three they'd found could spell jail for the lot of them.
"Okay, Jeff," he said in a pained exhalation to Bailey, trying to throttle his rage. He noted the collapse of the box containing FGSI's money and the displacement of the lid on the one containing paperwork. "The first thing we need to do is figure out exactly what he saw, exactly what he looked at. I don't care if we have to dust every box for prints, I want to know about everything that he saw."
"Yes sir," Bailey replied, surveying the place visually.
"Then, we're gonna have to clean it all up. Call in all the boys if you need to, just get it taken care of by morning."
"Of course, sir," Bailey acknowledged, setting to work immediately.
Waddling toward the exit, Bourdreaux shook his head in disbelief and dismay. He never would've thought it would come to something like this, it was almost an exact replay of 1996. It was as though they'd come full circle. When it happened then, he'd sworn that nothing of that nature would ever occur again -- and here it was, almost exactly the same, nearly twenty years later.
As he took his heavy and awkward steps toward the exit, he felt something crumble and crunch under foot in the middle of a step. Stopping, he lifted his right shoe and saw a small pile of crushed powder underneath. Knowing that it only could've come from one place, he looked up and to his right. Once he did, it only took a second to lay eyes on a box of product that had a very distinct and out of place hole right in the center of it. It appeared to have been made by a nine millimeter round, and he imagined it was through-and-through. Perhaps even into the box behind it, which really pissed him off.
"I don't believe it," he mumbled as he studied the defect. "That sum-bitch shot my meth!"