CHAPTER 13
DOOLEY FRIENDS
“It’s closed, Sheriff,” said deputy Kensworth, as he climbed into the squad car’s driver seat.
“Closed?” Barns sat up taller in the shotgun seat with a more ornery than usual scowl and eyeballed his deputy. “That’s fucking impossible! It’s a Seven-fucking-Eleven for Christ sakes!”
“Doors are locked and the closed sign is out, Boss. Not to mention no customers.”
“Well I’ll be damned! OK, let’s swing by Woody’s. We need to get us some coffee some damn place, even if it ain’t good coffee. I’m not going out there to them hills again without my damn coffee.”
The parking lot at Woody’s Stop-And-Go was also empty and the ‘closed’ sign was out, but a hand-written note was also in the window. “Gone looking for Dooley,” is what it said, but that wasn’t all it said. It was signed ‘Artistic License’ in fancy cursive lettering.
“Son of a bitch!” swore Barns. A few calls to people around town verified his suspicions. The word was out all over town that Dooley Simple had been kidnapped by the mad killer that had murdered the Larkin brothers, and that the damn Sheriff wasn’t doing anything about it. Dooley friends by the dozens were taking to the woods, armed with rifles, hunting dogs, and apparently all available coffee. Some of them were said to belong to some sort of militant artist collective called Artistic License.
“Voters too, damn it, the whole lot of them,” Barns complained to Fenster. “I’ll have to divert a couple of squads to join the hunt for that damned moron Dooley, or I’ll be shit in this November’s elections.
“Alright, but when we move on the Goth place we’ll need all the men we can get. In the meantime let’s try to turn that mob out looking for Dooley in our favor. Start rumors that the Indians are behind both the killings and the Dooley kidnapping, and that the Goths are in cahoots with them. But coffee or no coffee, get your ass up to the front gate of the Goth place and be ready to move through it with the loggers at any time. Tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest, we’ll be cutting Goth timber.”
Secrets of Goth Mountain Page 32
