Serve & Protect

by L. J. Breedlove

  Lindy laughed. “Your gun fetish is a bit obsessive,” she teased. “But I love you anyway.”

  Mac smiled. “Lindy? Truly? I....” he trailed off, not even sure what he was wanting to ask.

  His aunt studied him. “Mac, you are who you are,” she said gently. “You grew up rough, then you and Toby got into some ugly shit. You went into the Marines and went to Afghanistan. That doesn’t produce a man who knits booties as a hobby. You’re intelligent, you see things clearly. You stand by your friends, you take care of them. You work hard. You’re a good man, Mac, and I’m so relieved you turned out this way. Because I was afraid you wouldn’t for a while.”

  She patted his hand and stood up to put her cup in the sink. He thought about what she said.

  “Kate and I are done, I think,” he blurted out.

  “Can’t say I’m sorry,” she said, her back to him. “Or surprised.”

  “I wanted, hell I don’t know what I wanted,” he said. “But I’m not going to find it there.”

  She turned to look at him. “You wanted a home and a family,” she said. “That’s normal, Mac. We all want that. You’ll find the right woman. One who likes you as you are, and isn’t waiting for you to convert and conform to their beliefs and standards.”

  “You saw it. Shorty saw it. Even Janet,” Mac said. “Hell, I saw it. But I didn’t want to give up my dream of having a home like that.”

  “You can have a home like that, Mac,” she said gently. “Just build one yourself, as yourself.”

  She hugged him and left him sitting at the table.

  Good advice, Mac thought. Too bad he didn’t have a clue what that would look like. His mother had dragged him across the country looking for her next man, her next adrenaline rush, hell he didn’t know what she was looking for. But at 12, he nearly killed one of her men who decided he liked her son better than her, and she’d shipped him off to Lindy’s ex-husband who had custody of their son Toby. When Toby and Mac started getting in deep with the gangs, they were sent to live with Lindy in Seattle — as if there weren’t gangs to be found here. Lindy tried. But two wild teenage boys weren’t interested in what she had to offer. Add in four years in the Marine Corps, then four years at Western Washington University. So here he was, 30 in a few months, living in the upstairs flat of his aunt’s home, and he still had no clue what a home looked like. He had a memory flash of the warmth of the Fairchild home with the smell of homemade brownies and Kate’s laughter. And now Lindy’s saying there’s more than one kind?

  Fuck.

  Chapter 14

  (Seattle Examiner, Monday, May 5, 2014)

  Monday morning, 6 a.m. and Mac hadn’t slept well. Nightmares again. Happened. Unfortunately, police blotter calls also happened regardless of how much sleep — or how little sleep — Mac had. So, he grimly plowed through them. Nothing hugely exciting, but given his current headache, lack of sleep and lingering nightmare — the ugly one of being left in a car by himself at age four or so and crying, hungry, terrified his mother wasn’t coming back — he was relieved to have the blotter done. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes for a moment, letting the stress and adrenaline of deadline seep away. Then he made a list of all the calls he wanted to make as follo’s to his trip to Mount Vernon. And a list of all the unanswered questions about Sheriff Pete Norton. A separate list of questions about the wilderness survival trips. And then a miscellaneous list about the rise of constitutional sheriffs, white supremacy in law enforcement, domestic violence and child custody battles, the National Park Service and oh what the hell, toss in the current stats on the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. He groaned.

  He sent Janet a text saying he’d be across the street at the coffee shop. And he headed there, but then he heard Angie’s voice, and detoured through the photo department. “Hey,” he said. “How do the photos look?”

  She smiled at him. A genuine, uncomplicated, I’m happy to see you smile. And Mac could have kissed her for it. He would kiss her someday, he decided.

  “Hey, Mac,” she said. “Photos? Well let’s see. I have enough tulip photos that it sent the lifestyle desk into orgasms, I kid you not. The travel desk is thrilled with the photos I took for a to-be-named-later feature on visiting Mount Vernon for the weekend. Outdoors is, and I quote ‘very pleased’ with the photos I took of the Northern Cascades National Park, and my boss is happy with me.”

  Mac was laughing by the time she got done with her list. “What did you do? Come in here last night and work?”

  “Why yes, yes, I did,” she said, grinning. “And by the way I’ve got some great ones of Pete Norton.” She reached over to the printer and grabbed a few sheets. “Here, take a look,” she said.

  Mac looked at the printouts she handed him. She’d captured Norton, he thought sobering up. Caught his intelligence and his cruelty when he thought no one was looking. When he wasn’t pretending. He looked at the photos of Norton for a long while.

  “Mac?” Angie asked anxiously.

  “They’re good, Angie,” he said. “Really good. He forgot you were shooting, didn’t he? And he let the real man peer through.”

  She looked delighted. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly that. And it’s a scary man that hides behind that façade — all of the façades. It would be easy to think you’ve penetrated the John Wayne façade to the real façade of rural sheriff. But that’s just another façade.”

  He nodded. “Can I have these? I’m going to debrief with Janet. I’d like her to see them.”

  Then he grinned. “Makes me nervous, though,” he teased. “What do you see when you look at me through that lens of yours?”

  She laughed. She pulled out another print from her camera bag and handed it to him. “This,” she said. “Lots of different Mac Davis’s to be honest. But this one? This is the one who can go up against Pete Norton.”

  Mac looked at himself. Cold gray eyes looking off from the camera. Searching. “When we were shot at?” he asked. That was the man who had hunted down Howard Parker. Who had taken on Army of God. A stone-cold killer. The wolf who hid among the sheep, as FBI agent Stan Warren had described him. Not to get to the sheep, but because sheep got fed regularly and had a warm place to sleep.

  But sometimes, the wolf was necessary too.

  She nodded.

  “Does he scare you?” Mac asked, nodding toward the photo he held.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said somberly. “I know the difference between the men who prey on the weak, and the men who chase the predators away.”

  Mac felt something relax inside him. He handed the printout back and walked away.

  By the time Mac got across the street, Janet was already there with coffee in front of her. She raised an eyebrow, questioning where he’d gone. He handed her the photos of Norton.

  She looked at them silently. Then she spread them out on the table; there were six of them. “Interesting,” she said. “Angie is a talented photographer. What is she like to work with?”

  “Impressive,” Mac said. “Easy to be with, sticks up for herself without getting defensive. Has her own insights to offer. You can pair me up with her anytime.”

  Janet looked at him in surprise. “You don’t like being part of a team,” she observed, as she took another sip of coffee. “A reporting team anyway.”

  “I know,” he said. “But the two of us were able to get some interviews I couldn’t have gotten by myself. And those photos?”

  He studied them for a moment. “What kind of man do you see there?”

  “A cruel, self-important one,” Janet said promptly. “A game player. He’s got all these fake fronts he’s using, and then? She gets him in an unguarded moment, and we see the real man. Close?”

  “I think so,” Mac agreed. He told her about the trip, handed her the lists he’d made this morning. She read through them while he sat silently and drank his Mountain Dew. Maybe he’d order iced tea next time, he thought, just to throw them off a bit. He did order a bagel sandwic
h, and the waitress looked like he’d sprouted an extra head.

  Janet looked up at him.

  “I feel like I’m all over the place,” he admitted. “I do want to follow up and see if the sheriff did put a word in with Anderson about me going out on the wilderness survival trip. I think there’s one this weekend. Angie wants to go, so I’ll ask, but the trips are usually men only. If they don’t make an exception, she’ll have to make do with my photography. After seeing hers? I can see why she bitches.”

  “Then there’s a profile of Norton himself,” Janet said, thinking out loud. “Maybe as a feature sidebar to a bigger piece on constitutional sheriffs? The anti-government movement like Bundy in Nevada last month?”

  Mac nodded. “And there’s the whole story about women who are leaving these bastards, and then getting challenged over child custody,” he said. “And that’s the story I wouldn’t have even seen if Angie hadn’t been along. Those women wouldn’t have talked to me alone either.”

  “I see that,” Janet agreed. “And white supremacy in law enforcement? Why is that on this list?”

  “Because Rodriguez is worried,” Mac said slowly. “You could see it in the fucked-up response to the Army of God last fall. He’s making a connection from that to this somehow — I doubt he could even explain it himself. But I trust him on this. And Dunbar too. A Latino and a Black man. They’re both wary. So, I don’t know. And maybe it’s down the road, but...,” he pulled out his recorder, checked his notes, and queued up the segment from Norton about white men.

  She listened to it. “That’s the man without the masks,” she observed.

  “Yeah,” Mac said, then reconsidered. “Maybe. He’s also a self-serving, vain piece of shit. I need a couple of plates run, and I’d like a background check on him. His wife mentioned it: he’s never gone back to California, not even to visit, although his mother’s still alive. And it seems odd to me that he never served in the military. Most sheriffs, especially the constitutional crowd, have a military background. Which makes me wonder if there’s a dishonorable discharge?”

  She smiled. “I’ll make some calls,” she promised.

  Mac nodded. Janet had sources for some things that he just didn’t have. He could probably ask Rodriguez, but he wasn’t sure it would be legal for Rodriguez to give him the stuff, and he thought the Lieutenant needed to walk the straight and narrow right now.

  She looked at the photos, at his lists, and considered it all while Mac ate his sandwich. Food helped, he discovered. It was chasing both the headache and the lingering nightmare away.

  “OK,” she said. “See if you can get on the next wilderness survival trip. And if you can get Angie included, I’ll get her boss to sign off on it. Because you’re right — you do OK with still photography, but what she does is on a whole other level.”

  Mac started another list.

  “Then write the profile of Norton. Follow up. And maybe I’m paranoid, but I want to know more about that church. What you had to say worries me. It seems to be another theme lately, this joining of the right-wing political movements and evangelicalism. It may just be I’m sensitized to it.”

  “Remember Rebecca Nesbitt?” Mac asked, making a note. “That FBI agent who gave Stan Warren much of the info on religious extremists?”

  She nodded. “She owes us,” she said. “After that two-day interview I gave her. Good God! I’ve never put a subject through anything that grueling.”

  Mac laughed. That had been Nesbitt’s price for her off-the-record assistance to Stan Warren when they’d gone in after Janet— an interview with Janet about Jehovah’s Valley and the evangelical separatist communities.

  “My story list is getting longer, not more organized,” he observed in frustration.

  “Normal at this stage,” Janet said comfortably. And because she wasn’t bothered by it, he relaxed too. His last two large projects had mostly been him being tossed in the lion’s den and then fighting his way out. This wasn’t personal. It was reporting. Huh, he thought. So, this is what investigative reporting can be.

  “But you can write the profile and set it off to one side,” she continued. “You may have to revise it significantly, or it may be that it’s a stand-alone piece and the bigger story takes off in a different direction. But it will clear the table a bit.”

  He nodded.

  “So, get on it,” she ordered with a smile.

  He laughed.

  By the end of the day, he knew more about Pete Norton, a lot more. Most of it disturbing. He also knew more about constitutional sheriffs, Sandy Hook deniers, and the right-wing media and their fondness for conspiracy theories.

  “Who believes this shit?” he exclaimed when Janet asked him how it was going.

  “Millions,” she answered seriously. “Check their Facebook or Twitter followers.”

  Mac did and was depressed. Americans are fools, he thought.

  But the most important conversation was with Craig Anderson.

  “So, you’re the man to talk to about these wilderness survival weekends,” Mac said. “You didn’t tell me about that when we talked.”

  Anderson laughed. “Nope,” he said cheerfully. “Got a call from Sheriff Norton, saying I should include you next weekend if you called, though. You impressed him, sounds like.”

  “Good or bad?” Mac asked.

  Anderson laughed again. “Now that’s a good question isn’t it?” he observed.

  “Can I bring my photog along?”

  “That gal Norton was fuming about? We don’t include women, Mac. Not set up for it, to be honest,” he said more seriously. “And it really is a guy’s weekend away, you know?”

  “She’s not there as a woman. She’s there as a news photog. And if you could see the pictures from the trip to Mount Vernon you’d see why she should go. Otherwise we only get the photos I take, and they’re mediocre at best compared to hers.”

  Anderson was silent while he thought about it. “You willing to be her tent buddy? Or more accurately, is she willing for you to be her tent buddy?”

  “I’ll ask to make sure, but yes,” Mac replied. He sent off a text message.

  “Norton will hate it,” Anderson said with amusement. “Sure, let’s do it.”

  “Norton going to be there?” Mac asked.

  “Yeah, he’s going,” Anderson said. “And me. And our setup guy Ken Bryson. Don’t think you’ve met him. Ten clients not counting the two of you.”

  Mac read Angie’s response: yes!!!

  He grinned.

  “Angie says she’s fine with the shared tent,” he told him.

  “Be at my shop then at 5 p.m. on Friday. We’ll caravan from there.”

  “Weapons?” Mac asked.

  “Bring what you want,” he said. “We’ll have an assortment for people to try out as well.”

  And didn’t that put the fear of stupid men with guns into his very soul? Mac thought.

  “Tell me there won’t be drinking,” Mac said, because if you were designing a clusterfuck of epic proportions, of course you’d add booze.

  Anderson laughed. “For what we charge those men? It’s a catered, top-of-the-line experience,” he said. “Of course, there will be drinking.”

  “Then just remember I prefer Mountain Dew,” Mac said morosely.

  Anderson laughed some more. “I look forward to this one,” he said. “Oh, by the way? Andy Malloy said he thought he’d sit it out.”

  “Too bad,” Mac said. “Sorry I’ll miss him.”

  Anderson was laughing so hard he couldn’t say goodbye when he hung up.

  Angie was all but dancing by his desk, when Mac set his phone down. “I get to go? Really?” she exclaimed.

  “Really you do,” Mac assured her, although it troubled him for some undefined reason. “So, we’ve got things to do. One, I’m taking you to a gun range. Tomorrow afternoon work?”

  She nodded.

  “Two, you got gear for a camping weekend? Clothes to hike in? All that?”r />
  She nodded again.

  “He said it’s a deluxe trip, so they must be hauling in the stuff,” Mac said. “But keep it to what you can carry, OK? And that includes camera equipment.”

  “OK,” she said. “You’re worried.”

  Mac nodded. “I am. And if we have to haul ass out of there, I don’t want to be burdened with a lot of stuff.” Although if they really had to haul ass, he’d leave all the stuff. Weapons and her camera — that’s all they really needed.

  He wondered how far into the park did they go? Quite a long way, he thought, or Peabody would have mentioned the weapons fire. He frowned. Why hadn’t Peabody mentioned the weapons fire? It must be significant, if 10 men were going to play with guns. Either they went in farther than Mac would expect, or what? Weapons fire every other weekend didn’t bother Peabody?

  He jotted down a note to call the woman at the museum and ask if there had been complaints about that. And that reminded him he needed to call the coroner.

  “Mac?” Angie asked with amusement. “Your mind went somewhere? What else do I need to do to prepare?”

  He considered her. She was young, healthy and had plenty of stamina last weekend, he thought. He doubted a bunch of desk jockeys were any more fit. “Could you hike five miles?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said with a shrug. “I used to like to hike and camp. Been a while, but I’m still fit enough.”

  “Then you tell me,” Mac said. “You saw the terrain we’re facing. What do you think?”

  Angie’s smile lit up her face, and Mac wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve it.

  “Rain gear,” she said promptly. “Are we providing our own sleeping bags and tent?”

  He shook his head. “No, they’ll do that,” he said.

  “OK,” she said. “Let me think about it then. We can talk more when we go shooting.” She started back toward her department. “Don’t forget to have Janet clear it for me!”

  Mac watched her go with amusement. He sent off an update to Janet, including the reminder.

  Then he shut down everything and headed to the gym. He needed a good workout.