by Paul Bishop
Jen raced down State Street without lights or siren. She flew through the four-way stop, then past the Lutheran church to hook a quick right onto Edgewood where she floored it in anticipation of Highway 5.
Her heart kept time with the Chevy Tahoe’s piston engine, fast as during her morning run—faster. But she worked to keep her voice calm and under control.
She needed Lyle to understand the big picture.
“That was Mariah Dale on the phone,” she said. “Calling from Lincoln. Brittney never showed up at her friend’s pool party. She’s not answering phone calls or texts. Mariah is frantic.”
“Why call us?”
“Like a lot of parents, Mariah believes in trust but verify. She’s got a tracker on Brittney’s phone.”
“And where is Miss Brittney now?”
Jen swallowed hard.
“Her phone’s been pinging from a gravel road two miles outside town for the past hour. Willow Creek Road,” she said.
“I’ve got news too,” said Lyle.
He told her about Edna Larkin.
Jen thought it was like one of those little plastic dexterity puzzles with the sliding plastic squares that make a complete picture once everything’s arranged correctly.
She thought she saw it all clearly.
“Did Edna Larkin live in Meadow’s Ford forty years ago?” said Jen.
“Sure. Edna and her husband, Ralph, were community-minded people. The family’s an institution. Chamber of Commerce, volunteer groups.”
“What happened to Ralph?”
“Heart attack. Or maybe a stroke.”
“When? Look it up on your phone.”
Lyle pulled out his phone.
“Type in Ralph Larkin Obituary,” said Jen.
When the information came up, Lyle slapped the dashboard. “Ralph died exactly forty-two years ago this month.”
“Same time as the killings stopped.”
“Before he could mail Annie Beck’s finger.”
“And now Edna’s taking up where Ralph left off. With Brittney Dale,” said Jen.
“Hell, what are you lollygaggin’ around for?” said Lyle. “Give it all you’ve got.”
Jen pushed the Chevy hard, ran the stop sign at Edgewood, hit Highway 5, and drifted into the gravel corner at Willow Creek, lights flashing now, the siren wailing.
Through the storm of dust the Chevy raised, Jen followed Lyle’s outstretched finger and saw the white Buick parked at the side of the road near a chain link fence bordering the city’s brush and lawn waste dump.
She braked sharply, stopping within two feet of the Buick and taking up the middle of the road.
Lyle had his door open before they stopped rolling.
Jen stepped onto the road two seconds later, watching Lyle approach the Buick.
Neither of them drew their firearms.
Lyle knocked on the passenger side window of the Buick. Stepped back as the door opened from the inside.
Jen stood between the two vehicles. Alert. Ready for anything.
“Brittney Dale?” said Lyle. “Mrs. Larkin?”
“You people, again,” said Brittney. “Why the hell can’t you leave me be?”
The girl was dressed as she had been earlier in the day—sweatshirt, shorts, and sneakers. She crawled from the car with a world-weary sigh.
Lyle looked past her.
“Step out of the car, please, Mrs. Larkin,” he said.
The driver’s side door opened, and Edna Larkin popped her white-haired head out.
Jen moved around to help her, glancing inside the car.
The front seat was covered with dozens of Polaroid snapshots, fading color images of nude female cadavers.
Jen saw several close up shots on hands with missing fingers.
Taking Jen’s proffered arm, Edna said, “Thank you, dear. This gravel gets so tricky underfoot. It’s something I always try to remember. Willow Creek is tricky underfoot.”
“We didn’t do nothing wrong,” said Brittney.
“I was just showing the girl around town,” said Edna. “Sharing precious memories.”
“Be careful coming around the car, Edna,” said Jen, guiding the old woman to where Lyle and Brittney waited.
“She’s a fast study, this one,” said Edna, shaking her finger at Brittney. “I knew she would be the first time I saw her. I knew right away. She’s got the talent for the job. The passion too.”
“What job might that be?” said Jen.
Edna’s eyes sparkled. “Murder of course. But more than that.”
“It’s like an art,” said Brittney.
“And to think,” Edna continued, “when I woke up this morning and decided to drop my old box at the garage sale, I thought I was putting it all away.” Edna reached out for Brittney’s hand. “Turns out, I found my heiress apparent.”
“Your box, ma’am?” said Lyle.
“After my Ralph died, I couldn’t go on without him.”
Jen looked back inside the Buick. A new box sat on the back seat, full of knives, some wrapped in newspapers.
“Heiress apparent?” said Lyle.
“She’s a future All-American,” said Jen.
“Screw Harvard,” said Brittney.
“Call Mrs. Dale,” said Lyle. “Let her know her daughter’s okay.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Jen. “But I’ll call her.”
Lyle nodded and led Brittney and Edna back to the Tahoe.
“Be careful,” said Edna. “This road has always been tricky.”
Jen looked up the most recent conversation on her phone and hit the call-back number.
The moon was a somber bronze flame against the deepening black.
It was gonna be a long night.
Dinosaur
Nicholas Cain
I’m delighted to have snagged a story for this anthology from one of my writing heroes, Nicholas Cain. During the 80s and 90s, Cain created and wrote some of the best men’s adventure series on the market, all with a deep connection to the Vietnam War and the brave men who served there—Saigon Commandos, War Dogs, Chopper-1, Little Saigon, as well as other novels under various pseudonyms. Cain’s twelve-book Saigon Commands series is my particular favorite because of its unusual focus on the Military Police units serving in Saigon. Cyber meeting Cain last year explained a lot. His personal experiences as an MP in Saigon and his years in law enforcement on the home front are what gave the strong patina of realism to his work. The man knows of what he writes. I once stated, “If Joseph Wambaugh had served as an MP in Vietnam, he’d be Nicholas Cain.” That’s how much I respect his writing. Fortunately, I was able to get Cain to support a brother in blue and return to his fiction roots to share this unusual cop tale...
Dinosaur
Dec. 7, 2017, Denver News Now: Officials from the City of Thornton in North Metro Denver report they have been forced to halt construction of the new police sub-station at 132nd & Quebec after workers unearthed what can only be described as the fossilized bones of a prehistoric creature known as Triceratops. This particular dinosaur grew to thirty feet in length, stood nine feet tall, weighed up to twelve tons, and is famous for the two massive horns that protruded from the protective frill rising along the top of its massive skull. Every schoolboy has seen paintings of a Triceratops doing battle with the "king of the tyrant lizards," better known as T-Rex, both of which are believed to have gone extinct some sixty-six million years ago when, scientists theorize, a giant comet struck earth near the Yucatan peninsula, bringing an end to most life on the planet for many eons after that. Adding to the mystery, a human skeleton was also found lying atop the monster's carcass and appears to have been the victim of foul play. Officials have not revealed its age or whether they believe it was also doing battle with the Triceratops at the time of its violent demise.
A blizzard had been forecast for Colorado's Front Range. I could sense the change in the weather by the throbbing in my left knee. It was the one that had stopped a
sliver of lead in Saigon, 1972, courtesy of a rooftop sniper with an AK-47. His bullet had missed the squad of scrambling MPs in front of me. The bullet exploded across the blacktop of Le Loi Street, splintering into slivers of hot lead, one of which nearly ripped out my kneecap. It had been a typical humid, sticky night in the tropics. The sniper turned out to be a disgruntled whore—tired of being rousted by the American army coppers—and not a hardcore communist. This meant no Purple Heart, just a wicked scar, memories to last a lifetime, and a dull ache any time the weather changed, especially in winter.
I started to turn left across busy 84th Avenue at Fox Street but hit my brakes at the center median. Two blue and white police cars suddenly appeared in oncoming traffic, their multi-colored, rooftop strobes flashing bright as flares against the blackness of midnight. The first roared by, siren yelping. The two patrolmen inside were grim-faced and determined. A less urgent, mournful electronic wail emanated from the second cruiser twenty yards behind. Its occupants were seemingly unconcerned, laughing about something or other. Their carefree expressions instantly reminded me of my training officer forty years ago. Sipping at a paper cup of 7/11 coffee with one hand as he steered with the other, he maneuvered expertly through slower traffic as we raced to the scene of a head-on crash with fatalities. The Code-3 high-speed run was always fun. The ten or twelve hours of paperwork that followed, not so much.
The coast clear, flashing reds and yellows growing distant in my rearview mirror, I completed my left turn and pulled into the almost empty parking lot of a coffee shop. From outside, through the big picture windows, I scanned the interior for anything suspicious. Seeing nothing, I slipped my dark blue Dakota into Park and killed the Magnum V-6 under the hood. Opening the door, I got out, adjusted the holstered Sig under my jacket, and shook off the pain in my left knee.
I glanced at my bulky black wristwatch. It was 3:00 AM. The watch had been a gift from my nephew, who thought it was cool to have an uncle who had been a Saigon Commando—military police—back in the day. On the face of the watch, the words Vietnam Veteran glowed an elephant-grass green.
Earlier, I’d cruised up busy I-25 in North Metro Denver. When I crossed into the working class suburb cops called Big T, my stomach started churning. It was a placed I'd avoided since I’d traded in my Thornton PD badge for a gig as a security consultant in Singapore in 1981. The gig had promptly gone sour, but I’d tried to learn from that regrettable mistake. It was why I was back here again.
As light snow began to fall, I figured the rest of the night should be peaceful. However, I was startled by the yelping of another siren. I turned to see an unmarked car, red and blues flashing from behind its front engine grille, sliding on some invisible black ice. It was chasing two intoxicated punks on a blacked-out snowmobile. They were speeding down the middle of the roadway, swerving back and forth on their stainless steel skis. The passenger threw an obscene gesture back at the pursuing officer.
Shaking my head, I walked into the welcome warmth of the coffee shop. Through the glass doors closing behind me, I heard another engine roaring into overdrive. I turned my head to see a four-wheel-drive police SUV appear from a side street. I watched as it passed the unmarked unit and began gaining on the snowmobile. If only we'd had those babies back in the day, I thought, but I didn’t watch to see what happened. The more things changed in the Big T, the more they remained the same.
I vaguely heard what sounded like a distant crash as I moved toward the rear of the coffee shop. But whatever happened down the road was out of sight and no concern to me. I was retired, a certifiable old fart. I’d been summoned to my old battlegrounds “for a little surprise.” The cryptic invitation had been left on my voicemail by a man I'd trained to survive on the night beat over forty years ago. He was now a Deputy Chief.
The coffee shop had changed dramatically from the graveyard shift refuge I remembered. The plate glass windows still afforded an unobstructed view of the streets outside, illuminated by the bright lights of the mall on the other side of I-25. However, the long, curving counter was mostly gone. Once the domain of the Thornton Thumpers—the cops who had policed this rowdy suburb of the Mile-High City—the counter had now been chopped off by someone with no imagination. The alteration made room for a booth and tables, but I felt oddly violated. A dark force had screwed with my sacred memories.
A heavyset black waitress emerged from the bakery in the back room. She was spilling out of a too tight, pink outfit that stretched obscenely whenever she moved. Holding a half-full coffee pot in one hand and a soiled dishrag in the other, she wiped sweat from her brow with a meaty forearm and narrowed her gaze in my direction.
"Can I help you?" she said as if I was trespassing. I instantly missed the slim waitress with blonde locks who had cooed, “Coffee, tea or me?” every time she greeted the Blues of First Watch as they came in for their first caffeine break of the midnight shift.
"Coffee," I said, then slid across the protesting plastic cover of a swiveling stool, positioning my back against an interior wall. Cream and sugar were on the counter in front of me. "Got any Buttermilks?"
"We don't make those anymore." She frowned and aggressively plopped a porcelain mug down in front of me. I paused, surprised it had not shattered.
Glancing up, I locked eyes with her, remembering all the stare-down contests I'd won with young, anti-cop waitresses during the seventies. "How 'bout a bear claw?" I tilted my head slightly. "You still make those, don't you?"
"You look like a bear," she said. The slightest trace of a smile cracked her grimace. She leaned forward, slipped one of her curved, inch-long fingernails under the slightly visible ribbon protruding along the edge of my blue calico shirt. She pulled free the good luck St. Michael's scapular that was usually tucked out of sight, worn for protection like a Viking's sacred talisman. Her tone was accusatory, a challenge when she added, "A smoky-da-bear."
Headlights pulling into the parking lot outside stopped any clever retort. It was a police car. The officers stopped their unit but did not get out. Instead, I felt they were staring directly at me. I knew one had to be consulting the BOLO Hot Sheet on the clipboard attached to his dash. It held passport-sized photographs of a dozen local fugitives.
"Friends of yours?" The waitress asked.
I ignored her. I turned, watching for movement in the reflection of a long mirror running the length of the wall. A second patrol car pulled up, and the headlights of both units went out simultaneously. Four haggard-looking patrolmen in their twenties dismounted in unison. One paused to lean back into the car and balance a riot helmet atop the front seat's headrest.
Their uniforms were dark blue, appearing almost black. The badges over their hearts sparkled beneath the street lights as one officer zipped up his leather jacket and another unzipped his own. The stormtrooper-style hats we'd worn back in the seventies were nowhere to be seen.
The officers had beautiful metallic-blue police patches on their shoulders. Forty years ago, we'd gone slick-sleeved, like our Denver PD brothers to the south. The officers were now standing between the two marked patrol cars, straightening their tucked-in ties and aligning their gig lines out of habit.
A third sedan cruised in off the street, its headlights already off. It was an unmarked muscle car, last of the Crown Vic Interceptors. It was driven by my old buddy, the once-young rookie I'd trained in 1979 before there were such titles as Field Training Officers. Now a watch commander, his hair was a bit thinner and graying, but his belly was still flat. He had a dozen white hash marks sewn above the cuff on the left arm of his long-sleeved uniform shirt. They glowed as bright as the teeth he flashed when he spotted me sitting inside.
I stood, approached the doorway, and dramatically held my arms out as if anticipating a romantic embrace—typical cop humor.
"This must be him," the nearest officer to me said. Held out an open hand to shake. "The living legend, we’ve heard so much about."
I felt my face flushing, even in the half-
light of red neon advertising We Never Close. I shook his hand without making solid eye contact.
The older lawman chuckled. "Only believe half of what you've heard about this old dinosaur." Roy was a stocky sixty-year-old with wire-rim glasses and a crew cut. He elbowed his way through the cluster of gun-belts and tactical boots.
"He still looks like a cop," one of the younger officers said.
Once inside the coffee shop, Roy held out a scarred and calloused hand that felt like old leather when I clasped it. "How the hell you been, Jonathan?” he asked.
"It's been a long time, brother!" I said, enjoying the warmth and sincerity of the handshake. "Are those stars on your collar, Roy?" I asked. “Does the Big T have generals supervising the line troops now?"
My old friend smirked, avoiding the question. "Anyone run this guy for warrants yet?"
"So what's one of the big chiefs doin' workin' graves?" I asked.
"Deputy Chief," he corrected me with a wink. "I like to get out with my troops. Keeps ‘em honest."
Roy quickly introduced me to the four patrolmen, “Larry, Moe, and Curly—I forgot the last guy's name on the end," he joked.
"Just don't call me Shirley." The odd man out gave a poor imitation of the actor, Leslie Nielsen.
"He's the reason I asked you to come up to the Big T." Roy could not mask his pride. "My son, Joey. He’s number one on the sergeant's promotion list."
As I said, “Congratulations,” to Joey, Roy began to mock frisk me. He ignored my top-of-the-line, Swiss-made Sig in its concealed hip holster, but seemed surprised when he found and retrieved a pair of well-worn but intact leather sap gloves half tucked in under my belt. My wife always wondered why they were so heavy. I did not tell her they were lined with powdered lead, designed to take down even the biggest bad boy with one punch.
"These are illegal now," Roy said. He grinned, handing them back anyway.
"They were prohibited by department policy back when we worked the streets," I reminded Roy. I enjoyed his apparent unease at this revelation in front of his men. "Old habits die hard,” I said.
