Feeding Gators: Book 1 in the Shiner's Bayou Series

by Gen Anne Griffin

  Eddie opened his mouth to reassure the sheriff that he was fine but another spurt of coughing made him nearly double over in his chair.

  “Maybe Addy should put the cigarette out,” Alex suggested, shoving an empty soda can towards his friend.

  Addison raised an eyebrow at Alex. “What for?”

  “Because I think you’re killing him,” Alex jerked his thumb at Eddie, who was coughing too hard to agree but would have if he’d had any breath left in his lungs. Addison studied Eddie contemplatively and rolled the lit cigarette between his fingertips.

  “Addison, I think Alex might have a point.” Wally Hall shook his head at Addy and made a dropping motion towards the soda can. “Put it out, son.”

  “Fine,” Addison said. He dropped the lit cigarette into the can and scowled at Eddie. “Happy?”

  Eddie nodded, but he couldn’t catch his breath. “Need.” Cough. Cough. “My inhaler.”

  “I reckon go get it,” Wally Hall said with a sigh. Eddie stood up, still coughing, and headed for the front door. As he gasped his way out into the parking lot, he could hear the rest of them laughing behind his back.

  *

  “Where are we taking all this stuff?” Cal broke the uncomfortable silence that had filled the wrecker for the last 30 minutes.

  “I’m thinking Gleeson’s Salvage,” David chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip.

  “You serious?” Cal looked at him in surprised disgust. “I hate dealing with Shane Gleeson. He’s a crook.”

  “Can’t risk anyone finding so much as single piece of that car. Shane doesn’t even look at the shit he takes in before he melts it down.”

  “Shane is stoned out of his gourd. He wouldn’t know what he had even if he did look through every single piece of this load.”

  “Precisely.” David bared his teeth in an expression that was supposed to be a smile but wasn’t. Cal tapped his fingers against the arm rest. He’d been quiet for most of the ride. Too quiet, even for Cal. They sat in an uncomfortable silence and watched trees go by on the side of the road.

  “How bad are we talking about here?” Cal asked. “I mean, if someone say, picks up that engine and finds a VIN number you didn’t file off?”

  “Bad.” David gnawed on his lip and stared ahead through the windshield. He didn’t want to have this conversation with Cal. Not now. Not ever.

  “Define bad.” Cal pushed the issue.

  “Prison,” David admitted. “For a long fucking time.”

  Cal cursed under his breath. “You can’t keep doing this shit, David.”

  “I’m not trying to, believe me.” He was exhausted. “You think I want to spend my Saturday morning hauling around pieces of a stolen car and dodging a lousy cop who’s hell bent on revenge?

  “You don’t get it.” Cal shook his head, his jaw was locked in a tight line. “You’re never going to get it. You’re always reckless. You never care about the consequences.”

  “I care about the consequences,” David didn’t care for the implications Cal was making. “You don’t know how damn much I care about the consequences.”

  “You care about Gracie?” Cal turned in his seat so that his eyes were bearing into David. If looks could kill, David would have been dead in the driver’s seat and he knew it. David bit his tongue before he said something he’d regret.

  “Yes,” he said. “I care about Gracie.”

  “Why are you here?” Cal made a gesture at the interior of the wrecker. “The shop’s doing more business than you can keep up with. Your house is paid off. Your shop is paid off. You play like you’re broke, but I know damned well that you’ve got as much money in the bank as I do, and even more money hidden tucked away in those damned Mason jars you have hidden all over the swamp.”

  “What’s your point?” David snapped. He didn’t appreciate where the conversation was going but he was pretty sure this wasn’t the ideal time to set Cal straight. He couldn’t afford any more broken bones. His nose hurt bad enough as is.

  “My point is that you’ve got it all, including my goddamn girlfriend. Why are you here?” Cal practically spat the words at him. “Why are you hauling around stolen cars and risking going to prison when you have nothing to gain from it?”

  “Because I have to.” David clenched the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “Me and Gracie, it’s not what you think.”

  “We aren’t talking about you and Gracie. All you’re going to tell me is lies, David. Don’t bother. I know you too well.” David started to argue, but Cal held up one hand and gestured for him to shut up. David didn’t figure he had too many options, so he shut up.

  “I don’t want to know the details about how you and Gracie discovered you were fucking soul mates. I love her, David. I’ve always loved her and I’m always going to love her. If she’s picked you over me, I’m going to have to live with her decision. It doesn’t make me happy, but I’ve got to deal with that.”

  “She hasn’t picked-” David was getting tired of being accused of lying when he was telling as much of the truth as he could. Or trying to anyway.

  “Shut up and let me finish,” Cal slammed his fist into the dashboard of the truck, cracking it. “If you get Gracie tied up in your bullshit, I’m never going to forgive you. Never. If you get her thrown in jail because you get a cheap thrill out of stealing cars or you wanted to make a couple of extra bucks, I’ll never forgive you. You’re my best friend, but I’ll never forgive you if you go down and you take Gracie with you.”

  “I’ll do anything in my power to protect Gracie,” David bit his lip so hard it bled. “If you would just fucking listen-.”

  Cal cut him off again, he pointed to a narrow road that could barely been seen off the side of the highway. “Turn up here on the left.”

  “We can check your trail camera on the way back,” David didn’t slow the truck.

  “Shane Gleeson’s lazy. It could be weeks before he melts this load down. You want to leave that high dollar engine laying around that pigsty of Shane’s and hope everyone out there is too high to notice you rubbed grease and dirt all over it to make it look old.”

  “You have a better idea?” David took his foot off the accelerator. The big truck immediately began to slow.

  “I’ve got a better plan,” Cal put heavy emphasis on the last word. “Turn onto the lease.”

  David turned the wrecker onto the lease. As he slowed to a stop in front of the gate, Cal got out of the truck and unfastened the rusty padlock using the key he always kept on his key ring. He opened the gate and waved for David to drive the wrecker onto the muddy trail that lead deep into the depths of the hunting lease his grandpappy owned.

  David eased the truck past the gate and onto the trail. Cal locked the gate behind them and climbed back into the passenger seat. “You might want to go ahead and put it in four-wheel drive,” Cal told him.

  “What exactly are we planning to do here?” David asked, even as he put the truck in neutral and engaged the four-wheel drive lever.

  “Remember a few weeks back when we got all that rain?” Cal gestured for David to move towards the right side of the trail. David knew it lead down into the depths of an old, almost impassible area of swamp.

  “Yeah.” David eased the truck back into gear and took his foot off the brake.

  “The ground got real soft and one of those huge old cypress trees at the edge of the water came all the way out of the ground.”

  David waited for Cal to make his point. Cal stayed quiet as the big truck eased down under the tight canopy. The tree branches scratched down the sides of the metal body, making David glad he’d never gotten around to giving the wrecker a more attractive paint job.

  “Pappy wanted to use the tree. It was real nice wood. He had me bring the trackhoe down here and get it,” Cal smirked at David. “He told me to make sure to fill in the hole after I got the tree out.”

  “You ain’t got that hole filled in yet, do you?” David smiled his
first real smile all day.

  “Nope. But I’m sure Pappy will be pleased to see that I used my Saturday off of work to get it done.”

  “I just bet he will be,” David agreed.

  *

  “I’m pretty sure I could catch these guys if I blocked off their access points, you know?” Addison had lit another cigarette in Eddie’s absence and the conference room was more or less filled with smoke by the time Eddie managed to stop coughing enough to come back inside.

  He paused just inside the door-frame, his inhaler still in his right hand. He noticed that Wally Hall had bummed one of the cigarettes off of Addison. Instead of lighting it, the Sheriff had opted to chew the filter into a papery nub. He didn’t even bother to look ashamed when Eddie coughed slightly to announce his own presence.

  “Welcome back, now that you’ve missed our weekly staff meeting,” Wally Hall scowled at Eddie and tugged on the ends of his mustache. “I hope you don’t mind that we went on and had our meeting without you. Don’t have all day to sit around here running our yaps.”

  “I understand,” Eddie wasn’t happy to have missed the staff meeting, but it seemed like a waste of time to complain to the Sheriff that the Sheriff had not waited on him to come back before starting the meeting. He’d only been gone 10 minutes. “It must have been a short meeting.”

  “Not a whole lot going on around here,” Richard Perkins was playing with a little ball of notebook paper, tossing it from hand to hand. “Most of what does go on around here won’t concern you anyway, Deputy Von Hussant.”

  Eddie opened his mouth and then closed it again. He didn’t quite know what to make of the man’s statement. It was overwhelmingly clear that he was the outsider here and that he would always be the outsider, even if he did manage to keep his badge more than two weeks.

  “You coming in or are you just going to stand there holding up that doorframe all day?” Perkins asked him.

  “Someone needs to open a window or turn on the vent fan to let some of the smoke out of here.” Eddie had to struggle to keep from coughing again. “I can’t breathe with all this cigarette smoke.”

  “How did you pass your physical?” Addison asked condescendingly.

  “How did you pass yours?” Eddie countered.

  “I can run a three-minute mile,” Addison replied. He held his arms out in a wide shrug. “I’m a beast. Can’t help it.”

  “You’re a beast all right,” Alex rolled his eyes and laughed. His tone made Eddie think there was some kind of inside joke concealed in his words. Addison, Sheriff Hall and Perkins laughed.

  “You’re going on duty with Addison and Alex tonight,” Sheriff Hall cut the laughter short as he spoke directly to Eddie. “Addison’s been having a poaching problem. He feels like he could catch the poachers if he had more manpower.”

  “Poaching problem?” Eddie repeated the words slowly, out loud.

  “Yeah, you know, hunters shooting deer out of season. It’s illegal. We try to arrest those guys.” Addison explained as if he were talking to an extraordinarily dumb toddler.

  “I understand the concept,” Eddie clarified. “I’m just not sure what you think I’m going to be able to do about it.”

  Addison started to open his mouth but the Sheriff beat him to it. “We was figuring you could use all that fancy schooling to teach us a thing or two about how we do our jobs, right boys?” Sheriff Hall smiled unkindly at Eddie. “I know how you’ve said you want revolutionize law enforcement here in Coastal County. I figure this is a great chance for you to show us how you get it done. Addison here has been trying to catch them poachers for weeks with no luck. I’m hoping you can use all them skills they taught you in college to get those assholes locked up where they belong.”

  Eddie choked on his own saliva, which brought on another round of coughing. Addison sighed and put his cigarette out in the same soda can that had consumed the previous one. “As much as I’m sure I have a lot to learn from our esteemed colleague here, I don’t think he’s going to make it too far in law enforcement if he can’t go five minutes without hacking up a lung.”

  “We really can’t take him with us tonight if he keeps coughing, Wally.” Alex sounded less smug than Addison. “We aren’t going to be able to sneak up on anyone with him coughing the way he is.”

  “You going to live through the night, Twitchy? I mean, Eddie?” Wally Hall made no attempt to disguise the annoyance in his voice. “Or do I need to send you to the walk-in clinic in Canterville?”

  “Sorry, I’ll be fine once I get out of here.” Eddie struggled to catch his breath again. “I have asthma. I can’t do smoke.”

  “You realize you see a lot of smoke when you work in law enforcement?” Wally asked.

  “Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to be smoking in the Sheriff’s department,” Eddie was getting tired of coughing and even more tired of putting up with everyone’s abuse. He needed to get outside and back into the fresh air or he really wasn’t going to be able to work tonight. He wondered what would happen if he spent his entire trial period on sick leave due to his asthma. He bet the Sheriff would use it as an excuse to hire Alex.

  “I wasn’t referring to inside our offices, son.” Sheriff Hall ignored the implications of Eddie’s words. “I was referring to the house and brush fires we respond to, as well as the fires that start at car accidents. Not to mention the fights that start up in bars. Bars are real smoky, Eddie. People smoke in their homes too. We go to a lot of smoky homes, for sure.”

  “I’ll talk to my doctor about my prescription,” Eddie wished he could have said the words without wheezing.

  “You do that,” Wally Hall told him. He waved his hand in a half-arc and disappeared from the conference room. Addison pulled yet another cigarette out of the pack he was carrying and lit it. Eddie turned and walked out of the room.

  *

  “We have a problem,” Cal sounded out of breath even through the lousy cellphone connection. Gracie’s heart dropped clear down through her stomach. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to struggle to keep from dropping the phone.

  “Oh my God, what happened? Are you okay?” She had expected them to be back by now. Every minute she’d been alone had been agonizing. Gracie couldn’t seem to think of anything other than worst case scenarios. She’d envisioned everything from Twitchy Eddie pulling them over and arresting them to Austin coming back to life and killing her for what she had done to him.

  “We’re fine. Don’t panic. The wrecker blew the top hose off the radiator. David wants you to bring my truck down here and tow us back to the house.” Cal told her.

  “The wrecker broke down?” Gracie repeated his words with a sense of relief.

  “Yeah. Maybe now I can talk David into buying a new one.”

  “David is never going to buy a new wrecker,” Gracie said the first thing that popped into her mouth. Cal laughed and for half a second Gracie almost forgot how bad things had gotten between the two of them.

  Cal stopped laughing abruptly, as if he too had just remembered their situation. “My keys are in the ignition,” he told her. “It doesn’t have enough gas in it to get all the way out here, but my credit card is in the ashtray. You remember the pin?”

  “My birthday?” Gracie couldn’t hide her surprise.

  “Yeah,” Cal sounded almost embarrassed. “We’re out here at the back gate of the lease. Off South Springer Road. You remember how to get here?”

  “Of course I do.” Gracie grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter and headed for the front door. “I’ll see you in about 30 minutes.”

  “Be careful,” Cal said. He seemed on the verge of saying something more and for a moment she held her breath and waited. She’d have given anything to hear him tell her that he loved her right now, even though she doubted she’d ever hear him say those words to her again.

  He hung up the phone without saying anything else and Gracie let out the breath she had been holding.

  She took his
advice to be careful to heart as she slid behind the wheel of the Chevy, which started the moment she turned the key.

  *

  Jo Beth was less than two miles from David’s house when Cal’s Chevy roared past her going in the opposite direction. Jo took her foot off the accelerator and waited to see the flash of brake lights in her rear view mirror when Cal realized he had just driven past her. Instead, the big truck gained speed. It was rapidly disappearing from view when Jo did a u-turn in the middle of the road and chased after it.

  She reached for her phone, which was resting in the center console. Cal had promised he would call her when he got done at David’s, but her phone wasn’t showing any missed calls. She frowned at the screen and then pressed the touchscreen to bring up her list of recent calls. Cal’s name was at the top of the list. She’d already tried to call him twice today. She’d decided to bring him lunch while he was working on his truck as a peace offering, an apology of sorts, for what she had said to him last night. She’d called him to find out whether he would rather have turkey and Swiss cheese or roast beef sandwiches. His phone had sent her straight to voicemail both times.

  Now she dialed his number again. Obviously he was angrier with her than she had anticipated. Cal always answered his phone or called right back. This time the phone rang twice and then went to voicemail. Jo cursed under her breath and focused her attention on catching up to Cal’s truck. He must not have noticed her car when he had passed her. A glance down at the speedometer revealed she was going nearly 80 miles per hour as she struggled to catch up with the truck. He had to be going at least 70 mph; unfortunately the speed limit was 45 mph.

  Jo Beth was rapidly closing the distance between her little Hyundai and the truck’s thick back pipe bumper. She flashed her headlights at him and eased her foot off of the accelerator, expecting him to slow the truck down once he noticed her driving up his tailgate. Suddenly the big truck belched a large cloud of blue-black smoke out the exhaust pipe and took off, as if Cal had slammed his foot into the accelerator.

  “What the heck?” Jo Beth reacted instinctively by crushing her own accelerator onto the floorboards. What was Cal thinking? Better yet, what was he doing?