We sidled up to the buffet table where I was not bashful about loading my plate with pork skewers, green onion pancakes, and egg foo yung.
“Hey, Tracy, whatcha got there?” The voice startled me and I slopped a spoonful of sauce on the table. I turned around to see Leslie Welker, the police department’s medical examiner.
“Spicy cashews and peanuts in garlic chili sauce,” I said. “It’s one of Cin Wang’s specialties.”
Leslie turned to a diminutive white-haired lady standing next to her in the buffet line and repeated my answer. She elevated her voice so the elderly lady could hear her over the noise in the restaurant. “Do you want some?”
“I think I’ll pass, thank you,” said the lady. “But I’ll have the chicken wings.”
Leslie plunked three chicken wings on the lady’s plate and helped herself too.
“Try the green onion pancakes,” I said. “They’re delicious.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Leslie said. “Mrs. Stembridge?”
My ears perked up. Stembridge was name of the survivalist suspected of holding out in the stolen cabin. Dita had given Carl six names. Sheriff’s departments around the state checked on five men and determined they could not be involved. The sixth was a 75-year-old retired engineer who had disappeared from his home the spring before. Carl said his wife was frantic to find him.
I surveyed the little old lady trailing after Leslie. She didn’t look frantic to me.
“Why don’t you join us, Leslie? Margaret always gets the best booth over by the window.”
Leslie looked a little relieved. I figured she’d been assigned to shepherd Mrs. Stembridge around town on the eve of the big confrontation. The chief still insisted on a SWAT team but had yielded to the police mediator’s idea that he and the man’s wife should try to talk Mr. Stembridge out of the cabin before a paramilitary team stormed the place.
Leslie introduced us and we threaded our way through the tables to the spot where Margaret and her margarita were becoming reacquainted. In fact, Margaret had such a friendship going with her drink that she’d ordered another. It was just arriving and Margaret had to gulp the last swig of her first cocktail and relinquish the empty glass to the waiter before he could set the fresh one on the table.
Mrs. Stembridge did not comment on this procedure. Our state’s liquor laws must have made perfect sense to her.
We slid onto the booth seats, Margaret and I on one side, Leslie and Mrs. Stembridge on the other. The waiter brought their drinks over—a ginger beer for Leslie and a Coke for the lady. I decided it would be kind to let Mrs. Stembridge eat a chicken wing before I peppered her with questions, but Margaret had no such scruples. She’d read the papers, just like everyone else in town.
“So your husband’s the cabin thief,” she said, pointing a beef satay skewer at Mrs. Stembridge. “How on earth did he think he’d get away with that?”
Mrs. Stembridge cringed in her strawberry-colored shirtwaist and I felt compelled to come to her defense. “Mr. Stembridge—if that’s who really took the cabin—is a prepper,” I said. “There are lots of people who believe in preparedness in case of disaster. He doesn’t want to rely on the government to save him if the worst happens.”
“So he steals someone else’s cabin?” Margaret said.
“I’m sure he had a good reason,” I said.
Mrs. Stembridge had finished her Chinese chicken wing and was wiping her fingers on a napkin. “It’s all Stephen King’s fault,” she said.
We looked at Mrs. Stembridge as if she’d grown horns.
“Forty years ago my husband was unduly influenced by King’s novel, The Stand. It’s about a strain of influenza that escaped a government laboratory. He was convinced horrific bugs could be unleashed on the world and we could all die awful deaths.”
“Sounds ghoulish,” said Margaret.
“When our children were growing up, he stockpiled his survival gear in the barn. I canned our crops for years. My husband made sure our sons could cook, clean, and make their own clothes. He taught our daughters how to change the oil in our Jeep and fix a flat tire.”
“Your family was preparing for Armageddon,” Leslie said.
“That was the idea, and it didn’t help that a film called Armageddon came out in 1998. So then he was afraid asteroids also would end life as we know it.”
“This sounds like borderline paranoia,” said Leslie. “Did he ever get professional help?”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Stembridge. “We’re a bunch of individualists in this state. Our pioneer ethic calls for self-reliance. All was perfectly normal to him and to all our neighbors.”
“So what happened?” Margaret said. “Why did he leave you and take someone else’s cabin?”
“The children grew up. They moved away to find jobs. My husband retired from the water department and had a lot more time on his hands. That’s when he discovered the internet.”
“Websites?” I said.
Mrs. Stembridge sipped her Coke. “Forums online. The American Prepper. The Zombie Squad. Emery found friends as obsessed as he was. What are the best camouflage patterns? Where to get a manual meat grinder. How to get a zombie charger that brings a car battery back from the dead.”
Margaret laughed. “I always wanted one of those.”
“Well, I didn’t. I was fed up. Emery was spending our retirement savings on gadgets and gizmos and guns.”
There was a silence at the table. As the noise from the other diners welled up to fill the gap, Leslie stepped in. “Tell us about the guns,” she said.
“We always owned guns,” Mrs. Stembridge said. “Deer hunting rifles, handguns, shotguns. Emery taught all the kids to shoot. But when he started buying Tasers, assault weapons, and then bazookas, I put my foot down.”
I stopped nibbling on my cashews and peanuts in chili sauce and looked around the table. Our eyes were as round as green onion pancakes. “What did you do?”
“Do you know how it feels to have a semi-truck roll into your driveway and unload a pallet of weapons right at your front door? I refused the delivery!”
We all relaxed.
“But the driver unloaded them anyway. When Emery came home, we had it out. I told him he’d gone too far. I wouldn’t tolerate this collection of weapons and they had to go or I would.”
“Good for you,” Margaret said.
“So the next day the driver came back with the semi-truck and some helpers. They took all his survival gear. I couldn’t believe the parade of stuff from the barn. Took ’em two days.”
“And then they left?” I said.
“And then they left,” she said. “Trouble was, Emery left too and I haven’t seen him since.” Mrs. Stembridge’s lower lip trembled. “Stupid old coot.”
Her eyes glistened, revealing the remorse she must be feeling. To have turned away a husband of fifty years in the heat of the moment and not had any opportunity to take back harsh words—this sweet lady must be full of recrimination.
And now she must be so afraid her husband would be killed by an armed team of trained combatants. She had agreed to be escorted by a crisis mediator past the bend in the road to the cabin. They would try to talk him out. Considering all the rocket launchers and the AR-15s, was she afraid she’d never see him alive? Was she scared she might be killed in the crossfire?
I dropped my eyes and found that my plate was empty. “Why don’t we get more goodies?” I said.
“I’d like to use the ladies’ room,” Mrs. Stembridge said.
Leslie scooted out of the booth. “I’ll come with you.”
We watched Mrs. Stembridge make her way through the dining room.
“Quite a story,” Margaret said. “I would have given him the what-for about thirty years ago.”
“You make me laugh. How could she fight that passion? Most women aren’t as tough as you.”
Margaret sipped her margarita. “Where’s the cabin located?
“You know the forest roa
d up to the Flats? It’s about seven miles up.”
“Near the White Cliffs?”
“Opposite the White Cliffs.”
“Well, isn’t that interesting.” Margaret licked the salt off her glass. I didn’t trust the glint in her eyes.
“What?”
“You can see that whole area from the White Cliffs.”
We had all hung out on top of the White Cliffs in high school—the cheerleaders, the football team, members of the marching band. The cliffs faced west and the view of the mountains and the national forest was spectacular, but Carl and I hadn’t looked at the view very much. We’d spent lots of time in the backseat of his dad’s Dodge RAM Megacab.
“What are you thinking?”
“We go up there tomorrow and watch what happens.”
“Oh no.”
“Aren’t you worried? Isn’t Carl part of the tactical force? If something happens, wouldn’t you want to know right away instead of after the fact?”
Margaret had touched a nerve. I was terrified that Carl would be killed or injured. With that kind of firepower, anything could happen.
“OK,” I said, expelling a deep breath. “I’ll re-schedule my appointments in the morning. We’ll meet at the base of the Cliff Road.”
“Eight am?” Margaret said.
“Better make it 7:30. I think they’re starting early.”
Margaret’s pink 1962 Thunderbird lay in wait at the bottom of the cliff road, her headlights on even though the sun had risen hours before. I jumped in the passenger’s seat, cradling my backpack in my lap. She took off at a pace that slammed me into the door at the first switchback.
“For crying out loud,” I said.
“The operation’s going down.”
That’s when I noticed the police scanner. Static burst. Then silence. Then, “Talker, are you in position?”
“Roger.”
“You got Bunny Rabbit?”
“Approaching the bend now.”
We careened around the next switchback, tires squealing. I fumbled for the binoculars in my pack—10 x 42s my father had given me. Finally, we made it to the top.
Margaret flung open the driver’s side door and turned up the radio. I strode to the cliff edge and scanned the forest. The SWAT team was easy to find. Four armored vehicles sat in a clearing near the bend on a narrow dirt track, which I assumed was the road to the cabin. Try as I might, I couldn’t see the cabin itself. Too many trees.
When SWAT vehicles were first donated by the Feds, police families had been invited on a tour. The command post was a van with sophisticated communications equipment, weapons storage, and bench seating for a dozen SWAT officers.
A Lenco Bearcat, looking like a cross between a Jeep and a Brink’s security vehicle, was poised on the edge of the dirt track, ready to pounce at the first sign of trouble. The similarity to a Brink’s truck ended when you realized the accessories included gun ports, roof hatches, a turret, and battering ram. Bearcat stands for Ballistic Engineered Armored Response Counter Attack Truck. Part of me hoped Carl was inside because it was completely bullet and rocket proof. The other part of me hoped not—it was a lethal weapon designed for destruction.
The scanner squawked. “Command, this is Talker. Bunny Rabbit rounding bend with me now.”
My binoculars focused on a scrap of strawberry-colored skirt emerging from the trees. Mrs. Stembridge appeared in my view wearing a bulky Kevlar vest that said SWAT. A man in a blue uniform and SWAT vest held her elbow; I assumed he was the crisis mediator.
Suddenly a black bird obscured my field of view; there was a gun shot, static, then: “Drone down. Hold your fire.”
Not a bird. A drone with a camera. So now the SWAT team was flying blind.
I looked at Margaret, her own binoculars pinned to her face. “Mr. Stembridge is quite a marksman,” she said.
“With the kind of scopes he has,” I said, “that drone was a sitting duck.”
“Do you think he knows his wife is there?”
“Hard to say.”
We watched the mediator and Mrs. Stembridge approach the next stand of trees. They disappeared from view, but the scanner did its job. “Have visual on cabin. Static. Not within shouting range yet.”
My binoculars swiveled back to the command post. Twelve suited figures had materialized in the clearing wearing helmets and carrying assault weapons.
“This is Talker. Stand by.” Using a bullhorn, the mediator said, “Mr. Stembridge.”
Another shot rang out.
“I have your wife here. Your wife, Elizabeth.”
Another shot.
“Emery! It’s me. It’s really me.”
Static.
“Emery, I’m sorry. Emery, I want you to come home.”
Silence.
“Let’s talk it over. Let’s talk it over for two minutes. That’s all.”
Margaret and I looked at each other.
“Emery, I’m sorry for all those things I said. I miss you; I want you back.”
There was another pause, then more static from the police scanner.
“Emery, may I come in?”
“Just you.”
“I’m going in there, Officer. Alone. All right?”
There was silence after that. I pictured Mrs. Stembridge making her way to the 10 x 20 storage shed tricked up to look like a log cabin. What could be happening? A tearful reunion? A resentful condemnation?
Twenty minutes passed; then thirty. I watched Chief Fort Dukes in my binoculars. He paced, he stalked, he conferred, he harangued. This pantomime made me afraid he would blow up any minute and order the sweltering SWAT team around the bend on full assault.
But then the scanner erupted: “Coming out now.”
They appeared in the sunlight holding hands, stooped, leaning, strawberry-skirt swaying against legs swathed in camouflage trousers. No weapons.
I breathed again.
The SWAT team swarmed the property, but no one else was found. The old man had blocked the stream to make a pond and built an underground bunker with food, water, fuel, and enough firepower to fend off an alien invasion. True to Mrs. Stembridge’s description, there were AR-15s, surface-to-air missiles, long and short range rifles, hand guns and Tasers. There was enough cyanide for the mass suicide of twenty people. The police confiscated all of it and hired Hawk to return the cabin to its perch overlooking Wolf Lake. The food went to a homeless shelter.
A judge sentenced Mr. Stembridge to two years of probation, restitution of the stream, and eight hundred hours of volunteer service for Habitat for Humanity.
“You may be seventy-five,” the judge said, “but if you can move a ten by twenty foot log cabin by yourself and create an eight hundred square foot bunker, you can build houses for the homeless.”
When Carl hangs up his Kevlar vest every night, I send up my silent prayers.
Thank you, God, for no Officer Down.
And thank you, DuPont lady, for discovering Kevlar.
Case 7
Going Postal
One morning, I found Paddy Hamburger’s latest inciteful headline on the front page of the newspaper along with the mail delivered through the mail slot. I dashed through the salon, dropping letters behind me, and sank down on the sofa to read.
Fairy Tale Snooper POs PO
A 28-year-old woman faces a federal criminal charge after she broke into the downtown post office early Sunday morning and “played dress-up” with the uniforms.
Matilda “Tinker” Bell was discovered shortly after a silent alarm alerted the police. Deputies and federal officials arrived on the scene and collared Bell who was wearing a letter carrier’s uniform shirt and shorts.
Bell told deputies she entered the back workroom from the lobby by crawling through a cubby. She said the workroom looked “like a movie set,” that she was “acting out a fairy tale,” and did not intend to steal anything.
A spokesman for Changing Lives Enterprises, the home for individuals with int
ellectual disabilities where Bell is a resident, said attendants discovered her missing at four a.m. Sunday morning and notified the city police department.
“We are sure our resident had no intention of theft or mail fraud and was simply acting out her most cherished fantasies,” said Mike Abel, director of the resident facility. “We will furnish legal representation to Ms. Bell as her case proceeds through the justice system.”
I chuckled. Everyone knew Tinker Bell. She worked at the recycling center and helped all of us sort our plastic, cardboard, and aluminum. I could just imagine her playing dress-up. She probably admired every mail carrier she saw. No judge in his right mind was going to convict her.
I looked up from the newspaper and saw a trail of mail scattered all over the salon floor. That Paddy Hamburger—always sucking you in with an outrageous headline and making you lose your mind. I picked up the mail and put it on the counter in front of my hair cutting station. My cell rang.
“Citrus Salon.”
“Tracy, this is Katherine Putnam. I need to see you right away.”
I pictured Katherine with a major hair disaster. “Can you make a ten thirty?”
“Thank God,” Katherine said.
“I take that as a yes. What do you need done?”
“I have a job interview at noon. You’ve got to tone down the red.”
Katherine and I had been making her look like a rock star with a fiery red color guaranteed to stop traffic when she crossed the street. The trouble was the rest of Katherine looked as squat as a fire hydrant. I’d been wanting to darken that red for a long time.
“No problem,” I sang and hung up the phone just as Shirley Jones arrived.
“Tracy!”
“Hey, Shirley.”
“I’ve brought you some muffins.”
I took the bag from Shirley’s hands. It was warm. “They smell so good.”
“Blueberry.”
Shirley worked at the vintage diner across the street. She was wearing her 1960s waitress uniform with the pert little cap.
“Just a trim, please,” she said.
I draped her in a buttercup yellow cape with a cream-colored terry at the neck and removed her hat. “Your hair looks so healthy,” I said.
Petty Crimes & Head Cases Page 17
