Sandbagged: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 2)

by Edward J. McFadden III

  Ramage took his hand off the door handle and settled back in his seat. When presented with free entertainment, one accepts, and nobody was in danger. Yet.

  An old woman came out of the store, a coffee in one hand, a plastic bag in the other.

  Alice screamed and pounded her chest, galloping at the woman, arms and legs a blur.

  The old lady dropped her coffee and let loose with a wail that shook Ramage’s tooth fillings as she ran for the blue pickup.

  Commotion ensued as the store clerk came running outside to confront the chimp’s owners, who had realized what their primary problem was, and like many self-involved people, had yet to try and stop the mayhem they’d created.

  Ralph found his second wind, and he set off in a new direction, tottering back and forth on wobbly legs, hands dragging on the ground.

  The store clerk ran back inside, and Ramage watched through the store’s front windows as he ducked behind the counter and emerged with what looked like a shotgun.

  Ramage checked the .38 and got out of the car, sticking the weapon in his waistband behind his back. He yelled, “Ralph! Alice!”

  Both chimps looked back Ramage’s way.

  The store clerk burst out onto the walkway, the glass door falling back on its hinges and smacking the soda machine.

  Both chimps froze, and the clerk swung the gun in a wide arc, looking for something to shoot.

  That was enough for Silver Fox and Yellow Jacket. They bounced like kids after an ice cream truck, jumping into the Town Car and peeling out of the lot.

  Ramage blinked. He couldn’t believe what he’d just seen.

  The clerk took several steps forward, gazing after the Lincoln. His shoulders fell and he lowered the shotgun as he examined Ralph and Alice, who once again held hands and stood before the man expectantly.

  Ramage strode forward and pulled his wallet.

  The guy swung the shotgun in his direction.

  He put up his hands in the universal ‘I mean you no harm’ gesture.

  The tip of the gun fell.

  “Listen, I’m a private investigator.” He flashed Rex’s FBI card with the gold foil logo. “I’m after those two.” He hiked a thumb in the direction of the fleeing Lincoln.

  The guy’s face scrunched up and he looked at Ralph and Alice.

  “No worries. I’ll take care of the chimps. Can you believe those two are illegal animal traffickers?”

  “You’ll take them?” the clerk said, pointing the gun at the chimps.

  Ramage sighed. “Yup. I’ll take them.” He took Alice’s hand.

  She lifted her leg and pissed on him.

  Again.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As Ramage washed chimp urine from his hands he was forced to examine some of his life choices.

  He’d purchased cleaning wipes, hand sanitizer, oversized sweatpants, and a package of throw-away towels at the convenience store, along with a pre-packaged sandwich, a large beer, bananas, pears, and Ralph’s favorite, Cheetos™. Apparently, that had been why Alice had been storming the store, to get her partner his favorite puffed cheese snack. Ramage had figured out what the animal wanted when she pounded the Cheetos™ poster in the store’s window, the orange and black striped cat wearing sunglasses and holding out an orange bag.

  Ramage glanced in the rearview. Ralph and Alice ate calmly in the backseat of the Charger, cold wind whistling through the broken window he’d covered with a trash bag and tape. The shop owner hadn’t wanted trouble, and since Ramage had agreed to take the chimps with him, the clerk went back to stocking his shelves like nothing had happened. Ramage figured he might also be second guessing the need to break out a shotgun to deal with two chimpanzees who only wanted snack food. It was Utah, but there had to be limits. Right?

  When he was done cleaning his hands, he took off his shoes and wiggled out of his wet pants.

  Alice hooted and clapped, sucking back her lips, revealing large white teeth. Ralph fed her a cheese twist.

  Ramage slipped on the sweatpants, which were way to big. The blue XL sweats were leftovers from a local middle school fundraising drive, and had a bulldog embroidered on the upper thigh with the year 2016 under it in gold. He tied the drawstring off tight and put his jacket on. Thankfully, his shirt and jacket had only gotten a splash.

  The unique smell building in the Charger made Ramage’s hackles rise; human body odor, mixed with greasy hair, cheese, banana, and urine. He opened his window a crack.

  He took a bite of sandwich, his mind churning forward. Nothing had changed. Yes, he’d picked up two strays, but if things went the way he wanted, he could hand Ralph and Alice off to Maverix and Spencer and be on his way with the laptop in search of Rolly. As he watched the two chimps in the rearview, again he found himself thinking of Anna. Would she want to keep the two monkeys? He chuckled. Yeah, just what Anna needed, more mouths to feed and take care of. The idea was crazy, and Alice didn’t even like him. Or maybe pissing on something was a way of showing affection in the chimp community. Ramage had never seen her pee on Ralph, so there was that.

  Silver Fox and Yellow Jacket hadn’t returned. He wasn’t surprised. Ramage thought there was a possibility that the old guy might start thinking about how much money he’d spent on the chimps. How he was an important guy who doesn’t run off and let others take what’s his, but the guy didn’t show, which was smart. He was involved in the trafficking of illegal exotic animals, and while that doesn’t warrant a death sentence anywhere, even New York, they didn’t give you a ribbon. No, Silver Fox had weighed his options, evaluated the risks, and decided whatever he’d paid for the chimps wasn’t worth the potential fallout. Plus, the guy probably bought them for Yellow Jacket who didn’t appear to want them. Ramage knew that’s why most exotic animals were illegal. People couldn’t handle taking care of normal pets, so most snakes, alligators and other exotics ended up dead, or loose in an environment where they don’t belong, and in many cases cause significant damage to the native populations.

  The car thundered to life with the press of a button, no key, an innovation he just couldn’t abide. Cars and locks needed keys. He spun around the lot, waved at the store’s front window, and jumped back onto UT-155 heading south.

  He opened the back windows a crack and Ralph pressed his face through the open window like a dog, Alice holding his hand like a worried mother. Empty brown fields filled the sides of the road as the town of Huntington fell away, nothing but dead, frost covered pasture running to the mountains.

  In the distance to the east oil derricks rose from the hardpan like monoliths of another time, their spider work of steel girders casting long shadows over the plain. Pump arms rose and fell, flags whipped in the wind. Here he was, back in oil country, fighting for his life. The irony hurt Ramage’s head.

  Two weeks ago, he’d taken down the Sandman, and by extension temporarily stopped his theft of sand, crude oil, and the manufacture of Ride. The two weeks felt like two days, and his insides grew hot when he considered he hadn’t stopped anything. Anna’s sand was still being taken without her permission, and if that was happening, he had to assume the oil aspect of the scheme was still going strong, and Rolly and Shelly had Ride.

  The road dipped into a shallow valley, privacy hedges rising in the west. Squared-off parcels of land filled with rusted trucks and piles of trash filled the eastern side of the road. No cars approached from the south, and there were no vehicles behind him. It made Ramage feel vulnerable. By now Rolly had most likely reported the Charger stolen, so the sooner he could separate himself from the vehicle the better. He went around Castle Dale, through Ferron, and the map on his phone said Emery was thirty miles up the road. If he didn’t pass a cop, he might be O.K.

  As was customary, UT-155 turned into Main Street as the road looped west, coming in around Randy’s Service center. Emery was laid out in a standard grid pattern that had been designed to handle more homesteads than had been built. Cattle trailers, farming gear, and large
barns were scattered along the sides of the cracked faded blacktop, dark lines of tar running in every direction like shattered glass. There were many empty gaps of virgin land between the homesteads, like the people of Emery were the most unsocial in the nation. Ramage imagined the round grazing fields behind the houses in his mind’s eye, pictured what the place must look like in summer with the grazing fields covered in deep green grass and dotted with cattle. The air smelled of wood smoke and gas. He did two laps through town, and didn’t see Marie’s Mustang, or any sign of the Zoo.

  Ramage pulled into Randy’s Service, sidling up to one of the pumps. He killed the engine and turned to Ralph and Alice, who held hands, waiting patiently. “Stay here?”

  Four brown, unblinking eyes stared back at him.

  “Right.” He opened the driver side window a little more to get more airflow in the car, even though it was forty-six degrees and wind leaked through the trash bags covering the broken window. Ramage hauled himself out of the car, and locked it with the fob, the click of locks snaping closed, and the beep of the alarm ringing over the parking lot.

  No bell rang, and nobody stood behind the counter when Ramage entered the shop. The clang and ring of metal led him into the work bay, where an old tractor was parked over a service trench like the one at Manny’s.

  “Randy?” Ramage called out.

  “Who that?” an old voice grumbled. “Don’t need no strangers in here. I’m busy if you can’t tell.”

  Stranger? His northern drawl?

  “There hasn’t been no Randy here for fifteen years. I was just too cheap to change the sign and pay the fees to the state. People come with their broken stuff no matter what. I could call the place No Service and they’d still come.”

  “No place else,” Ramage said.

  “Now you catching on,” the voice said. The metal hitting metal had stopped.

  “Listen, I don’t mean to bother you, but I need some gas. I’ll pump it myself. Where should I leave the money?”

  Silence.

  “I be up in a minute. I don’t trust me no Yankees. No offense.”

  “Some taken.”

  An old man emerged from the service pit. He was so bent and twisted Ramage wondered how the guy walked without falling on his face. He looked up at Ramage with watery eyes and a smile broke across his face, then he sniffed, and his expression went sour. “You look OK, but you don’t smell so good.”

  The old man started for the office, but Ramage didn’t move. “Really, I can pump the gas. It’s not a problem.” He held out a twenty. If it could be avoided, Ramage didn’t want the man to see the car, or what was inside.

  The guy scoffed.

  “What’s your name?”

  The old guy huffed. “You buying gas, or we getting married?”

  “Just trying to be polite.”

  “Polite would be not coming into my shop smelling like a cesspool.”

  The guy had a point there. “I’m looking for Marie? The zoo? I’ve got a delivery for her, but the damn address on the label is wrong. You know where I might find her?”

  The old man pursed his lips and put his hands on his hips. “Do I look like a phone book… I mean the directory, internet, whatever the hell?”

  “Hard to believe you work here alone with your sparkling personality.”

  The guy laughed and said, “Name’s Woody.” He plucked the twenty from Ramage’s hand and said, “You better not take a penny more than twenty. You hear?” Woody was smiling.

  Ramage smiled back and let the conversation die. He needed to find the zoo, but two monkeys would be memorable, and the Charger wasn’t a work truck. The townsfolk would remember him and be more than happy to discuss things when the sheriff or one of his designees came snooping around.

  He gassed up fast and moved on. Ramage didn’t see Woody watching, but he felt him. Thankfully, there was a slight tint on the rear windows of the Charger, and unless the old man had super x-ray vision, he couldn’t have seen Ralph and Alice. Ramage drove around aimlessly, hoping something would jump out at him, and when he saw Old Time Feed, he pulled into the lot, and parked the Charger behind an empty truck waiting to be filled by a payloader that moved around the yard on a mission.

  The man in the office was less sociable than Woody, but he wanted Ramage out of his hair and when he mentioned a pet delivery the guy gave him directions.

  “Marie is a pistol. Watch yourself out there,” the clerk said. “Some strange goings on, and who can trust a woman with four husbands?”

  “You’ve got a point there,” Ramage said.

  He drove to the western edge of town where the grid of streets ended in a tree-lined road that could’ve been anywhere in the United States, the rolling mountains rising above the plain in the west. Ramage made a left onto UT-10, the town giving way to pasture and short flat mountains to the east, a carpet of devil grass and scrub pine filling the flat expanse of nothingness between.

  Ramage drove by the ranch entrance three times. There was no big sign arcing over the driveway, no pasture fencing. If the zoo had been a working cattle ranch, that had been a long time ago. Rotten fence posts stuck from the ground in spots, stray pieces of rusted barbwire clinging to them. The entrance dove through a copse of trees, and had it not been for the small forest of Douglas fur Ramage may have never found the driveway.

  The tunnel through the dense tree break wasn’t wide, and as Ramage approached the circle of light at the end of the tree cave he brought the Charger to a stop. The woods gave way to a long driveway that twisted and turned through underbrush, emptying into a large clearing with a boxy house at its center half a mile away.

  Alice pounded her chest and Ralph cried, human-like tears falling down his face. Alice pounded Ramage’s headrest, pointing at the house.

  Ramage had arrived at the Zoo.

  “It’s O.K.? Calm down.” Ramage threw another bag of Cheetos™ into the backseat and the commotion died down. He pulled his binoculars and stared out from the shadows beneath the forest canopy.

  Nothing moved on the open plain. All was quiet. Clouds of thick white smoke poured from the house’s chimney, and several stacks on a giant barn and on several outbuildings sent up smoke signals as well. His view of the lower portion of the house was impeded by vegetation that encroached on both sides of the driveway, so Ramage couldn’t see the porch, or if anyone moved about inside the house. There were no cars visible.

  Scanning the horizon with the binoculars he saw a thin dust trail threading in from the north. Looked like someone on an ATV. A twelve-foot chain-link fence surrounded the inner compound, and though he couldn’t see it from where he waited, Ramage guessed there was a locked gate.

  No matter. He was driving a rental.

  The tops of what looked to be cages rose above the underbrush next to the barn behind the house, and as he panned the binoculars across the inner compound, he saw several ostrich, llamas, and other animals grazing on a patch of grassland inside the fence.

  “Put on your seat belts,” Ramage said. When he didn’t hear metal clicking into metal he turned in his seat and pointed at the seatbelts. “Belts? Put them on?” When Ramage leaned over the seat to strap the chimps in, Alice hissed at him, gums pulled back revealing large white teeth. “Easy. Easy.” Ramage didn’t want to get pissed on again. “Suit yourselves.”

  He checked the snubby, breaking the weapon open and spinning the cylinder, verifying again that the gun was fully loaded. He revved the Charger’s engine, and Ramage scowled. Sounded like a station wagon. Using both feet, he pressed the gas pedal a quarter way to the floor and held the break down. He slammed the Dodge into gear, and the rear tires spun in the dirt, kicking up dust and sand, forming a cloud around the car.

  Alice hooted and brayed, pounding her chest as Ralph cowered in his seat, covering his face with his arm.

  Ramage released the break, and the Charger dove forward, leaping from the trees as he twisted the wheel, fishtailing around the driveway’s first c
urve. Cold air with a hint of pine and shit leaked into the car, dust lifting from the hardpan and covering the windshield.

  He didn’t slow, powering through each turn, accelerating, letting the car’s safety control slow his drift. Thick patches of juniper and desert sage filled the sides of the driveway. He buzzed down his window.

  Dust and sand bellowed into the car, both chimps braying and screaming.

  A gate loomed ahead, the silver chain-link glinting in the midday sun.

  Ramage came out of a drift, straightened the Charger, and dropped the hammer. The Dodge growled, wheels slipping, and the car slowed as the Charger’s safety controls took over, antilock brakes overriding Ramage.

  The car broke through the gate like it wasn’t there, metal bending and crashing, sparks flying. Ramage left the driveway, the Charger bouncing over underbrush and dips in the land as he put the nose of the Dodge on the front of the house, aiming for it like a runaway train.

  Gunshots rang out, puffs of dirt spouting from the hardpan ahead of the Charger. Ramage brought the Dodge to a thunderous stop ten feet in front of the house’s double wide wood steps that led up to a wraparound porch.

  “Stay.”

  Alice and Ralph had gone silent, and they once again held hands as they stared at Ramage.

  He felt the pressure of those eyes. The trust. Those eyes said, “Please don’t leave us here no matter what you do.”

  Ramage kicked open the door and used it as cover, the .38 out of sight.

  A stray gunshot, then silence.

  “Marie, it’s Ramage. Remember me?”

  A llama barked, and an ostrich darted by, squawking but paying Ramage and the Charger no attention.

  “Listen, can we call a timeout?” It sounded crazy, but he didn’t want to get into a gun fight, and he thought Marie would be feeling a bit threatened at the moment. Tales of spurned customers, animal control officers, and shady foreign contacts flashed through Ramage’s mind like a bad B movie, so he gave her some time to think.