Desert Discord

by Henry D. Terrell

What should he do now? Hobble next door and ask to use the phone, or send Erycca? Tank and the other guy might return at any moment. Tank had cut the phone lines, so that was the only way to call the cops. As banged up as he was, Reed decided he’d better go out and make sure the greenhouse was locked up tight. He looked around for Andy and found him lying prone on the floor.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Andy. He sat up, blood dripping from his nose. Leary, still highly roused but no longer murderous, licked Andy’s damaged face vigorously. “Stop it!” He pushed the dog away. Undeterred, Leary returned and kept licking. “No, really, stop it, Leary! Stop now! Come on, boy, stop it!”

  Lap lap lap lap …

  – 49 –

  Duro’s Finest Comes Heavy

  They sent Officers Smith and Talbot out to the edge of town to check on a reported dope farm. They used a key map to get out there, though Saturn Lane wasn’t on the map yet. Mars and Jupiter were listed, however, and the cops knew that Saturn was the undeveloped street just to the west. Supposedly, the illicit crop was growing in the middle of the block between 82nd and 83rd Streets, on the west side of the road.

  Talbot drove. He was annoyed because the squad car had just been washed and waxed, something that only happened every couple of months, and he knew they were headed for a dirt road. The privilege of a nice, clean car would last only half a day. After that, if they wanted it clean, they’d have to do it themselves.

  They drove out 82nd Street until it came to an end where two posts with reflectors were embedded in the ground next to a fence piled high with tumbleweeds. Talbot stopped.

  “Maybe we can see something from here,” he said.

  Smith radioed their location, then the two men got out of the car and looked up the road to the right. Weeds grew in the road here and there, but several tire ruts had also appeared post-rainstorm.

  “Somebody’s been using this road recently,” said Smith. There were no vehicles visible except for a white Ford van parked 200 yards away. “Where did the water guy say he found the dope plants?”

  “The third lot on the west side,” said Talbot. “Right about … actually, where that van is parked. I wonder …”

  “We should check it out,” said Smith.

  Talbot looked back at his shiny, pristine car. “Let’s walk it,” he said. “It’s not that far.”

  “Okay,” sighed Smith.

  They both knew, but didn’t say, that an actual field of dope was unlikely. They had investigated reports of marijuana plants twice in the past six weeks, neither of which turned out to be anything but the truck gardens of innocent citizens. One was an immature field corn and the other was alfalfa. Talbot blamed Dragnet. An episode from late last season had Sergeant Friday and Officer Gannon discovering an indoor marijuana farm, and the TV props people either didn’t know what marijuana looked like, or didn’t care, because they used some sort of generic fake long-leafed plants for the show. This inspired a flurry of calls from the ignorant ratting on their gardening neighbors. After the show played in summer reruns, there were more calls.

  The sand was soft, so they walked in one of the hard-packed ruts. The front of the van faced them. They didn’t see anyone, but they heard activity and the sound of a door shutting from the rear. Then they heard a man’s voice.

  “Make more room. Push them up to the front. Hurry!”

  A ruddy-faced man with prominent sideburns came around the side of the van. He was even with the driver-side door when he spotted the two policemen walking toward him. He looked startled, spun around, and ran.

  “Tank! Tank!” they heard him yell. “Cops!”

  The two policemen broke into a trot, hands on their guns to keep them from bouncing.

  “Oh shit, don’t let him start the engine!” yelled Talbot.

  The man appeared again from around the back of the van.

  “Stay where you are, pal!” called Talbot. The cops were still about fifty feet away.

  The man raised a pistol and fired two quick shots. Talbot yelled and dropped to the road.

  “William! I’m hit!”

  Smith drew his service .38 and fired a shot as the man jumped into the driver’s seat and cranked the van, gunning the engine into a roar. Smith expected the van to do a U-turn and speed away, but it stayed in place idling. He could hear more voices behind the back of the van.

  “Get in, motherfucker!” somebody yelled.

  Smith checked on Talbot. He had been struck above the knee, and blood rolled down his thigh. Talbot held his knee with one hand while holding his revolver in the other.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, that hurts! William! Leave me here! Go call for backup.”

  Smith sprinted back up the road to the car while Talbot scrambled with his good leg, trying to get out of the middle of the road. When he reached the embankment on the east side, he leaned back against it and pointed his gun at the van. If they wanted to run him over, he couldn’t stop them. He sat and waited for the van to come at him. His hand was shaking so badly, he was afraid he’d shoot before he had a target.

  Still, the van didn’t move. The driver stuck his head out the window and looked back.

  “Leave it!” he yelled. “Get in the fuckin’ car!”

  The police car with Smith at the wheel came roaring up in a cloud of brown dust and turned in front of Talbot to shield him. Inside, Smith was yelling into the radio.

  “Shots fired! Officer down! We need backup! I repeat, shots fired! Officer down! We need assistance! Come heavy!”

  Talbot could hear the radio squawking at high volume inside the car as the dispatcher responded. Smith got out of the car holding his pistol. He opened the back door to the car, then peered over the trunk, aiming.

  “Joe, can you get yourself into the back?” he yelled.

  “I can’t do it!” Talbot yelled back.

  The van started forward, and Smith fired another shot, which broke the van’s side mirror. The van turned around in the middle of the road, wheels spinning, and careened away, throwing up a cloud of dust. Smith fired once more at the fleeing vehicle, then turned to his partner. Talbot moaned and clutched his leg.

  “Just keep pressure on it, Joe. The paramedics are coming.”

  At the corner, the van turned left. Smith climbed back into the squad car and grabbed the handset.

  “Suspects have turned east on 83rd Street! White panel van! Suspects armed! Officer down! We need medical! Officer is down! I repeat, we need medical!”

  Tank and Mitchell might have eluded the police a little longer if they had stayed calm and kept to the speed limit. A sheriff’s deputy was on his way home out 83rd when the Econoline passed him going seventy miles an hour and blew through a stop sign. He sighed, hit his lights, and turned in pursuit. As he started to call it in on the radio, he heard central dispatch calling for all units.

  “Holy shit!” he said.

  Mitchell didn’t know the city of Duro or he would have turned left at Highway 772, which would have taken them out of town into wide-open parts of the county. Instead, he turned right, taking them through the heart of the west side. After several blocks, Highway 772 narrowed and became Pleasant Hills, the main street through an older residential neighborhood.

  Mitchell took the van up to eighty miles an hour as he went through a half dozen intersections.

  “Get off this street!” screamed Tank. “We need to find a highway!”

  “Just let me out!” pleaded Douglas from the back of the van. “You guys don’t need me!”

  “Shut up!” yelled Mitchell.

  But they were now in the heart of a neighborhood with narrow streets and stop signs at every corner. Retired people walking dogs, kids on bikes, and housewives watering flowerbeds stared in amazement as the van roared past.

  Mitchell had no choice but to slow down, because the street was crowded with parked cars and trucks. He looked in the rearview mirror, where he saw the lights of at least two police cars. The numbe
rs on the side streets were decreasing. Tank knew that 7th Street was six lanes wide and turned into a main highway as it went west. That would be their way out, if they could get there.

  “Keep going!” he yelled. “Look for 7th Street and turn right.”

  The street numbers went by—11th, 10th, 9th—and as they crossed 8th Street, Mitchell could see a broad intersection ahead with a stoplight. He slowed down, preparing to make the turn. Suddenly, two black-and-white police cars pulled out from both sides of the intersection and stopped nose-to-nose, blocking the road.

  “Oh FUCK!” yelled Tank. “Turn around!”

  But Mitchell had another plan. He slowed the van down—forty miles an hour, thirty, twenty. The cops got out of their cars, guns drawn, and pointed them at the approaching van. Mitchell slowed to fifteen, then ten miles an hour. Got to make them think I’m stopping.

  The two cops stepped aside, still pointing their sidearms. Thirty feet from the roadblock, Mitchell suddenly gunned the engine, took the van back up to twenty miles an hour, and drove straight at the two cars where their front ends met.

  The Ford hit the two police cars squarely, spun them both around, and then barreled through. Mitchell turned the van right, then punched the accelerator to the floor. Within fifteen seconds, they were up to eighty miles an hour going west on 7th Street toward the outskirts.

  Police and sheriff’s vehicles were responding from all over the county, and soon several more cars had joined the pursuit.

  “We need to get rid of the dope!” shouted Tank. In the back of the van were seven large gunnysacks stuffed tight with plant matter—leaves, stems, roots, and all. “Get off this road so we can dump the bags! You keep going! I’ll toss them out!”

  Mitchell looked for a place to turn, but saw none. They were reaching the edge of town, and streets were more widely spaced. The closest police car was a couple of blocks behind them and closing. Mitchell spotted a pickup truck emerging from a small side street between two metal buildings.

  “I’m gonna take that road,” he shouted. He turned hard on the wheel, and the van’s tires squealed as they turned the corner, nearly tipping over. After the van recovered, Mitchell straightened the wheel and stepped on the gas … but there was no road. It was just some sort of driveway that ended in a mound of dirt and caliche rock five feet high.

  “NO!” Mitchell screamed and slammed on the brakes, too late. The van struck the dirt mound and the rear popped four feet in the air. Mitchell smashed through the windshield and over the mound.

  Police cars, sirens screaming in a wild cacophony, came around the corner and swarmed around the damaged van. Officers with guns drawn jumped out of their cars.

  Tank was not one to give up easily. Stunned, his head bleeding, he slid the van’s side door open and stepped out, defiantly waving his pistol.

  “I have a hostage, motherfuckers!” he screamed. “Back off or I’ll kill him!”

  The cops looked at each other. What? Where?

  Tank glanced back in the van, then stuck his head inside and looked around frantically. Where the fuck did he go?

  “Drop the gun!” yelled a lieutenant.

  Tank turned around and faced the dozen service revolvers and one shotgun pointed his way.

  “Ah, man,” he said. He dropped his pistol and raised his hands.

  While Tank was being frisked and cuffed, other officers climbed over the dirt mound, where they found Mitchell, cut and broken, in a pile of concrete rubble and weeds. He was still breathing, so they called for an ambulance.

  Two of the cops climbed inside the van where the gunnysacks were piled, and poked around. Pulling one of the sacks off the pile revealed a foot and shoe poking out from the bottom. One officer looked at the other and put his finger to his lips, shaking his head. They both drew their guns. Other officers and deputies outside the van saw what was happening and drew their guns too.

  The lieutenant nodded a signal, and one officer quickly pulled back a gunnysack.

  “Freeze!” the cop yelled.

  Douglas, seeing two .38 Specials pointed at his chest, showed them his hands.

  “I’m the hostage,” he said.

  Douglas was banged up and rattled, but basically unhurt. Burying himself in the premature harvest had possibly saved his life.

  Mitchell died before the ambulance came.

  Back on Saturn Lane, the paramedics finished putting pressure bandages on Officer Talbot’s leg. He had lost a lot of blood but was stable. Officer Smith was talking to a sergeant while other officers milled about. One of them came over to Smith.

  “They caught them out on the Pecos Highway,” he said. “They’re in custody.”

  “Excellent,” said Smith.

  Talbot was loaded in the ambulance, and the driver was just getting in when Smith came up to talk to him.

  “Is he awake?” Smith asked. “Can I tell him something?”

  “He’s awake but pretty doped up. You can talk for a second.”

  Smith opened the side door.

  “Hey, buddy! They caught the son of a bitch,” he said. Talbot nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. The ambulance pulled away, and Officer Smith turned to get in his car. There would be an entire evening of paperwork, all after his shift was supposed to have ended. Damn.

  A girl, thin and pale, with long black hair, crossed the dirt road and walked toward them.

  “Ma’am,” said the sergeant. “This is a crime scene. Go back home, please.”

  But she kept coming. When she drew close, she pointed back toward where she’d come.

  “There’s a man who’s dead inside that house. He’s been holding me prisoner for a week. He tried to rape me. I killed him, but it was an accident.”

  “What?” said Smith. “Which house?”

  “That one over there,” she said, pointing again. “Two of my friends are there. They’re both hurt. They need a doctor.”

  “Did you say you killed a man?” asked the sergeant.

  “He tried to rape me. I shot him, but it was an accident.”

  – 50 –

  Of Course It Was the Dead Guy

  “When did you first know that De Ghetto had been killed?” asked Sergeant Pence.

  “When that guy opened the trunk,” said Douglas. “I saw the body. That’s the first time I knew for sure.”

  Pence had already written this down, so there was no need to take notes.

  “You said ‘that guy’ opened the trunk,” said Pence. “You’re referring to Lawrence Taggart?”

  “That’s right. I didn’t know his name until you guys told me, but yeah, it was Taggart. He’s the one Jerry called ‘Tank.’ I’ve told you already.”

  They sat in Lieutenant Lewis’s office at the Duro police station. Lewis had been sitting in on the interview, saying little. Now he spoke up. “Mr. Fairchild, are you saying Mr. Taggart told you that he killed Jerry De Ghetto?”

  “No, not in so many words,” said Douglas. “But he made it clear that he did it. He kept threatening us. He said things like, ‘Do what I say or you’ll end up like him.’ That sort of thing. He told Erycca Piedman he was going to cut her throat. The man is a stone-cold killer.”

  “Did he tell you why he did it?” asked Pence.

  “No,” said Douglas. “I’m guessing it has something to do with Erycca. I don’t think Jerry knew anything about the kidnapping. Maybe he found out and they wanted to keep him quiet. Maybe they just wanted to keep all of Jerry’s drugs to themselves. I really don’t know.”

  The sergeant looked back through his notes. “Okay, Doug. Help me understand this. When Taggart and his two buddies showed up with the teenage girl hostage and a body in the trunk, did you ask yourself, ‘Why me? Why this house?’”

  Douglas shrugged. “He knew where my house was, because Jerry brought him over one time. Jerry loaned me the money for my parents’ back taxes, and he wanted me to step up the payments. I guess he brought Tank—Taggart—over to try and scare me. So, when those guys
showed up a few days ago, I suppose they came to get the dope that Jerry was growing out there in the prairie.”

  “The drugs that were growing behind your house?”

  “It wasn’t behind my house.”

  “Doug, you’re quibbling,” said Lewis. “The dope field was pretty darn close to your house. Are you trying to tell us you knew nothing about it?”

  “I knew nothing about it,” said Douglas. “There’s no reason I would. Jerry never told us. I never went back to that dirt road. Nobody even lived there. The first time I saw the dope field was when they forced me to drive over there with them—to help bury the body.”

  “And you were just shocked, shocked to see a large field of marijuana growing there.”

  “I was more shocked about the dead body. The dope was small potatoes by comparison.”

  Lewis and Pence exchanged looks.

  “Yes, compared to the murder, the drugs are more minor,” said Lewis. “But still, I wouldn’t say it’s ‘small potatoes.’ There were over a hundred pounds of dope in that van, and more was left behind. Somebody’s looking at a life sentence for conspiracy.”

  “Wow,” said Douglas.

  “Then I guess you won’t be surprised to hear that Taggart says the dope was yours—yours and Jerry De Ghetto’s.”

  “Not surprised at all. And I bet he says I kidnapped that little girl and killed Jerry, too.”

  “No,” said Pence. “The murder he blames on Desmond Mitchell.”

  “There you go,” said Douglas. “I guess it’s a matter of who you want to believe. Hey, talk to Reed Polk. And Andy … Andy Zamara. He rents one of the rooms in the house. Ask him.”

  “Yep, we’ve talked to both of them,” said Pence. “They sound just like you. ‘Dope? What dope?’”

  “There you go.”

  Pence wrote down a few more notes, then closed his pad. “All right, then. I guess you can go now. Stick around town. We’re going to want to talk some more.”

  “Thank you,” said Douglas. “Have a good night.” He started to leave the room, then turned back. “Hey, about sticking around town—I need to drive down to Austin next Sunday. I have a physical exam on Monday morning. For the U.S. Military. I can’t really miss that.”