Defiance (The Defending Home Series Book 1)

by William H. Weber

  Randy Gaines stood glaring at his brother’s casket as it disappeared from view, the reverend reading passages from Scripture, perhaps in the hope that they might speed his journey into heaven. Far from a question of price, Clay’s humble casket was another consequence of the flu’s wrath. Who would have thought finding a box to be buried in would be so hard? But there had been other such changes none of them could have anticipated. As Randy listened to the reverend’s words, the well of anger within him only grew deeper. Dale Hardy was the man responsible for this. Sure, he might not have pulled the trigger, but like the owner of a wild animal who drew blood, Dale had to bear some of the blame. It was bad enough that he’d resisted their attempts at coercion and intimidation, but after the failed attack by Mayor Reid’s hired Mexicans, the situation was quickly swinging out of their control.

  As the ceremony ended, the mourners began to file away in groups of twos and threes. Sandy was among them, walking with a deputy named Keith. She had assured Randy that whatever had gone on between her and Dale was long over. He believed her, didn’t have a reason not to, although Randy couldn’t help but wonder if he might be able to use her against his enemy.

  Mayor Reid came up beside him, lowering his mask with one hand and handing Randy a handkerchief with the other. It fluttered in the breeze between them, the letters HR embroidered in dark navy letters.

  “I’m too pissed to cry,” Randy said.

  “It isn’t for your eyes,” Reid said. “You’re sweating like a pig.”

  Randy took it from him and dabbed his forehead and cheeks, handing it back when he was done.

  “Keep it.”

  Shrugging, Randy slid it into his back pocket. Later, he decided, he would toss it into the trash.

  “Your friend Dale is becoming a real pain,” Reid said, his hollow eyes fixated on the hole in the ground as two men started to fill it in with shovels.

  “He ain’t my friend.”

  “That little stunt he pulled, dumping those bodies in front of the sheriff’s office...”

  “Trust me, I know,” Randy said, reliving the moment he’d seen it for himself. “I was one of the people who had to clean it up.”

  “I don’t doubt that was distasteful, but that isn’t precisely what I’m talking about. The whispers going around town, surely you must have heard them.”

  Randy nodded. “Sure have. Folks are acting like Dale’s some kinda Robin Hood. Truth is he’s keeping every last drop for his greedy self.”

  “Not anymore,” Reid said. “He’s been using some of it to trade.”

  Randy’s eyes found the darkened sockets Reid called eyes. “So he’s finally figured it out.”

  “It was only a question of time,” Reid admitted. The two men began walking back toward the road and the cars they left parked there. “Either way,” he continued, “the move is making our job that much harder.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Don’t be dumb, Sheriff. Whether he knows it or not his influence is spreading. For some reason, the townsfolk seem to love him.”

  “Do they?” Randy asked. “Or is it us they hate?”

  Reid brushed off the comment with a dismissive gesture. “It isn’t love and acceptance we’re after. The minute his well runs dry, so will his support.”

  “Then I hope you have another plan,” Randy said. “Because so far, everything we’ve tried hasn’t worked.”

  “I always have a plan. In this case, I have several.”

  They reached Randy’s cruiser and he opened the door and placed a foot inside. The other mourners were already gone. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  “I’m sending a representative across the border to meet with Fernando Ortega. We can offer his people safe haven and a secure entry point into the country. All I’ll ask in return is that he solves our little problem.”

  Randy winced. “Are you sure doing business with a Mexican drug lord is such a good idea?”

  “It’s a fabulous idea,” Reid replied, his thin lips drawn into a hideous smile.

  “The men he sent over last time were nearly all blown away. If you don’t believe me, just look at the bodies. Maybe if we could round up some men from the community we might be able to―”

  Reid shook his head. “Nonsense. Convincing enough of them to risk their lives won’t be easy. Besides, we can’t risk any of the deputies we have left, at least not yet. Our slightly superior numbers are the only thing keeping Dale from attacking us.”

  “And if that changes?” Randy asked. “What if Ortega turns the offer down? Or if Dale somehow turns enough of the locals against us? We’ve already expropriated land from these people.”

  “That’s where you come in,” Reid told him.

  “How’s that?”

  “We need to start eroding Dale’s influence, get them to stop cheering for him and start cheering for us.”

  Randy began nodding even before the words were out of Reid’s mouth. “Leak something from his past.” He stopped, pulled out the hanky and dabbed his forehead again. “Problem is Dale’s way too clean. When I went after him all those years ago I really had to bend the truth.”

  “Then keep bending it,” Reid encouraged him. “Why bother with the truth at all when a pack of lies is so much more efficient and deadly? And to answer your question about Ortega, if I get my way, he won’t be sending up a group of amateurs. He’ll be sending up his best.”

  “So long as they don’t end up destroying the very prize we’re after. Dale and his family can all rot in hell as far as I’m concerned. They’re expendable. His well and the power supply to run it aren’t.”

  “Don’t be so quick to judge,” Reid said. “Some of them may prove useful.”

  Randy was about to drop into the seat of his cruiser when he stopped. “Our fuel reserves are nearly done. Confiscating what was left from the Texaco and Shell stations was a good idea, but we won’t be much good at keeping the peace if we can’t get around.”

  “Once we have the water,” Reid said, “we’ll be the ones trading for what we need.” The mayor paused and stuck a finger inside the neck of his dress shirt. “Deputy Hartman came by my place, asking a lot of questions. You told me she could be trusted.”

  Randy was suddenly nervous. “She’s trustworthy. Why what was she asking about?”

  “Joe Wilcox.”

  Randy nodded slowly. One more thing he needed to handle. “Okay, I’ll have a chat with her.”

  “Please, do,” Reid said coolly. “Because she’s far too pretty for a shallow grave.”

  Chapter 31

  Sandy

  The clinic was dark when Sandy arrived. She’d come to check on the mayor’s claim that Joe Wilcox had gone to get treatment after becoming infected with the flu instead of meeting with him.

  The sliding glass doors remained pried apart, the way they’d been ever since the power had gone out. Out back, she could still hear the town’s only generator rumbling away. These days, the clinic ran it only a handful of hours every day to keep the fridges with the insulin cool and some of the equipment charged. Unfortunately, the handful of patients on life support were long gone.

  She came to the waiting area, which was lit by a single candle that cast an eerie, uneven glow about the room. Seated along the walls were more figures than she’d expected to find. A young girl with straw-colored hair clung to her mother seated beside her. She looked weak, underfed and dehydrated.

  In fact, most of them did. Which was probably what brought them here in the first place. The majority wore masks, but that was probably because none of them were coughing. This was the last place anyone wanted to be, including Sandy. But seeing that little girl only reminded Sandy of the open hole in her heart. She’d spent eight years in a relationship that had failed to launch and three years kicking herself afterward for throwing away the prime years of her life.

  Before the virus had so radically transformed the town and the country beyond, she’d known her chances of becoming
a mother, even someone’s wife, were probably far behind her. Maybe in a big city like New York or Los Angeles a woman in her thirties was entering her prime, but not here in Encendido, Arizona.

  At the time, she’d believed that Dale would be the one to change all that. But there had been an invisible shift and he had grown distant and she hadn’t entirely been sure why. Was it the rumors circulated by the Gaines family in retaliation for Dale’s stance against their crooked business practices? His friend Tommy, dead now three weeks, had proven the inadvertent cause of the problem. He’d taken his car in to Randy’s shop to get a pair of squeaky brakes fixed and discovered he’d been charged over two thousand dollars. Randy had a long list of supposed parts he’d swapped out, but the truth was Tommy had just gotten the car checked six months before by someone else and it had been given a clean bill of health.

  Things between Tommy and Randy got ugly and deputies were called in once the disagreement got physical. It was Dale, not Tommy, who had been the one to call Randy a cheat and a crook and so it was he who had borne the brunt of Randy’s anger. Soon, rumors began to circulate that Dale had been cheating on his wife long before the crash that killed her. That she’d discovered the affair and that the two had argued shortly before her car had gone off the road. The insinuation was that Dale had had something to do with it. Whether she’d been upset and not paying attention or whether he had tampered with her brakes, for some in the community, it didn’t seem to matter. But for Sandy it did, especially given that she was the other woman.

  The real problem was that the rumors were completely false. She and Dale had started seeing each other months after Julie’s death and only because Sandy had been the one to pursue him.

  She stood in the darkness of the clinic, watching a shadowy figure approach.

  “Sandy?” the woman asked. “Are you feeling okay?”

  It was Betty Wilcox, the head nurse and precisely the person Sandy needed to speak with.

  “Huh? Oh, I’m not sick. I’m just following up on an investigation.”

  Betty looked worried. “Not a malpractice one, I hope.”

  “Never,” Sandy said. “You guys have done a terrific job here, especially given Dr. Peterson’s death.”

  “We miss him every day,” Betty said. “Maybe almost as much as I miss my brother.”

  “That’s sorta why I’m here,” Sandy said. Joe Wilcox was Betty’s older brother and as it turned out the only one of their family left.

  “Let’s talk in one of the examination rooms, shall we?” Betty said.

  The two women went to the tiny room off the main waiting area and closed the door behind them.

  “Look, I’ll skip right to the point. Do you remember whether your brother came to the clinic on the day that he died?”

  Betty crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes tilted up to the ceiling. There was a candle in the room and it cut deep shadows into the grooves of her face. She was in her sixties, but right now she could be a hundred.

  “He certainly didn’t walk in if that’s what you mean,” Betty told her. “I would definitely have remembered if my own flesh and blood had shown up sick and looking for help. I believe it was only later that night, after they’d both passed, that he and Doris were brought in for a brief examination.”

  “Who examined the bodies before they were buried?”

  “It must have been Dr. Peterson, but now that he’s gone I guess we’ll never know for sure. Within the first seventy-two hours almost all of the standard norms and practices for documenting visits went out the window. A number of those who came in had no ID and couldn’t even be identified. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

  “You’ve been more helpful than you know.”

  Sandy thanked her and began to leave the clinic, stealing one final glance at the young sickly girl, whispering a silent prayer that she might pull through.

  Sandy exited the clinic when she saw an angry-looking Randy standing by her cruiser.

  Her pulse quickened. “Sorry again about Clay,” she said.

  “What are you doing?” His arms were crossed over his chest.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, certain he could see right through her act.

  “Mayor Reid told me you came by and harassed him.”

  “Harassed him? I only asked a couple of questions. He offered me a drink. Those are hardly the actions of a man feeling harassed.”

  “Joe Wilcox is gone,” he said. “He was a good sheriff, but he’s dead and I need you to accept that and get on with your job.”

  “I’m doing my job,” she snapped, her hands perched over her utility belt. Whenever she spoke to Randy, she had to hold back the sudden violent urge to shoot him between the eyes. She knew he and the mayor were sending men to force Dale off his property as he’d done with others before him. She also knew Randy was the one who had started those horrible rumors about Dale years before. But she couldn’t prove any of it. That was the difference between a good old-fashioned execution and murder. The latter meant she’d likely be killed herself, instead of lauded as a hero. She might be onto his crooked ways, but the townspeople weren’t, at least not yet.

  “Your job is to keep the town safe from criminals,” he reminded her.

  She wanted to say that was what she was doing, but bit her tongue.

  He drew in a heavy breath and ran a hand through the few remaining scraps of hair on his head. “Hey, I’m not trying to bust your... well, you know what I’m trying to say. I came to pass along a friendly piece of advice. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Randy stepped aside and she opened the door to her cruiser.

  “When I was first appointed sheriff you told me that things between you and Dale were long gone. Is that true?”

  “Why do you ask?” she asked, not liking the direction this conversation was heading in.

  “I need to be certain.”

  She swore and slid into her cruiser, but Randy stopped her from closing the door.

  “I told you there was nothing. What more do you want?”

  “For you to prove it,” he said, popping an embroidered hanky from his pocket and using it to dab the sweat from his brow. “There’s some new information about Dale I’ve just discovered and I need to make sure it circulates around town as quickly as possible.”

  She regarded him skeptically. “And if I don’t?”

  “The department has been good to you, Sandy. Sure, we aren’t paying you with money anymore, but we’re giving you something far more valuable—food and a cut of what little drinking water we have left. Believe me, we make much better friends than we do enemies. Besides, with what’s coming to Dale and his family, you won’t want to be anywhere near them.”

  Chapter 32

  At about the same time that Sandy was leaving the clinic, Dale, Brooke and Duke arrived before Julie’s headstone. It was a beautiful piece of black marble with an engraving which read: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

  Dale laid the Remington on the ground and lowered himself into a patch of dry grass. Brooke did the same.

  Only Duke sat at attention, ever watchful for threats.

  The verse from the Gospel of John was his wife’s favorite and brought tears to her eyes whenever she heard it spoken aloud. Dale knew when his day finally came, he probably wouldn’t have the luxury of a tombstone. But if he did, he would want it to read: So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

  That one belonged to James, not him, but if words could sum up how a man felt about life, then for Dale this was it. He always strove to do the right thing, first for his family and whenever possible for everyone else.

  “Hard to believe she’s down there,” Brooke said, “under all that dirt.”

  “Not the part that matters most,” he told his daughter, plucking blades of dead grass and letting the wind take them. “You know I don’t like it when you
say that sorta stuff.”

  She didn’t look at him. “Sometimes I can’t help it, my mind just goes there. There are days when I imagine that she isn’t dead, just sleeping, and all we need to do is dig her up and she’ll be alive again.”

  Dale said nothing, basking for a moment in memories of the life they’d once shared. How he and Julie had met in high school. How he’d struggled to land a date with her, only to be shot down time and time again. It wasn’t until years later when they were both home from university, he as a dropout and her nearing the end of her bachelor’s in sociology, that he’d spotted her crossing the street. She was wearing dress pants and a white blouse. She was breathtaking and the knot that formed in his belly had made it clear he was hopelessly in love.

  He had stopped her before going in and reintroduced himself. Of course she remembered him, she had said. How could she forget? Words that sounded great to his naïve ears until he digested and dissected them later. She was about to apply for a job at the Bank of America, a job she would keep for the next twenty years. He asked if she’d be interested in grabbing a bite. She said sure, if he was willing to wait the thirty minutes it would take for her interview. Like a doofus, he waited and brought her to Sal’s Pizzeria down the street when she was done. The rest of the date was a blur, but he was in awe and would remain so for the next two decades.

  After her passing Dale had started a journal where he wrote Julie letters, telling her about his life and wondering how she was doing. For months after, he swore he could hear her voice greeting him whenever he came home. He hated it when concerned friends and family told him that time healed. They didn’t know what they were talking about. Time didn’t heal a thing, it was only an amnesiac that helped you forget.

  “How come you never dated after Mom’s passing?” Brooke asked, burrowing into his most guarded memories. He glanced over at her, stunned by her question. She recoiled, her hands filling the space between them, afraid she’d touched on something too personal. “I know you were seeing that woman Sandy for a while. Why did it end?”