The person that surprised Peter the most was Bill Roth. He turned out to be the strongest voice in favor of bringing Chuck in. His argument hinged equally on it just being the right thing to do to help somebody out who’d just seen his parents hauled away, and a sense of duty to a fellow citizen of Bowman who’d just seen his home be taken over. While Peter could understand the moral reasons for Bill’s arguments, they seemed naïve in the face of the person he knew Chuck could be.
Irene pushed hard in the other direction. It was clear that a lot of it was motherly protection of Larry. She’d been there all the times her son had come home from school scuffed up or with his books ruined, or just feeling helplessly frustrated after being taunted mercilessly. “No way I’m going to put myself out to take care of somebody like that,” she added.
Nancy mostly kept her own counsel. Peter couldn’t puzzle out her feelings on the matter at all. He was tempted to just straight-up ask her, but the way she was holding herself separate made him put that aside.
When there was a break in the conversation that lingered on long enough, Peter said, “Sounds like we’ve all had our say. Let’s vote. In or out.”
Larry, who’d also been quiet through most of the conversation, said, “In.” Bill immediately agreed. Irene, as Peter expected, firmly said, “Out.”
“Mom?” Peter asked.
“In,” she said.
Sally had crawled back from her post to also cast a vote to let him in. “I see somebody out there for the first time in his life realizing he has to rethink what his life is really about. I’ve been there myself, so I vote to give him a chance.”
That tallied up to four in favor, one opposed. Even though his vote was no longer needed, Peter still knew everybody wanted to hear his decision. He suspected that if he were to vote no, it would rekindle the discussion, at least. That was not his vote, though. Peter felt that Sally’s words only reinforced his own feelings on whether somebody could bring their life around and set foot onto a different path.
“In,” he said. “But he’s not on patrol yet, doesn’t pull any work detail alone or with only one other person, and he doesn’t carry. He’ll pull his own weight and extra work detail to free up some time for the rest of us to be able to put a third on watch for the overnights. If he can show that he’s willing to be a part of this effort, we’ll bring him onto equal footing with the rest of us. Agreed?”
12
Prange just about kicked in the door to the office he and Carter were using. “How the hell does somebody disappear between here and that building over there?” he shouted, pointing to the school building visible out the window. “I’ve been looking for that asshole for three hours.”
“We should have buttoned up the mayor first, before locking down the shops,” Carter said.
“Where was this particularly useful advice when I needed it? You’re with me because you supposedly know these things.”
“Look, Dan. We both assumed he was in his office when we gave the word. You and me both.”
“Obviously, he wasn’t.”
“Well, you’re the one that told me to get my guys rolling while you dealt with him. Maybe you should have made sure your simple task just down the hall was taken care of before you sent me out.” Carter stood up, visibly puffing out his chest. Prange often relied on bluster and threats in times of conflict, but he’d worked with Carter long enough to know that he’d call his bluff in an instant. With the situation everywhere being as touchy as it was, he had no doubt his partner would be able to dispatch him. He also knew that Carter had earned the loyalty of the crew, and they’d all back up whatever story he put out to explain it away.
“What I wouldn’t give for two working walkie-talkies,” Prange said.
Carter sat back down. “Yeah. This bullshit of not being able to pull me up short once I turn a corner makes even the simplest plans really hard to execute.”
While he was relieved that Carter was easing up, he was weary of that little technique of his of getting up in his face, then giving a little ground back so he’d sound reasonable. Maybe that game had worked with suspects Carter had interrogated back when he was a cop, or even afterward as a cartel enforcer. But those would have been one-offs, shorter engagements with somebody. When Prange saw him do it over and over again, it lost its effect and showed itself to be just a form of cheap manipulation.
“Whatever,” Prange said. “I need to find out where the mayor has gone. You sure you didn’t see him when you were out?”
“I told you, I had my hands full over at the firehouse. I swear, everybody in this town loves that big ugly dude in charge over there. They were ready to throw down if he hadn’t told them to chill.”
Prange shook his head. In the back of his mind, he’d never quite figured out what to do with Thorssen. “Maybe we should lean on him to find out where the mayor might be hiding out.”
“I think you’d get more information out of the mayor’s brother,” Carter said.
“You think? What I’ve gathered is that the brother actively avoids the town itself when he’s up in the area.”
“He’s got friends in town, and it seems like they keep him up on things. I’d try there first. The fire chief seems like he’d be a real tough nut to crack. The mayor’s brother will want to help you.”
“You want to give me a hand with him?” Prange asked.
“Nah,” Carter said. “I’m trying to work out the logistics of where to put all the extra people we picked up today. I don’t think we can spare the guys to drive them back to Black River for at least a couple days yet.”
“How many do we have to find room for?”
“Fifteen. I say we take ’em out to the woods somewhere and dump them.”
“Not yet,” Prange said. “We’ve shook ’em up real good today. Let that sink in before we escalate things like that. Leave them wondering if this is as bad as it gets or not.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Exactly, Carter. Whatever I say goes.” Prange turned and walked out of the room before Carter could drop a comeback.
“I need to talk to Jerry Grossman, alone,” he said when he got down to Schuster’s office.
“You act like I’ve got a room for you to use,” the police chief said, gesturing to the line of people squatting in the hallway, wrists and ankles zip cuffed. Prange didn’t see Thorssen among them, which he considered wise. He had the kind of influence among the townsfolk that merited segregating him from anybody he might be able to turn to for support.
“You could offer me this room,” Prange said. The police chief pinned him with a questioning look, as if trying to figure out if he was serious or not.
“I’ve got way too much work to joke around with you,” Schuster finally said. “I guess you could try the mayor’s office, if you need. He’s not using it at the moment.”
Prange noted a level of sarcasm in his voice that carefully skirted just below insolence. He’d need to tread carefully with Schuster for a few days. After all, he had created a ton of work for the man, and his ongoing support would be key in the coming weeks. One thing the town didn’t seem to have was somebody useful sitting in the chief’s shadow, waiting for a chance to take a step up, which meant Prange would need to keep him on his side.
“I’ve got Carter brainstorming some possible solutions to your overcrowding here. I’ll follow up with him, see if he can come up with something that’ll work for you. In the meantime, are you okay with me grabbing Grossman for a chat?”
Schuster seemed slightly mollified. It wasn’t much of a change in the man’s mood, but it was a little building block. “Sure,” the chief said. “I can’t really spare any of my people to handle the transfer. If you’ve got a couple guys free, go ahead.”
Prange stepped outside just long enough to grab the two men from his crew, then returned to the basement of the town hall. As soon as he got the guard to open the conference room Jerry was being held in, he noticed just how crowded it had be
come since he was there last. He also noted that Thorssen was among the newcomers in the room. Considering his ties to the mayor, putting him into confinement with several of the mayor’s avowed foes seemed like a smart move on Schuster’s part.
When they got upstairs, Prange set his two guys to stand in the hallway and shut the door.
After a few questions about Jerry’s welfare, and a promise to arrange for better conditions, Prange got down to business. “If your brother needed to go to ground, where would he go?”
“If he had a running car, probably to another piece of old family land, about two miles west of here,” Jerry said. “It’s where he goes to hunt, knows it like the back of his hand, has every spot of cover and concealment memorized, tree stands he could climb and maybe even pull up after him. If he thought he needed to make a stand, it’d be there.”
“Without a car?” Prange asked.
“He might still head out that way, but he’d be a lot slower with that bum leg of his. I don’t know how easy it would be for you to find him if he decided to walk out there. All his military experience was in tanks, so he doesn’t have the kind of field craft an old ground-pounder might have. On the other hand, our parents taught us to hunt about the time we learned to walk.”
“All right. I can send guys out that way. Where else? Let’s assume he figures it’s a terrible idea to go bushwhacking with his leg. Where would he hide out in town?”
“I don’t think I can help you there. I know where he wouldn’t be. Unless he’s decided to break into the house of any of the guys he arrested with me. Last place you’d think to look, and all that.”
“You can’t identify any particularly good friends?” Prange asked. “I’d really appreciate it if you could get me something I could use.”
“How much appreciation are we talking here?”
“I noticed you argued very effectively this morning that the town really has no cause to charge you with anything. Since I’ll be taking over as magistrate for your case, I could find your points extremely convincing.”
Jerry pursed his lips in concentration. Prange leaned back in his seat, content to give him all the time he needed. “I know who his best friends were back in high school,” Jerry said. “If he’s still in town, I imagine he’d look to them first.”
With a few names on a piece of paper, plus a map out to Grossman’s hunting property, Prange had his two men escort Jerry downstairs. He called in one of his military veterans and instructed him to put together a squad of four healthy, in-shape guys to take a fast walk out to Grossman’s land, then dispatched Carter to check the addresses in town.
With more than half of his soldiers out looking for Grossman, Prange decided to bring up the man who’d come into town wounded the night before, the one that appeared to have come up from Illinois with Jerry.
After quick introductions, Prange sized the man up.
“Looks like you’ve had some pretty rough days. I’m guessing you took that hit to your leg a few days ago, but that shoulder wound is fresh.”
“Yeah,” Rocky said. “People outside of town are twitchy. Shoot first and don’t ask questions.”
Prange spent a good amount of time studying the leg wound. It had clearly been caused by a shotgun, probably short range by how tight the shot pattern was. Heavy-gauge shot would have ripped the leg up real bad. He thought back to the cabin he’d been in the day before, with the two dead bodies laid out in the living room, the empty twenty-gauge birdshot shells, the bloody spot on the floor and scattering of gauze and bandage packaging. “You sure you haven’t been out looking for trouble?” he asked.
Rocky went into a sob story about his wife down in Chicago that had been on life support, a couple of buddies convincing him to get out of town for the weekend, the world going sideways, him wanting to get back.
“Jerry Grossman was one of those buddies.” Prange saw the surprise flash across Rocky’s face. “I was right there when you were brought in and put into the room with him. You don’t have a chance of denying it.”
Rocky shook his head, then said, “Yeah. We came up with Jerry.”
“We?”
“We had another guy with us. Same night I got this, he took a much worse hit. Way worse,” Rocky said, pointing at the shoulder wound.
Prange noticed the guy was pale and exhausted, but the bandage on the wound looked clean and fresh, professionally applied. That’s when he remembered Thorssen had been kept in the same room. He’d probably gotten the guards to bring him supplies so he could tend to Rocky’s wound. If that were the case, Prange decided he needed to move Thorssen, since he could easily win Rocky over to the mayor’s side by treating him.
“Where did this happen?”
Rocky gave some fragmented directions. He wasn’t from the area, and hadn’t driven around, so he knew none of the street names. But he was able to describe the directions from the cabin where Prange had seen the evidence of the gunfight to Jerry Grossman’s, and from there give some rough description of how to cut cross-country to the house where he’d taken the shoulder wound and lost his buddy.
“Serious survivalists there?” Prange asked, after having Rocky confirm his quickly sketched map made some sense.
“I’d say so. They’ve got weapons, seem like they’ve got some tactics and planning. Jerry said if anybody around these parts had a running car or truck, it’d be them.”
Prange thanked Rocky and gave him some vague words about seeing if he could get him released from confinement, then had him sent back down to the basement. He pulled out the old map of the area and tried to reconcile it with the sketch he’d just drawn up. He could see a couple places that might fit the description. He decided that putting some eyes on those spots was vital.
As he was mentally reviewing his roster of who he had on hand, and who was off on missions, his stomach started to rumble. He still didn’t have a watch, and the clock inside the office was dead on the wall. Looking out the window, he could see some low evening sunlight peeking below the cloud cover that had been hanging over the town for hours. He figured it was a decent time to see if the school cafeteria was serving up dinner yet.
Halfway down the stairs, he was intercepted by one of the soldiers he’d sent out to check on Tom Grossman’s property west of town. He felt a surge of optimism—if they were back already, they must have picked up the mayor on the road. His man’s face told a different story.
The man wiped the sweat from his brow, then said, “We got out a little over a mile, going kind of slow so we could keep our eyes out for anybody running the brush parallel to the road. Out of nowhere, we had a bunch of guns open up on us. I would guess at least three different types, by the sound.”
“You all make it back?” Prange asked.
“Yeah. I think they lit us up way too soon because the shots were all coming from a good way down the road and they didn’t hit any of us. Proper ambush, they would have let us get into a kill zone and shredded us. We all hit the ditches right away, and I called a retreat. Told everybody to bust on out and regroup quick at the last intersection we’d crossed.”
“Did they follow you?”
“Don’t think so. Sounded like they stayed in place and kept shooting after us.”
“Well, if the mayor went out that way, either they know him and they let him pass, or maybe they took him out for us.”
“Couldn’t tell you,” his man said. “Only communication we had with them was a lot of lead coming our way. Didn’t see any bodies or anything.”
Prange brushed his hair back and scratched at the back of his neck in frustration. “Well, why don’t you guys get something to eat. I’ll bring you a map in a bit, see if you can’t guess where this all went down. I think we’ve got another group just like yours out on the other side of town we’ll need to check out, too. The sooner we can figure out where all these folks are set up, the better.”
13
The morning after Chuck Larson arrived, Peter took him and Larry o
ut to the road, where they’d done their best to cover up and conceal his go-kart. With the two dirt bikes the Meiers already had, that gave them three small, functioning motor vehicles up at the homestead.
“Too bad we didn’t hold off one more day before completely burying up the driveway,” Larry said, as they tried to figure out how to get the go-kart off the road and onto the property.
“It’s only a few hundred pounds,” Chuck said. “Is there any way we could just carry it up to the garage? Throw Irene or Bill in, and we’d make short work of it.”
“Any foot paths we’ve left in or out are pretty twisted,” Peter said. “We found one approach we could use to get the dirt bikes through without much difficulty, but you’d never be able to drive this up that path. This thing isn’t much use to us if we can’t deploy it quickly, so even if we did get it up to the house, would we be able to get it back out here to the road if we needed it?”
“It sits behind my house most of the time under a tarp,” Chuck said. “What about just leaving it hidden somewhere out here?”
“Did you ride all the way down to your ex’s place looking for us last night?” Larry asked.
“No,” Chuck replied. “Just far enough down that I was sure I overshot your place before I turned around. Oh, but I did turn around at another cut through the tree line.”
Peter pointed down the road. “That soybean field in that bit of flat land right there where the road starts cutting back down the ridge?”
“I think it was soybeans.”
“You and I were just walking down there the other day,” Larry said to Peter. “There’s a decent approach from the house down to the field.”
Age of Survival Series | Book 2 | Age of Panic Page 11
