House Standoff

by Mike Lawson

  She asked the agent who’d cleaned out the gun cabinet, “Did you inventory everything?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Photographed everything in the cabinet before we took anything out too.”

  “Good. Give a copy of your inventory to Mr. Bunt so he’ll know what we took. Oh, and thank him for his cooperation.”

  She rounded up her men and told them they were leaving. They piled into the Suburban, Sonny’s weapons in the back, and took off. As McCord’s team was driving down the driveway, she saw a pickup truck swing into the driveway. The pickup stopped when the driver saw the FBI’s SUV coming toward him. His vehicle was blocking the road.

  The driver got out of the pickup. It was Hiram Bunt. He was alone. McCord had to admit that the old man had balls. On his hip was a semi-automatic pistol in a holster.

  McCord told the agent driving to stop and she got out of the SUV holding her shotgun, the barrel pointed toward the ground. McCord said, “Mr. Bunt, move your truck.”

  “Fuck you,” Hiram said. Moving slowly and stiffly, the old man started to reach for the gun on his hip. McCord pointed the shotgun at his face and said, “You take out that gun and point it at me, I’ll blow you to kingdom come.”

  Hiram stopped moving. He must have heard something in McCord’s voice and realized she was serious—and different than the FBI agent he’d dealt with during the standoff. He said, “You got no right to take my boy’s firearms.”

  “I have a warrant signed by a federal judge,” McCord said. “Now move your vehicle.”

  “No,” Bunt said.

  McCord opened the SUV’s passenger side front door, pushed the button to lower the window, then got in and pointed her shotgun at Bunt through the window. She said to the driver, “Go around the son of a bitch.”

  “You got it, boss,” the driver said and drove around Hiram’s pickup, tearing up the lush grass on Sonny Bunt’s lawn.

  21

  Hiram stood for a moment, seething, as he watched the goddamn feds drive away. He hated the bastards. They just kept coming after him and his family. He walked up to the front door to where Sonny was standing.

  “What did they tell you?” Hiram asked.

  “Just that they had a warrant that allowed them to seize my guns.”

  “Did they give you a copy of the warrant?”

  “Yeah. Those motherfuckers. Look what they did to my door.”

  “Show me the warrant,” Hiram said.

  Hiram read the warrant while standing on Sonny’s front porch, but couldn’t make a whole lot of sense out of it. Just government-lawyer double-talk, saying it was related to the BLM agent’s murder. Then he asked the question he’d been afraid to ask ever since the agent was killed. He said, “There any reason to be worried about them taking your weapons?”

  “No,” Sonny said. “I don’t know why in the hell they decided to raid my house.”

  Hiram studied his son’s face, but couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. Sonny was a good liar.

  Sonny said, “What should I do?”

  “Nothing,” Hiram said. “I’m calling my lawyer.”

  The lawyer’s office wasn’t open at six in the morning—so he called the lawyer’s house and woke him up.

  Lisa was in the kitchen when Hiram returned home, having a bowl of cereal, wearing the long T-shirt she’d worn to bed. She was barefoot, her long legs visible to the top of her thighs; she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her dark hair was tangled from sleeping. Goddamn, the woman turned him on. If his back wasn’t so fucked up, he would have bent her over the kitchen table and taken her right there. But those days were over. He sometimes thought that he’d be better off dead than being so old and feeble.

  She said, “What’s going on? Why’d you go tearing out of the house this morning?”

  He said, “The fuckin’ FBI got a warrant to seize Sonny’s weapons. They think he killed that BLM agent.”

  “What? I thought he was in the clear, that he had an alibi for the day that man was shot.”

  “Yeah, well, something’s changed.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I’m waiting to hear back from the lawyer. I told him to find out what’s going on.”

  Lisa studied him for a bit as she munched her cereal, then said, “Do you think Sonny could have done it?”

  Hiram shook his head and walked away.

  Lisa couldn’t tell if the head shake meant No, I don’t think he did it or if it meant I don’t know if he did it. Well, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Sonny had killed the agent. Sonny was a snake. He’d even tried to hit on her when she first married Hiram. Cheatin’ on his wife with that Mexican at the Grill was one thing; trying to screw his father’s wife was in a whole different category.

  All she knew was that if the FBI had enough to get a warrant, they had something. The FBI didn’t go off half-cocked. And if they could put Sonny in jail for murder, that wouldn’t be a bad thing—not when it came to her future. She’d already started to think ahead to what might happen when Hiram died. She’d inherit a pile of money, of course, but she wouldn’t get it all. And what she really wanted was the land and Hiram’s businesses, which no doubt would be passed on to Sonny. But if Sonny was serving life in prison—

  She looked out the kitchen window. The sky was clear; the wind was barely blowing. Since she was up anyway, she might as well go for a ride. When she’d married Hiram she’d never ridden a horse. After ten years, though, she’d become an excellent horsewoman and loved nothing better than a morning ride.

  Ten years. She couldn’t believe it. And as miserable as it sometimes was living with the grumpy old bastard, it had been worth it. If she hadn’t married him, God knows what she’d be doing today, most likely waiting tables or working some other minimum wage job. Her plan, from the time she’d turned twenty, had always been to marry a rich man and she doubted she could have done any better than Hiram. If she’d married a younger man, she would have had to put up with him for thirty or forty years, but Hiram . . . she wondered how much longer he’d last. His father had lived to eighty; he was now seventy-six.

  Whatever the case, she really had no complaints, especially now that she no longer had to put up with having sex with him. Thank God his back would never get any better. She drove a BMW convertible, went on shopping sprees in Denver, took classes at the community college in Rock Springs, went skiing in Jackson Hole. Then there was her handsome lover. Yep, life was grand—and if Sonny were gone, it would get even grander.

  22

  DeMarco was on his laptop researching nearby golf courses. The best one appeared to be a course in Rock Springs, a place called White Mountain, only an hour away. He was anxiously waiting to hear if McCord had confiscated Sonny’s weapons and to learn what the FBI planned to do next, but in the meantime, he was bored. There wasn’t much in the way of entertainment in Waverly.

  He was just about to dial the pro shop at White Mountain, to find out if he could rent clubs, when his phone rang. He was pleased to see it was McCord calling.

  She said, “DeMarco, I decided to keep you in the loop just to keep you from doing something stupid. Our ballistics experts confirmed for a second time that Sonny’s rifle was used to kill Jeff Hunter.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  “What the hell do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to arrest him for murder.”

  “You told me that Sonny has an alibi, that he was supposedly at some gun show the day Hunter was killed.”

  “Well, we’ll see how well his alibi holds up now. One of the first things I’m going to do is get in the face of the man who said Sonny was with him. I’ll tell him that if I can prove Sonny wasn’t really in Cheyenne then I’m going to arrest him for accessory to murder and for lying to the FBI.”

  “What will you do if he doesn’t fold?”

  “
I’ve got more options than I had before. Now that we know Sonny’s rifle was used to kill Hunter, I can get warrants to look at his credit card charges and cell phone records. Sonny Bunt’s no genius. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made a credit card charge or a call that proves he wasn’t in Cheyenne. And even if I can’t break his alibi, he’ll go to trial and the jury will have to decide if they want to acquit a backshooter based on what one of his buddies says. Folks in Wyoming tend to have a low opinion of backshooters.”

  Before DeMarco could ask about it, McCord said, “Regarding the small-caliber pistol we found in Sonny’s gun cabinet, it wasn’t the weapon used to kill Shannon Doyle. Shannon was killed with a .22. Sonny’s gun was a .25.”

  “Maybe he tossed the .22 after he used it,” DeMarco said.

  “But why would he kill her, DeMarco? He didn’t have a motive that I’m aware of.”

  “Yeah, he did,” DeMarco said. “She knew about the fight he’d had with Hunter and she was thinking about telling the FBI about it. But the main thing is, and like I told you the day I met you, Shannon was all over this town, talking to people, watching things, and she might have learned something directly tying Sonny to Hunter’s murder. Or maybe she learned something that would break Sonny’s alibi.”

  “DeMarco, you’re grasping at straws. And there’s nothing written in Shannon’s journal—I’ve skimmed most of it—that shows she knew anything about Hunter’s death other than what she wrote about the fight.”

  Before DeMarco could object, McCord continued. “You ought to be more concerned about the sheriff arresting you, and if I were you, I’d get out of Wyoming. I don’t think the state is going to try too hard to extradite you from D.C. to face charges for trespassing.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I know who killed Shannon,” DeMarco said.

  23

  McCord was looking forward to arresting Sonny Bunt—but there were some challenges.

  Had Sonny been almost any other citizen, McCord would have taken a couple of agents with her, driven up to his house, knocked on the door, and slapped handcuffs on his wrists when he opened the door. With Sonny, however, she had the same concern she’d had when executing the search warrant: that Hiram Bunt might put a dozen armed men around Sonny’s house to keep her from taking his son, in which case there’d be another standoff but this time people might get killed. The FBI didn’t need another Ruby Ridge and for this reason, McCord had decided to take a more cautious approach when it came to bagging Sonny.

  Sonny’s house was on County Road 23, also known as Crooks Gap Road, a road that ran north and south. About five miles south of his house was a small wooden structure that over the years had been used as a stand for selling fresh produce and honey gleaned from local hives and, most recently, fireworks. But as they say in the real estate business, location is everything—and the location of the stand was hardly conducive to brisk sales. It had been abandoned for the past couple of years.

  At six a.m., McCord pulled the big Suburban SUV she was driving behind the stand, where it would be invisible to anyone driving by on CR-23. With McCord were three other FBI agents and a technician she’d borrowed from the Cheyenne office. The FBI agents were dressed in jeans and wore dark blue windbreakers with “FBI” in yellow letters on the back. The technician was a skinny, long-haired kid in his early twenties dressed in a T-shirt, cargo shorts, and high-top, black Converse tennis shoes without socks. McCord figured he had to be exceptional at his job, otherwise, his boss in Cheyenne would have demanded that he get a haircut and dress more professionally. The kid’s name was Brian.

  McCord opened the rear hatch of the Suburban and Brian removed an aluminum suitcase about the size of an airplane carry-on bag. He opened the suitcase and, sitting in protective foam rubber, was an iPad, what looked like the controller for a video game with two joysticks—and a drone. The drone was a quadcopter, meaning attached to the body of the drone were four helicopter-like propellers. In the body of the drone was a camera, a powerful lithium polymer battery, and a bunch of other electronic gizmos that only Brian could understand. You could buy a drone that looked just like Brian’s on Amazon for a couple of hundred bucks. This drone, however, cost way more than a couple hundred because of its capabilities, and was the type of drone used by the military and other federal law enforcement agencies. In other words, it was the Cadillac of surveillance drones.

  It took Brian about five minutes to get the drone ready to fly and to run some tests to make sure everything was working. McCord gave Brian the GPS coordinates of Sonny’s house—and the drone rose into the sky. Ten minutes later, the drone was about three hundred yards from Sonny’s house at an elevation of two hundred and fifty feet. The drone, unlike the models you bought on Amazon, was so quiet you could barely hear it, and it was painted a grayish color that was essentially sky-colored camouflage. McCord had told Brian to locate the drone east of Sonny’s house so that it would be even harder for anyone at the house to see it, as they’d be squinting into the morning sun.

  The camera from the drone fed the scene to the iPad that Brian had propped up in the rear compartment of the SUV, so McCord and the other agents could see what the camera was seeing. And what the camera showed was not good from McCord’s perspective. In Sonny’s driveway was a black Dodge pickup with a king cab and there were four men armed with long rifles seated on folding lawn chairs near Sonny’s front porch. This is what McCord had been worried about, and she wondered if the four men had been there all night.

  She said to her team, “We’re going to wait awhile and see if those guys leave or if Sonny leaves his house and goes someplace where we’ll be able to make an arrest without getting into a gunfight.”

  If the men guarding Sonny didn’t leave soon, then she’d have to figure out what to do.

  There was no way she was not arresting Sonny Bunt today.

  For the next two hours, McCord monitored the scene at Sonny’s house via the iPad while Brian maintained the drone in position. The rest of McCord’s team sat in the SUV bullshitting and drinking coffee from a couple of thermoses that McCord had brought.

  At eight a.m., McCord saw a second pickup swing into Sonny’s driveway and a man got out of it. McCord told Brian to zoom in on the man. It was Hiram Bunt. McCord watched as Hiram walked into Sonny’s house without knocking. Five minutes later he came out with Sonny in tow and they got into Hiram’s truck. The four men who’d been standing guard got into the second pickup—the Dodge with the king cab—then the two pickups left Sonny’s place and proceeded south toward Waverly. They’d be driving right past the one-time fireworks stand that was blocking the view of McCord’s Suburban from the road.

  McCord told Brian, “Land the drone. You can come back later and pick it up.”

  “What if somebody finds it. That drone cost—”

  “I don’t care what it cost,” McCord said. “Land it and pack up the rest of your shit.”

  A couple of minutes later, Hiram’s convoy consisting of Hiram and Sonny in one pickup and Hiram’s four cowboys in the other, drove past the fireworks stand. McCord waited until the two pickups were almost out of sight, then took off after them.

  It was easy to follow Hiram and Sonny. The road ran almost straight and the landscape was flat. When Hiram reached the place where CR-23 intersected with I-80, Hiram merged onto I-80 and headed west—in the direction of Waverly. But Hiram didn’t stop in Waverly. He kept traveling west, toward Rock Springs—and McCord thought she knew where he was headed. Hiram’s lawyer’s office was in Rock Springs and McCord figured that Hiram was taking his dumbass son to ask the lawyer what they should do about the weapons the FBI had seized.

  She wondered if Sonny had told his daddy that his hunting rifle had been used to kill a man.

  Forty minutes later, the two pickups pulled into a small parking lot in front of a two-story brick building. A sign in front of the building said it was occupied by
a real estate agency, an Allstate insurance agent, an architect—and the honorable William S. Patterson, the attorney who’d represented Hiram in his never-ending fight against the federal government.

  McCord parked a block away from the building, parallel parking the Suburban between two other vehicles. She watched as Hiram and his son walked into the building. The four men who’d come with Hiram got out of their pickup but didn’t go inside. They stayed in the parking lot, jawboning, a couple of them smoking. Maybe Hiram had decided to leave his men in the parking lot because he thought that the FBI wouldn’t dare to arrest Sonny while he was in a lawyer’s office. If that’s what he thought, he was wrong.

  Now McCord had to make a decision. The FBI liked to outnumber its adversaries—by a lot. She’d brought three agents with her to arrest Sonny, making the odds four to one in her favor. With Hiram’s four cowboys standing in front of the building, McCord would have liked it better if she’d had a dozen more agents with her, all of them armed to the teeth and dressed in body armor. But she didn’t have a dozen agents, and in the time it would take to bring in reinforcements, Hiram and Sonny would most likely be gone from the lawyer’s office.

  She mulled the situation over for a bit then said, “Brian, I want you to go into the building and locate Patterson’s office. Then I want you to find a door on the back or side of the building that me and the rest of the team can use to get inside without Bunt’s men seeing us.”