Shotgun Honey Presents: Locked and Loaded (Both Barrels Book 3)

by Owen Laukkanen

  “Plus,” I said, “if it’d been here since last summer, the time would be an hour off.”

  Ed looked impressed that I’d thought of that; this was the depth of investigation our force could undertake: remembering daylight savings time.

  There were other signs people had been there: cigarette butts, beer cans, a few empty bags for snack foods. These items were eventually run for fingerprints but none matched any prints on file.

  I buried my boy five days later, putting him next to Ellie, the spot where I was meant to be. There was nothing to hold up a funeral when a shovel to the head was all there was for evidence.

  “One quick jab,” the coroner decided. “Guy must have been an ox.”

  The whole town turned out and the folks in most of the neighboring ones. That’s the way people are up here. But I’d be damned if Billy’s murder was going to end like this, so the investigation continued. But finally the new leads, the people to question, the timetables to work out faded away. There was no way to keep it going.

  I am a patient man. Billy taught me that. I knew that whoever killed my son had found another crib—if that’s the current term—but they hadn’t disappeared entirely.

  Small-time drug dealers, and that’s who I thought it was, don’t disappear. They’re peasants like me. And peasants don’t travel well. They like their own john if nothing else.

  They’d never return to the Ryans’ house, but the area had hundreds of similar setups. I just needed to wait it out. And I waited through spring and summer with nary a report of noise or unusual traffic.

  Summer fills the houses in northern Michigan, but by October, the houses are being boarded up for winter. It was then that reports of unusual activity began to surface, lighting up our phone lines or coming across the Internet. Local kids partying a bit too hardy, odd movement at night, a few DUIs that didn’t seem like the usual beer-induced euphoria. I spent most nights driving or walking the streets of our town and the ones nearby.

  “You’re not sleeping much are you?” Ed Stuyvesant asked as we stood in front of the coffee machine in November. “Saw your car out on Huron Street last night, Chief.”

  “Just making sure our taxpayers are safe.” We watched silently as the machine dripped its God-awful coffee into the scarred pot. “And what were you doing out there, Ed? A little far from your regular beat, too.”

  “Marge’s sister, Brenda, lives out that way. Her dog had some pups in the middle of the night. Ever since I delivered that girl’s baby in the squad car, those women think I’m an ob-gyn.” He held his hands up. “Do these look like the mitts of a skilled vet?”

  I smiled. “She hear anything? Brenda, I mean.”

  “Sometimes, Chet, if you’re looking too hard...” Ed said, calling me by name for once. He sampled the brew and made the requisite face. “But if you come across anything, give me a call—no matter what time of night, Chief. Don’t take it on alone. I never did care about eight hours sleep.”

  “I’ll give you a call, Ed. I’m not aiming to screw it up now.”

  “Still hoping to convict someone?”

  I nodded. “I’m gonna see someone brought to justice. If I don’t, I’ll never get beyond it”

  “Odds are against it by now. Those cowboys are probably long gone.”

  “And where would they go? Detroit? Chicago? Bet they can’t even read a map.”

  It wasn’t until the week after New Year’s that I picked up two reports of activity in Duck Hollow. Duck Hollow’s fifteen miles down the road. It’s less of a town than West Lebanon, mostly attracting folks who just want to fish or hunt.

  Loners. There’s a general store with a gas pump outside and not much else.

  Most of the houses sit deep in the woods. They’re really just bare bones cabins—not meant for families. Duck Hollow uses the schools, police, and services of the neighboring town to get by. Off-season population is 166 and mostly men over fifty, holed up in tiny cabins they knocked together with a few drunken buddies over a couple of weekends thirty years ago. Nobody tells them how to live their lives in Duck Hollow; taxes are among the lowest in Michigan.

  The first suspicious report came from one of the few married couples. They reported New Year’s Eve had been celebrated eight hours straight at a cabin nearby. The man said

  it sounded like a machine gun was being fired. It may have been a pump BB gun, but the officer who took the information thought it was probably a semi-automatic shotgun.

  Two more reports came in: the sound of windows being broken, cracking branches at night, possibly more gunshots.

  When I looked at a map, the locations called in as suspicious were in a straight line if you traveled through the woods. Maybe someone without a car, who was tramping through the woods from house to house, looking for food or stuff to steal. Ed and I went up there, scouting every cabin we could find and succeeding only in drawing attention from two men with shotguns.

  “Police,” Ed yelled. Both times, the gun was silently withdrawn through a crack in the door. No idle chatter in Duck Hollow.

  But the third time, we found their lair. Although the boards facing the dirt road were still up when we cautiously circled the house, the ones over the back door and window had been pulled aside just enough to allow entry and a bit of light. Smoke curled out of the chimney and two pairs of dripping boots sat at the back door. Nice they’d removed their boots before entering the cabin. Someone had taught these guys manners.

  “Think we need to call for more help,” Ed whispered as we eased closer to the house.

  “Looks like it’s just two of them,” I whispered, gesturing toward the boots.

  Ed kicked in the flimsy door and I peered in cautiously. Inside was a barely furnished room with a kitchen at our end. Two guys sat at one of those fifties kitchen tables watching a tiny TV. It must have run on batteries since the electricity was turned off. They both looked up, blinking at the sudden light and at the poised Glocks in our hands.

  Before they could move, I yelled, “Freeze,” which they immediately did.

  The older one, a beefy, red-faced guy, was around forty-five; the other, a kid who was even larger, was maybe eighteen or twenty.

  “Put your hands where I can see them,” I added. I’d hate to tell you how rarely I’ve said words like that. They took it as the genuine thing though and the kid’s enormous arms shot right up—probably something he’d seen in movies too.

  “Like this?” he called out in a surprisingly pip-squeaky voice. I could see his wrists clearly, and it nearly took my breath away. He was wearing a Spider-man watch. Red band this time. The one we found was blue.

  “Where d’you get that watch?” I asked, grabbing his wrist.

  The kid screamed, nearly falling off his chair. I yanked him back onto it and he sat there, his mouth hanging open, not saying a word.

  I repeated the question, “Where did you…”

  “Look, he ain’t right,” the beefy guy broke in. “And all you’re doing is scaring him half to death.” His voice softened considerably. “His dad bought that watch for him when he lost his old one. Right, Johnny.” The kid nodded. The older man looked at me. “What’s with the watch anyway?”

  “Could you be the guys killed a boy out in West Lebanon last year?” I asked. “Left him dead in a doorway.”

  The beefy guy shook his head. “No way. I was down inside Jackson ‘bout then. Didn’t get out till June.” He looked at me, answering my next question. “Stole a car.”

  “What about him? He do it?”

  “He ain’t right,” the beefy guy repeated. “He don’t remember what he did yesterday. His dad lets him hang around.” He looked around as if that father might be listening, then added, “He don’t know what else to do since Johnny’s mom took off. He’s got some place gonna take him after the holidays. Up near Marquette.”

  “Ever hit a guy with a shovel? A guy wearing a shirt like mine?” I asked Johnny, knowing I shouldn’t be asking questions like that.
Knowing I should call the cops in Traverse City and let them handle it. Knowing I was screwing things up. But I had to know. I could feel Ed flinching with this knowledge beside me.

  The kid shrugged.

  “I toll you. He probably don’t remember,” the beefy guy said. “And if he did do it, which I ain’t saying he did, it didn’t mean nothin’. A kid like Johnny, well you know how it is. Everyone knows a kid like Johnny. Right?”

  “Either of you have guns?” I asked, ignoring his last comment. I nodded to Ed and he started to search them.

  “Nah, I’m just a minder, you might say,” the guy told me. “John here gets minded since those events. I’d just as soon stay out of Jackson so it’s okay with me, Money’s less but it’s something. Not that I’m saying anything happened over there, mind you. Who knows how scared a kid like John might be to see a uniform come through a door. Who knows what he’s liable to do.”

  “You’re not saying that, huh?”

  “It’s just daycare,” the guy continued, in case we still didn’t get it.

  I looked at the table where the boy sat, head down. A tear slid down his cheek, his hands still up in the air.

  “Why don’t the two of you get out of here?” I said, avoiding Ed’s shocked face.

  “What ‘bout the other stuff going on?” Ed asked me. “The break-ins. You know.”

  “These fellows won’t give us any more trouble. Right?”

  “Right. Right! You mean we can go?”

  The guy was rising already, looking for his coat “Get your coat on, John.”

  Johnny lowered his arms slowly. “I don’t need a coat, Shep.” He looked longingly at the TV where Oprah Winfrey was interviewing a female guest. One of those skinny blondes you saw everywhere nowadays. “You ain’t gonna leave the TV behind, are you?”

  Shep shook his head. “You do too need a coat, Johnny. It’s not ten degrees out there.”

  “Get out of this county now,” I said from the doorstep. “As far away as possible. ‘Cause next time it’ll be different.”

  I stood at the doorway, watching them head toward the forest.

  “I may not remember what it’s like for a kid like him.” I was shouting the last words and Johnny had to cover his ears.

  Border Crossing

  Michael McGlade

  Onwards we continued, stacking time on the blacktop. Our thirty-six-hour drive thus far had taken us from DC, through Knoxville, Nashville, Fort Worth and Tucson.

  “Wait till you hear this, Daddy.”

  Missy pointed to a listing in the Arizona Penal Code directory on her lap.

  “Says here it’s unlawful to smile if you have teeth missing. Donkeys are not permitted to sleep in bathtubs. And cutting down a cactus is punishable with up to twenty-five years in prison.”

  That’s my wife, Missy. Equal-stakes partners since the moment I met her two years back and we’ve been skating asphalt together ever since. She calls me Daddy on account of the age difference—she being twenty-five, me thirty-four. My real name’s Jackson: not many living people know it.

  Midnight Rider jangled on the radio and I cranked it up. We were heading for the border crossing into Mexico with a priority pigeon-express delivery for Eduardo Guzman. Let me explain. I used to run my own export business out of Mexico City, which means I’m a seasoned transfer specialist. Back then I learned subtle techniques guaranteed to navigate the myriad nightmare bureaucratic red-tape complexities of border crossings such as smuggler tunnels, improvised cannons, trebuchets. Even used nuns with dodgy habits.

  I’m ex-military. Blackjack brigade. Army training is a good grounding for border jumps but I’d be nothing without Missy. She’s in charge of logistics. It’s her plan.

  “We can’t risk going through a border checkpoint,” she said. “So we’ll drive straight over the top of the fence.”

  She had prepared a makeshift ramp to scale the fourteen feet high US-Mexico border fence in Yuma, Arizona. What’s not to love about that? I had to go, just to see if it even worked.

  Not that this type of border crossing was strictly necessary considering the cargo. Eduardo Guzman had family papers and deeds he’d been keeping from the IRS which are presently contained in a steel lockbox which could easily be hidden in my Jeep and we’d pass through any checkpoint with a high degree of certainty. Even though I’d guaranteed Eduardo’s delivery, I wasn’t worried about being stopped by the border guards at somewhere like El Paso because if those border guards discovered the lockbox, me and Missy would just use my homemade grenades to blast our way out. It’s why we were being paid two hundred thousand dollars, half up front.

  But I wasn’t doing it for the money. Like I said, I wanted to drive my Jeep Wrangler right over that fourteen feet high fence.

  • • •

  Near noon we tooled along Interstate 8. Yucca trees, sagebrush, cactus, sand dunes. Every now and then, and I don’t know why, there were these little piles of pebbles like some bored child had taken it upon himself to tidy up the whole desert. Didn’t see sandcastles though.

  The roadside sign said five miles to Yuma, which was where we’d jump the border into Mexicali and find Eduardo waiting for his delivery.

  “Ever wonder where the phrase son of a gun came from?”

  Travel doesn’t often broaden the mind, just lengthens the conversation.

  “During the Civil War a Minié ball pieced a young rebel’s genitals, passed right though and struck a woman’s belly. She conceived a child because of it.”

  Missy chuckled.

  “Now that’s an immaculate conception.”

  Earrings of Spanish moss dangled from a roadside oak.

  A single pickup approached from a mile off.

  I checked the rearview and noticed that two vehicles in the distance drifted over the hazy ridge like wind-bullied tumbleweeds and both of these vehicles then slowed to a stop on the lee of the hill with a clear, uninterrupted line of sight. There was no reason for them to stop there except…

  A golf ball-sized hole fractured the left upper corner of the windshield. Glass powdered like ocean spray. Another hole. Closer to the center. Missy clutched her face.

  Our Jeep caught the gravel apron. Tractionless tires. Lurched into the ditch and struck an outcrop of rock and everything went upside down.

  Pressure, like a lead weight, squeezed the air from my lungs.

  Everything stopped.

  Sound and time no longer existed.

  I don’t know how long I lay there but burning electrical wires and gas fumes brought me back. The vehicle rested on its side. I leveled a boot at the windshield and struck at it till it shattered.

  I retrieved my Beretta M9 pistol from the glove compartment. There had been no more shots fired which meant our attackers were probably winding their way toward us. Missy’s seatbelt was caught and I cut it off . Her face glittered with glass fragments but she seemed uninjured. We scrambled out the vehicle and took shelter. The Mossberg 500 twelve-gauge was in the trunk, along with Eduardo’s steel lockbox, and to get them we’d be exposed.

  I peered out. The two cars were coming, still a mile off.

  My head thrummed. Took a hard hit during the crash.

  There were no clean surfaces on the Jeep and it had rolled almost into a ball. Coarse smoke billowed from the engine.

  “Who’d you upset enough to shoot at us, Daddy?”

  “Didn’t annoy nobody,” I said. “Nobody knows we’re here. Except Eduardo.”

  “Then who did Eduardo irritate?”

  The shooters’ cars approached from the wavering horizon and between me and Missy and them was a stretch of blacktop caught in the flux of the endless desert sands.

  Reek of gasoline intensified.

  “Get us out of here, Daddy.”

  Missy’s voice as crisp as the clack of a cocked gun.

  I certainly didn’t revel a shootout.

  A pickup approached from Yuma direction and I limped onto the pavement and waved it t
o a halt. Missy got the Mossberg and Eduardo’s steel lockbox and we piled in the back of the pickup.

  “What happened?” the woman said. “You run your car off the road?”

  “Just drive,” I said.

  “But you’re cut. You’re bleeding.”

  I hadn’t noticed the gash on my head.

  “Get us out of here,” I said. “I got money.”

  “I don’t want money. Are you OK?”

  “Drive. Just drive.”

  I pointed toward Yuma and the woman turned the pickup in that direction.

  Sharpness drilled into me. I heard the rifle bullet hiss and then I collapsed. Pain flared. A gunshot wound is terrifying and invigorating. Adrenaline kicked in and it felt like a series of doors slamming shut inside my chest. I stood but it was worse than I expected and I went down, down, down into darkness.

  • • •

  A dark green corrugated steel fence fourteen feet high in a solid contour receded into the heat shimmer for miles unbroken. Beyond were some low bald hills pocked with shrubs, then Mexicali. We had dropped the woman off near town and proceeded to the border crossing point. We weren’t followed, not after I lobbed a grenade at our pursuers, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t be found.

  Not long ago, out of this dead-grass landscape and sand and the stone plateaus smelling of burned bricks and heat lines that imposed a soft focus effect which caused the horizon to seem like some unreachable destination, we had willingly come toward the blue hills of Mexico, vegetation diluting from green until only dead yellow remained.

  This woman’s pickup, which I’d bought for ten thousand, was aimed at the makeshift ramp which spanned the US-Mexico border fence.

  “Don’t know if the pickup will make it,” Missy said. “I designed the ramp with the Jeep in mind. Gradient might be too steep.”

  She removed her sunglasses, blew a watermelon-scented bubble and popped it back into her mouth. She took the pickup onto the ramp and up the incline and at the changeover from incline to horizontal, the chassis caught and sparked on the ramp edge. Tires slipped. A little gas and the pickup made it onto the level. We were crossing the border. The way down was like a teeter-totter and she had to go easy and let gravity take us from horizontal to decline at the fulcrum, otherwise we’d stick.