Won't Back Down

by J. D. Rhoades

  The crackling of the open channel is the only thing he hears, then: “Wait one.” After another pause, dispatch comes back. “Two-six, hold. Working on that backup. Can you confirm why you need it?”

  Childress bends and rests his head on the top of his patrol cruiser. His department is stretched so thin that an officer going into an open doorway situation needs to justify backup. “Never mind,” he mutters into the mic.

  “Say again?” dispatch comes back.

  Childress draws his weapon and advances on the open door. It’s probably nothing, he thinks, nothing serious. He reaches for the partially opened door and prepares to push it open.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  “What are you doing?” Alia shouts as MacDonald slows the van, then pulls over to the side of the road. There are no houses nearby and nothing but pine woods on either side.

  “We can’t get away from them,” he says, his voice surprisingly calm. “They have guns. We don’t. The next thing they do is shoot out the tires.”

  “So you just give up?” Bassim demands. “Turn us over to these killers?”

  MacDonald looks back at him. “Are you sure these men mean to harm you?”

  Bassim shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?”

  MacDonald smiles. “No. I’m not kidding.” He looks at Alia. “I’m going to talk to them. But I’m leaving the keys in the ignition and the motor running. You know what that means, right?”

  She stares at him. “They’ll kill you. And then they’ll take us.”

  He shakes his head. “Only if God wills it.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Bassim mutters. “We’re not even all that religious.”

  Alia’s still looking MacDonald in the eye. “You don’t even know us.”

  He nods. “True. But we all have a duty to help the stranger in our land. I think that’s something our holy books share.”

  Tears are running down her face. “That’s…that’s what they tell me.”

  He reaches out and squeezes her hand. “Salaam al-akum.”

  She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Your pronunciation is still terrible.”

  “So, you’ll have to teach me better. Later.” He opens the door and steps out of the van.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Waller and Tench stand on either side of their battered truck, weapons held loosely by their sides, as the man in jeans and a polo shirt stumbles toward them, hands raised.

  “Hey, fellows,” he says, an ingratiating grin plastered across his face, “what seems to be the trouble?”

  They look at each other, an unspoken message going back and forth between them. Is this guy for real? Tench is the first one to speak up. “We need to get those children back to their father.” He smiles. “We appreciate your looking after them.”

  The driver smiles back. “Well, that’s good to hear. I mean, it’s not often in this world that good deeds get appreciated.”

  Waller interjects. “She’s moving! She’s in the driver’s seat!”

  As Tench looks from the man in khakis to the van, the engine of the big vehicle roars, the tires throw up twin rooster tails of dirt, and the vehicle accelerates.

  In reverse, smashing into the front of their truck.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Childress is about to push on the door when his radio comes alive again. “Two-six, two-six, we’ve got shots fired. Repeat, shots fired. Location, Holly Ridge Church Road. All units. Respond.”

  That’s the road he’s on, which makes him the closest unit. He steps back from the door and keys his portable microphone. “Two-six, responding. What about that backup?”

  “On the way, two-six,” dispatch comes back.

  “Okay,” Childress mutters as he sprints back to his cruiser. “I know I like to stay busy, but this is getting ridiculous.” He doesn’t know if he’s talking to himself, God, or the universe. In any case, no one answers.

  ###

  “Shit!” Bassim yells as the church van slams into the truck behind them. “Are you crazy?”

  Alia’s face is grim as she yanks the gearshift lever to put the van in drive. “We can’t let them follow us.” She pulls forward for a moment, then stops and looks in the rearview mirror. The men with the guns are nowhere to be seen. She looks around over her shoulder and sees one of them standing up, his gun trained, not on her, but on Mr. MacDonald, who’s running around the back of the van, trying to reach the side door. “No,” she whispers as the gun barks out a three-round burst. She hears a cry of pain and feels a thump against the back.

  “Drive!” Bassim shouts. “Drive!”

  “Mr. MacDonald!” she cries. “We have to—”

  “They shot him! Go! Go! Go!”

  She can barely see the road through the tears in her eyes, but she steps on the gas and swerves onto the asphalt. In a moment, the scene behind them is fading in the rearview.

  EIGHTY

  “Damn it to fucking hell.” Waller looks at the crumpled front of the truck. Both headlights are shattered and the hood is folded up like an accordion. Water and coolant are puddled underneath the front from the broken radiator. They’re not going anywhere in this vehicle. He looks over at Tench. His partner is standing over the man he just shot, cursing him in a low, unintelligible voice, emphasizing his more heart-felt expletives with kicks that wrench groans and whimpers of pain from the man on the ground. Waller sighs. “Tench,” he calls. “Stop screwin’ around. Finish him.”

  Tench looks over, his face a mask of frustration and rage. He looks for a moment as if he means to open up on Waller. But then he just nods, turns and puts a final three-round burst into the man on the ground. The whimpering stops. The only things Waller can hear are the sounds of birds in the trees lining the road, and the slow drip of vital automotive fluids into the dirt by the roadside. Finally, Tench speaks. “What the hell do we do now?”

  Waller doesn’t answer until he hears the sound of a police siren, coming from far away, but clearly getting closer. “The first thing we do,” he says, “is get away from a dead body and a broken truck.” He grimaces. “After that…we’ll have to think of something.”

  When the patrol car comes screaming up and pulls to a halt beside the ruined pickup, they’ve vanished into the woods.

  EIGHTY-ONE

  Childress sees the body lying beside the road and brakes to a skidding halt that leaves him three-quarters of the way in the oncoming lane. He gets on his radio as he’s straightening the vehicle up. “Dispatch, we need EMS, 10-18. One subject injured, lying in road. Repeat, 10-18.” It looks like a particularly serious accident, maybe a hit and run, until he gets out and rushes to the body. At that point, the bloodstains on the shirt and the bullet-smashed face of the victim tell him a far different story. He takes a deep breath to still the sudden pounding in his chest. He draws his sidearm and looks around him at the woods before he gets back on the radio. “Correction. We still need EMS. But we’ve got a subject with major GSW. An apparent 10-31. Repeat, 10-31.” Homicide.

  There’s a brief pause, then dispatch comes back. “10-4. Acknowledge. 10-31.”

  Childress stands over the body, eyes scanning the tree line, looking for any trace of whoever might have done this. He feels his right leg trembling and wills it to keep still. As soon as he relaxes his attention for a moment, the leg begins shaking again. Maybe I should get off the bulls-eye, he thinks. That’s when it hits him. This is a murder scene. His second this week. He needs to secure it for the detectives. He doesn’t want a repeat of the situation where he disgraced himself in front of Fletcher and Cameron. At least I’m not throwing up this time. That’s progress. I guess. On still-shaking legs, he goes to his cruiser, pops the trunk, and starts pulling out orange and white traffic cones. Placing them around the scene in the precise places he recalls from training helps to settle his nerves. He still pauses from time to time to scan around him. His gut tells him that whoever killed this victi
m is long gone, but he doesn’t want his gut to get him killed, either.

  He hears the ambulance coming from up the road, followed by another sheriff’s car. His backup finally arriving. He takes another deep breath. This would not be a good time to let anyone know how rattled he is. He’s glad to see the deputy getting out of the car is Benny Hires, one of the older guys, and even happier to see Hires stop, regard how he’s secured the scene, and give him a quick nod of approval. The EMS people pile out of their vehicle and run to the body in the road, shouting to each other in their own tongue. He walks over to Hires, trying to affect a nonchalant saunter. The sardonic smile on Hires’s face tells him he’s not pulling it off, but the look in the older deputy’s eyes tells him that’s okay. “Still like those busy days, young man?” Hires says.

  “Sergeant,” Childress says with feeling, “I’m beginning to come around to your way of thinking.”

  Hires laughs, then a distant yet sharp sound makes them both turn their heads and look down the road. It sounds like a crack of thunder, a couple of miles away, but there’s not a cloud in the sky, and there’s not a following rumble. “What was that?” Childress asks.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  Brandon Ochs awakens in the early afternoon, sprawled across his cousin Jake’s tattered couch. He sits up and nearly knocks over the beer cans sitting on the floor. His head is throbbing again and his mouth is dry, but the thought of another beer makes his stomach feel as if it’s going to climb up his throat. Through the slightly cracked bedroom door, he can hear Jake snoring. Good, he thinks, not wanting to feel the contempt he can feel from his cousin even when the older man isn’t speaking. He goes to the sink to try and get some water, but the few glasses he can find have unidentified liquid remnants and cigarette butts, so he drinks straight from the faucet. It’s then that he sees the gun, lying on an empty open shelf above the kitchen counter. He picks it up, and the act makes him re-live the flush of shame he felt from his cousin’s words: Instead of shooting at the boyfriend, you shoot at the fucking cop. He’d been angrier at the bitch for disrespecting him, but he saw now that the real target should have been Keller all along. He looks over at the hook on the wall by the door. His car keys and Jake’s are hanging there. At that moment, he decides what he needs to do.

  His hands are slick and slippery on the wheel as he drives to the house near the church where his friends told him Keller lives, but he can’t tell if it’s nervousness, the summer heat, or the hangover making him sweat like a pig. He cranks the A/C as high as he can, but he can still feel the moisture beading on his brow. He grips the wheel harder to try and stop his hands from shaking.

  When he gets to Keller’s house, there’s no vehicle in the driveway and he involuntarily laughs out loud with relief. If there’s no one there, he doesn’t have to go through with it. Another idea occurs to him; he can break in and fuck some shit up. That’ll show Keller and Jake both that Brandon Ochs is no one to mess with.

  As he gets out, Brandon can see that the door to the small stone house is slightly ajar. He frowns. Maybe someone’s home after all. He goes back into his truck and fetches the gun. Holding it down by his side, he approaches carefully. “Hey, asshole,” he calls out. No response. He can’t see any light through the opened door. “Hey, asshole!” he calls out a little bit louder. Still no response. Feeling a little bolder, he moves to the door, draws back his leg and kicks it open.

  He never hears the blast that kills him.

  EIGHTY-THREE

  They’ve left Keller in the interrogation room rather than take him to the cells, so he figures they’ve got more to ask him. Either that or they’re checking out his story. Either way, he waits. He’s gotten better at it over the years.

  It’s Fletcher who comes back in, and he doesn’t look happy. “Your lawyer’s here.”

  Keller nods and stands up. He knows Scott McCaskill will probably chew him out for talking to the cops without him there to advise, but he’s ready to explain the situation.

  It’s not the tall, impeccably dressed figure of his long-time attorney waiting for him in a conference room. The person who rises to greet him is a slender woman, in her late twenties, with curly blonde hair, dressed in a plain gray suit. She looks strangely familiar. “Jack Keller?” she says, smiling and extending a hand.

  “I’m Jack Keller,” he says, and takes it. “And you are…?”

  She smiles. “Addison McCaskill. You can call me Addie. I’m Scott’s daughter.” She motions to a chair. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Uh-huh.” He takes the chair. “And where’s Scott?”

  “Retired. He’s living at Wrightsville Beach and fishing every day.” She turns to Fletcher and smiles. “Thanks a lot, Detective. I’ll let you know when we’re done.”

  He shakes his head. “Can’t leave him unguarded.” He moves toward the door. “But I’ll wait outside.”

  She frowns. “I’m not sure that’ll work.”

  He doesn’t change expression, but his voice is sharp as he replies. “Ms. McCaskill, we don’t know each other, so I’ll fill you in. I don’t listen through doors. And I sure don’t listen in on privileged conversation, ’less I get a warrant.” He smiles thinly. “Easier all around that way.”

  She sighs. “Okay. Didn’t mean to offend you, Detective.”

  “No offense taken. Everyone’s just doin’ their job.” Before she can speak again, he closes the door.

  McCaskill shakes her head and sits down. “Touchy fellow.”

  Keller shrugs. “He’s a professional. I trust him to be that, at least. “

  “Trusting a policeman.” She gives him a wry smile. “Not the Jack Keller I’ve heard about.”

  “Things change. And not everything you may have heard is true.”

  “So, tell me. What’s the truth about what’s going on?”

  “Well, it’s true I do have a felony conviction. And I did have a firearm. No getting around either of those things.”

  “And you had a firearm why exactly?”

  He sighs and repeats the story again. When it’s over, she shakes her head. “If Dad hadn’t told me about you, I’d think you were in the grip of some kind of delusion. But he was right. You lead a pretty interesting life.”

  That makes Keller laugh. “Yeah. It wasn’t something I intended. But that’s how it worked out.”

  “Dad also told me to help you if I got the chance. He thinks a lot of you.”

  Keller finds his earlier discomfort with her fading away. He realizes now why he found something about her familiar: she has her father’s easy confidence and the direct gaze that makes people open up. “Thank him for me. What do we do now?”

  “We try to get you an unsecured bond. We’re lucky that—” She’s interrupted by a knock on the door. McCaskill frowns. “Come in.”

  Fletcher opens the door.

  Keller can tell by the look on his face that something’s gone wrong. “What is it?”

  Fletcher hesitates. Keller grows more alarmed at how shaken he is. Fletcher takes a seat uninvited. “Reverend MacDonald…your landlord…was just found shot to death a couple of miles from the church, lying next to a wrecked truck. And Mr. Keller…someone just set a booby trap inside your house.”

  McCaskill looks as if she’s been poleaxed. “Wait, what?”

  “You know that interesting life your Dad used to talk about?” Keller says to her. “This is it.” He turns to Fletcher. “And you know that shit I told you was about to come down?”

  “This is it?”

  “Yeah.”

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  Bassim is in the backseat, clutching the front seat like a drowning man. “Do you even know how to drive this thing?” he shouts at his sister.

  “I can drive!” Alia shouts back, just as the right wheels leave the road and the van begins bumping along the shoulder. She yanks the wheel, overcorrects, and veers wildly into the other lane. An oncoming hatchback blares i
ts horn as the vehicles nearly collide, and Alia cries out even as she pulls back into her lane.

  “Where are we even going?” Bassim’s voice cracks with terror.

  “Stop shouting at me!” Alia shouts back. She takes a deep breath as she accelerates. “Get my phone,” she says in a steadier voice. “Call Father. Tell him we’re in trouble and we need him.”

  Bassim looks around. “Where is it? I can’t find it.” He leans over the front, his voice rising again. “I can’t find it!”

  “Bassim!” she snaps in a tone so familiar he immediately falls silent. She switches to Arabic, marveling at how much she sounds like how she remembers her mother speaking. “Calm down. Look around.” She glances over to the front seat and catches a glimpse of a black rectangle. “Look,” she points as she looks back to the road, “there it is.”

  He reaches over and snags it. “This is my phone.”

  She tries to hold on to the composure she just regained. “Does it matter? Call Father. Now.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” In a moment, he speaks again. “Voice mail.”

  She returns to speaking English, because it’s the language she best knows how to curse in. “Shit.”

  “Language,” he admonishes in an exaggeratedly prissy tone. She wants to reach back and smack him, but realizes that if he’s trying to make a joke, he’s calming down. Not only that, he’s trying to make her laugh and feel better. A fierce love for her brother seizes her. She promises herself that she’s going to get them out of this. She has to.