The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3

by Jeffrey, Anna

  "John! Look out!"

  The shout came from behind the bar. John whirled just in time to get a glimpse of a blade in Paul's hand. He jerked backward, but not far enough or quick enough. The knife swiped across his midsection, caught his shirt and scraped his stomach.

  Anger turned to rage, mixing with the dose of adrenaline already buzzing in his system. He grabbed Paul's wrist and forced the smaller man to the floor with sheer brute strength, breaking his grip on the knife handle. He reached behind himself for the handcuffs, locked Paul's hands behind his back and hauled him to his feet.

  Now slumped on a barstool, Paul's opponent sat holding the towel to his nose.

  "What's your name?" John barked.

  The man mumbled through the towel, "Larry... Atkins."

  "You're not from around here."

  Atkins shook his head. "Come to see my sister."

  "Who's your sister?"

  "JoAnn Howard."

  John knew the woman's husband. He turned to the bartender. "Call Bob Howard. Tell him I said come get his brother-in-law and take him over to the hospital to see the doc." He turned back to Atkins. "You don't move 'til Bob gets here."

  A line of pain stung John's stomach on his left side. He looked down and saw a ragged tear in his shirt. Fuck! He stooped and picked up the knife, a heavy hunting type. Paul had sat down on a barstool again. John yanked the little fucker to his feet by the shirt. "C'mon, loudmouth. You're spending the night in a cell."

  After John locked Paul into one of the two cells in the courthouse basement, he stamped to his office, his whole body abuzz. His stomach burned like a bitch. His jaw ached. Bloodstains showed at the ragged tear on his shirt a few inches above and to the left of his belt buckle, but he felt energized and loaded for bear, euphoric even.

  Amazing substance, adrenaline. He had felt the rush many times, poised on the back of a charged-up horse behind a barrier in a narrow chute, waiting for a calf to cut loose. As much as anything, the high that lingered long after his seven-to-ten-second run under the bright lights had driven him to soak the letdown in a fifth of Crown Royal.

  For blood to have soaked through both his T-shirt and his outer shirt, he must be bleeding heavily. He shucked the jacket and threw it on the desk chair, plopped his hat on top of the filing cabinet, then went to the small storeroom where medical supplies were kept. On a shelf near the first-aid kit lay a bulletproof vest he had put on once for size. He admonished himself. If he had worn it tonight he could have avoided being cut by a drunk's knife.

  He unholstered his .45, removed his belt and whipped off the outer shirt. A damp football-shaped bloodstain had blossomed around a tear on his white T-shirt. He pulled the T-shirt over his head and examined a clean five-inch laceration just above his waist. The cut wasn't deep enough to need stitches, though it was more than a scratch.

  He knew first aid, had helped a fair share of rodeo cowboys patch themselves up after injuries. Inside the storage cabinet, he found some gauze pads and a bottle of peroxide. He soaked a wad of gauze with peroxide and swabbed away blood, wincing and gritting his teeth as the peroxide set fire to the wound. Even after he cleaned the injury, blood still oozed, so he pawed through the supplies until he found a tube of antibiotic ointment. He made a long thick bandage from a few of the gauze pads, squeezed on a line of antibiotic and taped it onto his stomach, mumbling and cussing the whole time. Hell, it was a wonder he hadn't been killed.

  He trashed the T-shirt and put on his outer shirt, then took a close look in the mirror. As poor as the single overhead light was in the bathroom, he could see a red patch showing on his jaw. He couldn't tell if it would be followed by a bruise.

  After working his jaw and determining he had no loose teeth or broken bone, he returned to his desk where he had dropped Paul's knife on the blotter. He picked up the weapon and turned it over on his palm. It looked to be a custom-made job. He ran his thumb along the blade. Jesus Christ, it was sharp as a razor. No wonder it had cut through both his shirt and his T-shirt. Fortunately, only the tip of the blade had caught him. He threw the knife into his bottom desk drawer and locked it, then leaned back in his chair and just sat there, summoning calm.

  As his heartbeat slowed, he thought of Izzy. Christ. Her own brother had smeared her reputation in front of a dozen or more onlookers and he, John, had been unable to do a damn thing to prevent it. He didn't have the heart to tell her.

  But he had to tell her he had jailed Paul. She worried over the little fucker day and night.

  For the first time in a year, John wished he had a drink.

  * * *

  "You what?" A shot of fear ripped through Isabelle's heart. She stared at the clock. Twelve forty-five a.m. "Who—who was he fighting with?" She hadn't seen her brother since the day he had walked in on her with John.

  "I dunno. Some kid from out of town."

  She lunged to her feet and stumbled to the dresser, tearing off the T-shirt she slept in as she went. She jerked open a drawer and reached for underwear. "Was he hurt?"

  "Who, Paul? You couldn't hurt him with an axe handle."

  Propping the phone under her chin, she pulled on panties. "The other person?"

  "Paul beat the shit out of him. I sent him to the ER with his brother-in-law."

  Isabelle closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. She knew too well that Paul could be a loose cannon, and more times than not there had been no one but her to take his side. Big-sisterly need to come to his defense surged within her. She grabbed the jeans she had been wearing earlier off a chair back and stuffed her legs into them. "You arrested Paul, but not the other person?"

  "He took a swipe at me with a knife, Isabelle."

  "What kind of knife?" She pictured the scabbard she had often seen attached to Paul's belt. She should have come back to Callister long ago, when perhaps she could have made a difference in her brother's attitude and behavior.

  "He had a hunting knife a foot long."

  She had never looked closely at the knife. "That's nothing. It probably wouldn't cut butter."

  "Oh, it'd cut butter all right. Fact is, it cut me pretty good."

  Isabelle's heart yo-yoed to her knees and back. "You?... Wh-where?"

  "My stomach. But don't worry about it. It's no big deal."

  She fought back a sob. "Oh, John, I'm sorry."

  "Isabelle," he said softly, "don't be upset. I said it's no big deal. I fixed it up with a bandage. It's okay."

  Relieved to hear he wasn't seriously hurt, her mind jumped to a picture of her brother behind bars. "Well... well, you have to let him out, John."

  "I can't. He's got too many priors. I'm gonna have to leave it up to the prosecutor from down south and the judge."

  Paul had had run-ins with the law through the years, but she had no idea how serious they had been or what might be on his record. Panic closed in. Wounding the sheriff with a knife had to be more than a simple matter. If John charged him... "But you know he's harmless. He just drank too much."

  "Taking a swipe at me with a knife isn't the act of a harmless individual. I could've maybe let it slide if all he'd done was get into a drunk fight, but the knife adds a new dimension. It's assault and battery. A felony. He assaulted an officer of the law, Isabelle."

  Too many times, Isabelle had heard John belittle the job he held. She felt her hackles rise as the need to stand up for her little brother pushed her. "Officer of the law. Who are you trying to kid, John Bradshaw? You don't know any more about the law than I do. I'm coming to town to pick him up."

  "Isabelle, don't. Please don't. I can't release him. Not for you or anybody. It's my job."

  "You don't even care about the damn job. You're waiting for it to end so you can go on to something else."

  "I know it may look that way and I may have even said it, but I have to do what I have to do. Sometimes I think Paul's a scary guy, Isabelle."

  "Oh, really? And what do you think of me? Do you think I'm scary, too? When you lie down beside me, do y
ou fear you're in bed with some kind of crazy?"

  "This has nothing to do with you and—"

  "Oh, but it does. It puts the differences between the Rondeaus and the Bradshaws nicely into perspective. As if your dad hadn't done that already."

  "Jesus, Isabelle, that's not fair."

  "You know what I think? I think reality has finally dropped on both of us. Just tell me when I can come and get my brother."

  "It's the middle of the night. I'll have to run down the prosecutor or a judge first thing in the morning. I can ask him to do a bail hearing on the phone. If Paul's got the money, he can probably post bail."

  "Well... if he doesn't have it, I do."

  "Isabelle, you shouldn't—"

  "I know what you're going to say and I don't want to hear it. I'll be there in the morning. Just tell me what time."

  "I don't know. On a Saturday, I'll have to catch a judge at home. I guess you'll have to wait for me to call you."

  Panic and frustration beat in her chest. How could she deal with her brother getting drunk and injuring a man she cared about? How could she deal with that same man intent on locking up her brother? She couldn't abandon her brother. She couldn't help him and continue to see John. Their relationship was too difficult. It had to end. "Just make sure that you do."

  * * *

  Click! She hung up in his ear. Shit.

  Suddenly John felt exhausted. The rollaway bed in the horse stall of a bedroom up the hall seemed a mile away. He forced himself to his feet and managed to make it to the tiny room carrying his pistol. He didn't expect a jailbreak, but under the circumstances and considering where he would lay his head, only a fool wouldn't keep his gun handy.

  In the courthouse basement, with no windows, the room was dark enough to scare a bat. He left the door ajar so he could hear noise from the office or jail cells and so the light from the office would steal up the hall and into the bedroom.

  His stomach hurt, his jaw hurt. Izzy was pissed off at him. He pried off his boots, then tucked the .45 under an extra pillow. He lay back with a groan and pulled the bed's one blanket over himself. The idea that he should see a doctor flitted past. No telling what Paul had last cut with that knife.

  He closed his eyes, but sleep eluded him. His memory kept jumping back to childhood, a rare occurrence until hooking up with Izzy. He thought of the times he had seen Paul Rondeau come to school in ragged, hand-me-down clothes that didn't fit. He often had bruises. It was common talk that his dad whipped him hard, but no one ever said why. Back then, John couldn't relate. His dad had never struck him. His parents had loved him and provided everything they could afford.

  A sullen, troublesome little kid, Paul made mostly failing grades, but no teacher who had ever had him in a classroom wanted to retain him. The system moved him on, like a conveyor belt in a warehouse. Social promotion, they called it these days. After eighth grade, Paul quit school altogether and went to work fixing flats at the Exxon station and John lost all but occasional track of him.

  A vague memory of Paul and Izzy's dad formed in John's mind, a swarthy, burly man felling trees in the summer months, then through the winter sweeping up after hours in various businesses in town. And drinking up his wages in Tall Timbers or the Rusty Spur.

  Izzy■ In those days, if Paul had been getting beat up by his dad, what had been happening to Izzy?

  The next sound he heard was Rooster's voice. "John T., you okay?"

  Startled, John sprang to his feet, his mind addled by a deep sleep. His head spun and the stomach injury nailed him with a stinging bite. He sank back to the thin mattress and braced an elbow on one knee, dropped his forehead into his palm. "Yeah, I'm okay."

  "What's going on?"

  "Nothing much. Just a fight." John glanced at his watch. Nine o'clock. "You make any coffee?"

  "Pot's on." Rooster tilted his head toward the cell area. "I see Paul Rondeau back there. Snoring like a buzz saw when I came in. Who was he fighting?"

  "Kid from out of town."

  "Who got hurt?"

  "Hurt?"

  "The bathroom trash is full of bloody gauze. And a T-shirt. Who bled?"

  As the cobwebs cleared from John's mind, he rubbed a palm over his morning stubble and sore jaw. He gave a humorless chuckle. "Would you believe it was me?"

  The deputy's eyes grew wide. "No shit? What happened?"

  John recounted the previous evening's incident. The deputy listened transfixed. "Man, oh, man. Ol' Paul's up a tree with a grizzly this time, ain't he?"

  "I don't know about that, but he's damn sure crossways with me."

  Rooster's eyes moved to the bloodstained tear in John's shirt. "You better have Doc Thornton take a look at that."

  John shook his head. "I doctored it. It'll be all right." He pushed himself to his feet, feeling as stiff and achy as if he had been bucked off an ornery bronc. "Keep all this under your hat, Rooster, especially about the knife. I haven't figured out how to handle it yet."

  Rooster peered up at him, uncertainty on his face. "You can hide that cut, John T., but what're you gonna tell the folks about the bruise on your jaw?"

  John shot him a look.

  The deputy lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "Just asking."

  After he relieved himself, John checked his jaw in the tiny mirror on the front of the medicine cabinet and saw a faint half-dollar-sized bruise. Maybe nobody would spot it if he didn't shave. He worked his mouth sidewise, then open and closed it. Satisfied for the second time that all he had was a bruise, he went to the office and poured a mug of coffee.

  Last night he hadn't filled out an arrest report and this morning he was glad. He had been on the job long enough to learn a county sheriff had broad leeway in the charges he brought against those he arrested. A decision, black as the hot coffee, brewed in his mind, but he wouldn't settle on it until he went home, showered and changed clothes.

  He finished his coffee and set the empty mug in the bathroom sink. "If Isabelle calls before I get back," he said to Rooster, "tell her I'm at home."

  The phone in his apartment didn't ring. He wasn't surprised.

  He returned to the office clean and freshly bandaged, but unshaven. If folks saw through his whiskers and asked him about the bruise on his jaw, he would tell them it was none of their damn business.

  Rooster reported that Paul had been fed breakfast from Betty's Road Kill. Knowing Paul, a cafe breakfast could have been the best meal he had eaten in a week.

  As John approached the barred front of the cell, Paul, sitting on the cot, looked up at him with dark eyes so much like Izzy's. Several days' growth of black whiskers showed on his jaw.

  John opened the cell door and sat down beside his prisoner, who reeked of body odor and yeast. "I'm dropping the charge to disturbing the peace. I'm letting you out on your own recognizance."

  "What's that mean?"

  "The judge'll be up from Boise on Wednesday. It means I'm trusting you to show up in court at ten o'clock."

  Paul's palms rested on his knees. He looked down at the dried bloodstains that covered his fingers. "You'd do that for me?"

  John nodded. "If you don't show, I promise I'll hunt you down, Paul. Hope you've got some money. Since Judge Morrison's seen you before, he'll probably fine you heavy."

  One side of Paul's mouth tipped up in a crooked grin. "You doing this 'cause you're fuckin' Izzy?"

  In no mood for bullshit, John ignored the insult. His conscience and his duty had warred within him all morning. "I'm giving you a break. I don't need a reason."

  Paul looked across the room at the gray concrete wall. "What about my knife?"

  John couldn't believe he had heard right. The guy either had nothing under his hat but hair or he had more balls than anybody John had ever met. "What about it?"

  Paul shrugged. "I need it. And it cost me a lot of money. Buck Brown made it."

  "The knife's gone, buddy." John got to his feet, out of patience. "This is your last chance on my watch, Paul. Don
't fuck it up. Clean up your act. You got a sister who cares about you. Do it for her sake as well as your own." John turned his back and stepped to the cell door. "Rooster'll do the paperwork to get you out of here."

  "John?"

  John stopped in the cell's doorway. "What?"

  "I didn't get you with that knife, did I?"

  John's jaw clenched. "No."

  A soft heh-heh-heh came from Paul. "Well, that's good, I guess. Things is a little fuzzy. I thought I'd cut you."

  A shiver ran all the way up and down John's spine. He didn't know if the man was relieved to hear he hadn't done serious bodily harm or was lamenting the fact that he had failed to. Was it a dangerous mistake letting a man as squirrely as Paul Rondeau off the hook?

  Chapter 21

  John walked from-the courthouse to Betty's Road Kill for breakfast. With a stiff body, a sore stomach and little sleep, he didn't feel up to facing Callister's citizens, but he didn't feel like hanging out in his dismal apartment either. Later, after Izzy had time to cool off, he would drive out to her house and discuss Paul.

  When he returned to the sheriff's office after breakfast, Rooster had already cleaned up the empty cell. No sign of the prisoner remained. "Come on into the office," John told him. John shrugged out of his jacket, then unlocked his bottom drawer, removed Paul's knife and laid it on the desk blotter. "Take a look at this."

  Rooster picked up the knife and turned it over in his hand, gripped it by the handle, tested it for weight, then gave a low whistle. "This is a Buck Brown knife." He handed the knife back to John and pointed out two Bs engraved on the hilt.

  "Paul said the same thing. Who's Buck Brown?"

  "An old hippie up on Cabin Creek. He gets a pretty penny for his knives. Never could afford one myself."

  "Yeah?" Curiosity aroused, John took back the knife and looked at it closer, hefted the weight of it. "From now on, it stays in the gun safe. You could gut an elk with it."