by Dave Daren
“He must have known the person,” I noted.
“Absolutely,” she agreed. “A stranger would have sent Spot into a barking frenzy at that time of night and Hup would have had his rifle ready.”
“So he did have a gun,” I said.
“Several,” she replied. “And none of them have been fired, from what I hear.”
“So the killer brought his own gun,” I mused.
“Do you own a gun?” my attorney asked.
I had a flashback to the nightmare I had endured just to apply for the license. It had finally cleared, though, and I had been to a gun shop recommended by one of the Febbo guards. After several days of debating with myself, I had finally made a decision to go with the Glock and been ready to head back to make my purchase when Anthony had decided to send me to West Virginia instead.
“I have a license,” I said. “I haven’t bought a gun yet.”
“That’s good,” she said. “One less thing the Sheriff can try to use against you.”
“Is there a way we can learn anything more about the case?” I asked.
“Don’t worry,” she said with one of her no-teeth smiles. “I have my own sources of information.”
I nodded and then turned my attention to the last few bites of my omelet. Joelle came by as I scraped the last few bits from my plate and refilled our cups before she grabbed the plate and disappeared again. The lull in conversation gave me a moment to think about everyone I had met so far, and to figure out who else I still had questions about.
“What do you know about the commune?” I asked.
“Mostly harmless,” she said. “They started showing up a few years ago to protest the mine. Since that was the only major employer in town, they weren’t real popular.”
“Did the protests ever get out of hand?” I queried.
“No,” she replied. “Mostly it was chaining themselves to the equipment or standing in a big group to block the entrance to the mine. As the group grew, they started adding other tactics, like stealing parts so the pumps wouldn’t work, and I think one time they managed to rip up some of the track so the carts couldn’t enter the mine. But that kind of thing was pretty rare for this group and I’ve always thought that some other more militant group might have been behind those attacks.”
“But they stayed on after the mine closed,” I noted. “Doesn’t that seem strange, since that was their goal?”
“It did, for a while,” she agreed. “But they’d somehow scraped together enough money by then to buy the old Hammersmith farm, and they were spending most of their days working on that. They still protest, but not like they used to. Most of them seem pretty content now to farm the land and sell what they can in town.”
“The Sheriff mentioned his wife likes their gardenia perfume,” I replied.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “I sent some to my niece in California, and she says everyone keeps asking her to buy them a bottle.”
“So how does the town feel about the commune?” I asked.
“These days, I’d say they get along well enough,” she said. “Most Folsom locals just think of them as harmless tree huggers, despite what happened before.”
“And they don’t blame them for shutting the mine?” I asked.
“There were a lot of hard feelings about that,” she agreed. “But we all knew the mine was going to close soon. It just wasn’t producing coal like it used to, and there wasn’t much of a market for what there was. You can’t blame people for turning away from coal, not when you see what burning it can do, but I think a lot of people felt like they were shoved aside along with the coal.”
“And no one came along with other ideas,” I finished.
“There was some vague talk of the federal government starting a retraining program, but that was only in bigger cities, like Morgantown,” she sighed. “We had a few people who could make the trip, and they did, but for most folks it’s too far, especially when you’ve got a family to support and no way to support them.”
“And the commune?” I asked. “Once they had settled in?”
“Most of them are real nice,” she admitted. “And they actually provided jobs for a few people, and they sell whatever they don’t need. So we learned to get along.”
“I’m surprised Hup and Shifty didn’t chase them out of town,” I said. “Especially once they learned they had bought the property.”
“I’ve wondered about that,” she replied. “But I just figured that someone at the commune was paying the taxes for the group.”
Or doling out information.
“Do you know the leaders?” I asked.
“Only to nod to,” she replied. “I mean, I used to help out when they first arrived. They’d get arrested for trespass or such, and I would go down to the Sheriff’s office to get them all out. The one from Boston, Richard? He was always very nice and I could work well with him. There was a woman, originally, who worked with Richard a lot. Tracey, I think. She was also very nice and absolutely wonderful to work with. She could charm a tick off a bloodhound, and even the Sheriff was under her spell.”
“But she’s not there now,” I said. “There’s another man helping Richard. Eliot Crenshaw.”
“Him,” Belle replied as she pushed her glasses up her nose and then patted her steel gray bun. Her tone had sharpened, and it was clear from that one word response exactly what she thought of Eliot.
“Not a fan,” I remarked.
“The man’s a bully,” she replied. “Plain and simple. I thought for sure the group would have voted him out by now, but somehow he’s managed to stay around.”
“I wonder how,” I remarked.
“That I couldn’t tell you,” she said. “He’s pretty much cut me out. I don’t think I’ve talked to one of the members in months, and even then it was because we met on the street, not because someone needed legal help.”
“So who helps them when they run into trouble?” I asked.
“They use volunteers from the university’s law school,” she said. “Which assures them that there are different attorneys pretty much every time. Nice, huh?”
“Interesting,” I replied.
“Something else I’ve noticed,” she added. “Eliot and Richard are rarely among the arrested.”
“Also interesting,” I noted. “I thought it was a badge of honor among these groups to be arrested.”
“Well, I know Kerry has plenty of money on his own,” the school marm replied. “I also know that he’s usually providing ‘support services’ to the protestors, so handing out water, driving people to the site, that kind of thing. Even if he does get rounded up, he’s out quickly thanks to his own attorney. I couldn’t tell you what the story is for Eliot.”
“Do you think someone at the commune, say Richard or Eliot, would have a reason to kill Hup?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she mused. “I can’t imagine one of the regulars, if you will, would even know Hup, though if they did, that might be a good reason. As for the leaders, well, as I said, someone’s probably been paying Hup. I’m sure both of them have dealt with Hup at some point.”
We finished our coffee and Joelle swept by with the check. Belle didn’t even glance at it as she snatched it before I could even move my hand and waved me towards the register. The lawyer chatted with the young woman behind the register for a moment, and then the two of us were on our way back outside.
The rain had eased up and left large muddy puddles behind along with a fresh smell that revived me even more than the coffee had. I took a deep breath and turned to smile at Belle. She started to say something, then stopped to frown at someone behind me. It was a fierce look, and if I were a twelve year old boy again, I’d probably be quaking in my shoes. Curious, I looked over my shoulder and saw a handful of men walking towards us.
“That’s him,” one of the men announced. “That’s the New York lawyer what killed Hup.”
“I guess they haven’t heard about my alibi,” I not
ed.
“I don’t think they care,” Belle replied.
“Should we run?” I suggested as I started to pull her down the street.
“My car’s just around the corner,” she said. “We can go to my house.”
We started to run, the men right behind us, and the other locals looking on in stunned surprise. Belle pointed to an old, dusty Suzuki Samurai, and we were nearly there when Belle stumbled and let out a small ‘oof’ sound. I started to steady her, and then felt something heavy hit me square between my shoulder blades. I stumbled forward and nearly dropped Belle onto the sidewalk.
“We take care of our own, city boy,” an angry male voice drawled.
“Shit,” Belle and I muttered at the same time.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw the men were spreading out to form a circle around us. The good news was that I didn’t see any guns but the bad news was that the odds were still stacked against us. I wondered if the Sheriff was still at the crime scene, and then decided it didn’t matter. Even if he were standing at the street corner, I doubted he would help us. If anyone was going to get us out of this, it was up to me. I stood up and set my feet, ready for the fight the men seemed determined to have.
Chapter 9
There’s a brutal beauty to a fist fight, and even if you spent your entire day in a boxing gym working out, it wouldn’t be enough to keep you upright when you’re facing off against a small gang. And while I certainly knew how to box, I was never more grateful for the lessons I’d had with some of the Febbo guards over the last few months. There were no rules, no requirements about how low you could hit, and definitely no limitations on which parts of the body you could use to defend yourself.
I was able to take down the first man easily enough. He charged forward, well ahead of the rest of the group and no doubt hoping to catch me off guard. I let him take a swing at my head with his fist and ducked below his arm before he could change his momentum. While he encountered nothing but air, I punched hard with both fists against his stomach. I could feel his muscles contract as I jabbed and as he started to lean forward, I launched an uppercut for the soft, round jaw that hovered just above me.
His head snapped back and then twisted to the left as blood and spit dribbled down his chin. His eyes crossed for a moment as his brain tried to understand what had happened, and then I came around with a haymaker to the temple. My opponent made a gurgling sound as his eyes rolled back in his head, and then he fell to the sidewalk in a heap of flesh and bone.
“Bubba!” one of the other men yelled out.
“Fuckin’ shit!” another man shouted.
“I’m calling the Sheriff!” Belle declared.
I’d lost track of her during the initial attack, but now I spotted her gray pants suit as she ran back towards the diner. A quick look over my shoulder revealed that one man lounged against the driver’s door of the Suzuki, blocking the attorney from a quick escape that way.
And then two more men ran towards me, from opposite directions. I let them get within an arm’s length of me, and then I quickly bounced backwards so that I had them both in front of me. A man with very fat cheeks and a mass of red hair peeking out from beneath his John Deere cap struck first as he launched himself forward with a flurry of punches. I managed to swerve enough to take the brunt on my shoulder, but it still stung like hell and I could just picture the bruises I was going to have.
As the red head shifted to take aim at my head, I ducked down and kicked at his knees. There was a satisfying crunch as the knee bent backwards for a moment, and then the redhead howled in pain.
Unfortunately, his companion was fast and he must have realized what I was about to do. While I was kicking at the angry redhead, the second man, a pale man with a buzz cut and a messy mustache, landed a punch along my collarbone, close to the throat. My throat constricted, and I struggled to suck in air as the mustached man grabbed the back of my shirt and tried to slam me into his rapidly approaching knee.
Somehow, I managed to wrap my arms around mustache man’s legs before he could slam it into my forehead, and now off balance, the mustache man waved his free arm as he tried to steady himself.
“What the hell?” mustache man demanded as he tried to shake me off.
I was breathing again, finally, and with everything I had left, I planted myself firmly on the sidewalk, then started to swing myself around. Mustache man’s leg was still locked in my grasp, and as I swung around, he was forced to hop along on one foot with me or end up on his ass on the concrete. He let go of my shirt and started to punch instead, but he only managed two soft blows before I knocked him into the redhead.
The two bodies collided with a smacking sound that reminded me of skin being peeled from a hot car seat. That was followed by a whistling sound as at least one man had the breath knocked out of him, and then one of the men started to cough.
“He swallowed his tobacco!” someone cried out.
Just my luck, I thought ruefully, that I would be arrested not for killing Hup but for the death of a man who had choked to death on half a can of Skoal. Honestly, who keeps chewing their tobacco in the middle of a fistfight?
I let go of mustache man’s leg and he stumbled backwards several steps. I caught a glimpse of his face, and though he looked stunned, he didn’t appear to be choking. As I stood up, I looked at the redhead. He was still on his feet even though his knee was still bent in the wrong direction, his face was turning purple, and black goo oozed from his mouth and stained his chin and shirt.
“Shit,” I muttered again.
I looked at the remaining four men, but none of them seemed to know what to do. They had come here for a fight, which they had found, and they were clearly ready to continue the brawl, but the redheaded ally needed assistance. Yet all they did was stand and watch in stunned silence as their cohort’s expression became more frantic.
One good thing about restaurants in New York City is that they are all required to prominently display instructions for performing the Heimlich maneuver. Nicer restaurants will often have a framed version near the door or the bathrooms, someplace where it doesn’t distract from the ambience of fine dining, but fast food joints and delis usually hang them near the registers so you have plenty of time to study them before you place your order.
I had never performed the measure myself, but I’d certainly stared at enough of the posters over the years to have a general idea of what was supposed to be done. I leapt behind the redhead and administered the required five back blows, but the man’s skin continued to lose color and the gagging sounded as if it were coming from deeper in his throat.
I wrapped my arms around his chest then, and with the thumb on my fist tucked in and the other hand flat over the top of the fist, I started the abdominal thrusts. The redhead grunted at first, and then it sounded like he was trying to hock a loogie. A moment later, I felt his chest heave and then something wet and nasty shot out of the redhead’s mouth and landed a few feet away with a splat.
“Geez, Jerry,” one of the other men said as I finally released the redhead. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” the redhead wheezed as he bent over to spit some more juice onto the sidewalk, then finally fell onto his butt in the road. “I think my knee’s broke.”
“What the hell are you boys doin’?” an angry voice demanded.
I looked towards the corner and saw that the Sheriff had arrived. He stood in the road, hand on his gun, and studied the scene in front of him. Belle was next to him, a few stray strands of hair around her face and the glasses perched dangerously low on the tip of her nose as she scowled at the men.
“I was hit with a heavy object,” Belle declared. “I want them all arrested and charged with assault.”
The men started to grumble, but the Sheriff held up his hand and the gang went quiet.
“I’m gonna ask you again, and someone better answer me,” the Sheriff warned. “What the hell are you fools doin’?”
There was a
great deal of foot shuffling then and most of the men looked at the ground. A few stared at the sky or one of the nearby buildings, but not one met the Sheriff’s hard gaze. I was the victim in all this, and even I couldn’t meet the man’s piercing look.
“We heard you’d taken him in,” one of the men replied. “Fer questionin’.”
“What’s that got to do with you?” Harris asked in a cold voice.
“Nuthin’,” the man replied sullenly.
“He killed Hup,” mustache man said as he tried to steady himself against the wall.
“He’s got an alibi,” Harris remarked. “Besides, you really think some city boy could sneak up on Hup? Show a little respect for Mr. Baker.”
The men shuffled their feet some more, and then mustache man squinted at the Sheriff.
“Are ya sayin’ one of us did it?” the man demanded.
“I’m not sayin’ any damn thing,” Harris replied. “And I won’t until I know who killed Hup. Now, get yer sorry asses back to yer jobs. That is, if you can still walk.”
“Sheriff--” Belle protested.
“It looks to me like Mr. Morgan already taught them their lesson,” the Sheriff noted.
The men were already limping back towards Jenkins Road, with the redhead supported by two other men. The gang walked slowly past the Sheriff, their heads down, as they turned back onto the road and then stumbled out of sight.
“You got here fast,” I said when I felt stable enough to move a few steps.
“I was already on my way back in,” the Sheriff said. “Clerk at the Gas-n-Go called to say that a group of men were plannin’ to find you and string you up for killin’ Hup.”
“I still want to press charges,” Belle insisted.
“You do and I’ll have to arrest Mr. Morgan,” the Sheriff replied.
“Me?” I asked in disbelief. “I was defending myself.”
“Maybe,” the Sheriff said. “But I’d have to sort out what happened, and whether you used appropriate force.”
“Appropriate force,” I stammered. “I was outnumbered. And I ended up saving that redhead’s life when he started to choke on his tobacco.”
