by Caleb Cleek
I opened the door, stepped onto the street, and joined Matt on the sidewalk. He paused to pull his gas mask over his face. He placed his hand over the end of the canister and inhaled, making sure the seal was tight and there were no leaks. When he was satisfied, he turned to look at me through the curved glass lens and said, “Let’s check this out and get back on our way.” He drew his pistol and I pulled my rifle off the back seat.
Before crossing the threshold into the house, Matt announced, “Sheriff Department. We’re coming in.” The front door opened into a ten foot long entrance with an arched doorway immediately to the left leading to the living room. Straight ahead, the entry dumped into the kitchen. A hallway ran to the right just before the kitchen.
Matt stepped into the brown tiled entry and turned left, clearing the living room. I continued past Matt to secure the end of the entryway. The fork in the entryway created a tactical challenge. When clearing a building, we liked to stay together to provide cover for each other. If we both turned down the hallway, we could be attacked from the unchecked kitchen behind us and whatever may be beyond. If we both went into the kitchen, we left the unsecured hallway to our backs.
When we reached the end of the entryway, I turned right into the hallway and Matt continued past the corner of the wall that led into the kitchen. He made a sharp left as he reached the corner which brought the rest of the room into view. I held my position, securing the hallway while waiting for Matt.
A second after he entered the kitchen, Matt shouted, “I have an elderly man and woman tied up! The kitchen is clear.” Five seconds later he appeared by my side. For all we knew, whoever tied up the man and woman may still be in the house. It would be of no benefit to them if we got shot in the back while tending to them. They would still be there when we were done clearing the rest of the house.
We proceeded through the house, clearing three bedrooms and a bathroom that were off the hallway. Nothing seemed to be disturbed.
Matt led the way back to the kitchen. I intentionally did not let my eyes go straight to the people laying on the floor. Instead, I did a quick sweep of the room. The cupboards were all open and mostly empty. A few packages and cans of food lay on the floor where it appeared they had been dropped or discarded. I moved to the man. I had seen around town and knew his name was Harold, but I had never spoken with him. I estimated him to be in his early eighties. He had tape across his mouth as well as around his ankles. His wrists were taped together behind his back with a leg of the kitchen table between his arms. He was effectively immobilized. A trickle of dried blood clung to his forehead from a wound concealed beneath his slightly receding white hairline. His eyebrows were furrowed close together in anger and frustration as he fought against his restraints.
I peeled up the lower left corner of the tape covering his mouth. I hesitated before pulling it off; most of his neatly trimmed mustache was beneath the tape. No matter how quickly I pulled, it was going to take a lot of hair with it.
Harold nodded his head up and down to signify he was prepared and to commence with removing the tape. I heard a nearly indiscernible grunt as I ripped it from his face in a quick motion. I looked at the tape which dangled between my index finger and thumb. There was a patch of white hair in a mirror image of his mustache, assuring me his lip was smarting sharply.
Harold expressed his gratitude as I was cutting the tape around his ankles with my knife. Next, I freed his hands. Once the tape was removed, he promptly moved them in front of him and rubbed his wrists and hands, attempting to restore the blood flow which the tape had impeded.
“You try to help a person out,” he said angrily, “and this is how you get repaid. If one of those crazed beasts had come through the door he left open, it would have killed us. He left us tied up to starve to death or be eaten.” Harold made no attempt to hide his anger.
I looked over at Matt who was cutting the tape from the elderly woman’s wrists and returned my attention to the man. “Do you know who did this?” I inquired.
“Of course I do,” he stammered with his rage reaching a crescendo. “It was Curtis White!” he said with such force that drops of saliva flew from his mouth.
“Why would Curtis do this?” I asked, realizing Curtis had become an even bigger problem than I had thought. Until last night, he had never attacked an innocent person. His spats of violence had always been directed against other “dirt bags” who more or less had it coming. It didn’t make it right, but it was different from armed robbery resulting in murder last night and then leaving an old man and woman to die, tied up in their own house.
“Curtis and my grandson Nick were friends. Nick lived with us after his parents died. Three months ago, Nick started bringing Curtis around. I knew Curtis was trouble and I told Nick to stay away from him, but do you think he listened? Even though we didn’t approve of Nick associating with Curtis, we allowed him to bring Curtis home to eat with us a couple times a week. It seemed like the right thing to do. He had nothing. We even loaned Curtis money which he never repaid. Nick had never been in trouble until Curtis started coming around. I think Curtis got Nick on drugs. Nick started acting strange. He became fidgety and couldn’t sit still. He wouldn’t sleep, sometimes for days, and then he would sleep a day and a half straight.
“Just before Curtis started coming around, Maye and I got worried about the state of the economy. We started stockpiling canned food and other nonperishables. When Curtis would come by to see Nick, he would make fun of us for being paranoid. After a while, we noticed that every time Curtis was here, things would go missing. At first they were just small things, but they got bigger.
“We finally forbid him to come into our home. Three weeks ago, we came home from shopping out of town and Nick and Curtis were leaving the house. Curtis had Maye’s jewelry box in his hands.” Harold stopped for a moment and took a couple deep breaths, trying to bring his anger under control. “I told Nick he had ten minutes to get his things and get out of the house. As they left, Curtis said, ‘You haven’t seen the last of us, Old Man.’ Until last night, I hadn’t seen Curtis or Nick since that day.”
“Was Nick here, too?” I asked as I parted his hair, trying to examine the wound on his scalp.
“No, it was Curtis and some other guy. Curtis hit me in the head with his pistol, tied us up, stole our food stockpile, and left us to die,” he bellowed angrily as I helped him stand up.
“Do you have any idea where Curtis is staying?” I questioned.
Harold began to answer, but was interrupted by an enfilade of gunfire from outside. Then my truck horn began blaring.
Chapter 27
Matt and I rushed out of the kitchen without saying anything to each other. We were both drawn to the sound of gunfire like buzzards to carrion. As I approached the door, I could identify the distinct sound of at least two different guns. One was a rifle and the other was a shotgun. I stopped as I reached the front door. I carefully peered around the door jamb to see who was shooting and what their target was. Matt put his hand on my shoulder to let me know he in position and then squeezed to alert me that he was ready to move.
As I peered around the corner, I saw a red 1980’s Oldsmobile Cutlass which I knew belonged to Curtis. It was stopped next to Matt’s truck. Curtis was at the wheel. Nick, whom I recognized from pictures in Harold’s house, and another of Curtis’ worthless buddies, Andy Whitworth, were out of the car unloading rounds into the patrol vehicle. As I brought my rifle to bear, Andy turned his gun toward my truck. While I focused on the front sight, my peripheral vision saw the windshield turn opaque as a hole appeared on the left side. More holes dotted their way across to the right. Each hole had a spider web pattern of cracks radiating out from the center to the edge of the windshield.
Rage began to boil up from deep within as I squeezed the trigger. Watching Andy smile as he fired at the two helpless women in my truck was more than I could handle. I inadvertently pulled the gun slightly down as the round exploded in the chamber.
I knew I had jerked the gun off target as soon as I pulled the trigger. Andy still went down, but I couldn’t tell where I hit him. My best guess was that the bullet had taken him in the guts. Wherever it had hit him, it wasn’t a killing shot. He scrambled toward Curtis’ car, half crawling and half running, his left hand clutching at his stomach, confirming my suspicion that I hit him in the guts. I fired again and missed.
Nick turned his shotgun on me as he retreated to the car. He fired as the barrel was moving horizontally in my direction. The gun went off too soon, harmlessly peppering the side of the house with lead shot. I returned fire as he dove into the front seat. Andy had nearly reached Curtis’ car when I heard the engine rev and the tires squeal. The car accelerated down the street, leaving Andy screaming for help as he tried to chase it down. I turned my sights to the car and fired again and again. After each round went off, I heard a clang confirming I was hitting the car, but I couldn’t tell where I was hitting it. I heard Matt fire to my left. Andy went down. I kept firing, aiming further ahead of where I wanted to hit as the car continued to accelerate.
I fired the last bullet in the magazine as the car squealed around the corner, turning onto Lake Street and disappearing from sight. I could hear the engine bellow through the custom exhaust as I reloaded. Tires squealed again, followed by the sound of metal scraping against metal; more squealing followed and then the sound of metal crushing. The engine went quiet. Matt was approaching Andy, using his truck for cover. I followed behind Matt. I realized that Andy had dropped his AK style rifle after I shot him the first time. He was lying on his side, curled up in the fetal position in the road.
The rage inside of me continued to grow. I was on the verge of losing control. I raised my rifle and put the red dot on Andy’s head. My finger tightened on the cool, smooth metal of the trigger.
And then I stopped.
I moved my finger off the trigger and rested it on the side of the receiver. Andy was no longer a threat. No matter how badly I wanted to finish him off for what he had done, it was wrong.
Andy cried as he begged for help. Once he was alone and faced with someone who could fight back, he revealed himself for what he was: a bully and a coward. He gurgled as he choked on his own blood. Andy died alone and abandoned by his friends. As Andy’s body relaxed and embraced death, I turned my eyes back to my truck. Through the shattered windshield, I saw Cindy and Kimiko’s heads peak up over the top of the dash.
“They’re okay!” Matt yelled. “Curtis crashed around the block. Let’s get him before he escapes.” We both sprinted down the road. When I rounded the corner onto Lake Street, I could see Curtis’ car four blocks ahead. The car was up on the sidewalk and the right side was wrapped around an oak tree like a horseshoe.
A woman was standing in the middle of the road with her hands on either side of her head, looking east down Hill Street. She suddenly screamed, “Alayna!”
A block away, Matt and I slowed our approach. There wasn’t much cover and we didn’t want Curtis to catch us by surprise. We moved out of the street and into the yards to the right. The houses provided decent cover if Curtis suddenly appeared and still wanted to fight. So far, there was no sign of him. There was at least one person still in the car. I couldn’t see whether there was a second.
The woman became more and more hysterical. Her vocalizations became incoherent. It sounded like she was trying to say words, but they came out as screeches. She sank to her knees, prostrating herself with her forehead on the ground, wailing.
We cautiously approached the car. The only thing holding the windshield together was the safety glazing. When I got close enough to see inside, I realized Curtis wasn’t there. Nick was slumped over in the passenger seat. Slivers of glass clung to his hair like shiny pieces of Velcro. Bark from the oak tree was imbedded in the right side of his cheek and the right side of his head. His right ear was missing and blood oozed from where it had been attached. The front of his face had hit something solid; his nose was smashed flat. He had what appeared to be a bullet wound in his left shoulder, which was suffused with blood. Amazingly, he was still conscious. The damage to the car, the skid marks, and broken glass in the street told the story of what had occurred.
Curtis had accelerated around the corner and didn’t take his foot out of the gas until he realized, at the last moment, that another vehicle was approaching the intersection. He slammed on the brakes, laying down a dark set of skid marks that extended across the white limit line at the stop sign and penetrated into the intersection.
He was going way too fast to stop. The front corner of his car slammed into the back of the other car in the intersection, shattering the lens cover over the brake light as well as the headlight and turn signal on his own car. Broken pieces of red and yellow plastic were scattered across the intersection, intermingled with pieces of clear glass from the headlight. The glancing blow wasn’t enough to stop Curtis’ car, but enough force was transferred to the other car to cause the back end to rotate around to the right. The other car’s back wheels laid down a black arc of skids as they pivoted sideways across the abrasive asphalt.
Curtis’ skids continued from the initial point of impact with an immediate change in direction after ricocheting off the second car. Two additional skid marks developed as Curtis’ car began to spin and the front wheels were no longer skidding in line with the rear wheels. The marks rapidly got very wide as the car spun sideways and then they came back together as the rear of the car came back in line with the front wheels. For a short distance, there were only two black marks, then front and rear wheels came out of line again and two more skid marks appeared. As the rotation continued, the marks widened a second time just before the car hopped the curb at the far side of the intersection and the passenger side hit the hundred year old oak tree square on. The rest of the car didn’t realize that the middle of the car had come to an abrupt stop. The front and rear continued forward, carried by inertia. They didn’t go much further, just far enough to wrap around either side of the oak.
The only question that remained was where the other car had gone.
“Nick. Nick!” I said louder as I crawled across the driver’s seat toward Nick’s broken body. “Where’s Curtis?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled.
“What were you guys doing at your grandparent’s house?” I questioned.
He slipped out of consciousness.
“Nick! Wake up.” I shook his shoulder, not really concerned about neck injuries. He was hurt badly and there was nobody left at the hospital to care for him. His chances of recovery were slim. My only concern was gleaning whatever information he had.
He opened his eyes and lifted his head slightly.
“Nick, what were you doing at your grandparent’s?” I questioned again.
“Last night after we left my grandparents, Curtis got worried. All night he ranted about how we shouldn’t have left them alive… If they got free, they would report his robbing them to the cops… That would put him in town at the time he killed Gordy in the pharmacy,” he said, half coherently. “He said they could finger him and we had to get rid of them in case somebody found them alive.”
“Do you know where Curtis is going?” I prodded, hoping for some information that would lead me to him.
“Probably to the…” He drifted off again.
I shook him again. He didn’t respond. I shook harder and he opened his eyes. “Where is Curtis going?”
“The cabin.” His eyes rolled back into his head. His eyelids remained half open with only the whites showing.
“What cabin, Nick?” I asked, shaking him again. “Wake up, Nick. What cabin?”
His pupils reappeared as he came to again. “Tell my grandparents I’m sorry.” He stopped for several seconds as the pain completely overwhelmed him. “Tell them I love them. I’m sorry about what I did to them.” His eyes rolled back in his head again as he slipped from consciousness.
“Wake up Nick. What cabin are you tal
king about? Where is the cabin?”
Either the shaking or yelling brought him back again. “It’s on the abandoned ranch… off Sager Road. It’s where he makes meth… says it’s a good place to hide out.”
I knew the place he was talking about. There was a ranch in the hills that the environmentalists had shut down fifteen years ago. Some sort of endangered something or other lived in the area and the cattle had allegedly been destroying the habitat they required to survive. The only thing the land was good for was cattle. The owner abandoned the ranch when he could no longer make a living on it. High school kids started going there for parties and other activities they didn’t want their parents to know about. It was a long way out of town. As gas got more expensive, the kids found closer places to perform their illicit activities.
Sager was a dirt road. It ran close to the ranch. There was a four wheel drive trail that went the last two, rough miles to the cabin. By the time I came to town, kids were no longer partying out there and there wasn’t any reason to patrol the area. I had only been up there once when I first moved to town. The deputy who oriented me to the area said I should know where it was and took me out there. After that, there was no point in going back. A few months ago, somebody bought it and, I was told, had placarded the entire perimeter of the ranch with no trespassing signs.
There was no way Curtis’ Oldsmobile would have made it on the old jeep trail. He probably had an ATV hidden near the road. “Who else is there with him?” Nick didn’t respond. I shook him again to no avail. “Nick, wake up.” I realized I could no longer hear his raspy breathing. I placed two fingers on his neck, searching for a pulse. He was gone.
I crawled back out of the car, careful not to cut myself on the broken glass, and exited the driver door. At least we had something to go on now.
