by Dave Daren
On the fuzzy screen were a handful of photos from what I figured was one of the local Facebook pages Evelyn had mentioned. Each of the photos was of the same man, but clearly taken on different days. In each shot, he was holding a large poster board sign declaring the corruption of the sheriff's department in big red letters and in no uncertain terms.
My brow furrowed and I leaned in closer over Evelyn’s desk to try and get a better look. I wasn’t sure if the photos themselves were grainy or if it was the fact Evelyn’s computer had been built before anyone even thought to remember the Alamo, but I couldn’t quite make out the details of the man’s face as she clicked through from picture to picture.
“Do you know why he’s protesting?” I asked without trying to disguise the small twinge of hope in my tone.
I didn’t want to waste my time tracking down everyone who felt they’d been the victim of police corruption, but I doubted Evelyn would have brought up the man and his crusade if it wasn’t for a good reason. She might have given me more shit than I deserved, but she’d yet to steer me wrong.
I glanced up at Brody as he crossed the room to look at Evelyn’s computer as well. I took a small step to the side to let him take my spot and straightened up as I waited for Evelyn to explain.
She made a pleased little hum, and I recognized the noise as the sound she always made when she felt like she’d gained control of the conversation. I liked Evelyn, more than I’d tell her for fear of her calling me a pansy, but she was the textbook definition of domineering.
“According to the things he posts on the local groups,” Evelyn began and a thin little smile started to edge at the corners of her lips. “The sheriff’s department unlawfully took his belongings and put him out of business.”
Chapter 3
The room had gone so quiet that I could have heard a pin drop after Evelyn’s delayed revelation. I blinked a few times to try and process what she’d said to make sure I hadn’t misheard her.
“And you waited that long to say anything?” I finally asked with what I suspected was an incredulous look on my face.
She gave a little huff and worked to turn her ancient monitor back to where she’d had it before as Brody straightened up.
“No need to be so snippy,” Evelyn said. “I was going to tell you after you stopped looking like some sort of kicked puppy over the case.”
While I did fully believe she planned on telling me, I didn’t even bother to hide my annoyance that she’d had to put me through the wringer first. I looked back at Brody who looked too amused by the entire situation and rolled my eyes.
“Come on,” I muttered. “We might as well head out there now to see if the protester has anything useful to say to us.”
It was certainly a better lead than talking to the sheriff’s department first, because maybe the man knew something that would help us when we tried to finagle Natalie’s ring back from the black hole that was their evidence locker.
I didn’t wait for Evelyn to throw out any more of her signature helpfully unhelpful comments before I turned on my heels and stalked out of her office with Brody quickly following behind on my heels.
“I’ll drive,” Brody called out to me, and I didn’t argue.
After the debacle with Knox Chemicals, I hadn’t quite gained my love of driving back. Something about driving for your life through the desert for hours on end soured the whole activity for some reason. So I tossed a welcome smile over my shoulder to Brody as I nudged open the front door of Landon Legal and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
The air was still stiflingly hot, but at least it wasn’t suffocating, and I counted it as a small blessing as I walked over to wait by Brody’s car.
He drove a classic muscle car, but I could never quite remember the make or model. He practically babied it more than his children, which was impressive, considering his history.
I’d never been the sort of man to dedicate that much time and energy into cars, and I think it might have had something to do with the fact my father wasn’t a big car person so he’d never instilled the love of card in me. He’d taught me how to do my own basic repairs, and I was more than capable under the hood thanks to his teachings when I was a kid and the magic of Google, but I didn’t love cars the way that Brody loved cars. I certainly didn’t love my old junker car like he loved his.
I didn’t even dare lean up against the side of the vehicle’s cherry-red body as I waited for Brody to make his way outside, and to kill the time, I pulled my phone out of my pocket to swipe through the notifications that had popped up during the last handful of hours.
I had been trying to get into a better habit of actually checking the messages and alerts that popped up as they came in instead of letting them go unseen until the end of the day like I’d started doing after the law firm grew in size. But between the new influx of clients and trying to handle the fallout of the Knox suit, I’d been spending too much time focusing on my job. I’d started to neglect the other aspects of my life, and checking messages had been one of the steps I’d taken to try and remedy that.
I had a few emails that I quickly tapped into and swiped through before I moved all of them to the trash bin because I didn’t need new health insurance or auto insurance or to buy a timeshare in Pensacola or Boca Raton.
Aside from the emails, I had three new messages that I’d not yet opened. They all looked like they’d arrived during my meeting with Natalie, and after I glanced up at the door once again to see if Brody was on his way out, I turned my focus back to my phone.
One of the messages was from my mother and was just an emoji of a generic-looking flower followed by a heart emoji. I truthfully had no idea what that meant, but I sent a heart emoji back. After the Knox case blew up in the public eye, I hadn’t been able to keep the details hidden from my mother, despite my best efforts. The price was now regular, and often mysterious, messages filled with symbols instead of words.
When I was feeling particularly paranoid, I had the lingering thought that Evelyn had probably found a way to contact my mother and had told her to ask me about everything that had happened.
And, because my mother was incapable of not worrying about me, she’d started checking in nearly daily. It was almost like she blamed herself for my innate ability to get into the good sort of trouble.
The next message was unimportant, just some auto-generated text from a thread I’d been subscribed to when I signed a petition that I’d not taken the time to opt out of yet.
The last message, however, made me go still, and my mouth went a little dry, a fact which was honestly too embarrassing to acknowledge.
I heard what sounded like a set of doors opening and took a second to cut my eyes back to the front door of Landon Legal, only to see Brody finally crossing the street toward where I waited in the parking lot. His cowboy hat had returned to its near constant spot atop his head.
I looked back at my phone and the message from Clara Shepard.
hey , hope you aren’t too busy, but Emma’s sitter finally has time to watch her in the evening if you still want to have that dinner
I read the message once, then twice just to make sure I’d read it correctly. My thumbs ghosted over the keyboard, but I didn’t manage to write a single word down.
Instead, I just stared at the text.
I liked Clara, maybe too much given our strange background. We’d met when she’d contacted me about suing Knox Chemicals, and I’d been undeniably impressed with her and how she’d handled herself throughout the case. Plus, it hadn’t exactly been lost on me that she was gorgeous, even in the scrubs she usually wore.
For the last few months, we’d been circling around each other in some strange sort of dance. We talked frequently, and I would call us friends without any sort of hesitation, but we were both adults with jobs and complicated lives to boot. I was building a legal practice, and Clara was a full-time nurse who also had her daughter with leukemia to think about.
The idea of final
ly grabbing dinner had been floated around more than once, but nothing had ever panned out, and that had been like a sort of safety net. But now, thanks to Emma’s sitter, there wasn’t a net.
I swallowed and ghosted my fingers over the screen again.
“You alright?” Brody asked as he sauntered over.
I stepped away before he could nudge me aside to unlock the driver’s side door of his car and slipped my phone back into my pocket as I made my way around to the passenger side seat.
“Yeah,” I assured him with a smile and a nod as I pulled open the door and lowered myself into the leather interior of the car.
I wasn’t sure what to say to Clara. Yes, obviously, was the best answer. Yes, I would love to finally get dinner with you. Yes, it’s about time we did this. Yes, I’m sorry I wasn’t the one to ask you.
But for some reason, I felt almost frozen, like I was some sort of dumb kid instead of a grown man with his own damn law firm.
I promised myself I’d text her back later, once my mind was less crowded from my new case, and I had the time to write out a good reply.
Brody didn’t seem convinced by my statement, but he didn’t argue it, either, and I appreciated that about him. He often came across like he was rough-edged and gruff, but he knew when to nod and keep quiet.
He pulled out of the parking lot as I snapped my seatbelt in place.
After a moment of thought, I pulled my phone back out from my pocket and clicked the little, blue Facebook app on the last page of my home screen. I’d only downloaded the damn thing because my mother had a tendency to find interesting articles she liked and instead of emailing them to me, or better yet, just texting me the links, she liked to tag me in the posts.
I took a moment to type in Crowley in the “Groups” tab of the app, and a long list of local organizations in Crowley popped up. I clicked the first one that looked promising, and it happened to be a page entitled Citizens of Crowley.
I only had to scroll through a few posts of people discussing local restaurants and the new construction on Heath Street before I saw a blurry video of the man Evelyn had shown me.
The footage was shaky and rain streaked, and looked like it was being taken from a moving car, but it undeniably featured the same man from the still photos. He held a poster board sign and looked drenched from the rain in the video, but he was still shouting something.
I frowned and clicked the little speaker button to switch the setting off of mute.
Suddenly, the car was filled with the tinny, far-off shouts of the man trying to be heard over the rain.
“Sheriff Thompson is a crook!” the video blared. “He’ll keep stealing from our pockets to line his own! You just wait! You’ll see!”
The video cut off and froze on an image of the man with his mouth still agape and his sign brandished out in front of him. My frown deepened.
I glanced up to see that Brody had a similar look on his face as he pulled onto the next street. I turned my focus back to my phone and started to scroll through the comments on the post.
Most people were simply disparaging the man, but I was surprised to see he had a few sympathizers. The messages weren’t deep, or ultimately very helpful, but they all had some variation of the phrase ‘he isn’t wrong’.
Interestingly enough, a few other commenters mentioned that they’d allegedly seen the man in the video posting long rants on the local forums himself, as well as in the review section for local restaurants. It looked like he was doing anything he could to attract attention to his apparent cause.
“Well, this should be interesting,” I said, mostly to myself, but Brody snorted anyway.
“Oh, you mean you aren’t excited to talk to some kook?” Brody asked as he made a clean turn into a parking lot.
It wasn’t the lot for the sheriff’s department itself, but one for a laundromat across the street. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to avoid the department’s parking lot. It wasn’t uncommon for squad cars to come peeling in like a bat out of hell, and if I were Brody, I wouldn’t want to risk my car, either.
“I’m not so sure he’s a kook,” I said, but even I could hear the hesitation in my voice.
I didn’t want to discredit the man, despite how crazy his behavior seemed. In my experience, I’d learned that usually the people that did crazy things had some sort of reason, even if it was hard to understand at first.
I sidled out of the car and gently nudged the door shut before I put my phone back into my pocket. I rolled the sleeves of my button-up shirt to my elbows and gave my knuckles a quick crack to loosen up my fingers.
I didn’t want to seem too authoritative to the man, because it wasn’t exactly a secret he seemed to dislike authority if his camp outside the department was any indicator.
Brody tilted his head toward me and dipped the rim of his cowboy hat before he gestured for me to lead the way across the street toward the man from the video.
I walked up to the crosswalk and hit the little button to signal I wanted to cross. While I waited for the light to change, I looked back at the man and tried to get a better bead on who he was.
He was in front of the sheriff’s department, on the grassy median between the street and the department’s parking lot, and he stood there like some sort of strange busker or street performer with his hand made sign held up above his head. Behind him, a foldout camping chair sat open with a few more signs propped against its legs on three sides and yet another in the seat itself. It was the same place he’d been camped at in all of the photos and the video I’d seen of him, too.
The crosswalk light turned a cheerful green, and Brody and I started across the street toward the sheriff’s department.
I gave a small wave and polite nod of thanks to the driver that had halted so we could pass. Next to me, Brody had to quicken his pace to keep up with my long strides.
The man on the median was watching us now. His sign was still suspended in the air above his head, but he’d gone still and stopped waving it around like he was trying to conduct air traffic.
I could feel his eyes on me as we turned onto the sidewalk, and I took the lead as we walked up onto the grassy area he’d seemingly claimed as his own.
“Hello!” I greeted him, as cheerfully and non-confrontationally as I could manage. “Do you have a minute to talk?”
My voice was raised just enough so that he could hear me over the low hum of traffic passing us by. I tried to sound friendly since I wasn’t sure of the protestor’s mental state, and I couldn’t quite keep my worry at bay as I took a few steps closer to him. But I didn’t stop until there was only about a yard or two between us.
Brody stood behind me like some sort of bodyguard. He was certainly broad enough to fit the part, and the way he scanned the passing cars only added to the impression.
“Who are you?” the protestor shouted back. “I’m not doing anything illegal!”
He quickly added the last sentence in a way that made it apparent he’d had this sort of conversation before.
I realized then that the reason he’d probably chosen to stand in the grass between the sheriff’s department and the street was because it wasn’t private property, and thus he couldn’t be kicked off for protesting.
I was almost impressed by the loophole of it all. I held one of my hands up with my palm toward him as a show of good faith.
“I’m Archer Landon,” I replied. “I’m a lawyer. And this is Brody Lucas.”
The man’s eyebrows furrowed and the sign dropped an inch or two.
“Oh, I’ve heard of you,” he said and seemed surprised at his own recognition. “You were the one who helped sue that oil company.”
Slowly, the man’s sign lowered the rest of the way until he held it limply in front of his chest for a moment, and then he relaxed completely to let it sit at his feet.
“Petrochemical company,” I corrected on impulse before I smiled and nodded. “But yes, that was us. Do you have a minute to talk, Mr.…”
I trailed off with the hopes he’d take the opportunity to fill in his name for me.
He straightened, just a little bit, and I realized it probably wasn’t often that someone actually stopped to talk with him like this.
“Carson,” he said. “Todd Carson.”
He tucked his sign up under his arm a bit clumsily before he cleared the few feet to extend his hand toward me.
I reached out to shake it in greeting and was loath to find that Todd’s hand was about as sweaty as he looked.
Minus the sweat however, he wasn’t a bad-looking man. He had mousy brown hair that looked just a touch overgrown and was lacking a bit of a chin, but he looked shockingly normal, all things considered.
If I’d just seen him on the street, I never would have pegged him for the sort of man that started a quest to slander a local sheriff’s department via protests and Facebook pages, but, well, people were certainly multi-faceted.
“It’s nice to meet you, Todd,” I said with a kind smile as Todd extended his hand toward Brody as well.
Brody didn’t move to shake it, and after an awkward moment of silence, Todd dropped his hand back down to his side and took a half-step back.
He cleared his throat and set the sign down on his lawn chair before turning back toward Brody and I again with confusion still faintly tracing his features.
“Um,” he began. “So, what can I do for you?”
He scratched at his sun-reddened cheek as he looked between the two of us expectantly.
I smiled again and fought the urge to elbow Brody for refusing to shake his hand, but then again, Todd had been awfully sweaty.
“Right, so, could you tell me what exactly you’re protesting?” I said without any sort of preamble or build-up.
I didn’t think there was much of a reason to try and beat around the bush given the fact Todd didn’t seem to be acting like he thought we were the enemy. And Todd perked up at the question as if he’d been waiting all this time for someone to ask him his story.
“Really?” he asked with clear excitement lighting up his blue eyes, and he didn’t bother waiting for another go ahead before he continued on. “Let me start from the beginning, okay?”
