by Dave Daren
He waited a heartbeat for Brody and I to nod, and then he stared over my shoulder for a moment as he gathered his thoughts.
“I used to be a small business owner,” he said. “Carson’s Caliber, ever hear of it?”
Behind me, I heard Brody shift his stance, and I glanced back at him with an eyebrow raised in question.
He adjusted his cowboy hat on his head, and to my surprise, nodded in acknowledgement.
“Shooting range, right?”Brody asked.
Todd’s smile was bittersweet as he gave a small nod in return.
“That’s the one,” he said with a laugh that sounded more like a sigh. “I started the business from the ground up almost a decade ago. It was like my baby. Best damn shooting range in Crowley, and I’m not just saying that, either! People voted about it, and it was in the paper!”
He looked between the two of us and seemed to be searching for another flash of remembrance, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had only been in town for a little over a year and had yet to get a subscription to the local newspapers. So, I simply nodded in encouragement instead, and that seemed good enough for Todd to continue.
“I had a pretty steady stream of clientele, a lot of regulars, even a few of the deputies would come in and use the range,” Todd said. “I made sure that everything was up to code, that all my guns were properly licensed. I was careful.”
I exchanged a quick look with Brody because I had a sinking feeling that I knew where this story was going, and it didn’t bode well for this case being a quick in and out sort of thing.
Brody met my look with a raise of his eyebrows that made it obvious he knew where this was going, too.
I looked back at Todd and nodded so that he would continue his story, though he didn’t look like he needed much encouragement to keep going. If I had to take a guess, I’d say it wasn’t often someone wanted to listen to his story.
“I had a minor incident, something real small where a customer brought in an unlicensed weapon,” he admitted with a growl creeping into his voice. “Even though I had signs posted everywhere about that, it slipped under the radar, somehow. I guess a deputy was at the range that day and that the customer was talking about his new gun.”
Todd’s energetic zeal had wavered some and instead, he started to look deflated and tired, as if telling this story took a lot out of him.
He rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled a deep sigh before he dropped his hand back to his side.
“Because a couple of days later, a bunch of deputies showed up with a warrant!” he exclaimed with a shake of his head.
Todd dropped back into his lawn chair despite all the signs he already had stacked in the seat. The poster board crinkled under his weight, but he didn’t seem to care. He slouched forward and gave another heavy sigh.
“They claimed that my shooting range was a front for weapons smuggling,” he muttered. “Here! In Crowley, of all places! I tried to explain what had happened, and that the customer who brought in the illegal gun was permanently banned, but it didn’t matter.”
I couldn’t help but feel a wave of sympathy for the man wash over me. Like Natalie, he had been screwed over by something more than circumstances. Someone had gone out of their way to cause them trouble.
“They took everything,” he said with a mournful shake of his head as he looked down at the ground as if looking at Brody and I had become too much. “All my guns, the ammo, they even took some of the targets. Told me that it was completely legal, too, that because they didn’t know what had been used in a crime, they could just… take it all.”
“I am so sorry, Mr. Carson,” I said with genuine remorse in my tone.
I felt a little guilty for assuming he was a little crazy before I spoke to him. Most people would probably have assumed he was a bit off because of his behavior, and that included me, but now that I’d heard his story, I could understand why he’d taken the approach he had. After all, this was a man that had lost everything to the very people who were supposed to protect him.
Todd sighed and shifted to lean back in his lawn chair. The posters behind him continued to crinkle and crease, but it was obvious he didn’t care.
“I had to go out of business,” he said. “A decade of operation, and then poof! All of it’s gone! I couldn’t afford to buy new supplies for the range, and besides, they did my good name plenty of damage, too, what with their claims I was bringing in guns from Mexico.”
I hadn’t even thought about that and felt foolish that the idea hadn’t even crossed my mind. Of course, his business was ruined.
It didn’t matter if Todd managed to get all of his guns and ammo back, Carson Caliber would still be the shooting range busted for being part of an illegal smuggling ring, whether it was true or not.
“You might have been able to sue for defamation,” Brody suggested.
Todd gave a sharp bark of a laugh.
“Who was going to listen to me?” he asked, but it was clear that he wasn’t really looking for an answer. “And how would I even pay? I had to file for bankruptcy. That range was more than my passion, it was my livelihood, too.”
I swallowed and shifted my weight from foot to foot as I looked past Todd to the sheriff’s department behind him.
The building sat squat to the ground and was longer than it was tall. It wasn’t an inherently impressive-looking place with its aesthetic of brown on brown on brown, and the cracked pavement of the parking lot was scattered with squad cars that looked like they’d have been more at home a few decades before.
It was hard to imagine from the outside alone that the department had caused so much grief for so many people.
I turned my attention back to Todd with a grim set to my own lips.
“Have you brought your story to the media?” I suggested.
I wouldn’t pretend that every law firm in the area was as welcoming as Landon Legal to non-profitable cases that would probably do the firm more harm than good. But the local media had always been good about sharing stories like this, at least in my experience.
“They told me I was crazy,” he snorted. “That I was making things up, and that the sheriff was a good, respectable man. Which makes me think that someone in the sheriff’s department was making damn sure the local media played nice.”
“Shit,” Brody aptly summarized.
“You’re telling me,” Todd agreed with another sigh. “That’s why I started doing this.”
He gestured around to the grassy median we stood on and to the signs around him.
“If the people who get these stories out weren’t going to listen to me, I’d have to make people listen on my own,” he said with a half-shrug of his shoulders. “Between this and my posts on all the local Facebook groups I could find, putting up flyers, knocking on doors, I think I’ve gained a reputation as the town crazy.”
I turned my attention to his signs to avoid letting the look on my face confirm his suspicion, while Brody shifted on his feet next to me and reached up to adjust his hat on his head.
“Has all of… this,” he started and gave a small gesture toward Todd’s setup. “Has it actually done anything?”
I could tell Brody was being careful with his words. The last thing we wanted to do was disparage a man that had clearly lost everything for the way he had coped with that loss. But Todd perked up at the question and straightened in his chair.
“Yes, actually!” he said and sounded nearly as surprised by that revelation himself as I felt. “Thanks to my canvassing about the stunt the sheriff and his damn crony deputies pulled, I actually found a handful of other people with similar stories.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise and caught sight of Brody with a matching look of shock on his face from the corner of my eye.
“Really?” I asked and couldn’t stop the disbelief from creeping into my tone.
Todd nodded and grinned up at us.
“Yeah, do you want the list?” he asked.
Chapter 4
I studied the crumpled sheet of paper clasped in my hands as Brody and I stalked off the grassy median and onto the sidewalk.
Todd’s handwriting was a little messy and looked a bit closer to chicken scratch than it did real words, but I could still make out the list of names he’d been eager to share with us.
I cut my eyes between the list and Brody’s back as he came to a halt next to the crosswalk’s blinker and jabbed his thumb into the button to signal our desire to cross.
I slowed to a halt next to him and skimmed over the five names Todd had written. Five wasn’t many, but five names were certainly better than I’d expected to walk away from our conversation with.
Given what both Todd and Natalie had told us, we had decided against attempting to talk to Sheriff Thompson. This had already started to seem like a problem bigger than just some confiscated guns and a snatched family heirloom.
Besides, I was still fairly certain that Thompson probably had a little voodoo doll of my likeness and stabbed it with sewing pins each night because of what I’d done to Knox, and therefore, what I’d done to the extra money lining his pockets.
Next to me, Brody huffed. “Do you know how stupid you’re being?” he asked me, but for some reason, I really didn’t think he wanted an answer.
I stayed quiet and tried to memorize the names on the list. Jackson Qualley. Tina Goodman. Richard Belk. Leigh Stefwater. Tristan Daniels.
None of the names were familiar to me, but that wasn’t too surprising. Aside from my actual clients, I didn’t know many people in the area. I mentally added the names Todd Carson and Natalie Morgan to the list.
I carefully folded up the crumpled paper into as neat of a square as I could manage without tearing it and slid it into my pocket alongside my phone.
To my right, Brody rolled his eyes and took a step out onto the road as the crosswalk sign across the street blinked green.
“Archer,” he started again in what I’d started to realize was his ‘dad voice’.
I wasn’t sure whether or not I should be insulted that he used the same voice he used on his children with me, given the fact I was a grown man and also paid his salary.
“Brody,” I responded with a pleasant uptick to my tone that asked a question without actually asking a question.
I kept pace with him as we crossed the street and stepped up onto the opposite sidewalk just before the blinking green stick figure on the sign to turn red once again.
I glanced back at him and raised my eyebrows in a further show of questioning, to which Brody only huffed and adjusted his hat.
“We should refer the case to someone else,” he finally said without much room for argument.
I decided to argue anyway.
“Why would we do that?” I countered with a question as we made our way to his car.
“Because this is more than an easy in and out issue,” Brody said, like it was obvious as he tossed his set of keys up and down in the air.
I was almost mesmerized by how easily he was able to throw the keys up and catch them without having to look. But I shook my head to break the spell and rolled my eyes instead.
“Look, all we have to do is talk to a couple of people on the list to see what Todd’s talking about,” I said. “And if it’s nothing, we go back to Plan A and talk to Thompson about releasing Natalie’s things from evidence, and if that doesn’t work, we find a judge to grant us an injunction.”
“And if it isn’t nothing?” Brody asked with a weary edge to his voice as he unlocked the door to his car.
I avoided meeting his eyes as I ducked my head down to slip into the passenger seat.
“And if it isn't nothing,” I conceded and continued on, “we still find a judge to grant an injunction, and we also build a case against the sheriff’s department.”
I kept my tone light and airy to bypass how absolutely insane what I’d just said actually was. I kept my fingers crossed that my easy attitude would keep Brody from seeing just how massive that undertaking would be if we went through with it.
But he guffawed loudly as he took his place behind the wheel. He clearly could see the insanity in my statement.
I offered a comfortable grin and shrugged up one of my shoulders as I relaxed into the leather seat.
“Yeah, so maybe it’s a lot,” I said. “But we can’t just do nothing.”
I’d never been the type who could sit by and do nothing when people needed help, and these people clearly needed help.
Todd had lost his business, and Natalie had lost a connection to her mother, and God only knew what the other five people on the list had lost to the sheriff’s department.
Brody slid the key into the ignition and let the engine turn over, but he didn’t switch out of park. He rested both hands on the steering wheel and looked over at me.
“We don’t have the time for something like this, kid,” he tried to reason with me again, but I could see his walls breaking down.
I shifted in the seat to fasten my seatbelt before I looked up at him again.
“So we do what?” I demanded. “Refer Natalie to someone else who’s going to run into the same exact issue with the sheriff’s department and with Thompson, and just let everything go?”
Brody rubbed one hand along the side of his face before dropping it to the gear shift.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” he asked, even though we both already knew the answer.
Evelyn hadn’t been lying before we left when she’d accused us both of having bleeding hearts. The only difference between Brody and I was the fact that I was more willing to wear mine on my sleeve.
“No,” I admitted with a small smile. “We need to help them. Our other cases aren’t pressing, and this shouldn’t take longer than a few days.”
I hoped he didn’t point out that I’d previously said the case would only take a single afternoon.
Luckily for me, Brody decided not to bring up that little discrepancy.
“You better not get shot at again, Archer,” he muttered. “Because somebody still has to sign my checks.”
I knew I’d won him over by the time he shifted the car into drive, and we took off from the parking lot with a low grumble of the engine.
“Where are we going?” he asked, though he didn’t take his eyes off the road as he pulled up behind a white minivan at a stoplight.
“To see Jackson Qualley,” I said while I pulled my phone from my pocket.
I wasn’t sure if he’d be in the online Whitepages, but it was worth a shot. I quickly tapped his name and our city into the search bars and waited as a small buffering symbol took up the screen.
It took a few minutes, but to my pleasant surprise, a residence for Jackson Qualley in Crowley, Texas popped up seconds later to replace the slowly spinning circle.
“Name doesn’t ring a bell,” Brody murmured as he accelerated through the newly green light and gave the phone in my hands a quick glance before turning his full focus back to the road. “You got an address?”
“I do,” I said and waved my phone a little as if that proved it. “He’s in the Greenview Apartments, the ones on the west side of town.”
Brody chewed the inside of his cheek before he gave a nod of recognition and a slight frown.
“The west side?” he repeated, as if he could have somehow misheard me in the otherwise silent cab of the car.
Despite his question, however, he still turned at the next intersection to start us toward the west side.
I nodded and gave a small ‘mmhmm’ of confirmation as I clicked out of the Whitepages website.
We lived in a fairly small city in Texas, not one of the boroughs of New York City, but the west side had a reputation nonetheless. It was primarily a residential area with a few sporadic businesses I’d never needed to frequent because there were similar stores closer to my apartment and Landon Legal.
The few times I had made the drive out to the west side, I’d noticed that the
apartment complexes and small subdivisions were all more weathered than similar buildings in the rest of Crowley, to put it nicely. But, I suppose if Jackson Qualley had been screwed over by the sheriff’s department in the same way that Todd Carson had been, it made sense for him to be living somewhere with lower rent.
Brody continued to drive in silence while I stared at the Messages app on my phone and felt the urge to click the icon and find my way to Clara’s name again. I still hadn’t figured out what to say, but I knew I had to say something soon, or she might think I was ignoring her, and I really didn’t want that.
Unlike my minor fling with Trish, the manager of the diner down the street from where Landon Legal used to be located, which had been driven primarily by a need of friendship on both our parts, I felt like there could be something more with Clara, and that was a terrifying concept. So in the end, I didn’t click open the message again. Instead, I tapped my screen off, and if Brody noticed my strange contemplation at nothing while he drove, he didn’t say a word.
After a few more minutes of our comfortable silence filling the cab of his car, Brody turned onto Dunken Street and carefully avoided potholes as he pulled to a slow stop along the curb in front of the Greenview Apartments.
The building was thin and despite only being three stories high, it looked taller as it towered over its neighbors. Sadly, it also looked like it could easily get blown over if a stiff breeze came through the area. Other than its odd shape, nothing else really stood out about Greenview. It looked like every other apartment complex I’d ever seen.
The units facing the street had small, fenced-in decks that looked hardly big enough to stand on, but some of them had still managed to fit porch furniture on the slatted wooden floors.
The sidewalk that ran along the front of the building was cracked in numerous places and covered with at least a dozen drawings done in chalk. A few children played hopscotch along the right-hand side of the sidewalk.
A little girl that looked to be the oldest of the pack of kids turned and stared at Brody and I in the muscle car with a small furrow between her delicate brow. Her dark hair was done up in two thin plaits that hung down to her shoulders, and her knees were scuffed with pastel colors that I assumed had come from the chalk.
