Not Before Midnight (Sheriff Bud Blair Oregon Mystery Series Book 5)

by Rod Collins

  Howard Finch sidled through the door behind Sonny and pitched in, “And about time, too. Maybe Nancy can sweeten him up – if that’s possible.”

  Sonny held out his hand. “Nice to see you again, Boss. Congratulations.”

  Bud grinned. “Thank you. I believe I owe you congratulations as well.”

  Sonny grinned back, but didn’t say anything.

  Bea whispered in Karen’s ear, “What’s that about.”

  “Sonny is engaged to Carol Connor, the editor of our paper.”

  Bud steered the conversation away from engagements and weddings. He looked at Roger and said, “Before we get started, do you have anything new on the drive-by shooting in Christmas Valley?”

  “The people living in the trailer won’t talk to me. Scared, I think. But something is hinky about the whole thing. I put a trail camera on a post near their driveway. I want to see who comes and who goes.”

  Karen frowned. “Hinky? What in the world does that mean?”

  Sonny laughed and said, “You don’t know ‘hinky?’ I thought you white-eyes knew everything.”

  Roger thought Bea’s laugh was about the sexiest sound he ever heard. If Bea noticed, she didn’t let on. “I know hinky,” she said. “It means out of whack.”

  Roger smiled. “Yeah. The civilian version of SNAFU without the ‘normal’ in it.”

  “Okay.,” Bud said. “Let’s focus on the reason I called this all-hands meeting.”

  ***

  An hour later the walls of the conference room were papered with flip charts that included diagrams of Dog Lake and the road which ran along the west side of it, possible surveillance positions, estimated times – down to seconds – to BB’s house from the eye-and-spy locations, surveillance schedules, equipment, tactical channel settings for the radios, weapons, likely route of ingress for the bad guys, vehicles, medical backup, and after-action plans.

  Bud held a magic marker in his right hand and asked “What else?” Just then, the phone started ringing. Bud ignored it until Karen’s voice rattled the intercom. “Bud, you’d better take this call.”

  “Who is it?”

  “The FBI. Somebody named Dutch Vanderlin.”

  “Okay. I’ll take it in my office.” Bud looked at his team and said, “Break time. I’ll go see what Dutch wants.”

  Dutch listened to Bud’s recap of the plan to trap any thugs sent by Al-Alwani. “Sounds good, but you’re a little thin on manpower.”

  “How many can they send?” Bud said. “We can cover the roads and trap anyone who shows up.”

  “I’m sending you a SWAT team – a short team – four people and a helicopter. My best people. The commander’s name is Blaine Cutsforth.”

  “ETA?”

  “About three hours.”

  “Thanks, Dutch. We’ll take ‘em. I have two officers who are pretty green yet.”

  Chapter 31

  Contrition

  BUTLER’S AWARENESS coincided with daylight as a weak sun poked a hole in the scattered clouds drifting upriver from the Pacific.

  Flat on his stomach, right cheek kissing the hard deck, head throbbing, and chilled to the bone, he felt like every joint in his body had taken a pounding. He pushed himself up and rocked back on his knees. A big knot on the side of his head pulsed against his black watch cap. He tried pulling the cap loose, but dried blood glued it in place.

  He sat for a full twenty seconds, his mind blank, unable to recall how he had come to this place. He reached for the rail that had taken a blow from his hard skull, and pulled himself upright.

  A breeze riffled the surface of the big river and broke sun beams into bouncing shards of light. Rows of cottonwood and alder muted the noise from distant traffic on I-5. A puff of wind carried the rank odor of mud flats. And then memory came flooding back – the heavy rain storm, the nighttime loss of power and lights, and the unexpected dark menace of an upriver container ship rising bow-to-bow over his boat. He remembered the deck tilting under his feet as The Runaway rode the bow wave generated by the freighter, causing him to fall across the slanted deck and run head long into a metal rail.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said aloud. “Missed me … sort of. I think I know what “Kiss your ass goodbye” means now. I knew I was dead.”

  He walked to the port side rail and looked down at the side of the boat. Not a scratch in sight. “If I believed in God, I’d say the hand of Providence spared me, but I think I’m beyond salvation.”

  A quick survey told him the bow of The Runaway was stuck on a sand bar, but the stern was parked over much deeper water.

  “Just drifted in and parked. Damned lucky.”

  The warmer air in the wheelhouse welcomed Butler and somehow fueled a bit of optimism. He pulled a first aid kit from a cupboard and headed for the shower to doctor his bloody head.

  Twenty minutes later, his cut cleaned and sprayed with antiseptic, followed by a cup of warm coffee from the thermos in the galley, Butler was feeling a bit better. He changed into dry clothes, slipped arms in the sleeves of a red mackinaw, and then went out on deck. He opened the hatch to the engine compartment. “Judas!” he said. “Who is trying to kill me? Not the FBI. They would just arrest me. It’s gotta be Al-Alwani.”

  The small bomb, wrapped in plastic bags and taped to the power junction, had failed, but the detonator had not. Instead of destroying The Runaway … and killing Butler … it simply burned wires and killed the power instead, leaving Butler adrift.

  Thirty minutes of cutting, stripping, and insulating bare wires with black electrician’s tape saw the engines running again and all navigation and radio systems operable. Butler put both engines in reverse and pushed the throttles to max rpm. The water foamed and boiled and then The Runaway broke free. The sudden movement caught Butler off guard and slammed his sternum against the brass wheel, but the pain was softened by the relief of getting off the sand bar and on his way down river again.

  Five hours later, he eased The Runaway into the boat basin fronting the Red Lion in Astoria. He tied off, and then headed up the dock to the marina office. He used a bogus credit card to pay for two weeks of moorage.

  Sometime between breaking free of the sandbar and the five hours it took to reach Astoria, salted with a great of deal of guilt and sorrow for his lost life, Winslow Butler resolved to try and make things right again.

  Chapter 32

  When Things Go Awry

  BB LED HIS GUESTS to the garage, punched the control button, then watched the garage door rise and coast to a stop on the overhead rails. He pulled three self-inflating life preservers from a gunmetal gray cabinet and handed one to each of his guests.

  Miranda fumbled with the shoulder straps, and he reached to pull the bottom strap around her waist. A hint of scented soap stirred memories of earlier, happier days.

  He hadn’t thought about his ex-wife in a long time. He’d felt like a failure in the early days of the divorce, but after a year or two he finally admitted he was glad she was gone … and that she had taken her emotional instability with her.

  He snapped the buckles and said, “There, Miranda. That should keep you afloat.”

  Miranda smiled and said, “Thank you.” The sensation of BB’s arms reaching around her hadn’t been at all unpleasant. “Do you have any children?” She asked.

  A frown creased his forehead as he stepped back and looked into her light brown eyes. “A son. Brian Dell BeBe. A career Marine.”

  “Was that his picture in the family room?”

  “Yep.”

  “He’s a handsome young man. He looks a lot like his father.”

  “That’s too bad,” BB said with a grin. He closed the cabinet, and pulled two paddles loose from the clip hangers on the wall.

  “You carry these and I’ll bring the tackle. Follow the path. The canoe is down by the lake. I’ll bring the rest of the gear.”

  BB watched until they were out of sight, then he rolled a set of metal cabinets away from the wall to expose
a large gun safe hiding in a cutout there.

  He punched a series of numbers into the keypad and pushed the locking handle down. To call the guns in the safe an ‘arsenal’ was to exaggerate, but he did own a respectable number of weapons, including two AR-15’s he’d personally modified to shoot either three-round bursts or a fully-automatic stream of fire.

  BB selected one of them, slipped two thirty-round clips in the side pocket of the black canvas gun case, then closed and locked the safe. He rolled the cabinet back in place and shook his head. “Paranoid, I guess.”

  ***

  Reverend TJ Wildish frowned when he saw Dell BeBe carrying a fishing pole and a tackle box in one hand … and what was obviously a rifle case in the other.

  BB said, “I know what you’re thinking, Reverend, but it never hurts to be prepared.”

  “You said they wouldn’t get here before tomorrow at the earliest.”

  “It’s not likely, but those Muslim assholes aren’t the only source of evil in the world.”

  Miranda nodded and said, “He’s right, Reverend. The Portland Police Bureau has flagged almost four hundred gang members in Portland, and some say there are over three hundred sets of street gangs there. It seems that any town with more than ten thousand people has at least some gang activity.”

  TJ looked sad and shook his head. “What do you suppose has gone wrong?”

  Miranda said, “I think when families fall apart, the gangs offer friendship and protection. Call it love, if you’d like. And a lot of young people, far too many, have nowhere else to turn.”

  “If only they could find faith in Christ and the love of his Church.”

  BB ignored TJ and pushed the canoe into the water. He steadied the canoe and said, “You get up front, Miranda.”

  ***

  BB paddled the canoe quietly across the lake to a weed patch he hoped might hold some yellow perch. A mallard hen with a dozen ducklings matched the speed of the canoe, marking the still water with tiny wakes, not letting BB close the distance between the canoe and her brood, but not moving with any sense of panic either.

  He shipped the paddle and let the canoe glide. It lost headway close to the weed bed, and he eased a cannon ball anchor over the side.

  “Lovely,” Miranda said.

  “God’s great wonders right here in front of us,” TJ said in a quiet voice. “I’m not given to jealousy, BB, but I might admit to a hint of envy that you live in such a wonderous place.”

  BB laughed and said, “You should visit during the winter when the lake is frozen and the snow is ass deep to a tall Indian.”

  “Every rose has its thorn,” Miranda said, “but the rose always smells as sweet.”

  “Not when it pricks you,” BB chuckled.

  ***

  An hour later, the shadows of the tall pine on the shore were reaching across the still surface of Dog Lake. BB had six nice perch on the stringer, and Miranda had at least fifty digital photos of ducks – including one bright northern shoveler that flew down the lake at about three feet off the water. “Beautiful,” she had murmured.

  TJ, binoculars on his lap, was half upright on the bottom of the boat, leaned back on a cushion propped against the center strut. A quiet snore told BB and Miranda he had gone to sleep.

  BB smiled at his childhood friend, and shook his head. “Worn out, I would guess,” he said quietly.

  Miranda nodded and mouthed silently, “Tired.”

  Something about their jointly-shared protective feelings for TJ drew the two law enforcement officers into the realm of intimacy. Both felt it, and both wished it was of more substance than only of the moment.

  The muted sound of car tires crunching gravel in BB’s driveway carried across the lake. “What’s that?” Miranda asked.

  “Looks like someone pulling into my driveway.” BB unzipped a pocket in his green safari vest and pulled out his cell phone. Bud answered on the third ring. “Bud, this is BB. Did you send someone out here? Or did you just get back?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Someone just pulled into my driveway. We aren’t at the house. We’re across the lake in my canoe, catching perch and shooting bird pictures.”

  “No. It’s not me, and I didn’t send anyone your way yet. We plan to.”

  TJ sat up and blinked. “What’s going on?”

  Miranda put her index finger across her lip in a hushing gesture.

  “Well, I’m not liking this,” BB said.

  “It can’t be the bad guys,” Bud said. “They haven’t had time to get there, and Dutch would have tipped us off.”

  “TJ has my binoculars. I’ll take a look.”

  TJ handed the ten-power field glasses to BB and raised his eyebrows in question. “Nothing to worry about, TJ. Probably just a traveling salesman … or the Watchtower people.”

  “Out here? No way.”

  BB pulled his log home into focus, just as a bearded man carrying a rifle walked out on the deck, a pair of binoculars in his hand. BB watched the man focus on the canoe. When the man set his binoculars on the top rail of BB’s deck and then slipped an elbow through the rifle sling, BB knew they were in trouble. He dropped the cell phone in the bottom of the boat, grabbed an oar and shouted, “Get down!”

  He pulled a short Gerber dagger from his boot top and slashed the anchor line. He was digging hard on the paddle before a slug slammed the water a good twenty yards short of the canoe, the slug ricocheting over the canoe between BB and TJ.

  BB turned the canoe end-on to the shore and paddled as hard as he could for the bank where a thick grove of alders sheltered a small cove. If we can get to the trees…

  The faint sound of Bud’s voice could be heard on BB’s cell phone. TJ picked it up and said, “Sheriff. This is TJ. We’re out on the lake and someone is shooting at us. BB is trying to get us to shore.”

  “Which shore?”

  “Across the lake from BB’s house.”

  “Help is on the way. You guys okay?”

  “No one’s been shot … yet.”

  Miranda’s paddle was dipping in rhythm with BB when the wooden handle exploded a split second before the sound of a rifle shot carried across the lake. Stunned, she just stared at the large splinter sticking through her left hand.

  About thirty feet from the bank, BB deliberately tipped the canoe over and hoped the water was shallow enough for them to walk to shore.

  When his feet touched bottom, he reached under the overturned canoe and pulled the Velcro straps loose from the gun case.

  “Stay low and head for the trees. Miranda go left into the trees. TJ go right. Got it?”

  TJ sputtered and thrashed in the water, more scared of drowning than of being shot. BB grabbed him by the collar of the life vest and said, “Damn, it, TJ, quit that! Put your feet down. You can reach bottom now. Stay low and crawl in behind that big alder tree over there.”

  BB pushed TJ in the direction of the shore in time to watch Miranda duck behind a small pine, dragging her daypack with her good hand. The sound of another shot followed a slug that punched a hole in BB’s canoe.