Kelton’s poncho had been removed and the contents of the backpack neatly arranged in a few rows on the dry concrete. He had a few pair of wool army socks and a few pair of Under Armor synthetic underwear. The damp ones were placed near a net bag. One each shirt and pants. A small gun cleaning kit where the rod and brushes stored in the handle. A couple of three-ounce plastic bottles and a box of baking soda. Some dog equipment including a metal bowl and a pair of rubber Kong toys. A tiny bit of food. There was clearly nothing of value to the bikers worth trading a plastic bag of cash.
“What’s in the small bottles?”
“One is bleach with a dropper for treating drinking water. The other laundry soap. He says he washes socks and underwear in the dog bowl and that the synthetics and wool dry quickly in the net bag. When the weather is better anyway,” Buck shrugged as if it made sense but not understanding why someone would live this way.
Chandler looked at Kelton’s feet. The boots seemed new in that the colors weren’t faded, and there was no fraying of the laces. However, there were creases of many miles in the leather and the tread was worn. Dull metal military dog tags were laced into each. Sheriff and Deputy stepped away a few steps and dropped their voices.
“What does he have for identification?”
“He has a current US passport and a laminated DD-214 showing an honorable discharge six weeks ago from the US Army with the rank of Captain. No driver’s license.”
“I had been thinking buyer and seller meet under deserted bridge. Seller leaves product at another location so not to be ripped off or implicated if a sting. Buyers get pissed he has no product to sell; they go to beat him, and get shot for it. How’s that play?”
Buck scratched his chin and shook his head.
“The buyer wants the product and attacking the seller doesn’t get them the product. Cold meets generally happen in a parking lot where you can have privacy to talk, but other people are around to curb violence. A deserted venue doesn’t go with that. Finally, this guy doesn’t really profile as a dealer.
What if we reverse buyer and seller?”
Chandler gave a smirk. They both already knew the answer but they worked by stating the obvious of what they knew.
“Man buys drugs from bikers, and the bikers, after stashing the cash, decide to return and take back drugs we haven’t found yet? That’s not good for business.”
“What’s the play, Boss?” Buck blinked his eyes several times as camera flashes from the nearby County Coroner gave him spots.
“Get particulars from our witnesses and give them a ride to where they want to go. I’ll secure the cash and take in Mr. Jager.”
Buck nodded and walked on. A technician was placing numbered placards by the shell casings on the ground.
“Mr. Jager, I’m going to issue you a notice to appear for late morning tomorrow to give the Commonwealth’s Attorney a chance to review preliminary reports and decide how he wants to proceed. I’ll keep your gun in the meantime. Can I give you a ride to Ed’s Truck Stop? They have a diner and motel rooms.”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you. That works for me as long as they take dogs.”
“Come on, then. I reckon Miss Doris will just have to put up with it.” Best of all, I don’t have to do overtime watching you in my holding cell, the old sheriff thought.
Across the street Baylee Ann screeched, “Well if Buck ain’t coming for Bambi. Tell me I don’t live in the South.”
“Shut it, Baylee Ann,” snarled the deputy.
CHAPTER—2
Deputy Buck Garner closed his cell phone on Doris, and got into his patrol car to speed up Virginia Route 903. His jaw clinched and his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. In minutes he reached the interchange with I-85, and turned left after the overpass to the onramp that would put him southbound. With no services, the exit didn’t rate a cloverleaf. Baylee Ann and Bambi sat together in the middle of the backseat, eyes glaring through the grill and burning up his rearview mirror. A blue sign on the interstate announced diesel, food, and lodging in five miles. There was nothing but black pastures beyond the rusty barbed-wire fences paralleling the road.
“You can drop us off at Ed’s,” stated Baylee Ann.
“I’m taking both of you to Rebel. Now shut the fuck up, you bitches.”
Baylee Ann slapped the grate making it rattle with a snarl on her face, while Bambi sunk lower in the seat. Then she crossed her arms and turned her head to stare out the window. It wasn’t just that he was taking them to where they didn’t want to go. He’d also gathered up all the marihuana.
He could see the lights of St. Albans, Virginia, the seat of Lowland County, just a mile west of the interstate. It was just a dot of a town in a sliver of a county, mainly floodplains around the Roanoke River. Hopes were high once upon a time as the interstate came through, but things never really took off. The modern rest stops at the North Carolina state line weren’t far away. It was flanked on I-85 by the big truck stops of South Hill, Virginia and the 401 interchange in North Carolina. There were no historical markers of some brave general leading his men passing through. The college bound escaped. Young men whose parents didn’t own the farms mostly worked the farms or fled to the military. Young women with no marriage prospects spread their legs at Ed’s Truck Stop and the skanks in the back were no exception. The Lowland Outlaws motorcycle gang was the only other driver of true crime for a lawman to contend with.
Buck desperately wanted to be sheriff, getting the title on his resume as it were, before the county defaulted and became absorbed by Lunen or Mecklenburg. Lazy, self-absorbed and ancient Chandler Fouche displayed no inclination of vacating the post. The county coffers were empty, fueled only by skyrocketing farm property taxes or traffic fines. However, the small family farms had been losing ground to the big corporate growers and ranchers in the Midwest for decades. There simply wasn’t much to tax. The sheriff’s office was down to just the two of them now, with personnel slots for other deputies once again unfunded in the county budget.
The county budget didn’t contain raises again either. The last one was three years ago, and it was less than 2%. He was never going to get ahead and this Rebel situation was not going to help. He twisted his lips and slapped the steering wheel, making Bambi begin to shake. Baylee Ann held her while he tried to relax himself.
He took the St. Albans’ exit, made a right at the bottom of the ramp to head west and immediately passed Ed’s Truck Stop on his left. The white cinderblock buildings were peeling paint and black with mildew and diesel soot. Flashing neon signs were missing a letter here and there, but still legible. They boasted of fuel, an all-night diner, cheap coffee, and small motel. The low-pressure sodium parking lot lights washed a handful of rigs in an orange hue. The diesel island stood deserted. Things definitely had a slow air to them.
Buck noted the parking separation of the rigs. A few were lined up side to side for the shortest possible walk to the diner’s entrance. A couple of others were parked in the back of the lot, the farthest they could get from both each other, the road, and the line of trucks close to the buildings despite the wet weather. They’d be his pick for a lizard hunt if Chandler wasn’t making him play chauffeur.
After the parking lot it was all overgrown field, with so many bushes and briars it would take a major effort to return it to pasture land. He went thru the flashing yellow light at north-south running Thigpen Road and less than a half mile later he drove among the tired brown brick buildings of downtown with cracking sidewalks, and faded street paint. There were the usual small businesses one sees in a small town: barbershop, bank, cafés, hardware and general merchandisers. A handful of small houses on tiny lots, one of which was Dixie’s, mixed in-between. And then, on the right, was the sheriff’s office.
It was the last building before the county parking lot and town park, or courthouse square, ended in Lowland Road. In the greenspace stood a bronze civil war soldier standing sentry over a marble tablet listing local casualties am
ongst the groomed trees; they didn’t have a cannon barrel. The north side of the square was bordered by the clinic and rescue squad. Across Lowland Road to the west of the park were the county offices, courthouse and church backing up to the rail road tracks. The Norfolk Southern ran six trains a day and never had reason to stop here. Buck took a left at the stop sign.
Rebel’s place was three miles south of town on Lowland Road, a junky garage backing up to those same rails. The guy had only been a year ahead of him in high school, and Buck knew his dad was the old drunk haunting the courthouse square, crippled from when a jack slipped and a tractor crushed his hips. Rebel had taken over the business but had been more into cars than tractors and not into cleanup at all. A scattering of scrub trees relentlessly grew up through the twisted rusty hulks, and Buck wondered if someday the derelicts would be grown from the ground.
Among the cracked shells of Fords and Chevy’s surrounded by last year’s pokeberry weeds, mounds of rusty dented mufflers and rotting tires, and the smears of oil and battery acid was the Gray Ghost herself. Once upon a time it had been a production Dodge Charger before embarking on a career as the local dirt track king. The crowd had roared but the cash prize of production classes didn’t cover expenses and no one in this town had money to sponsor. A decade had gone by since her engine had last revved, and the car-hauler trailer upon which she rode had sunk nearly to the axels in the dirt. The faded confederate battle flag and red “4” were hard to read under the layers of pollen despite his high-beams. A savage bend in the frame ensured she would never be sold for anything but scrap, even if Rebel Tarwick had such inclination.
Buck quickly toggled the siren, setting off various hounds a quarter mile around. He was about to do it again, when he saw the light come on in the greasy shop window. He hit the door release for the backseat instead. Waste oil burned for heat fouled the air that would have otherwise been fresh from spring rain on cedar trees.
Baylee Ann followed Bambi out the passenger side without saying a word. She slammed the door hard and hurried down the dark washed out gravel drive before he had the presence of mind to get out and backhand her. The stilettos gave way in the soft ground and she fell. He floored the accelerator; red clay mud from the churning tires pelting her face, but it wasn’t fast enough to race him away from school days.
He’d been a senior when he first noticed the two freshmen girls. The little blond was so precious and innocent. Mouthy Baylee Ann kept getting in his way though, and he’d had no money to buy them nice things like the long-haul truckers. Now, nearly a decade and a half later, he resented having anything to do with them. Buck still wasn’t sure how Doris managed to divert Dixie from a similar fate. The thought of Dixie gave him a longing, and he began to drive back toward downtown and her little house. It would give Rebel a chance to cool down over the money before they talked.
Dixie peered into the oval mirror and finished rubbing the cotton ball around her eyes, carefully removing the mascara. Next in her bedtime ritual was the moisturizer, cold upon her fingers, followed by the whitening toothpaste to fight the nicotine stains. She didn’t really like to smoke, but Dixie felt staying thin would keep her desirable. Still, the only men who had tried to put a ring on her finger were had-been jocks, dumb fat rednecks, or wore grease-stained blue shirts. Secretly she hoped someone would return from college to visit their parents, they would meet, and she would be whisked away out of here. Realistically though, at twenty-six, Dixie knew she desperately needed another life plan or rapidly be condemned to small town poverty.
A soft knock at the door interrupted her routine and scarlet flushed her cheeks under the silky cream. She wore only the robe of white terrycloth, the chipped nail varnish on her pale toes in full display. Dixie was in no mood for unannounced visitors, but the small house only took a few steps to look through the peephole. Deputy Garner stood on her stoop.
Her mother was always coldly polite to him, but in private was quick to list his shortcomings. When young that would have driven her into his arms, but she seemed to see more eye to eye with mother every year. Sure, she had slept with him a few times in the six months they’d been casually dating. But her attitude toward that was more akin to the unsatisfying chore of changing a car’s oil to keep it running.
“Come on, Dixie. Open up,” he said.
She did open the door a crack, firm against the unyielding chain, and glowered from around its edge. Her eyes fell upon the rusting wrought iron fence he’d promised a couple of months ago to tend to.
“Let me in, Sweetie,” he smiled.
“I’m not accepting visitors, announced or otherwise. Please go away,” she said firmly, but softly. There was no reason to make a scene with the neighbors.
Buck scratched the side of his jaw and his shoulders sagged forward. Then eyes came up to meet hers.
“I just wanted to invite you to an early lunch tomorrow before my shift starts. Say 11:00 at Suzanne’s? I think you like their coffee and sandwiches.”
The corners of Dixie’s mouth turned tense and down, but then softened. She did like their sandwiches and the white linen table cloths. She’d get a respectable public date, without having to fulfill any expectations after.
“Then I will see you there,” she said coolly and closed the door. With a quick twist of her hand, the heavy deadbolt slammed into the frame.
Buck rapidly turned to trot down the chipped and worn brick steps and began rubbing his temples as soon as he turned on the sidewalk toward his patrol car. His loins ached in frustration, but his mind was already racing ahead to calling Rebel. If there was going to be an opportunity it would be late morning, but first that man would have to get his cool back and Baylee Ann’s bigmouthed disposition wouldn’t help. The patrol car started easily and in a quick mile he was past the yellow flasher at Thigpen and making a right into Ed’s, its lights glowing lonely by the busy interstate overpass.
He immediately scanned for the young man with the dog upon coming in the door, but only drivers rested at tables taking their time with coffee and newspapers. Doris was working the counter. He grabbed a stool whose red vinyl upholstery was repaired with silver duct tape. She wondered over with a steaming pot and poured without a word.
“What do you think?” he asked without looking up at her.
“What’s Rebel have to say?” Doris replied. She never took her eyes from the coffee cup.
“I haven’t called him yet, but he knows. I took Baylee Ann to him for that.”
She considered, panning the room.
“I think we best lay low. Slow down purchases. There will be an intensive investigation with the shooting and we don’t want to raise any additional red flags when there’s lots of poking around going on.”
“What’s your take on the shooter?” asked Buck. He knew she had a really good eye for sizing up people.
Doris shrugged, “A real polite young man. Looks homeless with a dog at first glance, but if you take the time to look you know there’s more to him. He’s well-spoken and well-kept despite living on the road. You’ve looked in the eyes of homeless men before. They’re dull and distant without any glint of hope. One look in his eyes and you know that not only is a lot going on up there, there’s a relaxed confidence that he is exactly where he wants to be. He’s not one to trifle with.”
“The sooner he wanders up the road the better off we will be,” agreed Buck.
He finally took a sip of the black coffee. There was the scorched aftertaste of a pot that spent many long hours on constant duty.
Buck shook his head softly, “But I don’t think it’s going to go down that way. There will be questioning that will keep him around. And before they are done with him and send him and his mutt packing, Rebel will want the money. I sure as hell want my share.”
Doris cold stared him down, her glare the product of thirty years of low-life interstate travelers.
“If you let anything happen to my Dixie, I mean just a chipped nail, I will drag you down in t
hat pit of hell even if I have to fall down into it with you to do it. You understand me?”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’ll get her out of the way. Now bring me the phone.”
He tried to act confident and in control, but Rebel Tarwick wasn’t someone anyone controlled nor was Doris someone you fooled with an act.
Doris handed it over, the traditional tan keypad supporting the handset on top, with an extra-long and twisted coil cord greasy from being repeatedly dragged across the diner floor. The buttons still made the headset beep as he dialed. The answer came on the ninth ring.
“What?” came Rebel’s gruff voice, his breaths coming quick and heavy.
Buck thought he could hear whimpering in the background and looked up at Doris. Her beady gray eyes held him over the tops of her steel wire reading glasses, offering no respite.
“You’ve got a chance to get the money back. The evidence safe in Chandler’s office is a piece of crap. He’ll be at Ed’s questioning our suspect in the morning. I’m not back on duty till noon and I’m taking Dixie to an early lunch. No one will be there. The alley entrance will be unlocked.”
“I’ll tell ‘em was you who told me where the safe was.”
Buck ignored the leverage. It was simply Rebel’s way of communicating that they were in this together. They all were, he thought, as he winked at Doris. Her face didn’t soften.
“Try not to make a big mess. He won’t want to report it missing or a break-in or anything.”
The line went dead. He smiled briefly at her as he replaced the headset. She took back the phone and walked her coffee pot to a trucker at the other end of the counter without saying another word to him.
The deputy wiped his sweaty palms along the stripes of his trousers and turned toward the door, leaving the half-empty coffee cup behind. He drove out of the parking lot to a cluster of trees near the exit-ramp shoulder. Buck didn’t bother to turn on the radar gun. There were a lot of things that could go wrong tomorrow and he wanted the rest of his shift to ponder them.
K-9 Outlaw: A Kelton Jager Adventure Book 1 Page 2
