by Gideon, D.
“Grams?” Thomas said, his voice high.
“He didn’t do it!” Dotty cried.
Frank gave her a look that said he’d heard that a million times before, and pulled Thomas’ wrist behind his back. “Step back please, Ms. Parker.”
“But he didn’t do it,” she said again. “I did it. I shot at a chicken thief last night. Here, in my backyard. And he shot back!”
Frank froze, looking at her with his brows raised.
“Grams, don’t-” Thomas started.
“You stay quiet, Thomas Winters,” Dotty said, shaking the paper at him. She looked back to Wilhelm. “I’m the one who shot your son, because he’s stolen three of my chickens already and he was back to steal another one!”
“You’re a liar!” Wilhelm boomed, jabbing a fat finger at her. “He was walking on the sidewalk minding his own business and you shot him out of spite!”
“If he was on the sidewalk then tell me why there’s a bullet hole in my back porch railing?” Dotty shot back. “Tell me why we found pistol casings in my backyard!”
“You were probably shooting them yourself, you crazy bitch!” Wilhelm roared. His finger was nearly touching her nose. “How dare you shoot at my son? My son?”
“Your son’s a petty thug!” Dotty said, swatting at his hand.
Frank grabbed her wrist.
“Dorothy Parker, as witnessed here, you’ve admitted to firing a shotgun at Mr. Jack Wilhelm. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Dotty said. “It wasn’t Thomas. It was me. So all of this-” she waved the paper around in her other hand-”is a simple misunderstanding. There’s no need to arrest him.”
Frank nodded, and twisted her wrist. She yelped and spun, trying to relieve the pain.
Frank pushed her up against her front wall, not overly hard but not gentle, either. He yanked her hand up high behind her back, and she felt something slip around her wrist.
“Dorothy Parker, you’re under arrest for the attempted murder of Jack Wilhelm,” Frank said. “You have the right to remain silent.”
Preacher
Preacher was feeling pretty good, physically. His legs burned, his arms burned, and the wind he made in his passing was helping to cool him off.
Mentally was another story. He hadn’t been able to run that off, yet.
He’d dug in Teddy’s back yard until his stomach threatened to start in on his spleen, and then he had run three laps around Teddy’s property before heading home. All the work had helped burn off the extra energy he’d woken up with today. Too bad it hadn’t touched the guilt.
His first clue that something was wrong was when he got within sight of Dotty’s yard and Jax, sitting at the sidewalk, saw him. She ran all the way up the street to meet him and no one called her back. She happily loped along beside him as he closed the distance, tongue lolling and tail wagging.
Maybe I should take her with me the next time I go out, he thought.
He slowed as he reached the yard, and walked all the way into the back to cool down. A quick stop by the rainwater tub to splash some liquid relief on his face gave him a second to take a measure of things.
Jax outside, no one out with her, and it seemed like everyone was inside Dotty’s house. Raised voices. They weren’t happy.
He sprinted up the back steps and held the door open for Jax. She bounded inside and he followed. In the doorway to the kitchen, Mel turned around to see him, and her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Who am I killing?”
“Grams is gone,” she said. “They came and took her.”
A feeling of red-hot lava ran down his spine.
“Who came and took her?”
Mel’s eyes widened, and she took a step back. He took a deep breath and tried to tone it down a little. “Who took her, Mel?”
“Frank and the Mayor,” Bill said, stepping into the doorway. “Maybe you should come in and sit down, David.”
“Where?”
“Come on in, and let us tell you. There’s a lot to-”
He practically growled out the question. “Where did they take her?”
“They took her to their jail,” Marco said from the porch steps behind him. He must have been in the outhouse. Preacher hadn’t even heard him get close. “They arrested her for attempted murder because she confessed to shooting the Mayor’s oldest son.”
Attempted murder? Dotty? But she didn’t…
“We’re going to get her back,” Marco said. “Father Bill is insisting that we try it his way, first. If that doesn’t work…” he trailed off. “I’ll need your help with some planning.”
Preacher’s mind was reeling, but he latched onto Marco’s words and held tight.
“A reckoning?” he asked.
Marco’s lips moved a little, and he recognized that smile. It was a killer’s smile.
“A reckoning,” Marco promised.
Preacher turned back to Bill and moved into the kitchen. The whole family was there.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
He was turning it over and over in his head, and while he knew there was nothing he could have done had he been here, he still felt a crushing boulder on his chest that had Your Fault chiseled into it.
He was supposed to be here, to protect Dotty. But instead he’d been digging dirt and running laps while she took the fall for his actions.
“The church keeps an emergency fund,” Bill was saying. “We use it to help people keep their lights on, or keep their car from being repossessed. I’ll take all of it down to the Rec Center and offer it as a bond for her release.”
“What if they won’t even talk to you, because you’re not a lawyer?” Lily asked.
Bill tapped the table as he thought. Then he snapped his fingers. “Bishop Sorenson, of the Mormon church, is a criminal lawyer. I can go talk to him. I’m sure he’d help.”
“What if they keep her?” Mel asked.
“Officer Stalls said the other day that they don’t have access to a proper jail. They’re using restrooms. So they can’t keep her long-term,” Seth said. “It’s in their best interest to give her a court date and let her come home.”
“One less mouth to feed?” Corey asked.
“That will probably figure into it too, now that the Guard’s gone,” Seth said, nodding. He leaned back against the sink. “I’ll go with you to talk to Sorenson. I did some work for him and his group.”
“We’ll go see him this afternoon then, and go to the Rec Center in the morning,” Bill said.
“The morning?” Preacher asked, then shook his head. “Get her tonight.”
Bill held up a hand. “Tempers are high right now. Let’s let them cool down a bit. Having Dotty spend the night might put them in a better mood, make them feel like they’ve won a victory. They’ll be easier to work with in the morning.”
“What about our weapons?” Ripley asked.
That was another thing eating at him. Both Thomas and Ripley had been served with something Seth called a “Red Flag Law”. He’d read the papers. That thieving piece of shit Jack had petitioned against Thomas, and Cathy had petitioned against Ripley, saying she’d witnessed Ripley pointing a pistol at Dotty and a large man last week.
He’d mentally tallied that point in his Fault column, too.
Police Chief Frank had filed an additional witness statement on both petitions, stating he’d witnessed both Ripley and Thomas being “uncooperative” with law enforcement officers, both on Teddy’s property and while serving the inventory warrants. Judge Wilhelm’s signature was on both petitions.
The officers had taken every firearm and piece of ammo out of both houses. They’d even searched both cellars, now that they knew they existed, under the guise of “making sure they hadn’t missed additional weapons in the first search.”
No weapons made the idea of having a reckoning a little more difficult. Difficult, but not impossible.
Beside him at the table, Marco was
bent over a piece of paper, drawing and labeling something. He wasn’t finished yet, but from the peeks he’d had, Preacher was pretty sure it was a diagram of a pipe bomb.
He was more of a molotov cocktail kind of guy, but if the kid wanted pipes, Preacher could get him some pipes.
Bill continued to tap the table as he thought. “I’ll ask the Bishop about those protection orders, too. He’ll probably have to look through his state law books to check the language on that, which gives us another reason to hold off until the morning. It’ll give him time to beef up on the subject, so to speak.”
“How did they get all the weapons?” Preacher said. “We burned the lists.”
Mel made a disgusted face. “They had printed pictures with the corners blacked out. Someone who was here the other day took friggin’ selfies in front of the ‘arsenals’.” That last word was made with air quotes and a distinct note derision.
Thomas stood in the corner next to the kitchen hutch, arms crossed and eyes staring a hole through the back of Preacher’s head. He hadn’t said a word since Preacher had gotten home.
Home.
Could he really call it his home, if he couldn’t even defend it and keep the people inside of it safe?
He had some making up to do, he knew that. But the sheer rage being directed his way from the elder Winters wasn’t going to end well if he had to endure it much longer.
Marco slid the paper over to him. “As many as you can get,” he muttered.
Preacher swiped the paper from the table and pushed his chair back.
“If you see the Warden, send him to me,” he said to Bill. “I’ll be at Teddy’s. Gotta burn off some steam.”
Bill nodded. “That’s probably a good idea. We should all find something constructive and labor-intensive to do. Seth, you’re with me?”
“Just let me get one of the bikes from the shed,” Seth said.
Preacher was out the back door before Bill had even made it out of his chair.
Teddy had a huge old radio in his shop with speakers on both ends, a cassette player in the middle, and a handle on the top. As if you’d actually carry this beast around. It had been plugged in, but with a little fiddling, Preacher was able to get some big-ass D batteries from the shop’s inventory and pop them in. It fired up just fine, but of course the stations were all static. He browsed through a wooden cassette rack on the wall next to the workbench.
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kiss, some old AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac, and the Eagles were some of the bands he recognized. He popped in Fleetwood Mac and started humming along as he dug through the inventory to fill Marco’s list.
The six-inch pipes were easy enough. Finding caps to fit them, and a drill bit to go through them, proved harder. He gave up on finding the kerosene lamp wicks. Although he was sure he had seen them when they were packing up the few lamps Teddy had in the shop, he had no idea where Corey and Marco had decided they should go when they were unloading. Plastic tubs of nails and nuts for shrapnel were the easiest to find. Teddy had hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of nails, screws, and the like.
Marco hadn’t said if Preacher should shred the note when he was done with it or keep it, so Preacher decided to err on the side of caution. If Marco could draw it once from memory, he could do it again. He shredded the paper and sprinkled it in a puddle in the funky oyster shell drive.
Back inside the shop, he was stuffing a canvas tote with his carefully-stacked materials, singing along with The Chain, when the music cut off.
He initially froze, then looked around. There were plenty of stacks of things to hide behind, but if he moved at all, his heavy boots would make noise across the cement floor.
And here I am without a shotgun, again, he thought. Screw it.
“Sheriff?” he called. No answer.
He folded the top of the tote closed and scooted it to the back of the pallet of standing fans he’d been using as a table. As quietly as he could, he crept to the door leading into the workshop.
Frank Stalls sat on the workbench, one foot on the floor, his arms casually crossed across his other leg. Four men, all armed, stood in the workshop with him, rifles pointed straight at Preacher.
“Why hello there,” Frank said. “We’ve been all through Teddy’s house, and the other end of this barn--thanks for the loud music, by the way--and we’ve found two interesting things.”
Preacher stayed quiet. There’d be nothing to gain by talking to these men. They’d twist anything he had to say.
“Not going to ask? Fine, I’ll tell you,” Frank said. “We found a big empty spot where our APC should be sitting, and what looks to be a rudimentary grave dug in the backyard.”
A grave? You’ve got to be kidding me, Preacher thought.
Frank waited, and when Preacher still didn’t speak, he sighed.
“I’ve seen you at Dotty Parker’s house, and you sure as shit aren’t part of her family.” He held up a hand and started ticking off his fingers. “I want to know who the hell you are, where you came from, where you took our APC, and what you did with Teddy’s body. And then, maybe, if you survive that, I’ll take you to a nice clean jail cell. But I have to warn you: my men and I are very invested in finding the whereabouts of that APC. So if you don’t cooperate, surviving might become a real issue for you.”
Simon
Sheriff Simon Kane’s day had started going to hell right around lunch time.
First, he’d fished his bag of protein bars out from under the seat and found he only had one left. He’d thought there were two more. Once he finished that up and was trying to figure out what he should do next, his old CB crackled and a scratchy voice had said “Sheriff? You still monitorin’ this thing?”
It was Fish, a long-time guard at the federal prison where he used to be Warden. Seemed a certain someone and his band of merry men had come along the night before and “commandeered” Fish’s diesel truck. It had taken Fish most of the morning to dig out his old generator and get it running, then dig out his ancient CB from the attic and get it hooked up. Simon had gone over to pick him up, and they’d started cruising the town looking for Frank.
Simon was aiming to get that truck back.
They’d been at it a while when they came upon Father Bill and Seth Miller flagging him down.
A thief had been shot at Dotty’s last night, and late this morning she’d been arrested for it. Apparently the thief was still walking free, because he was the Mayor’s son.
And boy, did that not surprise him in the least.
Bill and Seth were aiming to get Dotty back. Legally.
And now Preacher, one of his inmates, wanted to talk to him. He had a pretty good idea of what it was Preacher had in mind...and it probably wasn’t going to be legal.
Problem was, he wasn’t sure if he’d even be able to talk Preacher out of whatever he was thinking, because frankly, Simon’s thoughts were rambling down that same path. He’d gone past the line of patience with Frank Stalls’ shit days ago.
They were getting close to Teddy’s driveway when Fish held up a hand.
“Hold on, Warden. Does that door look open to you?”
Simon pulled over and looked. Both Teddy’s screen door and his inner door were hanging wide open.
“Inch it up a bit, so we can see past this tree-line,” Fish said, gesturing. Simon let the car roll forward a bit.
“Well I’ll be,” Fish said. “Found my truck.”
Teddy’s house sat a good ways back from the road, and his drive continued far past that to the big barn-shaped shop near the rear of his property. Parked right behind the house, where you couldn’t see it if you were directly out in front, was Fish’s pickup and another. If Simon had been cruising by at normal speed, he’d have missed them completely.
“You think Teddy’s okay?” Fish asked.
“Teddy’s gone on a road trip,” Simon said. “Preacher’s supposed to be in there.”
Fish’s eyebrows flew up. He looked at the house for a moment, then back to
Simon. “You think Frank’s still alive?”
Simon frowned. “Frank doesn’t go anywhere these days without armed backup.” He threw the car in reverse and pulled it back to the tree-line. “Feel like a little walk?”
The house was empty. Neither Simon nor Fish could tell if the trucks had been sitting there long; the sun beating down in a rare bit of cloudless sky foiled the classic method of “feel the hood to see if it’s warm”. But one of the doors to Teddy’s workshop was open, and they could hear some yelling going on.
His pistol was already out and at the ready, as was Fish’s. They crept up to the doorway and paused.
“Just tell us what we want to know, and this all stops. Where did you take the APC?”
Yep, that was Frank.
As if in answer, there was the sound of someone spitting, and a yelp from someone else.
“Asshole spit on me! I’ve got blood on me! You trying to give me a disease?”
Simon didn’t recognize that speaker. There was the meaty sound of a fist striking flesh, and a soft grunt.
Annnd that was about enough of that.
Simon turned around the corner and cut the left side of the room, feeling Fish hugging his side and doing the same on the right. They’d run this drill at the federal prison dozens of times; you had to stay prepared for a riot. It had been years, but the old guard slid into position like they’d just practiced it yesterday.
Simon took it all in in a heartbeat: Preacher, in an old wooden chair, hands zip-tied to the back. Black and blue face, swollen. Blood running from a cut by his eye and more from a busted lip. Frank and three men standing around him. They looked to be unarmed. A fourth man in the doorway leading to the barn’s side-wing loosely holding an AR-15 pointed at the ground.
“Police! Hands up!” Simon yelled, and all the men jumped. The one with the rifle thrust his hands in the air like that rifle was on fire, leaving it dangling by its strap. Not a professional, then. That was good. Even as pissed as he was, he wasn’t looking to kill anyone today.
