Crystal Meth Cowboys

by John Knoerle

  Squad cars, their doors winged open, blocked the van. Cops, shotguns leveled, approached the van from both sides. PsychoSarge had come through.

  In his eagerness to join the takedown Wes put too much pressure on his plant foot and pitched forward, sprawling face first in the mud. A large hand grabbed the back of his belt. "It's me," said a deep somnolent voice from beneath the sea.

  Wes watched the white-dusted mud recede as an arm winched him up smoothly and set him back on his feet. Wes turned around to face Cyril Reese in street clothes, wearing his gunbelt over a pair of jeans. Reese held the cuff chain of a manacled suspect in his other hand. The young-voiced man, the one who had held Bell's feet. The man's front was also covered in mud. His eyes were glassy. Reese had blindsided him.

  "Nice collar," said Wes.

  Reese did not reply. He was regarding Wes oddly, almost as if he were impressed. "Man," said Reese, unleashing a million watt smile, sliding his almond eyes back toward the underground room. "You play to win, don't you?"

  Wes shrugged and ducked his head shyly. What could he say? The man was right.

  Chapter 22

  "I want Dr. Wog," croaked Bell as he was being wheeled into the ER. The on-duty physician, a moon-faced Asian woman who looked about eighteen, said, "What?"

  Wes helped an orderly guide the gurney through the emergency entrance to the Wislow hospital. "The Pakistani doctor, the one with the glasses."

  "Doctor Herat."

  "Yes. Call him."

  "But I'm the on duty…"

  "Call him," said Wes. Bell had been spitting blood in the van on the ride over. Reese drove. The other cops stayed behind to secure their prisoners and gather evidence. Wes had a brief satisfying encounter with PsychoSarge before climbing through the sliding side door and trying to make Bell comfortable amidst acrid beakers, jars of chemicals, test tubes and bunsen burners. He rested Bell's head on a leather satchel containing twenty freezer bags filled with white powder.

  Wes berated himself. Two tightly-clustered high caliber rounds was one too many. One round would have been enough to knock him backward. Bell sounded awful. What if he had ruptured Bell's esophagus? He knew Bell would rather be dead than unable to speak.

  The moon-faced doctor instructed the admitting clerk to call Doctor Herat. Bell looked wicked pale as Wes pushed the gurney and the orderly pulled. They stopped next to bed one in the three bed ER, the one with all the resuscitation equipment behind it. Sherri rushed in behind them, still in her gardening clothes, flip flops flapping.

  "How is he?" she asked the room, not sure who was in charge.

  "He's alive," said the doctor, examining Bell's eyes with a pen light.

  The orderly hooked his hands under Bell's armpits. Wes picked up Bell's boots. Sherri stepped up to support his middle as they counted three and shifted Bell to the bed. He landed with a groan. The duty nurse bustled in and began turning on machines. Wes decided to leave before Sherri asked him what had happened.

  "He'll be fine," said Wes to the back of her head and walked on down the hall. Twenty paces later he pushed through swinging doors and entered the general admissions reception area, the converted high school gym with the thirty foot ceiling.

  The place was almost empty. One rotund teenage girl waited in an orange plastic scoop chair, her chin on her hand, her fingernails dark purple. Wes Lyedecker's fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly as he looked around for another opponent. He had already vanquished PsychoSarge.

  Wes had surrendered the black metal .45 into evidence at Sgt. Harrick's gruff command, then described the location of the two firearms he had used in subduing Bell's kidnappers, sending the Sergeant huffing and puffing up the long dirt road to retrieve them. He tried to picture Sgt. Harrick's expression when he discovered the SKS sticking straight up.

  Chief of Police Frank Sunomoka pushed through the front door. He looked puny under the high ceiling. They met at the end of a row of plastic chairs.

  "What's his condition?"

  "He’s alive," said Wes. "He should be fine."

  The Chief started to push past. Wes blocked his path. "Sir, we have a problem that requires your immediate attention."

  The Chief backed up two steps to neutralize Lyedecker's height advantage. "What?" His eyes said that this had better be good.

  "Sir, I think…that is, we need to issue a warrantless arrest order for John Aubuchon. I have reason to believe he will flee the jurisdiction."

  "On what charge?"

  "11-379 H&S, felony manufacture of a controlled substance."

  The Chief made no move to go. Wes had captured his attention for the moment. "Sir, WPD officers seized a cargo van leaving the diatomaceous earth plant with a fully-equipped methamphetamine lab and at least twenty pounds of product. There were two rooms and a tunnel excavated beneath a shack inside the property. The main room had ventilation, running water, electricity and a concrete floor. They…"

  The Chief silenced him with an imperial gesture. He took his time before speaking. "I specifically instructed you not to pursue this investigation on your own."

  "Yes, sir." The Chief prompted Wes with his eyebrows. "I, we, did not pursue it, sir."

  Bell groaned audibly from down the hall. The Chief and Wes stopped to listen. The Chief said, "Then how did you and Bell happen to discover this lab?"

  "Well, sir, I gather Bell was walking his dogs before shift. They must've strayed onto the property. I was at Bell's house to give him a lift to work when I heard gunfire and dogs barking from behind the wall."

  The Chief looked decidedly unconvinced. "You are a probationary officer."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Telling me to order the arrest of the city's largest employer based on information developed from what is probably a tainted search."

  "Sir, I responded to an officer in distress and, at great personal risk, prevented his abduction and probable murder. My actions were fully justified under the law," said Lyedecker with some passion. "Sir, they poured concrete. No way that meth lab was there without John Aubuchon's knowledge and approval."

  The Chief looked away, examined the empty corners of the cavernous room. He closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. "And where are these drugs and paraphenalia?"

  "Officer Reese drove them to the station."

  It was Reese who came through, not PsychoSarge. Sherri had called him at home. He drove to the plant, heard muffled gunfire, followed the dog howl and radioed for backup, directing the troops to the area.

  "I'll make my decision when I see the evidence," said Chief Sunomoka and walked on.

  Wes turned to follow. He had to suck his bloody left shoe off the linoleum before peglegging after the Chief, who seemed quite intent on leaving him behind. "Sir," called Wes just before Sunomoka pushed through the swinging doors that led down the corridor to the ER. "The drug dealers were disassembling the lab. Aubuchon may already be out the door."

  The Chief winged open one of the swinging doors. Wes continued quickly. "Aubuchon knew the risks. He would have prepared for this day. He probably transferred ownership of the plant to an offshore holding company and he would definitely have a private jet on call at a nearby airport. I believe there are three within fifty miles."

  The Chief of Police turned to face Wes Lyedecker. His black eyes smiled menacingly. "How did the drug dealers know in advance that Officer Bell's dogs would wander onto the property?"

  "Uhh, well…"

  "This was a coincidence?"

  "I guess so, must've been." Wes didn't want to explain about Florence, it would expose his lie about Bell stumbling onto the lab. And Wes had plans for the Mayor-elect. "Sir, if John Aubuchon's half as smart as we both know he is he's already ten miles down the road. That's the only course of action that makes sense for him."

  The teenage girl with the purple fingernails shielded her brow from a shaft of sunlight. The Chief shifted his onyx stare from Lyedecker's face to above his shoulder. Wes turned to see a TV camera crew, led by the young
anchorwoman from the eleven o'clock news, burst through the front doors of the old gym. In the two seconds left him Wes said, "Unless John Aubuchon has acquired our co-operation."

  This remark had the desired effect. Chief Sunomoka was boiling with righteous indignation when the anchorwoman stuck a microphone in his face and the halogen light on the betacam pinned him to the back wall like a moth.

  Wes ducked into the men's room. The brown metal toilet stalls and speckled gray tile reminded him of high school. A hundred years ago and a million miles away. Wes put his left shoe in a square sink with porcelain spigots and rolled up his pants leg. The concertina wire had sliced him good. He ran hot water on a brown paper towel and pressed it to the blood still burbling from the crusted wound. It didn't hurt. He was too focused to feel pain. Wes hoped he'd lit a fire under Shitamoko, hoped he would face the camera and issue an APB for John Aubuchon, wanted for felony manufacture of a controlled substance. But hope was for homos, as his freshman football coach used to say. He needed to get back out there and force the issue.

  Wes regarded himself in the mirror as he reached for another paper towel. He looked almost rugged, face sunburned, hair and eyebrows wind blown. He pushed a lock of hair off his forehead. Definitely rugged.

  When Wes returned to the old gym he saw that Florence Jillison had joined the Chief in front of the camera. She was making a heartfelt statement with quivering lips. Wes pushed through the swinging doors and quick stepped down the corridor to the ER.

  Sherri stood back from the fray with a knuckle in her teeth. The duty nurse prepped a syringe while the young doctor watched Bell's heart monitor with a frown. The blue screen pulsed with jagged thunderbolts and the palp monitor sounded like a drum solo. Bell lay beached on the table, his t-shirt sliced open, a fat plastic tube gurgling in his mouth. His bullet-scorched extra large blue dress shirt and kevlar vest were draped over a chair in the righthand corner of the room. That explained the groan. They had to sit Bell up to remove the vest.

  "Let's get his boots off," said Wes.

  "Oh," said Sherri. They stepped up and unzipped Bell's patent leather boots. Wes moved to the righthand corner, patted down the pocket of Bell's shirt and felt the tape recorder.

  Now what? His polo shirt didn't have a breast pocket. A pants pocket wouldn't work. Wes picked up Bell's extra large dress shirt and buttoned it over his own. He edged over to the bed. Bell had a grapefruit-sized purple contusion in the middle of his chest. Wes reached out for Bell's long, pale blue hand. Bell stared up at him with a startled, far away look that Wes recognized. "The dogs are OK," said Wes, squeezing Bell's hand. "They're gonna be just fine." Bell squeezed back, weakly.

  Wes turned and walked out of the ER, past Sherri clutching Bell's boots to her breast, past a grim-faced Dr. Heart who said "What is happening?" over and over in his singsong voice.

  Wes Lyedecker was out of earshot when the moon-faced young doctor said, “He’s ready for surgery. We're just waiting on the scrub tech."

  Wes marched down the corridor and felt himself grinning. He would have to give Bell a massive ration of shit about his Boss Hogg-is-the-culprit theory. When Bell recovered, as he absolutely would. Though he ate and drank like a feudal lord and had only seen the inside of a gym on television, there was something indestructible about Bell.

  Wes tried deep breathing to calm the electric energy howling through his bones. He flexed his body from his ears to his Achilles’. It didn't help. He needed contact, a clean hit in the open field, to clear his system. Was this what an overdose of methamphetamine felt like?

  He paused at the swinging doors, wondering if the Chief had issued an APD for John Aubuchon. Not likely, not with Florence standing beside him urging caution, telling him to carefully examine all the evidence while the only living person who could implicate her fled the country at mach one. But there was someone else who knew. If Wes Lyedecker could just get his adrenals under control and conduct a skillful interrogation, Florence Jillison could implicate Florence Jillison.

  Wes plucked the cassette recorder from his breast pocket. He pushed play. Bell must have been ambushed. The thirty-minute mini-cassette was blank. Wes sighted Florence through the door window. She was still on camera. Wes adjusted the microphone input level to 8, depressed the red button, checked to make sure the tape was rolling, dropped the recorder back into his breast pocket, tucked Bell's blue dress shirt into the top of his gray flannel slacks and pushed through the swinging doors.

  Florence was wearing an apricot scarf that added a note of color to her black and white houndstooth skirt and white stand-up collar cotton blouse. She concluded her on camera statement and rushed over to Wes Lyedecker. "How is he?"

  Wes led her back through the swinging doors and ducked into a little hall off the main corridor. Florence followed. When they were safely out of sight he said, "It's touch and go.” He fingered the bullet holes in Bell's blue shirt. "He's lucky to be alive at all."

  "Oh God," said Florence, dabbing her scarf at hazel eyes bright with tears. Wes noted that her hand shook and her pupils were dilated. Florence Jillison had come to the hospital to visit his fallen partner while jacked up on speed. Which pissed Wes Lyedecker off. He kept his face blank but Florence sensed the change in him, backed up a step, looked down at her black and white spectators. Wes dispensed with all the negotiating to yes bullshit he had learned at the Academy and got down to cases. "Did you give Robert Bjornstedt a fatal overdose of methamphetamine?"

  Florence's face popped up. Her skin was flushed pink, which made her freckles dark orange. She looked shocked.

  "The reason I ask is that Robert Bjornstedt whispered something to me just before he died. Which, believe me, took quite an effort with his throat full of blood and his lungs perforated."

  Florence twisted her face away. Wes continued. "At the time I thought it was some sort of dying love call so I didn't tell anyone, didn't put it in the report. It didn't seem to have any bearing on the case." Wes advanced a step. Florence put her hands back as if to brace herself. "But now I wonder if it wasn't an accusation. He trusted you. It would have been easy for you to cook him up a little treat and offer it to him to, you know, kind of prime the pump before you jumped his bones. Perlina."

  Wes said this last word in a whisper for maximum effect. He was betting that Florence didn't know about the ether Deputy Coroner Fischer had detected in the corpse, betting she didn't know that he knew she didn't do it. She wouldn't have needed ether.

  Florence Jillison regarded Wes Lyedecker with open-mouthed horror, her face drained of color, her lips forming words she didn't speak. Wes felt his insides untangle. He had scored a clean hit in the open field.

  "No. No!," she said at last. "I wouldn't…I…I couldn't ever do such a vile thing!"

  "No? And I suppose you didn't slip a packet of crystal meth into Sherri's Brandy Alexander during your victory celebration either, as a kind of a friendly warning to Bell to back the fuck off."

  "I was furious about that when I found out! I told them I'd…" Florence clamped her mouth shut and ground her jaw. She closed her eyes, spilling hot tears down her cheeks.

  Wes leaned in. "Who is 'them', Florence? Tell me. Tell me or I’ll go stand in front of that TV camera and explain that you’re the reason Officer Bell is laying on that gurney fighting for his life.” Wes lowered his voice. He knew that eliciting information from a suspect under false pretenses did not invalidate the interrogation. Cops were not always required to tell the truth. He would and could use a secretly taped confidential conversation to nail her. "Tell me, Florence. Off the record, just between you and me."

  Florence backed up against a wall painted the color of beach sand. Whoever had the sand-colored paint concession for the City of Wislow was making a fortune, thought Wes, feeling oddly disengaged, as if he already knew what Florence was going to say which, mostly, he did.

  Florence kept her eyes closed as she talked, eyeballs darting back and forth, bulging her lids. "After I was raped and m
y fiance left me, I bummed around with eco freaks for a while, traveling the state and fucking anything that moved. I felt worthless. And, except for Bob, got treated that way. We met in a bar. I was there for a protest, 29 Palms, a toxic waste dump, something. He told me I was elegant. ‘You’re so elegant.’ I never saw any hard drugs. I had a joint so we got stoned and rode his Harley through Joshua Tree at sunset. He did a pencil sketch of me. He was a lovely man."

  Florence stopped at the sound of footfalls down the main corridor. The news crew, hunting prey. Wes took Florence by the arm and pulled her through the first door he saw. He closed the door behind them. They were inside a linen closet. "But you didn't see much future in being a biker babe so you came home and married Larry Tenace.”

  Florence started to protest, met Wes Lyedecker's hard stare, said nothing She touched her hand to her forehead and gulped air. Wes stared and waited, waited and stared

  “I'd get these phone calls out of the blue,” said Florence. “Bob, he was in town, could he see me. He had to see me. Sometimes I'd go. I never suspected drugs. I thought he was just like that."

  "What? Insatiable?"

  "Yes." Florence didn't bother to blush. Wes made a mental note to have a good laugh at himself later, at how concerned he had been that Bell's crudity would offend Ms. Jillison. "Then, a while ago, I don't know, recently, he got on this late night talking jag about how we should ride off together on his Harley, down to the tip of South America and back up to the Artic Circle and on and on and on. That was the first time I noticed tracks on his arm. I guess I promised I'd do it, ride off with him just, you know, to get the hell out of there. A few weeks later he called from the Coach House and said he'd come to collect me."

  Florence gazed up at Wes through moist eyelashes. She was into it now. Wes didn't have to say a thing. "I didn't know what to do. It was six weeks to the election, I couldn't call the police, how would that look? So I left a note for Esteban Rodriguez."