Outside the Law

by Phillip Thompson

  He nodded. “Dumbass is right.”

  “Yeah, well then he pulls a piece—revolver—and cranks off of a couple of rounds as we’re getting out of our vehicles,” John said. “He empties the cylinder—and now he wants to talk. I want to shoot him just on general principle.”

  He looked at Deputy Moore, whose expression indicated he did not approve of talk about shooting a suspect, principles or not.

  He put his back against the trunk and stretched out his legs. “OK, so now what?”

  “Well, now he’s talking shit.”

  “He’s got to do something. He’s out of ammo.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” John said.

  “What’s this guy’s name?”

  Deputy Moore perked up. “Calvin Bibb, sir.”

  John grinned down at the Glock in his hands. Colt caught it, gave John a look. “Thanks, Moore. All right, I’ll see what Calvin Bibb has to say.”

  John shifted, already working into position to cover him. “Watch it, Colt. He’s been talking crazy, and not just from this goddamn heat.”

  He raised to a squat. “Aren’t most bank robbers crazy anyway?” He stood and yelled over the car. “Mr. Bibb! Calvin Bibb! This here is Sheriff Colt Harper. Thought I might have a word.”

  “Sheriff, got dam it, I done tole them deputies I ain’t going in without a fight!”

  He looked down at John and Moore. Both nodded.

  “You didn’t tell me that,” he said to John.

  “Sorry, boss,” John said as Moore looked on, horror-stricken. “Musta got caught up in all the excitement.”

  He sighed. Sometimes this job is a pain in the ass.

  “Calvin,” he called out. “I understand you’re a little bit upset at the moment. But you know I have to take you in. You robbed a bank and, besides just being plain against the law, it’s a federal offense, too. And there’s three of us, one of you, and you’re out of bullets, I believe.”

  Silence. Humidity bore down on him; highway glare hurt his eyes. Staring at Bibb’s car, he said, “John.”

  “Gotcha, boss.”

  “Mr. Bibb,” he said to the Honda, “I’m going to take that as you agreeing with me. I’m coming up there so you and I can talk like civilized folk without all this yelling in this heat, you hear? I am armed, and I will not hesitate to shoot you if you try anything, you hear me?”

  Silence from the car. His anger flashed. He drew his .45 and marched toward the Honda.

  Bibb popped up from behind the driver’s door and into his front sights. He was older than Colt had reckoned, at about fifty or so. Short with short salt-and-pepper hair that looked like it hadn’t been combed in at least a month. His mouth worked furiously, but no words came out. His nose and eyes were too big for his face, making the workings of his mouth even more comical. He froze at the sight of the .45.

  “Calvin,” he said, still walking with the pistol leveled, “show me your hands. Right now.”

  Something in Bibb snapped. He jumped two feet straight up and screeched, a caterwauling so piercing it actually scared him. He stopped, momentarily stunned, his brain scarcely registering the gas can in Bibb’s right hand. It hurtled toward him, tumbling through the air. On reflex, he adjusted and fired. The round tore through the metal and howled off into the thick air. The can landed two feet in front of him and rattled to a stop in the gravel.

  Bibb bolted across the pavement and down the steep shoulder, short legs bearing him away as fast they could. Still stunned, he stared in something nearing amazement. Then his senses returned.

  “Well, shit,” he said. “John, I’m going after him.” He didn’t hear the reply. He holstered his pistol and took off after Bibb.

  For all his dramatics, the short man hadn’t gotten very far. He closed the distance to Bibb across the pasture, forgetting he was an officer of the law, or being watched by two of his employees. He broke like a wide receiver down the sideline, head down, arms and legs pumping, going deep, outrunning his coverage until he was five yards from Bibb, who wheezed and made a strange mewling sound as he ran out of steam.

  He launched himself and laid into Bibb with a shoulder, hitting him like a linebacker with a clean shot at the quarterback. The smaller man collapsed like a cardboard box, hit the grass hard, face-first.

  He was on Bibb a second later, pushing his face farther into the dirt as he snatched Bibb’s wrists and cuffed him. Read him his rights with sweat and grit dripping off his nose and chin onto the back of Bibb’s head.

  John and Moore appeared, weapons drawn on either side of the prone Bibb. He pushed himself to his feet and looked at his deputies, shook his head.

  “You ain’t going to believe this shit,” John said between breaths.

  “Try me,” he said.

  John grinned over the top of his pistol, still pointed at Bibb. “We found the money in the backseat.”

  He laughed. Had to. “All of it?”

  John nodded. “Every dime. Well, minus gas money. Six hundred and ninety-five dollars.”

  “But he ran out of gas,” he said. He shook his head and reached over, snatched a snuffling Bibb to his feet and pushed him toward the highway. “Calvin,” he said, “I swear to God, you must be the dumbest bank robber I ever met.”

  Driving back to the office, he recalled his earlier sense of unrest, the day John arrested Cheryl Brinks, the mountain of campaign materials in his office, and now a murder.

  He didn’t want the job anymore. The realization surprised him and didn’t, all at the same time, like slowly but certainly understanding there is no Santa Claus. He didn’t know what he wanted yet, but it wasn’t this. Arresting drunk women at convenience stores, chasing idiot bank robbers through cow fields, and dealing with murder victims. Or trying to justify to the public why his deputy shot somebody during a robbery.

  He was still fondling this new yet familiar realization in his mind as he walked through the office doors and Becky stood. He kept walking toward his door.

  She followed him into his office. “Colt,” she said as he rounded his desk. “Freddie Mac called and said he was finished with the autopsy on that guy y’all pulled out of the river. Said to give him a call; he had some information you might want to take note of.”

  He sat and shot her a glance. “He said that—‘information I want to take note of’?”

  “Exact words,” she said. “I wrote it down. Want to see?” She shoved the sticky note at him.

  He waved her off. “No, no, I’ll give him a call. Tell John to come on in when he gets back.”

  “Will do,” she said. “We can talk about your campaign later.”

  “Yeah, a lot later.”

  “Don’t be that way with me, Colt. You know I’m not going to forget.”

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Believe me, Becky, I know you won’t forget.”

  She spun on her heel and strode out of his office. He picked up the phone receiver and punched in Freddie Mac’s number.

  “What you got, Freddie?” he said when the coroner came on the line. He opened a drawer and rummaged for a pen.

  “Well, it’s a homicide, of course,” Freddie Mac said. “But you knew that already. You remember, I thought it was a little weird there was no exit wound? Did the autopsy, now I know why.”

  He drummed his fingers on the desk. Sometimes County Coroner Freddie Mac Baldwin could be a royal pain in the ass with all the dramatics of his job, which weren’t very much, but he really liked to make the most out of them.

  “Well?” he said.

  Freddie Mac chuckled. “Your victim didn’t have any exit wounds because he was killed with two rounds of nine-mil snake shot to the heart.”

  He grunted and wrote “Snake shot?” on a notepad. “Kinda strange way to do it,” he said.

  “I thought so,” Freddie Mac said. “I’ll leave motive and whatnot to you law enforcement boys, though. Looks like he’d been in the water three, four days, like I thought, and was most likely dead be
fore entering the water.”

  “Hmmmm,” he said. “Snake shot makes getting a ballistics match impossible.”

  “Yes, I s’pose it does,” Freddie Mac said. “Like I said, that’s law enforcement stuff.”

  “Thanks, Freddie Mac.”

  “Anytime, Colt.”

  He hung up and stared out the window, trying to discern a reason for Robert Pritchard’s demise. The sound of John’s footsteps crossing the hardwood floor broke his reverie.

  “You rang, boss?”

  He swiveled his chair to face John, who stood with several sheets of paper in one hand. “Yeah, you got something on our vic?”

  “Was working on it before we got the call on our bank robber.” He held up the papers. “Pritchard has—had—two priors for possession and a DUI. First possession was for weed six years ago. That was simple possession. About four years ago, he got busted for possession with intent to distribute—oxy—but that got pled down by your favorite public defender to simple possession.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, Gideon’s a silly bastard, but he knows his way around a courtroom.” He told John what Freddie Mac passed along about the gunshot wounds.

  “So what are you thinking?” John asked.

  He stood and walked to the window and gazed at the cemetery across the street. “My gut says it was a hit. Shot like that, most likely somewhere else, then tossed in the current to float away from the scene. But what I can’t figure out is why somebody would waste time on a low-level nobody like Pritchard.”

  “Dunno,” John said. “If it was a hit, maybe he just pissed off the wrong supplier. Or dopehead.”

  He turned to face John. “Yeah, maybe. The other thing I can’t quite figure out is why his name seems familiar to me. Hand me that file.”

  John handed it over, and he flipped through the pages until he found the arrest sheets. He stopped on one page that held a statement Pritchard had given.

  Well, what do you know about that?

  He looked up at John. “I’m going to read through this. Let’s nail this down as fast as possible. I can already see the headline the paper’s going to run on this one.”

  “You got it, boss,” John said, then walked back to his desk.

  He leaned against the window, studying the aged stones below. Whatever Pritchard did, it earned him a gruesome death. He sat at his desk and read through the statement Pritchard had given after his second arrest, the one for distribution. It was a fanciful tale, full of the usual bullshit of “it was my grandmother’s prescriptions” and “I had no idea those pills were in my car” and other usual lame-ass excuses. But Pritchard must have either been scared, stupid, or a real asshole. Or all three. He had no problem naming names, and one of those names was Jim Burton.

  Jimmy, you lying little shit. I could run your ass back to Parchman before the sun comes up.

  Rick Munny was the other name. He’d heard rumors ever since he’d gotten elected that Munny sold dope all over the county. That rumor was reinforced in the statement he read now and further confirmed by the comments made by the arresting officer, a Deputy Armstrong who left the office with the old sheriff. Armstrong noted that Munny was suspected of selling oxy for the McNairy Mob, that half-baked bunch of rednecks who fancied themselves a crime syndicate. Armstrong cited several other “unverified witness accounts” as to Munny’s role as dealer.

  He closed the file, turned to his keyboard, and tapped in Munny’s name in the database. Sure enough, there he was: name, photo, address, rap sheet. Former navy, gunner’s mate. Living in the county for ten years. Arrests for drunk and disorderly, public intoxication, speeding tickets.

  Doesn’t sound like a redneck mob dealer.

  He wrote the address down and exited the database.

  He walked through the office, past the dispatch desk. “Becky, I’ll be back,” he said to the top of her head.

  Ten minutes later, he knocked on Rick Munny’s apartment door. When it opened, Munny’s eyes went wide at the sight of his badge.

  “Mr. Munny?” he said. Smiled.

  Munny recovered and narrowed eyes. “Yeah, that’s me. What seems to be the problem?”

  “You mind if I come in, Mr. Munny? I just need to have a word.”

  Munny’s demeanor changed, and he knew this conversation was not going to go well. “I don’t mind at all, Sheriff, as long as you got a warrant.”

  “I don’t need a warrant, Mr. Munny, to have a conversation.”

  “’Bout what?”

  “Fella name of Robert Pritchard.”

  Munny shrugged. “Sorry. Don’t know him.”

  “Really. Seems you knew him at one time. Enough to be named as a ‘known associate’ of his about four years back when he got popped for possession with intent to distribute.”

  “What?” Munny said. He smiled and shook his head. “Nope, not me. You ought to talk to him about that and let him know he’s got his facts wrong.”

  “Well, normally I’d do that, but seeing as he’s laying on a table in the morgue with a bullet hole in him, he ain’t saying much.”

  Munny’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Deader’n shit.”

  “That’s too bad, Sheriff,” Munny said. “Really is. But I don’t know nothing about that or anybody named Pritchard.”

  He heard another person in the apartment. Over Munny’s shoulder he saw a woman limp through the living room. She was wearing very short shorts, with a knee brace on her left knee.

  “Hey, Rick, who’s that?” she said.

  Munny cut his eyes over his shoulder. “Don’t you pay no mind,” he said. “I’ll be in there in a minute.”

  “Aw, come on, Rick,” the woman said as she hobbled toward the door. But then she caught a glimpse of the badge on his shirt and stopped. “Oh,” she said. She turned and disappeared down the hall.

  “That looks like a bad knee she’s got there,” he said. “She all right?”

  Munny frowned again. “Ah, she’s all right. She, uh, fell not long ago. Busted her knee up is all.”

  “Fell, huh?”

  “Yeah, she’s clumsy.”

  “You know, Mr. Munny, I wonder if we have a domestic abuse situation here. I mean, I wouldn’t know of course until I searched the premises and interviewed the lady there. Normally, I’d need a warrant, but if I decide what I’ve observed constitutes probable cause, I could do that right now.”

  Munny stared at him for a solid twenty seconds, then stepped out onto the walkway and clicked the door shut behind him. “Look, all right, I knew Pritchard. I mean we weren’t drinking buddies or anything, but I knew him.”

  “Through your drug dealer network, that it?”

  Munny exhaled and shook his head. “I, uh, knew he sold pills, yeah. And what I heard was he got ripped off not too long ago, but I don’t know jack shit about him getting killed.”

  “Ripped off? By who?”

  “Hell if I know. But the rumor going around—the one I heard—is that some asshole wearing some kind of Halloween mask did it. Crazy little shit.”

  He watched Munny’s eyes dart back and forth. “But just ripped off? Not killed.”

  “Nope. I heard ripped off.”

  “You hear about any other dealers being robbed?”

  “Uh, no,” Munny said. Eyes darting again. “Just him. But, hey, you know how folks talk, right? Who knows if it’s even true?”

  “Oh, I know all about how folks talk. That’s how your name always seems to come up when people start talking about dope dealers in this county. I was you, Mr. Munny, I’d start being careful. You never know who might be watching your ass.”

  Munny nodded. “You right about that.”

  “All right, then,” he said. “I appreciate the conversation. You stay out of trouble, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir.” He eased the door open and disappeared inside.

  He walked to his car, and called John on his cell. “Hey, start squeezing the snitches,” he said whe
n John answered. “I think there’s somebody running around robbing some of the dealers in the county.”

  “Really? What makes you think that?”

  He filled John in on his conversation with Munny.

  “So,” John said, “you think Munny is lying?”

  “He’s lying about something. Maybe he got robbed, too. Or maybe he robbed Pritchard and killed him.”

  “I’m on it,” John said.

  MOLLY

  For the fifth time in twenty minutes, Special Agent Molly McDonough reminded herself to put in for a transfer as soon as possible.

  She sat scowling at her computer in her cubicle at the end of one of three rows on the floor. Her location put her adjacent to the main aisle on the floor and at an angle to the break room, which allowed her to hear the goings-on in there. At the moment, the goings-on consisted of three male agents discussing a particularly festive weekend in downtown Memphis, the city six floors below them.

  She focused on the spreadsheet on her screen. It was her own creation from a year ago. She had taken the bureau’s Bomb Arson Database, known in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as BATS, and tailored it specifically for the state of Tennessee by rewriting and adding code. She had included several entries that were based on her own experience as a field agent and that were specific to the state of Tennessee. It had taken her six months to convince her bosses that it was both legal and worthwhile. It paid off within two months of her introducing it to the Tennessee field offices and the state’s own bureau of investigation. After three meth labs blew up in the hills of East Tennessee over a six-week period—all of which had initially been ruled as cases of meth cookers not knowing what they were doing—she’d gone to work.

  Turned out a rural drug lord was eliminating all his competition by hiring ex-military men with explosives experience to blow the labs up in a way that would seem like an accident. It almost worked. But Semtex is easy to spot, if you know what to look for and you have the resources to do so. She’d been able to home in on the drug dealer within two months, which, in her estimation was too long, but the best she could hope for, since she had to coordinate with the fucking DEA, which was nothing but a pain in the ass.