Even When You Win...

by Dave Balcom

  “They took me.”

  He looked at me for a minute and I could tell he was making a comparison in his mind, “Not the same; not even close.”

  “I agree. I can’t imagine how this feels.”

  “It feels like I want to kill somebody and get my girl back.”

  The Feds arrived and Richards and Hurst were all business. They took the two parents into separate rooms and the interviews each lasted less than ten minutes, and then they switched. Minutes later, they emerged with serious looks in place.

  “Ed,” Richards began, “I suggest you take Roxanne and Gerald home with Agent Hurst. Riley, Jim and I are going to stay here. Ed, when you get home, call all your children. You tell them what’s happening. You put them on notice that the next person who knocks on their door should be waving an FBI credential or they don’t let ’em in. You hear?”

  Ed nodded. Roxanne had Gerald and a carry bag and was ready to leave. Hurst held the door for them, then reached out to Riley and gave his arm a squeeze, “They’ll be safe with me, I promise.”

  Riley nodded, leaned in and gave Roxanne a kiss. Her tears were streaming, and his eyes were full when he turned back to us.

  As they pulled away from the trailer, a sheriff’s patrol car pulled in. I watched Richards and saw him just check his watch and nod. “Locals are here,” he said. “I’ve heard mixed reports on these guys.”

  “These two are old friends of mine,” Riley said with sarcasm dripping off every word.

  “History?” Richards asked as he watched a short, squat blonde man climb out from behind the wheel of the cruiser.

  “That’s Thomas ‘Slim’ Flynt,” Riley said. “He was in my brother Crawford’s class in high school.”

  The other deputy had red hair that disappeared as he put his Stetson on after climbing out of the other seat. “And that’s Pete “Shorty” Packard.”

  “Good guys?”

  “I haven’t seen either of them since high school; they were redneck cowboys then.”

  Richards walked out the door and down the steps. He had placed his badge wallet in the breast pocket of his blazer so his credentials hung like a press pass at a football game.

  The three of them met halfway from the front porch to the squad car. We couldn’t hear the conversation. We saw no smiles, and I picked up no hints from their body language.

  The three came up to the house, and Riley led me away from the door so that when they came in we were across the room. I sat on the couch; Riley remained standing.

  Both deputies removed their hats as they entered the room.

  “Mr. Parker,” Deputy Flynt said softly with a nod. “I’m personally very sorry this is happening to you, and the Sheriff has made it very clear to us that we’re here to aid and assist the FBI in anyway we can in recovering Marie and capturing the folks behind this.”

  He delivered his statement without any sign of pretense or irony.

  His partner then said, “Long time, Riley. I hope we can get to the bottom of this without wasting any energy on what might have happened between us years ago.”

  “I’ve only got one issue I’m worrying about right now,” Riley said without rancor.

  Richards stepped in, “Here’s what we know.

  “At about two thirty this afternoon, Marie went outside with a book in her hand. Her mother left for the store a short time after, thinking Marie had gone to her favorite spot in the backyard to read in the shade as she does quite often.

  “At a quarter to four a friend of Marie’s from the other side of town called to ask Marie to go to a movie with her later. Roxanne went to the backyard to hand the phone to Marie, but she wasn’t there. Her book was lying in the grass, but there was no other sign of her.

  “At four fifteen, an unidentified caller told Roxanne that her daughter had been taken as a ‘message to the Sweets,’ and that the only way she was going to ever come home again was if the Sweets made the right choice, and nobody was dumb enough to call the police.”

  The deputy called Slim swallowed visibly at the succinct account and looked at Riley, “So the first thing you did was call the Feds?”

  “Hardly,” Riley said. “The first thing I did was call Ed and Rita. That’s when I found out that somebody has been threatening them for weeks over the Sweepstakes; demanding they name a specific child to be the one that gets the weekly award after Ed dies...but they refuse to tell Ed which child to name.”

  “Damn,” Shorty said under his breath.

  “The FBI has been a part of this mess ever since Mr. Stanton here and his wife came here to help Ed and Rita.”

  “You some kind of private dick, Mr. Stanton?”

  “No, just a friend from high school.”

  Richards chimed in at that point, “Mr. Stanton has had some experiences that led Ed to think he could help; but Mr. Stanton’s real help was to get Ed to involve our agency.”

  “That seems to have worked out...” Slim started to say.

  “That’s of no help at all, Tom,” Riley snapped. “I’m not interested in listening to you guys engage in some pissin’ contest. I need to hear what we’re going to do to get my girl back.”

  Deputy Flynt reacted as if he’d been slapped and deserved it. “Sorry, Riley. You’re right. Agent? What can we do?”

  “This is your turf. I now believe that the perpetrators are locals. I don’t believe outsiders who came here a month or so ago could have possibly melted into the fabric here.”

  Both deputies were nodding their agreement at that logic.

  “And I also don’t believe that anyone without significant training and access to specific expertise could have pulled off the kidnapping in the St. Louis airport.”

  Deputy Packard showed his surprise at that mention, and then looked closely at me, “That was your wife! Holy shit!”

  “As I was saying,” Richards persisted, “That attack took split second timing, a knowledge of airport security – hell, they took her out of a bathroom on a gurney on a transport cart and never showed up on a security camera! I don’t think some local evil-doers figured that out using Google search.

  “There’s a real touch of professional wrong-doing in all of this. At the same time, the whole thing has a real flavor of crazy.

  “So you guys are the local police. You’ve lived here most of your lives. You have to know if somebody in this part of the world has connections that approach this level. You have to.”

  Deputy Packard was scratching his head, and finally, when his partner didn’t say anything, “Slim? Kinda sounds like your extended family, don’t it?”

  Deputy Flynt hung his head and seemed to shrink inside himself. “I don’t think even in that part of the Flynt clan there’s anyone that nuts, but I have to admit, there are some crazy fuckers in that branch of the family tree.”

  Riley sank into the couch. “No shit?”

  Richards walked to the kitchen area, grabbed a chair from the table and dragged it back into the living room. He flipped it around and sat straddle of it, his arms resting on the back, his head swiveling from the deputy to Riley, waiting.

  I hooked my leg over the arm of the couch and sat there. Packard stood with his hat in his hands, looking from one face to the other, but nobody said a word, all seemingly lost in their own thoughts.

  Finally Packard cleared his throat. “I’m gonna call the Sheriff. If we’re going to go fussin’ around the Flynts, he’s gonna wanna be a part of that.”

  Flynt looked up at him. “Use your phone; keep off the radio; there’s no security there.”

  Packard pursed his lips for a second, “You’re right. I’ll make that call. If this is a lead, and I’m not sayin’ it is, we need to keep it on the down low. I’ll be back in a few.”

  He walked out of the trailer, and Flynt just stood there, obviously shaken. “This might be real different. It just might be...”

  Chapter 46

  “Sheriff Chance thinks y’all should go over to the Sweets,” Packa
rd reported, “and he’ll meet you there in an hour or so. He’s over in Kirksville at a meetin’, but he’s gonna bust outta there right away and come see you.”

  He took a big deep breath, “The very mention of the Flynts has his antenna up,” he looked at Flynt, “as you know well, Slim.”

  En route back to the Sweet’s home, I was driving, Riley was in the back seat, and Richards was up front with me. “I’ve heard a lot about Sheriff Wild Bill Chance,” the agent said with a chuckle.

  “You don’t ever wanna call him Wild Bill to his face,” Riley said. He leaned forward, his head between us and continued, “I remember once he was giving a talk to the boys at school. It was the year we all turned sixteen and would get our drivers’ licenses. He gave that talk every year back then, and it had to do with safe drivin’ an’ all, but it was also about bein’ careful, especially with girls.

  “It wasn’t all that much different, really, from the talk I got from Ed that first year we came to live with him. Maybe not quite as direct, but it pretty much laid it all out there – you know, the dos and don’ts that come with cars, girls, and lonely country roads.

  “Well, anyway, one of the guys was bein’ a smartass and asked the sheriff a question, but he asked him as ‘Wild Bill,’ and man, that kid was real surprised.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Well, when you hear Sheriff Chance talk, you think of Boss Hawg, you know? But when you see him in person, you think of Don Knotts.”

  “You an old movie freak?” Richards asked.

  “Love ’em to death; what you get bein’ raised by Rita Sweet.”

  “So what happened to that surprised kid?”

  “Sheriff Chance grabbed that kid by the front of his shirt and lifted him right out of his chair; held him right up there eye-to-eye and said, just as plain as if he was holdin’ a letter rather than a wigglin’ teen-ager, ‘Boy, the only nickname that suits me is Last.’ And he let that kid just drop back into his seat ... ‘You got that, boy?’” he said.

  “Man, we all got that; I can promise you we did.”

  “That’s real interesting,” Richards said. “The word on him at the bureau is that he’s a bona fide crime fighter. He’s described as being the epitome of a Southern gentleman, full of grace and charm and as laid back as a farmer kickin’ tires, but we know he was a career Special Forces soldier; retired at age forty-two as a Lieutenant Colonel, came home and announced his candidacy for Sheriff.”

  “Had the paper?”

  “Yep, got his bachelor’s with two majors; law enforcement and political science. He was an ROTC grad. Enlisted and went straight to OCS... there’re a bunch of secret notations on his file.”

  “You did a lot of background in a hurry this morning,” I noted.

  “Bullshit. I ran his background day one; right after I got the call from Jensen in Bellingham. Same time I ran yours. Just standard procedure.”

  “Anything else in his file?”

  “Well, one thing you might find in common with him.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s devoted to the practice of t’ai chi.”

  Chapter 47

  Sheriff Bill Chance walked to the back yard and let himself in to the porch where we were all gathered, waiting.

  Richards jumped to his feet and approached the sheriff with an outstretched hand.

  Chance was dressed in what back in Pendleton we called “Cowboy formal.” His white Stetson was the only thing similar to the deputies’ uniforms. He wore heavily starched and pressed jeans that hung down over his spit-shined boots, and if there had been spurs on those boots I wouldn’t have been surprised. He wore a rigidly-starched white Oxford shirt; open at the neck under a high-quality blue blazer that hung off his slim and athletic frame just right. I figured him for nothing more than 5-foot-10 and 160 pounds soaking wet.

  He held that Stetson in his hand as he was introduced, but it was obvious to me that he knew the Sweets, and perhaps knew them well. Then he turned a pair of sad, brown eyes on me and nodded before saying, “Jim Stanton; you probably don’t remember me.”

  I stood up and extended my hand. “No sir, I don’t.”

  “It was a long time ago,” he said, shaking my hand. “Well, folks, I need to sit with Agents Richards and Hurst alone for a few minutes. Is there a place...”

  “Go to my room, Bill,” Ed said.

  After they were gone, I turned to Ed. “He’s been here before?”

  “Many times.”

  “He’s a member of our church,” Rita said. “He lost his wife two years ago, and he sorta fell out of the social scene, but he comes to dinner here every year right after duck season closes.”

  Ed laughed, “Man’s never shot a duck in his life, but he sure loves the way Rita roasts a mallard. He’s a good man. I voted for him when he first ran, and every time since. A no-nonsense guy.”

  “But you didn’t call him when this all started?” I asked.

  Riley joined in, “Yeah, Ed. Why not?”

  “I have all kinds of faith in Bill, but his department? I’ve heard too many stories – some of them told by the deputies themselves about people I know and care about – to even consider taking something as confidential as this threat to them.”

  Rita nodded. “That inability to keep things to themselves has cost the county real money over the years.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Law suits. Two different slander claims that held up in court; the second one, I thought, was going to cost Bill his job.”

  “Too many Flynts in that department,” Riley said from his corner. “But Sheriff Chance has weeded out as many of them as he could over time.”

  “Bill got the county to implement recognized standards for new applicants a few years back, but the supervisors grandfathered the existing staff, so fixing those problems by professionalizing the department has been slow going,” Ed concluded.

  I listened attentively, but my mind was also searching for some memory of ever meeting an Army officer working in Special Forces and practicing t’ai chi... I tried the math, and figured out that he was probably just getting into the field when I was getting out, but I couldn’t place those sad eyes anywhere.

  As one, Rita and Roxanne seemed to come to life, realizing that they had a houseful of guests and nothing ready to serve. Roxanne unceremoniously dropped Gerald into Riley’s lap, and followed her mother-in-law into the kitchen.

  We could hear them bustling around in there to the accompaniment of the clink of glasses and the rattling of pots and pans. I looked a question at Ed, but Riley answered, “As long as I can remember, way back to the first time I ever sat at her kitchen table, visitors were immediately company, and company never leaves here hungry or thirsty.”

  Ed nodded. “She does the hot chocolate; I do the scotch.”

  Both men chuckled, and then we lapsed into silence, each of us alone with our own thoughts.

  Ed broke the silence a few minutes later, “That’s the mailman.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Riley said.

  “I heard the mailbox, it squeaks a bit when it closes.”

  “Is that camera still there?” I asked.

  Ed nodded as he got up and headed to the front of the house. He came back a few moments later with a handful of mail in one hand and a single envelope in the other. “I’ve gotta show this to Bill and the agents.”

  Riley and I followed him back to his study. He carefully opened the door and stuck his head in, “We got another one.”

  “Oh, shit,” I heard Richards say.

  “Bring it in,” Hurst said. Then the door swung all the way open and she looked at Riley and his baby and me. “You two might as well come in too.”

  We stood around as she went through the process of slitting open the bottom of the envelope which was marked “The Sweets,” and then filching out the letter with her tweezers and scalpel. We all stood close to read it.

  “Pick again!

 
; “We warned you, but you didn’t believe us. Mulatto Marie is now with Mrs. Stanton and neither of them will be coming home as long as the FBI is involved. Be by your phone at nine tonight. When it rings, answer it. You won’t hear a sound; just say the name and hang up. You’ll get your answer – hear nothing and you picked right. If not? You lose another kid. Think this through.”

  Hurst turned to us, “That’s it.”

  Sheriff Chance had a lost look as he spoke, “That’s some cold shit, that is.” He turned towards Ed, “You kept this all to yourself?”

  “I’m sorry, Bill. It was no reflection on you, but...”

  “I know; our department has the reputation of leaking like a sieve. I think that’s in the past, but I don’t know if I’da done it different if I was you. No offense taken, but by God, we’re in this thing now. I’ve heard pretty much all of it from the Agents, and I have to agree with their take.” He was looking back and forth between the agents as he continued, “This is a problem born and bred in Adair County, and anything you folks need, we’re at your disposal.

  “This is one of this county’s great families... that mulatto crack? That has no place with the folks who know the Sweets or the Parkers. We’ll end this, here and for certain.”

  “What can we do?” Riley’s voice was a hoarse whisper; a plea.

  “First, Ed can you pull the camera chips?” Richards asked.

  “I don’t think it’s going to show us anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause it wasn’t at the bottom of the stack; the note that is.”

  Richards came completely out of his chair, “You mean it was in the middle of the mail?”

  “Yessir.”

  Hurst walked over to Ed’s side. “Let’s go pull the chips in any event; just like you did before. I’ll walk with you.”

  They came back a few minutes later. Ed sat at the computer, and popped the porch chip into his reader.

  “There’s that damn cat again, coming in the dark, leaving in the daylight – time stamp is five a.m.; and here’s the mailman...”

  “Can you print that?” Hurst asked from his side.

  “I’ve got some photo paper..”