by George Wier
My left ear wasn’t so great any longer, but I heard someone cursing with my right. Someone stepped out from the right hand side and started to raise his arm, so I let go with the gun in my right. The fellow screamed and his gun clattered to the asphalt.
I continued walking.
I heard a whistle through the ringing in my left ear and then a distant pop, and realized they were shooting at me from behind, close on to a hundred yards back.
Turning, I squeezed off another one from the .44, and two distant figures dived away to the side.
I reached the end of the ally, both arms up, looking for someone to shoot, but no one was there.
There was motion to my right, thirty yards away, but whoever it was moved away from me as fast as his stubby legs could carry him. He seemed to be grasping his right arm. Hell, maybe I’d hit him. To my left there was another distant motion, someone running hell bent for leather, but he disappeared into the old and spent RVs, motorboats, and cars.
No Sheriff.
There was another pop behind me. Same old song.
I turned again and walked back up the ally.
When I got halfway back to the open storage locker, I thought I saw something ahead, and so squeezed off a shot with the shotgun. Silence came back at me in waves.
I turned my head to the blackness inside the storage compartment. “You okay in there?” I asked.
“Right as rain.”
“Okay. I’m coming back to get you in a few minutes.”
“Take your time,” Tanya said.
I nodded, not knowing whether or not she saw me.
Fifty yards down the line, he stepped fully into the ally.
It was Sheriff Paul Simon, over-sized gut, overly-small cowboy hat on his round, Charlie Brown head.
I heard a siren coming, growing in intensity, and knew who was at the wheel. Hank was coming, but it would all be over by the time he arrived.
“Hold it right there,” Sheriff Simon said.
There was too much pressure behind me, inside me. I was stopping for no man.
When I was twenty feet from him, his silhouette resolved and took on depth, dimension. I could see the gun in his hand.
I could make out his eyes.
“If you don’t drop that gun,” I said, you’re a dead man.
I took three more steps and stopped with the shotgun pointed at his face and the pistol at his ponderous belly.
“Shit,” he said. “You would do it, wouldn’t you?”
Sheriff Simon dropped his pistol.
“You’re under arrest,” I said.
“You can’t arrest me. I’m the Sheriff in this county.”
“Not anymore.”
*****
I knew for certain it was Hank at the wheel of the ambulance when it came crashing through the front gate.
When he came skidding to a stop, the gate sloughed off the front of the ambulance and rattled on the pavement. He was out the door in a flash.
“Are you wounded?” Hank yelled.
“I don’t think so.” I said. “See if the High Sheriff here has a set of handcuffs on him. If he does, use them to cuff him. He’s spending the night in his own jail.”
Hank got a little rough while finding the cuffs.
“I’ve never had to cuff anyone before,” he said. “Make sure I’m doing this right.”
“I don’t recall ever cuffing anyone either. Usually you have to lock them. Make sure he has a key on him for it. It’ll be a small one, round.”
Hank fished out Sheriff Simon’s keys and found it. When the Sheriff refused to put his hands together behind him, Hank jabbed him hard in the kidney and the man went to his knees.
“What was all that about?” Hank asked me.
“I have no idea. It was some kind of a setup all along, although I don’t know how they managed it. There had to have been some communication between Tanya and Loraine and the Sheriff before this day got going good. I don’t see how Abner could have fit into this, but the fact is that there’s a hell of a lot more going on here than meets the eye. There’s a paper sack in the storage locker back there. There’s a few million bucks in the sack. Tanya is with the money. Hold on a second.”
I holstered the .44 and rested the shotgun in the crook of my arm, then turned and called out.
“Tanya!” I shouted. “All clear.”
She emerged from the storage building slowly, looked both ways, then I called her again, “Over here. And bring the bag.”
“Just a minute.”
She ducked back inside, emerged again after a minute and came our way. As she approached, she looked like any given woman walking home from the grocery store.
“Where’s Loraine?” she asked.
“I have no idea. Maybe she’s sitting in my car. There’s been some gunplay. Surely she’s heard it.”
“She has,” I said.
Hank helped Sheriff Simon to his feet.
“I’ve got the hog all trussed up,” Hank said. “What do you want me to do with him.”
“Tell you what. We’re going back to my car, which is way out back behind this thing. There’s a dirt road over that way,” I pointed. “Pull the ambulance around to the back corner where the tall weeds are all knocked down and wait for us. Then, we’ll go together to the jail.”
“You’re not taking me back there,” Simon said. “I won’t be brought to my own jail in handcuffs, arrested like a common criminal.”
“Then we’ll treat you like an uncommon one. My friend here is a tai-kwon-do master. He can bend you into a pretzel and make you say the Pledge of Allegiance backwards if I tell him to do it.”
“Bastard,” he said, and spat.
“This way, cowboy,” Hank said, and led the big man to the ambulance.
I looked down at Tanya. She looked down at the sack, then up at me.
“Crap,” I said. “I suppose you want me to carry that.”
“If you don’t mind,” she said. “The damned thing is heavy.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When we got through the back fence and back to the car, Loraine was waiting in the back seat.
“What happened?” she asked through the open window. She had taken the liberty of rolling both windows down. She had likely heard every shot.
I opened up the back door and shined my flashlight at her.
“No,” I said. “I’m not wounded. Thanks for asking.”
“Can I have my shotgun back?” she asked.
Tanya laughed, and I followed suit.
“Does she have any more weapons on her?” I asked Tanya.
“Do I look like I have a weapon on me, Mr. Travis?”
I regarded her. She was wearing form-hugging blue jeans and a loose top. “I don’t know. You appear to me to be a resourceful woman.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Okay,” I said, “Tanya, you ride in the back with her. I’m keeping all the firearms up front.”
“Where’re we going?” Lorraine asked.
“We’re meeting with an ambulance and following it,” I said.
“To the hospital?”
“No.”
*****
Hank was waiting for us. I got out and gave him a few directions. Sheriff Simon appeared not quite comfortable in the passenger seat, but I couldn’t blame him for that.
I got back in the car, watched Hank pass us, then turn around. In order to do so, he had to pull almost into the ditch, whip back up on to the road, back very nearly back into the ditch again, then finally got it turned around. Once done, I turned back onto the dirt road and headed back to the highway, turned left and went into town.
When we got to the Sheriff’s Office, there were half a dozen deputies waiting outside. I drove around back to the jail and was stopped at the gate by a jailer. It was Amos Kepner.
“Are you ready to book somebody in, Deputy Kepner?” I asked.
“Who am I booking in? And why didn’t you tell me you were a Texa
s Ranger?”
“I was sort of off-duty at the time. All very informal. Now I’m on-duty, and I have a prisoner.”
“Where?” he asked and bent over to peer inside my car. “Mrs. Holdridge again? Or both of them?”
At that point I knew I had to make a decision. The fact of the matter was that I had no evidence that Loraine Simon had committed any crime. The decision came easy.
“Neither,” I said. “The prisoner is in the ambulance behind me.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s Paul Simon.”
“What? The Sheriff?”
“He’s not the Sheriff anymore.”
“What?” Loraine asked from the back seat.
“Shut up, Mrs. Simon,” I said, “or I’ll tell him to book you as well.”
I waited for a second objection, but since there was none forthcoming, I turned my eyes back to Amos.
“Then who’s going to be Sheriff?” Amos pressed. “We gotta have one.”
I thought about it. There was quite a bit I didn’t know. I had no idea who the Chief Deputy was, and especially whether or not he or she was any good. Then I realized that none of it mattered. I had little choice.
“If you will do as I say and book Paul Simon into this jail, I will make you the acting Sheriff.”
“Shit. This is East Texas. I’m black. You’re crazy. They would kill me.”
“This is the Twenty-First Century, Mr. Kepner. In fact, it’s decided. You’re the Sheriff of Atchison County. So I’m going to pull forward and you’re going to help me get him in a holding tank, after you fingerprint him, photograph him, and enter him in the ledger.”
“Oh shit.”
I pulled forward.
“I’ve never seen anything like that.” Tanya said.
“I think I’m looking at a dead man, is what I see,” Loraine said.
I pulled forward and Hank followed me.
I asked Tanya to keep Loraine in the car and went back and helped Hank get the Sheriff out.
We took him into the jail. There was one other jailer about, and his face blanched when he saw his boss brought in wearing handcuffs.
“Don’t say a damned word, Jimmy,” Amos told the man. “Not a damned word.”
Jimmy reached to pick up a phone, but Amos slammed the counter. “No! You stand right there, keep your hands in your pockets and your damned mouth shut, or I’m putting you in a cell.”
I looked over at Hank and he winked at me.
Amos hurriedly fingerprinted Paul Simon, the threat of another jab to his kidneys ever-present at his elbow in the body of Hank Sterling if he dared to disobey. He stood behind the line for a photograph and Hank held the card bearing his assigned jail number as Amos snapped the picture.
The whole time as this was going on, I stood there and waited for the door to open and a Sheriff’s deputy to come charging in, but this didn’t happen.
Once Amos and Hank got Simon to a cell, Hank unlocked his cuffs, got the man’s shoes and belt off of him, and gave him a complete pat-down, which disgorged keys, a second set of handcuffs, a pocket knife, and a small two-shot .380 derringer pistol strapped around his lower right leg. Satisfied, Hank shoved Simon into a cell and slammed the door shut. Amos came in behind him and locked it.
“Hank,” I said, “could you do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“Go outside to the car and bring in the ladies. Also, there’s a large paper bag with about five million in cash inside. Please bring it in.”
“Shit,” Amos said.
“You say ‘shit’ a lot,” I said.
“I know. That’s what my momma’s always telling me.”
“Amos, can you call a judge? Get him or her to come down here?”
“What judge?”
“County Judge, District Judge, Justice of the Peace. I don’t care.”
“What for?”
“To swear you in.”
“Shit,” he said, and went on a hunt for a telephone book.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There is an inevitability, what could be called an inertia, to every moment. The events of now seem to cast their shadows forward in time and one domino cascades into the next with startling velocity, or so it appears. And yet time is as it always has been—one fluid motion—because there can be no time without motion.
When Amos Kepner called the District Court Judge of Atchison County and summoned her to the County Criminal Justice Complex, the succeeding hours became a series of notes written on the fly: the Carter Police Chief Clarence Ales showed up and demanded to know what was going on and why the Sheriff was in jail. It seemed that Judge Wild had made a call to him before she climbed into her car. The Chief Deputy, a fellow named Roger Sparks—who appeared to have less ambition than he did natural wit—put in his appearance in the booking room, took one look at mine and Hank’s Texas Rangers badges, and stood leaning against the wall, wordless and with a paper-white face.
The District Attorney put in an appearance as well. His name was Harlan Jones, and I pegged him at no less than seventy years of age. He had jutting sliver-gray eyebrows and wore a three-piece navy blue suit—ever the appearance of a legal eagle, complete with gold watch chain. I wasn’t aware that anyone went to the trouble to dress that way anymore, until I found out that a murder trial had just concluded in which he had delivered a fellow unto justice by procuring a life sentence.
Before Judge Amy Wild showed up, Amos and Hank, acting in concert, had counted out the contents of the double-bagged sack of money and came up with a total. I had been off by a margin: it was four million, seven hundred and fifty-thousand dollars, all in neat bundles of a hundred thousand each, but for the last bundle, which was half the height of the others and bundled with a rubber band. All but the last one had the original minting swatch of paper around them.
I received word that the press was in the front lobby—no cameramen, just the Carter Dispatch-News reporter with a tape recorder, laptop and pad and pen, along with a couple of local Youtube video bloggers. They would all have to be dealt with, sooner or later. I told Chief Deputy Sparks to make no statement to them, but he stared at me. Back of his meaty brow I suspected that some of the flywheels had slipped their cogs and were simply spinning free.
Amos raised his right hand and took the oath of office of the Sheriff. He was temporary, until the county could hold a special election.
After the swearing-in ceremony, District Attorney Jones took me aside for a brief interview, exchanging a look with Judge Wildas he did so. I took the meaning of their silent communication to heart—the potential for judicial conflict problems down the road if Judge Wild were involved. Suddenly the gravity of it all assailed me: a small town Sheriff being removed from office in disgrace, followed by a possible trial and sentencing farther down the road in his own courthouse. But such had occurred before.
The dominoes were falling too fast to distinguish them.
“What is Paul being charged with, if you don’t mind me asking?” District Attorney Harlan Jones asked.
“The charges, if there are any, may drop. Thus far he’s hindered an ongoing investigation and he and his men took a shot at me. That’s about it, as far as I can tell. Who knows what else he’s done.”
“Really?” the old man said.
“I’ll have to think of something to tell my wife,” I found myself admitting. “She doesn’t like it when there’s gunplay.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I’m only a Special Ranger. This is not normally my line of work, but that stack of money over there,” I pointed, “which technically shouldn’t exist, along with the possible attempt on the life of a United States Senator, is why I’m here.”
“So you don’t know what the Sheriff’s role in any of this is, do you?”
“Not even close. But his speed-demon nephew assaulted a Texas Ranger, who is currently in the County Hospital.”
“Abner?”
“That’s the one.”
“Because of his skin color?”
“Possibly, yes.”
“Do you have any idea, Mr. Jones, what year this is?”
“I know full well the date, Mr. Travis. But some parts of the country are slow to change.”
“I don’t mind telling you,” I said, “that Amos was the only individual in the whole Sheriff’s Department whom to my knowledge,” I held up a finger, “one, hasn’t taken a shot at me, and two,” another finger, “has cooperated fully with us.”
Harlan Jones shook his head. “I’m fine with him myself. He’s a good lad. I’ve known his mother for her entire life. Impeccable family. Okay, we’ll see how it goes. He’s going to need all the support he can get, even if it’s only for the short haul. All right, Ranger Travis, let me know if there’s anything that you need.”
“I’ll do it.”
“And good luck with your investigation. Please conclude it quickly, before you tear this county apart.”
“I’m probably going to need the luck,” I said as turned and walked away.
Hank came around the booking counter. “Bill, that asshole back there is banging on the bars of his cell. I think he’s ready to start singing.”
“Fine. Let’s get Amos in there with us. I’ve got a lot of questions.” I noticed that Hank was sliding his cell phone into his shirt pocket. “Wait, have you spoken with Bee?”
“Just now,” he said.
“How’s Ranger Holland.”
“He’s okay. She said that he’s dressing to leave at the moment and he’s coming down here, against the wishes of the doctors.”
