Hard Rider

by Lydia Pax

  “After the party. Said he had evidence. Said…couldn’t use it. Got it the wrong way. Shame to…to let it go. That no one would say…nothing if Ram wound up dead.”

  Theo drifted now, eyes still half-open, but there was nothing inside. He drifted in a painless near-sleep, no longer present in the world.

  So that’s how it was.

  It wasn’t enough for her father to disapprove of her coupling with Ram, wasn’t enough for him to simply want his family to be “back the way it always was.”

  Her father was willing to lie to his own men to get his own murderous way.

  And what was that about evidence he couldn’t use? Why would he have evidence he couldn’t use that Ram was there? June trusted Ram, and if he said that none of the Wrecking Crew killed the cop, that meant they didn’t, as far as she was concerned. Some doubt still niggled at her, but she wanted to follow that thread where it led.

  She made two assumptions, realizing that both might be fallacious.

  The first was that Sheriff Colt did have some evidence of who killed the cop at The Hammerin’ Nail. It wasn’t that far of a stretch; her father had been in professional law enforcement for more than thirty years, and unfortunate though it was, being required to pick apart the pieces of a gang shootout wasn’t exactly uncommon.

  The second assumption she made was neither Ram nor the rest of the Wrecking Crew did it. She knew he was there—and she knew the Black Flags were there. That left either police friendly fire or the Black Flags who killed the cop.

  If it were the police, would her father blame the Wrecking Crew to save the face of her department? By why only the Wrecking Crew, and not the Black Flags? And what evidence would there be that he couldn’t use? In fact, if it were the police, the autopsy report would show it almost immediately—and that got released to the public.

  So, it had to be a Black Flag, but why would her father not say so? Why would he protect them?

  How many pots did he have his finger in?

  Chapter 38

  “How is he, doc?”

  Sheriff Colt had an imposing presence and for once, thought June, it was rather useful for him. Normally, it took ages to ever get responses or information from a doctor. But since all the doctors knew the Sheriff—and were, therefore, as law-abiding people, rather scared of him—they kept him current on any happenings with Theo.

  She had veered out of Theo’s room to get a cup of coffee, and stalked now in the hallway just outside his door, waiting to build up the emotional reserves she needed to be around her father. No doubt he somehow wanted to blame her for this.

  There were chairs sitting in short rows in the middle of the room bordered by tall plants.

  The doctor flipped through his chart, examining it closely. He was tall and thin, his coat hanging loosely on his shoulders like the clothes on a scarecrow or badly formed mannequin.

  “I won’t lie to you, Sheriff. He’s still a bit touch-and-go,” said the doctor. “It’s not looking great. His ribs punctured some of his internal organs when they were broken. Anything could happen at this point.”

  “What are his chances, then? Will you tell me that?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Fifty-fifty, maybe? At best.” Loud beeps and alarms began to blare from Theo’s room, and a nurse rushed out.

  “Doctor, we need you in here.”

  He nodded and waved at the Sheriff. “We’ll keep you updated.”

  Sheriff Colt walked to the other end of the lobby and kicked the trash can down the hall.

  “Goddammit.” He shook his head. “Those sons-of-bitches. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe they’d do this to me now.”

  June had a lot to say about that particular choice of words, but she was cut off by the sudden arrival of David Prince through the dinging elevator. He wore a silver suit, sharp cuff links attending his sleeves and a neat pin across the front of his tie.

  He stood across from Colt, one hand at his sternum, drawing himself up. “How is he?”

  “Doctor doesn’t know. Says maybe he lives, maybe he dies. It’s in the air.”

  “If he lives, will you arrest him?”

  “Arrest him?” Colt laughed. “He’s the one who was assaulted. First by Mikhail, god rest his soul, and then by that clown Ram.” He jerked his head to Theo’s room. “He’s the victim in all of this.”

  “I expect you will be doing a tox-screen? That you already took his blood alcohol level?”

  “I don’t know that they had enough blood in him to do that, but—”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child, John. I don’t like it. We both know he was drunk and in places that he shouldn’t have been. It’s horrible what’s happened to him, and far too much of a punishment. But as an officer of the law, he bears a responsibility to present himself as a straight and sober individual when in his uniform.”

  “He’s been through enough, Mayor. Don’t you think?” They looked at each other, neither wavering. Eventually Colt turned to one side, wiping the leather of his face. “We can let him off the hook for now. See what the public says.”

  “They won’t like it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we see how much they don’t like it?” Colt pulled his hat off and swung it off, dusting it on his hip. “There’s that election not far off. You could swing this sort of assault into another stay in office. If you try and turn the crowd against some hero cop…” he put a hand on the wall, leaning. He held himself with great satisfaction. “I don’t know how that would fly with voters.”

  Prince turned from him and thought, calculating. His anger had left him, and he became a figure of contemplation.

  “How did this all start?” Prince asked. “Who can we blame? We must blame someone. Someone specific. If we go after the whole of the Wrecking Crew, the town won’t like it. A lot of them admire those outlaws.”

  Colt, apparently ready for this, pounced on the Mayor’s indecisiveness. “I’ve got just the man. You see, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for Ram Maddox.”

  “That’s Hugh Maddox’s son? The son of their leader?”

  “You got it right. We take him out…it’s a done deal. Two members gone like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. These gangs, they need a lot of time to recover from big blows taking out their established people. Maybe they won’t, even. Takes them a long time to bring in new strikers and patch holders. Years, most times.”

  There was a water cooler against one wall. Prince walked over to it and retrieved a cup of water. He drank it and made himself another, and then returned to Colt.

  “We put out an APB for this Maddox kid, is that the idea?”

  “Any heat that we can. He’ll get the idea and stay out of town. Or hell, maybe we’ll catch him. I’ll throw away the key if we do.”

  Prince’s foot tapped impatiently. “How did you not pick him up already? Didn’t he do this to your deputy?”

  “He was gone when my men arrived. Spirited away, probably, by his own men.”

  Her father was awful, but he wasn’t stupid. That was exactly what had happened. They had taken Ram’s bike too.

  “Wasn’t he with your daughter the other night at the party? Engaged, weren’t they?”

  “Yes.” Colt’s voice was angry now. “She doesn’t know what’s good for her. I thought I raised her right, but apparently she’ll sleep with anyone. This is as much her fault as it is his, pulling her in like she did. God knows what’s she’s got in that head of hers. I didn’t think I raised a tramp, but there it is. It doesn’t matter. Once we put out the word on Ram, she’ll come around.”

  Prince finished his water and tossed it into the trash, taking care not to touch the lid of the bin with his fingers.

  “You are still interested, I take it, in Paxton courting her?” He looked down at the bin still, frowning. “I still do see how that would be…advantageous for us both.”

  The Sheriff spread his hands. “If he’ll have her, tainted as she is.”
/>
  “I’ll have to discuss the matter with him, but I should think so. He’s a forgiving boy, and very taken with your daughter. She’s very beautiful.”

  “God help the father of a pretty daughter.” Colt shook his head.

  Chapter 39

  After that barrage of insults, corruption, and shaming, June had to take a break in the bathroom to steel herself.

  The bathroom was small and gray, the tiles in need of a good thorough cleaning. One stall door was loose on its hinges and the next stall was full of waste. The third one, finally, was clean and secure enough that she could lock herself in and fight off the tears that she didn’t want to come.

  She wasn’t crying, of course, because she was sad. This was simply how she got angry. It embarrassed her, though, and she knew that she would go nowhere with either man by crying in front of them. All they would see was a pathetic woman unable to handle her feelings.

  It wasn’t the first time she had heard all of that—collusion between politicians, her father insulting her, two men disparaging women together as they affirmed their own importance—but it was the first time she had heard it all at once. All mashed up in the same horrible soup, so full of hatred and disregard for their fellows.

  She had come from that. Pulling out bath tissue and blowing her nose, trying to buy time, she wondered what part of that bad thinking was in her still. Was it coded, like DNA? Was she doomed to just accept it all like her mother did?

  Could she break out of it, even if she wanted?

  Minutes passed and she calmed herself, slowly exorcising the anger like a bad virus. She straightened her hair and washed off her face.

  Freshened, finally she worked up the nerve to approach her father. Prince was gone.

  He was still outside the door, his heavy frame straining against the tight confines of his shirt. The thought hit her like it almost always did when she saw him upset and in his ill-fitting uniform—he needed to lose some weight. Her father was a classic case for a heart attack if ever there was one.

  She had tried, when she was a teenager, to turn him on to salads. But he kept insisting that a salad was still a salad when you put fried chicken in it, or steak, or a mountain of dressing.

  He just didn’t want to understand nutrition. It ate away at his core beliefs, that he would be who he was no matter what his decisions. He viewed himself as some impermeable ship guiding through a sea of inequity and hypocrisy, the one thing that anyone could count on.

  She’d had a hard time making friends as a kid. Kyle had too. Most people were too scared of her dad to really get to know her very well. This got worse as she became a teenager and he was worried about what she would do when her “hormonal vagina started mixing with all those shit-kicker bucks” around town.

  Boys she was seen talking to had serious dressing-downs and girls she was friends with were chided for dressing too much like sluts if they showed more than a Victorian amount of skin. They were “asking for it.” The “it” was always implied—but it was clear what he meant.

  No invaders, and no influences. This was the unspoken motto of her father.

  She stood in front of him, waiting for him to talk first. He wouldn’t, though. He was too stubborn.

  “Theo was drunk. He came to attack Ram.”

  He stared down at her, nose imperious. “Are you trying to give me a statement, citizen? You can go to the station. They’ll take it in there and the evidence will be processed appropriately.”

  “Theo, your Deputy, arrived at Ram’s place drunk this morning. He then threatened Ram numerous times. When Mikhail showed up to drive Theo away, Theo shot him. That’s what happened.”

  “And how do you know all this, huh? You got spy cameras attached to the street lamps?”

  “Sure, Dad. That’s how I knew what was going on at my husband’s house this morning. Spy lamps.”

  She watched with no small amount of satisfaction as that news sank in to his brain.

  The satisfaction short-circuited when he walked away from her, picked up a nearby chair and threw it against the wall. The plastic banged down the hallway, several pieces shattering and rolling across the floor. He turned back on her, face red, and took a long breath.

  “Marriages can be annulled.” His jaw trembled. “I can make it happen.”

  “Not without my consent.”

  “You’re clearly out of your goddamn mind, and your consent doesn’t matter that much in that case. I think I will have you committed after all.”

  That was a line of argument going nowhere fast, and her father was approaching levels of high rage in a speedy fashion.

  “Theo was drunk, Dad. If he’s wandering around in his squad car drunk, that’s a problem for everybody. It’s not something you should ignore. And he killed Mikhail.”

  “In self-defense! You expect me to believe that Mikhail was defenseless as he attacked my deputy?”

  “He was unarmed.”

  “That’s hardly the point. The man is a trained killer. All of their type are. You ought to know, sleeping with one of them. Who knew you’d turn out to be such a hussy?”

  “I sleep with one man, my husband, by the way, and that makes me a hussy?”

  “It’s not the circumstances, goddammit.” Colt took two long paces across the room and kicked another chair down the hall. By this point, the rest of the people in the waiting room had cleared out. “It’s the company you’re keeping! It shows poor choice on your part. Poor foresight. You’re a disgrace. A goddamn disgrace. And so is that, that murdering loon you’ve decided to shack up with. Way to go, June.” He clapped his hands hard three times. “Way to go, being on his side. Being on the side of the man who tried to murder your cousin.”

  How she was not running away with the rest of them, how she was not crying like she always did when her father got like this, when she got this angry, was beyond her.

  “I’m not on his side, Dad, I want you to act with the facts. You’re talking about going to war and you’ve got it all wrong. He’s not what you think he is.”

  Colt leaned over onto a couch, breathing hard. June thought he was struggling for air and came forward to put a hand on his shoulder. He swatted her away, shaking his head.

  “If anything, I’ve been generous to him.”

  “Generous?” She put her hands on her hips. “You’re going to either arrest him or exile him from the town, and you’re being generous?”

  “Anytime I want, I could put a bullet between his ears, and don’t you forget it, girl. This is my town, and I run it how I want. You think I’ve got it wrong to go to war with him and his people? I decide what’s right and wrong in this town. Me. My justice!” He banged his chest. “My power. Me. Don’t you forget it.”

  Chapter 40

  He woke slowly and unsteadily, uncertain of his motions from one second to the next. Pain throbbed in his head, urgent and demanding. His hands shifted across the small bed he was in, searching for anything to press against his skull. Someone handed him a large bottle and he gratefully took a drink. Whiskey, the liquid cool and the alcohol burning in his mouth and throat. After a few seconds, the wave of pain passed and he could sit up. He was on a small army regulation cot slowly sinking inward from his weight.

  A small back room in Shovelhead’s. It was hidden between the walls, hidden so that the cops couldn’t find it. As good of a place to hide out as any, at least for a little while. Usually it was used if they had some VIP up from Mexico who needed to stay out of sight, or if they had some especially hot cargo with nowhere else to keep it.

  Hot cargo. That’s what Ram was now. He’d beat a cop in his own yard.

  He could hear now the heavy classic rock thrumming through the walls. Billiard balls knocked together and, beneath all that, heavy conversations were had.

  Ram suspected, rightly, that each conversation was all about him.

  In the room with him was Ace, the one to give him the whiskey bottle. Ace was sitting at a small table, disassembling an
d re-assembling a series of guns, cleaning them as he went.

  Goddammit, he realized slowly. Mikhail is dead.

  His brother was dead.

  “Jesus,” said Ram. His voice was groggy and he felt worn and old. “What happened?”

  “You got hit in the back of your head,” said Ace, standing up over him. The room was dark and Ram’s vision was hazy still, making Ace’s dark skin blend in with the shadows. “A gift from your old lady.”

  “Ah…” he said. “What did she hit me with, a brick?”

  “Tire iron.”

  Ram nodded, feeling gently at the deep knot in his skull. “She’s got a heck of an arm.”

  “We dragged you out of there. Cops were on the way. Didn’t want you found at the scene of the crime. Got your truck and your bike now.”

  “Is June all right?”

  “All right?” Ace laughed. “Yeah man, she’s fine. At the hospital, last I heard. Looking after her cousin.”

  “Mikhail’s dead.”

  Ace nodded sadly. “I saw him.”

  “It’s goddamn nuts,” said Ram. “There was no reason for them to be fighting like that. They just…they all got so twisted up in their heads, like this whole town does. It’s like…it’s like there’s some goddamn spell on everyone. I don’t understand it.”

  Ace finished assembling a small pistol and set it to one side. He pushed the table away and dragged his chair right up in front of Ram, looking over him calmly.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How much of this do you think would have been avoided if you hadn’t decided to start trouble with Beretta and the Black Flags that night? Do you think we would have just gotten through it all, no problems? Because a lot of people around here do.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Ace rubbed his fingertips together. “What I think is that I stand by my brothers no matter what. Thick or thin. Doesn’t matter. I don’t abandon nobody. But you and me does not an army make.”

  “I know.”