Another Man's Ground--A Mystery, page 26
One day, she’d had enough. She decided to scare him. She said they were going for a walk. Vern was at school, so it was just the two of them. She took the rifle—after all, Daddy said to never go near the border without it. She was just going to point it at him, tell him that she was just as much a “Miles boy” as he was and he’d better start respecting her. He’d listened, all serious, but then started laughing. She wasn’t a boy, he snickered. She told him that wasn’t what she meant.
But he was already off, trotting away from her, laughing and singing. She swung the rifle up and fired. Just up in the air. Just to show him that she was as good as Vern. And he collapsed. He was playing with her, she thought at first, as she walked toward him. Then she saw his head. And she knew that there was no way he was alive. Not with that much blood, and with his limbs all crumpled underneath him like that.
She walked away and sat on a downed tree for a while. Then she tried to move him. But you wouldn’t believe how heavy a seven-year-old could be. She only got about ten feet before the weight became too much. So she went home. And got her mother.
Mama had wanted to bury him proper, but Papa said no. They couldn’t be visiting no grave, he said. It had to be done and gone. So he had walked out alone, and come back an hour later with dirt and blood smeared on his clothes. He said he’d buried him in a ravine across the creek, then put the rifle back in its slot on the gun rack. And they never spoke of it again.
Charlie got cancer, suddenly, and was up at the hospital in Springfield, they told everyone, including Vern. After a good six weeks, her parents judged that enough time had passed and announced his death. They held a memorial service at the elementary school.
“I sat at that and held your hand.” The words came out cracked and brittle. Vern swayed in his chair. “I … you…” He trailed off and stared at his sister.
She turned her wandering gaze on him and her eyes hardened.
“It’s all your fault.” The words came out like knives, flying through the air with only one purpose. “You and your damn herbs. If you hadn’t been selling them, you wouldn’t have needed those illegal aliens. And if they weren’t there, then that one wouldn’t have gone and fallen into the hole. Everything would have been fine. No one would have ever known anything.
“You did this.”
Vern swayed again. Hank was glad he was sitting down.
“I … this isn’t happening. This … he was only seven,” Vern stuttered.
“And I said it was an accident,” she snapped. “And now you’ve ruined my life. And my kids’ lives. Everybody’s.”
A reflexive look of apology flashed across his face. It took him a second, but he shook it off.
“Wait, are you kidding? Me? I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t lie for forty years. I didn’t use—”
He stopped and turned the color of the moon just visible out the side window.
“Oh, God. I carried around that rifle all over. My brother’s murder weapon.”
He doubled over and retched.
Donna pressed her lips in an angry line and looked away.
Sheila went over and silently laid her hand on Vern’s shoulder. When he raised his head, she gently took off the handcuffs. She handed them to Hank, and he fastened them around the wrists of a twelve-year-old killer. At his gesture, she rose and walked toward the door without another glance.
Hank followed closely. He couldn’t bear to look back at Vern, who had hunched over again and was rocking back and forth with his arms wrapped around his knees. Sheila was kneeling in front of him and asking who she could call to come and stay with him. There was no way they could leave him here by himself tonight.
He escorted Donna out of the front room and past the empty gun racks in the foyer. Her posture was still stiff with anger. He took the opportunity to rub his eyes, trying to rid himself of the headache that had come on in the past ten minutes.
Sure, there was consciousness of guilt with the destruction of the rifle, but there was no guilty conscience. Forty-plus years with that weighing on your soul, and when you finally confess, it comes out with only anger and blame. No sorrow at ending a young life, no regret at the effect on your surviving brother. He shook his head and reached forward for the doorknob.
And then from the driveway, he heard a thud. And a snarl that did not come from an animal. He shoved Donna back toward the front room and drew his Glock.
CHAPTER
37
Hank flattened against the wall and tried to see out the frosted glass of the little window set in the middle of the Miles front door. It was impossible. He barked Sheila’s name and cracked open the door.
The narrow viewpoint didn’t help any more than the frosted glass had. All in, he thought, and shoved it all the way open with his foot. He stayed behind the doorjamb and waited a beat. He heard Sheila ordering the Miles siblings onto the floor.
“At least one unknown subject. By the cruiser,” she reported from her better vantage point by a front-room window.
She’d just said the word “cruiser” when a shot flew through the open doorway and embedded itself in Mama Miles’s daffodil wallpaper. Another followed, shattering a front-room window, and then a third, followed by a more distant explosion of glass. Sheila swore, Donna shrieked, and Vern made no sound.
Hank dropped to the floor and peered around the doorframe. He couldn’t see anything in the dark yard. Donna was now sobbing, and Sheila was on the radio calling for backup. He shifted back and away from the door and looked around the entryway. A pile of shoes sat against the wall. He grabbed a heavy hiking boot and hefted it carefully. He needed to aim perfectly. He stood, spun into the open doorway, and threw. It arched through the muggy night air, sailing far wide and short of the squad car and heading exactly where it was supposed to. It flew directly in front of the motion-activated light on the right side of the house, and the bulb burst into its high-wattage glory. Hank made his move.
He broke into a crouching run, skirting to the left of the car. The shooter was caught in the brightly lit open, frantically kicking away at the driver’s door, every inch of his ragged, filthy form clearly visible. He howled and threw his arm up to shield his eyes. Hank made it to the opposite side of the car and used it for cover as he moved into a better position. The man raised his handgun and aimed at the floodlight.
“Put it down, Boone.”
Still blinded, the Taylor brother spun around toward Hank’s voice and fired. But Hank had moved several feet to the right and the shot flew by harmlessly. The thudding Hank had heard before the first shot continued. Boone, yelling incoherently, reached through the shattered driver’s window and opened the door. He must have shot out the glass, Hank thought. And the car’s running.
Boone climbed in. And the thudding got louder. The back window on Hank’s side of the car started to crack. Worn, steel-toed boots let loose one more kick, and the glass finally gave up. Kinney’s legs shot through. He quickly pulled them back and flipped so he could wiggle out headfirst, just as Boone figured out how to put the car in gear. He hit the gas with Kinney half out the window, and the car leapt forward. Straight toward the house.
Sheila dove out of the way. The cruiser slammed into the porch and stopped. For a split second, it was completely silent. And then a thick support post toppled onto the car’s roof and the light bar cracked. Loudly.
Boone started shouting again, a torrent of berserk babble punctuated by every variation of the word “fuck” that Hank had ever heard. He couldn’t find reverse gear. Sheila scrambled to her feet, her uniform and the Glock in her hand covered in dirt. Hank holstered his own gun and lunged for Kinney, who hung limply facedown from the back passenger window. He grabbed the old bastard’s shirt and bent forward to pull his injured frame all the way out of the car.
Only Kinney wasn’t hurt. He reared up and head-butted Hank directly in the face. Hank’s vision exploded with pinpoints of light, and he suddenly felt hard-packed dirt underneath his cheek and thick wetness in his mouth. He heard Sheila shouting, but couldn’t understand what she was saying. His hearing had gone all staticky.
He had to get to his feet. He was not going to be bested by a seventy-six-year-old herbal drug lord. He made it to his knees just as Sheila tore past him, shouting something and readying her Glock. He gave his head a neck-snapping shake and lurched to his feet.
His vision wasn’t so hot, but he realized his hearing was just fine—it was the cruiser engine that wasn’t. Boone had managed to get it into reverse, but the front wheels were stuck on the ruins of the front porch. The car was trying to respond, shuddering and whining every time he stomped on the gas.
Hank drew his gun and moved even with the front passenger window. He yelled for Boone to get out of the car, but the screaming berserker couldn’t hear him. He was beyond what little reason he’d had in the first place. There appeared to be only one way to get his attention.
Hank aimed and fired. The nine-millimeter bullet cratered into the hard vinyl upholstery of the backseat, the equivalent of a sonic boom in such close quarters. Boone froze and then slowly took his hands off the steering wheel and shakily put them on top of his head. Hank moved so that he again had a clear line of sight toward Boone and was about to order him out of the car when the porch finally stopped resisting.
Another support beam started to topple, taking with it most of the railing and some of the skirting. That was enough. The car leapt backward, free of its lumber restraints. The post lying on the roof slammed down onto the hood and then the ground. Hank jumped out of the way and watched as his cruiser sped rear-first into the yard carrying an astonished Boone, hands still on his head. Apparently he hadn’t realized his foot was still on the gas. Hank hadn’t, either.
They both recovered their senses at the same time. Hank raised his gun. He had to stop the car before the only thing visible to shoot at was the trunk full of Vern Miles’s personal armory. Boone slapped his hands onto the wheel and yanked it sharply to his left, trying to turn the car around.
But the porch had done a number on the front axle and the wheel wells. The car wouldn’t turn more than a fraction of what Taylor needed. It lurched off at a modest diagonal across the yard. Boone slammed on the brakes and threw it into drive as Hank sprinted toward him. Boone was now yanking the wheel to the right, toward the road, but the steering wasn’t responding. The best the car would do was go straight. Hank changed course with it, struggling to catch up. His vision was still blurry, and now the horizon was tilting in an alarmingly vertical way.
The wounded cruiser managed another forty feet before the left front wheel well crumpled enough to stop the tire. The car skittered to a stop, or at least Hank thought it did. He wasn’t trusting his eyes at this point. He blinked rapidly and went around to the left, his Glock raised.
Boone saw him coming and started to scramble over the middle console and toward the passenger door. Hank sighed. He’d really had enough of this. He aimed for the back driver’s-side window and pulled the trigger. The light bar on the roof exploded instead.
Fine.
He fumbled for the door handle, finally found it, and ripped open the door. Boone had stopped halfway over the middle section, his ass in the air. Hank grabbed his belt and hauled him out of the car. He shoved the penultimate Taylor onto the dirt, ground a boot into his back, and reached for his handcuffs. Which were currently on Donna Kolpeck.
He shoved his weapon back in his holster and yanked Boone’s belt out of his pants. The dirtbag let out a yelp and started wiggling. Hank cinched Boone’s wrists as tightly as possible behind his back and then considered his prisoner’s legs. He really only had one option if he didn’t want the scumbucket walking away, which he most assuredly did not. Keeping his hiking boot on Boone’s spine, he stripped off his own belt and bound the scuzzball’s ankles.
He stood up and leaned against the car until the dizziness subsided, then grabbed a flashlight from the cruiser and pushed off toward the woods. He had to find Sheila.
CHAPTER
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He stood just inside the tree line and listened. It was the only hope he had. It was too dark to see anything. He thought he heard a twig snap and was slowly shifting in that direction when something poked him in the back. Something cold and metal.
“Don’t move,” Sheila hissed in his ear. “You’re gonna spook him.”
She moved even with him, her service weapon raised and steady in a two-handed grip. He silently unholstered his own Glock and waited for her direction. She motioned him to the left, away from the twig sound. She went right, angling deeper into the trees. Another twig cracked and then a slight, rattling breath came from a set of creosote-soaked lungs. He started to carefully circle around in that direction.
They closed in. Hank could feel him, throwing off loathing and disgust like heat off a kerosene camp stove. His fingers tightened around his gun and he took a slow step. A quick shuffle in the dirt cut through the humid air and Sheila let out a yell. Hank lunged deeper into the trees just as blue and red lights sliced through the trees and a dozen cars skidded to a stop in the Mileses’ front yard.
A flash of blue denim darted along the edge of Hank’s sight and disappeared. The old bastard had seized the moment and bolted. Hank broke into a run, crashing through the brush after him. The pounding in his head got worse and he prayed his balance wouldn’t start playing Tilt-A-Whirl again. He sprinted on, but he wasn’t going to be fast enough.
Another flash caught the corner of his eye. It turned into Sheila, who cut across in front of him and launched herself into the air. She timed it perfectly, felling Kinney as he ran out from the cover of a tree. They hit the ground together in an explosion of breath and shower of dirt.
Hank got there seconds later and trained his gun on Kinney. Sheila slowly got to her feet and wiped dirt off her cheek. Back by the house, car doors slammed and people started yelling. Kinney lay inert. Sheila prodded him with the toe of her boot. He stayed facedown in the Ozark loam. She gave him a shove with her foot to roll him over. That generated a groan—his hands were still cuffed behind his back.
“I know you ain’t broken,” she snapped as she reached down. She grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him to his feet.
He leaned forward and growled in her face. And Sheila Turley, professional hard-ass and world’s greatest peace officer, just smiled. Hank grinned. Then he stepped directly in front of the murdering bastard.
“I recommend that you not disrespect this deputy any further. Who knows what she’ll have to do to you next?” He smiled and gently nudged the barrel of his Glock into Kinney’s gut, right where Sheila had shotgun-butted him earlier.“She’s going to lead you out of here, and you’re going to behave. And I’m going to be right behind you with my gun, just in case.”
* * *
They walked out of the trees and into chaos. Squad cars and unmarked federal vehicles littered the front lawn. All of them had their lights going. Paramedics were trying to figure out how to get past the pulverized porch and into the house. Members of the search team patrolled the perimeter. And Sam was circling Hank’s totaled cruiser in disbelief. He was the first to see the trio emerge from the woods.
“Chief,” he yelled, darting toward them. “Where have you been? What’s going on? We got Sheila’s call about the same time the guys in the woods tracked Boone Taylor this way. But…”
He broke off as the dirt-spackled Kinney spat at his feet. Sheila yanked him away and packed him into the backseat of a squad car, then made Bill Ramsdell come over and stand guard.
Marshal Number One caught sight of Hank and came bearing down like a cannonball.
“Where the hell is my fugitive?” he yelled. “This…” His arms stabbed the air furiously as he surveyed the scene. “This cock-up you’ve done. If you lost me my fugitive, I’ll—”
Hank sighed. Presumably, Boone Taylor was no longer lying next to the battered cruiser. He held up his hand to stop the torrent of words from the marshal. Then he walked—slowly, because his head was still having problems keeping the horizon straight—over to the car. Sam and the marshal trailed after him. Hank reached the spot where he had left the most wanted man in the state of Missouri and started to laugh. He bent down and peered under the car.
“Hey, there, Boone. Comfy?”
A whimper came from between the wheels. The marshal elbowed Hank aside to find the belted Taylor wedged between the torn-up lawn and the torn-up undercarriage. The idiot had rolled underneath and gotten stuck.
The fed pivoted back toward Hank, who gave him a slap on the back as he rose to his feet.
“There you go, Marshal. He’s all yours.
“Oh, and when you get him out of there, I’m going to want my belt back.”
CHAPTER
39
He had to explain Purple Pass to the marshals—twice—and then again to a sleepy DEA special agent, who was not happy that there might be another controlled substance added to his list of responsibilities.
He had Bill Ramsdell and Doug Gabler catalog the contents of one burlap sack—which turned out to be eighty-two plant roots and eleven ounces of dirt—and place it into evidence. And he’d made sure that Vern’s pastor was out at the Miles place to care for the man whose life and home were irrevocably broken.
He and Sheila booked all three—Donna Kolpeck, Jasper Kinney, and Boone Taylor—into the jail and then gave each a chance to talk. Donna had nothing left to say. Kinney refused to even come out of his cell. And Boone, even after being pumped full of fluids and given a protein-packed meal, was still incoherent after a week fending for himself in the wild and then accidentally stumbling right onto the Miles property as he fled the advancing marshals.
So Hank sent him back to his cell and tried another one. Leroy Taylor, his spider tattoo crawling out of the neck of his jail scrubs, merely blinked when told of Jackson’s murder. He was just as responsive when asked about the powder.
