Bob had already scoped out the cameras in three corners of the room, near the ceiling. “You’re going to murder a prisoner on camera? I don’t think so.”

  “Well now, that’s a harsh word, murder. I’d say this falls under keeping our fair community pure of mind and heart. And where do you think I disappeared to after Lottie left, genius? Those cameras weren’t going to turn themselves off, now. Mouse must’ve pulled that plug, I reckon.”

  Well… this took a nasty turn. “And if your chief decides to return in the middle of your friends having their fun?”

  Fitzhugh sighed melodramatically. “Uh… yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen, Mr. Out-of-Towner. See, somebody told him Mr. Moore doesn’t keep a telephone on his person, and that the only way to reach him is to drive all the way down to Jericho. That’s twenty-five, thirty minutes each way on a good day. Nah… he won’t be back for ninety minutes, minimum, I reckon.”

  Lund pulled the cell door open.

  “Now, you boys don’t beat him to death or nothing. Signs of a fight are fine, suits my purposes,” Fitzhugh said, giggling once more.

  Lund advanced on him.

  Bob’s gaze narrowed. Are they… really dumb enough to bring the fight into the cell? It took the gun out of the immediate equation, which meant he could fight back. No way the deputy risks trying to shoot me and hitting one of them.

  “You got us separate before,” Lund said as the other three filed in behind him. “Let’s see how you pull them tricks with no room to move.”

  Bob knew if they cornered him, he was in trouble. Surf Shorts’s right eye is half closed, and he’s favoring his right shoulder.

  The men charged him. Bob jumped to the left, kicking down sharply with his left foot as he landed, his foot finding Surf Shorts’s right knee, the joint buckling sideways as the other men tried to reach in and grab him. Surf Shorts screamed as he stumbled over, headfirst, and crashed to the cell floor, the second man tripping over him and going down as well.

  A hand grabbed Bob’s shirt, Lund’s third friend trying to maintain his balance as he stumbled over the other two. Bob leaned in, hammering him across the bridge of the nose with his forehead, bone snapping, his opponent falling away in a sobbing mess even as a punch whistled in. Bob saw it at the last second, rotating his head so that it clipped the side of his ear, Lund following it up immediately, trying to drive a knee up and into Bob’s ribs.

  He blocked down, cross palm, then used the same guard to push the big man away, spotting Fitzhugh raising the pistol even as Lund awkwardly staggered backwards. Bob grabbed Lund’s left shoulder and spun him, throwing an armbar chokehold around the would-be cowboy’s neck and wrenching his head violently backwards.

  Fitzhugh tried to get a clean bead on his prisoner without success. “God-dang it!” he barked.

  “I wouldn’t!” Bob warned. “I will snap his neck if I have to.”

  Lund croaked, “Don’t. Please.”

  Fitzhugh looked panicked. “Now… you’re in a whole lot of trouble already, mister. I don’t think you’re doing yourself no favors by taking hostages.”

  “Yeah… but you planned to shoot me, so right now, I don’t really give too much of a crap what you think. Put the gun down.”

  Bob heard a shuffling sound behind him. He ducked instinctively as the fist shot through the space where his head had just been, a set of brass knuckle dusters instead driven straight into the back of Lund’s head. Bob threw a hard elbow backwards, the point sinking into Surf Shorts’s guts.

  Bob turned and snapped a backwards side kick, his heel driven to a point on the other side of the man, Surf Shorts flying back and into the concrete wall, his head bouncing like a rock dropped on a table, the brass knuckles pinging off the cement floor.

  He slumped to the ground. Lund went down as well, Bob’s shield losing his legs to the blow.

  Fitzhugh saw his opportunity, raising the Glock 21 and bracing it even as Bob reached down and hurled the brass knuckles like an old underhand fastball. They smacked the deputy chief right between the eyes, the force staggering him. His legs hit the edge of a typing chair, balance lost, his feet flying up in the air as the gun went off, the bullet burying itself in the ceiling.

  Bob rushed forward before he could rise, sliding the last five feet knees first on the tile floor, smashing Fitzhugh across the jaw.

  Behind him, he could hear the men in the cell stirring. Bob ran over to the front counter and reached under it, finding the lock button and securing the cell door. To his right, he saw Fitzhugh shake a few times, his eyes fluttering open. Bob took two steps that way and crouched, snapping another straight right hand, catching the officer on the button again. Fitzhugh’s eyes rolled back in his head.

  Bob rolled the deputy chief over and found his cuffs, then secured the man’s hands behind him. The pistol was a few feet away, and he grabbed it, stashing it in his empty speed holster. He also grabbed Fitzhugh’s cruiser keys.

  The motel was on the way out of town, and he figured it wouldn’t take more than a minute to grab his stuff. Then he needed to find another vehicle to borrow; the cruiser’s locator would lead straight to him. Once he had wheels, he needed to put distance between himself and the town before the sheriff returned.

  He’d been expected down in Jericho in another hour anyway, to meet Ellen’s local contact, John Burke.

  He jogged out through the front doors, half expecting to surprise the shocked clerk. But she was nowhere to be seen.

  Eight feet away, the pickup Bob had seen parked at the diner was in one of the guest slots.

  Well, thank you, Mr. Lund. He ran over to it and tried the door.

  Unlocked. And thank you, small towns. He reached under the wheel column to try to hot-wire it, then had a second thought. He checked the dash glove compartment.

  Nothing.

  He searched under the front seats.

  Nope. One last possibility.

  Small towns in northern states had to account for winter coming suddenly. People worried about being caught outside and losing their key. He got out of the truck and checked under the front and back bumpers.

  Bingo.

  The magnetic storage box for the extra key was attached to the backside of the trailer hitch.

  Bob retrieved it. As an afterthought, he tossed the deputy’s keys down the nearby sewer grate before climbing back in the cab.

  A minute later, he was on Acacia Street, heading towards Jericho.

  11

  He’d driven for nearly twenty-five minutes before seeing another sign of life, the road to the commune cutting across vast swaths of empty desert, nothing to see for miles but dirt and scrub. A cloud of dust was growing on the road ahead.

  Bob saw a glint of sun off the plastic casing around the police cruiser’s roof lights. He pulled the pickup over, then crouched low, sinking down as far into the well as he could, his head below the window line.

  The cruiser roared past.

  He waited a sixty count before pulling back out onto the trail.

  That was probably Garza. He’s got his statement from Toby. Not that it would matter, Bob knew. No matter what he claimed, Fitzhugh and his friends would present a unified front, a version in which a crazed out-of-towner attacked them all.

  After five more minutes, the desert gave way to grass, bushes and short, gnarled trees as the irrigation watershed’s influence became apparent. He turned down the dirt road towards Jericho. A few moments later, he pulled off by the side of the road and parked the truck well short of the makeshift turnoff they’d used before. If the truck was spotted as stolen, it was better if it couldn’t technically be tied to the commune, he supposed.

  Ahead, by the double main gate, a man was sitting on the hood of a twenty-year-old sedan, the olive-green paint job beginning to look its age. He was short with balding dark hair and three-day stubble, wearing a cheap orange windbreaker over jeans.

  He was munching on an egg-salad sandwich. An orange plastic thermos sat beside him, a lid cup in his spare hand.

  “Afternoon,” Bob said. “You wouldn’t happen to be John Burke?”

  The man put the sandwich and cup down. “I would indeed, sir, I would indeed.” He got off the hood and walked over. Bob noticed the limp immediately. “And I take it you’d be Bob Singleton.” He offered a hand to shake.

  “Bob Smith, officially. It’s a long story.”

  Burke smiled at that like it was nothing new. “No doubt, no doubt. You just missed a visit from the Royal City Police.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do.” Burke turned and gestured towards the gate. “Well, this is it. As you’ve no doubt already ascertained, it’s a hippy shithole of the first order.”

  He had slightly rounded letter o’s in his pronunciation, other words flattened, as if an upper-crust Briton had paired off with someone from northern Germany. Bob had heard it before. Recently, too. Somewhere near Pittsburgh, if I had to guess.

  Burke took out a packet of non-filter Lucky Strikes and lit one. The plume of blue smoke drifted towards the commune as he exhaled. “You can smell the compost from here. And that well’s quite the funky piece of nineteenth-century Americana. I wouldn’t drink the water if I were you.”

  It sounded like “smell the compuwst” and “drink the wooder” in his accent. Bob wondered what the hell Burke was missing. The place looked like a little slice of paradise; natural wood cabins that executives would’ve paid a fortune to own in Jackson Hole or on the Finger Lakes; beautiful vistas of trees, wild grasses and wildflowers in every direction; no air pollution, no noise pollution, sunny, clear skies.

  They could practically have shot The Sound of Music here, if the mountains a few miles south were a little bigger. “If you say so. They seem to be doing pretty well, from the size of it.”

  “There are twenty-two of them now, including a handful of kids, if you can believe it. Who brings their children to live like this?”

  “Yeah, all this fresh air? Perish the thought. I take it you’re not a country boy, Mr. Burke.”

  The other man grimaced slightly as he shook his head. “Just keep an eye out: a year from now they’ll probably have sheep and goats, and the entire place will smell even more like manure. But they’ll make sure you know they’d never stoop low enough to eat meat or anything. Just, you know… gather the wool and milk,” Burke sneered.

  “And what do you do that prompted Ms. Moore to call you in?” Bob asked, ignoring the cynicism. Getting into a debate with someone he’d just met over the value of fresh air seemed counterproductive. “She said something about you being her coal guy.”

  He nodded once. “That I am. I’m from Graysville, a town in⁠—”

  “Western Penn. I know of it. I was in Wheeling for a few weeks recently.”

  “Then you probably know the mines there are the largest in the nation. My father was a coal miner, his father before him.”

  “They sacrificed so you could get ahead,” Bob said sympathetically.

  Burke flinched derisively. “Hell no! My old man was a bum, and his was worse. I watched them suffer, get old twenty years before their time, get the black lung. And I sure as shit wasn’t following in the family business. The management types – the business guys, the engineers, the geologists – they always made more money without going underground. And that’s me.”

  “Sounds practical.”

  “So what’s your deal? She said something about you being a Marine?”

  “Years ago. Just security now,” Bob said. “She wants me to keep an eye on her brother.”

  Burke was staring across the compound. “Now that you mention him…”

  Bob followed his gaze. A figure had just exited the largest hut, a longhouse-style structure, near the back of the cleared communal living area. He squinted. “Yeah… I think that’s him. Not exactly a strapping fella, is he?”

  Burke shrugged. “What do you expect? He eats nothing but kale and fucking strawberries, probably. He’s one of those eco-weenie types, the ones who see someone die on the evening news and start crying from the vapors or some shit.”

  Or… you know, empathy.

  “Still… he fits in fine around here,” Burke continued.

  “How so?”

  “He’s a fucking moron. Have you spent any time in Royal City? All that small-town goodwill and friendly cheer? It’s fucking real. They’re like that all the time. It’s why so many of them get taken advantage of by guys like Jessup Cross, or are willing to trust Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ‘Oh no, we’re not going to deport you, Mr. Wetback. Just tell us where you’re staying these days, and we’ll drop round with an ice water and some cookies.’ Seriously… they’re a town full of sunny, humble morons.”

  It occurred to Bob once again that instead of seeing the glass as half full, Burke had more of a “smash it on the road and screw refreshment” sort of take on things. “Is that so bad, people being happy and optimistic?” Why am I engaging in debate? Bob asked himself immediately. Just let him be an idiot.

  Burke took a furious drag of his cigarette and flicked the ash. He blew out the smoke and fixed Bob with a look of theatrical distress. “So bad? Mr. Singleton, until just about a decade ago, when the state began enforcing a livable minimum wage, the average per capita income in that town was under ten thousand dollars a year. Now, more than half the population are Mexican fruit pickers, and about two-thirds of them are illegals. So they don’t carry much water, politically. But they kept accepting those poverty wages for near on a half century. They would rather have been taken advantage of, at poverty wages, than go home. Worse, they’d go to church with the men taking advantage of them, and thank them for the opportunity to be exploited.”

  “Good people being exploited isn’t rare anywhere.”

  “Neither is being dumb enough to be the victim,” Burke said. “What? You think I should have sympathy for those idiots? Or these” – he gestured towards the compound – “social rejects?”

  “But you’re here anyway.”

  “Because there’s money to be made, potentially. And if Toby stays here, two things are going to happen: one, someone else will make that money regardless. They’ll figure out a way. Not him, not his community, not Ms. Moore. And two, someone’s going to shoot the dumb fucker in the head to make it super-clear to him that he’s not welcome. Now… if you were in his shoes, as an educated, intelligent adult, would you stick around?”

  “Probably not,” Bob said. But sometimes, when people do what seems like the dumb, dangerous thing, it’s also selfless, and they’re doing it for good reasons. He might’ve been an expert in coal, Bob supposed, but Burke clearly didn’t understand other people, or care to try.

  It seemed more likely to Bob that the whole thing would be shut down by the courts through US Fish and Wildlife petitions. The land was private, but it sure looked like it fell into local protected wetlands, even if the actual water sources were miles away.

  Across the compound, the figure who’d left the longhouse was striding past the well. “Yep, that’s our guy,” Bob said.

  Toby took another twenty seconds to reach the gate. Burke took a last puff and tossed out his cigarette.

  “Tobacco’s all natural, but they don’t like that either,” he muttered.

  Bob let the error go. One day, Burke would probably angrily mutter something about chemical additives and the cruelty of profiting from addicts. But it wouldn’t be until he was on a ventilator and someone else’s problem.

  Toby held both hands wide as he approached. “Mr. Burke! Good to see you again, sir! And you must be…” His eyes widened as he realized Bob was the man outside the restaurant. “I must say I did think maybe that was you⁠—”

  “Who stopped those other men from beating your head in? Yes, Mr. Moore, that was me.”

  Twenty yards past him, Sally Weekes was walking past the well with her daughter. She raised a hand and gave a quick wave, which Bob returned.

  “I… pictured someone very different from Juno’s description. You’re more… well, she made you sound like quite a gentle soul.”

  Bob stifled a frown. Given that Juno had methodically shot a man through the leg without a moment’s hesitation, her characterization felt like good public relations. Clearly, she didn’t want her commune friends to think of Bob as “the man” or anyone with authority.

  And she knows them better than you do, Bobby. So smarten up.

  “I try to be,” Bob said, which was true. I routinely fail, but I try to be. “Particularly lately. I’ve been trying to reinvent myself, find a quieter life. But your sister didn’t send me here to discuss the merits of humanism, Mr. Moore. She thinks you’re in a lot of trouble. After that display in town, I’m inclined to agree.”

  He smiled blithely, as if none of it had even happened, or someone else had been victimized. “It’s just small-town guys blowing off steam, Mr. Singleton. That’s not the first time they’ve bugged me, and it won’t be the last. But I’m okay.”

  “Because I showed up when I did.”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps. Or perhaps they would’ve just gone on their way after I refused to engage their violent conduct with more violent conduct.”

  Bob stifled the urge to glance quickly at Burke and see if Toby was being serious. He clearly was. It was an admirable idea, to stand firm against violence. Passive resistance had a long and proud protest history in America, a type of free expression as effective or more so than any amount of florid speech. But it came with inherent risk. He wasn’t sure Toby understood that.

  “So you were willing to get the hell kicked out of you just to avoid breaking your code?” Bob asked.

  “Not willing. Glad to. I embrace the notion of getting along with others, Mr. Singleton, even if they do not wish to reciprocate.”

  Ah, hell. He’s not dumb, but he’s pretty damned innocent. His parents had money, and he’s never had real trauma, so he doesn’t really know what it means to suffer yet. The John Burkes and Jessup Crosses of this world will eat a guy like him up and spit out the remains before they’re done breakfast.

 

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