Chasing away the devil, p.1
Chasing Away the Devil, page 1
part #4 of Sheriff Milt Kovak Series
Books by Susan Rogers Cooper
E.J. Pugh Mysteries
One, Two, What Did Daddy Do?
Hickory Dickory Stalk
Home Again, Home Again
There Was a Little Girl
A Crooked Little House
Not in My Back Yard
Don’t Drink the Water
Milt Kovak Mysteries
The Man in the Green Chevy
Houston in the Rearview Mirror
Other People’s Houses
Chasing Away the Devil
Dead Moon on the Rise
Doctors and Lawyers and Such
Lying Wonders
Vegas Nerve
Kimmy Kruse Mysteries
Funny as a Dead Comic
Funny as a Dead Relative
CHASING Away the DEVIL
A Milt Kovak Mystery
Susan Rogers Cooper
SPEAKING VOLUMES, LLC
NAPLES, FLORIDA
2020
Chasing Away the Devil
Copyright © 1991 by Susan Rogers Cooper
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission.
ISBN 978-1-64540-221-3
To Don and Evin, always, and to my big brother, Frank Rogers, for his support, honesty, and enthusiastic response.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter One
The third week of November is Pioneer Week in my home, Prophesy County, Oklahoma. There’s nothing in this goddamn world I hate more than Pioneer Week. They make us deputies dress up for it. In chaps. And cowboy hats. And boots. And spurs. And real-live six-guns on our hips. It’s goddamn ridiculous.
I had more important things to do than dress like an idiot. Less than a month before, I lost my garage and some other stuff to a tornado. And now I had contractors all over the goddamn place with only my sister Jewel to oversee ’em, which meant they were getting a lot of free coffee and some god-awful food, but I suppose even Jewel’s food’s better than working.
This year the sheriff decided as how he was too old, too fat, and too mean, I oughta be the one to marshall the Pioneer Week parade. Which meant, on top of having to wear the silly goddamn costume, I had to ride a horse that afternoon. The last horse I tried to get on, when I wasn’t much more than a kid, nipped me on the ass. Me and horses never got along too well after that. Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to the parade. Or Pioneer Week in general.
I’d just left the Longbranch Inn where I’d had lunch served to me by my ladylove, Glenda Sue Robinson, who’d snapped at me about something I did sometime that pissed her off. Needless to say, I had no idea what she was talking about but apologized anyway. That’s what you do with women. Apologize. When that doesn’t work, apologize some more. Anyway, that had made my piss-poor mood a little darker than it had already been, so that when I was walking out to my unmarked squad car and happened to glance over to Meechem’s Western Wear, which was diagonal across the street from the Longbranch, I almost didn’t pay any attention to what I saw.
But when you been a peace officer for getting close to twenty years, you notice little things. Like an old beat-up car pulled up close to the front door, the motor running, and one guy behind the wheel. ’Course it could mean Mindy Sue forgot her fringed leather skirt till the last minute and Buster Lee brought her by real quicklike before the parade. But somehow I doubted it. Meechem’s did more business around Pioneer Week than they did the whole year put together, and if I had a criminal bent to my mind, I suppose I might think about hitting on Meechem’s myself. So I wandered on over to the Meechem’s parking lot to get me a look-see.
The guy behind the wheel was typical Oklahoma redneck, which we seem to have an abundance of here in the heart of Oklahoma. He was wearing a black-net gimme cap, a dirty red T-shirt, and his hair was long, stringy, and sorta brown. The car was, like I said, beat-up looking. A Dodge Charger that had seen better days. The paint was two shades of orange with primer accents, and, I noticed right off, there was mud covering the license plates. Now I’ve seen “Miami Vice” enough to know what that means.
I was contemplating going over and having a talk with the driver when two guys in ski masks come running out of the front door carrying bags and great big ole guns. Big ’uns. So I got out one of my six-shooters, got down in my crouch, pointing the gun like I learned at the academy lo’ those many years ago, and yelled, “Sheriff! Freeze!”
The guy driving took off like a son of a bitch, leaving his two buddies and the loot. The two guys in ski masks looked at the car, looked at me, and commenced to shooting. Well, I ducked down beside a Blazer that, until that minute, had a real snazzy paint job.
The only time I’d ever fired the fancy six-shooters we had to wear during Pioneer Week was ten years ago when we first got ’em. I qualify all the goddamn time with my own .45, but who’d think I’d have to fire those damn things? Well, I took aim, squeezed off, and blew the window out of a Chrysler ten feet to the left of the guy I was aiming for. They returned fire, busting out the windshield of the Blazer a little to the right of my favorite ear.
I hit the ground and rolled under the Blazer, which, thank the good Lord, has plenty of ground clearance for a slightly pudgy, slow-moving, middle-aged fella like myself.
Well, the two guys thought they had me on the run, which, of course, they did most certainly not. I was only taking a breather. Figuring my options, so to speak. Then out of nowhere, one of the marked sheriff’s cars screeches in, slides to a stop slantways in front of the two perps, and Dalton Pettigrew, one of the day deputies, jumps out, shotgun in hand, and yells, “Stop it now! Y’all just stop!”
Now I may have mentioned that I was in costume for Pioneer Week. I want you to know that even though this is true, I did it in the best possible taste. My Western shirt was of a beige tone, very sedate, my hat was regulation “cowboy” and white (since I’m one of the good guys); and the chaps that covered my Levi’s were plain brown leather.
Dalton, on the other hand, was wearing a lime green and yellow Western shirt, his hat was of the ten-gallon variety, and his chaps were sheepskin, the fuzzy kind. The two perps took one look at six-foot-four-inch, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound Dalton in his clown suit and twelve-gauge and dropped their weapons, holding up their hands pretty as you please.
I crawled out from under the Blazer, wondering if I could get the owner to pay for the dry-cleaning of my Western shirt due to the great big old oil stain on the front, but then, looking at the shape of the Blazer, I decided not to argue the point. That’s when I heard the sirens, and the other two patrol cars pulled up along with one city car, being as this was their jurisdiction in the first place.
The city police took over the perps, and Dalton walked on over to me. “Hey, Milt, you okay?” he asked, his big, stupid face all concerned.
“Just fine, Dalton. Just fine.”
“Milt, I sure am sorry I forgot to turn on my si-rene. I heard the call on the radio, and I got so excited, I plumb forgot.”
Me, I figure if Dalton had gone by the book and had had his sirens blazing, I’d probably be dead. But if I told Dalton that, he’d never run his goddamn siren for anything, so I just said, “That’s okay this time. I won’t tell the sheriff.”
Dalton gave me a great big ole bear hug, and I swear to God there was a tear in his eye when he said, “Thanks, Milt. I owe ya. I really do.”
After we got everybody settled down at Meechem’s, me and Dalton tooled on over to the County Courthouse in the middle of town, what used to house the Sheriff’s Department till we got our own building outside of town. Me and Dalton had papers to fill out, statements to sign, and I figured if I milked it a bit, me being an eyewitness and all, I could be stuck at the police station till late afternoon. Which meant calling the sheriff and telling him how I wouldn’t be able to marshall the parade after all.
“Goddamn you, Milt!” Elberry Blankenship yelled into the phone.
“Well, Sheriff,” I said, giving it my best whiny, aw-shucks voice, “I can’t do nothing about this. I’m real sorry.”
“I just bet your red ass you’re sorry! I’ll get you for this!”
“Yes, sir, I suppose you will.”
“You be on night duty till the cows come home, boy.”
“If that’s what you want, Sheriff.”
“Shit.” And he hung up. I smiled what my ex-wife called my “shit-eatin’ grin” and replaced the receiver. Then I went about signing my statement, which took all of five minutes. Then, of course, I had to meet with the city attorney (because the shoot-out was in city jurisdiction) and the county attorney (because I’m a county employee) and explain why I felt compelled to fire a weapon in defense of my frail, pink body. Since nobody was dead, or even wounded, the meeting took only another fifteen minutes.
After I left the city attorney’s office, I went down to the basement where the jail cells are to have me a look-see at the two young fellas that had been shooting at me. I figured it was my right. They had already made themselves to home down there, laying down on their bunks, staring up at the years ahead of them.
“Hey, Doyle,” I said to the one I knew, Doyle Kretcher, a homegrown boy. Doyle was one of the middle boys of Rochelle Kretcher, a lady who went to my church. A nice lady with just too many kids and not enough husband.
Doyle looked at me, then looked away. “Hey, boy, I’m talking to you.”
Finally, he looked up. “What?”
“Your mama know where you are?”
That’s when Doyle spit on the floor and I turned around and left. Wasn’t my job to tell his mama. That was gonna be city jurisdiction, not county. I went back upstairs and looked at the rap sheets of the two. Doyle was a nickel and dimer, a skinny, rat-faced little fart, now nineteen and able to do hard time, who’d already been arrested twice. But those charges had been dropped because he was a juvenile and because people basically liked Rochelle Kretcher. But this was big time now. Armed robbery and attempted murder of a peace officer. Namely me.
The other boy was older by two years and had already done some hard time down in Texas at their Huntsville facility. Leave it to a Texan to come up here and botch things up. His name was Lamar Bass and he’d spent two years in Huntsville on a B&E and had been arrested three times before, but the charges had been dropped. So, doing all that, looking at them boys and checking out their rap sheets, took another fifteen minutes.
But, of course, being in the police station necessitated my chewing the fat for a while with my old buddy, Emmett Hopkins, chief of police of Longbranch, which is the county seat of Prophesy County. I went into his office and shook hands, then sat myself down on one of his spindly legged visitor chairs.
Emmett grinned real big and said, “Well, hey there, cowpoke.”
I had temporarily forgotten about my getup. “Oh, this,” I said, looking I suppose sheepishly at my chaps and six-guns and wondering why Emmett was dressed in his usual J.C. Penney’s stay-press. “Not my idea.”
He shook his head. “Pioneer Week. What a bitch, huh?”
I nodded in the affirmative. “Ain’t that the truth?”
“So, how’s Miss Jewel Anne doing?” he said, asking after my sister.
“Fine. Just fine. You know she’s been going around with Harmon Monk?”
“That’s what I hear. Could do worse.”
“That’s not what my old daddy thought.”
“Harmon’s changed over the years, Milt. Hell, he’s one of the richest men in the county now.”
“I know that. I know that.”
“And nobody around here begrudges Jewel Anne about Harmon’s divorce neither. Leona Monk never was too popular around here. According to Shirley Beth, all she ever did at the Garden Club meetings was talk about how much better the Garden Club was in Oklahoma City. And bitch about how here girls weren’t getting a proper education in Bishop like they woulda in the city. Hell, Milt, people were tickled pink when Harmon dumped Leona for Jewel Anne. Even the Catholics.”
“I know that.”
“And everybody knows Harmon’s been carrying a torch for Jewel Anne for twenty years or so. Hell, it’s plumb romantic. Leastwise, that’s what the wife thinks.”
“How’s Shirley Beth doing?” I asked, by way of changing the conversation.
Emmett shrugged. “She’s got her good days and her bad days,” he said. Shirley Beth had taken to drink shortly after her and Emmett lost their boy to leukemia fifteen years before. Everybody knew it, but I don’t know anybody who’s ever actually seen her drunk. Shirley Beth had always been a lady, and I suppose she thought those things were best kept behind closed doors. Some Sundays she didn’t make it to church, and she’s missed a Garden Club meeting on more than one occasion, but the gossiping has always been kept to a minimum, and most people just try to act like it’s not there. Every year though, she just gets skinnier and skinnier till, pretty soon, I suppose she’s just gonna blow away. Sometimes I think Emmett should get her to a counselor or something. But that’s his business, not mine.
“Hear you’re building a pool out to your place,” Emmett said.
I nodded. “Damned expensive, too. But when the tornado tore down the stable and corral right after I’d promised Jewel’s kids horses, I up and promised them a pool. In the heat of the moment. Now I’m stuck.”
“Jewel Anne picking up the tab?” he asked.
I bristled. I didn’t like that. Didn’t like the implication. Even if the answer was yes. Which it was. “She’s paying her part,” I answered. “You and Shirley Beth gonna have to come out when it’s finished. Sacrifice some chickens to the barbecue and have a swim.”
Emmett nodded. “Sounds fine,” he said, though I knew it would never happen. Hard to make plans with Shirley Beth’s problems.
“You still seeing Glenda Sue?” he asked.
I nodded and grinned. “As often and as much of her as possible.”
Emmett laughed. “You’re a dirty old man, Milt.”
I sighed. “Used to be a dirty young man.”
“Didn’t we all?”
I stood and Emmett and I shook hands, and I wandered out to my unmarked squad car and drove out of town, finding a nice tree to park under and wait for the proper time to show my face back at the station. Besides, I had a lot to think about. Like just how I felt about having my shiny ass saved by Dalton Pettigrew. Poor, old, pitiful Dalton who’s been the butt end of my jokes for several years now. And here he went and practically saved my life. Well, maybe more than practically. I’da felt real bad if I didn’t know the whole damn thing had been an accident.
I got back to town at the tail end of the parade and sat in my unmarked squad car at the corner of Main and Crosby and waited for the thing to end. I could hear the high school marching band closer to the front and thanked the good Lord I’d missed that. Even if my nephew Leonard was playing his French horn. I watched the Rebeccas pass by, twenty-three ladies in long evening gowns doing precision marching, and not a one of ’em under sixty. Then came the Masons followed by the Eastern Star and then the Patriots for a Free America, a new group I didn’t know much about, about thirty of ’em, all men, all dressed in black slacks, white shirts, and blue gimme hats, marching in step like a well-oiled machine. They were followed by one of the city patrolmen on horseback, signaling the end of the parade. I started up the car and drove on to the station.
Well, Pioneer Week went the way of all Pioneer Weeks. Neil Bob Barnett from Bishop won the hog-calling contest for the tenth year in a row, and a little girl from the south end of the county won first prize for her Angus steer, then cried all over it when she had to give it up to Maynard Dabney, owner of the Longbranch Inn, who always bought the prized steers during Pioneer Week and served ’em for several months after.
On Friday, Emmett Hopkins called me on the phone and asked me if I could come on over to the police station. The two perps from the day before were making bail, and he wanted to know it I wanted to have a little interview with them, with him present of course, before they blew town, which we both knew, and the judge shoulda known, they were gonna do. I said hell yes and hotfooted it over to the courthouse.
By the time I got there, Doyle Kretcher and Lamar Bass were already waiting for me in an interview room, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths and feet up on the table. When Emmett and me walked in there, Emmett whacked Lamar Bass on the legs, knocking his feet off the table and his ass almost to the floor. I grinned. Lamar Bass didn’t seem to find the humor in the occasion. Doyle, getting the message, put his feet down and snuffed out the cigarette.
“Whatju want, Deputy?” he sneered in my direction. “Our lawyer’s on his way over here to let us out of this hellhole, so be quick about it.”
I laughed. “Doyle,” I said, “this is a big old courthouse, ya know? And I’ve heard tell of prisoners being lost in this place for years with their lawyers roaming the halls going, ‘Here, boy, here!’”
“You don’t go messing with me, Deputy!” Lamar Bass said. “You don’t know who the fuck you’re messing with.”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Just plain old ordinary Texas white trash.”
If possible, Lamar Bass was skinnier, uglier, and more rat-faced than Doyle Kretcher, with beady little eyes that looked two directions at once and made you a bit disoriented. So it was kinda comical to see him try to square his shoulders and stick out his scrawny chest.
