“I’m really sorry,” he said. “Something came up. I can be up there in a couple of hours—”
“Fuck you!” Wentworth screamed back. He’d obviously snatched the phone from Hatch. “Don’t even bother. We found Lek Sixty-four just after the snow paused for a few minutes, and we managed to find the road, no thanks to you.”
Joe punched off before he said something he’d later regret.
—
TEN MINUTES LATER, a set of bright headlights appeared on the access road. Because of his job and the long nights he had spent perching and patrolling his district, Joe had become a student of headlights in the dark. He could discern the make and model of an off-road vehicle by the spacing, height, and intensity of the headlamps. They were like faces to him. These headlights were far apart and higher and brighter than normal, and Joe shouted, “It looks like a Hummer!”
“Oh shit,” Reed said. “Here he comes.”
As he wheeled toward his van, Reed said to his officers, “Get ready for anything. Think of your safety first—and no hero antics. We just want to take him in and question him at this point.”
Deputies jogged toward their vehicles with their hands on their weapons.
Joe grasped Dulcie by the arm and guided her toward his pickup. Lucy opened her door when she saw what he was doing.
“Please get in there with Lucy, and both of you stay on the floor,” Joe said. “Don’t raise your heads until I tell you to, okay?”
Lucy nodded, and scooted across the seat to make room for Dulcie. Joe retrieved his Remington Wingmaster 12-gauge shotgun from behind the seat. If there was a firefight coming, he thought, the last thing he wanted was to be dependent on his sidearm. He racked a double-ought shell into the receiver.
When the pickup door was closed, Joe looked across the hood toward the oncoming vehicle. Rather than slow down at the band of crime scene tape, the Hummer accelerated through it.
6
He knows we’re here!” Reed shouted.
Joe crouched down behind the front fender of his pickup and rotated on his heels so he could survey the situation behind him. Reed had wheeled his chair back to his van and was positioned near the grille. Joe saw a glimmer of red from the wigwag lights wink from the barrel of Reed’s drawn semiauto. The deputies were well positioned behind their vehicles and were locked and loaded. Boner was crouched behind the back hatch of his SUV.
The Humvee roared into the yard and steered around two sheriff’s department SUVs, headed toward the trailer. Joe popped his head up over the hood of his pickup and was instantly blinded by the Humvee’s headlights. He dropped back down, squeezing his eyes shut. All he could see on the inside of his eyelids were the pulsing green orbs of an afterimage.
As the Humvee shot past Joe’s truck, he heard several deputies shout for Cudmore to stop, but he didn’t. Joe kept his head down, but no one fired at the passing vehicle.
The driver powered through a small front fence and across the lawn, turning around the side of the trailer and out of view. But rather than keep on going, the vehicle braked to a stop in the backyard.
“He’s going inside!” Reed shouted. He ordered two deputies to flank the trailer, and they moved out on foot.
“Should we storm it?” Boner asked Reed.
“Negative,” Reed said back. “I don’t want to get anybody hurt.”
“He’s inside,” someone said.
Joe looked up. A dim light had been turned on inside the trailer in what looked like the living room. A moment later, the window was thrown open.
“You sons of bitches have no right to be on my property, so get the hell off!”
He sounded enraged.
“Get in your goddamned cars and get the hell off my property, you fascist, jackbooted thugs!” he hollered. “Unless I see warrants and an order signed by the sheriff of this county—the only authority I recognize—you’re trespassing on my place and I’ll have all your asses. You have no right to be here!”
He had a thundering voice, Joe thought, but slightly slurred. Joe blinked his eyes, trying to force away the effects of the exposure to the headlights so he could see again.
“I’m right here, Tilden,” Reed responded from behind his van. “It’s Sheriff Reed. The warrant is on the way. So calm yourself down and stop yelling. Nobody wants any trouble if we can avoid it.”
Reed had a patient, reasonable timbre to his voice.
That seemed to startle Cudmore into silence.
Reed said, “If you’re packing that pistol you carry around, you need to take it out of your holster and put it down and come out of the house. I need to see your hands.”
“Sheriff, why are you here?” Cudmore asked.
“I think you know why, Tilden,” Reed said.
“Whatever it is, it’s bullshit.”
“So calm down and let’s talk about it.”
Joe took a deep breath. The situation seemed to be cooling. He chanced a glimpse around the front of his truck, keeping low this time so the headlights wouldn’t hit him again.
In the background, he could hear one of the deputies on his radio calling for additional personnel. He hoped that Chief Williamson wasn’t monitoring the channel.
Joe caught a glimpse of Cudmore as he lumbered past the dining room window. He was a huge man, blocky and solid. He had a massive Neanderthal brow and deep-set eyes. His unshaven face sparkled with silver whiskers. He wore a kind of slouch hat and there was a spray of wild thin hair that flowed from beneath the sweatband to his shoulders. The wispy hair glowed in the beams of flashlights and spotlights, and then he was gone.
A few seconds later, his face appeared in the bottom corner of the window. Cudmore squinted into the light, his mouth curled with anger. “How many of you jackbooted thugs are out there, anyway?”
“Quit saying we’re jackbooted thugs, Tilden,” Reed said with annoyance. “It’s my sheriff’s department. I don’t even know what a jackboot is.”
“How many?”
“Half my department, Tilden,” Reed said.
“Well, shit, it’ll take more than that if you want to arrest me.”
“Lower your weapon and come out,” Reed said. Not so reasonable-sounding this time.
“Ain’t you heard?” Cudmore said. “There’s this thing called the Second Amendment. I got a right to keep and bear arms.”
“Of course you do,” Reed responded. “But we’ve got a situation here and I’m getting impatient. We’ll give you your weapons back after we ask you a few questions at my office. If there’s been a mistake, you’ll be back here within an hour or so.”
“To hell with that. I know how your so-called justice system works. Get your men off my place. All of ’em. I’ll talk to you, but only to you.”
“That’s not going to happen, Tilden,” Reed said.
Joe didn’t know all the reasoning or philosophy behind it, but he’d heard that some survivalists made it part of their governing philosophy to recognize the local sheriff as the only authority in the country because, for whatever reason, the rest of the government—especially the federal government—was considered illegitimate. At the moment, Joe couldn’t care less about Cudmore’s reasons. He wanted him in a cage—or worse.
“You’re not arresting anyone,” Cudmore boomed. “This is my private property and you have no business being on it.”
“Back to that,” Reed said.
“Yes, goddamnit, back to that,” Cudmore said. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“We need to ask you some questions about a girl you might have picked up on the highway yesterday. We found her, Tilden.”
There was a long pause. Then Cudmore said, “What girl?”