Terror of the Darkness (A Sheriff Shreveport Allen Case File)

Vic left the car running and they walked into the gas station, guns held down behind their legs. The clerk, a middle-aged woman with a helmet of curls, looked up with bored, tired eyes that came alive as Vic stepped forward, raised his nine, and said, “Empty the register into a bag and do it quick.”

            Buck was behind him, holding the .38 and scanning the aisles with cranked up nerves.

            The clerk stood frozen, her thick arms raised, her lips trying to form words.

            “I said, quick,” Vic shouted.

            She reached for the rack of plastic bags. Vic extended put the gun in her face.

            “Don't try anything, sweetheart, or I'll blow your brains out.”

            She nodded stiffly, pulled a bag from the rack, and opened the register.

            “Someone's coming,” said Buck.

            Vic said, “Handle it,” keeping his eyes on the clerk. “Hurry up, lady.”

            She began stuffing cash into the plastic bag.

            “All of it,” said Vic. “Coins, too.”

            The door opened with a chime. A woman stepped in, not looking up until Buck said, “Get in here.”

            She was old, in her sixties Buck figured, taking the thin, loose flesh of her arm in his hand and pulling her inside. She screamed as her little brittle body fell into the stack of soda boxes displayed at the front of the store.

            Vic turned, said, “Handle it!” then turned back to the clerk holding the bag full of loose bills and change, her eyes wide with fear as she stared into Vic's own dark eyes, two burning embers devoid of emotion or sympathy.

He smiled, looking at her, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet exploded from the barrel and penetrated the woman's chest, tearing flesh and organs, destroying blood vessels as her body fell, collapsing on itself.

            Buck said, “Jesus, Vic!”

            The old woman screamed, “Please, God have mercy.”

            Vic jumped the counter to grab the plastic bag. Buck fired two shots into the old woman to stop her screaming. To shut her up.

            Vic came around the counter, plastic bag in hand, bloody footprints trailing behind him. Buck looked down at the old woman, her body broken and shriveled, like a pile of rags.

            “Let's go, daddy-oh,” said Vic.

            Buck looked up as Vic passed him, scared, blood pumping, ears flooded with white noise. He followed Vic out to the running car.

            Vic laughed. He put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the interstate.

            Shreveport Allen had been the sheriff of Buford, Texas for fifteen years. Buford was a small town but close enough to the border and Houston that a decent amount of traffic passed through along Interstate 40. Shreve didn't deal with a lot of murders, but he had seen his fair share. He had seen his fair share of everything in Buford, Texas.

            “What we got,” he said, stepping out of the state issued Bronco, adjusting his white Stetson against the glare of the sun.

            Will Patrick, Shreve's deputy, nodded, and pulled the sheriff along with a motion from his head to follow.

            “Two victims,” said Will, in the matter of fact way he used when talking police work. “The clerk and a customer.”

            Will led Shreve to the door, opening it for the sheriff. Lacy Waters, the forensic photographer, was already inside snapping pictures. Shreve stopped in the doorway, looking down at the old woman splayed out on the floor, her eyes open and vacant.

            He took a step inside, Will following, and let the door close.

            “Sheriff,” said Lacy, greeting Shreve without looking up from her work.

            “Lacy,” He said back, hardly looking at the young photographer, his mind on the woman laid out before him. “Wilma Peterson,” he said.

            “Yes, sir,” said Will. “Donna Burks is the other victim. Behind the counter over there.”

            The sheriff looked towards the counter and took in the details of the convenience store. The blood splatter on the soda boxes. The bloody footprints Lacy was photographing. The security camera behind the register.

            “Get a look at the tape yet?”

            “Not yet,” Will answered. “Waiting for the store manager to get here.”

            Shreve grunted. He stepped past Wilma Peterson's body, his boots clicking against the hard linoleum floor towards the register, seeing it opened, Donna Burks slumped, her back against the counter beneath the porn magazines and prophylactics. He nodded, as if answering a question to himself, and walked around the counter, his boots clicking their slow pace, and came around to look closer, knelt down, seeing the bullet hole, the torn fabric, the circular hole in her chest, dark dried blood and ruined flesh, her face, frozen, committed to his memory, nodding again, coming up, standing over her, his eyes going again to the register.

            “I figure it was a robbery gone wrong,” said Will, coming to stand on the other side of the counter, Lacy moving behind him, snapping pictures now of Wilma Peterson. “He's here,” said Will, “Wilma come in behind him, surprises him, he turns, shoots her, turns back, shoots Donna. Takes the money and runs.”

            “Well,” said Shreve, coming around the counter, looking out into the parking lot at the long coroner's station wagon pulling up, “it might not have been their plan to kill them.”

            Will turned, following Shreve with his eyes. “You're saying there was two of them.”

            “There were two guns,” said Shreve. “I'm speculating there were two perpetrators.”

            He opened the door to let in the county coroner.

            “Bill,” he said, greeting the short balding coroner, just a little younger than Wilma Peterson, whose body the coroner's eyes fell to as he entered.

            “Sheriff,” Bill Masters answered. Then, “Lord, that's Wilma Peterson.”

            “It is,” Shreve agreed.

            “Lord,” said Bill again.

            “Donna Burks is on the other side of the counter there,” Shreve said.

            Again, Bill Masters uttered, “Lord,” looking from Wilma Peterson to the counter then to the sheriff again. “Lord, Shreveport. Who would have done this?”
            “I don't know yet, Bill,” he answered, looking past the coroner to another car pulling into the parking lot outside. “Go see who that is, Will.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            The deputy shuffled past the sheriff and Lacy and Bill Masters to open the door and step outside. Shreve watched the young deputy, straight-backed, his hands on his hips, wearing the authority the badge and uniform gave him. He felt for a moment as if he were looking into the past and seeing a picture of himself.

            “I'm finished her, Sheriff,” said Lacy Waters.

            Shreve nodded. “Thank you, Lacy.”

            “I'll get these uploaded as soon as I can.”

            “I'd appreciate it.”

            She stepped through the door, out into the sunlit world, Will holding it open and sticking his head inside to say, “It's the manager, Sheriff.”

            “All right, then.”

            Bill Masters was behind the counter, just standing up from taking Donna Burks's vitals.

            “You finished, Bill?”  

            “Yes, sir. I pronounce them both dead on the scene.” His eyes fell again on Donna Peterson, his lips curved downward, disappointed, as if there could have been some other outcome.

            “Okay, then” Shreve said. “We'll call in the ambulance.”

            He went outside, leaving Bill Masters alone with the two bodies. Will Patrick stood talking with the manager. They turned as the sheriff approached.

            “Sheriff Allen,” Will said, “this is Fred Wilbur, the store manager.”

            Shreve put out his hand and the manager took it.

            “This is terrible,” the manager said. “I feel just awful about this.”

            “You knew Donna Burks well?” said Shreve.

            “She's been working here for two years. A good employee. I feel just awful about this. Does her family know?”

            “I'll be notifying them,” said Shreve. “What I need from you, sir, is the video from that camera behind the register and the one from that camera over there.” He pointed to a steel light post at the far end of the parking lot. “Any other cameras?”

            “No, sir. Just the two.”

            “All right,” Shreve said, watching the ambulance come down the highway, no sirens, just the flashing lights. “You get that footage to my deputy here.”

            “Yes, sir. Of course. Anything I can do. I feel just awful.”

            “That's it for now,” said Shreve, the ambulance pulling up, the soft roll of tires against the pavement. He put his eyes on Will, said, “You take care of that for me. Bring it to the station.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            Shreve turned and went to the Bronco.

            “Where you going, Sheriff?”

            “Notify the families.”

            It isn't an easy thing, telling a family their loved one has been murdered. I'd say it's probably the hardest part of my job. A lot of sheriffs delegate the responsibility and I understand why. You never know how someone is going to react when you tell them their lives have suddenly changed forever, and that the face they wake up to every morning won't be there anymore.

            Wilma Peterson's husband, a man of sixty-eight and half blind with cataracts, shut the door in my face. I stood there for a moment, thinking of what I should do, then I put my hat on and left. The only thing I knew to do was to catch her killers. I don't even know if that would make a difference to him, but I like to think it would.

            Donna Burks's husband answered the door with two young’uns clinging to him. I said I need to speak to him in private and right then he knew what I had come to tell him.

            He sent the kids to their room and came outside to stand with me.

            “You know who done it?”

            “Not yet, but we will,” I said.

            He just looked at me, nodded his head, and stood there with his arms crossed gazing out into the yard.

            “I told her, if anybody ever come in there with a gun, you give them what they want. It ain't your money.”

            I stood there with him and didn't say anything. Once you drop a heavy load like that on someone, it’s hard to just walk away.

            “I have to make dinner.”

            I nodded, put my hat on, and left him to sort out his new world.

            It isn't an easy thing, changing a person's life forever. A whole family. Promising them something you have no earthly way to guarantee.

           

            Will Patrick's voice came over the radio. “Sheriff Allen, come in.”

            Shreve reached for the receiver. “Sheriff Allen here.”

            “We got the video, Sheriff. Over”

            “I'll be right there.”

            They were sitting at a booth inside a bar called Hog Wild with a half empty pitcher of beer on the table. A couple of bikers were riding stools at the bar, watching television, the waitress behind there serving them drinks.

            Vic made sure he had a view of the door and watched as another biker came in from outside. A big hairy guy, dirty jeans and a leather vest. Vic sipped his beer. He couldn't understand those guys. What kind of broad would want to get close to that?

            “Seventy-five bucks,” said Buck. “Seventy-five bucks, man.”

            Vic smiled. “That's thirty-five bucks a piece,” he said, his eyes now on the waitress. She wore a pink tank-top that said I Like It Dirty.  Ten years past her prime. Vic shrugged, and said, “Not bad for twenty minutes work.”

            “Jesus,” said Buck.

            “Drink your beer,” said Vic.

            Buck picked up his mug and guzzled half of it before setting it down.

            “What are we going to do, Vic? Those people – ,”

            “Shut up,” said Vic, leaning forward. “You shut your mouth.” He leaned back again, the violence washing out of his face. “You got to learn something, Buck.”

            Buck looked at Vic. “What?”

            “When a job's over, you don't talk about it. You put it behind you like it never happened. What went down today? It never happened.”

            Buck looked down at his beer, watching beads of sweat drip down the smooth glass.

            “I don't know how you can be so calm.”

            Vic sipped his beer, then gave Buck a thin little smile.

            “You like Elvis, right? You dress like him. Want to be like him? It's okay, man. You're young. You still have idols. But tell me this. Why do you like Elvis?”

            Buck shrugged. “Because he's cool, I guess.”

            “Right,” said Vic, looking back toward the waitress. “So, be cool. That's all you need to do. Are you cool?”

            Buck looked up at Vic. Vic was a hard man to look in the eyes and Vic knew it. He took pride in it.

            “Are you cool?”

            “Yeah,” said Buck. “I'm cool.”

            “Good. Drink your beer.”

            Vic's eyes went back to the bar. To the flicker of light the television emanated. He saw his face. An old mugshot. Next to one of Buck. A mugshot from when Buck must have done time in juvie. Then grainy black and white footage of himself holding up the gas station. His eyes drifted to the waitress behind the bar, watching the television.

            Buck saw something in Vic's face. He said, “What?”

            Vic said, “We're famous. Just like Elvis.”

           

            It didn't take long to ID the killers once they had the surveillance tapes. The parking lot camera showed the late model Buick Riviera pull up at 2:20 PM. It sat there for ten minutes.  Two men exited, guns drawn, and went inside.

            The camera behind the register had a perfect view. He recognized them almost instantly, even with the heavy video compression.

            “That first one there, the taller one, is Vic Stump,” the sheriff said to Deputy Patrick. “The other one is Buck Humphrey”

            “You sure?” said Will.

            Shreve grunted. “Stump was in here not three months ago. Did thirty days for public intoxication and disturbance. Humphrey's been in and out of juvie since he was a kid. Nothing serious. Nothing like this.”

            Will took the names down and went to his desk to run them through the data base.

            “Stump's a bad one,” said Shreve. “He's got a record goes back to Houston. Armed robbery. Battery. How he ended up here, I'll never know. Wish to God Houston had kept him.”

            “Got an address on Stump,” Will said. “810 Parkway Drive.”

            “Humphrey?”
            Will clicked some keys. “2020 Stevens.”

            “That's his folk's house.”

            “Which one you want to check out first?”

            Shreve stopped the video. A still image of Vic Stump holding a nine-millimeter on Donna Burks.

            “Let's check Stump's.”

            “What about a warrant?”

            Shreve picked up his Stetson and keys from the desk and started for the door. “We'll call the judge on the way and have it sent over.”

            When I was growing up, I only ever heard about one murder. A fella named Charlie Waters shot his wife for messing around on him with a Mexican fella worked out at the orchard. Might still work the orchard, for all I know, though he's probably dead himself by now. Charlie Waters didn't mess with him. He shot his wife, then sat down on the couch and waited to be hauled off to the penitentiary.

            I never understood that, but I think that’s part of the lesson. Don't try to understand people. You'll never figure them out. You think they'll do one thing, and they do another.

            Just follow the evidence, is what my old boss taught me. Clem Shepherd, sheriff before me, was sheriff for thirty years. He liked to compare himself to those old Marshals like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. He never said it himself, but he carried himself much the way I imagine those fellas carried themselves. Walking tall and heavy. Commanding respect.

            There ain't no respect no more.

            Clem Shepherd retired an old man, then shot himself out on Lake Divide. Never would have expected that.

            “How long he been staying here?” Will asked the hotel clerk, a woman in her forties with dirty blond hair, leading him and the sheriff across the lot to the room.

            “About six months,” she said. “Didn't surprise me none when I saw him on the news.”

            “Why's that?” asked Will.

            She stopped and turned. “He's just the mean sort. You can tell just by looking at him. His eyes, always squinting at you. Don't never smile. Anyway, this here's the key. Room 108 right there.”

            Shreve took the key.

            “He ever have any visitors?”

            “I seen him with a couple different women,” she said. “I wouldn't exactly call them ladies, if you know what I mean.”

            “Anyone else?”

            “Seen him with a kid once. Had his hair all greased down like one of them Mexican greasers. You need anything else? I ain't supposed to leave the desk for long.”

            “No, ma'am. We can handle it from here. Thank you.”

            The woman walked away. Shreve and Will closed in on the room. Shreve slid the key into the deadbolt and gave Will a nod. The deputy had his hand on his pistol. He shouted, “Vic Stump, Sheriff's Department!”

            Shreve waited a beat, turned the key, and pushed the door open.

            The room was small and dark, with light cutting through the blinds to lacerate empty beer cans and a full ashtray on the little round table beside the window. The sheriff's eyes cleared the room and fell on the bed.

Will said, “Jesus.”

            “Get on the horn,” Shreve said, stepping inside. The room was empty except for the skinny, bone thin girl tied to the cheap hotel bed. “Tell them we have another victim.”

            Will fell away, the flat souls of his ankle boots slapping against the pavement as Shreve stood over the girl. She had been beaten. Her thin neck red from the man's hands where she had been strangled. There was a small backpack, the type some girls used as a purse, on the nightstand, her clothes scattered on the floor beside it.

            “Sheriff,” Will's voice came from behind him. He hadn't even heard the deputy come running back. “There's been a shooting over at Hog Wild.”

            Shreve turned.

            Will said, “Three men dead. One in the hospital. Said they took off with a waitress.”

            “Our boys?”

            “Sounds like it. Survivor said one of them had greasy hair.

           

            Vic pulled off the highway onto an access road, sending spray of sand and rock arcing out beside the car.

            “Where are you taking me?” the waitress said again, choked with tears.

            “Why don't we let her out, Vic?”

            “Let her out? Right here?” Vic's eyes flashed to the mirror, to the reflection of the waitress, huddled in the corner of the Buick's backseat. “What's your name again?” Vic said, steering the car forward and giving it more gas now that the road was straight.

            “Please –,” she said, sobbing.

            “What's your name?”

            “Diane,” she said, her voice barely audible over the crunching of sand and gravel thrown out beneath the car.

            “Diane what?” Vic demanded.

            “Holder. Diane Holder.”

            “You want me to let you out here, Diane? Way out here? Thirty, forty miles from anything. You know what will happen to you out here?”

            “Please, I just want to go home.”

            “You know what will happen to you out here, Diane?” Vic went on. “You'll die if I let you here. There ain't nothing but thirty miles of desert whichever way you go. You'll die if I let you out here, Diane. Is that what you want? Do you want to die?”

            “Vic,” said Buck.

            “Is that what you want, Diane?”

            “Please,” she said, lines of mascara running down her face like melting wax. “Please, I want to go home. I have a little boy –,”

            “We all have things, Diane,” said Vic. “We all have things we want to go back to. Don't you think I have a family to go back to? Don't you think Buck has a family he cares about?”

            “Please, let me go. I won't tell anybody.”

            “You're being selfish, Diane.”

            “Vic, just let her out.”

            “Just let her out. Jesus Christ. Just sit back and be cool, Buck. You too, Diane. The both of you just sit back and shut up. We'll all get out soon enough.”

            Buck sank down in his seat and tried not to hear the sobbing coming from the backseat.

            There weren't any cameras inside Hog Wild to tell us what happened, but I could read the signs well enough. The two boys come up here for a drink to celebrate their winnings from the gas station job. A pitcher and two glasses sweating on the table told me that much.

            Either they were still riding high on the adrenaline rush from their big score of seventy-five dollars and some change, or they needed more, or they just plain felt like shooting up the bar. Didn't really make much of a difference.

            Two victims were shot in the back, killed instantly with bullets to the head. The third took a round to the chest and bled out. They were a rough crowd, part of the local motorcycle club, but none of them were known killers.

            The fourth had been taken away in an ambulance. Two shots to the chest and survived somehow. Gave a description of a greasy haired kid and a mean eyed partner. He might survive, God willing. Doctors give him a slim chance.

           

            “Her name is Diane Holder,” Deputy Will Patrick said, consulting his notepad. “Age thirty-two. Divorced. One child.”

            Sheriff Shreveport Allen stood in the center of the barroom, hands on his hips, staring at the blown-out television above the bar.

            “Reckon they saw something they didn't like?”

            “Could be,” said Will. “Local news has been running their mugshots. State news is picking up the story.”

            The sheriff's eyes fell to the spent nine-millimeter casing, marked by a little flag, on the floor where it fell.

            “Making them into celebrities before the day is out.”

            “Slow news day, I guess,” said Will.

            The sheriff walked across the barroom, careful to avoid the pools of coagulating blood where the bodies had been removed.

            “What do you want to do, Sheriff?”

            “They haven't made a big enough score to ride off into the sunset yet. I got a feeling they ain't gone far. We got the state police watching the highways.”

            Shreve made his way behind the bar, his creased eyes scanning the pictures and photographs along the bar. He found one of Diane Holder, her arm around a young boy whose face resembled hers. The boy was dressed in a little league outfit.  

            “They won't go far with the girl, anyway,” he said, putting the picture in his shirt pocket. “They'll go somewhere they think is safe and hide out for a while.”

            Will crossed his arms over his chest. “Any idea where that might be?”

            “Not a clue,” said the sheriff. “Buck Humphrey is a local boy. Someplace he knows.”

            “All right,” said Will. “How does that help us?”
            “It doesn't,” Shreve said, walking toward the exit.

            “Where we going?”

            “Talk to Buck's folks. They'll have a clue where their boy run off to.”

            “You think they'll talk to us?”

            But the sheriff had already passed through the door.

           

            I sat in a worn out chair with Deputy Will Patrick  beside me inside the trailer Buck Humphrey was raised in, my Stetson on my knee, looking at Buck Humphrey's worn out parents. Both of them, the mother and the father, had the worn-out skin of lifelong alcoholics. Red and swollen in places that shouldn't be swollen.

            Beer cans lined the coffee table between us. The father, Carl Humphrey, stared at the table, a fresh can in hand, as if he were calculating how many beers he had that day. The mother, Kathy Humphrey, puffed steadily on a cigarette, looking at me she hoped I’d just go away. But I wasn't going anywhere until I got what I come for.

           

            “Tell me, Mister Humphrey, Miss Humphrey,” Shreve Allen said, his eyes going first to one and then the other, “is there any place he might have gone to? Somewhere he thinks is safe, no one else knows about.”

            The father drank from his beer can, his eyes forward. The window unit blew air, but the trailer was a hot box.

            Kathy Humphrey puffed on her cigarette. She said, “If that was your boy out there, would you tell the police where to find him, so they could shoot him full of holes? Or would you make them do their job and find him themselves?”

            Shreve's eyes moved toward the father.

            “Don't look at him,” Kathy Humphrey said, shaking her head. “I decide what's best for Buck and telling you where he might be ain't what's best for my boy. Not right now.”

            Shreve nodded, a cloud of cigarette smoke hovering in the pink light of the fading day the trailer's windows allowed inside.

            “I don't have a boy, ma'am,” he said, “and I won't pretend to know what the two of you must be going through right now. It's got to be a hard thing to watch your boy go bad. It happens quick most times. I've seen it often enough in my line of work.  A kid just falls in with the wrong type of companions. Never even see it coming, themselves. I'm sure your boy didn't plan any of this.”

            Shreve reached into his pocket and took out the photograph of Diane Holder and her son and placed it on the coffee table.

            “She has a boy, too. She wants to get back to him. Probably more than anything else in this world right now.”

            Kathy Humphrey's bloodshot eyes stayed on the sheriff.

            “You think she'd tell on her own boy?” she said and flicked a long ash off her cigarette.

            “She might,” said Shreve. “If she thought it would save an innocent woman's life.” He picked up the picture and slipped it back in his pocket. “I'll do everything I can to bring your boy in safe. This fella he's fallen in with, Victor Stump, he's the bad one. He's the one going to get your boy killed.”

            She turned away, blowing smoke.

            “I've said all I'm going to say, Sheriff. You want to keep talking, I'll call my lawyer. You can talk to him.”

            “This doesn't have to have a bad ending for everyone.”

            “I'm done,” she said. “Please leave.”

            Shreve looked up at Will and nodded. He stood up, put his Stetson on. He took a card from his shirt pocket and set it on the coffee table. “If you change your mind, want to see your boy again, give me a call.”

            She puffed on her cigarette.

            “Let's go, Will.”

            Shreve went towards the door and stopped, looking at a picture of a young Buck Humphrey and his father, taken in front of a cabin.

            “Where was this picture taken?”

            Carl Humphrey looked up for the first time. “That's my daddy's cabin. Me and him built it back in seventy-two. I used to take Buck up there when he was a boy to hunt.”

            Shreve turned to face the father. “Yeah? Good hunting up there?”

            “Used to be,” said Carl Humphrey “Ain't so good no more. Not since the mining companies claimed it all. Blasting scared away all the game.”

            “That right?” said Shreve.

            “Shut up, Carl,” Kathy Humphrey ordered. “Can't you see what he's doing? Trying to be friendly cop. Thinks we'll tell him something. We ain't telling you nothing, Sheriff. Not a damn thing. Why don't you just go and do your job. Do what you have to do and leave us alone.”

            Shreve tipped his hat and went through the door, Will following him. They stepped outside into the trailer park courtyard.

            “Well, that was a waste of time,” said Will. “We're not any closer to finding them than we were an hour ago.”

            “Maybe,” said Shreve. “Except, I know where that cabin is.”

            “How's that?” said Will, as they climbed into the Sheriff's Bronco.

            “He said the mining company took over the land after 1972. That would have to be Olderfield’s. They come in here then. Bought up everything west of Highway 61.”

            “Okay,” said Will. “That don't narrow it down much.”

            “The only good hunting before that was Dry Gulch Valley. There's a few cabins out that way, but not many.”

            “So what? We check them one by one?”

            “We do,” Shreve said, putting the Bronco into reverse and pulling out onto the highway.

            The cabin was nothing more than a dry-rotted plywood shack with no doors. The wind blew sand through the front, where a door may have been at one time, and out the back, where there was also a missing door. The windows were bare. Two dry rotted chair sat against the wall and a mattress was on a floor littered with piles of sand and animal droppings, dried and whitened with age.

            Diane Holder was scared as she stepped inside. The day's heat lingered, like a sweat box.

            “Sit her down there,” Vic said, motioning to the mattress.

            She looked back at the kid who had followed her inside. She had thought, maybe, she stood a chance with him. He was young. Had soft eyes. Not like the older one, whose eyes were cold and mean.

            But she didn't want to sit on that dirty mattress. She had a fear that if she did, she would never get back off it again.

            Instead, she ran. She ran as fast as she could out of the cabin and into the flat impenetrable desert. She ran as fast as she could in the flat soled Mary Jane's she wore.

            She heard his voice behind her, the mean one, say, “Go get her,” then quick footfalls of the younger one trailing behind her. “She screamed, but there was no one to help her, or even hear her.

            She turned to look and he was there, running like some kind of animal, head down, arms and legs pumping, and she stumbled.0

 “God,” she said, cursing herself for falling like they do in the movies, like she always said she would never do. He was on her, tackling her, his weight against her, holding her down against the hard grit of sand, grabbing her hair, his breath against her back.

 “Please,” she said, screaming the word, as he yanked her up, cursing her, dragging her back by her hair, his voice, low, guttural, blaming her, blaming the other man, dragging her across the sandpaper earth in her shorts and tank top until she was inside the shack, thrown onto the dirty mattress like a broken doll, the mean one crouching down in front of her now, holding her by the chin with one hand, holding his gun in the other. His fingers pressed into her face, forcing her to look into his cold mean eyes, and she wanted to plead with him, but he held her chin so tight she couldn't speak, only make those animal noises, those panicked animal noises that sounded like a child's first forays into speech.

            “You shouldn't have done that,” said Vic. “Look at Buck over there,” he forced her to turn her head, “Look at him. He's all worn out and tired now. You made him mess up his hair. You know how long it takes him to get that air so perfect?

            “Tell her, Buck. Tell her how long it takes.”

            “Don't matter,” said Buck. “We got her back.”

            Vic turned to look at Buck, considering the kid's small, acne smeared face.

            “You can't let them do that to you, Buck,” said Vic. “You can't let the world crap all over you.”

            “It's all right, Vic,” said Buck.

            “It's not all right. You let this broad do it, you might as well let the whole world do it.” Vic turned back to Diane, his hand so tight on her face she thought he was going to break her jaw.

            “Look at her, Buck. Really look at her. Look at the shirt she's wearing. I like it dirty. Jesus. Is that right, Diane? You like it dirty?”

            She tried to tell him it was a beer shirt. Dirty Ale Brewery. Her friend's brewery. But she couldn't. She tasted blood in her mouth as the inside of her cheeks ground against her teeth.

            Vic’s smile matched his eyes.

            He said, “That's how we're going to give it you, Diane. We're going to give it to you dirty.”

            Buck said, “We don't have time for this, Vic. We need to figure out what we're going to do.”

            Vic released the girl with a thrust of his arm and stood up. His attention was on Buck, the nine-millimeter lingering at his side like a snake feeling its way.

            Vic said, “Don't worry your pretty little brain about it, Buck. Remember what I told you. Be like Elvis.”

            Buck shook his head. “We need to figure something out, Vic. We can't stay here.”

            The kid was getting tough. But the kid didn't know what tough really was. He thought tough was putting grease in your hair and standing up to anyone who chided you about it.

            “Relax,” said Vic.

            “This is my dad's cabin. How long you think it will be before they come looking here?”

            “Long enough,” Vic said, turning back to the girl.

            “You're crazy.”

            Vic shot his eyes at Buck. He cleared the space between them in a heartbeat and slapped Buck with the back of his hand. Buck reared back. The girl screamed.

            “Don't ever call me crazy,” said Vic.

            Buck’s hand shook with the weight of the pistol he held.

            “You want to use that thing,” Vic said, “go ahead. Make it count, because if you miss, I'm going to take it away from you and show you what crazy means.”

            “We need to leave, Vic,” said Buck. “I've got a bad feeling.”

            “We go out there now, we get busted. We stay here, wait for the heat to die down, then slip out.”

            “Don't ever hit me again, Vic.”

            “I gave you a little slap to wake you up. Get some sense into your head.”

            “Don't ever do it again.”

            Fine –,” Vic said, turning around, his eyes falling on the mattress.

            The girl was gone.

            History makes heroes out of psychopaths. I’ve always wondered why there were more stories about bad men than good. Take Billy the Kid. Known to have killed at least five men. Three of those were officers of the law. A cow thief and a killer, his legend spread far and wide.

            The truth was, he was just a kid with a gun who got the drop on a few men until his card was punched by Pat Garret.

            What sense does that make?

            I'll never understand it and I'm not sure I want to.

            Diane ran as hard as she could. She wasn't going to fall again.

            They were behind her. She heard them back there in the dark. Shouting at her, calling her names, threatening her. But she wasn't going back to that cabin. She knew if she did, she would never leave it. She saw it in the mean one's eyes. She had never been more certain of anything.

            Her eyes searched ahead, desperate, scared. She couldn't see anything out there but shadows and darker shadows. If there was a road or highway, the night sheltered it from her.

            Still, she ran. She had no choice but to run.

            “Come back here!” Vic yelled as he charged after the girl. “I won't hurt you. I promise!”

            Buck ran beside Vic. He wasn't running as hard as he could. If the girl got away, then she got away. He was tired and wanted to go home.

            Vic fired off three quick shots. The sound of his pistol tore Buck from his thoughts.

            “Jesus,” said Buck. “Let's just go back to the car and get out of here.”

            Vic stopped and spun around.

            “You want to go back to the car?”

            “I just want to get out of here.”

            “Fine.”

            Vic raised the pistol and fired. Buck took the bullet in his chest. He slumped to his knees, the strength drained out of him. He looked up, watched Vic come closer.

            He tried to speak but couldn't catch his breath.

            “I should have never hooked up with you,” said Vic. He raised the pistol again and fired three quick shots into Buck's chest. Buck fell backwards into the sand. Vic fired another shot into Buck's head.

            A spasm ran through Buck's body, then he was still. Vic reached down and picked up Buck’s .38.

            He ran back towards the car, thinking Buck might have been onto something.

           

            The shots scared Diane. She dove to the ground with her hands over her head. The terror of the darkness and what lurked within it, hunting her, overcame her. She lay there, listening to the deep silence of the desert. She didn't hear them anymore, but that didn't mean they weren't out there, waiting for her to stand up and show herself.

            A car was coming from somewhere behind her. She heard the gravel and sand spinning out from beneath tires. She craned her neck to look behind her and saw twin headlights.

            Diane scrambled to her feet, running blindly again, like some terrified animal, as the car glided past her, spraying sand out in an arcing cloud, the driver screaming through the window like a  deranged cowboy.

            Vic circled her, spinning the wheel with one hand, his other extended out the window wielding the nine millimeter. He was smiling, having more fun than he could remember.

            “Get along little doggie!” he taunted, then fired a shot into the air as the car spun on loose sand.

            “Stop!” she yelled.

            Vic spun the wheel, fired again. He wasn't trying to hit her. Not yet. He was just having fun.

            Diane ran, choosing direction at random. She heard him gun the engine, circling her, shouting, laughing, punctuating his taunts with gunshots.

            She fell, the sand grinding against her bare skin. The car circled her. She looked up. Out there, across that dark black desert, she saw flashing blue and red lights.

            “You ever come across anything like this before, Sheriff?” Will Patrick asked, staring into the darkness outside the Bronco.

            Shreve was silent for a few miles, the blue and red light pulsating around them.

            “One time, back in ninety-five,” he said. “Fella name of Brody Winchester. Tried to make a name for himself in the drug trade. Thought this would be a good place to start.”

            “What happened?”

            “He kidnapped the families of some small-time dope peddlers. Told them they worked for him now. Ones disagreed, he sent them pieces of their loved ones to make his point.”

            After a short silence, Will said, “You catch him?”

            “No, I didn't. He messed with the wrong dealer. A Mexican fella connected to the Cartel. Brody Winchester only thought he was mean. For the next six months, every Tuesday, Brody's mama got a package in the mail.”

            “A package.”

            “A little piece of Brody in each one. With a Polaroid picture.”

            “Of what?”

            “Brody. Show they kept him alive as they chopped him to pieces.”

            “Good God.”

            “God ain't got nothing to do with it,” Shreve said, his eyes catching something in the distance. “What do you reckon that is?”

            Will shifted in his seat as Shreve slowed the Bronco, peering out across the desert, where twin lights bounced in the darkness.

            “Looks like headlights,” said Will.

            “Square headlights,” Shreve said, pulling off the road, jumping a ditch, “like the headlights of a Riviera.”

            He cleared the ditch and gunned the Bronco.

            “Get ready.”

           

            Diane saw the flashing lights turn and come towards her.

            “Help!” she screamed, her voice raw and choked with sand.

            Vic saw the flashing lights and pulled hard on the Buick's wheel, spinning the car and slamming on the breaks.

            He had come to far to let the woman escape now. He knew he should race back toward the highway, but he couldn't do it. He had to finish it. He stopped the car and opened the door. The woman was running but there was still a fair distance for the cops to cross before they could do anything. Vic climbed out of the Buick with a pistol in each hand.

            “Hey,” he shouted, aiming the nine-millimeter at the woman's back. He wanted to see her face, but this would have to do.

            He fired once and she kept running. He squeezed the trigger again and the chamber clicked dry.

            Diane ran towards the Bronco. Shreve and Will saw her in their headlights, her face clenched, eyes wide with terror. Behind her, standing in front of the Buick, was Vic Stump, pistols drawn.

            “Get down,” said Shreve, as Vic Stump raised a pistol and fired. The bullet crashed through the windshield, spider-webbing the glass. Shreve swerved and slammed the breaks. The sound of another shot, the crash of broken glass, and the warm spray of blood all made Shreve's heart skip a beat. He had time to see his deputy slump over in the seat next to him, blood spilling from his head, before he opened the Bronco's door and jumped out, pistol in hand.

            He took cover behind the Bronco's hood as Diane Holder ran towards him. Vic Stump fired again. The bullet plunked into the side of the Bronco.

            “Get down!” Shreve shouted at Diane, closer now, but her weaving body blocking his shot. He fired into the air, and shouted again, “Get down!”

            Vic stepped forward. He had the cop pinned. The other looked dead. He leveled the .38 at Diane's back and fired. She fell face first to the ground. Vic laughed and turned back to the Buick.

            “Victor Stump!” Shreve shouted.

            Vic spun to fire and was hit in the chest by Shreve's bullet. He fell against the Buick and slumped to the ground, dazed and breathless.

            Shreve came around the Bronco, his pistol aimed at the fallen killer. He stopped at the fallen form of Diane Holder and waited a beat for her to move.

            “You okay?”
            She looked up, eyes wide, disbelieving. “Y-Yes,” she stammered.

            Shreve kept moving. “Stay there,” he said, and approached Vic Stump, his chest heaving, a wheezing, gurgling sound coming from inside him.

            Vic's eyes came up, his head too heavy to lift. He raised his hand, bringing up the .38. Shreve kicked the pistol away with his boot.

            “Victor Stump, you're under arrest.”

            Vic breathed heavy. “I ain't going to make it to the lock-up.”

            Shreve nodded. “Probably not.”

 He reached behind him and took the handcuffs from his belt.

“But you're going to die locked up.” He slapped a cuff on one of Vic's wrists. “It's the least you deserve.”

            “You’re – You’re a son of a bitch,” Vic gasped.

            “Maybe that's true,” Shreve said, clamping on the other cuff. “But I'm the son of the bitch who got you. You remember that on your way to hell.”

                                                                        The End