Fallout (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 2) (5 page)

Joshua ducked, turned, reached through the door and turned off the kitchen light. He squatted, revolver in hand, staring out into the dark; and, it was definitely dark. The moon had not rose high enough to give decent lighting to the surrounding forest. It took several minutes for his eyes get use to the dark and then he was able to make out the tree line and the pathways to the river. Another shot whizzed past his head and landed with a thump into a log of the cabin. It convinced him that whoever it was intended to kill him.

He had no doubt that Leonard or little Tom or both were behind this assassination plot. They thought they could lay in wait and then bushwhack him; they had almost done it. Would have, too, if they were not such bad shots or so drunk.

He could be mistaken but he doubted it. He’d had no trouble with anyone else. For the most part, he got along well with most folks in the county because he was fair. He was firm when he had to be but did not abuse his authority. He gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, until they proved him wrong.

Joshua strained his eyes into the darkness, his ears too.

After listening awhile, he pinned down which direction the noises they made were coming from. He aimed his revolver in that general direction. He was planning to shoot back, the next time they fired in his direction. He could hear mumbling and cussing, but so far, they had not fired another shot.

“You boys need to just give it up and get on out of here,” he yelled out and waited. Nothing, it got deathly quiet. “Take your guns and leave, and I’ll let it slide. If you continue, I’ll either have to kill you or haul your ass to jail for attempted murder.”

Joshua knew he should call for backup and flush them out, but he knew most of their anger was fueled by alcohol. Once they sobered up, they would realize how stupid it was to try to kill a county sheriff.

“You yellow-bellied cocksucker!” someone yelled, Joshua knew it had to be little Tom. He could tell it was a boy, not a man. As Joshua opened his mouth to say something, another shot smacked the logs behind him; he heard glass break and cringed. His hundred plus years old windows were precious to him, he returned fire.

He did not expect the volume of bullets that pelted his cabin following his returned shot. It was as if his firing had given them justification to use deadly force, automatic pistols or small caliber rifles from the sound of them.

Joshua pulled one of the rockers in front of him to use for cover and then reached around and fired in their direction again. Another deluge of shots followed and then he heard someone yelling, “I’m hit, I’m hit!” It sounded like whoever had yelled the insult at him. Then Joshua saw someone walking out of the woods, but could not tell who it was. “You sum’bitch!” they yelled. It sounded like Leonard.

Joshua took aim at the yeller’s lower limbs and fired another single shot; they fell to their knees. He heard sirens and saw two patrol cars with lights flashing coming down his driveway. The headlights of the patrol cars lit up his backyard as if it was Christmas. That was when Joshua saw that there were four people there. Leonard was on the ground holding his leg and three teenage boys were in the tree line.

The boys were little Tom, Tom’s son; Marcus, who was Hannah and Leonard’s son; and Pearl’s boy, Boukie was there. Tom Jr. appeared to be bleeding from a wound in his left arm. The Hatfield’s and McCoy’s was what came to Joshua’s mind. He did not know whether he was a Hatfield or if he was a McCoy.

“You boys drop your weapons and there won’t be any trouble; leastways from me. If you refuse, we
will
use deadly force. You do not want that any more than I do. Now, lay the guns on the ground and back away from them.” The boys all looked at each other then laid the guns on the ground and began backing away. “Lay on your bellies and put your hands on top of your heads,” Joshua demanded. They had all began to get on their knees when suddenly, little Tom darted toward the woods. Deputy Cook took off after him and tackled him against a tree.

“Boy, don’t you know how to listen to
instruc-tions
” Cook said as he wrenched the boys arms behind him and cuffed him.

The entire time all this had been going on, Leonard was trying to get to his feet and cussing Joshua for every sorry sons-a-bitch he could think of. When Joshua had finally had enough of Leonard’s filthy mouthed insults, he kicked Leonard’s good leg out from under him and sent Leonard crashing to the ground.

Joshua put a knee to Leonard’s back and cuffed him. “Do I need to gag you, too?” he asked when Leonard began to say something.

Leonard glared over his shoulder at him but remained quiet. He could tell that Joshua was done with being nice, and done he was; he had had it up to the gills with all of them. It was all he could do not to haul off and kick Leonard in the teeth!

“You boys showed up at the right time. How did you know?” he asked his deputies once he had Leonard under control.

“Mr. Kelly from across the swamp called and told Ida Mae that there was someone shooting back here at your cabin, she called us,” Cook replied.

“They probably parked at the old plantation and walked in,” Calvert suggested.

“Yeah, probably, that’s about the only place they could have parked to walk here, at least from this side of the river without coming down into my yard,” Joshua agreed. “Lock 'em up for the time being, I’ll decide what to do with them later. You can get the vehicle impounded too. Maybe by the time they get through paying bail money and impound fees, they will think twice before stirring up a mess again.”

“I doubt it Sheriff, people like them don’t learn anything the easy way, they always have to learn their lessons the hard way,” Deputy Cook grumbled.

Joshua just grunted as he turned to walk up onto the porch. He knew Cook was right. That had been his experience too when dealing with people that had the same mindset as Leonard and little Tom. The other boys were probably of the same mindset being as they were kin and associated with Leonard.

Hook crossed Joshua’s mind; he was nothing like Tom, nothing like Willie either, but neither Willie nor Tom was like their father.

Their father, Bill Stringer, was as kind a soul as you would ever a wanted to meet. The boys must have inherited their mindset and ways from their mother’s side of the family. Joshua was not as familiar with her as he was the old man; now though, they were all gone - the old man, the boys, Willie and Tom. The only male figure the younger boys had now was Leonard-that was not good at all. If anybody was a ‘yellow belly,’ thought Joshua, it’d be Leonard.

Joshua sat down in his rocker and reached for his smokes. He needed a drink too, but he would wait until his deputies left to pour himself a glass of whiskey. After a few minutes, they left taking Leonard to jail and the boys to juvy. Deputy Cook was the only one lagging. Joshua knew he wanted something or had something to say was the reason he waited for the others to leave.

“If you got something to say to me, Cookie, spit it out. You know I don’t like anyone beating around the bush.”

“Yes, sir, I just wanted to make sure you was alright before I left. I know you was banged up pretty good from the wreck and then you was shot. Those things can catch up with you when-”

“When you get
old
,” Joshua grimaced.

“No sir, that wasn’t what I was going to say. I was going to say when you’re tired and not gettin’ enough rest. We’ve just been worried about you.”

“Y’all needn’t worry, son, I am fine. I get enough sleep to get by; you go on home and get you some. You will be a lot more help to me that way.”

“Yes, sir, I will see you in the morning.” Joshua watched Cook walk toward his patrol car and then watched the taillights as he drove out the driveway. As soon as he was out of sight, Joshua let out a sigh on relief and then poured a glass of whiskey.

He had seen Cook eyeing at the bottle. He had never hid his drinking, but normally he did not drink unless he was sitting at home. He had a right to do whatever he wanted when he was off duty, but since he was never actually
off
duty, he considered his time at home as his own. He stood and walked to the edge of the porch to take a piss. When he looked down, the possum was on the ground near a tree.

“Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked, of course the possum only gazed at him and then climbed the tree. Before he sat down, he reached in and turned the kitchen light off. He had turned it on after the deputies got there so that he could see better on the back porch. The screen door creaked as he opened and closed it. He needed to oil it. He added the squeaking door to his list of ‘need to dos’ and lit a cigarette.

As he sat there thinking and listening to the sounds of the night, fog began to rise from the river; he shivered. The night air was not quite as warm as it had been the last few weeks. Several long swallows of whiskey warmed him right up. He leaned back, slid his behind forward in the rocker, and then propped his booted feet on the railing. Morning found him in the same position.

Joshua woke with a start. He had been having one of those same weird dreams he had been having ever since he had to kill the psychotic Dixon brothers and finding their trophy room of women’s heads. Each dream was different, but in many ways, they were the same. They always involved the heads sitting on the shelves.

In this dream, he was standing in the middle of the room looking from head to head, wondering which one of them was his mother. Suddenly, each head began trying to talk, but they could not speak because their lips were sewn shut. Joshua grabbed a pair of snips like the ones he had used to cut the thread from Emma’s lips when the Dixon brothers had her. He began snipping the thread and then pulling it from their lips. As he did, each spoke a phrase or verse of some sort. All but the last one… she did not look at him or attempt to speak. Most of the heads had at least a few springs of hair attached to them but he could not remember the color of his mother’s hair, her eyes either.

The eyeholes of the heads on the selves all had miniature tombstones stuck in them instead of dried up eyeballs. He knew the tombstones in the eyes came from lyrics in the Steppenwolf song - ‘the Pusherman.’

When he thought of his mother and tried to remember her face, all he could remember was her sitting on the couch, patting it, and motioning for him to sit beside her. All he saw were her hands as she folded them and laid them in her lap. He wondered why he could not remember his mother’s face.

He needed to go look through their belongings and find the family photos. Joshua had not gone through his father’s belongings after he passed away. His granddad had hired someone to pack up everything in the house and move it to storage.

Joshua lived with his grandparents until their deaths. After they passed, he bought his cabin, and then he paid someone to move his parent’s stuff from storage to his granddaddy’s place. He could have lived in his grandfather’s home as long as he wanted. His grandfather left the farm to him, but since he was married, he wanted him and Francine to have a place of their own, a fresh start. His grandfather had sold his father’s house and put the money in an account for Joshua. That was what he used to buy the cabin and land where he now lived.

“Dragging all this out to muddle through is not getting me anywhere,” he muttered and glanced toward the swing as he had always done when figuring things out. He would talk to his dog Jack as if he was a person and could actually understand what he was saying, but Jack was not there. He missed his dog and wished the Dixon brothers had not killed him when they grabbed Emma from his porch.

Joshua decided to concentrate on what the heads were saying to him; however, he could not remember exactly what they said either. He thought it odd that only the oldest heads on the shelves were in his dreams, those the boy’s father murdered thirty years earlier. The heads of the younger women the brothers killed were not there in his dream. He knew they were not there because each of them had cropped dyed black hair and Egyptian painted eyes. He wondered why the brothers dyed and cropped the women’s hair and decorated their eyes with black make-up.

He closed his eyes envisioning the heads on the shelves. The third or forth from the left had short dark sprigs of hair probably five to six inches long. Was she the boy’s mother? Did they cut and dye the young women’s hair to make them look the way their mother looked, and what about the decoration of the eyes? Joshua doubted the boy’s mother wore her makeup the way the made up the girls… maybe they cannot remember what their mother looked like either…

It was some weird ass shit and he doubted he would ever learn the truth. He stood, stretched, took a leak, and after a moment, went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. He pumped water from the pitcher pump mounted over the sink and then plugged in the coffee pot. The electric coffee pot was one of the few modern conveniences besides the refrigerator and washing machine he had invested in; it perked a pot of coffee in just a few minutes and he did not have to build a fire in the woodstove.

Thinking of the woodstove automatically caused him to think of Francine when they first got married. He chuckled as he remembered her trying to learn to cook on it; however, that had not lasted long. Francine was not cut out to be a pioneer wife, any sort of wife for that matter. Joshua did not regret marrying her, just trusting her; but she was dead and gone. He had never felt a need to replace her. He poured a cup of coffee and walked out onto the porch. The ringing of the phone brought him right back in; it was John Metcalf. He wanted to let Joshua know what he had learned from the crime scene.