Storm Front (10 page)
Authors: Robert Conroy
“I can’t throw stones. Hey, this is the twenty-first century, isn’t it?”
Thea laughed. “Some people don’t think so. Bet you had your first sex in high school, didn’t you? A good-looking stud athlete like yourself didn’t have to beg for it, did you?”
Mike thought quickly back to his junior year in high school. The girl’s name was Mitzi, which was a nickname for something else he never cared to find out. All he really knew was that she was pretty and eager. She’d had sex with him and he’d later realized that she’d done the same for every other member of the wrestling team. He’d felt cheap and ashamed that he’d taken advantage of a pathetic little high school groupie who likely had all kinds of emotional problems and maybe just wanted to be “popular.” It wasn’t until much later that he realized he’d been lucky not to have gotten AIDS or some other sexually transmitted disease. Guys that age thought with their peckers.
Mike’s first real relationship hadn’t come until college. Her name was Aggie and they’d been desperately in love for a couple of torrid months. She’d dumped him claiming a need to not get tied down and to find herself. Mike had been relieved. It was going too far and too fast.
“High school wasn’t all that much fun,” Mike said. “For that matter, neither was college. Besides, Maddy is the one with the problem, not me.”
At least I hope I’m not the one with the problem,
he thought. “Her past life is no concern of mine and mine is really no concern of hers. What I’m really interested in is her future, our future.”
“Good speech,” Thea said. “Have you tried it out on her?”
“Yeah, but it hasn’t worked yet. I just hope we have a future.”
* * *
Maddy’s clothes were still a little damp when she put them on, but she didn’t feel like spending any more time in the furnace room, and Donna hadn’t returned with the promised brandy. The hell with it, the clothes would dry on her body soon enough.
She checked on the kids in the gym and saw their emotions covered all ranges. Some seemed to be enjoying the adventure, while others looked shocked and confused. One boy was crying and a teacher was trying to comfort him. A TV in the corner was playing an old video of Disney’s
Lion King
in an attempt to keep them distracted. They’d all seen it a hundred times, so it really wasn’t going over. Remnants of a poor substitute for a dinner from the cafeteria filled the waste baskets. For a moment, Maddy felt sorry, and then she realized that they were so much safer where they were than trying to get home. It was still snowing with an intensity that was sometimes blinding, but it seemed to be tapering off a little. Or maybe it wasn’t tapering off, she thought. Maybe it was her imagination.
Donna Harris emerged from the principal’s office with an angry look on her face. “Parents are all assholes,” she said in a harsh whisper. “Do you know the Hardingens?”
Maddy nodded, amused at her friend’s outburst. The Hardingens had a girl in first grade and a boy in third.
Donna continued. “Would you believe that Mrs. Hardingen somehow made it home and she just phoned me and wants me to send her little dumplings over to her?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Maddy asked.
“She wants me to let them walk. They live several blocks away, it’s still snowing heavily, it’s dark, and the kids don’t have winter clothing. Mrs. Hardingen is one of those parents who doesn’t seem to care how they dress themselves in the morning. They came to school today in light jackets, tee shirts, and gym shoes. They would be soaked and frostbitten in a hundred yards, not to mention lost. The woman is totally clueless. I can’t figure out whether she’s lazy or stupid. Or both.”
“So you refused?”
“I politely told her to stuff it. She then called the superintendent and our beloved Dr. Templeton told me I should do what the parents want. After all, they are taxpayers who vote on millages and elect the board members who chose the superintendent. So I told Dr. Templeton to stuff it, only this time I wasn’t so tactful. Damn it, I am not going to have kids getting lost and freezing to death while I am in charge here, even though I’m not the principal.”
“Good for you,” Maddy said, “but what kind of trouble are you in now?” Templeton was known to have a short fuse.
Donna grinned maliciously. “None that I can think of. She backed down and admitted I was right. Besides, I have tenure and a union to back me if it comes to that. I don’t think it will. Our beloved superintendent is just as frustrated as I am. Let’s face it; she’s got a whole bunch of schools with children in them to worry about. I got word from a friend that the kids at the high school end of the building are going crazy, while the ones at the middle school are a little worse. Something about raging hormones and an utter lack of discipline. A couple of high school seniors got caught having sex in a locker room. I think they’re having their version of end of the world parties. I think I like the little kids better.”
In the gym behind them, a child began to cry. Dinner had been less than wonderful, with dry cereal and leftover salad and fruit from lunch as the main and only courses. What they’d earlier thought might last through morning had turned out to be a laughable miscalculation. Some of the kids had refused to eat, and Maddy could hardly blame them. While what they’d been served would fill the belly, it was a long ways from Mom’s home cooking. Or even Burger King. Maddy wondered how well anyone was going to sleep this night.
“Enough feeling sorry for ourselves,” Donna said. “Let’s have a two-teacher staff meeting in the office and see what we can do about the rest of that brandy.”
“Is that a good idea?”
“Well, I don’t plan on getting sloshed, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Donna laughed. “I also don’t plan on driving, performing surgery, or operating heavy machinery, so screw it.”
* * *
Wally Wellman slammed down the phone. His producer, Ron Friedman, looked at him curiously. “Another satisfied customer?” he asked. Incredibly, the station had gotten calls demanding they do something about the weather. Wellman told the old joke about a television weatherman being in sales and not production, but it hadn’t gone over. People were angry and frustrated. Well, so was Wally.
Wellman shook his head. “Worse. This guy says it’s God’s punishment for our sins that this is all happening. He wants to go on television and lead a prayer for deliverance, and then call for the elimination of all sex and violence on television and in the movies. I think he used to be one of the Taliban.”
Friedman yawned. “I knew there had to be a reason. Are they going to sacrifice a virgin to make the snow go away, or have they given up trying to find a virgin?”
Wally laughed and looked at the monitors that should be showing traffic in various spots around the metropolitan area. Streetlights were on, which provided a faint jewellike glow to the still heavily falling snow. The snow already on the ground covered everything, making the area look surreal, even, in a strange sort of way, lovely. Outside, nothing moved, except an occasional snowmobile.
TV6 finally had a couple of reporters out on the snow-covered streets, but reporting on the snowfall had become an exercise in journalistic redundancy. Otherwise, there was no traffic, vehicular or pedestrian. The stillness was haunting. Every now and then, a gust of wind would make the snow swirl and the camera would go totally blank.
Wally checked his watch. In another hour, he was going on camera again to give another update. What could he say besides the obvious—Hey gang, it’s still snowing! Wow! He was tired from his all-day vigil and wanted to go home.
The phone on the desk buzzed and Ron picked it up. “If it’s God,” Wally said, “I don’t want to talk until He makes it stop snowing.”
“Don’t knock it,” said Ron, covering the receiver with his hand. “Remember, many are cold but few are frozen.”
“Yeah.” Wally laughed through his fatigue.
“Actually,” Ron said with a wicked grin, “it almost is God.”
“What?”
“It’s the governor, and she’s asking for you by name. I told you you should have paid your taxes.”
* * *
Jamal Wheeler knew he’d made a big mistake. He’d only been working for United Parcel Service for a little more than a year and wanted to make a good impression. A lot of people said that working for UPS sucked because of all the picky regulations and the strange, uncool, brown uniform, but Jamal had seen it as an opportunity, not a curse.
At twenty-four and with only two years of college, Jamal had been going nowhere fast. Still, he’d managed to get out of the inner city where so many young blacks like him were gang-bangers, did drugs, committed crime, or all of the above. The UPS job was the best money he’d ever earned and he got to drive the truck all by himself without some supervisor looking over his shoulder. There was no way he was going to screw this up. He had already paid off a lot of debts and was seriously considering going back to school and finishing his degree.
His aunt was the only relative with a degree, although Jamal’s cousin Byron had gone to college for four years on a basketball scholarship. Only he’d returned as illiterate as when he’d left for school and now was wandering around the city doing nothing but odd jobs.
Thus, even though he wasn’t a mailman per se, Jamal remembered the stuff about delivering through sleet and storm and felt that today’s weather certainly qualified. It might be difficult, but he was going to deliver the stash of packages in the back of his truck. He’d been told that a lot of drug dealers used UPS, but he didn’t think much of that happened in Sheridan.
At first, his truck, a big ugly brown diesel, had managed to bull its way through the deepening snow with not too much difficulty, but then problems began to add up.
Jamal’s real problem in the short run was that he had to leave the truck to make his deliveries in the residential area of Sheridan. By the time he got back to the truck each time, it seemed like another foot had fallen. That was an exaggeration, of course, but walking was even more difficult than driving, particularly when he didn’t have boots. Hey, it wasn’t even supposed to snow today. Whatever. His feet were cold and wet and his shoes were ruined. Of course, most of the houses didn’t have anybody home, which meant that items that needed to be signed for had to be brought back to the truck.
Finally, it happened. He’d learned to hate stops since it took so much of the truck’s energy to get started again. Now, he was confronted by a stalled car directly in front of him and another one off to the right. Under optimal circumstances, he might have finessed his way around them, but his situation sucked. He didn’t know where the road began and ended, and he didn’t think the United Parcel Service would want him driving over the nice lawns hidden under the snow.
He called his office on his cell phone and got the surprising comment that they’d thought he’d already returned to the barn. Since he hadn’t, he was urged to do so immediately and in no uncertain language. The implication was clear—he’d been stupid to stay out.
“How the hell do I get out of this?” he asked himself after hanging up. Jamal considered backing up, but he couldn’t see very much at all. Then he became aware that another car was stalled behind him. It was empty. The driver must have bailed right away. He was trapped.
He called his supervisor again and informed him that he was going to have to sit out the storm. Jamal’s supervisor was more sympathetic this time and agreed, then wished him good luck. This time he seemed concerned, not angry, and Jamal realized that the man was frustrated. Well, who wasn’t?
Jamal understood all about carbon monoxide poisoning and turned off the ignition. He grew rapidly colder and his wet feet felt like they were freezing. The fact that it was night only made him feel colder and lonelier. A check of the remaining boxes suggested nothing that would keep him warm. Certainly, there was nothing from Land’s End, or anyplace like that. He had a couple of boxes from Amazon, but they were heavy, like they contained computers. He doubted he could warm himself much by hugging a monitor.
That left going to a house. He left his vehicle and locked it. He had on a jacket, which had already proved to be useless. He could barely see the shapes of the houses, much less a light on, and he nearly exhausted himself before convincing himself that he’d have to break into one or freeze to death.
A red-brick colonial looked inviting. He rang the doorbell several times and waited. Then he knocked hard. Nothing. Nobody was home to get upset if he broke in and, just as good, he hadn’t heard a dog barking.
Jamal was a church-going young man and had never done anything even remotely illegal before in his life, but he’d seen enough movies to know what he had to do. He went to the side of the house and found a door leading to the kitchen. He took off his sodden shoe and used it to smash in the glass above the knob. As he did it, he wondered if UPS would reimburse for the damage or if he would have to pay for it himself. He decided it didn’t much matter.
Jamal cleared the window of glass shards that would have sliced him and stuck his arm through it. He found the inside knob and opened the door. He stepped in to the welcome warmth and took a deep breath.
He’d scarcely taken a step into the kitchen when the blast hit him square in the chest, lifted him into the air, and slammed him against the wall.
Through fading vision and waves of pain that swept through his shattered body, he became aware of a shape standing over him. It was an older white man and he had a double-barreled shotgun in his arms. Both barrels were smoking and the man looked wide-eyed and terrified. An equally frightened woman peeked over his shoulder.
“Damn it, Shelly,” he said to someone Jamal couldn’t see through his fading vision. “I told you the son of a bitch was trying to break in.”
CHAPTER 9
The frightening and unexpected sound of the doorbell chiming froze Raines in his tracks. He stared at Tower in shock and dismay as the chimes rang melodically. Who the hell could it be? They’d only been in the house for an hour and Raines had hopes of staying there all night. It was large, empty, warm, and had a refrigerator full of food and a dozen cans of beer. It was dark out and the snow was continuing to pile up. How the hell could anyone even make it to the house? He knew it wasn’t the Avon lady, so it had to be a do-gooder neighbor.
The ringing was followed by a loud pounding on the door and the muted sound of voices. Raines broke from his trance and picked up a gun. One of the few ways they’d managed to help themselves while looting houses was in firepower. If they couldn’t find much money, they did find some excellent weapons. The people of Sheridan seemed to be well armed, although cashless. One of the places they’d plundered contained several highly illegal fully automatic weapons and a lot of ammunition, and they’d helped themselves. It amused him that the owner was unlikely to report the theft to the police. He would be in deep trouble himself.
Raines had a full clip in his stolen M16, and the safety was off. He was ready. Tower was similarly armed. His face twitched in either nervousness or excitement. Raines could never tell.
A muffled voice sounded through the door. “Hey, Phil, we know you’re in there. We saw the lights. What gives? Talk to us, buddy.”
God damn it, Raines muttered. He had yelled at Tower to keep the place dark, but that was after the idiot had already turned on a couple of lights. The fucking troll was afraid of the dark. Raines had switched them off as quickly as he could, but they’d obviously been noticed. It was too late for regrets. Now what? Blast your way out or bluff your way out? Or maybe stay silent and hope the neighbor would go away. Not a chance. They’d obviously seen the lights go on and off.
Tower went to a window and peered through the drapes. He signaled that there were at least two men outside that he could see. Finally, the little jerk was doing something right.
First try to bluff, Raines thought. “Sorry guys, but I can’t come to the door right now,” he said in a deep voice that he hoped would pass for the homeowner’s. “I’m all wet and I’m changing. You know how it is.”
There was a pause and then laughter from outside. “Yeah, we know all about that. We’re freezing our asses off. Are Lisa and the kids home yet? Marie and our kids are worried.”
Who the hell is Lisa? A wife? A child? His wife, he decided. “Nope, and it doesn’t look like anybody’s gonna be home for a long while.”
“Ain’t that the truth? Well, when you get yourself settled, come over and let’s talk. We’re setting up ways to protect the neighborhood from whatever comes along. No way we can’t drink some beer while we’re doing it.”
“Sounds great,” Raines answered with what he hoped was the proper enthusiasm.
Raines crept to a window and looked out. He could make out two men on snowshoes walking away with an awkward shuffle. To his dismay, they had shotguns over their shoulders. The logical assumption was that this “Phil” had snowshoes as well; otherwise the neighbors wouldn’t think he’d be able to move around at all.
“Fooled them, didn’t we?” said Tower happily, unconcerned that his mistake had caused the dilemma.
“We wouldn’t have had to fool anyone if you’d kept your hands off the lights.”
Tower looked hurt. “How’m I supposed to see without lights? If I can’t see, this is as bad as prison. At least we can stay here with the lights on now that they know we’re here.”
He had a point about prison, Raines thought. Freedom, though, was more than turning on a switch when you wanted to. A thought suddenly jarred Raines. He ran upstairs to the room the owner used as an office. A desk in the corner was covered with papers. He turned on the light and searched through the papers. There it was, the homeowner’s bank statement. The name on the account read Philip and Amy Jakobowski. He checked for photos and found an adult man and a woman. No child. He checked the other rooms and only the master bedroom was lived in. That meant there was no Lisa and no kids! Oh, Christ! The fucking neighbors had tricked them. Damn it.
“Grab our shit and get moving. We’ve gotta leave,” he yelled.
“Why?”
“Because there ain’t nobody named Lisa and there ain’t no kids, and they’ll be back soon with cops and guns.”
Already, Raines could visualize cops on snowmobiles surrounding the house, while citizens on snowshoes helped them. In moments, the two criminals were ready and on their remaining snowmobile. They’d stashed it in the family room to keep it out of sight and free of snow. It made a mess when they’d opened the double doors, but they hadn’t cared. They weren’t going to clean it up. They quickly topped off the tank with gas from a container in the attached garage.
Raines had already plotted an escape route. Exiting the back, there were fences to his right and rear, but not to his left. The rear fence would prevent him from cutting to the street behind. He thought the snowmobile might clear the fence if he gunned it, but he couldn’t take a chance. Raines was an amateur driver and knew it. Jumping a fence was something you saw on commercials or in movies, not in real life. Lose their one remaining snowmobile and they would be hoofing it as wanted men in a strange town in the middle of a blizzard. Assuming, of course, that they weren’t hurt in the crash.
He drove the snowmobile out and swerved to his left, nearly overturning it. He drove down several back yards and gunned it left again towards the street. To his astonishment, several men stood directly in front of him. They were as surprised as he and scattered, allowing him to drive through them and turn away. One of them had a rifle or a shotgun. Tower fired a wild burst from his M16 that ripped through the night, and the men threw themselves into the snow. Someone howled in pain as Raines turned to the right and down another street.
Not good, Raines thought as they roared away from near disaster. Not good at all. But at least they were away from immediate danger.
* * *
Mike Stuart looked around the conference room. Where was Chief Bench, he mouthed as a question to Detective Hughes. She shrugged. The mayor was there, and he looked tired and frustrated. Well, that fit a lot of people, Mike thought.
“Chief Bench isn’t with us tonight,” Mayor Carter said. “He’s not feeling well.”
Mike suddenly understood. The chief was drunk, just like DiMona had said. Wonderful. Now he and Hughes were the senior officers present in the building, if you didn’t count a couple of elderly sergeants in supplies and records. Obviously, the mayor didn’t either, or they’d have been invited to the meeting.
“Detective Hughes,” Carter began, “do you believe the two men on snowmobiles who shot up Almond Street are the same people who killed those people in the motel?”
The calls had come in a few minutes earlier. No one had been hit in the shootout, although one citizen had fallen over an ornamental boulder and broken his ankle. The real shocker was that the criminals had used automatic weapons and scared the hell out of the citizens. How they’d gotten them and from where was a moot point. They had them and that made the two shooters even more of a threat, especially if they actually were the motel murderers.
“Probably one and the same, or two and the same,” Hughes said. “They left the motel with two snowmobiles, but they may have damaged or dumped one of them. Either way, they fit the profile and the rough description we now have. It ain’t perfect confirmation, but logic says it’s them.”
She’d just come from the site of the abortive shootout on Almond Street and had spent fruitless minutes looking for shell casings, before deciding that they wouldn’t be found until the snow melted, sometime around July. Another cop remained at the site and was lifting fingerprints from inside the house where the suspects had been hiding.
Earlier, Hughes had sent fingerprint information from the motel to the FBI and gotten a quick response because of the savagery of the murders. They identified two criminals named James Tower and William Raines. They were from Oklahoma and were suspects in a series of violent crimes, and had each been in jail for several years. Until recently, they had assaulted, robbed, and beaten, and there was a suspected rape, but they had not killed. Nor did they have any known drug problems. At least the Sheridan Police were not dealing with half-crazed addicts looking for their next fix. But that was scant comfort, because Tower and Raines had now killed. They’d crossed a new threshold of violence and that made them infinitely more dangerous.
Of course, knowing who they were and finding Tower and Raines were two different things. The two suspects had made a mistake in turning on the lights in a house that was presumed to be vacant. It was highly unlikely they would make the same mistake twice. Mike had little respect for the so-called mind of the criminal. Most people stole and killed because they were too stupid or uneducated to do otherwise, and, so far, he’d seen nothing to indicate a higher level of intelligence in either Tower or Raines.
Of course, that did not mean taking them for granted. Tower and Raines were now desperate and remorseless killers. The chatter of full auto guns made them extremely dangerous, stupid or not.
“Does anybody have any good news?” Carter asked.
There was silence; then Mike spoke up. “I can give a little highly qualified good news. We do have a couple of snow removal teams in action with more to follow.”
Carter raised his hands high in mock joy. “Hallelujah. Finally. Now, what do you mean by teams and why is it qualified good news?”
Mike explained that he, Public Works Director Dom Hassell, and their counterparts in the county government had decided on a way to begin to clear the roads. This, of course, was the main reason that Hassell wasn’t at Carter’s meeting. That Hassell couldn’t stand Carter was another.
First, they used the snowmobiles to get snowplow drivers to their vehicles. However, the plows could not operate alone. With the roads clogged with abandoned cars, it was necessary to first find a place to put the empty cars. Thus, tow trucks had to drag abandoned cars someplace where they wouldn’t be in the way. Usually this would be a temporary site, like a nearby lawn, or median. Once a path was cleared, plows would then go off-road and clear some of the parking lots that were empty as a result of businesses sending people home early. The tows would again drag cars into the lots and leave them.
“We’re making progress,” Mike said, “but it’s progress measured in feet per hour rather than miles per hour, and the snow is continuing to come down. At least, though, it gets the roads cleared so we can plow again.” And again and again, he thought.
Patti Hughes laughed. “How are the good citizens taking to our towing their cars? I’ll bet we’re killing a lot of transmissions and causing tons of other damage.”
Mike grinned wryly. “How can I argue? Of course we are. What’s funny is that some of the people who’ve abandoned their cars see us doing the work, and they believe they can hop in and drive home, and we’ve got to tell them otherwise, which pisses them off. At least we can get those people to put their cars in neutral and save on repair jobs.”
Carter shook his head in anger. “That way’ll take forever, damn it. Can’t somebody think of something else? I’m going to get crucified if this can’t be cleaned up promptly. What the hell went wrong? Why weren’t we prepared?”
Mike was tired and didn’t feel like playing nice. “Mr. Mayor, we were as prepared as we could be, especially since nobody predicted any snow in the first place. Look, this isn’t Buffalo or some town way up north or out west in the ski country, like Denver, where they deal with huge amounts of snow as a matter of course. A foot of snow in this town can close almost anything, and we’ve got more than three feet on the ground, and that’s on top of what had fallen last week. And it really hasn’t even begun to slow down. Add to that the fact that it started during a workday and caused everybody to get stuck in traffic and you have a better feel for the mess we’re in. Sir, if you have a better idea, we’d all love to hear it.”
Carter pulled back as if slapped. “If I had, you’re right, you’d hear it. I’m frustrated, pissed, and angry, Sergeant Stuart.” He softened slightly, although his expression showed residual anger. He didn’t like being talked back to. “I guess we all are. Do you know how many people we’re warehousing here in this civic center compound? No? Well, I’ll tell you. Four hundred plus. And would you believe that some of them are complaining about the facilities? We’ve got some food in here from some of the closer restaurants and stores, although the vending machines are now empty, but there’s no satisfying some people. Would you also believe that a couple of assholes have complained that I didn’t have bottled water brought in instead of food? When I told them to drink from the drinking fountains, you would’ve thought I’d asked them to commit incest or turn cannibal. Jesus!”
Mike laughed ruefully. “I guess you do have problems, sir.”
“We all do, Sergeant Stuart,” Carter said grimly. Mike winced. The honorable mayor had not forgiven Mike for his outburst. Someday he might regret being blunt with Carter. Tonight, however, he just couldn’t care.
* * *
“Governor,” Wally purred. “What a pleasure to hear your sweet sexy voice.”
Governor Lauren Landsman chuckled. “You are so full of bullshit, Wally. You should have been a lawyer or a politician, or both, like me. No, you had to be a weatherman type and lie to the world on a daily basis. I only have to do it when it’s time to get re-elected or otherwise politically expedient.”
“Thanks for putting things in perspective, Lauren.”
“Seriously, Wally, how are you doing?”
Wally took a deep breath. Usually, he gave a generic answer to a question like that and said he was doing fine, thank you. He couldn’t do that to someone like Lauren.
“It still hurts. God, Lauren, it hurts. Some days I think I’ll make it, and other days I just don’t know how. They say it gets better, but I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, I’m over my feeling sorry for myself and I really am doing better.”