Helmet Head

CHAPTER 2
White Noise

Pete Fagan poked through the gray bones of the chicken shack with a stick he’d picked up in the yard. Place stank of cat urine and some acrid chemical that dug into the sinuses like glass splinters. Empty plastic liter bottles littered the ground and there were three inches of scorched copper tubing. The shack hadn’t been a meth lab in a long time but it wasn’t a wasted trip. Every bit of knowledge helped Fagan do his job.

Kids had decorated the interior of the shack with cans of spray paint—the usual crude comments, wannabe gang symbols and a crude figure of a man drawn all in black with an oversized head waving a sword. There was a filthy mattress in one corner and scores of used condoms. Cigarette butts and empty bottles of peppermint schnapps. The place was open to the elements and various animal droppings lay on the wooden floor among the rubble.

Fagan stepped out of the chicken shack into the overgrown yard. A hundred feet away sagged the falling-down farmhouse, another casualty in the decades-long war against the family farm. Times were tough in Little Egypt. Fagan understood why some might turn to meth but he had no sympathy for them.

The grass and weeds were up to his knees. Kids had busted all the windows and painted graffiti on the side of the house. Upside-down crucifixes. Blue Öyster Cult. The Grim Reaper. A swastika. Weird symbols, random letters copied from photographs in
Juxtapoz
or
Vibe
or from boxcars that passed nearby. Teen tough guys high on paint thinner and glue. He went up the sagging steps and looked in through the missing front door. Absolute rubble. Mice and rats scurried inside the walls. The place was in receivership to a failing bank. It ought to be declared a hazard and surrounded with police warning tape, not that it would do any good.

The recession hit farm country hard. The last couple of years had been particularly difficult for the nation’s solar plexus, which had absorbed blow after blow, both manmade and natural. Tornadoes swept the area in April killing four people in Bullard County and devastating a trailer park.

Why did the tornadoes always strike trailer parks? Was there something there that attracted extreme weather? The house smelled rotten. Piss and shit. Fagan turned away. The porch and yard were filled with empty beer cans and bottles. Fagan sighed and scratched his head with gloved hands. The helmet made his scalp itch.

It did give Fagan an idea, something to pursue someday when he was no longer a cop. A pig, an oinker, a jack-booted thug. He’d been called those things and worse but down here in the alfalfa fields far from the city, not so much. Rural folk respected the police unless they were running a still or a meth lab. Even then they’d smile and call you sir as they lied to your face.

Fagan’s idea was simple. A motorcycle helmet lined with stiff bristles like a hairbrush so that when you moved it side to side the bristles stimulated the scalp.

His radio squawked. Down here in the valley, the reception was for shit. He’d have to get on top of one of these hills to communicate with the sheriff’s office in Ptolemy. Fortunately, Fagan knew of a roadside park two miles down the road. He snapped a few photos of the graffiti with his cell phone to add to the department collection, not that they were tracking Los Zetas.

Some pot farming, a couple meth labs and domestic violence were as bad as it got in Bullard County. Occasionally they had to scrape up the pieces when some kid put his car into a tree at ninety mph, but what rural community didn’t have that problem?

Of course, Fagan wouldn’t have the job if his predecessor hadn’t lost control of his bike during a high-speed pursuit and planted himself in the side of a barn.

They never found the perp.

Fullerton thought it was a probably a drug runner.

And the Road Dogs, a fifth rate pack of losers who dealt meth up and down the Mississippi and liked to hang at the Kongo Klub. Fagan hadn’t met them yet. He planned to introduce himself the next time they were in town.

He crossed the yard, long grass swishing against his calf-high highway boots. His ride was a modified, fat-fendered, black and white Harley sporting a light bar and a whip antenna. He tried the handset but all he got was white noise. Fagan picked his helmet up off the seat. It was white with the blue and gold star of the Bullard County Sheriff’s Department. He strapped it on. His scalp itched.

Fagan got on the bike, thumbed the starter and crunched down the gravel driveway to the county road. He turned right and accelerated up the hollow, the police bike as quiet as a bike can be.

When he emerged into the open, the sky looked funny. Dark cumulus were bunching up in the west and he could feel the languid touch of change on his cheek, smell it in the wind. Rain coming, maybe severe weather. There’d been no warning in the morning. Five minutes later he pulled into the county wayside, a gravel lot, a trash barrel, a picnic table and a trail leading into the woods. He kicked out the stand and spoke into the handset pinned to his shoulder.

“This is Fagan. What’s up?”

Snap crackle pop. Irma Conklin, the department’s veteran dispatcher answered. “Pete, Ellis Johnson just dropped in and said looks like the Road Dogs are back at the Kongo Klub. You said you wanted to be notified.”

“Thanks, Irma. Where’s the Sheriff?”

“Sheriff Fullerton is transporting a prisoner to Paducah.”

“What’s up with this weather?”

“It does look a mite stormy but we haven’t heard any warnings or sirens. I’ll let you know if we do.”

“Thanks Irma. I’m off to the Kongo Klub.”

A faint rumble off to the west drew his attention. A bolt of lightning arced from cloud to earth in brilliant dazzle. It could have been ten miles away; it could have been a hundred. Fagan waited for the rumble. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand …

The rumble came on ten. The storm was a long way off. A breeze picked up out of nowhere and rattled the alder and oak. Fagan keyed the starter, eyes automatically sweeping the horizon.

And there he was, biker at ten o’clock, peaking up over the rim of Gardner’s cornfield. Fagan pegged him instantly from the silhouette—the gaunt frame, doo-wop rag on his head and the sunglasses. He could just make out the top of the dude’s ape-hangers. Fagan reached into the tank bag for his fold-up binocs.

As he was bringing them to his face the biker reacted in comically exaggerated fashion, his whole body doing a snake-whip as he went rigid, jumped up, jumped down, and started the motor.

The thunderclap reached Fagan almost instantly.

***