Patience County War (Madeleine Toche Series) (2 page)

The men confronting Sam glanced at each other and looked at Prince, expecting him to make a move or say something. They weren’t in a hurry to start shooting and Sam could sense their hesitation.

The drug dealer looked carefully at the big cop pointing an equally big gun at his head. The cop wasn’t scared in the least. Obviously, this wasn’t the first time a gun had been pointed at him. He counted up the prison time in his head for the massive quantity of heroin in the next room, then for attempted murder and resisting arrest. He really didn’t care if his men got away, he could buy more, but he wanted to get away himself and take his drugs with him. He instantly made a decision and dove to the side.

Sam spun and moved, shifting his weight and torso to throw off the aim of the men behind him. He saw three and fired at two of them, and fired a shot to spoil the aim of the third. They fired back wildly and most
of the shots missed, most of them. Sam was caught in his upper chest and leg simultaneously by large caliber bullets. He had felt the impact of the bullets without pain. He rolled and came up with his Sig-Sauer and his .45. He got off several shots and took out the two men who had been in front of him. He was just slow enough so that one of them got off a round that hit him square in the cheek and went through, knocking him back onto the floor.

Everyone in the room was down. Smoke hung in the air, stinking of gunpowder and dead men. On his back, Sam rolled his head the best he could to check for movement. That was about all he could do. He saw the other men were down and motionless, Prince wasn’t among them. Shit, he missed his man again. He reached up feeling a tear ripped through the right side of his cheek. Blood ran down his chin onto his neck as he tried to count the number of holes in him. His head was wet with blood, as he felt a pool spreading out slowly from his upper body. Briefly his mind focused when he heard Mill’s huge Dirty Harry cannon go off three times, followed by a big thud and then silence.

“You lose, Prince!” he spat out through his torn mouth, blood spraying out with each word.

Mills ran into the room and saw Sam on the floor covered in blood.

He yelled “Officer down!” into a hand radio as he hurried to Sam’s side holstering his pistol seeing the dead men scattered around the room.

“You big dumb bastard. You better not die on me, soldier!” Mills said as he dropped to his knees, tearing open Sam’s shirt.

Sam turned his head and looked up at Roger. He heard him, but it was like a whisper from far away. He knew he had to concentrate on staying awake. He could feel Mill’s hands on him, working to stop the hemorrhaging. Roger never talked about his time as a medic in Vietnam, not even to his partner.

“Sorry Roger, looks like I fucked up again,” Sam said reaching out to touch Roger’s leg. He felt like he was deflating and Roger looked like the only thing solid in the room.

“The choppers are coming, big man, a bed with sheets and nurses. You stay with me. It’s no big thing.” Mills was somewhere else a long time past. His hands were skillful and practiced as he worked to keep Sam alive.

It seemed funny to Sam how the words didn’t seem remotely out of place. Mill’s tone was soothing and comforting, like a brother or a best
friend. He relaxed a little, but knew he was bad. God damn drug dealers, Sam thought.

“Tell my parents I love them. John Trunce, Patience Missouri,” Sam said slipping down. He looked up at Mills and saw a mixture of compassion and resolve. Maybe he’d die, maybe he wouldn’t he thought. He didn’t seem to mind.

“No you don’t Sam. No way you’re leaving me here. You don’t get to die today,” Roger said looking directly into Sam’s eyes.

Emergency medical personnel and several uniformed officers crashed into the room. Sam slid over the invisible edge. Mills was still at his side when it all went dark.

S
am bolted up in his bed; a sheen of sweat covered him as he remembered where he was, home, and not shot up on some dirty floor in Detroit. He had the dream much less often but it still came.

Sam swung his legs over the side of the bed and counted his blessings. He had had enough of sleep and dreaming for one night. He pulled on a t-shirt over his scars and looked out his window, squinting into the Missouri sunshine. He knew he had a lot to be thankful for. The doctors had been great, but it had been Roger Mills who had saved his life. While Sam was still in the hospital, Roger had put in his retirement papers. He had visited Sam often, and when Sam moved back to Missouri, Roger kept in touch, even coming to visit him once in a while in that big Winnebago of his.

Outside Sam’s modest home, the air hung thick and heavy. It was midmorning and the oppressive heat would only get worse. The buzz of the cicadas gave the dark woods an eerie, prehistoric feel. Growth crept everywhere up to the curtain of the highway and around every post, mail box, and tree.

Sam walked out of his bedroom and looked around his empty home. It was full of things, but didn’t feel like a home. He was alone except for an
ancient, scrawny cat that made a mournful howl as Sam lumbered into the kitchen and attacked the coffee pot. Sam scratched the cat’s ears, he had a soft spot for cast offs and runaways. Some days he felt like one himself.

“Mangy rat. Today’s the day for the dog food factory,” he declared, smoothing down the old tom cat’s fur.

The cat had been his girlfriend’s, the girlfriend who now lived somewhere else with someone else. She had left the sorry looking animal behind like an unwanted gift you can’t return.

All coffee was good first thing in the morning as long as it was black and corrosively strong. The older he got the less he felt like blasting into action. Since the shooting it seemed like he needed more time than he used to wake the hell up and get oriented.

The cat rubbed up against Sam’s leg mewing at him and varying his pitch like he was trying to speak.

“You’re probably right kitty, I’m just getting old and worn out and should probably just hang out with you for the day,” Sam said tickling the cat’s ears.

Sam walked out onto his porch, sat on a wooden swing and looked out onto the day. There had been a time recently when he met every day with optimism and a sense of adventure. After the shooting, that spark had been slow to come back. He was getting to that age when he knew he wanted something to bring his life together. What that was continued to elude him. He looked at the old clock thermometer hanging next to the door. It was time to go to work. He got up and went inside to the bathroom. He glanced at himself in the mirror and decided that he looked like a bouncer. One certainty he had discovered, was that you just can’t change your genetics, at least not yet. Until then he’d make some effort to keep healthy, do some running or hiking and lift weights. Being shot and coming close to death put vanity and health into immediate perspective. Well screw it, he thought, time for work.

Sam wandered into his sparsely furnished bedroom. He wasn’t much interested in décor and seemed to spend more time outside than in. He’d picked out his furniture in about an hour, all from the same store.

As he dressed for work, he felt a little slower and thought, the only thing about me that is quick these days is my temper. He was pissed off a lot. Maybe that was an age thing, too. No wonder generals and admirals were older and ill-tempered. He remembered meeting an old WW II Navy
Captain once, who had been about his age during the war. Out of curiosity Sam asked him, “What’s the first thing you do if an enemy ship is steaming towards you over the horizon?”

“Sink the bastard,” was the reply. That pretty much summed up Sam’s feelings toward the world today. Something needed to happen to push him out of this funk. Maybe today was the day for moving on. In his experience, life changing events came when you least expected.

Sam stepped to the railing of his porch and gazed out across the long hill in front and far off into the distance, where he could see the land just shy of the Mississippi, but not the river itself. He knew it was there. It always was when he went to find it. Like many people who live near water, he went to check on it from time to time. There were always people fishing down by the river. Sam liked to see his old friends, meet new people and talk fishing.

Sam walked down the length of his porch. It was nice and wide to keep the sun from blasting it all day. Most summer days, the second he stepped outside his door he was drenched with sweat. The humidity was staggering. The only relief was the thunderstorms which came with a ferocity that was both exhilarating and scary. Sam had built his modest home, up the hill and away from the river the creek became when the sky opened up. With the summer vegetation growing over everything and the constant sound of insects, the area Sam lived in was all but jungle. If it was a choice between hot in the summer or cold in the winter he’d take hot every time. The winters during his years as a cop in Detroit had torpedoed any romantic notions of winter wonderlands he may have mistakenly entertained. Winters in the upper Midwest were life threatening, at least to a Missouri country boy. What had he been thinking about when he followed an old army buddy into the Detroit police force?

Sam walked out onto his lawn and over to his squad car. It was as close to a tank as you could get. When starting up it sounded like the green flag drop at the Indy 500. Everything close that could, fled. The raw power made him smile as he tore off in the direction of town. Sam punched it on a lonely stretch of road and the car roared like a tractor pulling full throttle at a county fair. He pretty much had to hold the steering wheel straight. It had what he called ‘Armstrong’ steering, no power anything. Sometimes it was a wrestling match, but it was just how he liked it. It was a car you
avoided flooring in a turn. It was truly a beast, announcing that the man behind the wheel was no Barney Fife.

Being in no particular hurry, Sam thought he’d meander around a little and check on the general status of things in Patience. Sam did a lot of cruising just to keep track of what was going on and who was doing what. He liked to drive and hated sitting in an office. Since his days as a beat cop and a detective in Detroit he hated being cooped up doing paper work. This way he could say “Howdy” to the people on a daily basis, whether they were normal, borderline, or downright nuts.

When his other life went to hell in Michigan, he came back home to find some peace. There was little in the way of crime in Patience and that was all right by him. He’d seen enough lunatic violent crime to last several lifetimes: too many murder investigations, rapes, and arson. Every type of violence men and women can do to each other. Patience had its own set of unique situations and Sam handled each as they came. His constituents either loved him or were terrified of him.

Sam loved the quiet clean streets and countryside of Patience. Everything seemed in its place and reminded him of the simpler times of his youth. Nothing was simple in adult life. He remembered how hectic and disorganized things had been chasing murderers around Detroit, the politics, the dirty cops and the sense of helplessness that fouled everything in the high crime areas. Patience was as far away from that as you could get. He intended to keep it that way.

As he drove by the city park, Sam noticed a gray Dodge parked alongside the road. He’d seen it there and a few other places children frequented around town. He’d been patient and watched for a pattern to develop.

“Damn it,” Sam muttered to himself. “No second chance this time.”

He pulled the squad a ways up the road and unbelted his pistol, leaving it under the front seat. Few of his duties in Patience required a firearm. Besides, if he was correct, the perpetrator he expected to encounter would be little trouble. He walked quickly and quietly up to a clump of trees and brush next to an area where the younger children played in the park. Sam saw a couple of kids on swing sets and a merry-go-round playing happily, while their mothers or sitters watched them, glancing up regularly from their books or papers.

As he neared the bushes he pulled a tiny digital camera from his pocket and crept forward. Eight years in Special Forces had taught him stealth,
and he liked to sneak up on bad guys. Nothing like when the hero walks right up, plain as day, courageous and exposed. No damn way. You sneak up on the bad guy and take his ass out. Then you stand up and are the hero. All you have to do is be shot at once to know that’s true.

As Sam got closer, he saw a middle-aged man crouched in the bushes watching the children intently. From time to time he would reach down into his pants. It looked like he was going to take some time with that, so Sam took about twenty pictures: hand in pants, hand out of pants, licking his lips, mumbling to himself, an all-together sickening display. Not wanting to spoil the moment, Sam crept back to his car to make sure that the pictures were saved for later reference. He then walked back into the bushes plain as day making as much noise as possible. Whistling tunelessly Sam walked right up to the man, who was quickly trying to organize the front of his pants. As the man spun around he quickly said, “Good morning sheriff, my little dog ran…”