Night of Thunder

“Sure as sure is. He has a brother who has a car that matches the vehicle ID’d on the state forensics reports, the cobalt ’05 Charger. I checked this morning-it was a busy morning-and in fact Cubby had the car and in fact it’s banged up where he hit your daughter. I looked at the car and I think we can make the presence of your daughter’s paint in the gash along the side of the Charger.”

Bob was thinking, What the hell is she talking about? Who is this Cubby? Is he working for Eddie Ferrol, or some mysterious Mister Big, the Godfather of Johnson County? How’s it all connected? What does this detective know of his connections?

“You’ll check on his associations once you get him locked up? Be interesting to see if he was-”

“Working for somebody. Last person he worked for was Mr. McDonald, of the hamburger chain, who fired his worthless ass in three weeks. He was never able to master the deep-fat fryer.”

“Maybe he has other connections, criminal connections.”

“Doubtful, Mr. Swagger, but if so, we’ll find out tonight when I run the interrogation.”

“Yes ma’am. Now on another thing, this sheriff’s making a big splash with his chopper. But I hear the price of the stuff hasn’t gone up, which you’d expect if all the labs were being closed down. What’s the feeling?”

“Nobody knows. Maybe there’s a superlab somewhere, but you’d think you’d smell it, because manufacturing crystal meth in quantity produces a terrible, rotten egg smell. Or maybe it’s being trucked in from somewhere. Don’t know if you know it, but there’s a shooting last night, some grocery clerk got lucky and killed two robbers. The robbers were interesting: real serious bad actors, your white-trash professional heavy hitter, with rumored contacts to a batch of mobs all over the South, and participation suspected in a dozen armed robberies. Them boys ran out of luck in the worst possible way last night. Anyhow, way my mind works, I’m thinking, maybe they muled a load of ice from somewhere deeper south, and that’s where the stuff is coming from. I don’t know what else would explain their presence here. It would go to someone who knew the area, had ambitions, and a lot of criminal skills. Don’t know who that would be. You see any criminal geniuses hiding at Arby’s on the way over?”

“No ma’am, but there’s a shady dude at the Pizza Hut.”

This got a laugh out of her, but her mind was elsewhere, really, as she scanned the shabby front of the house down the street.

“Adam-one-nine, you there?” came a squawky call on the radio.

She spoke into her throat mic.

“Adam-one-nine copy.”

“Adam-one-nine, we in place. You can go any time.”

“Air-one, stat. You there, Tom?”

“I read you Adam one-nine.”

“Tom, you bring it on in and when you see me at the front door, you have Mike open up with the big lamp on the back of the house, you got that?”

“I read you, Adam one-nine.”

She turned to Swagger.

“Please don’t make me look bad. Sheriff doesn’t know about this. But I figure the dad gets to watch as the fellow who tried to kill his daughter goes down.”

He could tell she was uneasy, and the breath came hard and shallow. She ran a dry tongue over dry, cracked lips, and for one second did something amazingly feminine that totally contradicted the image of a tough cop about to make a bust. She grabbed a role of lip balm from the dash, and smoothed it, dainty as an expensive French lipstick, across her lips.

“Yes ma’am,” said Bob, as she got out of the car and walked slowly to the front door.

He wondered why they didn’t do it bigger; ten cars, lights flashing, loudspeakers. But maybe that would spook an icehead like this Cubby, legendary maker of bad decisions, and the next thing, there’d be another big gunfight. Give Thelma the benefit of the doubt. She’s done this, you haven’t. You don’t know so much, and as it is you are riding the raw edge of a term in jail on any one of a dozen charges.

So he sat back and watched the police theater.

Thelma arrived at the doorwell, hesitated. Her hand flew to her pistol, made certain it was where it should be and that the retaining device still held it ready and secure until the moment she drew, if she drew.

She knocked.

She knocked again.

No answer.

She slithered next to the door jamb and edged the door open. She had a Surefire in her nonshooting hand, and she used it to penetrate the darkness. He heard her yell, “Cubby? Cubby, it’s Detective Fielding. You in there? You come on out now, we’ve got business.”

There was no answer.

Don’t go in, Bob thought. One-on-one in the dark of a house against a violent offender whose head is all messed up on account of the skank he eats and makes every day, who’s paranoid, maybe crazy, oh lady, don’t go in, it isn’t necessary. Drop back, watch the exits, call for backup, let the boys in the Tommy Tactical outfits earn their dough.

But Thelma slipped in.

The moments passed, and before he knew it Bob had gotten out of the car and crouched in the lee of its wheel well, watching, waiting for shots or something.