FIVE
“Here ya go, Chief.”
With a wink and a smile, Diane set a beer in front of him and darted off to help another patron before Truman could thank her. He wrapped his fingers around the cold glass and held it below his nose for a few seconds. The stress of the tour of his uncle’s home melted away at the smell of hops and citrus. The bar was a dive, but it was the only bar in Eagle’s Nest. The wood floor needed serious help and all the tables were uneven, but the service was five star and the burgers beat anything he’d ever eaten in San Jose. After the Deere dealership, it was the main hangout for the men of the town. Opinions were freely expressed with few consequences. There was an occasional brief fistfight, but Truman had yet to lock someone up for fighting at the bar.
It was a good place.
A slap on his back made his beer slosh over his hand, and Mike Bevins slid onto the stool next to him, sporting a wide grin.
“Asshole.” Truman grabbed a napkin to wipe off his hand.
“Sorry, didn’t see the beer.” Mike pushed up on the brim of his Oregon Ducks cap.
“Yes, you did.”
Mike caught Diane’s attention, pointed at Truman’s beer, and held up one finger. She nodded and whipped a glass under the right tap.
Mike had been one of the guys he’d bummed around with during the three high school summers he’d spent in Eagle’s Nest. Each summer they’d pick up the friendship as if Truman had never left town. When Truman had accepted the police chief job, Mike had been one of the first to congratulate him and treat him as if he were one of the locals. Their friendship had always been easy and sincere, and he’d smoothed Truman’s move to the small town. He was always ready to introduce Truman to a new face or offer his support during the city council meetings.
Truman liked having Mike at his back.
“How’s work?” he asked Mike.
“Same shit, different day.” Mike nodded his thanks at Diane for his beer. “The old man is pressuring me again.”
Truman knew Mike’s father wanted him to take more responsibility at the big Bevins ranch. The ranch was a huge machine that used a dozen hands to keep moving. He also knew Mike wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. He had a dream of living in Portland and teaching survival classes to middle-class suburbanites who had money to burn. There was nothing Mike loved better than disappearing into the wilderness for two weeks, living out of his backpack. Truman had thought it was cool when they were eighteen, but now he preferred the comfort of his bed, a hot shower, and fresh coffee.
Mike’s father didn’t support his dream; he wanted his son to take over his legacy.
Considering Mike was inching close to forty, Truman wondered if he’d ever jump ship.
“What are you going to do?” Truman asked, knowing Mike needed to vent.
“Dunno.” Mike focused on downing a third of his beer. “I’ll know when the time is right. I heard the FBI shipped in some agents from Portland to work on the murders.”
Truman didn’t mind the subject change. “They did, and I’m glad. We need all the help we can get on the prepper murders.”
“You don’t see them as elbowing you out and taking over?”
“Heck no. Do you know how limited my resources are in Eagle’s Nest? I rely on Deschutes County and the state police for almost everything. I’m used to playing nicely with others.”
Mike looked into his beer. “I’m sorry about Jefferson. I know I’ve said it before, but I can’t imagine how bad it sucks for you.”
“Thank you.”
A companionable silence stretched for a few seconds. He never felt the need for useless small talk with Mike.
“How many FBI agents?”
“Two.”
“That’s it?” Mike raised his brows. “Is that really going to make a difference?”
Truman thought of Mercy Kilpatrick and the intense focus he’d seen on her face and heard in her questions. “I think so. It’ll be their sole assignment while they’re here. I’m constantly pulled in a half-dozen directions, and so is the county sheriff and the Bend FBI office. These two agents’ primary assignment is to find the murderers.”
“More than one killer?” Mike leaned closer, his eyes narrowing. He smelled of fresh-cut wood, and Truman noticed the faint powder of sawdust on his heavy dark jacket.
“Don’t know. Don’t quote me on that.”
Mike slowly nodded, weighing Truman’s words.
“Seriously,” Truman said. “We don’t know if there’s more than one guy.”
“I heard there’s a shitload of weapons missing from Ned Fahey’s place. That sounds like more than one person to me. Were you up there this morning?”
“No. It fell under county jurisdiction, but I’ll take a look at some point since they think it’s related to Jefferson’s death.” He heard his voice catch on his uncle’s name. It’s so hard to say.
“That has to be frustrating,” said Mike. “Since the last city you worked in was so big, I bet you aren’t used to dealing with so many different jurisdictions.”
“In a way,” admitted Truman. “My boundaries are much more narrow here, but I have a better handle on the people. I don’t feel like I’m constantly in a new situation with new faces. The faces here grew familiar over a few months.”
“After a while you’ll know within minutes who did each crime. People around here aren’t very original.”
“Can’t say I appreciate original crimes,” admitted Truman. A memory flashed, and he shut it down as he wiped away the small beads of moisture on his upper lip.
Or is that beer foam?
“I bet you’ve seen some weird shit.”
Under his arms, sweat blossomed. “Not really.” He took another big drink of his beer and scrambled for a change of topic. Sports. Cars. Women.
“What’s the most unusual thing you’ve come across?” Mike asked before Truman could form a coherent question. “I once read about a cop who found a hand in a suspect’s backpack. A whole fucking hand. Rings and everything.”
“Nothing like that. Excuse me a moment.” Truman headed toward the bathroom, needing space between Mike and himself and the caustic memory that’d barged into his brain. He slammed the heel of his hand against the men’s room door and strode in as the memory broke free.
Thick clouds of pale gray smoke billowed from under the hood of the burning abandoned car when Truman discovered it on the dead-end street. Officer Selena Madero pulled up as he called in his arrival. Nearly a dozen people milled around, watching the car burn, some taking videos, some talking on their cell phones.
“Back up!” Truman hollered at the crowd. “Everyone get away from the car. What happened?” he asked the closest woman, who balanced a toddler on one hip. She clutched her daughter with one hand; her other hand gripped an amulet at her neck.
She answered in Spanish too rapid for him to follow, her eyes wide.
“She doesn’t know,” answered Officer Madero. “She says she heard people yelling and then smelled the smoke.”
“Is someone in the car?” Truman asked.
The woman gave him a terrified look and shrugged, shaking her head.
“Does anyone know if someone is in there?” he shouted at the other observers. Flames licked at the wheel wells and burst out of the grille. The voluminous smoke turned black.
No one spoke up. Some held up their hands in an I-don’t-know gesture.
“Crap,” Truman mumbled. He glanced at Officer Madero. She was young, one of the newest recruits on the force, and she had her focus on him, looking for guidance.
“What do we do?” she asked in a low voice.
“Get everyone farther away from the car. Our priority is to keep everyone safe.”
An ear-piercing shriek made him spin around. A gray-haired woman ran full steam at the car, screaming in Spanish. A man grabbed her around the waist as she tore by. She beat him with her fists, but he didn’t let go.
“She says her daughter is in the car!” Officer Madero sprinted toward it.
“Madero!” Truman shouted. He took two steps after the other officer and halted, unable to think straight. What can I do? The flames at the front end of the car had multiplied and the amount of dense black smoke stunned him. Fire extinguisher. Truman dashed to his trunk, hoping he’d made the right decision.
The crowd let out a series of shouts.
Truman’s blood froze as he glanced back.
A young woman in the rear seat leaned her face against the car glass, her mouth wide open, her eyes terrified. Her face was pressed against the glass as if she couldn’t support herself, and Truman instantly knew her hands were tied behind her back. The mother’s shrieks intensified. The man holding her back met Truman’s gaze, questioning if he should let her run toward the car. Truman shook his head.
Madero grabbed the handle of the rear car door and tugged. “It’s locked!” she shouted. The black smoke billowed around her head and shoulders, briefly shrouding her.
A few of the crowd rushed forward to check the other doors.
Truman grabbed his extinguisher and glass puncher to break the window. With one in each hand, he tore toward the car. The flames intensified and people backed away, their hands and arms shielding their faces from the heat.
Madero didn’t leave. She hammered frantically at the window with her small flashlight. The woman in the car locked eyes with Truman, and he pumped his legs harder.
The car exploded.
An outline of Madero flashed in the blast as a wall of heat and power threw Truman backward.
His head hit the concrete.
Truman rubbed his hands under the icy water in the bathroom and grabbed a paper towel, then doused it under the stream and wiped it across his face.
The shudders stopped.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror. I should have pulled Madero away instead of getting the fire extinguisher. He could still see Madero’s silhouette in the bright light. And the face of the woman in the car. Over and over and over. His heart pounded in his chest.
Count five things you can touch.
He placed one hand on the cold metal spigot of the sink and let the stream run over his other hand, concentrating on the sensation of running water. Then he ran a wet hand over his spiky hair, touched the rough fabric of his sleeve, and deliberately banged a knee into the white sink, welcoming the small pain.
Count four things you can see.
He focused on the small scar on his chin. One. The other injuries to his face had healed and nearly vanished, but he knew where they lurked. A faint line here, a pale divot there. Two, three, four. His breathing slowed.
Count three things you can hear.
Scratchy music through the single ceiling speaker. The water in the sink. The murmur of voices from the bar.
Count two things you can smell.
He ended the mental recitation. By the end of the third step out of the five the psychiatrist had taught him for handling panic attacks, his heart rate had slowed and his sweats were gone. He took a quick inventory of his feelings. All calm; I’m grounded. He mentally stepped back and took an unemotional look at what else he’d locked away in his memories.
After two days, Officer Selena Madero had died from her burns.
The woman in the car had been tied up by her boyfriend and deliberately left in the burning car because she’d broken up with him. She’d been dead when the paramedics arrived.
Truman had been released from the hospital and had taken medical leave, spending time with the department’s psychiatrist. His vest had protected him from most of the flying, burning debris, but he still had two burns on his thighs. After a year they were still sensitive to the touch and itched and burned at random moments.
Constant reminders.
The victim’s moments of terror before the explosion ate at his gut and brain and heart.
He couldn’t comprehend the mind of a human who’d do that to another person. Especially a woman he’d once claimed to love.
The boyfriend was tried and sentenced. Truman avoided the trial except for his own brief testimony. He couldn’t have stomached the statements from the victim’s mother, who had pleaded with her daughter not to date the man, or the words from the medical examiner about the condition of her corpse.
If only I’d arrived sooner.
If only I hadn’t run for the fire extinguisher first.
Would it have mattered?
The psychiatrist had shown him how to get a handle on the survivor’s guilt, and techniques for managing the panic attacks, but he hadn’t been able to restore Truman’s faith in humankind. He’d been close to leaving law enforcement for good.
Then he’d received the call from Eagle’s Nest and his brain had seized the idea, as if someone had thrown him a lifeline. A small town where everyone knew everyone else. A town where people looked out for their neighbors and didn’t set their significant others on fire.
It became a beacon of change in his mind. A city where he wouldn’t deal with gangs or excessive homelessness.
A town where he could be a person, not a uniform, who helped.
“Shitty people are everywhere,” the psychiatrist had told Truman when they’d discussed his job offer. “Small towns, big cities, African villages. You can’t run away from it.”
Truman had known his doctor was right, but a quick visit to the town of Eagle’s Nest, where he’d spent those high school summers, rekindled a fire that had been doused when that car exploded. He’d felt compelled to follow that new energy and hold tight to its source. Since the explosion he’d been lost, drifting through life, searching for something that made him feel alive.
He’d been willing to follow that feeling to Eagle’s Nest.
He strode across the creaking floor of the bar. It’d been the right decision. He’d been welcomed to the small town. He felt wanted and he felt needed. No longer an anonymous face with a uniform and a badge, he had friends, he had a purpose, and he slept soundly at night.
But after that panic attack, tonight might be an exception.