THREE
Truman Daly swore under his breath.
He’d followed the old Ford pickup for a mile as it weaved and bobbed down the rural highway, the driver pointedly ignoring the swirling lights and sirens from Truman’s vehicle. He had to make a quick decision before the Ford entered a populated part of the town. Truman knew the driver and fully expected an earful when he finally got Anders Beebe to the side of the road. An earful he’d already heard a half-dozen times in his six months as Eagle’s Nest police chief. The old Ford caught a tire in the soft shoulder and overcorrected into the oncoming lane, then swerved back into its own.
Anders has to be drunk.
Making his decision, Truman accelerated and pulled the department’s Tahoe into the other lane, preparing to tap the old-timer’s right rear fender and send him into a spin. Instead, before Truman could tap the Ford, a huge cloud of steam burst out from under Anders’s hood, and he pulled off the road and rolled to a stop. Truman parked behind him and wished his department could afford a body camera to record the imminent kooky conversation.
With one hand on the butt of his gun, he approached the vehicle. The window was jerkily lowered by a hand crank. “Anders? You okay?” he asked.
“What the hell did you do to my truck?” The old-timer’s words ran together, and Truman picked up the scent of beer from five feet away. “How in the Lord’s high heaven did you do that?”
“I didn’t do anything to your truck. Something’s up with your engine.”
“Yes, you did! You police got some new fancy gadget to illegally stop citizens. How much tax money did the government spend on that?”
“Can you step out of the vehicle for me?” Truman asked. He knew Anders was generally harmless, but he’d never encountered him drunk, so his reflexes were on high alert.
“I do not consent!” Anders shrieked. Truman stepped close enough to see empty beer cans on the Ford’s bench seat.
“How much have you drunk today, Anders?” he asked.
“I do not consent! Codes and statutes aren’t laws unless I consent!”
Truman sighed. Even while he was drunk, Anders’s sovereign citizen beliefs were in full force.
“Your vehicle’s not going any farther today, Anders. Let me give you a ride and you can call someone to look at it.”
The man’s red-rimmed, pale-blue eyes couldn’t hold eye contact with Truman. The lines in Anders’s face were deeper than usual, and his gray hair stuck out in all directions from under his hat. “I do not wish to create joinder with you,” he stated.
Truman bit his tongue. Sovereign citizens had a whole litany of confusing pseudo-legalese to quote whenever they encountered a government official. The first time one had told Truman he didn’t want to create joinder with him, Truman had nearly replied that he wasn’t asking for sex. “I don’t want to create joinder with you either, Anders, but I will help you back to town. Does that work for you?”
“I’m a freeman on the land,” he sang.
“We’re all free men, Anders. Why don’t you hop out and let’s see what’s happened under your hood?” At least Anders wasn’t yelling at him anymore, but he was swaying nonstop in his seat. Truman doubted he could walk.
Probably why Anders had decided to drive.
The Ford’s door creaked open and Anders tried to stand but stumbled forward into Truman’s arms.
“Gotcha.” Truman turned his face away from the alcohol and body odor fumes. “Let’s get you to my vehicle.” He guided the man to the back door of his Tahoe, deftly checking him for weapons on the way.
“I don’t want to create joinder with you,” Anders muttered as Truman’s hands ran over his faded denim overalls.
“That makes two of us,” Truman replied. Two rifles sat in the rear window gun rack of the Ford’s cab, but Anders didn’t have anything smaller on his body. Truman cuffed him, put him in the back seat, and went back to check the Ford. He removed the weapons, cranked up the window, grabbed the keys from the ignition, and locked it up.
He returned to his vehicle and found Anders snoring in the back seat.
All the better. Sovereign citizens preferred to do their battles with words. Their statements were a lot of nonsense to Truman’s ears, but he knew they fully believed that they could avoid commonplace legal charges by making various oral declarations. They could talk their twisted legalese for hours, and the nonstop confrontations were exhausting.
He considered it a blessing to listen to Anders snore on the drive back to town.
Truman walked Anders through the small police department and was getting him settled in one of the three holding cells when Officer Royce Gibson stuck his head in the room and wrinkled his nose.
“Jesus, what’s that smell?”
“The usual cocktail of alcohol and body odor,” Truman answered. He stepped out of the cell and locked the door.
“Hey, Anders,” said Royce. “When’d you last shower?”
Truman sent him a look, and the young officer had the decency to look abashed.
“I am liberated from the government and not subject to US laws,” slurred Anders.
“In that case, consider this a safe place to wait until you can walk without help,” offered Truman. The older man nodded, lay down on his cot, and started snoring again.
“No joinder,” Truman said in an amused voice.
“I have no idea what the hell he means when he says that,” said Royce. “I ignore it.”
“He believes it keeps him from being subject to our laws. Something about there not being a legal agreement between him and us.” Truman shook his head. “Keep an eye on him. I’m headed home for the evening.”
“Wait a minute. I was coming to tell you that the FBI in Bend called; they’ve got two agents from Portland going to . . . the . . . Biggs murder scene. They want someone to walk them through it since it’s over two weeks old . . . and the door is locked.”
The steak-and-baked-potato dinner Truman had been thinking about all day suddenly got pushed back an hour. Or two. His stomach grumbled in protest. “Does it have to be tonight?”
“My understanding is they’re waiting outside the house already.”
Truman gave a short nod and strode toward the door, grabbing the cowboy hat he’d hung up when he arrived with Anders. He shoved it on his head. No one was poking around Jefferson Biggs’s home unless he was watching their every move.
Five minutes later Truman pulled up behind another black Tahoe in front of the two-week-old murder scene.
Two people stepped out of the vehicle, and he was briefly surprised to see a woman.
Have I been in Eagle’s Nest too long? He’d worked with plenty of women at his old law enforcement job and in the army. Six months in this isolated part of the country was turning him into a redneck. He didn’t have any women officers on his force, but according to the other guys, none had ever applied.
The man wore glasses and a heavy wool coat. No hat. He strode toward Truman, holding out his hand. “Special Agent Eddie Peterson. We appreciate you letting us in the house.” His handshake was strong, his eye contact solid.
The woman stepped forward, and Truman stopped himself from touching the brim of his hat when he realized her hand was out to shake. “Special Agent Mercy Kilpatrick.” Her handshake wasn’t as strong, but her green eyes were probing and intelligent. Truman felt as if she’d examined him inside and out, and learned all his secrets in one long glance. She was as tall as her partner, but had smartly worn a waterproof coat with a hood. And rubber boots.
“Truman Daly. I’m the police chief of Eagle’s Nest. A little more notice next time would be nice.” He couldn’t stop the small reprimand; they were taking his time, and he was hungry.
“Our apologies,” said Special Agent Peterson. “We just left the Fahey scene and wanted to get a look at the previous two scenes while the first was fresh in our minds.”
Truman scowled. “I heard Ned Fahey was murdered. You think it’s related to this one?” Mentally he swore at Deschutes County’s Sheriff Rhodes. The sheriff had kept all the details about Fahey’s death under his hat, and now Truman looked like an uninformed idiot. Granted, Fahey’s property was on county land, but Truman had considered the odd man an honorary resident of Eagle’s Nest since he liked to hang out occasionally at the John Deere dealership and shoot the breeze with the other locals who assembled there at the crack of dawn every weekday morning for bad coffee and gossip.
Special Agent Kilpatrick turned away to look at the house. “It’s possible,” she said from under her hood. He couldn’t see her lips move, just the rain sparkling on a few escaped black curls that wouldn’t stay under her coat.
In the last minutes of daylight, the home and outbuildings looked lonely. As if they were waiting for their owner to return. The emptiness settled over Truman and threatened to bury him in memories. Jefferson Biggs would never return to his home. Truman had recently moved to Eagle’s Nest to be closer to Uncle Jefferson, and now he was gone. What’s keeping me here? Truman’s roots hadn’t grown very deep in six months.
“Is the power still on in the home?” Kilpatrick asked. “It looks dark.”
“It is. The house is on city power, but it has a few backup systems in case that fails,” answered Truman.
“Good.” Her hood bobbed in a nod. “Were you one of the first responders? Did you see the scene before it was investigated?”
“I found him,” Truman said shortly. “I let myself in when he didn’t show up for coffee.”
Kilpatrick faced him, curiosity in her features. “You had a key?”
He wanted to squirm under her green-eyed scrutiny. “He’s my uncle.”
Sympathy flooded her gaze. “I’m very sorry. How horrible for you. Do you have other family in town?”
Truman felt the invisible walls rise around his heart. They’d been activated numerous times since Uncle Jefferson’s death. “No, we were the only two who lived in Oregon.”
“You didn’t step down from the investigation?” Peterson asked.
“This isn’t the big city. I don’t have access to a stable of investigators. Besides, I wanted to oversee every step, so I knew it was done right.”
Kilpatrick silently studied him for a long second. He held her gaze. She could reprimand him all she wanted; this was his town, and he had the final say.
“Let’s take a look,” she said. “Lead the way and give us a running commentary on what you found.”
Truman gave a stiff nod and led the two outsiders toward the house.
“You don’t have any suspects?” Peterson asked as they avoided several lake-size puddles in the dim light.
“None. I lifted dozens of prints. Ninety-nine percent were my uncle’s or mine. No hits on the others.”
“But his arsenal was emptied,” Kilpatrick stated.
“Yes. Every last weapon.” Last week Truman had discovered that his uncle had registered only two guns in his name. He’d known his uncle owned at least thirty different weapons.
He paused at the door and pulled the keys out of his coat pocket. His copies of his uncle’s keys were on an ancient Pabst Blue Ribbon key chain that Truman had envied during his teen years. He flipped through the keys, slipped one in the lock, and glanced over his shoulder at the agents. “Ready?”