Stillborn Armadillos (John Lee Quarrels Book 1) (14 page)

Chapter 27

"Who is the phantom sniper who has been shooting at Somerton County deputies in the past few days?" the television reporter on the early news asked. There was a picture of Greg's police car with the shattered back window and a close up of the bullet hole in the trunk lid.

"This is the second time in a matter of days that deputies in the normally quiet rural county have come under fire. In both instances, the first on Monday, and again yesterday, somebody with a high powered rifle has taken pot shots at deputies in marked police cars while they were parked. In the first incident, three shots were fired at Somerton County deputies investigating the discovery of three skeletons by a road construction crew on Turpentine Highway. And then yesterday, Deputy Greg Carson was parked at this abandoned gas station a few miles outside of the town of Somerton when two shots were fired at him. One bullet blew out the back window of Deputy Carson's police car and exited through the windshield, and the second penetrated the trunk and was found lodged inside the car. Reinforcements quickly arrived, but they were unable to find the person or persons responsible for these attacks. Fortunately, nobody has been injured to this point, but needless to say, Somerton County deputies are on high alert, as is the rest of the population."

The scene switched to an accident involving a bus and a bicyclist and John Lee's phone rang.

"Did you see that stuff on the news just now?"

"Yeah, I saw it, D.W."

"We need to do somethin' about this, John Lee. If we don't put an end to it real soon it's goin' to look like I'm some kind'a fool."

"Flag's got everybody out asking questions and trying to get any information on it," John Lee assured him.

"I don't trust Flag. He's lovin' every minute of this. You mark my words, he's goin' to use this against me if he decides to run for Sheriff."

John Lee was tempted to say that he was more concerned about people shooting high powered rifles at deputies than he was about his father-in-law's political future, but he didn't. With Beth Ann prancing around wearing just her tiny red panties, it seemed like the wrong thing to do.

"First we got those skeletons, and now this. This is making me look bad, John Lee. Real bad!"

"We're all working on it, D.W.," John Lee said again.

"Any more news on those skeletons?"

"Nothing new."

"Well, keep at it."

"Yesterday you said the shooter was the top priority. What do you want me to focus on, D.W.?"

"Both of them!"

"Okay, one may be tied to the other, but we don't know that."

"Just do somethin'," the sheriff said. "Wrap up either one and it will at least take some of the heat off of me."

John Lee was tempted to say that he couldn't concentrate his efforts on two things at once, but Beth Ann distracted him with a particularly emphatic wiggle of her butt as she walked by. He ended the call with promises to do his best and to keep D.W. posted on his progress. But it would be a while before he started on that, because the sheriff's daughter walked back into sight again, this time with the red panties hanging off of her finger and an inviting smile on her face.

***

"Yeah, I know where this place is," Paw Paw said. "We've got a power line that runs right down through here." He traced a line on the map with his finger.

"Is there anything left back there?"

"Beats me. Years ago when I was up on a pole I could look over in that direction and there was still some stuff laying around. Not much more than trash, but you could tell that something had been there."

"And what about this one," John Lee asked, pointing to the second turpentine camp near where the skeletons had been found.

His grandfather shook his head. "Nope, can't help you there. Want to go look?"

"I was thinking about driving out there to see what I can find."

"That car of yours won't make it back there," Paw Paw said. "We had to use four wheel drive trucks to get in and out. Let's take my Jeep."

"The Department's got a couple of 4x4s, I can get one of those."

"What for? My Jeep's just fine. And if we bang it up, you don't have to explain to Fig Newton how you did it."

John Lee couldn't disagree with that logic, though he dreaded riding in Paw Paw's ancient old gray Jeep Wagoneer. Built sometime in the early 1960s, the vehicle had seen a lot of hard use over the years. There was no air conditioning, the ride was rough, and the seats didn't have much padding left in them. But he had to admit that the old workhorse had never let them down on any of their backcountry adventures.

"When do you want to go?"

"No time like the present. Let me go tell Mama Nell."

"Grab a can of Off while you're in there so the mosquitoes don't eat us alive," John Lee said to the old man's back as he went into the house. While he was waiting he wandered over to the greenhouse and looked inside, shaking his head.

"Those beans are getting big, aren't they?"

"I thought I told you to get rid of those pot plants, Paw Paw."

"What pot plants?"

"The ones in there that I just saw."

Paw Paw climbed into the Jeep and started it, and asked, "You getting in, or what?"

John Lee got into the passenger seat and reached for the seatbelt, then remembered there wasn't one.

"Seriously, Paw Paw, you can't grow marijuana."

"What marijuana?"

"The marijuana that you have in your greenhouse.
That
marijuana!"

Paw Paw grinned at him and said, "Son, I don't know what you think you saw, but you need to get your eyes checked. You're going blind or something."

"Paw Paw..."

"Hey, you know what? Maybe, you should get yourself some cannabis. I've heard it's good for your eyesight!"

"Just drive the damn Jeep, Paw Paw, and try not to run us into a ditch or something, okay?"

The old man laughed out loud and said, "Don't you worry about my eyesight, John Lee. It's 20/20!"

They drove through town with Creedence Clearwater Revival blasting through the stereo, singing about a
Bad Moon Rising
and
Green River
.

"Now that's real music," Paw Paw said as the band segued into
Proud Mary
. "I love your Mama Nell, but that Elvis shit gets old."

He coasted through the third or fourth stop sign without touching the brake pedal. "Not that that's all bad, mind you. I got to tell you John Lee, some men want their women to dress up in that frilly see-through stuff because they say it makes the sex really hot. But all I got to do is put on a cape and one of those sequined Elvis costumes she's got, and she'll rock my world until all I can say is, "Thank you. Thank you very much."

"That's way more about your sex life than I need to know," John Lee said, shuddering.

"What? You think just because the hair turns gray the horny goes away? You have no idea, kid! That's about the time a woman comes into her prime."

"Can we talk about something else? Anything in the whole world, Paw Paw? Please?
"

Paw Paw blew the stoplight at Third Street and Main, drawing blares of protest from the horns of two drivers who had to slam on their brakes to avoid a collision. He ignored them and turned to John Lee with a wicked grin and asked, "Do you want to know what I'm taking for my erectile dysfunction?"

***

"See, there's another one. Proves my point!"

Paw Paw was referring to a dead armadillo on the shoulder of the road. For as long as John Lee could remember, the old man had always pointed out the dead animals, which were a common sight along Somerton County roads.

"I'm telling you, John Lee. There's never been a live armadillo. They're all stillborn on the side of the road."

John Lee didn't want to get into the same old discussion again, but it beat the hell out of hearing about his grandparents' sex life and how it was flourishing thanks to Elvis and Viagra. Given the alternative, he played along.

"Paw Paw, for them to be born dead alongside the road there had to be a live one to give birth, right?"

"There's another one right there. That's two of them in what, a quarter of a mile?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"So we've seen two dead ones. Have we seen any live ones?"

"No, we haven't."

"Well, there you have it," Paw Paw said, slapping the steering wheel for emphasis. "Stillborn armadillos. I'm telling you, John Lee, I don't know how the scientific community has overlooked this all these years. One of these days I'm gonna write a paper on it and send it up to the Smithsonian, there in Washington, D.C. You just wait and see, I'm gonna do it!"

Before John Lee could reply, Paw Paw made a hard right turn with no warning, throwing him sideways in his seat and then bouncing him off the roof of the Wagoneer.

"Jesus Christ, Paw Paw, are you trying to kill us both?"

"Nope, I'm just driving up this here power line road to take you where you want to go."

They thumped down into a dip and back up again with a tooth rattling jolt.

"You might want to hang on to your gonads," Paw Paw advised. "It's gonna get rough up here in just a little bit."

Chapter 28

Describing the rough track paralleling the power lines as a road was quite a stretch of the imagination, but they took it for some distance before Paw Paw finally stopped the Jeep.

They got out, and he said, "Let me see, I think it's just over there a little bit."

"You think? How can you tell? It all looks the same to me."

The area was a mass of trees and brush and there did not seem to be anything discernible about this particular location from any other they had passed, but Paw Paw set off through the waist high tangle like a homing pigeon.

"Why don't you slow down before you get bit by a rattler or something?"

"Oh, hell, John Lee, if I was worried about things like that I wouldn't have lasted a day with FPL. When people's power goes out, do you think they care about a bunch of critters minding their own business out in the middle of the woods?"

John Lee was in excellent physical condition, but he still had to work to keep up with his grandfather's long strides. Mosquitoes and gnats flew in his face and he had to constantly wave them away. At one point he walked into a massive web from a golden silk spider and cursed as he tried to wipe it off his face, hoping none of the big arachnids were on him.

Eventually Paw Paw stopped and said. "Here we are."

At first John Lee couldn't tell the difference between this and any place else they had walked past, but then Paw Paw pointed to some old boards. "There used to be more, but most of it has probably rotted away or been overgrown. See over there, that straight line? There aren't many straight lines in nature."

They walked to the spot Paw Paw had indicated and he kicked with his foot, uncovering weathered and crumbling concrete.

"This was probably part of a foundation for one of the buildings."

"Could be," John Lee said. "From what I hear, most of the workers lived in wooden shacks. But they may have had something here. I know there was a camp store and things like that."

"Yep," Paw Paw said walking the length of the line, then making a left turn. He followed the foundation around a roughly 10 x 20 foot rectangle.

Once he looked past the trees and brush, John Lee began to see how the camp may have once been laid out. They dug around and found some pieces of heavy rusted metal, numerous flattened rusty cans, lots of broken glass that had come from bottles, and other trash that indicated that at one time people had lived out their lives in this place.

"I'd love to come out here with a metal detector and see what I could find," John Lee said.

"Probably a whole lot more of the same," Paw Paw replied.

John Lee took his GPS from his pocket and found the location he had marked for the construction site where the skeletons had been found.

"2.9 miles overland to where we found the skeletons."

"Make sense that they probably came from here," Paw Paw said. "Now what?"

"I don't know," John Lee admitted, looking around. He took the blow up of the map that Sheila had copied for him. "Do you suppose we could find this other one over here?"

"It would be a crapshoot. I knew where this one was from being up on the power poles and seeing, but otherwise how would we have ever known it was here?"

"Yeah, you're right."

"In this country you could be ten feet from something and not know it," Paw Paw said. "If you want to, we can look around, but I don't know of any roads or trails going off in that direction."

"No use breaking our necks or getting lost back there," John Lee said.

He marked the camp's location on his GPS so he could find it again and they spent another hour prowling around, but all they found was more trash from long ago. John Lee stared at the old turpentine camp and wondered about the people who had lived and worked here. Their lives had been so different than his own, toiling from sunrise to sunset six days a week for little pay, always getting deeper and deeper into debt to the company with no hope of escaping their situation except by fleeing, hoping they could outrun the company's horse mounted posse and their dogs. Some may have made it, but he knew that most didn't. He wondered if the three poor men whose skeletons they had found had been among those who been hunted down and suffered the swift justice of the brutal system.

***

Every law enforcement officer in Somerton County, from the deputies and the small city police force to the state patrolmen who came through were on high alert, aware that at any time bullets could ring out and the sniper could strike again. He did, but this time around, the results were tragic.

Maybe the shooter had aimed to miss, like he had every other time, or maybe he had gotten bolder. Either way, Ray Ray Watkins paid the price.

People are creatures of habit, and one habit that nearly every Somerton County deputy seemed to have was to park at a wide pull off on the shoulder of Cemetery Road, six miles outside of town. From there, the road ran straight as a yardstick for over two miles. It was a favorite place for teenagers to drag race, testing their cars and their skills against one another. Over the years more than one unfortunate youngster had died or been maimed in accidents on that stretch of road, and deputies knew that if they went out there late in the day, there was always a good chance of interrupting a race and writing a ticket or two.

Ray Ray was parked there late Sunday afternoon, waiting for any action that might come along. He never saw the shooter hidden behind a tombstone in the cemetery, he never knew that he was breathing his last when a large fly flew past his face. He didn't know how it had gotten into the car, since he had the windows up and the air conditioning on. But twice now it had buzzed him, and he didn't plan to let it happen a third time. He rolled up the magazine he had been reading, turned sideways in his seat, and leaned over the back of it looking for the irritating thing. That's when the back window exploded in a shower of glass and the bullet plowed into his forehead before exiting in a misty cloud of gore.

There wasn't much traffic on Cemetery Road and nobody thought much of the police car sitting there, since it was a common sight. It was only when a couple from out of town, lost and dangerously low on gas, pulled in to ask the officer where they could find the closest station or convenience store that his body was found, slumped sideways across the front seat of his patrol car.