Page 91 of No Safe Place

Fat and Skinny had a race

Up and down the pillowcase

Fat fell down and broke his crown

And Skinny won the race

Sounded like a plan, I thought.

Except Skinny was about to lose, too.

I shot the both of them simultaneously with the weapons I’d borrowed from the female cop.

With my right hand, I shot the skinny Travers through the back of his left knee with the Glock 17, blowing out his kneecap. At the same time with my left hand, I shot the corrupt chief right in his large backside with the officer’s Taser.

A moment later, they were both on the ground. As the sound of the rotor wash died down a little, I could hear that Travers kept saying uh-uh-uh and the chief kept saying ah-ah-ah. The way they were doing it at the same time sounded oddly musical, like they were warming up to sing in a barbershop quartet.

“Surprise, fellas,” I said as I stepped up.

I saw that Travers was crying like a baby as he clutched at his bloody knee. I patted him down and found a Glock and a pair of handcuffs. I disassembled the Glock and tossed the parts into the trees. After that, I gave the chief a couple of blasts with the Taser to give him something to do. He gave out a yah-yah sound this time and actually flopped over. I guess the backside of him was done.

Then I handcuffed Travers behind his back and dragged him to the far side of the SUV next to the guardrail. I hauled him up and dumped him in the back. When he started howling, I pulled his hair back and rammed the Glock in his mouth.

“Either you’re going to shut your piehole or I am,” I said.

Then I attended to the chief by giving him a healthy twenty-second press on the fizzling buzz trigger of the Taser.

“Please,” he said as I knelt and relieved him of his .38 and his cell phone.

“Shut your mouth,” I said as I ratcheted his own handcuffs on his wrists. I hauled him up and dumped him into the passenger seat of the police SUV.

I looked down Route 4. We were still alone for now. I realized I needed them in order to have Colleen released.

“Time to get on the horn, Chief,” I said, holding up the radio to his mouth.

79

The cold cinder block cell had a shelf bed beside a stainless steel toilet. Colleen sat on the bed and rubbed at her left wrist that was cuffed to a bolt in the wall. The disgusting toilet had an attached water fountain that, even though she was getting thirstier and thirstier, she refused to drink out of.

She was at the Beckford station house now. She shook her head at the gray painted cinder block. It didn’t seem so quaint anymore.

They’d caught her in the woods not two hundred feet from the telephone pole. It was some canine cop and his German shepherd and they about gave her a heart attack as they pounced on her, the dog nipping at her arms and head while the cop laid his knee in her back. His disgusting gloved hands on her, searching her pants all over, going under her shirt.

Then the fat chief showed up and gave her more of the same. She thought they would kill her right there and then.

But they hadn’t.

Yet, she thought as she rattled the cold cuff on her wrist.

The door of the holding room opened. It was the dog cop. A square thirtysomething with a beer gut and a blonde copstache, his Beckford PD ball cap pushed back on his head.

He squealed open the cell and came in and undid her cuffs. And re-cuffed her behind her back.

“Let’s go,” he said.

He led her out of the holding area into a corridor and stopped at a door and opened it and put her in an interview room. He uncuffed her and sat her down behind a table and cuffed her to another wall bolt.

There was a bottle of water on the table. He cracked the cap.

---