Page 74 of JoyRide

“Will be when I get to the shop,” said Tammy.

“Tammy, you take the dogs with you. I don’t want you alone in the run feeding the prisoners. Make sure you take Max and Sarge in there with you when you hand out the food containers.”

“Sure. I can do that.”

Sheriff’s Office. Coyote Creek.

Travis sat in the break room while I booked the two teen pick pockets, then I put them back into their cells and called their parents. Max and Sarge stayed with me the entire time like Daddy wanted them to.

Both phone calls I made resulted in parents screaming at me and they wanted to come running over to the office to get their little darlings out of jail.

“Your son will be arraigned on Monday morning, sir. If you want to bring a lawyer with you to the courthouse, that is your right. If the lawyer needs to speak to your boy before his court appearance, you can visit the office after eight on Monday morning.”

“I want to see my son now.”

“Sorry, sir. The office is closed on the weekend. Staff only will attend to the prisoners. You’re welcome to come on Monday morning, like I said.”

“I’m calling the mayor, young lady, and you’ll find out you can’t talk to me like this.”

“Go ahead, sir. We don’t have a mayor in Harrison County. Only a county council. Call the County Supervisor if you wish to complain about the rules that he made, sir.”

I hung up and went to get Travis from the break room. “The parents are pissed and acting mean.”

“Too bad,” said Travis. “If they were better parents, their kids wouldn’t be in the can. What address did those kids have?”

“Both from Brownwood. A little past Shelby.”

“Where’s the county line to the east, Tam?”

“Let me look at the map in your office.” I ran and checked the big map on the wall in Daddy’s office and Brownwood was close to our eastern border.

I ran back to the break room. “Right at the east side near the line.”

“Huh. Don’t know if I’ve ever been over as far as the line.”

I locked up and helped Travis to the Bronco.

Shelby Fairgrounds.

Travis was slow getting to the picnic tables near the food trucks so he could sit with Billy. It was a long walk from the parking area and too far for a person in his condition.

“Anything happening?” I asked and Billy shook his head.

“Nothing yet. Crowd is getting bigger and bigger. Might be a productive afternoon.”

“Where’s Harlan?”

“He’s all over,” said Billy. “Last time he was back here for a Coke, he was watching the knife and gun vendors.”

“Okay. I’ll go look for him over there.” I ran through the midway and got to the section where the vendors had their tables set up. Down at the end I saw a couple of teens looking pretty closely at the guns.

They were talking to the seller and handling the guns. The guy was trying to make a sale and not caring that the kids were underage with no permit. All he cared about was the cash.

One of the boys looked kind of familiar to me, like I might have seen him once before. I walked around looking for Harlan and finally found him watching the midway games again—where we grabbed the pickpockets.

“There was a kid looking at the guns and he looked familiar to me.”

“Yeah? Can you think of where you might have seen him, Tam? Was it at the market? He could’ve been one of the punks who ran when you shot the other two.”

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