Cheryl

Elias found Cheryl down at the stables where Christine had said. She had riding pants and high cowboy boots on and her riding helmet was hanging behind her head by the chinstrap. She had the same heavy denim shirt she always worked in, whether it was fifty degrees or a hundred. Her short platinum hair caught highlights from light coming in the open door. She was tacking up a Palomino, tall at the shoulder as Elias. The gelding was on crossties. Didn’t take his eye off Elias. Sometimes horses get a vibe from senses people don’t know.

Cher looked down behind her at Elias approaching and nodded to him, talking low to the horse and scratching him at the shoulder as she worked the halter over his muzzle.

“How are you, Cher?” asked Elias.

“Hot today, Eli.” She didn’t look up from her hands. Come to think Elias was sweating just from the walk over from the house. “But the horses gotta get their work in.” She attached the breastplate.

“Christine said you wanted to see me,” said Elias.

“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “Maybe six years ago. It was wintertime. Had a horse named Kindred. He gave us a scare.”

“Oh?” asked Elias.

“He hadn’t eaten or drank or made for a couple days and his gums had gone white. It’s bad when they go white. But the vet came up, took a look and when she was here his bowel turned again and he seemed okay. She left, and I had a school board meeting, so I went and soon as I hit the 10, got a call from Christine, said he’d turned again. So I called the chairman and told him I had a sick horse, couldn’t make it.” Cher turned and picked up the saddle and put it over the pad on the gelding’s back. 

“I called the vet back in and she was there almost as soon as I was. Vet said it was fine and that he’d be fine. I didn’t know much back then but I knew if they turned twice it was real bad, you know? So I walked him and walked him and he would walk, but as soon as we stopped, he wanted to get down on his knees. Ohh, no you don’t! So I’d walk him some more. It was full nighttime and we’re out in the second ring and I’m talking to him and leading him around the edges of the ring. If a horse’ll graze then he’s okay, but Kindred put his muzzle down and sniffed; he didn’t want any. So that was two strikes. 

“I called Jim and he came home and by then Christine had the trailer hooked up to the Dodge and we trailered him in to Tucson. They put him in the stall where they check for colic, and he was already so bloated they had to squish him in sorta. They did the rectal and the ultrasound but we all knew he needed surgery. 

“They took him to the other stall to prep and they put the IV in and I started crying because, you know, you never know when it’s coming. That last day. He was only twelve.”

“That young for a horse?” asked Elias.

“Oh, getting on toward middle age maybe,” said Cher, tightening the girth. “He was a young twelve.” Elias saw maybe a tear in Cheryl’s eye.

“Well, he was laboring now. Probably more from nerves than pain. We walked him in to surgery. They know, Elias. They know. And he looked at me. Right in the eye he looked at me, and right through me. He looked at me as if to say, “Don’t worry, Mama. I’m coming back.” Not a hint of fear to him. Stoic, maybe. 

“So he’s in there and one of the ladies from the PTO, Edie Bowman came down. She has the Cross Beau Farm, up on North Cascabel Road north of Pomerene, to be with us, me and Kindred.

She was asking me about my presentation for the new field house and trying to keep my mind occupied.” She put her hand out to Elias to help her up into the saddle. 

“And I just stopped, and I put my hand on her arm to stop her. And I knew he would be okay. In a moment I just knew.” 

She braced on Elias’ shoulder and one stirrup. “Not 90 seconds later the surgeon called saying they were gonna sew him back up. There was no necropsy, which is when they start to die, and it was just a blockage. They cleared it and they were sewing him back up good as new.”

“Close call,” said Elias.

Cher mounted the gelding and made a clicking sound in his ear, spurring him right up to a trot. She called back to Elias, “Closer than anything this family’d ever had before Jim met you.”

Butterfield

Not twenty minutes after he’d submitted his report on the secure server to the Phoenix office, his phone rang.

Butterfield.

“Not happy, Special Agent Tucker,” was how it started.

“How are you, sir? Nice day out there.”

“Never mind that. Looks like you left something out of the report you just filed.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“The part where I sent you out to canvass that neighborhood and bring me back evidence of a hate crime,” said the boss. “I’m coming down. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Sure thing,” said Elias, but Butterfield was gone. Dial tone.

Elias sighed and let Valentine know. He started the Keurig and tied his tie up again. It took an hour before his superior made it down from Phoenix.

Butterfield came in. “Sit down, Tucker,” he said. He was tense and wound up, almost hopping. Elias sat. Butterfield didn’t. That was the only way Butterfield could seem taller so he could talk down to people.

“SA Tucker,” he said with a sigh, looking up at God, “you’re somehow now untouchable. Washington won’t move you and won’t let me discipline you. Did you know that?” The last part, he looked Elias right in the eye, hands on hips.

Elias shook his head no.

“…Officially,” said Butterfield with a gleam in his eye. “Nothing on the books.

“But I promise you,” he said with a finger in Elias’ face, “you’re going to bring me what I want. You’re going to do what I want. Because if you don’t, I’m going to have you on litter patrol all summer long. Outdoors. On foot.”

Elias suppressed a laugh. “Sir, it was a noise complaint. You can see in the 302 that the residents clearly stated that that’s all it was. Noise, not racism.”

Butterfield stopped for a moment for effect and then spun away. Like a dance step. “When a man enters the military, they spend months yelling in his face. Breaking him down. Making sure he knows that above all else, he must follow the orders of his superiors. Then they can build him back up into a lean, mean fighting machine. And point him at the enemy.

“And do you know why, Tucker?”

“No,” said Tucker. “Why?”

“Because when the bullets and flying and bombs are falling, it’s very easy for a man to lose his head and do something stupid. He needs loyalty to the chain of command or else all is lost.

“We don’t have that luxury, Tucker, to train new agents properly. So for some of them, there’s a distinct lack of loyalty. They freelance. And freelancers are very dangerous.

“Above all, Tucker, we demand loyalty. What you did to Assistant Director Wolf brought shame and dishonor to the Agency. You hurt us, Tucker. You hurt us all. You did that. It’s nearly unforgivable.

“And now you must be broken down. Broken and made to be loyal.”

Elias was shocked. He’d uncovered a government conspiracy which killed thousands of people for the benefit of a very few. And this was the thanks he got?

He set his jaw. “I won’t apologize for good police work,” he said.

Butterfield’s eyes narrowed. “So be it.”

And then he walked out of the office. Elias let out the breath he was holding and relaxed.

Then Butterfield marched in again and threw a leather strap down on Elias’ desk, shuffling his paperwork and sending some to the floor. It was a shoulder holster.

“Tucker, you’ve been keeping your service firearm on your hip. Bureau regs clearly state you must keep your service firearm concealed in a shoulder holster. From now on, that’s how you carry. And be happy I let you keep it at all.”

“Is that all, sir?”

“You wish,” said Butterfield. And then he left for good.

Man-made Writers’ Block

In case you haven’t heard, my debut novel Western Terminus is now available at Amazon through the link in the sidebar there. Very good reviews. You’re going to love it. I put the final edits to it in Feb 2019 and here we are in June almost (!) and there’s been very little movement on the next installment of this Eli Tucker series, titled The Fixed Element. I’ve got about 6500 words in the can, and I want the book to run about 65-70k, which would be just under 300 pages.

The story picks up after Christmas in the early spring, maybe just before tax time. Eli’s FBI relationships are easy to follow up on because he’s still with the Bureau, so that’s good. I introduce a new interesting character who will help him through the first part of the story due to his connections. I introduce one of the two antagonists for the book very quickly too. 

But something has been holding me up: the location. Both sets of antagonists are in the Tucson-Phoenix corridor, outside of Cochise county. Jim Funk and Heather Hill, both of whom are important people in his life, are based in Cochise County and for whatever reason are unlikely to come into Tucson and Phoenix. So setting the action in these cities meant I could not for the life of me figure out how to weave them in. 

Sure I could write separate subplots for them (and Harold) but that would leave the book disjointed. There’s already an A reel and a B reel, so adding C, D and E etc. will make it a different kind of book. No longer a thriller, really. Thrillers have to move fast. 

So no dice.

And herein lies the writer’s block.

Of course the answer is obvious. Sometimes my natural dumbness overcomes obvious solutions. That’s how strong my dumbness can be. The answer is to move the main antagonist from southeast Tucson, where I had planted them, over to Cochise. Cochise isn’t very populated but there are enough dots on the map that I can squeeze this antagonist in. In fact, it’ll be even more threatening and dire in a smaller community. 

That’s the next thing. I’m going to go back and pick up the whole scene and move it to Cochise. Then Jim Funk and Gabe Rodriguez and Heather and even maybe Ellen can work in easier. Probably not Ellen, but her situation is the focus of the B plot so I’m not as worried about it. 

Untitled

Just as he was walking up to Interview, the lady detective who was in there walked out shaking her head. As she walked by she said to Elias, “Maybe take a run at him. I don’t think I’m going to get the confession.” She didn’t stop. Just kept walking out to the bullpen. Elias watched her go. She was wearing brown slacks and a tan blouse with her badge on a lanyard around her neck. Her holster was empty.

Elias breathed slow, picked up his brown briefcase, and turned the knob.

“Hello, Mr. Schroeder. My name is Elias Tucker and I am a Special Agent from the FBI. The detective said that you got the best of her. That true?” He sat and smiled and put his case down. Just as Fletcher was about to talk, Elias interrupted. “Oh—sorry, just a second.” He turned around and unplugged the single CCTV camera that covered the whole room, and sat down again. “Bureau says we don’t need the recordings, so…” Elias smiled again, a little uncomfortable.

Fletch Schroeder was all angles. Sinew like a bowstring pulled tight up and down. He didn’t have his belt or any jewelry at this point. He wore a white ribbed tank top, faded jeans and flip flops. His left wrist was handcuffed to a railing on the metal table put there just for the purpose.

“These locusts. The screws, the shrinks, the shysters, the fags in pussy hats. Politicians. Hacks. They’d all like you to believe that everything is made. Like, made by culture. That we’re endlessly changeable.

Because that means they can remake the world in their image.” He stopped to let a gob of spit drip from his mouth to the table. Slow like a movie monster.

“But that ain’t so. We ain’t endlessly changeable. There’s such a thing as human nature. We weren’t made by society. We made it and He made us.

“And let me tell you mister, no matter what you do, Mother Nature will always be the biggest, baddest bitch on the block. She’ll be here when the White House ain’t even a memory in the brains of whatever comes from us. From us, not you, Tucker. Not you. Chimps have no future.”

Fletch leaned back in the metal chair, back on two legs, as far as he could handcuffed to the table like that. He looked at the ceiling. Like he was counting the holes. And then he said with resignation, “That’s Mother Fucking Nature.”

Suddenly he shot forward, slamming the front two legs of the metal chair against the hard tile floor, and hitting his hands flat against the metal table all at once. Bam! It surprised Elias and he startled a little. Fletch smiled at his reaction and continued to talk.

“Man is a part of Nature. That means that no matter what we do, Mankind will always be, at heart, the same. A man can be changed. Mankind can’t. We have a nature. There will always be evil. There will always be chaos. There will always be men who live to see everything burn; live to die. That’s the fixed element, Tucker. That’s us. That’s the Schroeders. You cain’t stop us. You cain’t change us. We’re gonna see it all burn. We’re gonna see you burn, Tucker. You and your filthy, dumpy monkey-ass handlers at the monkey ass FBI.”

He stretched around to face the mirrored glass behind him and raised his voice. “Now I’m done. Do what you want to, I’m not talkin’ to no monkey ass fed anymore.”

Having made his point, he turned back to Elias and shot laser beams into him. Fletch Schroeder smoldered.

Elias didn’t move. He sat, head cocked to the left a little, and breathed easy. He looked at Fletcher like he was the Friday New York Times crossword. He stroked his chin.

A minute passed. Fletcher was getting tired of holding his face in a contorted mask of rage. He squirmed a little in his seat.

Another minute. They were quiet enough to hear the hum of the fluorescents. Fletcher let his shoulders drop. It was tiring, holding that posture of rage.

Elias halfway closed his eyes. Like he was listening to something inside himself. “You love your kid brother Duke?” Asked Elias.

He could see the hamster wheel turning in Fletcher’s head. Fletcher’s visage turned almost imperceptibly from rage to suspicion. “What’s that got to do with anything?” He asked, slowly.

“He look up to you?”

Fletcher shrugged a little. “I don’t know. Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.”

“He ever imitate you? Like, see you doing something and he does the same thing? Because I have a sister back east, and when we were little she was always imitating me.” Elias smiled and laughed a little. He leaned forward.

“Yeah. Sometimes. Why?”

“That’s how people learn. They learn by watching people and doing what they do.”

“So what?”

“So, when there’s a person comes after you Fletcher, and you love that person, it makes you want to do the right thing to show them right from wrong. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Duke ain’t learned nothing from me,” he said. He pulled his free arm into his lap and turned to the side in resignation. It made it so he was kind of hugging himself, with the arm across his chest handcuffed like that.

“Hmm,” said Elias.

“Never,” repeated Fletcher. “All he knows he learned from the old man.”

“I could see that. Your old man is pretty strict. He runs a tight ship.”

Fletcher looked down into his lap. His back was bowed some. “I ain’t gonna cross him. I didn’t ever and I won’t now. Nothing you can do to me’s worse than what he could do.”

“Nah,” said Elias. “I won’t cast aspersions on your family. Especially not a man’s own father.

“But see, a building burned down. Police scientists say they’re sure it’s arson. Here, let me show you this.”

He pulled a manila folder out of his briefcase and opened it up. He turned to the forensic report where it showed evidence of accelerants used. He turned it around and pushed it to Fletcher.

“See here, it shows they know it was something from your shop. Your garage where you build your burners.” It didn’t say that, but Elias played a hunch that Fletcher wouldn’t know that.

Fletcher turned his neck to look, but kept his body turned away. He was like a twisted old tree with gnarly branches all tangled up together.

“So that means I have to put at least one of the Schroeder men in front of a judge and say to the judge that we think he did it. And then show the judge this evidence.”

Fletcher turned away and bent over at the neck and shoulders. He looked down into his lap real hard. His face was turning red.

“Fletch, they don’t care who gets done for this crime. The FBI wants to mark this down as a win and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process. I have no choice in that. All I can do is hopefully make sure nobody innocent goes to jail. You, your brothers, your father. Maybe Duke, I don’t know. That’s… that’s up to you now.”

Fletcher straightened most of the way up again and turned back to Elias. “How’s it up to me?”

“Well, the way I see it, either you can finger one of your kin and maybe see them go to jail for a long time.”

“Or else what?”

“Or you can write down what you did and I’ll take it to the judge and tell him you are a right guy. That I think you can be rehabilitated. I don’t know, but I would sure be in your corner if you could do that. And it would protect Duke too. He wouldn’t have to go through all this.”

Fletcher looked down and around and shook his head like he was dizzy. Then he said, “I want a deal.”

Elias took a moment to make it look like he was thinking. “Okay. Tell you what. I’m going to get a paper and pen for you and then I’ll talk to the court people and see what they will offer you. But in the meantime it’s important for you to write down what happened. As a sign of good faith.”

Fletcher nodded. He wanted the deal.

Elias mirrored him and nodded. He got up and went into the hallway.

Jim was there with the detective and the assistant district attorney.

“No loss of life,” said the young Hispanic woman from the DA’s office. “Five to fifteen with chance of parole in three.”

Jim and Elias looked at one another. Jim said, “That’s more like three to five with good behavior.”

Elias nodded. “My part’s done. You can have him.” He went and got a drink from the gray metal water fountain.

Jim and the woman talked a little more. Elias went back in.

“Oh, man, I got some good news from the court people!” he said.

“Yeah? What’s that?” Asked Fletcher.

“Well,” said Elias, looking over Fletcher’s confession, “Long as your part’s all in order, they don’t want a court case at all. Just tell the judge what you did. Here. Sign this at the bottom and put the date, ok?”

Fletcher was in holding at the precinct overnight before they took him to the county lockup over in Bisbee.