Chapter 33

BRISCO WALKED AWAY from the assembly room where the inquest had been held. The outcome was never really in doubt. Their body cams had recorded everything. His warning was clear until the Conway kid started shooting. That Brisco and Reg fired at nearly the same time simply reinforced the imminent danger the agents were in. The driver had already shot Unger when Thomas took him out. They’d at least managed one clean take-down but the Mexican kid who was on the passenger side scarcely spoke English—or was good at pretending he didn’t. When he opened his door, Reg had him at gunpoint and the kid dropped his weapon and raised his hands.

The clincher was the kids in the back of the van. The agents had saved innocent lives by acting as they did. That went a long way in the committee’s opinion. It was reaffirmed by the medical examiners. All the agents were listed as not at fault. The problem was with the Unger kid. By the time he was out of surgery, his parents had shown up with a lawyer. The agents were told in no uncertain terms that anything the kid had said before surgery was inadmissible. And he’d said nothing since. Even if he’d been coherent enough to answer questions, which he wasn’t, the agents couldn’t even speak to him. He was in a supposedly secure room at the hospital and was still unconscious most of the time. Brisco didn’t trust that the kid would be there when it was time to arraign him in court.

And that was the big problem. There was still a missing piece. There was a contact between the Gang of Three and the Mexican drug runners in Chicago. And right now, they had no leads on who it was. It was suspicious that the sheriff had the same lawyer as Unger. Technically, the cases were unrelated unless the agents could somehow connect them. Brisco wondered if the sheriff was the contact point, but he didn’t seem that intelligent.

On the other hand, Solomon Smith was a reclusive moonshiner in a shack in the woods. He had no lawyer and refused the one the court sent him. He was continually ranting about how he’d been betrayed and would kill the ones who killed his son. The case against him was strictly moonshining, unless they could somehow tie the drugs in Enders’ drink to him. A thorough search of the property netted all the distillery production and about fifty thousand in cash hidden under the floorboards. The amount of moonshine in his store room was enough to make his operation an aggravated misdemeanor instead of a simple misdemeanor. Brisco, as a federal agent, presided over the destruction of the still, alcohol, and shanty. He was accompanied and witnessed by two State Troopers who had been at the initial bust.

Brisco needed to find the missing link between Unger and the cartel. And when they found that link, he was pretty sure he’d find a network of small-time dealers who were currently not being resupplied. Brisco felt it was likely the middleman would try to find a new supplier to keep his network open and operating.

“Can I sit with you guys?” The girls at the team table with Dennis looked up to see Lana Brown, the shy cheerleader, standing with her lunch tray. There was a little shuffling to make room and she was welcomed.

“How are you doing, Lana?” Dennis asked. It had already been an exhausting day during which they missed most of their morning classes in the blow-up with the principal. “Please sit here and tell us what’s on your mind.” He held a chair for her. She set her tray down and sat next to him.

“I quit cheerleading,” she said as she pushed mashed potatoes and meatloaf around on her plate. It was actually one of the better meals the cafeteria served.

“I’m sorry,” Dennis said. “Were we too much for you?”

“No. Please don’t think that. You guys were fine. It was the other girls. They spent the whole trip home last night deciding how to punish me for not going along with them in the locker room. You didn’t pressure me and even defended me when I didn’t want to participate,” she said.

“Damn it! It’s my fault,” Brenda said. “I’m so sorry, Lana. If I’d stayed a cheerleader instead of running off to play basketball, maybe I could have controlled them this year. Maybe. Without me, Susan is turning them into call girls. I told Ms. Sanders what was going on when I left and she ignored it.”

“I would never have been on the squad at all if you hadn’t left,” Lana said. “Nothing that happened after was your fault. I could have refused their initiation and quit then. I just ... wanted to fit in so badly.”

“You don’t have to tell us what they did if you don’t want to, Lana,” Natalie said. “Just be welcome here and talk to us if you need to. And let us know if you need to be protected. We got pretty good at that with Dennis, here.” The girls laughed as Dennis hung his head and shook it. Lana smiled shyly.

“I’m just afraid they’ll try to punish me anyway. I told Ms. Sanders what they tried to do. She called me a priss.”

“Wow! That’s pretty uncalled for,” Dennis said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. On our team, everyone makes her own decisions. Right, ladies?”

“Well, if we were really making our own decisions, we’d all be sleeping with you every night,” Amy giggled. “There’s only so much Dennis to go around.”

“Do you really, um ... you know ... with each other?”

“Maybe this discussion would be better without me present,” Dennis said.

“No,” Lana squeaked and grabbed his hand. “I mean, please don’t leave your team because of me.”

“It’s okay, Lana,” Nat said. “Like everyone else in school, you want to know if we’re all having sex with Dennis. Would all the virgins at the table please raise your hand?” It was only freshmen and sophomores at the table with Brenda. The twins were working over lunch on a lab experiment. Seven hands went up—all except Brenda. Lana looked at Dennis.

“You’re a virgin?”

“Look at me,” he said. “I’m a four-eyed dweeb. Who’d have sex with me?”

“That’s not fair, Dennis. Don’t lie to our new friend,” Natalie said. “The truth is we would all have sex with Dennis, and my two sisters, too. We make out a lot and play some sexy games. We tease Dennis unmercifully with our bodies in the locker room. And there are a lot of orgasms to go around. But we’ve never had intercourse.”

“We’re all waiting for Natalie,” Amy giggled. Nat rolled her eyes. Lana looked puzzled.

“Sex is a big step,” Brenda confided. “I wish I’d been able to wait, but the pressure on cheerleaders to date and have sex with the team was more than I could withstand. And maybe I led the others astray a little with my wild behavior. But not rushing into sex, even if we’re sleeping together, is a lot easier to do when we’re all together. It was really hard last night.” A couple of the girls snickered.

“Last night?”

“I got to sleep over with Dennis alone for the first time. Everybody else’s parents were after them to be home. We messed around, but we didn’t go all the way,” Brenda confessed.

“Not being alone with Dennis is all that’s saved my cherry,” Natalie said. “I want to make love to him so bad.”

“You guys wouldn’t make me do something, though,” Lana said. She stated it firmly but raised her eyebrows in question for confirmation.

“No,” Dennis said. “We have three firm rules. No means no. Never without protection. Never in front of my sister. The cheerleaders were violating rule number one last night.”

“They said they were going to get the guy with the biggest cock to take my virginity,” Lana whispered.

“That’s rape!” Dennis declared. “We need to tell someone.”

“Who? The principal? You know how far that will go,” Natalie said.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Lana. I’ve seen my share of those guys’ cocks. The answer is Dennis,” Brenda said. “But that doesn’t mean they won’t try something.”

“Surely, you could identify them,” Dennis said. “I knew who was choking me with his cock last year.” The girls let out a collective gasp. It was the first time Dennis had really spoken about his experience other than the brief confession the day they threw Carol off the team.

“They’d blindfold me like they did when they made me suck off five guys for initiation. They said they’d keep me cherry for now and figure out who got it later,” Lana said. Dennis looked at the other girls. They shrugged and nodded.

“We need to tell Coach about this,” he said. “I know the school board could over react like they did last year and cancel the whole sports program, but we can’t let this go on.”

“The problem is people will point at us and accuse us of the same things,” Amy said. “People are just like my parents. If you tell them something they don’t want to hear, they just say you’re lying.”

Ardith was not having a good time either. An irate Lori Sanders was in her office.

“Your team so traumatized one of my girls last night that she quit the squad!” Lori shouted at Ardith. “Then she made up all kinds of things to blame it on the other cheerleaders. Either you put a stop to their behavior or I will.”

“Lori, you don’t know what you are talking about. Where were you when the girls were all in the locker room? It’s interesting that you rode the bus all the way up to Fort Dodge with us and then disappeared. You didn’t even see the game; how could you know what went on in the locker room?” Ardith said.

“I had business to attend to,” Lori said. “I couldn’t spend all my time babysitting.”

“Oh? So, your affair with Mr. Conway is considered business?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I wondered, when he said he wasn’t at the game last night. I was sure I saw him in the parking lot. Was he your client? I thought he was just a boyfriend.”

“You don’t have any evidence he was even there last night. What I do on my own time is my own business, not yours.”