Chapter 5

It hit me pretty hard, losing Terry the way we did. I had a tough time sleeping for a while. I mostly thought about what might have happened if I hadn’t played cowboy and gone to Terry first, but I mentioned it once while talking to Shirley and Steve, in front of Lori, and they explained that I’d be with Terry then, and not with them. I guess that might be true, but I still had those thoughts that maybe I’d made the wrong choice. Frank told me I didn’t have a choice. We were actually out gunned, and were lucky things turned out as well as they did.

Frank saw more action in the sandbox than I did, and as a retired Master Chief, and a SEAL, saw it in a few other places, too. I knew enough to listen to him when he spoke.

Lori and I were engaged, and adults. We often played around with each other’s bodies, and after several times reaching the pinnacle of sexual release, without actual penetration, we got very comfortable with it. Oral sex was a magnificent pastime with her. She was willing, very responsive, and very thankful for every one of the hundreds of orgasms I gave her. Likewise, she was becoming an excellent fellatrix, able to turn me inside out with her ministrations, often blowing gray matter out my ears with a hum right at the end of her efforts. It might have been described as debilitating, but that only lasted until morning when we’d start over, after, or even before, a cup of coffee and some whispered sweet nothings.

Marge pretty much took over the wedding plans, making sure we would have our ceremony at our little church with Lori’s family and all our close friends, but that we made the reception happen in Liberty City, where we could entertain all the folks that would want to be there. It needed to be inside, due to the weather being chilly, at best, that time of year, but also more unstable than anything else. Late winter or early spring could bring fifties or five below, blazing sun or blizzard conditions, in our part of the woods. No sense in having hundreds of guests in jackets being surprised and snowed on. Much easier to just have them inside and not worry about it. The plans were set, and the bride and groom were ready. I knew for a fact at least the groom was.

We had a couple of run-ins with members of the biker gang that was involved with the Andersons and the drug business in Colby and the neighboring counties. Their leadership was incensed that a small-time sheriff’s office could cause that kind of trouble to their organization. They weren’t alone. The bikers did the heavy lifting, but the Andersons had contacts, too. Contacts in the big cities to the east and west, St. Louis and Kansas City, not to mention to the north in Chicago, and to the south in Little Rock and Memphis. It was not a small operation. The wildfire had not been extinguished. As fires go, it had not even been brought under control, but we didn’t know that at the time, since it was still so much larger than us, and reached well beyond our jurisdiction.

One such incident happened when one of our crew stopped two of them, the bikers, for running a red light. As Barry was writing them a ticket, one of the bikers said, “See how easy it was to get you alone, out of your vehicle, and vulnerable? Maybe next time, or maybe the time after that, maybe you won’t make it home. Who knows? You guys need to see your way to turn away, before you all get hurt. There is big business going on here, chief, and you can either profit from it or ... Well, not. Your choice. You won’t have a field day like you did last time. We won’t let that happen.”

The look on his face went sullen when Barry handed them back their paperwork and their citations and said, “Thank you for the warning, gentlemen. There is a German Shepard in the front seat of that car, the windows are open, he’s pretty quick. Oh, and everything you just said is on film and audio. I’m sure the district attorney will be contacting you or your lawyer soon. Have a nice day.” Barry then backed up to his vehicle, let Smokey out to take a leak, neither of the officers, human or K-9, taking their eyes off the bikers. The men saddled up and rode off.

Yes, the district attorney paid them a visit. Then she paid a visit to their lawyers. They were on notice.

Weeks later, after working traffic control and assisting the state troopers with an accident, a few of us were out at a diner in a little burg south of Liberty City. This place was famous around our parts for being THE place where the hamburgers were made out of very, very large masses of very, very lean, aged, delicious Angus beef. They were also served on huge onion rolls and with Claussen pickle slices, just to let you know how serious these people were. Back to the story.

We were approached by two gentlemen in suits, followed by two not so gentle looking men in sports coats, obviously wearing the coats to conceal something other than their waistlines.

“Sheriff Colby, I presume?” the shorter of the two suited gentlemen asked, looking at me. I had single stars on my collar. The others had a major’s gold leaf, or stripes, except for Shirley. She was back to work, but as a basic patrol deputy didn’t have any stripes or anything. She did have valorous service and purple heart medals, but they didn’t wear those medals every day.

I nodded and replied, “And you might be?”

“Richard Cross. Cross Industries, from out of the Chicago area.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Cross?”

“Learn from your past? Learn from your mistakes? Not run for re-election. You can do a lot for me, Colby, and I insist you think about starting pretty quickly. I don’t take adversity lightly and I don’t think you understand what I’m capable of.”

“Well, Cross, we may have an issue. My past is pretty well indexed, positively. I’m told my mistakes are few and minor, not involving you at all, I don’t think, and I’m going to run for re-election until the day I die. It’s my great-great-grandfather’s county, he founded it, and I’m going to watch over it for him and my grandfather. I loved the old man. I don’t take adversity lightly either, Cross, and my capabilities aren’t in question. They are public record. Nefarious behavior in this county, Cross, has come to premature ends for not just a few people.”

Frank eased himself out of the chair he was in and stood.

“Mr. Cross, and that is the last time I will address you in a polite manner, if I see you in my county again, you won’t leave on your own free will. Neither will your hired help. Take that however you want, but if capabilities come into question, you won’t be on the winning side, unless of course you are crooked enough to bring the Illinois National Guard’s Artillery Division. We may have a problem, then. Leave now and don’t come back. Take your operation, your gang, your drugs, and your thugs with you, if you know what is good for you, Cross.”

“This is not the end, Colby.”

“Yes, Cross. It is. As far as you and I are concerned it is.”

He turned and left, the other suit following him. The two sports coats stood there as their bosses left and offered menacing looks. Frank looked back at one of them, and Shirley the other. They acknowledged and left, following the bosses. Frank was a trained killer, and Shirley was just an unhappy woman with a gun and a badge. I would bet the menacing looks the muscle received were worse than the menacing looks they gave my troops. Just a hunch.

“Get their plates, Steve.” He moved to the window. “Shirley, I need everything we can find about those assholes. The muscle had nothing to lose. Dangerous. Even I could tell that. I have no idea why they would show us the head of the snake. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe they aren’t, I mean.”

Frank helped me out on that one. “It wasn’t, Charlie. They aren’t. He reports to someone. He wants you out of the way to keep his boss happy. He wouldn’t have come here if he was your ‘head of the snake’, as you say. Nope. I doubt he’s even number two. We are not going to hear the last of this for a while. If you don’t mind, Charlie, I’d tell your minions not to be alone. Ever, not even Barry and Smokey. Smokey doesn’t shoot well.”

“I understand, Frank. I think you need to help me make sure everyone gets that advice. No. Make it so. Not advice. You have the gold leaves now. Use ‘em. We can’t lose any more friends. We just don’t go out alone. Period.”

Colby County was very quiet for weeks. No motorcycles, no fires in abandoned buildings, no fights at the two bars that had all the fights, not much of anything going on. We were hoping that trouble had moved on and found more fertile ground to spread roots. We were half right. Craig Thorogood, Sheriff over in Linwood County, called me.

“Charlie, Craig. We just got word that a couple bought a house just outside of Linwood and a group of bikers seem to be living there. Sounds like your Wildfire operation moved over here. I’ve called the folks in Kansas City. The DEA anyway. The rest of them can pound sand.”

“Thanks, Craig, but I doubt they moved. I’ll bet they’re expanding. A man named Cross, Richard Cross, a Chicago boy, made it very clear that he would bury me as soon as he could and run free here. Hopefully you won’t meet him. He seems a bit on the serious side and possibly vengeful. Me talking tough and acting all macho probably didn’t do any good or affect them at all. I don’t know.”

Craig laughed. “Probably not, but we all do that once in a while. Well listen, it was his daughter and son-in-law that bought this house, I think. She hyphenates. Denise Cross-Golden or something like that. I’ll probably meet him at some point. Thanks for passing the name, and the heads up. This is not feeling warm and fuzzy.”

“No, Craig, it doesn’t and it’s not. My chief deputy, my new one, since Terry Willis was killed by Cross’s gang, advises against anyone being out there alone. They aren’t going to look at the car doors to figure out which county is behind them. A cop is a cop. Please be careful and tell your people to do that, too. Just sayin’.”

“Understood, Charlie. See you at the conference next year, OK?” I acknowledged and he ended the call.

Well, damn. Cross was spreading his manure. I knew I wasn’t done with him, though, and I was tired of waiting for something to happen, so I went on the offense. I once heard that a good defense was often a really good offense, or something like that. We’d see.

I had the patrols out looking around for anything different. People, vehicles, anything we could act on to try to get the squirrels to surface. It was quiet enough to be proactive, whereas normally, we were so tied up, reactive was the only game in town.

It didn’t last long. It started with a bar fight in Liberty City. A few fellows from down south were riding through on the way back from a charity motorcycle run somewhere north of us. They thought they found a friendly bar with bikes outside. Nope. Cross’s people. No colors, just thugs.

The fight broke out, and the out of towners turned out to be Marine Vets from a club out of the Ozarks. Not a good match for Cross’s men.

Cross’s sports coats pulled up just before we did, and we wound up following them into the bar. What transpired next was just like in the movies. One of the hired guns pulled a piece and lost his wrist to a pool cue. The next one never got his hand out of his jacket. Two of the visitors hijacked his arms.