CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER TWO

“What time you got?”

“The same time I had a minute ago when you asked me: six-thirty-two.”

“Chief needs to bring his ass on.”

“Says who?”

“Says me!”

“Says you ?” The veteran cop looked at the young blonde rookie as the rookie sat behind the wheel on the driver’s seat impatiently strumming his fingers. “Say it to his face.”

“I ain’t that crazy,” the rookie said, and they both laughed. “But you know what I mean bro! I don’t see why he have to be here anyway. We can handle this.”

“Spoken like a dumbbell with zero experience.”

“But come on now. Am I right or am I right? It’s just an eviction serve.”

They were parked in their patrol car in front of a dilapidated house on the southside. The rookie had four months under his belt. The veteran had seventeen years under his. “One thing you’re gonna learn about this here town is that there’s two ways of doing things: The right way, and the Sinatra way.”

The rookie grinned. “Are you trying to tell me that our chief is a my way kind of guy? He does it his way, like Frank Sinatra?”

“ They do it their way, like Big Daddy Sinatra, the head of that family. And whenever there’s an eviction involving Big Daddy’s properties, which is practically every rental property in this whole county, then Chief wants to be onsite.”

“But why?”

“He wants to make sure everything is done by the book.”

“Again why?”

“Because the Sinatras are always on the hot seat. A lot of people in this town believe it’s not right that one family should have the kind of power they wield. There’s a concerted effort to do something about it.”

“What they gonna do? Money talk bro. All that complaining about how rich and powerful they are don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

A big Ram Big Horn pickup truck, with that glossy dark maroon color, flung into the driveway and Brent Sinatra, the chief of the Jericho County Police Department, stepped out in his big Cowboy hat and jeans. He began grabbing his corduroy blazer off of the backseat and began putting it on.

The rookie grinned as they began getting out of their patrol car. “Chief got style, you hear me? Even for a man his age.”

The veteran found that an odd thing to say. “What age?”

“ His age. He’s got to at least be in his late thirties. Maybe even his early forties.”

“And that’s old to you?”

“Damn right it’s old! It’s ancient to me. Although my girlfriend says he’s so fine. Every time she sees him, she says that to me.”

“What you say to her?”

“I say barf .”

The veteran smiled and shook his head. “You need help boy!”

The rookie laughed out loud as the two uniformed officers made their way up the driveway to their chief.

“An asshole lives here,” Brent warned them as he grabbed his long gun from the back of his truck. He was no-nonsense and they knew it. “He’s gonna call you everything but a child of God. Gonna spew out all kinds of conspiracy theories because that’s what he does. But you treat that man with respect,” Brent added, looking specifically at the rookie, a cop he still wasn’t certain had what it took to pass the yearlong probation Brent slapped on all rookies.

“Don’t worry, sir,” the cocky kid said. “We got this.”

Brent looked at the older officer, who shook his head. “Young and dumb, sir. Forgive him.”

Although the rookie smiled at his partner’s assessment of him, it was too serious for Brent to take lightly, even on an everyday run like this one. He allowed his second-in-command to do the hiring this time around because of the massive rise in crime, which meant the need for more cops increased overnight too, and because Brent already had too much on his plate as it was. But he saw now that he had to reclaim that responsibility.

They made their way toward the front porch of the house whose windows all were painted black. Old cars and food trash littered both sides of the house, and two pit bulls tied up to a big oak tree were already barking ferociously. Brent looked at the lock, saw that it had been changed to something homemade the way everything around that place appeared to be, so he knocked with hard bangs on the door. “Noah Lamm, this is Brent Sinatra. You know why I’m here. Open up!”

No response.

Brent knocked even harder. The rookie glanced at his partner with that why don’t he just kick it down quizzical look on his face. His partner ignored him.

“Noah Lamm, I’m giving you one more chance. Open this door!”

But before Brent could get that last word out, a shotgun blast tore through that door and slammed into the rookie, causing him to slide across the porch and crash into the post.

“Good God!” his partner yelled out as he raced to him and began dragging him off of the porch. The kid was looking at the hole in his chest and looking at his partner as if he couldn’t believe he’d just been shot, and Brent began firing his own shotgun blasts into that house. He peppered that place with gunshots, determined to take that bastard out, but when there was no return fire, he kicked the door in and raced inside.

The house was so dark Brent could barely see, and it reeked of so many different smells, from urine to body odor to wet clothes, that he almost wanted to gag. But he didn’t. He put the light on his shotgun and immediately saw what appeared to be the faint outline of a man racing from the front room to the kitchen in a rushed getaway. But Brent wasn’t about to let that happen. He ran after him.

Noah Lamm, the tenant, a straggly-haired white man in his thirties, ran through the back door, jumped off the back porch, and headed straight for the woods in back of his house.

He had a head start on Brent, but Brent was much faster. He ran through those woods after Noah, easily gaining ground, but he quickly realized with the advancing darkness around him and the thickness of those woods, that he was out of his depth.

But he wasn’t about to give up on that asshole. He just shot a cop! He beat back bush after bush after ever loving bush, until he could hear that he was gaining ground.

But Noah turned around and decided to shoot his shot one more time. Brent knew better than to run parallel to him anyway, and the bullet whizzed right past him. But it slowed down his momentum. That was why Brent fired his own shot, to slow Noah down too.

It slowed him, but didn’t stop him. Brent knew then he had to redouble his efforts, despite being unable to see in front of him, if he ever hoped to capture the suspect.

But fate intervened and Noah Lamm tripped over a log, causing his shotgun to dislodge from his hand. And Brent was right on him. He grabbed him up, slammed him, face first, against the bark of a tree. “You shot my rookie, you bastard!” He pulled out his cuffs.

“He had it coming!” Noah yelled back as Brent began cuffing him. “We all got it coming. Especially you. You and your family. You got it coming too, Brent. They got your number. They tried to kill me.”

“If you don’t shut up, I’m not gonna try, I’m gonna do it right now!”

“Better get ready, Brent. They coming for you.” He started crying. “They coming for all of us!”

“Let’s go!” Brent said after cuffing Noah’s hands behind his back. He flung him away and began escorting him back to the house.

Sirens could be heard, many sirens because an officer was down and their chief was gone too. That should have given Brent some sense of comfort as he fought his way through the dark and the bushes to the light.

But for some reason the hairs on the back of his neck were up. As if he was believing that paranoid bullshit Noah was always spouting. He never believed it before, and Noah had been a conspiracy theorist all his adult life. Why was Brent even entertaining it now? But he was.

As if he didn’t know what was wrong.

But he knew something wasn’t right .