J.D.’s low growl awakened his master, this after a decent night’s rest on Owen’s surprisingly comfortable couch with Maeby across his ankles and J.D. on the floor. Sunlight blasted through the uncovered sliding glass doors. Out back of the house, with the sun just over the horizon, Owen’s appliance and vehicle graveyard looked like a mini city skyline at dawn. Judge’s fingers rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Next to the couch at the opposite end, his German Shepherd focused on the view into the backyard. “Grrr.”
In front of the uneven skyline on the other side of the sliding glass door stood Señor Quixote, all eighteen hundred gray pounds of him.
A staring contest. Señor Q’s bull tail wagged, Judge’s German Shepherd partner’s didn’t. Separating them from the bull, his massive head and his horns, Judge’s sleep-addled brain told him, was a flimsy sliding screen door. The danger jolted the grogginess out of him. He lifted himself onto an elbow. Maeby didn’t move.
“Owen,” Judge called, weakly. It came out evenly, he thought, like he was about to pour Owen some tea, not soil his pants.
From behind them, Owen answered. “Yeah?” Owen’s fingers tapped a keyboard. “I’m finishing a column,” he said and continued keying. “Relax. Q does this all the time, gets this close then backs off. Too cluttered for him in here to make a move, and he knows it. He sees you and your dogs. He’s curious is all.”
Judge didn’t buy it. Less than fifteen feet away were some big, pointy horns. All those running-with-the-bulls videos in narrow alleys, with gored bodies, flailing arms and legs, and cluttered streets that didn’t seem to slow the bulls down…Owen needed to call his rancher neighbor now, or better yet, the National Guard. Judge’s Glock was under a couch pillow. He removed it, slowly, wondering how much damage the gun could do to that big, ugly head. He slowly swung his feet onto the floor, raised himself to a sitting position and rested the gun in his lap. Maeby hopped off the couch and joined J.D. in his growl. “Stay,” Judge told them, and they did. Smart dogs, considering this was an animal with a whole lotta I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-your-gun-or-your-dogs attitude. They watched the bull, and he watched them. Owen keyed his column.
A black blur that was Bruce the cat sprang from a patio picnic table onto Señor Q’s head, pushed off from his nose and bolted toward the rear of the cluttered yard. Q snorted like a cartoon Toro, did an about-face and stormed after him in a cloud of dust.
Fifteen minutes later, Owen ambled toward the bull’s breached post and rail fence dressed in his coveralls, the bull gone. Judge and his deputies watched from the family room. Owen tossed aside the splintered rails, found three tapered replacements in a weedy pile of gray ranch lumber on his side of the fence. He lifted each end and shoved them inside the empty post rungs. Except for the snapped electrified wires, the fence was repaired. Back inside, he made the call to his neighbor.
They were finishing their breakfasts at a booth inside the Jack-in-the-Box restaurant near Owen’s house, the dogs still catching up on sleep in the van. Judge sipped his coffee and depressed buttons on his phone, calling his Iraqi War bud at his home in Allentown. Owen continued to tap away on his laptop in between taking bites from his jumbo fast-food breakfast platter.
“LeVander. Good morning.”
“’Sup, Judge? I’m eating breakfast.”
…nigger nigger suck my trigger…
A jumbled thought, the tic-like reflex almost escaping his mouth. Judge unclipped his rabbit’s foot from his belt, put it on the table. All better.
The furry foot took Owen away from his column. “That thing is offensive, Judge.”
Judge still listened at his phone, ignored him.
“You know how filthy those things are?” Owen added. “And you put it next to your food?”
Judge’s facial expression said Really, dude, I’m hearing this from you? Someone with a toxic waste dump for a backyard? He covered the ‘offensive’ thing with his hand, which did his anxiety good. Soft bunny, cute bunny…
He turned his back to Owen, told LeVander why he called. “Larinda Jordan. She’s got some issues.”
LeVander snorted through a laugh, choked on his coffee. “Ya think? You’re killing me, Judge. What bail jumper doesn’t?”
“It’s more serious than that. You see the news yet? The Planned Parenthood bombing?”
“I was at church. No.”
Judge filled him in regarding place, time, impact, and national coverage, then reeled off what they’d found in the Fort Worth storage locker: victim souvenirs, bomb making materials, and fuels for said bombs. He finished with “Plus a few motel Bibles, and something else, something odd. Aside from the Bibles, one other book. On Native American religions.”
Owen hocked up a huge hunk of hash brown on overhearing that bit of info. He grabbed for his carton of OJ and gulped through the blockage. Judge ignored his distress.
“That sounds off, Judge,” LeVander said. “American Indians don’t consider their beliefs religion. They call it spirituality. As in being one with nature.”
“Fine, I misspoke, but the bounty is interested in it, whatever it is, and for whatever reason.”
Owen butted in. “You didn’t tell me about no book, dude. Let me see it.”
“Hold on, LeVander, my Cowboy fan buddy here seems to have recovered from his perpetual hangover and is now being rude.” Judge lowered the phone. “Owen, there is no book.”
“You just said…”
“I don’t have it. The cops took it,” which was true. “Evidence.” This shut him up, but Judge saw the gears spinning in Owen’s head.
Back to LeVander. “The Feds are looking to connect our bounty to the bombing. I’m heading back east today. I’ll make Blacksburg, Virginia, where that clinic blew up, a stop.”
“Fine,” LeVander said. “But just so you know, there’s no combat pay for this. What’s on the books for the drug charge is it, Judge. No other bounty money.”
True, Judge was sure, and validation that LeVander continued to be one cheap-ass businessman. Which was why he still had most of the money he’d earned. “Well then, having re-thought this, LeVander, I’m deciding this one is above my pay grade. The locals and the Feds are involved now. So, sorry, but I’m bowing out.”
“Judge, don’t be like this.”
“See you when I get home, sport. Adios.”
Judge tossed the phone onto the table. A stare outside the restaurant window seemed in order. Typical LeVander. Cheap bastard. Screw him. Judge was finished chasing his bounty. He re-secured the rabbit’s foot and was ready to leave. Owen punched keys on his laptop, flipped it around, put the screen in front of Judge on the table. “Is this the book on Native American religion you saw?” he asked.
It wasn’t. “How about this one?” No. “This one?” No.
“This?”
By Jove…“That’s it.” American Hero-Myths. A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent.
“The E-book version is free today on Amazon. And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he waved his hand over his phone like a magician over a top hat, then he pushed a button. “Presto, it’s in my phone reading library.”
“Happy for you, Owen,” Judge said, still irritated with LeVander.
He decided now was when he should call Geenie. He’d promised to tell her when he started on the trip back. His phone to his ear, he laid things out for Owen, waiting for Geenie to pick up. “This thing’s run its course. Where do you want me to drop you off, the bus? A train station?”
“Don’t you wanna know about the book?”
“You ordered the same book the bounty had. You’ve got a hard-on for this as a news story. What else is there? We’re done here, partner. I’m heading home.” Into the phone: “Geenie. Hi. Judge. Hey yourself. Miss you too.”
“Fine,” Owen said. “Screw the book then. I didn’t really need to buy it to know why our bounty has it.”
“Hold on a minute,” Judge said to Geenie. He covered the phone with his hand. Owen’s smug smile said he’d figured something out. Judge didn’t have the patience to pull it out of him. “Tell me, Owen, fucking now, why does she have the book?”
The smile widened showing glistening white teeth in a mouth too big for his face, his face too big for his braided head, his braided head too big for his body. “Naomi Coolsummer, the new associate justice, is why.”
“Geenie,” Judge said to his girlfriend, “let me call you back.”