Rockabye County 5 Read online

  Walking down the garden path to empty the mail box by her gate, Vera Grantley saw Woman Deputy Alice Fayde approaching from the Temple Street end of Baxson Road. Since her marriage, and subsequent retirement from the Gusher City Police Department’s Bureau of Women Officers, Vera had seen little of the girl who once worked as her partner. Promotion to the Sheriff’s Office appeared to have brought little change, Vera concluded.

  Red hair done in a neat flip style framed a good-looking face. Under the plain white blouse and comfortable denim skirt, a thirty-seven, twenty-five, thirty-five inch figure curved in a shapely, if not blatantly eye-catching manner. Taken with a pair of really good legs, that figure looked mighty attractive. Although not in uniform, Alice carried one of the shoulder bags Pete Ludwic had designed with the specialized interests of female peace officers in mind. Inside the bag, as Vera knew well, reposed a two-inch barreled .38 Special caliber Colt Cobra revolver in a detachable holster that could be worn on the belt; spare ammunition; a cased set of Stoeger-Zephyr ‘Double-Lock’ handcuffs; notebook, whistle and official identification wallet.

  ‘Hi there,’ Vera greeted.

  Alice halted, a smile coming to her face as she looked Vera up and down. Since retiring, Vera had allowed her hair to grow longer than B.W.O. regulations permitted, and it hung in a pony-tail down the back of the dark-green sloppy-joe sweater. She stood maybe an inch taller than Alice and filled out a pair of black stretch pants to their best advantage. Replace the sweater with a sun-halter, Alice mused, and Vera would have all the husbands along the street out in the front gardens taking surreptitious peeks in her direction.

  ‘Hi!’ Alice replied. ‘Where’s your lord and master?’

  ‘He just now rolled out of the sack. Came in late last night from investigating a realized suicide on Browning.’

  ‘I thought that our watch was the only one to catch late calls,’ Alice commented, noticing that Vera still used police terms, even after three years of married life.

  ‘Ha ha!’ scoffed Vera. ‘And what brings you up this end of town?’

  ‘Assisting on a 1442 B.’

  ‘Your watch sure works hard. A whole team out investigating the theft of a few chickens,’ Vera said, knowing the crime covered by Article 1442 B of the Texas Penal Code.

  ‘It’s been happening too regularly. Over a thousand birds gone in a month from different parts of the country. Buck Shields has it, but he picked up a tip that the thieves are passing them to a supermarket in town. Brad and I’ve been put out to check. I hit the one on Temple and he’s down at the big place across Vine there.’

  ‘How about a cup of coffee?’

  ‘I’ll wait to see how Brad’s done first, he’s just come out.’

  Following the direction of Alice’s gaze, Vera saw a tall man standing on the far side of Vine Street and looking along Baxson in their direction. Even at that distance Vera could tell that Deputy Bradford Counter possessed all the attributes necessary to turn women’s heads.

  Golden blond hair with a natural curl to it topped an almost classically handsome face and a six foot three-inch tall body developed like the muscle-man hero of an Italian pseudo-epic movie. Like Alice, Brad wore plain clothes instead of his uniform. Born into an oil-rich Texas family, Brad dressed well, if casually. A genuine Harris Tweed sports jacket set off the width of his shoulders and tapered down at the waist, as well as possessing another asset of much use in his chosen line of work. He wore his dark blue sharkskin shirt open at the neck and a yellow silk cravat-style scarf encircled his throat. Gray flannel slacks and crepe-soled shoes completed his attire.

  ‘Hum hum!’ murmured Vera. ‘They never gave us partners like that when I was a cop. He’s one of the Counters, isn’t he?’

  ‘Sure,’ Alice replied, a touch defensively for there had been a time when Brad’s appointment to the Sheriff’s Office did not meet with everybody’s approval. ‘And he’s a damned good peace officer.’

  ‘So Ian says,’ smiled Vera. ‘You first worked together on the Tom Cord kill, didn’t you?’

  Alice nodded and Vera felt suddenly contrite as she remembered that Deputy Tom Cord, slain by a pair of professional killers, i had been Alice’s uncle.

  ‘Is Ian on something extra heavy down at the Office, Alice?’ she asked, wanting to change the subject and also seeking information.

  Having read, on her arrival at the Office that morning, Grantley’s report of the visit to the bar on De Silva Avenue, Alice did not answer for a moment. When she did, it was more of an evasion than a reply.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve never seen him so tense. He slept with his gun on the bedside table last night and he hasn’t done that since just after we were married. You remember, when that young high-power threatened to kill me for jailing his sister on my last case before retiring.’

  If Grantley had not mentioned to Vera about his having seen a man he thought to be Mikos Papas, Alice wanted to avoid telling her. A glance along the street told her that her partner had crossed Vine and walked along Baxson, but he would not arrive in time to create a diversion. To avoid answering, Alice threw a look in the other direction.

  ‘All right,’ Vera said resignedly. ‘I was a cop and should know better than ask such a question.’

  Alice hardly heard the words, her attention being on a car which was cruising around the corner of Temple and on to Baxson. Having once been on Traffic Control, she never lost the habit of noting motoring offences. The car approached them on the wrong side of the street, but it travelled slowly and, as no other traffic used the street, was not causing any danger. Alice shrugged off the infraction as being unworthy of attention, for she had learned the value of turning a blind eye. Being a deputy sheriff now, she had long since left behind the rookie days when she sought quota-filling pinches.

  With a trained officer’s instincts, she noticed that the car was a gray four-door Ford Rambler 440 hard-top with local plates she automatically memorized. It carried three men from the look of the clothing. Their faces—

  ‘Look out, Vera!’ Alice screamed, thrusting out her right hand and pushing the other woman to one side and behind the garden’s hedge.

  At almost the same moment Alice flung herself in the other direction. From pushing Vera, Alice’s right hand went across to and jerked open the shoulder bag, then dipped inside towards the butt of the Cobra.

  Alice had not gone mad. In fact she had never acted in a more sane, practical manner. Instead of white, or even colored, faces, she had seen nothing but a trio of shapeless black blobs and she knew that men did not cover their features with masks to drive around the city unless possessed of good reasons. One very good reason had to do with the desire to remain unrecognized while committing a crime.

  All the trio in the car wore such facial covering and the fact that the two passengers trained twin-barreled, sawed-off shotguns towards the women told why they needed such protection from identification.

  Even while Vera fell out of sight behind the hedge, Alice went staggering backwards. She saw the car pick up speed smoothly; heard the booming of the shotguns; but, from the lack of impact, knew herself to be beyond the spread of the charge from either weapon. She hoped the same applied to Vera, but wasted no time in trying to find out. Holding the gun in her right hand, Alice landed in a sitting position on the sidewalk. Her skirt rode up to show white flesh and black garter straps above her suddenly ruined stockings. There was no time to consider how she looked. Using the braced sitting position, resting elbows on her knees and gripping the Cobra’s butt in both hands, she sent three aimed shots after the departing car.

  From further down the street Brad Counter saw the attempted killing and for an instant froze immobile with shock. The condition proved to be only momentary, not long enough to prevent him doing his duty. Clearly the occupants of the car did not make him as a lawman. In dress and appearance he might have been a well-to-do young business executive taking a leisurely stroll. When the trio saw Brad,
they failed to recognize his true potential—and in failing made a fatal mistake.

  Lifting his left hand, Brad gripped and jerked open the side of his jacket. So successful had the tailor been at his work, that not a hint showed of the Colt Government Model .45 automatic pistol riding in the Hardy-Cooper spring shoulder holster under his left arm; but it was there. Working in concert with the left, his right arm rose and swooped down to the combat-stocked butt of the big automatic. His fingers closed on the butt and swiveled the gun from the grasp of the holster springs. Until the gun left the holster and slanted away from him, Brad kept his forefinger out of the trigger-guard and thumb clear of the manual safety catch. Once out, the enlarged catch went down and a powerful finger curled over the trigger shoe which spread its pressure and made for smoother squeezing off of the shots, making all ready to fire. From waist high, using the F.B.I. combat crouch with legs apart, knees slightly bent and body slanting forward, Brad pivoted and aimed by instinctive alignment towards the approaching car.

  In just point-six of a second from when his brain flashed the order, Brad got off his first shot. An excellent time, working from a shoulder clip.

  During the brief time taken by the car to come level and pass him, Brad fired four shots. He slammed each one into the car, turning his entire body and angling the bullets upwards. The first struck the forward edge of the front door. Number two punched a hole through the center of the door and Brad thought he saw the man seated between him and the driver jerk his body forward as the bullet hit. His third bullet hit the leading edge of the rear door just below its window. Although watching carefully, Brad could see no sign of the fourth bullet’s strike. Instead he saw the man in the rear seat suddenly lurch almost erect so his head struck the roof, then flop back limply.

  By which time the car had run by Brad and he sprang into the street. He had heard the cracking of Alice’s Cobra and knew she could not be too badly hurt; but could not spare her a glance. Although anxiety for his partner’s welfare gnawed at him, Brad knew he must do his damndest to try to stop the car.

  With the rapidly increasing distance between Brad and the car, he knew the combat crouch no longer filled his needs. While it produced reasonable accuracy at maximum speeds, its range was limited to at most seven yards. So when Brad landed in the street, he went straight into the Weaver Stance—that fast, deadly accurate shooting method perfected by Sheriff Jack Weaver of Lancaster, California. Facing squarely towards the car, Brad raised both arms shoulder high, supporting the right with the left, bent his head slightly and took sight.

  Using that Colt, specially accurized to increase its fighting potential, Brad could shoot possible scores under match conditions; or, aided by one or another of the combat masters’ braced holds, make hits on a man-sized target at western movie hero’s ranges—with the exception that Brad’s automatic carried live bullets instead of studio prop blanks.

  Up to seventy-five yards Brad figured to be able to place his shots near enough where he wanted them when using the Weaver Stance. However the driver showed an awareness of his danger. Crouching as low as possible in his seat, he kept up the car’s speed and also jinked it enough to make himself an even more elusive target. Twice Brad punctured the rear window with bullets, but they missed both the driver and the man in the other front seat, passing out of the windshield and ending their flight in the wall of the supermarket beyond Vince Street.

  Swiftly Brad tried to decide what the driver aimed to do on reaching the intersection of Baxson and Vine. Obviously he did not intend to crash into the supermarket’s wall and so must swing either left or right. From the way he was heading, he contemplated a left turn, which would bring him momentarily into view without the man at his side blocking Brad’s aim. Given time, Brad would have changed magazines so as to have eight shots rather than one at his disposal. Knowing he could not spare even the second required to make the change, Brad did not try.

  On reaching the corner, the car swung to the right. Apparently its driver saw the danger in making a left turn and took steps to avoid offering Brad an open target. Brad fired his last bullet more in hope than expectancy; and, although it struck the car, it failed to hit any of the occupants.

  Still without looking back in Alice’s direction, Brad sprinted to the corner of Vine. He heard yells and saw people bursting from nearby houses, but ignored them. Pressing the release stud without breaking his racing stride, Brad allowed the automatic’s empty magazine to slide out, replacing it with a loaded spare from the special pocket built into the right side of his jacket. Held open, as designed, after the last case had ejected, the slide rode forward when the magazine went fully home and fed a bullet into the chamber.

  Although prepared for a further burst of firing, Brad found he had no target. By the time he reached the corner, he could see no sign of the Rambler along Vine. From two directions he heard the wail of police car sirens and knew that somebody, one of the neighbors most likely, had called Cen-Con and started the official wheels in motion. Although help was speeding towards Baxson Street, Brad doubted that that it would come in time to effectively seal off the area.

  Swinging around, Brad looked along the street. Even while doing so, without any conscious effort on his part, he applied the Colt’s manual safety and returned it to the holster. Much to his relief, he saw Alice on her feet and apparently unharmed. Already she had reached the gate where he had seen her talking with Ian Grantley’s voluptuous blonde wife.

  Ian Grantley’s wife!

  Remembering the report he and Alice had read in the duty log book, Brad felt as if a cold hand touched him. The previous night Grantley and his partner had gone to investigate a man they thought to be Mikos Papas. When Colismides had escaped from the escort taking him to the Arizona State Penitentiary to await execution, he communicated with the press and threatened to strike at the wife of any peace officer who tried to interfere with him or his men.

  While Brad knew the folly of forming theories without hearing the facts, he could not help concluding that the attempted shooting was either a mighty queer coincidence—or Rockabye County’s law enforcement officers faced their most deadly and dangerous challenge since the bloody battles after World War II when Sheriff Jack Tragg, Chief of Police Phineas Hagen, and a band of dedicated men fought to return law to what had become a wild, wide-open mob town.

  Realizing what the shooting might mean, Brad walked slowly back along the street. He collected his empty magazine on the way, checking automatically that the fall to the street had not damaged its lips in a manner that would render smooth feeding impossible. He gave terse answers to the questions fired at him by the people on the sidewalks and continued to where his partner had disappeared into the garden and Ian Grantley, naked to the waist but holding his Smith & Wesson, was running along the path towards the gate.

  Four

  With raw anxiety, Alice Fayde rose, watched Brad’s handling of the Rambler and then gave thought to Vera Grantley. Alice’s eyes took in the raw holes in gate and mailbox and she shuddered despite herself. Then she gave a gasp of relief as she saw Vera sitting on the lawn, shaken, not a little scared, but untouched by the shotguns’ buckshot charge.

  ‘Are you all right, Vera?’ she asked.

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Sorry if I pushed you too hard.’

  Looking at the shot-punctured mailbox, Vera shivered. After which she tried to act calm, as if having heavies drive by and open up at her with shotguns was part of everyday life on Baxson Street.

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’d’ve been a lot worse off if you hadn’t pushed. Don’t forget I was a cop and haven’t forgotten what I learned. When I hit the dirt, I kept on rolling.’

  At that moment Grantley arrived, dropped to his knees and cradled his wife into his arms.

  ‘Honey!’ he gasped. ‘Are you all right?’

  Then Vera’s assumed calm broke down. She clung to her husband and started to sob. It was one thing to act calm when talking to an old
friend who remembered you as a cop; but another matter entirely when held by the man you loved, had tossed aside your career to marry, and from whom you were keeping the most important secret of your life.

  ‘I’d best hit the telephone and get things moving,’ Alice remarked, but she might have spoken to herself for all the notice Vera or Grantley took. However, she heard the approaching wail of sirens and knew a more speedy method of communication would soon be available.

  ‘Easy now, honey,’ Grantley said, in the helpless tone of a husband who finds his wife suddenly behaving in a manner contrary to normal. ‘It’s all over now, honey. You’re safe.’

  ‘I—I wan’—be sick!’ Vera moaned.

  ‘Sure, honey,’ Grantley answered, helping his wife to rise and turning a scared face to Alice. ‘I don’t get it. She’s never had a day’s illness since we were married and all of a sudden she’s being sick every morning. And she won’t let me call in the doctor.’

  Turning, Grantley helped his wife along the path to their house. Alice opened her mouth and then closed it again. She faced a parallel situation to when Vera had requested information about Grantley’s current work. If Vera had not told her husband, Alice could hardly blab out the cause for the blonde’s early morning nausea.

  A slightly superior smile crept to Alice’s face. Male deputies always boasted of their calm detachment, unbiased approach to investigation, and how they applied cold logic to their deductive methods. Yet Ian Grantley, who Alice admitted was one smart peace officer, had failed to solve a mystery the answer to which flashed straight to Alice’s female mind.

  Even as Alice formed the thoughts, she heard tires scream and a black and white radio patrol car turned the corner around which the Rambler had made its appearance. Its siren died away as it rocked to a halt at Grantley’s gate. Any call involving a shooting was answered ‘Code Three’, with red light flashing and siren wailing a warning that all traffic must give way to the speeding police vehicle.