“Later.”
Nick clicked off. After talking to his friend, the house suddenly seemed quiet—too quiet—and he started to feel a little creeped out again. He checked to see if there’d been any messages sent in the minutes his phone had been off. There hadn’t. And while he was glad there was no photo of a serious little boy, he was a little disappointed that there was no credit card offer.
Maybe he shouldn’t have deleted that first text.
It would be nice to have his own credit card.
TWO
1
“The bank called. Another foreclosure. They’re faxing over the forms now.”
“Goddamn it.” Sheriff Brad Neth picked up his coffee cup, took a sip, then spit the coffee back into the cup, grimacing. There was nothing he hated more than cold coffee.
Unless it was enforcing a foreclosure eviction.
“Who is it?” he asked his deputy. “Anyone we know?”
Hank Dillman shrugged in that bony-shouldered way that Brad always found irritating. “She didn’t say. Want me to check the fax?”
The sheriff waved him off.
Foreclosures were down from the peak of the recession, but this was still the second one in as many weeks, and Brad always got a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach when he had to kick people out of their homes. Especially families. It didn’t sit well with him, and while it was legal, it didn’t feel right. He’d gone into law enforcement to catch bad guys, not to make life more difficult for good people who were down on their luck, and it seemed like a violation of his oath to conduct evictions on behalf of a private company. He was a public servant, damn it, and it was his job to uphold and enforce the law in order to protect the citizens of Montgomery.
“Carol!” he called. “Who’s available this morning?”
There was a beat, then the receptionist called back, “Mitch is off, Hildy and Clint are taking nights this week, Vern and Issac are out on that domestic call, and Norris, Paul and both Bills are on patrol. I think it’s just you and Hank.”
Damn.
“Okay, thanks!”
The usual policy was to carry out an eviction as soon as the paperwork came in, but he didn’t work for the bank. It wasn’t his job to be at their beck and call. He was the sheriff. It was his decision when to send someone out, and he was going to do it when it was convenient for the department. Which meant when two of the others came back.
Hank poked his head in the door. “It’s Carl Yates,” he reported.
“Oh, crap.”
There went his plan.
“You sure it’s Carl? Not Chet?”
“It’s Carl.”
The sheriff pushed himself out of his seat. “That foundation’s shaky to begin with. You put this kind of stress on it…” He grabbed his hat from the top of his file cabinet. “Come on. Let’s see if we can talk him down before we kick him out.”
The only car left in the lot was the SUV with the bald back tires, but Hank had driven his motorcycle, and Brad wasn’t about to let the deputy into his own car, so he tossed Hank the SUV keys and said, “You drive.”
They were nearly blasted out of their seats when the ignition was turned, all four speakers blaring a scratchy, static-y hard rock station out of Flagstaff. “Damn it,” Brad said, turning off the radio.
“Issac.”
“I told that asshole…” Brad picked up the paperwork that Hank had lain on the seat between them. “Where is it? Over on Juniper?”
“Yeah.” Hank backed out of the parking space, swung around and pulled out of the lot onto the street. “So how are we going to handle this? You want me to let you do the talking?”
“Unless you have some insight that I don’t.”
“It’s all yours, Sheriff.”
Brad dropped the paperwork on the seat. “Thanks.”
“Maybe we’ll be lucky and he won’t be at home. We can just post the notice, padlock the door—”
“He’ll be home. They’re always home.”
Sure enough, Carl’s pickup was in the carport, and the black space behind the shabby house’s torn screen indicated that the door behind it was open. Picking up the stapled eviction pages, Brad and Hank got out of the vehicle. This was going to be a tricky one. Carl Yates was about as stable as a bowling alley built on quicksand. He might come out drunk and weeping, or he might barricade himself inside the home, hiding behind boxes of those reconstituted ink cartridges he sold.
Or he might allow himself to be evicted with no problem.
It was impossible to tell.
Brad approached the house warily, announcing his presence as he walked up the path to the front door. “Carl!” he called. “I’m here with Hank! Got a foreclosure order!” He thought he detected movement behind the screen door. “You hear me, Carl? Bank’s taking back the house! You need to get your stuff together and get out!”
The screen opened just as Brad reached the porch step.
Carl, naked and holding a handgun, grinned at him. “How goes, it, Sheriff?”
“Damn it!” Brad dropped the papers as he fumbled for his own weapon. Behind him, he could hear Hank doing the same.
“We don’t want no trouble, Carl,” the deputy said.
“That’s right,” Brad assured him. “Your beef is with the bank, not us. We’re just doing our job. So put the gun down, we’ll forget this ever happened, and you get yourself a good lawyer and settle things with the bank.” He had gotten into the stance and was aiming his weapon at the man on the porch, whose own gun was pointed downward, loosely grasped in his dangling hand.
Carl’s smile suddenly disappeared, replaced by an expression of rage. “Get a lawyer?” he screamed. “Get a lawyer? I can’t even make the monthly payments on this shithole!” With one swift movement, his hand was raised, the gun pointed at his temple.
“No!” Brad shouted.
And Carl pulled the trigger.
2
When Coy Stinson was ten, his parents took him and his full piggy bank to the Valley National Bank, where a nice old lady helped him count all of his pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. He had been entranced by the way each type of coin was carefully packed into a brown paper tube, all of them making hard solid rolls when they were filled: four groups of different-sized cylinders lined up in a neat row on top of the teller’s countertop. He had then been given his very own passbook to keep track of his money, and a free calculator just for opening an account.