Perdido County- Dark Road Read online

  PERDIDO COUNTY

  Episode 1: Dark Road

  A MODERN-DAY AMERICAN WEST CRIME FICTION SERIAL NOVEL

  by

  LARRY DARTER

  First published by Fedora Press 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Larry Darter

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this work, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This work is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Larry Darter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names, if any, used in this publication and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the work are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within this publication have endorsed the publication.

  First edition

  Foreword

  Perdido County: Dark Road, is the first episode in a modern-day American West crime fiction serial novel with the second episode, Perdido County: Someone’s Daughter, published one week after episode one. Subsequent episodes are published bi-weekly thereafter until all ten have been published. If you enjoyed Perdido County: Dark Road, you won’t want to miss the remaining action-packed episodes.

  For those unfamiliar with serial fiction, Perdido County is not a traditional lengthy novel chopped into parts. I designed it from the ground up as a novel meant to be read in episodes. Think of it like a streaming television series you read instead of watch. There is an overarching plot that ties the entire novel together, but each episode is a stand-alone story with one or more mini plots of its own. Like a short story, each episode has a beginning, middle, and an ending. It is intended that the episodes be read in the order we have published them to get the most enjoyment from this serial novel.

  Thank you for reading Perdido County: Dark Road. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.

  Best regards,

  Larry Darter

  Contents

  Foreword

  1.1

  1.2

  1.3

  1.4

  About the Author

  Other Books by Larry Darter

  1.1

  The man dressed in mimicry camouflage with a pattern resembling desert sage plants with a sandy brown base squatted on his heels. He glassed the desert below him to the east with a pair of eight power binoculars. He had turned his matching camouflage pattern ball cap backward with the bill to the rear. He propped his elbows on his knees to stabilize the binoculars. The rifle on the ground beside him was a Remington Model 700 .308 Winchester with a synthetic camouflage stock. It carried a Leupold waterproof, fog-proof riflescope of the same power as the binoculars. The four-wheeler was getting closer, sending a dust plume into the air as it traversed the hardpan. It was a little under a quarter mile away, about three-hundred-fifty meters.

  It wouldn’t be a difficult shot. He’d made longer ones many times in the sandbox back in Iraq though he’d had a better rifle back then. Neither the mild heat distortion nor the wind would be much of a factor. The sun behind him would set in less than fifteen minutes. The shadow of the ridge already extended far to the east below him. He lowered the binoculars and sat studying the land. Far to the south, he saw the mountains of Mexico. He spat tobacco juice and wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his camouflage shirt. He saw no other dust rising that would have alerted him the border patrol boys were in the vicinity. He didn’t expect them to be.

  The man put down the binoculars and picked up the rifle. He gripped it with his right hand and then planted his right elbow as he assumed a low-prone position just below the crest of the rocky ridge. The shooter’s left elbow was fully extended and set just to the left of the rifle. The leather sling ran from low on his upper left arm to a point on the rifle near the left hand to form a triangle with his upper left arm and left forearm. He held the butt plate close to his neck with maximum contact with his right shoulder. The shooter set the cheek piece such that the top of it was in line with the axis of the bore.

  The rifle had a trigger set to eight ounces. He put the crosshairs on the chest of the man riding the four-wheeler. He laid his finger in the curve of the trigger. He took a breath, let half of it out, and squeezed. Even with the heavy barrel, the rifle bucked up slightly. When he pulled the scene back into the scope, he could see the four-wheeler slowing to a stop and the man on the ground he had just shot through the breastbone. It had taken the 150-grain Silvertip bullet just over a half a second to get there, but it took the sound twice that. The sound of the rifle shot rolled across the open country interrupting the early evening solitude before fading away. The man worked the bolt and ejected the spent cartridge casing. The back of his shirt was wet with sweat. He stooped down to pick up the brass casing. Putting it into his pocket, he slung the rifle over his shoulder, turned, and worked his way down the slope to the foot of the rockslide where he’d left his vehicle. It was almost dark now, and he still had an hour’s work ahead of him.

  ◆◆◆

  Careful to avoid the rotted, broken boards, Emory “Bud” Frazer climbed the three wooden steps to the porch and rapped on the door with his fist. He took off his hat and pressed his shirtsleeve against his forehead and put his hat back on again. It was already hot out.

  “Come in,” a voice called from inside.

  He opened the door and stepped into the cool darkness.

  “Owen?”

  “I’m back here. Come on back.”

  He walked through to the kitchen. A tall, ruggedly handsome man in his mid-thirties was sitting beside the kitchen table in a chair. There was a half empty bottle of Jim Beam and a water glass half full of amber liquid on the table. The room smelled of booze and stale cigarette smoke. Frazer stood in the doorway and took his hat off. The younger man looked up at him.

  “Hey, Bud,” he said. “I didn’t know who it was.”

  “How are you making it, Owen?” Frazer said.

  “You’re looking at it. You by yourself?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Sit down. You want a drink?”

  Frazer looked at the clock on the wall. It told him it was just past ten in the morning. There was clutter on the kitchen cabinet tops. Empty whiskey bottles. Empty Lone Star beer cans. Dirty dishes. An empty bread sack.

  “Thank you no,” he said. “I appreciate it. I had a letter from your ex-wife.”

  “You can still call her Kimberly.”

  “I know I can. Did you know she writes to me?”

  “I guess I knew she’d wrote you a time or two when we were still together.”

  “She writes pretty regularly,” Frazer said. “Tells me the family news.”

  “I didn’t know there was any.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “So what was special about this letter then?”

  “She told me you quit the police department up in Dallas,” Frazer said. “She told me why you did, and that you moved back here.”

  “Sit down,” Owen said. He picked up a package of Marlboro cigarettes and shook one out of the pack. He lit it with a kitchen match after striking it on the wood tabletop. He sat smoking quietly.
>
  “Are you all right?” Frazer said.

  “I’m all right,” Owen said watching Frazer through the smoke. “I got to say you look older.”

  Frazer nodded. “I am older.” He pulled out a chair and sat, putting his hat on the table.

  “Let me ask you something,” Frazer said.

  “All right.”

  “You plan on just sitting here from now on drinking liquor, wallowing in your guilt, and depression?” Frazer said.

  Owen stared at him, gauging the question.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I have no plans to do anything else at the moment.”

  “Why did you quit Dallas?”

  “I was tired of law enforcement.”

  “When you sign on for the ride, you probably think you have some notion of where the ride’s going,” Frazer said. “But you might not. Or you might have been misled. Probably nobody would blame you then if you quit. But if it’s just that the ride turned out to be a little rougher than you expected. Well, that’s something else.”

  “I let my partner get killed,” Owen said.

  Frazer nodded. “Losing a partner is a hell of a thing,” he said. “I know it’s been rough on you.”

  “What would you know about it?” Owen said.

  “Plenty. I was there when your daddy got shot up and crippled. I didn’t get so much as a scratch. I know what it’s like to feel you let a friend down. I blamed myself for what happened to your daddy for years even with him telling me about a hundred times it wasn’t my fault.”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  “What would it take to get you to come to work for me?” Frazer said.

  Owen tipped the ash from his smoke into the ashtray on the table which was already overflowing with cigarette butts.

  “I told you I was tired of law enforcement. I’m not looking for a job.”

  Frazer smiled and looked around.

  “How fresh is that coffee?”

  “I think it’s all right. I generally make a fresh pot every day or two even if there is some left over.”

  Frazer smiled again and rose. He went to the counter, picked up the coffee pot and sniffed. He wrinkled his nose and dumped the coffee into the sink. He filled the drip maker with water and coffee from the can beside it and flipped the switch. Once the coffee was made, Frazer rinsed out two of the chipped porcelain cups from the sink. He filled them from the pot and carried them to the table. They sat at the table drinking coffee out of cups that had been in that house since before Owen was born.

  Frazer looked through into the living room. Empty Lone Star beer cans took up every square inch of table space in the room. More empty cans littered the floor. There was an empty Jim Beam bottle beside the phone among more beer cans.

  “Well,” he said. “I like what you’ve done with the place. I’d never have thought of decorating the house with empty beer cans and liquor bottles.”

  “If you’re just going to insult my interior decorating, I’m not going to invite you out here no more,” Owen said.

  “You didn’t invite me this time,” Frazer said.

  “Well, that’s true.”

  Owen sat with his elbows on the table and his hands folded together. Frazer watched him."

  “I hope you didn’t drive all the way out here to offer me a job,” Owen said. “If so, you wasted your time.”

  “I wanted to talk something over with you,” Frazer said.

  “I might not want to hear it.”

  “It’s important to me. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  “I’ve got the cancer. It’s pretty bad. Next week I’m going down to Houston to get it worked on. I’ve got nine months left on my term as sheriff. But the doctors have been clear about it. I won’t be fit for the job once they get through with me.”

  “That bad?” Owen said.

  “If it’s not bad, it will do until the bad gets here,” Frazer said. “It’s damn prostate cancer. It probably won’t kill me, but there will be some side effects from the radiation and surgery.”

  Owen sat for a long time. He was bent slightly forward looking at the floor. After a while, he nodded. “I think I know where this is going,” he said.

  “I need someone to serve as acting sheriff to finish out my term,” Frazer said. “You could do it if you wanted to.”

  “Can’t one of your deputies take over for you?”

  “No,” Frazer said. “Barney Riggs and Olivia Alvarez are both good deputies, but they are both fairly new. Neither have the experience to be the sheriff. Then there is Chase Carpenter. He’d jump at the chance to be the sheriff. But he has a bad temper, and he doesn’t get along with the Mexicans. The whole county would be up at arms in a week if Chase took over.”

  Raising his eyebrows, Owen said, “Chase Carpenter? Vince Carpenter’s son? If he’s anything like his old man, I can’t imagine why anyone would hire Chase for a law enforcement job.”

  “Chase does okay as long as there is someone to give him direction,” Frazer said. “Have you forgotten we’re out here in the Llano Estacado in the middle of nowhere? People aren’t knocking down my door to apply for deputy jobs. Kids graduate from high school. They take off to El Paso, Lubbock, or Midland looking for work. Or Dallas, some of them, like you did. It ain’t easy to find people who want a job at a West Texas sheriff’s department.”

  “So, you expect me to do it?” Owen said.

  “I’m hoping you will,” Frazer said. “If I leave for Houston without naming a replacement, the county commissioners will hand it over to Chase. I won’t have that. Folks in Perdido County deserve competent protection from the bad elements in society just like everyone else in Texas. I don’t trust Chase to do it. You’re qualified. I wouldn’t have to fret about it if you’d step in. At some point, you will need a job again, Owen.”

  “You aren’t running for reelection once the doctors get you straightened out?”

  “No, listen out of your good ear, Owen. I won’t be physically fit to do the job once those butchers in Houston get through with me. But I’ll be back here to help you campaign when the time comes. Meanwhile, you will have nine months to get reacquainted with the fine citizens of our county and to impress the hell out of the voters.”

  Owen tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling for several moments. Then he straightened in the chair and looked his uncle in the eye.

  “I’m not the man for the job, Bud,” he said. “My partner in Dallas got killed because of me. That’s why I quit.”

  “I know you were a damn fine peace officer, Owen Wolfe,” Frazer said. “I know it because your daddy always bragged on you. And I talked on the phone to a fella at the police department up in Dallas who said you were one of the best cops they had. He said they hated to lose you. I know you’re torn up right now over what happened, but you can’t spend the rest of your life blaming yourself because you lived and your partner didn’t.”

  Both men were quiet for a while.

  “I wouldn’t even consider it if anyone but you were asking,” Owen said. “It’s damned unfair of you to put me on the spot like this.”

  “I know it is,” Frazer said. “But, I’m asking you, anyway. I don’t have a choice. I hope you’ll do this, Owen. And, not just for me. I hope you’ll do it for you, son.”

  “Oh hell,” Owen said. “I’ll finish out your term. I owe you that much. But, at the end of your term, I’m out. I’m not running for sheriff.”

  Frazer grinned. “That’s fine, Owen,” he said. “But, it might surprise you. Once you try the job on for size, you might find you like it.”

  “Well sir, I doubt that,” Owen said. “With all due respect.”

  Frazer reached into his shirt pocket and then tossed a silver badge on the tabletop.

  Wolfe picked up the badge and fingered it. He looked at it. It was a silver circle with a star at the center. At the center of the star was the Great Seal of Texas. “Sheriff” was inscribed at the
top of the circle. “Perdido County” was inscribed at the bottom. He thought about the Dallas police badge he’d turned in with his service pistol. It had surprised him how viscerally he felt disconnected and adrift without the badge and gun. It was tough being thirty-five and having no official status for really the first time in his life. The weight of the badge in his hand felt good.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Frazer said, “meet me at the courthouse at eight o’clock. The judge will swear you in as a deputy. I’ll meet with the county commissioners tomorrow evening and have you appointed as acting sheriff. Then I’ll be able to pack my bags for Houston.”

  “All right,” Wolfe said. “I guess you’ll introduce me to the others before you leave.”

  “Yes sir,” Frazer said. “I’ll bring everyone in after we finish up at the courthouse and I’ll introduce you around.”

  Owen nodded.

  “Welcome aboard,” Frazer said with a big grin. “You’ll need a firearm.”

  “I’ve got dad’s government model Colt,” Owen said. “Unless you have an objection, I’ll carry that.”

  “That’ll work,” Frazer said. “Well, I expect you might come out of it a little better than what you think taking the job.”

  “Yes sir,” Owen said. “I surely hope so.”

  1.2

  Steam rose around Wolfe as he showered. The stall was only partially built. It was surrounded on three sides by plastic sheeting attached with gray duct tape to a frame made of white PVC pipe suspended from the ceiling with wire.

  Wolfe shut off the water. He stepped out of the shower and dried off on a dirty towel. He walked into the bedroom to get dressed. Wolfe pulled on his cleanest pair of faded jeans, one of his father’s old khaki long sleeve uniform shirts, and a pair of worn Western boots. He looked in the dresser mirror. Sunlight coming through the window glinted off the shiny silver badge pinned on his shirt. He looped the tan holster onto his belt and buckled it. Opening a drawer, Wolfe took out the worn government model Colt his father had carried in Vietnam and later as a Perdido County deputy. Wolfe pushed a full magazine into the well and shoved the pistol into the holster. Dressed, he went into the kitchen to make coffee.