Divided We Fall (19 page)

“It will be fine,” I said to Mom, making sure I looked relaxed. “I have to go to work. It’s no problem. Trust me.”

She took a deep breath. “Be careful.”

“I always am.” I hugged her quickly, and then headed upstairs to my room, punching up a vid call with Sheriff Nathan Crow on the way.

“Danny!”
said the sheriff when he first appeared on-screen. He was in his squad car.
“How you holding up? The phone at the station is ringing nonstop with all these reporters. I went out on patrol to get away from it.”

“I’m fine. A little sore from the game last night. They really had it in for me after they heard the news.”

He pressed his lips together.
“I’m sorry about that. Wish I knew how the Fed found out about you. Anyway, how can I help you?”

“It’s like you said, with these reporters. The street in front of my house is almost completely choked with news vans. I need to get to work, but I don’t think they’ll let me through.”

“Right. Don’t you worry about it. I’ve been working on getting the mayor and council to change your street to no parking either side so we can start towing their vehicles, but until then, I’ll take care of the press.”
He reached for something offscreen, and I heard a siren wail.
“I’m on my way.”

A short time later, four squad cars pulled up.

“Danny, what’s going on?” Mom shouted.

“It’s okay, Mom. I called the sheriff asking for some help getting away from the press. Everything’s fine. Safe, even. You can relax.”

At the front door, I put my hand on the doorknob to head out, but Mom stopped me, pulling me into a warm hug. Neither of us spoke for a long time, and when she finally let me go, she locked her gaze with mine. I nodded, took a deep breath, then pushed open the door and headed out to the Beast.

“Daniel Wright! Can I ask you a few questions?” said a woman.

“Can I get you to make one statement?” said another.

As much as I hurt from the punishment of last night’s game, I kicked my pace up to a jog. The reporters followed, but were stopped by a wall of police officers who rushed up to block their way. When I reached my truck, I smiled. He’d done it. Nathan Crow and his men had the press all boxed in. I was free to go.

Then a two-foot-square black box with a small propeller spinning above it rose up into the air from one of the news vans and flew over to my truck, hovering twenty feet in the air. Another camera drone. Great. Crow could never stop that.

“Someone want to land that flying robot, please?” the sheriff called out to the news crowd.

“We have every right to fly our camera,” said a reporter. “The people deserve the news!”

Crow spun around and pulled his .45 from his holster. He aimed and fired eight heavy rounds into the drone. Sparks and smoke burst from it before it crashed to the street. He holstered his weapon and then faced the crowd. “And this boy deserves his privacy.”

He waved me on my way. I took my cue, climbed up into the Beast, called Mom to let her know what the gunshots were, and drove off to work. News vans were following me in seconds.

The street in front of the shop was almost as packed as the one outside my house. If only we could get this much traffic from people who needed car repairs. As I approached, leading the line of other news vehicles, reporters and cameramen stirred to life. I slowed down. The junky old school bus that had been sitting at the side of the shop for years had been driven or towed across the driveway to block the street view of the bay doors. I drove up the first part of the driveway to the sidewalk and honked at the reporters who blocked my way, pulling very slowly forward until they moved. Then I parked in the space between the bus and the shop.

“Daniel, can we please have a quick word with you?” “Does the National Rifle Association sticker in the front window of your shop office mean that you or David Schmidt are members of the NRA, and was the shooting a statement for gun rights?” “Can you describe your relationship with JoBell Linder?”

I stopped for a moment and almost confronted the reporter who’d asked about JoBell. They better leave her out of this. But I thought if I said anything, it would be like dumping gas on a fire.

I entered the shop by the office door. The bay doors were closed, which was unusual in good weather. The radio was playing
Best of This Week on the Buzz Ellison
Show
. “Schmidty?” I called out. No one answered. The crusty old coffeemaker that he used every day but never cleaned had a full hot pot on. His coffee mug with the phrase “How About a Nice Cup of Shut the Hell Up” on the side sat half empty on his desk.

I touched the cup. Still warm. Where was he? Sometimes on a Saturday morning he’d go to the Coffee Corner to eat way too much bacon and eggs. But as psycho as he was about the electric bill, he wouldn’t take off and leave the radio and all the lights on.

“Schmidty?” I checked in the parts room. Nothing.

Back in the corner of the shop, I sat on his desk. Where was he?

Outside, the reporters kept shouting questions from the sidewalk. One asked something about the federal government.

That’s when it hit me. I stood up and went to the wall to grab a heavy wrench. What if the Fed had come looking for Schmidty? Would they use him to get to me? Why not? If the reporters had figured out I worked here, the government easily could. There had to be half a dozen safety and environmental regulation violations in this place. That would be all they needed to bring him in.

If federal agents were still in the area, maybe they were watching the shop. They could be coming for me any second. Standing there in the middle of the bay, I tightened my grip on the big wrench, ready for anything.

“What the hell are you doing?” a gravelly voice came from behind me.

I spun around with the wrench in both hands, cocked back like a baseball bat. “Schmidty.” I sighed. He scratched his stubbled chin and flicked ash from his cigarette into the rusted coffee can on his desk. “Where were you?”

“You gonna hit me?” he asked.

“What? Oh! No … I …” I lowered the wrench and tried to act casual, like it was no big deal that I was getting ready for a fight in the middle of the shop. “I’ll put this back.”

He rolled his eyes. “Bad enough I got all these pricks from the media up my ass, now I almost get brained in my own shop. Come on. I’ll show you where I was.” He led me toward the back of the building. A brand-new closet had been built over the floor hatch that led to the basement. It was finished with drywall and painted and everything. There were even brownish grease stains in various places.

“You built this?” I said. “How did it get dirty so fast?”

“No, it built itself.” He coughed and then cleared his throat. “I smeared on some grease so it would blend in. Don’t want it to look brand-new. It would stand out too much.” He opened the heavy metal closet door. Inside, several old one-piece overalls and a few coats hung from a bar. Tools and some junk parts littered a high shelf.

“I don’t get it. Why would we need a new closet?”

“Damn it, but you are pretty stupid sometimes.” He shook the clothes on their hangers. “This shit’s all just camouflage. See?” He bent down — too quickly to spare me the sight of his nasty ass crack, unfortunately — and pulled up on a metal ring in the front corner of the floor, opening the hatch to reveal the steps down into the basement. “It won’t look like a trapdoor if it’s the entire floor of the closet. Now come on.” He breathed heavily as he walked down the stairs.

“What?” I followed him. “Why’d you have to do all that to hide this gross —” I stopped.

The dank old basement that all my life had been filled with junk, spilled automotive fluids, and wastepaper was gone. Instead, the place was totally clean. The floor had been swept, mopped even, and the cobwebs had been brushed away. The stained, dented cardboard boxes and oily car parts that had been stored down here on metal shelves had disappeared. In their place at the other end of the basement were six green Army cots complete with fresh bedrolls. In a corner near that, a cookstove with its own propane tank and four reserve tanks was set up next to a small wooden table. A big black safe stood in the corner of the room.

Schmidty slapped his hand on one of the metal shelves. “I’m still chasing down some deals on more shelf-stable food, MREs, and survival packs and stuff. Prices on all that are way up.” He pointed his cigarette at the hatch we came down. “You can lock the closet door from the inside. Plus I reinforced the hatch with some heavy-duty locks. If anyone figures out the floor of the closet is a door, they’ll have a hell of a time getting it open.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “Oh, and I installed an air circulation and filtration system. I still have to run a duct underground so the vent can come out of that slag heap in the vacant lot next door. Brand-new toilet under the stairs, hooked up to the sewer and everything, but if the water supply gets cut off, there’s a bucket version. When this place is ready, you should be able to hide out here for months if you need to.”

I tried a joke. “And when the toilet bucket’s full?”

Schmidty wasn’t biting. “If the damned reporters ever leave, a guy I know, a guy I
trust
, is going to help me dig and reinforce a tunnel to the slag heap. That way you won’t be trapped down here if something happens upstairs. Plus you’ll be able to crawl out and dump your shit in the creek back there.”

Not long ago, if Schmidty had shown me all of this, I would have thought he was turning into one of those survivalist nuts — the guys who spent fortunes and way too much time building bomb shelters and preparing for the end of the world. But after the gunman last night, Specialist Stein’s arrest, and everything else that had happened, I was glad to know there was a place like this for me.

“There’s more,” Schmidty said. “Come on.”

“Where you going?”

“Just follow me, damn it,” he said, trailing a small cloud of smoke after him.

He led me to the large black safe in the back. The thing was at least four feet tall, with an old-fashioned spinning dial combination lock and a big steel lever. “What’s in there?”

He looked at me, annoyed, then leaned forward to examine the dial closely, rotating it so far to the right, all the way around to the left, then a short move to the right. With a grunt, he pulled the lever to the left and yanked open the door.

Schmidty reached in and took out a rifle like my M4 at the armory, but longer. He pointed the barrel at the floor and pulled back the charging handle, checking to make sure there was no round in the chamber. Then he handed the weapon to me. I immediately checked it the same way. One of the holiest commandments in the Army was that the very first step upon receiving a weapon was to clear it.

“An M16?” I said.

“What?” Schmidty bent to reach down into the safe. I closed my eyes, wondering why he even bothered to wear a belt. He stood up and slapped six fully loaded, thirty-round magazines on top of the safe. “No, check the fire selector lever. No auto or burst. It’s an AR15.”

“Aren’t those illegal?”

“The federal government claims it has the authority to take our guns away because the Constitution gives it power over interstate commerce. Idaho is one of a bunch of states with a law that says that as long as the weapon is manufactured, purchased, and remains inside the state, then interstate commerce and federal gun control laws don’t apply. This beauty was built down near Boise only last year.” He leaned on the safe. “Besides, what’s legal or not is starting to matter less and less. So listen. I know you still have your father’s nine mil. You got ammo?”

I shrugged. “Maybe one fifteen-round mag for the Beretta. I don’t know. It’s my dad’s. I’m not old enough to have it or buy anything for it.”

“Here.” He pushed a box of fifty nine-mil rounds into my hands.

“What am I supposed to do with this? I don’t think —”

“No, you’re not thinking, and that’s your problem. He shook his head. “Go down to Post Falls or Coeur d’Alene tonight and buy four more.”

“But I’m not old enough.”

“Yes, you are. You can’t own a handgun or the ammo for it until you’re eighteen, but you can buy the magazines.”

“Why would I want magazines if I can’t —”

“This isn’t a damned game!” I jumped a little. Schmidty yelled all the time, but usually at the radio or some frustrating car part he was working on. “Today everybody’s still pussyfooting around. How long before the bullets start flying for real? How long before you’re gonna need some real protection?”

“This is insane,” I said. “It’s out of control.”

“And that’s why you need to keep that Beretta loaded at home. Keep it in your closet or under your bed or some place you can get to it quickly.” He grabbed the AR15 from my hands. “People are out of work and pissed off. They don’t know if the retirement funds they’ve invested in their whole lives will be worth a damn. They can barely afford gas or food for their families. Now Idaho and the Fed are at each other’s throats. Folks are scared and looking for someone to blame. That man who tried to shoot you last night blames you. Others may blame you for the shootings or who knows what else. You need to be ready.”

“This” — he held up the rifle and then put it back into the safe — “will be down here.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it over. A set of three two-digit numbers was written on it in ink. “This is the combination. You get yourself in trouble and you need a weapon, you know where to find it. You need a safe place to stay” — he swept his hand to indicate the basement — “you can come here.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think I’ll need it. I mean, I hope I won’t.”

Schmidty scratched his big belly. “You believe that, you’re an idiot.” He took a drag on his cigarette.

I ran my hands along a row of cases of MREs. There weren’t even this many rations in my whole armory. “I know this all looks really bad, but this whole crisis or whatever they’re calling it is a bunch of political crap. This is America. We’ve worked things out before. We will this time.” I only partly believed what I was saying.