Chapter 8
Luyu sat quietly behind the staggered circle of men, listening to the two Bay City detectives as they spoke. She heard about the card game Starsky had played with some of the kids in the back of the bus. Kids that were now missing or dead.
She heard about the long dark road, sudden pops in the night, the bus going out of control and Hutch's desperate attempt at saving his partner's life at the risk of his own.
Their voices grew more tired as they talked about picking up the pieces, Hutch finding Starsky, realizing what the impact of a boulder to his head had done, pulling themselves together and starting the process toward recovery, only to become targets once again.
Sam demanding that Starsky represent all of Bay City PD, unarmed and blind, under the beam of a flashlight.
Hutch planning a mad escape, ignoring a dislocated and badly bruised arm, and driving a torn up bus through the canyon bottom and over a waterfall.
The following morning when their hope for rescue was dashed by the return of Sam, Chuck and Dan Waggoner.
For anyone who had seen the partnership in action before, or been present to hear or read about it later, the situations and resolutions seemed at the very least, plausible.
For Rick Simon and Sheriff Reuben, the simple nods that each story got from Luyu Samara and Captain Dobey were astonishing.
"I aimed at where I thought dead center would be and...emptied my second clip." Starsky said, his voice whittled down to a rough whisper that could have been explained by his physical condition, though most in the room knew better.
"Did you know the sheriff was dead at that time?" Dobey asked.
"Sam shouted his brother's name and Chuck said...his uncle was dead." Starsky smoothed out the blanket over his legs with shaking hands, and shifted on the bed with a wince, staring at the blanket for a long moment before he forced himself to meet the bloodshot eyes of his superior. He knew he would have to say it all again, hear it all again, live it all again when IA stepped in. The only thing this impromptu retelling would give him was the backing of his captain.
"And in your mind it was self-defense." Dobey prompted.
"He'd threatened to kill me, and he'd already shot Hutch-"
"Supposedly.."
"Excuse me?" Starsky's eyes flashed from the dull, tired gray they'd been an instant ago to clear, sharp, ice-blue.
Reuben scanned the room, hostile eyes coming from every face but Dobey's.
"I mean...did I understand something wrong? Your detective was blind at the time. He operated purely on assumptions based on what he was hearing. He heard what sounded like the sheriff's gun. He heard his partner's gun."
"And then I heard your beloved sheriff tell me my partner was dead, and I was going to join him shortly." Starsky said, already losing steam. He leaned back against the bed he was grateful to still be in, and glanced toward his partner.
"And how do we know that isn't embellishment?" Reuben asked, shaking his head, bewildered. "I get that the rest of you are all on the same team here, but this...sounds like a John Wayne movie. You're taking the upstanding, unquestionable character of a leader of my community and dragging it through the-"
"Mud?" Rick guessed, smirking softly from his corner.
"Sewer!" Reuben snapped. "We've just heard this man admit to murdering my boss and instead of yanking him in and locking him up, we're still discussing the character of the man who is now murdered...unable to defend himself or his actions."
"That's why I'm here, Reuben. To get the whole story." Dobey barked. "And so far I haven't even heard all of one side of it."
"Why do I get the feeling we're not even going to make it my side?"
"You wanna go next?" Rick asked, "Go next."
Luyu watched Rick and the acting sheriff stare each other down, the former getting far more enjoyment out of the discomfort the stare-down caused, than the latter.
"There's not much more to tell.." Starsky said, his eyes dancing between the two still silently hating each other. "Hutch and I made it outta the canyon, got picked up by these two guys, Rick and AJ, and they brought us to Flagstaff Memorial."
"How did you two end up back in Winslow?"
Luyu quietly raised a hand and cleared her throat. "I...uh...helped."
Dobey smirked a tiny bit then switched his focus to the only physician in the room.
Luyu blinked, then scrambled to remember how her participation had started. "Well I...I was on duty when the guys came in. Recognized them, went to talk to Rick who had decided to stay with them at least until he heard something about their conditions. A few days later he was gone with his brother, headed back to Winslow. Hutch was awake and we talked and he expressed his concern about the two, especially in light of something-"
"The list." Hutch said, nodding. His cheeks flamed a little but he glanced up, meeting Dobey's eyes squarely. "It was a stupid thing to do, Captain. I...I was concerned about the juveniles still in my care, and after Rick convinced me that he had the department's blessing to return to Winslow I gave him a list of names. Of people that I was hoping he would avoid."
"Wouldn't have gone in without it." Rick cut in quietly, surprising Hutch with what sounded suspiciously like a vote of confidence.
"Hold on a minute. Hutch...what exactly was on that list?" Dobey asked.
"Names. The names I could remember of the people that seemed to be involved. Sam Waggoner, Chuck Waggoner, Abrams, some of the other kids that I could remember."
"Looked an awful lot like a hit list when we got it." Reuben interrupted again.
"You have the list?" Dobey asked, cutting off any other responses.
"It was one of the first things I took of this joker and his brother when the two rolled into town in a stolen police jeep." Reuben said, flicking a finger toward Rick's corner.
"You did what!?" Dobey barked, looking from his men to Rick Simon. It took Reuben a second to realize that it wasn't his actions, but the bit about the stolen police jeep that had enraged the captain.
"That's why we left the hospital, Cap-" Hutch started, interrupted by Luyu.
"It's why I went to Winslow Memorial in the first place, because Hutch heard about the jeep and was concerned-"
"The jeep was on the back of the parking lot and my brother drove off before I could remind him-" Rick chimed in, slowing a little when he realized he was no longer part of a chorus. "-that...it was still on there."
"The jeep was on the back of a what?"
"A parking lot. A car carrier, an empty car hauler. We were finishing up a job, returning the truck to its owner in San Diego." Rick said.
"And you stopped and helped my men?"
"Yes sir. We got them to the hospital and the rig sorta sat there for a few hours, forgotten and by the time my brother figured out that I wanted to stay, he'd...remembered that the truck was rented in his name and he...took off. Drove back in the jeep."
"And you fellas just...drove right on into Winslow-" Dobey finished, echoing, flabbergasted, the general stupidity of the plan.
"Look it was a bad idea. Nobody's arguing that. The fact remains that instead of being temporarily detained and questioned we were accosted by Reuben's men, thrown in a jail cell without a phone call or a lawyer, and then beaten to a pulp by his "diligent" officer Sam Waggoner." Rick returned, irritated and recalcitrant.
"How do you know it was Sam Waggoner?" Dobey demanded, cutting off Reuben before he could even start.
"He identified himself. Accused us of being in cahoots with the two men that killed his brother. Demanded to know where Abrams was, and when we couldn't tell him he-" Rick cut himself off and shifted in his corner, feeling a rush of bile come up his throat that he wasn't sure he could hold back. He pushed to his feet and swallowed then met Reuben squarely in the eye. "He locked me in my cell, took my brother into another cell and started beating him to death."
All eyes immediately went to Reuben expecting him to rally to the defense of his man but Reuben had taken to his feet and was pacing. His face was red, his hand rubbing more red into the back of his neck.
"Well!?" Dobey demanded, too hot to be in charge of the situation any longer, and fully aware of it.
"I couldn't-...I couldn't figure out how Sam got where he was in the other cell. Or why the prisoner had been moved...it didn't make sense until...now." Reuben turned a finger and his full gaze on Rick for a second. "But you did attack him. You hit him over the head with a billy club."
"In self-defense. To get him to lay off my brother." Rick growled.
"Why did you run?"
Rick gave him a look that accused him of being dense and having a poor sense of timing all at once.
"It wasn't the smartest thing to do," Dobey cut in, "But I can see why he might have felt he wouldn't find an advocate willing to defend him against a charge like that."
Dobey's full meaning hung in the air as Reuben continued his nervous pacing, his arms crossed over his chest.
"I think there's something else that should come to light here." Luyu said, hesitantly. She instantly had every eye in the room focused on her. "I just...Captain, you said you wanted to start at the beginning. I don't think we've gone back far enough. I talked with Anita Simmons."
Dobey rolled his eyes at yet another name in a confusion of names and looked to his men. He was surprised to find all but Rick instantly attuned.
"One of you had better explain..." Was all Dobey needed to say before Starsky took in a breath.
"Anita Simmons, she's Chuck Waggoner's grandmother. Abrams, the kid Sam Waggoner is so hot about, he was accused four years ago of involuntary manslaughter. He and his girlfriend….Han-" Starsky stalled.
"Haley." Hutch offered.
"Haley...both underage, both had alcohol in their systems. Abrams was driving, his car t-boned another car. The second vehicle was being driven by Anita Simmons, the girl's grandmother-"
"Not by Anita." Luyu cut in. "Anita was never out that night. She'd loaned the car to her grandson, Chuck."
Dobey's head was whirling, trying to keep track of the confusion of names and relationships.
"Chuck was driving the other car that night." Hutch said, suddenly paler than before.
"Chuck is?" Dobey asked, leaning closer to Luyu and the notepad, hoping somehow that there would be diagram for him to follow.
"Chuck Waggoner, Haley Waggoner's brother, Sam Waggoner's son, Dan Waggoner's nephew. Captain, Chuck told me this whole thing was about revenge on Abrams but he never mentioned that he was involved. He never said word one about having been there that night." Starsky blurted.
"Maybe he doesn't remember." Hutch said, then shook his head as if hastily wiping clean a chalk board. "It doesn't matter. What matters is, that's the connection. That's the thing that we've been missing. The entire Waggoner clan has been out to get this kid to cover up that accident. For all we know Sam Waggoner responded to it and-"
"No…" Reuben shook his head, his face waxy and suddenly pale. "Sam Waggoner didn't join the force until after Haley's funeral. They'd been depending on his wife's income, and she left, went to live with her mother. Sam desperately needed a job...Dan got it for him."
"Wait a minute." Rick interrupted. "You just said, Dan had only been serving as sheriff for-"
"For a year." Reuben nodded, "...before his niece Haley was killed...he said by Abrams."
The room fell silent for a moment and Luyu sat breathless in that second. They'd started out enemies. Two warring wolf packs that had, in that moment turned into what made them who they were and what they did in the first place. Problem solvers.
Hutch broke the silence with a slow, careful breath. "Did Dan ever report who the driver of the other car was?"
Reuben chewed on air for a moment, his hands going to his hips. "The driver of the other car fled the scene. Dan said he got there too late to ID 'em." Reuben tried to cross his arms over his chest but changed his mind halfway through and stood, squirming. "The focus was so much on Haley, we uh...we impounded the car and didn't look into it much after that."
"What did Abrams have to say?" Rick asked, watching Reuben mentally turning the years back.
"Said he was guilty. Looked guilty, acted guilty. He knew he'd been drinking that night. He tried to say that Haley was more drunk than he was, that's why he was driving, but...nobody wanted to hear anything bad about-"
"About the victim…" Rick said, nodding. "And nobody thought to wonder about the other driver. Why he or she woulda runaway?"
Reuben sniffed and stared at the ground. "Sheriff said he'd handle it. We figured, long as there weren't any dead bodies showing up…" The acting sheriff gave a half-hearted shrug.
"Your the sheriff now." Dobey cut in, waiting until the squirming uniform met his gaze. "You can imagine why I'm asking, but how long have you been in uniform?"
"For the United States? Four years. My first tour ended prematurely, but I saw a little action. Went straight to the highway patrol after that, and was hired into Winslow PD by Dan...the year they made him sheriff." The uncomfortable wiggle came back and Luyu suddenly saw it. The man's boss and maybe hero had been murdered, then tarnished before his very eyes in less than a week. Of course he'd fought as blindly as he had. Of course he'd swayed toward Sam Waggoner being in the right, and newcomers like Starsky, Hutch and the Simon's being in the wrong.
As Luyu studied the faces around her she could see that they were catching on too.
Reuben was practically scraping the toe of his boot across the floor, his chin to his chest when he muttered, "I'm in the reserves..." Almost entirely to himself.
Rick watched the man, remembering his initial take on the acting sheriff. Young, eager, but cool headed with some experience behind him. He'd made plenty of mistakes lately, but he'd been right about that.
"Well then, Acting Sheriff Reuben..." Dobey began, getting to his feet and hitching up his pants. "...we have ten juveniles unaccounted for, ten bodies that need to be identified and found, and you have a murder to solve. I haven't got much to offer you in the way of interdepartmental support...I haven't got any jurisdiction...but I've got clout, two mules..." Dobey pointed casually at his detectives, then gestured toward the PI still technically hired by Bay City PD,"..and an ass under my payroll. What's your next move?"