A/N 1: Now that I've got you on the edges of your collective seats…
52 – The Nebraska Night Patrol
Billy Mosbacher was out on patrol in his car. It was another quiet night outside Omaha. He never expected he'd be a small town cop in the very town he grew up in, but jobs weren't exactly plentiful when he got back from serving in Afghanistan and when this one came along he jumped at it. It wasn't a very hard job. Crime wasn't exactly rampant in the area. There was the occasional meth lab that needed busting. Speeders. Cow-tipping teenagers. He did have to attend some farm auctions. That was a little distasteful. People he knew all his life were losing their family homes because of a lousy economy, the same economy that put him in his job.
He'd been a cop for about a year and was now actually thinking about it more as a career than a job. He even started considering running for sheriff in the next election. The current sheriff was retiring. He had at least as much experience as the other potential candidates. More if you considered his service. He figured that if he went in that direction he should consider asking people to stop calling him Billy. Maybe Bill. Or William. That sounded more authoritative. Billy, well, Billy sounded more like someone who desperately wanted people to think he was young.
The most exciting thing that became part of his patrol was his periodic drive by of the Queen farm. Their daughter Penny was having some trouble out in California and the police out there thought it was possible it might spread to Nebraska. So the sheriff had him periodically drive by the farm to see that things were all right. He also stopped by the diner where Mrs. Queen worked, which wasn't really an imposition because he ate dinner there most nights anyway.
Billy liked the Queens. They never held the fact that he had arrested their son for having a meth lab against him personally. Wyatt told Billy he was only doing his job and that his son needed the kick in the ass to get his life together. Billy appreciated that. And Mrs. Queen was always nice to him at the diner. Billy's older sister used to be a friend of Penny Queen's but she screwed that up, pretty much like she screwed everything else up. Valerie Mosbacher was back living with their parents on her third kid and her second husband and always unhappy. She always said she wished Penny had gotten the head cheerleader job instead of her because then she would have had the stupid quarterback's stupid kid. It seemed like sleeping with him to get that honor didn't exactly leave her with the prize she was expecting. He ended up leaving town before the kid was even born.
He'd had a little crush on Penny but she was a couple of years ahead of him in school and he was pretty sure she didn't even know he existed. Billy admired that Penny Queen was smart enough to get out of town, to pursue her dreams elsewhere, even if she left with a jerk like Kurt. He was glad to hear from Wyatt that Kurt had been out of Penny's life for a long time.
Night patrols gave Billy time to think. Think and drive. And be thankful that it was pretty unlikely he'd run into any IEDs in Nebraska.
Usually the patrols were pretty quiet. Suddenly Billy's radio crackled.
"Patrol Car 73. Patrol Car 73. Come in."
"73 here."
"Billy, take a run out to the Queen farm. I just got a call from the police in California. Their daughter can't reach them. We checked the line and it looks like it's out and cell service looks like it's down too. It's probably nothing, but check in with the Queens and get back."
"Will do. Over."
It would probably take a bout 10 minutes to get there. As he got closer he saw that all the neighbor's lights were on so he knew it wasn't a power problem that affected the phone service. As Billy approached the farm he noticed all the lights were out. That was unusual. There was always at least a porch light on. He stopped and got out of the car and looked around. He thought he saw a light, someone carrying a torch.
Then he saw a flash.
And heard a blast.
And another flash.
And another blast.
And then Billy heard a blood-curdling scream.
A/N 2: And I'll be keeping you on the edges of your seats just a little bit longer.
