Engagement Rings and Hot-Tub Flings

(July 11-12, 2016)

12: When They Come for You

To Dipper's relief, Wendy pushed herself up from the floor. "I better go meet 'em," she said, slapping dirt from her shirt and jeans.

"Are you hurt?"

"Not shot. Kinda got the wind knocked out of me."

"I'm bleedin', man!" the thief screeched.

Wendy gave him a withering glance. "You'll live, tiger. Keep him covered, Dipper. Make him turn around and face away from you."

"You heard her," Dipper said. "Face the wall. Keep your hands on your head."

As the guy did, Dipper saw bright red splotches of blood on his shirt—not many, not large, and scattered—and saw a minor trickle of blood on his right wrist, too. None of it looked serious. "I'm shot, man!" the guy yelled at the wall.

"No, you're not."

Wendy had stooped to retrieve the guy's dropped gun and the axe. She went up front and dropped them inside the door, put her hands on her head, and stepped outside. The sirens had slowed, but now they swelled again, coming right up to the barn, and Dipper caught the flash of red and blue lights.

"Come on, bro," the thief begged. "Give me a break. Let me run for it at least."

"No way."

Dipper heard brakes and a chatter of police radio, and then voices. Wendy yelled, "Dipper! They're standin' in the doorway, got you and him covered. Put down the gun and step away and keep your hands where they can see 'em!"

Dipper did as she instructed, taking three steps back before putting the gun on the floor, then backed a little more and put his hands atop his head. He stood that way just in front of the Dart. Two cops in sheriff's department uniforms, weapons drawn, came into the lantern light. "He's the thief!" the guy yelled. "Arrest him!"

"He's lying!" Wendy yelled back. "That's my Dart they stole there. Back behind it you'll find a cop all tied up!"

One of the policemen had both Dipper and the car thief go brace the wall. The other cop went back into the darkness at the rear of the barn and yelled, "It's Lewis! I'm cutting him loose."

In seconds, that cop and the one Dipper had not seen—Lewis, presumably—came back into the light. Lewis, a paunchy gray-haired man of fifty, walked slightly stooped forward and held a hand to his mouth, blood leaking through his fingers. But he spat a gout of it out and said in a mushy voice, "That craphead on the right's the bad guy, Brennon. He's the one who pistol-whipped me. The kid next to him probably saved my life. You have to find the sheriff!"

"Got two more in the trunk of the Impala outside," Dipper said. "They were unconscious, but they might have come around, so be careful. Another one's in the old house, chained to a metal pipe."

Brennon, who seemed to be in charge, asked, "Who took them?"

"We did, dudes!" Wendy said. No one covered her—which, if she had been one of the baddies, would have been a fatal tactical mistake—and she said, "Me an' Dip, my fiancé. There's another wounded cop on the ground over past the drive."

"We got backup coming," Brennon said. "Davies, you go call for another ambulance. Then go see if the hurt cop's Sheriff Oleandar. Make that two more ambulances. Looks like we're gonna need a minimum of three. You kids hurt?"

"Wendy got shot," Dipper said.

"What!"

"I did not shoot her!" the thief said. "She stole my gun—"

"Shut up! Miss, where are you hit?"

"He got me in the axe," Wendy said. "From, like, five inches away! The slug hit the axe head and shattered. He's got nicks from the shrapnel, but I'm OK."

"You two kids go out and sit in the back of the cruiser until help gets here. I'm gonna read this citizen his rights."

So—they went out and sat in the back of the cop car. "What a mess," Dipper muttered. "We might be charged for assault or something."

Davies came back, supporting another cop, who was limping badly and clutching his gut. When he came into the light, Dripper saw the man's lips were bloody. "Wait a minute," the wounded man said hoarsely—his voice showed he was the cop they had first found—"I want to have a word."

A trim, white-haired man probably about sixty, he leaned in the open door of the cop cruiser, his breathing labored. "You kids all right?"

Wendy said, "Yeah—you're hurtin' bad, though."

"Broken ribs, I think maybe a punctured lung. Listen, you remember when I swore you in as deputies?"

"I—what?" Dipper said. "You—"

"Oh, yeah, we remember that," Wendy said hastily overriding Dipper and nudging him silent. "Hope we helped."

The bleeding cop winked. "You done good, deputies. My name's Oleandar, by the way. Frank Oleandar, Sheriff of Nutting County. Davies, you and Bren take care of those perps and when the reinforcements come, get somebody to find my sidearm. I dropped it somewhere over there when the bastard shot me. He would've hunted me down and killed me, wasn't for my posse here. I gotta sit down or pass out."

He couldn't manage the step up into the car, so he sat on the ground outside the barn, leaning back against a rear tire. In a few minutes, another cop car jounced into view and as soon as the deputies got out, one yelled, "Whose car's blocking the drive? Gotta move it for the ambulances!"

"That's mine," Dipper said. "Officer Brennon, may I move it?"

Brennon rose from where he had been hunkering next to the wounded sheriff. "Ride along with him, Cleark. No offense son, but this is a confusing crime scene."

"That's OK," Dipper said.

"Gonna need the keys," Wendy said, tossing them to Dipper, who swipe-caught them.

Cleark said, "Hustle, kid, they were right behind us."

They jogged down the dark ruts of driveway, Dipper slipped into the driver's seat of Helen Wheels and the policeman took the front passenger seat, and they rumbled down toward the barn. Sirens and lights faded in from behind them, coming on fast. Cleark said, "Better park her beside the barn. Who's the redhead?"

"My fiancée," Dipper said. "It was her car the guys stole."

"I'd say they made a big freakin' mistake."

"You'd be right," Dipper told him.

The first ambulance took the wounded sheriff and the battered Lewis. A second and third took the bad guys, three of them still woozy and nauseated, all of them cuffed, with a cop in each ambulance to ride along and guard them. "How 'bout my Dart?" Wendy asked.

Brennon, who had been left in charge of the scene, said, "Sorry, it's evidence. Forensics will go over it, we'll ferry it over to the Portland impound lot, and you'll get it back late tomorrow if you're lucky. More likely Wednesday or Thursday."

Wendy groaned. "Can I do a walk-around? I put years of work into that car. Did everything with my own hands."

That impressed Brennon, who accompanied her. As they came back from the barn, Dipper heard Wendy going into detail about the rebuild she'd done on an engine. When they reached the cruiser—Dipper was no longer sitting, but stood leaning against it, bone-weary—Brennon said to him, "Son, I want to shake your hand."

Dipper shook hands with him and asked, "Why?"

"Because you're gonna marry the most badass girl I ever met," Brennon said. "OK, Forensics will be here and take over the scene in about five minutes. I'll get you two back to headquarters and we'll take your evidence. It's gonna be a long night."

On the ride back, again in the rear seat of a police cruiser—Davies took Dipper's keys and said he'd drive the Carino in—Dipper and Wendy held hands and conversed silently. –Is your car OK?

Yeah, nothin' big. They ripped loose some wires to hot-wire it, and they took out the entertainment box I put in to replace the dead radio, but it's layin' on the front seat. They took off my tag and put one on from California, probably stolen, but I saw my plate behind it on the floor and Brennon made a note to get it back to me. Unless they hit something and caused undercarriage damage, I think it's all right.

–When you went down, I was so scared.

Yeah, I thought for a second I was gut-shot! But I was holding the axe flat against my solar plexus, and the slug hit the other side. I just now looked at the axe. Little crater there, man! But I think the jerk got hit with shattered pieces of the slug. Brennon says it was a .380, so not that big a cartridge. Like I said, though, it smacked the axe head sideways against me and knocked the wind out of me, and I've probably got a bruise right below my sternum, but once I was down, I thought it was better to stay down.

–I might have shot the guy. I almost did—pulled the trigger without meaning to, barely missed his head.

I knew you had it under control, man. I trusted you, Dip.

And for Dipper, that moment made everything worth it.

The rest of the night was long, draggy, and dreary. Wendy and Dipper went to separate interrogation rooms. They told their stories. They answered questions. They went over things again. Answered more questions. They got mildly scolded: "You should leave law enforcement to the professionals!" And immediately commended: "I never said this, but good job, anyhow."

By eight AM on Tuesday, they both felt numb and exhausted. Brennon, sporting a ten o'clock shadow—twice as bristly as a five o'clock one, as Mabel would have said—had them both come into the sheriff's office, where a name plate on the desk said "Franklyn Oleandar."

"OK, kids," he said. "The good news: two of the four guys already copped to the crimes—not just stealing your car, but half a dozen others in and around Portland—and ratted out the other two."

"What's that mean?" Dipper asked.

"For you, first of all it means you two are pretty much off the hook. The guy in the barn, Dale Kregar, is the ringleader. He and his brother Roy are terrified of us letting Texas extradite them. Texas has a laundry list of armed-robbery charges against them, in the course of one of which a law officer died in a pursuit when his car flipped."

"Oh, man," Wendy said.

"Yeah, and Texas is still a death-penalty state. We got the other two flat-heads a public defender, and she tells us they'll cop to grand theft auto, but we also nailed 'em all because over in Wallowa County they jacked a car at gunpoint, and the vic has ID'd the Kregars and Cletus from photos. That adds armed robbery. On top of that we can stack resisting arrest and assaulting two police officers. In other words, they're all four going away for a long time."

"Are the sheriff and the other man, Lewis, OK?" Dipper asked.

"Sheriff Oleandar has five broken ribs. Lung wasn't punctured, but bruised bad enough to bleed a little. Lewis lost some teeth and has to have some oral surgery, but they'll both recover. I know they'd want me to thank you two."

"When can I get my car back?" Wendy asked.

Brennon held up his hand for silence. "Let me finish, Miss Corduroy. Now, as I said, you two are off the hook for assault in, we'll say, assisting the police in their investigation when you conked those guys—by the way, what did you use on the three guys you knocked out?"

"Little toy camping hatchet," Wendy said. "But I was careful to use the hammer side, not the blade side."

"Camping hatchet," Brennon said. "I don't even want to know where you got it. Anyway, Sheriff Oleandar says he deputized you two, and we're not going to look too closely into that, either, because your driver's licenses indicate you're a little young to be deputies, but nobody wrote anything down, so we forgot to check your licenses, meaning you were operating under the assumption that it was all legit. The perps want to make any noise about that, we've got a great big bag of additional charges we can bring up to change their minds. And three of them had guns, so you were acting with reasonable force, far as we're concerned. No charges are gonna be made against you."

"We're not usually violent," Dipper said.

"I kind of figured that."

"Can you guys, like, take all the credit for the arrest?" Wendy asked. "My dad might come looking for the jerks who mistreated me and Dip. Believe me, you don't want that. So—?"

"We won't release your names to the press. Now, the Dodge Dart—you're going to have to file a theft-and-recovery report in Portland. They'll take their own time with their forensics crew in case we missed anything, which we didn't. I'm urging them to expedite things, but it'll be at least tomorrow, maybe even as late as Thursday, before you can have the Dart back. You did a real impressive restoration job, by the way."

"Thank you," Wendy said.

"You'll owe the city an impound fee of twenty bucks a day for as long as they keep it."

"What?" Dipper asked, outraged.

"Sorry, Mr. Pines, them's the rules." Brennon consulted a yellow note pad. "Now, Miss Corduroy, this bit about you serving in Afghanistan—"

Wendy laughed. "That was just a bluff. I noticed that the guy had a tat of an anchor and 'Semper Fi' on the inside of his arm, so I lied. Thought maybe one former Marine wouldn't hurt another or something, you know."

Brennon tossed the pad aside. "Yeah, well, it wouldn't have done any good—Dale Kregar was barely out of boot camp before he pulled a b.c.d.* You could say he got his ink prematurely. Anyhow, thank you for your help, and let me just say, if you ever try assisting us again in this jurisdiction, I'll personally throw your asses in jail so fast it'll make your head spin. You can drive the Carino back to Portland. Davies left it out back, and the keys are at the desk, just ask for them. Where did you first report the theft?"

Dipper gave him the address of the police station, and Brennon nodded. "That's what I figured. I'll give them a call and see if they'll get on the stick to cut you loose. You kids go get some rest, and I'll tell them you'll report to the station at—what, three PM?"

"Make it four, please," Wendy said.

"Four. Then take off. I'll be in touch if we need you for anything else."

Wendy and Dipper stopped for a hasty breakfast and repeated doses of medicinal coffee, and Dipper drove them back to Portland. At the motel, he arranged for them to keep the rooms another night. He called Mabel—"It's crazy here, Brobro! Wait until you hear how I got us some help!"—to tell her they'd be at least another day and that they had recovered the car. She had a flood of questions, but he first asked her to tell everyone they were OK, then promised, "I'll tell you all about it as soon as I see you."

He and Wendy were in his motel room. Wendy had stretched out face-down on the bed, on top of the covers, and seemed sound asleep, fully clothed except for her boots. Dipper hung the DO NOT DISTURB request on the doorknob and opened the connecting door.

"Uh-uh," Wendy murmured very softly. "You stay with me."

So he closed the door again and crawled onto the bed—too narrow for both of them, really—and she lay on her side, face to face, and he hugged her and fell asleep in her arms, knowing that his phone alarm would wake them up in just three hours for their trip to the police station for the rest of the rigmarole. He knew it wouldn't be pleasant, but then—

They'd take care of it.

Together.

*b.c.d. means "bad conduct discharge." It's what you get for (for instance) being dumb enough to steal a staff sergeant's Jeep and try to sell it to an undercover cop in a dive bar in Port Royal, South Carolina.