First Impressions, Page 2

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  Ritter insisted we take his vehicle, a Jeep Grand Cherokee with emblem and whip antenna and full light-and-siren package. I protested, telling him I wanted to make an inconspicuous approach. He told me to relax. "It's so damn dark out there this time of night they won't see us until we're right on top of them."

  I didn't argue. Turns out, he wasn't wrong.

  The moon was little more than a crescent sliver in the sky, playing hide-and-seek with some slow-moving, grey-black clouds. Ritter drove following a winding ribbon of black pavement carved between snow banks as high as the Jeep's hood. The asphalt was wet with runoff and our tires whished. I worried about black ice. Skeletal branches, bowed heavily with ice and snow creaked and swayed on either side of us. They glowed silver-white in our headlights as we passed.

  "You always work alone?" Ritter asked over the blowing of the heater fans that weren't producing much heat.

  "Usually. I've got a cop friend who helps me sometimes. She's a deputy with the Sheriff's Department."

  "Sounds dangerous. Doing this alone."

  The back of the Jeep fishtailed a little, enough to make my heart skip a beat but Ritter corrected the skid without outward concern.

  "It works for me."

  After a moment, he said, "People need people."

  An hour and a half together and the guy decided he knows me? I shrugged. "I have a pet monkey. He's all the people I need, or want."

  He looked at me, his face awash in green from the dashboard lights. It was a handsome face, but hard to read. I shifted the conversation away from my least favorite topic, me. "Been a cop long?"

  "Seven years. Army before that."

  Military. I'd called it. "See any action?"

  "What is it with you? Just 'cause I'm a cop in a small town you think we don't do any real police work here? All we do is write speeding tickets and teach DARE to school kids?"

  Pretty much, but I kept that to myself. "I'm just making conversation. Why are you getting all defensive?"

  "I'm not defensive." We drove on in silence for several more miles.

  After a while Ritter said, "So tell me. How does one get into bounty hunting?"

  How'd I get into it? I thought back over the eight years since I'd been booted off the Sheriff's Department, about the hundreds of skips I'd tracked down in that time. The people who took off, skipped on their obligations, left their families and their friends holding the bag. Wondering, worrying, what became of the person who'd simply disappeared from their lives?

  I thought about my father then. How he abandoned my mother and me when I was seven. Left us without a word, no different then every worthless bail jumper I'd ever tracked down.

  How'd I get into it? "More like it got into me," I said.

  The road forked up ahead. Ritter eased to the right.

  I shouted, "Look out!"

  Our headlights caught three deer, gracefully leaping over the snow banks from a copse of trees. They ran across the road only a few feet ahead of us. The high beams shimmered off their smooth, brown flanks. Ritter tapped the brakes and slowed. We watched them run off into the woods, their little tails twitching as they went. Then they stopped and turned, watching us watch them. What a great postcard moment, I thought.

  When they moved off, Ritter resumed driving. "You said the girl has a kid with her. Is the kid Maynard's?"

  "Far as I know. The boy, Jimmy, he was at the apartment when the cops busted the two of them. They found him hiding in a closet, his knees to his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs. Figure he hid in there when Maynard and Allison started beating the hell out of each other."

  "Jeez."

  "Guess you don't get crap like that around here, huh?" I sucked in my breath, realizing that sounded like another snide swipe. I didn't mean it to. After seeing the deer and being around the quaint, quiet beauty of the little town I was thinking how peaceful it must be to live in a place like this. I braced for Ritter's defensive barrage, not wanting to fight again.

  "We get our share," he said simply. "Six months back I got a call to check out a farm up on the county line. Earl Jenkins' place. Earl's got a wife, two kids-a son and a daughter. Odd folks, kept to themselves mostly. Home schooled the children so they could work the farm. Anyway, I get this call about gunshots out that way. I figured its some kids out plinking tin cans with a .22 or something. No big deal."

  He stared ahead, a part of him back in the past, reliving that day. His gloved hands tightened around the wheel. In the dim green dashboard lights, I saw his Adam's apple bob as he spoke.

  "It wasn't kids plinking cans," I said.

  "No. The boy, Eric, he got a hold of his father's pistol. Earl used it to shoot at the coyotes, keep them away from his stock. Eric used the gun to put two bullets into Earl. Then he shot his mom and his little sister. She was just nine years old. After that he took a machete to each of them. Hacked them up, gutted them, cut off their arms and legs. There was blood and guts strewn everywhere. An awful mess. Coming up on all that, I called for back-up. Then I started searching the property and found Eric. He'd hanged himself off the hayloft winch. Hanging there, just twisting in the wind. Rope creaking. His face and bare chest smeared in blood and guts. No note. No reason. Nothing." His voice grew soft. "Worse damn thing I've ever seen. And that's after two tours in Iraq."

  Humbly, I began to revise my thoughts on rural policing. Cops do what cops do, no matter where they are. And human beings, with their insane capacity to brutalize, aren't bound by geography. Metropolitan or rural, killers are killers.

  Ritter slowed the cruiser, pulled to the shoulder and came to a stop. He shut off the headlights. "There it is." He pointed up ahead into the darkness. The moon peeked from behind the cloud cover but offered little in the way of illumination. Ahead, ice-encrusted, gnarled tree branches gave way to a lumpy blanket of snow covering a clearing edged by a slush-hardened snow bank and a solitary black mailbox. The mailbox leaned at an angle, buried up to its little red flag.

  In an attempt to make up for my less than charitable thoughts regarding Ritter and rural policing in general, I said, "Thanks for bringing me back out." I know, lame, right?

  Ritter shrugged. "No problem." He shut off the engine and we stepped out into the cold.

  I shivered. I thought I'd come prepared for the cold. I had on long sleeve under-armor, a black turtle neck sweater, a wool-lined leather coat. Okay, so the True Religion jeans were for show, but the Uggs, they were both fashionable and practical. Still I was damned cold.

  "Come on," Ritter said.

  Together, we walked along the road, black, wet and icy despite the County's efforts to sand. Our breaths fogged the air. Ritter held my elbow, guiding me. When we reached the edge of the woods where the trees gave way to the cleared property, buried under three feet of snow, we stopped.

  Against the blackness of the woods I made out the dark angular shape of the house, its sagging roofline, its broken clapboard siding. No lights glowed from inside but Maynard's Charger sat in the unplowed driveway where the snow was tamped down and rutted by tire tracks. A dusting of snow covered the car: it hadn't moved. Colin Maynard was still inside.

  The surrounding quiet was both peaceful and eerie. A silence had settled around us, marred only by the creaking of gently swaying trees-their ice-sheathed limbs scrapping, one against the other-and the whistle of a cold breeze.

  Ritter gave my arm a gentle tug.

  "Look. I know you think I'm just some backwoods, hick cop in the rural nothingness. And I am, but I'm not. I'm also an M.P. with the National Guard. I did two tours in Iraq. I'm Ranger trained with the Army, SWAT trained with the state police. I don't get to use those skills much around here, and to tell you the truth, I'm thankful for that. But I've used them enough. I know what I'm doing."

  I stomped my feet. I wanted to cup my hands and blow into them but I didn't. I thought it would make me look weak, unprepared. I should have said I was sorry for my attitude. I didn't
do that either. I wanted to, but the words wouldn't come out. I don't do contrite well.

  He said, "Forget it. Give me ten minutes to get around back then make your approach." He started to climb over the plowed mound of snow, his heavy hiking boots crunching through a scrim of ice.

  "Hey." He was giving me the leeway I wanted. I touched his arm. "Why are you playing it this way?"

  His brow furrowed. "How else would I play it? I've got no reason to go in there. No probable cause, no reasonable suspicion. As far as I can tell the only play here is yours."

  "Then why are you here?"

  "I told you before. If that girl is in trouble, I need to be here." He flashed a smile. "But really I'm curious to see how a big city bounty hunter operates. Thought an old hick cop like me might learn something new."

  "Right," I scoffed, scooping my hair up and winding a ponytail holder around it, returning his smile. "I figured you were here to teach me a trick or two."

  "There's always that possibility as well. The night is young. You armed?"

  Though I'm licensed to carry concealed in Ohio, the gun laws between there and New Hampshire are not reciprocal-so carrying a gun here, that would be illegal. I had three on me. "You really want to know?" I asked.

  "No. Be careful."

  His concern was touching. "I will."

  Ritter moved off then stopped again. "Hey. Maybe after all this is done?you and I could, you know, go out and get something to eat?"

  Really? He was asking me out on a date? At a time like this?

  Before I could say yes he slipped off, swallowed up by the darkness.