Backslide

A wet thud.

Mike Eiser saw Charlie Bozeman’s head dissolve into a spray of blood and brains. A tenth of a second later, Eiser’s brain registered the sound of the shot; two-tenths of a second later, Eiser’s nose was flat on the bottom of the gully he was in belly crawling frantically for a culvert fifty feet in front of him.

Good news; no more shots, he had not been seen. Bad news; they would quickly come to check out Charlie’s body.

The culvert was just large enough for Eiser to sit up and turn around. Rattlesnakes, moccasins, copperheads all loved to hang out in culverts. He almost filled his shorts at the idea he might have deadly company. No snakes; just spiders. Big colorful spiders had spun webs over the entrance. A few black widows just inside retreated and let him in; “come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly”. He could sit with his back to one wall and watch both ways – just a darker lump to anyone looking in. A sunlight-filled orb to the left; a sunlight-filled orb to the right; Mike in the middle. The broken spider webs screamed out his location to anyone who cared to look. Right then, no one was looking.

Quietly, he drew a Glock 17 from a flapjack holster, then, a Glock 26 from an ankle holster. Slowly and quietly he jacked rounds into the firing chambers of both. He could shoot left and right handed; but shooting to the right was not his strong point. His left hand grasped the Glock 26 to shoot if they came at him from the right; the 17 was grasped by his right hand in case they came from the left. He prayed they wouldn’t come from the right. He waited.

Dogs…could he hear them running down the slope? Ploughing through leaves, parting or snapping low twigs and limbs, and panting as they ran. Rottweilers, Dobermans, Shepherds, what? His bladder threatened to void; he held on by a thread knowing the dogs would smell it. He couldn’t deal with dogs. No time to aim, not enough bullets; but they could only come at him one at a time in the culvert. Were their shadows falling across the sunlit culvert ends? What if they came from both ends at once? What then? He could smell their stinking breath as their white canine teeth tore into his legs and their slobbering muzzles leaped for his throat. The image overwhelmed him; he wet himself anyway.

Whoa! Enough imagination! Chill! How many could there be? Would there be? Would there be any chance at all? Charlie never had a chance, did he? Slowly, Eiser forced himself to calm down.

There were no dogs. No one came at all.

Dark came instead. A family of opossums made their way through his culvert ignoring him. When they ambled out the other end on their way down the gully, Eiser reassembled his sanity and slowly and quietly crawled from the culvert behind the ‘possum family, listening for noises from both up and down slope. Charlie’s body was still where it fell; head mostly gone; his gore lining a few square feet of the gully. Eiser moved past it, slowly and quietly down-stream. Eventually, he made it down the hill to where he parked his old Toyota 4Runner. Hidden in the dark tree line, he watched the car and parking area until his imagination became realer than the still night. Time to go.

The next morning, Eiser and Sheriff Glen Glassman leaned against the Sheriff’s new Dodge Charger while the Coroner’s technicians brought Charlie’s body down to their van parked alongside. The roadside was dotted with a GBI crime scene van and several police cars. The steep slope and thick underbrush made slow treacherous going for the techs. The coroner’s techs were sweating and breathing hard even though the temperature was cool. There was nothing easy about getting a big man’s body down a thickly wooded hillside.

Looking hard at the Sheriff, the chief tech said, “Tough one, Sheriff”. A GBI Agent walked over to listen in.

Glassman broke his gaze and stared up at the tree line. “Tell me about it!”

“One shot. I’d say probably. 30 caliber, .300 magnum, .308…something like that. Probably wasn’t close, but if the Deputies and crime scene guys are lucky maybe they can find the shooter’s position. I don’t know, though. It’s pretty rough up there; a lot of places to hide.”

Glassman didn’t reply. The techs finished loading the body and drove off. The GBI Agent watched them leave, then, returned to where Glassman and Eiser stood. He held out his hand to Eiser.

“Carl Kennedy, GBI“, he said, “It’s nice to meet you, Detective Eiser. Sorry, it’s got to be under these circumstances.”

Eiser looked at him hard for a moment, and then held out his hand. “Mike Eiser. I’ve seen you around town the past few months, off and on.”

“Yeah, we get around. We’ve got a few things going on here and there, you know, so we show up from time to time. I understand you worked closely with Detective Bozeman. Your partner, right?”

“Yeah, taught me everything I know about being a cop.”

“You know we’ll need to talk back at the office later today, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Ok, I’m going to check on the forensics people. I’ll catch up to you later at the office.” Kennedy walked off toward the woods.

After a minute, Glassman broke the silence. “So why you, Eiser? Why are you the lucky one? Charlie had been with me more than twenty years. Why is it him laying in that van instead of you”?

Eiser looked up at Glassman without meeting his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t know, Sheriff; just don’t know.

“Hell, I wouldn’t have wanted to lose you either. If the two of you were together, I just don’t get why Charlie bought it and you didn’t, that’s all.”

Eiser looked around at the tree line. The north Georgia woods stretched thick and rough upslope to the tops of steep hills here.

“Could be the shooter never saw me. Could be the shot was deflected by a branch. Could be the shooter miscalculated. It was a down-hill shot; they’re tricky. There are a thousandreasons a sniper’s slug can go wrong. He could have had a score to settle with Charlie for some reason and not me.”

Glassman stared at Eiser through narrowed eyebrows. “Yeah, I was a Marine sniper, remember?”

“Then you know,” Eiser replied as a small group of uniformed deputies leading a golden retriever left the tree line. “Here are the rest of the guys now. Maybe they found something”

Glassman looked up expectantly. He stuck a plug of tobacco between his jaw and gum as Sergeant Willie Marcus walked up to him. “Nothing, Sheriff. We projected the shot line the best we could, but we couldn’t find the shooter’s position. Paddy alerted once, but he seemed confused and disoriented. No drugs anyway. So, we didn’t find the shooter’s location even though we covered the area pretty well.”

Eiser rode with the Sheriff in his Dodge Charger. Besides a mirror polish, courtesy of a jail trustee, the pitch black car sported a sleek modern light bar and a forest of antennas for a variety of radio channels. The front seat was graced with the latest integral laptop computer and all digital communications system. Eiser contrasted his on-again-off-again portable handheld radio to the Sheriff’s toys.

“So what were you and Charlie doing up there?”

“Just looking around. That old homestead has been for sale for a while. I’m considering buying it for a peach orchard. Just when I got the down payment together, Charlie tells me the old house is being used regularly by some sort of gang, maybe bikers, I don’t know, as a place to deal drugs and sex to high school kids at night. Charlie was planning a raid one night but wanted to shore up the informants’ stories, so we went up there to look it over during the day.”

Glassman rolled down the car’s window and spit tobacco juice on the road. “You had an informant?”

“Two actually.”

“Names?”

“Sheriff, we have files on them at the office. They’re confidential informants. If I named all my confidential informants in conversations, I wouldn’t have any would I?”

“No, but I’m the Sheriff. I just lost a detective and a good friend and I need to know who they are…hell, you should want me to know who they are!” He rolled down the window to spit again.

“Johnny Mason and Leander Lively”

“God! What a tag-team! No wonder Charlie was trying to shore up their stories. I wouldn’t trust either of them to predict rain if they were already ankle deep!”

“Exactly.”

“Who did you tell that you were going out there?”

“Only dispatch. Dispatch logged it.”

“Why were you walking up the gully?”

“The road that crosses the gully at the culvert is the normal way in, but there some trees fallen across it. Some from storms, but a couple were recently and cut down with a chain-saw.

Someone didn’t want anyone driving in that way and we didn’t want to be conspicuous even though it’s an abandoned property.”

“Is that the only way in? How do the school kids get there?”

“That’s the only road. You have to walk to get in. More secure that way. There are fire lanes across the slope, a few animal trails, the gully bottom and I think there’s an old road and some old dirt bike trails on the back side that show up on aerial photographs. I know a bunch of kids used to ride trail bikes up there a long time ago. But there’s a regular recent path worn in the gully bottom.”

“Who did you expect to see? More importantly, who did you expect to see you?”

“We didn’t expect to see anyone; and during the day, we didn’t expect anyone was there to see us.”

They pulled into the Sheriff’s Office and the Sheriff carefully parked the Crown Vic. He opened the door and spat on the ground. “You need to take over managing the informants. Make sure I know everything you plan to do before you do it. Get started on your report and bring me those informant’s files this afternoon.”

“Sure, Sheriff”, Eiser said, “Quick question; who were those GBI guys? I know I’ve seen them around a lot. Have they got something going on we need to know about?

“They’re part of the Gang Initiative Squad. They dabble mostly in drug, biker and Aryan Brotherhood stuff.”

“And, why are they here?”

“I don’t know. They don’t share much with us, but I think it has to do with a drug and sex ring victimizing some of the local kids. Maybe the same one you and Charlie were working on. Anyway, I expect them to take over the case eventually, so I guess we’ll be the support team.”

“Oh, “Eiser said. Turning to go to his desk, he made a mental note to check out Carl Kennedy more closely.

Eiser sat at his desk and stared at his computer screen. He had to write a report and knew from experience that the longer he waited, the dimmer the details became. Still, he couldn’t make himself begin writing. He had lost a friend, a partner, a mentor; his trainer.

He looked around his small bare space. No family pictures. He was young, unmarried, no children and his parents were dead. He hadn’t been a detective long but he was pretty talented, so he figured he’d be a detective for some time to come. He had grown up in the town, gone to school there, except for college, gone to church there and knew everyone by their first name. Such were small Georgia towns that unless you left and moved to Atlanta, Savannah or some other large city whatever the town could offer became your entire life.

Still, he could never remember a murder occurring here. He could remember domestic disputes with battery, drunken brawls, petty shoplifting and, more recently, crack cocaine in town and a couple of clandestine methamphetamine labs in house trailers in the nearby hills, but no murders. It was madness that the county’s first murder should be a cop; especially Charlie.

He thought about Charlie; his wife and two daughters sitting with him in the pew at the Baptist Church on Sunday. Charlie was a deacon, a lay preacher, and a Sunday school teacher.

They never had a vacation Bible school that Charlie didn’t take time off to teach. The family always sat together in the same pew. He was going to miss seeing him sitting there. He thought about him as a detective, as his friend and mentor and the good times they had together rousting drunks, coaching softball or basketball, giving “Just Say No to Drug” talks to kids. He thought about Charlie’s father, a life-long farm equipment salesman, at Wright’s Tractor and Farm Supply; and Charlie’s mom, a life-long nurse at the community hospital. There was nothing wrong with those kinds of lives.

But was that all there is? All those people born, living and dying in the same place? Living their entire lives in a radius of ten miles? Maybe Charlie died before he ever realized he was alive; or, maybe his life was all he had ever wanted or needed. Thousands of people are that way; many more thousands aren't.

He punched the first computer key. Touching the first key made him think through the events of the preceding hours. The dog alerted according to Sgt. Marcus. That was odd. The dog was trained to find drugs. For him to alert, there had to have been drugs in the vicinity but apparently the drugs were no longer there. Maybe the shooter had been handling drugs. Maybe he carried drugs in his pocket for sale or his own use. That was consistent with the informants’ story about a gang of some sort selling drugs to high school kids there at night. If the dog alerted, he thought, they should have been able to find the shooter's position. The dog should have gone right to it. The shooting position couldn't have been far away from where they searched.

An hour later, he and Deputy Billy Moran, the canine officer, and his dog, Paddy, were standing in the gully where Charlie was shot. “Paddy alerted up behind those trees, just upslope there,” Moran pointed to a thicket of saplings a little more than a hundred meters up the slope. Climbing the slope, they walked a zigzag search pattern that eventually passed through the saplings. Paddy didn’t alert; once again, he showed signs of confusion.

Eiser racked his brain. If he was looking for where a sniper had laid waiting, what would he see? Boot tracks? Disturbed leaves or soil? Flattened grass? Broken twigs? There! Leaves pushed aside and mounded slightly at the base of that small beech sapling, a matching amount of leaves a little further away. Leaves flattened slightly between them, grass bent but not yet straightened after a night of dew, slight scuff marks in the compacted earth where boot toes had pushed a body erect.

Paddy came back repeatedly to a single area of the hide location but didn’t alert. Eiser could see nothing in the area, but he suspected that was where the sniper’s left pocket would have been. Laying as sniper would, he could see a very short distance along the gully between two large hickory trees. Thick sumac bushes and briars along the top bank of the gully prevented him from seeing the gully’s bottom or anything in the gully less than about six feet high. Charlie was six feet three inches tall. Eiser was five feet eight inches tall. The sniper would be able to see Charlie clearly as he walked into the sight-picture between the hickories; he probably would not have seen Eiser.

Holding his arms as though he were firing a rifle along the sight line, Eiser looked carefully along the ground to the right and slightly forward. About six feet out and partially covered by a leaf, he finally spotted the spent cartridge casing. Un-weathered bright brass, it reflected some of the shade scattered morning sunlight. .308 caliber; a round capable of accuracy well within the diameter of a human head at more than 1000 yards; a great choice for snipers.

Timing. Charlie had been walking forward; had there been time for a shot as Charlie crossed the space between the two trees? They had not been walking fast; Eiser estimated it would take Charlie about four strides or a little better than two full seconds to cross the gap. Range about 110 meters downslope. Outside the capabilities of a casual rifleman, thought Eiser, but well within the capabilities of a military or a police trained sniper who would be an expert with the .308 round.

Returning to the Sheriff’s Office, Eiser knocked on the Sheriff’s door. Hearing “enter”, he opened the door to find Carl Kennedy and another GBI Agent, Steve Kiner, with Glassman.

“Come in, Eiser, these guys want to talk to you. Where have you been anyway, we’ve been looking for you.”

“Billy Moran and I found where the shooter laid up; found his brass, too; a .308 casing.”

Glassman frowned. Kennedy and Kiner glanced at each other.

“You found the brass?" Glassman asked, “Sure it’s not just a hunter’s old casing?”

“Not with it nice and shiny and laying next to fresh evidence that the shooter was laying there. It’s a new casing.”

“Where is now?” asked Kennedy.

“In an evidence bag, marked properly and locked in the evidence locker.”

“I see”, nodded Kennedy.

Glassman cleared his throat. “You guys need to interview Detective Eiser anyway, so you go on to the interview room and I’ll send him your way shortly.”

“Fine.” Kennedy and his partner left the room.

Turning to Eiser, Glassman said, “Where exactly did you find that casing?”

“Found it in a stand of saplings about 110 yards upslope, at about 10 o’clock from the body.”

“Clear sight picture?”

“Not really. It was framed by large hickories and floored by head-high sumac…about a two second shot opportunity I’d say.”

Glassman was quiet for a second. “Ok, bring me those informant files, then run along and talk to GBI. Be nice! They’re trying to help.”

The interview with GBI covered old ground Eiser had already been over with the Sheriff. There was nothing new, but now GBI knew it too. As Eiser left the conference room, Kennedy smirked, “Didn’t fuck up my crime scene did you, son?”

Pausing, he turned to face Kennedy, “No sir, no more than your people fucked it up by not finding it to start with. Besides, you’ve been working in this county long enough to know you can’t keep secrets from this office. What are you here for, anyway?

“Need to know, “smirked Kennedy, “and you don’t need to know!” He glared back at Kennedy and caught Kiner’s frown out of the corner of his eye as he turned and walked down the hall toward his desk. He worked his anger out by typing furiously on his report until his shift ended.

Eiser went home to his small white house on the edge of town. It wasn’t much; pretty modest in fact, but he was not married, and detectives didn’t make a lot of money, so it worked well for him. A pleasant front porch with a rocking chair suited him. He could find peace there at least some of the time. A cold beer, his feet on the railing…dinner could wait. He felt peace beginning to fall down around him. Or maybe it wasn’t peace after all; maybe it was just the alcohol taking effect.

“Detective Eiser! Wake up; I need to talk to you!” The sound vibrated in his head. Surely he was dreaming. “Wake up, Detective!”

Standing on his porch was a man in blue jeans, a red Georgia Bulldog tee-shirt and snakeskin cowboy boots. A red plaid flannel shirt partly covered the Georgia tee-shirt. Eiser vaguely recognized the man as Lamar Mason, Johnny Mason’s dad. Eiser blinked his eyes open and looked at Mason groggily.

“What’s happening, Lamar?”

“Hate to bother you at home, but Johnny didn’t come home after football practice, that’s what’s happening!”

Eiser looked at his watch. 10:00 PM. He really had been asleep.

“Anywhere he could have gone?”

“I’ve looked everywhere I know to look. There’s nowhere else I can think of.”

Thinking out loud, and still blinking sleep out of his eyes, Eiser said, “umm, we usually don’t take a missing person report for a day or two. He wasn’t mad about anything or at anybody was he?”

“No, and he’s fifteen. It’s not like him to just disappear.”

“No girlfriends he could be hanging with?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“I’ll pass the word around. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

Shit! One of our informants, Eiser thought. Isn’t that convenient? Johnny running out just as Charlie’s murdered. Damn bad luck...if we had any luck at all. Then again, Johnny’s fifteen. He has limited options, so he couldn’t be far away. He called dispatch and made an initial missing person’s report on Johnny. He’d catch hell from Glassman tomorrow, but he’d deal with that when it happened.

Eiser stared into his morning coffee as though scurrying into a crystal ball. After Lamar’s late night visit, Eiser had gone through another six-pack in the vain hope of getting sufficiently blasted to get back to sleep. It hadn’t worked. Now, he felt every ounce of alcohol and every minute of lost sleep.

Margie, the waitress, gave him a bright smile and filled his coffee cup. “Don’t want to be happy today?” she asked.

“Guess not”, Eiser replied, “Just didn’t sleep much last night.”

“It’s a real shame about Charlie. Looks like our little town is in the big leagues now; you know, murders and all. That why you couldn’t sleep?”

“Guess so.”

“What did Glen pick up Johnny and Leander for yesterday? It didn’t have anything to do with Charlie, did it?”

“Don’t know; when did you see them with Glen?”

“Yesterday, late afternoon, they were in the back seat of Glen’s car.”

“He must have been giving them a ride home from football practice.”

“No, they were headed out Beaver Run Road. It seemed strange to me since neither one lived out there. I thought you might know about it.”

“Guess not; Thanks for telling me, though.”

Dealing with the missing person’s report came sooner than later. Sheriff Glassman was waiting behind the front desk for him.

“Eiser! My office, now!”

Eiser looked into his cold blue eyes for a moment and then walked into Glassman’s office. Glassman came in and shut the door, hard, behind him.

“What do you mean filing a missing person report on Johnny Mason? You know the policy says missing at least twenty-fours before a report is filed! The kid’s probably hanging out with his friends somewhere. They may have gone to the lake for a midnight swim for all we know”

“Yeah, like Rene Phillips, the gay activist, went for a midnight swim in Lake Lanier a month ago? There was hardly enough of him left to identify by the time he floated up. Not saying Johnny’s dead, but doing the report didn’t hurt anything, Sheriff. Lamar came to me upset about Johnny not coming home. Lamar works all the time, but he’s not negligent and he deserves some help, so I didn’t see any harm in letting the guys know to keep eyes out for Johnny. I know he’s fifteen and could be goofing off anywhere, but what’s the harm in the alert. If nothing else, it’s good practice.

Glassman frowned, sat down in his chair and looked thoughtful. Eiser looked around the office. He’d been in it before, but hadn’t paid attention; especially to the large glass gun cabinet on the wall behind Glassman’s desk.

“Oh man, Sheriff, I love your gun collection. Looks like you’ve covered a lot of firearm history there.”

“Yeah, it’s my pride and joy, that collection.”

“What’s your favorite?”

“That’s easy, the one on the end. It’s a Marine Corps M40A1 sniper rifle. It’s the rifle I carried in Viet Nam. That one has the 3 X 9 variable Redfield Scope they came with originally. I always liked the Redfield scope better than the Unertl 10X that I used in Nam.

“If you mind my asking, where did you get it?”

“Got it for a song at a gun show a few years ago. So cheap, I figured it was hot!” He chuckled. Eiser didn’t share the chuckle. “Anyway, go back to work and no more missing person reports unless they’ve been gone at least twenty-four, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

A few minutes of Internet research confirmed for Eiser that the M40A1 fired the .308 Winchester round similar to the casing he had found at the murder scene. He was putting a circumstantial picture together in his mind; a military trained sniper, a M40A1 sniper rifle, a .308 casing, a dead detective, a missing informant, who was seen in the Sheriff’s car after he allegedly went missing and a story about drugs and sex at an abandoned homestead, coincidentally, one he’d been planning to buy. Could the Sheriff be part of this?

Maybe he could close one loop at least; property ownership. If he controlled the property, maybe he could control at least part of the activity. The arrangements were finished for the purchase, all he had to do was to close the sale; He called the real estate broker to schedule the closing. Then, he went back to work on his report.

Leander Lively was reported missing near the end of the day. Glassman didn’t say a word; He couldn’t. Leander had been gone more than twenty-four hours.

“Good morning, Detective” said Carl Kennedy, “Want to grab some coffee, meet me in the interview room and bring us up to speed on your missing informants?”

Eiser ignored the implied sneer and said, “Sure, I’ll be right there.”

Thirty minutes later, he stepped into the interview room. Kennedy and Kiner looked irritated but calm. Kennedy opened.

“Detective, what do you know about your two underage informants being sexually abused?”

“Absolutely nothing; that issue has never come up in our discussions with them.”

Kennedy took a legal document several pages thick from a file folder. “And yet, right here I hold an affidavit signed by Lamar Mason, and have another in this file signed by Clara Lively, Leander’s mother accusing both you and Detective Bozeman of having illicit sexual relations with both boys. In the affidavits, they accuse you of luring the boys to the old homestead for the purpose of sex. Lamar Mason confesses to shooting Charlie Bozeman to save his son humiliation and embarrassment. Looks like one case closes, and another opens.”

Stunned, Eiser said nothing. Then he said, “I don’t know how you obtained those, but nothing of the sort ever happened. The boys were informants in a specific case and nothing more. They were never at the homestead with us, at least not with me, and I seriously doubt they were ever there with Charlie. If they ever were there, it was not for sex with us or anyone associated with us. Now, I am saying nothing else to you without a lawyer.” He stood and left the room.

Carl Kennedy looked at Kiner and grinned. “My, my, how the noose tightens; he never saw that coming.”

Eiser walked. What the Hell was going on? No one raped those boys. Why would Lamar and Clara say such things? He walked through town both ways, end to end, side to side, then, grabbed a burger for lunch. Before heading back to the office, he stopped into the North Georgia Hardware and Lumber Company to see Lamar.

Lamar wasn’t there. Ben Grady, the owner, hadn’t heard from him. Grady was a little worried; Lamar was good about calling if he was going to be out. Eiser walked back to the office and asked the dispatcher to send a deputy to Lamar’s place a couple of miles out of town. Then, he called Clara Lively. No answer. Oh, shit!

He was nearly to Clara’s driveway when he heard dispatch say, “Dispatch to unit 14.” He was unit 14.

“14, go.”

“Unit 10 advises Lamar Mason was found unconscious and believed dead in his garage. Paramedics and ambulance are on the way.”

“Roger, Dispatch. I’m headed that way.”

He pulled into Clara’s driveway, loosened the Glock in his holster and got out. He knocked on the door. No answer. He looked through a garage window. Nothing. He found the backdoor unlocked, the window glass above the lock broken. He found Clara in the kitchen, her neck broken.

“14 to dispatch.”

“Dispatch, go.”

“I’m at Clara Lively’s home, 223 W. Clarkston Road. Ms Lively appears to be dead in the kitchen. Please contact paramedics and ambulance.” He choked down tears.

“Roger 14. They’re on their way.”

“Dispatch, who responded to Lamar Mason’s location?”

“The Sheriff, Sergeant Marcus, and Agent Kennedy responded.”

“Where is Agent Kiner?”

“Agent Kiner responded to your location.”

“Roger, Dispatch. Thanks”

The paramedics and Kiner arrived together. Eiser ignored Kiner as he examined the crime scene carefully. The murderer had broken the window, reached through, and turned the lock. A butcher knife lay on the floor near the body; defensive wounds on her arms and a large bruise on the side of her face told the story of her panic and her struggle against someone bigger and stronger.

“Two murders in three days. Not what you'd expect in these quiet little towns. I guess you all are catching up with modern times”, said Kiner.

Eiser ignored him.

Speaking quietly, Kiner said, “I doubt that you’ll have to worry about the investigation; I expect you will be charged with child abuse and suspended before long. Too bad, so sad; you would have made a pretty good detective, you know. Now, you’ll be just another promising person rotting in prison.”

Eiser continued to ignore him. The crime scene team and coroner’s technicians arrived and Eiser left for Lamar Mason’s house. He wondered how long it would be before he was charged.

There was no truth in the charges, but he would be suspended and unable to do his job until they were resolved. And, Kiner was wrong; it was three homicides in three days. Kiner was right about one thing, though. Murder was unprecedented in this town, let alone three in three days, and the Mason and Lively kids were still missing.

There were no broken necks from kitchen struggles at the Mason house. Knocked unconscious from behind with something heavy and blunt, Lamar had been stuffed into his car which was then started and left to run out of gas in a closed garage. It was classic murder by carbon monoxide poisoning. No clues; even the assault weapon had disappeared.

That night, the real estate agent called Eiser and told him the property closing was scheduled in two days; but even that good news and the intervention of two six-packs did not help Eiser sleep that night.

The next day was Charlie's funeral. Class “A” uniforms, black bands covering the badges of a variety of law enforcement agencies, accompanied the dark suits and dresses of Charlie’s friends and family as practically everyone in town filled the Baptist Church. Charlie was well known and well respected. Eiser was a pall-bearer, as were other deputies and detectives, resplendent in class “A” uniforms, some of which hadn't been worn since the day their owners were sworn in. The Sheriff made sure that Charlie received the full law enforcement honors and the full military honors due a respected detective and decorated Marine veteran. The massive lights and siren procession from the church the two miles to the cemetery was something to see.

Carl Kennedy and Steve Kiner stood near the back and quietly watched as the guests filed past the grave and paid their respects to Carol Bozeman and her and Charlie’s two daughters. Eiser watched them and wondered what they were thinking; Charlie dead, his partner accused of child abuse. He wondered if they were really trying to investigate anything. As far as he knew, he was the only person they had interviewed about Charlie’s death, or the charges pending against him, or even Lamar or Clara’s deaths. The kids were still missing, and instead of bringing in investigative help, Kennedy and Kiner didn’t seem to Eiser like they cared at all.

Eiser made his way to the diner for coffee and a sandwich. The Sheriff joined him. “Hard Day, Mike,” Glassman said, “Charlie was the best of the best.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you going through with buying that property?”

“Yeah. Maybe I can clean it up and keep kids from getting in trouble out there.”

“That’s a pretty good house on that property; been abandoned a long time, though. The last time I saw it, it was still tight and in good shape; just needed a good cleaning.”

“That’s pretty much the way I saw it.”

“Of course, I don't know how whoever is using it will react to a new owner.”

“Guess I’ll have to find out.”

“Yeah, I guess you will.”

“Sheriff, Margie told me that she saw Johnny and Leander in the back seat of your car the afternoon of the day they disappeared. She said you were headed out Beaver Run Road. Can you tell me where you all were going?”

Glassman paused and looked thoughtful for a second. “Yeah, they’d left their bicycles at Morgan Johnson’s house out by the Beaver Run Bridge. You know where Johnson’s place is. Well I thought I’d give ‘em a lift and the thrill of a ride in a police car out to get their bikes. It’d be a couple of miles to walk.”

“Did they say why their bikes were at Johnson’s?”

“Yeah, Johnson put new tubes in the tires and replaced some spokes for them.”

“Oh, I see. Thanks, Sheriff.”

Glassman watched Eiser walk away thoughtfully. Eiser was sharp; maybe he would work out better than he had thought.

Eiser went home. Already tired from several sleepless nights in a row, the shock of Lamar and Clara’s murders, and the stress of Charlie’s funeral had taken their toll. He turned on the TV and fell asleep before the sleeping pill took effect.

The closing went smoothly. Eiser became the owner of the wooded hillside property. He decided to take the afternoon to hike the property and examine the house more closely. Not only did he plan to clean the property up and prevent its use for illegal activity but he hoped to live there as well.

Before leaving the office, he stopped by Glassman’s office to let him know what he was doing.

Pulling the tree logs from across the road with his 4Runner, he soon had the road clear to the house. The two-story log house sat in a clearing halfway up the hill. Its large windows embraced a view over the surrounding tree tops and over the valley toward the town. Dust, dirt, a few cobwebs, but not bad. The worst was the mess inside. Downstairs, beer bottles, a fortune in aluminum cans, crack and meth paraphernalia; upstairs, old mattresses on the floor in each of the rooms; the bathrooms were disasters. Junkies didn’t bother to clean; their pimps and pushers didn’t either.

After two hours the downstairs was cleaner; the junk was in garbage cans, and the sun was dropping lower in the sky. High pitched engine noises could be heard coming up the back-slope; the dirt bike trails. There was a lower engine noise as well. More like a truck.

Eiser loosened his Glocks in their holsters. Now, maybe he would find out who was using the place. But nothing unusual came in sight through any of the windows. Because of the trees, he could only see a couple of hundred feet around the house anyway. After a few minutes, he slipped quietly thorough the door onto the front porch. The porch light near his shoulder shattered.

No discernible time difference between the glass breaking and the rifle’s loud report. Close! A warning, since very few shooters would miss at that close range. Instantly, ducking back through the door, his back rammed hard into a round cylindrical object; a shotgun muzzles.

“Be still!” a deep voice said. “You can listen, do what we say, and live a little while longer; or not. It’s up to you. Now, backup slowly.”

Slowly Eiser backed away from the door toward the center of the room. Reaching the center of the room, he was told to stop moving and a second man, also with a shotgun, moved to face him. Over six feet, all power-lifting muscle, tattoos, shaved head and a permanent scowl, he looked like an Aryan Nation poster child with the matching attitude. Shit! What was the one behind, the one speaking one word into a portable radio, like?

“Clear.”

There was a static acknowledgement from a keyed mike, not a verbal answer. A few seconds later, Carl Kennedy walked in wearing body armor and carrying a M40A1 sniper rifle on a shoulder sling.

“Good evening, Detective.”

Eiser just stared at him.

“It looks like we just caught you with the goods, boy. You’re going to get your ass spanked good!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, “Eiser said, “But you’re trespassing on private property. I own this place now.”

“I’m disappointed. I really expected you to put the pieces together better than that.”

“What pieces?”

Before he could reply, the back door opened and Steve Kiner, also in body armor, appeared dragging two stumbling boys; Johnny Mason and Leander Lively. Both had trouble standing, dilated pupils and slurred the words they were mumbling to some imagined song.

“Enter the meth-kings,” said Kiner triumphantly, “relaxed and compliant!”

“Boxer, go upstairs and bring a mattress down”, Kennedy said to the tattooed man-mountain in front of Eiser. A minute later he returned with one of the mattresses. “Now, go get the video gear.” Boxer scrambled out the back door. The second man, behind Eiser, continued to cover Eiser with the shotgun. Boxer returned a few seconds later with a video camera.

Kennedy turned to Eiser, “See, this is how this works, we just caught you in the act of having sex with these boys. We’re going to make a little pornographic videotape of the action for use at your trial, assuming you live to have one.“

“What if I refuse to touch them?”

Kennedy pulled his Glock, fired, and a bullet hole appeared in the floor where Eiser’s right little toe had once been.

“Shit! You bastard!”

“A demonstration. The next one is your ankle, get it? That’s how the game’s played. If you get out of hand, just so you know, AK, behind you and Boxer, in front of you, are experts with their shotguns. They won’t waste shells on toes.”

Eiser tried to ignore the pain and the blood seeping out of his shoe.

“What about the kids? What happens to them?”

“What about ‘em? They’ve been on methamphetamine continually three or four days now, so they’re fucked up and feeling no pain. They’re junkies now; they need a long swim like that fag, Rene Phillips last month.

“So you killed him, too? Like you killed the boy’s parents?”

“Yeah, sure. AJ and Boxer are great! They have no conscience, none at all. They don’t think twice about killing. You need it done; it’s done. Too bad about the parents; wrong place wrong time, but Phillips was a fag and fags are perverts like you’re a pervert, and perverts get what they deserve.”

A voice behind Eiser called out, “Kennedy, you need some help in there!”

Kennedy went pale. He drew his Glock and backpedaled toward the door behind Eiser. “Turn around, you pervert”, he yelled at Eiser.

AJ moved left, Boxer moved right along the walls. Kiner drew his Glock and moved across the room to the right of the back door.

Sheriff Glassman stepped into the back door frame, his Glock down at his side pointed at the floor. Kiner was against the wall immediately to his right, but Glassman was not inside the room.

Kennedy pointed his Glock squarely in Eiser’s right eye and said, “I caught him in the act, Sheriff. He was going have sex with those boys.” He gestured with his left hand toward Mason and Lively. “He drugged them with meth and brought them here to make pornography”. He gestured at the video equipment piled on the floor. “He bought this property to use it to make child pornography and he killed their parents in retaliation for the affidavits they signed.”

“That so, Kennedy?”

“That’s so Sheriff,” said Kennedy. To Eiser he yelled, “Hands up, scumbag!”

Eiser just stared at him. “I don’t think so. I don’t think we need your shit!”

Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. He stuck the Glock in Eiser’s eye and pulled the slack out of the trigger. The sound of the shot split the room wide open; Eiser died for a moment, but, somehow, it was Kennedy’s brains and blood that were suddenly scattered on the floor. The Sheriff’s Glock moved to the next target; a double tap in the head dumped AJ like a box of rocks. Boxer fired his shotgun at the Sheriff; but Eiser, with no time to draw and aim properly, threw his Glock at Boxer. Boxer’s 00 buck load dismantled Kiner’s left knee. Another shotgun blast from the open front door, courtesy of Sergeant Willie Marcus, splattered Boxer’s head. Eiser scooped up Kennedy’s Glock while looking for targets.

“Easy, cowboy,” said the Sheriff, “It’s over.”

So it was. Soon, ambulances took the two kids and Kiner to the hospital, where the kids would eventually recover.

“Did you get everything, Sheriff?”

“Yeah, the signal was good; the recording is fine. How did you know it was them?”

“Things they did things they didn’t do; hunches, you know, sometimes you can’t describe it, but you just know.”

“You know, if they could have taken you down on those trumped up abuse charges this property would have been a felony seizure and they may have been able to get title to it to continue their drug, sex and pornography ring. You saved yourself, this property, and this community a big problem.

“I never really thought about it like that. I just wanted to catch Charlie’s killer. I figured he would show up as soon as I bought the place. Well, I guess Kennedy found his special spot in hell. Kiner’s headed to prison. He’ll lose that leg. He may avoid the death penalty since I doubt he personally pulled any triggers, but he’ll be a one-legged man in hell anyway.”

“Who else did you suspect?”

“No one, really.”

“Not even me?”

“Of course not, Sheriff, why would I suspect you?”

“Well, maybe the conversation we had about the sniper rifle, or about the kids in my car, for openers.”

“A sniper rifle doesn’t a murderer make.”

“Maybe you’ll make a good detective after all.”

THE END

Thank you for reading Backslide. I hope it brought you as much enjoyment to read it as it brought me to write it. If you enjoyed it, please continue to follow the Detective Mike Eiser Stories volume 2, Hot Summer Nights. I would really like your comments about the story! You may leave them on your retailer’s website or at cpolk625@gmail.com.

If you didn’t enjoy the story, I’m sorry it didn’t meet your expectations. Because it didn’t meet your expectations, I want and need your comments even more. As new Indie writer, your comments are the only way I can receive feedback that is useful to improve my writing skills and, hopefully, better meet your expectations next time. All of your comments are welcome at cpolk625@gmail.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Clabe Polk is into a second career as a writer of fiction. So far, he has written two novels, several short stories, assorted screen plays and has a couple of novels in process. He is a life-long reader with a great variety of life experiences that has led him to write a variety of different types of fiction.

Mr. Polk retired after nearly thirty-seven years in professional environmental protection, that included administrative, civil and criminal law enforcement. Holding a Marine Zoology Degree from the University of South Florida, Mr. Polk grew up in the fields and farms of Florida, fishing, hunting, sailing, and doing a million other things from designing and building houses and furniture to music.

He currently lives in Powder Springs, Georgia with his wife, two daughters and the family’s cockerpoo named ‘Annie’.