Turkey Ranch Road Rage Read Free Page A

sputtering from the usually sterile-mouthed sheriff. “Get down here, Jolene.” Boom. “Now!”
    Click.
    The phone had gone dead so I tossed the receiver into the cradle, wondering exactly what I’d just heard. A worried sheriff for sure, but what else? Bullets? Bombs?
    Not in Kickapoo.
    Of course, in Kickapoo.
    After running the myriad possibilities through my ever-ready mental visual system, I determined that any slim chance of avoiding a trip to Texas had exploded right along with that loud boom on the other end of the phone. The only remaining question was how to get there. I usually drive. I always drive. I’m about an hour and a half from Denver International, and Kickapoo is two and a half hours from the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Add in wait times and car rental time and I can be at the Texas border. So why was I even thinking about flying? And what were the odds that I could get on a plane at my convenience that wouldn’t require me to take out a second mortgage?
    Since I had to log on to the Internet anyway to send the article—and assure that Dr Pepper money would be forthcoming—I decided to investigate one of the online ticket getters.
    I’ll spare you the lengthy details of the process, but if you’ve never bid for a plane ticket online, do not do so unless you really want to buy the ticket. Who’d have guessed my $168 random roundtrip figure would actually get me a seat on a jet to Dallas at the last minute? Not me, that’s for sure. Thanks to my eager fingers and ever-willing credit card number, I had about five hours to get myself seated and buckled aboard a southbound plane. Translated to real time, I had maybe an hour to get my house in order, throw some clothes in a bag and get out the door.
    Yes, I am insane, and it is clearly an inherited trait.

Chapter
Two
    Thanks to the friendly skies and a peppy rented Toyota—which cost more than what I’d get for that one lousy article—I arrived at the Bowman County jail a few minutes before ten that night.
    The courthouse, where the Sheriff’s Department resides, was dark, but I made my way around to the back. The main door was indeed open, but the secondary door where Jerry let himself in and out was locked, probably always was, now that I thought about it. Still, if I could avoid explaining myself to whoever was manning the front desk, all the better. I knocked, hard, until I saw a figure moving toward the small window. I wasn’t even a little surprised to see Deputy Leroy Harper eyeing me through the square re-enforced glass in the door. I waved and tried to smile.
    Leroy pushed open the door, nearly knocking me down. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
    I didn’t take offense as he sounded shocked, not homicidal as in previous episodes. Furthermore, I had asked myself that same question so many times that it had kind of lost its impact. “I didn’t have a choice, Leroy. You have my mother. Remember?”
    He shooed me inside and slammed the vault-like door behind me. “Well, yeah, Jerry told us you were coming, but I don’t know how you got here this fast.” He paused, propping his hands on his hips, which is no easy feat considering the width of his waistline. “Jerry called you not nine hours ago. You’d had to drive a hunnerd the whole way. That’s speeding, even in Colorado and New Mexico. How many tickets did you get? I’m not fixin’ any tickets. No can do.”
    And did I ask such a thing? “No tickets, Leroy,” I said, trying to ward off all the usual thoughts that inflict me at this particular moment in time, meaning the point where I really realize where I am and that I apparently don’t speak the same language as the natives. “I flew in to Dallas and rented a car. I obeyed the speed limit” mostly “and broke no other laws that I am aware of. Where’s my mother?”
    “Oh.” He sounded a little disappointed. “Lucille’s in the back office. We were just about to watch the news.”
    The jailer and the jailee