not have her glasses on, but the redneck with his assault rifle outside her police car
looked familiar in a fuzzy sort of way.
“Sit up very slowly,” she said to Brazil.
“What for?” He wasn’t ready yet.
“Trust me,” she told him.
vft It was just as well that condensation had formed on the glass.
Bubba could not see exactly what was going on inside the dark blue Ford Crown
Victoria, but he had a pretty good idea. This heightened his excitement, making him
more certain that he was going to waste these two after doing something really, really bad
to them first. If there were two things Bubba could not endure in life, they were queers
making out, and straights making out. When he saw queers flirting,
touching, Bubba wanted to beat the shit out them and then leave them dying in a ditch.
When he saw what he thought he was looking at right now inside this police car, he felt
pretty much the same impulse.
People with money, importance, or a good sex life, and especially all three, made Bubba
insane with righteous outrage. It was his calling, he was sure, to smite them in the name
of America.
^^ W West was not as frightened by the rifle with thirty rounds as most people would
have been, and her brain was powering up.
It seemed this was the creep from the Firing Line who had gotten arrested for exposing
himself in Latta Park. She had a pretty good idea why she had found Super Glue in her
shrubs, and she wished like hell that Brazil hadn’t busted the guy’s nose. All the same.
West was ready for violence. When anyone pointed a gun at her, there was a true cause
and effect that rapidly clicked into gear. Unhooking the mike, she placed it next to her
hip. She keyed it with her right hand, locking out all radio traffic in her response area.
Dispatchers, cops, reporters, and criminals with scanners, could hear nothing but her.
She rolled down her window a few inches.
“Please don’t shoot,” she said loudly.
Bubba was surprised and pleased by her rapid submission.
“Unlock the doors,” he ordered.
“Okay, okay,” West continued in the same loud, tense voice.
“I’m going to unlock the doors real slowly. Please don’t shoot. Please. We can work this out, all right? And if you start shooting here, everyone at the Seventy-six truck stop will
hear, so what good will it do?”
Bubba had already thought about this, and she was right.
“The two of you are getting in my truck,” he said.
“We’re taking a ride.”
“Why?” West kept on.
“What do you want from us? We have no problem with you.”
“Oh yeah?” He gripped the carbine tighter, loving the way the bitch in uniform was
groveling before him, the great Bubba.
“How about at the range the other night, when Queerbait there hit me?”
“You started it,” Brazil said to him and all listening to channel two.
“We can work this out,” West said again.
“Look. Let’s just get right back on Sunset, maybe meet somewhere where we can talk
about this? All these trucks coming in here, they’re looking. You don’t want witnesses,
and this isn’t a good place to be settling a dispute.”
Bubba thought they had already gone over this point. What he planned to do was shoot
them out near the lake, weigh their bodies down with cinder blocks, and dump them
where no one would find them until mud turtles had eaten important features. He heard
that happened. Crabs were bad on dead bodies, too, as were household pets, especially
cats, if locked up with dead owners and not fed, and eventually having no choice.
As Bubba deliberated, eight Charlotte patrol cars with flashing lights were speeding
along 1-77, now within minutes of the truck stop.
Shotguns were out and ready. The police helicopter was lifting from the helipad on top
of the LEC, sniper shooters poised. The SWAT team had been deployed. The FBI had
been called and agents were on standby, in the event hostage or terrorist negotiators, or
the Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit, or the Hostage Rescue Team, might be what it