Hard Country: A Thriller

Chapter One

A trio of angry voices washed over the gravel county road in front of our restored Victorian perched on a low Northeast Texas hill. They carried onto our wraparound porch as if piped in on the cool easterly breeze.

You don’t tell me what to do! Either of you!

I couldn’t see the individuals a couple of hundred yards from where I sat in the swing, but the man’s furious tone rang with menace.

It was early fall, and the countryside was a riot of autumn color around our new sixteen-hundred-acre ranch. It was a lot of land, more than I ever thought I’d own, but my late wife, Sara Beth, had a million-dollar life insurance policy she’d bought on herself without telling me. I guess that’s how she splurged, playing the odds and providing for me and the girls.

Who would have thought that someone in such a potentially dangerous line of work in law enforcement like me would still be standing, when my wife and baby daughter died in a car wreck caused by someone’s stupid addiction to meth?

An ancient, sun-seasoned barn made of notched logs rested on another slight oak-covered hill across the county road on a separate piece of our property. Wood ducks passed over the house on their way to a heavily timbered pool just out of sight past the barn, and birds called from every tree.

The Realtor told me the original house ten miles from the town of Ganther Bluff partially burned a couple of years earlier, and the owners moved away once the new place was finished. My sixteen-year-old daughter Chloe and I toured the property in late summer when the trees were thick with foliage. It was exactly what we were looking for, and I thought the house was isolated when we signed the papers on the place.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

A woman’s voice thick with anger and decades of cigarette damage fired back. "You don’t think worth a dayum!"

Family arguments weren’t anything new to me after a career that first began as a trooper for the Texas Department of Public Safety, but I didn’t expect to hear them so close out there in the country. I wondered at the weird confluence of wind and weather conditions that brought me the family dispute.

His response was immediate. "You have two jobs, to keep the house clean and cook. You don’t do either one! Get off your ass and do something besides moon over that old boyfriend of yours! He’s not here, but I am!"

"That’s not what we’re talking about. Her voice cracked when she emphasized the word. You keep coming back around to that and I’m tired of…"

The fierce teenage female voice that cut her off rang sharp and shrill. "You two shut up! Shut up! I hate you both!"

I was already beginning to feel the same way, and I didn’t even know who they were.

I’m not sure why I bought so much land after my wife and youngest daughter were killed by an addict high on a new kind of meth called gravel. Looking back, I think it was because the ranch house seemed to fill the bill for me and Chloe at that moment in time.

The ranch was a cattle operation before I signed the contract, but I had no intention of raising beef. By the time we moved in that autumn, not one cow grazed in the creek-bottom pastures where coyotes yelped and wild hogs rooted at night.

From the high front porch, there wasn’t another real stick-and-nail house in sight, though across the road at a forty-five-degree angle from where I stood was the ratty house trailer where the noise originated. I thought of the place as despair on wheels.

Maybe that’s what sparked the disagreement, hopelessness.

The rusting wreck had been there so long the tires were gone and the single-wide structure sagging in the middle was on cockeyed cinder block supports. Other blocks under rotting railroad ties held up the stripped carcass of a cannibalized pickup.

It was surrounded by trees in their bright foliage, and tangles of blackberry vines, making it impossible to see from ground level unless you stopped at just the right spot by their gate. I didn’t have to drive down the road to do that. The view we had from the second floor was like peeking into a junkyard. After idly glancing out the window on the day we moved in and seeing stacks of trash, metal, and defunct household appliances, I tried not to look their direction again.

The invisible woman’s voice broke with emotion. I’m going to town!

No you’re not! I need the truck in a little bit and don’t intend to wait around for you to go stringing off to Brenda’s house and come back stoned to the gills.

It was Friday morning, and all I wanted to do was sit outside to drink coffee while Chloe slept late. Someone once told me that it takes two years to start getting over the loss of a loved one, and I couldn’t imagine eighteen more months of such intense pain.

For weeks I’d felt embarrassed by my own inability to control my thoughts and feelings. There were days when I wanted nothing more than to rest and stare into the distance, reflecting on our loss with the knowledge that I’d never hold Sara Beth or our baby daughter again.

I wandered through life in a trance and did my best not to let Chloe see it. She’d been close to her mother and little Peyton and had a harder time in her own way. Teenagers are strange beings anyway, and her overwhelming grief and emotions swept back and forth like the tide.

Wilted from grief, I took an extended leave of absence from my job as a special agent for the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, the oldest livestock alliance in Texas, and we moved. We’re also known as Special Rangers, stock agents, and brand inspectors, depending on who you’re talking to. I’d worked my way up from the highway patrol to undercover narcotics for the DPS, and finally to the position I’d always dreamed of.

Instead of the peace I needed that morning, the voices cut the still air with the harsh rasp of a blue jay, coming through loud and clear on the light breeze.

Get back in the house! The man must have turned away, because a sentence or two was swallowed by a shift in the early morning breeze. …customer coming…call that ex of yours and have him come get y’all then!

They may have both been rolling around on the ground after that, because all I heard were occasional well-defined cusswords. A door slammed, and I figured the teenage girl decided not to referee the fight.

Disappointed at the realization they were so close, I took my coffee around to the back porch overlooking the wide pasture and a line of trees reflected in the two-acre stock pond several hundred yards away. No one was arguing there, so I settled into a rocker as a skein of Canada geese cupped their wings and landed on the still surface of the water.

I took a sip of coffee made in the new pot and watched the geese paddle to the bank and start grazing up the slope like cattle. Movement caught my eye as a line of wild hogs emerged from the distant trees and hurried across the pasture.

A Remington 7mm mag rifle stood in the corner behind my bedroom door, and I thought I’d drift down there about dark and pop a couple of them. Chloe was familiar with firearms and a pretty good shot. Maybe she’d be interested in learning how to hunt. It’d be a good skill to have.

There’s over three million wild pigs in Texas, and the damage they do to land and crops is staggering. Shooting one or two wouldn’t put a dent in the population, but at least it was something to do, because I never was one of those guys to sit in front of a TV and watch the alarmist news.

The crunch of a vehicle on the county road out front brought me back into the present. From where I sat around back, I couldn’t see Rock Hill Road, but they were going way too fast. Pebbles popped and rattled against the undercarriage as it passed the house and decelerated at a slight rise over a concrete culvert bridge. It slowed again seconds later, telling me it was pulling through the battling neighbors’ wire gate to follow the weaving two-track dirt lane to the crumbling, rusting trailer.

There was no other turnout until a mile farther on, where the road intersected with still another gravel county road and the home of Bud Grubbs and his wife, Clara. I’d seen Bud pass in his little Toyota pickup that morning, and he was never in a hurry, always driving with the window down and his elbow hanging out in the breeze.

We waved each time, because that’s the way neighbors act. They’d stopped by the first week I was there to say howdy and welcome me in, offering to help if I needed anything. After that, I saw him up at the little country store at a highway intersection about ten miles away, where we picked up a few staples such as milk, bread, and eggs, along with a smattering of local gossip.

The geese heard the car pass, too, and stopped grazing and turned their heads to watch for danger. When the sound stopped, they went back to pecking at the ground and I took another sip of cooling coffee.

My relaxed mood vanished minutes later at the crack of a gunshot coming from the direction of the trailer. Out in the country, gunfire’s as common as mosquitoes, and most folks pay it little mind because people often shot at pigs, varmints, or were sighting in a rifle.

One shot, or maybe two, was normal. But it was the cadence of the gunfire that caught my attention. The distinctive sounds told me there were likely two different firearms involved.

The flat report of a single round, a pause, and then two shots in quick succession weren’t target practice. Several more shots on top of each other were followed by one last round.

There was a gunfight in progress.

Chapter Two

Wearing my faded T-shirt that read, When a Man Tires of Discussing Politics and Women, He Can Always Hunt Ducks, Chloe came through the back door, dark hair tousled from sleep and looking annoyed as only a teenager can. Though it was Friday morning, she was home, the happy recipient of the school’s four-day week due to changing educational practices.

What was all that shooting? She checked my hands and glanced around to see if I had a gun laying on the arm of a lounge chair or a rifle leaning against a post, likely to use it as evidence to chastise me for waking her up.

It wasn’t me. I pushed past her into the house to where I kept my service weapon on top of a barrister bookcase near the front door. It came from that trailer over across the road. You stay here, and I’ll be back in a minute.

She followed me, padding on bare feet. Why’re you going?

Somebody may be in trouble.

You’re off on leave.

Not in situations like this. I’m not working right now, but I’m still commissioned. I threaded the holster onto my belt and covered the Colt with a black T-shirt under an unbuttoned denim shirt. Tucking my badge into the shirt pocket, I headed out the door. Call 911 if you hear any more shooting.

Do we have 911 up here?

Good question. Dial it anyway.

A new white Dodge replaced my government issue truck, and it was parked near the house. In seconds I pulled through the open side of our eight-foot pipe gate and steered right. The window on my side was down, and damp fall air blew into the cab.

Before I reached the culvert bridge over Long Creek, a covey of bobwhite quail erupted from the grass. Any other time I would have stopped to watch the little six-ounce birds set their wings and scatter in the pasture, because since the early 1990s they’d become almost extinct in our part of the world. There was no time to watch the birds, though.

I was over the bridge and halfway to the neighbors’ gate when a faded orange RAV4 fishtailed on the loose rocks as the driver shot through the gate and hammered the accelerator. I let off the gas, fully expecting the back end of the little SUV to whip around and slap the front end of the truck, but the long-haired man behind the wheel regained control and passed, throwing up a spray of rocks and fine dust.

He passed so quickly I was unable to absorb any more details before the rooster tail of dust obscured his license tag. The only thing I got was the make and model of the vehicle.

Watching through the side and rearview mirrors to make sure he didn’t turn into my driveway, I slowed and kept an eye on the receding cloud before swinging onto the neighbors’ drive.

A hand-painted sign nailed to a hackberry tree beside the bob-wire fence read, BACKHOE SERVICES. Going a little faster than I should, I followed the two-lane track through the trees and came out into what amounted to a clearing, where an angry man and woman argued nose to nose not far from the trailer. They were both dressed in the uniform of that part of the state, faded jeans and camouflage hunting shirts.

It was hard to determine their ages because he’d spent much of his hardscrabble life in the sun, leaving him with a weathered look. She, on the other hand, had the emaciated look of a chronic meth head. I’d seen it a thousand times, and my younger brother, Harley, would always shake his head in wonder, more than once voicing the opinion that it’d be easier on everyone if they simply put a gun to their heads and got it over with before they destroyed everyone around them.

Two years behind me, Harley and I worked for DPS narcotics as an undercover team before I joined the TSCRA and he retired after being seriously injured on the job. We cut a swath through Texas drug dealers for years, working together under special dispensation from the governor, who barely raised an eyebrow at two brothers who reveled in the danger and adrenaline of putting criminals in jail.

We especially hated meth users and dealers.

Methamphetamine eventually wreaks havoc on addicts, etching their faces with ravine-deep wrinkles, loosening and rotting teeth, or creating yawning, oozing sores on their bodies. Every time we arrested the cooks or users back in those days, Harley and I often wondered how anyone voluntarily breathes in enough toxic smoke in one puff to give the EPA a rigor.

It’s made from the corrosive cleaning materials you can find under the average homeowner’s kitchen sink, including in some cases lye, battery acid, and acetone.

They give it cool street names like crystal, ice, LA glass, and now this newest drug whipped up in hell that took my wife and daughter, gravel. They sell it to weak-minded people with addictive tendencies who slowly kill themselves with it by smoking, swallowing, snorting, or injecting that garbage.

Appearing to chastise the couple, a teenage girl a year or two younger than Chloe stood spraddle-legged beside them in a white blouse and shorts, waving her smooth arms and stomping a bare foot to emphasize her point. The sun was behind them and in my eyes, but it did nothing to make the scene pleasant other than to halo the girl’s tangled blond hair.

When the man saw my truck, he turned his back and handed something to the teenager. She hesitated for only a moment and he pointed at the trailer. She whirled and flew up the steps as smooth as a deer running through the woods.

My law enforcement training kicked in, and I wondered what those two were hiding. Had it been a real emergency, the older woman I assumed was his wife or girlfriend would have already headed my direction, looking for help. Instead, she remained where she was with her own bare feet rooted to the sandy ground.

Leaving the engine running, I shifted into park and opened the door. Keeping it between me and the couple, I put one foot on the running board and spoke through the open window. Hey, folks. I’m Tucker Snow. I just moved into the house across the road there and heard some shooting that didn’t sound like target practice. I glanced around as if looking for a shooting station. You guys all right?

They took longer than normal to absorb my comment and question. The woman started to answer around the half-smoked cigarette dangling from her lips, but the guy interrupted. We’re fine.

She shot him a look and waited, as if undecided about what to do.

I’d seen that kind of behavior in the past, while questioning people about a variety of transgressions. Women often deferred to the male standing nearby, letting him speak for the both of them. I found through the years that men who leaned toward spousal abuse wouldn’t let their partners talk. Likely ingrained through violence, even if I specifically directed questions toward the woman, it was second nature for them to look to their husbands to answer.

The way she waited for him to speak irritated the hell out of me, but I wasn’t there in an official capacity, and because of that, hadn’t yet identified myself as a law enforcement officer, so I let it go. Well, the shots sounded different to me, so I wanted to make sure you didn’t have any trouble.

The guy with greasy hair cocked his head like a dog examining a strange new critter. He spat to the side and I tried not to think about the thick green glob that looked as if might have a spine. What’re you? The law? His words were flat, accusatory.

Depends on who you talk to.

We were just shooting at a skunk that’s been hanging around.

Like I said, it sounded like two different guns from over there.

They exchanged a look, and the woman flicked the still-lit cigarette at his foot before she spun on her heel and headed for the trailer, weaving past a defunct washing machine. She climbed the wooden steps, and the door slammed behind her. I gave the rest of the yard a quick glance to make sure no one was hiding behind the junk or the two rusting vehicles up on blocks.

I’d always wondered how people could let their home places turn into junkyards. My dad grew up in a dirt-floor shack in the river bottoms with his brothers and sisters. He said they were dirt poor, but that was no reason not to be proud of what little they had. He always shook his head in disgust or wonderment when we passed houses squatting amid yards full of cast-off garbage, cars, and appliances.

The man stepped closer, likely for intimidation, and for the first time I got a good look at the guy of average height. He’d lost his razor a week earlier, and his comb before that, probably about three months after his barber died.

It wasn’t the unwashed hair or beard that made me wary, though. Or the thin arms that weren’t much more than corded rope and wire. It was his eyes, glassy and hot, the eyes of an angry dog that wanted nothing more than to bite the first appendage it could clamp onto.

They read drugs and danger.

His hand rose and seemingly flicked of its own accord. I said we’re fine. We don’t much like city people getting into our business here in the country.

I saw a car flash by. I kept my voice even, so he wouldn’t think I was nervous. Humans are like animals, and sensing weakness either through fear or nervousness, they use it in whatever way works best for them. It looked like he was in a hurry.

He stuck both hands into the front pockets of his faded jeans that hung off skinny hips so low that I was afraid they’d slide down and I’d see his willy. He could have benefited from a belt. Just a misunderstanding. It was my cousin. He owes me money, and he’s got a temper. Blew up when I asked him to pay it back and started waving a gun around after he was here for a few minutes.

He shoot at y’all?

Naw. ’Bout that time a damned skunk came out from under the trailer, and he busted one at it.

You too?

What? No, like I said, I tried to kill a skunk and missed. Them other shots was him’s all. He was scrambling, trying to remember what he said only moments before.

The cadence was like a shoot-out.

Cadence?

The pattern of shots.

Echoes. He can’t hit shit with a pistol, and that made him mad when he missed. The guy paused, and I could see he was working out a story as he talked. Tried to shoot something bigger and it was that washer sittin’ over there. Missed it too. He was already aggravated when he got here, and when he missed it, I laughed at him and that made him madder, so he shot a couple more times.

He shouldn’t be shooting that way. My house is over there. One of those rounds could have hit my daughter, or me.

Well, I said he shot at the washing machine, but it was really the ground. I don’t know why I said that, ’cept you looked like the law coming up on me and all, and it made me nervous.

I was. Special agent for the Cattleman’s Association. Took a leave of absence. The blinds behind one window twitched, telling me someone was watching through the dirty, cloudy glass near the front. Well, sorry we had to meet like this. I should have come by and said howdy when we moved in, but the truth is, I wasn’t sure if anyone lived here.

What’re you saying?

I can’t see your house very well from mine. I gave him a smile to settle the guy down. It must have worked, because he visibly relaxed and didn’t seem as inclined to attack. Lots of cedars between you and me.

We do. He toed the ground with an untied sneaker. Live here, I mean. Got me a little backhoe business, and I take odd jobs ever now and then when we need a little more cash. Thanks for coming by.

I’d seen that before, too, when a liar is trying to cover a bad story and offers way too much information. You bet.

As I settled under the steering wheel and backed around to leave, he remained where he was, standing in the open as if to block me from charging the house. Motion at a window at the rear of the trailer caught my attention. The blond teenager’s face appeared for a second before I finished my turn.

The last thing I saw before the trees closed in behind me was the guy who still hadn’t introduced himself by name, standing right where he was, watching.

Chapter Three

As soon as Snow turned around and left, Jess Atchley’s common-law wife, Priscilla, came out on the rickety wooden porch deck and called across the yard. What’d he want?

He hated those kinds of questions, preferring instead to wait until he was inside to tell her in his own good time. Annoyed that she was shouting demands at him, Atchley balled his fist and kept his back to her, refusing to answer the woman who only brushed her hair about once a week, and that was when she went to town. He couldn’t take it right now, to turn and see her in that oversize camo shirt and worn-out jeans that made her look more like the white trash she was.

Hell, he was white trash, too, but at least he didn’t think he looked so much the part. Tense as a wound-up mainspring from the shooting, he listened to Snow’s truck pull onto the county road.

Did you hear me? What’d he want? The shrill voice became sharper and snappish as she waited for the answer that wouldn’t come. All right then, but I’ll tell you something. Don’t you ever put me or my daughter on the spot like you just did. If he’d seen that pistol, he could call the laws and Jimma’d be the one who goes to jail for shooting at somebody’s car.

He drew a long, deep breath to calm down.

Twitching and moving from the constant stream of meth in her body, she wouldn’t quit. I’d turn you over in a minute, you know. You’re the one with the gunfire residues on your hands. I watch enough cop shows to know that, and they could get me for conspiracy to hide the facts, but I’d tell everything I knew to stay out of jail!

Atchley considered his answer. He could explain that they would both be going to the pen if the DEA or the DPS showed up. They had enough meth stockpiled in the house to get both of them convicted of trafficking, so the self-educated bitch who spent most of her time watching reality television could yammer on all she wanted, and it wouldn’t make any difference.

Dammit! A typical tweaker, she talked all of the time in an endless flow of the same local gossip over and over, or continually rattled on about people he didn’t know or care about. Instead of being drawn into still another argument, he consciously tuned her out to think back about what Snow said and how he looked.

Who did that guy think he was, driving up like he owned the place to start asking questions? Atchley smelled po-po from the moment he got out, and then the dude actually told him he was cattle police. That’s the laws for you, sniffing around where they weren’t wanted, butting into people’s business and stopping him from selling what people wanted. Who said the government could decide a substance was illegal just because they wanted to?

It was his job, and he intended to continue the family tradition of selling to those who needed something a little different. Back in his granddaddy’s day, the old man was a bootlegger and provided whiskey to anyone who had a few coins in their pocket. Why not? The drugstore shelves back then were full of products marketed to relieve pain, treat chronic illnesses, or help children feel better. The main ingredient was alcohol, but other patent medicines back then contained cocaine, heroin, or opium. So what was the damned difference?

Doctors routinely prescribed billions of pills with OxyContin at the top of the list. So why not something that worked quickly and was a helluva lot cheaper in the long run and you didn’t have to pay no expensive doctor to get what you needed?

Are you listening to me, Jess?

He turned and studied her stringy dishwater-blond hair for a moment. Shut up. There was no power, no venom in his response, but she apparently heard something she didn’t like. She deflated and went inside without another word.

Why couldn’t a person buy what they wanted? They lived in a free country, and if somebody wanted to smoke meth to deal with life’s problems, it was their business and nobody else’s. Hell, if it made you feel better so you could put up with another day of life, then suck it in. He provided a service, like prostitutes. Prostitution was illegal, just because a bunch of Bible-thumpers didn’t want consenting adults to do what they wanted behind closed doors.

Damned laws. Had to wear a seat belt. Had to have a license just to drive. Had to pay taxes on land they owned. Had to pay taxes on what people made on their daily jobs. Had to pay taxes on most of what they bought at Walmart.

Atchley brought himself back to the moment and stalked toward the trailer. Stomping up the steps, he paused on the warped porch. From his elevated position, roughly three feet off the ground, he could see the upper half of the old Berry house, where Snow said he just moved to.

Only half of what Atchley told Snow was the truth. It wasn’t a relative who showed up