Free The Three Sisters by Bryan Taylor Page B

sisters had left town, the Warring brothers saw the sheriff pull up to the courthouse. After he parked the car in the RESERVED FOR SHERIFF space, Robert and George Warring walked over to Sheriff Kazan to tell him how much they liked the addition of topless policewomen to the force. Sheriff Kazan told the brothers to lay off the drinking or he would have to haul them in again and walked into the courthouse, not suspecting what had really happened. The sheriff led the arrested gypsies inside the building and took them straight to the jail cells in the back. Walking ahead of the sheriff, the gypsies’ mother was the first to see Deputy Sauras standing alone in the jail cell as naked as Noah. The mother quickly pushed her daughter into her skirts, lest the child see the naked deputy, and then started screaming about her misfortunes. It was then that Sheriff Kazan realized what had happened.
    “The prisoners escaped, sir,” reported Deputy Sauras.
    “I can see that, Bronty,” said the sheriff, looking for something to cover up the naked deputy while trying to ignore Deputy Duncan who was unable to control his laughter. Having found a sheet, the sheriff unlocked the cell door and gave the covering to Deputy Sauras, who walked out of the cell at last, only to receive a kick in the behind from Sheriff Kazan, causing the deputy to topple over and almost hit his head against the opposite wall.
    “I’m lucky it’s a warm day,” Deputy Sauras said after getting up off the floor and watching the sheriff push the gypsies into the two jail cells. “Otherwise I could have frozen to death.” The sheriff, having dispatched with the gypsies, just stared at him. “You’re not going to fire me, are you?” Deputy Sauras asked.
    “I would if I could, but your father practically funded my whole campaign last time. So help me though, if I lose the election in July, I can guarantee you that you won’t have a job. Christ Jesus, I was going to release the whores, and you let them escape. What the hell happened, Bronty?”
    “Well, I guess I shouldn’t’ve gone into their cell.”
    “You went into their cell?” asked the sheriff who spaced out each word.
    “Uh, huh, they needed a fourth hand for cards, and…”
    “I don’t even want to hear this. We’ve got to stop them before they get away. Don’t you see, you idiot, I was going to release them, but now we have to arrest them again so we can release them again.”
    “Well, if you were going to let them go, why don’t you just forget they were ever here?” asked Deputy Sauras.
    “Because half of the town must have seen them leave here half-wearing those uniforms, and if the newspaper ever finds out all the facts, my chances for reelection will be doomed for sure.”
    The sheriff knew this meant that many people in town had heard about the escape by now, but rather than waste his time yelling at Deputy Sauras, Sheriff Kazan decided to try and find out all he could about the three’s escape. Though Deputy Sauras had not seen the three drive away in the hearse, other loyal citizens had seen the incident, and Robert Warring even remembered the license plate number. The gypsies confirmed that it was their stolen hearse the three had escaped in. “We got the hearse because we needed the extra room,” one of the gypsies explained to the sheriff. “It’s not like the old days when you had a horse to pull your wagon around in. We have to stay up with the times too, you know.”
    Since the Три сeстры, Olga, Maria, and Irina, already had a thirty-minute head start, the sheriff realized he had little chance of catching up with them himself. He reluctantly put out an all-points bulletin for the three and prayed they would be caught before his political opponents realized what had happened. The three sisters, however, were already preparing to leave the state behind.
     

CHAPTER III
    And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the Lord: only Rahab