Free A Swollen Red Sun by Matthew McBride Page B

fifty-four and slim with a tight, square face that looked like country.
    Herb wore a ten-gallon hat and pointy-toed boots. His top lip was covered by a Fu Manchu, his salt-and-pepper head shaved close. Herb chewed a toothpick like he was angry at all times. His gun belt was cocked below the waist, and he sported a Glock on his hip like a six-shooter. His brogue was southern and slow, his eyes small and precise, like he’d just as soon force you to draw as arrest you.
    “How you doin’, Dale?”
    Banks held up a finger and finished reading the line he was on, then signed his name. He took off his reading glasses and said he was fine. Asked Herb how he’d been.
    “Doin’ OK, Dale. Doin’ OK.” He pointed to the paperwork. “That for the smurfing case you got there?”
    Banks nodded. “Yes, sir.”
    Smurfing was the latest in illegal trends related to the drug trade. Tweakers would spend all day driving from one gas station to the next buying cold medicine, pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in methamphetamine manufacturing. Street value was high. A hundred dollars a box or trade for crank. Most would trade for crank.
    A month earlier, they’d busted a van full of college kids at the Fuel Mart. When they searched the van, they found hundreds of pills from gas stations and drugstores. The kids had saved all the receipts and made Banks’s case easy.
    “Listen, you know an old man named Olen Brandt?”
    Suddenly, Banks could not swallow. It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to his windpipe.
    “Well, yeah I know him, Sheriff. He’s got a farm out off Highway K—’tween Mount Sterling ’n’ Swiss.”
    Herb nodded. “Yep, that’s him.”
    Banks asked Sheriff Feeler why he’d brought him up. Hoped it wasn’t because he’d just stashed a duffel bag full of money in his barn loft.
    “Well, damndest thing, Dale. Somebody found the poor old sumbitch out there by that gravel pile last night. At the junction of K ’n’ F.”
    Banks sat up in his chair. “Found him? What the hell you mean? He’s dead?”
    Herb threw his hands up. “No, no, he ain’t dead. Not yet anyway. Tough old fart. A car come up on him ’n’ his dog layin’ out in the middle of the road last night.”
    “In the middle of the road ? What in God’s name you tellin’ me, Herb?”
    Herb shrugged. “Well, nobody knew what the hell to think at first. He liked ta got hit by a damn car, Dale. He’s just layin’ there. Out cold. Covered in blood from a head wound, his dog beside him. Somebody shot her dead.”
    “ What? ” Banks could not believe what he was hearing. “Hang on a minute here, Sheriff. Lemme get this straight. Olen Brandt was just layin’ in the highway with his dog beside him?”
    The sheriff shook his head and continued to shake it while Banks talked.
    “What the hell happened to him? Who shot his dog?”
    Sheriff Herb Feeler pulled a smoke loose from his pack and struck a wooden match against the zipper on his Wranglers.
    Banks took a dip of snuff.
    “Nobody knows what the hell happened, Dale. He sure as shit wasn’t makin’ any sense last night. But ’parently he’s come ’round OK. Turns out he was haulin’ a pretty big load of anhydrous yesterday evening and somebody jacked his truck.”
    Banks shook his head and spit into a Styrofoam cup. “Well, goddamn, Herb. Don’t that beat all?”
    “Never heard of that b’fore, but I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.”
    “What’d they do to him?” Banks asked.
    “Says he thinks he got outta the truck, but he can’t remember a damn thing after that. Hell, Dale, I don’t even know if he remembers steppin’ outta the truck. But somebody musta flopped him a good one at some point.”
    “And the sumbitches shot his dog?”
    “Killed her dead. Looked like she tried to protect him.”
    Banks stood and said he was going to talk to Olen. “I been deer huntin’ on his place since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”
    Herb said that was a