Blood Wild

He was sent around to several persons of interest to question their whereabouts and movements after a particular gathering ended up with a shooting. So far, Cam hadn't really learned much worth mentioning but after stopping at the diner, he now had something to think about. It might be of interest to the Sheriff.

Old Betty, the eldest deputy Sheriff on the county payroll and long-time desk clerk or closest thing to a dispatcher that the department had, peered over her paperback romance novel. Her lit cigarette with half being just ash, dangled from the corner of her mouth. Those rummy glazed eyes followed Cam as he came through the door.

"The pup found his way back to the den huh?" Betty croaked with her heavy smoker gravelly voice.

"Now Betty, we've been over this. I'm not a pup." Cam grumbled as he walked past her desk on his way to the Sheriff's office down the hall.

"Sure, you are, pup. You look like you could use a nap too." Betty added as she went back to reading her book.

"I won't argue that point." Cam said as he tried to stifle a yawn just before he knocked on the Sheriff's office door.

"Come!" The Sheriff's voice barked on the other side of the door.

Cam opened the door and entered the office. Sheriff Gerald Potter was the name painted on the glass of the door and on the little name plate sitting on the front of the desk. The desk what was piled high with loose pages of reports and files almost as high as the butts in the ashtray sitting on top of some of them. The Sheriff was resting his mostly bald head on his left hand that still loosely held a burning cigarette. His elbow propped up on another stack of file folders on his desk.

The Sheriff looked as worn out and tired as Cam felt, he thought to himself. Quietly standing at rest before the desk as the Sheriff continued to write on a report form that held his attention. Finally, the Sheriff finished whatever he was writing and dropped the pen on the desk top. He brought both hands to his face and rubbed his tired eyes before dragging them down his face. Remembering the cigarette in his hand he brought it to his mouth and took one more long drag before grinding it out in the overflowing ash tray.

"Okay, what have you got kid?" He asked in a tired gravelly voice before looking up at Cam with his steely light blue eyes, a family trait that they both shared.

Cam pulled his little notebook from his breast pocket and opened it up. Frowning at a thought, he looked up at the Sheriff's steady if bleary gaze and turned to step over to the door and close it before turning again to address the man.

"I don't have much worth mentioning, Uncle Gerry, but I have a lead that you might want to follow up on." Cam said while looking a little embarrassed.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? And you know that when we are at work, you're to call me Sheriff, or Sir. I don't care if you're my sister's boy or not, you get no preferential treatment from me, is that clear?"

Somewhat abashed by the older man's harsh words, Cam stood a little straighter and looked as though he were going to say something in return. Instead, he frowned and lowered his eyes to his notebook before nodding his understanding.

"Well? Spit it out boy." The Sheriff prodded.

"Again, The three suspects... I mean persons of interest... I was able to track down and interview about the poker party last night all said they had left earlier and didn't know anything about an argument or a shooting." Cam said then took a deep breath afterwards then closed his note pad. He crossed arms at the wrists in front of his waist at the buckle for his utility/gun belt.

"That's it? That's the lead I should follow up on?" The Sheriff asked while giving Cam a perturbed glare.

"No... Sir. When I stopped at the diner this morning, to interview Hank, I found that he had called in sick. But I also learned that he had been to the same card game or party with Duke Simmons." Cam said, glancing up to catch his uncle's reaction.

"Oh, you did, huh? Well did you follow up on that lead and go talk to Duke?" The Sheriff asked with one raised eyebrow.

"No Sir. I figured you might want to do that yourself, as there is a bit of history between the two of you." Cam said quietly so as to ensure that it was not heard outside the office. The older man's eyes bored into his for a few moments.

The Sheriff looked away and grimaced a bit before reaching for another cigarette, fidgeting really. He puffed himself up and after a moment of thought he turned his attention back to Cam.

"Okay, Cam. I guess because you are family you would know a little bit about that, but don't you repeat that to anyone else. If nothing else, it might cloud this investigation. Alright, I'll go see Duke and see what I can find out from him. Go home and get some sleep." Gerald said and he stood up and stubbed out the cigarette in the ash tray and reached for his hat.

Cam turned to leave and was reaching for the door knob when his uncle spoke again behind him.

"I mean it, Cam. Don't mention anything about Duke, or about... well... you know. None of that needs to be brought up again... ever." He spoke with a low rumbling voice that sounded like distant thunder in Cam's ears.

"Yes Sir." Was all Cam said before he turned the knob and opened the door and walked out.

***___***___

"Miss Wainwright?" the receptionist at the waiting room desk called, one hand writing on her ledger, the other giving a come here motion, the phone still cradled between her ear and her shoulder.

Trina looked up with a worried expression on her face, her soft brown eyes were puffy and red. She rose from the rough and worn fabric covered chair in the emergency department waiting room in Kansas City, and crossed the room on shaky legs. Her whole body shaky really, mostly from anxiety and worry over her mother. It'd been a long night, and it wasn't over yet.

"Okay... I'll send her on back... uh huh... okay." The receptionist said into the phone before hanging up and looking up at Trina's worried face.

"They said you can go on back to the recovery room. Just down this hallway to door four on the right." She informed Trina while pointing down the hall.

Trina thanked the lady and nervously clutching her purse in both hands in front of her, she shuffled uncertainly down the hall looking for the recovery room she'd been directed to find. A nurse was stepping out of the room as she arrived at the door. The nurse smiled and held the door for her and motioned for Trina to go on in.

Inside the room, Trina found her mother lying on her side facing the doorway. Her eyes were swollen and her cheeks were reddened and tear stained from crying. When she saw Trina standing there she grimaced and closed her eyes in shame as her bottom lip began to quiver as if she were about to start crying, again.

"Momma?" Trina queried hesitantly, still clutching her purse to her chest as she edged into the room towards her mother's bed.

Trina's hand shook and her own lower lip trembled as she saw her mother laying on her side facing her. The hospital gown that closed in the back was partially undone, from the waist down her mother's bottom hung out. Not that it was bare, it was in fact covered with a massive bandage wrapping that almost looked like a diaper. Trina knew it wasn't a diaper however, as she had had to hold a blood sodden hand towel to her mother's backside until she could sit down in the passenger seat of her father's car. Trina had then driven from their home in Helton all the way to Kansas City to the emergency room of the hospital.

Technically, Trina should not have been driving, she didn't even have a license yet, but she'd known how to drive for years, driving the tractors and trucks used on the farm. More importantly, she shouldn't have had to drive her mother, her father should have been driving. But then, he was kind of the reason they had to go to the hospital to begin with.

Why did her parents and their friends have to drink so much Trina wondered for the thousandth time. Someone always got angry when there was gambling involved. Poker, or Gin Rummy, or any other game they played when they got together. Someone always flirted too much or said things to anger someone else. Tonight, or last night, was no different. What was different was that someone got shot! Trina's mom!

"Momma?" Trina asked again, trying to get her mother to look at her. She was so worried.

"Why..." Trina began to ask but she was cut off by her mother's words.

"I... I don't want to talk about it right now... Please baby, just let it be for now." Vivian Wainwright pleaded softly with her daughter. The shame and sorrow leaking into her voice with every word.

Vivian's wound was more embarrassing than life threatening. A bullet wound to her left butt cheek. The meaty rump had stopped the small caliber .22 bullet. For a gunshot wound it was a pretty clean wound. That's not to say it wasn't going to hurt when the pain medications they had injected her with wore off. The sutures they had closed the wound with would be a pain in the... well... butt, till it healed and they could come out.

Allowing her mom to remain silent and not demanding to know what happened, Trina took her mother's hand and squeezed it briefly before having a seat in the chair beside the bed. Vivian just continued to frown and her eyes remained closed. Trina leaned her own head on her arm that was resting on the side of the bed as she continued holding her mother's hand. Tears once more filled her eyes as she squeezed them shut trying to block out what she did know of the night that brought them to this place.

***___***___

Sheriff Potter's patrol car slowed to a stop before turning into the gravel driveway leading up to Hank Lipscomb's doublewide trailer. The car's tires crunching the gravel as he eased to a stop outside the trailer. The once nice exterior had been let go for so long that it looked twenty years older than it really was. The add-on wooden deck porch sagged on the end opposite the steps leading up to it. Sheriff Potter shook his head in tired resignation as he stubbed out the cigarette that he had been smoking. He then turned off the car and grabbed his hat before opening the door and getting out.

An old tired looking hound dog raised his head off his front paws and looked at the Sheriff with bloodshot eyes nearly as tired looking as the Sheriff's. The dog halfheartedly thumped his tail on the deck as he wagged it while yawning once. The tired old fella had seen the Sherriff many times before and didn't make a sound as he mounted the three steps from the drive up to the porch. Sheriff Potter bent over and reached down to scratch the old hound behind the ears for a moment. The dog took a deep breath and grunted a couple of times as if in thanks then laid his head back down and seemingly went right back to sleep.

Gerald stood back up and shook his head sadly yet again before taking two more steps over to the door and raised his hand to pound on the frame beside the door. No sense in even bothering with the doorbell, not if Hank was as drunk as he suspected. Hell, it might take something like a stick of dynamite going off outside his bedroom window to wake him up. But then Hank might not have even made it to his bed.

The Sheriff hung his head as he waited to see if the pounding had roused his old friend. He was trying to remain patient but that was just about worn too thin to last. After a couple of more minutes passed, Gerald raised his hand again and pounded on the door frame and shouted Hank's name. The old dog groaned and stirred a few feet away but didn't get up.

Just as he raised his hand for a third time to pound on the door... the door opened inward. A disheveled and obviously hung-over Hank Lipscomb stood staring with squinting bloodshot eyes, his face was covered in bruises and had dried blood under one nostril of his nose and one corner of his mouth. Hank's wife beater tee shirt may have been white once upon a time but was now stained with who knows what besides a few spatters of blood. The blood, undoubtedly was his own.

"Gerald? What the hell do you want man?" Hank grumbled in an irritated gravelly voice befitting the obvious hangover he was suffering with.

"God Hank! You look like shit! Got any coffee?" The Sherriff asked as he pushed past Hank and turned right, towards the kitchen.

"Sure...come on in." Hank mumbled mockingly as he grimaced from the sound of his own voice making his headache that much worse.

Sheriff Potter looked around the compact kitchen that was no better off than the outside of the trailer. Empty beer cans here and there, dirty dishes in the sink and even on the little table beside the bay window at that end of the trailer. He picked up the kettle off the stove and shook it, then crossed to the sink and turned on the water to fill it at least half way. Putting the kettle back on the stove and turning it on as Hank shuffled into the kitchen and plopped down into one of the chairs at the table. Hank groaned as he put his elbows on the table and cradled his face in his hands.

Gerald Potter and Hank Lipscomb had known one another most all of their lives. They went to school together from the first day of first grade through the end of their senior year of high school. Gerald had been drafted into the Army straight out of high school. Hank had been too but was sent home when a physical determined that he was unfit for service.

They were apart for years after that. Gerald serving his four years, then going to college and then the police academy. Hank, worked whatever part time or odd job he could get, going from one job to another with nothing seeming to sink in. That is, until he got hired on as a cook at a restaurant in Kansas City. Hank discovered that not only could he cook but that he liked it. When the new diner here in Helton opened up many years ago, Hank was one of the first employees. He got to be good at his job and was well liked by both the customers and his boss.

While Gerald got his college degree and then his certificate from the police academy, Hank was beginning to think about starting his own business, a restaurant. The problem with Hank though, was that he liked to party as much as he liked to cook. When Gerald had been around when they were younger, he had helped to keep Gerald out of trouble. He would be his friend's voice of reason and a very vocal conscience when needed. Without him though, Hank fell in with more questionable people. More than once he had ended up in the local jail for public intoxication or for fighting. That was where Gerald found Hank the first time, he returned to Helton, many years ago.

Gerald had worked as a deputy for the Sheriff's department in Kansas City right out of the police academy. A year later, however, he found out that the Sheriff's department in Helton was looking to hire a couple of deputies. Gerald came home. His first day on the job, still riding with the Sheriff as a probationary deputy, he got to do the paperwork for the arrest and incarceration of his old friend Hank.

After Hank was released, Gerald took him down to the diner for coffee and to catch up on things. They talked about where they had been and what they had done over the years. Gerald learned that Hank had been in many fights, usually after drinking too much and usually over a woman...or gambling... or sometimes both. Much like he suspected might have happened last night. Old habits are hard to break.

Hank wasn't always this pathetic though. Sure, he had been in trouble more times than most but for the most part he was pretty reliable. Certainly, he could cook and was more than capable of running a diner. So, when the previous owner felt it was time to retire and move to Florida, he made Hank and offer to buy the diner from him. At first Hank was not so sure about it. Not that he was afraid of running the diner, but rather that he didn't think he could afford the buying price that the owner was asking. Rather than let Hank say no, however, the owner suggested he look into getting a loan before deciding against it.

Hank probably wouldn't have gotten the loan by himself, as some of the people in town knew of his troubled past and some had connections that were still not at all pleased with him to start with. One being the chief loan officer at the bank. That's where Gerald stepped in and once more helped his old friend. Gerald had co-signed for a loan for the asking price of the diner.

Suddenly Hank was a business owner and for a long time he straightened up and flew right. Business was good and in two years' time he had paid off the loan. But once the loan was paid off, something changed in Hank, still being single and not having many prospects, and working long hours day after day, he became despondent. He began drinking again, and he started spending time with the wrong kind of people again.

"So, tell me about this card game you went to last night." Gerald said as he examined a couple of coffee cups to see if they were clean, or clean enough for coffee anyway. He grimaced and found a clean spoon in one of the drawers.

"Just some friends having fun..." Hank mumbled through his hands still holding his face.

Gerald set the mugs and the spoon on the table and looked through the debris on the counter beside the sink, moving dirty dishes and beer cans aside till he found what he was looking for, a jar of instant coffee. It was an off brand of course, and probably stale at that. He brought that over to the table as well before taking a seat across the table from Hank.

"Hank... Fun doesn't usually end with someone getting shot. What the hell happened out there at the shed last night?" Gerald rumbled with subdued annoyance. He was biting back his anger knowing that it would not be conducive to getting the information he needed from Hank.

Hank groaned again and leaned back in his chair to stare up at the ceiling. Well, to stare as best as one could with their eyes closed anyway. Gerald opened the coffee jar and spooned out two heaping spoonsful to each of the coffee mugs. Hearing the water begin to boil in the kettle, he stood up and went to the stove to get it. Back at the table he poured the water into the mugs and set it back on the stove. Resuming his seat, he stirred the coffee in each mug and slid one over in front of Hank.

"Ger... I don't know... I mean... Ah shit man!" Hank moaned, grimacing at the sound of his own voice again. Opening his eyes, he saw the mug in front of him and reached for it. With shaky hands he brought the steaming liquid to his face and sniffed long and hard before squinting his eyes open to look at his old friend.

"Hank, I have it on good authority that Duke was at that same party." Gerald said with one lone eyebrow arching upwards as he held his own mug of coffee in both hands, his elbows propped up on the table.

"Yeah, he was there." Hank confirmed just before he took a tentative sip of the instant brew. Once it hit is taste buds though, he grimaced again almost as much as from the sound of his voice in his hangover plagued head.

"Who else was there?" Gerald pressed, still blowing on his coffee, still in no hurry to taste the foul stuff.

"Let me think... There was me, Duke, Darrel Johns, Henry Willis, and Walt. The usual poker guys." Hank said before taking another sip of his coffee, and grimacing again.

"So, did someone cheat? Was that how tempers got short? An argument or a fight?" Gerald asked in rapid fire now that Hank was talking.

Hank opened one eye fully, well, both might have opened but one was a bit swollen so that wasn't happening. He took a long deep breath and rolled his head around on his neck causing the bones to snap and crackle. He worked his jaw opened and closed and side to side. Gerald could see Hank's tongue running around his teeth with his mouth closed as if counting his teeth. Satisfied they were all there, he took another sip of the coffee.