Клер Донелли - The Big Kitty

“Some kind of booby trap?” The deputy, a tall, lanky guy in a forest green uniform, frowned unhappily.

“Yeah—and we don’t know what else might be in there.” Will took the lead, approaching Sunny’s car with a large flashlight. “There’s something down by the gas pedal.”

Sunny held her breath as he craned his neck, trying for a better look. “I think the panel is off the fuse box, and there’s some kind of gizmo attached. I see wires—”

“You going in?” The lanky deputy swallowed audibly. Sunny saw his prominent Adam’s apple bob up and down.

Will’s hand went for the door handle, then hesitated. “I dunno, Fred. Maybe we should leave this for the professionals.”

The deputy stood staring at him. “You mean the bomb squad?”

Will began backing away. “Unless you want to go poking around in there yourself.”

Retreating to Judson’s Market, the deputy began talking into his own radio.

Perhaps five minutes passed. Then another sheriff’s department car came roaring up. It screeched to a stop, the door opened, and a red-faced Frank Nesbit emerged, dressed in a tuxedo.

Either he’s going for the James Bond look this evening or he has some political dinner to attend, that irreverent voice inside Sunny’s head suggested.

The sheriff took in the whole scene—the blocked road, the growing crowd—and flashed a baleful glance around the assembled lawmen. “What lamebrain’s trying to call in the state police bomb squad?”

The lanky deputy suddenly took a giant step away from Will Price.

His movement caught Nesbit’s attention. Now his generalized glare had a focus: Will.

“I should have known,” Nesbit growled.

“There’s some sort of device in there,” the constable tried to report. “Apparently it set off a shot.”

Nesbit stomped over to Sunny’s Mustang, grabbed the door handle, and heaved on it. The door opened with its usual unearthly screech.

The law officers and the crowd of civilian rubberneckers that had gathered all cringed back. But the awful noise was all that happened.

Nesbit put out his hand, calling, “Flashlight!” When he got one, he bent forward, peering at the floor in front of the driver’s-side seat. Then the sheriff straightened up. “Looks like somebody wired in a circuit board with a bullet attached to it.” He threw another aggravated look at Will. “A single shot. Nothing else.”

“There’s an urban legend like that,” one of the deputies said. “From back in the old days, when cars used those cylindrical fuses. They were the same size as a .22 shell, so some goober who was short on fuses used a bullet to replace a burned-out fuse. Worked okay until an electric charge finally set the damned thing off. Caught him right in the—”

The guy suddenly paused when he realized the whole crowd on the street was listening. “Er—groin region,” he finished lamely.

Nesbit in the meantime was looking fixedly at the Mustang, his lips set in a frown beneath his silver mustache. “This car looks familiar,” he said. “Whose is it?”

Sheepishly, Sunny raised her hand. If the sheriff had been angry before, a picture of his face now could be used in the dictionary to illustrate the phrase “if looks could kill.”

“You!” Nesbit visibly tried to restrain himself, but even so, his voice was overly loud when he spoke again. “Young lady, if you’ve—”

He broke off, looking over Sunny’s shoulder. She turned to see that Ken Howell had appeared, scribbling frantically in a notebook.

He’d love for the sheriff to say something stupid on the record, Sunny realized.

“All right.” Nesbit brought the volume down when he spoke this time. “We’re not sure what happened with this car, so we’re impounding it for investigation. If, at the end of our review, we discover that this was in fact some sort of misguided publicity stunt, criminal charges will be filed.” He glared at Sunny. “Count on it. It is a crime to waste police time.”

He jerked a hand at the Mustang, and several of his deputies jumped to start securing the car. The other town constable quickly pulled his car away.

Sunny tried to speak, cleared her throat, and finally succeeded. “Excuse me,” she said.

When nobody responded, she raised her voice. “Excuse me!”

Nesbit was getting back into his car. He stopped, giving her a hostile look. “Yes, Ms. Coolidge?”

“If you’re taking my car away, how am I supposed to get home?”

The sheriff directed a poisonous look at Will Price. “The motto of our force is ‘To Serve and Protect Elmet County.’ Since Constable Price is no longer busy trying to protect us from imaginary bombs, perhaps he wouldn’t mind serving as your cab driver.”

“Yes, sir,” Will said, his face carefully blank. Sunny could only imagine what was going on behind that facade.

Nesbit jumped into his car and escaped before Ken Howell could ask any embarrassing questions. The sheriff’s official vehicle roared off, followed by most of the deputies in theirs. Without the draw of the flashing lights, the small crowd quickly dispersed. The show was over.

Will and one of the deputies stayed until a tow truck came to collect Sunny’s Mustang. Then the constable led the way to his patrol car. He surprised Sunny by opening the front passenger door for her.

“Trust me, you wouldn’t want to try sitting in the rear seat. We do our best to clean things up, but there’ve been too many drunks back there—and you really don’t want to know what they’ve been up to.”

Sunny peered in at the seat he was offering.

“What? Did you expect it to be covered in hamburger wrappers or doughnut frosting?” Will asked.

“Okay, okay.” Sunny got inside.

Will closed the door, entered on the driver’s side, and picked up the radio microphone. “This is 243; 1000 has me on a 10-76 to—” He glanced over at Sunny. “What’s your address?”

“Wild Goose Drive, number 23.”

The constable relayed the address, put down the mike, and started the car.

“So this is Car 243?” Sunny asked. “I thought they used things like ‘1-Adam-12.’”

“You’ve been watching too many TV reruns,” Will told her, but then he unbent a little. “It depends on the force. In this case, 243 refers to, well, me. All patrol officers get a number in the two hundreds.”

“And the sheriff?”

“I mentioned him in that message—he’s 1000.” Will glanced over at her. “And before you ask, 10-76 means we’re en route to your address.”

Sunny was a little surprised that he was acting so human, explaining the police call signs.

“I guess I should apologize, Will,” she said.

“Apologize? For what?” he asked, his eyes still on the road.

“I’m sorry you were the one who had to come and get involved with that whole brouhaha and listen to Sheriff Nesbit—”

“If there were any justice in the world, he’d have pulled that door open and blown himself up,” Will replied with a lopsided grin. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for—unless, of course, you really did place that dingus as a misguided attempt to get some publicity.”

“I didn’t—” Sunny’s voice choked off, and her whole body began to quiver.

Will Price glanced over and then pulled his patrol car to the side of the road. “Hey, are you okay?” He took her hand. She could feel the warmth of his palm against her suddenly ice-cold fingers.

“Guess it finally caught up with me.” The words came out in a queer, wobbly tone. “Somebody tried to kill me tonight.”

“I forget that you’re a civilian,” Will said in a low, soothing voice. “It’s like the first time someone shot at me. I was so angry, and yeah, scared, and determined to get the guy, so focused on the situation that a few milliseconds felt like an hour, and when it was all over, the whole thing sort of piled on top of me.”