Scare Tactics by John Farris

bastard.”
    Stone looked him over. Nealy already had it fixed in his mind that the bearded drifter had killed Taryn. Well, that wasn’t so bad. “If he’s around, we’ll find him,” Stone said. He sat again on the corner of the desk and took out his cherished corncob pipe, which he stuffed with a dark and evil-smelling tobacco from a leather pouch. He lit the tobacco with a kitchen match from another pocket of his fisherman’s vest. There was a little dirt under one of his thumbnails. He stared at it, then used the other end of the extinguished match to clean under the nail. This time when the phone rang, Stone answered and spoke softly.
    “Believe we’re ready for a new statement,” he said. “Also there’s somebody we need to be looking for, Bob. Nealy’ll fix you up with a first-class description.”

•    6    •
    Lime-Green Panties
    D eep in meditation, Hieronymus Flynn was aware of the dog’s presence before he heard the Deputy Sheriff speak; but it was as if they were all underwater, he could make no sense of the words. Only the inflection of authority was clear.
    “I said for you to get up now, and put your hands on top of your head!”
    Hero began, with difficulty, to focus on the here and now. He was sitting crosslegged on a spongelike mat of pine needles and other woodland litter beneath tall, gently swaying trees. The sun was setting. There was a glint of light on the gold-toned badge and nameplate the deputy wore on his shirt, on the short chromed chain that held an eager German shepherd in check.
    Hero smiled at the dog, which whined but sat back obediently. He had no such easy communication with the deputy, who faced him from ten feet away holding a walkie-talkie in his other hand.
    “I want you to get up from there and do what I tell you, and I want you to be mighty quick about it!”
    There was movement on the path behind the deputy, Don Maxwell according to his nameplate, and another uniformed man—older, shorter, pudgier, with impeccably styled gray hair—came into view. He wore lieutenant’s bars on his collar.
    “Harve,” Maxwell complained to the newcomer, “he wants to give us a hard time. Been sitting there like he’s in some kind of trance.”
    “Meditation,” Hero said, his voice a little thick. “I’ve been meditating.”
    “You have a name?” the gray-haired Lieutenant asked him.
    Hero pronounced it for him carefully, then said, “But most people find it easier to call me Hero.”
    “That so? Not from anywheres around here, are you, son?”
    “I am from Sheffield, England.”
    “Um-hm. Stand up for us, please, Mr. Flynn. Just keep your hands in sight and place them on top of your head. If you make any kind of sudden move, Deputy Maxwell here will turn the dog loose.”
    “It’s all right to let her loose,” Hero said with a smile. He got to his feet, raising his hands slowly, as he’d been told to do. “She wouldn’t harm me, in any event.”
    “Don’t believe you want to take that chance, Mr. Flynn. This here’s a trained attack dog.”
    “I practice kinship with all forms of life,” Hero told him. “What else do you do with your time? Which you seem to have plenty of to waste. Now, just turn around slow, hands on your head, I’m going to do a body search.”
    “Is something wrong? I don’t believe I was disturbing anyone.”
    Hero, his back to the deputies, closed his eyes momentarily while the Lieutenant’s stubby hands patted him down from his neckline to his ankles. He felt uneasy, not from being roughly touched, but because the position he found himself in—feet spread, elbows out, fingers laced on top of his head—was eerily familiar to him. In Bolivia the police had lined him up facing a wall, and beaten him senseless with rifle butts. But this wasn’t Bolivia, and he couldn’t be in any danger. No, it was her again. She’d been forced to stand like this, and then—dear God—
    A shudder went through Hero, nearly staggering him.