The Devil's Copper by Jamie Crothall (ink ebook reader .txt) 📕

Though he looked like he was fighting a severe hangover, he managed to rally himself to the cause.  “I’m in.”

“Come on then,” I urged.

I helped him get to his feet.

“What’s happened?” he asked warily.  “How long was I out?”

“I gave Frankie the notebook, and he let Jack go.  We’re in the clear.”

“No,” he muttered.  “No, we’re not.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

I tried to help him get his leg over the stick shift.

“I barely escaped, Billie.  His cops tried to kill me.”

“What?”

As we tried to navigate his way around the driver’s seat, he stumbled and accidentally hit the steering wheel, nailing the horn.

“Shit,” I muttered.  I hurried him down and grabbed the sheet still trailing from him.  “Get in the back of the pick-up.”

Walter jumped in and put the blanket on him.

I gestured to Jack to get down.

“Billie?” my boss called.

He appeared around the corner of the tanker.

“Hey Joey,” I replied, doing my best to act natural.

“What are you doing out here?  Who said you could use a service vehicle?”

“Pat told me you were on a job, so I thought I’d best check to see if the truck was still licensed.  I couldn’t get you on the radio, so I came out.  Sorry, I knocked the horn.”

“The truck is still good,” he insisted.

“I know.  It’s a good truck.  And it’s still licensed, I just checked.”

“Well since you’re here, you might as well see what it’s like on a job site.  You’ve never been to a pumping job, have you?”

“Not one this big!”

“Well now, it’s time to get educated.  Come with me.”

Joey patted his overall pockets and produced a package of tobacco.  He juggled the pipe, the tobacco, and his clipboard while trying to pack his pipe.

“Can you hold…”

“I’ll hold the clipboard,” I insisted.

He packed and lit his pipe, then nodded and took back the clipboard.  My stomach churned just thinking about it.

“Right.  So, over here is the septic tank.  It's normally about ten feet away from the house.  You have to go into the basement and find the outlet, then follow it out into the back yard.”

“Okay.  Ten feet.”

“Most times, you have to dig up the grass to get to the lid, unless they have some kind of removable one.  People don’t like the risers showing, so they normally prefer to cover them up.”

“Cover the risers,” I repeated, looking over my shoulder.

When was the malaria going to kick in?

“I already did the digging, so you’re lucky.  I’m nearly seventy years old and I can still do it in about ten minutes.  Some of the drivers are in their twenties and complain if they have to do any digging.  I swear, Todd nearly had a heart attack the other week, and he tore up half their yard looking for it.”

“Heart attack, got it.”

I looked around again and saw something mildly concerning: a police car.  It slowed as it passed by on the main road, then disappeared behind a veil of trees.  Moments later, it returned.  The officer in the passenger seat pointed at the truck.  It pulled into the driveway.  The only reason I didn’t completely panic was it was an OPP cruiser, not local police.

“Uh, Joey?  Now might be a good time to have a license to drive this thing.”

Joey turned and saw the cruiser.  He seemed more eager than daunted.

“Watch me talk my way out of this,” he said.  “They don’t know who I am yet.”

He strode forward, switching off the pump from the back of the truck.  The two officers emerged.

“What seems to be the problem?” Joey asked.  “Are you here for me or the home-owner?”

“We’re actually here for you, sir,” one officer said.  “We had a report of a bomb being planted in the back of one of your tank trucks.”

Okay. Even I wasn’t expecting that.

“What?” he scoffed.

“I know.  It’s a bit absurd, but we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t check it out.  Do you mind if we have a look?”  He gestured them forward.  “We’re just going to give it a quick once over.  If we see anything suspicious, we’ll call the bomb squad, but I don’t think it’ll come to that.  This is likely just a prank by an unhappy customer.”

“Well, we have pissed off a few people by being unavailable lately,” my boss said, glancing over at me.

“Do you mind moving this pick-up truck, just to be safe?”

That was just the cue I was hoping for.  “I’ll head back to the office, Joey.”

Joey barely registered my departure. He was too busy trying to impress the police officers.

“Hey, are you the Joey?” one of the men asked.

Oh god.  I had to leave before his ego consumed us all.

I got into the driver’s seat.

“We have to leave town,” I said.

“I know,” Jack replied.

“No, I mean we really need to leave town.  They lied.  Big surprise.  They tried to kill Walter.  He’s in the back.  Let’s get out of here.”

I pulled out of the driveway, calmly to avoid any suspicion, but once we were away I began to speed up.

“Is he okay?” Jack asked.

“He’s fine. You can talk to him later.”  I looked down at the gas gauge.  “We have enough to get an hour out of town.  Where can you get this money you said you have?”

“It’s in my office downtown.”

I rolled my eyes.  “Well, I have some bad news about that.  Mike trashed the place.”

“My Mike?”

“Yeah.  Long story.”

“I’m going to have to talk to that kid.  I thought I could trust him.”

“Again, long story.  You may not have to worry about that.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him yet, nor the attention span to break it