Chapter 11

Jimmy Don Anson was usually the type of person who didn’t like being messed with and wouldn’t mess with anybody else.

At least until somebody was messing with him. It was time to send a message to whoever these guys were that were buying up all the land and trying to run the existing neighbors off.

Since they started moving in and paying ridiculous prices for the land, most of the people living in this valley had sold out and moved. Only Jimmy Don, his brother and a cousin, Sally Mae Williams, still owned land here.

Jimmy Don was born in this valley and planned to die here. He liked things just the way they were. He never had any problems with any of the neighbors, until the new people moved in. His brother also didn’t plan to move.

Sally Mae was a shrewd little woman and would sell once the right offer came along. She had probably saved every penny that had ever made it into her purse. Sally’s land was not all that great as most of it was on a hill side.

Most land around here was worth less than a thousand an acre, but the price was now going at five thousand an acre and old cabins and cruddy trailers were getting over ten times their worth.

They had approached Jimmy Don and Bubba several times about selling their land, but had gotten no luck, even though the price went up every time.

Bubba had been snooping around too much, even wanted to get the law and the newspapers involved. Jimmy Don didn’t think that was the way to handle the situation and told his brother not to mess with them, but Bubba didn’t listen and was probably in deep dookie now.

Jimmy Don didn’t bother with them and minded his own business. The new neighbors hadn’t been doing that and he was tired of them spying on him and trying to run him off.

They wouldn’t run him off. He had fought a lot worse. They might get him, but it wouldn’t be without a fight.

Jimmy Don snuck over next to one of the rockers. He picked it up and threw it through one of the windows at the front of the cabin. As soon as the window crashed, he was breaking through the front door.

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It seemed to take forever for the authorities to arrive at the lake. They called in an ambulance and loaded Michael up for a trip to the hospital, after the sheriff and his deputies interviewed him for way too long. He couldn’t understand the need for them to get his fingerprints, but Michael just wanted to get out of there and away from the body of the dead man.

The detective kept asking Michael why he was here and why he was meeting Bubba. Michael repeated the same answer several times, finally getting irritated. He didn’t have a clue what Bubba was going to tell him. Apparently whatever it was would be kept a secret forever because dead men don’t speak.

The ride to the hospital seemed to take forever. He told them to take him to one of the Fort Smith hospitals. There was no way he was going to stop off at the local county hospital first.

When he got to the hospital, Sandy was waiting for him. The look on her face bothered him much more than any pain he had gone through.

She was scared, worried and almost looked sick. They took him into an examining room and she sat down in a chair next to the bed to wait with him.

They waited until everybody left before. “How’s it going?” Michael said.

He hoped to get a smile out of her, but she wasn’t in a smiling mood. “Michael…”

Michael saw she was crying. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be joking around.”

She stared at him with a look he had never seen before. “Michael, I’m not upset about you joking around. You disappear in the middle of the night after somebody calls and threatens me and your building is blown up and you don’t tell anybody where you are going and then I don’t hear anything from you until some cop calls to tell me to meet you at the hospital.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Yes, I know you are. You scared me. I’ve finally got a chance to be happy and marry a man I love and it’s to the point where I don’t know if we’ll even get married before you get killed.”

“I’m not going to get killed.”

“How do you know that?” she said while wiping away some tears. “You’re working at a little newspaper. Just write the obituaries and put the pictures of the kids in the paper. Nobody cares.”

Michael was a little upset. Here he was in pain and his future wife was on the attack. That hurt, but so did the “nobody cares” comment. Surely somebody cares.

“I’m not going after them,” Michael said. That wasn’t necessarily the truth. He had been checking up on some things, but had not written a word about them. “They’re coming after me, Sandy.”

“Yes, they are. But why?”

Michael shrugged his shoulder. He thought of something that had almost slipped by. He stopped thinking about Sandy and all the other troubles.

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In the woods just outside of Langford, a new house overlooked a ridge just to the north. It was one of the nicer homes in the county with a view that people would die to have.

Only one light was on in the house, near the back. Roughly one hundred yards down the road, a man was hidden in the woods, waiting for a chance to see the person inside. The man was the one who had ended Bubba Anson’s life earlier in the night. Now, there was another man who needed taken care of.

This man’s crime was butting in downtown Langford earlier, helping to catch a friend who didn’t need caught by any law enforcement, even one as unsophisticated as the ones in this county.

Their plan was not going as smoothly as they expected. They didn’t think there would be any obstacles, but more were popping up almost every day. He didn’t know the person’s name inside the house, just knew he was a country guy who drove a monster truck and was sharing the company of some ugly woman with a massive chest.

He had been out here for almost two hours. The man was visible for just a few seconds earlier, talking on a cell phone. Since then, there had been some hollering and some other noise that almost sickened the man. It sounded almost like coyotes howling.

His instructions were simple: take out the man who owned this house. That was fine with the shooter. He didn’t mind killing somebody. It was his job. If his bosses told him to knock off somebody, that person would be knocked off. He had done it many times before and hoped to get more chances.

The pay was good with a bonus every time he took care of business. It was getting cooler but the man did not notice. He blended into the woods and thought somebody could walk right by without seeing him.

He saw a light come on in the house. At first, he only saw the shadow. But a person walked past the window. It was the man, wearing a pair of boxers that were at least three sizes too big.

The man was scratching his privates while walking through the house. He better enjoy it, the shooter decided, because this was the last time he would do it. The shooter waited a few seconds until the man came and stood right in front of the window, looking outside while drinking a beer.

This was almost too easy, the shooter decided. He liked a challenge, like the one of knocking off the big country hick from across the lake. In the dark even! The shooter got a kick out of that one. The hick didn’t even take a step, just dropped right where he was when hit with a single bullet from the Remington Model 700 .308 caliber rifle.

He looked into the scope, a D-145 Generation 1+ Compact Night Vision scope, one the man had used many times before. It almost made the darkness of night seem like day. It wasn’t really necessary with the man standing in the night. The shooter aimed right at the man’s head, directly above the beer bottle. The shooter took a deep breath and started to pull the trigger. “Time to die,” he said and applied the final pressure to send the bullet screaming through the night, through the glass of the window and into the man’s head.

The shooter didn’t know the man’s name. Most people just called him Squiggy.