Ask the Parrot

9

Trooper James Duckbundy was a health nut, which was why he liked to drive with the cruiser’s window open. Trooper Roger Ellis would have been just as happy with General Motors air, but Duckbundy was at the wheel this time out, so it was his call.

They were driving to Pooley from Barracks K because some old coot had reported mislaying his weapon, a handgun. Both troopers understood the citizens’ right to bear arms and all that, but both sincerely believed the world would be a safer place if idiots didn’t own guns. They could understand how a person at almost any age could mislay their car keys or watch, but to lose your piece? That was just the sort of individual, in their opinion, who shouldn’t be armed in the first place.

Of the sleepy little towns in the world, Pooley had to be one of the sleepiest. They drove in to few lights and no traffic, and Duckbundy parked in front of the address, a small house lit up like a Christmas tree, the only house in town that seemed to have every last light switched on, interior and exterior. Losing his handgun seemed to have made the householder nervous.

Because Duckbundy was a health nut, which meant his window was open, before he even switched off the engine they both heard the flat serious crack of a shot. Up ahead it came from, and on the other side of the road.

They looked at each other. “That was no handgun,” Ellis said.

“It wasn’t applause, either,” Duckbundy said, and put the cruiser back in gear.

There were no further shots as they eased slowly down the road, but there didn’t need to be. It is a crime to discharge a firearm within five hundred feet of a dwelling, and one time will do.

They both peered at the houses on the left, inching along, until Ellis said, “Movement back there.”

There was a boarded-up empty house at that point, with a driveway next to it and what looked like a garage in back. Duckbundy braked, swiveled the spotlight, and clicked it on. In the sudden glare, a man down there by the garage, with a rifle in his right hand, was just getting into a black Taurus. Something wet glistened on the barrel of the rifle as the man spun around, glaring into the light, clutching the rifle now with both hands.

Ellis had the microphone in his palm and carried it with him as he stepped out to the roadway. “Police,” roared the speaker on the cruiser’s roof. “Stop where you are. Lay the weapon down.”

He didn’t. He screamed something, gibberish, something, and then he did bring the rifle up.

Between them, the troopers fired eleven shots. Any three would have done the job.