Enjoy this 3 chapter teaser, about Outlaw aka Michael ROBB, from his
Horror/Thriller "I-35 South" Also his Award Winning Horror novel The Butcher's Boy
which transpires when Michael was 11 years old, is FREE thru Saturday the 27th here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004FPYWKU
The music and other novel is linked at the end.
I-35 South
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sitting behind one of the Seminole Nation’s Tribal Police desks, Outlaw was using two computers at the same time. He hadn’t mastered typing on two separate keyboards yet, but he assured Tah Timbo that he eventually would. He was there for Tah and Taima. He had a tiny little bit of Indian in him, but not nearly enough to receive tribal benefits. But he’d grown up with these guys and considered Tah family.
When Outlaw’s mother was dying of cancer, Tah lived with them for a while and kept an eye on her. Tah built her an iPhone from parts he kept in a tub, and he scored her bags of good weed, even though he didn’t use it.
Now, medical marijuana is legal in Oklahoma. It was as easy as telling the doctor you had trouble sleeping and handing over two hundred bucks to the state to get the card you needed to buy and use openly. Outlaw didn’t necessarily agree with that because some people needed the stuff to get by, like his mother had. He used it, but then again, he used a lot of drugs for a lot of different reasons. Getting “high” was not one of them and abusing them or taking any one kind in large doses, or for too long, was not what he did.
“Them girls are coming by again, y’all,” one of the younger guys said excitedly.
“They keep looking at us,” another added, “but they are skin and bones. That shit is rough on them.”
“They are probably going to get wet.” Wayne Ponkilla was usually right about the weather.
Almost all of them looked out the window wall of the Tribal Police building beyond the trees and saw the dark line of clouds racing toward them.
Oklahoma was full of small towns, and drugs, and criminals, but not the sort of criminals you’d find any other place. There were casinos everywhere, all owned by different tribes, and each ran a bit differently than the others, save for the Chickasaw Casinos. They’d built convenience stores on their land and bought land up and down all the main highways. The stores were called CTS (Chickasaw Travel Stop), and they had a hundred or so slot machines in each one. They’d become popular hangouts for the locals.
The Chickasaw owned the huge Winstar Casino north of Gainsville, Texas in a town called Thackerville, Oklahoma and the sizable Mega Star Casino, on HWY 377, both just across the border from Texas. They were building another casino and lodge right on Lake Texoma, at the foot of the HWY 70 bridge near Catfish Bay. It was close to where Outlaw, or Captain Mike, ran his fishing guide service.
It was fine with him. His business would double, and his dock had an apartment built on it. His real estate guy predicted it would triple in value when the casino was finished.
As far as he could tell, the Chickasaw were building a casino empire, which is why he and his band preferred to play for big events and special occasions. They played at other venues, too. Choctaw Casino was North of Dallas and was packed every night with wealthy Texans trying to hit it big.
Wayne Ponkilla, as well as a few other of their multi-tribe crew, were there at the Tribal Police Headquarters watching over them all. Outlaw had called Tah about noon saying that he felt Taima was no longer in danger, but neither the Texas Ranger named Jackson, nor Patrolman Harding were answering Timbo’s calls, and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol main desk couldn’t tell them anything helpful over the phone at that time.
Tah was quiet and looked as if he hadn’t slept since his sister was abducted. Every now and then, he would look at Outlaw, then Wayne Ponkilla, then back at the floor. A few of the others were joking and laughing, and it seemed normal, yet like some strange episode of the Twilight Zone, where joy was frowned upon, and no one could be truly happy until it was verified that Taima was found.
Outlaw looked at one of the screens and felt accomplished. He was in the federal Marshal’s database on one computer and was now in the Oklahoma Health Department’s cloud drive on the other. He hadn’t had to hack the first source. The Tribal Police had access. It was inevitable Indians would be working in every organization imaginable, and they were wisely starting to pool their resources to build their power up.
The casino money could be used to fund election candidates, or buy land, or just to invest, so they were covering their bases and, so far, doing a good, legal job of it. Their access to the federal Marshal’s data was legitimate, but not necessarily for who was looking. The Health Department wasn’t hard to get through, though, and if anyone tried to call out his intrusion, Outlaw’s lawyer would make them waste a year or two and a small fortune in legal fees just trying to determine if a crime was even committed.
Outlaw figured out the casinos, like Oklahoma law enforcement, loved and hated him at the same time. They loved him because everyone whispered when he showed up. People tweeted and Facebooked and used Instagram to tell their friends. Besides being a living legend on the poker table, the books he’d written won awards, and his songs had deep lyrics that were popular in certain circles, worldwide.
Social media messages like:
Outlaw is at Winstar tonight. Maybe he’s playing cards?
He has the blue OU cap on. Take the Sooners tomorrow.
Outlaw is on the two five poker table. Come watch him blow up when he loses.
He just said take the Lakers -9 tonight.
He’s walking around the slot machines with that look in his eyes, I bet he hits a jackpot.
All of which brought in quite a few extra players and spectators and their money, but it also meant that the casinos had to watch him win.
It was uncanny how he sensed what machines were about to hit. It was uncanny, even for him. He gave a lot of action back when he won, though. He didn’t want the casinos to hate him. When he won three grand in an evening, he blew a grand of it back frivolously or tipped it away to the staff. He called it to give action.
He picked so many sports winners he had to make a code and post picks backwards, just to keep Vegas from sending someone after him. If you just took his predictions at face value, you might lose. If you didn’t understand his methodology, or which bets he was best at making, you’d never get too far ahead, and the old school rakes left him alone. His caution with the Nevada books wasn’t because he was scared of them, either. He just didn’t want to catch a life sentence for defending himself. Those who understood the code saw through the bad bets he posted, though, and usually won big time.
He had a knack, and the gift of clairvoyance. If you asked him, he would say he got both from his mother.
He’d played in New Orleans for years, where the Voodoo Queen raked a percentage of the pots. He placed in several World Series of Poker Events, including a final table appearance and a sixth-place cash out at Choctaw Casino, and then another at Harrah’s in New Orleans. He took his wife to Vegas once and won the daily poker tournament at the MGM Grand the first time he ever played in it. If they dealt him a trap hand, he sometimes left the table stymied with yawning players or a sleepy dealer. Sometimes, he wouldn’t be seen in the gambling houses for months at a time.
He hated it when they called it luck because, to him, luck was simply being educated, prepared, and observant enough to see windows of opportunity while possessing the correct skills and means needed to open those windows and take advantage.
What he just found on the Health Department’s system, though, he had to admit was simple good fortune. And though he didn’t want to, he had an obligation to call Patrolman Harding and tell him the information before he told Tah and Wayne.
He was about to scrub his digital presence from that system when Tah Timbo’s cell phone rang.
“They got her,” he told them after answering the call. The weight of his worry lifted them all. “She is dehydrated and was drugged but is otherwise all right.”
“Was that Harding?” Outlaw asked after his friend finished listening and hung up his phone. “Did they get the killer?”
“Nope and nope.” Timbo shook his head. “University of Texas administration office. They said the Texas Ranger chased him but crashed.”
Outlaw let out a long sigh. He believed in karma in a way few others knew how to. He had a quote from one of his books. To serve karma, one must do good to those who deserve it. To serve karma well, one must also deliver bad karma where and when it is due.
He had no idea why Harding hadn’t called before the university did, and he couldn’t think of one that would satisfy Tah’s crew. So, instead of calling Harding first with what he found, he called his friend Tah, and another guy over and whispered the potential address of the killer’s second hideout to him. Oddly enough, it was just off I-35S near Ardmore, Oklahoma. Not too far north of Winstar World Casino, but even closer to the headquarters of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
A couple of cell phones sounded at the same time. It was a weather alert. Outside, it was just late afternoon, but the sky was dark as pitch on one side. Tornado sirens went off, several of them across town, with their long, whining drone.
Ponkilla saw it first. “Holy fuck, man!” He pointed and stood slack-jawed as the shingled roof of a house came tumbling and twisting toward them right over the neighborhood those girls walked into just a few minutes earlier. Beyond the roof, there were limbs, leaves, and debris and part of a mobile home being churned a few hundred feet skyward. Even before they could run for cover, the big glass wall they were watching from behind was instantly vaporized into a windblown spray of sharp chunks of tempered glass.
Oddly, Outlaw stopped hearing the tornado sirens right before the city’s power grid failed, leaving everyone in utter blackness.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Harding and Vida were in the helicopter easing North along the I-35E corridor trying to spot their killer’s refrigerator truck. There were so many exits and mix masters, Harding had all but given up on the search method he’d devised a few hours earlier. From the sky, every U-Haul van looked like their target until you got right over it. Every truck they saw with a refrigerator unit on top had an ice cream or frozen food logo on its side. It was maddening.
spaghetti on the table and the slowest ants in the word had started reclaiming them.
“This is starting to look pointless,” he grumbled with the binoculars still at his eyes. The headset mic picked up his voice, so he continued, “I see signs for 635, 121, and 75, and of course 35E, and he could have exited any one of them, or even stopped, during the storm earlier.”
The same storm that had led to Jackson’s broken leg, had blown through a few hours ago on its way north. It was probably tearing up Oklahoma while they hovered over traffic in the sun.
“You’re right.” Commander Vida sounded discouraged in the headset. “Harvey, take us back to Luv Field.”
“Wait a minute,” Harding said quickly before the pilot had a chance to turn them around. “I just got a text from your bad boy, Michael the Outlaw.”
Harding shifted in his seat and looked at a paper map of the area that was taped to cardboard to keep it spread open.
“Is there enough fuel to get us to Ardmore, Harv?” he asked the pilot.
“What’s in Ardmore?” the commander asked. “What did Michael have to say?”
Harding thought she sounded a bit miffed that he hadn’t called her, but he was also scrambling to dial Tah Timbo because he had promised to call him first if they learned anything, but after leaving Taima with the authorities in Austin, he’d stopped trying. He doubted Tah would be all that angry because she was safe, but he did dial Tah’s number again, and was sort of surprised when the call connected through the headset.
He almost hung up and texted him out of uncertainty, but the pilot pointed to a square pushbutton switch in a bank of many that had a Bluetooth emblem on it. If yours is on, it gets picked up,” said the pilot quickly.
“Hello? Who is this?” Tah asked. “Is this you Harding? You’re late.”
“What?” Harding didn’t understand, but a sudden sinking feeling hit his stomach. “I tried you half a dozen times after we got her out of there, Tah. What do you mean, late?”
“Seminole was destroyed by a tornado half an hour ago, but Outlaw found where the bastard is eventually going to go,” Tah said with defiance dripping from his angry voice. “We are almost there. You should have kept trying to get me. You know there are few towers on Indian land.”
“Take us to Ardmore,” Vida ordered Harv, hearing the conversation. “I know they have a landing pad there somewhere.”
Harding covered the mic with his hand. “Land at the Highway Patrol Headquarters. There are pads and room east of them on the turf.”
“You got your sister back, Timbo,” Harding said flatly. “Do not get in our way now.”
He heard the phone click off but thought Tah heard him. “Hey, Harvey,” Harding had another idea, “do we have enough gas to follow the highway route to Ardmore.”
“I smell what you are steppin’ in,” Harvey, an overweight guy with shoulder length brown hair growing from a shiny topped balding head, did his best impersonation of the Rock. He even added the eyebrow raise when he looked back and nodded, indicating they had enough fuel.
*
“There it is,” Commander Vida said into the silence of the helmet speakers. “I can see the shrimp logo. Look.”
She handed him the binoculars.
“There it is.” He only looked long enough to verify what she’d seen and handed her back the looking device. Then he started studying the cardboard map. After a moment or two, he held the section of map he needed up sideways and, using a pencil, he showed Harvey.
“He is either going to cut down Levinworth Trail near Calera here or go all the way into Durant and take Hwy 70 to the west. Either way, we need to wait until he is on that bridge, and then close off both ends.”
“Can you get someone to close it off behind him?” Commander Vida asked.
“More likely the other way around.” He gave Vida a smirk. “Outlaw’s fishing guide service’s dock is just over here.” He indicated the cluster of boathouses of Catfish Bay Marina less than a mile south of the bridge. “You should call him and ask him why he told the Indians where this place is before he told either of us.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Outlaw was tripping out. He was stoned, and maybe still feeling the effects of the pain pills the doctors fed him. He was down to two pills a day now after being up to five. His neck was fused from the c4 to the c7, a break from some unremembered wreck or penitentiary fight he’d been in. He needed the pain pills to get by, but he didn’t need five a day as they kept prescribing him
Up ahead, he saw two sets of red and blue lights flashing at an intersection. There was a shelter-in-place tornado warning still in effect, and the town was pitch-black. The intersection lights didn’t work, the streetlights didn’t work, and even the power to the tornado sirens was out. And as he rolled up to the intersection of Highway 9 and Hwy 177 to Shawnee and ran in front of the junior college, there was another two first responder vehicles there with the drivers looking around anxiously.
It dawned on Outlaw what they were doing then, and after getting blasted with a barrel full of tempered glass earlier, he had no choice but to respect them. When he looked off to his left, he saw several more red and blue lights spinning. None of the drivers were even near their vehicles. He had half a mind to move a few of them to different areas of the leaf- and limb-strewn field, but no. These city, county, and state folks were out here acting as human tornado sirens, as well as monitoring the minimal traffic.
Whoever thought of it needed credit, for, in Oklahoma, a town without sirens could be shredded in moments. The cost tabulated in lives lost not just dollars. Seminole had fixed their problem within an hour of first being slammed, with nothing but gumption and city vehicles. Even the big trucks were used, if only to idle with their lights on so people could see the stop signs.
He passed several limb crews being watched over by attentive officers who were clearly on their second straight shift. They were having to work under generator-powered lights barely protected from windblown debris. And here the police car sirens went off. All across town, vehicles started whining out loud aggressive warnings and firing up their sirens so those stuck inside houses wouldn’t be caught in the tornado unaware.
He’d never seen so many police lights in one highly affected area. But his thoughts kept going back to the officers themselves, who were willing to stay put and keep their sirens blaring while mayhem and debris slinging disaster came whipping and slamming them around.
Outlaw didn’t get back in the vehicle before the 4Runner shook on its suspension like a windblown toy. He decided to go back and offer help from his phone, but his cell phone rang, and he was immediately queried by Commander Vida about why he didn’t call them before telling the Indian vigilante crew of the killers second hideout.
“I tried several times,” he insisted, ”but I could never get anyone.”
“Bullshit, Michael. No one has called me all day. You should have been at your boathouse this evening,” she told him. “Our killer is about to come across Lake Texoma on the HWY 70 bridge. We are about to get him!”
End of Preview
Grab I-35 South by Michael ROBB here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5MGDSWL/
A fluent musician and songwriter, Michael just released a 22 song LP called: Michael ROBB’s Mysterious Ways
https://artists.landr.com/057829907676
@DahgMahn MR's X feed is giving away a 10" Kindle every Sunday until Christmas. Find out how to enter @DahgMahn