***
When the domestic disturbance call came in to the Tucker police station,
Alan Davis was just getting ready to leave. In the next room, the phone
rang, but the other half of Tucker's police force, Randy Boyd, wasn't
answering.
He was dead.
Officer Davis was busy gathering his things from his cluttered desk. Ten
minutes ago, Chief Boyd had informed Alan that he would be fired and,
pending an investigation into the "deal" he had arranged with the Mueller
girl so she could avoid a DUI, would probably go to jail for a long time.
Five minutes ago, Alan had offered Randy his rebuttal. A single shot. Who
was fired now, Randy, ol' dog?
Alan paused on his way out the door. The phone had stopped and started
ringing two or three more times while he was cleaning out the gun cabinet
and the petty cash. He was going to simply leave without answering it, but
picked it up, almost as an afterthought.
"Davis", he said.
"Alan? This is Bruce down at the 'Park. You better get over here. The
Duprees are goin' after it pretty hard."
"Aw, give it a rest, Bruce," he replied, "they're fighting all the damn
time. We almost never have to go break it up."
"Not this time. Alan, it sounds like he's killin' her."
"Shit. You go see if you can get his attention off her and I'll be right
over."
"Thanks, Alan. You're a good g..."
Alan punched the button on the phone, but left it off the hook.
"I ain't no good guy," he said to the station house as he left. "I'm
fired."
He stepped into the parking lot toward his car.
In her car in the lot outside the police station, Ann Mueller waited with
the motor running. She had spent the day watching the horror of Alan Davis'
attack sink into her daughter Erin's eyes. It was like watching her die.
Worse, actually, because Erin still had to live with the rape for the rest
of her life, a shadow forever darkening the vibrant, happy girl she had once
been. But Alan Davis was the police in this town. Who could she go to?
What was a mother to do?
Ann Mueller knew. As Davis stepped into the parking lot, she dropped her
car into gear.
***
Throughout the city of Tucker, the chain of events continued to gather steam
as the day wore on. An early-morning robbery at the Q-Mart turned into a
bloodbath, with the convenience store clerk and robber killing each other
and another customer in a hail of bullets. A disagreement over an auto
repair job broke out at the local car dealer and the mechanic beat his
customer into a coma. A group of middle school bullies, rather than simply
picking on Sheppard, a mildly-retarded fixture of Tucker, who rode his
bicycle everywhere, tortured him slowly to death over the course of several
hours.
Mark Dupree, covered in his wife's blood, was shot to death by his neighbor
Bruce as he stumbled out of his trailer carrying the broken remains of a
lamp. Later, after spending the day of agonizing over what she'd done, Ann
Mueller would swallow a bullet out of her husband's revolver.
Day slipped into red night.
Something was not quite right in the city of Tucker, Ohio.
At 11:59, the machine reset. Cindy Dupree slept soundly in her bed, but
this time Mark would plow his pickup into a carload of kids returning from a
late ballgame. Outside Cindy's window, her neighbor Bruce peered in with
evil on his mind. Alan Davis was still going to die at Ann Mueller's hands,
but Ann did not count on Randy Boyd, who would spend the rest of the day and
most of the night beating her with his nightstick in a cell at the station.
The last few seconds of the day ticked away in dead silence.
At midnight, the machine started to move and it began all over again.
A new day began.
And the machine needed blood.
x x x
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