Chapter 11

Sirens wailing and lights flashing Eagleton, with his Pinhill troops and Mary Gulder, and the county sheriff Dave Smallwood, with several of his deputies, converged on the small, secluded River Road residence. All of the law enforcement vehicles skidded to a grinding halt on Mary’s gravel drive, the officers of the law jumped out and quickly surrounded the house. When everyone was in place Eagleton turned on his bull horn, pointed it at the house and delivered his ultimatum.

“Come on out here with yer hands up, boy. Nobody’s gotta git themselves hurt over this. So, give yerself up peaceful like and we can sort this whole mess out.”

The detective thought he was speaking to Joe. His message of surrender was actually heard, of course, by Kyle Foggle. When the blaring sirens had started very faintly, off in the distance, Kyle was still unconscious and, therefore, started to dream of ‘local constables’ that were closing in on him. As the sirens drew closer, the dream intensified proportionately and he moved to semi-consciousness. By the time Eagleton finally got around to delivering his message Kyle was jolted into consciousness, sat bolt upright and stared around himself in a mesmerized dazed. He could see the flashing lights out in the front yard. He could heard another message being broadcast.

“Come on, boy. We got the place surrounded and there’s better than twenty of us out here. What do you say we close this out in a calm and orderly fashion.”

Next, Kyle heard the unmistakable screeching voice of Mary, who had gotten out of Eagleton’s cruiser to put in her two cent worth, “Just go on in and kill the bastard! He’s a gawd-damn killer you sumbitches! And he’s gonna kill me next if you don’t shoot him dead!”

Mary also thought Joe was in the house and was hoping that if they killed him quickly he might not have time to harm her currently precious Kyle, who at that moment knew for certain that he had been betrayed. He had no idea how Mary could have known his secret or found out, but apparently, somehow she had and brought the cops for him. He was trapped, and by his precious, delicate flower of love: Mary ‘Juliet’ Gulder.

Kyle pulled his thirty-eight special out from under the couch, checked to see that it was loaded and turned the safety off. He crouched low, waddled over to the front window and smashed it out with the barrel of his weapon. Not looking at all where he pointed the weapon, he yelled, “Take up thy rapier and dagger! And let slip the dogs of war!” and fired two shots high into the trees surrounding the house.

“Damn, where’d he git a gun?!” Eagleton wondered aloud.
Immediately, half of the law officers dove for cover and the other half opened fire on the house.
“Hold yer fire, boys!,” the detective shouted.
“A thousand years henceferth gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they was not here! And hold their manhoods cheap while any speak that fought with me upon Saint Crispy’s day!”
With that salvo, Kyle fired wildly into the trees again. The officers return fire again.
“Hold yer damn fire, boys!,” the detective shouted again.
Upon hearing his voice and unmistakable style of dialogue, Mary had realized that Kyle was the person in the house shooting at the cops. At first she was frozen in place. Then, she came out of her temporary trance.
“Kyle?! Is that you in there?! Oh, no! Detective there been an awful mistake! Please don’t kill him!”
“I hear yer treacherous voice, wicked queen! The voice that twice-crossed me and now turns to thrice-crossed in a cunnin’ bid to draw me out! May thee and thy voice be yet thrice-damned!” He fired yet again. The officers return fire yet again.
“Gawd-dammit! Hold yer gawd-damn fire, ya sumbitches!,” the detective shouted yet again.

But no more gunplay would be necessary, because Kyle had been hit during the last volley and had fallen to the floor, wounded and screaming.

Upon hearing the animal-in-pain-like-howling, Eagleton and the other officers of the law present rushed up to the porch, listened at the door for a brief moment, then busted through the front door. They could see a man’s figure lying on his back on the writhing in agony, holding his arm. They could also see that the man wasn’t Joe Smith.

Rawls said, “What the hell . . . ? That ain’t him. Say, ain’t that one of the guys . . .”

Eagleton yelled over his shoulder to officers still stationed at the cruisers, “Hey, one of ya’ll call an ambulance out here. Pronto! What about it, Dave?”

The sheriff and his deputies had completed searching the rest of the house and returned to the living room. Sheriff Smallwood answered the detective by shaking his head, pointing at Kyle lying on the floor and saying, “Place is empty exceptin’ fer him.”

Mary had fallen to the floor beside Kyle and was once again crying and sobbing uncontrollably, “Oh, Kyle, don’t you go and die on me! Hold on now, they got a ambulance on the way fer you! Please, don’t die, sweet prince!”

Kyle had stopped howling and was well into moaning, but he stopped moaning long enough to wax eloquently about his situation, “Oh, Horatio, I die . . .Aha! It’s the wretched queen what betrayed this here poor soul! Adieu! Things standin’ thus now knowed, shall live beyond me!” He looked crazily at Mary and continued, “If thou didst ever hold me in thy’s heart, absent thee from felicity fer awhile. And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story to the meddlin’ constables. Why, oh,
why, did you turn to such villainy and treachery and in so doin’ betray yer love?”

Mary was already extremely upset. Now, she was also extremely confused, “What’re
you talkin’ about Kyle?”

“The potent poison quite overcrowes my spirit! I am surely dead, why do you toy so unmericfully with me, oh, wretched queen? Tell me, before my noble heart cracks and flights of angels sing me to my rest . . . How did you uncover the festerin’ secret that it was me that killed Johnny Wilson a year gone past now? And why, oh, why did you tell the local constables about the whole plot? Why couldn’t you have just let the sleepin’ dog lie?”

Eagleton and the rest of the officers stared dumbfounded at Kyle and then each other.

Rawls broke the temporary silence, “Did I hear that right? Did he just admit to killin’ Johnny Wilson?”

Eagleton replied, “Damn . . . That’s what it sounded like.”

The sheriff spoke up, “Say Eagleton, it’s a damn good thing you apparently got yerself one murder case wrapped up. Unfortunately, it ain’t the one we came out here to deal with.”

Meanwhile, the ambulance had arrived and the paramedics were wheeling a stretcher through the front door. While they attended to a moaning Kyle, the officers of the law gathered to figure out their next step in finding one Joe Smith.

The paramedics were wheeling Kyle away to the ambulance with Mary in tow. One of them said to the grouped officers, “Hey, look here. This boy ain’t wounded seriously. He just got a few shards of glass and wood from the window frame in his arm. Hell, he ain’t even got a bullet in him!”

One of the officers called to Eagleton from a cruiser, “Detective? Sir, the radio dispatcher says he’s got a message fer you from a Joe Smith.”