“Tell him about the water,” Jack prompted.
Ronnie gave a disgusted snort. “It wasn’t water on the slip-slide.”
Coconut! The funky not-right smell I was smelling: it was coconut.
Ronnie kept talking. “They had tons of these industrial-sized jugs of the stuff. Poured on the plastic and rubbed it on themselves.” He made a disgusted noise.
“Love Doctor’s Lubricant?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Ronnie said. “It was everywhere. Empty jugs thrown around. And more stacks of full bottles waiting to be used. So the chick and the dude were sliding around. I sat and smoked a little. Somewhere along the way the dude grabbed one of those funny hats like foreigners wear.”
“A bowler,” I said. Hobart Creech.
“Whatever,” Ronnie said. “The slide had to be close to a football field long and ran straight down this big-ass hill. They’d pump some of that stuff on their hands, rub it all over, and dive onto that plastic. Slicker than snot, they’d shoot down the hill. Laugh all the way down. Walk up the hill. Smoke dope. Slide down again.” He looked at me. “I got bored. I had just drove halfway across Kentucky, so I was already tired. A few tokes on a joint and I was out like a light. It was awesome weed. I woke up just as they rolled me onto the plastic, and that little dude gave me a shove, and I started downhill headfirst.”
He glanced back and forth between Jack and me. “Man, once you hit that stuff there was no stopping. And the worst part was that little dude jumped on my back like I was a sled or something. I’m a big dude.”
“And gravity,” I commented.
“Yeah, gravity. Just like in school,” Ronnie said. “Gravity sucked us down faster and faster. We were zipping down this hill, between trees. Rocks. Whatever. And then it ended. And we skidded another twenty feet, damn near slamming right into a boulder. The little dude laughed all the way down the hill. That ride scared me.”
Falling back into the grass, Ronnie looked up at the sky. “Man, I’ve been in some fights in prison. Shanks and knives. But I was more afraid zipping down that hill inches away from a big old oak or a rock splitting my head open. I said, forget this. My guy told me the main dude I was to deal with was crazy. And he wasn’t the one nearly banging my head off the land riding down that slip-and-slide. That dude in the leopard-print thong was crazy enough for me. I didn’t want to meet his brother. I got the hell out of there intending not to slow down until I got out of this county.”
Jack pulled me away a few steps. “What do you think?”
Raising my voice, I said, “Ronnie, I think we can let you off with a warning this time.”
After we had Ronnie give us all the info he had about the house, Jack and I raced back to the office, where we came up with this great idea. Others would call it harebrained. But to us two rookies, it was a great plan. We used Ronnie’s statement about where he went (the Creeches’) and who he met (Hobart Creech) as well as the description of the slip-and-slide (matching the type of material stolen from Poppa Roche’s) and the brand and enormous quantity of Love Doctor lube (ditto for Poppa Roche’s burglary), and we thought we could get ourselves a search warrant for the Creech residence. Even better, with only a stoned and half-naked Hobart there, the two rookies could easily be the heroes and solve Poppa’s burglary. One stoned Hobart against two of the finest of the thin gray line. No problem. It was a foolproof plan.
When we knocked on the county attorney’s door with our freshly typed affidavit in hand, he was more than a little mad. However, after he read our work and saw what we were doing, he was all in. Did I mention that the prosecutor and judge also liked eating at Poppa’s place? From there we went to the judge’s house, where Jack swore out the search warrant.
When we finally got the warrant, it was after 3 a.m., so we figured even the ne’er-do-well relatives on Whitehouse Road would be asleep or passed out drunk or stoned and not be able to rouse old Hobart. Our plan was to ease up Whitehouse Road. Not going too fast. Not going too slow. With a little luck we would get to the Creeches’ big brick house while Londell and the others were out doing Lord knows what. We would snatch up Hobart, and once we located the missing stove and griddle, along with all of the plastic and Love Doctor’s product, it would be time for first-shift troopers to come in to work. All of those senior troopers could come help us heroes tote out all of the stolen property.
Sounded like a great plan.
Jack and I slid into his car and headed toward our destination. We waited until we were already headed down the road before I keyed the radio to dispatch. “Dispatch, be advised Units 322 and 575 are en route to 1072 Whitehouse Road.”
A long pause as the night dispatcher probably rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “Unit 322, I don’t have a call for that address.”
“Dispatch, we will be serving a search warrant for stolen property there,” I said. Then I keyed the microphone and made static noises and half words. “Dispatch we... when... contact post when we’re ten-seven.”
Jack suggested we switch off the radio. I didn’t do that, but I did turn the volume all the way down, so we could honestly say we couldn’t hear dispatch call for us.
To get an idea of Whitehouse Road, you have to picture a small, barely two-lane road that snakes this way and that. More curves than straightaways. Hillside on one side and wooded drop-offs on the other. Every little bit, a house or trailer would be in a flat spot or just visible through the trees. Most with only a porch light on, or a lone bulb glowing in through a window. The rest was darkness and shadows of trees, the road only illuminated as far as the light from the headlights.
As we drove deeper into the holler, the thicker the trees got and the farther apart the houses were. And the darker it seemed to get.
We rounded one long curve and there was a great big house and driveway. And it was lit up like it was on the Vegas strip. We didn’t have to worry about anyone hearing us roll up. AC/DC’s “Back in Black” was pumping out of a huge stereo someone had dragged out into the driveway with an extension cord running back into the house.
Jack pulled the Crown Vic to a stop at the bottom of the driveway, and we quietly got out, each taking one side of the driveway. Heading up the gravel drive, we kept our eyes open and one hand on our holstered pistols. As we passed the stereo, Jack reached down and gave the cord a yank, killing the music. The silence was deafening.
Together, Jack and I eased around to the back of the house, since that was where Ronnie said Hobart had been when he left. Moving through the carport, we took a flagstone path toward the rear of the house, where I could see at least an acre or more of cleared land sloping down to the bottom of the hill. As I rounded a corner, my foot kicked into something that skittered away, bouncing into the night. Looking down, I saw there were empty plastic bottles scattered along the pathway and into the yard. Love Doctor’s Lubricant. Sure enough, there was a long tongue of black plastic rolled all the way down the backyard out of the range of the light into the darkness. The slide started fifteen feet from a nice concrete patio with lounge chairs and a grill. Two of the lounge chairs were occupied. Curled up on one was a woman as naked as the day she was born. Flopped in the second chair with his legs and arms spread out in a wide X was Hobart Creech. Still wearing the leopard-print thong and bowler. Snoring away. Tucked in at the corner of the patio were neatly stacked cartons. You guessed it. More Love Doctor product standing by, ready to slather up and slide down.