Gone(2)

Rondeau got out and went to the trooper on the porch. He was a hardcase named Jaskulski, who everyone called Ski. Ski didn’t look pleased.

Rondeau held the man’s eye. “Where is it?”

“Gone. It’s at the barracks. Photographer who owns it will probably press charges. And we could, too: first degree criminal mischief, first degree wanton endangerment. Local ordinance states—”

“Right, well, that was a revised statute . . .”

Ski looked severe. “You kidding me right now?”

Rondeau held up his hands. “Alright. I know. I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it. Thank you for your help, Ski.”

He waited until Trooper Ski decided for himself that it was enough, and left the porch. Ski slammed his vehicle door and tore out of the driveway. Rondeau watched him leave, took a breath, and went inside.

Millard stood in the hallway, the heaping mass of man that he was, dressed in his ragged flannel shirt and stained pants.

“Millard, what the hell happened? What did you do?”

“Hey, you don’t come flying over my house with one of those things and expect me to just sit here and watch,” Millard said. “That’s what I did.”

“They were taking pictures.”

“They were taking pictures?” Millard’s mood changed to anger. He paced around the wide hallway. Framed photos hung on the walls, family members watching them from behind patinas of dust. “I bet they were taking pictures,” Millard yelled, “And I bet that’s not all they were doing!”

Rondeau folded his arms. “What did you hit it with?”

“The Winnie.” Millard was referring to his Winchester Universal, a sporting gun for bird hunting. A 12-gauge. Aside from a Bee-Bee gun he’d had since his teens, it was the only gun he owned. But Rondeau knew his brother-in-law liked to think he still had an arsenal to choose from.

Birdshot wasn’t much use for home invasion, because its small light pellets wouldn’t do much to halt a determined invader. But that didn’t stop its use on the home defense front — in fact, if memory served, some guy in another part of the country had blown a drone out of the sky using a similar weapon. It was almost becoming “a thing.”

Rondeau cocked his head. “Did you take it down with one shot?”

“Oh yah. When the guy came for it, though, I was hidden upstairs. I waited. I thought, ‘You cross that fence, there’s going to be another shooting. This is private property.’”

“Right,” Rondeau said. And that was when the photographer had turned around and called 911, who’d sent the state troopers.

Rondeau scratched his shoulder and sighed. He started towards the kitchen, his boots clomping across the old wooden floor. “Come sit down with me,” he said as he passed Millard. His brother-in-law followed and they sat at the table.

“Millard,” Rondeau said after thinking for a bit, “I think you need to start seeing Connie again.”

Millard look at the floor. He seemed frustrated, embarrassed. Not much had changed there; Millard hated therapy.

“Yeah, sure.”

“You know you’re lucky you don’t have to go to County Mental Health for your therapy, right? You listening? Connie is expensive . . .”

Millard gave him a hard look. “So stop paying her. I told you I don’t need any therapy.”

Rondeau sat back, and ran his fingers through his greying hair. It needed a cut. “Okay,” he said, “tell me why you shot down that drone.”

“I told you, it was taking pictures of my goddamn house!” He slammed a meaty fist on the table. Rondeau briefly saw the cuts and bruises on his knuckles, they were banged up pretty bad. Like he’d been in a fight with a Chevy, and lost.

Our house, Rondeau wanted to say, but experience advised him not to. There was no point in bringing up his dead sister, Millard’s wife, God rest her soul, gone three years. Rondeau was the executor of her will, and he was ultimately responsible for the property. But it wasn’t worth dragging any of that out right now.

“Okay,” said Rondeau, humoring Millard, “It was taking pictures of your house. Why was it taking pictures of your house?”

Millard’s anger didn’t entirely subside, but evolved into paranoia. Millard’s voice dropped, his shoulders drew together.

“You know why,” Millard said in a small voice.

“I do?”

“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, Jay, you do.”

Jay, Rondeau thought. What his sister had called him. What they both called him — Jessica and Millard, when Rondeau visited in the days before she died and Millard became a paranoid conspiracy theorist. When the roof wasn’t sagging as much, when the baseboard wasn’t as eaten away, when the kitchen smelled like chicken casserole.

Rondeau could guess why Millard had shot the thing out of the sky. Just six months before, Millard had reluctantly submitted to an eyesight examination. When the optometrist had asked to take a picture of his retina, Millard had refused. Not only refused; he’d gone on a rant about government surveillance and demanded the eye doctor turn over all of his records. That was the level of his paranoia.

Yes Jay, you know why. You know why that drone was taking pictures of my house. Rondeau just had to ask: “You think it was them, Millard?”