Truman Daly swore under his breath.
He’d followed the old Ford pickup for a mile as it weaved and bobbed down the rural highway, the driver pointedly ignoring the swirling lights and sirens from Truman’s vehicle. He had to make a quick decision before the Ford entered a populated part of the town. Truman knew the driver and fully expected an earful when he finally got Anders Beebe to the side of the road. An earful he’d already heard a half-dozen times in his six months as Eagle’s Nest police chief. The old Ford caught a tire in the soft shoulder and overcorrected into the oncoming lane, then swerved back into its own.
Anders has to be drunk.
Making his decision, Truman accelerated and pulled the department’s Tahoe into the other lane, preparing to tap the old-timer’s right rear fender and send him into a spin. Instead, before Truman could tap the Ford, a huge cloud of steam burst out from under Anders’s hood, and he pulled off the road and rolled to a stop. Truman parked behind him and wished his department could afford a body camera to record the imminent kooky conversation.
With one hand on the butt of his gun, he approached the vehicle. The window was jerkily lowered by a hand crank. “Anders? You okay?” he asked.
“What the hell did you do to my truck?” The old-timer’s words ran together, and Truman picked up the scent of beer from five feet away. “How in the Lord’s high heaven did you do that?”
“I didn’t do anything to your truck. Something’s up with your engine.”
“Yes, you did! You police got some new fancy gadget to illegally stop citizens. How much tax money did the government spend on that?”
“Can you step out of the vehicle for me?” Truman asked. He knew Anders was generally harmless, but he’d never encountered him drunk, so his reflexes were on high alert.
“I do not consent!” Anders shrieked. Truman stepped close enough to see empty beer cans on the Ford’s bench seat.
“How much have you drunk today, Anders?” he asked.
“I do not consent! Codes and statutes aren’t laws unless I consent!”
Truman sighed. Even while he was drunk, Anders’s sovereign citizen beliefs were in full force.
“Your vehicle’s not going any farther today, Anders. Let me give you a ride and you can call someone to look at it.”
The man’s red-rimmed, pale-blue eyes couldn’t hold eye contact with Truman. The lines in Anders’s face were deeper than usual, and his gray hair stuck out in all directions from under his hat. “I do not wish to create joinder with you,” he stated.
Truman bit his tongue. Sovereign citizens had a whole litany of confusing pseudo-legalese to quote whenever they encountered a government official. The first time one had told Truman he didn’t want to create joinder with him, Truman had nearly replied that he wasn’t asking for sex. “I don’t want to create joinder with you either, Anders, but I will help you back to town. Does that work for you?”
“I’m a freeman on the land,” he sang.
“We’re all free men, Anders. Why don’t you hop out and let’s see what’s happened under your hood?” At least Anders wasn’t yelling at him anymore, but he was swaying nonstop in his seat. Truman doubted he could walk.
Probably why Anders had decided to drive.
The Ford’s door creaked open and Anders tried to stand but stumbled forward into Truman’s arms.
“Gotcha.” Truman turned his face away from the alcohol and body odor fumes. “Let’s get you to my vehicle.” He guided the man to the back door of his Tahoe, deftly checking him for weapons on the way.
“I don’t want to create joinder with you,” Anders muttered as Truman’s hands ran over his faded denim overalls.
“That makes two of us,” Truman replied. Two rifles sat in the rear window gun rack of the Ford’s cab, but Anders didn’t have anything smaller on his body. Truman cuffed him, put him in the back seat, and went back to check the Ford. He removed the weapons, cranked up the window, grabbed the keys from the ignition, and locked it up.
He returned to his vehicle and found Anders snoring in the back seat.
All the better. Sovereign citizens preferred to do their battles with words. Their statements were a lot of nonsense to Truman’s ears, but he knew they fully believed that they could avoid commonplace legal charges by making various oral declarations. They could talk their twisted legalese for hours, and the nonstop confrontations were exhausting.
He considered it a blessing to listen to Anders snore on the drive back to town.
Truman walked Anders through the small police department and was getting him settled in one of the three holding cells when Officer Royce Gibson stuck his head in the room and wrinkled his nose.
“Jesus, what’s that smell?”
“The usual cocktail of alcohol and body odor,” Truman answered. He stepped out of the cell and locked the door.
“Hey, Anders,” said Royce. “When’d you last shower?”