The Devil's Highway by Timothy C. Phillips Read Free Book Online

quest, he reflected silently, nodded to himself, and looked me in the eye when he spoke.
    “We’ve had our run-ins with the Army of Redemption, to be sure. The old man—Colonel Tolbert—you could reason with him. He was pretty out there, mind you. He had his strange ideas, to my way of thinking, but he kept the other nuts on the compound in line. They were out there getting ready for the End of Time, but they were a fairly quiet bunch.”
    Garrett smiled in recollection, but then his face darkened and his tone altered.
    “Since his death, though, there have been some incidents. The situation has become rather worrying at times. When Tolbert was alive, The Department of Homeland Security kept agents out here, monitoring the group. That was one big reason they kept so quiet, I suppose. He was a real dissident, you might say. He’d written a book that a lot of extreme types took as the gospel, so the Feds thought he was worth keeping an eye on. After his death, though, the feds went away. Seems they don’t care if the news media doesn’t, either.”
    “I’ve read his book, and I agree with you, he was a real kook.” I said, and Garrett laughed. “Is there no leader now?” I asked.
    “Most definitely, and that’s our biggest problem. The new leader is Tolbert’s former right hand man. Now he calls himself Colonel Cushman, and if you ask me, he’s a dozen times worse than old Tolbert ever was. The problem is, Cushman likes to stay out of the spotlight. He’s smart, too. He hasn’t written any crazy “Redemption Manifesto” like Tolbert did, to bring him to the attention of the Feds. He gives his speeches with a big picture of Tolbert on the wall, reads from Tolbert’s book, keeping the old man’s paranoid gospel alive . . . but Cushman does what he wants, and doesn’t care if it contradicts the old man’s teachings now and again.”
    Garrett tilted his hat back and his voice lowered a bit, looking and sounding more than a little like Gary Cooper.
    “Back before the Compound became so isolated from the town, his people and ours did some trading and talked some. From what we know, Cushman rules the compound with an iron fist. When he took charge, he brought in this South African guy, a man named Johannes Kiker, to be his own right hand. I’ve been in Law Enforcement for twenty-odd years, and I’ve seen some bad apples, but I can tell you, that man Kiker is bad through and through. One of the kind who would kill on orders and wouldn’t let it trouble his sleep. Wherever he’s from, I’ll bet he’s got some bad history there.”
    Kiker. I filed the name away for future reference. I’d seen the type, and a militia compound would surely be haven for someone like Sheriff Garrett described.  
    “You say you’ve had trouble with the Redemption Army, here in Delgado.”
    Garrett paused, as if weighing the wisdom of discussing the subject with me.
    “There have been some fights between the Redemption Army members and the townies, to be sure, but that was a while back. When Tolbert first moved in here with his first few hardcore supporters, we had some incidents. There was some tension every time they came to town. There were a few bar brawls for the most part, no worse than the type of thing we see any given weekend. That all changed when Tolbert died. When Cushman took over, he put the bars here in Delgado off limits. I had several of his people in the jail overnight, more than once. It started to look like the Redemption Army was starting its own bail bonds service. Cushman got tired of that, and set up his own bar, out on the compound. Now they can get hammered on the Compound on their day off, and that keeps them out of Delgado.”
    “So the only problems you’ve had with the Redemption Army people is bar fights? That’s all?”
    He looked very pensive, “No, it’s not. I thought you would already know about the Mendoza murder.”
    I shook my head. “I haven’t heard anything about a murder. Who