Little Kid's Horror Stories

Chapter 3 - Getting Involved

Looking out the window of the Oak Haven motel, Endora's sole tourist/traveler accommodation, Haggard Pyne licked his lips and drained the last drops from his bottle of liquor. Patience, he kept reminding himself. Have patience. Ten years in a provincial penitentiary taught him that very lesson and now he was using what he learned to his advantage . . .hopefully.

Haggard reflected on the stroke of luck that brought the yokel and his truck to the roadhouse on that particular night. He enjoyed how he had easily bamboozled the young buck into taking the deed, which he didn't need anyway in exchange for something he did need. The kid told him about the waiting buyer and how much he was getting and why, and by the end of the evening he was so drunk and gullible Haggard could have taken the truck without giving him anything.

It felt good to be on the outside again and once he recovered his buried loot, Haggard would disappear somewhere and live the life he dreamed of for the past ten years.

Twelve years earlier, Haggard and two others, Whitman Fesserand his brother Garth robbed an armoured truck of several hundreds of thousands of dollars. As initially agreed, Haggard took charge of the loot and buried it at a property he had purchased at a government auction for a small amount of back taxes.

The plan was to leave it untouched for a while, since the police were giving them a hard look and wait until they felt things had cooled down enough to split it up, but Whitman had a falling out with Haggard over not knowing the location of the loot on the property. The detectives who had been watching them decided the time was right to bring them all in for questioning, figuring they could use their distrust against them.

While they managed enough to have them charged, they didn't get all they wanted until they were all out on bail and Haggard made a deal that didn't include disclosing the location of the money. It gave the police a solid case against Whitman and Garth Fesser and Haggard pled to a lesser sentence of ten years.

The authorities presumed they would get the rest of the information they wanted from Whitman but when they came to arrest him, he resisted and died in a subsequent shootout. Garth, who managed to avoid capture, swore to get even for his brother and spent the ten years of Haggard's sentence plotting his revenge.

A year before Haggard was released he received a letter from Garth warning him that he knew where the property was and he would be waiting when Haggard came for the money. Haggard knew that Garth would never find the money no matter how hard he looked but he also knew that he couldn't just walk in and get at it as long as he was around.

So here he was, practicing his patience and growing more fidgety each day. The truck had barelybrought him to Eldora and the money he got for it was paying for the room and his food but it was running out fast.

Haggard needed new transportation and a plan.

*****

"He's what! I'm going to lose my job over this." Charlotte automatically began shuffling papers about on her desk.

"Mister Dobbs said it would be okay for a night or two," Penny explained. "Just until we find a way to get him to his property."

"It's not our job to- to- Mister Dobbs had no business--"

"It's just for this weekend, Miss Huddie. Can't we do something to help him? He has nowhere to go."

Charlotte slumped down at her desk. She knew what this meant; it meant she would spend her weekend off driving some stranger around the township looking for an unknown address.

"We'll help." Penny added enthusiastically. Charlotte groaned and dropped her head to her forearms, rolling it back and forth.

"It'll be fun."