Lazy Lizzie

Thirty-One

When she left the police station, Lizzie had left them with a list of Dale's colorful activities, as observed in the years they'd lived together.

She told them about the shed's double back wall, where his grenade launcher was kept, an old military model which he got from an old friend, disassembled. Dale and Trey put it back together, then built the missing parts. It was working, they partied after they tested it. That was when the ATF were called. Terrorist was the last thing Lizzie ever considered Dale to be.

About his drugs and paraphernalia, kept from a time he cooked for his friends and regulars, how they were in a storage container by the northeast fence. He had locked it years back, but couldn't throw anything away. By that point in her statement, the DEA were called.

About the two barrels of acid that he stole from his brief guard job, at the chemical compound. Hidden in tires all over the property, along with grenades that he bought from one of his contacts, back when he was obtaining rare chemicals on the dark web from other conspiracy theorists who believed the end of civilization was near, later using them for trade. 

Said chemicals were to be found in the ground, in a half-finished hatch that was an old well, with a rope ladder exiting in a bush, two feet away. Based on the inefficient stacking system, police understood that it was mostly a hoarding space, as opposed to a bomb-making one, as they feared. The FBI would have to be involved, an officer said.

That was because of the bomb plans he had researched on Lizzie's computer. She had told the police about them, knowing his interest was just because of his obsessive need to know how they were made. All fifteen officers gathered by that point in officer Salt's office strongly disagreed.

When they asked her who else might be able to add to her story, Lizzie knew only one person.

"I have to make a call, first."

In the hallway of the police station, she called Lana, who answered immediately. 

"Yes?"

"Lana, it's me, Lizzie." The men in the bar fight had long gone, the night left the doors to open only for the occasional drunk and belligerent. Even the policemen seemed to be moving at a slower pace.

"Lizzie, how are you? How's life without Dale?"

It was strange to hear Lana's voice made so serious by the phone speaker. She was anything but.

"I'm with the police, I'm telling them about him."

"Wow," Lana said. 

"I wanted to give them your name, to verify my story, but then I realized it means Dale'll come after you."

Lana laughed, "Girl, I'm not afraid of Dale! It's good they're coming. I can give them my own list!"

She was silent at the discovery that Lana voiced, "It's just you who's so afraid of him." 

Lana didn't know Lizzie began fearing him only after she'd left Warsa Park. She'd just thought all men were like him.