No response. He tried the handle. Locked. Not wanting to bring the Feds in with guns blazing by shooting the lock, he put his shoulder to the flimsy door and barged it open.
His headlamp now on bright white, he swung inside, both hands gripping his pistol, sweeping the room.
The place was worn and dated but surprisingly tidy, despite the canning supplies and giant spools of twine piled against one wall.
Jordan raced from room to room until he found himself in the front trailer. On the table was a note.
Dear Feds,
Took off because I knew how this was going to go. Don’t let my chickens die.
Fisk
Jordan turned to leave. At least no one was getting shot today.
Blinding light filled the windows as a bullhorn crackled. Wen’s garbled voice gave Fisk ten seconds to surrender. Jordan lifted a corner of curtain and peered out. Impossible to see against the glare. The ten seconds was probably a bluff, but he couldn’t take that chance.
He threw open the front door and kept his body pressed against the wall. Was this what a heart attack felt like? He grabbed a light-colored jacket off a peg and waved it in surrender. Before he could yell, he heard a gun crack.
Feeling a tug on the jacket as a bullet hit it where the heart would be, he dropped to the floor and curled into a ball, expecting a hail of bullets to riddle his body through the thin trailer wall.
Instead, there was a momentary silence, as though everyone outside was as surprised as he was.
“It’s me, you assholes!” he bellowed. “Sheriff Burke! Don’t shoot!”
“Everyone, stand down!” screamed Wen. “Like, stand down!”
When nobody fired again, Jordan stood up and left the trailer with his hands over his head.
Still half expecting to die.
CALIFORNIA DEATH TRIP PODCAST
SEASON ONE, EPISODE TWELVE
DYLAN DANVERS:Hi, crime fam, it’s Dylan. Today I was able to speak to someone with a unique inside view of law enforcement’s hunt for Cara. Troy Silverman is a real estate entrepreneur who also happens to be the only one challenging Jordan Burke in this fall’s sheriff’s election in Madera County, north of Fresno, where all of this is going down. Welcome, Sheriff.
TROY SILVERMAN: (laughs)Not sheriff yet.
DANVERS: (laughs)That just sort of slipped out.
SILVERMAN:It’s like you can see into the future.
DANVERS:Let’s get right into it, because I know our listeners want to know. What’s going on on the ground?
SILVERMAN:Dylan, it doesn’t look good. Me and some of my men assisted the Madera sheriff and his deputies in the tracking of Cara Campbell. And I wish I didn’t have to say this, but what I saw was basically disorganization and incompetence. We were lucky we weren’t killed. No one warned us that we were smack dab in the path of the Coarsegold Fire.
DANVERS:That must have been scary.
SILVERMAN:When you’re runnin’ for your life, you don’t have time to be scared. But it was a close one.
DANVERS:Is Sheriff Burke any closer to catching Campbell?
SILVERMAN:Let me tell you somethin’ about Sheriff Jordan Burke. His daddy was sheriff before him, and his granddaddy was sheriff before that. We’re talkin’ three-quarters of a century of Burkes runnin’ Madera county, in what we like to think is a democracy?—
DANVERS:I understand where you’re going, but the focus of this interview is the hunt for Cara Campbell.
SILVERMAN:Of course.
