Chapter Ten of A Reporters Nightmare

By the time morning rolled around all the crates and all the spilled diamonds had been recovered and taken to the police station. Officer Hardly looked over the damage to Aragon’s pickup. “The man that was behind this all will pay for the damage to your pickup.” He said.

     Aragon shrugged. “He’ll have to replace the ignition to. Smoky lost my keys.”

     Officer Hardly looked into the pickup and saw something that appeared to catch his interest. “They left blanks all over.” He said. “Along with the pistol, but not a single bullet with live ammunition.”

     Aragon looked over his pickup and came up with the same thing. Officer Hardly gestured at his police cruiser. “I’ll give you a ride back to Salina until we can get your pickup fixed.”

     Aragon was relieved. “Thanks.” He said. “But don’t ask me for my ID or anything, I forgot my wallet at my house.”

     “Good thing you didn’t get pulled over then.” Officer Hardly said.

     By the time Aragon was back at his house the word had spread to Salina that he had been kidnapped and helped the police recover stolen diamonds.

     By the end of the week Aragon had been interviewed by a dozen different reporters and he began to have a better understanding of why so many people veered away from cameras and microphones.

     His pickup was returned along with his keys and a new window and paint job. The robber was caught and put in prison before anyone caught wind of it and Officer Hardly offered Aragon the job of being bait for other robbers that were avoiding the police.

     Aragon politely declined.  

Chapter Nine of A Reporters Nightmare

Aragon helped the officer open the doors, one of the bicycles fell over and a table leg broke. The officer cast an inquisitive glance Aragon’s way.

     Aragon grabbed one of the shovels that had been left and moved a table and bike out of the way and dug some dirt away. In the dark it was hard to make much out but Aragon soon found a crate and pulled it out.

     The officer came over and tugged his flashlight free. Aragon pried the top free and both of the men stared. At least a hundred packets of hundred dollar bills carefully wrapped in plastic stared back at them.

     The officer pulled a radio out of his pouch and rattled off the discovery to whomever he was calling.

     When he was done he sat back. “I can’t believe it, after all this time of searching and we couldn’t find a thing an actor finds everything.”

     “I’m not an actor.” Aragon said. “I’m a reporter from Salina.”

     The officer extended his hand. “I’m sure glad to meet you. I’m Officer Hardly.”

     Aragon shook his hand. “Aragon Gates.”

     Officer Hardly scratched his head. “I’ve got a question.” He said. “If you’re from Salina, how did you find those men and all these crates?”

     Aragon told Officer Hardly everything since he had been looking for a story. “I needed a story.” He said. “I followed everyone of interest, even two girls arguing over what they were going to buy at the mall, but until I saw Smoky and Baxter I didn’t have a story.”

     Officer Hardly shook his head in wonder. “I couldn’t have done a half of what you did.” He said and pulled a notebook out. “But I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you, I don’t think you’ll ever get a chance to write a real story on this, I think everyone will be to busy writing a story about you.”

     A thought occurred to Aragon. “But what about the man that’s behind it all?”

     “The three men that are headed to jail seem very talkative, they really don’t want to go to jail, I’m sure they’ll tell us everything we want to know.”

     Aragon nodded, relieved. “How did you know to come here?” He asked.

     “The man that’s behind it all happens to own these storage units, we found out that he started the fire to hold us off. It took us a little bit but we figured out what was going on.” Officer Hardly stretched one arm from his side. “We got over here as fast as we could to find you surrounded by those three men.”

     Aragon wanted to ask more but just then several more police cruisers pulled in and six officers came into the unit, armed with shovels. Without saying anything they began to dig at where the crates had been buried.

Chapter Eight of A Reporters Nightmare

Smoky stared at Aragon; finally he broke out of his stupor and pointed at Aragon. “Get him!”  Baxter ignored the command but Tate charged Aragon.

     Aragon played the pitiful part he had done in the pickup. He scrambled backwards and tripped over an unseen rock. He pushed himself up against a unit and raised his hands to protect himself.

     “Please don’t hit me.” He cried. “I never used to be a model and I don’t want to ruin my non existent reputation of never getting hit.”

     It didn’t help, Tate continued to charge him.

     Aragon began to shake. “Please!” he wailed loudly. “I don’t have kids that’ll never know or care what happened to me!”

     Just as Tate was in range and getting ready to throw a kick his way, Aragon leapt up and kicked the man in his shin. The kick didn’t slow Tate down but did make him stumble. Aragon jabbed two fingers stiffly into Tate’s throat.

     Tate’s eyes bulged and he wheezed. Smoky ran up to help him out but was to slow.

     A police car tore into the parking lot and two officers jumped out, running to overtake the three men.

     Smoky saw the officers and veered away from Aragon, running to a gap between the units. Aragon fell to the side, landing hard on the ground, but his plan worked. Smoky tripped over him and fell down.

     Aragon scrambled over to him and held him down. The officers caught Baxter, which wasn’t hard with his injured foot, they tased Tate and cuffed both of them.

     An officer came over to where Aragon was holding Smoky down and slapped cuffs on Smoky. Once all three men were in the police car one of the officers came over to Aragon.

     “Good job with the shouting.” He said. “If you hadn’t been making all that noise we would’ve locked you up to.”

     Aragon shrugged. “Do you have warrants out for their arrest?” he asked.

     The officer shrugged. “Not really, just some grounds that might be something in court.”

     Aragon stuffed his hands into his pocket. “Are you looking for any stolen diamonds?”

     The officer rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Now that it’s been mentioned again, yes. A man broke into several houses and stole a lot of jewels, later the same man robbed four banks, but we never caught him or recovered the money and jewels.”

     Aragon pointed at the unit behind him. “Those three men were burying a bunch of crates and one of them had diamonds in it.”

     The officer looked interested and walked over to the unit. He jiggled the lock, the rust that Aragon had thought been fake crumbled and fell off, taking the lock with it.