Tardy Tending

George had never ridden a lawn mower before. Oh, sure, he’d used one of those little rinky-dinky push-mowers before. But this was a whole new experience.

The mower was bigger than most ATV’s, with so many buttons and gears and levers that he felt a little giddy just looking at them all. The thrum of the engine rang powerfully in his ears, and he liked to imagine he was astride a tall stallion, looking down upon the fair country folk as he herded his cattle.

In reality, the country folk were generally young children and the occasional parent or bored teenagers, and the cattle was the grass he was mowing.

Hmmm. On the other hand, perhaps that was an inappropriate metaphor. He wanted to be a cowboy, not a butcher.

He didn’t get as many hours as he wanted with this job. There was only so much mowing that needed done, after all. But it paid well and he enjoyed the fresh air. Things could’ve been much worse.

*

Things couldn’t have been going much worse for Agent Hart. With Harley sick and Manson in one of his tirade-ing moods, she was stuck without reliable resources back at HQ. Harley’s back-up, the new kid Jeremy, was nice enough, but that was part of the problem. He didn’t have the guts to tell Hart when she was wrong or had a blind spot. Besides, his tech skills left a lot to be desired. And Manson was too busy yelling at people to give her any useful directions.

So she was basically shooting in the dark, trying to follow a lead that had gone cold two days ago. A group of ROZ members were suspected of committing a high profile murder and pinning it on the Maryland governor, Harold Jorgenson. The victim, Aliana Lee, a middle aged businesswoman well-renowned for her stance against the governor, had been killed by a bullet to the head. The governor had no solid alibi, and the bullet that killed Lee matched Jorgenson’s gun. But some intercepted communications and underground movements pointed towards ROZ as the true perpetrators. Problem was, Hart had lost their trail completely. Without Jorgenson fully discredited and out of office, it was highly unlikely that ROZ had left the scene. But if they hadn’t, they were covering their tracks immaculately.

She rubbed tired eyes, reading the same sentence in the news article for the third time in a row and still not remembering what it had said.

*

George bustled down the busy Walmart aisles, eyes trained on the handwritten shopping list. The cursive was barely legible, and he had to squint down at it. Did that say grape juice or grape jelly? His mother’s handwriting was growing more and more difficult to discern as her eyesight waned.

George barely avoided running over a toddler who was trying to reach a large jar of Nutella. The boy’s mother was calling for him to come back to the cart while she studied the wide selection of sugar-free jams and bounced a wailing baby on her hip.

George frowned to himself, grabbing a squeezable grape jelly container before weaving around a teenager who was clearly high and then pressing himself against the bread section to avoid being run over by a short child ‘helping’ to push a cart. His reusable shopping bag hung over one shoulder, nearly full now. He rushed to the next item on the list, which he was fairly certain said ‘oyster crackers’.

After waiting in the checkout line for over a quarter hour, he finally made it out to his car. He shook his head at the full parking lot. He’d never seen so many people out shopping on a Thursday afternoon.

He drove to his mother’s small home in Baltimore, Maryland. She lived only an hour away from him, traffic willing. Today, rush hour came early and lasted late. He didn’t arrive until nearly eight o’clock pm. When he pulled into the driveway, he noted that Louise, another widow in the neighborhood, was already there. Her little white Subaru was parked in front. That was odd. Louise usually visited on Friday.

He knocked three times on the door and then pushed inside without waiting for his mother to come open it.

“Mother!” he called out. “It’s George! I’ve brought your groceries!”

“We’re in the kitchen!” his mother’s tire worn voice drifted back. He followed the sound, turning a corner and entering the small kitchen. His mother and Louise sat at the table, glasses of ice water and a plate of stale raisin cookies before them.

“George!” Louise exclaimed, pointing a bony finger at him. She was a tall, spindly woman with rather wild grey hair. “Marie here tells me you were supposed to bring her the groceries yesterday!” Her tone was chiding. “And now you make her wait till long past supper today as well!”

George cocked his head. Had his mother asked for the groceries early this week? He didn’t remember her doing so.

He paused then, a worrisome thought occurring to him. He pulled out his phone slowly and looked at the lock screen. Specifically, at the date scrolled across the top.

Friday, September 21.

He slapped his forehead. “Oh, dear.”

*

“We have the locations!”

Hart listened intently. Her searching had finally paid off, leading AGENT to a likely target for ROZ: Governor Jorgenson’s charity banquet. Using that, they had worked backwards and managed to incept the tail-end of a communication from one ROZ member to another. They speaker mentioned meeting at ‘the park’, which wasn’t very helpful. However, tracking the phone had allowed AGENT to narrow down their options to twenty parks within a ten mile radius of the initial call. Trying to find the phone now would be pointless. It would be a disposable cell, meant to be used once and left in a dumpster. But if they could get Agents to each of the parks, they might be able to catch the ROZ while they were gathering.

But Hart couldn’t help the feeling of despair in her stomach even as she drove like mad to her assigned park. They had intercepted the message only minutes ago, which meant that likely the ROZ members were already gathering. Besides, AGENT had no proof that the park was within a ten mile radius of the phone call, or that ‘park’ wasn’t some sort of code word. They had only caught the very end of the call, so they had no other information except that ROZ was meeting up at ‘the park’. She hoped it would be enough.

*

George hurriedly cranked the mower into action, speeding it down the street and towards the park.

Sweet mercy, he had lost track of time. That’s what happened when he didn’t have a steady work schedule to keep him organized. He had lost track of the days, and thus hadn’t mowed the lawn this morning as he was scheduled. He’d already been reprimanded for late mowing twice before. He couldn’t afford another strike.

It was quite dark outside, being nearly half past nine, but he figured he could still see well enough using the street lights and the lawn mower headlights to do a decent job. If he finished tonight, Mr. McKintire would never be the wiser.

*

Kate snapped the flip phone closed. “Jester and Brit should be here in five,” she announced to the five others around her. Larimore cursed.

“We don’t have time to wait around. They should be here already.”

Kate tried to contain her own irritation. Larimore was right. It was extremely unprofessional, not to mention dangerous for all of them, for those two to be late. The longer they dallied, the greater their chances of being discovered.

As if on cue, a humming sound broke out from over the hill. In unison, all six ROZ members turned to face the noise. Kate squinted into the darkness, flip phone held tightly in her fist.

At that moment, bright spotlights crested the hill, shining upon the figures trying to hide under the pavilion. Kate cursed.

“It’s the cops!” Larimore hissed.

“Maybe not,” Steven protested. “I don’t here no sirens, and there ain’t no flashing lights.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kate snapped. “We can’t risk being discovered by anyone, and we don’t have time to dispose of whoever it is. We’ll have to go to the secondary location. Move out, before whoever it is gets a good look at our faces.”

The group vanished into the shadows. As they ran, Kate snapped the phone back open and, reluctantly, redialed the last number. After two rings, Jester picked up.

“What in the devil are you doing?” he demanded angrily. “You know we aren’t supposed to call on the same disposable twice.”

“No choice,” she snapped. “If you hadn’t been late, we could have all left together. Instead, I have to warn your sorry butt so you don’t get caught. Abandon the park. Go to secondary location.”

A pause. “Secondary location?”

She gritted her teeth at his incompetence. “The bridge, idiot,” she growled.

“Oh. Right. Roger that.”

*

George muttered a quiet apology to the poor people he had accidently blinded. They were probably just college kids getting into the usual trouble, and he seemed to have scared the bejeebers out of them. Ah, well.

He began to whistle to himself, happily cropping away at the thick greenery.

About halfway through, the sprinkler system turned on. Three things happened in rapid succession. First, a jet of water sprayed him in the eye. Second, he closed his eyes in surprise. And third, he ran over a sprinkler head. It was promptly torn to shreds, leaving the water to gush out and form a rather depressing puddle.

*

Hart couldn’t believe her ears. AGENT had intercepted a second transmission from the same cell phone within three minutes of the first call. This one indicated they had been spooked by something and were relocating to a bridge.

Hart grinned. She had a good guess where bridge this was. Near a park in the suburbs, a bridge spanned a shallow stream that was frequented by druggies and homeless people. It would be the ideal place for shady characters like ROZ to relocate to in a pinch.

She gunned it, her foot pressing the gas pedal to the floor.

Only one thought worried her. What had made them leave? The message indicated they had been running from something. Or…someone? Could it be that the mysterious vigilante had struck again?

*

George had been fired. “Unequivocally and irrevocably, with great prejudice,” as Mr. McKintire had put it. George couldn’t help but wonder if the man knew what half of those words meant.

He sighed, wondering if he could have kept the job if he had tried mowing early on Saturday instead. Then again, Mr. McKintire was a rather unpleasant man. Perhaps this was for the better. Lawn mowing didn’t seem the job for him, anyway. He could never seem to get that one little corner behind the monkey bars, after all.