Bitter Sweets

unit. If she had owned any material goods in the world, besides the ones inside these walls, she would have been using them, not surviving with only the barest essentials.

    Earl Mattock’s storage unit.

    The thought stirred Savannah’s curiosity. One could learn a lot about a beast by viewing the contents of its habitat. And until she could find out where Earl Mallock lived, his locker would have to do.

    The rows of identical, drab, beige buildings reminded Savannah of some chicken coops she had seen down South. The storage lockers might smell better than Uncle George’s poultry farm, but they were far less interesting.

    Nothing was happening. No one, nothing. Savannah was getting antsy.

    Sitting in the Camaro, she had been waiting twenty minutes for Dirk to arrive with a court order in hand, giving him permission to search Earl Mallock’s unit. Since she had supplied the lead, Dirk had been kind enough to allow her to watch the process.

    Plus she had promised him another honey-baked ham sandwich and a peanut butter milkshake, which was growing lukewarm on the dash.

    She had just finished applying the second coat of “Flaming Desire” red polish to her nails when he appeared, chugging down the street in his battered old Buick Skylark. Judging from the car’s rumbles, creaks, and groans, he needed to drive it off the nearest cliff and put it out of its misery. But the last time she had offered to do the deed for him, he had thrown what Gran would call a “hissy fit” and pouted for three days.

    The car belched to a stop across the street; he got out and walked over to hers.

    “Been waiting long?” he asked, looking only a bit sheepish.

    “Darlin,” she drawled, “I’ve spent the better part of my life waiting for you.” She screwed the top onto the nail polish bottle and slipped it into her purse. “Well, have you got it?”

    Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out a pale yellow document that bore the seal of the Great State of California in the upper left corner and Judge Harrington’s signature at the bottom.

    “Right here,” he said, opening her door in a rare display of not-so-common courtesy. “And how about you? Have you got it?”

    She sighed-she felt like they were a couple of worn-out drug dealers-and handed him the sack with the sandwich and the soggy milkshake container which had sweated a pool of condensation onto her dash. “Here, your favorite kind of food...free.”

    His haggard face split with a delighted grin as he peeked into the bag. He looked like an overgrown kid, checking out his Halloween treats. “Great! Come on.” He nodded toward the lockers. “Let’s go snooping around and see if we can find us some ‘Dirty laundry.’”

    “If not,” she mumbled, climbing out of the car, “we could always go back to your apartment.”

    The naked fifty-watt bulb that hung from the ceiling did little to illuminate the eight-by-eight-foot cement cubicle. But Savannah didn’t need a lot of light to determine that the contents of the locker were a man’s and not Lisa Mallock’s.

    A monster stereo system, sports equipment, and a bigscreen television took up most of the space. A few duffel bags containing clothes were tossed on top of some boxes of magazines. Savannah bent to examine the boxes, while Dirk checked out the duffel bags.

    “Hey, I’m not the only one with crunchy socks,” he said, holding up some examples.

    “Yeah, but you’re wearing yours,” she muttered. “At least he gives his a vacation.”

    Dirk ignored the insult. “Whatcha got there?”

    “Mostly adolescent male stuff: mainstream porn, sports, mechanics, and...oh, yes, these... .”

    She lifted out an interesting assortment of survivalist propaganda, everything from The Armageddon Conspiracy to Mercenary Soldier.

    “Looks like our boy has anarchist tendencies,” she said with another drop in her morale level.

    “And that probably explains this.” Dirk had lifted back a tarp in the corner, uncovering a strange contraption, that was bolted to a workbench. The equipment looked like an Erector set or a mad scientist’s laboratory gone wrong, a clear plastic tube pointing upward, a canister filled with powder on one side. Instantly, Savannah recognized the mechanism as a bullet reloader.

    “How quaint.” She shook her head. “Earl rolls his own.”

    Dirk opened a small, dark green, brass-cornered chest and peered inside. “Mallock’s ex-army, just like his