The Righteous Path

by James D F Hannah

  The clerk was retirement age, with a ring of white hair wrapped around a liver-spotted skull. He wore a faded blue dress shirt and a stained tie and a business-like facade that felt overdone for the surroundings. He nodded toward Matt as Matt smiled at him and checked his name badge. Walt.

  “Sheriff,” the clerk said. “What can I help you with this evening?”

  “You’ve got a guest on the sixth floor, room 612. Is there anyone on either side of her, Walt?”

  Walt adjusted the wire-rimmed glasses on his face and leaned over the counter closer to Matt. “What’s this about, Sheriff? What’s Ms. Warner done?”

  “Ms. Warner’s not done anything. But there could be something wrong and we need to know there’s not anyone in those rooms.”

  Walt turned his attention to a computer behind the counter and tapped on the keyboard. “Rooms 610 and 614 are both vacant.” He swung his gaze back to Matt. His eyes moved over to Crash and the shotgun. “I’m sorry, Sheriff, but what exactly is going on here that requires you coming in armed?” He emphasized the last word.

  Matt brought his phone out of his pocket and flipped through it. “How long have you been on duty tonight?”

  “Since about six. Why?”

  Matt spun his phone around and showed Walt a photo of Micki. “This girl look familiar to you? Have you seen her tonight?”

  “Not that I can recall, no.”

  Matt slid his thumb across the screen and brought up a photo of Billy. “What about him?”

  Walt focused on the picture as though struggling to recall a terrible wrong from the past. “I think I saw him come in earlier this evening. He stuck out somewhat, since he’s young and we don’t get many young people coming through here.” He rubbed at his chin. “The girl from that first picture, she might have been with him. He came in with someone. They walked in, went straight to the elevator, and that was that.”

  “What about Iris Warner? Have you seen or talked to her tonight?”

  “Not tonight, no. We’ve spoken before, when she asked about places to eat, things like that.” Walt stood up straight. “Again, Sheriff, I need to ask what’s happening here. Is this something that will put our other guests at risk?”

  Crash cocked an eyebrow. “How many guests you got tonight?”

  Walt looked hurt by Crash’s tone, as though she had insulted his pride. “Enough that the possibility of violence is a concern, regardless of the number.”

  “You mean like when we busted the meth lab on the fifth floor?” Crash said. “Wait. There was the one on five, then the one on the second floor.” She ticked off numbers on her fingers. “How many times was this? Two, three, four—”

  Matt sighed. He grabbed Crash’s wrist and gave it a gentle squeeze. She froze and dropped her hands to her side as he let go.

  Matt said, “Walt, you’ve got a job to do, and so do we, and keeping everyone safe is our first concern, which is why there’s only the two of us. Ms. Warner could be in danger, and so we’re going to go up on six and see what we can do about that. Now you said the rooms on the other sides of her are empty. How’s the rest of the floor look?”

  “It’s empty,” Walt said. “Ms. Warner is the only occupant on the floor.”

  Crash said, “Why’s that? Are the other floors booked?”

  “No,” Walt said. His face flushed again, but it was a gradual sense of embarrassment. “We’re having the other floors renovated.”

  “Aren’t those the floors where we found the meth labs?”

  Matt kicked at Crash. He hit her in the calf, and she muttered something angrily under her breath.

  “Do you have a master key for the rooms?” Matt said. “So we can get into 610 or 614?”

  Walt opened a drawer underneath the counter and rummaged through until he found a small ring of keys. He pulled one key free and handed it to Matt.

  “We’ll be moving everything over to the electronic card readers like other hotels in the next phase of renovations, but for now, we’re old-fashioned, I suppose,” he said.

  Matt wrapped his hand around the key and smiled. “Thanks for your help, Walt. Now we’re going to head on upstairs. I need you not to say or do anything while we’re up there. Don’t call your boss, don’t order takeout from the Riverside, don’t roust awake the guy asleep over there, anything like that. We need you to be as quiet and low-key as possible so we can be as quiet and low-key as possible. Can you do that for us?”

  Walt nodded.

  “Much appreciated,” Matt said as he and Crash headed for the elevator.

  Matt reached for the elevator call button. Crash swatted his hand away and pressed the button.

  “Your people skills suck,” Matt said.

  Crash shrugged and whistled, swinging the shotgun back and forth in her hand.

  “Why aren’t you wearing body armor?” she said.

  “Because if what I think is waiting for us actually is, looking like I came to fight won’t do anything but stir the pot. Besides, what are the odds it’ll be bullets that kill me?”

  Crash shook her head. “You’ve got to lay off the cancer jokes, dude,” she said as the elevator doors slid open.

  They rode the elevator to the fifth floor, then took the stairs up to six. Matt pushed the bar to open the stairwell door with the butt of Crash’s shotgun, cracking it enough for him to peek his head out.

  “Anyone out there?” Crash said.

  Matt drew himself back into the stairwell and held onto the door as it closed, the click barely above a whisper.

  “Seems they are not, since no one shot at me,” Matt said.

  Crash unwrapped a stick of gum and tossed it in her mouth. “Are you legit this worried about the possibility of two kids?”

  “They’re kids with nothing to lose, Crash. They either think they’ll live forever or they don’t care if they don’t. Either way, based on the past week, caution is the right way to go here.”

  Crash blew a bubble and let it pop. “Okay, boss. I’ll let you take the lead.”

  Chapter 34

  Matt knocked on Iris’s room door. He leaned in close to the wood and heard what sounded like several people moving without grace, knocking into furniture in hurried and awkward movements. Hushed voices, shuffled footsteps, muttered curses, the rattle and clicking of the door’s locks being unfastened, and the door opening wide enough to allow a wedge of light to shine out from the room. Matt saw a sliver of Iris’s face. Her eyes were large, the pupils small, her mouth drawn into a tight O.

  “Sheriff,” she said. “Rather late for you to be out, isn’t it?”

  Matt gave his best smile. “I had a few questions, and I hoped we could talk.”

  “You caught me as I was heading to bed. I need to get up early and try to talk to my father in the morning.”

  “About that. My understanding is the Feds are picking him up about six and heading him up to Pittsburgh to talk about the bank robberies.”

  Iris gave a small but audible gasp. “Um, Sheriff, I’ve got to get a hold of him. This is…this is important. It’s…”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Warner, but it’s all above my pay grade. Once the Feds lay their hands on him, then he’s not going anywhere or talking to anyone who’s not his lawyer for a while.”

  Iris’s eyes darted to the side, and her hand reached out and took hold of the door. She trembled like she was struggling to stand. Her voice cracked.

  The door flew open wide and someone pushed Iris out of the way and the next thing Matt saw was Billy McCoy pointing a gun in his face. Matt stood motionless, hands to his side, staring down at the barrel of the pistol. It was less than a foot from his face, a .38 caliber, snub-nosed, gleaming in the light. It looked well taken care of, and Matt could smell the gun oil, which meant a recent cleaning. So Billy liked the gun and respected it and knew how to use it. It implied Billy might be a decent shot—not that it was a concern at less than a foot—and he also may not ha
ve a problem pulling the trigger. Nausea swelled and churned in Matt’s stomach. For all his talk of being unafraid of death, this wasn’t how he wanted shit to go down. Not that he had preferences about how to die—not that he wanted to die at all—but he knew for certain he didn’t want to get shot in the face and left to bleed out in the lobby of a shitty hotel.

  A bead of sweat dripped from Matt’s forehead and across his eye. The salt burned and made his eye water, and he squinted to keep his focus on Billy and the gun. Billy kept his aim steady on Matt. Finger on the trigger, ready to fire if he didn’t like the way things looked. Attention square and sure on Matt. No emotion on his face. He was bigger than the pictures had implied. Time spent at the gym. He had bulk and muscle and youth all on Matt. Plus, there was the gun. Matt’s gun, still holstered, mattered damn little at the moment.

  Behind Billy, from somewhere toward the back of the room, a woman’s voice said, “Goddamn, Billy, get him in here.”

  “Micki?” Matt said. “Micki Miller?”

  Micki stepped out to where Matt could see her. Her face was hard and angry, and she didn’t look like the girl Matt had seen in the photos. She had taken on a focus, a determination, that skated on the edge of dangerous. She clutched a pistol in her right hand. Matt guessed she wasn’t a little girl anymore.

  Matt said, “Your mother’s worried about you, Micki. She’s been looking for you. She’s had me and my deputies looking for you.”

  Micki walked closer to the door. Billy kept his ground, motionless. That was when Matt realized where Iris was: on the ground, trembling as though the floor shook underneath her.

  Micki came up behind Iris, grabbed her by the hair, and yanked her to her feet. Iris yelped like a whipped puppy. Micki twisted Iris’s hair around her hand while pushing her pistol underneath the woman’s chin.

  “How is Mom?” Micki asked. Her eyes were as dead and flat as a doll’s eyes. “She good? What about the boys? How are her precious boys?” She pulled Iris back. To Billy, she said, “Get him the fuck in here.”

  Billy said, “You heard the lady. Move your ass.”

  Matt stepped into the hotel room. Billy moved over to let him in, closing the door behind him, clicking the locks once the door was secure, never letting the barrel of his pistol get very far from Matt’s head.

  Micki led Iris over to a couch and slung her onto it. Iris slammed into the furniture with force and melted into its shape.

  Billy held out his free hand. “Hand it over.” Matt unclipped the holster from his belt and handed it to him. Billy motioned toward the table. “Get comfortable.”

  Matt sized up the situation. Micki was about two feet from Iris, with her gun trained on her. Billy stood at the far end of the table, gun pointed at Matt.

  Matt took a seat at the table, rested his arms on the table top. “This isn’t the only play to this. You can let her go, and we can all go over to the courthouse and settle things up, and no one gets hurt.”

  “We all know that’s not true, and it’s not happening, Sheriff,” Micki said. “Shit’s not settled until those bastards pay me what I’m owed.”

  “Tell me what you think you’re owed, Micki.”

  “Well, those bank robberies scored them all about, what? More than a million dollars, right?”

  “Close to a million and a half.”

  “And what they should have done was split that money up five ways. That would have given my daddy about a quarter-million dollars, right?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “What’s the phrase the lawyers use, honey?”

  “Pain and suffering,” Billy said. He said it without inflection. He seemed bored by the whole thing, as though hostage-taking wasn’t enough to keep his interest.

  “Pain and suffering,” Micki repeated. “These fuckers owe me for pain and suffering. So what’ll happen is that Campbell’s gonna shit out that money—him and the rest of those fuckers—or I’ll scatter his daughter’s brains out all over the wall.”

  “Campbell’s in jail, Micki,” Matt said. “The other one you attacked, he’s still in a coma. Two of them are already dead. And that money is long gone, spent years ago. All that’s left is old men waiting to die.”

  “No,” Micki said. She shook her head as if trying to make Matt’s words go away. “Campbell’s got money. I know he’s rich. He owned all those grocery stores. You don’t do that and not be rich.”

  “He robbed those banks because he was broke. The stores were going under, and he borrowed from loan sharks he couldn’t pay back. There’s nothing left.”

  “Bullshit,” Micki said. “He’s got money somewhere. He’s driving a fucking Cadillac. Don’t tell me he’s broke.”

  Iris pulled her knees up close to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. Fresh bruises had formed on her face, ripening and taking color.

  A sigh sounded from Matt. “Okay, let’s say Campbell’s got money. Doesn’t change there’s no way of getting to him. The Feds will lay hands on him like it’s Sunday morning, and they’re not letting go. How much ransom money you think you can milk from a man in federal prison orange?”

  “This ain’t ransom money,” Micki said. “I’m owed this. This money is mine. They took my daddy from me. Ain’t I owed something for that?”

  “You’re nothing but a kid, Micki, and I know the world looks this one particular way to you, but let me share a secret with you I had to learn the hard way: the universe owes you jack.” He shifted his gaze from Billy to her. “Whatever they’ve told you in school, or you read in books, or preachers yelled at you, it’s bullshit. The universe has zero fucks to offer you. You’re owed nothing, and nothing is owed to you. You and the boyfriend over there bandying about Parker County, blowing shit up and whatnot, won’t make the universe change its plans, because there are no plans.”

  Micki stepped up behind Billy and laid her hand on his shoulder. He reached up and took her hand.

  “So be it,” she said. “But I ain’t asking anything from the universe. I’m asking it from men who killed my father.”

  Matt slouched in his chair, relaxing into its shape. It was easier than it should have been, what with a pair of JV-squad psychos pointing guns at him.

  “How did you connect your father to these men and the robberies?” he said. “You managed something an awful lot of cops weren’t able to do.”

  Micki smiled, a shy, bashful grin that offered a reminder she was still seventeen. “Wasn’t much detective work, Sheriff. Mom sent me out into the storage building one day to find papers she needed for something, and there pushed to the back was a cardboard box I’d guess we’ve moved from every shithole apartment, trailer, and house we’ve been in over the years. I opened it and dug in and realized it was from before I was born, and it was stuff from my dad. Pictures of him and my mom, and pictures of him with his people. Car parts and notebooks and random things Mom shoved into a box after he disappeared, but she never got rid of because…because they were his. Something I found was a spiral-bound notebook, and the handwriting wasn’t like Mom’s, so it had to be Dad’s. Didn’t seem like anything but random lists. Movies they’d seen together, and books he’d read, and baby names—”

  “Baby names for you, I’d bet.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, midway through I found this stack of paperback books. They were all yellowed and old, and they all looked like total guy shit, with chicks with big tits and men with guns and all that crap. The descriptions on the back, they were all about bank robberies.”

  Matt jerked his head in Billy’s direction. “We found them at his place.”

  Micki looked at Billy. “We shouldn’t have kept them there.”

  Billy shrugged. “I was reading them.”

  Micki turned back to Matt. “When I flipped through the pages on one, a business card dropped out for that florist shop in town. Then I saw on the inside cover of one Daddy had written a bunch of names, and underneath that was a list of ba
nks. I Googled it and it was all those banks that had all been robbed right around the time Daddy vanished.”

  “So your deductive leap was to say connect those names with the robberies. That’s a big swing to make with nothing else to build on. No attorney would have walked into a court with that.”

  “That’s why I didn’t say nothing to anyone. No one except Billy.”

  “I bet Billy recognized one of those names since he was a Tri-Comm guard, didn’t he? That gave him access to the security codes to get into homes.”

  Billy shrugged. “No one wants to spend their life protecting shit that ain’t theirs. That’s all you do, work like that, looking around seeing people living better lives than what you got.”

  Matt hated to think Billy might have a point. If he lived through this, Matt decided he was going to reconsider working for Rachel’s brother. Some of the appeal had been lost.

  Matt said, “Billy have the big idea you two should destroy property and beat up old people and cause no end of mayhem until someone gives you money? Did the thought cross your mind there might be a better way of going about all of this? Or you might have been wrong?”

  “But I wasn’t wrong, was I, Sheriff?” Micki said. “I figured out what no one else figured out all those years ago. Besides, were you gonna listen to me, I walked into your office and told you all this? What you’d see is the same anyone else sees looking at me: a poor white-trash kid talking shit about people better than me.”

  “I’d have listened to you the same way I’d have listened to anyone, Micki,” Matt said. “And I would have sat you down and heard what you had to say, because that’s what adults do.”

  Billy said, “That’s bullshit. You say the universe don’t care, but we still ain’t ever going to be the ones who go the way the everyone else thinks we should. Soon as the world sees you ain’t going to fit into its boxes, it tries to break you down. The world didn’t give us no other choice.”