Opening Moves

by Steven James

  “Step back!” Ralph bellowed, moving into the room.

  “Get back, Joshua!” I yelled. “Now!”

  “No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” Those words raced through Joshua’s mind, chased by the ones from Reverend Tate’s homily, “Let us take responsibility for our sins…Let us trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one whose blood cleanseth us from all sin.”

  The blood.

  Always the blood.

  And that cleansing was what Joshua yearned for, even as he said to Basque, “A shedder of blood shall die,” and then he thrust the necrotome deep into the man’s abdomen.

  But that was the last thing he ever did. Because Special Agent Ralph Hawkins fired three shots in quick succession and Joshua Padilla dropped dead to the floor and entered eternity.

  For the reckoning.

  Ralph lowered his gun.

  The knife handle jutted from Basque’s abdomen.

  “We need a doctor in here!” I yelled. “Now!”

  TWO DAYS LATER

  Friday, November 21

  The Coffeehouse

  100

  8:31 a.m.

  They were able to save Richard Basque.

  They stitched up his abdomen, wired his jaw shut, and the prognosis was positive.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  We’d stopped Griffin, Basque, and Joshua Padilla. Radar was safe, Lionel, Colleen, Tod, Adele and Mallory had all been through traumatizing experiences, but all were recovering. Agent Parker was fine.

  But we’d lost Sylvia Padilla.

  All too often endings in real life are bittersweet. We all die, but we don’t all find peace before we do. However, when I remembered the look on Sylvia’s face as she passed away, I knew there was forgiveness there. And I trusted that God had seen what was in her heart and judged her accordingly.

  Inevitably, there were going to be charges filed against Carl, Vincent, and Radar for the crimes they’d committed to fulfill Joshua’s demands, but I was hopeful that, considering the circumstances, the judge would be lenient—especially with Radar. Initial indications were that things were leaning in that direction.

  Browning had, as it turned out, known that Griffin had killed Mindy Wells and it looked as though he would be spending a long time on the other side of some prison bars. So, the wheels of justice were already turning, working their way through the complex, multilayered case.

  My shoulder and leg ached, but they would heal soon enough. People say that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. I wasn’t so sure about that, but the things that don’t kill us do shape who we become. And I knew the events of the last week would shape me forever. Whether in a good way or a bad one, only time would tell.

  Agent Parker had flown back to DC yesterday, but I’d offered to take Ralph out for coffee before his ten o’clock flight today. When I’d said that, he’d eyed me suspiciously. “You don’t even drink coffee.”

  “Yeah, well, you were bragging on it so much the other day, I figured I’d give it a shot.”

  He’d looked pleased, and now we were at a neo-hippie coffeehouse not far from the airport. A sign on the wall announced COFFEE THAT’S BETTER THAN ALTERRA’S!

  Alterra was one of the most famous roasters in Milwaukee and if I was going to try coffee, I guess this was the place to do it.

  When the ponytailed barista behind the counter asked if I wanted “bold” or “mild,” I asked if he was kidding. “Would any guy ever say he wants ‘mild’?”

  “You’d be surprised,” he told me.

  Both Ralph and I ordered the bold. He went for the largest size they had, I chose the smallest, which they called a “tall” and I had no idea how that worked. The person who’d named it was either a marketing genius or a complete idiot. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  We picked up our drinks. I grabbed a couple sugar packets, tipped some cream into the cup, and we took a seat near the window so we could watch the gently falling snow drift down across my city.

  Ralph went at his coffee right away. One gulp and half of it was gone. He shook his head. “I still can’t believe a police chaplain did all that.”

  A lot had come out in the last two days, including confirmation of what Joshua had told Radar about a place under a barn on some land his family used to own in Colorado. Two skeletons were found down there. Dental records told us that one of them had been Joshua’s father.

  I thought of a young Joshua partaking in the atrocities that happened beneath that barn.

  And I thought of a five-year-old Ted Oswald being forced to watch as his father slaughtered puppies in front of him and then lashed out at him if he showed any sign of emotion.

  And again, as I had the other day, I wondered about our choices and the point at which we ultimately become accountable for them.

  Can we ever really know when someone else is old enough, or mature enough, or mentally healthy enough to be held responsible for his crimes? An arbitrary age of eighteen? The current definition of mental health? Our motives are so tangled and intertwined that I imagined a person could point to extenuating circumstances for nearly any crime. But there must also be accountability. There must be justice.

  A reckoning.

  If justice exists, there must be a hell.

  If love wins, there must be a heaven.

  I had a feeling it was going to take me some time to sort all that through.

  There was no way to know for sure, but Thorne, who’d known Padilla the longest, speculated that he’d turned to religion to try to find redemption. Just as Radar had said that Griffin deserved to go to hell, I believed Padilla did too. Still, I wondered if, in the end, anything he’d learned or shared with others over the years about the grace of the Almighty had sunk in when it mattered most.

  Ralph drew me out of my thoughts: “You must have swung that meat hook hard.”

  I stared at my cup. I really did not want to do this. “What do you mean?”

  “Broke his jaw. Basque’s.”

  I blinked. “When I swung the meat hook?”

  “Yeah. When it hit him. I just heard this morning, he told, well…” Ralph smiled a little. “I should say ‘wrote out for’ his lawyer that that’s how his jaw got broken.”

  Basque’s apprehension replayed in my mind: grabbing that meat hook, swinging it at his face, him dodging it. The fight. Cuffing him. Sylvia’s death as he mocked her. Then punching him. Twice. Hard. The crunch of bone when I hit him—not when I swung the hook at his face.

  Ralph stared at me. “What is it?”

  “Yeah,” I said distractedly. “No, I did. I swung it hard.”

  Why did he tell them the meat hook broke his jaw?

  I had no answer.

  So far, Basque denied any involvement in the death of Sylvia Padilla or anyone else. He claimed he was innocent, that he’d heard screams from inside the slaughterhouse, gone in to see what was happening, and found the woman as she was.

  He said he’d pulled the scalpel out of her chest to try to help her, and then when I arrived, he got scared, tried to flee, and shot at me with his legally registered firearm just to protect himself, thinking I was the killer.

  It was ludicrous. I could hardly believe that anyone with his IQ would try to defend himself with a story like that. I knew it would never fly with a jury. There’s no death penalty in Wisconsin, but I was confident this guy was going away forever.

  In the slaughterhouse, we found evidence of previous homicides, including the body of Celeste Sikora, a woman who’d disappeared the night before Sylvia was killed, and DNA of a woman named Jasmine Luecke whose body was found in a trailer home outside of town. All of those cases would take time to sort out. For the moment I was just glad we’d caught the right guy.

  Ralph was almost done with his coffee. “So, before I go, I gotta ask you—you and Taci? Any more news?”

  I thought about what to say.

  You had a year of loving someone special, of
being loved in return—that’s more than some people ever get in a lifetime.

  He waited. “You gonna be okay?”

  “She’s happier, I think, knowing that I don’t have to be in second place. So…” I wasn’t sure how to put this, wasn’t even sure I was ready to say it, but I did: “I’m not gonna brood.”

  We left it at that. He took one last swallow of coffee to finish off the cup, then reached into his computer bag and pulled out a box that looked like it might hold an office stapler. It was wrapped in a brown paper bag crudely wound in duct tape.

  “What’s that?”

  He slid it toward me. “A present.”

  “I didn’t buy you anything.”

  “I didn’t buy you anything either, bro. Just open it.”

  It took me a while to work through the duct tape. “You wrapped this yourself, did you?”

  “Yup.”

  Once I got to the box, I tore off the end and tipped the item onto the table.

  “A Mini Maglite.”

  “My Mini Maglite.”

  “Ralph, that’s—”

  “It’s not that big of a deal. I’ve got another one at home.”

  “Okay.”

  “I figured you needed one. They come in handy.”

  “Really, thanks.”

  He nodded toward my still-untried coffee.

  “I’m working up the nerve,” I explained.

  “You’ll want to drink it before it gets cold.”

  “Why?”

  He looked at me strangely as if everyone should know the answer to that. “Coffee changes taste as it cools.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t help but think, You never know, that just might help. “So, you said sugar and cream? Helps with the taste?”

  “Helps calm it.”

  “Calm it. Right.”

  He noticed packets of hot cocoa on the counter. “Hang on.” He walked over, plopped down a dollar bill, grabbed one of the packets, and nodded to the barista, who nodded back.

  When he was back at the table he told me, “Mix this in with the cream and sugar. See where that takes you.”

  Double-sugar high plus a caffeine high. Not a bad thought. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  I emptied the sugar packets and pouch of hot cocoa into my cup. While I was stirring it all in, Ralph said, “We never finished talking about coincidences. From the other day. How you don’t believe in them.”

  “No, I guess we didn’t.” The cocoa was almost dissolved.

  “Well, don’t you think it was a coincidence that your gun jammed when you fired at Basque? I mean, how often does that even happen? Or that we arrived at his hospital room just in time to save his life? A couple seconds later and Padilla would have cut him apart.”

  I mulled that over. “Well, if those were coincidences, are they really the kind to be thankful for? Twice saving Basque’s life?”

  It looked like he was going to reply, but in the end said nothing and seemed to grant me the point.

  “Alright.” Hesitantly, I lifted the cup to my lips. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  Since I was sure it was going to be acrid and bitter, I wasn’t ready for what happened next.

  The concoction somehow tasted both deeply sweet and bitter—but in a good way. And that aroma, which I had to admit really was enticing, actually became part of the flavor on my tongue.

  It really was not that bad.

  “Well?” Ralph asked.

  “I think I could stand to drink this once in a while.”

  He offered me a satisfied grin. “Give it a few weeks with the hot cocoa, then move on. Honey’s good too. Before you know it, you’ll be a true coffee aficionado.”

  “Well, I doubt that would ever happen.”

  “Never know.” He glanced at his watch. We had just a few minutes before we needed to leave for the airport. “By the way, that FBI jacket looked pretty good on you the other day at the bank.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Seemed to suit you.”

  “Thanks.”

  He leaned forward. “Why are you getting that master’s in criminology and law, Pat?”

  The answer seemed obvious to me. “To more effectively do my job.”

  “As a homicide detective.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How many homicides do you work in any given year?”

  “Depends. A couple dozen maybe.”

  “You’re not gonna believe this, but we get calls at the NCAVC every day.”

  “I do believe that.”

  “I consulted on more than a hundred homicides last year alone. You want to make a difference, a real difference, come to the NCAVC. Start helping law enforcement agencies nationwide find these guys, and put ’em where they belong. You’re experienced, you’re sharp, and with a graduate degree in criminology, you’d be a shoo-in.”

  “Calvin’s sort of pressuring me to study with him.”

  “PhD?”

  I nodded.

  “Naw, think about the Bureau, man.”

  “I will,” I told him, and I realized I really would seriously consider it.

  “Who knows,” he said, “we could work together again. You might not have to be the sidekick anymore.”

  “The way I remember it, you were the sidekick.”

  He scoffed.

  I finished my coffee-cocoa combination and we stepped outside into the light, whispering snow. “By the way,” I said, “you never told me what happened in France.”

  “France.” Just the way he said it spoke volumes.

  “Yeah.”

  The car wasn’t far. He trudged toward it. I walked beside him.

  “I had a bad experience there with pillow mist. Bought some while I was doing a training for INTERPOL.”

  “Pillow mist?”

  “Yeah. You spray it on your pillow at hotels, you know. To…so they smell nice—what are you looking at me like that for?”

  “You don’t strike me as the pillow mist kind of guy.”

  “Hey, I like a nice-smelling pillow and I’m man enough to admit it.”

  I had no idea how to respond to that. “So, what happened with the pillow mist?”

  “I had a reaction. Allergies. My whole face swelled up for a week.”

  “And you held it against France instead of pillow mist?”

  “I told you. I like a nice-smelling pillow.” He climbed into the car. “Besides, they use the metric system over there.”

  I decided what present I’d get him in return for the flashlight—a bottle of pillow mist. And I’d make sure it was measured in milliliters. Just for fun.

  Then I pulled away from the curb to take Ralph Hawkins, my friend, to the airport.

  2007

  Epilogue

  Friday, May 18

  4:32 p.m.

  Time has taught me some things.

  Some people say that, in retrospect, our hard times aren’t as bad as they seemed, but I’m not so sure about that. I think they were as bad as they seemed, and the good times were just as good too.

  Hollywood glamorizes violence. The media either mutes it or sensationalizes it. But here, in this job, you see it for what it truly is every day. The blood and the gore and the terror.

  But you see love and beauty too, if you keep an eye out for them.

  Now, I wait in the living room.

  Taci has become a part of my story, a good one, a gift no one can take away—shared times of love and beauty that really were as good as they seemed. Over the years I’ve had a number of other relationships, though none as meaningful as the one with her.

  A couple weeks ago, however, I started seeing another woman, Christie Ellis. Already she seems special to me, like she might be the one. Before introducing me to her daughter, she’d wanted to get to know me first, so here I am now, in their apartment, waiting for the big meeting.

  She’s fifteen.

  A teenage girl.

  And just the thought of talking with her makes me fe
el clueless.

  Christie brags about her all the time, even though she’s warned me that she can sometimes be a bit opinionated and a tad impulsive: “Occasionally,” she told me. “Just once in a while.”

  The doorway at the end of the hall opens and footsteps approach.

  Christie’s daughter emerges from the hallway. Shoulder-length, raven black hair. A look of innocence about her, but wary and deeply intelligent eyes.

  Before I can speak, she does. “So, you’re Patrick.”

  “Call me Pat, if you like.” I stand and reach out my hand to shake hers, but she makes no move to respond in kind, and I end up lowering my hand somewhat awkwardly again to my side.

  Okay.

  “Come here.” She nods toward the balcony. As we head that way, Christie gives me a hint of a smile: See, I told you. She’s got some spunk to her.

  We step outside and then the two of us are alone on the balcony overlooking New York City, where I live now, working for the Bureau. As it turns out, Ralph was right. That FBI jacket did suit me pretty well after all. And, actually, Calvin was right about that PhD program too. Both, a perfect fit.

  “So, you like my mom?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, you better treat her right.”

  “I will.”

  “No, I mean it, she’s been hurt before.” There’s a depth of love in her words I’ve rarely heard from anyone before. “I swear to God you’d better not break her heart.”

  A pause. “I won’t.”

  The girl has a gaze that’s steady and unflinching. “She raised me by herself, okay? I never had a dad here and she never had a husband. She deserves a guy who’s man enough to treat her the way a woman deserves to be treated. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Is that you?”

  No matter where things went with Christie and me, I knew the answer to that question right away. “Yes. It is.”