by Harvey, JM
She went out the way she had come in. Herby was waiting for her. He flew up from the bench, his mouth already open and running, but Victoria wasn’t listening anymore. She walked right past him to the rear doors.
“He’s going to be held downstairs this evening, but you better have a birth certificate on my desk by tomorrow morning or he’ll be on level six in time for bologna sandwiches,” she said as she blew past him.
She pushed through the door, slamming it closed behind her, cutting off anything Herby might have had to say. That made her feel a little better.
16
Val was home, in the nursery, changing Kyle’s diaper when the phone rang.
The diaper was a bad one, the smell was like something from a truck stop bathroom stall. He quickly folded it up and stashed it in the diaper pail, but he could still smell it as he mopped up Kyle and powdered him down. He had a new diaper ready to go when the phone vibrated in his pocket. It had to be Victoria. He had called her cell phone seven times in the last thirty minutes and gotten only her voicemail. He was starting to feel like a caricature of a nagging wife. And he’d be a bitching wife when he finally got her on the phone.
Pinning Kyle to the diaper board with one hand, he pulled his phone out and checked the caller ID. It wasn’t Victoria; it was Petersen, Senior Crime Editor of The Dallas Morning News. Pete must have seen Victoria on TV and was looking for a comment or a quote. Val wanted to hit DECLINE, but he owed Pete. She had been the one reporter who hadn’t jumped on the ‘Lynch Valentine’ bandwagon four years before.
“Hey, Pete.” Kyle began to squirm, trying to bust loose and run naked through the house, one of his favorite pastimes. Max was already asleep in the crib, drool pooling on the sheet.
“Valentine,” Renee Petersen said in a raw-lunged smoker’s voice. He heard her flick her cigarette lighter and could picture her sitting at her cluttered desk, half hidden behind leaning and spilled piles of paper, her lined but pretty face, bleached bone-white from a steady dose of computer monitor x-rays, smoke curling from her nostrils. She blew a gust of smoke in his ear before abruptly asking, “You got any comment on the murder of Abby Sutton?”
Val was startled so badly that phone the dropped from his hand. He juggled it one-handed for three or four bounces before it hit the floor. Keeping one hand on Kyle’s belly, he ducked down and scooped it up.
“—this morning on the Trinity River,” Pete was saying when he got the phone to his ear.
“Say again,” he said, his voice tight. “What was that about Abby Sutton? She’s dead?”
“Shot and stabbed multiple times. Body was dumped on the Trinity River Levee over by Canyon Street.”
“Who did it?” he asked, instantly wondering if it had anything to do with the fifteen million dollars her father, Garland, was looking for?
Pete laughed. “Who knows? She wasn’t a popular girl. The bitch had a mouth on her. I was calling to ask you if you did it?” Pete wasn’t known for her diplomacy. Pissing people off was just part of her job. And she was good at it. Too good.
“First I heard of it,” Val said tersely. He hunched the phone against his ear with his shoulder and began to swaddle Kyle in the diaper, pinning it closed with safety-pins.
“So, that’s a no comment?”
“No, that’s a ‘keep my name out of it if you can,’“ Val replied. He carried Kyle to the crib and laid him down beside his brother.
Pete’s tone softened. “I can’t do that, Valentine. Abby’s murder will run above the fold tomorrow morning and you’re a part of what makes it a story.”
“Great.” Val didn’t argue further. Pete was a reporter doing her job, but, if Pete was going to get mileage out of him, maybe he could milk that for a favor. “I need some help, Pete.”
Pete barked laughter. “Like you’ve done me so many favors? You never once let me inside an investigation. Never gave me a single tip. Not one quote that wasn’t made up of four letter words. Never—”
“I paid your bar tab and ferried your drunk ass home more times than I can count,” Val cut in.
Pete sighed. “There is that,” she conceded. “But that was a long time ago. And you rarely stayed the night. What have you done for me lately?”
“Beer on me next time I’m downtown?” Val ignored the halfhearted come-on. He and Pete had had their run a long time ago. It hadn’t worked. She had never turned off the tape recorder.
“And a burger? Adair’s?” Adair’s was an Aggie hangout on Elm Street that had all the charm of a burned out gas station and the best burgers and coldest long necks in the city.
“Deal,” he said then hesitated a moment, wondering how far he could trust Pete? How much he dared say? In the end, he had to trust someone and Pete had never let him down. He finally decided that he had to tell her the truth, minus the violence. Dramatic details just made reporters anxious. Give them a punch line and they’d find a story to attach to it even if they had to make it up.
“I heard that Abby was looking for Lamar and Lemuel’s money,” he said. “The money they stole.”
“The money?” Pete’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Who told you that?”
“I ran into Zeke Sutton today,” Val said. “Had to take a pistol off him.”
“What? Jesus Christ, Valentine,” Pete said over the clatter of her fingers blazing away on her keyboard. “You took a gun off him? What the hell are you doing playing cop? You’re retired. You should be detecting poopy-diapers not crimes.”
Val ignored the jibe, it hit too close to home at the moment. But the typing made him nervous.
“Hey Pete, this isn’t for public consumption. Use my name and I’ll deny I said it.”
The clacking stopped abruptly.
“Don’t dry hump me, Valentine,” she warned him.
“I want your word or I stop right here.”
“There’s more?”
“I paid Garland Sutton a visit,” he said.
“And you’re still alive,” Pete said breathlessly, her excitement growing. “Does that mean that Garland’s dead?”
That pissed Val off. He had heard enough of that kind of humor to last a lifetime. “Why does everyone in Dallas think I just roll around killing people?”
“The answer to that question is too obvious to warrant a reply,” Pete said. “But as long as the right people get dead, who gives a damn?” She hurried on before Val could interrupt, “Tell me about Abby and the money. I know the cops never found the cash or the gold coins. We ran three or four stories on that before it got stale. We figured the Confederate Syndicate or Garland Sutton had it. Are you telling me that it’s still out there?”
Val hesitated. He shouldn’t have said anything about the Suttons or the money. At least not before he had spoken to Jack Birch. He was blowing holes in an open murder investigation. One in which he was undoubtedly a prime suspect, as Pete had pointed out.
“Who knows?” he replied. “Like you said, we never found it.”
“I remember the figure was fifteen million. At least that was the estimate we used.”
“A figure that you made up,” Val said. “Lamar and Lemuel took less than three million in cash that we could firmly document.”
“That was the cash taken from the three reported robberies - the Athens Savings and Loan, the First Priority armored car and Martinson’s Wholesale Gold,” Pete said defensively. A sure indication that she had made up the fifteen million dollar figure. “Hell, they took over ten million in gold coins from Martinson’s alone.”
“The Martinson’s estate settled with the insurance company for less than half that,” Valentine reminded her. “They figured Martinson’s brother padded the claim.”
Pete continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “If you add in the fact that they were hitting dope houses and gamblers and other thieves, I think fifteen million is a fair estimate. Hell, they were at it for months.”
Val didn’t need to be reminded of how long he, Jack Birch and the task for
ce had chased the Suttons. Val, Jack, and the thirty-three other state, local and federal cops had been one bloody step behind the Suttons for more than three months. Every time the task force had gotten close, the Sutton boys had disappeared like smoke. It was uncanny how Lamar and Lemuel had always seemed to know where and when the big money transactions were taking place, legal and criminal. The Suttons had hit Big Willie Buchel when the dope dealer was in the middle of a thirty-kilo buy then two days later they took down an armored car on a high-security bank relocation run. But the worst had been Martinson’s Wholesale Gold. The Suttons had robbed and fire-bombed the family owned shop on the very afternoon that Virgil Martinson had received a shipment of gold coins from the Canadian Mint. All in all, the Suttons had left a trail of sixteen bodies across the state of Texas before Valentine had finally run them down. And the people they had gunned down were the lucky ones. The Suttons had kidnapped two young females on the final day of their spree - women who were bound and gagged, then carted away to the Suttons’ basement. There the brothers had—
“And Garland Sutton thinks you have it?” Pete asked, drawing Val abruptly back to the present.
“That seems to be his position.” Val replied.
“Do you?”
“If I had fifteen million dollars I’d hire a nanny,” Val said, only half joking.
Pete didn’t laugh. “If they think you have the money, Val,” she began, getting really excited, “they’ll come after you! They’ll kill you if they have to.”
“Don’t go all warm and fuzzy on me, Pete.”
“Jesus, Valentine. This is a story!” she said. “You have to let me print this. You and the Sutton family and fifteen million dollars! That’ll put an extra zero in our circulation numbers! God knows we need it.”
“Not until I talk to the cops. Print a word and I’ll deny it. And I bet Garland will too.”
Pete thought about that for a moment. “Okay,” she agreed reluctantly, “but here’s the deal. You talk to no one else. No one. I get what you get.”
“On Abby Sutton? Or the money?”
“On everything. I get first dibs if it’s a story worth ink. Give it to that big-titted bitch at Channel Seven and I’ll plaster your face all over page one.”
“I doubt that there will be a story. This is just a doper fantasy—”
“Right,” Pete cut him off. “Everywhere you went as a cop someone tried to kill you. and I doubt much has changed. We’ve only been on the phone for five minutes and I’m ready to kill you myself. I want your word, Valentine; any story is mine.”
Val didn’t hesitate. “You got it.” It was the best deal he could hope to get. And it kept the story out of the papers. For a while anyway. “Now for the favor,” he said. “I need a list of all the current members of the Confederate Syndicate.” Maybe one of Abby’s cohorts could explain why the crippled teenager had suddenly decided, after four long years, that Valentine had hijacked her brother’s loot.
“Why ask me?” Petersen replied. “I mean, one phone call to Jack Birch would get you that.”
Petersen was probably right, Jack would get him the list, but Valentine didn’t want to ask Jack. Jack would want to know why Val wanted the list, a question he did not want to answer. Not yet. But he didn’t explain that to Pete.
“Can you get it?”
Petersen sighed. “I’ll get it. Is that it?”
“No,” Val decided on impulse. “I want everything you can dig up on the Sutton brothers’ robberies.”
“You were part of the investigation. Nothing I can get you will be better than the info you already have,” Pete protested.
“It’s been a long time, Pete, and I don’t have access to the files any more. What I really need is a timeline. Something to help me sort it out in my head,” he replied evasively, unwilling to admit the real reason - that he was wondering if Garland and Jasper might just be right about the gold and the money; that it might still be out there. And if Val could find it and turn it in, the danger to his family would be over. It was a long shot, like winning the Pick-Six without buying a lottery ticket, but…
“Sort it out in your head,” she said like he was mentally deficient.
“That’s the deal,” Val replied. “Get the info and email it to me or I’ll call Emma ‘Big Tits’ Coronado at Channel Seven.”
Pete took the deal.
17
Victoria arrived home to find BoDean’s behemoth of a tow truck parked in the driveway, which meant, one: the Mustang had broken down again, and two: there was no space for her Jeep. She parked on the street.
It took all of her strength to heave herself out of the seat and trudge up the walkway, every step bringing pain from an assortment of bruises and scrapes. The adrenaline rush she had ridden for almost three hours had finally come to a crashing halt and the pain had rushed in to fill the vacuum. She was exhausted and the sweltering late afternoon heat was quickly sapping what little energy she had left. Even the two huge old pecan trees that overhung the front porch looked lackluster and thirsty.
She was halfway to the front steps when Valentine stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind him.
The porch, already narrow and low, was turned into a dim cave by a tangle of wisteria vines that looked heat-wilted and half dead. Faded violet petals dappled the dark, deeply shaded earth under the porch’s eaves. From her vantage point, squinting into all that shade, Victoria could see Val’s outline, but nothing more.
She stiffened her spine, plastered on a smile and brushed at her dusty suit with her free hand. What a joke. The jacket was torn at the shoulder and filthy from her roll on the pavement. The lining was hanging down at the back like the tattered hem of a worn out slip and her skirt was in even worse shape. How the hell was she going to explain that away? Her heart sped up and her feet slowed down as she scrambled for a plausible story. If Val found out the truth he’d freak. And she couldn’t blame him. She’d kill him if he had taken a risk like the one she’d taken that afternoon.
“Hey, babe,” she said as she reached the shade of the pecans. The temperature instantly dropped five degrees. “What a day. I took a little tumble down on the Trinity—” she began, gesturing at her clothes with her free hand, but something about the way Val was looking at her made her stop mid-sentence. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the gloom, but any good attorney could read body language as easily as legal statutes. Val stood stiffly, chin tucked, arms crossed. Something was wrong. Instantly she thought of the twins.
“Are the boys okay?” she asked. She was already on the ragged cliff of a breakdown. If something had happened to one of the boys…
“They’re fine,” he said, his voice as unyielding as his posture.
Victoria climbed the porch steps and stopped at the top, still six feet from her husband, suddenly nervous. She didn’t like lying to Val…but she was going to do it anyway.
“What a day,” she said and then remembered that she’d already said that. She flushed, as much from Val’s steady gaze as the verbal stumble. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the gloom she could see that he was angry. No, he was furious.
He already knew.
“Who ratted me out?” she asked. “One of your SWAT buddies?”
“CNN,” he said. “And, you’re right, that was quite a tumble. Funny, I thought the Trinity was a River. I didn’t know it was a Confederate Syndicate dope pad in Oak Cliff.”
“It wasn’t as bad as it looked,” she began, but Val wasn’t buying it.
“Two officers were killed and four were wounded,” he said. “And that’s exactly how bad it looked.”
“Val, I had no choice. I—”
“You didn’t have to be there,” he cut her off.
“I—”
“You’re not a cop.”
“I—”
“Or a bomb technician.”
“I—”
“We made a deal,” he said. “You, me and the kids. Before they were even born. You rem
ember that? You made me promise.”
Of course she remembered. Remembered his hand resting on her swollen belly, the twins kicking as if they knew their parents were talking about them.
“Val—”
“The question requires a simple yes or no, counselor.”
Victoria quit wheedling. There was only one thing she could do: suck it up.
“Yes.”
“‘I don’t want to be a single parent.’ That’s what you told me. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to be a single parent either,” he said, his tone softening. “It’s hard enough with both of us.”
She nodded mutely. Words would only get her into deeper trouble.
“New promise,” he said, “You to me. Never again. No guns, no bombs, no heroics.”
“Promise,” she said then crossed her heart with a grimy index finger. “Never again.”
He eyed her cynically. “Right. I want you to put my old Kevlar vest in the Jeep,” he said. “That’s how much I believe you.” Obviously he wasn’t prepared to let it go completely, but she wasn’t worried. She knew a few techniques guaranteed to win instant forgiveness. Of course, most of them required nudity…
“But you love me,” she said, giving him the beginnings of a smile as she inched closer. She put her briefcase down on the porch.
Val nodded grimly. “Yes. What can I say? I am a moron.”
She went to him then, wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed her body tight to his. That’s when she noticed the scratch on his forearm and the rumpled and dirty state of the Tommy Bahamas shirt she had bought him last Christmas.
“What happened to you?” she asked, pushing him away mid-hug. “You’re filthy. And what happened to your arm?”
Val looked down at the bloody scratches and the grease and rust besmirching his once white shirt. He almost broke down and told her about Zeke and Garland and Jasper Smith, but then he thought better of it. She’d kill him.
