by Harvey, JM
Victoria’s eyes fell on the knife, eight inches of wickedly tapered steel, the handle wrapped in Scotch tape. She darted forward, snatched up the bloody blade then shoved herself backward across the floor, her heels skittering on the concrete, scooting along on her butt until her shoulders hit the wall. She held the knife in front of her as Rusk slammed Rankin to the floor one last time.
Rankin didn’t even twitch; he lay there like a broken doll, covered in blood, his neck twisted at a cruel angle.
“Nighty night,” Rusk said then looked over his shoulder at Victoria. She couldn’t see his mouth but his eyes were grinning. Slowly Rusk stood and turned to face her, blood dripping from his fingertips. She knew what was coming; she was as dead as Rankin, Albert and Big Sandy. Surprisingly, that knowledge didn’t push her over the edge; instead it brought on a sudden and eerie sort of calm. She held the knife out in front of her, waiting for Rusk to make his move. But Rusk just stood there, looking down at her, his rubbery lips curved up into a leer.
“That wasn’t nearly as much fun as killing women,” he said, “but better than nothing.” His eyes dropped to the knife then came back up to her face. His grin widened. “What are you going to do with that?”
Victoria didn’t reply, she showed him what she intended to do by lunging forward on her knees and stabbing upward, cutting through the orange jump suit and opening a narrow gash across Rusk’s midsection, barely more than a paper-cut. She made another lunge, but Randall skipped backward as agilely as a boxer and slapped the knife out of her hand. The poorly taped blade sliced her palm, giving her a cut twice as bad as the one she had inflicted on him.
“Jesus,” he said, laying one huge palm over his wound, but he didn’t sound angry, he sounded offended. Like she had just spit in his soup. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I was trying to kill you,” she told him as she fell back, pressing her shoulder blades into the wall. Blood leaked from her wounded hand but she barely felt the pain.
Rusk stared at her with his mouth hanging open. And then he laughed so hard that his shoulders shook.
At the end of the corridor, Herby shot a look over his shoulder then redoubled his efforts at the door, pounding it with his fists and kicking it with his rundown cowboy boots, screaming for help that didn’t appear to be coming.
Rusk looked at Herby and laughed again. “Don’t be in such a hurry!” he called out, “Looks like I’m gonna need me a new attorney!” He turned back to Victoria and dropped into a crouch, facing her, his arms propped on his thighs like a gorilla at rest.
Victoria drew her legs in tight and tugged her skirt down over her knees with trembling hands.
Rusk’s grin grew broader. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I ain’t got no time for that. Though, I gotta say, you’d be a tasty bite.” He ran his tongue over his teeth. Her stomach heaved, but she fought not to show it. She had to keep Rusk talking until help came. If it ever did.
“Why did you kill Axel?”
Rusk glanced at the withered pile of blood-drenched orange that had once been Axel Rankin. “A favor for some new friends,” he said cryptically as he turned his muddy eyes back on her. “But that’s got nothing to do with us. We still got a deal, right? I mean, this,” he hooked his thumb at Rankin then waved down the hall to were Albert and Big Sandy lay in a lake of blood, “don’t change nothing, right?”
“Deal?” Victoria said. The man had just killed three people, one of them a deputy sheriff, and he was talking about a deal?
At the end of the hallway the REACT team had arrived. She shot a glance down the corridor and could see them through the door’s reinforced glass, but they appeared to be having a problem getting the door open. There was a lot of yelling and cursing, Herby’s voice louder than the rest.
Rusk looked toward the door then back at her. “What’s a couple more bodies?” he said and laughed. “Deal?” he held out a bloody palm.
Suddenly the door burst open, knocking Herby flat on his ass, and the REACT team came barreling in, dressed in Kevlar and riot helmets, batons and plastic shields in their hands. But the guy in the lead wasn’t carrying a baton or a shield. He had a large caliber pistol in his fist, though firearms were not permitted inside the jail complex.
“Freeze, Rusk!” the deputy with the pistol yelled as he raced down the hallway, his face hidden behind his helmet’s Plexiglas shield.
Rusk stood and turned to face them, his hands going up over his head. He showed the REACT Team his palms, fingers splayed wide. Blood ran in rivulets down his forearms.
“I’m done!” he yelled as the wave of deputies bore down on him. “I’m done!” He dropped to his knees, his hands still over his head. “I’m done!”
“You got that right, Rusk,” the guy with the pistol said as he skidded to a stop, the pistol just inches from Rusk’s face.
Randall started to say something else, but the words were knocked back down his throat by two 9mm slugs as the deputy fired twice straight through Rusk’s teeth.
26
Jack Birch led Val to the porch. Gary Griggs and the Hispanic cop followed. When they reached the shade, Gary stuck out his hand to Val.
“How’s it hanging there, Vicious,” he asked, grinning with a mouthful of yellow teeth that would have better suited a horse. He eyed the blood running down Val’s face. “Looks like deputy Erath didn’t find your sense of humor nearly as amusing as you seem to think it is. I agree with him, but I’ve learned to restrain myself from beating your face in.”
Police officers, Val thought wryly, were not the sympathetic sort. Get your right hand chopped off and you’d pick up the nickname Captain Hook in around ten seconds.
“Been a while, Gary,” Val said, shaking Griggs’ beefy hand. Griggs was a twenty-five-year street cop who snubbed every chance of promotion. A true hard drinking, hardheaded patrol officer, he was a junkie for the kind of action you couldn’t find behind a desk.
The Hispanic cop was grinning too as he stuck out his hand. His brass name tag said J. Rodriquez. Joseph, Val remembered. Rodriquez had silver tabs on his collar and silver buttons on his shirt, the accoutrements of an administrative lieutenant. Val remembered him as a quiet kid with more guts than brains who had been sent up to SWAT Team Two just a few weeks before Val had been promoted to detective and moved over to Homicide.
“Joe,” Val said. “You’re looking prosperous. I figured you for a SWAT lifer.”
Rodriquez flushed. “Reassigned three months ago. I got three kids now. The wife doesn’t want me kicking in crack house doors. They got me working out of South Central. That’s dangerous enough.”
Val glanced at Griggs. “You’re still working Faulkner, old timer?” he asked. Faulkner Estates was the most violent housing project in the city. It was located on the far south side and surrounded by hourly-rate hotels, tote-the-note car lots and furniture rental stores. The land that the developers forgot as they pushed the suburban sprawl farther and farther north and east. Things had gotten better since the city built the South Central station house. A little. At least the criminals weren’t playing Wild West in the streets any longer.
Griggs scratched the back of his bullish neck, wincing as his fingers hit the fresh sunburn. “I go where duty calls,” he said with mock-humility.
“Does your wife know you’re riding around with this guy?” Val asked Rodriquez, hooking a thumb at Griggs. “That’s gotta be ten times more dangerous than SWAT. Griggs BO alone should be enough to qualify for a disability pension.”
“I smell like a flower,” Griggs said through his horsy grin. “Sniff my ass and guess what kind.”
Val laughed again, thoroughly enjoying himself. It was just like old times at an arrest scene. Except that he was the one under arrest.
That thought killed his laughter.
“This is a long way from South Side. What brings you guys here?” he asked.
“We were down at Jack Evans when Birch was rolling out. Thought we’d tag along,” Rodriqu
ez explained. “Let me get the First Aid kit out of the car,” he added, eyeing the blood oozing from Val’s eyebrow. “You’re bleeding pretty good.” He headed off across the yard.
Val touched his fingertips to the wound. Not a good idea. A rocket went off inside his skull. He sat down on the porch steps, it was that or fall down.
Jack went up the steps past Val and crossed the porch to the playpen where the boys were watching the proceedings with wide eyes. The kids didn’t seem to notice the blood smearing their father’s face, but they were too young to know blood from ketchup. Val was thankful for that.
“Hey there Max,” Birch said, chucking Max under the chin and Val wondered how Birch could tell the boys apart? Jack had only seen the twins two or three times and sometimes Val had a hard time doing that himself. Max giggled and tried to bite Jack’s finger.
“You saved my butt there, partner,” Valentine said, nodding his thanks.
“Been a time or two you did the same for me,” Jack replied. He leaned against one of the porch posts and took out a crumpled pack of Pall Mall Reds. He started to shake a cigarette out, looked at the twins and reconsidered. He tucked the smokes back into his breast pocket.
“What the hell—” Valentine looked over at Max and Kyle and backtracked, “What the heck is going on?”
“You know about Abby Sutton?” Jack asked as Griggs dropped down onto the step beside Valentine, his weight making the whole porch shiver.
Val nodded and Birch continued.
“Abby was stabbed to death.” Birch explained, “The killer did a lot of other stuff, including shooting her twice in the belly. I got a call from the Medical Examiner this morning. Not Samuel, the lady ME, Eustace Cantor. Eustace pulled those bullets out of her yesterday morning. Those two and one other.”
“The one lodged in her spine?” Val guessed.
Birch nodded. “She bagged and tagged all three for the lab. Standard procedure. They got a ballistic match this morning.”
“That fast?” Val was impressed. When he’d been on the force a ballistic comparison could take days to process.
“They didn’t have to look far for the match,” Birch said then paused significantly, like it pained him to go on. “The slugs that killed her last week matched the one that crippled her four years ago. The brass downtown is betting that they came from your service weapon, Valentine.”
“Holy shit,” Gary Griggs said.
“Bullshit,” was Val’s less reverent comment.
Birch put up a palm. “I believe you. Believed you back then, too,” he said. Val nodded stiffly and Jack continued, “But Sheriff Swisher isn’t as trusting. He convinced Deputy Chief Ballast to go to Judge Pinto for a warrant for your arrest.
Val opened his mouth, but Jack held up a palm.
“All this is easy enough to clear up. I hate to say there might be a bright side to this, but this could prove that you didn’t cripple her. That there was another shooter outside the kitchen that day. Let me take your gun downtown. Have a ballistics test run on it.”
“The ballistics should be on file,” Val said. “It was my service weapon. I submitted it for testing after the Sutton shooting.”
Birch shook his head. “Having a little trouble finding that report. Some computer glitch, they tell me. So, if I could get that gun…”
Val’s face went hot. “I sold it,” he said. Just saying it made him feel guilty. How many times had he and Birch heard a line like that from some dirt-bag murder suspect? “Almost two years ago, but I still have the receipt.” Thank god that after years of chasing down murder weapons, Val had a healthy respect for the paperwork necessary to cover your ass when you bought or sold a gun. “It’s in the gun safe.”
Jack nodded. “That’s good news. Who’d you sell it to?”
“Gus Perdido.” Gus was a gun dealer favored by the Dallas city cops. “He might have sold it by now. Been two years.”
“Gus Perdido,” Jack said thoughtfully. He looked out across the yard and said nothing more.
Griggs filled the silence. “Gus got firebombed three days ago, Val. They robbed the place then burned it out. After locking Gus in the back office. Poor bastard cooked to death.”
“Along with all his sales records,” Birch added. “I’ll look into the state and federal records. See if I can find anything.” In Texas, a private citizen could sell a gun to whomever he pleased, no ID or paperwork required, but gun dealers didn’t get off that easy. If Gus had sold the gun there’d be a record of it.
Joe Rodriguez came through the gate and crossed the yard, carrying a red and white first aid kit. Val didn’t object when Joe opened the case and went to work on his eye, dousing it with alcohol as a first step. That hurt, but Val refrained from tears. Just barely.
“It’s not that bad,” Joe said. “Bled a lot, but I don’t think you need stitches.”
“The closer to the bone, the more the cut bleeds,” Valentine said. Was that from the book of home remedies he and Victoria had received as a baby shower present or a lyric from a rock ballad? Probably both. Joe put a gauze pad over the cut and taped it down.
“Any suspects in the firebombing?” Valentine asked Jack.
Jack shook his head. “Looked professional. Reminded me of Lamar and Lemuel. The Martinson’s robbery. You remember.”
Val nodded. He would never forget it. Millions of dollars in gold coins had been stolen and a father, son, daughter and mother had all been gagged and bound then doused with kerosene and set ablaze. And that wasn’t the worst thing that Lamar and Lemuel had done during their spree.
Val stood. “Arrested or not, the boys need to have their lunch.”
“I’m starving,” Griggs said as he heaved himself up from the steps. “What’s for lunch, Mr. Mom?”
Val gave Gary a cautioning look from under lowered brows. “I’m warning you, Gary, I’m starting to feel like resisting arrest. So, you’re not only risking an ass kicking, you’re talking yourself out of a grilled cheese sandwich.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Justice,” Griggs said with a stiff little bow that was abbreviated by his massive gut. “I would love several grilled cheese sandwiches.” Griggs didn’t keep his portly build on moderation.
Val looked at Jack and Joe. “If you guys are up for tomato soup and grilled cheese, you’d be welcome.”
“I could eat,” Joe admitted.
Jack gave Val a sliver of a smile. “You might want to have something better than grilled cheese, Valentine. Your next meal might just be a bologna sandwich down at Lew Sterret.”
27
Victoria exited the jail’s infirmary dressed in an oversized T-shirt with a blue Sheriff’s Department logo on the right breast, having discarded her blood-splattered suit coat and blouse in the infirmary’s trashcan. Two suits destroyed in two days. Her body felt limp, used up, every muscle aching from adrenaline burnout, but she wasn’t thinking about her aches and pains or the horror she had just endured, she was thinking about Big Sandy and Albert Pico who were still back in the infirmary, lying on gurneys with sheets stretched over their faces. She just wanted to bolt out of the jail and go home. But she wasn’t going to get off that easy.
Sheriff Nolan Swisher was waiting for her, seated on a blue plastic chair, flipping through the pages of a fishing magazine that was spread across his lap. Though he had once been a vigorous man, dark-haired and sturdily-built, liver disease had wrung the life right out of him. He was as thin as a fence post, his dark eyes as dead as the holes bored in a bowling ball, his face a knot of wrinkles. He looked every minute of his sixty-four years.
His eyes sparked a little when they lifted to her. A glimmer in the darkness that was quickly gone. He pitched the fishing magazine onto the table beside him, retrieved a spotless tan Stetson short-brim from the same table and stood to face her. An old west style marshal’s star was pinned to the left lapel of his brown, cowboy-cut suit. The jacket sagged from his shoulders and the slacks hung in loose folds around his Tony Lama boots. He r
an the hat brim through his fingers, turning the Stetson slowly between his hands as he spoke.
“How do, Victoria,” he said in his dried-out rasp. He looked down at her freshly bandaged hand. “They get you fixed up back there?”
Victoria was too exhausted for pleasantries. “How did Rusk get a key to his shackles?” she asked, ignoring the apology. “And a knife a foot long?”
“Key?” Swisher raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “He didn’t have a key. I figure he used a paperclip or something to pick the cuffs. The knife must have been planted by a trustee or a civilian janitor.”
“I saw a key,” Victoria insisted. “It was on the floor by Big Sandy.”
Nolan shook his head. “There wasn’t a key when the REACT team got there. They would have told me.” That was a load of crap. Victoria had seen the key while the REACT team was performing pointless CPR on Albert and Sandy, before they had insisted that she leave the visitation area for the infirmary.
“You sure about that, Nolan?” she demanded. “Or are you covering for them?”
The skin of Swisher’s face went tight, but he merely shook his head. “That ain’t the way I work, Victoria,” he said. “You know me better than that.”
“I saw the key, Nolan—”
“I’ll look in to it,” Swisher cut her off. “I hate to think it, but I’ve never known you to lie. If you’re right, I guarantee asses will fry.” He immediately changed the subject. “I’ve got to go out to Sandy’s house here in a minute,” he told her. “Maude’s going to take this hard. Sandy was just a week out from retirement. But at least we took care of Rusk. That will be some comfort to the family.” He gave her his graveyard-smile, the Stetson still turning between his hands.
