by Harvey, JM
“I wish you had,” Val replied, still looking at his closed front door. “Then she would have kicked your ass instead of mine.”
30
By the time Victoria and Jack Birch reemerged from the house, Val was saying goodbye to Griggs and Rodriquez. Jack didn’t rejoin them, he didn’t even wave goodbye. He shared a few parting words with Victoria on the porch then crossed to his car where detective Gruene sat as still as a statue, waiting for the end of her career.
Griggs huffed and wheezed as he wedged himself in behind his patrol car’s steering wheel. His girth and height made the Crown Vic look like a kid’s pedal car. He stopped with one leg still out the door, sweat beading on his jowls. His sunburn looked two shades darker.
“You and Victoria should come by some night for dinner. I still burn a pretty mean steak and I have a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue that I’m dying to open,” he said.
Val appreciated the offer. Gary, a good Catholic, had five children, three of them in college, a situation that had Gary working two part time jobs in addition to his DPD duties. Even with the extra money, steak and Johnny Walker Blue would probably strain his budget to the breaking point.
Val nodded, “Sure thing. If I’m not dead or in jail.”
Gary frowned, turned in the seat, opened the glove box and pulled out a pistol. He turned and handed it up to Val by the trigger guard. Val took it and looked it over. A Glock-17 that looked well maintained.
“Just in case,” Gary said, but Val shook his head and handed it back.
“I still have my dad’s .45 if it comes to that.”
Gary shrugged and put the gun back in the glove box. “Well, if you need another gunslinger, call me,” he said, his tone deadly earnest. Griggs had killed three men in the line of duty, but, more importantly, he had managed not to kill another few thousand suspects over the years. There was no one Val would have preferred on his side in a fight.
Val nodded a reply and Griggs pulled the door closed.
Joe Rodriguez was still standing in the open passenger side door, looking across the light-bar at Val.
“The Sutton brothers deserved what they got,” he said. “Their sister too. The only mistake you made was not killing her four years ago. If she had thrown down on me with a shotgun…” Joe shook his head grimly. He didn’t wait for a response; he ducked into the car and banged the door closed behind him.
Val’s expression turned stony as he watched the patrol car pull away. Christ, even his friends believed he had crippled Abby Sutton. That was depressing. Val had thought this was all over, and here he was again. Lamar and Lemuel Sutton. Abby, Garland, Jasper Smith, and a mythical fifteen million dollars in stolen cash and gold coins. Echoes from a cold grave. But fresh graves were being dug. Abby and Phil Bastrop and Gus Perdido and God only knew how many others.
He turned back to the house and was startled to find Victoria standing directly behind him, arms crossed over her chest.
“Jack told me the whole story. He tried to gloss it over, but I know you. It’s probably ten times worse. If that’s possible.” She looked at the bandage plastered above his eye. “He said the Sheriff’s department arrested you.”
“Well, not exactly…” Val began, but Victoria wasn’t interested in subtleties.
“Cut the crap, Valentine,” she snapped. “Did they read you your rights?”
“Yes.”
“And they handcuffed you. And beat the crap out of you.”
“Yes.”
“Then you were under arrest, Einstein.”
Val shrugged. She had a point.
“And that’s another ruined shirt,” she said, glancing at his shirtfront then quickly away. There was a hitch in her voice and a glimmer of tears in her eyes.
Val looked down at the shirt. Dirt, blood and grass stains. Ruined was an understatement.
“I screwed up. I’m sorry,” he said instinctively. He had been married for two and a half years. He pled for mercy at the first sign of tears.
“For running around like Robocop or for the shirt?”
Having abandoned pride, Valentine found little trouble moving on to groveling.
“Both,” he said. “What I did was stupid. I took it too far. Just like you did yesterday in Oak Cliff.” Not tactful, but he hoped that reminding her of her own life-risking transgressions would get her off of his back.
He should have known better.
Victoria’s eyes flashed, the shimmer of tears instantly boiled away by anger. “What I did was stupid,” she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous pitch. “What you did was a betrayal of trust. If you can’t see the difference then maybe I should call the Sheriff and let them cart you off to jail.”
Val’s face went hot. Going after Zeke, Jasper and Garland half-cocked had been a bad idea. A mistake in judgment. He could admit that. But it wasn’t as if he had to ask her permission to leave the house. She was his wife, not his supervisor. But he didn’t argue the point. He wanted this over. He nodded woodenly.
“You’re right.” It took a lot for him to utter those words. “I apologize.” But Victoria wasn’t buying it.
She shook her head. “That’s bullshit,” she said. “You’re just trying to shut me up.” She had to blink fast to keep the tears from rolling. “What are you going to do now?” she asked, dreading his reply. She knew her husband wasn’t the type to lay back and let it ride.
“It’s over,” Valentine said. “Jack and the cops can handle it from here.” But he knew that was a lie as he said it. The cops cleaned up after murders, they rarely prevented them. They couldn’t keep tabs on Garland and Jasper Smith.
Victoria could read her husband’s expression. He had the look in his eye again. The bleak hostility. The coldness. The same look he had worn when he hunted murderers for a living.
“You’re not going to start playing cop, Valentine,” she said firmly. “You’ve done some stupid things in the past, but that’s just plain retarded.”
Valentine looked away. He couldn’t explain it to Victoria. For half of his life he had followed the code of the cop, never give a crook an even break. Have your tactical baton out before they threw the punch. Have your gun in your hand before they reached for the knife. And if they had a gun? Shoot to kill.
“You’re already a suspect in one murder.”
“That charge won’t stick. I didn’t kill anyone,” he said, realizing he sounded like a crook as he said it.
“But you could have been killed yourself,” she pointed out, the hitch reappearing in her voice. “And then what would I do? And the boys? What about them? Did you even consider us?”
That was below the belt. The last two years of his life had been about nothing but the twins. And it was Max, Kyle and his wife he had been trying to protect. But Val didn’t blow up. Things were bad enough. He wasn’t going to have a knockdown drag-out with his wife in the middle of the front lawn.
“Can we talk about this inside?” he asked, glancing up and down the quiet street, but Victoria didn’t give a damn about making a scene.
“This isn’t just stupid, Valentine, this is crazy. And now you’re on the wrong side of a homicide investigation. What the hell were you thinking?” she asked, searching her husband’s pale eyes for some reassurance that her life wasn’t going off the rails completely, but there was no reassurance there. What she saw chilled her.
Valentine made no reply.
Victoria waited, willing him to buckle, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen. He hadn’t changed. Hadn’t grown up. He was willing to risk everything just for the sake of risking it. She tore her gaze off her husband, turned and walked across the lawn, tears rolling down her face, her shoulders already starting to heave.
Val trailed her, head down.
Sometimes marriage truly sucked.
31
Victoria didn’t argue when Val followed her into the living room and took her in his arms. After a moment, he led her to the sofa. They sat there, the baby monitor on the coffee table whisp
ering with the twins even breathing. Victoria told him then, her face buried in his shoulder, about Big Sandy, Albert Pico, Axel Rankin, and the serial killer Randall Rusk. She left out only Rankin’s accusations against Val and her own theory that Rankin and Rusk’s murders might have been orchestrated by Sheriff Swisher’s men – her husband was acting spooky enough already - but she told him everything else. It came out in such a flood of backtracking and explanations that it took Val a long time to make sense of what she was saying. When he finally did he almost came unglued.
“You stabbed Randall Rusk?” Randall was a straight-up monster. “How—”
“I had the knife that he used to kill Big Sandy and Albert,” she said and shivered. “I stabbed him in the stomach, but it barely fazed him.”
“Jesus,” was all Val could think to say. “That’s how you hurt your hand?” She nodded and Val said, “Jesus,” again. He really didn’t know what to say. Tell her he was proud of her or offer her sympathy? He had killed seven men, and seen even more men die, but his way of dealing with those incidents was anything but healthy. He placed each of the dead in a box and slid that box back into the darkness to gather dust. His own personal little morgue. But that philosophy hadn’t been working too well in regards to his marriage. Victoria had never understood his silence. Maybe now she would.
“Jesus,” Val repeated.
“You said that already. Twice.”
After a moment of silence, Val said, “You did the right thing. What you had to do to survive.”
There was that coldness in his tone again. The icy promise of violence. Victoria pulled back and looked into her husband’s eyes. Val wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“I went to a counselor the first couple of times. It helped,” he said then shrugged, all out of words.
‘The first couple of times,’ Victoria thought and shivered again. Val was so cavalier in his attitude about killing people. He was right, she had done what she had to do in order to survive, but she didn’t like herself any better for being capable of stabbing another human being, for trying to kill someone.
Kyle squalled, the sound loud through the baby monitor. Val clicked the volume off and started to rise, but Victoria tugged him back down.
“I need them right now,” she said as she stood. She crossed the room, but stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned back to him.
“Don’t they ever bother you?” she asked. “The men you killed?”
Val’s instant reaction was silence, but he couldn’t do that to her now. Not anymore, not after what she had been through that day. Maybe he could tell her the plain truth? Maybe she’d understand after being so close to so many deaths?
“No.” He looked at her steadily as he spoke, he was done hiding. “I never set out to kill anyone, but I never got in the way if that’s what they were looking for.” The only wraiths that haunted his conscience were the victims of the men he had killed. The people he hadn’t been able to save. Like the two hookers in the Suttons’ basement that last day. The ones that Lamar and Lemuel had raped then—
Val’s mind recoiled from that memory. He wouldn’t go back there. Not now, not ever.
Victoria’s blood slowed in her veins and her heart swelled to bursting as she stared at her husband, wondering if she really knew him at all? Finally, she turned and climbed the stairs to collect the twins.
Valentine watched her go, knowing he had said too much. But at least he had been honest with Victoria.
Maybe for the first time.
32
Victoria returned downstairs with Max and Kyle, carrying them down one at a time, wordlessly waving off his offer to help. Val sat on the sofa and busied himself by folding a load of the boy’s clothes while the washing machine churned away on a load of funky cloth diapers that he had pre-rinsed by hand in the downstairs toilet. And whose idea had cloth diapers been? Not his, that was for sure. They might be ecologically sound, but they leaked and reeked and made his days a poop-smeared hell. But that was about to change. Potty training resumed tomorrow, in earnest.
Victoria didn’t say a word to Val. She huddled on the floor with the twins and began playing some made up game with blocks and stuffed animals as game pieces. Dark circles had built under her eyes and her face was drawn and pale.
As Val watched her from the corner of his eye, searching for something to say that might break the tension, he replayed what he had said to her about all the killings he had been involved in, wincing internally, twisting one of the boys’ pajama tops in his hands. What the hell had he been thinking? She had needed his comfort, not the additional burden of his own psychosis. He should have kept his mouth shut. He had gotten pretty damned good at that over the past four years, so why had he felt compelled to unburden his conscience today? The Suttons, he thought as his fingers dug into the pajama top. Everything came back to the Suttons. To Lamar and Lemuel, Abby and Garland. After four years of relative peace, Val’s life was in turmoil once again.
God, he wished he had shot Garland and Jasper yesterday. He should have killed them both. Should have burned that whole damned nest of snakes down. He—
Val ripped the shirt in half.
Victoria looked at him, then at the shirt, and frowned, but she didn’t say a word. She turned her attention back to the twins, picked up a toy gorilla, pressed it to Max’s face and made kissing noises.
“Mr. Gorilla loves Max! Mr. Gorilla says Max tastes like bananas. Yum yum! Mommy wants a taste,” she ducked and plastered his face with kisses as he squealed with delight.
Val flushed as he put the torn shirt aside. Right, he thought bitterly. The Suttons were the problem. They were the violent ones. The bad guys. He didn’t have any issues of his own…nope, not a one.
He took the folded clothes upstairs then transferred the diapers to the dryer and fixed the boys a snack. By the time he returned to the living room with a plate of sliced apple and two cups of milk, Victoria had fallen asleep, her head thrown back against the sofa. Kyle was in her lap with a coloring book, filling the page with one huge red scribble while Max was kissing the gorilla and saying “bananas” over and over. Victoria looked uncomfortable, legs tucked under her, her bandaged toe jutting out from under her thigh. He reached down and touched her shoulder.
She came awake with a start, her eyes wild in their sockets. Eyes that found Val leaning over her and grew only more frightened. It was a look that cut through him like a chainsaw.
“Sorry,” he said lamely. “You looked uncomfortable. Why don’t you go upstairs and lay down for a while? I’ll wake you up when dinner’s ready.”
Victoria nodded mutely. Her eyes were bloodshot, gritty looking. She rose, grimacing against the pain of stiffened joints and bruised flesh. She felt like one giant contusion. She ducked down and kissed the boys then turned to the stairs, sparing Val not a glance.
Val watched her go. For the first time in four years he wondered if he and Victoria were going to work out in the long run? He had held the darkness at bay for a long time, but now it appeared that his sins were coming back to revisit him. That once again he would have to kill or be killed. Garland and Jasper would leave him no choice. He—
No. That was bullshit. A rationalization. He did have a choice. And he made it at that moment, suddenly and decisively. Victoria was right. The Suttons had nothing to do with who he was now. His responsibility was to his wife and children. Garland and Jasper were Jack Birch’s and DPD’s problem. He’d stick to his own job. Mr. Mom.
“Hungry!” Max bellowed.
“Hungry!” Kyle echoed a half-beat later.
And it looked like Mr. Mom needed to think about dinner. But it had been a rotten enough day without having to eat his own lousy cooking.
“You boys up for a ride?” he asked as he rose from the sofa and gathered up the folded diapers. He was thinking Campisi’s on Mockingbird. It was a drive, but the pizza was worth it. And there was a beer store right next door. “Pizza and beer?” God, a beer sounded good righ
t now.
“Pizza?” Kyle said, bouncing up and down on his butt. “Pizza! Pizza!”
“Beer!” Max yelped. “Beer!”
“Juvenile delinquent,” Valentine said as he headed for the hallway. The kid had a knack for picking exactly the wrong words out of a conversation and repeating them. It was actually kind of funny, but it sure did make Val dread Max’s teenage years.
Val stowed the folded diapers in the hall closet then got the twins’ stroller out. He left Victoria a note on the kitchen table and called in the pizza order before wheeling the twin-buggy into the living room and scooping the boys into their seats. He pushed them out the back door and around to the driveway.
The car seats were still in the tow truck and Val was too lazy to switch them to Victoria’s Jeep. He put the boys in the back of the truck and headed toward downtown, the boys singing a made-up song about pizza and beer. Val sang along, catching the rhythm of the song but making up his own words.
“We make a pretty good trio,” he said, glancing at the twins in the rearview.
Max didn’t agree; he stuck his tongue out and blew Val a sloppy raspberry.
“Everyone’s a critic,” Val muttered and put his eyes back on the road.
Campisi’s was in a low-ceilinged, 1950’s strip mall. The narrow, windowless dining room was decorated like a pizza joint out of a Godfather movie. There was a bar along the left wall, booths along the right and a scattering of tables covered in red-checkered cloths in between. The place was packed with people swilling cheap chianti and chowing down on spaghetti and pizza.
Val wove among the tables, he and the boys catching smiles from every girl in the place. Babies were chick magnets. He paid for his pizza, wheeled the boys back out, ditched the pizza on the passenger seat of the tow truck, and trundled the twins down the sidewalk to the liquor store on the corner.
The liquor store was just as crowded as Campisi’s. Val grabbed a six-pack of Shiner Bock and took it to the counter. He got a few looks from women in there as well, mostly disapproving. They must not be parents, Val thought. Potty training a pair of boys would make anyone crave a drink. That justification didn’t prevent him from feeling like a deadbeat as he dropped the beer into the stroller’s cargo bay and headed back to the truck.
