Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1

by Harvey, JM

  By then the men were right outside the office door.

  “You hear that?” the peckerwood asked.

  A moment of silence passed before Hockley replied. “No. I didn’t hear anything. You going pussy on me?”

  “Just listen,” the peckerwood replied, his tone carrying a warning edge.

  The two stopped talking. Another long moment of silence.

  “I said I don’t hear anything,” Hockley said impatiently. “Let’s just get this done with.”

  “The closet,” the peckerwood said in a stage whisper.

  For a moment there was silence and then booted feet thumped across the room’s bare floorboards accompanied by the sound of something being dragged along the floor. The boots circled Herby’s desk and came straight at the closet.

  Victoria stopped breathing.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Laroy asked. “I already went through the closet, there’s nothing in there but winter clothes.”

  “Little insurance,” the peckerwood said. The closet doorknob jiggled, but the doorknob didn’t turn and the door didn’t open, it was merely pressed inward, tighter to the frame. The boots turned away and clomped back around the desk.

  “You’re crazy old man,” Hockley said. “If you’re that worried about it, open the door and check it out.”

  The peckerwood snorted at that. “I didn’t get this old by sticking my head in snake-holes,” he said. “Give it here.”

  The two men fell silent. Victoria’s ears strained for any sound that might indicate what they were doing.

  The sound of metal grating on metal was followed by a sloshing sound like water slopping out of a mop bucket. It took another moment for the smell to hit her.

  Gasoline! The odor grew rapidly, mixing with the woodsy-wooly smell of the cedar closet. Her head spun. She knew what was coming, could almost feel the flames.

  Laroy spoke. “Hurry up” he said. “Douse the desk and the bodies so we can get out of here.”

  “Don’t flap your jaws at me,” the redneck replied. “We’d already be long gone if you’d have thought this through. You got me heading out to the Quick-Stop for a can of gasoline just ten minutes before we commit an arson.”

  “Just get on with it,” Laroy snapped. “Keep bullshitting around and we’ll both end up in Huntsville.”

  The peckerwood chuckled. “You afraid of prison?” he asked, the sloshing sounds coming closer to the closet as he spoke. “Pretty as you is, I don’t blame you. Them muscles won’t do much good against five or six bull queers looking for a fresh poke.”

  The smell of gasoline grew chokingly thick. A trickle of fluid crept under the door, forming a small puddle on the threshold.

  “That’ll never happen, old man,” Laroy said. “I’d kill you and ten more just like you. Let’s go!”

  “Well, shee-it,” the peckerwood said, drawing out the word to two syllables. “Who’s going all pussy now?” His boot heels retreated across the office again.

  A moment passed in silence before Laroy said, “Give me the rest of that gas, I’m heading upstairs. Get this done and meet me at the back door.”

  The peckerwood made no reply to that.

  Victoria pulled a coat sleeve over her mouth and nose and took a slow breath, sucking air through the musty cloth. The fumes were making her lightheaded. She pressed the coat sleeve tighter to her mouth, but it didn’t help. Her head was reeling. The darkness in front of her eyes filled with red spots and her knees went shaky.

  “Maybe I’m just talking to myself,” the peckerwood said conversationally. “And maybe I ain’t. If I ain’t, well then, welcome to the barbecue!”

  Victoria heard a match scrape.

  If there had been any air left in her lungs, she would have screamed.

  49

  Martinson’s Wholesale Gold looked closed when Valentine rolled into a parking space out front. The parking lot of the Bed Bath & Beyond next door was packed, but only a single car sat in front of Martinson’s iron-barred, plate glass door: an old Mercedes with a sun-faded Jack in the Box head mounted on the radio antenna. The building, with its single door set into windowless walls of red brick, looked more like a fallout shelter or an electrical substation than a business. The only exterior decorations were two closed-circuit TV cameras that were mounted on metal brackets at the corners of the building and aimed down at the front door. There were no signs, no neon, no sale ads taped to the door’s glass. The Martinson’s didn’t need to advertise. They weren’t a retail jeweler selling engagement rings and wristwatches; they were a supplier of minted gold coins to the retail traders.

  Once again, Val was sucked back in time. To the fire and the bodies. He could smell them again and his throat clenched tight. The little girl had been the worst. She had been found under the body of her mother, both burned so badly, so contorted and twisted by the heat, that it had been impossible to separate them for burial. They—

  “Jesus,” Val said aloud, his hands throttling the steering wheel. At that moment, he almost threw the car in reverse and backed away. But he had come here for a reason. He killed the engine, climbed out into the heat and crossed to the building’s front door.

  An Allied Armed Security warning sticker was the front door’s only adornment. Beside the door was the stainless steel grill of an intercom, but there was no call button to push. With the sun hanging low in the west, the glare coming off the door’s glass forced Val to cup his hands and press his face against the glass to see inside. He was half expecting to see an empty office closed for the day, but was startled to find a woman, pushing sixty, staring back at him across a narrow counter that bisected the front of the store. She was wearing pink cat’s-eye glasses, a low-neck red blouse and a suspicious frown. Behind her was a closed door that Val remembered led back to the offices and the safes where the coins were stored.

  Val waved, but the woman just kept staring. But she must have done something because the door behind her suddenly opened and a pair of uniformed guards came out, one blond, one redheaded, both built like sides of beef.

  The guards were as wide as the office door and almost as tall with flat faces and hard eyes. They looked like professional soldiers in their starched uniforms, their hair clipped so tight to their skulls that it looked painful. They acted professionally as well. They split left and right at the counter. The blond came around to the door while the redhead positioned himself in the far corner, overlooking the room, his hand on the pistol holstered to his hip.

  The blond had the heavy grace of a football linebacker. His eyes never left Val’s face as he leaned down and pushed a button beside the door and spoke into the intercom.

  “Help you?”

  “I’m here to see Earl,” Valentine said, leaning close to the speaker. “My name’s Valentine Justice.”

  “Appointment?” the guard asked.

  Val shook his head.

  The guard turned toward the old woman and said something that Val couldn’t hear. She picked up a phone, dialed an extension and spoke a few words. She listened for a moment then hung up and nodded at the guard. He shook a key ring loose from his belt and started working locks. There were five of them in all. Finally, he pushed the door open a crack then stepped back ten feet, his hand on his pistol.

  Val stepped through and pulled the door closed behind him.

  There was no evidence of the fire that had gutted the store four years ago. No smoke damage, no smell, but Val could still see the corpses. The bodies twisted into blackened pretzels.

  The old woman spoke, jarring him out of it. “Take him back,” she said. “Earl’s in the sorting room.”

  The blond grunted and pointed Val at the door behind the counter. Val led the way through it, the guard keeping a good four feet behind Val at all times, his hand never far from his pistol. Val was impressed. Security was tight at Martinson’s. That had not been the case four years ago when Lamar and Lemuel had crashed through the front door and started shooting.

 
; The back of the shop was clean and unremarkable. The hallway floor was covered in blue Astroturf. Heavy-gauge steel filing cabinets lined the walls, all padlocked. Fluorescent lights provided a flat glow that gave the place the air of a doctor’s office.

  “There,” the guard said as Val neared a door on the left. Val went through it without knocking.

  The room was carpeted in more Astroturf, this time red. The wall on the left was dominated by a large wall safe with brass work that glittered in the fluorescents. To the right was a table covered in green baize and bracketed by four chairs. A huge old brass scale sat at the table’s center. Behind the scale sat Earl Martinson. The tabletop in front of him was littered with gold coins, bunched into groups of five or six.

  Earl looked up over eye glasses that hung precariously low on his nose. He leaned back, his big belly moving forward and out, tenting the rumpled shirt he was wearing. A broad smile stretched the deep wrinkles of his melon-shaped face, knocking ten years off his appearance. He stuck out his hand without rising.

  “Detective Justice,” he said, “Damned good to see you.” Despite the pleasant greeting, there was a questioning note in his tone, but he didn’t voice it outright. He looked over at the guard who was standing in the doorway behind Val.

  “That’ll do it, Gene. Tell Margie she can close it up out front.”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard said and exited. He pulled the door closed behind him.

  Earl Martinson waved Val at a chair. “Grading these coins,” he said. “Collector stuff,” he made a face. “Volatile market. Gotta move them fast.”

  “I thought gold was always on the rise,” Val replied, just to have something to say, as he took a seat.

  Earl nodded, and his glasses slipped even lower, barely hanging on the bulbous tip of his nose. “Gold is, sure. Lately. But these are worth more than their gold weight.” He made a face, “Supposedly.” He shrugged. “That was really Virgil’s side of things,” he added, mentioning his dead brother. “I stick to newly minted bullion coins. Nothing subjective about that, they weigh what they weigh, and gold is worth whatever Wall Street says it’s worth. All you got to do is add our commission to the stock ticker price and you got the value. Easy. This is a favor for an old friend.”

  Val nodded. He wasn’t really interested.

  “You all right?” Martinson asked, frowning. “You don’t look so good.”

  Val tried on a smile but it didn’t fit. He let it go and got to the point. “Have the coins that were stolen by the Suttons ever turned up?”

  That got Earl’s interest. He shoved his glasses back up his nose and looked intently at Val for a moment. Finally he shrugged.

  “Who knows? Coins don’t have serial numbers. No way of telling one from another. You could sell them just about anywhere by the handful. Offloading the whole load would be a bit more complicated.”

  “Why?”

  Another shrug. “They were a single lot. An order I placed with the Canadian Mint. No one but a dealer would have that many coins from the same mint in the same issuing year, and the robbery was big news,” Earl paused, frowning down at the tabletop, his eyes distant. He shook himself, his hard belly shivering under the rumpled white shirt, and continued. “Every dealer in the country heard about what happened here. And only a dealer would buy that amount of coins for a fair price,” he shrugged again and shook his head. “But there are plenty of crooks out there. Especially when you’re talking over eight million dollars.”

  “I understand the insurance company settled with you for a little more than half that amount,” Val said, not bothering to be delicate.

  “Damned vultures.” Earl flushed, his jowls turning an unhealthy red. “I had four funerals to plan. My whole family was dead. Those bastards…” He caught himself and shook it off. “I wasn’t up to a court fight. I took what they offered, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

  Val asked what he had come there to ask. “How much room would they have taken up? The coins?”

  Earl settled back in his chair and dropped his hands on the armrests. His lips drew down as he considered the question.

  “I’d say a little smaller than a half-bushel basket. They were mixed coins, quarter, half and full Troy ounce Maple Leafs.”

  That wasn’t as large as Val had thought. That meant that the gold, added to the bulkier cash Lamar and Lemuel had stolen, would probably fit into the average coat closet.

  “Why do you ask?” Earl leaned across the table. “Has something turned up?”

  Val shook his head. “No,” he said, hesitating to say more, but he couldn’t leave it at that. He wasn’t a cop anymore. He couldn’t ask blind questions then hide behind the badge and the old ‘open investigation’ line. Besides, he didn’t want Earl thinking he was running some kind of scam. “Garland Sutton has the idea that I know where they are,” Val said. “He and some friends of his have been making my life…a little difficult.”

  Again, Earl went silent. When he finally spoke, his words were spaced, his tone cautious. “Do you know where they are?”

  Val stared woodenly across the table. He wasn’t going to reply to that. To hell with Earl Martinson and everyone else who thought he was a thief.

  Earl didn’t like the look in Val’s eyes. The old man’s face went the color of wet cement. He threw up his hands.

  “I didn’t mean to imply anything,” he said hurriedly. “Lord knows I owe you for putting those murdering, rednecks in their graves,” his gaze shifted away from Val and he let a beat or two pass before he looked back, “But, if someone did find them, I’d pay a ten percent fee for their return.”

  “The insurance paid you off,” Valentine said. “They’d claim ownership.”

  Earl shook his head. “I’d give them their cash back and take the gold,” he said. “Bastards screwed me sideways. And gold has been on the rise. The coins would be worth more than ten million now.”

  Val was all out of questions. He rose and stuck out his hand. As Earl took it, one more question came to Val’s mind.

  “Didn’t you use cops for security when you first opened? DPD and Sheriff’s men?” he asked, still considering the possibility of a dirty cop working with the Suttons.

  Earl grimaced. “Yes, but not for years now,” he said. “Lots of our customers are dodgy when it comes to cops. And, no offense, cops are hard to deal with. They never turn it off. You might pay their salary, but you’re not their boss. And God help you if an attractive lady comes in. Every one of you guys is a horn-dog,” Earl broke out in hoarse laughter, “I had one guy, a big fat DPD sergeant, that hit on everything in a skirt from seventeen to seventy.” Earl shook his head and the laughter died. “Bonded security is the way to go. Not that it helped my brother or his family.”

  Val nodded. The two security guards on duty that day had died right alongside the Martinsons. He turned for the door, but Earl wasn’t done talking.

  “Those Sutton boys deserved to be shot down like dogs. I thank you for that.”

  Val didn’t say anything. He didn’t even turn around to acknowledge the comment, he opened the door and stepped through.

  “And if you do find those coins…” Earl said, trailing off wistfully. “My offer stands.”

  50

  Herby Lubbock’s office went up in a fireball that sucked the air straight out of the closet and straight out of Victoria’s lungs. Flames chewed into the bottom panel of the door, finding quick purchase on the old wood, lighting up the inside of the closet like a campfire in the woods and ratcheting the heat up forty degrees in half as many seconds. Oily petroleum smoke curled up through the gap under the door, fouling what little air was left in the cramped space.

  Victoria jerked an armful of coats off the bar above her head and threw them down in front of the door, smothering the flames and cutting off the influx of smoke, but that wouldn’t hold the fire back for long. She had to get out! Nothing that Laroy or the peckerwood could do to her would be worse than burning alive! She had to
move! Right now! She grabbed the doorknob, turned it and gave it a shove, but the door didn’t budge. She pushed harder. Still no movement. Her heart accelerated, feeling like a flock of birds beating against her ribcage. She stepped back, put her shoulders against the wall and snapped a kick into the door’s thin central panel, mindless of the noise she was making. The kick only shivered the door in its frame a fraction of an inch. Furiously, her panic growing by the second, she kicked the door again and again with the same result. The effort left her panting and out of breath, gagging on the smoky air.

  Victoria wilted against the closet’s back wall and pressed the coat sleeve over her mouth again, but it didn’t help. The coats at her feet began to smolder, adding the stench of burning wool and nylon to the gasoline and wood smoke. She knew she didn’t have long, already her vision was tunneling and her mind was spinning toward unconsciousness. In a final act of desperation, she grabbed the bar above her head, lifted herself off the ground and kicked out with both feet like a kid on a swing, driving her heels into the center panel.

  Her broken toe shrieked like a molar being ripped out without Novocain, but wood cracked and her heart leapt in her chest. She did it again. Another crack! But she was growing weaker by the second, the smoke choking her down. She swung herself up and out again, like a trapeze artist going for the big leap, and slammed her heels into the panel. A splintering crack split the panel! Desperately, she did it again. And again. Finally, with a sharp crack that sounded more like a gunshot than breaking wood, the panel popped straight out of its frame.

  She dropped to the floor and stuck her head through the narrow gap to find that a chair had been wedged under the knob! That’s what the peckerwood had dragged across the floor. As flames whipped up around her, she reached through and shoved the chair loose, sending it clattering to the floor, then stood and grabbed the doorknob from the inside. It was skillet-hot, blistering her hand through the bandage that covered her palm, but she barely felt it in her panic.