by Harvey, JM
“I haven’t done anything, but Judge Pinto just issued another warrant for Valentine’s arrest. DPD didn’t want any part of it, so they passed it on to me,” he said and paused to let that sink in. “Considering the fact that Valentine has killed seven men, we have to consider him a high risk felon.”
The words ‘high risk felon’ hit Victoria right in the gut. Those were the words that the Special Tactics Unit used when they really meant ‘shoot on sight.’ She started to reply, to protest, but Swisher had more to say.
“I assigned the warrant to Deputy Erath and the Special Tactics Unit. If you value your husband’s life, I’d suggest you tell him to turn himself in.”
Victoria’s breath caught in her throat. Val and Henry Erath was an almost certain gunfight in the making, but she couldn’t ask Val to turn himself in. His life would be in even greater danger inside the jail complex. Between crooked deputies and cop-hating criminals, Val would catch a shank between the shoulder blades before breakfast was served.
Nolan brushed past her. “Pardon me,” he said and headed for a rust orange Ford F-150 that was parked in a reserved space on the first row.
He wasn’t going to get away that easily.
“Laroy Hockley just killed Herby Lubbock and Debbie Foster,” Victoria snapped at his back. Nolan didn’t miss a step. He didn’t even act like he had heard her. “And I’m betting he killed Abby Sutton too,” she added, her voice rising.
The sheriff stopped beside his truck. He looked even more frail standing beside the oversized pickup, but that would buy him no slack. Too many people had died. He turned to face her. In the shadow of his hat brim, his eyes were hard as railroad spikes.
“We’ve got a murder weapon with your husband’s fingerprints on it,” he said. “You need to face the hard fact that your husband killed that girl and he’s gonna die for it. The only thing you need to decide is whether it’ll be on the street or in the lethal injection chamber.”
“Hockley just tried to kidnap me.” Victoria bellowed, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. “He was going to kill me.”
Nolan shook his head, turned away, climbed into the truck, and banged the door closed. He cranked it up, backed out and headed for the exit at a funeral-procession pace. Never once did he look back at her.
Victoria stood there for a full minute after Swisher had left the garage before she dug her phone out of her purse and called Valentine again. The call went directly to voice mail. She slammed her phone back into her purse, considering what she should do next? Finally, she decided that there was nothing she could do except keep her meeting with Cory Logan. At this point she had nowhere else to turn. She entered the building, showed her ID to the deputy and headed for the cafeteria.
Logan was waiting for her just outside the cafeteria’s swinging doors, leaning against the beige cinderblocks. He didn’t offer a greeting.
“Too many deputies hanging around in there,” he said as he pushed off the wall and headed back toward the garage. He didn’t comment on her appearance or the smell of gasoline drifting off of her.
Victoria didn’t argue. Mutely, she fell into step beside him. Once inside the garage, she pulled her keys from her purse, but Logan shook his head.
“We’ll take my car,” he said. “Until I get your statement on paper and notarized, you’re not getting out of my sight.”
Victoria started to protest, but Logan was doing exactly what she would have done with a suspect in a homicide: keeping her under lock and key until he had what he wanted. That realization didn’t make her feel any better, but she acquiesced without argument. She was too tired to fight about it.
Hell, she was lucky she wasn’t already in handcuffs.
53
The bullet from Erath’s gun punched into Val’s left shoulder, tearing straight through his bicep, carving a path through the scar tissue left by Lamar’s axe attack four years before. The impact spun him on his heel, bounced him off the aluminum garage door and sent him to the floor in a pile, his shoulder pulsing blood and sending out a shockwave of pain that lit up every conduit in his skull. But Val had been hurt before. He had been shot and axed and stabbed. Even as a part of his brain short-circuited, another part, the inheritance from his career behind a gun, bellowed for him to react, to fight for his life. But, with his hands cuffed behind his back, there was nothing he could do but lie there and wait for Gruene to finish the job.
But Gruene didn’t fire again. She stared down at him as the blood pumped from his shoulder, her expression remote, a scientist looking at a tacked-down insect. “Where’s the money?” she said.
Val’s rage made him briefly forget the pain. “No,” he said. “You’ll have to kill me.”
Gruene’s expression remained flat as she reached under her jacket and unhooked something bulky from her belt. Something that looked more like a blow-dryer than a weapon, but Val recognized it for what it was: a Taser. It was larger than the ones DPD had issued to patrol officers back when Val was in uniform, but he was betting that the twelve-hundred volts of electricity it delivered was just as effective.
“I’m not going to kill you, but I don’t think you’re going to like this a whole lot better,” Gruene said as she raised the Taser and fired.
The Taser went off with a muffled ‘pop’ and a flash of sparks that sent two metal barbs hurtling through the air, trailing their copper leads. The barbs speared Val dead-center in the chest, ripping through his shirt, burying themselves deeply into his flesh.
Gruene squeezed the trigger.
The juice hit him like liquid fire pumped straight into his veins. Every joint in his body locked tight and he crawfished up from the floor, his teeth clenched so fiercely that they felt as if they might shatter. An eternity seemed to pass before Gruene cut the current. Val flopped back to the floor, limp as a worn out rubber band, his nostrils filled with the cindery smell of a lightning storm, his ears crackling like an AM radio station.
“Where’s the money?” she asked again.
Val made no reply; he couldn’t even breathe. And Gruene wasn’t going to be patient. She hit him again with the juice.
A thin ‘scree’ escaped past Val’s teeth through a windpipe that was cinched tight by electrical current. Every vein in his body burned, every muscle knotted tight. Three long seconds ticked past at the slogging tempo of a funeral dirge before the current was broken again and Val collapsed back to the concrete, barely conscious. A thin trickle of smoke rose from his shirtfront toward the rafters of the garage.
Gruene didn’t ask the question a third time, she just hit the Taser’s trigger, juicing him with another twelve-hundred volts.
All the circuit breakers in Val’s head popped and a dark wave sucked him out to sea.
When Val awoke, lying on his side on the cool concrete, he knew he had been unconscious for a long time because it was darker inside the garage. Not quite night yet, but very close. He looked down the length of his body to see the Taser’s steel probes still lodged in his chest. His shirt was crusty with dried blood, so his shoulder must have stopped bleeding. He cocked his head for a look at the damage and found himself staring at a bright red rag jutting from his shoulder like a crimson flower. It took him a moment to realize that Gruene had stuffed a dirty shop rag into the bullet hole. If he didn’t bleed to death the infection would probably kill him.
Val managed to sit up, the effort making his head spin and his wounded shoulder scream. It took him a moment to spot Gruene by the kitchen doorway, her cell phone pressed to her ear.
“No. He won’t talk.” She was silent for a moment and her eyes cut to Val. Eyes that glowed yellow in the waning light like a rat peering out of a sewer grate. “He’s awake,” she said then added, “Shortly.” She listened for a moment longer, then broke the connection, stowed the phone and came forward out of the shadows. She leaned down over him and peered into his eyes, tilting her head this way and that like a doctor in a soap opera.
“You’ll live,” she
finally pronounced. The Taser was still in her hand, hanging heavily from her bony fingers, its wire leads spooled haphazardly across the concrete floor.
Val had to work his tongue in his mouth to gather enough spit to reply, but he was feeling surprisingly better. The pain in his shoulder had receded to a pulsing ache, but he wasn’t fooled by that. He knew it was just shock setting in.
“Jesus loves me,” he managed to say, his voice little more than a whisper.
Gruene ignored the comment. “I’m going to help you up. Do anything stupid and I’ll get you up with this.” She waved the Taser in his face.
Val didn’t argue. He wasn’t sure if he could survive another dose of the Taser. With Gruene gripping him under his good arm, steadying him, he managed to shove himself up, but it took almost everything he had left to do it.
Gruene backed away from him. She waved him toward the kitchen door, past Erath’s corpse.
The floor around the dead deputy was a sea of dark red going sticky at the edges. Val circled the blood, taking it slow, moving with the jerky step of a broken tin soldier, concentrating on every footfall. Gruene stayed close behind him, prodding him along with the Taser’s blunt snout. In that way they navigated their way through the disarray of the kitchen and living room and exited the house onto the front porch.
Night was settling over the neighborhood, the shadows around the houses deep, the sun’s last rays turning the cloudless sky pink. Houselights and televisions glowed behind curtained windows. No one was outside. It was still way too hot. The temperature wouldn’t drop out of the nineties until well after midnight.
“We’ll be taking your car, Mr. Justice,” Gruene said with a curious formality, like she was still a cop and this was all routine. She nudged him with the Taser again. “You’ll be up front with me, but if you make a move I’ll juice you.”
Val didn’t reply. He went gingerly down the steps, almost falling once, and crossed to the Mustang. Gruene opened the passenger side door and waved him inside. He turned and fell into the seat. It took a tremendous effort to get his legs up and in. Gruene stood there until he had accomplished the task then pitched the Taser past his face, into the driver’s seat before slamming the door closed. She circled the car, retrieved the Taser and started the engine, her face painted green by the dash lights. She backed into the street then paused and looked toward him. She was about to say something when her eyes suddenly jumped past him to the street.
“Shit!” she yelped, her eyes lighting up with panic, her hand darting to the .45 tucked into her waistband.
Val twisted his head, inciting a fresh wave of pain from his shoulder, to see that a DPD patrol car had just pulled to the curb in front of Erath’s SUV. The car’s door opened and the dome light popped on to reveal Gary Griggs’ huge red face peering through the windshield. He lifted a hand at Val then started to heave himself out of the car.
Gary wasn’t going to make it.
Gruene swung up Val’s 45 and fired straight through the passenger side window, working the trigger three times in rapid succession, turning the safety glass into a blizzard of tiny fragments.
Gruene was a good shot. The three bullets stitched a neat line across the patrol car’s driver’s side windshield. Half blinded by the flash of the .45, Val still saw Garry flinch with the impact of the heavy caliber rounds then tumble slowly out the patrol car’s open door, dragged down by his massive belly. Gary sprawled face-first into the street.
Val bellowed a wordless roar and turned toward Gruene, but she was ready for him. The juice hit him like a lightning bolt, exploding through his already charred mental circuitry, blowing up his brain like a hand grenade.
The dark wave crashed down on him again, bearing him mercifully under.
54
Logan settled into the driver’s seat of a small blue Mercury sedan parked on the lowest level of the garage. As Victoria slid in beside him, Logan shifted the holster clipped to his belt forward, out of the way. She got a glimpse of the weapon before he tugged his shirttail down over it. It was an old-fashioned revolver, a .38 Detective Special or something similar.
As they exited the garage onto Commerce Street, Logan turned to her, taking his eyes off the road ahead. “What happened at Lubbock’s?” he asked.
Victoria quickly told him everything. From her suspicions that the Sheriff’s Department was behind the deaths of Abby Sutton and Axel Rankin right up to Herby and Debbie Foster’s murders and her own run-in with Garland and Laroy. She talked for the better part of fifteen minutes as they headed toward downtown, Logan’s expression darkening with every word. When she had finished, she pulled out the PAC paperwork and handed it across the console to him. Logan propped it on the steering wheel and flipped through it quickly, taking his eyes off the road ahead, before pitching it onto the dash.
“So, let me get this straight, you witnessed three homicides and you haven’t reported them to DPD?”
Victoria flushed. “I was afraid I’d be arrested. If you consider Herby’s statements about me and Jack Birch…” she trailed off. Logan could connect the dots for himself. “I had to figure out what was going on before I went to the police.”
“Figure it out?” Logan said through locked teeth. “You just destroyed a four month investigation.” He plucked up the PAC paperwork and shook it at her like an angry teacher brandishing a cheat sheet. “You think this will ever make it in to court now? You violated attorney client privilege, tampered with evidence and conducted a warrantless search. Jesus, a first year public defender could get this tossed out.”
Victoria was stung by the truth of what he said, though she didn’t let it show and she didn’t point out that if she hadn’t taken the paperwork it would have burned right alongside Herby.
“We’ll worry about getting it past a judge when it comes to trial,” she said then laughed suddenly, high and tight. “I don’t even know if there is a case, or even what the crime might be, but I’m pretty damned sure that you do. So, quit jerking me around, Logan. And don’t give me that story about investigating Abby’s murder, this is way bigger than that.”
Logan said nothing; he just shook his head, his lips compressed.
“Damn it, Logan, tell me what the hell is going on!”
Logan continued to glare out the windshield in silence for a protracted moment before he finally began to speak, his words clipped and grudging. “The Citizens for Law and Order was a specific purpose PAC,” he said. “Nolan Swisher’s cash cow. A lot of money was funneled through the PAC, but no one’s really sure where it came from.”
“They had to submit a list of contributors to the County Clerk,” Victoria interrupted. “It’s not in the paperwork, but it had to be filed at some point.” In Texas, State and city election campaigns were required to file a stream of paperwork that listed all expenditures and contributions at the State Capital in Austin, but county elections were exempt from this state oversight; they were required to file the contributors list only with the local County Clerk. This was a situation many people thought was ripe for corruption. And it looked like they were right.
Logan shook his head. “They filed a waiver for an extension on submitting the contributors report. That allowed them to put off filing everything, even the pre-election report, until after the election was over. But it was the electronic filing exemption that really piqued our interest. The CLO claimed that they had limited access to computers. We don’t see many of those exemptions anymore, and, when we do, they’re usually a sign of something crooked.”
Victoria had suspected the same thing when she first saw the exemption form in Herby’s office. “But eventually they had to submit the contributors report,” she said. “Even if it was after the election.”
“They never submitted it,” Logan replied. “They claimed that all their records were stolen when the Suttons robbed the First Priority Bank’s armored car. That they had been stored in a safe deposit box.” The First Priority armored car robbery had been Lamar and Le
muel Sutton’s next-to-last crime. The bank had been relocating to a new building, transferring all their assets and the contents of their customers’ safe deposit boxes in one armored car. Millions had been stolen. “Herby told us about the PAC. He claimed that he still had copies of the PAC’s complete contributors list and that the amounts listed didn’t add up to the total spent on the campaign. That list would have been enough for us to make an indictment against the Sheriff.” Logan picked up the PAC paperwork and waved it in her face again. “But it isn’t here.” He tossed it back on the dash.
“Herby was cooperating?” she asked.
“We never would have known about the CLO, except that Herby got himself into some trouble with the IRS five months ago. Big trouble, like ten to twenty in federal prison. When we hit him with the charges, he offered up Sheriff Swisher in exchange for a deal”
That explained why Herby had been willing to protect the PAC paperwork even when it became obvious it might cost him his life. It was his ticket out of prison.
“And now Herby’s dead,” Logan added angrily.
Victoria shuddered at the image those words brought to mind: Herby’s burning body, his head leaking smoke like an oil fire. She shook it off. She had more personal concerns. “So, what you told me about investigating my husband was just a smoke screen?”
Logan shook his head. “Not exactly, I think all of it is connected, but I had no idea how deeply you were involved. I couldn’t take the chance of clueing you in.” He shrugged.
“But you don’t really believe that Valentine killed Abby. Do you?”
Logan shook his head. “No, but everyone has an Achilles heel. Your husband is yours, so I used it. And I still think that he knows where the Suttons stash is.” There was no hint of apology in his voice.
“God you’re an asshole,” she said wearily, but she let it go at that. “So who do you think killed Abby?”
