by Harvey, JM
“One of Swisher’s men, probably. That’s just a guess. Abby was talking about her brothers’ stash. Claiming that it was still out there. I imagine that would have made Swisher very nervous. The last thing he would want would be that case being reopened.”
Victoria was more confused than ever. “What do the Suttons have to do with Nolan Swisher and the Citizen’s for Law and Order?”
“I believe that Sheriff Swisher or one of his men was working with Lamar and Lemuel Sutton four years ago, giving them information on potential victims and helping them stay underground while half the cops in the state were hunting them. In exchange, the Sheriff was getting a substantial cut of the proceeds. I believe it was that money that was filtered into the Citizens for Law and Order. More than five million dollars. And, I’d be willing to bet that Sheriff Swisher got Lamar and Lemuel to rob the armored car to create a plausible excuse for the disappearance of the PAC paperwork.”
Victoria was stunned. It was almost too much to believe. She had suspected Laroy and Erath of involvement in Abby’s death almost from the very beginning, but Sheriff Swisher? Swisher was a cold blooded bastard, but a murderer and a thief?
But it all fit so neatly!
“I’ll prosecute him myself,” she told Logan, but he shook his head decisively at that.
“This is a federal case,” he said.
“The political side of it is, but the murders are local, Logan,” Victoria pointed out. “The State of Texas gets first crack at him.”
“I’m not talking about corruption charges, I’m taking about the murder of a federal officer,” Logan said then went silent as he navigated under the highway and headed up Commerce Street toward the Federal Building. When he finally started to speak again, his tone was flat, emotionless.
“Four weeks ago my partner, Gill Parker, and I were assigned to a surveillance detail on Sheriff Swisher. Just me and Gill, there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant a larger team. We did twelve hour shifts. The last I heard from Gill he was following Swisher out by Lake Ray Hubbard.” Logan’s hands were strangling the steering wheel and his teeth were clenched. He braked for a red light at Austin Street. The Federal building was dead ahead, on the right. “They found Gill’s body two days later down in Harris County rotting in the trunk of his car.”
Neither she nor Logan said anything for a long moment. Twilight was settling over the city, shadows had collected beneath the skyscrapers that loomed over the narrow, almost deserted streets.
Victoria’s phone rang, breaking the silence. She dug it out of her purse. It was Jack Birch.
“We got problems,” Jack said without bothering with a greeting. “I’m at your house and so are about fifty other cops. Gary Griggs was shot in the street out front not thirty minutes ago. He took two in the vest. He’s fine, but they found Henry Erath in the garage. Henry wasn’t so lucky. Somebody got up close and blasted a hole right through him.”
“Where’s Valentine?” Victoria asked, her heart racing. Every other question and consideration was secondary to that. “Is he there?”
Birch didn’t reply immediately. The silence stretched until Victoria couldn’t take it anymore.
“Damn it, Jack! Where—”
“There’s a lot of blood in the garage, Victoria,” he said. “It looks like two people went down. Erath and whoever shot him. A gunfight. I think the other guy might have been Valentine.”
“Oh, no,” Victoria whispered.
“Val’s alive,” Jack said, but he didn’t sound like he believed it. “Griggs saw him in the front seat of his Mustang right before somebody started shooting. Griggs said someone else was driving. I’m betting it was Laroy.”
“He’s after the money,” she said dully,
Logan shot her a look but said nothing. He put his eyes back on the road.
“I think I know where he took Val,” Birch said. “I got a text message just before I got here. The phone was a prepaid. No way to trace it. The text was just an address.” He paused then added, “It’s out in the Hudson subdivision.”
It took Victoria only a moment to make the connection. “Lamar and Lemuel’s house.”
“That brings us to another problem,” Jack said. “Hudson is outside of DPD’s jurisdiction. The Sheriff’s Department runs the patrols out there. If I call this in, you know who they’ll send.” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. The Sheriff’s Department had only one armed response team, the Special Tactics Unit. Sheriff’s Swisher’s wrecking crew.
“Jesus,” Victoria said. “What are you going to do?”
“Gary’s getting ready to roll out there right now,” Jack said. “I’ll be right behind him, but I got to stick here for a while longer. Couple of sheriff’s deputies showed up when the call went out on Henry. They’ve got their blood up. I’ve got to do some fancy talking or every Sheriff’s deputy in Dallas will be gunning for Valentine.” Jack paused. “Where exactly are you, Victoria?”
“I’m with Cory Logan, the US Attorney I told you about,” Victoria replied but she didn’t explain further. “What’s the address in Hudson?” she asked. She was only interested in one thing at the moment: Valentine.
“No,” Jack said, and that was all.
“Damn it, Jack,” Victoria began but she was talking into a dead receiver. Jack had hung up.
“Son of a bitch!” she yelled as she jerked the phone from her ear, pulled up Jack’s number and hit CALL.
The call went straight to voicemail. “Son of a bitch!”
“What’s going on?” Logan asked. “What’s this about Lamar and Lemuel?”
Victoria didn’t reply immediately, she jammed her phone into her purse, knotted her fingers around the cloth bag’s strap and sat there staring at it but not seeing it. What had happened in the garage at her house? She shivered. She knew her husband too well. He didn’t have an ounce of back down in him. Laroy and Erath had come for him and Val had ended up killing the deputy. But Val hadn’t come out unscathed. Jack had said that he’d been shot. Was he even alive at that moment? That question was followed by a chilling thought: even if he were alive, he might not be for much longer.
“What the hell is going on?” Logan demanded again, still parked at the light though it had turned green long ago.
Victoria didn’t reply. She made a sudden decision; she had to get to Val. Now. She lunged across the seat, jerked up the tail of Logan’s shirt, ripped the .38 out of the holster clipped to his belt and jabbed the revolver’s stubby barrel into his ribs.
“I’m sorry about this, Logan,” she said, “but I don’t have time to argue. Pull over. This is as far as you go.”
55
Valentine was jerked back to consciousness by the dreamlike sensation of falling only to find that he really was falling; tumbling out the passenger door of the Mustang. Instinctively, he tried to throw his hands up, but they were still cuffed behind his back. He hit the concrete hard, jarring his wounded shoulder. The pain carved right through him, crashing over him in waves that left him panting and drenched in a chilly sweat before they finally ebbed enough that he could focus his eyes and look around.
He squinted against the darkness to find that he was lying on an oil-stained driveway, the ticking of the Mustang’s cooling engine the only nearby sound. The Taser’s steel barbs were still lodged in his chest; the wire leads trailing back up into the car through the open door. He twisted his head, trying to figure out where he was. There were no streetlights, but he could make out the dim outline of a darkened house at the end of the driveway. He recognized it instantly as the Suttons’ hideout. For some reason, he felt no surprise at this. It seemed fitting that this should end where it had begun. And the money was close by, not that that fact was going to do him any good. He was a dead man.
“You awake there, partner?” Jasper Smith asked as he stepped around the Mustang’s hood. Jasper was stripped to the waist, the gnarled flesh of his branded skin glowing yellow in an eerie trick of the moonlight. He propped h
is hands on his hips and gave Val a grin, Several of Jasper’s teeth were broken off at the gum, his left eye was a swollen slit and his cheek and forehead were a jaundiced yellow-purple from the pistol-whipping Val had given him. A new white hearing aid was hooked over his right ear.
Jasper touched the hearing aid. “Got me a new listener,” he said. “You like it? Well, I don’t. I liked the old one. Had a switch right on the front of it so I could turn it off when ignorant people started talking.”
“I should have killed you,” Val replied in a husky whisper, squeezing his eyes closed.
“Yep.” Jasper Smith agreed, still smiling. “I can’t reckon why you didn’t. I mean, after all the stories I heard about you…” He lifted his shoulders and let them drop. Muscles rippled in his chest and arms. “Well, let’s just say that I ain’t very impressed and leave it at that.”
“Quit screwing around,” Gruene said as she circled the car, following in Jasper’s footsteps. She stopped beside Jasper and looked down at Val critically for a moment before she ducked down and jerked the Taser’s barbs free. Val gasped, but the pain was a minor thing compared to the agony of his wounded shoulder.
“Get him up, Smith,” Gruene said as she coiled the Taser’s copper leads into a loop.
“Why, yes, ma’am, Detective Sally!” Jasper said mockingly, but he did as she asked: stooped, shoved his hands under Val’s arm and roughly hauled him erect, wrenching Val’s wounded shoulder almost out of its socket in the process. Val gasped again and wilted against the car’s fender. White spots spun across his vision like a snow in a blizzard.
“Can you walk?” Gruene asked. “If not, I’ll have Jasper drag you. It’s your choice.”
Val nodded. “I can walk,” he said, then the world took a hard spin to the right and he slid down the side of the Mustang. Jasper caught him by his shirtfront before he hit the ground. He hauled Val erect again and pinned him against the fender with one hand.
Val shrugged the hand off. “I can walk,” he said with a tongue that felt like a dry stick.
“Let’s get inside—” Gruene began but stopped short. Her eyes leapt to the street and her right hand darted to the .45 tucked in her waistband.
Val followed her gaze and saw a car creeping down the block toward them, its headlights off, motor idling. It slid to the curb in front of the house and stopped. A moment later a muscled-up guy in a pink polo shirt and khaki shorts opened the driver’s side door.
The tension went out of Gruene. She looked at Smith. “It’s Laroy,” she said. She dropped her hand from the pistol.
Jasper didn’t reply, and Val didn’t need the identification. He recognized Laroy Hockley. Hockley had been Harris County’s representative on the Sutton brothers’ task force. And that answered a question that had been nagging Val for four years: how had a pair of inbred peckerwoods like Lamar and Lemuel Sutton managed to outwit half the cops in the state of Texas? Laroy must have been their inside man. Hockley had been the biggest asshole on the task force, always pushing, always nosing around, wanting to run the show. And now Val knew why.
Oh, yeah, and he was also an ex-boyfriend of Victoria’s.
“Get that piece of junk out of the driveway, Sally,” Hockley snapped, eyeing the Mustang. “Pull it behind the house.”
“We were going to get him inside first, Laroy,” Gruene said defensively, but there was something more than mere grievance in her tone. Hurt feelings, maybe? Reproach? Val made the instant connection: Gruene and Hockley were involved. Valentine had been married for almost three years; he knew all the subtle signs of an angry wife.
“Quit talking and get that car behind the house, Sally,” Laroy said. “Deputies run patrols through here twice a night. If they see this place looking like Sam’s Used Car Lot we’ll have more problems than we can handle.”
Gruene didn’t argue further, but she didn’t quit pouting either. She turned hard on her heel, stomped back to the Mustang, climbed inside, and slammed the door closed behind her.
Hockley turned back to his own vehicle. He started to slide in but Jasper stopped him with a question.
“Where’s Garland?”
Hockley froze then slowly straightened. He looked across the roof of the car at Smith. “Garland’s dead. Someone ambushed us at Herby Lubbock’s house. Son of a bitch almost got me too.”
Jasper cocked his head and narrowed his one good eye like a buzzard eyeing something too foul to eat. “Is that right?” he said. “Ambushed, you say?”
Hockley nodded and flicked a glance at Valentine. “His wife caught us searching the house. We caught her and then this guy came out of nowhere. A professional.”
Val heard ‘We caught her’ and real fear bloomed in his chest for the first time.
“Where is my wife?” he croaked and took a staggering step toward Hockley. And then another. He started to take another, but Jasper hooked his fingers through the chain of Val’s handcuffs and stopped him in his tracks. Val was too weak to break away. “Where is my wife?”
Hockley grimaced and shook his head. “She got away.” He paused for a moment, peering into Val’s face and then asked, “What the hell was she doing there, Valentine? Why did she want to talk to Herby?”
Val didn’t reply to Hockley, though he was sure he knew the answer to the question. Victoria had gone to confront Herby about Axel Rankin’s murder. About the lies that Lubbock had sworn to, his claim that she and not Rankin had been Rusk’s target. But why had Garland and Laroy Hockley been at Lubbock’s? That was just as easy to figure out, he thought bitterly; crooked cops and crooked lawyers went hand in hand. All of them after the money.
“What does she know, Valentine?” Hockley pressed. “Don’t make me kill her.”
Val laughed at that. “I’d stay clear of her, Laroy. She’s ten times tougher than you are.”
“Looks like he ain’t feeling too cooperative, Cap’n Hockley,” Jasper Smith interjected. He tugged the handcuff chain, turning Val around and aiming him at the house. “But I reckon I can change that.” He gave Val a push and they went up the driveway, Val in the lead, his gait unsteady.
“Wait for us,” Hockley shouted at their backs. “Don’t touch him until I get there, Deaf. I want to hear what he says firsthand.”
Jasper didn’t look back. “Why, Cap’n, I thought we had us a relationship based on mutual trust,” he called over his shoulder. “We’ll be down in the basement waiting on you,” he added then cocked his head at Valentine, “You remember the basement, don’t you, sunshine?”
Valentine didn’t reply, but his intestines went cold. He knew he would never make it out of that basement a second time.
Val stumbled up the front steps and crossed the porch with Jasper hard on his heels. As they stepped over the threshold into the living room, Jasper took a miniature Maglite out of his pocket and flicked it on. He swept the light across the room, stopping its yellow circle on a pile of clothes lying in the far corner. It took Val a moment to realize that the pile of clothing was actually a corpse then another moment to recognize the corpse as Zeke Sutton.
“Poor Zeke,” Jasper said gravely. “That boy had a mess of barbed wire in his head. Couldn’t stay off the dope. Couldn’t keep his mouth shut, neither. I sent him to a better place.”
Again, Val made no comment. He didn’t give a damn about Zeke Sutton. Jasper gave him another push and Val proceeded down the hallway, Smith sticking close behind him. But Val wasn’t thinking about Jasper anymore; he was thinking about Gruene and Hockley. They were his only hope, as crazy as that sounded.
Gruene and Hockley were cops. Crooked cops, but still cops. Val felt sure that he could predict their behavior up to a point. They were after the money and would do whatever it took to get it, including killing him, but it was still just about the money. That wasn’t the case with Jasper. For Jasper this was personal. It was about Val’s killing of Lamar and the pistol whipping that Val had given Jasper outside Campisi’s. Would Val’s death be enough to avenge th
ose transgressions? No, Val felt sure that it would not. Jasper Smith was a psychopath. He’d just look for another target. Victoria and the boys would never be safe as long as Smith was alive.
When they reached the doorway to the basement, Jasper pushed the door open wide and pointed the flashlight down the steps. Carefully, Val went down them with Jasper staying one tread behind the whole way. At the bottom, Smith prodded Val across the dirt floor to the far wall
Val turned to face the ex-con, bracing himself for what was to come.
“Have a seat,” Jasper said then slapped his hand onto Val’s bloody shoulder and dug his fingers into the wound.
Val’s vision went black with the suddenness of a flashbulb. His knees buckled and he fell to the floor as the dark wave sucked at his heels, dragging him under once again.
Jasper slapped Val awake. The ex-con was squatting in front of Val, the flashlight dangling from his fingers, casting a yellow backwash that gave Jasper’s battered face an even more ghoulish cast.
“If you was to tell me where the money is,” Jasper said softly, “I’d make it quick for you. A bullet to the head,” he let that sink in then shrugged, “Otherwise it’s gonna be a piece at a time, partner.”
Valentine said nothing. He could barely hear Jasper over the roaring in his ears, but he did hear the thump of footsteps hurriedly crossing the living room floor overhead. Jasper cocked his head up at the sound then dropped his eyes back to Val.
“One last chance,” he said.
A flashlight appeared at the top of the stairs and then Hockley and Gruene came down in single file. They crossed the room and stopped in front of Val.
Hockley panned his flashlight over Val’s face then let it drift down over the clumsily bandaged gunshot wound.
“Jesus, Sally, he’s half dead,” he said, glancing angrily at Gruene. “Why’d you shoot him? You had the Taser.”
“I had just shot Henry,” Gruene said defensively. “I needed a story that DPD would believe. I was just doing what I thought you would want me to do.” Val heard reproach again. He felt certain that he had guessed right - Laroy and Gruene were more than crime partners.
