Free Fall

by Robert Crais

Garcia was pacing near the doors, glancing out like he expected something.

  Dees said, "You think I like this? You think I want it?" He looked at the fire. It was already dying away. "You should've trusted me, Mark. I was going to work it out. I'm still going to work it out."

  Riggens said, "Fuckin' A."

  I said, "How, Dees? You going to bring Charles Lewis Washington back to life?"

  Riggens screamed, "Fuck you. With no tape, no one can prove anything. So maybe you showed it. Big fuckin' deal. Without the tape it's just hearsay, and we can ride that out."

  I nodded. "Unless there's a copy."

  Garcia stopped the pacing and looked at me. Pinkworth shifted behind Eric Dees and Riggens sort of let his mouth open. Dees said, "I'm willing to bet that you haven't made a copy. I figure you take the tape, you're thinking about cutting a deal, why do you need a dupe? You got a dupe, why make a big deal out of holding out? You'd just say, okay, here's the tape. You see?" Garcia was looking from Dees to me, Dees to me.

  I spread my hands. "But it's still a bet. You bet, sometimes you lose."

  Dees nodded. "Yeah, but probably not this time."

  Guess you didn't earn command of a REACT team if you weren't smart. Of course, if you were smart, you didn't get yourself into a fix like this, either.

  Mark Thurman said, "Okay, the tape is gone and you're going to work things out. Let us out of here."

  Dees shook his head. "Not yet."

  Jennifer said, "You said if you got the tape back, you'd let us go. You said that."

  "I know."

  The crunching sound of tires over gravel came from outside, and Akeem D'Muere's jet black Monte Carlo eased between the fences and came toward the concession stand. Garcia said, "He's here." Pinkworth and Riggens went to the doors.

  Eric Dees took out his 9mm Beretta service gun and Mark Thurman said, "What the hell is D'Muere doing here, Eric?"

  Floyd Riggens turned back from the doors. "Akeem's pissed off about all the trouble. He wants to make sure it don't happen again."

  Jennifer said, "What does that mean?"

  I met Eric Dees's eyes. "It means that Akeem wants to kill us, and Eric said okay."

  CHAPTER 33

  Eric Dees said, "Floyd. Pink. Get on them." Riggens drew his gun and Pinkworth worked the slide on his pump gun. Pete Garcia looked like he was about to pee in his pants. Jennifer Sheridan said, "Oh, shit."

  Thurman shouted, "Are you nuts? Have you lost your fuckin' mind?"

  I took two steps forward, putting myself closer to Riggens and Pinkworth. "You can't live it out, Dees. We come up dead, they're going to know. They'll backtrack the case and put it in bed with you."

  Dees nodded, but he nodded the way you nod when you're not really thinking about it. "We'll see."

  Thurman said, "Dees."

  Eric Dees went outside and walked toward the Monte Carlo. The front passenger door opened and two black guys slid out with sawed-off Mossberg shotguns. They said something to Dees and the three of them came toward the concession stand.

  Thurman yelled, "Jesus Christ, Riggens. Pete."

  Pete Garcia said, "Shut up. Just shut up."

  Pike moved across the cloudy glass at the back side of the concession stand. Everyone was looking toward the front, at Eric Dees with the hitters, so nobody saw him but me.

  Eric Dees and the two Eight-Deuce hitters came in through the double doors, Dees squinting from the bright desert sun and the hitters stone-faced behind heavy-framed Wayfarer sunglasses. The hitters held their shotguns loosely, right hands on the pistol grips, left hands cradling the slides. Nothing like being comfortable with your work.

  I said, "Think it through, Dees. It's falling apart around you."

  Dees made a little gesture at Pinkworth and Riggens. "Pink, you and Riggens take off." He glanced at Garcia. "Come on, Pete. We're outta here."

  Thurman shook his head, giving incredulous, still not believing that this could be happening. "You're just giving us to these guys?"

  Riggens said, "Yeah."

  Riggens and Pinkworth holstered their guns and went to the door. Garcia wiped his hands on his thighs and hopped around some more, but he didn't move to leave. "I can't believe we're doing this, Eric. We can't go along with this."

  Riggens stopped. Pinkworth was already outside, but he stopped, too, when he realized that Riggens wasn't with him.

  Garcia looked at Dees, then Riggens. "We can't do this. This is fuckin' nuts."

  Riggens went red in the face. "What'd you say?"

  Pinkworth came back and stood in the door.

  Riggens screamed, "You losing your fuckin' nut? We got a lot at stake here."

  Garcia screamed back at him. "We know these people. This is fuckin' conspiracy. Fuckin' cold-blooded murder."

  The taller of the two hitters said, "Shit." He racked the slide on his shotgun.

  Dees said, "It's too late to back out, Pete. This is the only chance we have. You know that. Come on. All you have to do is let it happen."

  Pete Garcia said, "No, Eric," and reached under his shirt for his gun. When he did, the tall hitter lifted his shotgun and the shotgun went off with a sound that was as sharp and loud as a seismic shock. Pete Garcia was kicked back into the counter and then Joe Pike stepped into the glass doors at the back of the shack and fired his shotgun twice. The milky glass erupted inward and the tall hitter flipped backwards. Dees and Riggens came out with their pieces and fired at Pike, but Pike wasn't there anymore. The short hitter ran under their fire toward the broken doors, boomed his shotgun into the remaining glass, then looked out. "Muthuhfuckuh gone."

  Something scuffed on the roof, and the short hitter let off another volley through the ceiling.

  Warren Pinkworth ran for the blue sedan. Beyond him, the Monte Carlo kicked up a cloud of rocks and sand and fishtailed across the berms. Eric Dees dove out through the double doors and shot at something on the roof, but whatever he shot at he didn't hit. He said, "Shit."

  I pushed Jennifer Sheridan down, and when I did, Mark Thurman went for Floyd Riggens. I yelled, "No," and Floyd Riggens shot him. Thurman spun to the left and sat down and Jennifer Sheridan screamed. She clawed past me, baring her teeth as if she'd like to tear out Riggens's throat.

  I pushed her down again, then came up with the tall hitter's shotgun just as the short hitter turned and fired two times. Both of his shots went wide to the right. I shot him in the face, and then I fired out through the double doors at the Monte Carlo and hit it, but then it was behind the fence and away and Floyd Riggens was shooting at me. I dove behind the little wall that shielded the entrance to the bathrooms.

  There were more gunshots outside, and then Eric Dees was in the double doors, yelling, "Floyd, get your ass out here!" Outside, Pinkworth climbed into the blue sedan and ground it to life.

  Riggens fired twice more at me, then went for the doors. Riggens's eyes were wide and red and he looked like he was crying, but I wasn't sure why. He stopped over Mark Thurman. Mark Thurman looked up at him, and Riggens said, "This is all your fault." Then he raised his gun to fire. Jennifer Sheridan picked up Pete Garcia's pistol and shot Floyd Riggens in the chest. The bullet kicked him back, but he kept his feet. He opened his mouth and looked down at himself and then he looked at Jennifer Sheridan and fell.

  Outside, Warren Pinkworth put the blue sedan in gear and sped away. Eric Dees shouted, "You fuck," fired two times at me, then dove behind the counter. Everything went still and quiet and stayed that way.

  Pete Garcia rolled onto his side and moaned.

  Jennifer Sheridan dropped Garcia's gun, then grabbed Mark Thurman by the shirt and dragged him toward the rest rooms. He had to outweigh her by a hundred pounds, but she kicked off her shoes for better traction and made a sort of groaning sound and did what she had to do. The floor was gritty with shattered glass, but she seemed not to notice.

  Gravel crunched outside the concession stand, and Joe Pike took a position behind the broken double doors.


  I said, "That's it, Dees. It fell apart. It's over."

  Eric Dees moved behind the counter.

  Pike looked in through the broken doors and I pointed at the counter. "Dees."

  Eric Dees moved behind the counter again.

  Pike said, "Don't be stupid, Eric. Let's go home standing up."

  Dees said, "What else have I got, Joe?"

  Eric Dees charged around the near end of the counter, firing as he came, and when he did, Joe Pike and I fired back.

  Dees went down hard, and I ran forward and kicked his pistol away, and then it was over. Dees was on his back, blinking at the ceiling and clutching at his chest. Most of the pellets had taken him there. A dozen feet away, Pete Garcia said, "Oh, God," but he didn't say it to anyone in the room.

  Pike came up beside me and looked down. "Hey, Eric."

  Eric Dees said, "Joe."

  Pike said, "There a radio in the unit?"

  "Yeah."

  "I'll try to raise an ambulance."

  Pike went out to the green sedan.

  Dees opened and closed his mouth and blinked up at the ceiling again. He said, "How's Pete? Is Pete okay?"

  I checked Pete Garcia and Floyd Riggens, and then I went to Mark Thurman. Jennifer Sheridan said, "He's bleeding."

  The bullet had caught him low on the left side. She had ripped away part of her blouse and was using it to press on the wound. There was plenty of blood. Her hands were covered with it.

  "Let me see."

  She pulled away the little compress and a steady rhythmic surge of blood pulsed from his abdomen. Artery.

  He said, "I gotta stand up."

  She said, "You've got to stay down. You're bleeding, Mark. I think it's an artery."

  "I want to get up." He pushed her off and flopped around and finally I helped him stand. When he was up he pushed me off and tried to walk. It was more of a sideways lurch, but he did okay.

  Jennifer said, "Damn it, Mark, please. We have to wait for the ambulance."

  Mark Thurman stumbled sideways. I caught him and helped him stay up. He said, "You gotta help me." He had lost a lot of blood.

  Jennifer Sheridan said, "Make him lie down."

  "He's okay."

  I helped Mark Thurman lurch across the concession stand to Eric Dees. Mark Thurman dug a slim billfold out of his back pocket, opened it, and held it out. It was his LAPD badge. He said, "Do you see this?"

  "What in hell are you doing?" Little bubbles of blood came out of Dees's nose when he said it and I wasn't sure if he was seeing the badge or not.

  Mark Thurman breathed hard and sort of wobbled to the side but he kept his feet. His shirt and his pants were wet with his own blood. He said, "I'm doing something that I should've done a long time ago, you sonofabitch. I am an LAPD officer, and I am placing you under arrest. You are under arrest for murder, and conspiracy to commit murder, and because you're a lousy goddamned officer." Then Mark Thurman fainted.

  Eric Dees was dead by the time the ambulance arrived.

  CHAPTER 34

  Jennifer Sheridan rode in the back of the ambulance when they brought Mark Thurman and Pete Garcia to the Lancaster City Hospital. Pike and I followed behind in Mark Thurman's Mustang.

  The Lancaster cops assumed that something bad had gone down between a group of gangbangers and a group of LAPD officers, and neither Joe nor I told them different. The Lancaster police, as might be expected, assumed that the police officers on the scene had been there as the representatives of Truth and Justice. We didn't tell them different about that, either. Joe Pike got one of the Lancaster cops to give him a lift back to his Jeep.

  The emergency room staff tried to keep Jennifer Sheridan out of the ER, but Mark Thurman woke up enough to say that he wanted her with him, and they relented. I went with him, too. Because of the nature of the bleeding, the ER staff prepared to take Mark Thurman into the operating room. One of the doctors grumbled about having no X rays, but I guess nobody wanted to wait. Pete Garcia was already on the table, and it didn't look good for him.

  Jennifer and I stood beside Mark in a green tile hallway and waited for the orderlies to wheel him into the OR. Jennifer held his hand. Mark Thurman smiled at her, then his eyes moved to me. It was a sleepy smile. They had pumped him full of Demerol. "What do you think will happen now?"

  I made a little shrug. "It'll come out. No way to keep it in."

  Mark looked lost and maybe a little fretful. "The tape's gone. There's no more proof of what happened that night. They catch Pinkworth, all he's going to do is deny everything. Akeem D'Muere isn't going to offer anything."

  "There's Garcia."

  Mark Thurman sighed. "If he makes it."

  "There's me and there's Pike."

  "Yeah. But that's just words. You weren't there that night."

  "No. But we'll offer what we can. If no one believes, then there it is."

  A nurse came and told Mark that it would be just a minute more.

  I said, "What do you want to do, Mark?"

  He looked at Jennifer, and she nodded, and then he looked at me. "I don't care about the tape. I want to go forward. I want to tell them what happened to Charles Lewis Washington. Can you set that up?"

  I patted his shoulder and the orderlies came and took him away.

  Jennifer Sheridan and I went into the little waiting room they have there and I bought her a cup of coffee. Then I went to the pay phone and called Lou Poitras. It was eighteen minutes after six, and he wasn't happy to hear from me. "You're late. I got half a dozen people sitting here waiting for you and your boy Thurman. You getting cold feet?"

  "The tape's gone, Lou. Dees burned it."

  Lou Poitras put me on hold. A couple of minutes later he picked up again. "I had to change phones. I didn't want those people to see me have an aneurism."

  "Dees is dead. So is Riggens. Garcia and Thurman are under the knife now, and Pinkworth ran. I'd guess he'll go home. He'll think about it for an hour, then call in with a story."

  Lou Poitras said, "Jesus Christ."

  "Thurman wants to come in, Lou. Tape or no tape. He wants to make a statement about what happened in the pawnshop, and what's been happening since, and he's willing to testify."

  Lou Poitras made a soft sound, but said nothing for several seconds. "There's no deal without the tape, Hound Dog. None of these people will make a promise on verbal testimony. If he comes forward, he takes his chances."

  "He knows that. He wants to step forward anyway. If Garcia makes it, he'll probably be willing to corroborate."

  "That would help."

  "But even if Garcia doesn't, Thurman comes forward."

  "I understand." There was maybe just a little bit more respect in Lou Poitras's voice than there had been. "We're going to have to bring you in. Tell me where you are."

  I told him.

  When I hung up, Joe Pike was sitting beside Jennifer Sheridan. He was holding her hand. I sat on the other side of her and took her free hand. She didn't look happy. She said, "I can't believe I killed a man. I just shot him."

  "Yes."

  "A man I've known and talked to. Before they were divorced, the four of us had dinner once. We ate at the Sizzler." She was staring at a point in the middle space, somewhere very far from here.

  I said, "You shot a man who was going to murder Mark Thurman. If you hadn't shot him, Mark would be dead. Do you see that?"

  She nodded.

  "It's what you have, and you must use it. You're going to hurt. You're going to miss sleep, and you're going to feel guilty, and it's going to get worse before it gets better, but you can survive it. You helped Mark survive, and now he will help you. He is alive because of you. When you hear him breathe, when you see him smile, it is because of you. Tell yourself that and know that it's true. Tell it to yourself as often as you need. If you forget, call me and I will tell you."

  She leaned her head against my shoulder and we sat like that. A few minutes later I told them about the call to Lou Poitra
s and the way it was going to be.

  When I finished, Jennifer Sheridan said, "I don't want to leave Mark."

  I rubbed her hand. Joe still had the other. "You'll be fine. They're going to want to talk to you, and to Mark, but probably not until later. Joe and I will go now."

  She looked down at our hands, then up again. "What will I say?"

  "The truth."

  "Will they put him in jail?"

  "I don't know. I don't think so, but I don't know. A lot of people out there are going to want his head."

  She nodded again, and this time smiled sort of sadly. "He just wanted to be a police officer."

  "Yes. But now he'll have to move on, and so will you."

  "It's going to be such a big change. What will he do?"

  "Something."

  "Well, we still have each other. We can make it."

  "Yes," I said. "If you want to make it, you can."

  She smiled again, and this time the smile didn't seem so sad. "Thanks for sticking it out with me."

  "Jennifer, you're worth it."

  Twenty-two minutes later a couple of California Highway Patrol cops in khaki uniforms came into the waiting room. The shorter of the two said, "Who's Cole?"

  "Me." I stood, and Pike stood with me. Jennifer got up with Pike and took my hand.

  The same cop said, "We're supposed to take you down to L.A. Is this guy Pike?"

  Pike said, "Yeah."

  "Okay. The both of you."

  The taller guy began to dig out his cuffs, but the shorter guy waved them away. "We don't need that."

  Jennifer's grip on my hand tightened. I gave her the smile and squeezed her hand back and said, "Everything's going to be fine." Mr. Confidence.

  The high desert sky was turning a nice purple when the state cops loaded us into a black-and-white highway cruiser and blasted off down the Antelope Valley Freeway. Less than an hour later, the sky was dark when we pulled into the parking lot of the Seventy-seventh Division in South Central Los Angeles. I thought they'd take us to Parker Center, but there you go. Criminals always return to the scene of the crime. Even if we have to be taken.

  They were expecting us. The Seventy-seventh's halls and squad rooms were jammed with cops and reporters and lawyers and handcuffed young black men who looked like they were Eight-Deuce gangbangers. A couple of them I recognized. I didn't see Akeem D'Muere, but Harold Bellis was talking to the homicide lieutenant, Stilwell. Stilwell looked bored, but Bellis looked confident. He also looked like he had just been called away from dinner. L'Orangerie, no doubt. Des Oeufs de Poule au Beluga, no doubt. The appetizer alone would've cost more than Stilwell's take-home for the day.