Judgement Calls

by Alafair Burke

  no record of a grand jury testimony. Is there or isn't there? Don't

  you fucking lie to me!" he yelled, back-handing O'Donnell with the

  gun.

  Tim's head jerked to one side with the blow. When he sat back up,

  blood was running from a cut beneath his right eye. "We don't have

  court reporters for normal grand jury sessions, but you can request one

  if you want to keep a record."

  Derrick smacked him again in the same place, bursting the cut open even

  wider. "Now you fucking tell me, man!" He pursed his lips, trying to

  figure out his next move. "OK, bitch."

  I assumed he was talking to me.

  "You think you're so smart, but now I know you got a transcript, you're

  gonna tell me where it is."

  "It's at the office," I said.

  "That's bullshit," Derrick said. "Tim tells me you been holding out on

  him. He couldn't find the files in your office and tells me you've

  been hiding them at home. Only way he knew you indicted me was a

  secretary. Ain't that right, Tim?"

  I looked over at O'Donnell. The right side of his face was swollen and

  bloodied.

  "Alice mentioned it to me," he said by way of explanation. "She

  recognized the name and thought I should know about it."

  In an office where I could never find anyone to help me, I'd managed to

  find someone who was too competent. I should've known Alice Gernstein

  wouldn't miss a beat.

  It was clear that O'Donnell was losing his resolve to fight. It was

  also clear that I wasn't digesting the new information quickly enough.

  My first impulse was to be pissed at him for snooping through my

  office, but then I remembered that this was a man who had helped kill

  Jamie Zimmerman, sent an innocent man to death row, and led the

  Derringers to me to save his own ass.

  Derrick was behind me now, running the head of his gun along my

  collarbone, pushing aside my hair to graze the back of my neck. "Tell

  us where the transcript is, Sam, or I'm gonna have one hell of a time

  on your buddy Kendra before she dies."

  I resisted the urge to tell him I wasn't as stupid as O'Donnell. I

  knew they were going to kill us and do horrible things to Kendra before

  they killed her, whether I was helpful or not. I also knew that the

  promise of those transcripts was the only leverage I had at this

  point.

  Luckily, I'd left my case file in the trunk of my car. "I've got them

  locked in a safe," I said.

  "Good girl," Derrick said. "Now where's the safe?"

  "Upstairs," I said, "in the master bedroom."

  "Aangh," he responded, like a buzzer on a game show, "wrong answer. I

  personally tossed this place looking for your little friend's peepshow

  pictures, and there ain't no safe."

  "It's an old wall safe. It's hidden in the baseboard. There's no way

  you'd see it."

  I could picture Derrick searching his memory for the ransacking of my

  bedroom, doubting whether he would have noticed an irregularity in the

  oversized baseboards. He threw a note pad and pen at me from the

  dining room table. "The combination," he said. "Where is it in the

  baseboards?"

  "Directly behind the bed," I said, as I scrawled down three numbers

  that were all slightly off. If my guess about what was going to happen

  was wrong, I could always tell them that the safe stuck sometimes.

  Derrick snatched the paper from my outstretched hand and gave it to his

  brother, gesturing with his head toward the stairs. "Here, take

  these," he said, throwing him a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket.

  Frank took the stairs two at a time. I heard a few thumps from

  upstairs, followed by silence and a few more thumps. I tried not to

  think about Frank Derringer being in my bedroom.

  After a few more rounds of thumps, Frank scrambled back down the stairs

  to the landing. "That bed is fucking heavy, man. I can't budge it."

  I had sworn at myself many times for buying a solid maple bed that I

  couldn't move without the help of a strong friend. But it had just

  been added to the very short list of things I'd never get rid of. That

  is, if I lived past eight o'clock.

  Derrick was less happy with the news. "Jesus Christ, man.

  Can't you do a fucking thing by yourself?" Then he looked around the

  room, in search of Plan B. C'mon, pea brain, I thought, watching him

  ponder the possible combinations. There's only one right answer

  here.

  His eyes eventually fell on me. He gestured toward the stairs with his

  head and said, "You, go up and help." Yes! Good answer, Derrick, good

  answer! "Try anything, and Ken-dra will pay the price," he yelled as I

  went up the stairs, Frank behind me.

  Frank was a lightweight. The bed was approximately four centimeters

  from where I'd last left it. I walked around to the far side, saying,

  "If we each take one leg of the. headboard and pull back, it's usually

  the best way to move it."

  I watched Frank take his position on the other side of the bed, and

  then I crouched to my knees to reach beneath the bed ruffle and grab

  the headboard. As Frank pulled against his side of the bed, I pulled

  on my side with my right hand. With my left, I reached inside the top

  shelf of my nightstand and pulled my .25-caliber automatic loose from

  the tape that held it to the bottom of my drawer. I slid it onto the

  floor next to me and then pulled on the bed hard with all my weight.

  The bed jerked a few feet away from the wall. Frank rose from his side

  of the bed and saw my gun aimed on him before I'd fired off the shot.

  If he could've just stood still, the bullet would have hit him dead

  center in the chest. Instead, he ran for the door quickly enough that

  it caught him in the right shoulder.

  I fired off a second shot but missed and hit the doorframe. Damn. Too

  much time on the firing range, not enough chasing down wily targets.

  Two quick shots rang from downstairs as I followed Frank to the door.

  By the time I got there, he was almost to the end of the hallway

  leading to the stairs. I fired another shot. I must've hit him,

  because I heard a low grunt. I must not have gotten him good, though,

  because he turned down the stairs, and my next shot ripped through the

  shameless Warhol knockoff on my wall.

  Assuming that Derrick would be waiting for me at the bottom, I took the

  stairs with my back pressed against the inner wall. I stopped at the

  last step before the landing, steeling myself to make the turn. The

  pressure of my heart pounding against my chest was fierce, and I fought

  to catch my breath.

  I poked my head around the corner and then retreated to the safety of

  the wall again. Keeping my back against the wall, I began moving down

  the second half of the stairs. Tim O'Donnell was still in my Mission

  chair, but now blood was oozing from a dark hole in his forehead. From

  the looks of things, a second bullet had been fired into his groin.

  As much as I'd practiced shooting, I'd never made a sweep through a

  house before, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do next. Without

  any other basis of info
rmation, I instinctively relied upon that most

  reliable of sources, television.

  From the landing, I could see that the front entrance and living room

  were clear. I swung off the stairs in a half circle to face the back

  of the house, my gun outstretched in front of me. Still clear.

  The living room and Tim's dead body were to my left now as I faced my

  dining room and kitchen. I reached down slowly, keeping my gun pointed

  in front of me, and grabbed my purse. If I could just make it out the

  front door and to the safety of my car, I'd be home free.

  As I reached to unbolt the front door, I saw Derrick spring around the

  corner of the dining room with his gun in front of him. He must've

  watched TV as a kid, too. What he should've been doing was practicing

  at the firing range, because he was a piss-poor shot. I heard the

  mirror behind me crash as a bullet ripped into it.

  I fired off two shots as I jumped across the hallway, over the top of

  my sofa, and into the coffee table. I muffled a cry as pain shot

  through my left side where I landed against the oak edge. I scurried

  backward to get myself out of the pool of blood that was quickly

  forming beneath O'Donnell and my Mission chair. The noise was blocked

  out by the sound of the back door sliding open, followed by tires

  squealing down the street.

  I don't know how long I lay there, listening to myself breathe, trying

  to convince myself that I couldn't hear anything else. Even Vinnie was

  quiet now.

  I finally mustered up the courage to crawl around the back of the sofa

  and sneak a quick peek into the dining room. I'd done right by the

  firing range. Derrick Derringer was on his back, two bullet holes

  squarely in the middle of his chest. Apparently, it was OK for me to

  move while I was firing, as long as my target stood still.

  Based on the trail of blood through the dining room, into the kitchen,

  and out the back door, I guessed that Frank had fled when he saw his

  brother go down. More blood outside suggested that Frank was long

  gone.

  I freed Vinnie from the pantry as I dialed 911. Then I sat in a ball

  on the kitchen floor holding him and my gun close to my chest until I

  heard sirens pulling up to the house and fists pounding on the front

  door.

  Sixteen.

  When I finally woke up the next morning, my whole body was on fire. I

  was also sleepy and had a sore throat. By the time the police finally

  left around two in the morning I'd related my entire story three

  different times. First, I had to tell the patrol officers who

  responded to the 911 call, so they wouldn't shoot me when I answered

  the front door with a gun in my hand, two dead bodies behind me, and

  bullet holes all over the place.

  Then I had to give it to Walker and Johnson, who drew the MCT call-out.

  They offered to page Chuck for me. I guess once your sex life's on the

  front page of the newspaper, it's considered public knowledge. They

  apparently didn't know the whole story, because they seemed caught off

  guard when I asked them to call my dad instead.

  Then I had to explain it all a third time to Griffith, who showed up

  just as the medical examiner was zipping the body bag closed around Tim

  O'Donnell's corpse.

  "The Chief called me," he said. "He thought I should know that two of

  my deputies were involved in a shoot-out."

  By then, my narrative skills had gotten pretty proficient. The

  Derringers' involvement in street-level prostitution. O'Donnell's

  extracurricular interests, which led him from what he thought was a

  staged fantasy with an underage prostitute to the murder of Jamie

  Zimmerman. How Kendra's assault arose from the same scenario, but this

  time with Travis Culver as the not-so-innocent dupe. Culver's lies

  about Frank's car. O'Donnell's fabrication of the Long Hauler letters.

  My night of shoot-'em-up action. I dumped it all on him. Except the

  part where I'd given O'Donnell my resignation.

  "You should've come to me with this, Samantha," he said. He looked

  tired, and, in the light of my kitchen, the wrinkles that usually

  seemed distinguished just looked old.

  "I thought I did the right thing at the time. I knew O'Donnell was set

  on killing the case, and I assumed you'd listen to him unless I had

  some leverage."

  He stood to leave. "You should give me more credit, Sam. I'm an

  independent thinker, and now I'm going to go home to think." As he

  headed out the door, he gave me a wave over his shoulder. "Nice house

  you got here. See you in the morning."

  I had assumed from his comment that I was supposed to go to the office

  this morning, regardless of my sleep deprivation, sore throat, and

  aches. It definitely beat being dead, though.

  And at least I was safe from the Derringers. At my insistence, Walker

  had dispatched patrol officers to watch Haley and Kendra while police

  began their search for Frank Der ringer. I thought about doing the

  same for Travis Culver, but as far as I was concerned, he could fend

  for himself. The warning call I placed to Henry Lee Babbitt seemed

  courtesy enough.

  Around the time Griffith left, Johnson snapped his cell phone shut and

  announced they'd found Frank.

  "Was he dumb enough to go home?" I asked.

  "Wherever he was headed, he never got there. Traffic responded to a

  major one-car accident on I-Eighty-four. The car burst through the

  railing at an overpass and flipped head first onto the concrete below.

  Driver was dead by the time they cut the car open. They were searching

  the car for holes, trying like hell to figure out where the bullets in

  the driver's shoulder and ass came from, when they heard the APB for

  Derringer on the radio."

  "His butt?" Walker said.

  "Yeah. Looks like that second bullet of yours went straight into the

  man's left cheek, Kincaid. Must have hurt like a mother fucker when he

  was driving on the freeway. He was probably squirming around trying to

  take the weight off his bony ass when he lost control."

  I hadn't been able to laugh with them about it then, but in the morning

  shower, as I rubbed a bar of Dove on my own left bum, I could see the

  humor, and I laughed until I started crying again.

  A strange bubble of silence followed me through the courthouse as I

  walked to my office. I guess no one knew what to say to me. This

  morning's news had featured vague reports of a fatal shoot-out at my

  house involving the Derringer brothers and O'Donnell. The reports

  didn't explain that they were all trying to kill me, only that "police

  were investigating."

  When I got into my office, I checked my voice mail, hoping for a

  message from Chuck. No luck. He hadn't called my home or cell,

  either. I did, however, get a message from Griffith, summoning me to

  his office.

  When I got there, he handed me a piece of paper and asked me what I

  thought.

  It was a letter from Griffith to Governor Jackson, supporting the

  pardon requests of Margaret Landry and Jesse Taylor. It explained that

&n
bsp; all currently available evidence indicated that Frank Derringer and Tim

  O'Donnell had killed Jamie Zimmerman during a rape arranged through a

  teenage prostitution ring managed by the Derringer brothers. O'Donnell

  had pursued the case against Landry and Taylor based upon the

  circumstantial evidence that existed, possibly providing the

  confidential information to Landry that eventually helped secure the

  convictions. Then, when Frank and an unnamed suspect assaulted Kendra,

  he'd done what he could to get rid of the case. When I thwarted his

  efforts to issue it as a general felony, he fabricated the Long Hauler

  by using confidential information he found about unsolved murders in

  the cold case database and then ordered me to dismiss the case.

  The memo went on to explain my discovery of the Derringers' connection

  to the sex industry. After briefing Griffith, I'd obtained an

  indictment against Derrick Derringer as the first step in an envisioned

  investigation into the Zimmerman and Martin cases. Unfortunately,

  O'Donnell had discovered the investigation and tipped off the

  Derringers. They broke into my house, I heroically saved the day, and

  Griffith would be pursuing any remaining culprits to the full extent of

  the law.

  It was accurate in the ways that counted, and at this point I really

  didn't care if Duncan wanted to cover his ass. He was covering mine

  too, and the end result was the right one. "Looks good," I said. "Will

  Jackson issue the pardon?"

  "It's a done deal," he said. "The governor's office will announce it