The Vanquished

by David Putnam

  I swallowed hard, my words came out in a rasp. “What . . . what happened?”

  “With what, Bruno?”

  “Sonja?”

  Dan shook his head. “When I came on scene, she was DOA, gunshot nine times. Last I checked, the investigators had not determined who gunned her. I was able to get Marie and Sonja’s kid out of there on the pretense of being a material witness in a matter concerning national security.”

  “Who shot Sonja?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I knew, and Dan did, too.

  “Bruno? One more thing.” He wanted to change the subject away from Marie. “Your nephew, Noble’s son, he’s missing. I’m working on it though. You don’t need to worry about that, I’m on it.”

  I said nothing. Not my nephew. What could I do about it? Nothing.

  Dan waited a moment more and then said, “Take care of yourself, Bruno, and let me know where you end up. Drop me a line, okay?”

  I nodded.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  THAT SAME NIGHT, four deputies in perfect uniforms and polished leather, along with a hospital orderly, escorted the gurney with me strapped to it with soft restraints. They trundled me out of my room, down the long hall, and over to the elevator. The deputies weren’t young jail deputies like they should’ve been for a routine transport. The epaulets on their shoulders said that these four deputies came from SEB, the Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau, the SWAT team. Stout young men, experienced and street hardened. They made a big show of it, one of the FBI’s ten most wanted, on the run for three years, finally captured.

  Right, real dangerous.

  No one said anything in the elevator.

  I knew the routine. I’d been involved in transports as a jail deputy. They’d take me down to the prisoner entrance of the county hospital, to a secured area in the back, and load me up in a sheriff’s transport van. Then they’d drive me the short distance to MCJ—Men’s Central Jail—where I’d be transitioned through IRC, the Inmate Reception Center, classified, and sent up to the hospital ward on 3300.

  The elevator opened. The SEB sergeant in charge of the detail said to the orderly, “We’ll take it from here.”

  Without waiting for the orderly to reply, they took control of the gurney and two deputies now wheeled me the rest of the way, the other two following along. It was all about control. They didn’t know the orderly and didn’t want to worry about him.

  They pushed the gurney through the swinging double doors to the loading dock outside. Backed in at the loading dock sat a red and white ambulance. Next to the two open doors stood a deputy who wore jeans and cowboy boots with a green Sheriff’s raid jacket. My escort wheeled me up to the deputy in the raid jacket.

  The deputy in the jacket extended his hand. I couldn’t shake if I wanted to, my hands restrained. The deputy looked at the escort and didn’t need to say anything. The sergeant reached into his boot and came out with a dirk. He cut off the leather restraints. The guy in the raid jacket again offered me his hand. “My name’s Roy Clevenger, Mr. Johnson, and I’m here to tell you thank you.”

  “What?” The name rang a bell, and my mind spun trying to catch up to all that was happening. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

  He smiled hugely. “My wife is Kris Clevenger. She works for the Highway Patrol.”

  “Oh—” was all that would come out.

  Roy said, “You didn’t have to stop that day, and I’m damn glad that you did. There’s no way you’re going to jail today. You get a free pass courtesy of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.”

  For days I’d felt no emotion. At that moment the emotions overwhelmed me. “Thank you. Thank you.” I wanted to say more, something eloquent, but couldn’t.

  They wheeled me into the back of the ambulance. On the bench inside sat my lovely Marie.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  IN MY NOVELS, I try to take the reader into my world of law enforcement. I want them to feel what it’s like to work in a patrol car, what goes through the mind of a detective chasing dangerous felons, the emotions involved, the good and the bad, the pain and the pride.

  The Vanquished, although a work of fiction, was inspired by one of those incidents that occurred one hot summer night when I was on the job. That night I responded Code-Three—red lights and siren—to a residential robbery. I found Maury Abrams just as I described—that wasn’t his real name of course—with his head split open and bleeding. He tried to tell me in his own way what happened, unable to get the words out, the ordeal still too fresh in his mind. And he might have succeeded had I sat down with him, calmed his jagged nerves. But I was young and anxious and full of the thrill for adventure.

  So when the second call went out, “shots fired, man down,” I left Maury Abrams to respond to the call, fully intending to return. When I arrived at that second call and saw the gang member shot in the back, smelled the blood, I realized my mistake. I immediately returned to the Abrams’ home and sat on the edge of Mr. Abram’s bed as he told me the story. How the two thugs tricked him into opening his reinforced door. How he shot them both in the defense of his wife who lay in that same bed with the covers up to her nose, still too terrified over the recent event to say a word.

  I did refer the incident to the gang unit and tried to impress upon them the vulnerability of this elderly couple, trapped in their own home, in a dangerous neighborhood. I was worried about retribution, gang retaliation.

  A week later, a detective in OSS—Operation Safe Streets—stopped me in the parking lot in back of the station to tell me the Abrams’ home had been firebombed. I remember standing there a long time overcome with emotions. Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t save the Abrams; we couldn’t keep the street from eating them.