by Joel Goldman
She slumped in her chair, defeated. “How did you know?”
“One of the bills was from the cable company. I doubt that the bank made you order Disney movies. At least you let the kids watch TV while they were locked away upstairs. After all, how much fun could they have, especially after you boarded up the windows? Be sure you mention that to the judge before he passes sentence.”
There were two bedrooms upstairs, both of them locked. I knocked on the door at the top of the stairs and heard the same hurried footfalls as when I came in the house.
“Evan and Cara, my name is Jack. Your mom sent me to bring you home. Move away from the door.”
I waited a moment and kicked the door open. They were huddled together on the bed, wearing pajamas, arms around one another. A lamp on a nightstand next to the bed provided the only light. Stuffed animals and other toys were scattered on the floor along with empty McDonald’s bags. A small television sat on a dresser, the screen blank.
“You’re safe now, but I want you to sit tight until the police get here.”
I left them to go back downstairs. I had to call Adrienne Nardelli, Quincy Carter, Lucy, and Joy. I was buzzing with adrenaline, and, for the moment, I wasn’t shaking. I made it to the top of the stairs when I heard a familiar voice.
“Hello, Jack,” Braylon Jennings said. “Walk down slow and easy and keep your hands above your shoulders.”
He was standing in the front hall next to Cesar Mendez, who was aiming a shotgun at me, one of his men from earlier in the evening backing them up. They were too happy to see me, Mendez taking my guns when I reached the bottom stair, emptying them and dropping them on the floor.
Jennings said to Mendez. “Go see what’s upstairs.”
Mendez cocked his head at the other man. “Alvaro,” he said, passing Jennings’s order down the line.
“I told you to go,” Jennings said to Mendez, “not Alvaro.”
Mendez screwed his face tighter than the grip on his shotgun, swallowed, and trotted up the stairs. It was Jennings’s way of reminding Mendez of the pecking order and telling me how wrong I’d been about Jennings.
He was on the Nuestra cartel’s payroll, sent by the home office to find the guns Mendez had promised. He needed Brett Staley to do that, which was why he had made certain Quincy Carter let Brett leave the hospital Sunday night and why he pushed so hard to get Roni released from jail when Brett went off the grid.
I wondered how he found me until my cell phone rang. I’d turned it back on a couple of hours ago, long enough for him to have picked up the signal and tracked me down. It was Joy.
“Give me the phone,” Jennings said.
I threw the phone across the floor, skipping it like a stone on a pond into the room with the duffel bags. Jennings motioned to Alvaro, who retrieved the phone as he launched a roundhouse punch to my gut, folding me in half and forcing me to my knees.
I clenched my jaw, seeing stars, sucking hard to find my breath as he grabbed me by the hair and pressed the barrel of his gun against my temple, the click of the hammer being pulled back echoing in my ear.
“You’re a piece of work, Jennings. How much is Nuestra paying you?”
“A helluva lot more than my pension, and that’s all you need to know.”
“Too many people know that Roni and I are here. You won’t be able to cover your tracks.”
“You’d be surprised what a remodeling fire will do.”
“Look at this,” Mendez said from the top of the stairs, the shotgun resting on his shoulder, aimed behind him and at the ceiling.
Evan and Cara were standing in front of him, quivering, crying silently, Mendez grinning like a wolf that had found his dinner. I knew there would be no negotiations, no keeping them talking while I thought of something clever to say. The kids were an impossible complication. Mendez and Jennings couldn’t let them go any more than they could let Roni or me go. They’d kill us, take the guns, and burn the house down before I could give them a reason not to.
Mendez was tall, looming over the kids, an irresistible target out of my reach until Jennings loosened his grip and lowered his gun and spoke what I hoped would be his last words.
“What the fuck?”
I grabbed his gun with both hands, flipping the barrel up, aiming at his chin, forcing my finger inside the trigger guard and blowing a hole through the top of his head. I yanked his gun free and shoved his body toward Alvaro, who fired wildly, hitting Jennings and coming after me.
I spun toward the stairs and put two rounds in the center of Mendez’s chest as he racked the slide on the shotgun. Mendez pitched forward, knocking Evan and Cara to the side, tumbling down the stairs and firing the shotgun. I flattened myself on the floor, the blast catching Alvaro in the face.
Bolting up the stairs, I swept Evan and Cara into my arms, the three of us sitting on the floor. They were crying, and I was shaking, their slender arms locked around my chest, squeezing me in a hug that did what no other hug had ever done: It made the shaking stop.
Chapter Seventy-six
Each of us serves different kinds of sentences, some imposed by law, some self-imposed, and some that are part of the inexplicable nature of life. Like everything else, we choose as often as we are chosen.
Roni Chase was sentenced to twenty-five years to life for kidnapping Evan and Cara Martin. All charges relating to the stolen guns and construction materials were dropped in exchange for her cooperation into the government’s ongoing investigation of the cross-border gun and drug trade. Her lawyer argued for leniency, citing her mother’s physical condition, her grandmother’s financial problems, and the fact that she’d saved my life on two occasions as mitigating circumstances, but the judge didn’t buy it.
Her lawyer asked me to testify on Roni’s behalf at her sentencing, threatening to subpoena me when I declined. She backed down when I assured her that I would do everything in my power from the witness stand to assure that Roni went away for a long, long time.
Lilly Chase did testify, fingering a cameo suspended from a gold chain around her neck as she spoke. She drew a line from her mother, Vivian Chase, to her granddaughter, Roni, shaking her head, saying Roni wasn’t responsible for the blood that ran in her veins, acknowledging on cross-examination that even if that was an explanation, it wasn’t an excuse.
Jimmy Martin finally spoke, explaining the impossible situation Roni put him in, any chance for leniency lost when it turned out he owned a Dodge Ram and the paint found at the scene of Eldon Fowler’s accident matched the paint on it. Kate wrote a letter to the court on his behalf, saying that she forgave him and did not consider him a threat to her safety, drawing on a well of forgiveness that was deeper than mine. It wasn’t enough to save him from a life sentence.
Peggy Martin moved away, taking Evan and Cara, saying that she and her children needed a fresh start. Lucy and I went to see them the day they left. She had been sober long enough to realize how good it felt and how hard it would be to stay that way. The kids were quiet and avoided eye contact with us, Peggy saying that they’d been seeing a therapist who’d referred her to a colleague in Seattle, where she had found a job.
“Debt paid?” Lucy asked me as we drove away.
“In full.”
Joy’s cancer made her oncologist a prophet when she died six months later. We spent her last weeks at Kansas City Hospice House, holding hands, whispering remembered stories, laughing when our versions didn’t match.
Memory, I discovered, is reconstructive, not reproductive, a collage of half-remembered names and faces. We can’t reproduce or remember exactly what happened. We bind bits of facts with pieces of our hearts, making the past easier, sweeter, and less painful. And so it was with letting her go, our last moments merging with our first.
Like Peggy Martin, I needed a fresh start. I had lost my children, believing that I could somehow reclaim them by saving others, alchemy for the guilty. I laid down that burden at last when I buried Joy, her words canceling all
debts. You did your best. Now let us go. Though my body still shakes, my soul is steady.
I sold the house and everything in it. Lucy and Simon adopted Roxy and Ruby and promised me the use of their guest room until they turned it into a nursery.
I packed a bag and bought a ticket, running into Jeremiah Quinn at the airport.
“Coming or going?” he asked me.
“Going.”
“Where to?”
“San Diego.”
“Kate?” he asked, and I nodded. “One way or round trip?”
“We’ll see. Kansas City is a good town. Keep an eye on things while I’m away.”
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