A New Start: Final Dawn: Book 9 (Volume 9)

by Darrell Maloney

  “It’s no fun without you, Eva. My life is an empty shell. I no longer like living.”

  “It’s tough now. But it’ll get easier with time.”

  “And what if I don’t want to wait?”

  “You’ll wait. You have to.”

  She touched his cheek with her fingers. He expected her to feel cold. Like a corpse.

  Then he felt foolish. There’d never been anything about Eva which had been cold and lifeless.

  Her hand felt warm to the touch.

  He savored the moment and hoped it lasted forever.

  “I’m here to discuss something else with you too, Frank.”

  “What’s that, my love?”

  “You’ve been under a lot of stress lately about what to do with Marty’s murder case.”

  “Yes. I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I don’t want to hurt the nice people who took us in. But I feel I have a duty…”

  She cut him off.

  “Frank, I want you to go talk to Marty.”

  “Okay. But why?”

  “I want you to be honest with him. I want you to tell him that you believe some of the men in the compound may be responsible for the death of Nathan Martel. But tell him there’s more to the story than it seems.”

  He wanted to ask her questions, but was fascinated by her words. He fell mute and just listened.

  “Honey, tell him that his murder victim was a very bad man. That he’d killed several others, including innocent children. That he’d abused several women in very bad ways.

  “Tell him that you will pursue justice against those responsible if Marty wants you to.

  “But tell him it’s very similar to Scott Burley. And then ask him if he still wants you to pursue it.”

  “Scott Burley? Who in heck is that?”

  “Marty knows. Can you remember that name?”

  “Scott Burley.”

  He repeated it, as though trying to sear it permanently into his mind.

  He didn’t know why. Didn’t understand its meaning. But then again, he didn’t need the details.

  His beloved Eva had given him a mission. Had put him back on a course and told him what to do.

  She’d been his sounding board for more years than he could count. Always there to keep him straight, to advise him when he needed it.

  The one to tell him he was her hero.

  Or an idiot, when the event warranted it.

  Her vision started to fade.

  “Eva, honey, don’t go.”

  “Go to Marty, Frank. Tell him what I told you. It’ll ease your pain and help you sleep again.”

  Even in deep slumber, Frank knew she was wrong. Going to see Marty wouldn’t ease his pain, for most of it was there because of Eva’s loss.

  But he respected and loved her enough not to argue with her.

  “I will, my love. I promise.”

  -44-

  Hannah and Sami came storming up to the security desk.

  Or, at least as fast as Hannah could walk.

  Both were in tears.

  Frank was somewhat taken back. And more than a little concerned.

  “What’s the matter with you two?”

  Hannah reached him and wrapped her arms around him. Sami followed suit, in what turned into a rather bizarre group hug.

  Sami blubbered, “Frank, don’t do it. Don’t go. This isn’t the way.”

  Now Frank was more than taken aback. Now he was downright confused.

  He unwrapped himself from the girls’ arms and tried to lighten their mood just a bit.

  “Well, as much as I love being made into a sandwich by two beautiful women, we need to find a better place to do this. Someplace where your husband and boyfriend won’t see us. I’ll tell you what. I get off in half an hour. Why don’t you go to my place and get into something more comfortable, and I’ll meet you there.”

  His humor fell flat. Not even a smile from either of them.

  So he tried a different tactic.

  “Have you two finally gone completely nuts?”

  Hannah tried to explain, but it was obvious from her discomfort it wasn’t going to be an easy task.

  “Word has gotten around camp that you’re going outside the walls… that you decided to…”

  She couldn’t finish.

  “Do what? What in the heck are you talking about?”

  Sami tried to help.

  “Frank, David said you talked to him this morning about taking one of the pickups outside the compound. He said you didn’t know for sure how long you were going to be gone, and that you looked very depressed.

  “He was worried that…”

  “What? He was worried that what?”

  Hannah tagged in again.

  “He said he’s never seen you so depressed or downtrodden. He was worried that you would… do something stupid.”

  Frank finally figured out what the pair was talking about.

  “David thinks I’m going to drive into the woods and shoot myself?”

  Sami said, “Well… yes.”

  And Hannah added, “Don’t do it. I know Eva’s gone, Frank. But we all love you so much. You have so much to live for.”

  This time Frank reached out to Hannah and wrapped his arms around her.

  “Hear me out, sweetie. Yes, I told David I was taking one of the pickups out of the compound after my shift today. And yes, I told him I didn’t know if I’d be back. Today. I told him I didn’t know if I’d be back today or not. But I’ll be back, if not today then tomorrow. And I’ll be walking and talking and just as handsome and sexy as I am now. You sure you girls don’t want to make me into a sandwich?”

  Hannah drew away and looked him in the eyes.

  “Then where did David get the idea you were going to go off into the woods and shoot yourself?”

  “Did he actually say that?”

  “Well… no. He said you looked like hell and that you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, and that he thought you were at the end of your rope.”

  “So… David put two and two together and came up with five. And then you added two to his five and came up with thirteen.”

  “Well… okay. Maybe. We’re just worried about you, that’s all.”

  “Well, don’t be. I mean, it’s nice of you to worry and all. But I’ll be fine. David was right. I have been under a lot of pressure lately. And Eva’s not around to help me put things in perspective any more. But I’ve got no plans to kill myself.”

  “Pinky swear?”

  “Pinky swear.”

  Sami chimed in again.

  “Then where are you going where you might not be back until tomorrow?”

  “I’m going to Eden, to talk to Marty.”

  Sami swallowed hard. Now it was her turn to be distressed.

  Brad was Sami’s significant other.

  And Brad was one of the three men Frank was going to talk to Marty about.

  Only three men knew what happened to Nathan Martel that morning three months before, and they’d sworn themselves to secrecy.

  Everyone in the compound knew that Brad, Bryan, and the soldier they’d nick-named “Bryan Too” left with Martel and came back without him. The rumor later went around that Martel had been found murdered, execution, with three bullets in his head.

  Everyone made their assumptions. But nobody wanted to talk about it.

  Least of all Brad.

  Not even to Sami.

  But Sami had been under a lot of stress lately too. She’d lost her father in a helicopter crash not long before. And she knew that Marty had opened up a murder investigation into Martel’s death.

  That in itself didn’t concern her. For Marty was a novice detective, with no training and a propensity for making rookie mistakes.

  But then Frank agreed to help him.

  Frank, who’d won the title of the Texas Peace Officers Association Homicide Detective of the Year.

  Two years in a row.

  Sami’s stress cam
e from the fear that she’d lose her father and her lover in the same year. One to death, the other to prison.

  Frank could see the fear in the young woman’s eyes.

  And he felt she’d been through enough. Since the loss of her father, Brad was all she had left.

  Brad and a whole bunch of friends who really cared for her and were watching out for her.

  Frank was one of them.

  He put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Relax. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  -45-

  “What the hell did he mean by that? Everything’s gonna be okay. Just what does that even mean?”

  “Um. Maybe that everything’s gonna be okay?”

  “Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.”

  Hannah and Sami were sitting in the dining room having coffee.

  They’d just heard over their two way radios as Karen directed Roxanne to open the gate and let Frank out. He was off to Eden to visit with Marty. And Brad’s fate might well be in the balance.

  Sami might have been terrified Frank was going to tell Marty his suspicions. And that the two of them would return together to arrest Brad and Bryan for murder.

  Or she might have found solace in Frank’s cryptic assurance that everything would be okay.

  The problem was she wasn’t sure which way to go.

  So she sat and drank coffee and commiserated with Hannah.

  “What do you think he’s going to tell Marty?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie. But I got the impression this big cloud that’s been hanging over our heads since Martel was killed is going to come to an end, one way or the other.”

  “Hannah, they can’t arrest Brad. I can’t afford to lose him too.”

  “I don’t think they will, honey. I think common sense will prevail. Even if he was involved, and even if Frank and Marty have the evidence to prove it, surely they’ll look at the problem rationally. There’s no court system set up to handle a murder trial. And no district attorney to prepare the case against them. And lastly, any jury which heard the case would surely acquit them, based on the type of man Martel was and the things he did to Sarah.

  “The smart thing to do would be to drop the whole thing. And Marty and Frank are both very smart men. I’m sure they’ll come to that same conclusion.”

  Frank was driving northeast on Highway 83 toward Eden. On the seat beside him was a zip-lock bag containing the three shell casings he’d dusted for fingerprints three days before.

  He’d carelessly left the bag on a shelf in the control center, where it had been accessible to pretty much everyone in the compound.

  Just doing that was an uncomfortable act for him to perform. It went against all his training, violating a basic rule of law: always maintain a proper chain of control for any evidence which may later be used in a trial.

  Always secure it. And never, ever, allow anyone to have a chance to steal it or tamper with it.

  Especially people who might be suspects, or who might know someone who is a suspect.

  When Frank took the clear plastic bag from the shelf that morning he’d held it up to the light and examined it.

  The fingerprints on the casings were all smudged and worthless, as he suspected they would be.

  Whoever had done the deed had been incredibly sloppy.

  Perhaps incredibly dumb was a more accurate description.

  When he or she had picked up the brass casings one at a time to smudge them, they’d gotten the fingerprint dust on their own fingers.

  The dust provided very clear prints of their own fingertips on the outside of the resealable bag.

  “Amateurs,” Frank muttered under his breath, half out of disgust and half of humor.

  He’d strongly suspected someone would tamper with the evidence. The fact that someone had didn’t bother him as much as it should have. After all, he’d purposely given them the opportunity to do so.

  It bothered him more that they’d go behind Frank’s back and pull such a stunt, instead of trusting him to do the right thing.

  Of course, he’d certainly given no one any indication what his plans were. In fact, didn’t even know himself until that morning. He supposed he couldn’t blame anyone for wanting to cover all the bases.

  Which was why he’d left the evidence on the shelf to begin with.

  As he pulled off of Highway 83 in the heart of Eden and turned south onto Highway 87 he wondered which of his friends had gone behind his back to destroy his evidence.

  It would be easy to find out.

  He could keep the bag, lift the prints from it, and file them away for safekeeping.

  Then, one by one, he could covertly collect prints from a short list of suspects.

  By dusting their doorknobs when they weren’t around. Or by picking up a coffee cup they’d left on a dining room table. Or by walking behind them, and making note of a wall they touched. Or a table, or anything else with a smooth flat surface.

  And he could go back to that place later in the day, or in the dead of night, to lift prints for comparison.

  But then again, he was probably better off not knowing. He’d laid out the bait, and someone took it, and the key evidence he had tying one or more of his friends to the Martel murder was now worthless.

  Of that he was glad. It also pained him a bit, for he felt he violated his oath.

  But at least now he could tell Marty, with a straight face, that his shell casings were worthless.

  At least for fingerprint evidence.

  Marty had called Frank via shortwave radio the afternoon before.

  “Hey Frank, are you available to come to Eden tomorrow?”

  Frank had been itching for an excuse to get away from the compound for awhile anyway. Now he had one.

  “Sure thing, Marty. But for what?”

  “You’ve already forgotten more about security than I’ll ever know. I’d like to give you a tour of the prison. Maybe you can see some glaring holes in our security procedures that I’m missing from lack of experience.”

  “Sure. I’d be happy to meet you there tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Oh, and Frank…”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you have a chance to fingerprint those casings for me?”

  “Yes. I’ll bring them with me.”

  That was before Frank examined the bag to see whether the evidence had been tampered with.

  And he’d have given Marty the bag even if it hadn’t been.

  Now it would just be a little bit easier to do so.

  -46-

  Frank pulled the F-150 into the main entrance of the Eden Correctional Facility and noticed that both rolling gates of the Sally port were completely open.

  Such a practice would never have been acceptable when it was an operating prison.

  A lone sentry leaned against the wall of the outer guard shack, enjoying a cigarette in the shade of the tiny building. His rifle lay unattended on a folding lawn chair at least thirty feet away from him.

  He drove slowly through the Sally port, expecting at any moment to be stopped, challenged, and asked the nature of his business.

  Instead, the sentry just looked up and waved as he passed.

  “Jesus Christ,” Frank muttered.

  Once inside the prison he came to a dead stop, unsure where to go.

  He looked around for Marty and didn’t see him, then picked up his radio.

  “Marty, this is Frank. You copy?”

  “Well, good afternoon, Frank. How far away are you?”

  “I’m parked just inside your entrance.”

  If Marty was surprised Frank had already gained access to the facility he didn’t let on.

  “Good. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  Frank stepped from the truck and walked around.

  He’d been in several other prisons before on official business. For awhile when he was with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Department he was so caught up on his homicide cases he volunteered for transport duty.r />
  There was nothing hard about it. Transporting convicted criminals in a van from the county jail to whatever prison they were assigned to serve out their sentences. Sometimes he traveled to other cities in Texas to pick up prisoners who were being extradited to Bexar County for trial.

  It wasn’t hard duty. But it got him out of the office one or two days a week. And he liked being on the road and seeing parts of Texas he’d never been to before.

  Eventually he caught a new homicide case, then another. Then a high profile case where two high school teachers were shot in their classroom after school hours.

  He never got back to transport duty, but for years he missed it. Especially when he was working several homicide cases at the same time and desperately needed a break.

  What he used to call, “up to my ass in alligators and nowhere to run.”

  “Hello, Frank.”

  Marty appeared from nowhere, walking through an old utility room door to exit the main cellblock of the prison.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “No problem, my friend. I needed to get out anyway. First things first.”

  He handed over the plastic bag containing Marty’s shell casings.

  “All the prints are too smudged to be of any use. Sorry.”

  He could have gone into more detail. Could have said there was a usable print, and another that was close. And that both were smeared intentionally by someone with ties to his suspects.

  Or by the suspects themselves.

  But he chose not to mention that.

  What he told Marty instead, that all the prints are too smudged to be of any use, wasn’t a lie. Frank could, in good conscience, convince himself he told Marty the truth.

  Marty took the bag and shoved it into his pocket. There no longer seemed to be any reason to treat it with kid gloves.

  “Ah, well… thanks anyway, Frank. It was worth a shot, I guess. You ready for your tour?”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes, why? Have you already seen anything you didn’t like?”

  “The very first thing I saw, in fact.”

  “Which was?”

  “The whole purpose of a Sally port is to prevent access. The double gate ensures that no one can ever sprint or drive completely through without being stopped by a barrier.