Friendly Fire

by John Gilstrap

  “You killed those men.”

  “Yes, I did. They’ll never hurt anyone ever again.”

  “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

  Jonathan didn’t know how to read the emotion in her words, and he didn’t much try. At this point in a mission, his job was simple. He needed to return the precious cargo to her family and move on. He was not a counselor and he was not a soother of souls. In his experience, those who were so drawn were born with a radically different skill set than his.

  “I didn’t ask you to do that,” Mindy repeated.

  “I heard you the first time,” Jonathan said. “But it’s done anyway. Here, let me see your hands. I’ll take those ties off.” As he spoke, he lifted out the three-inch folding blade that was clipped to the pocket of his jeans and opened it with a one-handed flourish.

  The suddenness startled Mindy. She retreated from him.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Jonathan said. “I’m just going to cut the plastic away.”

  “Stay away from me.”

  Jonathan sighed. “Fine.” He folded the knife and put it back in his pocket.

  “Who are you? You’re not the police.”

  “That is true,” Jonathan said with what he hoped was a friendly smile. “We are definitely not the police. But we are on your side. We came here just to save you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re the good guys,” Jonathan said. She didn’t need to know anything about his business arrangement with her father, and she didn’t need to know anything about his operations. These were the times when he most missed his days with the Unit, doing the official bidding of Uncle Sam. Back then, the Army psychologists would take care of the emotional damage, and all he had to concentrate on was the physical stuff.

  Right now, their biggest concern was to get rid of this vehicle and transfer over to the Batmobile. All the screaming and shooting almost certainly attracted attention, and if anyone saw them hustling Mindy into the backseat of the Ford, they would conclude that Jonathan and Boxers were the bad guys. So far, he heard no sirens or indicators that word of the shoot-out had made it to the authorities, but any delay would buy him only minutes.

  They’d stashed the Batmobile in the bay of a body shop owned by Marcus Glenning, a former MARSOC operator who’d lost a leg in Afghanistan and retired on disability to pursue his passion for cars in the community of residents who would most appreciate his sacrifice. Marcus and Jonathan had crossed paths a few times back in the day, and Marcus was willing to do his old friend a favor without asking too many questions. Within an hour of trading the Ford for the Hummer, the Explorer would be a pile of parts awaiting resale.

  Jonathan pressed his transmit button. “Mother Hen, Scorpion. Call the hammer man and tell him we’re two minutes out.”

  “Calling now,” Venice said.

  Jonathan turned to his precious cargo. “Mindy, I need you to listen to me. I need you to trust me. Your father sent my friend and me to rescue you from those bad men—the ones who hit you and tied your hands. Can I cut that band off your wrist now?”

  She held her hands out. He opened his knife again and carefully slid the razor-sharp blade under the plastic band, near her thumbs, and sliced it away. The deep red lines in her skin angered him. Mindy pulled her hands back and rubbed her wrists.

  Jonathan continued, “In a few minutes, we’re going to pull into a garage and we’re all going to transfer to another truck. That’s the truck we’re going to use to take you home.”

  “How do I know I can believe you?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that. Let’s start with the fact that I killed the men who hurt you. That’s got to buy me something.” He smiled, showing off his fake buck teeth. “I need you to cooperate with the transfer, okay? No more kicking and screaming, no trying to run away. We’re still in danger, and need to move quickly. Will you do that for me?”

  “Are you going to kill anybody else?”

  Jonathan scowled. It was an odd question. “I hope not. I’ll certainly try not to.” From the way she pulled back, he saw that it was not the right answer. “Let me put it this way. The only way I would kill anyone else would be to protect you from harm.”

  Something clicked behind her eyes. “So, you’re, like, my bodyguards?”

  He winked. “We are exactly like your bodyguards.”

  “Promise you’re telling the truth?”

  He drew an X across his chest with his finger. “Cross my heart.”

  Mindy thought some more, then nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll trust you.”

  Jonathan bladed his hand and held it out. “Let’s shake on it.”

  She smiled as she took his hand and shook it.

  “Great,” Jonathan said. “Now, one more thing. Don’t talk to anyone other than Big Guy and me. There might be people in the garage, and I don’t want you getting involved in conversations.”

  Her eyes grew larger. Jonathan took that as a yes.

  “Hey, Boss,” Big Guy said from the front seat. “We’re here.”

  They pulled around to the back of the body shop, where Marcus Glenning had left two bay doors open. The one on the right was empty, and the nose of the Batmobile peeked out of the one on the left. Jonathan wasn’t sure what Glenning had done with his employees—or with himself, for that matter—but the place was devoid of people. Boxers slipped the Ford through the opening and pulled to a stop.

  “Okay, Mindy, here we go,” Jonathan said. He opened the door on the driver’s side and Mindy slipped out right after him. Ten seconds later, they were inside the rolling fortress. Ten seconds after that, Boxers cranked the engine and they were on their way.

  “Score another one for the good guys,” Boxers said.

  They drove north and west for over an hour to a roadside rest stop near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Mindy said nothing along the way, and Jonathan made no effort to get her to talk. She’d seen a lot and endured a lot, and the fact that she was safe now—a fact that she likely did not believe one hundred percent—wouldn’t do much to diminish the nightmares that lay in her future.

  Big Guy pulled into one of the regular slots and threw the transmission into Park. Only one other car sat in the lot.

  “We’re almost done, Mindy,” Jonathan said. “I’m going to introduce you to one more person, and that person is going to take you to your parents. Are you ready?”

  Mindy stared at the back of the seat in front of her. If she’d heard him, she made no indication.

  “Mindy?”

  “I heard you.” She turned her head to face him. “Why is this happening to me?”

  Jonathan recognized his cue to say something wise and soothing. If only he owned those words. “You know what, Mindy?” he said with a sigh. “There are a lot of bad people in the world. You just happened to cross paths with them. Sometimes, there is no why.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “You killed those men.”

  Jonathan let the words hang. Then he opened his door. “Come on,” he said. “I’m going to introduce you to one of the nicest men in the world, and he’ll be much better at answering your questions.” As he spoke, one of Jonathan’s oldest and dearest friends unfolded himself from a slightly worse-for-wear Kia sedan and walked toward the Batmobile. The man wore a black suit, a clerical collar, and a big, kind smile. His name was Father Dom D’Angelo.

  Jonathan stepped down out of the Hummer and turned to help Mindy do the same. She looked frightened again. “Mindy, this is Father O’Malley, a man I’ve known since I was in college.”

  With a trim build, thick black hair, and dark brown eyes, Dom looked like an Italian movie star. He stooped to get eye-to-eye with the little girl. He didn’t reach out a hand, and he kept his distance. In addition to his role as a priest and pastor of Saint Katherine’s Church in Fisherman’s Cove, he was also a licensed psychologist. Jonathan figured that the distance he kept had something to do with the psychologist part.

  “Hello, M
indy,” Dom said. “I know you’ve had a really rough few days. Are you ready to go home?”

  Mindy looked up to Jonathan. “I thought you were going to take me home.”

  Jonathan stooped down, too. “That’s not something I can do,” he said. “That’s for Father O’Malley to do.”

  “Is it because you killed those men?”

  Jonathan glanced to Dom, who arched his eyebrows. You’re on your own.

  Jonathan said, “Sort of. Besides, Father O is a much nicer man.” He sold it with a smile.

  Without warning, Mindy threw her arms around Jonathan’s neck and hugged him. “I want you to take me.”

  Jonathan was stunned—both by the suddenness of her move and by the pressure he felt behind his eyes. He returned the hug. “You’re safe now, sweetie, I promise,” he said. He kissed the top of her head and eased her away. “Do you think for a minute that I would put you in the care of someone I didn’t trust?”

  “Please?” Her lip trembled.

  “I can’t,” Jonathan said.

  “Hey, Mindy,” Dom said, rising to his full height. “Time to say good-bye to Scorpion and say hello again to your parents. We’re only about an hour away.”

  Jonathan stood, too, and turned away. It made no sense to prolong the inevitable. Besides, if he ended up shedding a tear, Boxers would never let him hear the end of it.

  Chapter Five

  Of all the Northern Virginia police jurisdictions, defense attorney German P. Culligan respected Braddock County the most. Of all the prosecutors, however, theirs resided on the bottom of the list. J. Daniel Petrelli could not stand in front of enough television cameras, couldn’t spout enough crush-the-criminals rhetoric, and couldn’t play hardball any more aggressively in the courtroom. Elected in the standard four-year voting cycle, he’d wormed his way into office six times now.

  Combined with the limp-wristed board of supervisors that governed the county, Petrelli had begun to think of himself in somewhat Caesarean terms, consistently filing the toughest charges against even minor infractions. The assistant Commonwealth’s attorneys who worked for him were well aware that the sole path to promotion lay in being equally intractable. It all played so well with the voters.

  It didn’t, however, play very well with the police department. The chief, Warren Michaels, famously despised J. Daniel, and he encouraged his police officers to serve as a kind of Petrelli antidote, at least to the extent that they could. That cooperative attitude often inured to benefit German Culligan and his clients. He was hoping that would be the case today. The court had appointed him to represent a crazy kid named Ethan Falk, who’d apparently attacked a man without reason and stabbed him with a carving knife. Fifteen times.

  The uniformed cop in the greeting window smiled as he approached. “Good afternoon, Counselor,” she said.

  “Hello, Gloria. You’re looking well as always. I have appointment with Lieutenant Hackner and a Detective Pam Hastings.”

  Gloria buzzed the security door. Culligan walked through it and into the hallway that led to the department’s administrative offices. Five years ago, the police department had relocated from its dingy digs near the old courthouse into this brightly lit cube farm. Lots of blues and greens gave Culligan the feel that the county had spent a dollar or two on an industrial psychologist to design the décor, and he was certain that in ten years that same décor would make the place look dated as hell.

  “Just wait in the conference room, Mr. Culligan,” Gloria said, but he was already on his way. He waited in the same conference room every time he visited. On the way, he stopped at the communal coffeepot and helped himself to a cup. Two sugars, and a teaspoon of the white poison that they called creamer. Then he headed to the fishbowl that was the conference room.

  The detective and her lieutenant arrived together after about five minutes. Culligan had known Jed Hackner for years, but Detective Hastings was a new face to him. Tallish and blondish, she looked a little like a cheerleader poured into a pantsuit. He sensed that she knew that, thus explaining the hard set of her mouth and the stiffness of her bearing. Overcompensation.

  After the obligatory dance of introductions, they got down to business. “How did you get this dog of a case, German?” Hackner asked.

  “Beats me. The judge spins the Rolodex and my card pops to the top.” As a sole practitioner, Culligan looked to court appointments the way senior citizens look at a Social Security check: Not really enough to live on, but a reliable source of cash. “How big a dog is it?”

  Hackner deferred to Pam Hastings. “We’ve got at least two dozen eyewitnesses who saw Ethan Falk race out of a coffee shop, tackle a man in the parking lot, and stab him fifteen times.”

  “Don’t forget about the confession,” Hackner prompted.

  Pam chuckled. “Oh, yeah. And he confessed to the whole thing.”

  Culligan couldn’t keep himself from smiling. “I presume you jumped through all the proper hoops?”

  “Mirandized him and everything,” Pam said. “Twice, actually. Once when it was just the two of us, and then a second time in front of a witness.”

  Culligan took a note, not that there was much to forget. “When I meet with Mr. . . .”

  “Falk.” The cops said it together.

  “When I meet with Mr. Falk, I’m not going to see a lot of bruising from where you beat the confession out of him?” He’d meant the statement as a joke, an allusion to the growing media-driven zeitgeist that badge-bearers were bad guys, but what he saw in their faces gave him pause. “What?”

  “He attacked one of the officers downstairs as they were processing him,” Hackner said. “It got pretty violent. It took more than a couple of stick-hits to get him to settle down.”

  “Bones broken?”

  Hackner said, “Not that we know of.”

  “Has he seen a doctor?”

  “He refused,” Pam said.

  “But you offered medical treatment?”

  “He refused,” she repeated. “We can show you the security tapes if you want.”

  Culligan shook his head. “Maybe in time.” Culligan never saw the prosecution team as enemies. Adversaries in the courtroom, sure, but at least in Braddock County, everyone pulled on the same oar in favor of justice. Even J. Daniel Petrelli, though his version of justice always came with a harsh spin and five exclamation points.

  “When he confessed, did he tell you why he attacked the guy?”

  “Some bullshit story about a kidnapping when he was eleven years old,” Hackner said.

  Culligan’s head snapped up. “I’m sorry, how old did you say Ethan is?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “I don’t understand. Did the victim—what’s his name?”

  “We don’t know,” Hackner said. “John Doe for now.”

  “Did Mr. Doe just get out of prison or something? Was there a vendetta against him?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  Culligan put his pen down and shifted in his seat. “Please don’t be difficult. Why did Ethan allegedly kill a man twelve years after he was kidnapped?”

  “The suspect just had a birthday,” Hackner clarified. “So, it was closer to eleven years ago, or so he claims. That’s the bullshit part. There never was a kidnapping.”

  “He made it up?”

  “It’s not a complicated thing to look up kidnappings,” Hackner said. “He gave us a date and a place, and we checked both local and federal records, and there’s nothing there.”

  “Why would he make something like that up?” Culligan asked. It made no sense.

  Hackner rolled his eyes. “Maybe when you look down at yourself and you see your hands and legs covered in someone else’s blood, you feel the urge to make up a quick story. How the hell should I know?”

  Culligan looked to Pam, whose eyes were somewhere other than the conversation. “Is that what my client told you at the time of his arrest?” he asked. “That he was kidnapped?” If he didn’t have as solid a r
elationship with Hackner as he did, the lieutenant might have taken offense at being second-guessed. As it was, Hackner looked away. “Detective Hastings?”

  She scowled as she inhaled deeply through her nose. “That is what he told me.”

  “But?” There seemed clearly to be more.

  “It was the way he told me,” she said. “He seemed genuinely flabbergasted to be put under arrest. Like killing the John Doe was the most obvious thing in the world.”

  Culligan scratched the back of his head. It seemed that every new answer deepened his sense of confusion. “What are you telling me?” he asked. “Or maybe what are you not telling me is the better question. I’m kind of lost here.”

  “I’m telling you that I believe him.”

  Culligan looked to Hackner. “You said no such kidnapping ever happened.”

  “Let me restate it then,” Pam said. “I think that Ethan Falk really believes it happened.”

  “Just as he might believe that he’s Santa Claus,” Hackner said. “Believing doesn’t make it true.”

  Pam wouldn’t back down. “You asked.”

  “Because I need to know.”

  “He could be delusional, of course,” Pam said. She seemed to be arguing with herself. “That’ll take a shrink to figure out. But I saw the raw emotion in the heat of the moment, and I’ll bet everything that if you could climb into his head and look around, you’ll see pictures that are scary as hell.”

  Culligan looked over to Hackner, and then back to Pam. “Okay, then. Anything else I need to know?”

  “Nope,” Hackner said, and he stood. The meeting was over.

  * * *

  Ethan Falk did not look like a murderer. In Culligan’s experience, only sixty percent of criminals had the criminal look about them—a much lower number than it used to be, now that tattoo sleeves were no longer the markers solely of prisoners and gangbangers—but precious few had the look of innocence that this kid projected. He was terrified. And with good reason. Blood still seeped through the bandage on his cheek, and Culligan had seen raccoons with lighter coon’s eyes than Ethan.

  “I don’t belong here,” Ethan said after the introductions were finished. The guards had refused the attorney’s request to remove the shackles that held the kid’s hands to the chain around his waist.