Friendly Fire

by John Gilstrap

  “You killed a guy,” Culligan said. “He wasn’t shooting at you, and he wasn’t actually kidnapping you, your story notwithstanding.”

  “But he—”

  Culligan silenced him with a raised hand. “Nope, not yet,” he said. “I’ve heard what you told the police when you were arrested. What part of ‘you have a right to remain silent’ and ‘anything you say can and will be used against you in court’ confused you?”

  “I needed to make them understand—”

  “No, you didn’t.” Culligan wasn’t trying to be mean, but he needed to get his client to understand that admitting to a murder was not a trivial thing. “From this point forward, up until the day you step into a courtroom, everything that transpires will be driven by perceived facts. Right now, there’s a growing list of witnesses who saw you charge out of a coffee shop, tackle a guy who’s smaller than you, and then stab him about a million times. Are you following me so far?”

  Ethan’s head twitched a noncommittal yes.

  “I prefer verbal responses,” Culligan said.

  “Yes, I’m following you.”

  “Excellent. Thanks to the legions of eyewitnesses, your confession doesn’t do as much harm as it otherwise might have. But quit telling yourself that you don’t belong in jail. For now, here’s exactly where you belong. What you need to consider—the thought that needs to consume your heart and soul—is whether you ought to die by lethal injection. Or worse, in my personal opinion, whether you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.”

  Ethan blanched—all but his eyes, which remained just as purple and bruised as they were before.

  Culligan pressed on. “From this point forward, you have no friends in this place—except for me and one other, but I’ll get to her in a minute. Say as little as you can to as few people as possible when you’re in here. There are some biker dudes in this place who could eat you whole in one bite and not even burp. You don’t talk to them because they’re sensitive to nuances that haven’t even occurred to you.”

  “I’ve been in jail before,” Ethan said somewhat defiantly.

  “Have you, now. And is that a point of pride? I’ve seen your jacket, Ethan, and no, you haven’t. The drunk tank ain’t what we in the business call real jail. You’re not getting out of here tomorrow, and you’re not getting out of here in a month. If everything goes right and with the gods smiling upon us, you might get out of here in twelve to fourteen months. That’s a long time to live with anybody, but when your roomies are mean sons of bitches who could kill you without breaking a sweat, the time gets particularly long.”

  Ethan’s jaw set as a swell of anger returned color to his face.

  “I’m not done yet,” Culligan said, sensing that the kid was about to say something. “That’s why you don’t talk to other inmates unless you have to. And in not talking to them, find a way to show respect. Don’t know what to tell you specifically on that one, but you’ll be happy if you figure it out. The other people you don’t talk to is anyone in a uniform. I’ll say it again. Anyone in a uniform. Good morning, please, and thank you are fine, but ‘have a good day’ crosses the line. Everything you say and do in this place is on the record. It’s watched and it’s recorded. Whatever you confide and whoever you confide it to are all admissible in court.”

  Concern returned to Ethan’s face. “Not this, right?”

  “No, not this. Attorney-client privilege is still the rule. What you tell your psychologist is also protected.”

  Confusion. “I don’t have a psychologist anymore.”

  “Might not have been a bad continuing investment,” Culligan said. He tried selling the line with a smile, but it was too little too late. “Anyway, you’re going to.”

  “I don’t want one.”

  “Oh, yes, you do. Her name is Wendy Adams, and you’re going to tell her everything. Even stuff you don’t want to tell me, you want to tell her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because from where I sit, you being a little touched in the head is the most viable strategy to get you sprung before you’re eighty.”

  “Not guilty by reason of insanity?”

  Culligan weighed his answer. “I’m not sure if that’s what the exact wording would be, but that’s the general theme, yes.”

  “So, I’ll spend the rest of my life with the world thinking I’m crazy?”

  “Baby steps, Ethan. Consider the relative merits of people thinking you’re a bit psycho as opposed to being convinced that you’re a murderer.”

  “But I’m not crazy.”

  “And you say you’re not a murderer, either.” Culligan sensed that the conversation was turning darker than he wanted it to, so he waved the topic away as if shooing a fly. “Put all of that on a back burner. All of those considerations are for later. Wendy will be visiting you in the next couple of days. Just promise me you’ll talk to her.”

  “I can’t afford to pay her.”

  “Don’t worry about that. She’s done pro bono work for me before, and she’ll do it for me again. Won’t cost you a penny.”

  Ethan scowled. “Why would someone do that for me?”

  Culligan matched the angle of the kid’s head exactly. “Well, if it’s important, and you really need to know, she won’t do it for you. She’ll do it for me.”

  “Why?”

  Culligan waited for it.

  “Oh. You two are . . . friends.”

  Culligan let it go. “So, are we good? You’ll talk with Doctor Wendy when she shows up?”

  A shrug, the ultimate gesture of noncommitment. “Sure.”

  “Good. One last thing. The Commonwealth is likely to send a shrink of their own to evaluate you. Don’t know who it’s going to be, but whoever it is, they’ll give you some line about being on your side, and about being off the record, but don’t believe it.”

  “The cops can lie to me in here and it’ll stand up in court?”

  “Absolutely,” Culligan said. “Cops, guards, lawyers, psychologists, every one of them can lie, and everything you say will still be held against you.” He felt a pang of guilt and backed up a little. “Well, okay, the prosecution’s psychologist won’t reveal the specific things you say, but what they will do is report to the court whether or not, in their professional opinion, you are competent to stand trial.” He leaned in closer. “Hint: Everybody is always competent to stand trial in their eyes. And then that shrink will work with the prosecution on ways to counter everything and anything we try to put together for your defense.”

  “So, what am I supposed to say?”

  “You answer the questions that anyone else would answer, but if the shrink starts sniffing around the details of your past, or the kidnapping you allege, I need you to lock up and tell them you want to see your lawyer before you answer any questions.”

  “And they’ll do that?”

  “Yes. Well, they might sniff around your answer a couple of times, but once you invoke your right to speak to your lawyer, they’ll stop.”

  “But you said they can lie.”

  “Not about this.” Culligan smiled. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “It gets confusing.”

  * * *

  Jonathan Grave loved his office atop the converted firehouse in Fisherman’s Cove, Virginia. Featuring dark woods and leather furniture, it had the feel and the look of a gentlemen’s club. The windows looked out on the marina, where the masts of pleasure boats seemed to be engaged in a slow-motion sword fight. Down to the right, maybe four blocks from the front door, crews of commercial fishing vessels and dock workers toiled to keep the residents of Virginia’s Northern Neck—and parts beyond—stocked with seafood. Jonathan wished sometimes that he was more of a boat person than he was. It seemed wasteful to possess such a view yet enjoy so little of the activities. He found peace in the rhythms of the waves and the masts and in the foreverness of the horizon.

  Much as he enjoyed the view of the world through the windows behind him, he desperately hated the vie
w of the piles of papers that cluttered his desk. As president of Security Solutions, a major player in the world of high-end private investigations, he had to stay at least reasonably versed in various ongoing investigations, and he most certainly had to sign all the checks, though even that was something of a formality.

  While most of the administrative matters were handled by Venice Alexander, and most of the standard investigatory issues were expertly managed by Gail Bonneville—his one-time nemesis and subsequent lover (until they broke up—no awkwardness there! )—Jonathan had learned from his father a long time ago that one should never cede control of one’s money to a third party. It was one thing to write the checks—any bookkeeper could do that—but it was something else entirely to sign them. He kept that duty for himself.

  And there were a lot of checks to be signed. Between the 0300 mission to rescue the Johnson girl, and an op right before that to separate a Mexican banker from some mean-spirited drug lords, he’d been away from the office for ten days, and he was shocked by the speed with which administrivia could stack up. The good news was that Venice and Gail both had arranged their respective stacks of paper more or less in the order of their importance.

  Security Solutions was in every sense a legitimate private investigation firm, providing confidential services to some of the world’s most recognizable companies, none of which knew anything about the covert side of the business which interested Jonathan infinitely more. The firm’s name was not well-known to the private investigations industry, but it was known among the quarters where it mattered. Security Solutions specialized in obtaining the most sensitive kinds of information through means that were always successful and rarely discussed. That meant the kinds of fees that allowed him to pay his employees very, very well.

  Jonathan’s office resided in a corner suite that he called The Cave. He shared the space with Venice and Boxers, the latter of whom rarely spent much time in the office. Of everyone on the payroll, Boxers was the most . . . action-oriented.

  A light rapping on his open office door pulled his eyes from his papers, happy for some relief. Venice stood in the doorway with Dom D’Angelo. “Have you got a minute?” Venice asked.

  He didn’t like the expression on her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to talk,” Dom said.

  “Uh-oh.” Jonathan had known Venice since he was a teenager and she was a little girl with a crush. Her mother—Mama Alexander—had officially been Jonathan’s family housekeeper, but in reality became Jonathan’s surrogate mother after his own mom died when he was very young. He’d known Venice long enough to translate her facial expressions into emotions, and she was upset. Dom had been Jonathan’s roommate through college, and close friend ever since.

  They started for the guest chairs in front of his desk, but he stood and diverted them to the conversation group in front of the fireplace. “Let’s get comfortable,” he said. “My back’s beginning to ache anyway.” That’s what happened when you spent a career jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. His chair of choice was a wooden Hitchcock rocker marked with the Seal of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, his and Dom’s alma mater. He swung it around a few degrees so he could face them as they sat next to each other on the green leather love seat.

  “Who died?” Jonathan asked. Sometimes, the quickest, most merciful way to the point was to steal the punchline.

  They seemed startled. “No one,” Venice said. “It’s not like that.”

  “Well, sort of,” Dom corrected. As was his habit when off duty, Dom wore a regular collared shirt and jeans.

  “Someone is sort of dead?”

  “I mean that’s not the point,” Venice said.

  “Then how ’bout you get to the point,” Jonathan said.

  “Do you remember Ethan Falk?” Venice asked.

  Jonathan looked to Dom and scowled. “Why does that name ring such a loud bell?”

  “He was the precious cargo on a rescue mission about ten, eleven years ago.”

  Jonathan winced, feeling busted. He’d made it a point over the years not to think much about the people he rescued. They were all just PCs—precious cargo—the points of the missions for which he would risk his life. To get too close was to lose perspective, and getting distracted was the surest way to come home dead.

  “James Stepahin,” Dom said.

  And that did it. Jonathan rarely forgot a bad guy. “Kid-toucher, right? Sold boys into slavery?”

  “That’s the guy,” Dom confirmed.

  “And Ethan was the PC we snatched.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay. What about him?”

  “James Stepahin was killed yesterday,” Venice explained.

  “Good,” Jonathan said. The details of the operation were coming back to him. “He and his buddies were sick sons of bitches. I think we toasted one of them and one got away. That was Stepahin, right?”

  “Three were killed and one got away,” Venice corrected. Jonathan admired that she had just pulled that detail from memory.

  “So, why the long faces? Where’s the champagne?” Jonathan shot an uncomfortable glance toward Dom. “Meaning no disrespect, but I think we can agree that Stepahin won’t be impacting Saint Peter’s day.”

  “This is where Ethan Falk comes in,” Venice said. “He’s the one who killed him.”

  Jonathan laughed. “Really? Well, good for him. Justice the way it’s supposed to be done.”

  “The kid is being charged with murder,” Dom said.

  Something snagged in Jonathan’s gut. He said nothing, choosing instead for them to play the rest of their hand.

  “He’s trying to claim self-defense,” Venice explained. “He told the police about his kidnapping and his rescue, but no one’s listening.”

  Jonathan brought both hands to his head and pulled his hair back from his forehead. “Because there’s no record,” he said.

  The others nodded in unison.

  “Well, shit,” Jonathan said.

  Chapter Six

  At Jonathan’s request, Venice summoned Boxers from his home in Washington, and within two hours, the team sat in the War Room, a teak conference room that sported every high-tech gadget that Venice thought worthwhile to own. She sat at the end of the long oval table, at what Jonathan called the command center, directly across from the enormous screen that dominated the far wall. Jonathan sat at the long side to her right, his back to the door. Boxers sat directly across, and Dom sat on Jonathan’s right.

  The big screen displayed images of four men who looked only vaguely familiar. They were black-and-white mug shots of four tired-looking white guys, aged between twenty-five and thirty-five, their images displayed as a grid, Brady Bunch style. They all wore the same sullen expression of every mug shot.

  “Which one’s our boy?” Jonathan asked.

  “The one on the bottom right,” Venice said. That guy fell between the others age-wise, and he by far looked like the most intelligent of the lot. The measurement scroll on the wall in the background showed him to be just a touch over six feet tall, and he sported a shock of blond hair combed straight back in a style reminiscent of old greaser movies. “The other three are Gabriel Potts, Raymond Stanns, and Samuel Din-klage.”

  “They’re the ones we killed, right?” Boxers asked.

  “Better be careful, Box,” Dom said. “When you’ve killed so many that you can’t remember what they looked like, it might mean you have a problem.”

  “People look a lot different when parts of their heads are missing, Padre,” Boxers fired back. “Judge not lest ye be judged, remember?”

  Dom held up his hands in surrender. “No offense intended.”

  “Those assholes were slave traders,” Big Guy pressed. “They sold kids to the highest bidder. My bullets let them off better than they deserved.”

  Dom looked to Jonathan. “Slave traders? Is that right?”

  Jonathan looked down at the table. “Some of the baddest bad guys
we’ve ever run across.”

  “But we didn’t know that at the beginning,” Venice prompted.

  “No, not at the beginning,” Jonathan concurred. “The case came to us as they usually do, through the normal cutouts.”

  “We were a lot easier to reach back then, too,” Boxers said.

  “True.” The higher their profile got, the thicker and more numerous the safeguards. “We got word through the kid’s father that he’d been kidnapped.”

  “Lawyer,” Venice said.

  “What?”

  “The father didn’t contact us, his lawyer did.”

  Jonathan shrugged. “Fine, his lawyer.” A memory bell dinged. “There was something strange about the contact.” He looked to Venice.

  She clicked a few keys on her computer to bring up whatever she was using for notes. “The first contact was to make a phone call, but when we made the call, they pretended that we had the wrong number. Then they tried to call that number back and were stymied by the rolling numbers we use to prevent detection.”

  “That’s right,” Jonathan said. “I got pissed off that they were trying to double-cross us somehow. At least that’s what I thought at the time.”

  “Another day passed before they reached out again,” Venice said, picking up her momentum. “I suggested we ignore them, but you insisted that we give them a second chance.”

  “We were still trying to learn our own business,” Jonathan explained. He heard the apology in his voice. “Jeeze, that really was a long time ago.”

  “They wanted a face-to-face, but you drew the line on that,” Venice continued. “It turned out that eleven-year-old Ethan Falk left school on his own to walk to football practice. His folks didn’t know he was missing until he didn’t come home for dinner.”

  “Did he show up at the football practice?” Dom asked.

  Venice shook her head. “No. And the coach didn’t call because why would he? Kids miss practice all the time.”