Friendly Fire

by John Gilstrap

  “It proves that it’s possible,” Wendy said, seeming pleased to finally be back in the argument.

  “Your cells are singles,” Culligan said. “You have shower facilities, and the ADC can send over meals.”

  “Why not just make him a reservation at a motel?” Warren said. “That way he can have clean, crisp sheets every night and maybe a couple of drinks at the bar.”

  “I fear that we’re losing this argument,” Culligan said.

  “You fear? Oh, trust me, you’ve already lost it. I am not a prison. And by the way, that Garcia case cost a lot of money in terms of extra guard time.”

  “That was because he was a protected witness,” Culligan said. “That would not happen here.”

  Warren hated it when the other party in an argument was right.

  “Before you kick us out of your office, let me make the case,” Culligan said. “Give me sixty seconds.”

  “You’ve got forty-five.” Warren said it because it sounded like the right thing to say. In reality, he’d give the man five minutes if he needed it.

  “We have growing reason to believe that the man Ethan Falk killed had in fact brutalized him when he was a child. Detective Hastings is in Ashland, Ohio, as we speak, hoping to triangulate Ethan’s story with an unsolved homicide there that meets the time frame. The early indications are that she scored a home run.”

  “Then you must be thrilled,” Warren said. “You’ve got a perfect argument to take to court. You can claim temporary insanity, or maybe go for jury nullification, but there is nothing in what you have said, what Ethan has said, or what witnesses have said that could possibly justify self-defense. That means he’s likely in the environment that he’ll have to cope with for the rest of his life. I’ll stipulate that it sucks, but jails have long had a reputation for sucking. There’s no surprise here.”

  “If I may,” Wendy interjected. “This case is special. That young man—Ethan Falk—is in a very fragile state. It is my professional opinion that the continuing stress of daily violence will leave him permanently wounded, psychologically.”

  “Then petition the court,” Warren said.

  “They will deny my petition,” Culligan said.

  Warren raised his shoulders in an extended shrug.

  “This is more than that,” Wendy said. “That young man needs counseling, and he desperately needs to feel a sense of safety. At least of marginal safety. Daily beatings from which he cannot defend himself are hardly the way to sanity.”

  Warren looked to Jed. “Don’t they have isolation cells in the ADC anymore?”

  “They’re all taken, apparently,” Jed said.

  “And even with isolation, there is still the air of violence that permeates all aspects of that place,” Wendy said. “Look, if he gets convicted, then obviously he’s going to have to do whatever the system tells him he has to do. But let’s at least give him some coping skills. Let’s give him an opportunity for some kind of emotional recovery.”

  “We can make it work,” Jed said.

  Ah, so there it is, Warren thought. They’d already won Jed over.

  “Not to repeat myself,” Wendy said, “and not to step on dangerous territory, but you do know more than most how much difference a little rule-bending goes in taking a young man’s future from the dark side to the light.”

  This was a bad idea. Warren knew it in his heart. No matter how you cut it, this was going to add a burden to everyone involved in the incarceration cycle, from the food workers at the ADC all the way down through his own officers who had to keep track of a semipermanent resident. But Wendy had structured her argument in a way that he could not deny it.

  “Okay, Lieutenant Hackner,” he said to Jed, “make it happen.”

  The defense team beamed.

  “Don’t say anything,” Warren said with a trace of a smile. “This’ll take a couple of hours to put together, and I can change my mind as quickly as I made it.” He’d never do that, of course, but there was no harm in them thinking that he might.

  Warren ushered his visitors to the door, and as they left, an older man in civilian clothes stood from the corner of an empty desk he’d been sitting on. He wore a Braddock County Police Department ID tag, and he looked familiar, but Warren couldn’t quite place the face.

  “Excuse me, Chief,” he said in a timid tone. “My name is Cletus Bangstrom, sir, and I really need to talk with you.”

  * * *

  Jonathan spent the night ten miles away from the Hilton Garden Inn, at some all-suites place whose management team needed to think seriously about remodeling the rooms and hallways. Jonathan rarely stayed in the kinds of hotels that catered to business travelers, preferring higher-end digs when the situation allowed, but he couldn’t imagine that dirty and dreary was anyone’s preference. On the other hand, maybe with the economy the way it was, the market would not support the extra twenty or thirty bucks a night that would be needed for what ought to be done.

  He’d pulled himself out of the rack at a ridiculous hour so that he and Boxers could meet back at the airport for their return flight to Virginia. Boxers was already pre-flighting the Learjet when Jonathan arrived. He had just a little over a year left on his “lease” agreement with the plane’s owner, and as much as Big Guy hated the aircraft’s cramped size, Jonathan appreciated the convenience. If need be, he could always lease another plane through one of his cutout corporations, but Jonathan enjoyed the anonymity of this arrangement.

  Boxers was just alighting the fold-down stairs when Jonathan approached from behind.

  “Good morning, Big Guy,” Jonathan said cheerfully. It was always a good idea to give Boxers adequate notice when moving up behind him. “Did you have a successful night of passion?”

  “Nah. But I did get laid well and frequently.”

  “Congratulations,” Jonathan said. “Now maybe you’ll be less cranky.”

  Boxers climbed through the door and turned. “You know, Boss, you ought to try it some time.”

  “Stop,” Jonathan said. He’d had difficult times with relationships for as long as he and Big Guy had known each other. It never failed that just when he thought he had found a soul mate, she’d let him down. “Are we ready to go?”

  “We’ve got wings, fuel, and a working engine,” Big Guy said. “Can’t think of a thing that can stop us now. I filed a flight plan back to Virginia, so as far as I’m concerned, we’re all set. Are you riding up front like a big boy, or are you planning to lounge in the back?”

  If only for the optics of having two faces in the windscreen during takeoffs from real airports—as opposed to some of the less-than-optimum fields they’d used over the years—Jonathan always rode in the front seat until the plane was at altitude. More times than not, he’d stay there to keep Big Guy company during the flight. As far as Jonathan was concerned, the private plane was entirely about convenience and not at all about the creature comforts. Sometimes, though, when he had things to work on, he would ride in the back and spread out. This would be one of those days.

  “Somebody’s got to think the big thoughts so we can make the big bucks,” Jonathan said.

  “That’s why you don’t mind this piece-of-shit sardine can of an airplane,” Big Guy grumbled.

  Jonathan didn’t answer. He just waited for Boxers to squeeze himself into the pilot’s seat—it really was a comical thing to watch, a little like watching a calf crawl back into its mother’s womb—but he dared not laugh at the spectacle. For reasons that Jonathan had never cared to explore, Big Guy was oddly sensitive about his size. Once the pilot was in place, Jonathan maneuvered his way around the center console and settled easily into the right-hand seat.

  Jonathan wasn’t entirely useless on the controls in an emergency. Boxers had taught him enough over the years that he could land the beast in a pinch, but only if the weather was clear. He had no business flying on instruments. And zero desire to do so.

  Ten minutes later, they were airborne.

&n
bsp; “So what about you?” Boxers asked once the intensity of departure radio traffic had died down. “Did you accomplish anything with the hot young detective?”

  “I told her that she was on the right track about Ethan,” Jonathan said. “And I gave her the name of her John Doe.”

  Boxers gave him a look. “Was that wise? I thought Wolfie wanted you to keep that close to the chest.”

  “You heard Ven the other day. He’s been pretty thoroughly disappeared. Having the name isn’t going to help them much.”

  As Jonathan was unfastening his seat belt to head back to the passenger compartment, Boxers said, “Hey, Boss. What are your intentions with this Falk kid?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, as an anything-but-disinterested observer, it seems to me that you’re as preoccupied with him as you are of doing what we need to do for Wolverine.”

  “That’s because I think we can do both.”

  “Nope, not buying it. You deliberately showed your face to the detective who’s investigating the deaths of people we killed. You know I don’t pull your short hairs often, but that was reckless. As the guy on the other gun that night, I want to know what your intentions are. From the very beginning, my single ground rule was that I am not going to jail.”

  “Nobody’s going to jail,” Jonathan said. “We are no more traceable now than we’ve ever been. But I cannot sit still while Ethan Falk is dismissed as a looney tune when I know the reality.”

  “The reality is that we saved his life,” Boxers said. “We gave him eleven years of freedom that he otherwise would not have had. He chose to kill a guy who wasn’t doing anything wrong. Not then.”

  Jonathan sighed loudly. “Are you going to look me in the eye and tell me that you would not have done the same thing?”

  “Of course I would have done the same thing. But I wouldn’t have taken care of business in front of a world full of witnesses.”

  “So, he’s too much of a rookie at the whole vengeance thing,” Jonathan said.

  “Clearly.” Boxers took a couple of seconds to adjust a control that Jonathan couldn’t see. “You know, I’m not even a cheap imitation of Dom, but there’s something else. I think you should consider telling me what it is.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m not here to analyze you, Dig, and I sure as hell am not here to judge you, but I am the guy whose life depends on you having a solid head on your shoulders. There’s something eating you up. What is it?”

  Jonathan kept about a thousand different drawers in his head locked at all times. That was for good reason. Emotions only became real if you spoke of them. Otherwise, they remained fully deniable. Deniability was important to him. On the other hand, no one had a greater stake in Jonathan’s activities than Boxers. If there was a chance that he would not perform at one hundred percent when the shit got thick, then he shouldn’t be doing what he did.

  “You know I love what we do, right?” Jonathan said. “We’re damn good at it, and we’ve saved a lot of lives.”

  “Yes, we have,” Boxers said. “And we’ve taken a lot of lives, too.”

  “And I don’t give a rat’s ass about most of them.”

  “You’re not shedding angst for those assholes you offed at the motel the other day, are you?”

  “Oh, hell no,” Jonathan said. “Wake ’em up and I’ll shoot ’em again.” A beat. “Don’t you ever worry about this stuff getting too easy?”

  Boxers said, “We’ve never killed anyone who didn’t need killing.”

  “That’s not true,” Jonathan said. “I wish it was, but it’s not. That op in West Virginia was a total goat rope. A lot more people were killed and wounded than needed to be.”

  “That wasn’t us,” Boxers said. “That was Jolaine. Who knew she’d turn out to be psycho?”

  A while ago, Jonathan and his team—which had expanded to include a former personal security specialist named Jolaine Cage—invaded a terrorist compound in West Virginia, and the resulting slaughter had been nauseating.

  “That was my team,” Jonathan said. “Our team.”

  “I thought you settled all of this with Dom,” Boxers said. “You kicked her off the team, and now it’s all square.”

  “No, it’s not square,” Jonathan said. “She’s a murderer and she’s free. No justice at all.” The irony of his own words did not escape him. According to the law, his whole team was an assembly of mass murderers, but that was different. While often outside the law, he was rarely on the wrong side of it.

  Boxers took his time asking his next question. “So, do you want to quit?”

  “You know better than that.”

  “I don’t know that I do. I mean up until five minutes ago I thought I did, but now I’m wondering. Because you know, if you even consider the possibility of defeat—”

  “—defeat is guaranteed,” Jonathan said, finishing Big Guy’s statement. “Yeah, I know. I’m the one who told you that. This isn’t like that.”

  “What is it like, then?”

  Jonathan struggled to find the right way to put it. “Remember that snatch-and-grab we did outside of Islamabad? The Puzzle Palace needed a tribal leader to grill?”

  Boxers’ whole demeanor darkened. He didn’t say that he remembered, but thanks to the body language, he didn’t have to.

  “That little girl—a guard’s daughter, we figured—stepped out to protect her father just as your round was leaving the muzzle.” The result was a double-kill, but the damage a 7.62 millimeter bullet inflicts on a little girl is far more profound than what it does to an adult. Boxers went to a very, very dark place for quite a while after that incident.

  “It’s a little like that,” Jonathan went on. “Sometimes this shit just slips through the filters. You deal with it and then move on.”

  Jonathan chose to stay in the cockpit through the ensuing silence. Boxers was probably pissed that he dredged up that old memory, and he didn’t want to leave it unresolved.

  “So, what does any of that have to do with the Falk kid?” Boxers said after a couple of minutes.

  “He’s collateral damage. Just like the little girl in Islamabad, and just like those poor souls in West Virginia. Only, unlike those, we have a chance to fix the damage.”

  Boxers gave him a long, hard look. “How?”

  Jonathan gave him a wry smile. “I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. But I promise I won’t be reckless.”

  “I don’t even know what reckless means in this context,” Boxers said.

  “It means that I’ll figure out a way to help Ethan Falk without you getting sent to jail.”

  “What about you getting sent to jail?” Big Guy said. He seemed bothered by where this was going.

  “I figure I’ve got nothing to worry about,” Jonathan said with a smile as he arose from his seat to head back to the cabin. “If I get sent to jail, I’ve got you to break me out.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Three hours later, Jonathan and Boxers were back on the ground in Braddock County, maybe a half mile from the Caf-Fiend Coffee Shop where all of this began. With Konan’s help, Venice had done an analysis of Stepahin’s movements in the last hours of his life, based on the cell phone data that she’d been able to obtain. It was scary what one could learn from a SIM card, even when the location services were disabled.

  Stepahin had spent his last night at the Governor Spotswood Resort about ten miles from here. It wasn’t a high-end place, but it was no slouch, either. It was the kind of place a business owner would take midrange clients to, perhaps the banker who holds his loan. Built in the eighties, the place featured a lot of indoor water features and an elaborate indoor/outdoor pool, but the real pull of the place for most was the golf course. In Jonathan’s experience, avid golfers would suffer all means of discomfort and ugliness so long as they got to spend four hours chasing the little white pill around freshly mowed grass. He didn’t understand it himself, but he knew th
at among men his age, he was in the minority.

  According to information hacked from the BCPD, Venice learned that Stepahin had used the alias George Magruder when he’d checked in to the hotel, and that he’d stayed there for only the one night. Because he’d opted for automatic checkout, there was no way to know when he’d left. If the police department had determined his departure time, they hadn’t posted it to any source that Venice could tap into.

  From there, Stepahin had driven around for a while, rather aimlessly, to Jonathan’s eye. “I think he was in evasion mode,” he said to Boxers as they reviewed the course tracks uploaded to his laptop. They’d traded the Learjet for the Batmobile, and were parked in the far corner of a church parking lot. When looking for a secluded spot on a day that was not Sunday, church parking lots were always reliable. “Look at all the random turns and switchbacks.”

  The computer displayed Stepahin’s route as a bold red line laid over a map. A tiny red dot indicated the places where he’d stopped for more than a minute or so, and by clicking on the dot, you could pull up a time and date stamp. As one with a keen interest in remaining untraceable, Jonathan found it disconcerting that such tracking capability was available on the public market. Venice assured him that their communications were so encrypted that such tracking was not possible, but it still gave him pause. He took solace from the fact that Stepahin’s other phone—presumably his business phone—was likewise untraceable.

  As for phone calls made from the device Venice had hacked, every one of them seemed innocent. Restaurants, mainly. The data he accessed dealt primarily with news sites and online reservations. It seemed that the murdering asshole was also quite the foodie. The police were wearing out a lot of phone lines and shoe leather tracking those leads down, but in his gut, Jonathan sensed that they would go nowhere.

  “Look here,” Boxers said, pointing to a spot on the screen where Stepahin had spent a lot of time. The screen in that spot was a red smear. “What is that, a park?”