Life or Death

by Michael Robotham

The tape was ripped away, tearing at his hair and skin. Urban had taken Audie’s wallet. He pulled out the driver’s licence and social security cards, dropping them in the dirt. He found a photograph of Belita – one taken in a photo booth at Sea World with Belita sitting on Audie’s lap. Urban tossed the picture into the water, where it spun like a floating leaf, pushed by the breeze. Squatting next to Audie, he draped his hands on his thighs.

  ‘Do you know why you’re here?’

  Audie didn’t answer. Urban signalled his nephews, who pulled Audie to his feet. Urban punched him hard in the solar plexus so that Audie’s whole upper body jackknifed forward and he cried out.

  ‘You think you’re smarter than me,’ said Urban.

  Gape-mouthed, Audie shook his head.

  ‘You think I’m some ignorant spick, who doesn’t know the difference between his ass and a hole in the ground.’

  ‘No,’ Audie gasped.

  ‘I trusted you. I let you get close to me.’

  Urban’s voice shook and his eyes shone. He nodded to his nephews, who dragged Audie to the edge of the water, forcing him to kneel. Audie could see his reflection in the smooth, glass-like surface; see himself aging, growing old in the space of a few seconds. He saw his father’s white hair. Wrinkles. Disappointment. Regret.

  His face touched the water and the image dissolved. He attempted to twist away from the hands, but they pushed his head deeper. He kicked with his feet and tried to keep his mouth shut, but soon his body cried out for air and his brain reacted instinctively. He drew breath, flooding his lungs. Air bubbled from his mouth past his eyes. His head was jerked upward. He coughed and spluttered, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish. They plunged him forward again and leaned their weight on the back of his neck, pushing his head so deep that his forehead touched the bottom. The more he struggled, the weaker he grew. He grabbed at their legs and belts, trying to crawl up their bodies like a man clinging to a rope on a cliff face.

  He lost consciousness and didn’t remember being dragged from the water. When he came to he was lying on his stomach, spitting water, his whole body heaving. Urban squatted next to him, cupping the back of Audie’s neck in a fatherly way. He pressed his mouth closer, his breath like a feather against Audie’s skin.

  ‘I let you come into my house, eat my chow, drink my booze … I treated you like a son. I would have made you one. But you betrayed me.’

  Audie didn’t answer.

  ‘Do you know the story of Oedipus? He murders his father and marries his mother and brings disaster upon his kingdom, all because of a prophecy made when he was born. The old king tried to stop it happening. He took the baby and abandoned it on a mountainside, but a shepherd rescued Oedipus and raised him, so he grew up and he fulfilled the prophecy. I do not believe in these myths, but I can see why they last. Perhaps the old king should have killed Oedipus. Perhaps the shepherd should have minded his own business.’

  Urban squeezed Audie’s neck more firmly. ‘Belita loved me until you showed up. I rescued her. I educated her. I gave her clothes and put a roof over her head.’ He waved his finger back and forth. ‘I could have filled her stomach with balloons of cocaine and sent her back and forth across the border, but instead I let her share my bed.’

  He looked at his nephews and back at Audie, raising his voice again. ‘If I ever see you again, I will have you killed. If you ever come near Belita, I will have you both killed. If you want to be a martyr, I can arrange that. If you want to die like Romeo and Juliet, I can make that possible. But it will not happen quickly. I have associates who can keep someone alive for weeks, drilling holes through bones, pouring acid onto skin, scooping out eyes, severing limbs. They enjoy it. For them it is natural. You will plead for death, but it won’t come. You will renounce everything you have ever believed. You will give up your secrets. You will beg and plead and promise, but they will not listen. Understand?’

  Audie nodded.

  Urban looked at his fists, examining the broken skin, then he turned and walked toward the car.

  Audie called after him. ‘I’m owed money.’

  ‘That has been forfeited.’

  ‘What about my things?’

  ‘I hope they’re flammable.’ Urban had opened the car door. He took his coat from the seat and shrugged it on, tugging at the sleeves. ‘If I were you, I’d forget about Belita. She’s been used more often than a jailhouse condom.’

  ‘Then let her go.’

  ‘What sort of signal would that send?’

  ‘I love her,’ blurted Audie.

  ‘That’s a wonderful story,’ replied Urban. He nodded to his nephews and each of them swung a boot into Audie, one kicking his stomach, the other his back. The pain almost shook loose his bowels.

  ‘Have a nice life,’ said Urban thickly. ‘Be thankful.’

  39

  In the basement of the Dreyfus County Criminal Court there are records of every case tried before a judge dating back 150 years: legal briefs, trial transcripts, exhibit lists and statements – a vast repository of bleak stories and black deeds.

  The woman sitting behind the screen is called Mona and her hair is darker than midnight, piled so high it makes her look top-heavy. She sets aside a half-molested sandwich and looks up at Desiree. ‘What can I do for you, sugar?’

  Desiree has filled out a form asking for archival material.

  Mona looks at the request. ‘This might take a while.’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  Having countersigned the form and stamped it twice, Mona rolls it into a tube and tucks it inside a canister, which is popped into a chute and sucked downward. She tucks a pen behind her ear and studies Desiree more closely. ‘How long you been with the Bureau?’

  ‘Six years.’

  ‘They make you jump all the hurdles?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘I bet they did. I bet you had to be twice as good as any man.’ Mona gets up and leans forward, glancing at Desiree’s shoes.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  Mona looks at her sheepishly and points out the waiting room.

  Desiree takes a seat and flicks through several out-of-date magazines, periodically checking the watch on her wrist, which belonged to her father. He gave it to Desiree on the day she graduated, telling her that she had to wind it up every night and think of her parents when she did.

  ‘I was late for work only once in my working life,’ he had told her.

  ‘On the day I was born,’ she replied.

  ‘You know the story?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy,’ she laughed. ‘I know the story.’

  The cavernous archive smells of copier fluid, floor polish, paper and leather bindings. Dust motes are trapped in the bright beams of light that angle from the high windows.

  She gets a coffee from the machine, but flinches at the first taste. Discarding the cup, she chooses a soft drink. Her stomach rumbles. When did she last eat?

  Mona calls her name and slides a dozen folders through an opening in the screen.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Oh, no, sugar.’ She points behind her. A trolley is stacked with boxes. ‘And I got two more just like that one.’

  Desiree finds a desk in the reading room and pulls out a pad. She begins reading about the robbery, laying it out page by page, threading the details together as if editing a film, cutting and splicing the footage in her mind. Photographs. Timelines. Autopsy reports. Statements.

  The truck was hijacked just north of Conroe shortly after 3 p.m. The security firm Armaguard had a contract to collect the damaged bills from banks and credit facilities, which were then to be delivered to a data-destruction facility in Illinois.

  The delivery schedule and route were changed every two weeks, which meant that somebody tipped them off. The guard who died in the robbery, Scott Beauchamp, was suspected of being the inside man, but no evidence was presented at the trial. His phone records and movements were investigated as agencies searched for the final gang
member and the missing money, but the only evidence against Beauchamp was circumstantial.

  Audie Palmer pleaded guilty, but refused to reveal the names of anyone else involved. He didn’t give up his brother or implicate the security guard. Because of his injuries it was three months before police could interview Audie and another eight months before he was well enough to stand trial.

  Desiree turns to the witness statements. According to police logs, at approximately 20.13 – five hours after the hijacking – a DSCO patrol deputy and his partner on a routine patrol observed an armoured truck parked on the northern service road of the I-45 at League Line Road. While running the licence plate, the deputy noticed a dark-coloured SUV pull up with a single occupant. The rear doors of the armoured truck were opened and bags were transferred between the vehicles.

  The deputy called for backup, but their cruiser was spotted and both suspect vehicles took off at high speed.

  Desiree reads the transcript of the radio communications, noting the names of the officers involved: Ryan Valdez and Nick Fenway were the first responders. A second cruiser, driven by Timothy Lewis, joined the pursuit.

  The first radio message was timed at 20.13 hours on January 27.

  Deputy Fenway: 1522, suspicious vehicle parked on Longmire Road near Farm Market 3083 West. Investigating.

  Dispatcher: Copy that.

  Deputy Fenway: We have an armored vehicle, licence plate November, Charlie, Delta, Zero, Four, Seven, Nine. It’s parked on the shoulder. It could be from that robbery.

  Dispatcher: Copy that. Any occupants?

  Deputy Fenway: Two, possibly three males. White. Medium build. Dark clothing. Deputy Valdez is trying to get closer … Shots fired! Shots fired!

  Dispatcher: Officers under fire. All units. The corner of Longmire Road and Farm Market Road West.

  Deputy Fenway: They’re getting away. In pursuit!

  Dispatcher: Copy that. All available units, all available units. Police pursuit in progress. Shots fired. Approach with caution.

  Deputy Fenway: Passing Holland Spiller Road. Seventy miles per hour. Light traffic. They’re still shooting … We’re coming up to League Line Road. Where are the cars?

  Dispatcher: Still five minutes away.

  Deputy Lewis: 1522 where do you need me?

  Deputy Fenway: Come down League Line Road. You got spikes?

  Deputy Lewis: Negative.

  Deputy Fenway: The truck just crossed League Line Road. Still heading north.

  Dispatcher: We got eyes coming in from the west.

  The pursuit continued for another seven minutes as the patrol cars and armoured truck reached speeds of up to ninety miles per hour. At 20.29 this happened:

  Deputy Fenway: He’s lost it! The truck is over! Sliding! Shit! I think he hit something.

  Dispatcher: Copy that.

  Dispatcher: Give me a location.

  Deputy Fenway: Old Montgomery Road. A quarter mile west of the RV Park. They’re shooting at us! Shots fired. Shots fired …

  Deputy Lewis: I’m coming.

  Deputy Fenway: (unintelligible).

  Dispatcher: Can you repeat that 1522?

  Deputy Fenway: Leaving the vehicle. Under fire.

  (Four minutes of silence follow with the dispatcher trying to raise the officers.)

  Deputy Fenway: Three suspects down. We got a seriously wounded security guard and a vehicle on fire. Code 4.

  Dispatcher: Copy the code 4. We have fire and paramedics responding.

  Desiree goes back and reads the first statements made by the responders and notices how often they used similar phrases and almost identical language to describe the events, as if they might have swapped notes or agreed on a story. It was common practice among law enforcement officers, who wanted to ensure that nobody jeopardised any subsequent trial. The pursuit ended when the armoured truck failed to take a bend and tipped over, slamming into a car, which burst into flames, killing the lone driver. Audie Palmer and the Caine brothers tried to shoot their way out.

  According to their accounts, Deputies Fenway and Valdez were pinned down by heavy gunfire. They took cover behind their vehicle, returning fire, but were outgunned and vulnerable until Deputy Lewis arrived. He reversed his car into the line of fire, allowing his colleagues to take up better positions.

  In total more than seventy rounds were fired by the three deputies. All three suspects were hit, two of them dying at the scene and a third being critically wounded. According to Dreyfus County Coroner Herman Willford, Vernon Caine had died from a gunshot to the chest and his younger brother Billy was hit three times – the leg, chest and neck. Both bled to death at the scene. Audie Palmer was shot in the head. The security guard Scott Beauchamp, who had been bound and gagged inside the truck, died from injuries sustained in the crash.

  Desiree takes out five albums of crime-scene photographs and scans the images quickly before going back to study particular pictures more closely. Both police cars are visible, blocking the road, along with the twisted wreckage of the truck and burned-out car. The truck’s doors are bust open. Blood has pooled inside. Using the drawings and computer simulations, Desiree creates a mental diorama where she can place each of the ‘players’ at the scene.

  There are gaps in the albums – more numbers than there are images. Either they were mislabelled or somebody has removed them. By 2004, most police cruisers in Texas were equipped with a camera and a hard-drive recording system. These could either be turned on by the officers or triggered automatically when the cruiser reached a certain speed. Newer systems record constantly and download via Wi-Fi whenever the cruiser returns to headquarters.

  During disclosure, the defence had asked about the dashboard cameras and been told that the two cruisers didn’t carry such equipment. This detail snags in Desiree’s mind. She goes back through the photographs. The police cruiser driven by Fenway and Valdez is shown parked diagonally across the road. The windshield is shattered and holes are punched through the outer metal skin of the doors.

  Using a magnifying app on her cell phone, she hovers over the image, focusing on the dashboard of the cruiser, noticing the telltale bump above the windscreen. A camera. Desiree jots down the code on the photograph, putting a question mark alongside it in her notebook.

  Studying more of the images, she can see the wreckage of a burned-out car in the background. A charred body is just visible in the upturned wreck, which is so twisted and bent by heat and collision that it looks like a piece of abstract sculpture.

  Desiree looks for details of the vehicle – a 1985 Pontiac, Californian plates. According to the autopsy report the driver was female, mid-twenties. The photographs show her charred corpse locked in a pugilistic pose with flexed elbows and clenched fists, caused by the shrinkage of body tissues and muscle due to the severe heat. There was no evidence of alcohol or drug use or childhood fractures.

  Without a face or fingerprints, police had difficulty identifying the victim, which led to a nationwide search of DNA and dental databases. Later the hunt was expanded to include international agencies like Interpol and organisations dealing with undocumented immigrants. Desiree looks for a chain of ownership. The Pontiac 6000 was first sold by a dealer in Columbus, Ohio, in 1985, and resold twice more. The last registered owner was a Frank Aubrey in Ramona, southern California.

  Desiree picks up her iPhone and calls a colleague in Washington. She and Neil Jenkins went through training together, but Jenkins had shown no desire to work in the field. He wanted a desk job at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, preferably in the data surveillance section where he could eavesdrop on other people’s conversations.

  True to form, Jenkins wants to shoot the breeze, but Desiree doesn’t have time.

  ‘I need you do a vehicle history search. It’s a Pontiac 6000, 1985 model. California plate 3HUA172.’ She rattles off the VIN number. ‘The car was destroyed in an accident in January 2004.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘A woman was driving – se
e if they ever identified her.’

  ‘Is it urgent?’

  ‘Call me back.’

  Desiree moves on to the security guard who died in the robbery. Scott Beauchamp was a former marine who did two combat tours in the Gulf and one tour in Bosnia. He resigned his commission in 1995 and had worked for Armaguard for six years. Police suspected an inside informant, but couldn’t link Beauchamp to the gang through phone records; however a fuel receipt put him in the same truck-stop diner as Vernon Caine a month before the hijacking. A waitress positively identified Beauchamp from a photograph, but couldn’t remember seeing the two men talking.

  Desiree discovers a DVD at the bottom of the box. She crosschecks the evidence label with the list of exhibits. It’s Audie Palmer’s arraignment hearing.

  She goes back to Mona, who looks surprised to see her.

  ‘You been here for six hours.’

  ‘I’ll still be here tomorrow.’

  ‘We close up in forty-five minutes, so unless you brought a sleeping bag…’

  ‘I need a DVD player.’

  ‘You see that room over there? You’ll find a computer inside. Here is the key. Don’t lose it. And you got till six or you come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Desiree fires up the computer and can hear the DVD spinning as the screen blinks to life. A fixed camera shows Audie Palmer in a hospital bed, his head swathed in bandages, tubes sticking from his nose and his wrists. She had already read the medical reports. Nobody had expected Audie to survive. Surgeons had to glue his skull together like a jigsaw puzzle, using fragments of bone and metal plates. Audie lay in a coma for three months, showing minimal brain activity for the first few weeks. Specialists debated whether to pull the plug, but Texas only executes people on death row, not when they’re brain-dead, because it might mean culling most of their politicians.

  Even when Audie came out of the coma doctors doubted if he would ever talk or walk. He proved them wrong, but it was another two months before he was strong enough to be arraigned at a bedside hearing.

  The footage shows a defence attorney, Clayton Rudd, sitting next to Audie, who is communicating by spelling out short messages on a borrowed Ouija board. The district attorney was Edward Dowling, now a state senator, who wore a surgical mask as though frightened of catching germs.