The Jury Master

by Robert Dugoni

  Jenkins considered the information. Castañeda had clearly stepped on Peak’s toes. If he hadn’t, they would have issued the statement together, likely shaking hands for the cameras on the White House lawn, which meant it was unlikely that the release of the information had been with the White House’s approval. It had also been an unlikely slip. Castañeda could not afford to make a mistake if he was truly trying to cut Mexico a better deal than the predicament in which it currently found itself. That meant he, or someone, had orchestrated it. In doing so, he had left Peak no choice but to go on national television and embrace the deal unconditionally. If Peak did not, if he looked lukewarm or indecisive, it would fuel the growing criticism that Peak was a president who straddled the fence, unwilling to make the tough calls. The Arabs would perceive an opening, find a way to scuttle the deal, and make Peak look bad in the process, effectively ending his presidency. If Jenkins was right—and he had no reason to think he was not—Castañeda’s next move would be to suggest a summit as early as possible, and Peak would accept it just as a man hanging from a cliff would accept a rope.

  Was it coincidence that Joe had died the same week, working on the same issue, trying to find a man believed dead for thirty years?

  “How far are you?” he asked.

  “Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour.”

  He could hardly hear her. “You’re breaking up.”

  “I can see the lights of the accident up ahead, but the weather isn’t helping.”

  The first drops of rain fell onto the concrete deck, large drops that splattered on impact. “If we’re going to stay here, we’ll need some candles and matches,” he said.

  “You’ll find candles in the dining room cupboard. My father kept matches on the fireplace.”

  The drops pinged off the deck surface and roof. Jenkins took cover inside, walking to the river-rock fireplace and finding a book of matches in one of the crevices. A gust of wind rushed at the house, rattling the windows, nearly masking the sound—nails pulling on hardwood. Jenkins dropped just before the shotgun blast shattered the floor-to-ceiling window in a shower of crystals.

  “Charlie?”

  He was rolling across the floor, hearing the pump action eject the shell, the shell hitting the floor, followed by the click-click sound of another shell being jacked in the pipe. He grabbed a fire poker as he rolled past the fireplace, knocking the set over with a crash, and continued toward the door. The second blast pounded the river rock, sending bits of stone and dust spraying into his face. Because he had just come off a commercial flight, he was unarmed, a target in a shooting gallery.

  Alex’s voice was screaming from the telephone. “Charlie? Charlie!”

  He stumbled to his feet, rushing off balance down the darkened hallway, in and out of rooms, shoving doors closed behind him—a mouse trapped in a maze. He shouted into the phone. “Did your father keep guns? Guns! Did he have guns?”

  The line was dead.

  He kept moving, searching for an exit—the house was like a fortress with bars on the outside of the windows. He rolled into an ornate bedroom and pinned himself against the wall, hoping to surprise the man when he kicked in the door. Footsteps sounded down the hallway, then stopped. Shit. Bad idea. Jenkins bolted from the wall as the door to the room exploded, the blast removing a large chunk of the wall and door frame and showering him in fine white dust. Third shot.

  The pump action ejected the cartridge and reloaded. The wall exploded in front of him. Fourth shot.

  He retreated to an alternative exit. The weapon was a 12-gauge, pump-action combat shotgun, probably a Spas-12 or a Mossberg 500. Both were American military favorites. The problem was, the Mossberg carried five shots, but the Spas carried seven shots in the tube and one in the pipe. Eight total. If the man wasn’t reloading as he went—and Jenkins thought he was not—he either was down to his last shot or had a weapon still half full. Jenkins rolled underneath a pool table and out the other side, fumbling for a ball in one of the pockets. The room was as dark as night, the only window covered by a pulled shade. The door burst open. He hurled the ball, striking his target. The gun jolted upward, the blast blowing a hole through the ceiling. Fifth shot. Jenkins considered rushing the man, heard the pump action, and quickly dismissed it. The weapon was still loaded. His assailant had chosen the heavier Spas for the extra rounds. His luck.

  He dove out of the room and rolled through a Jack-and-Jill bathroom and out the other side, into a large entertainment room with a high beamed ceiling and a wooden bar. Liquor bottles and glasses reflected in a mirrored wall beneath an old-fashioned Tiffany lamp hanging by chains from the ceiling. The only other exit from the room was out a sliding glass door onto the second-story deck, and he already knew there was nowhere to go from there but down.

  Dead end.

  66

  THEY STOPPED AT a supermarket so the detective could purchase milk, bread, and potatoes. He also bought a bag of cashews, which were now open on the front seat of the Chevy between them. The detective leaned forward, peering through the windshield at angry clouds rolling across a darkening sky, manifesting on currents of air as if someone had hit the fast-forward button on a video player.

  “Thunderheads,” he said, explaining the phenomenon of an East Coast thunderstorm to Sloane. “The persistent heat and humidity during the past week made it inevitable, sort of like boiling a kettle of water with the lid on, you know? The pressure builds until it blows. Just a matter of when and how much steam is gonna blow off. This looks like it could be a good one. Not like California—those are just showers compared to what we can get out here.” He sat back. “I should just shut my yap. You’re going to get a firsthand illustration. What’s that thing about pictures being worth a thousand words?”

  Dusk became night in a matter of minutes, punctuated by an arc of lightning that crackled across the sky, coloring the charcoal-gray cloud layer in a burst of purplish hue, like the colors of a healing bruise.

  Molia counted out loud, “One thousand one, one thousand two—”

  Thunder clapped and rumbled. He looked over at Sloane with noticeable pride; the storm had arrived, and it did not disappoint them. Rain fell like sheets of clear plastic. Molia turned on the car’s headlights and turned the knob for the windshield wipers. The driver’s-side blade never moved.

  “It’s the damn heat,” he said, quickly rolling down the window. “Melts the rubber right to the glass.” He reached out and gave the blade a quick jerk. It broke off in his hand. “Damn. That’s a problem.” As if on cue, lightning crackled again and the thunder roared. “We’ll need to let this pass. I know a place close by—not much on atmosphere, but best bowl of gumbo you’ll ever have.”

  Sloane was still full from the pie. “What about the pot roast?”

  “Call this an appetizer.”

  Minutes later they turned off the highway onto a country road that cut through thick scrub and white ash, elm, and birch trees before widening at a small clearing. A dilapidated oblong wooden structure sat at one end of the lot, which was more dirt than gravel and had felled logs for parking curbs. The wind, blowing a gale, caused a hand-painted sign hanging at an angle over the screen door entrance to bang against the building like an unsecured shutter. Its red lettering, faded to a dull pink, read, “Herring Company Café & Bait Shop.”

  Outside the café were two vintage 1950s gasoline pumps.

  Sloane pointed to a sign in the restaurant window between swipes of the blade and spoke over the rumble of thunder. “Closed. Looks permanent.”

  Molia looked genuinely perplexed. “Les and Earl have been threatening to retire the past ten years, but I never thought they’d do it.” He turned to Sloane. “Two brothers. Fought like they were on opposite sides of the Civil War. Some say they were. Les ran the café and Earl managed the gas station. Had a thriving business for fifty years; every hunter and fisherman in the state started and finished his day here.”

  “Not today.”

  Moli
a shook his head. “Too bad. The gumbo was to die for.”

  The roar came from behind them. Not thunder or anything created by nature, but the manufactured sound of a car engine at high rpm, whining and revving. Sloane turned his head in time to see the battered white pickup truck slide across the dirt and gravel, the back end fishtailing as the driver corrected, causing the truck to tilt as though it might actually tip over before it bounced back on a course straight for them. The barrel of a large-caliber weapon extended out the passenger window.

  “Don’t think they came for the gumbo,” Molia said. He pulled the Sig and tossed the Colt in Sloane’s lap.

  They rolled out the doors as the barrage of bullets peppered the metal body like hail banging on a tin roof.

  67

  JENKINS LEAPED OVER the top of the bar, frantically searching the shelves for anything he could use as a weapon—the fire poker wasn’t much good unless he got in close, and that wasn’t going to happen unless he survived three more shots. Not even a knife. He heard the door to the room open slowly, the man no longer worried that Jenkins might be armed, but still cautious in the dark. He was no doubt searching the room, eliminating potential areas of ambush, identifying the only two hiding places: on the deck or behind the bar.

  Time. Jenkins needed time. He considered the liquor bottles beneath the bar—mostly good Scotch, the kind Robert Hart liked to drink when he smoked his pipe. The thought rushed to him. He grabbed a cocktail glass, threw it over the counter, and heard it shatter, drawing the sixth shot.

  Precious seconds.

  He grabbed a bottle of thirty-two-year-old Springbank from a shelf, unscrewed the top, and saturated a bar towel.

  Pump action. The cartridge hit the ground. Click-click. The gun reloaded.

  He stuffed an end of the towel into the top of the bottle.

  The shotgun blast ripped a huge hole in the bar just to his right, splinters of the cheap wood laminate, shards of cocktail glasses, and alcohol spraying him and embedding in his skin like thistle needles.

  Seven.

  Jenkins curled into a fetal position. He wouldn’t make it to eight. He rolled behind a small refrigerator, pulled the pack of matches from his pocket, and struck a match on the strike plate. It didn’t light. He struck it again. Nothing.

  Pump action. Final round.

  He pulled another match.

  Click-click—gun reloaded.

  Jenkins struck the match. A small hiss, then a flame. The doused towel burst into a blaze. He threw another glass—a cheap trick that had little hope of working—stood, and hurled the most expensive Molotov cocktail ever made.

  68

  SLOANE LAY FACEDOWN in a puddle of muddy water, the rain pounding with such force that it looked to be rising from the ground. A tire on the Chevy exploded, a hollow, echoing ring that burst in Sloane’s ears and, with the rush of wind and hail of bullets, deafened all sounds. At a lull in the attack Sloane rose to one knee, cupped his left hand under his right, and squeezed three well-placed rounds at the truck’s windshield, blowing holes from left to right. He heard gunfire from the other side of the car, then Molia rolled over the hood, landing beside him in the muddy water. He pulled Sloane to a retreat behind the front bumper. They pressed low behind one of the tree trunks serving as a parking curb.

  “You hit?” Molia yelled above the storm.

  “If I am, I can’t feel it.” Sloane looked around the side of the car. The gun barrel reappeared out the window. He fired two more rounds. Three left. The other two clips were in the glove compartment of the rental car. “We are seriously outgunned.”

  Molia pointed. “We need to get into the woods. We can pick our shots in there. There’s a creek runs north-south about three hundred yards back. Go. I’ll find you.”

  Sloane shook his head. If he left, he knew that the detective had no cover to get into the woods. “Not leaving without you.”

  The barrel of the automatic extended out the window of the truck.

  “No time to get heroic. I know these woods; you don’t. I’ll find you.” He shoved Sloane in the direction of the scrub-and-tree line, turned, and squeezed two shots at the car windshield. It was all the cover he could afford.

  SLOANE HEARD THE detective fire two shots as he hurdled a fallen tree at the edge of the forest. He dropped and took aim at the truck, which was at a ridiculous distance for a handgun. He fired twice anyway, leaving him just one bullet, and crawled into the thick brush. He moved as quickly as he could through the tightly knit trees, deflecting the low-hanging branches that scratched at his face and arms and tugged at his clothes.

  Where the hell was the creek?

  Lightning flashed, illuminating the forest in a quick burst, like something from a horror film. The thunder clapped damn near on top of him. The images blurred. He thought it was the rain. Then the pain shot daggers across his forehead, stabbing at him. He fell to one knee, holding his head between his hands as if it might split.

  No.

  He stood, staggering forward. Images pulsed in and out of focus. Black and white spots. The aura.

  Migraine.

  No.

  His vision and balance deserted him. He stumbled forward, blind, felt his bad ankle roll on uneven ground, his foot sliding, unable to stop his momentum. The wet blanket of leaves gave way like a rug on a freshly varnished floor. Sloane pitched to the side, head over heels down the hill, like a boulder. Stumps, trees, and rocks battered him until he came to a jarring stop against something solid and fixed in place. The wind howled. Lightning flashed another burst.

  Men shouted. Smoke choked the air. Flames flickered colorful shadows and brilliant flashes of light that captured the woman on the floor in strobes of horror.

  Sloane shook the thought. He kicked furiously, trying to keep from being pulled under, fighting to stay at the surface.

  Outside he heard women and children wailing in pain, grief, and shrieks of confusion and horror.

  “No!”

  He pushed himself up, toward the light and the surface. He lay with his back against a tree, water continuing to pour from the branches overhead. Momentarily disoriented, he caught his breath, then struggled to his feet. He needed to find the creek. He needed to help Tom Molia. He put a hand against the tree trunk for balance. His vision remained blurred, but he could see where his sliding body had cut a swath down the hillside to the bottom of a ravine. He clawed and dug at the ground, gripping anything that did not pull from the earth—one step forward, sliding in the mud and leaves two steps back. The storm battered him with pellets of water. His head pounded a steady beat. His ankle ached.

  When he reached the top he was out of breath and uncertain how many minutes had passed, but he didn’t have time to stop and figure it out. Pinballing between the trees, he ducked beneath branches that pulled at his clothes.

  Where the hell was the creek?

  THE TRUCK RAMMED the back of the Chevy, pushing the front wheels up and over the log. The driver, the dark-haired man who had killed Bert Cooperman, swung the driver’s door open, using it for cover, and fired a short burst from a fully automatic Uzi pistol as his partner, the bearded redhead, slid forward, gripping the handle of a 12-gauge Benelli tactical shotgun. They had watched Sloane flee into the woods but did not see the detective follow. Their orders were clear. Kill the detective, but bring Sloane back alive.

  Red advanced, aiming inside the blown-out windows of the Chevy, his trained eyes scanning the interior. Empty. He slid forward, pointed the gun around the front fender. The detective wasn’t there.

  “They’re in the woods!” he shouted back to his partner.

  The dark-haired man moved forward, ripped the keys from the Chevy’s ignition, and threw them into the brush. Then he stepped back and opened fire on the radio and car phone. He knew that the full assault had prevented the detective from radioing for backup—they had been monitoring the Charles Town police frequency—but this was a precaution in the event the detective had thoughts of dou
bling back to radio for help. They split up, his partner proceeding in a clockwise arc. He would move counterclockwise, and they would meet at twelve o’clock. It was a military tactic to reduce the chances of shooting one’s partner.

  Once inside the forest, the dark-haired man moved from tree to tree, searching the shadows. The water cascaded from the leaves and branches. It was like looking through a waterfall. The wind howled at him. Tree limbs creaked and clattered. He worked his way through tall grass and scrub, crouching as he went, stopping to search for shadows that did not belong, his loins tingling with the thrill of the hunt and the anticipated kill. Overhead, lightning streaked. The woods pulsed a brilliant white, followed by the clatter and clang of thunder. A sudden pain stabbed his chest. He put the palm of his hand to his sternum. Lightning crackled, briefly illuminating the blood being washed from his palm and between his fingers. He raised his head in acknowledgment. The thunder boomed. And the second well-timed, well-placed shot hit him directly between the eyes.

  69

  THE MAN SWUNG the barrel to deflect the ball of fire, shattering the bottle against the paneled wall, the ignited alcohol spraying him about the face and clothes. His final shot blew apart the Tiffany lamp hanging over Jenkins’s head, showering him in green glass.

  Empty barrel. Empty tube.

  Jenkins vaulted the bar, fire poker in hand.

  Well trained, the man dropped and rolled to extinguish the flames and rose to one knee, pistol in hand, but Jenkins was on him. He swung the fire poker like a baseball bat, sending the gun across the wood floor, and drew the poker back to strike again. The man reached up quickly, stopping the bar in midair—an amazing display of strength and tolerance for pain. Holding the bar overhead between them, at a stalemate, the man rose to his feet, a giant emerging from the ground, with shoulders like the bumper of a car. Jenkins kept his grip on the fire poker and drove a knee into the man’s stomach. It was like hitting a wall. The man whipped his head forward, striking Jenkins in the forehead, knocking him backward. He held on to the poker and fell, using the momentum and his weight to pull the man with him. When he hit the ground, he drove a boot into the man’s stomach, flipping him heels over head. Unfortunately, the poker went with him, ripped from Jenkins’s grasp.