“You should have left it to the police,” he admonished. “It’s our job to find guys like this…and see they get punished.”
“I went to the cops!” she said, spitting in anger. “They couldn’t find their ass with a roadmap.” She paused, gathering her thoughts amidst the waves of rage rolling over her. “Besides, you know what happens to rape victims at trials. I become the criminal,” she said. “No fucking way! I’d rather die.”
“I know the police didn’t help you then, but I’m here to help you now.”
“Why should I believe you?” she sighed heavily.
“Because I’m telling you the truth.”
He looked around and his pulse spiked with hot adrenaline, seeing about twenty faces now lining the alley’s entrance.
“Please move back! This is a police matter.” He directed, the voice a product of years of training
“We heard it all,” one said, resting his hand near the pistol holstered at his denim-covered hip. “Scumbag had it coming.”
Smith surveyed the group of hard-core bikers, all leather and chains, counting only three that weren’t armed in some way. He suddenly felt very outnumbered. He knew he had to maintain control of the situation or it would end fast and tragic. “I’m taking this woman into custody,” he said. “Do not interfere.”
“She shoot this guy?” he asked, friends nodding in agreement with his question.
“No.” Smith replied, tension growing as the seconds ticked off.
“Then what’s the problem?” the biker asked, his hulking physical presence an unspoken threat.
Smith again asserted himself, hoping the other man would respond and obey. “She’s a suspect in other crimes,” he said. “Now, please turn around and move back!”
“Is what she said true?” the man, all shaved head and muscles, continued. “Did those guys rape her?”
Smith tried to see the eyes behind the dark glasses, looking for some way to dissuade the man, the group, from pursuing this dangerous path.
“That’s for the courts to decide,” he said. “My job is to bring her in to see that she answers the charges. I’m not a judge.”
“You are at the moment,” the biker said. He pointed to the frightened woman. “Right here, right now, it’s up to you to decide if she gets raped… again.”
The leader of the bikers turned to Hailey. “You can go with the cop, or you can come with us. Your choice.”
Smith glared back at the man. “I don’t think so,” he said, voice ringing with finality. “She goes with me. Do not interfere…or you’ll be arrested.” His gun swept back and forth, covering both the woman before him and the bikers surrounding her. Gripping his weapon more firmly, Smith alternated between sighting on Hailey and holding it down, but rotating it toward the bikers.
“I’ll say this one more time, back off. This is a police matter.”
“Stop!” Hailey shouted. “I just want it to end, that’s all. I don’t even care how anymore.” She cocked the pistol, barrel still pressed against her temple. “I’m so tired of being afraid.” The admission came between soft sobs.
“Hailey, please don’t do this,” Smith beseeched. “It doesn’t have to end this way.”
The bikers moved closer to Hailey, surrounding her in an intimidating semi-circle of leather and steel.
“Look detective, you can end this situation right here or you can let it escalate,” the biker leader moved his hand over his weapon. “I think it’s time to put some justice back in the justice system. Don’t you?”
Smith spent several seconds considering his options. Holding the woman in his sights, he spoke to her. “You have to come with me,” he said. “If you leave now, you won’t get very far before we find you again…and it will be that much worse when we do.”
He could see her considering his words, the pistol’s barrel drooping lower. “They’re gone now, all four of them. It can end here,” he spoke softly, as if she were a frightened deer. “No one else has to get hurt.”
Hailey answered as the tears ran down her cheeks again, her voice just above a whisper. “I just don’t want to be afraid anymore.”
“Come with me now. You’ll get a fair trial.” Smith said.
“I can’t go to jail. I’d rather die.” She turned to move closer to the assemblage at the far end of the alley.
Smith considered his position. He was surrounded by armed men and only feet away from a street full of innocent by-standers. I can’t fire. That biker son of a bitch knows it too!
“So be it,” he said. “You can put the gun down. I won’t hurt you.”
Each warily mimicked the other in lowering their respective weapons. “But I will come after you and I will find you again.”
Smith circled warily around the young woman, opening a path to the end of the alley, his weapon pointed at her retreating form.
She took a tentative step. “The gun stays here,” he said. “That’s not negotiable.”
She placed the pistol on the pavement and turned her back on the officer. She moved away from Smith, joining the gang of bikers on the sidewalk. They closed quickly, engulfing her in a human force field as Smith watched, unable to do anything more than smolder in anger.
He holstered his gun and turned back to pick up the discarded revolver, seeing it had already disappeared. Damn, there goes my evidence. Oh, well. I have what I need anyway.
An hour later, the paramedics loaded Hoya’s body onto a stretcher and hauled him off to the morgue. Smith finally gave in to his cravings and lit up a cigarette as he waited for them to finish. He left the alley and walked down Whiskey Row, jostled by the Saturday night revelers. He moved back toward his car, wondering if he had done the right thing. Fuck! So my career’s over, it was over anyway.
The leader of the bikers suddenly appeared in his path. The denim covered man stood next to the noisy bar’s entrance, leaning against the wall of the building.
“I should arrest you right now for obstruction.” Smith growled, his resentment at the man’s interference throwing fuel on a fury already red hot.
“If you have to,” the leaning man said. “But I don’t think you’ll have any witnesses willing to testify.”
Smith continued to seethe, keeping his silence for fear of what he might say…or do.
The other man spoke first. “Look, Detective, you know as well as I do that’s as much justice as she’s ever going to get, right? Courts and trials can’t erase her memory. She’ll have to relive that rape every day for the rest of her life. Isn’t that punishment enough?”
“Maybe so. But I still have four dead bodies to answer for.” Smith said with a sigh.
“Here, this might help.” The biker snapped out his left hand, a small object sailing through the air. A wary Smith reached out and caught it in his right.
“What’s this?” Smith turned the cell phone over in his hand.
“Call it a little street theater,” he said, walking on past Smith “And you never saw me.” He took a few steps down the side walk before crossing the street and disappearing into the raucous crowd.
Smith touched a button on the phone and the screen went dark for several seconds before lighting up with a long video shot of dozens of bikes parked along the street in front of a bar, the sidewalk crowded with partiers. The time stamp in the lower right corner showed the current date, the video just over an hour old.
At the sound of yelling and commotion, the camera tracked the source, moving to the mouth of the alley and catching Hailey from behind as Hoya faced her, each held in bold relief.
The volume was low, but the muted words unmistakable as Hailey prodded the truth from Hoya’s own lips. There was a flurry of movement before shots rang out and Hoya fell.
The video closed with Hailey putting the pistol on the ground and stepping back, out of camera range.
Smith considered the replay of the encounter. Maybe it wasn’t legal, he thought with a grim, reluctant acceptance. But it was justice.
> He stopped at the entrance to one of the many lively watering holes for a well-deserved belt.
“Detective Smith,” the small, feminine voice came from behind, giving him a little start. He turned to see Hailey staring back at him. “You were right. It has to end here…now.” He noticed the young woman was still trembling uncontrollably.
She put out her hands, blood from the wound in her shoulder running down her damaged arm, hitting the street in intermittent drops. “I wasn’t going to run,” she said, the voice calm and restrained. “But they might really have shot you…or you might’ve had to shoot one of them. I couldn’t let anyone else get hurt because of me.”
He saw the crimson stain on her vest and the blood landing at her feet. “We have to get you to a hospital.”
Turning her to face the wall of the building, he patted her down, her humiliation now complete.
“You know I have to do this.” He pulled his handcuffs from his pocket and locked them to her wrists, hearing her wince with pain as he tightened them down.
“I know.” She said through clenched teeth.
He drew a deep breath. The effort was half air intake and the other half a sigh of resignation. He turned her to face him. “Hailey Barrow, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Dan Matarski looked around Senator Grady’s Tucson office. The lavishly decorated room sported dozens of pictures of the man surrounded by famous celebrities, politicos and athletes. He felt like a student summoned to the principal’s office.
The two men sat in posh leather armchairs watching a computer, their faces bathed in the eerie green light emanating from the screen. Grainy and dark, the video showed Grady’s son staring down the barrel of a gun.
“We found this on a camera in the alley behind Johnny B’s,” Matarski said. “I immediately took it into evidence. Fortunately, that’s the only copy.”
The Senator grimaced as the gunpoint confession continued. “I knew it would come to this one day,” he said, shaking his head as the video continued to run. “Fool boy had no sense of boundaries. Especially when it came to women.”
The video ended with a muffled gun shot.
“Where is this girl now?” the elder Grady asked.
“The Yavapai County Jail.”
Grady stood before his desk, pacing back and forth. He ran a hand through his graying hair. “I don’t want his mother to see this… ever,” Grady said, indicating the screen. “Do you understand?”
“Understood,” Matarski said. “What do you want me to do about the press?”
Removing his glasses, Grady pinched the bridge of his nose in tension and thought for several seconds before replacing the spectacles. “This is an election year. I can’t have her, or her bleeding heart lawyer, talking to the press. Am I being clear?”
“Perfectly.”
“I have to go to a memorial service the university is holding for my son, then I’ll talk to the Attorney General, she owes me a favor.”
“I’ll speak to my detective.”
“Do you anticipate any problem?” Grady said, again coming back behind the desk and lifting a cigar out of a humidor sitting on the far end.
Matarski said nothing, confident he could handle Smith.
“Good. Then I’ll consider the matter closed.” He said, the blue smoke circling his head before floating away in small clouds.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The next morning Hailey woke up in jail, sitting in a holding cell for the first time in her life. After spending a night sharing the small tank with a delightful assortment of the area’s more noxious female criminals, all she could think about was a hot shower…maybe a tetanus shot. She wrinkled her nose at the odor surrounding her, the holding cell smelling of cigarette smoke, urine and sweat.
She couldn’t wait for the arraignment, the uncertainty of her shattered future torturing her more than the fear of incarceration itself.
A few minutes later, the guard appeared at the door. “Barrow!” the stocky, fireplug of a woman bellowed. “Get on your feet, your lawyer’s here to see you.”
Lawyer? I don’t have a lawyer. A split second later the guard yelled again in irritation. “Let’s go! I haven’t got all day!”
The burly woman grabbed her by the bicep in the classic control hold, escorting her through the series of secure doors and gates between the holding area and the processing stations. Pushing her along, the guard swiped a key card through an electronic lock on the wall and opened the door, nodding her head that Hailey should go in.
When she arrived at the conference room, Joanne Barrow was already there, waiting. Hailey noted the perfectly painted face, now pale and stretched tight in concern, sported wrinkles that weren’t there before. Her mother jumped as she entered the room and threw her arms around her daughter.
“Oh, Hailey! Thank God. Are you alright?”
She saw a tear begin a slow trek down her mother’s face. “I was so worried, after that horrible fight I started.”
Her mother’s admission of wrongdoing sideswiped her like a bus. She scrubbed her face in her hands. “Mother, it’s alright. I’m okay…Really I am.” The tears began to dampen her own cheeks.
“But my God, you’ve just been in jail. I can’t imagine how horrible that was for you. I’m going to get you out of here.”
Hailey silently disentangled herself from her mother and took a seat in one of the four utilitarian chairs surrounding a small table.
“I’ve hired you a lawyer, Christina Bridgewood,” Joanne said. “Your father said she’s the best he’d ever seen on these cases. She should be here soon.”
A few minutes later a small, quiet knock repeated three times before the door opened, admitting a very petite redhead standing on impossibly tall high-heeled shoes.
The young woman, business suit failing to completely hide the toned curves of her five-foot, three-inch body, introduced herself to Hailey and sat across from her. She brought a soft-sided leather briefcase from the floor, putting it on the table and removing a thick manila folder.
While the barrister studied the papers, face fixed in concentration, the silence in the small room crushed down on Hailey as she thought about what lay ahead. Her anxious mind plowed through scenario after devastating scenario, her life flashing before her eyes like a movie, the plot too complicated, the running time far too brief.
After a seemingly unending few moments, Bridgewood’s clear, strong voice filled the small space, snapping Hailey back from her run-away thoughts.
“Well, I just spoke to the Attorney General and I must say I was extremely surprised by her position on your case.”
The disclosure hit Hailey’s mind like a freight train, a heavy jolt of instant panic flaring beyond her ability for control.
“How bad is it?” she asked, her nerves going numb with dread. “Am I going to get the…” she couldn’t even finish the sentence aloud. Death penalty.
The lawyer’s face donned a smile full of perfect white teeth as she went on. “The Attorney General said, and I quote, ‘No public good would be served by bringing this case to trial,’ end quote. She goes on to add some stipulations, blah…blah…blah. Essentially, the charges are being expunged, like they never happened.”
“But what does that mean?” Joanne Barrow asked, her voice a thin scratch of anxious breath. “Is my daughter going to prison?”
“No. It means that something’s going on here that I don’t quite understand. Somebody obviously pulled some strings, some really big ones, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth…and I suggest you don’t either.”
Hailey quickly nodded in agreement. “So what’s next?” She asked, not yet daring to feel any hope.
Bridgewood pulled some papers out of the black leather bag and handed them to Hailey. “It means that you’ll have to appear before the judge and agree to attend counseling sessions, pretty much until the doctor releases you,” she said. “But ot
her than that, you’re free.”
Hailey was stunned to immobility. Her voice disappeared as a group of thick black clouds fluttered across her vision, threatening to carry her off in their abysmal embrace. She clutched the arms of her chair until the clouds parted and the buzzing in her ears died away. “I can’t believe it,” she finally gasped in surprise. “It can’t be true, after what I’ve… done?”
“It’s a miracle,” Her mother said, turning to face the attorney “Oh, thank you, thank you!”
The young woman continued. “Your mother also asked me about taking out a loan against your uncle’s trust to pay my fees. Well I have some good news there. I talked it over with my partners and since we won’t have to go to trial, we decided to make this case pro bono. One of the male partners was actually the one who suggested it.”
The attorney continued, her face filled with compassion uncharacteristic of her profession. “Everyone agreed, what those men did to you was beyond savage,” she said. “Just between you and me, I probably would have done the same thing.”
She held out her hand, taking Hailey’s in a firm handshake. “I’ll be there when you go before the judge, but it’s pretty much over.” She started packing her things back into her briefcase. She cocked a thumb toward the sky. “I don’t know who, or how, they did this, but somebody up there likes you.”
Hailey felt herself becoming light-headed, the clouds returning, and leaned on her mother for support.
“Can it be true?” she asked her mother as the blood returned to her brain. “Is this nightmare really over?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Chief read the report in silence while Smith stood at loose attention before his desk. Summoned to his presence, the detective had nervously considered the many possible reactions his boss might have to the incident with the bikers. He had to admit, he’d second-guessed himself more than once in the two days since the encounter, wondering if he’d done the right thing, or the easy one.
Hailey's Hog Page 21
