Julia took one more look at the clearing, and then instinctively followed the bird as it seemed to float along the top of the tree line. A mournful wail of a coyote called out in the distance, and Julia picked up her pace as low-slung tree branches cut her skin as she passed. Julia looked up at the sky toward the bird and felt a strange ache of worry when she saw that it was gone.
“Keep going,” Julia whispered, and began to sprint when she heard the sound of a car driving by just beyond the tree line in front of her. Julia’s feet were torn up and raw, but she pushed herself harder at the promise of a road and her escape. She stopped short, though, when she saw a high fence, twice her height, six feet in the distance.
“No,” Julia said as she slowed her approach. She looked to the top of the fence and saw sharp spikes of barbed wire lacing across the top. The hope Julia had felt seconds ago mocked her like a bitter tease. With her hands still tied behind her back, Julia knew there was no way she could ever get over the fence.
Julia began to run, realizing that keeping still wasn’t an option, when a voice called out from behind her.
“It’s amazing. You took the exact same path your brother did that led him to the road. Max put the fence up after that,” Phoenix said as he appeared from behind a tree. “Don’t feel bad about losing. You did great, but there’s no way you could’ve gotten out. The fence wraps the entire way around the property. Get down on your knees, Julia. I won.”
“No,” Julia said.
Phoenix raised his gun so it was pointed at Julia’s head.
“My game. I said get down on your knees. You die the way I want you to.”
Julia heard the sound of something moving in the brush and started to run as Phoenix turned his head in the direction of the sound.
“It’s over. Drop your weapon.”
Julia looked toward the familiar voice as Chief Linderman appeared with his gun drawn and pointed at Phoenix.
“I’m not going to tell you twice,” Linderman said.
“I don’t think so. They’re all dead except for me now. But I know,” Phoenix said.
“You’ve been warned. Drop your weapon or I’ll shoot,” Linderman said.
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you? Then all your problems would be over,” Phoenix said.
“What’s he talking about, Chief?” Julia asked.
“Phoenix Pontiac is a liar. Everything that he’s said to you has been a lie. He wasn’t abducted, like he told you.”
“How did you know that he said that to me?” Julia asked. She looked back at the man she’d known for twelve years and something raw and slippery felt like it was crawling through her belly.
“Navarro told me. Julia, come stand behind me.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Phoenix said, and then looked to Linderman. “Tell her. Tell her how long you’ve known Max, you elitist dick. Tell her how you first met Max when you worked patrol and how I met you when I was a kid when you started coming around here to get your payoffs.”
“That’s a lie. Don’t believe him, Julia. You know I’d never do anything like that.”
Phoenix tossed his long hair and gave Julia a cruel smile. “Tell her what you did, Chief. She’s been wanting to know all this time. Someone should put her out of her misery.”
A shot rang out and Julia looked on as a bullet pierced through Phoenix’s left eye. The man who had pretended to be many different people to her fell to the ground as a flash of heat lightning lit up the night sky.
A second shot stung the air, hitting Linderman in his gun hand. Linderman’s weapon fell to the ground as Duke appeared from behind a tree and scooped up Linderman’s weapon.
Julia felt an ache of relief as she ran to her father’s side. She wanted to touch Duke, to make sure he was real, since she had been certain Ahote had killed him.
“You okay?” Duke asked. He gave Julia a quick assessment and then turned her around and removed the plastic ties binding her wrists.
“Yes,” Julia said. “Did you hear?”
“Everything,” Duke answered.
She looked at Linderman, a man she had sometimes disagreed with through the years when she worked the crime beat, but still a man she had always respected. “What did Phoenix mean? You worked for Max?”
“No, he’s a liar,” Linderman said as he clutched his wounded hand.
“Tell the truth. Tell the damn truth!” Duke yelled and kept his gun trained at Linderman.
The strong, familiar mask that Julia had always seen Linderman wear slipped as the police chief looked at Julia pleadingly.
“What did you do, Chief?” Julia asked.
“I’m a good man. You know that. I kept an eye on you when I knew Agent Kenny and Phoenix were going to come after you. That’s why I came to your house to warn you they were coming for Duke. I didn’t want your boys to get hurt. You have to understand. I was in a bad situation at the time when I first met Max. My son, the one I told you about, he had been in the hospital for so long. On a cop’s salary, the medical bills were strangling us. Our house was about to go into foreclosure and my wife was under so much stress. She was going to leave me unless I could figure out a situation to get us out of our mess. I needed money. Everything was falling apart. I did it for my family.”
“You worked for Max then,” Julia said.
“I met Mueller when I worked patrol. He needed an in with the police department. Max was picking up illegals and runaways in the city in the area I patrolled and he needed a cover. So I gave it to him.”
“He paid you off. Jesus, Linderman,” Julia said. “You knew what he was doing, and how Ahote was killing those young men.”
“I had no other choice.”
Something Phoenix said to Linderman clicked in place for Julia.
“Stand behind me, Julia,” Duke told his daughter as he seemed to sense her mood shift. But Julia held her ground and stood alone in front of Linderman, with both her hands balled into tight fists.
“You know what happened to my brother, don’t you? Tell me. Goddamn it, tell me!” Julia said.
Linderman swallowed hard and shifted his eyes down at the ground. “I couldn’t believe it the first day you walked into the station and I heard what your name was. Julia Gooden, the sister of the missing boy. The other cops, they didn’t know your backstory, not even Navarro back then, but I did. When we were working your son’s abduction case and we had to start looking at Ben’s cold case, I thought about coming forward. I swear, I did, because I like you, and I knew my detectives were on the wrong trail, thinking the two cases were linked.”
“Did Ahote kill my brother?” Julia asked.
Linderman looked back at Julia, and in the indistinct shadows of the night, Julia thought the police chief was about to cry.
“I held this secret for thirty years. A man does what he has to do to be sure his family is protected,” Linderman answered.
“On your knees with your hands behind your head,” Duke said. “You tell me what happened to my boy or I pull the trigger.”
Linderman kept his eyes on Julia as he acquiesced to Duke’s command.
“I had just picked up a payment from Max at his property here. It made me sick what he was doing. Just sick. I was driving home, and for some reason, I took the longer route. There were no other cars on the road and I was thinking about my own boy when this kid, he runs into the middle of the road. The boy, he was waving his hands at me to stop. So I did. The little boy, he was barefoot and terrified, but he had a presence about him, like he was a lot older than he actually was. I felt so sorry for the kid.”
“The boy was Ben,” Julia said.
“He told me his name and what happened to him at Max’s place. When Ben got in the car, I promised him that everything was going to be all right, but then, I knew he would go to the police and tell them about what Mueller had done and the business he was running there. Max would have dragged me down with him. I was stuck.”
Linderman looked down at the gro
und and away from Julia as if finally staring down his long-ago but never forgotten sin.
“Everything’s all right, son. What’s your name?” Linderman asked as the boy got inside his car.
“Ben, Ben Gooden. We need to go to the police! I was kidnapped by a big guy named Ahote. He was going to kill me. They’ve got a bunch of other people trapped inside a house there in the woods. There’s a man named Max Mueller, who runs the whole thing. You’ve got to speed up. The people who took me, they’re going to go after my sister Julia if they know I got out.”
Linderman’s hands froze on the steering wheel as he looked back at the little dark-haired boy who was still trying to catch his breath. His thoughts then moved on to his own boy and his wife, who had stopped talking about divorce after Linderman was able to get their house out of foreclosure and move their son to a better hospital because of the hush money Mueller was paying him.
Linderman began to turn the car around, back in the direction of Mueller’s property, when Ben grabbed the patrol officer’s arm.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Ben asked. “You can’t go back there. You’re not a good guy, are you?”
“No, son. I’m not.”
Linderman reached across to snap the locks in place, but Ben’s hand was already on the door and he pushed it open.
“Stop!” Linderman called out as he slammed on the brakes, but Ben had already leapt from the car and was running to the cover of the tree line.
Linderman jerked his car to a stop and jumped out. He reached for his gun and figured a warning shot would stop the child, who was about to disappear into the woods.
Linderman fired and began to run in the direction of Ben, but then he stopped when he saw the small boy fall.
“Oh God,” Linderman cried out. He ran to the boy’s side and watched as Ben, who had been struck by the bullet in his chest, stared up at the night sky as he struggled to breathe.
“Please. My sister is Julia Gooden,” Ben panted as his eyes began to fill with tears. “Make sure she’s okay.”
“Hold on, son,” Linderman said. He reached for the boy’s hand, but it was too late.
Ben’s labored breath stopped and his nine-year-old, dark brown eyes stayed fixed and unblinking as if they were taking in the stars and the vastness of the universe. A single tear slid down the dead child’s cheek and Linderman stood and looked up at the same sky, knowing that he had lost his soul forever.
Julia began to shudder as if she had fallen beneath the ice and was plummeting down into frigid black water.
Linderman, Duke, and the woods seemed to fade away as the weight of what happened to her brother began to settle in—a truth she had desperately sought to uncover for the past thirty years—but one so cruel, now that it was revealed, Julia wasn’t sure she could ever accept it.
Julia closed her eyes and pictured her beloved Ben, her first and forever hero, who had devoted his entire young life trying to always protect her, just a little boy who knew nothing but hardship, neglect, and poverty, but somehow had seemed to still see the goodness in the world and fought to the end for his little sister.
Julia let out an anguished cry as she imagined Ben’s final moments spent alone and terrified in the dark woods and prayed his last thought wasn’t that he failed her by not being able to find a way back home.
Julia looked back with primal rage at Linderman, the man who had taken everything away from her. The silver metal of Duke’s gun seemed to glint in the moonlight, and Julia fixated on the weapon, almost able to feel the weight of it in her hands as she imagined holding it against Linderman’s temple and pulling the trigger.
“You’re okay, Julia,” Duke said. He clasped Julia with a firm and steady hand and pulled her to him.
“Let me go!” Julia cried. She began to hit her father with her fists, not wanting to be touched or comforted; but the harder she fought, the harder Duke held on.
“It’s going to be okay. It might not seem like it right now, but you’re going to come out of this all right,” Duke said. “Now you know what happened, and that’s how you’re going to heal.”
“Daddy,” Julia cried. She fell into her father and buried her face against his chest as she allowed herself to weep.
“I got you. You’re safe,” Duke promised.
Julia stayed in the protection of her father’s embrace for a minute, but then pulled away as a sense of duty about what she had to do next beckoned her forward to a place she now knew she had to go. She owed Ben that much.
“Give me your gun,” Julia said. “I need to make it right.”
“Are you sure?” Duke asked.
“Yes.”
Duke looked uncertain but handed Julia the weapon. She held the gun between her hands and pointed it at Linderman’s head.
“You killed my brother,” Julia cried.
“It was an accident,” Linderman said. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“Even if it was, you were going to take him back to Max Mueller and Ahote, and they would’ve killed him.”
“I didn’t have any other choice. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. I regret what happened every day, but I didn’t have any other way out.”
“There’s always a way out,” Julia said. Her hands shook as she held the gun inches away from the back of Linderman’s head and willed herself to pull the trigger. “Where’s my brother’s body?”
“I buried him in the woods, near where we are. There’s a willow tree right around the bend from here. He’s there.”
Julia felt a hand on her arm as Duke gently grabbed hold of her.
“This isn’t you. Give me the gun. You kill Linderman, you’re no better than he is. Ben was right about you all along. You’re worth a whole lot. I know he wouldn’t want you to do this.”
Julia wept silently as she handed the gun back to her father and then stepped away from Linderman as Duke took her place.
“You killed my boy,” Duke said. “Julia isn’t a killer, but I am.”
“Go ahead. I deserve it,” Linderman said.
Duke looked at the police chief, prone on his knees, and nodded his head. “A guy like you, a lifetime cop, the big dog now, a secret gets out about what you did, something so terrible, and no one, not even your own wife or boy, would forgive you. If I kill you, you get off easy. You go to jail, that’s the one hell you’d never want to face.”
“Kill me,” Linderman begged. “Please.”
“No. You pay the consequences for what you did,” Duke said.
“Drop your weapon!”
Julia spun around to see Navarro coming out from the trees, with his gun pointed at Duke.
“No, Ray. It’s not what it looks like,” Julia said. “Linderman was mixed up with Max Mueller. The chief killed Ben.”
Navarro’s eyes darted back and forth from Julia to his boss.
“I swear, it’s true,” Julia said.
“Chief, what’s going on here?” Navarro asked.
“It’s just a mix-up,” Linderman said.
“Linderman confessed. He did. Duke and I both heard it,” Julia said. “Linderman was getting kickbacks from Mueller when he was on patrol because he needed the money, and he was covering for Mueller in the department.”
Navarro worked his jaw as he looked down at his boss of sixteen years. “Is that true? You’re dirty?”
“I want a lawyer,” Linderman said.
“Drop your weapon and back away,” Navarro told Duke.
Navarro then got Linderman to his feet and handcuffed him.
“I looked up to you like a father,” Navarro said to Linderman. “If it’s true, you’re a disgrace.”
Navarro then looked to Julia. “I have to arrest your father.”
“I know,” Julia answered. “My sister, Phoenix shot her. She’s locked up in a trailer at the main property. She needs help.”
“We already got her. Russell is with her and the paramedics should’ve already arrived,” Navarro said. �
�Let’s go, Duke. Over here by Linderman.”
Julia heard the chorus of sirens whir by her on the other side of the fence.
“Just give us a minute. My daughter is shaken up and I need to talk to her alone,” Duke said.
Navarro disarmed Duke and shook his head. “You want to do that, Julia?”
“It’s fine. Duke saved me.”
“I’ve got my eye on you. Don’t do anything stupid, Duke.”
“You have my word.”
Duke grabbed Julia’s hand and walked a few feet away from Linderman and Navarro.
“I was sure Ahote killed you,” Julia said to her father.
“Five more minutes with him, I probably would’ve been dead.” Duke’s right arm shot across his torso and he winced in pain.
“You okay?”
“I need a doctor. But I’ll be all right. Take this,” Duke said, and handed Julia a piece of paper.
“What’s this?” Julia asked.
“You did good, Julia. You know what happened to Ben now. Don’t let it consume you. Find your brother and take him home. Give him a real burial. Then you move on. That’s what you’re going to do. That’s what Ben would want for you, to have a good life and to let it go. That’s what you do now. You move forward, okay?”
Julia looked ahead in the direction where Linderman said he had buried Ben’s body. She turned back to her father to ask him to go there with her, but Duke had already slipped back into the woods and out of sight.
CHAPTER 27
Julia looked at the bouquet of flowers she bought for Sarah in the hospital gift shop and felt awkward over the gesture. But Julia knew, deep down, that despite what Sarah had done to her in the past, she needed to at least try to give her sister a second chance, especially in light of Sarah unexpectedly having Julia’s back over the last few days. As she walked down the hallway to Sarah’s room, Julia realized her natural instinct was not to put herself in vulnerability’s way, but she also knew she needed to keep moving forward, taking the advice from another unlikely ally, Duke. If Sarah was really trying to turn her life around, Julia knew opening the door a crack to her was the right thing to do.
Worth Killing For Page 29
