by Matthew Iden
Closest to us, where we lay sweating and dirty, was an old freestanding garage with boarded and black-papered windows. A ring of trash that always seems to accumulate around farmsteads and old homes surrounded the garage: ancient milk bottles, rusty cans, a tire. It seemed to be in decent shape, but abandoned and unused. A graying, decrepit garden shed, with a wild grapevine poking through one window, stood sixty feet from the back door of the main house. More debris formed a perimeter around the shed, some of it—like bed frames and lumber—leaned against the walls, other bits polluting the ground, like empty buckets and wash rags that had been in the dirt so long it was hard to tell what was earth and what was cloth.
I shifted my attention to the house. From our vantage point, I could barely make out the front porch where it peeked around the corner, but I did have a decent view of the back, where a modest porch led to, presumably, a back door and maybe a kitchen. There was a walk-down trapdoor to the basement in the back of the house and an old-fashioned coal chute on the side. A familiar-looking Bronco with gray spots of patching compound sat in the side yard.
Warren nudged me and said, “Coming around from the front. Right side.”
I swung the glasses to cover that side of the house, where the chunky blond kid that I had prevailed against so long ago at the gas station came swaggering around the corner. He was wearing the same cutoff jean shorts and tank top. There were two new additions to his wardrobe that caught my eye. The first was a black baseball cap. The other was an AR-15, cradled in his arms like a black bug. Which explained some of the swagger. He headed back to the garden shed and walked a simple perimeter route along the edge of the woods, peering menacingly into the shadows. I lowered the glasses to avoid a reflection off the lens and watched him with my naked eye. He bobbed in and out of sight as he passed around the far side of the garage, making no effort to stay hidden, and eventually made his way back to the Bronco, where he leaned the AR-15 against a tire and opened the door. He leaned in and came back out with what looked like a fast-food bag, picked up the gun by its top handle, and headed back to the house. He skirted it, however, and passed out of sight, presumably to do a circuit of the front yard, too.
“Who is that kid?” I asked Warren.
“Toby Henderson. All-star tackle for the high school football team couple years back. The highlight of his time on Earth so far. Why, you know him?”
“He and some skinny creep tried to jump me about a week ago out at the gas station by the on-ramp to 29. I introduced my elbow to his face before his friend tried to knife me.”
Warren smiled. “That warms my heart. Toby’s been beating on people his whole life. Always been a big waste of space. The creep is Dwayne Riggins. Burnout pothead. I been running him in for touching girls the wrong way since he was in elementary school.”
“Looks like they’ve both graduated to something bigger and nastier.”
“Yep.” He nodded towards the yard. “How often you think our little soldier goes on patrol?”
I thought about it. “He loves toting that gun around, but he’s got to be bored as hell. I mean, no way anyone around here is stupid enough to trespass on the Browers’ land, right? So, he only does it because he’s afraid Will or Tank will show up and kick his ass. Once an hour, tops. Or maybe if he knows they’re on their way back, he’ll pop outside, show them he’s on top of things.”
Warren nodded. “S’what I thought. Want to throw him a curveball?”
We talked it over, then wriggled our way across and down the four hundred yards until we were right behind the garage. We took our time and used all the cover we could in case Toby—or someone else in the house—was being extra vigilant and spotting from the second-floor window. In twenty minutes, we were crouched behind the garage, leaning against the wall for support. Neither one of us was young or in the best shape and I know Warren was as glad as I was that we still had another twenty minutes to go before Toby came out for his rounds. A soft breeze swirled around the back of the garage and I closed my eyes, drinking it in.
Warren took longer to catch his breath. Eventually, when he got it under control, he looked over at me. “Why’re you doing all this, Singer?”
“J.D.’s thing?”
“Yeah, and Mary Beth. I can understand wanting to, but actually doing it?”
I gestured towards him. “You’re here.”
“It’s my job. In my hometown. You’re retired and a hundred miles from home. You don’t get off on the vigilante thing, do you?”
“No,” I said. I scratched idly at the rough cinder-block wall of the garage. “Just unfinished business.”
“Don’t give me that vague bullshit,” Warren said, surprising me with the edge in his voice. “I’m out here with you risking my neck. Even if I don’t take a bullet, I’m probably out of a job tomorrow. You owe me something better than unfinished business.” He said the last two words in a high-pitched, little girl’s voice.
I stared at Warren, thinking about it, seeing the years slip backwards. Maybe another cop would understand. Finally, I said, “When J.D. was busted all those years ago, he was just a small-time loser that got in way over his head. Running crack, picking up cash. Sooner or later he would’ve done time. Who knows how much or when. But he was on his way.”
“Sounds like his time down here.”
I nodded. “The thing you probably don’t see in Cain’s Crossing are cops who snap. I don’t mean pull a gun and go crazy. I mean the ones where the everyday consequence of what they do and see erodes who they are and what they stand for. When murders pile on top of one another with no end in sight—and for sure not stopped because of anything you do—you start to lose it. Look for shortcuts. Assign guilt and move on.”
“We talking about you?”
“No. I understand it, but I never went there. No, this was a guy I was assigned to temporarily, help him out with a string of shootings in Southeast. He was a couple years older, had seen too many things. Some of them in Vietnam, so maybe that had something to do with it.” I ran a hand through my hair. I didn’t like talking about this. “Long story short, he saw a little girl get shot and that was it, the one that broke him. He knew who’d done it and knew he’d never catch up to him.”
“Then?”
“Then J.D. fell in our laps. And Stan—his name was Stan—saw J.D. as our golden opportunity. He thought we could lean on him, get him to flip, and we’d pull the shooter in. But J.D. wouldn’t budge.”
I was quiet for a long minute. Warren said, “So?”
Signed, sealed, and delivered, Stan says, patting a breast pocket. I sighed. “So Stan framed him. We searched his apartment on a jacked-up warrant and Stan slipped the shooter’s gun into a likely spot.”
“How’d he get the gun?”
“He cut a deal with the crack dealer whose gun it was. Isn’t that nice? J.D. wouldn’t rat out the dealer, so Stan turned around and did exactly the same to him.”
Warren frowned. “Why’d the dealer want to do that?”
“Got rid of a flunky, the weapon, and the murder rap all at the same time,” I said. “Who wouldn’t go for that?”
“Why’d this guy Stan do it?”
“He told me later he didn’t care, he’d nail the dealer on something else. But the real reason was that he couldn’t stand the idea that J.D. could’ve helped him put the dealer away…and didn’t. So he punished him.”
Warren was quiet for a second. I knew what he was going to ask. “You know about the frame?”
“No. Not then. But then I had my doubts. Stan was acting crazy. And the day we found the gun, it was like something out of a movie. He nearly said ‘oh ho!’ when he dug it up. I got more and more suspicious but didn’t say anything. It almost came out after J.D.’s trial, but I think I didn’t want to know, even though Stan damn near admitted to me that he’d done it. Gave me his reason right there in the courtroom.”
“Which was?”
“He asked, why? Why are you going to bother w
ith this piece of shit who is going to go to jail anyway? Why delay the inevitable? And, maybe more important, why wait until something worse happens?”
“And you went along with it.”
I closed my eyes again. “And I went along with it. And because I did, J.D. Hope lost twenty years of his life.”
Warren was quiet.
“I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it, too,” I said. “That Stan was probably right. That we would’ve put J.D. away sooner or later. It’s an easy argument to like. But the fact remains that J.D. didn’t do it. And that’s got to be enough. We’re not in it to play God, we’re not there to decide who might commit a crime. We’re there to stop the ones we can and solve the ones we can’t. And that’s it. If you can’t stomach the idea that some guys get caught and some guys slip through, then you’re in the wrong business.”
Warren said nothing.
“So that,” I continued, “is why I owe J.D. Hope something. Even if he was a lifelong crook, even if I was doing my goddamn job, even if he would’ve wound up doing time anyway. Even if he’s dead.”
Warren picked up a pebble, tossed it into the woods. “Can’t change the past, Singer.”
“I’m not trying to. The fact is, it’s not for him. It’s for me. Redemption is selfish.”
Warren thought about it, nodded once. “Sometimes the ends don’t justify the means. Sometimes they surely do. Not sure how I would’ve handled it. I guess I’m more of a cut-and-dried kind of cop.”
“You would’ve let him go to jail?”
He shrugged. “Probably. But I wasn’t there. I didn’t have to live with it for twenty years.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And now it doesn’t matter. Mary Beth’s the priority now.”
In the distance, we heard the front door slam and all conversation was done. I checked my watch—on the hour, exactly. Warren tapped me on the shoulder and I crept around the garage to the opposite side. Once there, I took my phone and turned the camera function on, then placed it on the ground and propped it against the garage. I toyed with it until only the barest slice—enough for the aperture to remain clear—showed around the corner. From my hiding place, I could see the screen perfectly, but Toby would have to be looking for a half-inch sliver of black phone two inches off the ground leaning against a garage with debris scattered around it.
Through the camera, I watched as Toby sauntered around the yard, poking at the vine in the garden shed, taking his time. Body language told me he was as bored out of his skull as I’d predicted. He stopped to put a wad of chew in his mouth, spit, and continue. As he came closer I heard his footsteps, one foot crunching on gravel, one silently on the grass. When he got within twenty feet of the garage, I carefully pulled the phone back and speed-dialed Warren’s number. After two rings, I pulled my gun and stepped around the corner.
It couldn’t have fallen out any better. Toby, head bent like the first time I saw him, was looking at his own phone. He held the AR-15 by the stock and trigger guard, the barrel pointed straight down, as he checked his messages. He shuffled slowly towards me, oblivious.
“Toby,” I called softly as I drew a bead. At about the same time, Warren rounded the corner behind him, unseen and silent.
The kid’s head snapped up and he stared at me like I’d suddenly sprouted from the weeds. The phone slipped from his hand and his mouth opened to say something, or yell for help, but Warren cut off any sound he might’ve made as he whipped the butt of the shotgun forward two-handed and cracked it against the back of Toby’s head. The kid dropped like a sack of laundry. The only sound was a rattle as the AR-15 dropped with him.
I slipped the SIG in the holster and ran forward to help Warren drag Toby’s two-eighty around the corner of the garage. Warren patted him down and cuffed him while I listened for any sign from the house that we’d been spotted. When there wasn’t any, we gagged him, and made sure he could breathe.
“Sorry, all-star,” Warren said, patting Toby on the cheek. He then showed me two sets of keys he’d taken from the kid. “That’s to a Ford. The Bronco, I guess. Bottle opener. And a couple of house keys.”
“Those are his, probably. What about the other set?”
Warren flipped through the other set. “A padlock. Two house keys.”
“Those are for the house,” I said. “Give me the binoculars for a second.”
Warren handed me the binoculars and I slipped up to the corner of the garage. A quick glance told me what I wanted to know and I ducked back around the garage. “There’s a shiny new padlock on those basement doors. So, we’ve got front door, back door, and basement, here.”
“What now?”
I looked down at Toby. “If there’s anyone inside, they’re going to be expecting him eventually.”
“What are you thinking?” I glanced at Warren, then down at Toby, eyeing their respective sizes. He shook his head. “You ain’t serious, Singer.”
“Don’t be a baby. You only have to give an impression, Warren. It might give us three extra seconds we need.”
It took another minute, but I managed to convince Warren that we didn’t have much time—or many options. Grumbling, he swapped his jeans and Hawaiian shirt for Toby’s shorts and cutoff tank top. The hat and the gun completed the look.
“Looking good, Warren,” I said. I picked up his shotgun. “We ready?”
“Let’s get to it.”
Warren tossed me the back door key, then sauntered out from behind the garage, holding the assault rifle by the stock just as Toby had. Swaggering like he owned the place, he traced the path we’d watched Toby take before, veering towards the Bronco, then out to the front yard to do the rest of the circuit. I watched as he reached in a pocket and pulled out Toby’s phone and pretended to thumb through it as he walked. I had to admire his guts. He had no guarantee that he was fooling anyone in the house. Bullets might start flying any second.
But there wasn’t a peep from the homestead and, as he started to round the corner towards the front, I sprinted for the back door, shotgun at the ready. I crouched to a stop at the foot of the porch, training the gun on the door. Ten seconds passed. Then thirty. A full minute later, when no one kicked the door open to take a shot at me, I padded up the steps and hunkered down near the door, leaning the shotgun against the wall. A quick check showed the door was locked, so I slid the first house key in.
No luck.
I listened. Nothing.
I tried the next key. It slipped into place like it was greased. I grabbed the shotgun and eased the door open.
I’d entered a dusky and gloomy kitchen. Fried onions, old coffee grounds, and stale beer dominated the topmost layer of a deep stink that made me want to hold my breath. Beneath it was the ingrained odor of years ignoring basic hygiene. Pots and pans were stacked in the sink and fast-food bags and cups had been thrown on the counter. Aqua-tinged linoleum had come up in places, revealing the black, gummy adhesive that had been used to set it fifty years ago. Sunlight made gray and greasy by a filthy window couldn’t improve the look of stains and caked bits of food on the stove.
I crept through the kitchen, moving with exquisite care so as to not step on the loose floorboards I knew had to be there, and into a plain old dining room. Once upon a time, the carpet had been removed, revealing a patchwork of plywood and subflooring, but the renovation couldn’t hide the smell of mold and decay. Gun catalogs and car manuals were tossed on an old pine table with thick, knobby legs and four chairs around it. I sifted through the papers quickly, but didn’t see anything valuable. I pressed on.
The dining room gave way to a long hall with wainscoting and a chair rail. It led in a straight line to the front door and past the stairs to the second floor. I resisted the urge to head straight for the steps and forced myself to clear the entire first level. Crossing the hall, I eased open a swinging door and found myself in a room that once, long ago, had served as a parlor or drawing room.
As bare as the other rooms were, this on
e was chock-full of boxes and furniture, as if the contents of all the other rooms in the house had been piled in there for some reason. It smelled of cardboard, glue, and twine. The small noises I made sounded smothered and close thanks to the stacks of boxes. Dark wood paneling on the walls made the room especially dim and mournful. I stepped in the room and had just lifted the lid on the first box when, from behind me, came the unmistakable sound of a shell being racked into the chamber of a shotgun.
“You nosy son of a bitch,” said a low voice. “You just don’t know when to quit.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Drop it.”
I took a deep breath and squatted, putting the shotgun on the floor.
“Turn around.”
Keeping my hands by my sides and away from my body, I did a slow pivot. Relaxing in an old rocking chair, hidden by stacks of boxes, was the by-now-familiar stoner face of Jay-bone. This time, however, instead of a pool cue or a case of beer, he held a pump-action riot gun. Twelve-gauge, based on the size of the black hole at the end he pointed at me, which looked as big as a drain pipe from where I was standing. Just like the one at my feet that I had no way of reaching. My fingers squeezed into fists, impotent.
Jay set the chair to rocking back and forth in place, the expression on his face amused. “Think you can reach your backup before I pull the trigger?”
I was ten feet away from the end of his twelve-gauge. My SIG was in a waistband holster, but I’d never reach it in time; it might as well have been back home in Arlington. If I tried, the spread of shot from Jay’s gun would shred me and just about every piece of paper in the room. The coroner would need any untouched boxes to put all the little pieces in. “No.”
