by Derek Blass
The young officer called to him, “Hey, that's it?” Tyler nodded. “All right, well I guess I'll see you around then.”
“You hope not,” Tyler said under his breath. The young officer went back to his work. Tyler picked up his cell phone and dialed a number, “It's me. I need you to run a vehicle identification number. It's 1M8GDM9AXKP042788…yeah, I'll wait.” Tyler sat stoically and stared straight ahead while he waited. His eyes were calm, rarely looking at anything around him.
“Still here...who owns it?” Tyler got his answer and hung up. He put the car in gear and pulled away from the accident. He called the Chief next.
“It was Shaver and Tomko.”
“And the person on the motorcycle?” the Chief asked.
“Martinez.”
“So you know what Martinez has then. Go check his home first. You aren't that far away anyway. I'll text you the address.”
“Got it.” Tyler flipped the phone shut. He thought about Shaver's ineptness as he drove. He never would have let Martinez get his hands on that drive. But, Tyler thought, people always get emotional right after killing someone. Plenty of experience taught him that those who could control their emotions would own the world and everything in it. That was one lesson his prick of an adoptive uncle taught him. He wailed on Tyler without a semblance of emotion. It wasn't until Tyler stopped caring about the beatings, accepting them as robotically as his uncle doled them out, that his uncle stopped. They never talked again after that day.
Tyler's personality kept him isolated from other people as a young man. Studying them from isolation, he began to develop the feeling that they were all weak and powerless creatures. He made efforts to sit among them and observe any redeeming qualities. He never saw one. Instead, he saw weakness. He saw compensation. He would choke as he breathed in their fake cheer. A teeming, parasitic bunch of lemmings who walked, nose to neck and crotch to ass, on their way to his slaughterhouse. With time and tens of murders, he began to view himself as their savior—their cultivator. Like children, they didn't know just how bad it all was. But, unlike children, they had some sense that something was wrong. They dared not ask though—instead they stayed plugged into the system, content to rot away.
These thoughts ran through Tyler's mind as he drove to Martinez's house. He slowed down to try to read addresses illuminated by solitary lights. He stopped a few houses away and turned his car and lights off. There was a car in Martinez's driveway. Martinez could not have come back, he thought. On the other hand, if that video was still in the house, he may have. He opened the car door and softly closed it. From a distance he could see that the front door was open. Some light spilled out from it.
He moved closer and saw the shadow of a person on the wall just inside the front door. Tyler moved behind a tree as two people came out. They shut the front door and started toward their car. It was a man and a woman. The man was tall but probably a few inches shorter than Tyler. The woman was about six inches shorter than the man. Both were well dressed and looked relatively young—maybe late twenties or early thirties. They started their car and backed out of the driveway. Tyler pulled out his pen and paper and took down their license plate number.
* * * *
Martinez stirred out of his sleep and then sat upright. Dawn was just beginning to break outside on the third day since the incident took place. His leg throbbed intensely. Taking care not to disturb the wound, he pulled his pant leg up and saw that the skin was glossy smooth from being stretched. His leg was discolored a plumish purple from his knee down, and the color deepened to caked, black blood around the bullet wound. Martinez knew that he didn't have much time before infection set in. He slid over to the train car's door and peered out.
All that he saw were plains intermittently broken by oil wells. Despair filled him a bit as he looked at the barren landscape. He took a breath and tried to calculate how many miles he had traveled. At an average of twenty miles per hour, he figured about a hundred and twenty miles. That distance placed him about fifty more miles from the next city. It was doable.
Martinez pulled the safe out of his jacket, which he guarded neurotically even alone in the train car. He typed in a code and opened it. The drive was still inside—peering back at him as if it had a life of its own.
“I'm going to give you life just as soon as we get out of his mess.” He closed the safe back up and set it aside. His body swayed gently from side to side in rhythm with the train. Suddenly one of his pockets began to vibrate.
“What the hell?” He reached into his pocket and felt his cell phone. “Forgot I even had it.” He answered, “Yes?”
“Roman Martinez! How the hell do you go this long without answering. We thought you were dead you bastard!”
It was his wife. Martinez looked at the screen and saw sixteen missed calls.
“Shit—I'm sorry baby, but...”
“Sorry? Sorry? I almost called the damn police station to find what the hell happened.”
Martinez's tone immediately changed, “Carmen, don't call the station or any police officer for that matter.”
“But I had no idea...”
“Just listen to me—that's the worst thing you could do. If they find you, you're dead and they'll get this drive. Where are you two?”
“We've almost reached the border,” Carmen answered. “Probably another three hours.” His “master plan” had been for Carmen and Alicia to head for the border.
“Okay, listen to me honey. I want you to drive straight through until you cross. Then call me.”
“You doing all right baby?” Carmen asked, her tone softening some. “You don't sound so good.”
“I'm doing all right, just a little beat up,” he said, masking the nauseating pain he was feeling.
“Have you talked to Shaver?”
Martinez hesitated, “Kinda.”
“Are you at home?”
“No,” he answered, “just stepped out for a couple.”
“Well, I want you to get home and barricade yourself in there until this passes over. I assume you got the video to the local news?”
“Not yet. That's two stops from now.”
“I hate when you're vague like this,” Carmen said. She was used to it though. There was plenty of vagueness being married to a cop for twelve years. “Well, get home.”
“Okay, love you,” Martinez said as he hung up the phone. All of the sounds which he tuned out during the call came rushing back. His leg throbbed for good measure, not to be forgotten. Martinez rolled onto his side and stared out at the golden plains, waiting for his exit.
N I N E T E E N
__________________________________________________
Shaver lay on his back looking at the ceiling in his hospital room. Fractured bone in his left leg. Three cracked ribs. Punctured lung. Concussion. One lost eye.
A piece of debris apparently flew in through the shattered window of his SUV during the crash. It cut a line from above his eyebrow, diagonally across his eye and stopped on the middle of his nose. The damage was too severe to save his eye. The doctor said he was lucky to be alive. Shaver didn't care about luck. All that he felt was rage dripping from his mouth. He longed to see Martinez again so that he could dissect him alive. That bitch had gotten away, Shaver thought, but not for long.
Tomko stirred next to his bed, momentarily drawing Shaver's attention away from his thoughts. Then his phone rang. He picked it up off the end of the table next to his bed.
“Hello,” he croaked out with an unused voice.
“How bad is it?”
“Chief…well, I should be all right in a couple weeks.”
“Don't fuck with me Shaver. A fractured leg and a missing eye is going to have you out a lot longer than that,” the Chief said.
“How the hell do you know my injuries?”
“Come on—did your concussion make you an idiot too?”
“Fuck you.”
“No, Shaver...fuck you. Did you get that goddamn dri
ve?”
“No.” A long pause ensued before the Chief broke it.
“I'm not quite sure what to tell you, Shaver. Old dogs get put to sleep. I can't wait for you to recover and get that drive back. And, if you have no stake in getting that drive back because I'm going to do it for you, then I don't see what good you are to me. You're nothing but a liability.”
“Bullshit, Chief. You try to kill me and I'll just go to the news with this.”
“Sink the whole ship, just like that, huh?” the Chief asked.
“Fuck yeah. I've got reporters that'll die for this story. You know what, Chief? How 'bout I just start by telling this nurse in my doorway?”
“No, no...wait! Is it a man?”
“Yeah, but you had a fifty-fifty...”
“Promise to tell him one thing for me, okay Shaver?”
“What's that, you prick?”
“Hello,” the Chief said flatly.
* * * *
Tyler walked down the hospital's main entrance. Incandescent lights hummed and flickered overhead, making shadows play on the walls. He had donned a nurse's uniform and moved amongst the hospital's staff with serpentine fluidity. He stopped behind a nurse's station and picked up a clipboard with a patient list on it. Tyler stood behind the station as he slowly scanned the list until he got to Shaver—Room 439.
“Excuse me, sir?”
Tyler looked up calmly at a nurse. “Yes?”
“Do I know you?” she asked.
“Oh no, no. I've just been transferred here and I'm trying to get my bearings.”
“Where from?”
“What's that?”
“Where'd you get transferred from?”
“Oh! Mercy—up north.”
“Okay...I figured they would have told me if I was getting new staff,” the nurse said while coming out from behind the nurse's desk. “But then again, why would they tell me anything,” she added snidely.
“So,” Tyler started, “can you point me in the direction of the 400 rooms?”
“Why don't I just take you? You'll need a tour of the place anyways.”
“That'd be fantastic!” Tyler cooed.
The nurse grabbed some documents and then moved off. Tyler fell in behind her as she began to point out landmarks such as the cafeteria and the employee locker room.
“I'm sure you know where Human Resources is by now...”
“Yes, of course.”
“Just around this corner are the 300 and 400 rooms.” Tyler followed her, scanning the door numbers as they went. 408…409…410...
“This is generally where we house the trauma patients, so it can be a pretty stressful place. Do you know where you're going to be assigned?” the nurse asked. 422 …423…424.
“All my experience is in trauma so probably here.” 427… 428…429…
“Well, you're gonna need to buckle down because trauma here is much busier than at Mercy. I used to work up at Mercy and it was a pretty light flow.” 433…434…435... “That reminds me. When did you work up there? You must be my same age and I don't remember ever seeing you.” 438. Tyler itched inside. He wanted to grab the nurse's face and slam her into a wall. Annoying bitch.
“I was up there for the last three years, after I graduated,” he answered.
“Ah, that explains it. I've been here for five years,” she said as she moved down the corridor again.
“Say, where's the closest bathroom?” Tyler asked.
“Right around the corner up here on the left.”
“Okay. Something I ate just reared its head. How about I meet you back at the nurse's station?” The nurse gave Tyler a bit of a grossed-out look and then nodded her head and walked away from him. He went into the bathroom and stooped over a sink where he ran some cold water and lightly patted it on his face. He waved his hands under a towel dispenser, grabbed one and dried himself off.
Tyler pushed through the bathroom door and headed back to Shaver's room. He looked behind him to confirm no one was there and then pulled a silenced handgun from a side holster and let his arm hang loosely at his side. He entered Shaver's room and saw Shaver in the hospital bed just hanging up his cell phone. There was a younger man asleep in a chair next to the bed.
Shaver looked up. “I'm supposed to tell you hello.” The comment startled the man in the chair enough to wake him up. Tomko went to draw his gun but Tyler lifted his own and trained it on Tomko.
“Please—don't try,” Tyler said.
Shaver put his hand out to Tomko in a motion meant to stand him down. “What do you want, you demented asshole?” Shaver said.
“Save it Shaver. Just because I kill doesn't mean I'm demented. In fact, I feel wholly rational and collected right now. Tell me, is this how you felt when you murdered that old man in his bed?”
“What the fuck does it matter?”
“Well, you start with attacks, but I don't think you've turned that magnifying lens on your own actions yet. I'm solely a consequence. I am a product of a course of action you set in motion. Being a product, I have no desire, anger, or remorse associated with what I am about to do. Can you say the same of your slaying of an innocent man?”
“What—what are you about to do? Do you know this guy, Shaver?” Tomko asked with a crack in his voice.
“Know of him.”
“That's all you're supposed to know.”
“Get over yourself,” Shaver said, “you're no fucking angel of death. You're just a prick like your boss. You're a killer and just because you don't have emotion attached to your killing doesn't make you any different than me.”
“In any event, that's about as philosophical as we need to get,” Tyler said, shutting the door to the room. He went over to Tomko with his gun still fixed on Tomko's face. “Give me your gun.” Tomko handed his gun over to Tyler who then moved back around the bed.
“Before I kill both of you I need information.”
“Kill us? What the fuck, man?” Tomko cried as he looked back and forth at Tyler and Shaver. “But I didn't do a damn thing!”
“Guilt by association. It's a hard lesson to learn—especially when it's your last one. Now, what I need to know is where that drive is.”
“And that's why you can't kill either of us—we're the only ones who know where it is,” Shaver said. Tyler raised his gun again and shot Tomko in the left shoulder.
“Ohhh fuck!!!” Tomko screamed as he folded forward. “What the fuck!!”
“Don't fuck with me, Shaver,” Tyler warned.
“Fuck you,” Shaver said, staring into Tyler's eyes.
“No, no—I'll fucking tell you!” Tomko yelled. “Kill him but fucking leave me. I'll tell you what you want to know.”
“Let's hear it then,” Tyler said.
“Don't do it Tomko, it's the only leverage we've got.”
“Fuck leverage, Shaver—I just got shot! This lunatic is gonna kill us if we don't cooperate.”
“He's going to kill us anyway—so tell him to go fuck himself instead.”
“No…no way. Listen here, man,” Tomko said, turning his misty gaze to Tyler. “If I tell you what you want to know, will you let me go? I was just there; I didn't do anything!”
“Sure,” Tyler answered, “tell me what I want to know and I won't kill you.”
“It's a lie, Tomko,” Shaver said.
“Fuck it,” Tomko said in a half cry, half exclamation. “Another cop named Martinez has the drive. We tried to get it from him at his house but he got away. That's when we started chasing him and he went to the railroad tracks. We think he managed to hop onto a train while it was moving but we weren't sure because the next thing we know our SUV was somersaulting through the fucking air. So there—you've got all the info we have. Now will you let me...”
Tyler pointed his gun at Tomko's head and shot. Tomko's mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. Blood, hair and skull fragments sprayed on the window behind him. His body slumped and his lifeless arms fell on both sides of the chair.
“You cocksucker…he didn't have anything to do with this,” Shaver said.
Tyler waited for a moment and listened to blood gurgle in Tomko's mouth. “You know that didn't matter,” Tyler responded, turning his gun on Shaver.
“One question before you do this.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know someone named Mr. Colt?”
“What are you talking about?” Tyler asked, his voice straining a bit. Tyler saw a movement below the covers of Shaver's bed and immediately lunged to his left. A shot bellowed out from Shaver's gun and grazed Tyler's right shoulder. Tyler's ears rang as he regained his bearings.
“Hahaha! You pussy, look at you go!” Shaver screamed. Tyler scurried toward the door and another shot rang out. This shot missed Tyler entirely as he yanked the door open and ran out into the hall. He saw the head nurse running down the hall toward him.
“What's going on down here?” Tyler ignored her, and as they met he pushed her aside to the ground. “Hey! What are you doing?” she cried. Tyler kept running until he got to his car a few blocks away. He started the car, still panicking a bit but then stopped himself.
“Deep breath,” he said to himself. He put the gun back in his side holster and pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket. He dabbed his forehead and took several deep breaths. It had been sometime since he had a struggle like that. Adrenaline was flowing through his body. As he checked his face in the rearview mirror, Tyler noticed that he was aroused. He smiled and pulled away.
T W E N T Y
__________________________________________________
Cruz and Sandra were headed back to Diego's house when Cruz's phone rang. “Hi Diego. We found some interesting information at Martinez's place.” As Cruz listened, the car slowed and came to a stop.
“What's going on?” Sandra asked.
“Here,” Cruz said as he turned on the speakerphone. “Diego, I put you on speakerphone. Start from the beginning again if you would.”
“I was telling Cruz I may know where your Martinez is.”
“Oh yeah? How?” Sandra asked.
“I can't get into my sources too much, but the more important question is where.” Sandra flashed Cruz an exasperated look. He smiled back at her and rolled his eyes. “I was watching the news and saw a pretty significant accident between a SUV and a motorcycle out by the old Ranch Store near the railroad tracks. Turns out that the people in the SUV were none other than your white cops.”
