Vindicator

by Denney Clements

  “OK.”

  He told her the whole story in digest.

  “Why are you giving this to me?” she asked when he was finished. “You could put this on The Vindicator. Another huge scoop.”

  “I’m too tired to write it right now and need to get out of town. If you can get up there right away, you might be able to get video. The shots may attract other reporters, so I can’t guarantee you’ll have it exclusive.”

  “That’s OK,” she said. “You've given me context no one else will have. We can get text and video onto the web faster than they can get it on the air. And I’ll alert the desk to hold space for it in the morning paper. Thanks, Joe.”

  “It’s OK, Kendra. Go get ’em.”

  He shut down the phone and got onto the Midtown Freeway. He thought he might try to make it all the way to the Black Mesa, a good six hours away. How sweet it would be to sleep with Carol tonight, if only for a few hours.

  The adrenalin wore off an hour later, however, and exhaustion set in. So he stopped for the night at a motel on the west edge of Pratt, asking the clerk for a room at the back.

  After undressing, he called the Black Mesa house on his No. 2 throwaway cell phone. Carol answered.

  “Hey, sweetie. How're you feeling?”

  “Oh, Joe, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’m feeling a lot better, though the rib is giving me fits. Are you still coming in tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I was planning to stay in the condo tonight, as you know, but now I’m in Pratt. Let me tell you what happened.”

  When he finished his story, she said, “I was beginning to hope we were rid of them.” She was unable to hide her despair. “Sadie, who’s here with Juwan until Tuesday, brought me printouts of your two posts yesterday. The stories gave me great hope things were coming to an end. But the thugs just went deeper underground. You could be stuck on The Story for months.”

  “I know. We can talk this out tomorrow. I just wanted to tell you I love you and make sure things are OK down there.”

  “They are. Things have been quiet. Teddy’s itching to go back home.”

  “Tell him I said please don’t until I talk to Aaron Renke. I’m planning to see him tomorrow on my way down there. I’ll let you all know what he says.”

  “OK, sweetheart. Sleep well. Oh. Could you stop by the house and pick up some baggy sweatshirts and sweaters for me? I need day clothing that’s easier on my rib.”

  “Sure I can, sweetie. I love you. Good night.”

  Then he called Renke, apologizing for the lateness of the hour, and told him what had happened at the condo. Renke said he would check out the Clark residence personally and agreed to see Emery at 10 the following morning. His tone was less than cordial.

  Chapter 31: Bad Day in Ouimet

  December 4, 10:45 a.m.

  Emery unlocked the front door of the Clark house, mounted the stairs and gathered the clothing Carol had requested, packing the sweat shirts and sweaters in a small suitcase he found in the attic. Back downstairs, he went to the study and retrieved the tech bag containing the laptop, a nice big-screen HP, he’d bought for Carol. Then he locked the door and walked back downtown. He put the suitcase in the Dodge, still parked in front of the sheriff’s office, shifting the shotgun case to make room for it. Then, shouldering the tech bag, he walked three doors north to Vi’s Café for a late breakfast.

  After ordering his meal, he set up the laptop and opened the Examiner’s web site. Kendra Wendell did not disappoint. TWO FUGITIVES DEAD IN NORTHSIDE FIREFIGHT screamed the headline over her story on how the police thwarted an attempted ambush. The story named Emery as the intended victim of the trap that the two dead men, Michael Richards and Percival “Lefty” Larkin, had laid. Both had gone down shooting rather than surrender to police. The police had harvested their identities – whether phony or real – from their Kansas driver’s licenses.

  But police declined to say how they had learned that the men were lurking to ambush Emery. Wendell described him as the “former Examiner reporter who now publishes The Vindicator, a popular public affairs blog.” God bless her, she included a link to his blog in the piece.

  Wendell, who'd apparently gotten to the scene too late to shoot video, also posted driver’s license photos of the two dead men. One of the photos gave Emery a start: Richards, the one waiting inside his condo, was the rifleman who fired two rifle shots at him and his son four days earlier out in Garfield County.

  Wendell had not made this connection, so Emery fired off an e-mail alerting her to it. Cushing, he noted, had sent him an e-mail demanding to know how a story that should have gone to the Spotlight ended up in the Examiner. He decided he'd answer later and went back to Wendell’s story. He was glad that Larkin and Richards were dead. Never mind that the sentiment clashed with his values.

  He shut down the laptop when his eggs, ham, hash browns and biscuits arrived. As he ate, he wondered whether he’d been too confrontational earlier with Aaron Renke, a man whose respect he craved. Their conversation had been less pleasant than Emery expected.

  “You should have told me about the goon hideout,” Renke growled upon Emery’s arrival. Dressed in faded jeans and a white western work shirt, the Baird County sheriff was smiling, but his eyes glinted with anger. They took seats in his office, Renke behind his desk, Emery in a hard metal chair.

  Emery shrugged. “It had been more than a month since that Crown Vic drove me into the Kiowa River and the KCID investigation was going nowhere. I had no confidence that the Thanksgiving home-invasion probe would go any better.”

  “I told you last week the KCID were doing the best they could,” Renke said. “These goons were well embedded. Once the KCID got hard information on their base of operations, they acted – decisively. But you had already peed in that pond, dispersing the fish. And you put your life and your son’s at risk in the bargain. Journalistic hubris mattered more to you than doing the smart thing.”

  “How did you know my son was with me?”

  “You just told me that.” Renke smiled slyly.

  Emery grinned. “You got me there. But we’ll have to agree to disagree on what you call journalistic hubris. I call it going after a good story. Carol has already dressed me down for exposing my son to danger. I thought about what she said. Should I have gone out there by myself? My answer came up no. The kid’s driving skill saved both of us. I’m damned glad he was there and so is he. And it’s not my job to gather intelligence for the KCID.”

  “I admire a man who stands up for what he believes in, even when he’s wrong,” Renke said. “And you are wrong.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t work for law enforcement. I work for my readers.”

  “Enough said on that matter,” Renke said gruffly. “As you say, we’ll have to agree to disagree. And I do disagree.

  “As to your query last night whether the goons had staked out the Clark place as well as your place in Wichita, I don’t think that’s possible. Ever since Thanksgiving, I’ve had my deputies swing by there several times a day and night. They try the locks and look in the windows. In Wichita, the goons have urban cover. They can blend in. Here in Ouimet, they and their vehicles would have been spotted.”

  “Is it safe for Carol, Rose and Ted to come home?”

  Renke thought for a moment. “Not yet, and it pains me to admit that.”

  “One more question, Aaron. What, if anything, do you know about Kan-Tel? I followed up yesterday on those assault reports you dug out for me. I posted my piece on the interviews yesterday afternoon. I talked to three of the five victims. All three were working on tech-related projects that fear induced them to drop. Kan-Tel benefited in the Cherokee case and may have benefited from the ones in Washington and Holcomb. But I didn’t get into the Kan-Tel angle.”

  Renke nodded. “I know. I read your piece right after you posted it. I seem to have become a fan of The Vindicator, God help me. I subscribe to your feed. So you’re following up on a hunch?”

  E
mery nodded. “I’d sure like to know who’s on the Kan-Tel board. The only public Kan-Tel people I’m aware of are Albert Spritzer, who was their CEO in 2007, and Gloria Munday, who lobbies for the company in Topeka.” He spelled out both names. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that at least three of the assaults were about communications technology. Do you?”

  “No. It’s worth follow-up. Let me talk to the folks at Town Hall and on the town council. Maybe they know some of the names. Call me, say, Tuesday, and I’ll let you know what I found out.”

  “This is above and beyond, Aaron. Thanks.”

  “My price is cheap, Joe: No more cowboy antics.”

  “I’ll promise you the same thing I promised Mike Harmon, to remember I’m a law-abiding citizen as well as a reporter. But I set my own direction and I don’t work for you.”

  “I guess I can settle for that,” Renke said.

  Now, as Emery swallowed the last of his coffee, paid his bill and walked down the street toward the Dodge, he decided he couldn’t have handled the discussion with Renke in a less in-your-face way. He liked and respected Renke and wanted the same in return. But he would not compromise his independence as the price of friendship.

  Emery pointed the Dodge southwest toward Elkhart, intending to take the direct route out to the Black Mesa. But not five miles out of Ouimet, he came upon a jackknifed semi with an empty livestock trailer blocking the road, shoulder to shoulder – strange, considering that the sun was out and the weather was dry. He braked the pickup. Rather than wait for a wrecker to move the semi, he decided to turn back to town and head south into the Panhandle.

  As he looked in the rear-view mirror in preparation for executing a 180-degree turn, he saw, to his horror, a white Chevy Impala coming up fast behind him. The car turned sideways as it braked to a halt, blocking off his escape route to the rear; deep irrigation ditches lined the sides of the narrow highway.

  The driver and a rear-seat passenger got out of the Impala, dressed in jeans, black ball caps and blue windbreakers. Two more men, similarly attired, had gotten out of the semi and were approaching the pickup.

  Overcoming his fear-induced paralysis, Emery snatched the shotgun from the seat beside him and unzipped the case. The pistol was wedged beside the suitcase on the floor of the truck. But as he tossed the case aside, one of the men from the Impala yanked the pickup’s front door open, slashed Emery’s seatbelt with a jackknife and pulled him out, kicking his legs from beneath him. As Emery went down, the man snatched the shotgun from his flailing hand and slammed the butt into the side of Emery’s head, snarling, “This is an execution, fuck-face. We’ve had enough of you.”

  Emery crashed into the pavement. He heard the man jack a shell into the shotgun’s chamber. Thinking, so this is what it’s like to die, he awaited the roar of the shotgun and the impact of the buckshot, wondering whether the man would shoot him in the head or the chest. He felt extreme regret that his time on Earth, satisfying for the most part, had been so short, especially the sweet time he’d gotten to spend with Carol. The roar came soon enough, more of it than he thought there’d be. But he felt no impact. Strange, he mused as his soul floated away. …

  Later, when his soul reunited with his body, bringing with it intense cranial and bodily pain, he found himself on a bed in a medical facility. An ice bag was strapped to the left side of his head.

  “Ah,” cried a nurse standing beside him. “You’re awake already. Guess I lose my bet with the sheriff. He told me you were too hard-headed to stay passed out for long.” Dressed in pale green scrubs, she was slender, red-haired, freckle-faced and pretty and, Emery realized as consciousness took hold, older than she looked. The giveaway was the accumulated sad realism in her green eyes.

  “Before you ask the where-am-I question,” she said, “let me tell you that my name is Emma Gussett and you’re in Ouimet, in Dr. Ahmed Rahman’s clinic. Rick Hartman brought you here in his cruiser after the sheriff and his deputies rolled up those fugitives from up in Garfield County. Killed one, wounded two and got one to surrender.”

  “Aaron saved me?” Emery asked in wonder. “I thought for sure I was a dead man. Was he or any of his people hurt?”

  “No. According to Rick, they got the drop on the bad guys because the bad guys were focused on ending your life. The two injured men are in Dr. Rahman’s operating theater. He’s extracting the bullets they took. The other man’s in Aaron’s jail. You’ll have to ask him their names.”

  Emery tried to sit up but fell back onto the bed. He was still in his clothes.

  “Whoa there, partner,” Emma said. “You’re going to be laid up a day or two. You’re in shock and you may be suffering a concussion, though the X-rays showed you somehow escaped a skull fracture and a broken jaw. Guess Aaron was right about your hard-headedness.”

  “But I need to get down to the Black Mesa to see my family.”

  “Don’t worry. They’re coming to you. The sheriff called them and told them what happened to you. Carol said they’re sick of hiding out and they’re coming home to take care of you.”

  “What? How …”

  “How did Aaron know where they were? He told me to tell you he guessed it right off, that he’s taken his family to Rose’s place down there a time or two for relaxation, fishing and hunting. He’ll be in to talk to you about it after he finishes his paperwork from the arrests. Who don’t you get some rest now.”

  She didn’t have to ask twice.

  Chapter 33: Reunited

  December 4, 3:30 p.m.

  Emery came to an hour or so later. The ice pack was still strapped to his head. Renke was standing at the foot of the bed. “I realized as they were standing over me with the shotgun that I wasn’t ready to die,” Emery murmured, “though, oddly, I wasn’t afraid.”

  “Just resigned to it?”

  Emery nodded, depressed that he was so weak. “How did you know?”

  “Been there myself. Joe, I want to apologize for my mistake in assuming that the goons had no place to hide here. Apparently, those two men in the Chevrolet drove in early this morning and hid in plain sight. They were parked in the business district. And one of the neighbors on Courthouse Street thinks she saw them drive past Carol’s house about 10:15.

  The man in my jail, Howard ‘Marco’ Polanski, has been talking to us for the past several hours. He tells me he and his associate, Thad Vernon, stole that semi from a feedlot in Satanta after they got word you had come to town. The other two, Kenneth Davis, the dead man, and Hector Hardaway, who, like Vernon, is shackled to a gurney in Doc Rahman’s other emergency bay, contacted them by cell phone. Davis and Hardaway apparently spotted you coming out of the Clark house. They’d expected you would head out this way after you dodged the trap they set in Wichita last night. Seems their sole mission in life since you flushed them out on Wednesday has been paying you back for your …

  “Cowboy antics?” Emery murmured.

  Renke grinned. “That’s a good way to put it.”

  “Did you ask Marco about the Los Llanos crimes?”

  Renke shook his head. “Harmon told me to stay away from that. The FBI is supposedly in the loop on the other crimes the goons may have committed. They just sent a high-level team to Topeka. I’m to restrict myself to what happened here, today, and that’s fine with me.”

  “How did you manage to save me?”

  “Young Rick Hartman, whom I’m promoting to chief deputy, the position having been vacant since Lester Thurmond retired last summer, happened to be driving in from a road patrol as you were leaving town. He saw the Chevrolet take off after you, noted that it had a temporary tag and alerted me by radio. He followed the Chevrolet while I and two other deputies who were in the office at that time piled into my Explorer. We all got out to where they’d trapped you on U.S. 56 just as they yanked you from the car. I got my rifle on Davis just as he was putting that shotgun to his shoulder. When I ordered him to drop the weapon and put his hands up, he swung the shotgun aroun
d toward me, so I dropped him with a head shot. Hartman and Bob Moore incapacitated the other two as they were pulling out their weapons, and my third guy, Harlan Garvin, took Marco into custody after he wisely decided not to fight. We loaded you into Hartman’s cruiser and he brought you here.”

  “Wow. That’s a hell of a story, sheriff.”

  “It is, but it’s already out. I’ve already talked to the Appeal up in Garden City and they’ve put it out on the AP wire.”

  “Scooped again,” Emery murmured. “Shucks.”

  Renke smiled. “But only you can tell the tale from the perspective that matters most – the intended victim.”

  Emery didn’t want to think about that. So he asked, “Do you think Carol, Rose and Ted will be safe here? Emma, the nurse, says they’re on their way back.”

  “Yep, along with Sadie and her new boyfriend, Juan. Is that kid OK?”

  “His name is Juwan. He’s better than OK. He’s a bright young man with a good heart, my son’s best friend.

  “Well, they’ll all be safer now that the Wichita police and my little group of lawmen have taken six of the goons out of circulation. But don’t get complacent. You might install a video surveillance system, for instance. There’s no telling how many more of them there are out there. I have a feeling this isn’t over.”

  “Me, too.” Emery, rasped, sinking back against his pillow.

  “Rest, Joe,” Renke said. “Carol should be here to get you in a little while. Doc says you can go home with them as long as you promise to rest for at least a week.”

  “Thank you, Aaron, for everything. I owe you.”

  “You may regret you said that,” Renke said, smiling, as he left the room.

  “We’re going to take care of you for a change,” Carol asserted an hour later, as she helped Emery into Rose’s Grand Marquis. “We’re through seeing you as this force, albeit lovable, that disrupted our lives and put us in danger,” she continued as she sat behind the wheel and started the car. “I say that knowing there’s more of The Story to be told. I almost lost you today. That really clarified my thinking.”