Opening Moves pbf-6

by Steven James

  “Yeah.” Lyrie rubbed his head. “Alright, look, there’s an FBI agent in there. Parker. The guy’s strapped to the bed. But she stays in the room.”

  “I’m supposed to meet with people confidentially.”

  “She stays, Padre.”

  The tranquilizer. Use it if you need to. Get in, meet Basque, then get out.

  “Alright.”

  I heard heavy footsteps pounding around the corner behind me.

  I looked back.

  Ralph.

  “Radio Ellen,” I called to him. “She’s at the room!”

  He was quickly catching up with me. “I tried already. There’s interference here in the hospital.”

  “Then let’s move.”

  One hallway to go.

  Lyrie introduced Joshua to Special Agent Parker and then left the room.

  Joshua looked toward Basque, but his attention was immediately drawn to the television on the wall. There was a news report about the woman who’d been killed at the slaughterhouse.

  A name flashed across the screen and the announcer said, “We’re getting unconfirmed reports that the victim’s name is Sylvia Padilla.”

  Joshua froze.

  He locked eyes with Basque and knew it was true.

  Parker looked at Joshua oddly. “Didn’t Lyrie just say your last name is-”

  But then her words were cut off as he jammed the needle fiercely into her neck and depressed the plunger. The tranquilizer kicked in almost immediately. He held one hand over her mouth and with the other he stopped her from reaching for her gun.

  She faded and he lowered her to the floor.

  He quickly checked-there was no lock on the door. He slid her body against it to slow anyone down who might try to interrupt him. After wedging her legs solidly in the nearby bathroom doorway, he turned a cart on its side and jammed it in to lock them in place. Nobody was going to get the hospital room’s door open without torquing Agent Parker’s spine.

  Then Joshua turned to Basque, whose wrists and ankles were strapped to the bed.

  The man’s jaw was broken so he couldn’t cry out for help.

  His hands were restrained so he couldn’t hit the call button.

  “You took Sylvia.” Joshua’s voice was trembling. “You killed my wife.” He produced the necrotome from its sheath.

  Voices shouted in his head: You are beyond redemption, Joshua!

  No! It’s not evil to pursue justice!

  Basque just watched him. Didn’t struggle to get free. Didn’t look away.

  You took care of your father, Joshua. You did what needed to be done. You’re good at doing what needs to be done.

  He pulled up a chair beside the bed.

  Ralph shouted down the hall for Lyrie to open Basque’s door, but when he tried, he was able to open it only far enough to get a hand inside.

  Ralph beat me to the room. “I got it,” he told Lyrie.

  But then he looked into the room. “It’s Ellen! She’s down!”

  And that’s when I arrived.

  Joshua heard Detective Bowers shout, “Padilla, stop! Get away from the bed!” Through the crack in the doorway he could see movement. He wasn’t sure how many people.

  So this was it.

  Endgame.

  He tightened his grip on the handle of the necrotome, the “cutting instrument of the dead.”

  Yes, he would do this for Sylvia.

  Your father taught you what to do. This is your chance, just like you did in the cellar under the barn.

  Bowers called again for him to stop, even as Joshua saw a massive arm squeeze through the crack in the door, clutch Agent Parker’s armpit, and begin to lift her from the floor.

  Ralph gritted his teeth, shoved his other hand through the crack as well so he could get a better grip on Ellen’s limp body.

  He managed to get her high enough to free her legs, then he leaned heavily against the door.

  Joshua had the necrotome raised when the door swung open. Lyrie stepped forward to support Parker, and the enormous guy who’d lifted her whipped out a Glock, aimed it at Joshua. “Move away from the bed!”

  “Listen to him!” It was Bowers again. He stood in the doorway beside the big guy. “Back away.”

  The evil which I would not.

  That I do.

  In an instant, the rest of the passage came to him, the conclusion St. Paul had reached, the one Reverend Tate had mentioned in his prayer at the funeral: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” and Joshua thought of his wife dying at the hand of this man now lying in front of him, and he thought of redemption and sin and hope and eternity. He had, all of his life, wanted to find God’s forgiveness, and now he was sure he never would.

  “Step back!” Ralph bellowed, moving into the room.

  “Get back, Joshua!” I yelled. “Now!”

  “No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” Those words raced through Joshua’s mind, chased by the ones from Reverend Tate’s homily, “Let us take responsibility for our sins…Let us trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, the one whose blood cleanseth us from all sin.”

  The blood.

  Always the blood.

  And that cleansing was what Joshua yearned for, even as he said to Basque, “A shedder of blood shall die,” and then he thrust the necrotome deep into the man’s abdomen.

  But that was the last thing he ever did. Because Special Agent Ralph Hawkins fired three shots in quick succession and Joshua Padilla dropped dead to the floor and entered eternity.

  For the reckoning.

  Ralph lowered his gun.

  The knife handle jutted from Basque’s abdomen.

  “We need a doctor in here!” I yelled. “Now!”

  TWO DAYS LATER

  Friday, November 21

  The Coffeehouse

  100

  8:31 a.m.

  They were able to save Richard Basque.

  They stitched up his abdomen, wired his jaw shut, and the prognosis was positive.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  We’d stopped Griffin, Basque, and Joshua Padilla. Radar was safe, Lionel, Colleen, Tod, Adele and Mallory had all been through traumatizing experiences, but all were recovering. Agent Parker was fine.

  But we’d lost Sylvia Padilla.

  All too often endings in real life are bittersweet. We all die, but we don’t all find peace before we do. However, when I remembered the look on Sylvia’s face as she passed away, I knew there was forgiveness there. And I trusted that God had seen what was in her heart and judged her accordingly.

  Inevitably, there were going to be charges filed against Carl, Vincent, and Radar for the crimes they’d committed to fulfill Joshua’s demands, but I was hopeful that, considering the circumstances, the judge would be lenient-especially with Radar. Initial indications were that things were leaning in that direction.

  Browning had, as it turned out, known that Griffin had killed Mindy Wells and it looked as though he would be spending a long time on the other side of some prison bars. So, the wheels of justice were already turning, working their way through the complex, multilayered case.

  My shoulder and leg ached, but they would heal soon enough. People say that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. I wasn’t so sure about that, but the things that don’t kill us do shape who we become. And I knew the events of the last week would shape me forever. Whether in a good way or a bad one, only time would tell.

  Agent Parker had flown back to DC yesterday, but I’d offered to take Ralph out for coffee before his ten o’clock flight today. When I’d said that, he’d eyed me suspiciously. “You don’t even drink coffee.”

  “Yeah, well, you were bragging on it so much the other day, I figured I’d give it a shot.”

  He’d looked pleased, and now we were at a neo-hippie coffeehouse not far from the airport. A sign on the wall announced COFFEE THAT’S BETTER THAN ALTERRA’S!

  A
lterra was one of the most famous roasters in Milwaukee and if I was going to try coffee, I guess this was the place to do it.

  When the ponytailed barista behind the counter asked if I wanted “bold” or “mild,” I asked if he was kidding. “Would any guy ever say he wants ‘mild’?”

  “You’d be surprised,” he told me.

  Both Ralph and I ordered the bold. He went for the largest size they had, I chose the smallest, which they called a “tall” and I had no idea how that worked. The person who’d named it was either a marketing genius or a complete idiot. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  We picked up our drinks. I grabbed a couple sugar packets, tipped some cream into the cup, and we took a seat near the window so we could watch the gently falling snow drift down across my city.

  Ralph went at his coffee right away. One gulp and half of it was gone. He shook his head. “I still can’t believe a police chaplain did all that.”

  A lot had come out in the last two days, including confirmation of what Joshua had told Radar about a place under a barn on some land his family used to own in Colorado. Two skeletons were found down there. Dental records told us that one of them had been Joshua’s father.

  I thought of a young Joshua partaking in the atrocities that happened beneath that barn.

  And I thought of a five-year-old Ted Oswald being forced to watch as his father slaughtered puppies in front of him and then lashed out at him if he showed any sign of emotion.

  And again, as I had the other day, I wondered about our choices and the point at which we ultimately become accountable for them.

  Can we ever really know when someone else is old enough, or mature enough, or mentally healthy enough to be held responsible for his crimes? An arbitrary age of eighteen? The current definition of mental health? Our motives are so tangled and intertwined that I imagined a person could point to extenuating circumstances for nearly any crime. But there must also be accountability. There must be justice.

  A reckoning.

  If justice exists, there must be a hell.

  If love wins, there must be a heaven.

  I had a feeling it was going to take me some time to sort all that through.

  There was no way to know for sure, but Thorne, who’d known Padilla the longest, speculated that he’d turned to religion to try to find redemption. Just as Radar had said that Griffin deserved to go to hell, I believed Padilla did too. Still, I wondered if, in the end, anything he’d learned or shared with others over the years about the grace of the Almighty had sunk in when it mattered most.

  Ralph drew me out of my thoughts: “You must have swung that meat hook hard.”

  I stared at my cup. I really did not want to do this. “What do you mean?”

  “Broke his jaw. Basque’s.”

  I blinked. “When I swung the meat hook?”

  “Yeah. When it hit him. I just heard this morning, he told, well…” Ralph smiled a little. “I should say ‘wrote out for’ his lawyer that that’s how his jaw got broken.”

  Basque’s apprehension replayed in my mind: grabbing that meat hook, swinging it at his face, him dodging it. The fight. Cuffing him. Sylvia’s death as he mocked her. Then punching him. Twice. Hard. The crunch of bone when I hit him-not when I swung the hook at his face.

  Ralph stared at me. “What is it?”

  “Yeah,” I said distractedly. “No, I did. I swung it hard.”

  Why did he tell them the meat hook broke his jaw?

  I had no answer.

  So far, Basque denied any involvement in the death of Sylvia Padilla or anyone else. He claimed he was innocent, that he’d heard screams from inside the slaughterhouse, gone in to see what was happening, and found the woman as she was.

  He said he’d pulled the scalpel out of her chest to try to help her, and then when I arrived, he got scared, tried to flee, and shot at me with his legally registered firearm just to protect himself, thinking I was the killer.

  It was ludicrous. I could hardly believe that anyone with his IQ would try to defend himself with a story like that. I knew it would never fly with a jury. There’s no death penalty in Wisconsin, but I was confident this guy was going away forever.

  In the slaughterhouse, we found evidence of previous homicides, including the body of Celeste Sikora, a woman who’d disappeared the night before Sylvia was killed, and DNA of a woman named Jasmine Luecke whose body was found in a trailer home outside of town. All of those cases would take time to sort out. For the moment I was just glad we’d caught the right guy.

  Ralph was almost done with his coffee. “So, before I go, I gotta ask you-you and Taci? Any more news?”

  I thought about what to say.

  You had a year of loving someone special, of being loved in return-that’s more than some people ever get in a lifetime.

  He waited. “You gonna be okay?”

  “She’s happier, I think, knowing that I don’t have to be in second place. So…” I wasn’t sure how to put this, wasn’t even sure I was ready to say it, but I did: “I’m not gonna brood.”

  We left it at that. He took one last swallow of coffee to finish off the cup, then reached into his computer bag and pulled out a box that looked like it might hold an office stapler. It was wrapped in a brown paper bag crudely wound in duct tape.

  “What’s that?”

  He slid it toward me. “A present.”

  “I didn’t buy you anything.”

  “I didn’t buy you anything either, bro. Just open it.”

  It took me a while to work through the duct tape. “You wrapped this yourself, did you?”

  “Yup.”

  Once I got to the box, I tore off the end and tipped the item onto the table.

  “A Mini Maglite.”

  “My Mini Maglite.”

  “Ralph, that’s-”

  “It’s not that big of a deal. I’ve got another one at home.”

  “Okay.”

  “I figured you needed one. They come in handy.”

  “Really, thanks.”

  He nodded toward my still-untried coffee.

  “I’m working up the nerve,” I explained.

  “You’ll want to drink it before it gets cold.”

  “Why?”

  He looked at me strangely as if everyone should know the answer to that. “Coffee changes taste as it cools.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t help but think, You never know, that just might help. “So, you said sugar and cream? Helps with the taste?”

  “Helps calm it.”

  “Calm it. Right.”

  He noticed packets of hot cocoa on the counter. “Hang on.” He walked over, plopped down a dollar bill, grabbed one of the packets, and nodded to the barista, who nodded back.

  When he was back at the table he told me, “Mix this in with the cream and sugar. See where that takes you.”

  Double-sugar high plus a caffeine high. Not a bad thought. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  I emptied the sugar packets and pouch of hot cocoa into my cup. While I was stirring it all in, Ralph said, “We never finished talking about coincidences. From the other day. How you don’t believe in them.”

  “No, I guess we didn’t.” The cocoa was almost dissolved.

  “Well, don’t you think it was a coincidence that your gun jammed when you fired at Basque? I mean, how often does that even happen? Or that we arrived at his hospital room just in time to save his life? A couple seconds later and Padilla would have cut him apart.”

  I mulled that over. “Well, if those were coincidences, are they really the kind to be thankful for? Twice saving Basque’s life?”

  It looked like he was going to reply, but in the end said nothing and seemed to grant me the point.

  “Alright.” Hesitantly, I lifted the cup to my lips. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  Since I was sure it was going to be acrid and bitter, I wasn’t ready for what happened next.

  The concoction somehow tasted both de
eply sweet and bitter-but in a good way. And that aroma, which I had to admit really was enticing, actually became part of the flavor on my tongue.

  It really was not that bad.

  “Well?” Ralph asked.

  “I think I could stand to drink this once in a while.”

  He offered me a satisfied grin. “Give it a few weeks with the hot cocoa, then move on. Honey’s good too. Before you know it, you’ll be a true coffee aficionado.”

  “Well, I doubt that would ever happen.”

  “Never know.” He glanced at his watch. We had just a few minutes before we needed to leave for the airport. “By the way, that FBI jacket looked pretty good on you the other day at the bank.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Seemed to suit you.”

  “Thanks.”

  He leaned forward. “Why are you getting that master’s in criminology and law, Pat?”

  The answer seemed obvious to me. “To more effectively do my job.”

  “As a homicide detective.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How many homicides do you work in any given year?”

  “Depends. A couple dozen maybe.”

  “You’re not gonna believe this, but we get calls at the NCAVC every day.”

  “I do believe that.”

  “I consulted on more than a hundred homicides last year alone. You want to make a difference, a real difference, come to the NCAVC. Start helping law enforcement agencies nationwide find these guys, and put ’em where they belong. You’re experienced, you’re sharp, and with a graduate degree in criminology, you’d be a shoo-in.”

  “Calvin’s sort of pressuring me to study with him.”

  “PhD?”

  I nodded.

  “Naw, think about the Bureau, man.”

  “I will,” I told him, and I realized I really would seriously consider it.

  “Who knows,” he said, “we could work together again. You might not have to be the sidekick anymore.”

  “The way I remember it, you were the sidekick.”

  He scoffed.

  I finished my coffee-cocoa combination and we stepped outside into the light, whispering snow. “By the way,” I said, “you never told me what happened in France.”