Wrongful Death: A Novel

by Dugoni, Robert

  “But we just climbed a freaking mountain to get here to save your ass,” Jenkins said. “So the least you could do is be grateful.”

  Cassidy turned back to Sloane. “What would I have to do? What do you want?”

  “I’ll need you to come to federal court and tell a judge exactly what you just told me,” Sloane said.

  “That wasn’t part of the deal.” Cassidy started to twitch again.

  “We had no deal,” Sloane said. “The deal was you do what we tell you, or you spend the next thirty to fifty becoming friendly with your cellmate.”

  Cassidy closed his eyes, inhaled slowly, and blew out a burst of air. “What time?”

  Jenkins groaned. “What, do you have an appointment, Michael? You need to check your BlackBerry to find out what time you’re getting your nails done? Or is there a large venture capital company looking to invest in your nifty operation here?”

  Sloane put up a hand to tell Jenkins to back off. “I’d need you there next Tuesday.”

  Cassidy looked pale, and Sloane didn’t think it was from the dull lighting inside the trailer. “Will it help Jimmy’s family?”

  Sloane didn’t know. At present it would likely hurt his case, but the game had changed and he needed to adapt. This wasn’t about winning. It was about surviving. “It might,” he said.

  “Fine. Give me an address and I’ll be there.”

  Jenkins laughed. “Sure. You’re about as dependable to show as the horses I bet on.”

  “You need to come with us now,” Sloane said.

  “Where?”

  “Someplace safe, a hotel.”

  “I’m not going with you to no hotel.”

  “If you stay here, or run, they’ll find you, and they’ll kill you.”

  “So, much as I don’t like it either, looks like you and me are bunking together,” Jenkins said. “I hope you don’t snore.”

  “After you testify, you can disappear,” Sloane said.

  Cassidy looked like he might cry. “Fine,” he blurted. “Okay. Fine.”

  They decided to drive Cassidy’s truck back to the quarry to retrieve the Explorer. Jenkins would drive with Cassidy to a hotel. Sloane would retrieve his laptop computer and meet them back at the room to draft an affidavit in case Cassidy got squirrelly or changed his story.

  “What about the dog?” Jenkins asked.

  Cassidy looked at him like he didn’t know what he was talking about. “What about the dog?”

  “She doesn’t look like she’s eaten or had any water in over a day.”

  “So? It ain’t my dog.”

  Jenkins took a deep breath. “So? So how about I tie you to a leash in that hotel room and not feed you or give you any water?”

  “Hey, I said it ain’t my dog. It’s Kroeger’s dog.”

  “You have any food around here?” Jenkins asked.

  “No.”

  “When is Kroeger coming back?”

  “He’s painting with his dad. He’s supposed to meet me at four when he gets off.”

  “Fine. When we get in the car you’re going to call him and tell him to bring dog food and make sure the dog has water. Got it?”

  Cassidy frowned. “Mellow out. It’s just a dog, dude.”

  Jenkins lunged forward and lifted Cassidy off the ground, holding him by the neck. “So, asshole, she’s a living, breathing creature, which means she doesn’t deserve to be tortured, kicked, or starved.”

  Sloane grabbed Jenkins’s forearm, but it was like grabbing a metal bar. “Put him down, Charlie! We can drive into town and get the dog food and water.”

  Cassidy dropped like a bag of flour and crumpled to the floor coughing and gagging.

  Jenkins pushed open the door to the trailer with such force it flung off its top hinge and slammed against the siding. He stepped down into the yard, where the dog continued to bark, and paced, blowing off steam. He turned toward the dog, and realized she wasn’t barking at him. She faced in the direction of the grass.

  Cassidy had stepped out from the trailer onto the wooden step, Sloane behind him.

  Jenkins rushed at them. “No!”

  Cassidy’s eyes widened as Jenkins slammed into him. His head snapped back as if he’d taken an invisible punch to the face.

  A split second later the retort of the rifle echoed across the valley.

  SAN VICENTE VILLAGE

  BAJA, MEXICO

  THREE YOUNG BOYS, their skin tanned a rich bronze, stepped into the street as Alex walked into the village. Their smudged but happy faces reminded her of her friends growing up in a suburb of Mexico City, though she had been considered relatively wealthy and these boys were dirt poor. They wore battered jeans and fraying shorts. Without shirts or shoes they rushed out to greet her, smiling and calling her “pretty lady.” One asked her if she was “The Blessed Mother.” These kids knew how to work a mark.

  Alex explained that she was not interested in buying anything, but that she would pay the one who could take her to the family who owned the cattle ranch in the distance.

  “Me tienes que llevar el dueño del rancho,” she said.

  The boys stepped back. “No,” their leader said, speaking Spanish and looking concerned. “He shoots trespassers.”

  Alex produced several dollar bills. “Take me,” she said, “and I’ll give you each a dollar.”

  The leader considered the offer, taking a moment to whisper to his compadres. “Tres.”

  “Dos,” Alex countered.

  He looked to his friends, who nodded.

  They led her down the road, chattering at her, asking her where she had come from and why she did not have a car. Outside of town, a paved road intersected the dirt path. The boys took her as far as a wooden post and barbed wire fence. “Aquí. Aquí,” they shouted, holding out their hands to get paid.

  She handed each two dollars. The leader tried to negotiate for an additional fee, but when he realized that wasn’t about to happen, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of dollar bills, showing them off.

  Alex grabbed his wrist. “De dónde sacaste eso?”

  “No. No,” he cried, trying to pull away.

  No way these poor boys had that kind of money, American dollars no less. “Tell me where you got the money.”

  “A man gave it to me,” he said, eyes wide, voice pleading.

  Her heart pounded. “Por qué? Why did he give it to you? What did he ask you?”

  “Es mio,” the boy said, struggling to free his arm.

  She held on. “What did he want to know? Tell me.”

  “He was looking for his wife and son,” another of the boys said.

  Adrenaline rushed through her. “Que le dijiste? Que le dijiste?”

  “Leave me alone,” the boy said.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him to go to the camp. I told him to talk to the gringo lady.”

  Alex felt her legs go weak. “Cuando? When was he here?” she asked, but one of the boys rapped her across the arm with a stick, breaking her grip, and he and his friends ran off, frightened.

  Alex turned and looked down the dirt road. It would take too long to get back to the camp, even if she ran the distance, and she would still have to climb the mountain and try to find the pond.

  She slipped beneath the barbed wire, feeling the heat from the pavement through the thin soles of the sandals the woman at the camp had allowed her to borrow, along with a pair of shorts and a shirt. In the near distance a two-story yellow adobe home—surrounded by palm trees, with two cars parked in a turnabout—shimmered in the heat like a desert mirage. Behind it was what had caught her attention on the way to the campground—a swath of dirt through the brown grass and scrub stretched the length of the property, leading to a barn—a landing strip for a private plane.

  As she hurried toward the house, a dog ran up the road, circling and barking. A man stepped out the front door dressed in crisp blue jeans and a red cotton shirt with a bolo tie. He donned
a white cowboy hat to shade his face from the sun.

  “Buenos días,” Alex said, introducing herself and apologizing for disturbing him. “Disculpe la molestia.”

  “This is private property,” the man said. The clasp of his tie was an ornate turquoise and silver design.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I need your help.”

  The man asked how he could help. “En que le puedo ayudar?”

  “A woman and her son are in the mountains,” she said. “They are in grave danger.”

  MAPLE VALLEY, WASHINGTON

  SLOANE LAY SPRAWLED on his back, his shirt covered in blood, Cassidy on top of him.

  Jenkins scrambled to his knees, rifle in hand. Before he could get off any shots, bullets tore through the open door of the trailer, embedding in the walls with pings and tings. Outside, the rifle’s retorts echoed across the grass valley. The gutted trailer wouldn’t provide them much cover.

  Sloane looked down at Cassidy. The young man’s lifeless eyes remained open, but the right side of the top of his head was a matted mess.

  Jenkins pulled and dragged Sloane out from under Cassidy and behind the counter. They lay flat on the ground while the assault continued. “You all right?”

  Sloane nodded.

  “If a bullet hits one of those propane tanks or gas cans, this place is going to go up like a bomb. We have to get the hell out of here,” Jenkins said.

  “That’s a problem,” Sloane said, “since we only have one door and they have a couple hundred yards of cover. We don’t even know where they are.”

  “Just one guy,” Jenkins said. “He’s in the grass.”

  “How can you be sure it’s just one guy?” Sloane ducked his head at the sound of glass bottles shattering in the cabinets above them.

  “Because they couldn’t have anticipated we’d be here, and they didn’t need more than one guy to kill Cassidy. If there was more than one guy, I wouldn’t be standing here and neither would you. The first guy would have waited to get a shot at Cassidy, but the second and third would have had their scopes set on you and me. We’d all be dead. A lone shooter had to make sure he killed Cassidy first, or risk giving himself away without getting his target. Now he can pick us off one at a time.”

  “We screwed this up,” Sloane said.

  “No, we didn’t. He didn’t follow us. If we’d been followed, they would have brought more than one guy. And Cassidy would still be dead if we hadn’t come. We were his only chance. We did our best. Nothing we can do about it now.”

  More bottles in the cabinet shattered, spraying glass and acid.

  “He thinks he’s got us pinned down here,” Jenkins said.

  “He does have us pinned down.”

  “Wrong. He doesn’t know who he picked a fight with.” Jenkins handed Sloane what looked like a Costco-size mayonnaise jar. “Fill the jar with whatever gas you can find.”

  As Sloane poured what was left of the gas from the cans into the jar, Jenkins grabbed one of the propane tanks by the handle and unleashed it like a discus through a window. Then he picked up the AR15 and sprayed several blind shots into the grass, buying them some time.

  “That’s all of it.” Sloane slid forward and handed him the jar, which was about half-full with gas.

  “That’ll do.”

  Jenkins yanked down the stained and torn curtain, and used Cassidy’s knife to tear off a strip. He punched a hole in the lid of the jar, stuffed the fabric into the hole, and tilted the bottle so the gas wicked up the cloth. Then he crawled again to where Cassidy lay and reached into the young man’s pockets, pulling out his lighter.

  “I’ll yell ‘light it’ from the bedroom. You have three seconds to get it lit. When you hear me shooting, stand and toss it.”

  “Grass is too wet to catch fire,” Sloane said.

  “We’re not trying to burn him out. We need a diversion. Aim for the back of the truck. If the bottle doesn’t break, shoot at it until it does, but get down if you hit it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I need to get back there.” He pointed with his thumb to the back of the trailer. It meant getting past the open door. “And get us a better fix on where the guy is. When he pokes his head up at the explosion, I’ll have him.”

  Another series of bullets blew out overhead fluorescent tubes, glass spraying. Jenkins grabbed his shotgun and rifle and crab-walked to the edge of the cabinets. Sloane lifted the Glock to the window and shot at random until Jenkins had darted past the door and down the short hall. A moment later Jenkins yelled.

  “Okay, light it.”

  The lighter sparked a blue flame. The piece of curtain lit.

  Sloane counted. The flame grew bigger. “Three,” he shouted.

  Sloane heard multiple shots from the back of the trailer, stood, and threw the jar out the window. It exploded in the back of the truck with a burst of flames, lighting a tarp. As the cloth burned, Sloane saw what was beneath it. Cassidy had restocked—cans of acetone, a gas can, two propane tanks.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  “Charlie?”

  SIERRA DE LA LAGUNA

  BAJA, MEXICO

  THE MAN WHO called himself Mr. Williams wore a blue ball cap and sunglasses. He had come down the ledge and taken the machete. The other man remained on the boulders above them, looking down from under a wide-brimmed straw hat. Tina sat on the rocks beside the pool of water, an arm wrapped around Jake’s shoulder, holding him close.

  “I heard you caught a fish,” Mr. Williams said. “What was it, thirty-three pounds?”

  Jake glared at him.

  “Don’t be like that, Jake. I’m your friend. Didn’t I help you catch that salmon?”

  Jake shook his head. “You’re not my friend.”

  “Maybe we can go fishing again. Would you like that? Would you like to go fishing with your friend, Mr. Williams? Just tell me where the other woman is hiding and we’ll all go fishing.”

  “She’s gone,” Tina said.

  “I don’t think so. The woman in the camp said you all came up here. So tell her to come out.”

  Tina considered that information, but was unsure why the woman would have lied. “I told you she’s not here.”

  “And I told you to tell her to come out. Now.”

  Tina shouted. “Alex? Alex, come out.” She looked at Mr. Williams and shrugged.

  “That’s a shame,” Mr. Williams said. “Maybe she doesn’t care about you as much as you think.”

  “She isn’t here,” Jake said.

  “We’re going to find that out, Jake.” He looked to Tina. “Get in the water.”

  “What?”

  “Get in the water.”

  “I’m not getting in the water.”

  “Fine. Jake, you get in the water.”

  “No,” Tina said, pulling Jake closer.

  “It’s going to be one of you, Mrs. Sloane. Count on it.”

  Tina stood. Jake grabbed her arm. “No, Mom.”

  “It’s all right,” she told him. “It’s going to be fine.” She removed his arm, stepped to the edge of the pool, and dropped in, feeling the rush of cold.

  “Swim out to the center.”

  Tina did as instructed. Mr. Williams sat down on the rock next to Jake. “What do you think, Jake, is your mother a good swimmer?”

  “Get away from me,” Jake said. “Leave us alone.”

  “If I were you, Jake, I’d start calling Alex, because I have all the time in the world to wait, and I don’t think anyone is that good a swimmer, do you?”

  MAPLE VALLEY, WASHINGTON

  JENKINS BUSTED OUT the bedroom window facing the grass field. Keeping his head behind the wall, he pointed the AR15 out the window and fired randomly over the blades of grass in the general direction of where the dog had been looking. On Sloane’s count of three Jenkins looked through the scope. It was sighted to zero at 200 yards, which meant he could put the crosshairs on the man’s head. He heard the glass jar explode
in the back of the truck and waited.

  “Come on. Come on, you son of a bitch.”

  Nothing appeared over the blades of grass. It hadn’t worked. The man was well trained.

  “Charlie?” Sloane yelled from the bedroom.

  Jenkins ducked back behind the wall, frustrated. “What?”

  “Got a problem.”

  “I know.”

  “Cassidy restocked. There’s gas cans and propane in the back of the truck.”

  Crap, Jenkins thought.

  “You hear me?” Sloane asked.

  “I heard you. Hang on.”

  Another idea came to him. Jenkins hated to do it, but it was the only other way he could think of to get the man to give away his position. He lowered the rifle, picked up the shotgun, and busted out the window facing the shed. The dog, now struggling so hard with her collar she looked to be strangling herself, stopped to bark up at him.

  “Charlie!”

  Jenkins fired the shotgun, obliterating the tie ring embedded in the side of the shed along with the chunk of the aluminum to which it had been bolted. The dog flinched at the blast, flopped onto her side and somersaulted back to her feet.

  “Go,” Jenkins said. “Go.”

  The animal looked up at him, then took off like a shot across the grass, the rope trailing behind her.

  “Charlie!”

  Jenkins dropped the shotgun, quickly picked up his rifle, and hurried back to the window. He wedged the butt of the rifle firmly against his shoulder and lowered his eye to the scope, watching the blades fold as the dog’s brown head crested the tops of the grass, anticipating her destination.

  She surprised the man, as Jenkins had hoped. He rose from his crouch. When he did, Jenkins scoped him in the crosshairs, and fired. He looked up from the scope and watched. The dog popped up, circling and barking. The man did not reappear.

  He picked up the shotgun and rushed down the hall. Sloane was waiting by the door. “Let’s go.”

  Sloane bolted out the door and down the steps, running for the tree line, Jenkins behind him. Halfway there he heard the explosion behind them. He felt a rush of energy, like a shove to his back that propelled him forward and off balance.

  Sloane lay on the ground with his head down. When he didn’t feel anything fall on top of him he rolled over. Jenkins lay next to him. The white truck had been flipped upside down and crashed through the side of the trailer, like footage of a mobile home park after a Midwest tornado. Paint cans and debris fell from the sky along with the burning embers of the tarp. Smaller explosions began inside the trailer.