American Justice

by J K Ellem

  She certainly wasn’t going to tell the FBI anything until she had the two in custody and had spoken to them first. She gripped the wheel harder as the truck stop loomed ahead.

  It was the sound of the gunshot that awoke Shaw.

  Jessie.

  He struggled to his feet then hunkered in semi-darkness, trying to pinpoint the sound. He saw a line of trucks in the distance, his groggy mind telling him that’s where the sound had come from. He staggered forward, ignoring the pain, adrenaline keeping him upright, keeping him going, his mind focused on finding Jessie.

  Beth called Davis on the radio and told him to take the side entry and park away from the diner. She didn’t want to draw attention to anyone. A police car pulling up right out front would spook them.

  She slowed as Davis swept past her then Beth swung hard into the exit lane, away from the main building. To her left she could see the dark long shape of parked trucks. The headlights of her SUV bobbed up and down as she drove across the uneven surface, her eyes fixed on the lit-up diner. There was no way she was going to miss them this time.

  Shaw heard a throaty roar, the sound of a big engine coming to life. The sun came out, two brilliant orbs, turning the darkness to daylight, blinding him. Shaw shielded his eyes. The earth began to vibrate under the soles of his boots. The light intensified, the sound louder, coming straight toward him.

  A big truck slid out between a row of parked trucks, its engine roaring, the crunching sound of rubber churning gravel and dirt, smoke billowing from its twin exhaust stacks. The engine pitch changed, shifted up a gear, its speed increasing as it bore down on where Shaw was standing.

  Shaw dived sideways, throwing himself as far as he could, hit the ground and kept rolling.

  The truck turned, huge tunnels of blinding light turning with it. The ground shook, Shaw prayed, then the light faded as the truck lumbered past, washing over him a vortex of dirt, grit and displaced air.

  In the gloom, Beth caught the shape of someone walking, no, staggering, clutching their back, across the ground fifty feet away. She slowed. The man stopped.

  Then the dark shape of a truck slowly slid out between two others, twin beams of its headlights came on and lit up the man. The truck accelerated but instead of turning toward the exit, it headed directly at the man. The truck lights hit him squarely and for a brief moment Beth saw his face fully through the windshield. The truck driver was trying to run him over.

  She hit the siren and lights and floored the gas pedal. Her car lurched forward, the tires skidding on the loose gravel and dirt. She lost sight of the man, the cruiser speeding forward.

  Now the truck turned sharply toward her. She caught a glimpse of the man behind the wheel, sitting high up in the front cab. Dark evil eyes locked onto her.

  Beth felt her gut twist. The man’s gaze seemed to pierce her soul, tainting it, blackening the surface of her mind. Something passed between them, an understanding. The hunter and the hunted, face-to-face.

  Then the truck turned fully toward her, harsh light filling the inside of her SUV. Beth raised her hand to shield her face, the back of her eyes burning white.

  Instinct and self-preservation took over and Beth swung the wheel hard to the left trying to avoid the huge truck bearing down on her. She reached for her holster, her fingers flipped the release.

  Then Beth’s world collapsed around her.

  Airbags deployed punching her full in the face as the front grille, engine compartment, and front dash of her car crumpled inward. Glass shattered into a million fragments. A world of aluminum, plastic, steel, rubber, and chrome collapsed, tore, broke, and compacted around her as a massive moving wall of force slammed into her.

  Davis saw the truck pull out then smash into Beth’s SUV.

  Seconds later he was out of his cruiser, on his feet, handgun drawn, sprinting toward the mayhem and the sound of screaming metal.

  Beth’s car shunted along the dirt, plowing a trench as it went. Tires dug in and the car flipped and tumbled sideways before coming to rest on its roof.

  “Motherfucker.” Davis, pulled up short, took aim, and fired.

  He squeezed off six rounds at the side of the truck, aiming for the drivers cabin. Sparks flew off the door and side but the truck kept going.

  The sound of crunching metal and breaking glass filled the air. Then more gun shots.

  Shaw got to his feet just in time to see the truck pull out onto the highway then roar off. In its wake lay the crumpled remains of a car: twisted metal, shattered glass, smoke rising from it. Shaw ignored it as well as the man who was standing nearby, looking after the truck.

  It wasn’t important. None of it was.

  What was important was Jessie.

  She was gone.

  31

  The big silver SUV tore across the highway overpass. Traffic swerved out of its path, the driver an obvious madman.

  Hoost gunned the engine, taking the bend almost on two wheels. He flew down the exit ramp then turned sharply into the truck stop, deliberately avoiding the gas pump plaza and skidded to a halt where the trucks were parked on the far side, throwing up a cloud of dirt around the shape of a man who stood there.

  To Hoost, nothing else mattered. Not the truck he saw pull away, nor the crumpled mess of what remained of the police car the truck had smashed into.

  All that mattered to Hoost was the man who stood in the dusty headlights, tottering on his feet, shoulders slumped.

  The man turned and looked back, staring at the SUV idling just a few feet from him, a bewildered look on his face that was streaked with dirt and blood.

  Hoost swung open the door and barreled out.

  “Hey!”

  Turning, Hoost saw the darkened shape of a man coming toward him, gun drawn. Hoost now had two problems to deal with simultaneously. So he prioritized them in his head.

  In one fluid motion he swept the edge of his jacket aside, drew his gun, and took aim at the center mass of the man running toward him and squeezed the trigger.

  Then he saw the cop’s uniform.

  Hoost’s brain screamed. He kinked his aim before the shot broke.

  The bullet rode high, slamming into Davis’s chest up near his shoulder, smashing his collarbone. He spun and collapsed, his gun spiraling from his grip, his shoulder and arm seizing in pain.

  Hoost holstered his gun then turned toward his next target: the unarmed man. Hoost came at him with no mercy, pissed off at the inconvenience the man had caused.

  Shaw did well to avoid the first blow, but he was too dazed, too concussed, too far gone to stop the second.

  Reluctantly Hoost withheld the power and altered the angle of the second punch at the last moment, thinking about his employer and the wrath that would be bestowed upon him if he actually killed the man. The punch clipped Shaw’s jaw, a perfect lights-out stroke.

  Shaw dropped.

  Hoost scooped him up and bundled him into the back seat. He didn’t bother with restraints. The guy would be out for at least an hour and where they were going was only thirty minutes away.

  He rummaged through Shaw’s pockets, found the cell phone, and pocketed it. It was unbelievable that one small device could cause so much mayhem.

  Hoost slammed the door, ran around the huge hood, and climbed in. He gunned the engine and headed to the exit and the highway beyond.

  32

  Carolyn Ryder had been fast-tracked just after her second year with the FBI. She had been earmarked by her superiors. A native of Washington, D.C., she attended George Washington University where she earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and master's degree in criminology.

  She was of slight build with shoulder-length dark hair and amber eyes that missed nothing. She treated her fellow colleagues with the same respect she expected for herself. But unlike most of them, she lacked an ego. Instead she possessed an unrelenting drive for truth and honesty. She played the political games inside the Bureau when she had to, but she much preferred being
on the ground, out of the steel and glass head office of the FBI in Salt Lake City.

  The ground she now stood on was floodlit by portable lights and littered with blood, bodies, and carnage—the scarred and churned aftermath of a puzzle she so desperately wanted to solve.

  Other agents busied themselves around her, taking statements inside the diner, reviewing CCTV footage, and marking out the evidence trail. Tiny plastic yellow markers dotted the ground. A pool of blood here, a dead body there. Shell casings, a sodden pad she had picked up with her gloved hand that she knew was soaked with chloroform.

  She stood still and shut everything else from her mind as she tried to imagine what had happened.

  The plowed dirt, the blood and brutal violence, the dying screams, the blast of gun shots, the screech and ripping sound of metal. Slowly she began the long process of arranging the clues in her head. It was like someone had taken three puzzle boxes and tipped them into one box for her to rearrange.

  In the days ahead, it would make sense to her. But as she stood looking at the detritus of clues, nothing of what she saw made sense. Added to this was the other crime scene she had left an hour ago at the motel where they had found the slain body of Abasi Rasul and a dead biker.

  But to Carolyn Ryder, things didn’t just happen. People had to make them happen. There was always a reason.

  She walked toward the entrance of the main building. From the initial reports her agents had fed to her, it had become obvious that local law enforcement had no clue, or if they did, they weren’t telling her the whole truth. Ryder didn’t want to get involved in some petty turf squabble with the locals. She had enough to contend with.

  There was a link between the two locations; she could feel it in her gut. One dead biker at one crime scene, two more dead here. The techs back in the motel room concluded that other parties had been present and injured from the trace evidence they left.

  Automatic doors slid apart and Ryder made her way into the diner. Inside she was greeted with sullen faces and a somber mood. All the staff were corralled to one side in the diner, sitting at tables, waiting to be questioned. Customers were grouped at the opposite side. FBI agents were taking names and contact details from both groups before asking what they saw.

  The staff room had been converted into a makeshift interview room, and all exits had been secured. No one was going anywhere until Ryder said so.

  An agent pulled her aside and gave her an update on the progress. The CCTV footage had been reviewed, images had been enhanced and sent off for facial recognition, and license plate checks were underway. But it seemed much of the action had taken place off-camera, along a wide expanse of flat ground where the trucks typically parked. They had pulled some dark images of four people who had been involved in a fight just past the gas pumps, in plain view of one camera that was perched under the high awning roof. The agent told her that the images would be emailed back in a few minutes from the office in Salt Lake City. Criminals didn’t sleep and neither did the FBI.

  Ryder thanked the agent then set off to the staff room for a private meeting she really wasn’t looking forward to.

  She walked down a narrow corridor and entered a room at the end. Inside the staff room there was a table and four chairs. In one chair sat Officer Beth Rimes, looking none too happy.

  Beth opened her mouth, the beginning of a tirade of complaints, but Ryder held up her hand, cutting her off. “Before we start I’d like to first apologize,” Ryder said. Before Rimes could reply, Ryder continued, “You know, you should really get one of the paramedics to take a look at that.” She pointed at the gash on Beth’s forehead.

  Beth had stemmed the blood with a few paper napkins, a thin slither of skin rippled on each side of the wound. “I’m fine, thanks,” Beth replied testily. She had a splitting headache and her whole spine felt like it was out of alignment. “I will get it looked at later.”

  “Your police car is being towed as we speak, but it’s a write-off. I’m just glad you survived.”

  Apart from a few bruises and a nasty gash, Beth had managed to unbuckle herself and climb upside down out of her upturned SUV. It was only then that she saw Davis on the ground, unconscious, shot in the chest.

  Once Davis was stabilized by the first paramedics on the scene, a helicopter landed in the parking lot and he was taken to a local trauma center.

  “How is Davis?” Beth asked.

  Ryder sat down. “He’s in surgery right now. I’ll let you know as soon as I know.” Ryder could see the anger in Beth’s face.

  “I’m a police officer of the state of Utah, but I’m getting treated like a damn criminal,” Beth spat, then grimaced at the pain in her head.

  “As I said, I’m sorry. We got off on the wrong foot back at the motel.” There was scant interaction between Ryder and Beth back at the Pink Poodle, other than Ryder ordering her about. Yet Ryder admired the policewoman who sat across from her. She was strong-willed, determined like herself, but she still was withholding information from her investigation. Ryder stood and went to the watercooler in the corner and filled a small plastic cup. “I arrived second on the scene at the motel. I’m sorry if the first team of agents were a little direct.” Ryder came back and placed the cup of water in front of Rimes. “The FBI is still a man’s world,” she said, rummaging in the pocket of her jacket. “Too much testosterone.”

  Beth’s scowl lessened slightly.

  Ryder pulled out a small red bottle of extra strength Tylenol and placed it next to the cup of water. A peace offering.

  Beth looked at the tiny bottle of pain killers then back up at Ryder. Her mind wasn’t made up about this woman, but she was different than the other agents she had encountered so far today.

  Ryder smiled at Beth. “My gun, my badge, and my painkillers. My everyday carry. I never leave home without them.”

  Rimes nodded, unscrewed the cap, popped three of the tablets into her mouth, crushed them with her teeth, then washed them down with the water. She didn’t thank the woman, just slid the bottle back toward her.

  “I need your help, if we are going to solve this together,” Ryder said, tucking away the bottle of Tylenol. She straightened her jacket and looked Rimes squarely in the eye. “This is what we have. I’m going to share this information with you because I need your help.”

  “Then tell your agents to stop walking around here like having a dick in their pants makes them something special.”

  Ryder spread her fingers flat on the table, a conciliatory gesture. “I will,” she replied. “We have two dead bikers, both brutally killed with what looks like a bladed weapon. They were killed off camera in the location where the trucks park. We have no footage of how or who. We do however have footage of them arriving on two motorbikes, about thirty minutes before you arrived. They parked in the parking lot but didn’t move, looked like they were waiting for someone.”

  Beth kept her eyes on Ryder, but said nothing.

  Ryder continued, “Then a man and a woman came out of the diner. They started walking across the plaza then got jumped by the two bikers. One biker clearly pulls a gun, the other grabs the woman, holds a knife to her. Words are exchanged but we have no audio. A fight arises, the girl breaks free, and the man is struck and kicked on the ground. From what we can tell, the woman then runs off in the direction of the truck parking area. But then she runs out of the frame of the cameras. We have no footage of her after that.”

  This time Rimes nodded.

  “By now the bikers have kicked the shit out of her companion, so they go after her. And that’s when we lose sight of everyone. That part of the truck stop is a blind spot, no cameras. But we have good images of the three men and the woman, and we’re looking into the license plates of their bikes.”

  Rimes took another sip of her water. The tablets were starting to work, the edge coming off the grinding pain.

  “You arrive on scene, but your car gets sideswiped by a big truck leaving the place. But again this is all off c
amera. We have no footage of that.”

  “Bastard didn’t stop,” Beth muttered. “Came straight at me. Attempted murder in my book.”

  “So we can only assume whoever was driving the truck was part of whatever happened. Didn’t want to get stopped by the police. Maybe killed both of the bikers. Like I said, their bodies were found where the trucks park, in a vacant slot between two others. We’re processing that area right now.”

  “Where’s the woman?” Beth asked. She had a really bad feeling about this, about the woman. Beth leaned forward and tapped her finger on the table top. “Have you found her?”

  “No, we haven’t,” Ryder replied, a little curious. Rime’s heightened level of concern for the missing woman didn’t go unnoticed. But Ryder would have to keep that thought for later.

  “What about the man?” Beth asked. “Where did he go?”

  “We have footage of the man regaining consciousness, getting to his feet, then going after the woman and the bikers. Once again, he goes out of camera range as well.” Ryder didn’t tell Rimes about the big silver SUV that pulled in moments later, after Rimes got hit by the truck. She deliberately withheld that piece of information. They only had partial footage of the SUV as it flashed across the upper edge of the CCTV screen, driving too fast, joining in the mayhem. Her team was working on getting a clear image of the vehicle’s plates to see if they could get a match, but the angle was making it difficult.

  “Then who shot Davis?” Beth demanded. “Was it the man, the one with the woman?”

  Ryder shook her head. “I don’t know yet. We have recovered a gun near where we found the two dead bikers.”

  There was a knock on the door and an agent walked into the room carrying an iPad. He handed it to Ryder, deliberately holding it vertical so only she could see the screen, then he left the room.

  Ryder continued talking as she scrolled across the images on the screen. “They could have just both run, holed up somewhere.” Ryder threw the next question out there, just to see Beth’s reaction. “Have you seen them before, this man and woman?”