Hidden Justice

by J K Ellem

  Gulls wheeled and spun out over the hillside, riding the warm thermals, spying for food, bickering at each other. A bright orange orb rose high in the sky warming everything below. The beach, wide and flat, stretched away like crushed yellow glass towards a limitless expanse of the ocean. A sailing boat with its sails in full bloom cut across the glinting surface. On the left, Erin’s Bay stretched a wide long sandy crescent, back from which sat the township and a boat harbor along the shore where tall masts rose.

  When he was finished eating, Shaw pulled out a tattered book that was crammed full of bus and train tickets, bookmarks that he used to mark key passages and important chapters. He felt good, content. The air was crisp and fresh, the sun was high, the sky a cloudless canvas of blue, and the coffee was rich and fresh. But Shaw thought better and ignored the book, happy to enjoy the view and let his mind move along at a leisurely pace, take in everything around him, the sights, sounds, and the scent of the ocean.

  He mused for a while about the past few months, where he’d been, what he had done. He thought about Daisy McAlister, wondered what she was doing right now on her ranch in Kansas. Her life would never be the same again. He thought about Clare Decker, the sheriff from the small mountain town of Lacy in Colorado who he had helped. She should be out of hospital and well on the road to recovery by now. Then there was Carolyn Decker, the FBI agent, the woman from his past. She could be a complication. He liked Carolyn, yet she wasn’t the type of person to let things just lie after they crossed paths in Utah. She may decide to come after him, track him down. Her professional curiosity may get the better of her. They’d had a thing together once. For him it was over, but for her, maybe not.

  For some reason, Shaw was beginning to feel like a fugitive but he had no reason to be. He wasn’t running from anyone. He just didn’t like the attention or getting involved. The aftermath was someone else’s problem. He just wanted to be left alone.

  He had left Utah quickly, avoiding the FBI and the questions they may have had. He preferred to move on, blend into the landscape, disappear.

  The waitress came and refilled his cup then was gone again.

  He glanced at the town in the distance. He preferred small towns over larger cities. People seemed nicer, willing to help you, friendlier, no agenda or angle they were trying to work on you. True, in small towns it was harder to blend in, to go unnoticed. New faces always drew attention, but Shaw was an expert at going unnoticed while he hid in the fringes and watched everyone around him. That had been his job in the Secret Service until the Vice President Shaw was protecting decided that raping a young girl in his hotel room while on the campaign trail was an appropriate thing to do. The fine married family man that he was. Shaw took it upon himself to enter the hotel room and punch the guy’s lights out. And for his sins, Shaw was kicked out of the service with nothing untoward recorded in his file—if he agreed to go quietly. Threats were made, prison was mentioned, hush money paid to the girl. The service closed ranks, and the Vice President’s indiscretion was promptly buried, never to see the light of day. Up until then, Shaw had liked his job. Too much hypocrisy and bullshit in politics.

  The restaurant’s front door opened then slammed shut, just a little too hard. From where Shaw sat, he could hear voices on the other side of the hedge out in the parking lot, low at first, then becoming more animated, boiling into a heated discussion, and then arguing. Shaw ignored the sounds and continued drinking his coffee and admiring the view.

  Then shouting, accusations, swearing, and a voice Shaw recognized. Through the foliage he could see shapes moving, two people, close together, a different kind of embrace.

  Shaw looked out at the ocean. Serene, peaceful, calm. The sailing boat he’d seen before had cut-back and was tacking towards the shore, zigzagging to where it could find the wind.

  Now scuffles came from the parking lot, feet churning up the gravel, then a cry.

  Shaw stood up and looked around the hedge.

  Abigail Brenner was standing next to her car, a man holding both her wrists, a tug of war; she trying to pull away, he was pulling her towards him. Aware that someone was watching, they suddenly both stopped and stared at Shaw.

  It was then Shaw saw her face fully. A trickle of blood ran down her nose and the side of her face flared red from a slap mark.

  Shaw let out a sigh. Then he became angry. He just wanted to sit quietly, enjoy his coffee, enjoy the sun on his face and maybe read a few chapters of his book. That’s all he wanted. Now, his plans were rapidly fading.

  Abby looked at Shaw and gave a slight shake of her head.

  The man looked at Shaw and just frowned. He was big, a lot bigger than Abigail Brenner. Sandy-brown hair, arms and shoulders like he’d spent every day of his life in the gym lifting weights. He had a thick neck and a boxy head like a Rottweiler. The man gave a forced smile at Shaw then laughed, “No problem here man, just a little friendly discussion between the girl and me.”

  It didn’t look that friendly to Shaw.

  “Go back to your crossword old man.”

  Crossword? Old man? Really?

  “I’m twenty-eight, not sixty-eight,” Shaw replied, stepping around the hedge.

  The man holding Abby looked like he was still in college, played football maybe or on the wrestling team. Bulk all up top, neglected legs, nothing between the ears. Shaw knew the type.

  “Let her go.” Shaw took a few more steps forward. The ten foot gap now reduced to seven.

  “Please, Ben, it’s nothing,” Abby pleaded, a desperate look in her eyes. Gone was her armor of confidence, her strong independent demeanor.

  The man looked at Abby in disbelief, “Ben? You know this prick?” He twisted her wrists inwards. Abby gave another cry of pain and buckled sideways. “Honest Teddy, I don’t know him really. I just offered him a ride this morning.”

  Shaw stepped forward again, seven feet now reduced to three, killing distance. “Here’s the deal, Biff,” Shaw said deliberately, spoke casually, like he really didn’t care. And he really didn’t. He was angrier that his peaceful morning had been disrupted. But what he did care about was the woman getting her wrist dislocated or worse, broken.

  “It’s Teddy,” came a snarl.

  “Teddy,” Shaw nodded. “Whatever,” Shaw said dismissively. Teddy, Freddy. Eddy. Who cares? Shaw thought. “Here’s the deal, Teddy.” The way Shaw emphasized the guy’s name, like it was something nasty you would step in on the sidewalk.

  It had the desired effect. Infuriated, Theodore Hanson, or “Teddy” to his friends, switched his attention to Shaw.

  “I was sitting over there,” Shaw turned and nodded at the picnic benches behind the hedge, “enjoying a quiet morning. Just drinking some coffee and admiring the view. And now I’ve got to come over here and deal with someone like you.”

  No one had spoken like this to Teddy before, certainly not an out-of-towner. “Someone like me?” Teddy’s face twisted, his teeth gritted.

  Shaw could see rage building in Teddy, but he continued. “Look, I don’t really care about the woman. I don’t know her, don’t even like her. Too skinny, too pale, flat-chested. She comes across as some spoiled little rich girl driving Daddy’s car. Probably spends all day looking at herself in the mirror or posting updates and selfies online. I don’t care, honest.”

  Now it was Abby’s turn to get angry. She couldn’t believe what Shaw was saying about her.

  Shaw angled his stance slightly as he spoke, closer now within reach of Teddy’s face. Then suddenly Shaw’s entire facial expression went from one of mild amusement to one of dead-pan cold ruthlessness. It was as if a storm cloud had passed over the bright sun, turning daylight into darkness, a warm summer’s day into a long frigid winter’s night. “But if you don’t let go of her, then I’m going to break your arm.”

  Everything went cold and quiet.

  “Both of them,” Shaw added.

  Teddy just looked at Shaw like he was insane, his mind trying to proce
ss the situation and the sudden prickle he felt along the ridge of his spine. Teddy was certainly bigger, heavier and stronger than Shaw, but there was something about the way the stranger stood, the cold look he now had in his eyes that made Teddy think twice before he acted.

  Letting go of Abby, Teddy said, “Keep the bitch for all I care.”

  Abby staggered back rubbing her wrists.

  “She’s a lame fuck anyway.”

  Shaw stood his ground then looked at Abby. “I think she would warm to the right person.”

  “Take some advice,” Teddy said, his fists balled. “Don’t stay in town for too long. People have a nasty habit of getting hurt when they overstay their welcome around here.”

  Teddy cursed then walked away.

  4

  You had to look really hard if you were to see her. She vanished into the periphery even while in motion. She faded into the fabric of the town, amongst the townsfolk, amongst the tourists, even amongst the rough and rowdy trawler men down at the boat harbor where she had inquired about renting a small boat in Erin's Bay. That was her skill. Yet being a naturally attractive woman placed her at a distinct disadvantage compared to her male counterparts.

  It was said that if you met or crossed her path, you would have trouble recalling her. She could make herself forgettable. However if you became the focus of her attention, the reason why she was here, then her face would be the last thing you would ever see. Her cold eyes, the vacant stare, her slight smile, would all be etched in your memory just before you died. Her job was a cathartic one; to cleanse, to rid, and to purge the world— of you.

  She was tall. She was short. She was blonde. She was brunette. She could be a redhead, if needed. But one thing she didn’t change was the color of her eyes; steel-gray orbs of a wolf that took everything in but revealed nothing. Contact lenses tended to irritate and dry out her eyes so her eyes never altered in their color.

  Lovers she had many. Partners she had few. Equals she had none. She brought to her bed the same predatory compulsions and instincts that she employed in her professional life. Some of her past exploits had to explain the bruises and soft-tissue damage they had endured to their wives and girlfriends. One such male conquest had ended badly, in traction in a hospital for a month, so misaligned was his spine when she had finished with him.

  She was extremely proficient with any weapon, in any environment but much preferred the upfront and personal comfort that a steel blade offered. Her compulsion was to see her victim’s eyes at the moment her blade went in, to watch them reflect the cold, tearing pain, the shock, the wide-eyed look of disbelief, followed by the gradual glimmer of realization and recognition, not of her, but of their past sins. She liked to watch as the life seeped from their faces, the gradual dimming of their eyes, the slow bleeding away of their soul.

  The blade raised less questions too, whereas a fatal gunshot wound, even if made to look careless and amateurish, would raise a whole new line of inquiry. But a blade was often, if erroneously, perceived as something domestic that had gone wrong; an inappropriate comment about someone’s girlfriend in a bar; or an alleyway mugging gone wrong. Maybe road rage or gang pay-back. And so the possibilities went on, covering the true intentions.

  She didn’t hide in plain sight. Didn’t need to. She walked on a beach in Thailand without leaving foot prints. She sat at a bus stop in Berlin for an hour without leaving the plastic seat warm. She stood motionless for twelve hours in the snow in Aspen watching the ski lodge of a mafia billionaire without leaving so much as a trace of scent for the wildlife to sniff.

  She just was. Always there, always watching, seeing without being seen, a tradecraft taught well by another.

  She had been a teacher once, in a small coastal community much like this one. Loved it, too. Loved the children and they loved her.

  Then one day an eight-year old girl in her class, drawing at her desk during recess, revealed too much. The sleeve of the girl’s uniform was pulled high on her tiny arm, a pattern of bruises beneath.

  The teacher knew what caused them: the distinct pattern of adult fingers pressed hard on innocent skin.

  The teacher spent the following weeks watching the girl very carefully, telling no one what she had seen, wondering what else lay hidden under the girl’s uniform. She also watched when the girl’s stepfather collected her after school. She watched him very closely from that first day onwards.

  Seeing without being seen.

  Then the little girl didn’t come to school for a few days. And when she finally returned, her tiny forearm was in a tiny cast. She’d fallen off her bike the school principal and her classmates had been told. The principal was convinced. The authorities were convinced. The doctors were convinced. Case closed, life goes on.

  But the teacher wasn’t convinced.

  So after school one day, she stood next to the little girl, with her arm around her at the curb, waiting for the stepfather to pull up.

  And when he finally did, he apologized for running late, thanked the school teacher for waiting with his daughter.

  Like the little girl, the school teacher remained mute, the cold eyes, the vacant stare. Instead she knelt down and smiled at the little girl, and placed in her little pink palm something. It was a small cut-out shape of a wolf, gold foil cardboard from the class craft box. Closing the girl’s tiny fingers around the wolf she whispered, “I’m watching.” Then the teacher stood up again. They locked eyes for a brief moment, the father and the teacher. Something passed between them. One, a look of knowing, the other a look of being found out.

  For the teacher, it was confirmation enough.

  Looking back now, it had seemed like a life-time ago. She was another person back then, a person she wouldn’t recognize today. But the seed had been planted in her mind, the seed of her evolution into what she had grown into. What she had become.

  And now she was watching someone else, someone who had wronged, not her, but those who employed her for this assignment. She was here, in Erin’s Bay to right the wrong that had been committed. To cleanse, to rid, to purge the sins of another.

  When she had seen the subject of her assignment in the flesh, for the first time since arriving in the bay, she was amused but not surprised at how unassuming the woman looked. After all, women do make the best thieves, the best liars, the best killers. She knew this personally so why should it be any different?

  It hadn’t taken her long to determine where the woman lived, down amongst the dunes, a secluded spot right on the beach a few miles out of town in a charming cottage.

  That was good, convenient. For this occasion she would use water. It made sense, make it look like a drowning, perhaps a suicide. Do it in the woman’s own home, fill her lungs first, carry her the short distance into the surf then let the ocean do the rest. Done that before. The body could take weeks to surface from the cold, dark, inky depths, maybe never if the sharks and other marine life got their way. Twelve months had passed and still no word from Santorini, Greece about the missing underworld crime boss posing as a legitimate businessman she had taken care of. The newspaper read: Missing, presumed drowned.

  Under the awning of the gift store she checked her messages one more time on her encrypted cell phone. No new updates. Cars slid down the main street of Erin’s Bay, locals mixing with tourists walked right by where she stood, not giving her a second look.

  Pocketing her phone she crossed the street. A warm breeze tugged at her unremarkable sundress, plain sunglasses perched on her head, and a typical drawstring beach bag slung over one shoulder, with a not-so-typical compact handgun tucked inside.

  There was a new visitor in town, a teacher of sorts. The class would be short. The lesson, lethal.

  5

  Shaw gave Abby a napkin for her bleeding nose. Abby took it and pinched her nose. “You’ve made an enemy of Teddy,” Abby said in a nasally voice.

  Shaw picked up Abby’s red sunglasses that had fallen and handed them back to her. He wante
d to ask her why Teddy had slapped her, but it was none of his business. He didn’t want to get involved, it wasn’t his place unless Teddy did it again.

  Tears welled in Abby’s eyes. She turned away, too proud, a chink in her fragile armor.

  The bleeding stopped. Shaw nodded then began walking away, back to where he was sitting, believing the tears were for his benefit.

  “Hey.” Abby scuttled after him around the hedge. “Wait!” She grabbed his arm. Shaw shrugged her loose and sat back down on the picnic bench. Suddenly the industrial design of the coffee cup in front of him became the focus of his entire universe.

  Abby plonked down across from him, blocking his view.

  Shaw let out a breath then held out his hand. “Keys.”

  For a moment Abby looked blankly at him. Then she handed over her car keys. Shaw disappeared then returned a few moments later after shifting Abby’s car to another parking space.

  He dumped the keys back down on the table.

  Abby scooped them up. “What are you, like some kind of Boy Scout?” she replied.

  “I have disabled friends,” he replied. He leveled his gaze at her. “I don’t take kindly to people parking in spots reserved for those friends.”

  For a few minutes no one spoke. Shaw shuffled along the bench so he could see the ocean again. Abby mirrored the movement so she could see him square on. She touched his arm but Shaw pulled it back. “Did you really mean all those things you said about me?”

  “I’m a fast judge of character,” he replied.

  “But you’re wrong about me.”

  Shaw studied her face. While he was moving her car Abby had adjusted her hair, reapplied her make-up. She sat pristine, composed and self-assured once again. Her momentary lapse into vulnerability all but gone. Close up though, she still looked young, very young. A child still, in Shaw's eyes.

  “Stop staring at me.”