Right of Redemption

by Jenna Bennett

  “Anyone behind you?”

  I glanced in the mirror. “No. Just the three of us on the road now.”

  “A couple of sheriff’s vehicles should be catching up soon,” Rafe said.

  “Good.” Or maybe it wasn’t good. “Are they going to pull the minivan over? What will Richard do if they do that? Once he knows that he won’t get away with this?”

  “Hard to say,” Rafe said, as the Volvo rolled past Beulah’s Meat’n Three. “Depends on how crazy he is. And what he’s already done.”

  “Meaning?”

  “So far, he’s kidnapped his wife and kids at gunpoint. That’s a big deal, but not as big as if he shot Charlotte’s mama.”

  Understood. “Any news on her?”

  “A car’s on its way,” Rafe said. “Ambulance too, just in case.”

  Good. “So what you’re saying is, if he’s already shot somebody—maybe already killed somebody—he’ll be more likely to do it again.”

  “It gets easier with practice,” Rafe said. “But yeah, less and less to lose the farther he’s already gone.”

  That wasn’t encouraging. “How close are you to the Damascus Road?”

  “Couple minutes. You?”

  “About the same.” Although he was surely driving like a bat out of hell. He does that even when he’s not in a hurry, and at the moment, he was probably flying. Meanwhile, Charlotte was carefully obeying the speed limit and rules of the road. But if she increased her speed just a little, she’d get to the turnoff before him. While he probably couldn’t go any faster than he already was unless he wanted to risk an accident.

  “Any sign of the sheriff?”

  I glanced up in the rearview mirror again. “Yes! They’re coming. I see flashing lights.”

  I didn’t hear any sirens, but maybe they weren’t close enough yet. Or maybe they were coming in silently, so as not to give Richard advance warning.

  “See the intersection yet?”

  “I can see the traffic lights,” I said. “The minivan’s signaling to go into the right lane. They’re definitely turning toward the interstate.”

  “I see them coming.” His voice was calm. “Turn off to the side, darlin’. Get outta the way of the sheriff.”

  “I don’t see you,” I said, trying to look around for him while at the same time preparing to do as he said. The sheriff’s vehicles were coming up on my rear now, flashing their lights. I scooted off to the right, onto the shoulder of the road, and crept forward while they zoomed past me.

  Up ahead, the light changed from red to green.

  I’d been here before, at this same intersection in much this same situation. Then, it had been Dix, Darcy, and me, with Dix behind the wheel and a different baby in the backseat, trying to catch up to Denise Seaver in Darcy’s Honda. And as she’d turned the corner—at a much faster clip than Charlotte was going now—a three-ton pickup with the Virgin Mary on the back window, with my husband behind the wheel and José Garcia next to him, had blasted across the intersection and knocked her clear across four lanes of traffic and into the ditch.

  That didn’t happen this time. Charlotte slowed to a crawl, and took the corner at a sedate fifteen miles an hour. One of the sheriff’s vehicles put on a burst of speed, skidded into the next lane, and wrenched the wheel hard to the right, to come to a quivering stop diagonally in front of the minivan.

  The other sheriff’s car, meanwhile, fell in behind, also at an angle, so the minivan couldn’t go backward. And the shoulder of the road dropped off to a deep ditch, so no way to drive around.

  I stayed on my side of the corner, where I had a good view of the proceedings, but where I probably wouldn’t get caught up in anything bad, assuming anything bad was going to happen.

  By now, the two sheriff’s deputies—or actually, it was Sheriff Satterfield himself getting out of one car, and Cletus Johnson out of the other—had both pulled their guns and were pointing them at the minivan. They were both bracing their hands on the tops of the door frames of their respective cars to keep the guns steady.

  What that meant, of course, was that poor Charlotte, in the driver’s seat, had three guns pointed at her. Richard’s, and the two of them. She was probably hysterical, and the kids, too.

  I was so busy watching that I didn’t even notice Rafe’s tan Chevy zooming across the intersection and making a squealing U-turn before coming to a stop behind me.

  He wrenched open the door and ran toward me, crouching to keep out of the line of fire. I unlocked my door and let him pull it open.

  He squatted in the space between the open door and the rest of the car to peer in at me. “You all right?”

  “Fine,” I said. “We’re both fine. And I’m staying out of the way.” So don’t tell me to leave.

  He nodded. “Not far enough back if bullets start to fly, but I don’t imagine it’d do much good to tell you to go home and leave it to the professionals.”

  “Not until I know if Charlotte’s going to be all right.”

  Richard still had her at gunpoint, as far as I was able to tell from over here. And so, of course, did Bob and Cletus. Not that they’d shoot her on purpose—Richard might—but you never know what can happen once bullets—as Rafe had said—start to fly.

  “Besides,” I added, “my husband just showed up, and is about to get himself involved, and I want to make sure he comes out of this in one piece, too.”

  He smiled “Always, darlin’.”

  Not always. He’d been shot before. And stabbed before. And had other bad things happen to him before, too. He wasn’t indestructible. Hard to kill, maybe, but one well-placed bullet could do a lot of damage.

  “I’m staying,” I told him.

  He nodded. “Stay back, then. And down. Don’t get outta the car until you know it’s safe.”

  I promised I wouldn’t. “What are you going to do?”

  “My job,” Rafe said. He put his hand on mine for a second—not long enough for me to turn mine over and latch on—and then he was gone. Around the open door and around the front of the Volvo and into the ditch bordering the road.

  I held my breath as he moved, still in a crouch, toward the corner, and then around the corner and toward the minivan, still following the ditch. I could see his head bobbing, but nothing more of him now.

  Richard would be able to see him coming, though. All he had to do was turn his head and he’d be able to see Rafe moving toward him. And all he’d have to do then, was open his door and shoot. He could get Rafe square in the chest—because of course my husband hadn’t taken the time to put on tactical gear—while Rafe wouldn’t have a clear shot at all, at Richard inside the minivan.

  Is it any wonder I was holding my breath, and turning purple with the effort, until I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, and gulped a mouthful of air into my lungs?

  Richard’s attention was focused in the other direction, though, at Charlotte in the driver’s seat, and at the two law enforcement officers keeping him at gunpoint from the road. Rafe made it to the back corner of the minivan and up onto the pavement with no shots being fired.

  When he popped out of the ditch, Cletus noticed him. I guess he and Bob had been too focused on Richard so far, to realize that Rafe was approaching from the other direction. Or maybe Bob knew, but Cletus certainly didn’t. His attention flickered to Rafe for a second, and as a result, Richard became aware of him, too.

  It all happened quickly after that. Too quickly for me to really see the progression. There was a shot, and another shot, so close together that they sounded almost like the same shot. Rafe dropped to the ground behind the minivan—my breath stopped, and not because I was holding it this time. Blood spatter hit the inside of the minivan’s window, where Richard was sitting. And then there was a lot of noise and movement both inside and outside the minivan.

  Rafe popped back up again—my heart went back to beating, a little unevenly until it caught back up to normal—and ran to Richard’s door. He wrenched it open—
someone must have popped the button from the other side, I guess; probably Charlotte—and Richard half fell out of the car. Rafe grabbed him, and skidded a little on the gravel shoulder of the road as he tried to hold on.

  Then Bob skirted the front of the car and was there to help, and Cletus ran around the back, and I saw Charlotte open her door and pretty much fall to her knees on the pavement. And at that point I figured the danger was over, so I left my own car—although I made sure to lock it behind me on the run, so nobody would be able to get at Carrie—as I hustled up the shoulder of the road and down the other side to see what, if anything, I could do to help.

  Nineteen

  Charlotte was on her hands and knees on the road, retching, so I took it upon myself to open the back door of the minivan and look in on the kids. They were both screaming, with tears coursing down their cheeks. The little girl was sobbing so hard she was hiccupping. “Mommy! Daddy!”

  “Shhh,” I told her. “It’s OK.” It wasn’t, but what else could I say? “Your mom’s coming.”

  She wasn’t listening to me. “Daddy!” she screamed. “Daddy!”

  I glanced over the back of the seat, into the front of the car and out the door. “Daddy’s OK, too.”

  He was, actually. Or if not OK, at least he was alive and kicking. He was down on the side of the road, bellowing in rage, loud enough that whatever gunshot wound he’d contracted couldn’t have been that big a deal. I’ve been shot once, and it does tend to take all your attention when it happens. Richard wasn’t unduly put out by his, it seemed. His voice worked just fine, and so did his lungs. He was cursing and weeping—tears of rage, no doubt—and fighting as Rafe and Cletus together wrestled him to the ground and fastened handcuffs around his wrists. It took both of them to do it, which should tell you something about just how angry he was. They’re both bigger and considerably more muscular than Richard, and it still took their combined effort to get the job done.

  “Richard Whitaker,” the sheriff intoned, “you’re under arrest for kidnapping—”

  I squatted next to Charlotte as the guys hauled Richard to his feet and began moving him toward one of the sheriff’s vehicles. He was kicking and bucking, trying to throw them off, and I didn’t doubt for a second that if he could have gotten free, he would have taken off down the road. When he saw Charlotte on her knees on the pavement, he spat at her, and then let loose with a string of invective. “You ungrateful bitch, I should have…”

  Charlotte raised her head to look at him, her cheeks pale and tear-stained and her lips quivering.

  Rafe and Cletus paid him no mind, just kept wrestling him toward the squad car, where the sheriff was holding the door open. They maneuvered him inside, still cursing and bellowing—Cletus put his hand on Richard’s head and shoved it down—and then the door shut behind him, and it was blessedly silent. Or more silent. He was still carrying on inside the car, but distantly, muted, like a bumblebee in a jar. Hopefully, once he realized that nobody out here could hear him, he’d stop doing that, too, although I didn’t envy whoever would have to drive him back to the sheriff’s office for lockup.

  He kept kicking and throwing himself around, too, like a five-year-old having a temper tantrum, making the whole car bounce and jerk.

  “Better get him outta here,” the sheriff told Cletus. “I’ll follow you in a couple minutes.”

  Cletus grimaced, but nodded. He and Rafe exchanged a wary sort of nod, like two tomcats circling one another in an alley, and then Cletus skirted the back of the squad car and headed for the front seat. Richard’s curses got louder for the few seconds it took Cletus to get himself seated behind the wheel, and then they were cut off again when Cletus shut the door. We watched as he made a U-turn across all the lanes of traffic—all the other cars moved out of the way of the flashing blue lights—and then he took the turn back down the Columbia Highway—or Pulaski Highway—toward Sweetwater.

  Charlotte watched the car until it disappeared, her eyes wide, before she blinked and seemed to come back to herself. She looked around, from Sheriff Satterfield to Rafe to me.

  Her brows lowered. “What are you doing here?”

  Her voice was hoarse, either from the crying or the throwing up.

  “I followed you,” I said, “after Richard loaded you into the minivan. You saw me, parked across the street.”

  Or so I assumed, seeing as she’d taken Richard’s attention off me when it looked like he might be inclined to investigate my car.

  “Oh.” She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. “Right.”

  Maybe she’d forgotten I was there, in the terror. It wouldn’t be surprising.

  “I called Rafe from the car,” I said. “He called the sheriff. And then we all caught up to you here.”

  She nodded, sort of vaguely. And looked around. And finally seemed to realize that her children were in the back seat of the minivan, screaming their heads off. “Oh, my God!” She scrambled to her feet. “Michaela! JR!”

  Rafe put an arm around me and pulled me out of the way so I wouldn’t get mowed down. As Charlotte flew, head-first, into the back of the van to console her kids, I turned to Bob Satterfield. “Hi, Sheriff. Any news on Charlotte’s mother?”

  The sheriff nodded a greeting and filled me—us—in. “Shook up, but all right. Whitaker gagged her and tied her to a chair so she couldn’t call for help when he took his family and left. She’s not a young woman, so the shock and rough handling didn’t do her any good, but the paramedics are staying with her until her husband gets there, and knowing that Charlotte and the kids are all right will go a long way toward making everything right again.”

  A beat passed, and then he added, “Let me go do that.”

  He headed for the remaining squad car. Rafe tightened his arm around me and leaned down to drop a kiss on my cheek. I turned my head at the last second so it landed on my mouth instead.

  “You OK?” I asked against his lips.

  They curved up. “Yeah. A couple bruises, but nothing worse.”

  “What about Richard? He got shot, obviously.” I’d seen the blood spray on the inside of the window. “But he was in good enough condition to put up a fight.”

  “Just a scratch,” Rafe said. His just-a-scratches tend to be a bit worse than… well, scratches, but I believed him when he added, “He’ll need a couple stitches and some padding. But he’ll survive to stand trial. And live for a long time afterwards.”

  Good to know.

  “I should get back,” he added, with a glance over his shoulder. “I got work of my own to do.”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry to take you away from it.”

  “I’m not.” He dropped another kiss, this time right on my mouth, and lingered. “But now that everything’s in hand here,” he added once he’d raised his head, “I should get back to it.”

  “I’m going to stay for a few minutes, and then follow Charlotte home. Make sure she and the kids get there OK. Check on Carrie on your way past the car, would you? She’s probably still asleep—”

  It had only been a few minutes since I stumbled out of the Volvo, but they’d been a couple of minutes that had gone on for what had seemed like a long time. “If not, I’ll take her out of the car while I wait.”

  He nodded. “I’ll see you at home later.”

  Count on it. I unclenched my hands from his sleeves and watched him saunter away, along the side of the road, down to the corner, and from there, over to the Volvo. He peered through the back window for a second, and turned to give me a thumbs up. I lifted a hand in acknowledgement, and then I watched him get into the Chevy and drive away, merging with traffic headed toward the center of Columbia.

  “He going back to work?” the sheriff asked. I hadn’t even noticed him come back out of the car and toward me, but now he was standing next to me watching the Chevy disappear up the road.

  I nodded. “He’s following Kyle Scoggins and Rodney Clark around. Rodney was the other guy from Beulah’s the other day. I saw
him on Fulton Street earlier, and recognized him. And Rafe said he showed up at Kyle Scoggins’s place of employment just before this whole—” I waved my hand at Charlotte, at the minivan, and at the two screaming kids, “—mess happened.”

  “Things are coming together,” Bob said, sounding pleased. I guess he was talking about the Laurel Hill case, and not this… mess. Although with Richard being caught red-handed the way he’d been, this was pretty open and shut too, if you asked me.

  I cleared my throat. “What are the chances, in your opinion, that Rodney and/or Kyle killed Natalie Allen because she knew they were Nazi sympathizers and she was threatening to rat them out?”

  “Rat them out to who?”

  Whom. “I don’t know,” I said. “Somebody.”

  He shook his head. “Here’s the thing, darlin’. There’s no law against being a Nazi. It makes people look at you sideways, especially when you go in a clump to a place like Laurel Hill for target practice. But we can’t arrest somebody for that. It’s no crime to think a certain way. It’s only a crime if you act on it.”

  I nodded. “What if they were planning to do more? And what if Natalie knew about it?”

  “More than three years ago?” The sheriff made a skeptical face. “Don’t you think they woulda done it by now? Especially if they killed somebody so nobody’d figure out what they planned to do?”

  Maybe. I mean… that did make sense. “So not Kyle or Rodney.”

  “It mighta been Kyle or Rodney,” the sheriff said. “I don’t recall the case. It wasn’t one of mine. But if it was Kyle or Rodney, it probably wasn’t for that reason.”

  No. “I appreciate it.”

  He nodded. And turned back to the minivan and Charlotte. “Think she’s gonna be all right driving home?”

  “I think she’ll have to be,” I said. “Although I suppose I could pile them all into my car and drive them back if she can’t manage. You wouldn’t pull us over and give us a ticket if she held one of the kids on her lap on the way home, would you? I’ve got Carrie in the back seat, so there’s only room for one more car seat.”