by Robert Ellis
Matt pulled in front of the house, wondering why all the lights were on and the front door was standing open. When he got out of the car, he heard Lucia screaming.
He ran into the living room and saw a man roughing her up on the couch. Without a single wasted motion, he horse-collared the intruder and yanked him down to the floor. Flipping him onto his back, he saw Sonny Daniels screaming at him and hurling his fists into the air.
“What the hell are you doing, Sonny?”
Sonny spoke through clenched teeth. “Getting these animals out of here.”
The words settled into the room like poison gas. Matt met Sonny’s eyes and realized that they’d gone dead. But even more, he could feel something exploding inside his body. Something fierce and uncontrollable. And then he snapped.
He kicked Sonny in the face, and then kicked him again even harder. As the man tried to block the blows with his arm, Matt struck him again and again until his nose burst open and the blood started to flow. It dawned on him that he was hurting Sonny exactly the way he’d been hurt—outmatched and unable to defend himself—giving into his anger and rage. He needed to get a grip on himself. He needed to end this quickly. Grabbing Sonny by the collar, he jacked him up to his feet and began running him through the living room. When they reached the front door, Matt drove him across the porch and tossed him into the street. Then he bent over and pointed his finger in the man’s face, his voice low and dangerous.
“Get the fuck out of here, Sonny. Get up and go home. Go home, or you’ll spend the night handcuffed to a tree in a place where no one, not even your dumb-ass lawyer, will ever find you.”
Sonny didn’t say anything. He just lay there, staring at Matt with those frenzied eyes and trying to catch his breath.
Matt walked back inside and closed the door. Lucia was still screaming, still hysterical, still unable to control herself in a way Matt had only seen on the street with drug overdoses. It almost seemed as if Sonny was still in the room, still shouting at her and slapping her around. He took a quick look about the room. And then his eyes stopped on the wall over the fireplace mantel.
Angel’s shotgun was missing. The Remington 870 Wingmaster.
Something catastrophic was happening.
Matt raced over to the couch. “Where’s Angel, Lucia? Where’s your husband?”
It was almost like she couldn’t hear him. She sat there trembling and repeating Sophia’s name. She kept calling out to her little girl. Tears were streaming down her face, and she appeared to be in a state of deep psychosis.
Matt sat down beside her, pressing his hands against her cheeks and trying to get her to focus. “You have to tell me what’s happening, Lucia. Quickly. Where’s Angel? Where’s your husband?”
She couldn’t make it. She couldn’t concentrate. She pointed in the direction of her daughter’s bedroom and called out Sophia’s name again.
Matt got up and raced through the kitchen into the bedroom. The computer was playing a video loop that had been uploaded onto a social media website. Matt could feel his soul collapsing as he rushed toward the desk.
It was a video of Sophia’s murder.
A video shot from the camera on the helmet she used to record her skateboarding runs. The helmet they had been looking for but could never find.
Matt sat down on the bed, watching his world crumble. Sophia had witnessed everything. He could see Moe Rey underneath the tree branches being forced to dig his own grave at gunpoint. The man was on all fours, pushing the dirt to one side in a huge pile. When it looked like he’d finished, he clasped his hands behind his back and bowed, his body convulsing in fear. Matt could hear Rey begging for his life and weeping, but it didn’t matter. The killer was standing behind him with the pistol aimed at the back of his head. The muzzle flash came first, followed by the sharp sound of the gun blasting in the night. All it took was a single shot to finish Moe Rey off, his dead body flopping onto the ground.
But even more harrowing, Matt could see the moment Sophia tried to back off and run away. The moment the killer heard her from underneath the trees and knew that she was out there. He could see the killer begin to race after her, the camera on her helmet turning away and bouncing up and down. He could hear Sophia shrieking in terror and crying out for help—the killer grunting and groaning and chasing her through the woods.
And then he finally reached Sophia and tackled her down to the ground.
The killer must have ripped her helmet off to get to her throat. The image rolled over and over again until the helmet seemed to hit something and came to a sudden stop. And that’s when the killer wrapped his hands around Sophia’s neck and started banging her head into the ground.
What the image hadn’t stolen from Matt’s soul, the reality of the murder did. He could see the killer’s face now—the man gritting his teeth and straining under the pressure—his body shaking in a mad animal-like fury as he squeezed the life out of a fifteen-year-old girl on her birthday.
Everything about the moment cut to the bone. Especially when it was all over—when Sophia’s body became still and lifeless and the killer turned to the helmet and noticed the camera. For more than a minute, he just sat on the ground staring at the lens and trying to compose himself.
Deputy District Attorney Mitch Burton.
It took Matt’s breath away.
SIXTY-ONE
It almost seemed as if fate had reset the clock to half past midnight. Like reality was rippling through a distorted lens. Everything straight in the world was now bent. Everything bent had somehow become straight. Matt turned away from the computer and saw Sonny Daniels standing in the doorway.
“I thought I told you to go home.”
Sonny just stood there, his dead eyes pulling away from the computer, landing on Matt’s face, and burrowing in.
Matt shook his head. “I don’t have time for this.”
He grabbed Sonny by the arm and pulled him through the living room, then out the front door onto the porch.
“Be smart, Sonny. Let it go, and just get out of here.”
Matt knew that as much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t stay there for Lucia. Jumping into his car, he lit the engine up and floored it down the street. As he sped by, he caught a glimpse of Sonny stumbling down the sidewalk and felt a certain degree of relief that at least Lucia was safe for now.
The drive to Burton’s house was a scrambled blur of grim memories and even darker thoughts. He couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed. He couldn’t believe that anything like this could be happening.
He had been chasing Robert Gambini, but it was Mitch Burton all along. The same Mitch Burton who worked in the district attorney’s office and helmed the Organized Crime Unit. The man who had been standing right beside him.
Matt’s body shivered in the face of this new horrific reality.
As he climbed the hill and rolled around the corner, Burton’s house seemed normal enough. But then he lowered his gaze to the driveway and saw that Angel Ramirez had crashed his pickup truck through the gate.
As he skidded to a stop, he heard the cannon-like blast of a shotgun followed by two quick bursts from what sounded like a large-caliber pistol. Burton and Ramirez were shouting at each other. Drawing his .45, Matt leapt up the steps and ripped open the front door. The moment he stepped inside, Val called out his name and rushed toward him. Her face and eyes were bruised and swollen—she’d obviously taken a hard beating.
“Who did this to you?” Matt said. “Mitch or Ramirez?”
She seemed confused. Panic stricken. Trembling in his arms.
“Mitch,” she whispered. “I found the helmet in the back of his car. I saw the video, Matthew. I saw it. I put it on the web so everyone could see it, too. How could he do this? Why is this happening?”
The shotgun pounded again, followed by two more pistol shots. Burton shouted something at Angel, and Angel shouted back.
“He’s in the study,” Val said. “He’s only got one g
un, but I saw a lot of bullets. They looked big to me.”
Matt gazed into her eyes and pulled her closer. “I want you to call nine-one-one,” he said. “Then I want you to get out of here, okay? Over to a neighbor’s, Val. Anywhere that’s not here, right?”
She nodded and fled into the kitchen wiping the tears off her cheeks. Matt turned and started down the hallway with his .45 up and ready. He noticed that his hands were sweating and realized that he’d never been in a situation like this before. He didn’t want to shoot Angel, and he didn’t want to become Burton’s judge and jury and gun the man down. Not in a case like this one. He filled his lungs with air and exhaled. When he spoke, his voice had hardened and become loud.
“Angel Ramirez, this is LAPD detective Matt Jones. I want you to back out of there before you do anything you’ll regret.”
Ramirez shrieked at the outrage and sounded all jacked up. “But he killed Sophia! He murdered my little girl!”
“If you don’t back out, Angel, I’m coming in. And don’t fool yourself into thinking that what Burton did will make a difference. It won’t. If you’ve got that shotgun in your hands, I’m gonna shoot you and keep on shooting you until you’re dead. Do you understand?”
Two gunshots rang out. Burton.
Matt started around the corner. The lights were dimmer there. Everything hard to see.
“But he killed her,” Angel said, his voice distraught. “He took my little girl’s life away. My Sophia. She’s all we had.”
“Are you listening to me, Angel? Your wife has already lost a daughter. Do you really want her to lose you, too? How do think she’s gonna handle that?”
Two more gunshots rang out from the pistol, and Matt grimaced in anger when he thought he heard someone groan.
He stopped and gazed into the darkness. “Knock it off, Mitch! Goddamn it! Stop shooting! Angel? Are you coming out or not?”
A moment passed, the silence heavy and corrosive. But then Matt saw a figure passing through the darkness into the dim light. It was Angel, staggering toward him with the shotgun pointed at the floor. He was pressing his right hand against his left shoulder. Blood was dripping down his shirt.
Matt pulled him over to the window and turned him into the light. “Let me see it,” he said.
Angel looked terrorized, lifting his hand to expose the gunshot wound. As Matt examined it quickly, it was a through-and-through a half inch below the skin. And Val had been right about the size of the bullets. Still, when Matt glanced back at Angel’s face and noticed that he was weeping, he guessed that it had nothing to do with being shot or the size of the wound.
“I want you to go into the kitchen,” Matt said. “I want you to sit down and press a towel against your shoulder until help gets here. They’re on their way.”
“But he did it. He killed Sophia. My little girl. I saw her body stop moving. I saw my girl die.”
Matt tried to keep it together, tried to stay cool in the face of an emotional overload. He took charge of the shotgun and stepped into the man’s face.
“I know what you saw,” he said. “I know what you saw, Angel. And by now, trust me, everybody knows what he did. Now I want you to go into the kitchen. I want you to hold on until the EMTs get here.”
The man was a wreck, trembling from head to toe. Matt watched him stumble around the corner. After inspecting the shotgun, he gave it a pump, checked the magazine, and realized that all four shells had been fired. Leaning the unloaded weapon against the wall, he stepped into the darkness with his .45 and worked his way to the door to Burton’s study.
Burton fired his pistol, the bullets exploding into the wall a foot beside Matt’s head. Matt fired three shots into the office and leapt to the other side of the door.
“You just shot at a police officer, Mitch. Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“What difference does it make now?”
“You’re right about that. You’ll get the needle for what you’ve done. I just want to know why. What made you do it?”
“I’m taking it with me to the grave. I’ve got no plans to walk out of here alive. And there’s no way I’m sitting through the humiliation of a goddamn trial. I’m gonna make you kill me, Matt.”
Matt was peering through the doorway. He could see Burton in the dim light jamming a fresh mag into a pistol and firing three more quick shots into the hall. Matt lost his balance and fell against the doorjamb. When he recovered, he’d lost sight of where Burton was in the room.
“What made you do it, Mitch? Why did you kill Moe Rey? That’s where this starts, right?”
Burton didn’t say anything. Matt couldn’t tell what he was doing, but it sounded like he might be moving furniture around. As he thought it over, he wondered if Burton was trying to barricade himself in the room. Val had said that he had a lot of ammunition. Maybe he was preparing for a shoot-out when backup arrived. Maybe he really did want to be killed.
But then Matt heard a table fall over and saw Burton’s shadow begin swaying across the wall. He took a jittery peek around the corner and flinched, then raced into the room.
Burton had tied a noose around his neck and was hanging from one of the ceiling beams, his feet dangling six feet overhead. Matt couldn’t believe what he was seeing as he watched Burton point his gun in the air, scream like a madman, and blast off ten maybe twelve rounds into the ceiling. The sound was horrendous. When Burton ran out of bullets, he tossed the pistol onto the floor and began twitching.
SIXTY-TWO
A moment passed as the cloud of spent gunpowder floated through the room. Matt glanced at the pistol on the floor, then turned back to Burton, hanging from a rope lashed to the wooden beam high in the air.
“So what are you doing, Mitch? Taking the hero’s way out?”
Burton looked down at him, his eyes big and glassy. The jump from the table he’d placed on his desk hadn’t broken his neck. But judging from the color of his cheeks, Matt guessed that the noose was beginning to cut off his blood supply.
“Screw you. Sometimes a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.”
“Sounds like a TV commercial for a really bad beer, Mitch.”
Matt stepped closer, watching Burton’s body sweep through the gloom. The view of the city out the wall of glass was remarkable tonight. It seemed like Burton had positioned himself so that he could gaze out the window as he died.
But Matt couldn’t help thinking about the photograph on the wall in Burton’s office. “You and Joseph Gambini go way back, don’t you, Mitch? You guys were in it together from the beginning.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You and the old crime boss. How did it start?”
Burton didn’t say anything, but Matt could tell he was thinking about it.
“He was your snitch, wasn’t he, Mitch? He helped you win convictions. You helped him consolidate his power.”
Burton gave him a wild look. “Yeah, maybe.”
“I’m guessing he came up with the idea. He did the research and knew what Sonny Daniels was up to all along. But then the feds stepped in. What’s his name? That freak prosecutor who thinks screwing people is his ticket into politics. He took everything Joe had and put him away for two more years. Joe needed help from the outside and was willing to cut you in.”
Burton grabbed the rope above the noose, straining to pull himself up and loosen the grip on his neck. “He needs money. Cash. A way to live when he gets out.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you did this, Mitch. Joe’s in a prison cell at Club Fed, and you’re out here doing all the dirty work.”
Burton almost seemed outraged. “I need the money, too! I’m tired. I’ve been doing this nonsense for thirty years and wanna retire. How are me and Val gonna make it? Sell this place and move into a one-bedroom piece of crap in West Hollywood?”
“You didn’t save enough to get by?”
Burton looked down at him with those big eyes. “Sooner or later, Matt, I think you’
ll find that people, no matter how smart or stupid, no matter how good or bad, will do just about anything for money. And I mean anything. Everybody who’s breathing, anyone who’s walking around on two legs, wants money. And when they get it, they want more of it. They like the feel of it. The smell of it. They can’t get enough of it. They’ll steal for it. They’ll screw for it. They’ll sell their souls for it—and yes, if that’s what it takes, they’ll kill for it, too. Because money’s the only real way to happiness we’ve got left. Money’s better than God. Money’s bigger than God. Money actually answers your prayers and makes everything good again. Clean again. Money’s what makes the world go round.”
Matt didn’t say anything. After a while, he leaned against the back of the couch and looked up. Burton had let go of the rope and was kicking his legs, his body swaying through the shadows like a swing.
“So I was right. You guys knew what the Brothers Grimm were up to all along. You knew that it was never about a turf war over drugs. It was about the cash.”
“Not at first,” he said, pulling at the rope above the noose again. “We sent Moe Rey in to check things out.”
“Ah, I got it now. You sent Moe Rey in, but he did more than figure it out. He stole two bags of cash—two hundred grand—and made the mistake of telling you about it.”
“He was a stooge. The crumbs at the bottom of a bag of chips. I couldn’t take the chance that he might tell someone else. I never said anything to Joe about it. I just knew that Moe Rey needed to be eliminated.”
Matt laughed in irony. “Is that the way you mobbed-up guys say it these days? Moe Rey needed to be eliminated?”
“Whatever,” Burton said. “And stop laughing at me. You know I might have made a mistake doing this. I’m having trouble breathing. Maybe you should cut me down.”
