Due Recompense: Justice In Its Rawest Form

by Jason Trevor

  “I can handle that part. What should I do to quiet my soul? I already have so much blood on my hands…”

  “Pray, my son. Pray at every opportunity in your life and privately confess your sins to God, seeking the forgiveness of the lamb that was slain on your behalf. You will find absolution, as it has already been given to you and only needs to be sought and found,”

  “Thank you, Padre. I will do that,”

  “God’s speed and safety on your travels, my son,”

  Chapter 30

  Margie groaned and scowled in her sleep. “What’s going on?” she fussed at the noise. She propped herself up on one elbow and squinted past her snoring husband at his nightstand. His cell phone was ringing and vibrating noisily on the wooden surface. She shook his shoulder. “William. William!”

  He grunted. “Huh? What’s the matter, baby?”

  “Who in the world is calling you at five in the morning?”

  “Dunno. Let me see!” He mumbled into the phone as he grabbed it. “Hello, Athens here,”

  “Mr. Athens, this is Lieutenant Wakefield with the Houston Police Department, Homicide Division. I have you on speaker with Lieutenant Franks of the Gang Unit and Brittany Scott with the District Attorney’s office. We are calling on behalf of a special task force that has been formed to investigate and capture a vigilante whom we believe to be your client, Joseph Danton,”

  “Good morning,” William mumbled, only a little bit more awake than he had been when he answered the phone. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a call at this hour?”

  “We will have a warrant for the arrest of Joseph Danton in very short order. Is our understanding correct that he will not be willing to turn himself in?”

  “That’s correct. His exact instructions to me were to give you his location to pick him up if you call me asking for his surrender,”

  “Will he come quietly?”

  “I can’t promise that, but he was clear that he did not want me doing anything unethical or illegal, that the location I give you should be honest and accurate. I have advised him against any attempt to resist or escape. He has assured me that no innocent police officers will be harmed by him, should you try to pick him up,”

  “How generous of him,” Franks was sarcastic. “Where is he?”

  “You don’t have a warrant yet. There’s no way Judge Lemond is in his office at this hour on a weekend. You’ll be lucky to get him to answer the phone before seven or eight,”

  “How do you know it’s coming from Lemond? Maybe we got it from the overnight magistrate,” challenged Wakefield.

  “No, you didn’t,” William pushed back. “This isn’t my first rodeo, Lieutenant. You always use ‘tough-on-crime’ Lemond, and my little birdies at the courthouse told me that you’ve been waiting for it since the middle of the day yesterday, when the overnight magistrate was snoring. Someone goofed and the warrant was issued for the wrong Joe Danton. You’ve been stuck in place with your thumb in your ass ever since. Forgive my language, Brittany,”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she chimed in the most professional voice she could muster in her exhausted state, after being dragged out of bed by Wakefield at four in the morning.

  “Enough,” moaned Wakefield. “We’ll be calling you back as soon as the warrant drops.

  “I’ll have to call him to confirm his exact coordinates at that time,”

  “Call him now!”

  “No,” William saw a sleepy-eyed Billy standing in his bedroom doorway. “You’ve disturbed my family’s sleep already. I won’t disturb his until it’s necessary,”

  “Yeah, like he sleeps,”

  “Spare me the theatrics. Have a good morning, and I will talk to you soon,”

  ◆◆◆

  “Eddie Lancaster of Priority Technology, checking out,” Joe walked up to the hotel night clerk with a large, olive drab duffel bag on his shoulder, a laptop case in one hand, and the framed photo of his family under his arm. He laid a room key on the desk.

  “Room five-seventeen? Let’s see. Your room is secured using a credit card ending in three-three-five-five with the name Priority Technology on it. Would you like your charges to that card?”

  “Yes, please. Can I get some cash against the card also?”

  “How much?”

  “What’s your limit?”

  “$500, but there is an ATM in the corner of the lobby, by the bar there, if you need more,”

  “That’s fine, thank you. Do the $500,”

  “Yes, sir,” the clerk tapped a few more keys on his computer, then grabbed a page that rolled out of a printer below the desk. “Sign here, if you would please, Mr. Lancaster,”

  Joe scribbled an illegible version of “E. Lancaster” as best as he could without it looking like his own signature, took his copy and his cash, and headed for the ATM across the lobby as he used his free hand to dig in the back pocket of his jeans for a stack of debit and credit cards with the names of various shell companies on them.

  ◆◆◆

  “What the hell do you want?” griped Greenie as he answered Joe’s call. “It’s six in the morning!”

  “Don’t tell me that you weren’t up!”

  “I had just snoozed the alarm, asshole,”

  “That’s a bad habit. Don’t make me come there and play Reveille in your front yard,”

  “You’d better damned well not,”

  “I actually don’t have time. Today’s the day,”

  “Today’s what day?”

  “There should be a warrant for me any minute. It’s time for me to go underground for a while,”

  “So, they caught you. Are you going to stay on the lam for the rest of your life?”

  “Probably not. I’m sure that my lawyer can work something out and we may need your help. I just don’t know what or how soon,”

  “Anything you need me to tie up?”

  “Yeah. My Escalade is valet parked at the hotel over by the beltway on my side of town and my Ram is in the parking lot of my industrial park in The Woodlands. Can you get them both into the warehouse on the Beltway in the next day or so?”

  “Sure. What about the Charger and the Bug?”

  “Sell the bug, keep it, push it into Lake Houston, I don’t care. I’ll be using the Charger today, then the police can keep what’s left of it,”

  “What’s left of it? What the heck kind of plan have you cooked up?”

  “Just watch the news and you’ll see,”

  “Oh, dear Lord. Anything else?”

  “The repairs on my house are supposed to start late next week. I’ll need someone to watch the contractors and keep the GC honest. I’ll push the contractors to get help from Green Staffing,” he snickered.

  “I appreciate that, but most of them will already have their own crews,”

  “I know, but I’ll be throwing extra money at them to get it done fast, for the benefit of my neighbors. They might need to bring in extra help,”

  “Sounds good,”

  “I’ll be in touch once in a while, but for now, this is goodbye. You take good care of yourself, Greenie. It’s made a big difference in my life to have a friend like you,”

  “The honor is mine, Flyboy. Thanks for all of the business, and be careful out there,”

  ◆◆◆

  Ellie padded her dumpy frame across the linoleum floor in the dark as fast as she could, tugging at the legs of her pajama pants so that she didn’t step on them. Things like this were the burden of being short. The urgent, persistent, knocking on her door continued as it rattled in its old frame.

  “Ellie, wake up!” came Joe’s disembodied voice from the other side as she was almost there.

  “Joe, what the heck are you doing?” she fussed in a loud whisper as she opened the door. “You’re going to wake up the kids!” She ushered him in.

  “El, it’s done,” he said blankly.

  “What’s done?” she shook her head to clear it from the clouds of sleep, then gathered her
chestnut hair with a hand and pulled it over a shoulder.

  “They’re gone. There is no more Blood Brothers gang,”

  The light of recognition come on in her eyes. “You killed the guy who shot Foster?”

  “No, he’s in the ICU at Ben Taub. He’ll be eating through a straw for the rest of his life, probably won’t walk again, and might lose the use of a hand, among other things,” Joe could only go by what he had done on the night of the fight in the street, but he was pretty sure he had surmised Tony’s injuries with some accuracy. “A couple of his friends are in there with him. The rest are dead and cold on slabs. He and his friends will never carjack or shoot anyone again,”

  Elaine collapsed into his arms and sobbed, much like she had on the morning after Foster’s death. This time, Joe’s chest and arms remained soft and he held her, stroking the hair tumbling down her back as she cried. “I don’t know how to feel,” she spoke in a muffled tone from the side of her mouth that wasn’t pressed into Joe’s tee shirt. “I prayed and prayed for justice for Foster… but I don’t know if I like the way it came,”

  “What’s done is done, Ellie. I’m here to say goodbye. I have to go. I don’t know for how long, but I don’t have much time this morning,”

  She pushed back to arm’s length and stared inquisitively into his eyes, keeping her hands on his shoulders, “The police caught you?”

  “They watched me turn a crackhouse into toothpicks. My guess is that they want to bring me in on that and try to push me into fessing up on everything else,” There was no sense mentioning that he had shot Bullet in the presence of Cody Sims because he didn’t know what version of events the detective had told to spare his neck after letting Joe go.

  “Are you going to let them bring you in?” She was surprised at the possibility of Joe surrendering without fighting for his freedom.

  “Of course not. I’m going on the road, but I’ll keep in touch. I’ll be back someday, long after it’s moved over to the cold case department by HPD,”

  “How will you ever come back? There’s no statute of limitations on killing people,”

  “I don’t know. I’ll figure that part out. You take good care of those beautiful children. They are Foster’s legacy. They need to grow up to be amazing people, like Foster was… like you are. The world needs more people like you, and fewer…” he trailed off, unsure if he was going to say “like the blood brothers” or “like me”. His conscience had suddenly taunted him again, as it had in the church. This was such a wonderful family and lovely home, he felt like his presence was desecrating it. “At the very least, I won’t be back until I learn to live with myself,” he continued.

  She nodded silently, still staring into his eyes as the occasional tear dripped down her cheek. “I’ll raise my children to be like you, Joe,”

  Joe’s heart stopped at hearing her words. He swallowed a lump from his throat, leaned over, and gently kissed her cheek, then rushed out the door.

  ◆◆◆

  The lock was stubborn, as it had always been. Joe wiggled the key and worked it in and out slightly as he tried to turn it. Of course, it was being extra tough, now that he was in a hurry. The lock finally surrendered and the key turned. He pulled the door open and hurried into the Ready Mailer store, where he had been maintaining a mailbox for a few years. No mail ever came or went from his box, but it was a handy and quick stash with around the clock availability, which was much simpler than his myriad bank safe deposit boxes.

  He strolled rapidly through the dark room, not wanting to turn on the light, as he knew the shop had antiquated security cameras that did not work well in the dark. He almost bumped into the closed “after hours” corrugated aluminum curtain that separated the mailboxes from the counters with the shipping scales and cash registers on them. Getting his bearings in the dark was difficult. If he stood still long enough, his eyes would adjust and he could rely on his night vision, but there was no time for that. Tugging at his glasses to straighten them, as if it mattered in the dark, he felt his way to his one box out of the two hundred set into the wall.

  Jamming the key in and opening the box, he carefully pulled out a federally sealed bankroll of $50,000. Dropping it on the narrow table under the mailboxes, he untucked his shirt, reached inside, and unbuckled his money belt, slapping it onto the table next to the bankroll. Then he pulled a pocketknife and a wad of $3,400 that he had managed to coax out of the ATM with his cards. At least none of the cards had his actual name on them to raise a flag for the police, who would almost certainly subpoena his financials soon.

  As he broke the cash into smaller piles of $100’s and $20’s to fit into the sections of his money belt, he noticed a soft glimmer of daylight appearing through the trees behind the buildings across the street to the east.

  His phone startled him when it rang and he yanked it out of his back pocket. It was William.

  Chapter 31

  William sighed and yawned as he called Lieutenant Wakefield back. Based on what he had seen of Joe’s talents, this was going to get very interesting, very fast.

  “Wakefield here,” came a gruff and tired voice on the other end of the line.

  “Have you emailed me a copy of the warrant yet?”

  “We faxed it to your office,”

  “It’s Sunday! I’m not in my office, and won’t be until tomorrow. Email it to me. Now. I’ve confirmed Danton’s itinerary with him for this morning, but I am not at liberty to share that information with you until I see the warrant to discuss the details with him,”

  “Goddamit, counselor! How about a little professional courtesy?”

  “I don’t owe you any favors, Lieutenant. My obligation is to my client and the rules of ethics. I don’t even have to give you his location, except that he has instructed me to do so. How about you be grateful for that and email me the warrant?”

  ◆◆◆

  “Hello again, William,” Joe answered the second call from his lawyer in as many minutes.

  “OK, Joe. I bought you a few more minutes by insisting that they email me a copy of the warrant, but it probably won’t take them long,”

  “You didn’t have to do that. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Joe cradled an armload of rations and a few burner-phones in one arm as he held the cell phone to his ear with the other, strolling through a nearly-deserted grocery store. “Dang it, I don’t think I can get a camping saw here. Add a stop at the Walmart on 1960 just off of the freeway to the itinerary I gave you earlier. You will remember to tell them that I will be in the Charger, right?”

  “Yes, I will as soon as I see the warrant. You know, this sounds like you want them to come and catch you, which will not bode as well in court as if you just drive downtown with me and turn yourself in,”

  “They won’t catch me,”

  “…and no one will get hurt?”

  “Maybe me, but that will be all,”

  “You’re making me uneasy. You’re not thinking of suicide by cop, are you?”

  “Of course not. I’ll be fine, William. Love to Margie and Billy. I have to go,”

  ◆◆◆

  “Walmart?” Wakefield was incredulous and waved Franks over to him. “He’s expecting us to come get him, but he’s out stocking up on toilet paper and milk? You’ve got to be messing with me!” Call Sims and Le! He mouthed to Franks.

  “No, I am not messing with you. This is the professional courtesy you asked for. I was instructed to specifically inform you that he was going to the Ready Mailer on the northwest corner of Will Clayton Parkway and Wilson Road, then the nearby Kroger’s on the freeway, then the Walmart on FM1960, just off of the freeway. He also said to make it clear to you that he will be in his blue 1969 Charger,”

  “What about after Walmart?”

  “The last stop he told me about was at his house to leave a note for the contractors who will be fixing it,”

  “Okay, thank you,” Wakefield hung up as Franks’ broad, sloped shoulders whirled back around to f
ace him.

  “Sims is calling the cavalry. Le is going to meet us downstairs,”

  “Let’s get the bird in the air. It seems that Danton is out, running his Sunday morning errands before he goes to prison,”

  “My next call is to the Air Support Unit,”

  ◆◆◆

  Joe sauntered, leisurely and gleefully, from the door of the Walmart to his Charger, unpacking his new imitation Ka-bar. It wasn’t as practical as a camping saw, but the serrations along the long blade would make a suitable substitute for a little while, at least. He shoved the package into a garbage can in the parking lot and clipped the included imitation-leather sheath to his jeans pocket, giggling at its impracticality when it slapped his leg with every step.

  Back at his car, he opened the passenger door, buckled his old hiking backpack securely into place, and then stuffed the new knife into it alongside the picture of his family, the laptop bag, and the disposable cell phones. Rounding the back of the car past his drogue chute and sinking into the driver’s seat, he cracked his knuckles and mentally prepared himself for the inevitable action, silently thanking God that it was Sunday morning and the streets would be empty. Being close to Bush Intercontinental Airport, he almost didn’t notice the police helicopter appear overhead from the south.

  ◆◆◆

  “Air support has his car at the Walmart!” Sims shouted into a portable radio.

  “Are we sure it’s not another blue Charger?” came Le from the car behind him. “He could be messing with us and driving the Escalade or the Suburban,”

  Franks came over the radio: “Air support reports the Ready Mailer is deserted and no charger or black SUV at Kroger. They also said that they are pretty sure the car at Walmart has a racing chute. This is our best shot. Hammer down, before he’s on the move again!”