by Blake Banner
I felt a stab of irritation, yanked open the passenger’s door, pulled open the glove compartment and took out my Colt. I slipped it in my waistband, underneath my jacket and slammed the door again. I glared at her over the roof. She was staring past me at the hotel. She spoke absently. “Don’t be sensitive. We haven’t time for that. Let’s go pack our bags.”
She started walking across the parking lot, taking long, fast strides, doing something with her phone as she went. I followed after her. I saw her put the phone to her ear as she reached the entrance porch and back through the door into the reception hall. As I pushed in after her, she started talking like she was mad.
“The Vince Wolowitz case? What the hell for?”
I stopped, watching her. She started to pace, listening. She rolled her eyes, looked at me, gestured at the phone and shrugged, then mouthed, “Start packing. Gimme five.”
As I climbed the stairs, she started to shout again. “You gotta be kidding me, sir! What possible reason… But why? Why Wolowitz?”
I went to our rooms thinking about the Vince Wolowitz case. It was a cold case, and one that I had suggested to Dehan when she had suggested the Redfern case. I figured the deputy inspector had informed Dehan he wanted us off the Redfern case and on the Wolowitz one. Maybe he thought, as I did, that she had some personal investment in the case, she was becoming a loose cannon and he wanted to keep her out of harm’s way. I knew how he felt: her behavior so far had been increasingly unpredictable.
I piled all her stuff in her bag, and then started packing my own. I put on my holster, slipped my weapon into it and felt strangely uncomfortable.
Two minutes later, she appeared in the doorway.
“I paid the bill. You ready?”
“Sure. What’s happening with the Wolowitz case?”
“Nah, nothing.”
“I heard you…”
“Don’t worry about it. C’mon! Let’s go.”
I followed her down the stairs and across the lobby.
“Dehan.”
“Yes, Stone?”
She pushed through the glass door out into the parking lot and held the door for me as I went through. I said, “Slow down. What’s going on?”
“I do that sometimes. I get all speedy. May I drive?” She held out her hand and gave a grin which she knew was disarming. I handed her the keys and she continued talking as she strode toward the car. “My uncle says I have ADHD. Personally, I think he is wrong. You know why I think he is wrong, Stone? C’mon! Keep up!”
This last was shouted as she ran the last thirty feet to the Jag. I was aware she had steered the conversation away from Wolowitz and I was wondering why. She opened the trunk and threw in her bag, then stood bouncing slowly on her knees and grinning at me while she waited for me to catch up.
I started to say, “Why…” but she cut in.
“Because I think people say other people have ADHD…” I dropped in my bag and she slammed the trunk closed. “When they just can’t keep up.” She climbed in behind the wheel and I got in the other side. She fired up the big, old bruiser, gunned the engine and made the tires complain as we screamed out of the parking lot. “Me,” she said over the roar of the engine, “I like to do things speedy.”
As we pulled out of the lot, I saw Nestor and Gustavo, aka Einstein and Godzilla, loping across the lot toward their Audi. We cruised down West 8th Street and she had her eye on the mirror all the way.
I said, “Dehan, cut the crap and tell me about Wolowitz.”
“Crap?” she said absently. “What crap? My uncle really does think I have ADHD.” She turned left onto 1st Avenue and started moving north, past the Ron-De-Voo, where we had spent the night before, toward the sheriff’s office. “But you must have noticed by now, Stone,” she said, still with her eye on the mirror, “that I have in fact exceptional powers of concentration.”
“Yeah, and that’s why I am wondering what the hell you’re playing at.”
I turned and looked out the back window. The Audi was following us, but keeping its distance.
“What’s going on, Dehan?”
We passed the sheriff’s office and she accelerated onto the bridge that spanned the Cedar River, surging from twenty-five MPH to seventy in a couple of seconds. Then it was a drag race. Almost two miles of straight road across the river basin, with lakes and dense, marshy woodland on either side.
After a mile and three quarters, she began to slow. I looked out the back window and saw the Q7 at least a mile back. She dropped to third and made the tires complain again as she turned down a dusty track that wound in among the woods. Now it was impossible to see if they were following us because of the vast cloud of dust we were kicking up behind us. I snapped, “If you’re trying to lose them, you just advertised where we are to the whole damn county!”
“Try,” she said, and she said it not unpleasantly, “not to talk or think, for just ten minutes, and let me do my stuff, please.”
We came to a fork in the track. Here she slowed right down and eased her way across a wooden bridge that spanned the river onto a narrow spit of land which protruded from the far bank. She rolled along the spit and then backed along a rough track in among the trees. There she killed the engine and got out.
I got out after her. I was beginning to get mad. “OK, I haven’t spoken or thought for three minutes. That’s as good as it gets. Now tell me what the hell is going on and what you are doing.”
She was standing a few yards from the car, watching the gap in the trees where you could just make out the spit of land and the river. She glanced at me and shook her head.
“It’s because I am a woman, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“No, no, deny it,” she went on absently. “If I were Holmes, you would be all full of admiration and talking about my intellectual vanity without doubting for a moment…”
“Dehan!”
“What?” She frowned at me irritably. “First, they see the dust and realize we took the track. They think we are trying to shake them. They follow us. Then, once the dust has drifted away, they see the little bridge in among the trees. They figure we crossed the bridge and they think they have us trapped...”
“And they haven’t?”
“Shut up.”
She walked back to the Jag and sat on the hood, still watching the gap in the trees. A moment later, the Audi nosed through, rolled forward a few feet and came to a halt. The doors opened and Nestor and Gustavo climbed out, looking like the mice who just found the cheese but have a feeling something is wrong with it. They were about fifty feet from us. Dehan said, “Why are you following us?”
Gustavo, the smart one, did a little knee dance. “What? You own the roads now. We can’t drive where we like?”
“One more time, asshole. It’s an offense to stalk an officer of the law. Did you know that? Start talking before I cuff you. Why are you following us?”
He did more knee dancing and shrugged his shoulders. “We were just takin’ a drive, Popo, right, Nestor?”
“Down here? Seriously? In an Audi Q7?” She stood. “C’mon, hands on your head and get down on your face.”
Nestor Godzilla had started frowning. Gustavo was momentarily paralyzed. Dehan reached behind her back for her cuffs and I reached for my piece. My mind was racing, trying to anticipate what Dehan thought she was doing.
Then there was no time to think. Dehan had taken two steps and was saying loudly, “On your face! On the ground! Both of you!” But Gustavo was not getting on the ground. He was not raising his hands to his head. Instead, he was reaching behind his back. He seemed to move in slow motion. Nestor was watching him. I saw him blink. And now he too was reaching behind his back. I swore profusely, shouting at them to freeze, but unable to decide in that fraction of a second which one to line up. Both had their weapons in their hands; both were swinging them around on Dehan.
Then there was a strange noise, like a snapping branches, and Gustavo seemed to hesitate and frown. Then he looked
down at his chest. It was less than a second. Then two more cracks. Gustavo fell backwards and hit the grass with a soft thump. Nestor sighed, got down on his knees, grunted softly, said, “Ay…” and lay down.
I stared, struggling to comprehend what I had just seen. She checked the bodies, then inspected the grass behind them. Finally, she walked over to me, examining my face with a frown as she approached. She said, “Through and through and landed in the water. You need to talk about what just happened?”
I stared at her for a long time before answering. “You murdered them, Dehan.”
She shook her head. “No. I gave them a choice.”
“But you knew they wouldn’t take it. You knew they’d go for their guns.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I knew no such damned thing, Stone. I knew there was a risk, because when you investigate the likes of the Camachos, there is always a risk. And the risk was no higher today than it was last night or yesterday. The difference was today, I confronted them and demanded they obey the goddamn law. Which is what we are supposed to do, Stone. And they chose to try and kill me, so I defended myself.”
I shook my head. “But you provoked this situation, Dehan. You didn’t need to do this!”
Her face flushed and she scowled. “Come on, Stone! Do you know how many lives the Camachos destroy every year? Do you know how many young girls they kidnap, rape and force into prostitution?” She stepped toward me, pointing past my head toward Arizona. “We have a chance to take that asshole down. I have no time to pussyfoot around with legal niceties. They had a choice, the county jail or try to kill me. They made the wrong choice. Now if you want to sit here and mourn their civil liberties, be my guest. While you’re at it, you might mourn all the lives they destroyed while they were enjoying those civil liberties. Meantime, I need to get to Arizona. So now you have a choice: reconnect your balls and come with me, or drive me somewhere where I can get a goddamn car!”
I held out my hand. “Give me the keys.”
FIFTEEN
As she handed them over, her phone rang.
“Dehan!”
She glanced at me and put it on speaker.
“…spoken to the Phoenix Field Office. So, they have control of the operation. They have agreed to have you and Stone on the team, but strictly as observers. They run the show. You understand that, Carmen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You get to Phoenix, you report to Detective Brad Tucker. Be there by tomorrow. He will debrief you and give you your instructions. I have informed him that you need to interrogate Camacho and his men regarding the Redfern murders, so you will have full access to them.”
“Thank you, sir. Sir?”
“Yes, Carmen?”
“There was an incident. Two of Camacho’s men followed us. We confronted them and attempted to arrest them. They drew their weapons and we were forced to defend ourselves. The two men are dead.”
We heard the sound of a loud sigh. “This really complicates matters. Where did this happen? Are you with the bodies?”
“I’m sending you the coordinates.”
“You must contact the local sheriff’s office immediately. There will have to be an inquiry. I want a written report from you and Stone as soon as you get to Phoenix.”
“Sir, can I suggest that you contact the feds again, whoever you spoke to before, explain the development and get them to contact the sheriff of Benton County and explain to him that we are cooperating in a federal investigation…?”
The inspector’s voice came sharp over the phone. “Detective Dehan! The New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are not here for your convenience! You will follow procedure and…”
“Sir, forgive me, but it is imperative that we get to the Phoenix office immediately. The success of this operation hinges on our being able to talk to the team there. If the sheriff decides to hold us, it could be disastrous. It could cost lives…”
Another loud sigh. “Very well, Carmen. But I am not happy about this!”
“No, sir, neither am I.”
She hung up and we stood a long while, looking at each other. Finally I said, “That easy.”
“Get off your high horse, Stone. They were tailing us on behalf of a drugs cartel who intend to assassinate us. I went to arrest them, which was the proper thing to do. They resisted arrest and tried to kill me. I defended myself.”
“But you deliberately lured them here, Dehan!”
“What? I should try to arrest two dangerous killers at the hotel? Or in the middle of Vinton, where they can grab hostages and get innocent people killed? I’m sick of having this conversation with you, Stone. Are you in or out?”
I thought about it for a moment. “OK, Dehan, but you and me are going to have a conversation about exactly what this case means to you. Because it is blurring lines in your mind that were never blurred before.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Yeah? Maybe you just see lines where there are none. Are we done?”
We waited in silence for the sheriff to show. When he did, he didn’t look happy, but he’d been told the feds had jurisdiction and he must do no more than preserve the crime scene. We told him we’d send him copies of our reports and we left, headed southwest towards Vinton and Des Moines. We drove in silence for a good half hour. But as we turned onto the IA-330, she started to talk.
“Look, Stone, leave aside that I am your wife and I am crazy about you. What’s important right now is I like you and I respect you. I always have, even before we met. I like your integrity, and I like the fact that you stand by what you believe. That’s why I asked to be partnered with you in the first place.”
“What?”
“Never mind that now,” she said, as though she was talking to an invisible person riding beside us. “I get that the issue is not who I shot. They were bad people—maybe you don’t know just how bad—but that is not the issue. The issue is that we stand for the Rule of Law. And if the Rule of Law is to mean anything, then it has to apply to Nestor and Gustavo as much as to Mr. and Mrs. Brown, who have never knowingly broken a law in their lives.”
I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “You asked to be partnered with me?”
She ignored me. She still spoke to the invisible guy outside the window. “Believe me, I do get that, and I believe in it.” Finally, she turned to look at me. “But you know what the problem is? Shall I tell you what it is? That crime syndicates are becoming as rich as countries. And while good guys like you are busy observing the letter and the spirit of the law, people like the Camachos are becoming billionaires and retiring to Englewood with private armies of assassins; and they use you and your honorable legal system to do it. Because while you are busy giving them the full protection of the law, they are busy buying and murdering officials, officers, cops and judges from Vancouver to Mexico City.
“And in the end, Stone, you, and good men and women like you, can sit and watch that long procession of murdered corpses—fathers, mothers, children, young girls—two hundred and fifty thousand minimum in Mexico alone, not counting the tens of thousands outside Mexico—you can watch the long processions of young girls addicted to heroin and forced into prostitution, you can watch the millions of lives destroyed by the drugs; and as you watch them all shuffle by, you can watch the likes of Julio Camacho grow fat and rich and powerful on all that suffering, and you can console yourself that you gave those bastards the same protection that you gave Mr. and Mrs. Brown, who actually deserved it.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know how to answer her. But she didn’t give me a chance anyway. She plowed right on. “And the thing is, Stone, I agree with you. But what do you do when a system you created to protect justice starts enabling injustice? Is the principle of the matter more important than the people whose lives are being destroyed?”
“Dehan, stop! Where do we end up if everybody starts thinking like you?”
“I don’t know, Stone! And that is the point! Because I am not concerned w
ith the principles of the matter. I am not concerned with the philosophical niceties. I am worried about Maria Ibañez, aged fifteen, who was abducted from her home in Ciudad Juarez and is right now, in this moment, while we are discussing philosophy, being forced into prostitution. She is a child! I am worried about the kids, the individual children, Tommy, Pete, Jane, who will be seduced into taking the crack and heroin that the Camachos are bringing in, whose teeth will fall out by the time they are twenty-one, who will die of overdoses before they ever get a chance to enjoy the Rule of Law which you protect so vigorously for the Camachos!” By now she was almost shouting. “I don’t know,” she half yelled, “what the answer is to your philosophical problem! But I do know that the system we are sworn to defend does not work when it is under this kind of attack!” She was quiet for a moment, breathing hard, then added, “And I am more concerned about protecting the people than the principles!”
I looked out through the windshield at the vast, flat expanse of land, under the vast sky, where a few clouds were beginning to gather. What trees there were were turning copper in the morning sun, lost amid the endless golden fields. The fall was closing in.
Eventually, I said, “I am not a philosopher, Dehan, and I don’t hide behind theories so that I can ignore individuals. I have seen my share of suffering people. But if we don’t respect the system we have created to protect those individuals, what do we have?” I shook my head. “We have vigilantes taking the law into their own hands. We have cops shooting people on the streets because they don’t like the way they dress or walk. Before long, we have lynchings and mob justice.”
She seemed not to hear, keeping her eyes on the passing, glaring landscape. After a while, when I had almost forgotten that I had spoken, she turned and said suddenly, “I agree. I agree with you. We agree. But now answer me this: what do we do when that system collapses? And don’t give me theoretical bullshit, Stone. This is not a rhetorical question. I am asking you…” She pointed an angry finger at me. “You, who are passing judgment on what I did back at the river, you tell me what we do when the system breaks down, and starts protecting the guilty instead of the innocent.”