Storm Justice

by Pamela Cowan

  Storm rolled her shoulders, pressed her head into the headrest of her car seat, and sighed with impatience. If it didn’t work, she would have to tell Howard it was over. They’d have to find someone else to take. There had been three women under consideration. She’d obviously made a bad choice.

  As she was considering whether to phone Howard and suggest they call it a night, the door to The Cooler opened, and Angela Ruiz stepped out. Alone. She wore a tight black leather skirt, a white tank top that blazed under the lights, and platform heels Storm thought looked like horses hooves. Storm wondered if the woman was too drunk to notice how inappropriate her clothes were for the frigid night.

  Storm fumbled for her phone and dropped it twice before grasping it with both hands and hitting the call button. Howard answered before she heard it ring.

  “She’s here and she’s by herself. I’m going now.” She hung up without waiting for a response, opened the door, and stepped out. Her legs felt heavy, half asleep. She'd been sitting for too long.

  As she walked toward Angela Ruiz, Storm tried to keep the pace of someone going somewhere, but not in a huge hurry to arrive. Realizing her hands were shaking and damp, as if she were about to deliver a speech to a large audience, Storm took time for a couple deep, calming breaths.

  Easy, this is just your client, she reminded herself. Becoming annoyed with herself, her tone changed, and she admonished herself. Stop being such a baby.

  Stepping around the trailer hitch on the back of a dusty pickup, she spotted Angela lighting up a cigarette, inhaling deeply, and then dropping what must have been a lighter into her purse. As she looked up, Storm said, “Angela? Ms. Ruiz.”

  The woman’s head snapped up, and eyes black as a moonless night sky stared into hers. Recognition dawned, and the tension faded to be replaced by a frown.

  “Hey, Ms. McKenzie. How’s it goin’?”

  “Fine. Just great. How have you been?”

  “Good. Real good.”

  “Look,” said Storm, moving into the next part of Howard’s plan. “Could we maybe talk . . . I mean, could you come with me, just over here?”

  “What? Why?” the woman asked, her natural instinct for self-preservation kicking in.

  “I need a favor. You think you can help me?” Storm asked.

  Storm watched the woman mull it over; it took less than two seconds. Who wouldn’t want their PO to owe them a favor?

  “What do you need?”

  “Right now I need to get away from the door. Someone might come out and see me.”

  Accepting that, and after casting a quick glance over her shoulder toward the door, Angela followed Storm. A van with darkly smoked windows was parked near the bar and would have made a good shield, but Storm decided that an SUV and the old pickup would work just as well. She backed between the vehicles’ shadows, and Angela continued to follow her. Storm wondered where Howard was. The same street noise that masked her approach also covered his.

  They had moved into the shadows between the cars. From which direction would Howard come? Should she try to maneuver Angela Ruiz so she had her back to where Howard’s stolen van was parked? Would he work around the car or maybe just walk past as if he were simply heading toward the bar?

  “What is it? What you want from me?” Angela Ruiz asked.

  “I'm here to check on a client,” Storm explained, just as she'd rehearsed. “I’m trying to determine whether he's breaking his court order and is still drinking. If he is, I need to warn his wife. He's a very violent drunk, and he almost killed her last time.”

  “She ought to leave him.”

  “She did. But that doesn't stop him from trying to find her,” Storm improvised.

  At that moment, three things happened. The door to the van with the smoked windows opened and a heavyset. African-American woman climbed out and started running toward them. Howard moved past Storm, startling her with his sudden appearance, and lunged for Angela, who screamed.

  Uncertain how to react, Storm froze. Howard bumped into her with his hip, slamming her so hard she spun a quarter turn and would have fallen except she managed to catch the edge of the pickup’s bed.

  From the corner of her eye, Storm caught the motion of what looked like a kid's baseball bat being swung down

  at Angela Ruiz's head. The woman moved like a cat, despite the high heels. The bat bounced off her shoulder, and she gave a shriek of pain.

  Turning away from the car, Storm saw Howard catch Angela's wrist. She was still screaming, cursing in Spanish and trying to break away.

  Wanting to help, Storm shoved Angela toward Howard. He brought the bat down again, and this time it slammed down on Storm’s forearm. The impact made her arm go numb. It fell to her side as if it had become disconnected, but then the connection was restored and pain, sharp and sudden, told her she was hurt. Instinctively, she backed away, but found herself unexpectedly blocked by a trio of women with flailing fists.

  Trying to protect her arm, Storm kept her back to them. She was trapped on two sides by an SUV and a pickup. Howard had his arm around Angela’s throat and was dragging her away. Behind her, women slapped, clawed, and punched in an effort to get past her and reach their friend.

  Storm was pushed against the SUV, and pain shot up her arm and into her shoulder. A sharp-toed boot or shoe cracked into her shin, and she tried to push her way free. She was suffocating under the press of bodies. Incongruously, she was surrounded by the scent of flowers: jasmine, rose, lilac, and a trace of vanilla.

  Someone grabbed her hair. A fist was driven into her stomach. As Storm doubled over, the person whose hand gripped her hair had no trouble dragging her the rest of the way to the ground.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” a rough voice called. He repeated the question in Spanish. “¿Que diablo esta pasando?”

  Her hair was released, but someone stepped on her hand, driving the thin point of a stiletto into her palm. She jerked her hand back, tearing her knuckles on the asphalt. The woman who’d stepped on her teetered and fell, driving a knee into Storm’s stomach.

  She rolled away and heard the woman hiss, “Ala gran puta” as she climbed awkwardly to her feet.

  Afraid the woman would try to stomp her again, Storm tried to squirm under the pickup. Everything was chaos, but in slow motion and high definition. In the shadows, under the truck, she could make out rusty metal parts and smelled dust and oil.

  Her shoulders were under the van, and she tried to slide sideways to get the rest of her under cover. A large hand grasped her ankle and dragged her unceremoniously into the unforgiving light of the largest flashlight she'd ever seen.

  “¿Senora, que diablos esta pasando?” asked a male voice. She stared at the large bald man uncomprehendingly and shook her head. “On your feet,” he said in perfect English. “Get up.”

  Tentatively, grasping her elbow with her good hand and keeping her bad arm tight against her side, Storm managed to sit. “I think my arm is broken. Can you help me?”

  “Si,” the man said, reaching down for her. She took his hand and pulled her to her feet. With each movement her left arm, from elbow to wrist, burned and throbbed.

  As she hobbled from between the cars, she saw the women who had attacked her. Another man, who was shorter but with broader shoulders, stood in front of them slapping a flashlight into his palm over and over.

  “You gotta go after Angie!” one of the women yelled.

  “He's getting away, you idiot!” shouted another.

  “Who is getting away?” the tall man asked. This set off another flurry of shouting, and it took some time before the men realized someone had been kidnapped from the parking lot and called the police.

  Everyone seemed to calm down once they realized the police were on the way. The men, who said they worked security for the bar, stood between Storm and the women, who seemed convinced she had something to do with their friend's abduction.

  Storm looked at the women, who stood beside one pillar
of the billboard and stared back with jutted chins and an attitude that promised a fight.

  Two could have been sisters, except that one was black and one white. They were short, heavyset, and wore nearly identical jeans with short, black, leather jackets and boots.

  The black woman held a water bottle in her fist like a weapon. The white one juggled two purses. In front of the two stood a diminutive, curvy, Hispanic woman, her dark hair streaked with blond highlights. She held a broken shoe in one hand and cursed nonstop. From the small amount of Spanish Storm knew, she gathered that the woman was more angry about the broken heel of her shoe.

  Dressed more for a dinner party at some upscale Portland restaurant in an obviously expensive, knee-length, green dress, off-white pumps, and a black fur shrug, she seemed out of place at The Cooler. She fiddled nervously with her necklace, the light glinting off the stones. Then she lifted her shoe and shook it in Storm’s direction. “Ija de puta me quebraste el tacon.” The combination of elegance and street language was disconcerting.

  “Where is our friend?” demanded the woman with the purses as soon as Storm stepped out of the shadows and into the light. One of the men asked her to settle down.

  Several other people were now milling around, spilling out of the bar, all asking what had happened and adding to the general craziness.

  “You hear me?” the woman asked, ignoring the bouncer, her voice becoming a screeching wail that rose above the crowd's chatter.

  “What are you talking about?” Storm shouted back, still holding her bad arm tightly and wondering if she'd be able to drive and escape from this disaster.

  “We saw you and that guy jump our friend. We saw you helping him kidnap her. Where you take her? She don't have much money, so you didn't take her for that. What are you, some kind of perverts or something?”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Storm repeated. “I was talking to my client, Angela. All of a sudden we got jumped by some man. Next thing I know I'm on the ground and you and your friends are kicking me. I think my arm's broken. That man hit me.”

  “What do you mean, your client?” asked the attractive Hispanic woman, who obviously spoke English just fine and had picked up on the word. “How do you know Angie?”

  “You mean Angela Ruiz? I'm her probation officer,” Storm said. The simple truth felt scary, like a secret had been ripped open, a hidden fear exposed.

  “But we saw you and that man attack Angie,” protested the black woman, shaking her bottle of water toward the parking lot.

  “We called the cops. They'll get it figured out,” said one of the bouncers.

  Storm could hear a siren and saw red lights flashing from the windows of the businesses across the street. An ambulance was approaching from the direction of Beaverton, the nearest town to the east. It pulled into the parking lot, and mercifully, the sound was shut off. The flashing red lights continued, however. They pulsed in time with her heartbeat and the throbbing pain in her forearm.

  The paramedics made her sit in the back of the ambulance while they took a quick look at her injuries. They put a brace on her arm and were helping her put it into a sling to further immobilize it when a Washington County Sheriff's patrol car pulled in, red and blue lights rotating.

  Two officers approached, one stopping to see who'd

  been injured, the other moving past to speak to the other women. The bouncers had continued to encourage them to stay where they were. All three spoke at once, frantically explaining that their friend had been taken, dragged from the parking lot to a dark van, black or blue, that was driven away with her inside.

  Storm heard the officer get on his radio and report.

  “Excuse me. Could you tell me what happened here tonight?”

  Storm dragged her attention back to the officer standing in front of her.

  He was about six feet tall, fairly slender, with wide shoulders, buzz-cut hair, hard eyes, and tight lips. Despite his appearance of youth, Storm thought he was probably older, had been around longer, and had seen and heard more than she suspected. She would have to be careful.

  Trying for the right level of cool professionalism, Storm listened to the policeman’s question while in the back of her mind a voice, her own, was screaming, Where is Howard? Did he get clean away? Has he had time to get to Evergreen?

  “I'm a probation officer,” she told him. “My identification is in my purse in my car. I think someone was kidnapped from the parking lot. I got in the middle of it and got hurt. I can explain later. You need to go and do whatever you can to find the woman who was taken.”

  It was hard to urge someone to chase Howard when it was the last thing she wanted. All she could do was trust that Howard had had enough time and that no one would track him to Traynor Chemical.

  “We've asked for other officers to be dispatched. Let's concentrate on what happened to you,” said the officer, not so easily brushed off. “Can you describe it?”

  “I guess.” Storm took a deep breath. She realized she was trembling but decided it was an appropriate response and would not have seemed odd. “I was driving by and saw someone who looked like a client, a multiple DUI. He shouldn't have been near a bar. I thought if I drove up, let him see me, that maybe it would be enough to sort of, I don't know, scare him straight, I guess. Dumb idea.”

  “So, you pulled into the parking lot.”

  “Yes, like I said, I thought he was one of my clients. He'd been doing really great in recovery, and I didn’t want to see him blow it.

  “I didn’t get there in time. He had already gone inside. I was about to drive off, but I remembered he was a smoker. I figured if I sat around a little while, he'd be bound to come out for a cigarette and if he did, I'd do my little drive-by, maybe have a few words with him, staying in my car, of course. At minimum I’d have a good reason to get a UA next time and see just how far off the rails he'd slipped.”

  “Can you get your identification please?”

  “She can't use that arm,” supplied one of the two male paramedics. They were both young, blond, and unbelievably gentle. “We're about to transport to Tuality ER for treatment.”

  “If you could get my purse out of my car?” Storm said, “I’d be happy to show it to you.”

  “In a moment,” he answered. “So now you're sitting and waiting for your client. So how come you got out of the car? You just said you planned to stay inside your car in order to stay safe, right?” asked the annoyingly perceptive policeman. So far, any camaraderie Storm had hoped might exist between fellow officers of the court was entirely absent. The officer's face was as lacking in emotion as an experienced poker player's.

  Storm shook her head. “No reason. He wasn’t coming out. Thought I’d get out and stretch. Sitting in a cubby all day, the first thing you want to do is not sit. Wasn’t really thinking about it. Got out to stretch, was going to get back in and head home when I saw Ms. Ruiz.”

  “Another client.”

  “Yes. Most of my clients have drug or alcohol problems, so finding them at a bar isn’t much of a surprise. Still, no one likes running into their clients. It's embarrassing knowing that much about a person. Just because someone is on probation—well, they did something wrong, sure, but public humiliation isn't part of the sentence. Everyone deserves their privacy. When Ms. Ruiz spotted me, I just wanted to say hi, sort of reassure her I wasn't checking up on her.”

  “How did she react?”

  “Fine. In fact we were just sort of chatting. You know, the usual stuff. How was your week? How are the kids? She said she was doing great, that her kids were doing well. Next thing I know, there's a man swinging a bat at Ms. Ruiz. I grabbed her and sort of pushed her out of the way. It hit me instead. I tried to grab Ms. Ruiz and back away, but these women—”

  Storm raised her injured left arm to gesture toward the women and winced at the shooting pain in her elbow. “Those women are friends of my client and I think they believe I was involved. That I was with the man who att
acked us.”

  “And you were not?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Can you describe this man?”

  Storm paused as if she were thinking. “Not really. It was dark between the cars. I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

  Realizing there was no harm in giving a general description of Howard, who looked like about half the men she'd ever met, Storm went on to give a very general description of his height, weight, hair color, and what she could remember of his clothing. She was sure the women would be asked the same question, and if her answers weren't similar, it would have looked odd. Maybe not too odd, though, considering they had already reported the van as black or blue when she knew it was dark gray. Crime witnesses had notoriously bad memories of events.

  Looking pointedly at his watch, the paramedic said, “We should transport now.”

  “No, you don't have to do that,” said Storm. “I'm sure I can drive myself to the ER or an urgent care myself.” She stood up, and suddenly, all the blinking lights and shadows began to spin in a very unpleasant way. As she started to slide toward the ground, the police officer caught her and helped her sit back down.

  “Or maybe you should do that,” Storm said, realizing she had little choice.

  In order to be transported, Storm had to suffer the further humiliation of lying down on a stretcher and being strapped in. At least they promised not to run the siren or lights.

  Lying there, amid the beeps of the machinery and the unmelodious harshness of voices over the radio, Storm wondered what story she would have to invent to keep Tom happy. She had to stick closely to the story she'd told the police. Tom thought she was out celebrating a coworker's retirement, but she was supposed to be at McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove, several miles west. She couldn’t even say she’d stopped on her way home because she’d have had to pass home to get to The Cooler.

  As she shifted to a different position, a jolt of pain shot up her arm. The palm of her ‘good’ hand ached where she’d been stepped on, and her knuckles stung. She had a headache, and the base of her skull ached. She wanted to cry or scream. It had not been her best night.