Blind Justice

by Ethan Cross

  The noise of the crime scene grew closer, and he heard and felt the change in sound as they entered Easton’s office. It was like a change in pressure as the voices and echoes were no longer constrained by walls. “What do we see, Gerald? I know the layout. Just give me the details of the crime.”

  Gerald Dixon had been his best friend since they were children. The large black man’s family had worked for Munroe’s father on the plantation for generations. Young Deacon Munroe hadn’t known that Gerald was below his station in life. And Older Deacon Munroe simply didn’t care about such things. One of the crops grown on the farm was tobacco, and he still vividly remembered the first time that he and Gerald had decided to try to smoke some directly from the field. The two boys were sick for what felt like a week.

  Gerald took a deep breath. “The bodies are along the north side of the office. Easton’s on his back with his wife cradled in his lap. It looks like she was beaten to death. Her face is…” Gerald’s voice trailed off, painting Munroe an especially grim picture. “The entry wound on the General’s head is in the left temple with the exit on the right. I think I see powder burns consistent with direct contact of the barrel.”

  “Did you say the entry wound is on the left temple? Gun in the left hand?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Go on.”

  “The General appears to have scratch marks all over him, consistent with a struggle. The room’s the same way. Lamp’s overturned. A chair. Some papers and books are scattered across the floor. Bloody footprints leading to the desk. Bloody handprints on top of the desk. Blood on the chair.”

  “What about the murder weapon?”

  “For the wife, it looks like she was beaten to death. I see a lot of blood and abrasions on the General’s fists. It doesn’t look good, Deac.”

  “Continue.”

  “The gun is a decorative Colt 1911. It looks like the one from his display case.”

  “Check the case. Is it bloody?”

  “No, it looks clean.”

  “Good. Could you summon Agent Markham for me please, Gerald.”

  A moment later, Markham’s clip-clop footfalls approached, accompanied by another set that Munroe guessed to be Ashter. Munroe said, “What do you think about the scene, Markham?”

  Ashter’s nasal voice said, “Are you kidding? It’s clear that—”

  “Adults are speaking,” Munroe interrupted.

  “What is your problem, Munroe?” Ashter said, playing the victim in front of his superior.

  Munroe turned sharply to the sound of the man’s voice. “I don’t like your face.” Turning back to where he assumed Markham to be standing, he continued, “Your thoughts, Special Agent Markham?”

  When Markham spoke, his words were slow and measured, as if he were considering every syllable with care. “It’s too soon to make any definite conclusions. We haven’t gathered all the evidence yet. But from what I’ve seen to this point, it appears that General Easton and his wife had a physical altercation, and Easton, a highly trained soldier, killed her during the fight. He then sat down at his desk, considered what had happened. Realized what he’d done and decided to end his own life. He retrieved the gun, cradled his wife’s body, and shot himself in the head.”

  Munroe nodded. “On first glance, that is what appears to have happened. However, there are a few inconsistencies. First of all, the Commandant is right-handed. Why would a right-handed person use his left hand to hold a gun and commit suicide?”

  Ashter cut in. “Maybe he hurt it in the fight. That doesn’t—”

  “Second, if things played out as you described. Why isn’t the display case covered in blood? Have you checked the weapon? Any traces of blood on the magazine or rounds that Easton would have loaded?”

  Markham told them to hold on and went to check with his people. When he returned, he said, “The real test will be done at the lab, but they checked with UV light and found no traces of blood on the magazine, bullets, or display case. But before we go off half-cocked with wild conspiracy theories, none of that necessarily proves anything more is going on. There are scratch marks on Easton and skin under the wife’s nails and a whole lot of other evidence saying that the wife fought him for her life. It’s too soon to come to any conclusions.”

  “Please, we both know that you came to a conclusion within thirty seconds of seeing this scene. I’m just saying not to let any preconceptions allow evidence to be missed or possibilities to be overlooked. Are your people checking for witnesses that may have seen anyone suspicious?”

  “We know how to do our jobs, Munroe.” Markham walked off with Ashter following on his heels like a new puppy.

  Munroe said, “Let’s take a walk down the hall, Gerald.”

  The big man led him out of the room and away from the others with his guide arm, the one Munroe was holding, sliding behind his back. The small gesture told Munroe to transition into a single file line in order to maneuver through a tight space. “I don’t like your face, says the blind man?” Gerald commented.

  “I thought you might like that. I bet our boy’s still chewing on that one.”

  “You think that somebody faked the scene? Is that why he’s holding the gun with his left hand?”

  “No, I think that it was a message. George was leaving us a clue. If a professional had faked the scene by forcing the gun to his head, they would have assumed that he was right-handed. And that’s if they hadn’t checked beforehand to be sure. But if they had threatened him in some way, forced him to do it, then he may have used his left hand in order to throw up a red flag. Do you remember the Sherlock Holmes short story, Silver Blaze? We read it in Ms. Petrie’s class when we were kids.”

  “Yeah, it was the one where Holmes solves the case because the dog didn’t bark.”

  Munroe nodded. “Good memory. There’s a dog not barking here too.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “George had an ornate clock in his office that ticked with every second. A present from his grandmother or some such, one of those new clocks that are designed to look like antiques. It always annoyed the piss out of me, but George found it relaxing. He kept saying that he was going to send me one for my office at home, that I needed to relax a bit more. But where’s that clock at now? There wasn’t any ticking in his office.”

  “Okay, wait here. I’ll take a look. Maybe it was broken in the struggle.”

  He listened to Gerald’s footsteps as he walked away. Waited. Thought. Listened to the same footsteps return a few minutes later. “I found it,” Gerald said.

  Munroe shook his head. “Damn, I thought I had something there.”

  “It wasn’t in his office. It was in the study a couple doors down.”

  “Really. I don’t hear it.”

  “It’s not working. Batteries must be dead.”

  Munroe considered this. Why would the Commandant have moved his clock and let the batteries run down? He loved that damn clock. Especially when he knew that Munroe was coming. Unless it was another message. One directed specifically at him.

  “Check the battery compartment. Don’t let anyone see you do it.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem. They’re all focused on the office.”

  A moment later, he heard Gerald return. His partner’s breathing pattern had noticeably changed. “You were right. I found something where the batteries should have been.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jonas Black always pushed himself harder on the last leg of his run. Exhaustion pressed down on him and his legs burned, but he pushed forward, gaining momentum, arms pumping, teeth grinding. He was in the best shape of his life, even better than when he had been a Recon Marine.

  The training to become an elite special forces operator had been difficult for him. Most spec ops soldiers were small and wiry and quick. Jonas was none of those things.
At six-foot-six and two hundred and seventy pounds, he was a freight train, not some kind of ninja. Most people thought that being big gave him an advantage as a soldier, but they were wrong. His size made everything about the job more difficult. It was hard enough to carry a fifty pound pack through dense forest and up cliffs during SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, escape) training when you weighed a hundred and sixty pounds. He had nearly twice as much bulk to contend with and could never run and move as fast as his smaller counterparts.

  Sometimes, however, his size did give him an advantage. Like when he had become an inmate at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, AL. In prison, size mattered, and Jonas Black was an intimidating opponent for even the craziest of his fellow prisoners. The others gave him his space, and he liked it that way. He just wanted to do his time and get back on the outside. The problem was that a big percentage of the inmates at Holman were serving life without parole. They had nothing to lose, while Jonas only had six months left on his sentence. Still, he knew better than to show any kind of weakness to the wolves.

  That type of thinking wasn’t anything new for him. He had learned that the strong survive and the weak get swallowed up and spit out. Fortunately, he had never been weak.

  He finished his run around the prison yard and placed his hands on top of his head as he caught his breath. A little white guy known as “Shorty” reluctantly peeled away from a group of other inmates and approached him. Shorty stank of body odor and cigarette smoke. The little man’s voice trembled when he said, “Yo, Black, think you can hook me up with some Julep?”

  Jonas wiped the sweat from his forehead and ran his hand through his closely cropped hair. “How much you want?” he said in his gravelly baritone.

  “Bottle’ll do it.”

  “You have payment?”

  “Got two Mrs. Freshley’s.”

  “A bottle will cost you four Mrs. Freshley’s and a pack of Bugler.”

  “Damn, Black! I thought you were in here for murder, not robbery.”

  “That’s the price, Shorty. Don’t waste my time. No credit, no loans.”

  Shorty shuffled back to his group, still mumbling curses. Black had made a decent business for himself while on the inside. The prisoners, of course, weren’t supposed to have drugs or alcohol, but Jonas had never let a little thing like rules stop him before. He didn’t deal drugs or use them, but he had acquired a special recipe for Julep, which was a kind of homemade whiskey in high demand at Holman. It was difficult to make and could often result in an alcohol content as low as two percent, but the batches that Black made were much stronger and much more expensive. The current going rate was a pack of Bugler, the brand of tobacco sold out of the prison store, and four Mrs. Freshley’s Grand Honey Buns. The treats had strangely become a better prison currency than cigarettes. Black wondered if there was some correlation between this and the rise of obesity in America. He had never liked sweets himself, never had them growing up, but they were good for barter and for sweetening his Julep.

  He made his way back through the prison yard across the dusty ground dotted with sporadic patches of grass. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone, emanating an aura of intensity that told the others to stay out of his way. The air was thick with humidity, and the July sun beat down on the back of his neck, but a slight breeze carried a trace of something flowery and sweet, the hint of a better world beyond the fences. He passed the basketball courts and workout equipment and was heading for the blue gate leading to the general population dorm—the place he called home—when Mel Franklin ran up to him.

  Franklin was a skinny black kid with a tattoo fetish. He was bare-chested, displaying the artwork that covered his whole upper body like a shirt. Black had a few tattoos himself—one on his bicep from the service that displayed a skull and cross bones and the number one over a blue triangle and the words 1st Recon Bn and the motto Swift, Silent, Deadly, and then a pair of simple tattoos on his knuckles with the words “Pain” and “Life”—but he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to ink themselves from head to toe.

  “You gotta help me, Black.” Franklin’s body trembled, and fear filled his eyes.

  “I don’t have to do anything, kid.” He walked on, but Franklin followed.

  “Please, Grier’s coming for me. If you don’t help, he’ll kill me.”

  Jonas shook his head. He tried to keep to himself as much as possible, but he felt sorry for the kid. Franklin and his brother had broken into someone’s house to get drug money, and his brother had shot the guy. Even though he didn’t pull the trigger, Franklin was still there, an accessory, and took the same wrap as his brother. Then the kid had managed to piss off the resident white supremacist group, the Southern Brotherhood, on his first day. The aryans weren’t as prevalent at Holman, because the prison was predominantly made up of African Americans, but they were still a force to be reckoned with. And Grier was the worst of the bunch, a lifer with nothing to lose.

  “I’m not your babysitter. Handle your own problems.”

  “Please, Black. He showed me the shank. Said he was gonna—”

  Black swung back toward Franklin and leaned down in his face. “That’s not my problem. I’ve got six months left. I’m not screwing that up for you or anyone. It’s a hard knock life, kid. Get used to it.”

  A flash of memory shot through Jonas’s mind. His brother, Michael, had always used that phrase—a hard knock life. Michael had thought of the two of them as orphans like the famous Annie, even though their parents were technically still alive. His brother would have liked for some rich guy to come pull them out of the gutter too, but Jonas had liked things the way they were, liked his independence.

  Black left Franklin standing there, alone and afraid, and headed back toward the dorm. Along the way, three men passed him, heading in Franklin’s direction. They moved in tandem, quickly and with purpose. The one in the center was Grier, his prison jumpsuit untucked and open displaying a white tank top beneath. A giant red swastika climbed from Grier’s chest to his throat. The killer’s eyes stared straight ahead in a laser beam gaze directed at Franklin.

  Black had seen that look before. He also noticed Grier slide something from beneath his shirt and cup the object in his right hand. Black could guess what the other man was holding: a homemade box cutter made from a razor blade glued between two pieces of wood. It was the weapon of choice at Holman—perfect for slicing a man’s throat.

  He tried to ignore them. It wasn’t his problem.

  But words and phrases spoken at his own sentencing floated back to him…same as pulling the trigger…life cut short…take responsibility for his choices. Then he thought of the concepts engrained into his mind during his Marine training. Concepts like honor and never leaving a man behind.

  A part of his brain told him to keep going. It screamed at him that he’d never been a hero and now wasn’t the time to start.

  But another more dominant part turned him around and moved him quickly back in Mel Franklin’s direction.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Antonio de Almeida knelt at his mother’s bedside and said a prayer over her frail form. The doctors had sedated her and called him after her most recent violent outburst. Her mental state had been sliding downward for months now as the Alzheimer’s ravaged what was left of the woman who had given him life. He had moved her from a nursing home in Mexico to a temporary one in Virginia when he learned that he would need to be in DC for an extended period of time. He couldn’t stand the thought of her struggling through her disease without him by her side, whether she could register his presence or not.

  He finished his prayer and then took her small hand in his. It felt like all bones, and her skin was thin as tissue paper. She was withering away before his eyes.

  Her gaunt face rolled in his direction, the eyes flickering with a brief second of recognition. “Nio?”

  He patted her hand
and smiled. “I’m here, Mama.”

  As her head lolled over and her eyes fluttered shut, she said, “Dónde está tu hermano?”

  Almeida closed his eyes and fought back the tears. His brother, whom his mother had just asked about, had died when they were boys.

  His phone vibrated on the nightstand and pulled him away from both the pain of the past and the present. “Hello?”

  The angry voice of Brendan Lennix answered, “Have you found Randall?”

  “No, General Easton lied to us. It must have taken a great deal of self-control to do so. He was a man to be respected.”

  Almeida held the phone from his ear as Lennix screamed at him from the other end of the line. “I’m so glad that you made a new friend! But do you think that maybe you could worry less about being respectful and worry more about doing your damn job!”

  He let silence set in on the line before he calmly replied, “We’ll find your scientist soon. It’s only a matter of time. Things would have gone differently with the General if we’d had more time, but we couldn’t raise suspicions by kidnapping a man in Easton’s position. Besides, the important thing was to remove him as a threat, which has been accomplished.”

  “We’re supposed to be going into production in two weeks, and DARPA has been asking questions. There are billions of dollars at stake here. We can’t afford any more screw ups.”

  “I am well aware of what’s at stake, Mr. Lennix. John Corrigan will be executed in a few days, and Wyatt Randall’s research and documents will be recovered. Stick to what you know best, and I will do the same.”

  “You listen to me, you lazy…jungle savage. I want to know exactly how you are going to find—”