Kindness Goes Unpunished

by Craig Johnson

  “Mr. Longmire…Sheriff?” I opened my eyes, moved the towel, and looked at the hand on my shoulder. It was a man’s hand of pretty good size and had a graduation ring on it from the Philadelphia Police Academy. “How ya doin’?”

  “Howdy, Michael.” He smiled and watched me some more.

  “You were snoring.”

  “Sorry.” I looked up at the windows, but they were still black. “What time is it?”

  “Little after four. I told Mom I’d take an extra shift, seeing as how I’ve got time on my hands.”

  I took a deep breath and looked at the handsome young man with so much of his life ahead of him. “Michael, have you ever heard of a guy by the name of Shankar DuVall?”

  He thought about it. “Doesn’t ring any bells…” He shrugged. “I can ask around.”

  I nodded. “He might be one of the guys we arrested out on Lancaster Avenue.”

  “I’ll check.” He looked at Cady, at the arrangement of the ceremonial pipe, the buffalo skull, and the stones. “Looks like you guys’ve been busy.”

  I stood, stretched my arms above my head, and approached the bed with hope ready to curdle at the slightest notice. “I decided to refer to a higher authority.”

  There was no change, and I could feel my heart cannon-balling into my bowels, taking my lungs along for the ride. I took a deep breath and listened to it clatter in my throat like a rattler in shedding season when it is blind, pissed, and strikes out at everything. I heard Michael say something. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “You should go home.”

  I turned and looked at him. “You’re right.” I then thought about whether I would be giving up Moretti family secrets, finally deciding that I wouldn’t. “Your sister’s in town.”

  He looked blank. “Victoria?” His smile returned; he couldn’t hold the joke. “I know; I’m the one that called her. I called her day before yesterday.” He studied me for a moment. “I didn’t think you’d mind, and I thought she’d be a help.” I didn’t say anything. He continued to smile and shuffled his purple-and-orange-clad feet, still not sure of my response. “She’s a good cop.”

  I finally nodded. “I’m in a position to know that.” The kid was a prince.

  I started off with a taxi, but my restlessness drove me to abandon it at 20th and Market. I kind of knew where I was and figured if I headed north by northeast, I’d eventually hit Race and take a right. If I got to the river, I’d have gone too far. I watched as a black Expedition stopped at the light and then started up the street. I saw a sign for the Franklin Institute about a block up and decided to continue north for a while.

  It must’ve rained while I was asleep, sometime during my vision, as Henry would have called it. The streets were wet, but it was still the cool of the morning before sunrise, and the halos of the streetlights looked like chain links drifting up the dark city streets. I listened to my boot steps echoing off the tall buildings and gathered wool on the directions our lives take, on the intersections that allowed no U-turn and committed you to your fate. I thought about how I wished there was somewhere I could go and just pay the fine and take my daughter home.

  At the corner of Arch, I stopped and looked around. My eye caught some movement behind me, and I turned my head just a little; it was the same black Expedition that I had seen on Market. It sat there at the red light, the reflection of the street lamps making it impossible to see inside. I put my hands in my pockets and acted as though I was deep in thought. It passed me, and I watched the taillights of the vehicle slow and then recede, listening to the radial tires growl as they turned down the deserted street. I took my hands out of my pockets and laughed out loud. What was I thinking? That I was important enough to be followed around the streets of Philadelphia? I shook my head and continued on.

  The sun wouldn’t be up for a while, so maybe I could grab a couple more hours of sleep before calling Katz and Gowder for a meet. It would be interesting to hear their take on the Vince Osgood Parade of Stars but even more interesting to see their response to Vic. I wondered what Lena’s response to Vic would be and wondered if Alphonse had gotten anywhere with Lena’s hunch about a different connection between Osgood and Devon.

  I was in the middle of all this wondering when I saw the black Expedition again, crossing the street a block ahead. There was a narrow alley to my right, and I ducked in there. I wedged myself in a doorway between a power pole and a utility box alongside the back of a building. I stood there feeling foolish for a few minutes, until I saw the black SUV slowly go up 20th. It looked like a government vehicle, but who would be trailing me in something like that? Osgood? Katz and Gowder? It just didn’t make sense, unless they’d come to the conclusion that the notes had made me a viable candidate for being thrown off a bridge next.

  I went to the corner and watched as the Expedition turned right a block ahead and, once again, circled around. Whoever they were, they weren’t very good at this, which led me to believe they weren’t on the job.

  I looked back up the alley and started jogging toward 19th. By the time I got to the other end, the Expedition was moving slowly down the street in its attempt to double back. A large Amorosso bread truck pulled up to the light just south, and I pressed myself against the corner of another building. The SUV passed me and stopped behind the truck.

  If I was feeling frisky, now was the time.

  Approaching unsecured vehicles was how the majority of police officers got killed, but I thundered down the sidewalk, slid to a stop along side the Ford, and yanked the door open anyway. Before I could say anything, the driver yelled. “Yo, man…”

  “You tailing me?”

  I looked at the tall, lean kid at the wheel. He didn’t look like a cop or a robber. He wore glasses and had long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a three-day beard. He looked like a graduate student, and he looked at me like I was crazy. “What?”

  I was having the same doubts myself. I held up my hands to show there was no intent. “Sorry, I thought you were following me.”

  He studied me. “You a cop?”

  “Yep.” I didn’t have to say from where. He nodded and took a breath. I guess I’d almost given him a heart attack. “Sorry.”

  He didn’t move but kept looking at me. “Jesus, man. You scared the shit out of me.” He took a deep breath as the bread truck released its air brakes and started around the corner. “I thought you were some kind of carjacker or something.”

  “No, I just…You were driving slowly, and I thought you were following me.”

  “I was looking for an address, man.”

  I nodded, feeling the complete fool. “Sorry.”

  He stuck a hand out and stopped me from closing the door. “Hey, man, do you know where the Municipal Services Building is?”

  I shook my head. “No.” I started closing the door, but he kept talking.

  “I’ve got this package that has to be delivered by…”

  I closed the door as he held the FedEx envelope toward me, and it was at the last second that I noticed the ignition switch and the destroyed lock where the Expedition had been hotwired. I clawed at the door, trying to get it back open as he hit the gas, and I slapped at the back of the vehicle’s glossy surface.

  I watched as he made the mistake of turning left behind the bread truck that was now halfway down the street and backing into a loading zone with the reverse alarm chirping. I watched as the SUV screeched to a stop at the middle of the block. He hit the horn, but the Amorosso man was having none of it. He locked the air brakes on the big truck and turned on his emergency blinkers, whoever was behind him be damned.

  God bless Philly truck drivers.

  I pushed off a parked car at the corner and ran for all I was worth, struggling to pull the .45 from the holster at my back. The driver of the Ford continued to blare his horn but, when I was only thirty feet from the SUV, license number 90375, city plates, the reverse lights flicked on.

  I slid to a stop in the center of the st
reet in a widespread stance, raised the .45, and yelled. “Sheriff! Freeze!”

  He didn’t, and I had to decide if a hunch was worth shooting a man, finally deciding that it wasn’t. He was still in reverse, but he wasn’t going that fast, and I figured, what’s the worst that could happen? I jumped up on the back bumper and grabbed the luggage rack as the air left my body on impact. My left hand held the black bar, and I listened as the bracings buckled into the sheet metal of the roof. My feet slipped from the bumper as he accelerated, and I scrambled to get a tiny purchase, trying to not think about what the hell I was doing.

  I wasn’t going to last long like this, so I raised the butt of the Colt and swung it down on one of the back windows; the glass spider-webbed out to the framework. I could feel the luggage rack starting to go as he hit the brakes at Race and made a right onto Logan Circle. A Japanese compact barely missed us as we made the turn and cut across four lanes.

  I brought the butt of the .45 down on the window again, and this time the glass blew into the interior along with my arm, and I was able to leverage myself up to the armpit into the vehicle.

  I pressed my face against the cold metal of the window divider and could feel the glass cutting along my jaw line. “Peace officer! Stop this vehicle now!”

  I could see him sawing at the wheel and could feel the pressure of my grip starting to slide me toward the edge of the bumper as he continued to veer around Logan Circle and the Swan Memorial Fountain.

  He swerved back toward the outside, deciding to test the waters on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, but a utility company van cut him off. I took advantage of the slowing velocity to reestablish my grip on the doorway just as the luggage rack pulled completely off the vehicle.

  My feet slid on the bumper as I slipped sideways, and I felt my boot hit the surface of the road and pogo with a large hop as I threw my other arm into the back window and scrambled for a grip.

  I was to the point of dropping the .45 when my other hand grabbed hold of some small leverage, and it was only when the door I was hanging from made a small jump with a chunklike sound that I realized that it was the interior door handle.

  The door swung wide with the momentum of the vehicle, and I was no longer attached. I rolled my back, my head cracked against the concrete sidewalk, and my legs went over my shoulders. I tucked my arms into my chest along with the semiautomatic and hoped that wherever I was rolling nobody would run over me.

  I didn’t move at first, just watched the black Expedition continue the wrong way down 18th and disappear as I listened to sirens approach like hounds to the hunt.

  I tried to focus, but my vision was blurred. My head hurt, and I closed my eyes. I could hear people, so that was a good sign. I opened my eyes and looked up at a gigantic individual with a tricornered hat looking down on me. It was only when I saw it was a statue and that the title on the base had way too many consonants that I collapsed against the cement and tried to breathe.

  “Sir?” I felt somebody gently pull at my right shoulder in an attempt to turn me over. “Sir, are you alive?”

  I rolled onto my back and watched as whomever it was backed away when they saw the big Colt in my hand. “It’s all right…” I coughed and cleared my throat, my voice sounding like somebody else’s. “I’m a peace officer.” The face returned, and I looked at his uniform. “You a cop?”

  He shook his head. “I’m the bellman. I been here since the hotel opened, and that was the most dramatic entrance to the Four Seasons I ever seen.” I laughed weakly and felt a pull at my abdomen, curled in a little, and returned to my side where it felt better. He kept his hand on my shoulder and talked to me in a soft voice. “Don’t you worry, there’s help comin’, you jus’ lie there.”

  I stared at the traffic and took shallow breaths, absorbing some of the cool from the sidewalk. I felt a little dizzy for a moment, but it passed with the adrenaline discharge, and I stared past the traffic at the fountain at the center of Logan Circle with the swans blowing jets of water thirty feet into the air.

  And there it was, the Indian I was meant to go back to.

  11

  “So, you got the license plate number of the truck that hit you?” She sat on the back of the chair with her feet on the seat, the kind of posture that made teachers yell.

  It was a cop convention at HUP. They had tried to take me to Hahneman, which was only four blocks from the Four Seasons, but I had told them I’d throw myself from the ambulance if they didn’t take me to the same hospital as Cady. After careful consideration and in light of recent events, they took me at my word.

  “Like I told the fuzz, city plates, 90375.” The stitches at my jawline pulled when I talked. Dr. Rissman was looking at my ear, but he didn’t say anything so he must have figured that was old news. I guessed he had come down to take a look at me out of curiosity and that you could pretty much jump in anytime if you were a neurosurgeon.

  Vic turned to look at the two detectives as Katz flipped his small notebook closed. “Stolen from the city lot two nights ago.”

  Gowder looked at Vic, she looked at Katz, and I could tell that they had all three known each other for quite some time. Michael was leaning against a wall, and they had posted a patrolman outside the curtain.

  Gowder stepped forward and held up a standard wants-and-warrants vita with a two-by-two photo of William White Eyes. He was slightly heavier, wore no glasses, and the hair was loose. “That’s him.”

  Katz walked over beside Vic and adjusted his glasses, the red dots jockeying for a good seat on his nose. He was a handsome devil, and I could see Lena making the reach. “Released a week ago. After you mentioned him last night, we did a quick look-see. Any idea why he was following you?”

  “We cowboys have that problem with Indians, even white ones.” Katz gave me a look. “Any word on Shankar DuVall?”

  The two detectives turned and looked at Michael, who grinned. “Looks like he was the one that you ran into the other night. Turns out Fraser and the others couldn’t retrieve the gun, and he wasn’t carrying, so they had to let him go.”

  “What about his connections with Toy Diaz?”

  “We got a hit on an abandoned car in Atlantic City, but no Diaz.”

  “I think I may have met Toy Diaz last night.” They all looked at me as Gowder continued to wait on the phone for the current address of one William White Eyes.

  Katz cleared his throat. “Where?”

  “At the shooting range; he was with Osgood. At least I think it was him, short guy, Latino, very precise, eyes like a snake?”

  The detective nodded his head slowly. “That sounds like him.”

  Gowder flipped his cell phone closed. “We’ve got an address.”

  Vic sipped her coffee. “Asa, why would William White Eyes want to hurt Walt? If he’s the one that knocked on the Franklin Institute door, sent Devon to flight school, and wrote the note? We should focus on Toy Diaz.”

  “Believe me, we are, but maybe the sheriff here was getting too close for comfort.”

  “He could have run over him twice…” I shook my head and raised a single sprained finger. “Excuse me, once.”

  Katz glanced back at me. “I think White Eyes did a pretty good job on him.”

  “But he didn’t kill him.” She hadn’t said anything about the note I’d given her, and I thought maybe I wouldn’t say anything about it just yet. I reached for the fresh shirt that Vic had brought me from Cady’s. She said that she had met her mother there and that Lena was taking care of Dog.

  Gowder was watching me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “With you.”

  He shook his head. “Oh no, you’re under house arrest until we get William White Eyes.”

  I looked at the two of them. “So, the partnership is over?”

  Gowder smiled as they left. “Looks that way.”

  I waited till they were past the curtain. “What if I told you I got another note?” Vic took a sip of her coffee and snorte
d.

  They stopped without turning, stood there for a moment, and then Gowder looked back at Vic, to Katz, and then to me. “Bullshit.”

  “Vic?”

  She took her time taking another sip. “Off the bridge at the crime scene.” She pulled the envelope from her pocket and held it up between her index and middle fingers.

  I went ahead with putting on my shirt. “I also know where the next one is.”

  Katz took the envelope, opened it, and read the card. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you two to have this dusted?”

  “Were there any fingerprints on the other one? Any DNA sample from the envelope?” He didn’t answer, and I had mine.

  Katz passed the note to Gowder and looked up at me. “Where?”

  Vic climbed off her chair and stretched. “Does this mean the partnership’s back on?” She stepped over and helped me from the gurney. “So, did my little brother start his crush before or after your daughter was in a coma?”

  Bodine Street was in an industrial complex five blocks north of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. I mentioned to Vic that it was convenient, since she was the only one in the car speaking to me. John Meifert, White Eyes’s parole officer, was going to meet us there, which was good, because without the tan sedan parked at the corner we might’ve never found the place.

  He was heavyset with sandy hair and was waiting for us on the sidewalk. He made for the door next to a truck dock. I looked around, but I didn’t see anything that would have led me to believe the address was a residence. Meifert shrugged and pushed open a steel door that had a wire-mesh grate over the glass. There was an unused, beat-up counter in an entryway with a scratched Plexiglas divider that led to a freight elevator. We all stepped over the opening between the floors, and Meifert clanged the heavy metal sliding gate that closed from the top and bottom, dropped another safety grating from above, and hit the button to his left.

  The whine of the counterweight system and the condition of the cables inspired little confidence, but the battered elevator rose to the sixth, where Meifert aligned the black spraypainted arrows on the gate with the ones on the adjacent bricks. He lifted the safety gate, and we walked out into a large, industrial loft that was surrounded by eighteen-foot glass-paned walls. The floors were hardwood, and there was nothing in the 5,000 square feet except a painted teepee. It was in the center of the space, and its sixteen hand-peeled poles extended upward and into a ventilation cupola.