by Chris Bauer
—Schoolteacher was more than a pill-popper. Only charge that stuck. Got 2 addresses for you.
The bounty’s apartment was one, in a Dallas suburb. The other was a trailer park in Glenn Heights, a half-hour from Arlington:
—People who ID’d her live there. They say she killed their church pastor. Not enough to hold her on it.
—Stop at the trailer park, ask questions, let them see your shiny dome, have them meet your cool dogs.
She’d skipped bail, but who skips bail for possession of bogus prescriptions? Had to have been for something more serious.
The lights inside the stadium dimmed to half-strength. The lighting for the exit in front of him switched off. The exit’s long hallway went dark, turned opaque black, thick and heavy as a stage curtain. Except they still had a volunteer from the audience, Chigger, in the bowels of the building somewhere.
“…chigger-swigger, nigger-dwarf, earwig snort, cowboy jig, jiggy with it…”
All whispers through Judge’s pursed lips, with no one there to witness them.
And then, showtime. His pint-sized assailant stumbled or was pushed out of the darkness and fell onto all fours. No black sequined hat, but the rest of his cowboy outfit was intact. He struggled getting to his feet, brushed himself off, then swept a tangle of black and gray dreads fit for a Rastafarian maestro out of his eyes. At full height in his cowboy boots he was at best four-foot-eight. The boots had spurs, something Judge had missed earlier, and was thankful he hadn’t learned about them the hard way. The little guy squinted, the bright light from an overhead lamppost offending his previously light-deprived vision, or maybe his hangover.
A tossed black hat split the darkness from behind him, spinning out to hit him in the back of the head. He wobbled, picked it up and dented its sparkled ten-gallon top before he placed it on his head. A slight tug on the brim just above his forehead snugged it up. Calm and unfazed, his squint got more severe as Judge approached. Judge was calmer too, now that he saw they hadn’t maimed or killed him. Coming face-to-face, sort of, his attacker’s head tilted up, Judge’s tilting down. They assessed each other.
“Owen Wingert. Dallas Morning News sportswriter. One helluva fight, huh?”
“One helluva fight. Gunnery Sergeant Judge Drury, USMC, Former Enlisted.”
Bare-knuckled combatants always shared a certain camaraderie with each other after the fight was over. Judge first learned this growing up on the streets in Philly, where fistfights were common, even between best friends. And where some friendships grew from battles between sworn enemies.
“I appreciate what you did for me tonight, you going all superhero on them. No one’s ever jumped in like that before. Wasn’t needed, but I appreciate it.”
“Certainly looked like you needed it. They were zapping you pretty good.”
“They know when to stop. I don’t, but they do. Sorry about the groin shot. You left yourself open.”
“I didn’t leave myself open. I was surrendering to Security. Hands up means white flag. ‘No mas.’”
“No such thing as surrender for guys like me. Surrender only means getting a worse beating.” They began their trek to the far reaches of the parking lot. “So it’s Tourette’s, huh?”
“Yep. Sometimes the medication works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
“How the hell did they let you in the Marines?”
A direct little SOB, Judge had to give him that. “Friends in high places.” Better word would have been “acquaintances.” Judge’s father was responsible, but he was never a friend. Best word, prick.
Owen was late thirties or early forties, seemed easygoing enough and well adjusted. Judge went for cute, addressing the other elephant in the room. “So it’s dwarfism, then.”
“Close enough,” he said, staying deadpan. “‘Midget’ is more accurate. My affliction’s medicated, too.” He pulled out a flask, took a hit. “Medication success rate one hundred percent, long as I stay that way.” He offered Judge some and Judge declined. He took another hit, then got panicky. “Shit. What time is it? I’ve got a column to write.”
Judge checked his phone. “Two forty-five. You all right getting home by yourself?”
“I could use a lift,” he said. “I have no idea where I left my horse.”
FOUR
The Palace Motel clock rearranged its red LED dashes. Two-forty-five a.m. Larinda watched the five become a six, the six a seven, then an eight…
She was wired, her adrenaline still pumping. A busy day yesterday. Productive, with one threat to the cause eliminated. The next threat, this one to her personally, needed addressing, and this was keeping her awake.
She’d been told to disappear, to use an alias, as in make herself a ghost and leave town. The ID by the mom and her kid at the church made her a person of interest in the pastor’s murder, her appearance just before the murder too suspicious. It made The Faithful nervous in addition to the cops.
Out of bed now, face down and horizontal to the floor, her toes flexed, she locked then unlocked her elbows. Background noise drifted from the TV while she pounded out her pushups. An early morning farm and ranch report showed a farmer milking his cows, the flat screen’s volume turned up to drown out neighbors who were bouncing off the adjacent wall, fornicating themselves silly. The cheap motel carpet smelled of mildew and wet dog fur, and it tickled her nose on each downward thrust as she counted out fifty intense pushups, “…twenty-two for Jesus, twenty-three for Jesus,” her stress soon dissipating, “…forty-nine for Jesus, fifty for Jesus. Thank you Jesus, my Lord God and Savior.”
Larinda relocated a Tec-9 mini semi-automatic handgun from the motel end table to the front pocket of her backpack. She pulled on a black windbreaker, flipped up the hood and slipped the backpack over her shoulder. With the farmers’ cows milked, a TV news anchor slid in behind the dairy report, producing more white noise.
After she eliminated the people who could identify her, she’d abide by The Faithful’s wishes and make herself scarce. But her definition of scarce and their definition differed. To them, scarce meant a motel in Minnesota scarce, or a campsite in Idaho scarce. Her gut feeling said it was even worse, that they’d prefer her to retire from the business. Their need for her and her services, her dedication, her religious zeal, her willingness to do whatever it took to save babies: was this all winding down?
No. Never. As far as she was concerned, more work was needed. Plus her sin needed more penance. Much more.
To her, scarce meant become invisible, blend in, hide in plain sight while staying enough steps ahead of getting caught. Regardless, their need for her scarcity wouldn’t sway her from shadowing a certain newly appointed Supreme Court justice. The confirmation hearings, live on TV, had delved deeply into the prospective justice’s background. The justice vocalized her liberal leanings as a college student, including blasphemous ideals like pro-choice and feminism. She was a widow, but she was unworthy of the marriage that had made her one, to a conservative Christian Republican husband and military hero. The new justice included pagan Indian spiritualism among the religions needing protection by the Constitution. Between cable news coverage and contentious analysis of the hearings, Larinda’s faith was being soundly trampled every night on the evening news. Her beliefs were not debatable issues; they were God’s word.
With Pastor Beckner out of the way, the newest loose end was now Associate Justice Naomi Coolsummer, an Indian. Larinda hated Indians, a few generations of family hate preceding her own. The Faithful hadn’t approached her about neutralizing the Supreme Court justice, but did they really need to? Sometimes the targets were obvious. This one would be a freebie.
A droning TV anchor voice suddenly grabbed her attention. “In a few weeks, the first case on the docket for the new United States Supreme Court term will become the most controversial case it will hear in over forty years.”
Larinda lowered the hood for her windbreaker, stared at the screen.
“A case birthed in T
exas, argued, decided and won by the State,” the reporter continued, “that Texas women who seek abortions would now be required by law to view ultrasounds of their fetuses before terminating their pregnancies.”
The decision had been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Its defense in that venue, per the reporter, “was primed as an opportunity for the Court to revisit and rule on, in its entirety, the legality of terminating pregnancies that had resulted from the right-to-privacy landmark Roe v Wade ruling.”
Killing babies. The thought made Larinda’s stomach turn.
“And front and center to this debate is the newest associate justice of the Supreme Court, Texas’ own federal judge Naomi Coolsummer. Here are some highlights of her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
Larinda moved closer to the TV.
“I grew up in modest circumstances in Austin, Texas…was adopted…I’m a Native American of Caddo Comanche extraction.
“I’ve been a prosecutor, a private litigator, a trial judge, and an appellate judge.
“…President William Jefferson Clinton appointed me to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. President George Walker Bush appointed me to…
“My nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Alfreda Helen Lindsay is the finest and most humbling moment of my career…”
Then came an excerpt of the U.S. Senator from Texas Mildred Folsom’s comments and questions to the appointee: “…your agile legal mind…judicial integrity…You are, however, a chameleon. Someone has to mention this, so it might as well be the senator from your home state. You were an abortion advocate, then a volunteer abortion clinic assistant. You exhibited social activist behaviors as a college undergrad and at the OU College of Law. You came across as anti-religion, or at a minimum as an atheist. How do we reconcile this biased collegiate background to the fair and impartial judge we’ve seen render unbiased decisions in our district? A judge I truly admire, mind you, and one I would truly like to support…”
“Senator, I am not an atheist, nor am I anti-religion. I’m Native American, which is quite the contrary. Native American religions focus on nature, the landscape, animals…and I do not let my personal beliefs interfere with the law. My decisions have always served justice, never individual interests. I apply the law based on the facts at hand…the Constitution’s statutes…justice…”
“And after I apply God’s law,” Larinda said to the TV screen, “your application of the law won’t matter.”
She tossed yesterday’s church-going clothes into a gym bag, turned off the flat screen, grabbed the pocket change scattered atop the motel’s rickety bureau and left the room key. She wouldn’t be back.
She climbed behind the wheel of her SUV; it was three-thirty a.m. She’d need to find new transportation. Her targets lived in a trailer park in Glenn Heights. This info, plus their names, she’d gleaned during her interviews at the police station. Her young, court-appointed attorney had block-lettered her accusers’ address on his legal pad. A rookie mistake.
Larinda checked one of her Tec-9s, switched out the ammo, inserted copper R.I.P. bullets into the clip. Radically Invasive Projectiles, her choice for this hit. R.I.P.s shredded solid objects; drywall, plywood, sheet metal, and they expanded in different directions while their trocar petal shrapnel spun on its way into and through the target. They were advertised as “the last bullet you will ever need,” and very effective for human tissue destruction.
Two hours of total darkness to work with. She knew an all-night diner and truck stop near Ft. Worth where good folks with a disdain for seat belts, democrats, and atheists left their cars and trucks unlocked while they ate. She’d acquire another SUV, swap out her payload and do the deed. She’d get on the road to D.C. soon after.
Naomi lay awake in bed in her high-rise condo apartment in Austin. Reed had come to her in a dream again.
“Let go, Naomi,” Reed said. “It’s time. Let me go.”
Reed Guest, her Texas high school sweetheart, and her soul mate. Today was the six-year anniversary of his death.
Reed served in Desert Storm while Naomi earned her BS in pre-law. He returned, earned a BS in Military Science and graduated from Officer Candidate School. She graduated from Oklahoma’s School of Law and returned to practice in the Texas tribal court system. He learned to fly Black Hawk helicopters into war zones, served three tours of duty. She entered the federal legal system as a prosecutor. Distance and time apart had been a challenge for them, but their companionship and marriage proved unshakeable. Theirs was a bond that could have been broken only one way.
His goal, his brass ring: attain the rank of colonel. He’d finally earned it during his Iraqi Freedom tour, but he didn’t stay stateside, didn’t stay alive, long enough to receive it. A hero, killed in action soon after his deployment to Afghanistan. Since then she’d never shared her bed with anyone else.
“Reed. My Reed…”
His name on her lips was a soft release into the bedroom’s stillness. Her son and daughter, students at the University of Texas at Austin, lived on campus, were a year apart in age, the best of friends, and emotionally close to her. But as adults they now needed her less, when she now, perhaps, would need them the most.
Her professional life’s pinnacle, her grail, would be life altering, potentially world changing, and border on godlike, answerable both to current and future generations. In a moment of self-pity, in the dead of this interminable night, Naomi heaved a heavy sigh, feeling overwhelmed and alone.
“I miss you, Reed.”
Missed him cupping her chin, missed his soft, playful pinch of her full face and her round cheeks, a plumpness he adored best when she blushed, the blush dusting her cocoa complexion with a dash of rose, her face framed by straight black hair, and her hair, during their lovemaking, tickling his chin, his neck, his chest, and then his stomach and other regions south. Oh how she melted inside his embrace, could rest there while he soothed away her insecurities, would let her speak of her doubts, her fear of clerking for the tough judges, of taking the Texas Bar, and her concern that her efforts as a prosecuting federal attorney weren’t making enough of a difference.
As the first Native American woman seated in the federal judiciary in Texas, at five-ten she was physically imposing and took no prisoners. And now, Naomi Coolsummer-Guest, Naomi Coolsummer to the public, age forty-six, had become the first Native American confirmed for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Her husband was gone, and her kids lived on campus. Her adoptive parents were in assisted living, both with early stages Alzheimer’s, Naomi their only child. Leaving her parents behind, even with the excellent care they received, was so incredibly tough, and the reason she delayed her relocation to D.C. until the last weekend before the start of the fall term.
She fluffed her pillow. She needed to salvage a few hours of sleep. A big travel day today. A U.S. marshal would pick her up to escort her on her flight, Austin to D.C. He was to remain assigned to her until she moved into her Georgetown townhouse.
Sinking farther down, inside her dreamscape, a snippet rose up, of her as an infant gazing skyward, falling, no, tossed, from an open window, a woman wringing her hands above her, the woman’s hands and arms growing smaller as Naomi descended in a free fall from floor to floor. The woman’s arms and head disappeared, her hands still on the sill, then her head reemerged for one last, featureless peek, a blurred dark speck that lingered then pulled back inside, gone.
The child discarded, the deed done.
Her biological mother: Was she still alive? What about her biological father? Did she have any siblings?
“I’m so proud of you,” her husband Reed said, returning to her subconscious. “Don’t go it alone, Naomi. Open your heart again. You deserve it. Share…”
FIVE
“There she is,” Owen said, pointing.
His horse was a late model Boss 302 Ford Mustang, with a custom paint job in Dallas Cowboy navy blu
e with a wide, silver stripe from the grill to the rear bumper. At three-thirty in the morning, it was the only car left in the stadium’s section fifteen parking lot. They pulled up next to it. “Just needed to make sure she’s okay. Say, wanna do me a favor?”
Owen was sober enough to know he wasn’t sober enough to be driving. Judge keyed in the cross streets for the lot, Web and Slaughter, to his van’s GPS and waited for Owen’s input, as in where the hell he wanted him to drop him off.
“My spread’s in Oak Leaf, Texas. About a half hour.”
The GPS agreed on the ETA. It also showed the location was near Glenn Heights, home to the people who identified LeVander’s bounty. Both out of the way to Judge’s B&B, but not by much.
A long haul to the stadium on foot from here. For his new friend, the equivalent of a marathon, acknowledging his, ah, short stride. So why park all the way the hell out here?
“I take the shuttle, wise guy.”
The little fucker had read him. In Judge’s head…nigger midget jigger widget…
Behind the driver’s seat Maeby raised herself to all fours, went on alert, stood tall enough to lay her chin on Judge’s shoulder. Anticipating his TS mood swings was a sixth sense for her. With her chin there, Judge choked this one back.
“Press credentials don’t get you anything closer?” Judge asked.
“Sure, if I still had ’em. So would season tickets. Because of out-of-town shitheads like you, no offense, I wore out my welcome. Now I’m stuck looking online for ticket resellers for any seat I can get.”