Jane's Baby

by Chris Bauer

  “No, NO, motherfucker, NO!”

  The truck’s payload released, the hot tar cascading slowly onto the roof of the diesel four-door like fresh hot fudge onto a brownie, with Edward and the judge inside. The road crew tugged frantically at the pickup’s passenger side door, the tar sliding off the roof, about to swallow the truck whole. Judge trotted his dog toward the scene then stopped short when gunfire pinged off the chromed door handles. The roof of the pickup buckled under the weight of the tar, compromised by the heat. Bullets sizzled into the oozing black tar muck, bore their way through it then punched a hole in the buckled window, stopping moments before ordnance from the helicopter sent repeating gunfire at its unseen target. High-powered work lights were unforgiving in their display, even at this distance, until someone got wise and shut them off. Owen hustled in Judge’s wake. He caught up, doubled over and heaved up his barbecue.

  Judge knew he’d be of little help here now. His rage kicked in, and with it his adrenaline pitched him into overdrive. He grabbed his dog’s leash, trotted him toward the community’s front gate to find his van, leaving Owen behind to finish emptying his stomach and his bladder. The assassin was two blocks away. He was going after her.

  FORTY

  Tar covered the truck, oozed off the roof, the hood, the door panels, dripped in huge globs into thickening black pools on the ground. The rifle’s optics tagged the truck door handle. Larinda depressed the trigger, waited for the delayed burst of bullets to scatter the road workers. The tall spotlights switched off, the scene of the massacre going dark.

  She lowered the rifle, stared, sniffed, showed no emotion. She was satisfied. A bullet shower then a hot tar bath. No one could survive that.

  She dropped the smart rifle on the rooftop, retrieved her Tec-9 handgun from her backpack. Cars with flashing lights and sirens bore down on the block that contained this apartment building. Four seconds to get to the rooftop exit, thirty seconds to get down six sets of stairs. Automatic gunfire pinged off the roof ledge from an approaching helicopter as she closed the door behind her.

  At ground floor she threw open a fire door and exited the building, the handgun behind her back. People on the street were preoccupied, spectators busy scattering in the direction of the nearby townhome community. She tucked her gun into her backpack, charged around a corner, and approached her vehicle. It had garnered interest, was now blocked by two police cars.

  If they wanted it, they could have it.

  She made no eye contact with the uniformed cops, strode past her car, the cops shining flashlights into it, about to break the rear window. Screeching vehicles stopped in front of the building. Plainclothes agents exited them, some entering the lobby, others looking for the fire exits, all with their weapons drawn.

  She’d chance no bridge checkpoints out of D.C., no D.C. Metrorail searches, no carjacking that could go wrong. It was six blocks to the Key Bridge Boathouse. A ten-minute walk or three-minute jog or two-minute run. Then it would be, needed to be, no more than fifteen minutes max in a canoe, paddling away from D.C. She expected to make it across the Potomac under the radar because, she knew, God loved her and would protect her.

  Naomi was semi-conscious, bloodied, in shock, her shoulder immobilized, pinned by buckled hot metal burning into her skin next to a gunshot wound. Her chest and face were singed, her ankle throbbing. Intense heat and tar fumes made it difficult to breathe. The passenger window exploded, letting in a whoosh of cooler, nighttime air.

  A creaking door hinge cut through the fog. “Got you,” the little man said, tugging at her forearm. Inside the truck the massive, protective arm that had been around her shoulder, drawing her close, was now limp.

  “Edward…” she managed before losing consciousness.

  FORTY-ONE

  “C’mon, c’mon, move your ass…”

  Traffic let up as Judge circled the apartment building. He knew who he was looking for. The Feds might notice her if she were attached to an assault weapon, otherwise, they might not. The low-rise was being evacuated and agents hovered in the lobby, at the bottom of the fire escape and at other exits. This would be a room-by-room search. An SUV on the street was overrun by a bomb squad, the agents dressed for the part.

  Judge’s assertion was she’d already left, was out here somewhere on foot.

  “J.D., you’re up, dude,” he told his dog, whose ears perked to attention. Judge found space for the van, parked and opened the back door. His dog was in his face. “Easy, boy, hold on.”

  Kevlar for them both, a longer leash, high-intensity LED flashlight, extra clips, and handcuffs. An ankle holster and handgun. He retrieved the bounty’s tee shirt from a plastic grocery bag to reacquaint J.D. with it, his partner now super-stoked. They followed the perimeter of the building. J.D. picked up a scent at a side door.

  “Hold it, Cowboy,” was directed at Judge. Another agent in a suit. “Don’t. Move.”

  His partner sniffed and continued straining hard on his leash. “Fugitive recovery agent,” Judge announced. The agent let him badge him, the agent’s associate too busy shaking down exiting apartment residents.

  Judge got chatty. “Look, you guys might be wasting your time. My dog is a tracker. His nose says the sniper was here, is gone, and is headed…” he let his partner pull him forward, “this way.”

  Judge and dog now had company. Two agents were freed up to walk with them, which meant trot some when J.D.’s Shepherd legs got frisky, and run some as well. They put two blocks between them and the apartment building and were headed southeast. He still had a scent, still tracked the sidewalk, with occasional detours into alleys that dead-ended, returning to the street each time, always moving.

  Four blocks into their trek an agent spoke up, his hand to his ear, stopping the entourage. J.D. whined, pulled at his master to step it up. “The supervisor says we’re two blocks from the Key Bridge Boathouse. He thinks that’s where she went. They’re setting up on the bridge so they can get a look at the river.”

  Back on the scent his Shepherd took them around an electric gate and underneath one of the arches for the Francis Scott Key Bridge. At the bottom of an incline were stacked kayaks and canoes on a dock, with paddleboats tied together and bobbing in the water next to a few outboards. His dog paced the length of the dock, soon sat panting and out of breath on the canoe end. He waited for a reward.

  “She’s in a canoe or a kayak?” an agent asked.

  “That’s what my deputy says.”

  “Good job. Pay the man,” one of the agents said, and Judge tossed his partner a treat.

  Judge retrieved his flashlight, switched it on, the other agents doing likewise with theirs. Their lights swept the area near the shoreline and the dock, showed nothing, so they shined the lights farther out into the river, where distance made them less effective. The agent called his supervisor and seconds later two spotlights on the Key Bridge above them flipped on. A third sparked up, the three of them spaced out along the bridge’s pedestrian walkway. Behind them on the bridge, pulsing red and blue bursts of light sprayed the nighttime sky from the cop cars belonging to the handhelds, the spotlights as bright as searchlights at a Hollywood premiere. The cops aimed them down at the river, close to the bridge, the water murky but calm. Suddenly all lights converged.

  A canoe. In it someone with long dark hair was paddling like a champ. A woman. She glided through at a silent clip, the spots lighting her up like a figure skater in a darkened stadium. She put the paddle down, stayed seated, motionless. The canoe drifted a little, the lights blinding her; she raised her arm to shield them. A bullhorn delivered a tinny, garbled voice that might have been a cop, might not have been, sounding more like it came from the river. A deafening foghorn followed the bullhorn.

  Christ, Judge thought, a fucking boat, it’s gonna ram her…

  A short burst of semi-auto gunfire from the canoe interrupted the foghorn, chipping the face of the bridge beneath the closest spotlight. A second burst, longer and raised hig
her, found the spotlight the first burst missed. The agents around him on the dock un-holstered their weapons and fired on the canoe, a distance of maybe seventy yards. An uninterrupted burst from the canoe moved from light to light, wild, erratic, the canoe bucking from the recoil but the burst still aimed well enough to neutralize two lights out of three. Judge’s canine pulled hard, wanted to give chase in the water, his master needing two hands to restrain him. The one spotlight on the bridge stayed functional, crammed into barbed wire fencing.

  Another blast of the foghorn, and the cop repositioned the last shaft of light to illuminate a cabin cruiser bearing down on the canoe. The cruiser slowed, but not enough. The canoe flipped, was churned underneath, resurfacing in its wake in pieces as the cruiser continued under the bridge. Flashing lights strobed the sky from additional cop cars on the bridge and across the river on the Virginia shoreline, with vehicles advertising in red and blue arriving in large numbers.

  A Coast Guard cutter drew alongside the cabin cruiser, both vessels anchoring near the Virginia side after passing under the bridge. A frantic half-hour search found canoe parts and a paddle but no shooter. The effort remained search and rescue for now.

  After an hour it became a recovery mission. Divers entered the river to find the body.

  On the phone with Geenie, Judge related what he knew, Geenie grunting her responses. After that he read texts from Owen, who’d been trying for the past few hours to get his attention. The texts were frantic, disturbing. Judge and J.D. hitched a ride back to his van then headed to the hospital ER where Owen held vigil.

  FORTY-TWO

  Naomi awakened, plenty groggy, feeling like she was floating. Her scalp tingled, her head wrapped in gauze. Her left shoulder was packed and bandaged, protecting a bullet wound with a front entrance and a back exit, a nurse told her, but this hadn’t fully registered. Her ankle, immobilized by a tight cloth bandage, sat atop the bed sheet, visible but fuzzy to her. She must have said something about medication because someone volunteered an answer. “Some really good stuff, ma’am.”

  This was Mr. Wingert speaking, the blogger, seated in the right corner of the hospital room. No, he was standing; he was the super-short one. Naomi was now remembering, it was coming back, all the horror was coming back. She held back her tears.

  “Edward…”

  An authoritative voice bettered Naomi’s fog: “This is Nurse Dawson, Madam Justice. You’re on a narcotic drip.”

  To Mr. Wingert the nurse said, “She’s awake. The vigil’s now officially over. You need to wait outside.”

  “No,” Naomi said, her words wet and sloppy. “He stays. For a moment, please.” She turned to Owen and asked, “Where is he?”

  The little guy’s eyes fluttered then misted up. Beseech was the word her fuzzy mind gave her, his eyes beseeched her, blinked at her beseechingly. His hands moved near his waist, his fingers in search of his absent cowboy hat. She remembered the one.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “he’s gone. I’m sorry.”

  She gagged, just now noticed there were two other men in the room, in suits, plus another man in a suit posted outside the door. One of the suited men in the room stepped forward.

  “Madam Justice. Director Egan of the U.S. Marshals Service. We lost Deputy Trenton tonight, in the line of duty. Him and two others, ma’am. Deputy Abelson was also a casualty, but he’ll recover.”

  Tears built but stayed at bay. She spoke again, but it felt like she was chewing her saliva. “That doesn’t…answer…my question. Where is he?”

  The director glanced at the nurse. The nurse answered for him. “He’s here, ma’am. Downstairs.”

  “I want to see him.”

  The nurse said, “Ma’am, no, that’s not going to happen.”

  Naomi strengthened her resolve, “Nurse, yes it is going to happen. Now. Director Egan, do something.”

  Director Egan had interceded, duly acknowledging the protest of Naomi’s doctor. The patient elevator opened at the basement level. A marshal exited first then waved the entourage out, Naomi’s hospital bed slightly raised and pushed by an orderly, her doctor striding alongside her, Nurse Dawson keeping up while wheeling her IV poles. Director Egan and another marshal followed them.

  At the end of the wide corridor a pair of windowless doors greeted them, MORGUE stenciled in black across each one. On the other side of the doors, a tile floor, stainless steel walls and sinks, scales, microscopes, hoses, high-intensity overhead lamps, and instruments hanging like wands and brushes at a self-service car wash. The group surprised a female morgue attendant about to slide a body back into the wall.

  Three bodies on gurneys, all tagged, lay flat in various stages of preparation for temporary storage, all covered in sheets, cadaver style. It smelled of blood and bodily fluids and antiseptic, the floor a mess underfoot. The attendant made quick business of the body she’d been working with and grabbed a spray hose to wet down the floor, the water and body effluence finding a drain.

  “Careful, it’s slippery,” she said. The agents were in shoe leather and Naomi was on wheels, but everyone else had rubber-soled shoes. The orderly pushing Naomi stopped, waiting for orders from someone. No one moved. The doctor called the attendant over. “Mister Edward Trenton. Which one?”

  Before the attendant answered, Naomi spoke. “I see him.”

  Long body, massive chest, one leg partially exposed, the knee black as if it had been dipped in licorice, some exposed bone, the skin below it copper-red, and the giveaway: five discolored toes on his right foot, all milky white, a yellow toe tag on the big one. The orderly guided Naomi alongside.

  “Edward,” she managed after composing herself, her hand moving from her distraught face to the sheet that covered him. “You were so very, very brave, Edward.”

  Her emotional pain obliterated the meds. Naomi felt the agony, a gouge driven deep into her chest, her heart sinking, a loss so reminiscent of her earlier one, so…déjà vu. The entourage gave her room. She rested her hand on the sheet again, squeezed his arm, and whispered prayers in Cherokee for the safe journey of one Edward White Paw Trenton to his rightful place in the spirit world.

  The trailing marshal spoke a response into a wrist piece. “Roger that. Director Egan, sir, a V.I.P. just arrived at the hospital to see Justice Coolsummer.”

  “We’re giving Madam Justice a few minutes, Marshal.”

  “Sir…” He leaned over, whispered into Director Egan’s ear.

  The director turned toward Naomi. “Justice Coolsummer, we need to get back upstairs ASAP.”

  FORTY-THREE

  They sat on stiff plastic chairs with unforgiving seats three doors down from Justice Coolsummer’s hospital room. Nearby was yet another U.S. marshal, who cleared Judge and Owen once again before they’d allow them near the justice when she returned upstairs. Judge’s Glock was again locked up in the van, the only way they’d let him anywhere inside the hospital. How soon they forgot who the friendlies were.

  Judge and his bomb-sniffing dog in training had screwed up. So had the marshals. They’d all missed the explosives hidden in the shrubbery. Judge felt all kinds of inadequate, but the reality of it was, this happened on occasion. Dogs took cues from their handlers. When handlers tensed up, there were more false alerts. Bombs that weren’t there. But the reverse happened, too. When handlers were off the clock, or maybe less focused, so too were their partners. Today was one of those days. One he’d have to live with, because it had cost lives.

  The U.S. Marshal’s office was complicit. And in that business, a mistake like this would mean heads not already part of the body count would roll.

  According to Owen, someone other than Justice Coolsummer was in her room. Owen leaned back, deep in thought. Stoic. Not a word Judge ever expected to use to describe him. The door to the justice’s room stayed closed, two suits next to it, one on either side, their hands clasped in front of themselves, their heads swiveling like gun turrets. Another suit stood in front of the room’s observat
ion window.

  “Owen,” Judge said. “Dude. You did good. You were a hero helping to pull her out of there.”

  He looked lost. “It’s all here, Judge, in my head, all this bizarre, deadly shit.” Judge could see in his eyes he was reliving it as he spoke.

  “The blood. Justice Coolsummer. The marshal, fucking Marshal Trenton, pinned in there under the collapsed roof, the tar, the hot tar, him trapped, terrible, the smell…”

  Owen had lost some of his hair in the fire, a handful of dreads missing all the way back to his scalp, a small gauze patch covering the burned area. He’d also lost his hat. “My hair…it was like a fuse, it ignited my Stetson…”

  Listening to him, Judge knew he was witnessing the birth of a new case of PTSD. He’d been there, was himself still victimized by it. Sitting next to Owen like this, he put his arm around his shoulder, could do nothing else for him right now other than listen.

  An elevator door opened; Justice Coolsummer exited on a gurney. They wheeled her to her room, her door remaining closed. All eyes excluding the patient’s found Owen and Judge. Conspicuously absent, Judge now noticed, were other voices on the floor, noises, or any activity or movement anywhere near them. No patients, no doctors, no nurses, no orderlies. A guy in plainclothes…casual pants, zippered windbreaker, bulk underneath, and a big, friendly smile…moved to within six inches of Judge’s face. A second, larger guy forced Owen to take a seat.