Robert B. Parker's Colorblind

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  The Explorer got dead silent. James Earl slumped forward and Jesse thought he might be about to get sick. But it wasn’t that at all. James Earl was crying, first quietly and then loudly. Jesse let him cry. It was time to let James Earl talk if he wanted to.

  “They killed my brother.”

  Jesse knew better than to fill in the empty space.

  “They killed him and I stood by and let them do it. I am so fucking ashamed of myself, Jesse. Every time I think I can’t sink any lower . . .”

  “There’s always lower, James Earl. I know that from experience.”

  “Can a man kill himself jumping off these cliffs?”

  “It’s been done, but I won’t let you do it. You’ve got a choice to make,” Jesse said. “You can get John W. some justice or you can keep feeling sorry for yourself.”

  James Earl was crying again. Jesse knew there were only so many tears in a man, even one as drunk as James Earl.

  “They thought he was disposable because he wasn’t really one of us. He was Clarissa’s boy.”

  “John Wilkes?”

  “That’s right. Daddy never had much regard for him, though I guess he loved him in his way.”

  “What about you? Does he love you?”

  “In his way.”

  “Tell me how they did it, James Earl. Let me get some justice for your brother.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” Now Jesse was pressing him. When James Earl didn’t answer, Jesse said, “How about I tell how it went down. Your brother Lee Harvey drove John from the shooting range to the Gray Gull and handed him a gun John W. must’ve thought was fully loaded. But your father couldn’t risk John actually hitting Officer Davis or having a slug recovered. So the gun was loaded with blanks. After the shots were exchanged, Lee Harvey rappelled down, collected the gun, and climbed back up onto the warehouse roof. By the time Officer Davis got to John W., Lee Harvey had already rappelled down the other side of the building and was driving out of Paradise in a camo-painted Jeep.”

  “Holy shit! How the hell can you know that?” James Earl stared at Jesse as if he had pulled a rabbit out of a hat where there was no hat. “You can’t know that.”

  “But I do. C’mon, James Earl, this is your chance to break away and to put an end to the hate right here and now.”

  James Earl was thinking about it. Jesse gave him a last push.

  “How about getting your brother a little justice.”

  “All right, Jesse. What do you need?”

  “The missing gun would be best, but I’m sure it’s been disposed of. Short of that, a sworn state—”

  Now James Earl was laughing. “The gun ain’t been disposed of. My daddy thinks I don’t know it, but he’s keeping it to put in a museum someday. You don’t understand him, Jesse. He sees himself as some kinda messiah. He thinks there’ll be a time when people see him like George Washington, that they’ll build monuments to him for what he’s done. And he thinks that gun will be part of a shrine or some such thing.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “I do.”

  “Will you give me a statement now? I have a voice recorder. Tomorrow, I can have it transcribed and you can sign it.”

  James Earl hesitated but agreed.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN JAMES EARL HAD FINISHED, Jesse could not believe how much of the plan he had been right about. There were missing pieces. For instance, James Earl didn’t know what had happened to Roberto or about the motorcycle gang.

  “You can’t go back home now,” Jesse said. “You know that, right?”

  James Earl nodded.

  “I’m going to make a call and arrange things.”

  But before Jesse could punch in the number, the phone buzzed in his hand. Lundquist’s name appeared on the screen.

  “You were right, Jesse,” Lundquist said.

  “Uh-huh. About what?”

  “Daniels is waiting for his lawyer, but he’s going to talk. He went to Garrison’s house this evening and the soldier took a shot at them. Garrison panicked and tried to kill Daniels, but Garrison was drunk and missed. Daniels planted him with three in the chest. Where are you?”

  “The Bluffs. You better get Lee Harvey’s photo out there wide,” Jesse said, but something was bothering him.

  He liked being right about Daniels and that the case was coming together, but there was something about the soldier screwing up that felt wrong. He was about to say something to Lundquist about that when he heard the roar of the engine and saw the lights coming at them.

  Bang! The truck must’ve been doing fifty when it hit the passenger-side door. The door caved in with a telltale groan. James Earl’s head snapped sideways with a dull crack as his neck broke. The left side of Jesse’s head smacked hard into the window, briefly stunning him. As the Explorer was being pushed toward the edge of the Bluffs, a hundred thoughts went through his head. The loudest one was about stepping on the brakes and pressing the ignition switch. His only hope of survival were the airbags, and they wouldn’t deploy if the Explorer went over without the engine on. Jesse felt for the brake pedal, found it, jammed down as hard as he could, and pressed the ignition. The engine turned over, caught, and . . .

  88

  There was nothing in his world but hurt. It pushed everything else out of him so that there wasn’t room for thoughts or ideas. Every part of him was in pain. Moving his head nearly gutted him, and there was a vague feeling of nausea deep in the pit of his belly. His left arm and right leg were stiff and unmoving. It was dark when he opened his eyes, and he thanked goodness for it because even the tiny bit of ambient light split his head in two and made the nausea rise up from deep within him into his throat. He shut his eyes and let the pain and the sounds of the sea sing him back into unconsciousness. The last thing he remembered were the smells of gasoline, iron, and salt in the air.

  As he drifted in and out with the waves, he thought he heard loud voices, the grinding of metal against metal, and a woman’s mournful gasp. There were sparks. He could swear there were sparks and flashes of different colored lights. He felt himself rise up, and as he rose, so, too, did the pain. It was pain like he had never felt before. In his head he was tumbling, endlessly tumbling, waiting to crash to the rocky infield in Pueblo, but he never hit the dirt, never felt his shoulder crack. From somewhere on a distant planet he heard a voice calling to him, but the words were scrambled and made no sense. Then the sea sang again, and with it came the blackness.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT TIME HE OPENED HIS EYES, his head didn’t quite explode and the pings and whooshes he heard were distinctly not of the sea. Nor were the odors that filled his nose. The salt, iron, and gas had been replaced by that odd mixture of ammonia, isopropyl alcohol, and humanity. There was a blurry shape to his left, a familiar human shape.

  “Mol—Molly,” he said, his voice no more than a raspy whisper.

  But she didn’t answer. Instead, she disappeared. Jesse heard her footfalls. “Nurse! Doctor, he’s awake,” she said, her voice very much louder than his whisper. “Jesse’s awake. He’s awake!”

  “I don’t mind telling you, Chief Stone, you are a lucky SOB. I’m amazed you survived that tumble down the Bluffs. More than that, you’re going to leave here in a few days with nothing more serious than a concussion, two black eyes, a badly sprained elbow and knee, and every inch of you is bruised. You won’t be playing softball anytime soon, but in six weeks you should be fine. I’ve got a drip going with something for the pain, and when I release you I’ll give you a script. For now, all you’ve got to do is rest.”

  By the end of the doctor’s talk, Jesse had already begun to fade. He was confused by what the doctor had said about the tumble down the Bluffs because he was having trouble remembering. He meant to ask Molly, but he was ou
t cold before the questions reached his lips.

  In the scrambled pieces of his sleep, Jesse put some things back together, but not so that they made much sense to him. He remembered the sound of a truck engine and lights. He remembered rolling and bouncing, remembered opening his eyes and the sound of the sea. But there was something he could not get his head around, a hole in his memory that he could not fill in.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT TIME HE OPENED HIS EYES, there were two much larger human shapes to his left: Suit’s and Lundquist’s.

  “Where’s Molly?” Jesse asked, his voice not much stronger than it was before.

  “She left here hours ago, Jesse. You trying to hurt my feelings?” Suit laughed as he said it. “A guy could get a complex.”

  “Sorry, Suit. It’s good to see you.”

  “You look like crap.” Lundquist leaned over Suit’s shoulder. “But you did good work, Jesse.”

  Jesse was confused all over again. Both Lundquist and Suit could see the confusion on his face.

  “Drake Daniels won’t shut up. He’s scared out of his wits. He’s corroborated a lot of what’s on the voice recorder,” Suit said. “That was smart to record James Earl like that.”

  Lundquist was smiling. “Yeah, we recovered it and listened to it. James Earl really gave up the whole bunch of them, including his father and brother. My people and Weld’s people are executing warrants as we speak.”

  “James Earl,” Jesse said to himself, but loud enough for the others to hear.

  Lundquist shook his head. “Dead when they got to you guys. Too bad about him. There might’ve been hope for him as a person. Not like the rest of those crazy bastards.”

  Jesse didn’t speak because he was letting the puzzle put itself together in his head. First he remembered the sound, and then came the image of James Earl’s head snapping sideways when the truck plowed into the passenger side of the Explorer. He still couldn’t remember the rest of it. He was sure there was something else, but it stayed just beyond his reach.

  “Jesse, you okay?” Suit asked.

  “James Earl died before we went over,” Jesse said. “His neck broke when the truck hit us.”

  “Yeah,” Suit said. “We found the truck at the bottom of the Bluffs next to your Explorer. Stolen from a yard on Trench Alley. You were lucky there, too. Truck could’ve landed on top of you.”

  Jesse felt that missing piece getting a little bit closer to his grasp. “Do you have the soldier, Lee Harvey Vandercamp, in custody?”

  By the looks on Suit’s and Lundquist’s face, he had his answer.

  “He’s the dangerous one,” Jesse said. “You’ve got to get him.”

  Lundquist put his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “We’ll get him. In any case, we’ve ruined their party. Looks like Officer Davis is in the clear, at least as far as the shooting goes. You had it exactly right, Jesse.”

  That’s when the last piece came within his reach, and Jesse grabbed it. Weld’s words about a race war and revolution rang in his head.

  “What time is it?” Jesse said, sitting up in bed, his head pounding.

  Suit looked at his watch. “Seven-fifty-two. Why?”

  “What time is the vigil at the old meetinghouse scheduled for?”

  Suit looked puzzled. “Eight.”

  Jesse pulled the IV drip out of his arm, stood up from his bed, and went down to his knees.

  “Get back in bed, Jesse,” Lundquist said, pulling him to his feet.

  “No.” He swatted Lundquist’s arms away. “We’ve got to get to the vigil. Now! Get me some scrubs to wear and my gun.”

  Lundquist didn’t understand. “Why?”

  “That’s the target. Think of the symbolism of the old meetinghouse. Vandercamp means to declare war. Real war.”

  89

  Suit called ahead as Jesse demanded and had the cops working security at the vigil begin clearing people out of the building by the time they arrived. The old meetinghouse was large for the era in which it was built but had no more square footage than a modern McMansion. Lundquist had already arrived by the time Suit and Jesse got there. Suit fished his pump-action shotgun out of the trunk.

  “Jesse, you look like hell,” Gabe Weathers said as Suit helped him out of his cruiser. “And your holster looks pretty silly over hospital scrubs.”

  Jesse ignored that. “Any trouble?”

  “They’re pretty pissed. I guess they feed off things like this.” Gabe pointed at Vandercamp’s people across the street from the meetinghouse, some of them draped in Nazi flags, others carrying signs with hateful slogans written on them. But it was the things they were chanting that sickened Jesse most of all, things he had hoped he would never hear again.

  “Any sign of Leon or Lee Harvey Vandercamp?”

  Gabe shook his head. Jesse really didn’t like that, but it confirmed his worst fears, that something big, something bad, was going to happen.

  “All right,” Jesse said. “Try and pick up the pace and get everyone out of the area.”

  That’s when Reverend Sam approached Jesse.

  “Lord, Chief, what happened to you?”

  “We can discuss it some other time. Right now I need you and the other clergy to get everyone out of the meetinghouse and out of the area.”

  Mahorn wasn’t pleased. “Look, I know you have our best interests at heart, but we won’t be bullied by the likes of haters like those people.” He pointed at the small line of Vandercamp’s supporters marching across the way.

  “They’re not the problem, Reverend.”

  “Then what is?”

  That was when the first burst of automatic-weapons fire hit the windows on the second floor of the old meetinghouse, raining glass down on the street below and forcing people who were exiting to retreat back inside for cover. Jesse grabbed Reverend Sam with his good arm, yanked him down to the sidewalk, and threw his body over Mahorn’s.

  “You okay?” Jesse asked.

  “Fine. I’m fine. Anyone hurt?”

  “Doesn’t look that way.”

  There was another burst of gunfire, driving people back into the old meetinghouse for cover.

  Then another.

  “Reverend, I need you to crawl to cover, so I can deal with this. Can you do that?”

  “I can.”

  “Go!”

  Jesse rolled off Mahorn and the reverend combat-crawled into the building. Jesse crawled in the opposite direction and got behind Suit’s cruiser, where Suit was kneeling and scanning for where the shots were coming from.

  “Where’s the shooter, Suit?”

  Suit pointed to a storefront about a half-block away. There was a fourth burst of gunfire.

  “Here’s the crazy thing, Jesse. I don’t think the shooter’s trying to hit anybody.”

  “My bet, it’s Lee Harvey. And it’s not crazy,” Jesse said. “I think he’s trying to drive everyone back into the old meetinghouse. He wants as many people inside as possible. Watch the door. He’ll fire whenever people try to leave.”

  Suit turned to look at the meetinghouse doors and, just as Jesse predicted, the minute people tried to leave, there was a spray of bullets aimed at the street twenty yards in front of the doorway. The bullets ricocheted, pinging into lampposts, lodging in trees, and smashing car windows.

  “Why does he want people inside? He could cut a lot of people down in the panic.”

  “Maximum damage. I think there’s a bomb planted in there. Demolition was one of Lee Harvey’s specialties.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Do you think you can make it inside?”

  “Sure, Jesse,” Suit said, voice cracking slightly.

  Jesse grabbed Suit’s arm. “Look, Luther, I know you don’t ever want to get shot again and you’re newly married—”


  “It’s not that. What am I supposed to do when I get inside? I can’t tell the people there’s a bomb. That’ll just make the panic worse.”

  “Remember why the place is a landmark and why they had the vigil here tonight.”

  That goofy smile of Suit’s lit up his face. “The Underground Railroad.”

  “Let’s hope Lee Harvey didn’t stop to read the plaque if and when he planted the bomb.”

  “Okay, Jesse.”

  “First, give me your radio and your shotgun.”

  Suit handed Jesse the shotgun and undid the radio from his belt and uniform shirt.

  “Keep low,” Jesse said. “He won’t fire at you if you’re going in. Get those people into the tunnel as fast as you can. Even if the building blows, I think you should be safe. And, Suit, one more thing . . . I couldn’t be prouder of you. Now go save those people.”

  Jesse wasn’t much for praying, but as Suit crawled toward the meetinghouse doors, he closed his eyes and prayed.

  90

  Lundquist was hunkered down behind his cruiser.

  He called to Jesse, “SWAT team’s on the way. Bomb disposal, too.”

  Jesse, the initial rush of adrenaline wearing off, was dizzy and nauseated, the pain of his bruised ribs and sprained limbs reminding him he’d come within a few inches of death less than twenty-four hours ago. He waved for Lundquist to come his way as he knelt over and sucked in large gulps of air.

  “For crissakes, Jesse,” Lundquist said, reaching him. “You going to be sick?”

  “No. Listen. We can’t wait for SWAT or the bomb squad. We’ve got to get people away from the outside of the meetinghouse now.”

  “Agreed. But what about the people inside?”

  “Suit’s handling it. My cops will give us covering fire and then we’re going to move along the cars parked on the opposite side of Salter Street until we pass the gunman’s position. You’re going to give me covering fire and I’ll take him out.”