January Justice

by Athol Dickson

  “You’re saying police officers were shot?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you on the radio in their squad car?”

  “That’s right. I’m going after the shooters.”

  “You’re driving a patrol car?”

  “Yes. I just passed Lincoln on Washington.”

  “Sir, you need to stop the vehicle now and wait for officers to arrive at your location. Where are the officers who were shot? Did you say Washington near McLaughlin?”

  “That’s right. Listen, the guys who shot them, they’re after a woman who lives in Venice. I’m going to her place now. You need to send help over there.” I gave her Olivia’s address.

  “Stand by.” There was a pause, and then she came back on. “Mr. Cutter, you need to stop that car and wait for the police officers to arrive at your location. Just stop right where you are.”

  “I can’t stop. Those guys will kill her. Get some help over there.”

  “What’s the woman’s address again?”

  I repeated it.

  “All right, sir, we’re dispatching a car to that address right now. But you need to pull over where you are and wait for the officers.”

  “Listen to me. I have a friend with the OC Sheriff’s Department. His name is Tom Harper. That’s Sergeant Tom Harper, with the OCSD. Do you have that?”

  “I have it.”

  “Call Harper for background on me. I’m not the perpetrator in this situation.”

  “Mr. Cutter, you must stop the car and wait—”

  I switched off the radio and dropped the handset to the floorboard of the car. Beside it was a plastic evidence bag with my M9 inside. I pressed my knees against the steering wheel for a second or two as I used both hands to open the bag and withdraw the weapon. I checked the magazine, put the M9 on my lap, and gripped the wheel again. I had a fleeting thought of digging in the bag to find my cell phone and calling Simon, but he was at least forty-five minutes away in Newport. I was on my own.

  Olivia’s street was just ahead. Making no effort at surprise, I took the turn at nearly forty, oversteering and sliding sideways. The patrol car sideswiped a Volkswagen van parked on the right side of the street. I regained control, then stepped on the gas and roared on up the block.

  In front of Olivia’s place, I locked all four wheels and came to a stop in a cloud of smoking rubber. I leaped from the car and looked around but saw no sign of the Navigator. Her gate was standing open. I ran through. Her front door was open too. Although I knew it had to be pointless, I made myself run inside. Shouting her name, I charged from room to room. Olivia wasn’t there.

  48

  Back outside, the air was filled with screaming sirens. It seemed police were coming from every direction. If I was still there when they arrived, Olivia had no hope at all.

  I ran to the patrol car. The engine was idling, and the driver’s-side door was standing open. I leaned inside and found my duffel bag, which they had taken as evidence. I kept looking and found another plastic evidence bag with my wallet and my keys. Grabbing the plastic bag, I ran up the street to the Bentley, which was still parked at the curb. I was in it and rolling slowly up the street when a patrol car turned my way off Washington. The car sped past me, lights flashing and siren screaming. I went right onto Washington, heading for the 405. Another patrol car was approaching at high speed on the other side of the street. I made myself go slowly. The second squad car passed me too. Within fifteen seconds, a third squad car screamed by, doing at least sixty with its lights flashing.

  I drove for several blocks trying to decide what to do. Far ahead I saw what seemed to be about a dozen patrol cars parked at every angle in the road. They had found the dead policemen.

  I took the next right, drove a few blocks, then turned left again on Braddock. I thought about the Navigator. The mud. Red mud. I decided to gamble everything. I drove up onto the freeway heading south.

  It wouldn’t take long for the police to broadcast the Bentley’s plates and description, and after that, every cop in California would be looking for it. Most of them would probably shoot on sight and later claim I had brandished a weapon. The last thing I needed to do was call additional attention to myself by the way I drove, so although my every instinct shouted hurry, I made myself keep pace with the other traffic.

  Chances were, the men in the Navigator wouldn’t go to work on Olivia while they were in motion. They’d wait until they had her in a more controlled location. With luck I would be right behind them, so they wouldn’t have time to hurt her badly before I arrived. At least that’s what I told myself. But that logic assumed I knew where they were going. Because of the mud, I was pretty sure I knew where they had been, but even that was only a guess, and it certainly didn’t mean they planned to return to the same location. In a city of almost ten million people, with another three million just to the south in Orange County, the chances I had guessed correctly were slim. Still, I had to do something.

  I had sat by uselessly while Haley died. I hadn’t even tried to save her. The fact that I had been in no condition to save her made no difference to me. I hadn’t tried; that was all that mattered. I wouldn’t let that happen again.

  I drove south for forty minutes to San Juan Capistrano. I took the Ortega Highway exit and turned inland, toward the Santa Ana Mountains. It was far more than a long shot; it was an act of desperation. But I kept thinking about the mud on the Navigator, and the rain in the mountains, and telling myself it was the only shot I had.

  The city fell away behind me as I rose into the hills, my headlights carving deep into the nighttime up ahead. As I rounded a hairpin turn, the high beams caught a coyote in the incandescent glare. It stared at me, twin eyes glowing yellow, and then it vanished like a ghost into the chaparral beside the road.

  Soon a gentle mist began to coalesce on the windshield. I switched on the wipers. I was catching up with the weeping clouds that had drifted inland a few hours before. Rounding one particularly sharp turn, I felt the tires begin to lose their grip on the moist pavement. It was a bitter choice to make, but I had to cut my speed a little. Although there was a certain attractive symmetry in the thought of dying in the way that Haley had, it wouldn’t do to sail off into midair above the canyon far below. Not while there was still a chance Olivia might live.

  I passed the ranger station, made a right turn onto the small road just beyond it, and continued climbing into the mountains. About a quarter-mile along the road, I hit a wall of rain. It pounded the top of the Bentley like the fists of an angry mob. Water rushed down the slope above me, concentrated by the gullies, and spewed across the road like little rapids. In the downpour and the dark, I couldn’t see the potholes or the places where the thin veneer of asphalt had been washed away. The Bentley scraped bottom, bounced, and then scraped bottom again. I had to slow down even more.

  After another half an hour, I reached the place where Medallion and the other guy had nearly killed me. At least I thought it was the place. If I was right, the cattle guard should be about a quarter-mile farther along on the left. I drove at walking speed with the window down, rain soaking my left shoulder as I watched for the cattle guard in the brush beside the road. I had passed it by in broad daylight the first time. The odds of finding it at night in a storm were slim, but I persevered.

  Then I saw the rows of pipe. I stopped and stared into the darkness beyond the cattle guard. In Haley’s Range Rover, I had barely been able to go on from that point when the ground was dry. The Bentley would get stuck for sure. Besides, if they were already up there, I didn’t want to announce my arrival with headlights or the sound of a car engine. I drove on another hundred yards and parked out of sight around the next bend in the road. I checked the safety on the M11 again, verified there was a round in the chamber again, and got out of the car.

  I returned along the road at a trot, crossed the cattle guard, and set out along the rough path up the hillside. The rain was falling in huge drops, completely
soaking through my clothes. It was January, and I was nearly half a mile above sea level, so the water felt like ice cubes slipping down my back.

  Soon I came upon the Navigator. They had stopped by the old rock slide at the same place where I had been forced to leave the Range Rover on my first visit to that place. I approached with my sidearm leveled and ready to fire, but the vehicle was empty.

  There was a deafening crack and a flash of lightning, very close. In the sudden glare, I saw their footprints in the mud. Then it was pitch-black again. I thought about what I had just seen. Four sets of footprints. One small, three a little larger. I remembered the small person who had been the first to emerge from the Navigator when the police stopped it, and the two men who had gotten out next. Two men and a woman, just as Doña Elena Montes had described Castro’s partners in crime after the home invasion. Maybe they were only three. If so, then the four sets of footprints meant Olivia had still been walking when they had arrived. It gave me a little hope. I moved past the rock slide.

  A few yards farther on, a set of footprints branched off to the right, toward the uphill side of the path. It was one of the men, probably, standing guard above the trail ahead in case they had been followed.

  I climbed after him. The rain was turning into hail, little balls of ice slamming into the brush and rocks around me with subtle pops like the sound of rifles in a distant battle. It was a lucky break, covering the sound I made as I climbed. I followed a steep path that was covered by a sheet of water streaming downhill underneath my feet. I kept a good grip on the M11 and used my other hand to grasp at trunks and branches, hauling myself up the trail.

  At a small level place, I paused. It was a rocky outcrop, a ledge, that seemed to extend to the left along the hillside. It was where I would have stationed myself if I had been detailed to guard the path below.

  Ice from the January sky bounced like ping-pong balls on the rock around me. They hurt, but they weren’t big enough to be a danger. I rubbed my free hand against my trousers to clean away the mud. I grasped the M9 in both hands, extending it in the firing position as I followed the outcrop along the hillside. The ledge ahead seemed to run around a little ridge. I eased up to the edge and peeked beyond it. He stood about six feet away, his back to me, looking downhill toward the path. I drew in one deep breath and let it out. With my next breath, I attacked.

  He made it easy, standing clear of the hillside instead of closer to it with his back protected. In two strides I was on him. I slammed the barrel of the M9 hard against the base of his skull. He dropped like the hailstones.

  I crouched beside him to remove his sidearm from its holster. I slipped it into my belt. I kept searching and found a combat knife in a sheath around his ankle. I threw the knife into the bushes. I removed his belt and used it to lash his forearms together behind his back. There was another flash of lightning, farther away this time, but still close enough to illuminate the scene. I got a good look at his face. He wasn’t Medallion. He was the Other One. As he lay on his side, I removed a wallet from one of his hip pockets, and a cell phone from the other. Using the glow of the phone’s screen I searched the wallet. I found an ID card for Ricardo Nuñez, special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

  I had no time to sit and think about the fact that he was DEA. I stood and retraced my steps along the ledge, and then I went clambering and sliding down the water-soaked trail. Back on the main path, I slipped Special Agent Nuñez’s firearm into a small recess in a boulder. I stared hard at my surroundings, making mental notes of the way a branch hung strangely from a sycamore tree nearby, and the shape of three large stones that seemed almost as if they had been stacked atop each other by human hands. If I survived the next few minutes, it would be important to find that spot later.

  With the hiding place firmly in mind, I continued up the path. The hail had mostly abated, but the rain continued pouring down. Gripping the pistol with both hands, I aimed it ahead and quick-walked up the path. Because of the loudly pounding rain, the shack’s glowing window was already in sight above me before I heard Olivia’s screams.

  At the sound of her agony, an emotionless, methodical state of mind settled in, the product of a dozen years of training and firefights. I willed myself to think only of the objective. I assessed the situation. There were most likely two enemy combatants in or near the building. The only question was whether one of them was watching the approach, or whether they were both inside the shack. With the heavy rain as cover, I could possibly get halfway up the slope between the path and the building before a guard observed me. That would still leave ten yards of open-fire zone before I reached their position. Climbing the trail to the shack would be suicide if they were keeping watch.

  Olivia screamed again, and a vision overwhelmed my thoughts. Suddenly, instead of the shack with its glowing window, I saw Haley’s face contorted with terror in the darkness up above, Haley screaming at a mirror on the wall in her trailer, Haley screaming that she saw Satan, Haley screaming out for Jesus as she slammed her fists against the mirror, breaking it, bloodying her hands and yet slamming on and on. I heard the screams and saw Haley in her final moments and knew that what I saw wasn’t a madman’s fantasy but was instead my true and final memory of our last moments together.

  I shook my head. I wiped rain from my eyes. I told myself to think of what was noble, good, and true. The vision faded, but the screams remained. I had to stop the screams this time. I started up the trail, and with my first step out into the open, a strange sense of peace descended. This was what I had been created to do. This was who I was and who I would continue to be in whatever time was left to me without Haley. It wasn’t about a death wish. On the contrary, life at last had regained meaning, even if the end of life was imminent. Climbing that path, knowing bullets might slam into me at any instant, I was happy for the first time since I lost my wife. I still had a purpose, after all. I was useful. It felt like I was going home.

  49

  I reached the cabin. I assumed a position with my back to the wall beside the door. Since nobody had killed me, they must have assumed Nuñez would intercept anyone who came along the path. They must have felt safe devoting their attention exclusively to Olivia. Rain sheeting off the overhanging roof cascaded down before me. Just inside I heard her begging for mercy. I heard two voices, one male and one female. The female laughed and said something. When Olivia screamed again, I went through the door.

  Medallion was very fast. He had his weapon out of its holster within half a second and was already raising it when I reached him, my M9 about a foot away and aimed between his eyes. I said, “Stop.”

  He froze, his sidearm pointed toward my knees.

  I said, “Raise it even slightly, and you’re dead. Just open your fingers and let it fall.”

  His eyes were focused on the small hole at the end of my M9’s barrel as he did exactly what I said. I stepped back out of his reach and said, “Kick it toward me.”

  As his foot sent the weapon sliding across the plywood floor, I heard a woman cursing his stupidity. Looking past him, I saw Olivia. She had been strapped in a standing position to a folding ladder with masking tape at her ankles, waist, and chest. The legs of the ladder had been bolted to the floor. Her head was bowed, and her long black hair hung loosely down, obscuring her face. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, and both of her hands were covered with blood. It dripped freely from her fingers into twin pools on the floor beside her feet.

  Standing beside Olivia, holding a bloody knife, was her torturer. With my M9 leveled at Medallion, I said, “Move away from her, Doña Elena.”

  Instead of moving away, Doña Elena Montes stepped behind the ladder where she had bound Olivia and laid the knife’s edge against the carotid artery in Olivia’s neck.

  I pointed the M9 toward her. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “If I fire from here, there’s no way I could miss.”

  “Maybe,” said the movie star. “Or maybe you’ll hit your girlfrie
nd by accident. And even if you hit me, there’s no way I won’t cut her on my way down.”

  It was probably true. I glanced around the room. A pair of cots with sleeping bags had been moved into the shack, and along one wall stood a large ice chest and some cardboard boxes filled with groceries. A butane camping lantern on a folding table cast the only light across the room. They must have visited the shack earlier to prepare it, bringing up camping gear and food. It explained the muddy Navigator.

  I said, “Are you planning on a long stay?”

  “As long as it takes. Drop your gun, or I’ll slice her pretty neck.”

  “Do that and there won’t be anything to stop me from firing.”

  Medallion lunged toward me. I spun and shot him in the gut. He fell to the floor with a groan.

  When I turned back toward Doña Elena, she was smiling at me beautifully. There was a small splatter of Olivia’s blood on her forehead. She tucked herself more carefully behind Olivia and said, “It seems we have a stalemate.”

  With Medallion on the floor, I lowered my weapon, hoping it would make Doña Elena careless.

  She said, “I thought the police arrested you.”

  “They did.”

  She glanced between the ladder rungs toward Medallion, then back up at me.

  I said, “If you’re hoping Special Agent Nuñez will come to the rescue, forget it. I took him out on my way up here.”

  Lowering my weapon had worked. She exposed more of her face to me, peering over Olivia’s shoulder and thrusting out her lower lip to pout while she still held the knife at Olivia’s throat.

  Her voice changed, became younger, like a little girl’s. “I need someone to help me, Malcolm. Someone who can take care of me. Finish that one off and go kill the other one. I’ll kill her. We can go away together. Rio. Buenos Aires. Paris. Anywhere you want. I have a lot of money, Malcolm. Millions and millions. I’ll share it all with you. I just need somebody big and strong and smart to tell me what to do.”