by Erik Carter
“But he would never frame someone. Remember, Lee Kimble said all this at a mental hospital where he’d been declared insane.”
Fair interjected. “But Lee said pursuing the insanity plea was his only hope to avoid prison. He knew that the evidence was overwhelming. And he said that he would get his revenge on Lawton.”
“Revenge…” Dale said. “Kimble blames Lawton for being arrested as the Red Riding Hood, so he uses someone he met at the mental hospital, takes advantage of the man’s condition and passion. He breaks the two of them out along with several other guys, prominent guys, people whose escape would lead to a confusing mass manhunt. He convinces the Felix personality that he can help him with his mission, that he can lead him to Abe Ruef’s establishments. As long as Felix agreed to put John to sleep. But in reality, Kimble was attacking the Alfonsis by way of a member of the Fair family, creating a mob war between the two criminal families through which District Attorney Beau Lawton built his career.”
Yorke shifted in her chair again. Clearly she was uncomfortable with Dale’s theory, but she was starting to believe it.
She finished for him. “Thinking he was going to destroy both the man’s credibility and his career. When, in fact, Beau was able to use the mob war Kimble created to his advantage, stopping the attacks before they happened and making a string of highly-publicized arrests. And then you brought in Jonathan Fair.”
“We brought in Jonathan Fair,” Dale said.
Yorke strummed her fingers on the table. “Kimble’s revenge scheme was ruined. What does he do now?”
“He finds a new way to get his revenge.” Dale thought about this for a moment. His eyes lit up. “Yorke, where is Beau right now?”
The question rattled Yorke. Her lips parted. “I think he—”
There was a sudden commotion from the hallway.
Yorke went to the door and opened it. She stood for a moment.
“Something’s happening. Everyone’s watching the news.”
She closed the door and walked back in. She got on her tip toes to turn on the television set mounted in the corner of the room toward the ceiling. She flipped the channel dial. A live news program appeared.
A female reporter with a microphone was on the steps of the Hall of Justice, the very building Dale was in, wrangling for position with the crowd as she followed two suited men heading for the doors. One of the men was gigantic, maybe 300 pounds. The other was of average build with an immaculate suit, slicked back hair, and a small mustache.
“Oh my god!” Jane said. “My father! He’s come for us!”
She reached across the table for Jonathan.
“Mr. Fair,” the reporter said to the large man. “Why have you suddenly shown up here at the Hall of Justice?”
“To meet with the district attorney. I understand he has two of my children,” he said, not looking at the woman.
“And why have you brought Angelo Alfonsi with you? Are your two families not at war?”
“Don’t believe everything you hear. Solidarity. We’re here to set the record straight.”
The two men made it through the doors. The crowd continued to shout questions at them.
The reporter turned back to the camera. “An amazing turn of events here at 850 Bryant. Only time will tell what—”
Yorke killed the TV. She turned to Dale, a grim expression on her face.
Jane bolted out of her chair.
“I knew it! I knew I shouldn’t have come here! I knew he’d come for us.” She looked at her brother. “Come on, John. I’m getting us out of here.”
Dale grabbed her wrist, guided her back down into her chair. “You know I can’t let you do that. Your brother’s been arrested.”
“But he’s come for us!”
She had reached full hysteria. She was nearly hyperventilating.
“Jane, listen to me, please. There is no safer place in the city for you than this building.”
It was right then that the lights went out.
Chapter Forty-One
It was dark. Nearly pitch black. Just a tiny bit of light creeping in through the cracks of the door.
Next to him, Dale could hear Jane’s panicked breathing. He could just see in the darkness as she reached across the table for her brother again.
And then there were shouts from the hallway. Commotion. Fearful screams.
And a gunshot.
Jane shrieked.
Dale tried to find Yorke. He could just make out her form.
“There hasn’t been an alarm,” he called out to her. “How the hell could someone get a weapon past security?”
“It’d have to be someone really familiar with the building,” Yorke said in a prompting tone.
Dale took her meaning.
“Like a former assistant district attorney,” he said.
Lee Kimble.
Jane was breathing harder now.
“Or criminals who know the building inside out!” she screamed. “Like my father’s men.”
Dale drew his gun. He saw Yorke move through the darkness and lock the door.
“Everyone up,” Dale said.
The others stood, and Dale tipped the metal table onto its side. It hit the floor with a loud clang.
“Behind the table,” he said.
Dale and Yorke positioned themselves on either end of the upturned table, guns aimed around the edge and with John and Jane protectively between them.
More screams and chaos from outside. Another gunshot.
The door handle rattled.
Jane wailed.
The handle rattled again, harder. Violently.
Jane moved frantically next to Dale. He could feel her wrapping her arms around her brother.
A voice screamed from behind the door. A man.
“Open it!”
Sounds of keys jingling.
A pause.
And the door opened.
Squeaking hinges.
A small, bright light. It darted over the room, bouncing, streaking. Searching. A flashlight.
Two figures. Barely illuminated.
In the scant light, Dale could see a gun.
The voice called out again.
“I’ve come for Jonathan Fair!”
Beside Dale, Jane’s body closed in tighter around her brother, pulled him down.
“Drop your weapon!” Dale said.
One of the figures raised the gun at the other figure’s head.
The second man was a hostage.
“I’ll kill him! Where’s Fair?”
Yorke yelled out. “Drop it now!”
The lights came back on.
Dale squinted.
A fraction of a second. That’s all it took him to register.
Two men. Lee Kimble with a gun aimed at the other man, his hostage...
Beau Lawton.
Lawton’s eyes fell on Dale’s for a moment. Fear. Panic. Not an ounce of the grit and determination Dale had grown accustomed to.
Kimble bolted to the right side of the table. Toward Yorke.
A crackling noise from the ceiling.
The lights went out.
Darkness again.
Confusion. A hand grabbed at Dale. He swung blindly. Hitting nothing but air. The hand wrapped around Dale’s arm, twisting, and his gun fell to the floor.
The lights fluttered on.
Kimble was over him. His eyes pierced down, glaring into Dale. A deranged look. Kimble had one arm—the one holding his gun—wrapped around Lawton’s neck, and with his free hand he reached toward Fair, forcing Dale away with his knee.
Jane pushed between them, tried to get Kimble away.
A gunshot.
Squeaking. Shoes on cement. Dale glanced. Yorke. Stumbling backwards. Squeezing her arm. A grimace on her face. Blood flowing between her fingers.
The lights went out.
Blind again.
More struggling. Dale landed a good punch to who he thought—hoped—was Kimble.
&nbs
p; Then something cold and hard struck across his head. Metal. A gun.
And Dale was out.
Chapter Forty-Two
Dale woke up, and there was a beautiful woman looking down upon him. For a moment, he was happy and peaceful.
Only for a moment. Until he heard an alarm in the distance and realized where he was and the situation he was in, the reason why the beautiful woman was there.
“You’re awake,” Jane said, gently touching the throbbing area on the side of his noggin.
The Hall of Justice. The attack. The blow to the head. Yorke getting shot.
Dale bolted up. “Yorke!”
“Careful,” Jane said.
Dale spotted Yorke, at the front of the room, speaking rapidly, urgently into a phone, blood down the side of her body.
The side of Dale’s head exploded with a dull, throbbing pain. He assessed the situation.
Just him, Jane, and Yorke.
No Jonathan Fair.
And no Kimble or Lawton.
An alarm blared in the hallway. People shouting.
Yorke hung up. She stepped closer, dragging with her one of the chairs that had been thrown to the far wall. Her right sleeve was soaked in blood, and the injured arm hung at her side. She grimaced as she sat.
“They’re gone,” she said. “No one saw how they got out.”
Dale looked at her arm. He couldn’t tell exactly where the wound was, but there was a massive amount of blood. And her face was pale.
Dale scooted over to her and took out his pocketknife, placed a hand on her leg.
“Don’t worry, Yorke,” he said and gave her a wink. “I’m not getting fresh with you.”
He pinched a fold into the fabric of her khakis then pierced it with his knife. He yanked, tearing the lower half of the pant leg off. Her calf was exposed. Smooth and shapely. Dale admired it for only half a moment before he slid the loop of clothing over her boot then grabbed it from the top and tore down, making a big, wide strip of cloth. He folded it over, slid it under her arm, and tied it tight around the wound.
“Did you call an ambulance?” he said.
“They already have one coming,” Yorke said. “But it just grazed me. I need to help you find them.”
“No, you need medical attention.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yorke, you—”
“I’m going with you.”
“Yorke…”
“I’m fine, Conley.”
“Hanna!” Dale said. It was the first time he’d used her first name. “You. Were. Shot.”
Yorke didn’t answer. She exhaled slowly. Finally, she said, “You know that’s why Beau personally picked me for this assignment.”
“What do you mean?” Dale said.
“Doesn’t it seem odd to you that when there was an escape so significant it came to be called the ‘Second Alcatraz,’ the DA personally chose a deputy marshal who hasn’t had a fugitive case in a year, whose last case was a disaster resulting in the deaths of innocent people?”
Dale shook his head. “It seems to me like a guy trying to give his ex-girlfriend an opportunity to prove herself again on the biggest stage possible.”
“No, Conley. No. Let’s assume Beau really did frame Lee Kimble. Then of all the Second Alcatraz escapees, Kimble is the one Beau would want brought in with the least amount of fanfare—the guy who he framed as a child-killer. The longer Beau could keep the media circus surrounding Jonathan Fair going, the more he could keep attention off the other escapees, including Kimble. So he brought on the screwup to hunt for Fair, the person he assumed would fumble about foolishly and not be able to bring him in.”
Dale thought over her idea. And he reluctantly agreed with her. But he couldn’t tell her that.
So he didn’t reply.
Yorke looked at the floor. Her face was long, defeated. And growing paler from the blood loss.
Voices from the doorway. The medical crew had arrived.
Dale put a hand on Yorke’s shoulder. “Go with them. Please. I’ll handle this.”
She gave him a long, resigned look and stood up. The medical crew led her out of the room.
The Hall of Justice was almost entirely evacuated by the time Dale and Jane exited a fire door on the side of the building. Outside, it was dark. The early evening air was cool—and filled with the sounds of pandemonium.
Swarms of people moved in all directions. Alarms sounded. There was a fire truck parked on Bryant, and the horn of another blared from about a block away as it approached. People everywhere. Cops. Lawyers. Civilians. Gawkers. And there was a sense of absolute confusion and panic. It was a real-life lesson in sociology—the breakdown of society when order and leadership have been severed.
Dale looked toward the front corner and spotted some of the media.
“Shit,” he said. “Come on.”
He led Jane away to an alley that ran between two of the buildings in the Hall’s complex. There was a trash can to the left. Dale went toward it, and as he did, he brought both hands to his beard.
And he yanked the damn thing off.
He’d been wanting to do that so badly.
He tossed the beard into the trash can then scratched his face like a madman. The relief was absolutely divine. He rubbed and massaged and twisted his cheeks, stretched his lips.
Jane was staring at him.
He stopped.
“Sorry, the media recognize me as having the beard. And we need a couple minutes alone to figure this out.”
She looked to the trash can and back to him, puzzled.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“You’re even cuter without it,” she said.
A compliment from a pretty girl. No matter how many Dale got, it always gave him a thrill—and a boost to his more-than-ample ego.
“If we’re gonna figure out where Kimble took your brother and Lawton, we need to be methodical,” Dale said. “First of all, where would...”
He trailed off. He’d noticed something in Jane’s face.
She was shellshocked.
The initial need to tend to Dale’s injury followed by their rush to exit the building had kept her mind focused. But now she was drifting away. Rapidly. Dale knew that he would need to be patient with her. She’d just been in a gunfight. Without a gun. And lost her brother for a second time, after only briefly being reunited.
“Jane, I know this has been traumatic, but I need you to focus with me. For just a minute. So we can find Jonathan. Your brother said that Kimble and Felix had discussed a safe house, somewhere far from the city that they would use if things went south. And I have an idea where it might be.”
Jane perked up. She stepped closer.
Dale continued. “It was the picture you showed Felix that brought Jonathan back out. The memory of you—a personal anachronism. And I’m thinking it was something anachronistic like this that pulled Jonathan out for a moment and let him hear Kimble’s conversation about the safe house. Jonathan said that when he woke up for that moment, Felix and Kimble were talking about something that couldn’t be felled. Something that couldn’t be brought down by nature or man. There’s a historically significant tree—one that couldn’t be felled—not terribly far from here, in the redwoods. Somewhere off the Avenue of the Giants. But I can’t recall the name. Something like—”
“It’s called the Immortal Tree,” Jane said. She held a shaky hand to her mouth. “My family owns a cabin near Redcrest, off the Avenue of the Giants. We went there on vacations away from the city. John and I used to hike to the Immortal Tree.”
Dale ran his thumb over his chin as the pieces fell together in his mind. “And the Immortal Tree is famous for not being brought down. Not by nature—flooding in the ’60s, a direct lightning strike—or by loggers who tried to bring it down in 1908. That’s two years after Felix’s reality of 1906. Felix somehow resurfaced one of Jonathan’s memories, and the anachronism brought Jonathan forward for a moment. Lawton told Fair they�
��d go there if they needed to escape. Their safe house is your family’s cabin.”
Dale watched a group of cops sprint by on the sidewalk beyond. Everyone was preoccupied with the attack on the heart of the city’s law enforcement and legal system. Law and order was in disarray. There was no time to coordinate any assistance. Dale and Jane were going to have to do this on their own.
He turned back to her. “We need to take a road trip.”
Chapter Forty-Three
“Stop!” Paulie shouted to the driver.
The Rolls-Royce came to an abrupt halt.
“What is it, Pop?” Danny said from the seat beside him.
Paulie waived his hand, quieting him, keeping his attention on what he’d seen in a gap between the buildings.
Janey.
He hadn’t seen her in person since she was eighteen, and, until today, he hadn’t even seen a photo of her since she graduated college. As he looked at her now, she was ... a woman. An actual, adult woman. And beautiful. She looked like her mother.
She and a man dashed toward an orange De Tomaso Pantera, which sat farther away, double-parked behind the main building. The man was in civilian clothes—jeans, a brown shirt, motorcycle boots—but he was most likely a cop. The two of them got into the Pantera, the engine roared to life, and the car bolted off.
“Follow the Pantera,” he said to the driver.
The Rolls-Royce moved again.
Paulie turned around and looked through the rear window. His other cars were following after him.
And so were the Alfonsis.
Chapter Forty-Four
Arancia howled as Dale and Jane rocketed north up 101, siren blaring, flashing lights pulsing into the night. They were well beyond the city now, trees on either side of the highway. The moon was bright, giving everything a majestic glow.
“You’re sure you’ll remember how to get to the cabin?” Dale said.
“You kidding?” Jane said. “Seared into my memory. I could get there blindfolded.”
She leaned over again from the passenger seat, gave the speedometer another inspection. She sure was fretful. It was understandable if her nerves were shot after everything that had just happened back in San Francisco, but Dale got the sense that she was always the anxious type, which made sense given the protective, mother-like position she’d adopted toward her brother.