Valiant

by Bradley Carter

  “Any amount of blood lost is too much,” he says.

  The body on the table next to Jace is completely covered from head-to-toe with a sheet.

  The coroner steps beside the table.

  Spencer holds my hand tight.

  The sheet pulls back, showing a pale and lifeless El Toro.

  The dead eyelids still open, exposing his dark pupils that stare up at the ceiling.

  “I hope it’s Hell he sees,” I say.

  All that’s left is to find the children. To find the shipment. Spencer says it won’t take long. Cole’s attorney knows the gravity of the situation. He knows lives are still at stake. If nothing else, as soon as Haylee wakes up, she can give us more details.

  In a way, I feel I’ve let Christopher down. Like his crossword puzzle, he was counting on me to solve the problem on my own without him having to say anything.

  Unfortunately, after all this time, “The Bull is marked,” still means nothing to me.

  Reverend Jonas swings his face to me with wide and fearful eyes.

  His skin turns pale.

  Tears form.

  You’d think he saw a ghost.

  “The man in the hospital told you this?”

  I nod and Jonas’ face swings back to Bull’s lifeless body.

  “You know something,” says Spencer. “What is it?”

  A tear escapes and trails down Jonas’ face, hanging from his chin.

  His mouth barely opens with his teeth apart.

  He looks to the coroner and asks the sheet be pulled back.

  Reverend Jonas takes a step closer to Bull’s body, his eyes scan the corpses skin.

  His eyes widen more.

  His words are shaken.

  “During my years as the prison Chaplain, the inmates spoke of a man named El Toro—The Bull.”

  The Reverend’s eyes lock in a dead gaze at the lifeless corpse.

  “Even the most vicious, heinous of criminals,” he adds, “they whisper his name as though he’s the devil himself.”

  Jonas’s hands being to shake and rubs his clammy fists together.

  “The prisoners feared him more than anything, even each other. They call him ‘The Bull’ because he’s the last kind of animal you would want to be locked in a cage with.”

  Spencer and I look toward each other and back to Jonas as he continues.

  “To disturb him, to distract him, to challenge him, or to fight him; it meant certain death. Never mind going behind his back. He made others do his work for him. If El Toro wanted you dead, he would shed your blood on someone else’s hands.”

  Noticing Jonas might faint, I grab hold of his arm.

  “I want this to be him,” he says, closing his eyes. “It has to be him.”

  You take away all that’s in a man’s heart and the only thing left is his quest to find closure.

  Revenge. Justice. An end to his suffering.

  When you take that away, he’s left with nothing but an open wound that will never heal.

  Jonas wants nothing more than certainty the man in he sees is El Toro.

  If not, he may never find peace.

  His face rises to The Coroner.

  It takes him a moment to speak hesitant words.

  “Would you please turn him?” he asks.

  The Coroner lifts Bull’s body to its side, exposing the skin of his back.

  The Reverend trembles even more, as though a chill had frozen the air.

  “Jonas?” I ask.

  His stare never leaves the body.

  He shakes his head and another tear slides down his cheek.

  “This is not El Toro,” he says. “This man is not The Bull.”

  Detective Spencer looks to me again and then to the Reverend.

  “How do you know?” he asks.

  Jonas’ wet eyes lift to Spencer’s. His mouth hangs open, trying to get the words out.

  “The Bull is marked,” he says. “The man we’ve been searching for has a tattoo of the animal on his back, underneath his right shoulder blade. A symbol distorted with scars from a burn. A burn he sustained during his escape from prison.”

  “He’s right,” I say.

  The man who lays next to Jace, a man who claimed to be the mastermind behind a massive human trafficking ring, has no such markings.

  No scars.

  No burns.

  No tattoos.

  Not a mark.

  My stomach sinks.

  It occurs to me what Craze was trying to tell me from the second I walked into his room.

  I mouth his words, “You fall easily for misdirection.”

  I had mistaken the phrase as a response to me telling him I thought he was dead, but like another word for ‘deceit,’ he was was giving me the answer and clues from the very beginning. He was giving me pieces of the puzzle from the moment I entered his room.

  Then I think back to the last time I saw Jace Marshall, the moment just before he died.

  He wasn’t trying to get revenge; he was trying to save me.

  That’s why he seemed confused when I called this man, The Bull.

  “Then whose body is this?” asks Spencer, pointing to the corpse.

  The Coroner lifts a file folder from the table and skims through the top page.

  “Warren Lynn Schaeffer. He served as a Special Forces Lieutenant in Afghanistan until 2013.”

  Reverend Jonas’ chin falls to his chest. His eyes close, pushing another tear to drip across his cheeks.

  If nothing else, if he couldn’t save his own children, his hope of saving others was shattered.

  “God be with the children,” he says.

  The higher your hopes, the harder they fall.

  30. BAD FOR BUSINESS

  No matter how many times I’ve said it before, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve alway been fascinated by the thought of what others are doing, close by or far away, at the same moment I wonder about them.

  People’s lives don’t run parallel.

  They each move in different directions.

  Occasionally, a few of them come together and intersect at a specific point.

  Then something happens that each one of them will remember forever.

  The butterflies flap their wings and set the conditions for a hurricane.

  When those butterflies get sucked into a storm, it’s important to know how they got there.

  Attorney-Client privilege. This late in the evening, it takes awhile for Cole’s lawyer to get the prosecutor in for a meeting to set up an offer. Officer Cole has always been timid and afraid. Always looking after himself. Spencer had informed the attorney of the news: the body in the morgue is not the one belonging to the mercenary they call El Toro.

  More than anything, I want a moment alone with Cole. I have no doubt I could get him to talk. But his attorney has him stashed away in an interview room guarded by his Constitutional rights. Regardless, despite the legal advice he’s been given, Cole insists on doing the right thing.

  Reverend Jonas’ voice is quiet as he hangs his head and walks through the empty sanctuary of his church, quoting scripture.

  “All your children will be taught by the Lord, and great will be their peace…”

  Cole leans over a table in an interview room with his superiors and his attorney, drawing on a yellow legal notepad. It’s a map directing them to the small town just outside of the abandoned coalmine, not far from the center of the three cellphone towers. To a small town with nothing more than a school, church, some houses, a hotel, and a grocery story with a pharmacy inside. With a red ink pen, Cole circles one of the buildings, over and over again.

  Sitting next to Haylee’s bed, my fingers don’t stop caressing the side of her face. The only good thing to come of someone’s tragedy is the relief of it being over. From now on, I’ll do everything I can to protect her and I’ll stop at nothing to end the nightmare that spreads across the Midwest.

  My hand grips around Haylee’s fingers as her eyes slow
ly open.

  “I— I wasn’t going without a fight.”

  A tear streams down her temple and she tells me about Austin and how he had been cheating on her the whole time. It’s a talk we have needed that’s long overdue. I give her the same advice I had learned over the years.

  “It goes away,” I say. “The pain subsides. Don’t let him be the reason you never trust or love anyone again.”

  “It’s so hard,” she replies. “It hurts so bad.”

  I push a strand of her hair from her face back behind her ear.

  “To get through this, you have to keep your faith.”

  “You’re letting me get a tattoo now, right?”

  I snicker and kiss her forehead.

  “First, I’m going to get the bastard who did this to you.”

  Reverend Jonas’ stops walking when he reaches the front of the sanctuary and kneels, facing the large cross mounted on the wall.

  “…Then he took the children in his arms and placed his hands on their heads and blessed them…”

  Ms. Pritchett stands in the doorway of Haylee’s hospital room, smiling at the two of us.

  At her side is a somber Randin Marshall.

  I kneel and spread my arms apart, welcoming him with a hug.

  “Your dad was my hero,” I say, holding him tight and brushing my hand over the back of his soft hair.

  He pulls away and I hold the sides of his face, wiping his tears away with my thumb.

  “You can come stay with us any time you want.”

  Randin smiles and nods, then he makes a gun with his thumb and finger and shoots it at me.

  “Pew, pew,” he whispers.

  I do the same and shoot my finger at him.

  “Pew, pew.”

  Ms. Pritchett takes him by the hand as she and I both smile.

  The painted sad eyes of a statue of Jesus Christ nailed to the cross gaze down at Jonas. The eyes are full of sorrow. The Reverend makes a cross with his hand, from his head to his heart, from the left side to the right.

  “…Through the praise of children and infants, you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger-- Psalm 8:2.”

  In a locker room at the police station, I change into a new uniform.

  The bright new letters of the name badge on the front of my vest, read: Avery Spencer.

  On the back of my vest are much larger letters that spell: SWAT.

  This will be my first raid since my promotion.

  The others and myself gather in our roll call room for a briefing.

  Seated at the table next to me, two other officers glance at me and snicker, looking me up and down.

  Our sergeant introduces Agent Bridges from the F.B.I. As they explain where we are going and our plan of action, one of the nosy officers whispers to his friend.

  “She’s so fucking hot. I’d let her throw me down and use those handcuffs on me anytime.”

  Oversized children with no shame.

  I give them the finger, but not the insulting middle one.

  I flip the ring finger of my left hand that’s base is wrapped with my wedding band.

  The cold ring I kept beneath a pillow is now warm once again.

  In his office, the clock ticks as Spencer’s patience wears thin. He paces in front of Cherish who sits in a chair. He has a photo of the dead man in the morgue, Lieutenant Schaeffer. He shows it to her. She turns her face away, and Spencer feels she’s hiding something.

  He reads her reaction to the photos.

  He can tell by her demeanor.

  Her body language.

  The frightful expression on her face.

  “You have to see this from my perspective,” he says. “You are the last person to see Haylee, and you somehow found your way to meet with Officer Cole when she was rescued. How do I know you’re not responsible? How can I be convinced you’re not a part of this whole thing?”

  He threatens to arrest her. He threatens to lock her up, not much different from how she was before. He tells her how prison inmates will treat her once they realize she’s an accomplice to the missing children. Cherish fights back her tears and turns away when Spencer pushes his face in front of hers.

  “Who is El Toro?” he shouts, leaning over and pushing her shoulders back.

  She cries. She wants to avenge her sister and herself as much as the cops do, but she’s shaken, knowing there’s nothing else to do now but to tell the truth.

  This is where Spencer uses his tactics. He changes from her enemy to her friend in an effort to learn what she has to tell him. He kneels beside her chair to comfort her, gently taking hold of each of her hand. He tells her everything will be okay, and he wants to help, but he needs to know the truth.

  “Who is he?”

  Cherish’s wet eyes rise to Spencer’s. Her mouth opens to answer but she hesitates, having to force her words to come out.

  “He’s my father.”

  In The Hallway, El Toro’s henchmen begin gathering the children, lining them up and taking count. At the last minute, when the men were short their quota of products, they had found two more bodies to fill the empty slots.

  Cherish sits across from Spencer, explaining to him about the day she and her sister ran from home. They were alone with their mother, and their father was working late.

  An intruder broke in, the tall tan-skinned man with a scar on his chin, and attacked their mother. She was strangled with a zip tie fastened around her neck. The two girls ran away, leaving their mother behind.

  They were homeless for days, too afraid to return and too afraid to ask for help. It wasn’t until they found a shelter, when Ms. Pritchett took them under her wing.

  Reverend Jonas makes his way to the back to a washroom, quoting more scripture.

  “Leviticus 19:28…” he says, sitting on a bench in front of a locker.

  Agent Bridges enters Spencer’s office and pulls a chair to his desk. Bridges shares what he’s learned.

  The Captain, the torturous convict who had once escaped Ft. Leavenworth Prison, coerced Lieutenant Schaeffer to play the part of El Toro. It was Schaeffer’s face the authorities would hunt for.

  After the death of his family, Schaeffer was left with nothing. However, once he was forced to play the role, he discovered his hopes of revenge. Once he found the Captain had children of his own, he would go after the twin girls.

  Jonas removes his robe and folds it away to his side, leaving him dressed in a gray tank top and black tactical pants. He removes his cheap tennis shoes from his feet and a pair of black boots from his footlocker.

  “…You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead…”

  In his office, Detective Spencer sits with his head supported by his arm. File folders sit open on his desk. On his computer, he’s watching the surveillance video of Mateo Cabal’s jail cell and perks up when he sees Mateo and Reverend Jonas shaking hands.

  Jonas stands and closes his locker.

  “…Nor tattoo any marks upon you…”

  Detective Spencer replays a few seconds of the video, looking closer at the screen. He notices Reverend Jonas wearing a long sleeve robe, and Mateo wearing a long sleeved orange jumpsuit. He observed Jonas’ lips telling the prisoner that he wishes him luck. When their hands shake, Mateo’s wrist twitches as if something was being slipped to his hand—a key.

  The Reverend stuffs a clean set of clothes into a black duffle bag and throws the strap over his right shoulder. Underneath the strap, scarred over from a burn mark, is the tattoo of what was once a bull’s face and horns.

  “…For I am the Lord.”

  Cherish roams the streets of a place just outside the city. It’s a place not far from where she was left for dead in the abandoned coal mines. She walks toward a church, hoping to find some sort of answer. As she makes her first step toward the building, the chirping and whirring sounds of police sirens startle her. She watches and cars and trucks whiz past her in the street, flashi
ng bright red and blue.

  Jonas takes the steps into the basement of his church, to a hallway below, where his men are pushing frightened children out a door at the opposite end.

  Buddha stands against the wall, watching each weeping face as they pass by him.

  He looks to Jonas.

  “We’re good to go,” he says. “The two empty spots have been filled.”

  Jonas nods.

  Austin tried to put up a fight when another member of El Toro’s crew dragged him from his room. It was a confrontation he soon lost after the henchman threw a looped cable tie over his head and threatened to zip it tight. Like the dog he is, Austin is escorted through The Hallway toward the exit by the plastic leash.

  Stumbling from her room is a frightened college girl, dressed down from her torn gym clothes she had been wearing when she was taken. With her straight brown hair draping down her back past her sports bra with a cherry print on the back, and ending at the top of matching gym shorts. Her fingernails painted red. Her lashes wet like the rain had fallen on the Celia of a Venus flytrap. She’s thrown into the group with Austin and the other products and forced along in a heard of immeasurable fear.

  Pushing her along with the others, with his large fist gripped around her arm, is Mateo Cabal.

  Jonas smirks, tossing a stick of gum in his mouth and begins to chew.

  “Any tattoos can only be removed by burning the skin,” he says. “Which can leave a scar…”

  Mia is taken through the exit and joins the rest of the products in a van waiting outside. On the side of the vehicle is a decal for The A Corporation. Along with Austin and the other children, she’s loaded into the van as Jonas follows behind.

  “…Either way,” he says, “it’s bad for business.”

  Myself, and other members of the SWAT team, burst through locked doors. Our guns drawn. Our rifles aiming around each corner, clearing each room. We make our way through a large open room to a set of steps that lead to a basement, to what was known as The Hallway. Down here is nothing. Only empty rooms, stains of blood in the carpet. Mattresses, still warm from the bodies that lay on them just moments before.

  The trace of lingering evil.

  The scent of sweat from the city’s children who will never come home.