Everyday People

by Louis Barr

Vogel and Walsh admitted to participating in the murders of the kidnapped victims. But, according to them, they had no choice. Tucker had kept them fearing for their own lives over the past five years.

  “Sure, any court will buy that argument,” I said. “It went over well during the Nuremberg Trials.”

  According to Vogel and Walsh, they’d also followed Tucker’s orders for five years because he’d guided them through the commission of perfect crimes.

  Vogel looked over his shoulder and smirked. “Did you know Jud promised to pay Blake and me each two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for reporting the Danning kidnapping and lying to you and the cops?”

  “If Tucker ever pays you, that amount won’t even cover your legal fees. And I’d suspected someone paid you to lie.”

  “Very good, Sherlock,” Vogel said. “The rest of the five-million-dollar-ransom went to Tucker for planning and committing Danning’s abduction.” Vogel turned and grinned. “Tucker’s following Diana Danning into your office…that was ballsy and brilliant, don’t you think?”

  “No, I call it balls-out brainless. Tucker made an ass-ton of mistakes, but the worst had to be his coming into my office using his buddy’s name.”

  Vogel scowled. “How did you know about Tucker and Scott Davidson?”

  “I’m a detective. People tell me shit, I put everything together and reach conclusions.” I shoved Vogel’s ass with the sole of my boot. “Shut the fuck up and keep moving.”

  “Blake and I want to turn state’s evidence,” Vogel began. “Our testimony will put Jud Tucker on death row. For that, we want full immunity.”

  “Full immunity, or worst case scenario, a few months in county lockup, and a couple years of probation,” Walsh said.

  “Your lawyers will need to negotiate a plea deal with the prosecutor,” I said.

  And good luck with all that. Miniature elephants would fly out of these psycho boys’ asses before any prosecutor would even consider a plea involving county jail time and probation. At best, Vogel and Walsh might get life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in lieu of them joining Tucker on death row.

  Life without the possibility of parole or death row, whichever or what-the-fuck-ever, I hoped the Bobbsey Twins from hell and Tucker would never again step outside prison walls. Manipulative, organized, and able to fly under society’s radar, they struck me as textbook psychopaths. They saw nothing wrong with abduction, rape, torture, and cold-blooded murder for profit. I could not venture a guess as to how many nameless victims’ bones would be found buried on the Ranch. I doubted Tucker himself knew the exact number.

  I briefly considered putting bullets in Vogel and Walsh’s heads, saving taxpayers the cost of finding them guilty of multiple felonies. Their prints were all over the guns they’d pulled on me. Staged properly, I could claim self-defense.

  Then I considered Nietzsche’s warning about gazing long into the abyss. Beware, that when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. I would trust law enforcement and the criminal justice system to do what needed to be done with Blake Walsh, Blaine Vogel, and Jud Tucker.

  I followed Vogel and Walsh through a narrow opening in a long row of tall spruce trees. A windowless cinderblock building stood ahead, backed by a second windbreak of towering pines.

  I pulled out the keys I’d taken from Walsh. “Try running, and I’ll put your little dicks in the dirt without thinking twice about it. Do I make myself clear?”

  Vogel and Walsh nodded. I shoulder-holstered my Glock.

  Fisting their shirt collars, I lifted them and dropped them on their asses. With their hands Plasticuffed behind their backs and their arms tied together, standing without my assistance would take teamwork and effort.

  The key slid into the lock and twisted easily. I pulled open the thick steel door.

  Hot air and the pong of emptied bowels, urine, and the coppery tang of blood rushed out the opened door like explosive vomit. I stepped aside, gulped semifresh air, and exhaled a string of expletives. Regaining my equilibrium, I slid a hand along the right side of the jamb and found a light switch. Twin rows of fluorescent tubes flickered, then glowed steadily.

  Again grabbing their shirt collars, I lifted Vogel and Walsh to their feet and shoved them into Jud Tucker’s private prison. We entered an open room with a small kitchen, threadbare sofa, and an antique console TV. The hallway to my right had a row of five solid steel cell doors. Two of them stood open.

  I again frisked Walsh and Vogel, shoved each into an empty cell, then closed and locked the doors.

  I checked the next cell. A man who could’ve been twentysomething or sixtysomething lay supine and nude on his bunk. He appeared to be breathing, but didn’t respond to my voice. The stench of shit and the ammonia burn of the piss-soaked bunk forced me to hold my breath. But another odor lay beneath this unknown man—the reek of decaying flesh. I did not need to roll him over to check; I recognized the smell of decubitus ulcers. Attempting to move him would do more harm than good.

  Another nude man, awake and breathing evenly, sat still as death in the next cell. Dried drool caked his chest. He’d also emptied his bowels and urinated on the thin mattress. He gave no sign of either seeing me or hearing my voice.

  I found Shane Danning in the next cell. He lay on his stomach in the nude, his face pointed toward the door. His eyes remained closed at the sound of my footsteps. His back wounds had remained open from repeated whippings. The deeper slashes appeared to be infected. I touched Shane’s forehead. He felt feverish. His hands and feet were roped to the bunk. I pulled my KA-BAR knife and cut him loose.

  “Shane, can you hear me?”

  His eyes opened to slits. He spoke in a hoarse whisper. “No more…please.”

  “I came to get you out of here.”

  Danning’s eyes opened wider.

  “You need water. Can you sit up?”

  He closed his eyes. “No.”

  I checked my phone. I did not have a signal. I told Shane I’d be back with water. Stepping outside the cinderblock prison, I checked again for a signal, frowned, and ran for the farmhouse.

  In Jud Tucker’s kitchen, I lifted the wall phone’s receiver and punched in Captain Flynn’s cell number. I waited for it to ring.

  The Ranch lay far beyond the captain’s jurisdiction, but the Danning case belonged to Flynn. I didn’t doubt there would be cooperation between law enforcement agencies and jurisdictions. Flynn answered my call on the first ring.

  “I found Danning and two other men alive. All of them need immediate medical attention and hospitalization.”

  “Roger that. I’m on my way with an interdepartmental posse and EMTs.”

  “It’s bad, but once the staties and feds bring in the cadaver dogs, sensor probes, and a helicopter with an infrared camera, it’s going to get far fucking worse.”

  “Ten-two,” Flynn said, letting me know he’d received my message and its core meaning.

  “I also have two suspects cuffed and subdued. Since Jud Tucker isn’t one of them, I’m assuming he’s at the casino.”

  “Not to worry. He’s presently in his office under surveillance by the feds and local police.”

  “What’s your ETA?”

  “About ten minutes,” Flynn said.

  I hung up the kitchen wall phone. Seconds later, it rang. Expecting Flynn, I answered, “Did you forget something?”

  After a few seconds of silence, I started to hang up. Jud Tucker’s voice sounded way beyond pissed. “You fucking lied to me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re out of time,” I said.

  Tucker fell silent, but I heard him breathing and sensed his rage. I gave the knife another twist. “You know, there is some honor among thieves. Child killers are at the bottom of the prison pecking order. While you’re in county lockup awaiting trial, you’ll likely get gang-raped repeatedly until someone shivs you.”

  “Fuck you,” Tucker said.

  “But hey, should you make it out of
county lockup alive, enjoy your short stay as a guest at one of California’s beautiful maximum security prisons. You won’t stay alive for long, as Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t.” Letting the handset fall to the kitchen floor, I heard Tucker’s tinny condemnations. Grabbing three bottles of water from the refrigerator and sliding them into my pack, I ran back to Tucker’s private prison.

  I returned to Shane’s cell. “Let me help you to sit up.” Kneeling, I wrapped his arms across my shoulders and told him to lock his fingers. Emaciated, Shane wasn’t heavy. I gingerly lifted his legs, sat him up, and began giving him sips of water.

  Distant sirens drew nearer. “Do you hear that? You’re going home.”

  Shane tried to smile. Tears streaked his dirty cheeks.

  I gave him another sip of water. I’d found Danning injured and scarred for life in more ways than one. But soon, I’d let him know he had an unknown brother, nephew, and aunt.

  Flynn and I had closed the Danning case.

  It sounded good in theory.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Lied To and Locked In

  Jud Tucker, Mystic Canyon Casino, Wednesday, May 23

  I’d ordered Steele to meet me in my office. But the motherfucker outsmarted me. How the hell he discovered my ranch’s address went way beyond my realm of understanding. My certainty Steele couldn’t find Danning had been the ace up my sleeve.

  Taking a CCTV look at all the casino’s parking lots, ramps, and the valet underground garage, I spotted three beige four-door sedans and a pair of black SUVs with tinted windows. The fucking cops had invaded my workplace. I’d gotten lied to and locked in.

  Steele evidently overpowered Vogel and Walsh. Adding insult to defeat, the two college boys doubtless spilled their fucking guts. They would turn state’s evidence, no fucking doubt about that.

  I looked up as the lights in my office flickered.

  I’d underestimated Steele again. When I heard his voice on my kitchen’s wall phone, I knew I’d gotten fucked seven ways to Sunday. I pounded my fist on the desk.

  But I had one more move to make.

  I’d found all of Steele’s email addresses and phone numbers. I turned to my office keyboard and sent a message to Steele’s home PC.

  Then I deleted all the files and the operating system in my office computer. I checked my watch. It was 1140 hours. I knew I didn’t have much time left.

  I pushed away from my desk, crossed my office, and stood before the floor-to-ceiling one-way glass to watch the players seated at the high stakes poker tables. Cameras gave me a view of every square inch of the casino’s gaming floors, all the common areas, and every gambler.

  But I enjoyed looking through the mirrored glass, watching the hope in players’ eyes turn to dismay as they lost this month’s rent or mortgage and car payments, not to mention the money to feed themselves and their families. Most of these fucking fools would lose every dollar they had until their next payday. Then they’d return.

  Some people considered casinos a fool’s paradise; some called them dens of iniquity. But all players knew the first rule of gambling: The house always wins. Still, they came.

  The lights in my office flickered again. I wondered what the fuck was causing that. I checked the time. It was 1145 hours. My desk phone rang. I answered the call.

  “Mr. Tucker, there’s something hinky going on with the power. Every slot machine that’s in use has locked up and is playing jackpot music. You need to get down here.”

  “Get everyone out of the casino now,” I said.

  A minute later, a recorded announcement told casino guests to go immediately to the nearest exit and follow security guards’ instructions.

  I turned to the line of CCTVs and watched the casino’s guests being shepherded to the doors. All the lights went out, and three thousand slot machines went dark. The emergency lighting came on.

  I watched four federal agents and six uniformed cops push their way through the casino’s main doors. I no longer gave two shits about either the cops storming my casino, or anything about my job, or the Ranch’s black-market organ business, or my latest killing game miscalculations.

  But I would not spend the rest of my life in prison.

  It wouldn’t be long before the feds and the local cops took a battering ram to my office door. I pulled my Beretta from my middle desk drawer. They’d catch me all right—with the back of my head missing.

  Hearing the cops outside my office door, I slid the gun into my mouth.

  The door crashed open.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Hocus Pocus

  Jane Day Child, The Houston Shoot, Friday, June 15

  As my surname suggests, I’m an indigenous American; what it does not say is I’m a six-foot-two, male-to-female transgender.

  Topping off my bio, I’m the first person a Steele Productions actor calls when she or he gets busted for lewd conduct, domestic violence, public intoxication, making an indecent proposal to an undercover cop, shoplifting, assaulting a photographer, ass-ending a police cruiser, and so on. I’ll mention that with little or no provocation, an actor can turn crazier than a rat trapped in a tin shithouse. It’s my job to post bail and hustle the artiste’s sorry ass out the police station’s back door before the media swoops in.

  Presently, I’m working the Houston shoot of Peter Remington. It’s often hella boring on the set, but I figure it beats working in a reservation’s salmon cannery.

  Someone above my pay grade changed Raoul Martinez’s name to Raul Martin. His hair color went from a sun-streaked brown to blond, emphasizing his green eyes and golden complexion. Raul Martin is a hot devil all right.

  As to the Peter Remington movie, Steele Productions’s marketing and promotions department continued to wage a media blitzkrieg. It’s hard to miss seeing Raul Martin and his costar, Vanessa Holmes, on the covers of tabloids, Sunday newspaper inserts, movie magazines, and in skimpy swimwear on fourteen-feet-high and forty-eight-feet-wide billboards. Together, they’ve been making the rounds of the TV talk-show circuit. Stills and videos of Raul and Vanessa from the Peter Remington shoot can be seen all across the worldwide web simply by entering “Raul Van” in your browser. Steele Productions’s dreamweaver machine created two hot new stars before the release of their first film. It’s all Hollywood hocus-pocus.

  For the filming of tonight’s scene, the location manager rented a Houston area roadhouse. The set decorator, prop master, and art director gave the old joint a warmer, less dumpish look, and the set was ready to go.

  The gaffer, grips, camera operators, and their assistants patiently waited for further instructions and/or changes. The scene’s extras included folks dressed as a ranch hand, a cable technician, a pair of auto mechanics, an oil rigger, a gaggle of buxom bottle blondes, run-of-the-mill rednecks, and a smattering of store managers with their white collars loosened and their Sunday pants on, all in their places with sunshiny faces. And all this for a scene that would run under five minutes.

  I stopped Rick Jackson, a reporter-photographer with the tabloid Worldwide Tattler, at the roadhouse’s doors. Looking straight into Jackson’s beady eyes in his shit weasel face, I demanded his phone. He gave it to me. Then I held out my hand for his other phone. “Don’t make me frisk you.” He handed me his backup phone.

  “Mr. Jackson, you know how it works: No photos or videos of anything or anyone before the end of the shoot. If you break the rule, I’ll smash your camera, then I’ll bust your sorry ass while I’m kicking it out the door and down the street.” What can I say—I’m not at all pleasant when I’m forced to deal with tabloid tools.

  Following a final adjustment of the lights, Vona Steele, the film’s director-producer, ordered, “Roll sound, roll cameras.”

  A four-piece band played an old Hank Williams tune. Raul and Vanessa two-stepped around the dance floor. They began speaking their lines.

  I could literally see and feel the chemistry between the two actors. If I, jaded broad that I am, recogn
ized it, theater audiences and critics couldn’t miss the magic between Raul and Vanessa. I’ve been on enough shoots to know this movie would be fucking huge.

  I kept my eyes peeled for potential problems. An extra wearing brand new rigger boots stood at the edge of the dance floor, smirking at Raul and Vanessa.

  I ambled over and wedged myself between the rigger and a rhinestone cowboy.

  “They sure can dance,” I whispered in the rigger’s ear.

  The cute bastard put his hand on my ass. If the cameras hadn’t been rolling… I’ll leave it at that.

  Still watching Raul, the rigger leaned closer and whispered in my ear, “He’s too good-looking not to be a fag.” He added, “Course, all fudge packers can dance like darkies.” His lips curled into a malicious smile. “Think I’ll follow his pansy ass out the door, shove him into an alley, and give him a taste of real Texas beef.”

  I didn’t reply, but thought, Fucking great, we got a homophobic racist, queer-in-denial rough trader, rapist, and overall shit rag on the set. I’d report this asshole to Vona. Maybe she could see that he lost his SAG card.

  The song ended. Vona Steele yelled, “Cut, print it.”

  The rigger extra moseyed behind Raul and Vanessa as they headed for the bar. I followed one step behind him. I squawked my rover twice, alerting security guards of a potential problem.

  I saw the tabloid’s Rick Jackson taking candid shots of Raul and Vanessa as they talked at the bar. I focused my attention on the pretend rigger.

  The rigger extra shoved Raul against the bar and kissed him on the lips. I caught the flash of that shitshow Rick Jackson’s camera.

  Raul connected his fist with the extra’s nose, dropping him screaming and bleeding to the floor. A real lightweight, the extra doubled over and puked. Two company security men manhandled him off the set.

  Sure as I’m standing here, Rick Jackson and the pretend rigger staged this little incident. I could see the tabloid’s cover photo and headline: “Raul Martin Gay As Springtime!” Or something similar.