Vigilante

by Stephen J. Cannell

  Off to his left, I could see a portable camp stove like the one I’d found in the Airstream trailer. Next to that was a big ice chest. Sitting on top of the chest, a crossbow and a leather shoulder quiver full of red darts.

  “Aughhh…,” I said, trying to get his attention. I was groggy, but as I continued to regain consciousness, I could feel some of my strength coming back. Whatever he had shot me with seemed to burn off quickly. He turned from what he was working on and looked directly at me.

  “Where am I?” I said weakly.

  He studied me for a moment with those cold gray eyes but said nothing. Then he turned and went back to his project. I tried to move my arms and legs again but still couldn’t. I looked down a second time and now my vision had cleared slightly and I realized I was lashed to the arms and legs of the chair with heavy fishing line. It was looped around my wrist at least ten times, hard to see and impossible to break.

  “Lee Bob?” I asked, forming the words carefully around my thickened tongue.

  “Bouche ta gueule,” he said, in Cajun French, his voice strangely reedy and high-pitched. “You in my cachot. Ecoute-moi, no gris gris.”

  Not a clue what that meant. He turned back to his workbench and refused to look at me or say anything more.

  Half an hour later I heard a metal door slide open and footsteps moved into the concrete room. Nix Nash was suddenly standing in front of me, wearing a tailored tuxedo with a bow tie and cummerbund. He had a festive red carnation pinned to his lapel, a black overcoat draped across his left arm.

  “Guess you should’ve joined my team after all,” he said dryly.

  “Where’s Marcia? What did you do to her?”

  “She’s waiting in the shed outside.”

  “What … what did he shoot me with?”

  “Lee Bob hunts gators with a crossbow in the ’Glades. It’s his thing. Loads those darts he makes with succinylcholine. It’s a fast-acting skeletal relaxant. A neuromuscular blocker. It can fully paralyze a bull gator in fifteen seconds. It’s an animal tranquilizer, so no coroner ever puts it on a blood tox screen. Won’t show up at your autopsy, if you even get one.”

  “You actually think you can get away with killing me?” I asked.

  “Yeah. After Lee Bob does his thing, he’s gonna get lost for a while, go home. Things will cool off.”

  Classic psychopathic egotism. Nix was studying me carefully. I saw flashes of adrenalized excitement in his eyes.

  “I sorta knew it would come down to this after we had our talk on the Bounty,” he said. “I tried to warn you. I offered you a fortune and a chance to work this with me. If you’d listened, none of this would have happened.”

  “You can’t kill us,” I said slowly. “I’m a police officer. Marcia’s an ex–L.A. prosecutor. We both have important friends in Los Angeles. You’ll never get away with it.”

  “You obviously haven’t been paying very close attention,” he said softly. “I would think by now you’d know I don’t leave much to chance.” He grabbed a nearby wooden chair, pulled it over, and straddled it, sitting backward. Then he put his chin on his crossed arms and leaned forward, studying me lazily.

  “The final confrontation,” he said, smiling. “One winner, one loser. It’s like great sex without the complaining.”

  “You haven’t won, and you won’t. People in my department know what’s going on. We found Lee Bob’s Airstream. It’s loaded with evidence. We’re already working on getting a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Not in any law school I attended,” he said. “I admit, you surprised me by finding his hideout so fast, but the fact is, I saw that possibility coming over two days ago. I’ve been covering my bets ever since we took that sail. None of that stuff you found up there in that Airstream is gonna tie up to anything. I had Bobby throw it all away, buy new. His clothes, tread wear on the boots, all the ammo. It will match nothing at Lita’s crime scene.”

  “Then why are you here? Just come to gloat?”

  “I want you to tell me anything that I might not already know.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So you and Marcia won’t have a horrible last hour with Lee Bob before you both die. He’s got a black heart. You don’t want that Cajun miscreant experimenting on you with one of his cane knives.”

  “You knew him in Florida, didn’t you? You blew that bust intentionally so he could get away.”

  Nash paused for a moment pondering that before he said, “I wish it could have been that easy. Unfortunately, I blew that case on the square. It was a mistake, but I was young and impulsive. It was one of the few times I didn’t think things all the way through. It cost me dearly, but it also allowed for me to move on, to grow, to explore my psyche. There were dark parts of me I needed to understand. Then, fifteen years later, after I was out of prison and had sold my show in Miami, I knew I needed some kind of an edge for it to be huge. I knew what Lee Bob was. I understood what drove him, even back when I first busted him in the nineties. He couldn’t speak proper English, which made him impossible for anybody to talk to. That made him a perfect, watertight partner.”

  A small, arrogant smile crossed Nash’s face as he continued. “I learned Cajun. I’d been working airboats, so I already knew that swamp. After I sold V-TV to that local TV station I went back into the ’Glades. It took me a week, but I found him. He’d become even more dangerous than before. He caught and almost murdered me, but using Cajun, I was able to talk him out of it. One day, after things calmed down, he took me to a mud clearing in the middle of the swamp. Nothing but gators, water moccasins, and mosquitoes big as flying beagles. He told me he was building a beautiful city there. ‘Le Gran Batiste,’ he called it. Dreams are powerful things, Shane. They can define or destroy you. There was nothing there but a bunch of stolen lumber and plastic sheeting, but Lee Bob could see a beautiful sun-washed city. I pay him a monthly salary. He’s living to build Le Gran Batiste. It’s all he cares about. Since I sold V-TV, he’s been paid a fortune for the services he’s provided. There’s enough lumber and plumbing stacked on that sandbar now to open up a Home Depot.”

  “And you think you can control him? He’s a serial killer.”

  “You’re wrong. He’s only delusional and territorial. Like the first Cajun settlers, he kills to protect his land. He’s not crazy. He’s motivated by his dream.”

  Nash took a moment to think this over before he said, “I have, however, seen Lee Bob at his tortures. You don’t want to experience that. Marcia’s already come clean. Now you need to tell me what you’ve learned and I’ll see he ends this civilly.”

  “Not interested.”

  Nash heaved a disappointed sigh and stood. “Sorry you feel that way, but I can promise you this much: the ending will be great TV.”

  He looked over at Lee Bob, who had never turned away from whatever he was working on at the bench. “Sors de la chambre à onze, cher,” Nash said, then turned back to face me. “Gotta go. The Children’s Cancer Auction awaits.”

  Then he walked out, leaving me there.

  Lee Bob finally stood up from his workbench and walked toward me. He was holding a damp white washcloth.

  “Avancez,” he said, and grabbed my neck, pulling my head roughly forward. Then he clamped the cloth over my nose and mouth. I held off breathing for as long as I could but finally had to inhale. My nose was suddenly filled with a sweet, pungent odor that clogged my senses.

  CHAPTER

  46

  When I opened my eyes, it was dark outside.

  I was in the backseat of Marcia’s Cad convertible, my hands firmly tied behind me, my feet still lashed together with fishing line. I tried to speak but quickly realized a gag was jammed deep down my throat. I had to be careful breathing to keep from aspirating.

  I looked over and saw that Marcia was also tied up and gagged beside me. Her eyes were bulging with terror.

  Lee Bob Batiste was in the front seat behind the wheel, paying no attention to us, tapping
his bony fingers on the dash. We were parked off a main road in a dirt lot. To my right, half a block down, I could just make out a road sign that said:

  BUENA VISTA

  Buena Vista was in Burbank. Out the other window I could see the exit ramp off the 5 Freeway at San Fernando Boulevard a block and a half away. Something about this location began tugging at my memory, but I couldn’t pull it together because my head was still freewheeling.

  Marcia started to gag from the cloth down her throat. Lee Bob stopped drumming his fingers and turned sharply around in his seat.

  “Tranquille, cher,” he said. “Da loup-garou ça s’advance.”

  I didn’t know what most of that meant, but I’d taken a trip to Mardi Gras when I first got out of the service and thought I remembered that a loup-garou was some kind of fictitious Louisiana wolf-man-monster that wanders around in the night and eats the dead.

  Lee Bob checked his watch, turned back, and continued to look out the front windshield. He seemed to be waiting for something. I looked again at Marcia, whose eyes were now darting back and forth in panic; the cords in her neck were rigid.

  I was so damn mad at myself for having let this happen. One of these days, if I live, maybe I’ll just follow the fucking manual.

  I tried to gather my wits. After a few more minutes, I pinned down what was familiar about this particular location. It had a bloody ten-year history.

  The railroad intersection with San Fernando and Buena Vista Street in Burbank had produced a number of fatal collisions with the Metrolink. The cops called it the Death Crossing. In the past few years, there’d been twelve train hits on cars at this spot. The intersection was formed like a Y, which made it hard to see up the tracks when you merge from the left. The crossing was equipped with the normal array of warning lights and crossing guards, but the lights face south and are not easily seen by cars crossing the tracks from San Fernando Boulevard on the east. According to half a dozen lawsuits filed against the City of Burbank and the Metrolink, it’s possible to make a turn onto the tracks before the metallic crossing guard drops and you can see the flashing lights that warn you a train is coming. Because of this flaw, cars have become trapped on the tracks, unable to get off. Several deaths have resulted from train hits at this spot in the last three years. Because the crossing meets all of the NTSB technical and safety requirements, to date the Metrolink and the city have won each lawsuit. As a result, the intersection has yet to be redesigned.

  It didn’t take much deduction for me to realize that Marcia and I were about to become the next fatalities.

  There would be no prolonged investigation into our deaths. Probably no autopsy, as Nix had suggested. It would be assumed that we were just the next two unfortunate motorists to die here.

  We would be victims of a tragic mistake in engineering. It would be covered by the news but dispatched with quickly.

  CHAPTER

  47

  Lee Bob looked at his watch, then got out of the car, opened the back door, and lifted Marcia out. He put her in the passenger seat, then came around to get me. He lifted me up with almost no effort and carried me to the driver’s side of the Cad, shoving me behind the wheel beside Marcia.

  It’s hard on a man’s self-image to be lifted, then carried around and dumped like so much garbage.

  “Da gran rêve pesant, cher,” he said, looking at Marcia. “Da loup-garot, ça arrive.”

  Then Lee Bob pulled out a vial of clear fluid and poured it on a rag.

  He grabbed me by the neck and pulled me toward him, covering my nose and mouth with the cloth for the second time. He held it there until I began to lose consciousness, then pulled the rag quickly back. I was still awake but totally paralyzed. He reached across me and did the same to Marcia.

  We were still parked in the dirt lot on a slight rise when I saw the headlight from the approaching Metro train. It rounded into view a mile away, coming toward us at over sixty miles an hour.

  Lee Bob shoved me over, then crowded behind the wheel and started the car. I could see the train barreling down the tracks toward us. At sixty miles an hour, that would put it at the intersection in about a minute. Lee Bob had the car moving and was heading toward the track. It wasn’t even going to be close. He was going to beat the train by at least twenty seconds.

  He pulled the Cad around the corner on San Fernando and drove it up onto the tracks just as the signal lights started flashing and the guard arm dropped both in front and behind us. Then he scrambled out of the front seat, pulled a thin curved knife from a scabbard on his belt, and slashed the fishing line holding my hands and feet. He did the same with Marcia.

  “Bonne chance,” he said, then slammed the door and sprinted off the track. I could feel the car shuddering with the vibrations of the approaching train. The red lights across the street from us were clanging, the bar arm lights flashing. I was unable to move.

  Marcia was staring dumbly up the tracks at the approaching train. We were both trying to claw at the door handles to get out but had no strength to accomplish it.

  Then the headlights swept around the last bend in the track and the train was bearing down on us from less than a block away. The engineer saw us and started leaning on the horn. He was going way too fast. The train whistle kept blaring as the white headlamp on the lead car wigwagged back and forth, strobing the car as the train thundered toward us.

  We sat there, staring helplessly, watching the end of our lives approach at breakneck speed.

  CHAPTER

  48

  I’ve heard that at the moment of death your life will sometimes pass before your eyes as a series of living tableaus. As I stared in terror at the approaching train, I had no retrospective vision—no precious insights. I was just sitting there, unable to move, locked in full panic. The only thing that kept running through my brain was, This can’t be happening.

  The train whistle blared relentlessly now less than a hundred yards away as a hundred and fifty tons of metal and glass bore down on us. The brakes were shrieking as they locked up on the track, throwing out sparks on both sides. Metal squealed against metal. We were seconds from impact.

  First I heard the crossing guard arm behind us shatter. Then our car was hit from behind. As Marcia and I were thrown forward the airbags deployed. Next we were being pushed violently across the intersection and off the tracks. The nose of the Cad hit the crossing arm on the opposite side of the intersection, broke through it, and kept going.

  Once the Cadillac broke through the guard arm, the tires cramped and it brodied right, spinning sideways. For a second I could see out the driver’s side window. A gray Navigator with smoked windows was behind us, powering us off the tracks. As we skidded sideways, the big SUV turned sharply with us and both vehicles barely cleared the rails. Seconds later the Metrolink flashed past.

  The door to the Navigator opened and Lester Madrid climbed out. Leaving his cane behind, he limped quickly over to us and opened the car door. He pulled me from the front seat and laid me on the ground. Next he limped around to the passenger side to free Marcia. As he pulled her out, the train was still screeching by, trying to stop, but it was going so fast it would keep going for almost two more blocks. All I could see was the taillight as it finally came to a halt almost a quarter mile away.

  I struggled to sit up. My head was spinning. Lester came back around the car and looked at me with disgust.

  “I can’t believe I’m down to rescuing ass-wipe pussies like you,” he growled.

  “Help me up,” I said.

  He pulled me to my feet, and as soon as he did I started teetering. I felt a mile tall and six inches wide. I swayed and finally leaned against the Cad, trying to keep from falling down.

  Marcia was lying on the grass on the far side of the road. She was beginning to regain some coordination and was struggling to get to her feet. She couldn’t make it but managed to prop herself up in a sitting position with her arms out behind her.

  “Who parked you up th
ere?” Lester asked. I couldn’t answer, so he went on. “I’ve been following you for two fucking days, Scully. How did you miss me? You should work on getting your head out of your ass.”

  “Lee Bob Batiste. We need to get him, Les. He killed Lita.”

  “Come on,” he said. “I saw where he went.”

  Lester helped me into the front seat of the Navigator and then pulled Marcia to her feet and helped her into the seat behind.

  I heard some train crewmen running toward us, their footsteps crunching the gravel beside the tracks as they approached. Lester got behind the wheel, slammed the door, and swung a U.

  “Hey!” somebody yelled. “Come back! Where you going?!”

  But Lester already had the Navigator in a smoking turn and squealed it back up and across the tracks.

  “Where’d Lee Bob go?” I asked.

  “Took off running up that side street back there,” Lester said. “Looks like designer houses and a cul-de-sac. Ends up by the foothills.”

  He had the pedal down and the engine roared as the big SUV screamed across San Fernando Boulevard and made a right. We headed toward the foothills about a mile and a half away.

  “Oh, shit,” Marcia muttered, ducked her head down, and threw up in the backseat.

  Lester glanced back angrily at her. “You gonna puke, lady, do you mind doing it in your fucking purse?”

  We flew up a residential street toward the hills beyond.

  “There’s a backup piece in the glove box,” he said.

  I fumbled with the latch, but I couldn’t get it open. My coordination was still shot.

  Lester reached over and opened the glove box, then pulled out a .38 and dropped it on my lap.

  “Try not to shoot me with it,” he growled.

  We reached the cul-de-sac at the end of the road and Lester smoked the Navigator to a stop. I looked past the new designer houses and caught a glimpse of what looked like a man running in the moonlight through the brush up into the hills beyond.