by Lee Child
“What about Ernesto?”
“I’ll find him. It’ll be okay.”
Only it wasn’t okay.
Ernesto shared a room in a dingy building about a mile from Fields Avenue. When I got there, the normal chaos of a typical Angeles street had been replaced by something much more sinister.
White vans blocked off each end of the street, but it didn’t stop the curious from walking around them to see what was going on. The real action was toward the middle of the block, in front of Ernesto’s building.
Whatever had happened seemed to have just ended. A dozen soldiers stood near the entrance. They were wearing full battle gear and held machine guns at the ready. At first I thought they were all Filipino, but the closer I got, I realized that though they were wearing identical dark uniforms, most of the men appeared to be either Caucasian or African-American.
My immediate thought was Americans.
I moved with the crowd, reaching a spot almost directly across the street from the building’s entrance. I knew enough not to put myself out front, and I held back, allowing others to stand in front of me.
After about ten minutes, two men appeared in the doorway. They were carrying a stretcher, complete with a sheet-draped body on top. By the way everyone was acting, I knew the dead man wasn’t one of theirs. And when Joseph Perdue emerged from the building a few moments later to the backslaps of his colleagues, it was pretty evident who was on the stretcher.
Homeland Security had gotten their man.
It was nearly 10:00 P.M. when Perdue showed up back in my bar. For the first time in a long time I wasn’t sitting on my usual stool. Instead I’d taken over the back booth, and left instructions not to bother me unless it was really important.
Perdue spotted me right after he came in. He got a beer from Kat, then walked slowly back to my table, not even glancing at the girls on the stage. That was probably a good thing. While I hadn’t told any of them what had happened, most had found out Ernesto was dead through other means, and had a pretty good idea Perdue had something to do with it. The looks they gave him were nothing short of venomous.
“How ya doing, Wade?” he asked.
“Fine. You?”
“Doing just great.”
He slid into the other side of the booth without waiting to be asked.
“Haven’t been able to get anything about the guy in your picture.” I figured ignorance was the best route to take.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Problem’s taken care of.”
I said nothing.
“Look. I’m going to be leaving town a little early. Heading out in the morning. Don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“Have a good trip.”
“Actually I came by to thank you. I had a great time. Lots of fun.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” I said, less than enthusiastically.
He took a deep swig of his beer, then set the bottle on the table. “Good-bye, Wade.” He stood up. “You take it easy, all right?”
I shook his hand. Didn’t want to, but there was no sense in causing a scene. He was leaving town, so I wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore.
“Have a safe trip wherever you’re going,” I said.
“I’m heading home,” he said. “Well, D.C., actually. I’m getting promoted.”
“Good for you.”
“Yeah, it is.”
I’d been so wrapped up in wishing he’d just get out of the bar, that it wasn’t until after he left that I realized he hadn’t said anything about Ellie. Not one word.
Kat was the one who found her. We actually shut the bar down, and I sent the girls out in every direction. But leave it to Kat to hunt her down.
Ellie was only a few blocks from the dormlike room she shared with over a dozen other girls. She was in an alley—Angeles is rife with them—on the ground, her knees pulled up to her chest and her head lolled back with her mouth open. There was a long gash running from her left temple nearly all the way to her mouth. Blood was running from the wound, so I knew she was still alive.
The story I got later was that when she heard Ernesto was dead, she went crazy. All she could think about was killing Perdue. She got a knife and went to Perdue’s hotel. The rest is pretty easy to imagine. She was no match for him. The only reason he didn’t kill her—and I’m guessing here—is because he thought damaging her would be a worse fate.
As it was, what he had done to her in less than fifteen minutes took three operations and several months to repair. Even then it wasn’t perfect. The scar that ran down the side of Ellie’s face would always be with her. A reminder not only of Perdue, but of Ernesto.
“Can I ask you a few questions?” the man said.
It was a Monday evening, and in less than an hour the place would be packed for the weekly body-painting contest. But at that moment we were only half full.
“Of course,” I said.
“Something to drink?” Ellie asked the man. Since returning to work a couple weeks earlier, she had asked if she could work behind the bar with Kat. Who was I to say no?
“Just some water, please,” the man said.
He was the nervous type, who probably felt a lot more comfortable in a suit than in the casual wear he had on at that moment.
Ellie set a cold plastic bottle of water in front of him.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I’m Wade Norris,” I said.
“Curtis Knowles.” He held out his hand and we shook.
“What can I do for you, Curtis?” I said, already knowing what he was going to ask.
“I’m with the FBI,” he said.
“A little out of your territory, aren’t you?”
He smiled. “I’m just part of an investigation, that’s all.”
“And your investigation brought you here?”
Knowles looked around. “It is one of the more unusual settings I’ve been in. I’ll tell you that much.” He unscrewed the top of his water, but didn’t take a drink. “I’m looking into the disappearance of a federal employee.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Joseph Perdue, right?”
“I realize someone’s already talked to you about this.”
“You’re the third person in two months. One of the others told me Perdue’d been kidnapped.”
“We don’t know anything for sure.”
“He said it was in retaliation for that kid he killed, if I remember right.”
“Terrorist.”
“What?”
“The terrorist he killed. Perdue had uncovered information that linked the man to potential attacks that would have happened right here on your street, Mr. Norris.”
“Really?” I said. “Hadn’t heard that part.”
“It was in the paper.”
“I stopped reading the paper years ago. Too depressing.”
Knowles removed a small notebook from his breast pocket, and opened it to one of the pages. “According to my notes, you said you remember Perdue coming into the bar twice, is that correct?”
“I haven’t thought about this since the last time one of you guys came by. But that sounds about right.”
“People have reported seeing him with … a woman.”
I smiled. “So he was getting in a little fun while he was here.”
“The woman was not someone he was seeing,” Knowles said. “Perdue was a good family man.”
“Was?”
Knowles paused, caught by his own words. “At this point, we believe he is most likely dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“We also believe he was in contact with this woman as a potential information source. One of the people we talked to thought she might work here.”
“Get you another beer, Papa?” Ellie said.
“Yes. Thanks.” I looked at Knowles. “She wasn’t one of ours. I remember everyone who takes one of the girls out.”
“Everyone?”
“It’s my job.”
Ellie replaced my old bottle with a new one.
“He probably just met her on the outside.”
“I would have found out,” I said, then took a drink of my beer. “Mr. Knowles, there are a couple thousand girls who work in the bars here. Who knows where she came from.”
Knowles nodded. “You’re right.”
“Why do you think she’s so important?”
“We don’t know for sure, but we think maybe she set him up.”
“Sounds like you’re reaching,” I said, trying to appear sympathetic.
Another nod from Knowles. “I won’t take up any more of your time.” As he pushed himself off the stool, he said, “If we have any more questions, we’ll get back to you.”
“I’ll be here,” I said, then saluted him with my bottle.
Knowles smiled, then walked around our new stage and out the front door.
I knew Perdue was trouble when he’d stared at me after I told him I didn’t recognize the picture of Ernesto. There was no bluff in his gaze, no false toughness. What I had seen was the look of a man who didn’t like to be crossed. I’d seen it before, back in my service days in the corps. Other marines who were more like machines than real men—in their minds, they felt like all they had to do was look at the enemy, and their adversary would crumple to the ground.
They were hard. They were single-minded. They were dangerous as all hell.
And I’d been one of them.
After Kat found Ellie and we’d gotten her to the hospital, I’d gone alone in search of Perdue. I found him easily enough. He was in his room at the Paradise Hotel. I knocked on his door, told him I was looking for Ellie and wondered if he knew where she was. Of course he let me in.
I eased the door closed behind me, then I buried the pointed metal rod I’d been holding against my leg under his rib cage and into one of his lungs. I watched his face for a moment as he realized too late the danger I represented. I was just a lazy old Papasan, after all. Drunk half the time, and mellowed by the women that surrounded me.
He tried to grab for me, but he was already too weak.
I should have probably said something damning, something to sum up his failures as a human being. Instead I pulled the rod out and shoved it up again. This time into his heart.
See, I was Homeland Security, too. It was just that my homeland extended only a couple miles beyond the door of my bar.
By morning, the old stage in the bar had been ripped out, and a hole dug deep into the ground beneath. Perdue went into the hole, along with some dirt and rocks and concrete. Then we got to work on the new stage. I made this one a little wider.
The girls love it.
“Thanks, Papa,” Ellie said after Knowles had left.
“Nothing to thank me for. How about a dance?”
“Not today,” she said. But this time, unlike all the previous times I’d asked her to try out the new stage, she actually smiled.
I was breaking her down. One day, she’d get up there and she’d dance again.
On that day, drinks will be on the house.
Killing Justice
by Allison Brennan
I.
Senate Pro Tem Simon Black sat in his high-back leather chair signing letters, the tall, narrow window behind him framing the Tower Bridge at the far end of Sacramento’s Capitol Mall, the morning sun making the elevator bridge appear golden. His secretary, Janice, escorted Matt Elliott into the office, offered him coffee—which he refused—then quietly retreated.
Simon had been expecting the confrontation since Elliott called him before six that morning, and said nothing, allowing the tension to build.
It didn’t take long. Elliott slammed his fists on the antique desk and leaned forward, his knuckles white. “You bastard. You stacked the committee!”
Simon placed the pen precisely on the blotter, sat up straight, and clasped his hands in front of him.
“Sit down, Senator Elliott.”
The pulse in Elliott’s neck throbbed. He pushed away from the desk and paced, running both hands through his dark hair. “You promised you wouldn’t fuck with my bill package.”
That was true. Simon had always planned to quash the so-called children’s safety legislation on the Senate floor at the end of session, when it would be too late for Elliott to raise the money and qualify an initiative. Simon hated the fact that in California, when the legislature—which had been given the power to pass or defeat legislation—didn’t cater to the cause of the year, the rich and powerful would raise a few million dollars to put their pet project on the ballot.
He hated it except when it benefited his interests.
The truth was, if Senator Matt Elliott had the time, he could have qualified an initiative for the November ballot even though it would force his party to take a position on “tough on crime” legislation. Didn’t Elliott see that? Wasn’t the future strength of their party more important than one bill?
“Kill the bill now, Simon.”
Jamie Tan’s words came back to him. The head of the Juvenile Justice Alliance, which operated nearly two hundred group homes for juveniles in the criminal justice system, had made it perfectly clear that if Elliott’s bill passed, they’d pull all support. It was an election year and they wanted to take no chances on a vote by the full Senate. The bill had to die in committee.
Worse, Tan had brought the head of a prison reform group and one of the two major trial lawyer organizations into the meeting. The warning was clear: screw them, his election well would run dry.
That was the biggest problem with term limits, Simon realized. Before, the leader had the power. Now, special interests had power. James Tan would be around longer than Simon Black, and Tan knew it.
Simon had no choice but to back down. If he lost even one seat this election cycle, he’d be unceremoniously dumped as leader.
“Put Paula back on the committee,” Elliott demanded, stopping in front of his desk.
“Forget it, Elliott. My decision is final.”
“I’ll bury you, Black.”
“You? You’re the outcast of our party. No one trusts you. You’re just as likely to vote with the Republicans as vote with us. So you won Paula over to this issue, but you know damn well she’ll never agree with you on your other pet projects.”
“This isn’t a pet project. My bill will save lives.”
Black waved his hand in the air. “Don’t start believing your own press releases,” he said.
“Damn you, we can make a difference!”
“Do you realize what’s at stake? Do you know how many people will lose their jobs if your bill passes? Do you understand that the state is under court order to decrease the prison population? All your bill would do is make the crisis worse.”
“Tell that to Timothy Stewart! Wait, you can’t. He’s dead.”
“That’s what this has all been about. You want to destroy an entire industry because of one mistake.”
“One? The Stewart case is only one example of the problems with the current system.”
Simon’s phone beeped. On cue. He’d told his secretary to never leave him alone with Matt Elliott in his office for more than five minutes.
“Yes, Janice? Right, I’ll take it.”
He covered the mouthpiece. “Get out.”
II.
SENATOR MATT ELLIOTT hung up with the fiery Paula Ramirez, who was as livid as he was that Black had replaced her on the Public Safety Committee. Matt had spent the entire three years of his legislative term working on Paula, earning her trust and respect. It all came to a head when he asked for her support of this bill, against their party line. Matt was the maverick, the others expected him to vote however he damn well pleased, but Paula was one of theirs: a dyed-in-the-wool, intellectual, steadfast liberal.
And he’d won her over on this issue. He’d also grown to like her, though they still didn’t see eye-to-eye on most criminal justice issues.
It was Hannah Stewart, the slain boy�
�s mother—for whom “Timothy’s Law” had been named—who’d swayed Paula. Her raw, honest testimony that Matt, a former prosecutor, could only attest to, not recreate. She’d been to hell and back in the five years since her son had been murdered, and had been with him from the very beginning.
And now he had to tell her that not only was the bill dead as the result of political posturing and corruption, but he didn’t have the time to qualify an initiative for this year’s ballot. It would be put on the back burner until the next election.
His chief of staff, Greg Harper, knocked on the door. “Mrs. Stewart and her sister are here.”
“Send them in.”
He stood, walked to the door to greet them. Matt felt like a prosecutor again, giving bad news to surviving family. He’d always hated that part of the job, and this was worse because he knew Hannah.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as soon as they sat down on the couch facing his desk.
She’d always been perceptive. Even when she was on the emotional ringer during Rickie Coleman’s trial, she’d picked up on the subtleties of the court testimony.
“Paula was removed from the Public Safety Committee,” Matt said. “She was replaced by someone who opposes Timothy’s Law.”
“Why?”
“I told you this was going to be a tough sell.”
“But after Senator Ramirez agreed to support Timothy’s Law. We had the votes, correct?”
He nodded.
“And she was removed why? Because someone didn’t want the bill to pass?”
“Essentially.”
“You mean the Senate leader.”
“I’m not going to lie to you. Politics reigns supreme in this building. We knew what we were up against—the group-home industry is worth tens of millions of dollars and growing. All they are doing is slowing down the tide against them.”
“It’s happened since Timmy,” Hannah said. “It’ll happen again. Is that a justifiable cost for human lives?”
Matt had nothing to say. He agreed with Hannah. “I’m sorry.”
Hannah turned away from Senator Elliott and looked at her niece in the stroller. Rachel was a beautiful child, perfect in every way, round and plump with chubby hands and deep dimples. The dimples ran in their family—both Hannah and her sister, Meg, had them.