PREGNANT AT THE ALTAR

by Claire St. Rose

  He nodded and then shook his head, with clear disapproval. “His parents are rich and they spread the money around.”

  “They bribed the judge and jury?” she asked, a little shocked.

  “I wouldn’t say that, but they hired the best lawyers and all these expert witnesses, not to mention the fact that the prosecution’s case was built on the testimony of his friends.”

  “What about the DNA evidence?”

  Hunter’s face twisted in disgust. “Somehow it got… lost. Then there was the witness who placed him at a party across town at the time of the rape. Her story was so full of holes it was like Swiss cheese, but it was enough. The four guys who changed their testimony pulled a year for perjury but…” he let his voice trail off.

  “So what happened?”

  “Four months after he was acquitted, Randy turned up dead. Some kids found his body in a field. It was an execution. One shot to the head.”

  Lily’s eyes widened. “And the Immortal Souls did it?”

  “I don’t know that. There is no proof linking them to the crime.”

  “But you think they did it?”

  His lips thinned. “I think that asshole got what he deserved.”

  Lily stared at him for a few seconds. “Are you serious? You support vigilante justice?”

  “No. Absolutely not. But Randy had his day in court. I’ve been doing this for twenty-two years and he was as guilty as anybody I’ve arrested. The victim identified him. Four people said he told them he did it. Then… nothing.”

  “You arrested him?”

  “Yeah. I served the warrant and brought him in. I remember him—the cocky little shit. You could tell he was guilty, but he knew he wouldn’t serve even one day in the slammer.”

  “But still, Hunter… he was murdered!”

  “Yeah. And if we could pin it on the Souls, I’d arrest the guy myself. But we can’t. Nobody knows anything. Every last one of them had an airtight alibi.”

  “Then why do you think they did it?”

  “Because of the rumors. We’ve had a few complaints from people about being threatened. We never could pin anything on the Souls because, just like with Fliken, they all had alibis. The interesting thing is, when we investigated deeper, we usually found out the person who was complaining was usually accused of harassing someone, or had threatened someone, or robbed or scammed someone, or something. It’s almost always a case that we ran into a dead end on or something we couldn’t execute on because we couldn’t prove anything. But if we hear about one or two a year, it makes me wonder how many things like that are happening that we don’t hear about.”

  They rode on in silence for another minute.

  “And you think it’s the Immortal Souls?” Lily persevered.

  Hunter grinned at her again. “I don’t think anything. I’m just a patrol cop. They don’t pay me to think. That’s the detective’s job.”

  Lily snickered. “Come on. You think they did it, don’t you?”

  He tore his eyes off the road, glancing at her for a brief moment. “Yeah, I think they did, and while I would bust their asses for it if I could, I’m not going to shed a tear for that cocky little bastard. Maybe what happened to him will serve as a warning to some other douche bag in the future.”

  Lily considered his words and eventually nodded. “I can respect that, but it bothers me someone is taking the law into their own hands.”

  “Yeah, well, things aren’t quite so black and white when you’re actually out on the street.”

  It was Lily’s turn to grin this time. “Which is why I’m riding with you, right?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah. Welcome to the real world, kid.”

  Lily and Hunter rode along in silence. They were in the dead zone, between four and seven, when even most of the criminals were sleeping, or fucking, or doing whatever they did when they weren’t causing trouble.

  She watched out of the side window of the cruiser as Amberton glided past, dark, quiet and peaceful. She’d been mortified when Hammer had teased her in front of Hunter. She thought she’d handled it pretty well, being polite but firm in brushing him off. Though she would deny it to her last breath, she was actually secretly pleased that he’d noticed her butt. She worked hard to stay in shape, and though the ballistic vest hid most of her curves, it didn’t cover her bottom.

  She smiled slightly. He wanted to help an officer? She’d give him something to help her with. It had been a long time since she’d engaged in any bedroom calisthenics, and that looked like something he could definitely help her with.

  She turned away from the window, her daydreaming interrupted as a car flew past going in the opposite direction, clearly going over 50 when the speed limit was 35. She sighed as Ed looped the cruiser around and flipped on the lights. Time to go back to work.

  Chapter Two

  Hammer picked up his phone and glanced at the display. He didn’t recognize the number, so he went with a formal tone and style of answer. “Soul Security.”

  “Joe Grimes, please,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

  “Speaking.”

  “Mr. Grimes. This is Detective Sergeant Bob Newt. How are you today?”

  Hammer pressed a finger to his lips to indicate silence to the two other men in the room, and then put the phone on speaker and placed it down on the table. Whenever the police called, he liked to keep his club brothers in the loop to help keep their stories straight.

  “I’m doing fine, Detective. How may I help you?” Hammer asked as Knife and Mike, his vice president and sergeant at arms, listened in.

  “I’d like to talk to you about George Foster. Can you come down to the station this afternoon and answer a few questions?”

  “Who’s George Foster?”

  “The guy you roughed up at the concert a few nights ago.”

  “Oh. That guy. What about him?”

  “Mr. Foster wants to file assault and battery charges against you.”

  Hammer rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding me? For what?”

  “He claims you attacked him.”

  Hammer closed his eyes and counted to five. “I’m sorry Detective. I’m kind of in the middle of something at the moment, but if you want to stop by my house later this evening, I will speak to you then.”

  “This won’t take long, Mr. Grimes,” the detective insisted.

  “Good, but I’m still in the middle of something. I’ll be home about five if you want to talk to me then, or I can stop by the station Monday.”

  “Give me your address,” the detective replied, his voice firm and his annoyance clear. He probably wasn’t used to people not jumping when he barked. Hammer smiled and gave him the address. “I’ll be there about five.”

  “I’ll be there,” Hammer told him and then ended the call.

  “What’s that about, you think?” Knife asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hammer said. “The cops want to ask me some more questions about that spherical asshole the other night.”

  Mike shook his head and chuckled. Hammer used the term, “spherical asshole” to refer to someone who was an asshole no matter how you looked at them.

  “Diego told me what happened. He’s lucky he didn’t get his ass kicked,” Mike threw in.

  Hammer grinned again. “I thought about it. Anyway, back to this problem. Any idea where to pick this guy up?”

  Knife grinned. “The dweeb works for Andy’s Burgers. I followed him home. I think he must live with his parents because there’s no way he could afford that place on what he makes flipping burgers.”

  “Okay, so paying him a visit at home isn’t going to work. Pick him up when he gets off work?” Hammer suggested.

  “That’s probably out best shot,” Mike agreed. “Stuff him in the Tahoe and dump him off outside town somewhere. By the time he walks to a phone, we’ll have our alibis.”

  Hammer thought it over. “Okay, let’s get Guy on the Tahoe. See if he can squeeze another job out of what we ha
ve on hand, even if it’s a couple of different colors. This job doesn’t pay much, so I want to keep the cost down. As soon as he has it ready, we’ll make our move.”

  “I’ll let him know,” Knife said.

  “What are we going to do about an alibi?” Mike asked. “It’s going to be hard to setup since we don’t know when we’re going to move.”

  They talked the problem around for a few minutes.

  “Why don’t we pick our day and have a party in the park? That way, we can take all day if we need too,” Knife proposed. “That’s always a good fallback position.”

  Hammer nodded. Knife’s plan was a good one, but they didn’t want to go to that way too often. The cops would get suspicious if every time someone got roughed up the Souls were partying.

  “Probably won’t have a choice this time, and it’s been, what, a year since we did that?”

  Knife nodded a few times. “Something like that.”

  “Okay, let’s plan it that way,” Hammer told them. “We’ll get the Tahoe sprayed, then pick our day and get a place reserved. We’ll make our move after that. Anything else?”

  Mike, Knife, and Hammer glanced between themselves.

  “Okay, let’s run with it,” he said as he banged his hands on the table. “Who’s up in the rotation?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to check,” Mike replied.

  Hammer glanced at his phone to check the time. “Shit. I’m going to have to go if I’m going meet this detective.”

  Knife snickered. “You’re the one who always wants to be in the thick of things.”

  Hammer grimaced. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his brothers, but he wouldn’t ask them to hang their nuts out if he wasn’t willing to do the same. That’s why he always handled the face time with potential customers and was always involved in the dirty work. If he was going to put someone’s cock in a vice, his was going to be in there too.

  “You want to handle this? I won’t mind,” Hammer asked.

  Knife waved his hands in front of him. “I offered to go sort out the drunk, but you left me to deal with those fucks and their pissing contest. It serves you right.”

  Hammer chuckled. Knife was right. He’d left him backstage dealing with two bands that were threatening to kick each other’s ass or walk off, as the show promoter tried to calm everyone down. He’d thought he was getting the better deal that night when Tater had called for assistance, but now it had come back and bitten him in the ass.

  “Yeah, well, fuck you too,” Hammer said with a comical sneer.

  Knife chuckled and scratched his cheek with his middle finger.

  Mike grinned. “See, if you had just shot the fucker, then he wouldn’t be pressing charges.”

  Hammer shook his head but cut a wry smile. Mike’s solution to everything was to shoot them. Maybe he should start listening to him. “I have to go. I’ll call one of you if I have to make bail.”

  Knife and Mike both snickered as Hammer pushed back from the table, leaving his two best men in “church,” their nickname for the meeting room, to work out the details of intercepting Greg Tuttle and putting the fear of God into him for harassing his ex-girlfriend.

  Hammer stepped outside the Immortal Soul’s clubhouse. It was a typical fall day in Amberton, crisp with a bright, warm sun and a partly-cloudy azure sky. He swung his leg over his Softail Deluxe and thumbed the big Harley into life.

  He rumbled through town on White Horse Road until he reached his subdivision—an older neighborhood full of houses built in the 60s and 70s. He pulled into his drive then stopped and killed the rumbling V-Twin, leaving the bike in gear so it wouldn’t try to roll down the hill and tumble to its side. With the bike now stable, he dismounted and typed in the four-digit code to raise the garage door. As the door rumbled up, he remounted his hog, started it, and then pulled it into the garage. If he ever bought another house, he was going to make sure the driveway was either level or downhill into the garage. Having an uphill driveway sucked when riding a motorcycle because you always had to restart the machine just to ride it the last ten feet into the garage.

  After he’d parked the bike beside his F-150, Hammer sauntered into his house, slapping the controller to lower the garage door as he passed. He didn’t know when Detective Sergeant Billy, or whatever his name was, was going to arrive, so he pulled out a beer and flopped onto his recliner to wait for him.

  He didn’t have to wait long before his doorbell rang just after five o’clock. Hammer sat his beer on the counter that served as a visual divider between the living room and kitchen and then opened the door.

  “Mr. Grimes? Detective Sergeant Bob Newt.”

  “Detective,” Hammer said, his tone curt.

  Newt was older, perhaps fifty, with thinning gray hair. He was at least fifty pounds overweight and was wearing a pair of tan Dockers with a dark blue pullover shirt and comfortable looking shoes. His badge and sidearm were as prominently displayed as his attitude.

  “May I come in?”

  Hammer thought about making him stand at the door to ask his questions but then stepped back. “Want a beer?”

  “Thank you, but I’m on duty.”

  “What’s this all about?” Hammer asked, directing the detective into his living room.

  “The man at the concert is accusing you of assault and battery. I’m investigating his claims.”

  “I see… Did he mention he was drunk and pulled a knife on me?”

  “He said he wasn’t drunk and the knife wasn’t his.”

  “What did the arresting officers say?”

  “They documented that he was intoxicated, but the knife isn’t part of the arrest record.”

  “What does this asshole say I did to him?”

  “Mr. Foster claimed he was simply watching the concert when he was harassed by a member of Soul Security. When he protested, you arrived and without provocation, threw him to the ground.”

  “Uh-huh,” Hammer grunted. “I supposed he said the same thing about the officers who arrested him.”

  The detective smiled. “No. He actually admitted to that. He said he was upset by how he was being treated, and how the police weren’t concerned about you assaulting him and had been only listening to your side of the story. Apparently, you and the senior officer on the scene know each other?”

  “Not really. I’ve spoken to Hunter a couple of times over the years on business. Basically… what was his name again?”

  “George Foster.”

  “So, George-boy tried to run because he felt like he was being railroaded… all because I happened to know one of the police officers?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “I don’t believe anything. I’m simply following up on a complaint to make sure you acted in accordance with the law.”

  Hammer sucked on his teeth a moment. “I don’t know what to tell you. Did you read the arrest report? Didn’t that tell you what happened?”

  “It told me what you said happened.”

  “You want me to tell it to you?”

  “Do you stand by your story?”

  “That the guy was drunk, causing problems and we asked him to leave? And when he wouldn’t we attempted to escort him out, and that’s when he became combative? Then, as we were escorting him out, he pulled a knife on us, and I disarmed him and held him for the cops? Yeah, I’ll stand by that.”

  Detective Newt watched Hammer for a moment. “You have anything to add?”

  “There’s nothing else to add.” Hammer wanted to add the prick should consider himself lucky he didn’t shove the knife up his ass but held his tongue knowing it wouldn’t help his case. The less involvement the Souls had with Amberton’s ‘finest’ the better.

  “I think I have enough. Thank you for your time,” Newt said as he turned toward the front door.

  Hammer followed and opened it for him. “Tell me something,” he said as Newt stepped out onto the porch. “Th
ere’s more to this than some drunk asshole screaming about an assault. Who is this guy?”

  Newt paused at the door. “It’s not who he is, it’s who his father is. His father is Chester Foster.” When Hammer drew a blank face, Newt continued. “He’s the Majority Leader in the State Senate.”

  “Ah, I see,” Hammer said. “He wants somebody’s head, so you’re going to give him mine?”

  “I told you, Mr. Grimes. I’m simply following up a complaint.”