“We didn’t cross the border,” Stark said mildly.
“I don’t think that’s going to do you much good.”
He patted her hand and said, “You’re doing fine. I’m not worried.”
“I’m glad one of us isn’t,” Hallie muttered.
The district attorney, who was handling the case personally, paraded his witnesses through the courtroom for several days until he finally rested the state’s case.
Stark leaned over to Hallie and said, “You can rest, too.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed look and said, “The hell I will.” As she came to her feet she went on in a louder voice, “Defense calls John Howard Stark.”
Stark leaned back in his chair in surprise.
“You can’t put me on the stand!”
“Yes, I can,” she insisted. “Get up there.”
“I won’t do it!”
The judge, a stocky Hispanic man named Garza, said, “Counsel? Is your client going to cooperate? I can’t force him to testify, you know.”
“I know, your honor,” she said. She looked at Stark. “John Howard, please.”
With a frown on his face, Stark got to his feet. His wounds had all healed while he was out on bail, waiting to go to trial. He had lost quite a bit of weight during his recuperation, though. With obvious reluctance, he walked up to the witness stand and was sworn in.
Hallie stood at the defense table and said, “Mr. Stark, have you been seeing a doctor on a regular basis?”
“You know I have,” Stark said. “I got shot.”
“I don’t mean because of your wounds. I mean have you been seeing a doctor for some other reason?”
“Hallie,” Stark said so quietly that those in the back row of the packed spectator’s benches had to strain to hear. “Don’t.”
“I don’t have any choice,” she told him. “Please answer the question, Mr. Stark.”
Shifting uneasily in his seat, Stark glanced up at Judge Garza. The judge said, “I don’t know what the relevance is, Mr. Stark, but you’ll have to answer the question.”
Stark drew in a deep breath and blew it out through his nose.
“I didn’t know you knew about that, but . . . yes, I have been seeing a doctor.”
“Tell the court why.”
The district attorney came to his feet.
“I fail to see the relevance of this, too, your honor,” he said. “I have to object—”
“Overruled,” Judge Garza said. “For now. Mr. Stark?”
Stark grimaced, scratched his ear, and said, “I have cancer. There’s a tumor in my brain. The doctors say there’s nothing they can do about it.”
That set off such an uproar in the courtroom that Judge Garza had to bang his gavel on the bench for a good three minutes before the noise even started to subside. The hall outside was filled with reporters, and they started shouting when the news reached them. The chaos soon spread outside, where the courthouse lawn was packed with people waiting to find out what the result of the trial would be.
“Recess!” Judge Garza bellowed. “Thirty-minute recess!”
When the trial finally resumed, Stark was still on the stand, and a bunch of additional bailiffs and sheriff ’s deputies had been brought in to keep order, not only in the courtroom but all over the courthouse square.
Hallie’s next question was, “What’s the prognosis for your condition, Mr. Stark?”
“They say it’ll kill me, but they don’t say when,” Stark answered with a grim smile.
“They’ve given you an estimate, though, haven’t they?”
“They have,” Stark said. “The tumor’s a slow-growing one. I’ve got a year, maybe. Eighteen months, if I’m really lucky . . . if you consider that luck. Two years at the outside, and that’s way outside.”
“How long have you known about this?”
“Since the day those three punks tried to steal my pickup.”
The district attorney stood up and said, “I object again, your honor. This has absolutely no relevance to the case at hand.”
Hallie began, “Your honor, the defendant’s state of mind—”
Judge Garza shook his head.
“I’m afraid I have to agree with the district attorney, counselor. This isn’t relevant to the facts of the case. I’m going to strike this entire line of questioning.”
“In that case, your honor . . .” Hallie sighed. “I have nothing further.”
Judge Garza looked at the district attorney and said, “Your witness.”
The district attorney stood there for a long moment, obviously thinking, then said, “Mr. Stark, do you believe that a man’s medical condition, assuming that he’s of sound mind, excuses him for any crimes he may commit?”
“No, sir, I don’t,” Stark said. The district attorney nodded and started to turn away, but Stark went on, “But I don’t believe I’ve committed any crimes. I acted only in defense of my own life and the lives of others.”
“That’s not a determination for you to make,” the district attorney snapped, clearly annoyed that Stark had gotten that statement in.
“Well, who else is going to make it? I was the one who was there. You weren’t, and the judge wasn’t. The members of the jury weren’t. I was there when those thugs were shooting at me and my friends and those kids. I just did what I had to do to save our lives.”
“Objection, your honor! The witness isn’t responding to a question. Move to strike!”
“Sustained,” Judge Garza said. “All the witness’s comments following his answer to the prosecution’s question will be stricken, and the jury is to disregard them.”
Good luck with that, the expressions on the faces of the jury members seemed to say.
Hallie rested the defense’s case as soon as Stark stepped down from the stand.
“I can’t do any better than what you just did,” she told him when he returned to the table.
“Practically everything I said was stricken from the record,” Stark pointed out.
“There’s the record . . . and then there’s the truth. That’s what the jury heard.” She paused. “I’m sorry about having to spring that on you.”
“I didn’t know you knew,” Stark said.
“Your doctor told me. He said he didn’t care how much trouble he got into for breaking the confidence. He said they could take away his license if they wanted to. He wasn’t going to let you go down without a fight.” She rested her hand on his. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “But I’m so sorry, John Howard. So sorry about . . . everything.”
“Don’t be,” Stark told her. “I’m not. I’ve sort of gotten used to the idea by now. I figure that even if we lose, there’ll be enough appeals to keep me out of prison for the time I’ve got left.”
“You’re not going to lose,” Hallie said with a fierce note coming into her voice. “Not after my closing statement.”
She sat there, looking down at the table while the district attorney spent five minutes damning John Howard Stark for every crime in the book, or at least it seemed like it. Then, when he sat down, she stood up and walked over to face the jury.
“‘Somebody ought to do something about that,’” she said. “How many times have you seen something that’s unfair, or cruel, or just plain wrong, and said to yourself, ‘Somebody ought to do something about that’? How many times have we all said that? And if the thing you’re looking at is bad enough, you might even say, ‘Somebody’s got to do something about that.’ But who does? Most of the time, nobody.”
She turned and pointed a finger at Stark.
“That man sitting right there, he does something about it. He does whatever he has to in order to put things right. Look at him.” She smiled. “Look at the way he’s looking down at the table and shifting around in his chair. He’s uncomfortable. He’s even a little embarrassed. Because he doesn’t think what he does is any big deal. He doesn’t want people praising him or calling him a hero. He doesn’t believe he’s a hero. He
’s just a man trying to do what’s right, the way everybody should. The way anybody hardly ever actually does. That’s John Howard Stark for you, ladies and gentlemen. No big deal. Just a man.” Her voice caught, but she got the words out. “Just a good man.”
With tears running down her face, she walked back to the defense table and sat down. Stark lifted a hand, awkwardly, and patted her on the back.
The jury was out barely long enough to take a vote before they came back with a verdict of not guilty on all counts.
The district attorney stood up and said, “I’m going to ask the court order a new trial, your honor.”
“Motion denied, counselor.”
“But your honor—”
“The jury accepted the contention that Mr. Stark acted in self-defense, as do I. If you want to charge him with any of the myriad lesser offenses you might bring against him, feel free to do so.”
The district attorney sighed and said, “I’ll . . . take that under consideration, your honor.”
“Do that.” Judge Garza picked up his gavel. “Mr. Stark, you’re free to go.”
The gavel banged on the bench, and chaos erupted in Devil’s Pass again . . . mostly happy chaos this time.
It took a dozen deputies to clear a path for Stark and Hallie to leave the courthouse. Cameras and microphones were everywhere. Reuben, Ben, and the rest of Stark’s friends took over for the deputies, closing ranks around him. Despite that, he was still jostled quite a bit until they got to the car Hallie had hired, waiting to take them back to Shady Hills. Once Stark and Hallie were inside, the driver pulled away slowly, forcing the crowd to give way before him.
“That was quite a speech you made in there,” Stark said. “I think you really did embarrass me.”
“I don’t care. You’re free, and that’s all that matters.”
“Back to Shady Hills, ma’am?” the driver asked from the front seat.
“That’s right, thank you.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, ma’am,” the driver said as he sped north out of Devil’s Pass. The rest of Stark’s friends were following in their own vehicles, but they were quite some distance back. “It’s not every day I get to drive a genuine hero.”
Hallie smiled and said, “He doesn’t like to be called a—”
Stark knew that voice, and suddenly he remembered from where.
“Silencio Ryan,” he said.
The driver took one hand off the wheel and drew a gun from under his seat. He stuck it over the seat and covered them as his eyes met Stark’s in the rearview mirror.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
“It’s been a long time,” Ryan said.
“Not long enough.”
Hallie had gasped in surprise at the sight of the gun. Now she said, “John Howard, what—”
“John Howard and I are old friends,” Ryan said.
“Not hardly,” Stark said. “Ryan’s a killer. Used to work for the cartel. I guess he still does.”
“You’d be wrong about that. I’ve moved up in the world. Now I work for people even more powerful than the cartel. They want you dead, John Howard. In fact, they hired me to kill you more than a month ago.”
“You’re talking about people in the government.” A raw edge entered Stark’s voice. “Our own government.”
“It doesn’t really matter. Hell, you rub so many people in power the wrong way, it might be just about anybody. But here’s the shocker, John Howard. . . . I don’t particularly want to kill you. I’ve been watching you. I always respected you as an enemy. Now I sort of. . . admire you.”
“You’ve been watching me,” Stark repeated. “I knew it. I knew there was somebody out there. But with everything else going on . . .”
“Please,” Hallie said. “If you really admire him, don’t do this.”
“He doesn’t have any choice,” Stark said. “If he doesn’t do the job he was paid for, he’ll never get any work again. Isn’t that right, Ryan?”
“More than likely,” Ryan admitted. The big car was going at least eighty now, which didn’t really seem all that fast on the flat, straight, open West Texas highway. “They might even decide that I need to be eliminated. Can’t have that.”
“Of course not.” Stark’s mind went back to the night of the rescue. “So why didn’t you just let Jalisco kill me? Your shot slowed him down just enough for me to get some lead in him.”
“I couldn’t let somebody else kill you, John Howard. That wouldn’t be right. Especially some low-level Mexican thug whose brain was probably only one step above a snake’s. It wasn’t time yet. Besides, if I hadn’t waited, I wouldn’t have known that I was doing you a favor.”
“A . . . a favor?” Hallie said. “By killing us?”
“Well, not you, miss, and I’m sorry about that. But John Howard here, he’s going to die anyway. Aren’t you, John Howard? You really want to spend the next year or two wasting away to nothing and suffering the torments of the damned, when one bullet can end it all? One second of time, one little squeeze of the trigger?” Ryan laughed. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it yourself!”
Stark drew in a deep breath. He had thought about it. He didn’t like to admit that, even to himself, but the thought had crossed his mind. Maybe it would be better if everything ended quickly. . . .
“You don’t have to kill Hallie,” he said. “She can’t hurt you. Just do what you need to, stop the car, make her get out, and drive away. I know you, Ryan. Nobody’s ever going to catch you.”
“That’s true,” Ryan said. “But it’s not the way things work.” He checked the mirror again, not looking at Stark this time but at the empty road behind them. “We’ve run off and left all your friends. They’re several minutes behind us. That’s plenty of time. I’ll stop and give the two of you a chance to say good-bye.”
“Listen, Mr. . . . Ryan, was it?” Hallie said. “There’s something else I need to tell John Howard instead of good-bye.”
“What’s that?”
Hallie looked over at Stark and said, “Get that son of a bitch.”
She brought her briefcase up and slammed it into Ryan’s wrist just as he pulled the trigger. The gun roared, but the bullet went into the car’s roof. Before Ryan could fire again, Stark had hold of his wrist. He shoved Ryan’s arm toward the front of the car, so when the gun went off again the bullet blew out the front passenger window. Stark used his legs to drive himself forward over the seat while he hung on to Ryan’s arm. He caught a glimpse of the speedometer needle hovering just under ninety miles per hour.
Stark spilled over into the front seat. His shoulder hit the steering wheel and turned it. The tires howled like a lost soul as the car went into a skid. While Stark wrestled with Ryan, the vehicle’s front and rear tried to swap places. The car veered toward the shoulder, across it. The rear wheels bit into the dirt, spraying gravel and sending dust billowing into the air.
It stayed on the ground for ten feet or so before it hit a little dip and flipped.
Stark didn’t know where Hallie was, didn’t know if she was all right. All he knew was that he had hold of Ryan’s wrist and that they were airborne, turning over and over. With a loud rending of metal and a bone-shaking impact, the car landed on its roof and began to slide, throwing up even more dirt and dust.
Stark and Ryan were lying on the roof now. Neither of them had been thrown clear, despite the fact that neither of them had been wearing seat belts. Hallie had been, Stark recalled. Maybe she would be all right. No time to check on her. He smashed Ryan’s wrist against the roof of the car. The gun came free.
Ryan’s other hand locked around Stark’s throat a second later. Stark hammered a punch into Ryan’s face but didn’t loosen his grip. Ryan leaned closer to him, snarling in an expression of triumph. Blood dripped from a cut on his forehead.
Ryan had made a mistake. Stark bunched his shoulders and summoned his strength to drive his head into Ryan’s face. The head butt loosened Ryan’s grip. Stark reached up
with his left hand and grabbed the shoulder harness that was hanging down slightly with the car in this upside-down position.
He pulled it lower, looped it around Ryan’s neck, and hung on for dear life as he tightened it more and more.
Ryan slammed blow after blow into his head and body, but Stark took the punishment. Ryan’s face turned a dark red, the color of a brick, and his eyes began to bulge. His tongue came out of his mouth and he gasped desperately, but no air made it down his throat to his lungs.
With their faces no more than a foot apart, their eyes met. As panic and desperation began to show in Ryan’s gaze, Stark looked at him and said, “I want to live. I may be dying, but I’m not dead yet.”
He heaved even harder. Something snapped. Ryan went limp, and the life went out of his eyes like water running out of a bucket with a hole in it.
When he was sure Ryan was dead, Stark let go of him and shoved him aside. He twisted around on the inside of the car’s roof, searching frantically for Hallie.
She was still in the backseat, hanging limply from her seat belt.
Stark crawled to her and reached up to struggle with the catch. It came loose, and she sprawled down into his arms. As he cradled her against him, her eyes fluttered open.
“J-John Howard?” she asked, her voice weak.
“I’m here,” he told her. “How bad are you hurt?”
“I think . . . my arm’s broken. But you . . . you’re alive.”
“Damn right I am,” Stark said. He lifted a foot and kicked the back door. It took two kicks, but the door sprang open.
Stark crawled out, then turned around to ease Hallie carefully out of the overturned vehicle as well. He’d been sniffing for gasoline but hadn’t smelled any so far. That was a stroke of luck. He saw that her arm was indeed bent at a funny angle, so he was as careful as he could be as he lifted her to her feet.
A glance along the highway to Devil’s Pass told him that their friends were racing toward them, still a mile or more away. He held Hallie and waited for them, and as he did, a breeze blew the last of the dust cloud away. It was autumn now and the heat of summer was gone. Even here in West Texas, the breeze held a faint hint of pleasant coolness. The sky was as blue as it could be, Stark saw when he tilted his head slightly to look up.
The Bleeding Edge Page 29