“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching over and patting her thigh. “I’m just confused. There are three dead people back there and my head hurts.”
“It was Wade,” Marissa said. “Peggy told me after the three of you left. Wade was behind it all.”
“I get that. But what were they after?”
Then, before she could answer, he reached into the box of mice and grasped a fistful of the shredded paper. He downshifted because the brakes were shot and he eventually pulled over to the side of the dirt road and stopped the Dodge. The motor banged away but didn’t quit running. He could smell hot oil burning somewhere under the hood.
“What is it, Brandon?” she asked.
The strips of paper in his hands were blue and old. But when he pieced them together he could see the words Trust, Security, and Stockman’s printed on them.
He said, “Stockman’s Security Trust. That’s the bank that got hit years ago. These are bands that held the piles of cash together. Where did you find them, Marissa?”
“I told you,” she said. “They were in the nest. I didn’t even look at them.”
He tried not to raise his voice when he asked, “Where was the nest?”
“It was in the back of this truck. When I found it and realized their mom wasn’t around, I looked for something to put them in so I could save them. There was a toolbox under the seat of the truck so I poured all the tools out and put the babies in the box. Brandon, why are you asking me this?”
He sat back. The water tower for Big Piney shimmered in the distance.
“Pingston did that armed robbery and hid the cash somewhere inside the Power Wagon. Probably beneath a fender or taped to the underside. He got pulled over and arrested before he could spend it or hide it somewhere else. And all these years he thought about that money and worried that the old man would find it—which he did.”
Marissa seemed to be coming out of shock and she registered surprise.
“Either that,” Brandon said, “or my old man was in on the robbery all along and fingered his partner. That way, he could always have a big roll of cash in his pocket even though the ranch was going broke. We may never know how it all went down.
“Pingston told his cell mate Wade about the cash and promised him a cut of it when they got out. I heard Wade say something about protecting Pingston inside and that makes sense. Wade kept Pingston safe so they could both cash out. Only the money wasn’t there and Wade thought his old pal had deceived him all along. He went berserk and killed Pingston, then Pingston’s family.”
Brandon put the truck in gear and turned back onto the road. “We’ve got to let the sheriff know to look for Peggy’s Jeep so they can arrest Wade and send him back to Rawlins.”
“Why didn’t he kill us and eliminate all the witnesses?” she asked.
“He thought I was dead,” Brandon said. “I think maybe he panicked after Peggy and Tater were down and just got the hell out of there. Maybe chasing down a pregnant woman was too much even for Wade.”
“Or maybe,” she said, “he thought he was stranding me out there to freeze to death without a car, that bastard.”
As they entered the town limits of Big Piney, Brandon had to slow down for a dirty pickup that pulled out in front of them. The legs of a massive elk stuck straight up from the bed, and sunlight glinted off the tines of the antlers.
Marissa said, “I can’t believe you grew up here.”
Brandon patted the steering wheel and said, “We’re keeping the Power Wagon. I don’t care what my brothers or sister say about it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed. Then: “Maybe because I got it to run again with my own two hands.”
BURNT MATCHES
by Michael Connelly
THE COURTHOUSE ELEVATOR was a sardine can filled with people and the collective breath of desperation and failure. Nobody ever came out a winner in this place. They all rode down in silence and defeat. Like me. I had just taken an all-counts-guilty verdict in a two-week trial in superior court. All that work, all that planning, and I didn’t turn a single juror on a single count. My client was going off to jail for a long, long time and there was nothing I could do about it. His case and his appeal would go to somebody else now. And it wouldn’t surprise me if they built the appeal around an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel cause. I lost the case. Truly guilty or not, they always blame the lawyer.
I tried to hold my breath in the elevator. I always do and I always fail. It moves so slowly, stopping at almost every floor. Others hoping to escape this place crowd up in the hallway as the doors slide open, the look of one more defeat on their faces when they realize there is no room and they must wait longer.
Finally, we reached the lobby and I pushed my way out through the trudging bodies. I headed to the exit onto Temple and then started looking for the Lincoln.
I turned right onto Spring—that was where most of the drivers waited—and checked the license plates on the lineup of Lincolns at the curb. There was LEGLWIZ followed by LV2RGUE and LNCNLAW, and then, finally, IWALKEM. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but sometimes it gets hard to find my ride. This is what happens when they make a movie out of one of the cases you’ve won. But that victory and the glory of the movie seemed like distant lights on a far-off shore as I walked to my car.
I looked around but Cisco wasn’t standing in his usual place on the sidewalk shooting the breeze with the other drivers. That and his not responding to my text telling him I was on my way down should have alerted me that something was wrong but I missed it, like I seemed to be missing everything else. I was thinking about the verdict—an across-the-board wipeout was as much a statement about the lawyer as it was about the defendant. I had some thinking to do and I had already started by the time I opened the rear passenger door and got in.
As I slipped, briefcase in hand, into my customary spot in the rear passenger seat I saw a man sitting on the other side of the car. He moved the aim of a nickel-plated pistol from the back of my driver’s head to me.
“Get in,” he said. “Close the door.”
I put the briefcase down on the floor and raised my hands in a gesture of compliance. No false moves from me.
“Okay, okay, no problem,” I said in a voice as calm as I could manage.
The images of the courtroom and the jury forewoman’s dead-eyed stare at me while the clerk read the verdict disappeared quickly. Keeping my eyes on the gunman, I reached out behind me to the door and pulled it closed. I realized as I did so that I recognized the man. I couldn’t place him but guessed he was the father or the brother or the husband of one of my violent clients’ victims. A face from a courtroom, somebody who had watched me attempt to turn the villain into the victim at his dead or damaged loved one’s expense. He couldn’t get to the offender because the offender was probably in prison. So he was getting to me.
“Okay,” I said. “Now what? What are we doing here?”
The man turned the gun and banged it once on the headrest behind Cisco to get his attention.
“Drive,” he said.
“Where to?” Cisco said as he reached forward and started the car.
Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski was a very capable investigator and bodyguard. He was driving for me only because a recent surgery on his knee kept him off his Harley and limited his mobility. I was between drivers and he needed to justify his paycheck. He had volunteered and had somehow allowed this man with a gun into the backseat.
“Get on the freeway,” the man said. “Go north.”
Cisco dropped the car into drive and pulled away from the curb, almost immediately making a U-turn in front of city hall.
“You want to get you and your boss killed quick?” the gunman barked. “Make another move like that.”
“You said get on the freeway,” Cisco responded. “This way’s the freeway.”
Cisco didn’t have a concealed-carry permit but more often than not he was carrying s
omething. Usually a Kimber .45 or at least a boot gun. But that was when he was working the streets, chasing down witnesses in some of the rougher neighborhoods in the City of Angels. I had no idea whether he was carrying or not now but I found myself hoping he was. Our abductor’s eyes were so intense, they glowed in their sockets. They told me this man was at the end of his line.
The man with the gun turned and looked out the rear window to see if Cisco’s maneuver had drawn notice from police or anyone else. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to me and I was ready for it.
“So what can I do for you?” I asked.
“What can you do for me?” he said. “You’re asking me that? I’ll tell you what—what you can do for me is die. We’re heading out to the desert where I’m going to get your driver here to bury your ass in the sand.”
Cisco had turned on Temple and taken it to Broadway. The entrance to the northbound 101 Freeway was just a block away.
I said, “Look, sir, I don’t know if it was your wife or your daughter who got hurt, but my job is to defend the accused. The system is based on it. Everybody accused of a crime is entitled to a vigorous defense. It’s in the Constitution. Your complaint with me is—”
“You dumb shit,” the man said. “I don’t have any wife or daughter.”
And then it hit me—he wasn’t a grieving father or husband of a victim. He was a client. I didn’t recognize him from a courtroom gallery; I knew him from the defense table. We had sat next to each other through a trial and now I couldn’t remember his name or his case to save my life.
“So, another satisfied customer,” I said. “You’re going to have to tell me who you are. I know I should recognize you, but over the years I’ve had a lot of clients and a lot of trials. I know you from a trial but I am sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
I glanced at the rearview and saw Cisco’s eyes looking back at me. We were merging onto the 101 heading north, like the man wanted.
“I’m just a burnt match to you,” the man said. “That’s what you called me.”
That didn’t help me conjure up the name.
“I never called you that,” I said. “What I said was that some of these cases—like yours, I assume—are hopeless. They put me in a position where I’m basically trying to sell burnt matches to the jury. And no one buys burnt matches. So you’re here because you blame me for losing your unwinnable case.”
“No, man, that’s not how it was.”
“Yeah, it was. I don’t remember your name or your case but I guarantee it was a dog. I told you to take the offer from the DA and you said no. You insisted on a trial even though I told you—I warned you—that we couldn’t win and you’d end up with more time. Now tell me that isn’t what happened.”
The man angrily shifted in his seat and momentarily turned his face from me and looked out the window. It was so unexpected I didn’t react. I missed the chance to go for the gun.
Still, it told me two things: one, I was right about the case, and two, he might make the same turn-away move again if I pushed him hard enough. The next time I’d be ready to go for the gun.
We were moving on the 101 at a brisk pace. It was the middle of the day and traffic was light. We had already gotten to Hollywood. As we passed a green freeway sign announcing the exit to Hollywood Boulevard, the man shook his head.
“Hollywood,” he said. “I mean, you fuck up people’s lives and what happens? They make a movie about you. Matthew fucking McConaughey. They showed that shit one night at Corcoran. I’m watching it and I hear the lawyer’s name and I’m thinking, That guy’s playing my motherfucking lawyer. The guy who fucking put me here.”
I didn’t have many clients that ended up in Corcoran but it still didn’t bring the name to mind.
“Are you going to tell me who you are or are we just going to keep playing a guessing game?”
“Oscar Letts.”
I recalled the name and soon the general outline of the case came back to me.
“Remember me now?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Felony hit-and-run manslaughter. You were drunk and the lady you hit was the wife of a sheriff’s deputy. No, actually, he was a captain.”
“I wasn’t drunk. I’d had two beers!”
“That’s what you said. The bartender they brought into court said different.”
“Because she was forced to by the sheriffs—they were going to close her down. I went away for nine years. I had a house and a wife and a kid and I lost it all. You didn’t fight for me, Haller, you didn’t do shit. You didn’t care at all.”
“This is ridiculous.”
I leaned forward and reached down to my briefcase.
“What the fuck you doing?” Letts said.
He put the muzzle of the gun against my head.
“My computer,” I said. “I want to pull up the file.”
“Give me the briefcase,” Letts said. “I’ll get the computer.”
I slid the case over the transmission hump to him. He pulled the gun back and brought the case up to his lap. As he flipped the locks one at a time and opened the case I stole another glance at Cisco in the mirror. We held each other’s eyes for a long moment. He shook his head slightly. I think he was telling me he didn’t bring his gun. I slowly nodded once. I hoped he knew what I was saying: I was going to make a move against this guy and he needed to be ready.
Letts inspected the contents of the briefcase as if thinking he might find a weapon. He then opened the laptop and checked it out before handing it to me.
“The case is almost ten years old,” he said. “You’re telling me you still have it on your computer?”
“I have conflict-of-interest software,” I said. “All my cases are digitized and loaded, so if a name from an old case shows up in a new one, I’ll know. Cops or witnesses from old cases come up from time to time. Occasionally even clients.”
I went into the software and typed in Oscar Letts. His case file immediately opened on the screen. I started scanning the summaries. I was looking for something in particular and soon found it.
“Okay, right here,” I said. “Offer of disposition from the DA’s office. You were offered a term of four to seven years in exchange for a guilty plea. You turned it down, against my advice. You made me go to trial. You insisted we go to trial. There was no case. We had no defense. You left the bar, you blew through the stop sign, and you hit the captain’s wife in the crosswalk. There was nothing I could do. It was burnt matches, but you wouldn’t listen. You insisted we take it to a jury and we did and you ended up with nine to fifteen from the judge. Am I missing anything?”
Letts didn’t respond. I turned slightly to my left to face him. I slowly closed the laptop and moved my right foot toward the door so I could brace it.
“You were the architect of this,” I said. “I remember everything now. You hit her and then you just kept driving while she bled to death in the crosswalk. How was I supposed to sell that to the jury?”
“I didn’t just keep going,” Letts protested. “I got out. I checked on her. I had no phone. I had to get to a phone and get her help. I made the call, goddamn it!”
“Yeah, well, there was no record of it.”
“It was because of him. The captain. He pulled the records because he knew it would make me look bad. And you let him get away with it. You never even fucking called him to the stand.”
“I couldn’t call him. There was no evidence he did anything. I’m going to put the victim’s husband on the stand and go after him with nothing? You should have taken the deal. You would have been out in four and you would still have your life. But don’t you fucking dare blame me. You want to shoot somebody, put that gun in your own mouth.”
Letts gritted his teeth angrily, pulling back his lips in disgust. I saw the muscles of his neck and shoulders tense. The grip on his gun tightened. He then turned away again, as if finding his bearings before firing the gun at me.
I made my move. Raising the laptop
up as a shield, I lunged across the seat and into him; I slammed the laptop into his face just as he turned back toward me. Then I grabbed the top of the gun barrel with one hand, put my other hand over his, and forced the weapon toward the floor. And I yelled as loud as I could, “Cisco, pull over! Get back here!”
I braced my foot against the door and pushed my body into Letts’s. He was stronger than I thought, and control of the gun until Cisco could help was the immediate challenge. He tried to pull the weapon’s muzzle up and I fought to hold it down. I tried to jam a thumb behind the trigger but Letts cleared the trigger guard and started firing the weapon, two quick shots into the floorboard that made Cisco swerve the car back and forth. The force of the double move threw me off Letts and then right back onto him. He managed to bring the gun up and fired into the seat in front of him.
Cisco was hurled forward into the steering column, and the car went into a clockwise spin. I took one hand off the gun and reached for Letts’s door.
“Cisco, the lock!”
Somehow Cisco knew what I meant and managed to hit the electronic lock button. Even with the squealing of sliding tires, I heard the pop of the locks coming up. I grabbed the door handle and yanked it up. Centrifugal force did the rest. The door flew open and Letts was jerked out of the car as if by two unseen hands. I was about to follow him but the car slammed into the guardrail at the side of the freeway. It came to a jolting stop that threw me in the other direction.
I looked over the seat at Cisco. He was leaning forward, one arm up and under his leather coat.
“Cisco, you hit?”
“Fucker got me in the shoulder. Where is he?”
Good question. I turned and looked out the back window of the Lincoln. I recognized that we were in the Cahuenga Pass, where the freeway cuts through the Santa Monica Mountains and enters the San Fernando Valley. We were hard against the railing in the freeway’s breakdown lane. There was no sign of Letts at first and then I saw cars in the slow lane swerving to avoid something in the road.
It was him. An opening between cars gave me a glimpse of Letts on the asphalt, crawling and then struggling to his feet. His clothes were ripped and he had a bloody abrasion on the side of his face. He still held the gun, the knuckles on his hand torn open from the skid on the asphalt. Just as he got to his feet, a car coming up behind him swerved out of the lane and crashed into a panel van already occupying the next lane over. The impact propelled the car right back into its original lane and it hit Letts from behind, flipping him up over the car and into the air. He came down in front of another car and was dragged under it as it skidded to a stop and was promptly rear-ended by an SUV.
The Highway Kind Page 5