Criminal Justice

by Parker, Barbara

  He held her tightly. “I’ll be careful.”

  Driving into Lakewood Estates, Elaine could see the buildings of the country club to the right beyond a landscaped parking lot, then an empty expanse of black, marked here and there with the vague shapes of sand traps. The guard shack was dead ahead, occupying an island that divided the road. Another two miles would bring them to the Isles of Lakewood. Martha sat in the front seat, Dan in the back. Martha kept a gate opener in her car, and she had brought it with her. As they neared the guard shack she pressed the button. Elaine slowed. Martha’s thumb went up and down, pressing without result. The striped arm did not move. “Dammit! Oh, my God! They’ve changed the access code again!”

  Elaine said quickly, “I have my badge.”

  “No.” Dan’s hand gripped her shoulder. “Just go through and tell the guard you took the wrong turn.”

  They came back out and parked at the country club. Martha said, “I’m sorry.”

  Elaine exhaled. “Now what?”

  “We can walk in,” Martha said.

  “Dan, you’ve been to Salazar’s house. What do you think?”

  “It’s risky,” he said. “We might get around this guard gate, but the approach to the next one is narrow, with the lake on both sides. They might notice us.”

  Martha said, “We have to try!”

  “There’s no way in,” Elaine said.

  Elaine drove slowly along an unpaved road west of Lakewood Village. To their left was a swamp being drained for more houses. On the east side, a wide canal guarded the Isles of Lakewood, most of the home sites still vacant. Martha looked for landmarks. The overcast sky hid the sliver of moon.

  Turning her headlights off, Elaine parked behind a weedy hill of dirt pushed to the side when the road had been bulldozed. Martha said nobody ever came out here, except for kids smoking pot. Construction debris was scattered around—five-gallon paint cans, old lumber, some twisted rebars. Crickets chirred in the weeds.

  Dan explained that when the road was finished, a long mound of earth would run alongside to keep motorists from seeing into the residential areas. Nothing had been planted yet; it was only weeds, bare rock, and black Everglades muck, which had dried to powdery dust.

  The three of them climbed to the top of the hill, Dan catching Elaine by an arm when she nearly slipped backward on the loose ground. Across the lake, some hundred yards distant, the Isles of Lakewood spread out ahead of them, most of the home sites still undeveloped. A light shone weakly from a construction shack, a temporary metal building. There were some fuel tanks for the dragline, which sat idle, a sleeping brontosaurus with a huge steel bucket Elaine could have driven her car into. Farther away, past the vacant lots and over the trees, were the roofs of the houses already built. Martha pointed out Miguel Salazar’s. There were one or two lights in the upper windows; nothing could be seen below that.

  “My studio is on this side,” Martha said. “The door faces the house, but there are trees between, so nobody could possibly see us. The dogs stay in the garage at night.”

  At Dan’s direction, Elaine had driven to the nearest grocery store. He had purchased a styrofoam cooler, black plastic bags to cover its whiteness, two dark-colored towels, and an airtight container for the tape. Dan and Martha would float their clothing across and get dressed again on the other side.

  Martha Cruz bounded down the slope and sat on a rock to take off her boots, then her black jeans and sweater. She wore nothing underneath. She tossed her clothes into the cooler, then raised her arms over her head and moved as if she were dancing.

  Elaine shivered, more from nerves than the cold. Dan turned back to look at her. He was a silhouette in the faint light from the construction shack. “We’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  On the roof Arlo Pate stared south into the darkness. He could see the tops of trees, then the white, weedy ground of the vacant lot, and beyond that, a couple hundred yards away at the edge of the lake, was the boom of the dragline. About five minutes ago he had noticed headlights moving on the dirt road. Then they had gone out.

  Usually it was high school kids smoking grass or making out or doing what he was doing, which was having a couple of beers, but this was Sunday night. In Lakewood Village they didn’t usually party on a school night.

  He would have forgotten it and opened another beer, but he had seen silhouettes on top of the hill. He couldn’t tell how many. Two or three. Whoever it was, they came on down the slope.

  It was when he saw someone go into the water that he stood up and kept watching. Swimming in this weather, sixty degrees. They had to be stoned or crazy. Or they wanted something. If they came this way, he should probably mention it to Miguel.

  CHAPTER 38

  Martha Cruz shrieked getting into the water, and Dan told her to be quiet. She rubbed her bare arms briskly, then submerged to her shoulders. Pushing the cooler out ahead, Dan stroked smoothly and silently into the lake. Martha dog-paddled behind him.

  The rocky ground angled sharply and vanished into the gloom. The steel teeth of the dragline bucket had left deep gouge marks about two feet apart along the shore, as if a monster cat had clawed the earth. When he had lived in Lakewood, Dan used to hear in the distance the great clank and rattle of the machines as they chewed their way around a new subdivision, hoisting tons of pulverized rock from the ground, creating a lake here and higher ground there.

  Reaching shore, Dan avoided the light from the construction shed and walked into the shadow of the dragline, a rock-scarred, red and white machine sitting on rusty steel tracks as high as his head. He dried off quickly, then helped Martha out of the water. He turned his back to give her some privacy, although it was too dark to see much. Across the lake he looked for Elaine but could see only the long, jagged hill a hundred yards away.

  When Martha was dressed, she said urgently, “Let’s go.”

  Dan pulled her back. “Hold it. I’m going first. When I see that it’s okay, I’ll flash my penlight two times.” He picked his way by starlight through the darkness. He knew that past the construction zone was a vacant lot, then the Salazar property, marked by a line of hedge. They would come at the house from the side. Lake and pool to the right, street to the left. Find an open spot in the hedge, walk fifty yards to the guest house. Martha had the key. She would open the door while he stood guard. She would find the Barrios tape, lock the door, and then they would return by the same route.

  Stopping at a pile of branches and old lumber, Dan turned and signaled. Martha ran across the open ground and stopped beside him, her breath light and quick. He went ahead to a tree, then she followed. At Salazar’s property line, they crouched for a moment behind the hedge. Dan said, “Wait here.” Martha nodded.

  He stepped onto the lawn and saw Miguel Salazar with his hands braced on the terrace railing. Dan moved back quickly and dropped. “Stay down. It’s Miguel.”

  “What? He’s not supposed to be—”

  “He’s on the terrace. Let’s get out of here.”

  “He’ll go back inside,” she whispered.

  Dan pointed. “Right back the way you came. Now.”

  “No, let’s wait.”

  Crouching, he dragged her by the arm.

  Martha looked back over her shoulder toward the house. “What about the tape?”

  “Forget the damned tape.” Dan tightened his grip. At the same moment he heard heavy footsteps thudding from the right. “Get across the lake!” He shoved Martha and she took off.

  Arlo Pate crashed out of the underbrush with a flashlight. Dan sent his shoulder into Pate’s stomach, and the big man rocked back a step. The beam of the flashlight traced a wild arc through the branches overhead. Dan led him away from the lake, knowing he could run faster, hoping that Martha would be across by the time he hit the water himself. He passed some palm trees made green and pink by small landscaping lights, then heard the thud of a bullet hitting one of them.

  Dan dove behind a low wall enclosing a flower gar
den and flattened himself in its shadow. Starlight revealed the silvery splash of water in a fountain. He heard low murmured voices then the shuffle of leaves. When the flashlight beam swept over the hedges where he lay, he leaped up and ran toward the lake, stumbling over a fallen palm frond in the dark, then scrambling up again. He saw the boom of the dragline and headed for it.

  Arlo Pate yelled, “This way!”

  Dan glanced around and saw Pate fifty yards behind. He broke into the open and picked up his speed. The light from the construction shed was on him now. The ground spurted up just ahead to his left, and he heard the whine of a ricochet. Pulling his sweater over his head, he ran for the dragline. In its shadow the lake was perfectly black, and he could get quickly out of pistol range.

  He threw himself at the water. In that brief second of arc he filled his lungs then submerged. The cold hit his bare chest like a slap. He would zigzag under the surface, coming up for air each time in an unexpected spot, then go down again, moving steadily toward the opposite shore.

  Nothing was visible, but Dan could gauge his depth by the variation in pressure on his ears. He stayed level at about four feet. He came up for air and dived again. When he surfaced the second time, a bullet pocked the water a few inches from his head. He dropped under.

  As his arms moved in unison forward and around, he closed his eyes and let his body relax. Counted slowly. Willed his heart rate to drop. He realized suddenly that he had forgotten to notice his direction. He let himself sink toward the bottom. The slope would tell him which way to go. His lungs were already burning, desperate for air.

  He put his feet on a rock. Strangely, the rock seemed to be vibrating. Through his eyelids he saw a flicker of light and looked up to see a steadily brightening glow as if dawn had arrived. At the same moment he heard the deep growl of an engine. He popped to the surface and pulled in a breath.

  The dragline was rolling forward on its enormous tracks, spotlights pointed at Dan. He heard a squeal of metal and tilted his head back, looking upward. The bucket was rising, swinging out behind him. For an instant of incomprehension Dan could only stare at it. Then the cables let go and the thing fell as if in slow motion, tons of steel. Dan inverted and kicked for the bottom. He could feel the rush of water and pressure as the bucket swung past him horizontally, as if he were a small fish and a maniacal giant were trying to grab him in a net. He swam blindly, disoriented. The clank and roar were muffled, and he could tell which way was up only by the light playing over the surface.

  If he came up Salazar could pick him off easily. As fear and a pounding heart burned away oxygen, Dan clamped his jaw shut. Curling up, losing his strength, he felt the water break past his mouth. He thought of Josh. And of Elaine waiting terrified on the opposite shore, unable to help him. He would rather have died in the ocean, where the water was clean and free. Not in this ugly, dark water with a bottom of unyielding rock covered by ooze.

  Above him, the lights swung across the surface of the water, and the awful clank and groan went on. Then he felt himself moving forward, rolling like a leaf in a rain gutter. A metal floor seemed to rise up beneath him. The air hit his face and he breathed, coughing and choking.

  Dan slid down the immense metal bucket, grit and rock under his bare back. He saw the black sky above him, links of chain a foot across, three of them connected to a heavy cable. The bucket was being winched upward, water pouring through the holes and slits in the metal. He looked through one of them and saw the lights of Lakewood Village. Scrambling the ten feet or so to the other side, he could see moonlight glinting on the windshield of Elaine McHale’s car. She was lost in the shadows.

  The bucket swung closer to land. It was too late to jump out now. Dan saw Miguel Salazar fifty feet below, both hands on the gun, holding it steady. Dan saw a flash, heard a bullet ping off the bucket. Another one hit the chain, making sparks. The silencer hardly mattered over the shriek of the engine and slamming of the gears.

  He looked down again and saw a slender figure in black standing beside the construction shed—Martha Cruz. She cupped her hands at her mouth and yelled. Salazar turned. The pistol dropped to his side and his left arm moved, a gesture of frustration. They were screaming at each other.

  Dan crawled up the floor of the bucket, which had shifted to a less perilous incline. The mouth of it faced the dragline, and the steel teeth glinted in the spotlights. He reached the edge and looked down.

  Salazar was pointing at the bucket. Martha shook her head vehemently, braid swinging. Then Salazar raised the pistol, aiming straight at her. Martha’s hands went out, placating, begging.

  Dan screamed, “No!”

  At the same instant, cables squealing, the bucket dropped under him. He grabbed for the edge and held on. The descent was fast, but just before he slammed into the ground, the bucket slowed. With a reverberating crash of metal the back end hit first, then the front. The breath was knocked from his lungs.

  He pushed up on shaking arms.

  When his mind grasped what he was seeing between two of the steel teeth, he staggered backward and fell against the side. Miguel Salazar lay face up, trapped under the bucket. The edge had caught him mid-torso, and his chest, arms, and head were exposed. The teeth supported the front edge just enough not to have crushed him instantly. The front of his white shirt was bright red. Horror gleaming in his eyes, Salazar pushed at the massive weight. Blood streamed from his mouth and nose.

  Then he went limp, and his head hit the ground. The engine of the dragline stopped roaring, and Dan could hear a last hiss of air from Salazar’s chest.

  Martha Cruz screamed into the silence.

  Arlo Pate slid down the ladder from the cab and ran toward her, his heavy boots kicking up bits of rock. Before Dan could shout to warn her, Pate had picked Martha up like a child. He was patting her back, and she buried her face in his denim jacket.

  It took Dan a few seconds to stand. Holding onto the edge of the bucket, he managed not to stumble. He could hear Arlo Pate’s heavy sobs, like the starter of a truck engine that wouldn’t quite catch. Dan inched over to the pair of them. Pate looked over Martha’s head at Dan.

  “Sorry, man. When I saw Miguel aim at Martha, I figured out you were on her side.” Still holding Martha on his shoulder, he pulled off his bandanna and wiped his face. “I feel bad. I let him hurt her before. I feel real bad.”

  Elaine’s frantic voice came from across the water. Dan walked to the shoreline and cupped his hands at his mouth. “Salazar is dead. We’re all right.” Looking around, Dan spotted his sweater and went to put it on. His slacks were still dripping, and his socks squished in his shoes. His body was shivering from the cold.

  Arlo Pate gently lowered Martha to her feet. She ran over and grabbed Dan by the arm. “Let’s go get the tape now.” There were twigs in her tangled hair, and her face was dirty and tear-streaked.

  He knew she would go for the tape whatever he said. “All right, fine.” Avoiding the front of the bucket, Dan told Arlo he ought to lift it off Miguel’s body, then cut the spotlights. They would call the police from the house.

  Arlo caught Dan’s sleeve. “Are they going to arrest me?”

  Dan stopped walking. All of them would be questioned. It would take the rest of the night. He would have to explain why he and Martha had come here, what they were after, and why. He said, “They won’t arrest you. Here’s what happened. We came for Martha’s keyboard. We swam in because she’s afraid of Miguel. Miguel saw us, tried to kill us, and you saved our lives. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Dan slapped Arlo on one shoulder, then walked to the water’s edge. “Elaine! I’ll be right back.”

  He could see a movement onshore. “You said that last time!”

  CHAPTER 39

  In her studio Martha opened a cabinet and rummaged through a box while Dan stood by the open door. He combed his fingers through his hair, picking out bits of gravel. Under his sweater his skin burned from abrasions.

  Mar
tha was saying, “I hope the police don’t take all of this. Seize it or whatever. I don’t have receipts, but it’s mine. Miguel bought it for me.” She told Dan how hard it would be to replace the keyboard, which was a Korg Trinity worth almost $5,000. Plus the rest of it: computer backup, mixing board, microphones, speakers, amps, headphones—

  “You know what?” Dan said. “I don’t give a damn.”

  Martha’s eyes came up from the box. “What’s your problem?”

  If she had been within range he might have slapped her. “My problem. Well, after nearly drowning, getting shot at, then seeing a man crushed like a roach, I just can’t get too worked up over how hard it would be to replace your fucking keyboard!”

  She stared at him a moment then went back to the tapes.

  “What do you think? Did Miguel kill Kelly for you?”

  The only reply was the clicking of plastic.

  “Your best friend, remember her? The girl who paid the price for your ambition.”

  Martha held up a tape then sent it toward Dan, an easy toss. He caught it in one hand, a gray cassette inside a clear plastic case. The label said PARTY.

  When she spoke, her voice trembled. “That’s what we came for. I’ve already cried over Kelly. Now Miguel is dead. You may think I never loved him, but you’re wrong.” She pushed past Dan. “I’m going to get some things from my room.”

  They walked in silence up the herringboned brick path to the terrace, their way lit by small lamps making pools of light. Martha loosened her braid, and by the time they had crossed the terrace and were inside the living room, she was fluffing her hair into its usual dark cloud of curls. Dari watched her, both fascinated and repulsed, not able to decide if he admired or hated Martha Cruz.

  “It’s so quiet in here.” Her voice seemed to echo on the marble floors and high windows. “Everyone left for Guayaquil, that’s what Arlo said. Miguel would have been gone tomorrow.” Martha trotted up the stairs.