Vindicator

by Denney Clements

  He nodded. “They’re all fine. We managed to run the invaders off.”

  “I remember. You fired shots.”

  He lowered his face to kiss her cheek, but she turned her head enough to meet his lips with hers.

  “Hero,” she whispered. Her eyes fluttered shut.

  Chapter 25: Crime Scene

  November 26, 9:10 a.m.

  Emery intended to rent a motel room across the street from the hospital so he could be close to Carol. But shortly after she drifted off to sleep his phone chirped. On the other end of the line was Baird County Sheriff Aaron Renke, who invited Emery to his office for “a friendly interview” at 9 the next morning.

  So Emery crammed himself into the back seat of Juwan’s Civic for the ride back to Ouimet. At the house, the front hallway was open, but the parlor archway to the left and dining room archway to the right were blocked off with yellow crime-scene tape. Someone had pushed the French doors together and taped cardboard over two broken panes. Both rooms were strewn with broken crockery, picture frames, furniture and other wreckage. The remains of the Thanksgiving meal were beginning to stink. The lab techs, Sadie told them, weren’t coming until morning.

  Sadie announced that J-3 would sleep in her mother’s room and “Juwan will be sleeping with me.” Her eyes dared Emery to take issue, but he smiled, kissed her cheek and bid the young people good night. Sore and depressed, he shuffled up to the painfully empty bedroom over the garage, stripped down to his boxers and crawled into bed.

  Now, after a fitful five hours of sleep, he sat across a table from Renke in a windowless conference room at the one-story cinder-block Sheriff’s Department building. It was two blocks from Carol’s house.

  Renke, slender, bald and tall, wore a sleek charcoal gray suit with a white shirt and a maroon tie printed with tiny silver handcuffs. A gold six-point star badge was attached to the breast pocket of his suit coat. Fixing Emery with a gray-eyed stare, he said, “I’m wondering, Mr. Emery, if you can explain how one bullet ended up in Carol’s dining room ceiling and another one in the floor. Oh, and there seem to be some blood and bone fragments associated with that one in the floor.”

  “I fired both shots with my revolver, a Charter Arms .38.”

  “Continue.”

  Emery asked Renke if he knew why the invaders had come to the house. Renke said that was a mystery to him. So Emery told him about his pursuit of The Story in the Examiner and on The Vindicator the past six weeks, and how he and Carol had come to be together. He concluded with an account of the home invasion, including the blue-eyed intruder’s “explanation” for it. “They want me to stop writing about it on my blog.

  “I feared Rose was dead and Carol had been badly beaten. I had to short-circuit the violence, so I got out the gun – it was stashed in the knapsack where I keep my computer – and ended it.”

  “Why did you plug one of the men in the foot?”

  “He threatened to come back and kill me and my family – Carol and I are getting married – so I put him out of action awhile. He’s lucky I didn’t shoot him in the stomach. I wanted to. I wanted to shoot them all. But I just wanted them gone, so I didn’t.”

  Renke pursed his lips. “I would have handled it the same way, Mr. Emery. A man’s got to defend his home while not sinking to the level of scum.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you going to publish more provocative stories on that blog of yours?”

  “I’m going to write an account of what happened and post it today. And if the new leads I have pan out, there will be more posts on the subject. They’re not going to intimidate me into dropping The Story.”

  “I kind of wish you would drop it – purely from a law-enforcement perspective. But you’re within your rights to do it. We’re short-handed, so we can’t offer Carol and Rose full-time protection. I’ll make certain that my deputies go by the Clark place several times a day. As for the investigation, I’m going to refer the case to the KCID because of the obvious tie-in with the earlier attempt on your life. I’d like to handle the case myself, but this is bigger than my department can handle on its own. It spreads across at least three counties, maybe more.”

  Emery frowned. “The KCID hasn’t done much with it so far. I have to tell you that I’m losing confidence in Mike Harmon.”

  “I’ll speak to him about it personally. There’s probably a good explanation for that. Harmon’s a good man.”

  “I don’t trust Harmon to do the right thing. But I do understand your predicament.”

  Renke nodded. “I’ll sound him out on the subject and make my own judgment, if you don’t mind. Thugs busting up the home of three of my favorite constituents? That doesn’t set well with me. They dishonored our town.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “One last question, Mr. Emery. Will you produce the gun or do I need a warrant? We need to make sure it matches the slugs. You’d get it back in several days. We’ll also run the serial number to make sure there are no, um, problems attached to it.”

  Emery thought, Oh God. I hope J-3 wasn’t lying about where he got it. He said, “I’ll bring it over right away.”

  Renke smiled. “I’ll save you the trouble. I’m sending Deputy Hartman back with you. Give it to him. We’ll call you when it’s ready for return.”

  Back at the house, two lab techs dressed in khaki uniforms and ball caps and wearing latex gloves were sifting through the dining room, kitchen and parlor. With their permission, Emery and Hartman, a fresh-faced, straw-haired young man in a gray uniform, tiptoed into the study. Emery dug out the gun and dropped it into an evidence bag that Hartman produced. After the deputy left, Emery retreated to the front hall. He asked the lead tech, a red-haired young woman working in the dining room, how their investigation was going. She admitted they hadn’t found much.

  “We collected samples of the blood from the dining room and some bone and boot fragments. We’ve found a mess of fingerprints.” She stepped over the yellow tape to face Emery. “But we don’t think any of the prints belong to the assailants. Apparently, they all wore Nomex/Kevlar gloves – that’s a hybrid fabric used in light combat wear. We found some fibers from the gloves, which we'll test at the lab.

  “We think the blood is from two different people, the lady of the house and the assailant who got shot. We collected hair samples with follicles from Mrs. Clark’s hairbrush in the upstairs bedroom. We’ll run DNA tests on both samples. We should be done here in less than an hour.”

  Emery thanked her and mounted the stairs. He found Sadie, Juwan, and J-3 in Sadie’s bedroom, sitting on her double bed. Sadie was red-faced and angry. They’d been having a heated discussion, by the look of it.

  “Hey, guys, how’s it going?” Emery said.

  Sadie leapt to her feet and faced him. “You caused this.”

  “You’re right. Can you ever forgive me?”

  His admission deflated her. “Well thanks for saying that, Joe. But I really wish you hadn’t come into our lives.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. It stung.

  “It’s because of him that you and I met,” Juwan murmured. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” J-3, sitting next to his friend on the bed, nodded somberly.

  Confusion playing across her beautiful face, she muttered. “I guess.”

  “It’s complicated, sweetie,” Emery said. “I hope you can forgive me for going after the people who framed your Uncle Ted and killed two innocent people. But I’m going to stay on it. I know that’s what your mom would want.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Sadie said. “I talked to her awhile ago and told her how I felt.”

  Dread clutched at his heart. “How did she respond?”

  “She asked me to delay the question until she gets home. She said she understands how I feel.” She gave him a tentative smile. “She did remind me that she pushed you to stay on your story. But she said she wished she hadn’t done that, now that the worst has happened.”

  �
�The worst is yet to come,” J-3, ever the realist, said.

  Sadie whirled to face him, face contorted with anger.

  “He could be right,” Emery said.

  From the doorway, Rose said, “Joe Emery is a good man, Sadie. You could not ask for a better stepfather.” Attired in a long green and black plaid woolen robe, beneath which peeked the hem of a nightgown, she kissed Emery’s cheek. “I understand you’re the hero. You drove them off. I’m sorry I wasn’t awake to see it.”

  “I’m no hero,” Emery said, “though I’m damned glad J-3 got me that gun. Without it, the assault could have been much worse. But I’m sick that my work on the blog resulted in such terrible injuries to Carol.”

  She wrapped him in a hug. “Don’t ever apologize for facing down criminals,” she said.

  He hugged her back, whispering “thanks” into her ear. To the group, he said, “We have to focus on security for the family. Sheriff Renke all but admitted they can’t protect us if we stay in this house. Is there any place where Carol can recuperate and you can lay low for awhile?”

  “Yep,” Rose said, “the old Brody homestead over in the Oklahoma Panhandle near the Black Mesa. Carol’s and Teddy’s father Morris, God rest his soul, was born there in ’27. The place belongs to me now. We have a house and 40 acres. We go over there for a change of scene every once in awhile.”

  “Sounds good,” Emery said. “As soon as we get Carol out of the hospital …”

  “She said she can come home tomorrow,” Sadie said. “They’re keeping her one more night.”

  “Great,” Emery said. “We can all head over there tomorrow, then.”

  Rose said, “Sadie’s in the middle of her semester at FHSU. I’d hate to see her education interrupted.”

  “She can go back,” Juwan piped in. “I’ll stay with her over there and guard her. I’ll keep her safe.”

  “Where can we stay?” Sadie said excitedly. “I’m in a girls-only dorm.”

  Emery said, “Perhaps we can arrange a safe place for you to stay off campus.”

  “I’ll work on that,” J-3 said. “We have friends from Lawrence in at Fort Hays State. They live off campus near downtown Hays.”

  Rose said, “It’s settled, then.

  Emery went to his bedroom and collected his shaving kit and a change of clothes. Back downstairs, he got permission from the techs to retrieve his laptop from the study.

  Rose, clutching a ring of keys, followed him downstairs. She unlocked a closet behind the stairway and extracted a long padded canvas zipper case. “Sheriff’s got your pistol, right?”

  He nodded.

  She handed him the case. “Shotgun, Remington 12 gauge. There are four shells, buckshot, in the chamber, and a dozen more in the pouch. You never know when you might need it. I've still got the Winchester 20 gauge and deer rifle here, with plenty of ammunition, so we've got lots of firepower. We'll take them down to the Black Mesa with us.” She kissed his cheek. “God bless you.”

  He thanked her and carried his gear out to the Grand Prix, locking the shotgun in the trunk. He headed for Garden City, intending to write his post at her bedside.

  Chapter 26: The Black Mesa

  November 28, 9 a.m.

  With sadness and a touch of foreboding, Emery walked out of Rose’s Black Mesa house with the young people, helped them cram their gear into Juwan’s Civic and bade them farewell. As the Civic zoomed eastward out of view, Emery, facing the dry, cold north wind, turned back toward the house. Carol, who was too weak to stand for long, had made her goodbyes from the front room couch.

  The house, set in a grove of tall, skinny, leafless cottonwoods, was a handsome one-story structure, sheathed in sandstone, with a deep covered front porch. Behind the house loomed one of the small, curved, chopped-top hills that surrounded the majestic Black Mesa, the tallest point in Oklahoma. The region, reachable by only a few blacktop secondary roads, had an eerie, badlands feel that Emery found appealing. As a hideout – or as a refuge for someone who was sick of civilization – this place was perfect.

  Bit by bit, Rose had modernized the place over the years – insulation, storm windows, electric baseboard heat, indoor plumbing, land line telephone, satellite TV. But there was no Internet service.

  Juwan offered Emery the use of a cellular Internet air card that would plug into his laptop. But Emery, who had shut down his cell phone after Juwan explained that it emitted a GPS signal, decided he could afford to neglect The Vindicator for a few days.

  He was angry, tired, miserable and perpetually worried, but his business was thriving. He'd posted an account of the home invasion from the hospital in Garden City on Friday. By the time he shut down his laptop Saturday morning to collect Carol from a wheelchair at the hospital’s side entrance, it had racked up more than 5,000 hits.

  Before they left Garden City, he stopped at the local branch of his bank and, while she waited in the idling car, cashed a check for $1,000. Then they drove to Ouimet to reunite with the family. From there they all motored southwest into the Panhandle, a three-hour trip over mostly substandard roads. Carol slept beside him, seat back reclined, covered with a Mexican wool blanket, most of the way. Ted drove Rose in her big Mercury Marquis and the young people rode in the Civic.

  At Carol’s behest, on the way out of Ouimet, Emery called the co-op to let the manager know she’d be out indefinitely, recovering from her injuries. The manager said her job would be waiting for her. Ted, who worked part time at the Chambers feedlot outside Ouimet, had already obtained an extended time off.

  Their bosses knew what had happened at the Clark house on Thanksgiving Day. So did the rest of the world. The Garden City Appeal’s story on the atrocity appeared in its Friday edition. Many newspapers inside and outside the state picked up the Associated Press version of the story; even the New York Times had published a three-paragraph brief about the event.

  The Appeal beat Emery into publication, but his post provided readers a riveting (he thought) first-person account of the invasion. He reported his split-second decision to shoot the blue-eyed bad man in the foot, reciting the provocative remark (word for word, he was reasonably certain) that impelled him to pull the trigger: “You won’t shoot. You're too civilized. We just wanted to express our irritation to you and your loved ones. You know, take you by surprise, bust up the place, punch you and your girlfriend out. Back the fuck off with your stupid blog or we’ll come after you in bigger numbers, with guns of our own.”

  Back inside the house, he shucked his woolen watch cap and canvas barn coat, hanging them on the coat tree by the door. Carol smiled at him from the couch. They had the house to themselves. Rose and Ted had gone to nearby Clayton, N.M., to buy groceries and cleaning supplies.

  The bruises on Carol’s face were fading. But the skin around her eyes was gray and oily. She was a long way from being well. She asked, “Did the kids get off all right?”

  “Yes.” He bent down to kiss her cheek. “I need to ask you about something that’s really been bothering me. Sadie told me the other day that in the light of what happened Thursday, you regret encouraging me to pursue The Story.”

  “I might have said something like that,” Carol replied, “but that was mostly an attempt to calm her down. At the time I talked to her from my hospital bed, she was focused mainly on her own anger and fear about what had happened and about what might happen in the future.”

  “Well she should have been focused on you, on the suffering you were experiencing. Asking you, battered and hurting in your hospital bed, IV hooked up to your arm, to ease her anguish was totally inappropriate. I hope you know I mean that in a loving way.”

  She smiled. “You sound like a stepfather, a good stepfather. Did you say that to her?”

  “I don’t have the standing to lecture her. She was angry with me, blamed me for what happened. Fearful of losing her affection, I told her she was right. Your mom, by the way, scolded her for getting up in my face like that. She told Sadie she couldn’t a
sk for a better stepfather than I would be.”

  Carol giggled. “Mom’s a pistol, isn’t she?”

  He grinned and nodded. “When she kissed me and hugged me in front of those young people, I felt like a little boy soaking up the love. My own Mom is a wonderful person, in her own way, but she never made me feel like that.”

  “Well, I’d like to meet your parents some day.”

  “Perhaps we can make a pilgrimage to Ohio when you’re better and all this bullshit is behind us.” He knelt beside her and took her hand. “So what is your heartfelt desire, sweetie?”

  Squeezing his hand, she closed her eyes a moment. As her eyelids fluttered open, she said, “That all this be behind us so we can enjoy our lives together. But it’s too late for you to quit The Story now.”

  “I don’t intend to. I’m going back to it, beginning tomorrow. J-3 is going to assist me. I didn’t ask him to but he insisted. So I agreed.”

  She grimaced. “He’s a dear boy. I hope your plan takes his safety into account. You do have one, don’t you?”

  “I do.” He laid it out it for her.

  Chapter 27: New Friend

  November 29, 3 p.m.

  Fighting a bitter cold wind, Emery drove back toward Kansas the following day, turning north into Colorado, then east on U.S. 50. The sky was gray. Frost had leached the remaining green from the vegetation. Only the red cedars that dotted the roadside and some farmyards broke up the unrelenting brown of the landscape.

  After crossing into Kansas, he soon reached the place where the murderous men in the Crown Vic forced his Eclipse into the Kiowa River. Just as Steve Jung and Mike Harmon had predicted back in October, there was little water in the riverbed now. Anger suffused his dark mood: Comeuppance time for those bastards was way overdue.

  He arrived in Garden City by mid-afternoon. J-3, who was driving Juwan’s Civic, had already booked a room with high-speed wireless service at a motel at the city’s eastern edge. He used some of the cash Emery had given him to pay two nights' rent and gave the clerk an assumed name, Sam Snavely. As instructed, the kid asked for a room at the back, out of view of the highway.