“I should’ve been paying attention, but I wasn’t. I hadn’t been sleeping for about three days by that point, worried someone was going to kick in the front door and murder my family in their sleep,” Nikki explained. “Anyway, the first I knew there was a problem was when I felt the thug’s pistol dig into my back.”
“Shit,” I couldn’t help muttering under my breath, but Nikki either didn’t hear or chose not to as she continued her monologue.
“He could have killed me, right there, and I would never have known what had happened. But he grabbed my arm and spun me around, shouting in my face. ‘Give me your purse, bitch,’ he kept yelling,” Nikki shivered, but her voice finally began to take on some emotion as she spoke. “His two buddies, they were trying to get into the back seats, pulling at the door handles, but I had them locked. The one behind the leader, he was yelling too, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Anyway, the thug had his gun pressed into my chest, right here,” she gestured over her heart, “and I could see his hand shaking, and all I could hear was his yelling for my purse.”
Even though I knew she’d survived the encounter, I couldn’t escape the tension growing in my stomach, fueled by fear and outrage, as my sister continued her harrowing story.
“I have that big Galco leather purse, you know, the one that you say weighs forty pounds, I had it on my shoulder when this happened. He could have just yanked it away, you know? He could have just reached out and stole it off my shoulder, but he kept screaming at me to give it to him, and his friends were all making so much noise, and the kids…the kids were screaming their lungs out in the car.”
“What did you do?”
“I reached inside with my right hand, and I slid the purse off my shoulder. He grabbed the purse by the strap as it fell, and he never noticed the pistol in my hand. That close, I couldn’t miss. I must have shot him five or six times, all center mass. I was just reacting, and went all tunnel vision,” Nikki recited her tale in a monotone up to this point, then she sobbed a little under her breath before continuing.
“If Rachel hadn’t yelled just then, I don’t know what would have happened next. The thug who was hammering on her window looked up at the first shot, but he had his pistol stuck in his waistband like some kind of gangsta. He was on my side, just six feet away, but is seemed even closer when he went for his gun. I already had his chest in my sights, but I wasn’t really there, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” I lied, glad to keep Nikki talking.
“Rachel’s cries jerked me out of that mental state, and I was already squeezing the trigger again before that fucker noticed. I guess I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t paying enough attention to his or her surroundings. I counted four shots to his chest before be fell down, too.”
“And the third man?”
“Ran back to their truck when the shooting started. I don’t know if he had a gun or not, but Bryan, if I could have gotten a clear shot, I’d have finished off that magazine into his back. I was that scared, and that mad.”
Nikki was shivering now. My best guess was from a combination of suppressed fear and the chill in the air. She fell into my chest, grabbing tight, and I was instantly transported to back when Nikki was Rachel’s age, or younger. She was suddenly a child again, seeking comfort and protection from the scary things in the world.
“Shhh,” I soothed, stroking her hair absently as I stood holding her. “I don’t blame you, sis. Now, where’s that pistol?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Going to use a magic trick and make it disappear,” I whispered conspiratorially in my little sister’s ear.
“You can’t do that! I need it!”
“Honey, that pistol now has bodies attached to it. Who knows what might happen down the road, and you can never be safe with that thing hanging around,” I reasoned, and Nikki acquiesced, and took a step back. She drew the Ruger, popped the magazine, shucked the round in the chamber, and laid everything on the counter.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Safe place,” I confided, “but one the cops will never find. Consider it lost on a fishing trip. You were never at that gas stop, and it was never you on the video.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Nikki retorted, her voice tinged with her confusion.
“Exactly! That’s what I mean. You are Sergeant Schultz. You know nothing! Nothing!” I exhorted, and Nikki finally rewarded me with a smile.
“I still need a pistol,” Nikki complained, but her voice now held a hint of playfulness in it.
“Please,” I said with an exaggerated sigh. “I’ve got four more just like it in the hallway safe.”
“Why would you happen to have that many of my particular model of pistol?” Nikki asked, her curiosity now aroused as the previous tension bled away.
Now I rewarded Nikki with my own Cheshire-cat smile before replying.
“Those P-95s are great pistols, but too big for a lot of folks to carry concealed, and when the cops moved away to the forty-caliber round, I picked them up cheap when I was helping Mike at the gun shows. I think I have about $700 in all four of those, and three of them came with the cases and extra magazines.”
“And no paper trail?”
“Please,” I repeated. “Don’t you know me by now?”
“Sometimes I wonder,” Nikki admitted. “Mike is supposed to the gun nut in the family, you know?”
“I’m just sneakier,” I admitted. “Just don’t let on to Mike, or he might get his feelings hurt.”
Nikki gave me a snort of derision, and I already felt better about my little sister.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The next day after Nikki’s revelation, I went to work with a different attitude. I’d thought I was ready for trouble, but I knew I was constantly allowing myself to react rather than act. The country I knew was already cracking at the seams, and no one seemed to know what the hell was going on outside their own little sphere of observation.
My lease with the property owner included four parking slots in back under the sun-faded awning, in addition to the six angled spots facing the Main Street. The back of the row of connected buildings fronted onto a two-lane stretch of street that reminded me of an alley, despite the sidewalks and gutters just like the front side. My impression arose, I imagined, from the lack of any store fronts on this side of the buildings. There was a real alley, four-foot-wide and blocked on both ends by six-foot-tall wooden gates on both ends, separating the side of my building from the one housing the Urgent Care clinic.
I was pleased to see Barbara’s well-preserved Mercedes sedan already parked in the reserved slot next to mine, and today I didn’t have to deal with squatters using the assigned parking spaces. My law practice wasn’t what anyone would call a high-volume business, but recently I’d seen an uptick in traffic coming through my doors, and hearing that one of my clients was forced to park at one of the metered slots adjacent to the courthouse got my blood boiling. I paid for those damned parking spaces, after all.
Barbara’s coffee was always better than I could manage on the little Mr. Coffee, so I was also pleased to see she was already brewing a pot when I entered through the back door. The door had a double deadbolt, and I kept them engaged until closing time, and only Barbara and I had keys. Any business that needed to be conducted came through the front door, unless a client called ahead with some mobility issues. I catered to an older clientele, and this happened all-to-frequently, which was why I kicked in extra for those assigned parking spaces.
“What we got today?”
“Nothing until the Dearborns at ten o’clock, Bryan,” Barbara said, straightening a stack of files on her desk as she watched me out of the corner of her eye. She was nervous about something, and that made me cautious.
Barbara Thompson was a thickly-built matron in her mid-fifties, devoted to Milt, her husband of thirty-three years, and her four grandchildren. She was active in her church, First Methodist, and had
the pulse of the town firmly under her thumb. Barbara was certainly tied into the local intelligence network, spreading word that she calculated wasn’t malicious, but might make for a bit of conversation. She edited what she spread, at least. After she’d learned Betsy Hamatrak was in to see me because they’d learned of a fatal cancer diagnosis, Barbara kept her mouth shut. On the other hand, if Cathy Baker’s oldest daughter was admitted on scholarship to Baylor, that was fair game.
I’d hired Barbara knowing she served as a repository of that rumor mill and more than once, she had been instrumental in keeping me out of making a social blunder from my own ignorance. Honestly, she reminded me of the character in Alas, Babylon who worked at the Western Union office, except with a more exciting homelife. Well, relatively speaking.
Now something had Barbara’s antennae raised, and I waited to for her to broach the subject.
“Bryan?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“What do you think is going to happen next?”
I shrugged, then winced. It was a bad habit, and something my wife was always trying to break me from doing. I hadn’t thought of that fact in years, but I found myself opening that door in my mind more often as time went on. Not sure if that meant I was getting past the loss or just becoming more accustomed to it.
“I’m not sure I understand what you are asking,” I finally said. “This country has suffered a terrible blow,” I temporized, “but we’ve taken licks in the past and eventually recovered.”
“Reverend Knightly was preaching from the Book of Revelations,” Barbara explained apologetically. “I just don’t know what to believe. I know you think this is a natural occurrence, but the very idea of those earthquakes and all that damage…it sounds like something God would lay down to smite the sinners. Are you still of the opinion this is a natural occurrence?”
Yes, on top of everything else, the religious fundamentalists were having a field day with the ‘Left Coast’ suffering from God’s Wrath. Of course, that attitude completely ignored all their fellow co-religionists who’d also died in the upheaval. I could only imagine that belief would spread if word ever got out that the nation with the largest Muslim population in the world just disappeared under the wall of water.
“I don’t know about that, Barbara. I never said I thought God didn’t have a hand in this. What I know is a lot of people died, including a great number of Americans. Sure, there were a lot of dead Californians in that mix, but despite the propaganda, you’d be hard-pressed to tell some of them from folks who get up around here.”
“No way. Those people are a bunch of kooks and nuts.”
“Seriously, ma’am, they’re not that different. Sure, you got those ‘Hollyweird types’,” I conceded, using the common term I’ve heard bandied about. “On the other hand, there were a lot of people you would think were local. Or, at the worst, grew up in Tyler or Beaumont. I was out there several years ago for work, just north of Sacramento. Ended up staying right across the road from the RCBS factory.”
“Don’t know what that is,” Barbara admitted. “Is that one of those marijuana dispensaries?”
I had to stifle my chuckle. “No, ma’am, and I’m sorry I laughed. I just thought it was funny, since I know your husband knows who they are. RCBS makes dies and reloading equipment. Or I should say, made. I doubt they are still in business.”
“Oh, that is funny,” Barbara agreed, then her smile turned serious. “I also get what you mean, and I’m sorry for what I said. I shouldn’t be that way. I’m sure you lost some friends out there.”
“No more than other folks, I’m sure. Until Facebook is back up, I’ll just keep hoping for the best. You asked me what I think is going to happen next, and I think we will continue to see the economy decline. You know there’s been a lot of rioting in some cities, and I think that’s going to continue as well. Best thing we can do is stick close to home and mind our own business.”
That was my official line and I was sticking to it. No sense tempting fate, which was what I would consider sharing any of my plans with Barbara Thompson. I liked Barbara or I wouldn’t have hired her, but she did carry a load of what I thought of as ‘old thinking’. She openly distrusted anyone who wasn’t a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, for example. To my shame, I didn’t do much to try to correct her thinking, but then, I was already treated as an outsider.
After that discussion, Barbara let it go and I dove into my work. I met with the Dearborns, who just wanted me to look over their wills and see if anything needed updating. Since I’d been born after the date on Terry Dearborn’s will and his wife Teresa’s was only a year newer, we did find a few things that needed to be brought current. Their children were all grown and out of the house, and the Dearborns wanted to make specific bequests to their grandchildren, so I made the appropriate alterations and brought the language up to current standards. Another one hundred and fifty dollars when it was all said and done. Another positive cash flow day, and it wasn’t even noon.
New Albany, and Albany County in general, didn’t lack for lawyers. We had four more within easy walking distance of my office, but the others took whatever walked in the door, while I focused on wills, trusts, and estate planning. It was limiting in a way, as I ended up turning away potential fees, but it also kept me from having to deal with the headaches of family law, and I refused to accept criminal cases. My best friend from law school had a successful criminal defense practice, but I lacked the ability to separate my personal beliefs from my professional ones.
Also, I saw what happened to my friend when he suffered a loss at trial for a client he thought was actually innocent. That happened, once in a blue moon, and Bill suffered terribly when it happened. No thanks. That was another reason I’d only participated in the Rudy Polinsky defense by secretly helping funnel money to help fund his defense.
For the rare decent personal injury case that walked in the door, I had a young lawyer across the street I worked with for a referral. Since the new legislation set attorneys’ fees at fifteen percent, the recovery needed to be really good to pay the freight. I never could understand why voters kept supporting politicians who advocated against the best interests of their constituents, favoring the big insurance and managed healthcare conglomerates, but they did run really slick advertising campaigns. Or as my brother Mike said, the insurance companies played the Star-Spangled Banner in their TV ads so everyone would stand for the national anthem. This made it easier to pick their pockets that way.
I’d done okay for myself in practice under the old rules, and by the time I was ready to leave Houston and walk away from that life, I’d banked a little over half a million dollars. That wasn’t bragging, since Collette and I had lived a fairly frugal lifestyle for the times. When I lost Collette and Charlie, I was already working for an older attorney who specialized in estate planning. Even if the fees were less, the hours were better and I was not working every weekend. I’d learned what I could from Bruce Wyatt, and I was just about to open my own shop when I lost them in that wreck.
A few hours after seeing the Dearborns out, I was doodling on a scratchpad, thinking about the reset hearings I had scheduled for the next day. I was also wondering when Barbara was coming back from lunch when I heard the bang of someone running their car into the metal trash dumpster out back.
This was a common enough occurrence since the Urgent Care clinic had installed their ambulance bay in the rear, which resulted in the giant metal trash receptacle being moved too close to the last parking spot on that end. Somebody backed into the damned thing at least once per week.
What the heck, I wondered as I next heard the roar of a car engine outside. This was not a normal sound, since even these old walls were fairly soundproof, and I began to worry. Barbara was late.
I stood quickly, grabbing my coat as I rose. I was conscious of the weight of the pistol in the side pocket of my sports coat. After being spooked by that unexpected visitor at the front gate and listening to my sister
’s nearly hysterical recitation of her escape from the gas station outside Luling, I was making the effort to be more careful and observant.
I paused at the landing leading to the barred back door, checking the small black-and-white television screen from the security camera, looking down on the back door. The immediate area was clear, and I planned to take a peek outside and lock back up while I checked down the side street.
Turning the two deadbolts, I had a brief image of childhood memories of watching movies at the old single screen theatre back in my hometown. Whenever it was a horror movie, there was always at least one woman in the crowd shouting advice. Usually, it amounted to, “Don’t go in that house, you stupid boy! That monster is gonna get you!”
Yeah, that was how I felt as I eased the door open. Just a few inches, and I peeked to the left. There I saw a faded blue Ford Fusion parked at an angle, rear driver’s side quarter panel pressed up against the green rectangle of the dumpster and blocking the ambulance driveway. I also spied the driver, out of his seat and standing behind the front corner of the car, facing the ambulance bay. He had his back to me, but I could vaguely see the shape held in the man’s arms. Shotgun.
Oh, crap. It took me a few seconds, but I finally felt all the pieces sliding into place. Somebody, well, two or more somebodies, were robbing the clinic, and I was looking at the getaway driver. I could intervene, violating my own rules, or I could simply observe and report. The decision turned out to be harder than I thought, but after reaming Mike for playing hero, I decided to haul out my cell phone to make a recording of the event. Best way to preserve the license plate numbers and get the faces of the thieves, I decided.
Was it cowardly? I didn’t think so. Other than my trips to the tactical range in Kountze and playing paintball with my brother and brother-in-law, I had no training in such matters. I’d never been a soldier, or policeman, and even with society starting to unravel, on-the-job training for such a dangerous avocation seemed foolish.
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