This wasn’t going to go down as easy as she thought.
21
“Vincent!” Brandt screamed as she emerged from the car.
Vincent froze the second he heard Brandt call his name, the tone in his partner’s voice indicated fear and immediate danger. And that’s when he saw the shooter up the street.
The guy was about fifteen meters to his left, peeking out of an alleyway with a semi-automatic and aimed in Vincent and Kelly’s direction.
Vincent pulled Kelly by the arm and dove to the left behind a parked car, two shots pinged off the metal and narrowly missed them.
As soon as Vincent and Kelly ran for cover, Brandt pulled her service weapon and aimed it over the roof of the car in the assailant’s / Devon’s direction. But Brandt was hesitant to take the shot for fear of killing their prime suspect.
“Drop it!” she screamed, he stared fire at her aiming his weapon, prepared to squeeze the trigger.
At that point, Brandt knew she had no choice.
She fired.
The bullet buried itself into Devon’s shoulder, spinning him around and knocking him down. Brandt moved around the car, gun trained on Devon as she made her way toward the alleyway—but he was already sitting up and firing blindly in her direction.
Devon let off four consecutive shots.
Brandt doubled back to the car and crouched behind the front end as Devon stood and began to flee, tripping over himself several times as he ducked into a building and disappeared from sight, blood dripping behind him like a trailing onto the ground.
Vincent, pulled his weapon and disengaged the safety, prepared to stand and join the firefight.
But then he realized Brandt was lying on her side in a small pool of blood.
“Lindsay!” he screamed, using her first name for the first time ever. Vincent looked to Kelly. “Stay here. Don’t you move.”
Seconds later, a Miami PD cruiser screeched to a halt, two female patrol officers emerged vehicles and raised their weapons flanking Vincent. “Alleyway,” he said to them. “We have a shooter. He’s on the move.” He pointed to Kelly. “One of you stay with her.”
“Copy that!”
“Yes, sir.”
One of the officers attended to Kelly, and the other closed in on the alley, Vincent ran in a crouch to Brandt. “Look at me,” he said, slowly turning her over and laying her on her back.
She was alive. Wounded, but still alive.
“He got me in the side,” Brandt said, a bloodstained hand pressed against her rib cage just below her bulletproof vest. “Shit, that hurts!”
Vincent examined the wound, covering with his palms and applying pressure as his hands became soaked in crimson. Her wound was bleeding profusely, but he knew enough to know she would survive.
“I think you’re going to be okay,” he said. “I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
Vincent looked over the hood of the car and saw the trail of blood Devon had left behind. “No,” he said, “but I am the asshole who just let our suspect get away.”
Later, at the hospital Brandt was diagnosed with two broken ribs. Vincent drinking a bottle of water by her bedside. Both were exhausted beyond belief.
“He ducked out of that alleyway after he took a shot at you,” Vincent said. “Units chased him down, but he managed to get away.”
Brandt closed her eyes. “We had him, damn it. We had him.”
“We can still talk to Kelly Moretti. She may know where he’s going next.”
Three and a half hours after the shootout, Vincent was in the interrogation room with Kelly Moretti. “You did the right thing, Kelly,” he said. “You could have been in a lot more trouble if you didn’t.”
She said nothing.
“Kelly,” Vincent said, Mendoza, making sure the digital recorder on the table was rolling, “we need to know where your boyfriend went. Where Devon would have gone.”
She took her time answering. “We were supposed to leave the country. Maybe he has already.”
“No. Miami PD checked out the motel room where the two of you were staying. The cash was still there. He’s not going far without it.”
Kelly fell out of her chair and began to weep on her knees. Mendoza came to her aid and helped her sit back up as her face turned an unpleasant shade of red. “I killed them,” she said, shaking her head. “Oh, my God. I killed them. I did this. I did this!”
Her body shook. She cried; slammed her fists on the table. Tried to leave the room several times but had to be restrained.
“Kelly,” Vincent said, trying to sound as warm as possible, “we did a background check on your boyfriend after we met his brother, Alex Palmer. Did you ever meet Alex?”
“No,” Kelly said with a sniffle.
“Okay,” Vincent said. “I understand.” He paused. “Did you meet Devon Palmer at your school in Hollow Green? Back when he was working construction?”
“Yeah.”
“And the two of you struck up a relationship from there. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“And after some time, he convinced you to murder your parents and use Aiden Stonebrook as a way to cover it up. Right?”
A long pause. “Yes.”
“Can you tell me why?” Vincent said, leaning in.
“Devon said we had to make the cops think someone else did it,” Kelly said.
“The murders?”
“Yeah.”
“And you started dating Aiden as a way of recruiting him to be the patsy. The person you were going to set up?”
Another long pause. “Uh-huh.”
“How did you get a hold of your family’s life insurance payout?” Vincent asked. “Can you tell me how you did that?”
Kelly shrugged, gaze focused on the digital recorder. “I asked him to. He never said no to me.”
Mendoza and Vincent exchanged a look.
Unreal.
“Kelly,” Vincent said, “it’s important we find Devon. We need him to confess to what he did. Do you have any idea, any idea as to where he could have gone?”
Kelly thought for a good long while.
“Bakersfield,” she finally said. “He always talked about his aunt in Bakersfield.”
“Bakersfield mean anything to you?” Mendoza asked Vincent after they had stepped out of the room.
“After we did a background check on Devon and his brother, we found out that they were both raised by their aunt in Bakersfield,” Vincent said.
Mendoza sighed. “My ex-wife is from there.”
“You end it on good terms?”
Mendoza smirked. “No.”
A moment passed as Vincent thought of his relationship successes and many failures. “I need to get moving,” he finally said. “Contact my people.”
“You should call this in to the people in Bakersfield,” Mendoza told him. “Get the PD over there to start looking for Devon Palmer.”
“No. I wanna keep it quiet. Devon’s clever. If he sees red and blue lights flashing around his home, he’ll likely split.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s too clever. The guy only slightly adjusted his real last name when he crafted his alias.”
Vincent wanted to laugh. “True.”
“Okay,” Mendoza said. “Kelly said she’d sign a confession, so we’re good on that end. Her lawyer is in my office right now trying to work it all out.”
“She giving you any flak?”
“Negative. She knows the score. She’s adamant about sticking to a few stipulations, but her and Kelly have agreed to the confession.”
“Good,” Vincent said, checking his watch. “Think you can hold down the fort while I make a quick stop over in California?”
“You really think he’s going there?”
“My gut says so.”
Mendoza started moving toward his office. “Let me know if Bakersfield is still the shit-show I remember it being.”
Vincent tur
ned on his heel and made his way to the hospital to check on Brandt.
I wonder if I should bring up the other night.
No way.
Bad timing.
Real bad timing.
“Bakersfield,” Brandt said, propped up in her bed at the hospital. “You think he actually might go there?”
“Big time.”
“You clear this with the higher-ups?”
A pause from Vincent.
He didn’t want to lie.
“Oh, man,” Brandt said, looking away.
“They don’t want me going off a hunch,” Vincent said.
She laughed. “Well isn’t that a first.”
“Feeling all right?” Vincent asked.
“A bit banged up,” Brandt said. “But I’ll be fine. Bullet went in and out. Just gotta deal with these ribs and I’ll be tiptop.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“I know you’re going to follow through with this,” Brandt said, “regardless of what anyone else tells you.”
“He’s there, Brandt,” Vincent said. “I know Devon is in Bakersfield.”
“Well…go find him, then.”
“Hey,” Vincent said. “I was thinking maybe we—”
“Take it up with me when you get back. Yeah?”
“Say no more, detective.”
Vincent stood up, moved toward the door, and didn’t look back as Brandt called out to him, “Be careful.”
22
Bakersfield, California
Vincent walked into the dimly lit bar just off the highway on the outskirts of Bakersfield California. It was a dimly lit and cheaply built property, but none of the patrons in it seemed to mind.
Inside the bar was an older woman with sun leathered skin, greasy, unwashed hair, and a set of steely-blue eyes that seemed glazed over from a lifetime of consumption. In fact she had a glass in her hand the moment Vincent entered. She rushed the dark brown liquid down her throat.
Her name was Amy Palmer, Devon and Alex Palmer’s aunt, and the moment she saw Edgar Vincent approaching with a badge clipped to his hip, it seemed she knew the day had come that one or both of those boys had finally reaped what they had sown.
She shifted her eyes to the news playing on the TV in the upper-left corner of the bar, seemingly uncaring of the actual events playing out on the screen. Vincent walked over to the nearest stool and cozied up. Her body language told a story of pure discomfort.
“Devon or Alex?” she said.
“Devon,” Vincent replied.
Amy shook her head; eyes still focused on the tube. “How did you find me here?”
Vincent picked at the label of the empty beer bottle in front of him. “Wasn’t too far of a walk. Few of the locals here seem to know all about you and your family.”
Amy closed her eyes, the sins of her clan now coming back to haunt her. “You know,” she said solemnly, “I always had a hunch Devon would get into trouble before Alex... Officially, that is.”
Vincent pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet, ready to buy Amy her next round. “And I have a feeling that you know exactly where Devon is at.”
She said nothing.
Minutes passed without her saying a word.
“I might,” Amy said. “But I’m scared.”
Vincent said. “I just want Devon. You can put that on the record.”
Vincent saw the history in her eyes and the bags underneath them, a whiff of stale cigarettes rode on Amy’s breath as she spoke, “He just showed up. He’s wounded. Some doctor sutured him up, though.”
“You have a trailer,” Vincent said, recalling what he had researched on Amy. “Correct?”
“That’s where he’s at. But I’d be careful. He’s definitely armed.”
Vincent took a moment, took the ten dollars, and slid it over to Amy. “I’m going to take a leap of faith and hope that you’ll still be here when I get back from rounding up your nephew.”
Amy nearly laughed, taking the ten-dollar bill from Vincent as she focused back on the television and said, “Even if I wasn’t helping, I’d still be right here.”
Realizing he wasn’t going to get any more out of Amy, Vincent stood up, moved toward the exit, and made his way to Amy’s trailer.
Her trailer rested on a ten-acre lot filled with rusted, abandoned, trailers. Everything was organized and sat on a street in rows, all the campers and trailers laid out in a way that seemed to evoke hope of an emerging neighborhood before it all went to shit and lost funding.
The grounds gave off a ghost-town vibe with the tumbleweeds, the lack of greenery, and a stillness that was so calm you could hear the creak of a screen door slapping against a long-since-abandoned trailer.
Vincent pulled up outside the rusted fence, Amy’s trailer resting among the fifty others organized in parallel roads at the far end of the lot. He pulled his cell phone, dialed, and held it to his ear.
“Bakersfield Police Department.”
“Yes, my name is Detective Edgar Vincent, Hollow Green PD. I need to speak to your watch, commander.”
“Please hold.”
Twenty seconds later.
“This is Lieutenant Miller.”
“My name is Detective Edgar Vincent,” Vincent said. “I’m outside the Luxury Grounds trailer park. I’m currently in the middle of an investigation, and I’m looking for a perp named Devon Palmer. He’s been involved in a string of murders in Hollow Green, Illinois, and I believe he’s hiding out here in his aunt’s trailer.”
A sigh. “Jesus. The Palmers. Why am I not surprised?”
“I need backup units here immediately. I need to take him into custody.”
“Why didn’t we get a heads-up?”
“I was concerned about alerting him to my presence. I figured Palmer would run.”
Vincent could almost hear the lieutenant thinking over the phone.
“I’ll get some people over there right away,” Miller said. “Stay put.”
“Copy that.”
Vincent hung up, checked that his Kevlar vest was snug on his chest, got out of the car, and removed his pistol from its holster.
Okay, Devon.
Time to face the music.
Vincent moved inside the grounds, scanning from left to right as the wind blew and a small plume of dirt was kicked up by the wind. A howling filled the air as the sun beat down on Vincent’s neck, cooking it like an egg as he controlled his breathing and walked through with caution.
He passed by trailer after trailer, slow and steady, a tight grip on his weapon as he moved to Amy’s trailer at the back of the lot. Vincent knew that there was no one here—save for Devon—but the stillness and the eeriness of it all caused shivers to travel up to his spine.
Vincent made it to the back of the lot, crouching low as he made out the sounds of a television in the one trailer at the end of the lot.
Vincent approached with his head low, his right shoulder hugging the side of the trailer parallel to Amy’s away as he moved in.
He took his time, moving as close as he could to the trailer but keeping mindful of potential cover as he swooped in on the porch, crept up the metal steps, and prepared to kick the door in.
One… Vincent counted in his head.
Two…
Three…
He kicked the door open and moved in, sweeping left and right through the trailer and finding nothing of interest but an old dingy television broadcasting cartoons in the living room.
“Shit,” he said.
Could I have tipped him off that I was here?
The sound of someone loading rounds into a shotgun told him he had.
23
The shotgun blast tore a hole into the trailer, the slug whizzed over Vincent’s head and shattered the television screen into multiple pieces.
Vincent shuffled backward on his elbows, reaching toward his gun before he rolled onto his right side, raised it, and fired off six rounds in the direction where blasts came from.
Two seconds passed. Then three. Everything felt sped up and slowed down all at the same time.
“Palmer!” Vincent shouted, getting up in a crouch and moving for cover inside the trailer. “Give it up! Don’t be stupid!”
Devon fired another round, this time shattering one of the windows and forcing Vincent to duck as he was showered with shards of glass.
“Shit,” Vincent, raised his weapon and fired off four more rounds in the direction that the other shots had come from.
Two more blasts from the shotgun were returned. Two fresh craters were made in the wall in the trailer as Vincent rolled, got to a kneeling position, raised his weapon toward the door, and emptied his clip.
Vincent heard Devon shuffle away, discarded his empty magazine, loaded a fresh one, smacked it in the housing, and kicked the door open to the trailer so he could follow Devon in pursuit.
Devon ran to lose Vincent amongst the trailers. His hand was leaking like a sieve, nicked by one of Vincent’s bullets, which was likely the reason he was no longer holding his shotgun.
Devon zigzagging through the trailers prevented Vincent from taking a shot. Vincent found a few brief openings as Devon weaved and dipped and dove behind cover, but he couldn’t get a bead on his target long enough to fire. Then Devon dropped out of Vincent’s line of sight.
Vincent held his weapon ready, knuckles as white as fallen snow and his lower jaw was so tense it began to hurt.
Vincent slowed his pace as he walked toward the second row of trailers, every noise that he made, every footfall in the dirt, made him fearful that he would give away his position.
Vincent spotted a glimpse of Devon as he emerged from one of the trailers, briefly as he dove behind another.
Vincent let off two rounds in Devon’s direction. He heard nothing for a time, so he stepped forward cautiously as his hands were becoming sweaty around the grip.
Devon rushed Vincent from the shadows. A shoulder check knocked his gun out the grip of his hand and the gun slid away in the dirt.
Hollow Ground Page 9