Blue Steele Box Set

by Remington Kane

  I left Gary alone with her to keep her busy, while I talked with the caregiver who had shown Tommy around. Her name was LaShonda Miller, and she had a gold cross pinned to her sweater.

  “It was Mr. Geary who had the 100th birthday, but honestly, Mr. Hayes seemed more interested in Mr. Blaine; he talked to him for hours that day.”

  “Who’s Mr. Blaine?”

  “Andrew Blaine, he’s 88 and suffering from Alzheimer’s, he’s in the early stages though, so he has good days now and then. It helped him find Jesus, that’s one good thing that came out of it.”

  “Is today a good day or a bad day?”

  LaShonda smiled. “Let’s find out.”

  Andrew Blaine was lying in bed wearing a robe. In a corner of the room, a TV was playing religious programming. And thankfully, he was having a good day mentally.

  “Tommy Hayes, Lord yes I remember him, good boy, and I swear he’s the spittin’ image of my kid brother Albert, only Albert died years ago, in Korea.”

  I pulled a chair close to the bed and sat.

  “What did you two talk about, sir?”

  “Not to be disrespectful, ma’am, but that’s between me and Tommy, but don’t worry, once he writes his story, the whole world will know.”

  I told him about Tommy then, and he seemed to shrink inside himself. A moment later, he mumbled something.

  “I’m sorry sir, I couldn’t hear you; what did you say?”

  He lifted his head and stared at me with young blue eyes trapped in an ancient face.

  “I said the bastards killed him.”

  “What bastards?”

  Blaine reached over to his bedside table and grabbed a bible.

  “Their day of reckoning has come. Listen up, missy; I’m about to tell you a story.”

  And he sure did. When he was done, I was certain I knew who killed Tommy Hayes, and why.

  Chapter 10

  We arrived back in Landsville late in the evening, then Gary and I spent the night on our laptops doing research.

  Mama got up early as usual and made us breakfast. Over coffee, I filled her in.

  “That son of a bitch! I should get your daddy’s old shotgun and put him in the ground.”

  “Whoa Mama, we’ve no proof; it’s just a theory at this point, but once I confront him, we’ll know if he’s guilty or not.”

  “Your sister is being arraigned this morning at nine o’clock; we’ll talk to him then.”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll talk to him then. This could be dangerous, and if it is, I don’t want you anywhere around.”

  “I know you’re damn near as tough as your daddy, girl, but get some help, don’t face him alone.”

  “I’ve already thought of that, and I’m waiting for a call back from the sheriff’s department.”

  We got to the municipal building at half past eight.

  Sheriff Matt met me in an unoccupied courtroom and I repeated Andrew Blaine’s story to him. When I was finished, he leaned back on the wooden railing of the witness box.

  “Doc and the mayor, bank robbers?”

  “Actually, it was an armored car. The heist took place just outside of El Paso, in 1953.”

  “And this Blaine, he claims to be one of the gang that Doc and Emma were a part of?”

  “Yes, he and another man, it was the other man that planned the heist. Andrew Blaine was Emma Cole’s boyfriend, of course, back then she was Emma Jameson. Emma, Doc, Blaine, and another man robbed over two hundred thousand dollars that day; they also killed the three guards inside the truck.”

  “This fourth perp, any idea who he was?”

  “Yes, Blaine says he was the brains behind the heist, and also the reason it worked so well.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The other man was a deputy sheriff; he flagged down the armored car by using his siren. When the driver lowered the window to talk to him, he shot him in the face. After that, Doc and Emma blocked the front, and with the patrol car blocking the rear, the remaining guards had nowhere to go.”

  Sheriff Matt got off the railing and stood up straight.

  “And you say this happened in El Paso?”

  “Yes, your father, Sheriff Joe, he was from El Paso, wasn’t he?”

  The sheriff let loose a heavy sigh.

  “Goddamn it, Blue, why couldn’t you just let it go? Your sister could have pleaded diminished capacity and been out in five years.”

  “And what about Tommy, Sheriff, will Tommy be back in five years?”

  “I hated doing that, I really did, but the boy left me no choice. He had no clue who I was. He came and told me Blaine’s story in the hope that I would help him identify the deputy from El Paso. Blaine couldn’t remember his last name, only that his first name was Joe.”

  “You knew all this before he came to you, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, my daddy confessed to me when he was dying. I told him it didn’t make a bit of difference; every man does good and evil. A few years after that heist, daddy met my mama and stopped drinking; from that day forward, he did nothing but good. I’ll be damned if I’ll let anybody drag his name through the mud, anybody, Blue.”

  “So what are you going to do, Sheriff, kill me? It won’t do any good, other people know about Andrew Blaine.”

  “Blaine’s just a silly old coot with Alzheimer’s, besides, Doc is on his way there now to… ease him to the other side. As for you, I guess I’ll say that you were attempting to break your sister out.”

  “I’m not Tommy, Sheriff, I have a gun and I know how to use it.”

  “Little Blue, named after her daddy, are you as fast with a gun as he was? Well, I guess we’ll find out.”

  “No we won’t, Sheriff,” said a voice from behind him.

  It was Deputy Billy Joe Tently, I had told him my suspicions about the sheriff and he reluctantly agreed to hide himself beneath the judge’s bench and listen in. Now, he stood behind his boss with his weapon drawn.

  “Billy Joe, put down that gun.”

  Billy Joe shook his head.

  “Afraid not, now take out your weapon slowly and lay it on the witness seat there.”

  The sheriff did as he was told and then smiled.

  “This don’t matter none, once Doc takes care of Blaine, it will all just be hearsay.”

  Billy Joe smiled his big toothy grin. “No sir, we got you on film.” He reached over and grabbed his phone off the bench. “And not only was it filming, but it also downloaded to my computer at home.”

  The sheriff made a pained expression.

  “You and that goddamn phone, Billy Joe.”

  As Billy Joe led the sheriff away, I whipped out my own phone and called the nursing home. It took a minute, but I got them to understand the threat to them. They assured me that Mr. Blaine was safe, and that they were alerting security and calling the Dallas P.D.

  I walked out of the courtroom and found Gary and Mama smiling at me.

  Mama walked over and placed a hand on my cheek.

  “You done good, girl.”

  “Thank you, Mama.”

  “Mr. Gary?”

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “Let’s go get my other girl free like you promised me.”

  Gary offered her his arm.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Well, all right then,” Mama said, and off we went to get Jenny.

  Part 3

  Call Me Ramón

  Chapter 11

  I was at the Lone Star Mall.

  Earlier, I had eaten lunch in the food court with Becca and her oldest daughter, Amy, who was eight-years-old.

  Becca and Amy were browsing about the mall, while I sat in a chair at the salon getting ready to have my hair dried and my feet pedicured. It was Spoil Blue Day, a day I tried to celebrate at least twice a year.

  I had a full schedule planned. After sleeping sinfully late, I drove to the mall and met Becca for lunch. After the salon, I planned to go home and veg out in front
of the TV, and later, after a junk food dinner, I would indulge in ice cream, mint chocolate chip.

  Gary was out of town on business and wouldn’t be back for two days, so it was a perfect time to just sit back and relax. Of course, life had other plans.

  The stylist was just about to place the dryer over my head when I heard the gunshots. I, along with the others in the shop, ran to the salon’s front windows and looked out at the interior of the mall. We were on the ground floor of the three-story building, and in the middle of our section, there was a coin fountain. Past the stone fountain, on the other side of the mall, was a bank.

  As we watched, three armed men in suits ran out of the bank and headed for the exit, the one in the lead was dragging a child along; the child was Amy.

  I ran back to my pocketbook and grabbed my gun, a snub-nosed .38. As I did so, I shouted to the shop owner.

  “Gloria, call 911, tell them that four men just robbed the bank, shots fired, hostage taken.”

  “I only saw three.”

  “There’s a driver outside, trust me, they’re not walking.”

  On my way out the door, I grabbed a scrunchie and tied my wet hair back in a ponytail.

  As my bare feet slapped against the floor tiles, I maneuvered around groups of huddled shoppers and thumbed back the hammer on my gun.

  When I heard more shots ring out, I came to a sliding halt in front of the bank, then watched as the robbers banged open the exit doors. On the floor behind them were two bodies, a man and a woman, both mall security.

  I raced toward the doors and made it outside just as the last robber was twenty feet from the getaway car. He was a behemoth and weighed three-hundred and fifty if he was a pound. It was no wonder that he was last to reach the car.

  “Stop!” I called.

  The man turned toward me with an Uzi in his right hand. I shot at him four times while still running. The first three shots missed high, but the forth one took the top of his head off in a spray of blood and brains. As he fell, he spun toward his own vehicle and the gun in his hand began to chatter.

  The man sitting in the passenger seat ducked in time but the driver wasn’t as lucky. As he bent forward to avoid the errant shots, his seat belt held him in place, and multiple slugs caused him to dance in his seat. As the gun fell toward the ground along with its owner, it blew apart the right rear tire and etched a line of holes into the ground behind the car.

  The man in the back seat scrambled out of the car with Amy and a black satchel, while his sole remaining companion followed behind.

  “Let the girl go!” I shouted.

  The man shoved Amy toward the other surviving man, then leaned over the trunk of the car.

  As he opened up with his gun, I dived to the ground and rolled beside the dead man. He had fallen on his back when he died and his massive bulk made for a handy shield.

  I lay as flat as I could as a dozen shots came my way. Many of them plunked into the corpse and at least one exited in a spray of blood. I was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and the still warm blood splattered across my legs.

  “Stop shootin’, you’re hittin’ Bobby,” the other man yelled.

  I raised my head, risked a glance, and found that the men were running away, while dragging Amy along between them. Amy’s curly blonde hair floated behind her in the breeze. They were running toward the east end of the parking lot, where the highway was.

  I stood to go in pursuit, and that’s when I heard my name called.

  “Blue?”

  It was Becca. She had a lump the size of a golf ball above her left eye and appeared to be on the verge of passing out, even so, I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of her; until that moment, I didn’t know if the robbers had killed her.

  “Blue they took Amy… they took Amy.”

  I locked eyes with her.

  “I’ll get her back; I swear it.”

  Becca nodded slightly, then sank to the ground in tears.

  I ignored my impulse to comfort her and ran after the robbers. As I threaded my way through the parking lot, I came upon shoppers hiding in their cars. Many of them held phones to their ears, undoubtedly calling 9-1-1. While the police would be a blessing, I also prayed that their arrival wouldn’t escalate things into a hostage situation. I needed to get Amy away from her abductors before the situation got out of hand.

  At the end of the parking lot was a rise of grass, twenty feet high, which took you up to the freeway. As the two men reached the top of the slope, one of them fired a shot in my direction. It blew the windshield out of a car thirty feet away from me. It was a weak one-handed shot and was probably only meant to slow me down.

  As I started up the hill, they vanished from sight and I slipped and grunted my way up the grass. The morning dew remained and had made the grass slick; my bare feet only made the going tougher.

  I was ten feet from the top when I heard shots, which was followed by screeching as a car came to a sudden stop. I made it to the top of the rise just as the robbers peeled away. They were in a Hummer of all things, a blue one. Its previous owner lay on the side of the road, he was unconscious, with blood running down his face.

  The Thursday afternoon traffic was light and the carjacking had barely slowed down the flow.

  I needed a ride. I ran out into the middle lane, gun at the ready and searched for the right vehicle. It came a second later in the form of a black Ford F350.

  I fired one shot in the air and then stood sideways with the gun aimed at the speeding pickup. The truck slowed, but as it neared me, it veered to the right and skidded to a sideways stop. A moment later, I found myself face to face with the driver. His gun made the .38 I carried look like a popgun.

  The man smiled, as he thumbed off the safety on the gun.

  “Hey Chica, what’s happenin’?”

  “There!” I pointed. “The black Hummer in the middle lane.”

  “I see it,” said the man in a calm voice, he was about thirty, swarthy and muscular.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Call me Ramón,” he said, with a slight Spanish accent.

  “I’m Blue.”

  “The bounty hunter?”

  “You’ve heard of me?”

  “Yes, you once got to a man before I could.”

  “You’re a bounty hunter too?”

  He smiled, “Not exactly,” and then he looked down at my bloody legs. “There are some wipes in the glove box.”

  I found the wipes and cleaned up, when I finished, I found Ramón staring at my legs.

  “Eyes on the road, we can’t lose them.”

  “Sorry, Chica, but you are a little distracting, you know?”

  “I only know that my best friend’s daughter is in that Hummer with two crazed gunmen. Help me get her back and I’ll pose nude if you want.”

  A smile formed on Ramón’s handsome face.

  “I may hold you to that.”

  We drove along, following behind the Hummer, while always keeping two or three cars between us. If they knew we were following, they didn’t show it. They just drove along in the middle lane while keeping with the flow of traffic.

  I tapped my fingers on the door.

  “I can’t believe you don’t have a phone.”

  “I hate the damn things, besides, there’s no one I want to talk to.”

  “I need to call the cops.”

  “So, where’s your phone?”

  “Back in the beauty parlor, along with my pocketbook, and my boots.”

  “There’s a pair of flip-flops behind your seat, they’re better than nothing.”

  I twisted in my seat and reached back to grab a pair of bright red flip-flops. I put them on even though I didn’t like them. I hate the feeling of having anything between my toes, but as Ramón said, they were better than nothing.

  “Why are you helping me?” I asked.

  “You said that these bastards took a kid; I hate anyone who messes with kids, plus, there’s the money they took.�
��

  “That money belongs to the bank.”

  “Finders keepers, Chica.”

  Up ahead, the Hummer made a right, turned off the highway, and drove down a dirt road. Ramón pulled over to the shoulder and parked.

  “What are you doing? We have to keep them in sight.”

  “We will, but if we follow too closely they’ll hear us coming.”

  He was right, but it was hard to sit by and do nothing, a moment later, he turned off the engine.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Think about where we are. What’s on the other side of these trees?”

  We had followed the thieves along highway 31, headed west.

  “The Trinity, the Trinity River is back there,” I said.

  “Correct, so this road must be the only way in or out, from here on in, it looks like we’re on foot. If we go driving in there, they’ll hear us for sure.”

  I opened my door.

  “Let’s go.”

  As we crept along, it occurred to me that I had only one round left in my gun. However, Ramón’s hand cannon, a .50 Desert Eagle, held eight rounds.

  We walked down the narrow dirt road, staying to either side, so that we didn't make ourselves into one convenient target. As we walked, we listened for any sounds of movement or talking.

  We had only gone about a hundred yards when we heard the voices, two of them, arguing.

  “She can identify us, Toby; do you want to spend the rest of your life in Huntsville?”

  “Derek, she’s just a kid.”

  We crept closer. Through a break in the trees, I could see the river calmly flowing by, a few steps more and I spotted the two men. The taller of the two had stringy blond hair and a goatee. His gun was out; it was hanging by his side. The other one stood before him, and from where I was, it looked as if Amy was trying to hide behind him.

  “Move, Toby, it’s gotta be done, so let me do it; we can’t stay here all day. That damn Hummer might have GPS tracking and I ain’t goin’ to be here when the cops find it. Now move!”

  The one called Toby was shoved aside, leaving Amy exposed.