After the Execution (19 page)

‘A
BOUT TWO MONTHS
ago I contacted Vance with a proposal,’ Garcia explained. ‘I told him I had a dossier full of incriminating information on the Texas Syndicate that would blow the organization apart.’

‘Such as?’ I asked.

‘Bank records, offshore accounts, articles of association, the names of paid contacts within the state legislature, the police, the prison system and the media. Plus, details of their links with the Mexican drug cartels. Distribution routes, storage facilities, safe houses. Enough to put a lot of top people away for a long time.’

‘What was the FBI’s reaction?’

‘They were keen. And why wouldn’t they be? The Syndicate has become a major embarrassment to law enforcement agencies. It wields enormous power and influence, especially here in Texas. Nobody in my position has ever turned against it and so the Feds realized they couldn’t pass it up.’

‘So why have you decided to rat on them?’

‘I want out and I need to do it before they realize I’ve been taking money that wasn’t mine to pay off gambling debts.’

‘Money that belonged to the Syndicate?’

He nodded. ‘They trust me because we go back a long way. There are family connections down the line. So I have access to funds both here and abroad. About two months ago Martinez ordered the murders of four gang members who’d been feeding information to the cops. They were slaughtered and dumped in an alleyway not far from here. It was part of a crackdown on leaks and betrayal. It scared the hell out of me. So I moved a sizeable pile of cash into my own accounts and started planning for a new life far away.’

‘But why fake your own death if you’ll have to give evidence against the Syndicate eventually?’

‘Because testifying in court was never part of the deal. I told Vance I wasn’t prepared to do that. Or go into the witness protection
programme
. I know what would happen if I did. One day I’d be pulling out of my driveway and the car would explode. That’s how it works. They’d eventually find me.’

‘So the Feds went along with it?’

‘They knew that what I had to give them made it worth their while. Everything is either documented on paper or on disc. It’s all in a
briefcase
that’s hidden upstairs. A briefcase full of dynamite. There’s no need for me to testify against anyone.’

‘So you told Vance that he had to convince the Syndicate you were dead so Martinez wouldn’t look for you.’

‘That’s right. And Vance was tasked with coming up with a way to do it. He told me he was in his office when your photo appeared on the TV. He said he was struck by the likeness. He spent a week looking into it before outlining his proposal to the guys in Washington. They gave the go-ahead and then he told me how it would go down.’

‘So these pants I’m wearing are part of a suit that belonged to you?’

He looked at them and nodded. ‘Vance convinced me it would work. He said they had every angle covered. So I arranged to meet Martinez to go through some financial matters. While you were being taken to the restaurant in my place, I went to a safe house in Houston. But I had to come back here after you got away. I told Martinez I spent the night with a friend after the attempt on my life. He’s been trying to find out who tried to kill me and why. But of course he’s getting nowhere.’

I had to admit it was an ingenious plan. And it would have worked like a dream if the hooded guy hadn’t missed me. But I felt the anger welling up inside me. My sister, two FBI agents and a San Antonio detective had died because of what this no good shyster had done.

I looked at the gun in his hand and tried to figure out if I could get it from him before he pulled the trigger.

And that’s when I saw something that almost made me smile.

At that very moment the phone started ringing. He had placed it back on the coffee table, but as he reached for it I rushed him.

He jumped back and squeezed the trigger.

Click
.

Before he could work out for himself why it hadn’t fired I was on him. He tried to hit me with the pistol, but I grabbed his wrist with one hand and drove the other one into his stomach. As he doubled over I seized the gun from his grip and then brought it down hard on the back of his neck.

He collapsed in a heap, but remained conscious. I stepped away from him and said, ‘You should never play with guns unless you know how to use them.’

He rolled on his side, clutching his stomach with one hand and the back of his head with the other.

‘The safety catch,’ I said, making a show of flicking it off. ‘You left it on.’

The phone stopped ringing, and Garcia said, ‘That was Vance. He’ll think there’s a problem and come over.’

I didn’t think that Vance or any of his agents would press the panic button because Garcia hadn’t answered the phone. So there was no rush to get going. Besides, I needed to consider my next move. An idea was taking shape in my mind, but it was risky and it might not work.

‘What are you going to do?’ Garcia asked.

There was a look of sheer terror in his eyes now that the tables had turned. He’d started to sweat and his face was devoid of colour. He started mumbling so I told him to be quiet. I wanted to think. My head was starting to ache. It felt like a giant bruise that was gently pulsating.

My mind dialled through what Garcia had told me. It was hard to believe that the most outrageous part of Vance’s plan – the faked execution – had been so easy to pull off.

They knew it was possible because they’d done it before apparently. So guys like you could be experimented on.

Jesus
.

Just how often had a death row inmate survived his own
execution
? And how many of them were still alive and hidden away in some grim government research facility? It was incredible and yet strangely plausible because lethal injection had become the accepted method of committing legalised murder. As Vance had pointed out to me, drugs could be used to make a person appear dead.

And it was easy to see why the government would want to do it. Why not make use of all those human guinea pigs? Far better to experiment with new drugs and dangerous chemical agents on real people
than on rats or dogs or monkeys – especially people who are believed to be dead.

It means there are no concerned relatives, no financial liabilities in the event of death, no outcry over human rights issues, no worries about high mortality rates.

The debate over whether to use ‘live’ death row inmates for non-
consensual
clinical trials had been raging for years. Opposition to it was strong and I could see why the government had decided to start faking executions. Call me heartless, but I didn’t actually have a problem with it. It was a way at least to make sure all those murderers and rapists paid their debts to society.

I wondered how many executions were faked each year and how inmates were selected. Maybe it depended on what drugs were being tested at any given time. Or perhaps, as in my case, one of the law enforcement agencies needed a corpse or someone to take a fall.

‘You should go,’ Garcia said. ‘Just get as far away from here as you can. If you don’t you’ll end up dead. There can be no happy ending to this.’

‘Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,’ I said. ‘It was you who sparked off the chain of events that led to my sister getting shot.’

‘Don’t lay that one on me,’ he said. ‘The only person who was
supposed
to die was you. But then you were going to die anyway. That’s why I didn’t feel bad. At least you got to live a while longer.’

In a perverse kind of way he had a point. In his place, given the
circumstances
, I might have done the same thing.

‘How often have you been meeting with Vance?’ I asked him.

‘When we need to,’ he said.

‘Where?’

He swallowed. ‘There’s a small lake south of here close to the
municipal
airport. It’s called Parson’s Hollow. There’s a parking area which hardly anyone uses.’

‘How long would it take to get there?’

‘Fifteen minutes or so.’

I pointed to the phone. ‘Then I want you to call Vance back. Tell him to meet you there in an hour. If he asks what it’s about tell him you want to talk over what’s happened.’

‘He’ll smell a rat.’

‘Not if you don’t give him a reason to. If you do I’ll blow your fucking head off.’

To make sure he got the message I waited for him to sit up and then pressed the muzzle of the gun against his forehead.

This time Vance answered and the lawyer told him he wanted to meet up.

‘I just want a face to face conversation,’ Garcia said. ‘No it can’t fucking wait. An hour at the lake. Be there.’

He severed the connection and handed me the phone. But in doing so he made a mistake that cost him his life.

He tried to grab the pistol from me. As I pulled my arm back his hand closed around mine and put pressure on my trigger finger.

The gun went off. The blast was muffled somewhat because it was pressed against his chest. He fell back, blood gushing from the wound. He started writhing in agony but I could tell from the damage that he would soon be dead. I knelt beside him, feeling a knife of guilt twist in my gut.

‘Help me – please.’ As he murmured these words bubbles of blood formed in his mouth. His face was scrunched up in pain.

For a fleeting moment I thought of doing as he asked, but instead, I said, ‘The dossier. Tell me where it is and I’ll get an ambulance for you.’

If I’d thought he had a chance I wouldn’t have said it, but he didn’t so I reckoned it was worth trying to salvage what I could from the situation.

He mumbled something that I didn’t catch so I asked him again about the dossier, not really expecting him to give me a coherent answer. But then he opened his eyes, looked up at me, and mouthed a single word:

‘Bath.’

Before I went in search of the bathroom I hurried into the kitchen to have a look out front. I wanted to know if the gunshot had attracted any attention. But the street was quiet and I saw no one out there. I
reckoned
if a neighbour had called 911 I would have soon heard the whoop of sirens.

The bathroom was upstairs, a large airy room with a corner tub. There was only one place to conceal a briefcase and that was behind the side panel which was made of plastic and easy to remove.

Sure enough, it was there. An ordinary black leather case. I took it out and thumbed it open, surprised that it wasn’t locked. Inside were dozens of documents and three or four CDs.

I glanced at some of the paperwork and saw mention of several
banks, including two in the Cayman Islands and one in Panama. There was also a list of names, among them a Judge Roy Sanders and a police detective named Dennis Cross. Next to the names a sum of money and what looked like a bank account number.

Garcia was right, I realized. This was dynamite.

I rushed back downstairs with the case, but by the time I got to the living room Garcia was already dead. I checked for a pulse and listened to his heart just to make sure.

I tried not to let it get to me. The guy had essentially got what had been coming to him. As a lawyer who represented some of the state’s biggest criminals, there was always the strong possibility that his life would come to a violent end.

I forced myself to focus instead on the plan that was coming together in my head, a plan aimed at achieving the two objectives I’d now set myself. The first was to ensure that Kate came through this crazy mess in one piece.

And the second was to make someone pay for letting me spend ten years on death row for a murder I did not commit.

Before leaving Garcia’s house I went to his study and fired up his
computer
. Having watched Kate surf the internet in the hotel I knew how to get online and use Google.

I was looking for a specific address and I thought it would take me an age to find it. But to my astonishment it took less than five minutes. In the new high-tech world nothing was private or secure anymore.

I wrote down the details on a sheet of paper. Then I raided Garcia’s closet and took out one of his shirts and a sober grey suit. They were as good as new and probably made-to-measure. They were also a perfect fit.

I retrieved Garcia’s keys from his pocket and took his wallet too. It contained credit cards and a hundred dollars in cash. Plus his driving license with the photo of a man who looked just like me, only younger.

A minute later I backed the Mercedes out onto the road. I left the engine running while I shut the garage door and went over to the SUV to get the holdall with the money.

As I drove away from Garcia’s house I checked all around to see if anyone was watching me.

I saw no one.

T
HE SKY WAS
a flawless blue when I got to the lake.

Vance was already there, standing at the water’s edge next to a grey Honda Civic. He turned around as I drove towards him across the
otherwise
empty parking area. He gave me a little wave and I saw smoke from a cigarette curl above his head.

I brought the Mercedes to a halt on the black tarmac next to the Honda. Vance had returned his attention to the lake so when I got out he wasn’t looking at me. I wondered how close I would have to get before he realized I wasn’t Raymond Garcia.

I kept my head down as I approached him. The pistol was tucked into my waistband under the jacket.

On the way here I’d gone over what I was going to say to him and how I was going to play it. This was the only chance I was going to get to put things right for Kate. I couldn’t afford to blow it.

He let me almost reach him before he turned around and the moment he did I drew out the pistol and pointed it at him. He froze with the cigarette in his mouth and two jets of smoke spewed out of his nostrils.

I don’t think he realized it was me at first because his eyes were drawn to the gun. But as he looked up and registered my expression he suddenly knew. His mouth fell open and the cigarette dropped out onto the ground. He instinctively reached for his gun beneath the suit jacket.

‘Don’t do it,’ I warned him. ‘Not unless you want me to blow a hole in you.’

He stopped going for his gun and let his hand hang loose at his side.

‘Raymond Garcia is dead,’ I said. ‘And before you start with the bullshit about you being my friend and saviour he told me everything.’

He ran the tip of his tongue across his upper lip.

‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘What is there to tell?

‘Nice try,’ I said. ‘Now turn around.’

I gave him a hard stare to show that I meant business and he slowly turned. Then I held the gun against the back of his neck while I patted him down and removed his service pistol from its holster.

I pushed him up against the side of the Honda so that he was facing me again. Then with the gun still trained on him I told him what I knew. The deal he made with Garcia. How he came up with the plan to fake my execution. Why he wanted Julio Martinez to see me gunned down outside the restaurant. I then told him what I’d done with Michael Cruz and how Raymond Garcia had met his end. He listened to me in stupefied silence, his eyes suddenly bulbous with panic.

‘You bastards have stepped over the line once too often,’ I said. ‘And because of that my sister is dead. Now I’m going to make you pay.’

I felt a wave of pure hot rage flow through me. It took a great deal of willpower not to pull the trigger.

‘Your sister wasn’t meant to die,’ he said. ‘And I’m really sorry that she did.’

‘But you gave the order.’

‘It wasn’t like that. I sent our agents there to see if you’d turn up. They were meant to—’

I grabbed his jacket then and yanked it hard.

‘Get on your knees,’ I yelled.

When he was down I stood behind him and pressed the muzzle into the back of his head. My hand shook violently. I wanted to put the fear of God into him, make him believe that he was about to be executed.

‘Don’t kill me,’ he pleaded. ‘Just disappear. You’ve got a life now. I give you my word we won’t try to find you. I’ll tell Washington you’re dead.’

I almost laughed.

‘If you think you can save yourself by lying then you’re a fool, Vance. I know you’ll do whatever it takes to cover up what’s happened. You can’t afford not to.’

‘But what good would it do to kill me?’

‘It’ll make me feel better. At least I’ll know that I’ve got even for my sister.’

He started to speak but I cut him off and said, ‘Where’s Kate?’

He licked his lips and took a deep breath. ‘She’s at the safe house
with her baby. The same place you spent the night.’

‘Who’s there with her?’

‘Daniels.’

‘Have you talked to her?’

‘Briefly.’

‘What has she told you?’

‘Everything that happened to her after you abducted her in the parking lot,’ he said. ‘She said you stopped Larson from beating her up and then you took her to Mountain City. She said that by then she didn’t think you would hurt her. That’s why she picked you up after she heard the shots and saw you running away from the house.’

‘What else did she say about me?’

Vance wiped a hand across his face. He knew what I was getting at.

‘I want the truth,’ I said.

He gave a slight nod. ‘At first she tried to pretend she didn’t know who you were. But I didn’t believe her. So I pressed her on it and
eventually
she came clean and told me how she learned of your identity from the TV news report on the shootings.’

I wasn’t surprised that Kate had opened up. She was scared and
confused
and would have found it hard not to buckle under the pressure of an FBI interrogation. Vance would have been firm, perhaps even rough. He would have used every trick in the Bureau’s book to extract the
relevant
information from her.

‘So you intend to kill her now to stop her talking,’ I said.

He hesitated, which told me he was about to lie, so I kicked him hard in the back and he toppled forward onto his front.

‘You bastard,’ I said. ‘You callous, fucking bastard.’

He lifted his face off the ground and said, ‘What do you expect us to do? She knows you’re alive. She’s therefore a risk. And it’s your fault for getting her involved.’

He was right about that. I was to blame. And that was why I couldn’t just walk away. I owed her. She was an innocent victim in all of this just like my sister had been. I’d let Emily down, but I was determined to save Kate.

I told Vance to sit up. Then I stood in front of him. I stared hard into his face, as though seeing him for the first time. There was a hint of raw desperation in his eyes. Clearly he was a man who was not used to failure. To become a Special Agent in Charge he would have had to put in a lot of toil and commitment – and carried out his fair share of
‘dirty jobs’ no doubt. For despite its holier-than-thou image, the FBI had been a law unto itself since the reign of J Edgar Hoover. Everyone knew it and everyone ignored it. The Feds were experts at covering up their crimes and misdemeanours. They pulled out all the stops – including the elimination of people who they perceived to be threats or potential embarrassments. People like Kate and me.

‘Here’s the deal,’ I said. ‘I won’t kill you if you have Kate and her baby brought to me here.’

He wrinkled his brow. ‘Are you insane? I can’t do that.’

‘You can and you will,’ I said. ‘You’ll call Daniels and get him to bring them. Just him. Nobody else. Tell him you’ve had orders from Washington to kill them both right away.’

‘He won’t believe me.’

‘Why not? You’re the boss and he’ll know it’s what you plan to do eventually anyway.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s not that simple. Something like that would have to be sanctioned.’

‘Then sanction it or I’ll kill you right now.’

He studied my expression for about fifteen seconds and he must have realized that I meant what I said because he agreed to do it. I told him to get his cellphone out slowly and to put it on speaker.

‘Now make the call,’ I said.

I was prepared to shoot him at that moment. But I didn’t really want to. My thirst for revenge had been quenched by the realization that it would be cold-blooded murder. I’d killed the other men in self-defence. If I pulled the trigger now it would be an execution. And when it came down to it the primal instinct to kill wasn’t in me.

Vance told Daniels he’d been ordered to neutralize the Pena woman and he wanted him to take her and the baby to the lakeside parking area where they’d had meetings with Garcia. He sounded convincing and Daniels did not even question the order.

‘Tell the woman you’re taking her to a hotel or something,’ Vance said. ‘Otherwise she might get worried.’

I took the phone from him and put it in my pocket. Then I got him to open the Honda’s trunk and told him to get inside while I moved the Mercedes to the edge of the parking area where it couldn’t be seen. He wasn’t happy, but he complied because he knew he had no choice.

Five minutes later, after I’d parked the Mercedes amongst some bushes, I moved the Honda so that it was parallel with the side of the
lake. That way I could position myself behind it when Daniels arrived.

I then let Vance out of the trunk.

‘Give me your cuffs,’ I said.

I knew he had a pair in his pocket because I’d felt them when I patted him down. I got him to lean forward over the Honda’s hood and put his hands behind his back.

Then I attached them to his wrists.

‘What now?’ he asked.

‘We wait,’ I said. ‘And when they get here I don’t want you lying to Kate by telling her that you’ll take care of her. If you won’t tell her the truth, then keep your mouth shut.’

I looked up at the access road to the lake. There were no cars in sight. The sun was starting to go down, throwing shadows across the landscape.

I turned back to Vance and said, ‘For your information Michael Cruz doesn’t know who I am. My face was covered when I dropped in on his office. So there’s no need to kill him. And one other thing. If I drive away from here with Kate then you can have Garcia’s dossier. At least then it won’t all have been for nothing.’

His eyes widened. ‘You have it with you?’

‘It’s in the Merc,’ I said. ‘A briefcase full of documents and discs. Looks to me as though you could do a lot of damage with it.’

A smile almost touched his mouth. He began to say something but I told him to shut up because at that moment I saw a vehicle in the
distance
moving slowly down towards the lake.