Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) (2 page)

“Your Honor, unfortunately I have nothing more,” Leah said.

Horner looked at the prosecutor for a long moment, hating what had to come next “Ms. Cobb, the government has had the opportunity to present its case. In the context of the trial as a whole the jury would be your judge, but—and I never like to do this...in any case—at this point it is my responsibility to determine if you’ve done your job. I’m sure you’ve done your best, but you haven’t sufficiently impugned Mr. Barrish to warrant continuing this trial.” He saw the youthful attorney cast her eyes downward briefly. She was angry at herself, Horner knew, though he also was certain she could have done nothing to overcome the situation pure chance had put her in. “And delaying that conclusion any further will do no good. You had an additional six months following Agent Danbrook’s murder to rework your case.” Danbrook was her case, Horner knew all too well. Or, more properly, his testimony would have been. But a chance encounter with two murderers had robbed Thom Danbrook of his life, and Leah Cobb of her only way to show that Barrish was more than just an ignorant observer of a plan that had resulted in four black children dying a horrible death, trapped in a church as bullets cut them down. Horner felt her anguish. He also felt his own rage at having to set John Barrish free. “Step back, please.”

Mankowitz took the lead this time. The front rows of the gallery could easily see the contrasting expressions on his and the prosecutor’s faces. A hushed murmur rose from those in attendance.

“You’re going home, John,” Mankowitz whispered.

Barrish swallowed, still not ready to believe it. He had narrowly escaped prosecution for the same crime by the State of California because of a lack of evidence, a bullet dodged until the federal government had decided to take a crack at him under the guise of “violating the civil rights” of the dead African children. For over a year now he had been held without bail in federal custody in the tower-like Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. Locked up like an animal. Subjected to the taunts and brutality of the African inmates. Slurs and hateful threats had been hurled at him. So had choice bodily excrements left to ferment for days in foam cups just for that purpose. All while his keepers laughed at the display. He had expected no less from the Africans, and no more from the agents of the State. Was it going to be over now? he wondered, still looking defiantly straight ahead.

“Would the marshal please bring the jury in.” In a moment the twelve citizens were in their place on the courtroom’s left wall. “Mr. Mankowitz, would you and your client please stand.” Horner watched as the self-described leader of the Aryan Victory Organization rose with his attorney. Such a small man, the judge thought. Physically and otherwise. Yet this man was hate, and he inspired that in those who would do his bidding. And he was about to be let loose upon the world once more.

Horner waited for a few seconds before beginning. “It is the opinion of the court that the government has failed to present sufficient evidence against the defendant to warrant the continuation of this trial. The motion to dismiss offered by the defense is hereby granted.” The background murmur became a soft gasp. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your attentiveness and service. You are dismissed from this case. The marshal will see to your needs.” Rather quickly, with shared looks of surprise, the twelve jurors filed out for the final time. And then it was time for the most distasteful part of what had to be done. “Mr. Barrish, the charges brought against you in this case are hereby dismissed. Accordingly you are remanded from custody and are free to go. Good day, everyone.”

The gallery and litigants stood as the judge left, and a few reporters tried to move to the front of the court. Three very serious federal marshals stopped them four rows back.

Deputy U.S. Attorney Leah Cobb stood motionless, just staring at the empty bench, looking right after a few seconds. “You have no idea what you’ve done, Mankowitz.”

Seymour Mankowitz looked the prosecutor’s way, smiling. His eyes traveled halfway down her slender body. “And you have no idea just how fine an ass you have, Leah.” He ended the retort with a leer that was meant more to anger than to invite. It was enough to motivate her quick departure.

“You’d better get him down to the basement,” a huge marshal suggested to Mankowitz. “The crowd’s already gathering out front.”

“Okay.” He turned to his client. The man was still looking blankly ahead, at nothing in particular. His chest was rising and falling more than Mankowitz had ever noticed. Relief. That had to be it. “John. Let’s go.”

The two men followed a small phalanx of marshals to a service elevator out of view of the press. It took them directly to the restricted area of the basement parking garage.

“He has transport, right?” the big marshal asked Mankowitz.

“I have everything I need,” Barrish told the big African, turning away and walking toward the blue Aerostar waiting with its side door open.

“I tried to tell him it would be better to have some protection leaving here,” Mankowitz told the marshal.

“No skin off my back,” the marshal said, thinking to himself that a lynching by that very large and very dark crowd out front might be very appropriate, considering...

John Barrish climbed into the van and took the middle seat as the door was closed. His wife grabbed him around the neck in a hug that was so tight it was almost painful.

“John. John.” Louise Barrish kissed her husband’s neck and started to cry. “John. You’re coming home.”

John felt the warmth of her tears rolling onto his cheeks. He reached up with both hands, gripped her shoulders, and broke the hold she had on him. “Get off of me!”

Louise fell away as her husband pushed her toward the large tinted window on the van’s left side. Her hands came up to her face, the tears falling upon each trembling finger.

John looked to her with the eyes she remembered. They also contained the look she had wished would be gone. Somehow gone. “This isn’t the time.”

“Pop.” Toby Barrish looked back to his father from the passenger seat, his lazy right eye askew. “You look strong.”

“Always,” John answered, happy more than anything to see his two sons after so long a separation. “Stanley, where are we going?”

The younger Barrish boy adjusted the rearview mirror to see his father. “We have a place.”

A place, obviously provided by his one remaining benefactor. Four walls and a roof. Not a home. That had been taken by the State. Still, it would serve the purpose. A place to eat, to sleep, to think. And to prepare.

“Do we have it yet?” Barrish asked his eldest son.

Toby looked back, smiling. “Freddy picked it up today. I’m gonna get it from him tomorrow.”

“Good,” John said, his head nodding confidently.

Stanley glanced at his father in the mirror as he wound the van up the serpentine driveway to the street. “So we’re going to do it?”

John gave his son a look that caused him to turn away from the reflection of the man who’d given him life. He flashed on the seemingly endless days spent penned in by concrete and steel. “Yes, Stanley. Now more than ever.”

It was eagerness, Toby realized. And anger. His father was a master at harnessing the power of the latter, in himself as much as in others.

“There’s a bunch of niggers out there,” Toby warned his father.

John snapped his head toward his eldest son, which was enough of an admonition.

“Sorry, Pop,” Toby said, knowing exactly what his transgression was. “Africans.” Many people referred to his father as a refined racist because he didn’t run around in a white hood saying “nigger” every time he opened his mouth. But Toby saw no difference in the terms. African. Nigger. Coon. It didn’t matter, though he respected his father too much to challenge his views on the subject. And in due course it would not matter. Soon there would be an America populated by Americans, and what anyone called someone with an excess of skin pigment would be up to them. The Africans would be back banging their drums and taking Swahili names for themselves. The Mexicans would be back in tortilla heaven. The Japs and the towelheads would all go home. America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, would be white, as it was meant to be. Soon. Sooner than anyone could imagine.

“You might want to duck down, Dad,” Stanley suggested. “We’re going out the side but there might be cameras.”

“I’ve got nothing to hide,” John declared.

“Sit tall, Pop,” Toby said as light from the street above washed over the driveway ahead.

“I just thought—”

“You thought wrong, Stan,” Toby said, cutting his brother’s words off.

The Aerostar crested the driveway and pulled through a line of police onto the blocked-off street. Cameras were everywhere, but only a few demonstrators had figured out that the front of the Federal Building might be a
symbolically
fine place to show their anger, but the object of that anger would be nowhere near it There were some signs, plenty of obscene gestures and shouting, and lines of hypocritical police holding back those with vengeance in their hearts. They would arrest John Barrish for his beliefs, and they would protect him because of the same. It was a duality they would come to regret in very short order.

“I’m glad you’re going to be with us for this, Pop,” Toby admitted. His father had conceived the entire plan some time before, nurturing all the elements until everything was in place. Even his incarceration hadn’t halted the preparations. He had seen to that, seen to everything being able to go ahead without him. Still, he deserved to be part of it. “You get to enjoy it all.”

John Barrish stared straight ahead at downtown traffic, not really smiling, but feeling something beyond pleasure. It was desire. A burning desire that nothing could match. “Not ‘enjoy,’ Toby. Savor.”

It was the closest words could come, but words meant very little now. Talk was no longer cheap in John Barrish’s mind—it was without value. Action was the only measure of expression worth a damn.

They have no idea...

ONE

First Light

You would have thought that the Super Bowl was being played just two miles from 1212 Riverside by the number of satellite trucks lining Avenue B.

“The vultures are out,” Frankie observed as she eased the Bureau Chevy along the crowded roadway.

“They smell flesh,” Art said, regretting his words as they became prophetic. “Damn.”

“You’re the one with the high-profile face,” Frankie said, just before the first mic-wielding reporter reached Art through the passenger-side window.

“You’re Agent Art Jefferson, aren’t you?” a harried female reporter asked.
Asked
, really, didn’t fully convey the force of her
demand
.

Well, if they could exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech. Art could use his to push a few buttons. “What is it?” he asked, looking at his watch. “About eleven o’clock? Hey, the news starts in a few minutes. Got anything good?”

The reporter’s face switched from that of a determined professional to that of a teenager in disbelief at the lame comment her parent had just made. “Come on, Jefferson. Give us a statement.”

The “us” had pressed up behind and around her. Cameramen circled to the front of the car and the sides, bathing it in a dazzling glare.

“Watch your toes!” Frankie cautioned the news crews as she crept through the pack. “Feral dogs. Man.”

“No statement yet,” Art informed them.

“Is it true there’s a spill of a chemical used in military weapons research?” a reporter asked.

“We’ll have a statement later.” They hated this, Art knew, being told
no!
like children. And, of course, they would react as such. But he really couldn’t give them much more than they already knew. His and Frankie’s quick stop at the L.A. office hadn’t yielded much information, and the news they’d listened to on the drive north only mentioned a major chemical accident, possibly involving hazardous materials stolen from an Army depot in New Mexico. What really was going on was yet to be discovered.

“Why are there Army personnel here?” the closest reporter asked, pressing the attempt for information.

“Later.”

“Jefferson! Come on!”

Early in his career with the Bureau, contact with the media had infuriated him. Now he knew how to play the game, and how to win. It was time for the trump card. “No comment. Let’s get in there, partner.”

Frankie gave the Chevy a bit more momentum and pressed through the pack, stopping at the first roadblock a hundred yards ahead. There, their identification was checked by the four sheriffs deputies manning that checkpoint. After being allowed in they drove another half-mile on Avenue B to the intersection of Riverside. Where the roads met, a sheriffs department patrol car sat blocking the streets’ north and west lanes of travel. A deputy, windmilling his arm as he stood in mid-intersection, directed them right onto Riverside. Heading south now, they could plainly see the glow from the incident command post ahead. Far ahead.

“This isn’t like any perimeter I’ve ever seen,” Frankie commented. “It’s got to be two miles as the crow flies.”

A chemical accident
, Art thought.
Must be some nasty stuff if it’s true.

“Slow down, partner,” Art said, seeing the orange-vested deputies standing at roadside. The lights of the Chevy painted them as the agents neared, causing the wide reflective stripe on the vest’s front to fluoresce and mark their positions. There were a half-dozen visible, spaced fifty or so yards apart, each holding a road worker’s sign that read SLOW. To that admonition they added hand gestures, pressing downward on the air before them. The message was clear.

Frankie slowed the car to under fifteen miles per hour and continued on to the incident command post. What had been just a half dome of light on the horizon became much more as they neared. Portable light standards, their self-contained generators humming, ringed an area about a quarter the size of a football field. Two trailers were nose to rear on one side, one each from the sheriffs and fire departments. A dozen fire engines lined Riverside opposite the trailers, and, parked in the trampled sage off the road were more vehicles, including several with the familiar
G
plates assigned to government agencies. These also had the mark of the United States Army stenciled on their doors.