Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1 (19 page)

31

Victoria
didn’t argue when Val followed her into the living room and took her in his arms. After a moment, he led her to the sofa. They sat there, the baby monitor on the coffee table whispering with the twins even breathing. Victoria told him then, her face buried in his shoulder, about Big Sandy, Albert Pico, Axel Rankin, and the serial killer Randall Rusk. She left out only Rankin’s accusations against Val and her own theory that Rankin and Rusk’s murders might have been orchestrated by Sheriff Swisher’s men – her husband was acting spooky enough already - but she told him everything else. It came out in such a flood of backtracking and explanations that it took Val a long time to make sense of what she was saying. When he finally did he almost came unglued.

“You stabbed Randall Rusk?”
Randall was a straight-up monster. “How—”

“I had the knife that he used to kill Big Sandy and Albert,” she said and shivered. “I stabbed him in the stomach, but it barely fazed him.”

“Jesus,” was all Val could think to say. “That’s how you hurt your hand?” She nodded and Val said, “Jesus,” again. He really didn’t know
what
to say. Tell her he was proud of her or offer her sympathy? He had killed seven men, and seen even more men die, but his way of dealing with those incidents was anything but healthy. He placed each of the dead in a box and slid that box back into the darkness to gather dust. His own personal little morgue. But that philosophy hadn’t been working too well in regards to his marriage. Victoria had never understood his silence. Maybe now she would.

“Jesus,” Val repeated.

“You said that already. Twice.”

After a moment of silence, Val said, “You did the right thing. What you had to do to survive.”

There was that coldness in his tone again. The icy promise of violence. Victoria pulled back and looked into her husband’s eyes. Val wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“I went to a counselor the first couple of times. It helped,” he said then shrugged, all out of words.

‘The first couple of times,’ Victoria thought and shivered again. Val was so cavalier in his attitude about killing people. He was right, she had done what she had to do in order to survive, but she didn’t like herself any better for being capable of stabbing another human being, for trying to kill someone.

Kyle squalled, the sound loud through the baby monitor. Val clicked the volume off and started to rise, but Victoria tugged him back down.

“I need them right now,” she said as she stood. She crossed the room, but stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned back to him.

“Don’t they ever bother you?” she asked. “The men you killed?”

Val’s instant reaction was silence, but he couldn’t do that to her now. Not anymore, not after what she had been through that day. Maybe he could tell her the plain truth? Maybe she’d understand after being so close to so many deaths?

“No.” He looked at her steadily as he spoke, he was done hiding. “I never set out to kill anyone, but I never got in the way if that’s what they were looking for.” The only wraiths that haunted his conscience were the victims of the men he had killed. The people he hadn’t been able to save. Like the two hookers in the Suttons’ basement that last day. The ones that Lamar and Lemuel had raped then—

Val’s mind recoiled from that memory. He wouldn’t go back there. Not now, not ever.

Victoria’s blood slowed in her veins and her heart swelled to bursting as she stared at her husband, wondering if she really knew him at all? Finally, she turned and climbed the stairs to collect the twins.

Valentine watched her go, knowing he had said too much. But at least he had been honest with Victoria.

Maybe for the first time.

32

Victoria
returned downstairs with Max and Kyle, carrying them down one at a time, wordlessly waving off his offer to help. Val sat on the sofa and busied himself by folding a load of the boy’s clothes while the washing machine churned away on a load of funky cloth diapers that he had pre-rinsed by hand in the downstairs toilet. And whose idea had cloth diapers been? Not his, that was for sure. They might be ecologically sound, but they leaked and reeked and made his days a poop-smeared hell. But that was about to change. Potty training resumed tomorrow, in earnest.

Victoria didn’t say a word to Val. She huddled on the floor with the twins and began playing some made up game with blocks and stuffed animals as game pieces. Dark circles had built under her eyes and her face was drawn and pale.

As Val watched her from the corner of his eye, searching for something to say that might break the tension, he replayed what he had said to her about all the killings he had been involved in, wincing internally, twisting one of the boys’ pajama tops in his hands. What the hell had he been thinking? She had needed his comfort, not the additional burden of his own psychosis. He should have kept his mouth shut. He had gotten pretty damned good at that over the past four years, so why had he felt compelled to unburden his conscience today? The Suttons, he thought as his fingers dug into the pajama top. Everything came back to the Suttons. To Lamar and Lemuel, Abby and Garland. After four years of relative peace, Val’s life was in turmoil once again.

God, he wished he had shot Garland and Jasper yesterday. He should have killed them both. Should have burned that whole damned nest of snakes down. He—

Val ripped the shirt in half.

Victoria looked at him, then at the shirt, and frowned, but she didn’t say a word. She turned her attention back to the twins, picked up a toy gorilla, pressed it to Max’s face and made kissing noises.

“Mr. Gorilla loves Max! Mr. Gorilla says Max tastes like bananas. Yum yum! Mommy wants a taste,” she ducked and plastered his face with kisses as he squealed with delight.

Val flushed as he put the torn shirt aside.
Right,
he thought bitterly. The Suttons were the problem. They were the violent ones. The bad guys. He didn’t have any issues of his own…nope, not a one.

He took the folded clothes upstairs then transferred the diapers to the dryer and fixed the boys a snack. By the time he returned to the living room with a plate of sliced apple and two cups of milk, Victoria had fallen asleep, her head thrown back against the sofa. Kyle was in her lap with a coloring book, filling the page with one huge red scribble while Max was kissing the gorilla and saying “bananas” over and over. Victoria looked uncomfortable, legs tucked under her, her bandaged toe jutting out from under her thigh. He reached down and touched her shoulder.

She came awake with a start, her eyes wild in their sockets. Eyes that found Val leaning over her and grew only more frightened. It was a look that cut through him like a chainsaw.

“Sorry,” he said lamely. “You looked uncomfortable. Why don’t you go upstairs and lay down for a while? I’ll wake you up when dinner’s ready.”

Victoria nodded mutely. Her eyes were bloodshot, gritty looking. She rose, grimacing against the pain of stiffened joints and bruised flesh. She felt like one giant contusion. She ducked down and kissed the boys then turned to the stairs, sparing Val not a glance.

Val watched her go. For the first time in four years he wondered if he and Victoria were going to work out in the long run? He had held the darkness at bay for a long time, but now it appeared that his sins were coming back to revisit him. That once again he would have to kill or be killed. Garland and Jasper would leave him no choice. He—

No
. That was bullshit. A rationalization. He did have a choice. And he made it at that moment, suddenly and decisively. Victoria was right. The Suttons had nothing to do with who he was now. His responsibility was to his wife and children. Garland and Jasper were Jack Birch’s and DPD’s problem. He’d stick to his own job. Mr. Mom.

“Hungry!” Max bellowed.

“Hungry!” Kyle echoed a half-beat later.

And it looked like Mr. Mom needed to think about dinner. But it had been a rotten enough day without having to eat his own lousy cooking.

“You boys up for a ride?” he asked as he rose from the sofa and gathered up the folded diapers. He was thinking Campisi’s on Mockingbird. It was a drive, but the pizza was worth it. And there was a beer store right next door. “Pizza and beer?” God, a beer sounded good right now.

“Pizza?” Kyle said, bouncing up and down on his butt. “Pizza! Pizza!”

“Beer!” Max yelped. “Beer!”

“Juvenile delinquent,” Valentine said as he headed for the hallway. The kid had a knack for picking exactly the wrong words out of a conversation and repeating them. It was actually kind of funny, but it sure did make Val dread Max’s teenage years.

Val stowed the folded diapers in the hall closet then got the twins’ stroller out. He left Victoria a note on the kitchen table and called in the pizza order before wheeling the twin-buggy into the living room and scooping the boys into their seats. He pushed them out the back door and around to the driveway.

The car seats were still in the tow truck and Val was too lazy to switch them to Victoria’s Jeep. He put the boys in the back of the truck and headed toward downtown, the boys singing a made-up song about pizza and beer. Val sang along, catching the rhythm of the song but making up his own words.

“We make a pretty good trio,” he said, glancing at the twins in the rearview.

Max didn’t agree; he stuck his tongue out and blew Val a sloppy raspberry.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Val muttered and put his eyes back on the road.

Campisi’s
was in a low-ceilinged, 1950’s strip mall. The narrow, windowless dining room was decorated like a pizza joint out of a Godfather movie. There was a bar along the left wall, booths along the right and a scattering of tables covered in red-checkered cloths in between. The place was packed with people swilling cheap chianti and chowing down on spaghetti and pizza.

Val wove among the tables, he and the boys catching smiles from every girl in the place. Babies were chick magnets. He paid for his pizza, wheeled the boys back out, ditched the pizza on the passenger seat of the tow truck, and trundled the twins down the sidewalk to the liquor store on the corner.

The liquor store was just as crowded as Campisi’s. Val grabbed a six-pack of Shiner Bock and took it to the counter. He got a few looks from women in there as well, mostly disapproving. They must not be parents, Val thought. Potty training a pair of boys would make anyone crave a drink. That justification didn’t prevent him from feeling like a deadbeat as he dropped the beer into the stroller’s cargo bay and headed back to the truck.

He hadn’t made ten feet before a brand new Lincoln Continental pulled to a stop beside him, blocking the exit to Mockingbird. The car was immaculate black, long and low, with an old fashioned chrome hood ornament that was large enough to be the prow decoration on a pirate ship.

“Fine looking boys you got there,” Garland Sutton said from where he sat, hunched over the steering wheel of the vehicle. Jasper Smith lounged in the passenger seat, one crucifix-scarred forearm propped on the window ledge, a longneck Lone Star in his fist. Smith had a blackened right eye and an un-bandaged cut on his cheek that had gone scabby. Sweat was running down Jasper’s torso, but Garland didn’t seem to mind the heat. His pressed jeans and long-sleeved white shirt looked dry, the shirt buttoned all the way to the top. He had a beer bottle between his legs and a lopsided smile on his face.

Between the two men sat an open cardboard twelve-pack of Lone Star. There were several unopened bottles left, but it wasn’t the beer that caught Val’s eye, it was the checkered grip of an automatic pistol tucked down in the box with them.

“I had me two little tow-heads like that once,” Garland continued, his eyes slipping to the boys. He didn’t sound drunk, but his eyes were muddy and dark, the whites as runny as undercooked eggs. He smiled at the boys and Kyle let out a whimper of fear as instinctive as the cry of a baby rabbit being stalked by a coyote.

Val’s fingers knotted around the stroller’s handlebar, his eyes stuck on the pistol. Jesus, he wished he had brought a gun. He should have known that Garland was too stupid to lay low even though the Special Tactics Unit out hunting him. Now that mistake had just put Max and Kyle in the line of fire.

Val tore his eyes off the gun and looked Garland straight in the eye.

“Not like these, old man,” he said, turning sideways, putting himself between the car and the stroller, using his body as a human shield. “Not even close.” Val looked at Jasper. “I heard you had a conversation with Deputy Erath, too,” he said, eyeing the cut on Jasper’s face. “Thanks for siccing him on me.”

Jasper brought the longneck to his lips, took a swallow then gently pressed the cold belly of the bottle against the swollen flesh under his eye. There was a spot of blood on the plastic earpiece of his old-school hearing aid. He shrugged.

“The man has a persuasive way about him,” he admitted. “And he didn’t figure to
stop
persuading until I gave him someone else to whup up on. Then I thought of you and…” Jasper lifted his shoulders and let them fall.

“Fine looking boys,” Garland said again as he pitched the empty beer bottle over his shoulder into the back seat. He reached for another bottle, nudging the pistol aside as he did so. “All the gold in the world won’t replace a child. I know that better than most.”

The blood rushed to Val’s face, and his molars ground sparks. All of his instincts told him to attack, to take the fight to his enemy, that the best defense was a swift and brutal offense, but he couldn’t do that, couldn’t take that chance, not with the boys in the line of fire.

A horn bleated and Garland looked up from behind the wheel. A red minivan was trying to exit the parking lot but couldn’t squeeze past Garland’s car. It stopped almost nose to nose with the Lincoln. The driver, a fat man with a red face and a loosened tie, honked again. Garland just stared at him through the windshield, lifted his beer and took a long, slow swallow.

The van’s driver got the message. He backed quickly into a parking space, turned and exited the parking lot through the Greenville avenue exit.

“I heard you was playing mommy, but I sure didn’t believe it,” Jasper said, cocking his head to the left to get a better look at the boys. “Not after all the stories I heard down there in Huntsville. You’re a legend, you know. A real bear-killer. You mightn’t believe it, but you got you some admirers down there. Us mainline convicts like our lawmen with the bark on. Some say different, but it ain’t true. We like it just as rough as we can get it, and, believe me, we get it plenty rough.”

“I told you I didn’t want to see you again, Jasper,” Valentine said, ignoring the bantering convict-bullshit as he shot another glance at the gun in the beer box. He had never felt more naked, more defenseless, but these men were hyenas; showing fear would only draw violence and blood. And a couple of dead toddlers wouldn’t even make these boys flinch.

Jasper frowned as he reached down to the hearing aid’s speaker box clipped to his belt and adjusted the volume. “We didn’t come here to cause no trouble,” he said. “I just had to see it for myself. Vicious Valentine playing wet nurse.” Jasper took another swallow of beer, grinned at the boys then waggled his fingers in a wave. They had the good sense not to wave back. “I’d think a pretty little family like you got would make a man realize what’s important in life. I’d say protecting those children would be more important than any amount of money. I—”

Val was done listening, and he sure wasn’t thinking. The aggression that had been hardwired into his skull by the Army and his years on the police force took over. He crossed the sidewalk in a single stride, jerked the Lincoln’s door open, grabbed a fistful of Jasper’s hair, and spilled the ex-convict face-first into the gutter. Jasper’s beer bottle shattered on the curb.

Val had been blessed with a whole lot of quick, speed he had honed during his years behind a gun. It had been four years since he retired, but he hadn’t lost much of that speed. Before Smith could react, Val had ducked into the car and grabbed the pistol from the beer box. Garland made no move to stop him. The old man just took another swig of beer, his eyes following Val with all the interest of a man watching reruns on TV.

Jasper landed on his hands and knees, but he didn’t stay down long– he rocketed up off the pavement, his oversized hands knotted into fists, ready to throw a punch, but he froze stock-still when Val jammed the pistol’s barrel into the hollow of his right cheek.

Jasper’s skin shrunk tight to his skull, outlining every bone and vein, his pupils were hard pinpoints, his teeth locked in a snarl. Val waited for him to make a move. Waited for an excuse to kill him.

But Jasper wasn’t that stupid. He chuckled and the tension evaporated from his body. He lowered his hands to his sides and un-balled his fists.

“Looks like you got the drop on me, boss,” he said, a rueful smile playing across his face. “And with my own gun.” He twisted his head against the barrel of the pistol to look at Kyle and Max. “You boys should be proud. Your daddy here sure is quick with his hands. He’s even quicker with a gun. Kills people for a hobby. Cripples little girls and—”