Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1 (21 page)

35

Valentine
waited until the Jeep had made the corner before he sprinted to the tow truck and clambered inside. He backed quickly down the driveway and headed for the highway, making the turn onto the westbound service road just as the Jeep was entering the onramp.

Val hung back, checking his mirrors regularly as they headed west on IH 30 toward Fort Worth, keeping an eye out for rednecks with crosses branded on their chests or Special Tactics Unit thugs brandishing warrants or shotguns. All he saw was a shifting sea of vehicles full of people chattering on cell phones or singing along with the radio. Still, it helped keep his mind off the way Victoria had looked at him last night when he woke her. The fear in her eyes. Fear of him. A fear that still shadowed her eyes that morning.

He cursed himself again for telling her how he felt about the men he had killed. How little they meant to him. He knew that wasn’t normal. He had seen other cops suffer through years of guilt and remorse or walk away from the job altogether after a killing. So, why had all that death had no such impact on him? It didn’t take much to figure that out: he liked the danger, the blood and the terror. Hell, he thrived on it.

No. He
had
thrived on it. Past tense. Four years off the job and two years of raising twin boys had changed him. Softened him. Right? Val flashed back to his confrontation with Jasper Smith the night before and that train of reasoning went off the rails and into the gorge. He remembered Kyle screaming, the terror in Jasper Smith’s eyes, the broken teeth in the gutter. He had been trying to kill Smith right there in front of his children. That knocked the wind out of him. What kind of father was he? What kind of man?

His teeth ground and his fingers throttled the steering wheel. Vicious Valentine, he thought bitterly. No, it was worse than that. What had Erath said they called him behind his back? The Executioner. That knocked him even lower. It felt far too close to the truth. But that didn’t change the situation. It wasn’t about Val anymore; it was about protecting his family. He’d do what it took even if that meant killing Jasper and Garland.

Eight and nine.

Jesus.

Victoria stayed on IH 30 until just short of downtown Fort Worth, its Art Deco skyline peppered with a few modern high-rises. Unlike Dallas, Fort Worth had dug its boot heels in and maintained its western heritage. They didn’t call it Cow Town for nothing, though the historic stockyards were now more about honky-tonk bars and trendy restaurants than the beef industry. She took the second exit for the City of Burleson, a rural suburb that was changing rapidly into an urban subdivision.

Val followed her, falling farther and farther back as the roads grew narrower and narrower. He pulled to the grass shoulder when he reached the white slat fence that marked the southern border of the Montague Ranch. On the opposite side of the road a suburban subdivision had been carved out of the hillside, its winding streets fronting one-acre lots dotted with mini-mansions. Andrew Montague’s rural oasis was being overrun by lawyers, dentists and accountants.

Val watched Victoria roll up the long gravel drive, her tires stirring up a dust cloud from the parched roadbed. A half-dozen horses were crowded close to the roadside fence. Two of them broke loose to race alongside the Jeep. Val watched them until they and the Jeep had disappeared behind a low hill.

Val breathed a lot easier knowing that his wife and the boys were with Andrew. The old man was one tough SOB. And mean. A trait that ran in the family. Jasper Smith would be a fool to go up against the combination of Andrew
and
Victoria with anything less than a rocket launcher. God knows the pair scared the hell out of Valentine, especially Andrew. The guy was a gun nut
and
an overprotective father, not a good combination.

Val made a K-turn on the narrow band of asphalt and headed back to Dallas. While he drove, he considered what he was going to do, trying to come up with a plan. But planning wasn’t his strong suit. He was more Dirty Harry than Sherlock Holmes. The only clear thought he had was that if he could find the Suttons’ stash, all of this would be over…and that wasn’t exactly a ‘clear’ thought. Half of the country had looked for the gold and cash and no one had ever found a single dollar.

Forty-five
minutes later, Val pulled back into his driveway, still without a plan. He went inside and checked his email for the tenth time in the last twenty-four hours. Petersen had finally come through with the list of Confederate Syndicate members along with their last known addresses. Forty-odd names in all, but the list didn’t do him much good. More than twenty of them were listed as deceased, and all but three of the others were in prison or jail. He sent the file to the printer.

Also attached to the email was an Excel file listing the Sutton brothers’ crimes that was seven pages long. Seventeen individual robberies and more than a dozen homicides. The Suttons had been busy boys right up until the moment Val had gunned them down. Val printed out that document as well and started reading, wondering what good it was going to do? He had no idea; it was just the homicide cop in him coming out. He was gathering all the facts together, all the puzzle pieces.

The Athens Savings and Loan, the First Priority armored car, and the Martinson’s Wholesale Gold robberies jumped out at him. These robberies were the only crimes committed against legitimate businesses. Prior to that, the Suttons had hit only other criminals. Big time drug dealers, thieves and hijackers. They had even taken down an Oklahoma arms dealer who was under surveillance by a dozen state and federal agencies. Their choice of targets was part of the reason the brothers had been able to stay on the run for so long; criminals don’t report crimes or give testimony at a trial. All the task force had had for evidence was a trail of corpses. Until the Suttons had hit the savings and loan, the armored car and Martinson’s all in the span of less than two weeks.

The change in pattern bothered Val now just as it had four years ago. But what did it mean? Anything? Nothing? He didn’t have a clue. He folded the paper into a square, tucked it into his back pocket and headed for the gun safe in the garage. He unlocked it and retrieved his .45 Combat Commander and a 20-round box of low velocity wad-cutters. He loaded two eight-round clips, popped one into the .45 and tucked the pistol into the waistband of his jeans, tight against his lower back. It dragged his pants down on his hips. If he was going to start carrying again he’d have to buy a new holster.

He went to the kitchen and microwaved a frozen burrito, carried it back out to the truck and cranked the engine, then sat there, looking at the short list of living and un-incarcerated Syndicate members. Three names. And exactly what the hell was he going to do with them? Track them down, stick a gun in their faces and demand answers? Maybe spend a few weeks trailing them, hoping they’d give him some clue as to why Abby had suddenly decided that Valentine had her brothers’ stash? And then what? Try to prove to Jasper and Garland that Abby had been wrong?

Right. That was a brilliant idea. Christ, it was amazing that he had ever made detective. Val took a bite of the burrito.

Detective, he thought sourly. Victoria was right, he was thinking more like RoboCop – heading out to wave a gun around and scare the bad guys into submission. If he was still a detective assigned to finding the gold and cash, he’d be working the case, collecting evidence, examining and reexamining the crime scene…

The crime scene.

Val stopped chewing. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry anymore. The Suttons’ last crime scene was the one place in the world he never wanted to see again. And the most logical place to start his search…

After a moment’s grim hesitation, he bundled his uneaten food into the wrapper, pitched it into the passenger seat floorboard and backed down the driveway. He headed south.

Back to the heart of his worst nightmares.

36

Victoria’s
father’s horse farm sprawled across two hundred acres of rolling, heavily wooded land surrounded by miles of tract homes that the developers called ranchettes, a suburban sprawl that stretched all the way to the historic stockyards of downtown Fort Worth.

Fifty years ago herds of longhorns and whiteface cattle had roamed these low hills and shallow washes, but, one by one, Andrew Montague’s rancher neighbors had sold out to the developers and land speculators. Finally only the stubborn old horse breeder remained, scowling down on the yuppie mob from his rambling stucco ranch house. A ranch house with sun-bleached walls that still showed the bullet scars of a Comanchero raid that had claimed the lives of three of Andrew’s ancestors on June third, eighteen-fifty-six.

Victoria used a plastic swipe card to activate the gate’s electric motor, bumped over a cattle guard of steel pipe, then followed a twisting gravel drive that climbed through a half-mile of oak trees and open pastures. Horses clustered under the trees and along the fence line, cropping grass, all Morgans and Appaloosas. Two of them abandoned their grazing to race the Jeep for a few hundred yards before they were stopped by an intervening fence, one of dozens that divided the acreage into smaller pastures.

What Victoria wouldn’t give for the escape of a long ride through the wild, scrub-choked hills and gullies that surrounded the ranch house. The release of racing downhill, tucked low against a horse’s surging shoulders, her mind purged of everything but the clarity of the moment, the speed and the power, but there would be no escape today.

Andrew Montague was waiting for his daughter, seated on a glider in the shade of his front porch, deep under the eaves. He stepped down to the gravel as Victoria rolled to a stop in a cloud of white dust that settled like sifted flour on the Jeep’s black paint. Andrew had the back passenger side door of the Jeep open before Victoria had even taken the key out of the ignition. He manhandled a delighted Max out of his car seat

“Three inches, at least!” he said delightedly. “Growing like Johnson grass!”

“Hi Daddy,” Victoria said as she climbed down and opened the rear driver’s side door. He shot her a smile.

“Sweet-pea,” he said. His eyes narrowed as he took in her scraped forehead and her bandaged hand. He frowned. “You need to put an end to your goddanged Annie Oakley routine,” he snapped. “Acting like a fool’s going to get you killed one day.”

“We had this conversation last night,” Victoria reminded him. “My butt’s still raw from that chewing. Give it time to heal before you start in again.”

Andrew snorted, but he let the subject drop as Victoria freed Kyle from his seat. She grabbed the diaper bag and hip-bumped the door closed then circled the car to join Andrew. Kyle immediately lunged for his grandfather, almost hopping right out of Victoria’s grip.

“Paw-paw!” the boy bellowed.

“Give him here,” Andrew said, propping Max on his right hip, his arm wrapped around the boy’s waist. He took Kyle in the same fashion. “All right, all cowboys into the bunkhouse. Time for beans and biscuits!”

Andrew led the way, but Victoria got the front door. They crossed the gleaming tile of the high-ceilinged foyer and entered Andrew’s massive study. A playpen had been set up on the Oriental rug that dominated the floor, directly beneath a stuffed boar’s head. The boar had long yellow tusks and a moth-eaten, mangy gray hide. Victoria hated the thing. Its eyes followed you around the room. As a child, she had made her father cover it with an Indian rug.

Andrew sat down in an overstuffed leather chair, a boy on each knee. They started tugging at his mustache so hard that his eyes watered, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“So…?” he said, cocking one wild gray eyebrow at her.

Victoria dropped onto the footstool in front of his chair, needing his proximity. Drawing comfort from it. Her mother had died when Victoria was only seven years old. She had been raised in a household of men, but she had never felt a lack of love. Her father had been her best friend, her mentor and her confidant. And she needed a confidant right now. She felt sure her marriage, and possibly her career, were going down in flames, but she hadn’t come here to talk about Valentine. Andrew and her husband had enough issues without adding to them. She had come to talk about Sheriff Swisher, a subject she had broached with her father the night before. She had voiced her suspicions that Sheriff Swisher’s men were killing every Syndicate member they could find in an attempt to cover up the murder of Willy Henderson, but her father had thought the theory was farfetched to say the least. Actually. He thought she was crazy. Andrew had been the Chairman of the State Republican Party for more than twenty years; he was well aware of the machinations that occurred behind the walls of courthouses and statehouses, but he had offered her little comfort last night, keeping his comments to cryptic warnings, seeming unwilling to talk about it on the phone.

“I’ve been thinking about the murders of Axel Rankin and Randall Rusk,” she said and her father pulled a face. There was no hope she could ever prove that charge and he knew it, but that wasn’t going to make her drop it. And, while she wasn’t going to restate her unsubstantiated suspicions that Sheriff Swisher’s men might be killing Confederate Syndicate members, her accusation that the Sheriff’s men had murdered Rusk was more than just suspicion. She had
watched
Rusk die as he tried to surrender. “Someone set up Rankin. Someone inside the Sheriff’s Department. Those rooms are supposed to be thoroughly searched and so is everyone that goes in them. Who else could get a knife and a shackle key past the screening without a search?”

“You might as well forget about this,” Andrew said. “Nolan Swisher knows how to clean up his own messes. He’s been doing it for more than thirty years.” Nolan and Andrew weren’t exactly friends, but they were as close as you could get without using the word. Her father had backed the old sheriff in more than one campaign.

“He’s lying about four homicides,” Victoria said. “Covering them up. He knows someone inside the jail was involved. I’m telling you, Daddy, not all the crooks down at Lew Sterret are wearing orange jumpsuits.”

Her father shook his head. “Nolan ain’t what I’d call a liar. Oh, sure, he’ll cover this up. Hell, that’s his job.”

“Daddy, that’s bullsh—” she bit it off with a quick look at the boys. Max was already enamored with the word ‘shit,’ she didn’t want to reinforce it into his permanent repertoire, but the boys didn’t look up from their grandpa. They were playing with the mother of pearl buttons on his shirtfront. Max was trying to eat one.

“That’s bull-flop,” she continued. “We’re the guardians of justice. The people deserve honesty and integrity.” she said indignantly, knowing how pompous she sounded, but feeling the truth of it all the same.

“Elected officials are the guardians of the
people’s trust,”
Andrew corrected. “That and justice ain’t always the same thing.”

“Daddy—”

He held up a hand, cutting her off. “What good comes from releasing that information? I’m betting that the worst anyone down at Lew Sterret is guilty of is incompetence. That’s a long way from murder. My guess would be that Nolan’s running a quiet investigation right now. People are going to lose their jobs. Even worse, they’re going to be blackballed right out of the business. Lost pensions and ruined careers are enough punishment for stupidity.”

“Sheriff Swisher—”

“Let Nolan have his last six months,” Andrew said cryptically. “You’ll be free of him soon enough.” He looked at her significantly, baiting her, but Victoria wasn’t interested in playing games.

“Just spit it out, daddy.”

Andrew sighed and shifted the boys around. Kyle wanted down, so Andrew placed the boy on the floor. Kyle toddled off to the playpen, dug his fingers into the plastic mesh and tried to chin himself up. He obviously wanted the toys piled inside. Andrew rose, gave Kyle a boost into the playpen then plopped Max down beside him before returning to his chair. He sat down heavily, his knee joints popping like firecrackers. Not for the first time, Victoria realized that her father was getting old. He had been just past forty when she was born. Now, he was pushing eighty and starting to show it. He wouldn’t be around long…she shook that thought right out of her head. It was too much to bear. She leaned forward suddenly and planted a kiss on his weathered cheek.

He flushed. “I’ll be here for plenty more years, Sweet Pea,” he said, reading her thoughts. “Breeding fine horses and drinking finer whisky,” he laughed, then frowned and turned serious. He pointed a finger at her. “Stay out of Nolan’s way,” he warned. “Six more months. Anyone can ride it out for six months.”

“What makes you so sure he’s going to lose the election?” Victoria asked. “He’s popular with the voters.”

“With the wrong kind of voters,” Andrew said sourly. “The big money’s lining up against him. They didn’t back him in the last election, and I don’t know how he managed to get the cash without their support, but they didn’t throw money at the opposition either. This time they’re out for his hide. Being tough on crime is one thing, but killing handcuffed suspects?” He shook his shaggy gray head. “This federal investigation is making people nervous. It’s going to be Nolan’s undoing.”

“I heard it was just an informal review,” Victoria said. That’s what Hockley had said out on the levee. “Is it going to go to a formal investigation?”

“It already
is
a formal investigation. Nolan hasn’t got the word yet, but he will soon.”

Victoria was unsurprised that her father had better information on the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department than Sheriff Swisher did himself. Andrew Montague, even in retirement, was still a powerful and well-connected man.

“You think Nolan will be charged with anything?” she asked.

Andrew shook his head. “No. There’ll be sanctions and threats about federal funding, that’ll be about it. But it’ll be embarrassing as hell at a time when Nolan can least afford it. This mess with that peckerwood biker is going to bring Nolan down.”

Victoria dropped her head, thinking about Willy Henderson, the Confederate Syndicate’s Road boss again. And Abby Sutton and her boyfriend, Axel Rankin, two more dead Confederate Syndicate members. The more she thought about it the harder it was to believe that those three murders weren’t related - linked by Sheriff Swisher’s goon squad, the Special Tactics Unit. And Valentine was right in the middle of it, now. He was probably out there right this minute killing Suttons.

Or being killed by them…

“Hey, there darling,” Andrew said, leaning forward and resting his hand on her knee. It was only then that she realized that she was crying. Andrew scooted forward and took his daughter in his arms. She pressed her face into his shirtfront, embarrassed by the tears.

“Is this about Valentine?” he asked, his voice taking on an angry edge. His daughter was no crier, except when it came to that man she had married. A man Andrew had liked just fine when Valentine had been merely a homicide cop with a quick trigger finger.

Victoria nodded against his chest. She stayed there, taking comfort from his proximity, as she related everything Jack Birch had told her, from Val’s attack on Zeke Sutton to his almost-arrest at the hands of the Sheriff’s men.

Andrew’s response when she finished was not at all what she had expected.

“You should have let me shoot that son of a bitch four years ago,” he said then sighed and shook his head. “But, I can’t fault a man for wanting to protect his family.”

Victoria jerked away from her father. Her eyes felt hot and gritty and her nose was clogged.

“He’s going to get himself killed! He—”

But Andrew wasn’t listening. “You go on out on the front porch and count the bullet holes,” he said. “Your great granddaddy and two cousins died in that dooryard, shot down by the Comancheros.”

“Those were different times—” Victoria began, but Andrew shook his head, his expression grave.

“Garland Sutton and his kind are murdering thieves,” he said. “Dying’s too good for them.”

Victoria rolled her eyes. More macho crap, which is what she should have expected; Valentine and her father weren’t all that different.

“Valentine has a responsibility to me and the boys,” she said with finality as she dug in her purse for a tissue. “I won’t tolerate this. I won’t.” She wasn’t going to argue about it. It was insanity to chase around the city looking for a confrontation. Worse, it was damned childish.

Andrew chuckled. “Plenty of geldings looked over the fence at you, but you just flicked your tail at them and showed them your hooves. You had to have you a
stallion.
And now you’re mad ‘cause you can’t break him.” Andrew fell back on horse metaphors whenever the subject of Victoria’s romantic life came up. It was a habit left over from all those awkward father-daughter talks during her motherless youth. The worst comparison had occurred when she was in the delivery room in labor with the twins and she could hear him in the waiting room shouting, “She’s fixing to foal!”

“If you compare me to a mare one more time,” Victoria warned him, a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, I’ll geld
you.”

“Now,
that’s
my baby girl,” he said happily then stood and smoothed the damp wrinkles in his shirt. He ran an appraising eye over the twins who were bashing two plastic trucks together like a pile up on the freeway. “Those boys are getting skinny on that health food junk you feed them,” he said, changing the subject. “Hector is making cheese enchiladas for lunch. Let’s go see if they’re ready.”