Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1 (26 page)

44

The
Dallas County Medical Examiner’s office is located just off Stemmons Freeway in a new glass and brick building called the Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences. The building is a high-tech complex of labs and modern equipment, a world removed from the previous location in a moldering old building across the street from Parkland Hospital that had held only a handful of autopsy rooms and small labs that were hopelessly cramped, damp, and cluttered with archaic equipment.

Victoria parked in the almost empty parking lot under the scant shade of a curbside oak that was wilting under a sun so hot that the building ahead shimmered like a mirage. Her brow was slick by the time she crossed the parking lot to the relative cool of the building’s foyer and showed her ID to the Sheriff’s Deputy standing sentry just inside the locked glass doors. The building was officially closed on Saturday, but there were always techs, scientists and pathologists working overtime. The Medical Examiner’s office was as understaffed as every other department in the County; long hours and weekends were part of the program.

“I’m here to see Eustace Cantor,” she told him.

The deputy nodded. He was young; she’d never seen him before. He looked ex-military with his close cropped hair, rigid posture and immaculate uniform. He was polite but stiffly officious, his lips a straight line, chin thrust forward squarely, eyes aimed down his nose. He looked at her ID, then at the bruise on her forehead and the scrape on her cheek.

“Don’t ask,” Victoria said, “It’s been a tough week at the office.”

He looked at her ID again then back at her. Recognition gave his face the first hint of animation, a narrow smile that was little more than a crack in the spit and polish veneer.

“You’re the lady lawyer, right? From the shootout two days ago?”

Victoria didn’t want to offend the deputy, but she didn’t want to talk about it either. “Like I said, it’s been a tough week.”

He got the point. “Gotcha,” he said, his face forming hard lines again, smile gone. “I was in the Marines. Afghanistan.” He held the door open for her, but kept her ID card. “Let’s get you signed in.” He led her across the lobby to the reception desk, then circled behind it and picked up the phone. He pushed a clipboard across the counter at her. She signed a quick scrawl.

“She’s got a cop back with her right now,” he told Victoria as he dialed an extension. “She might be in one of the autopsy suites or her office.” He shook his head. “The Doc never slows down.”

Victoria nodded. Eustace Cantor only left the Institute to bathe, sleep and eat. She had no children, no husband and no close family, just a job she cared deeply about. Far too deeply, in Victoria’s opinion. Victoria was no stranger to long hours herself, but Eustace took it to extremes that weren’t healthy physically or psychologically. A fifteen-year long string of murder victims, from infants to the elderly, had left her once pretty face lined and gray.

The young deputy’s eyes dropped away as he turned his attention to the phone. “Hey, Doc, there’s a lady from the District Attorney’s office here to see you,” he held up Victoria’s ID card and read from it. “Victoria Justice, Felony Trial Division Chief.” He listened, nodding along, said “Okay” then hung up. He handed Victoria’s ID across the counter.

“She’s in the Trace Evidence lab. You know the way back?”

Victoria nodded as she tucked her ID into her wallet. “Sure thing,” she said. “Thanks.” She had made the trip before, many times.

The sterile corridors were quiet on a Saturday in August. All of the working parents were either at home with the kids or on vacation somewhere cooler, which was just about anywhere in the continental US. But Victoria still passed a half dozen people in lab coats as she walked back to the lab. She pushed through the door without knocking, but stopped dead on the threshold.

Eustace Canton was sitting on a wheeled stool in front of a bulky digital microscope connected to a computer terminal, her eyes pressed to the viewer. There was a pistol on the counter beside her, lying next to a brown evidence bag that’s red seal had been ripped away. Leaning against the counter beside Eustace was Deputy Henry Erath, his squared-off face aimed at Victoria, his expression as grim and inscrutable as an Aztec idol.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Justice,” he said, his voice as gruff as gravel tossed down a drain pipe.

“Deputy Erath,” Victoria replied as she stepped into the room, letting the door swing closed behind her. “Am I interrupting something?”

Erath grunted. “You could say that.”

“I’m so sorry, Victoria,” Eustace said as she turned from the microscope. Eustace looked even more haggard than usual. Her blonde hair hung limp and dark circles ringed her eyes. Eyes that refused to meet Victoria’s. “So sorry.” She dropped her hands in her lap and her shoulders slumped.

All of those ‘sorries’ made Victoria’s heart stammer in her chest. The last few days had geared her up to expect the worst at every turn, but she didn’t think she could take much more. Her gaze flicked over to Erath. He gave her a slash of a smile. The asshole.

“What’s going on, deputy?” she demanded as she strode into the room, putting purpose into her step, bracing herself for whatever was to come. Involuntarily, her eyes dropped to the pistol.

“Police work,” Erath said. “Catching a killer.” He flicked a glance at Eustace. “I’ll let the Doc tell you.”

“I’m so sorry, Victoria,” Eustace said again. She took a long, shuddering breath. “But there’s no doubt. Valentine’s prints are on this weapon.”

“And the bullets match the ones the ME pulled out of Abby Sutton,” Erath added, his eyes boring into Victoria’s like a poker player looking for an opponent’s tell. “Your husband killed that girl.”

Victoria flinched and her eyes leapt back to the gun. With an effort, she tore her eyes off it and looked at Eustace. “What the hell is he saying?” she demanded angrily, conscious of the pain in her friend’s face, but at that moment Victoria didn’t care about Eustace. Her world had just been firebombed, her husband irrefutably linked to a homicide. She wanted an explanation.

“Deputy Erath brought this weapon in this morning,” Eustace said. “The prints are Val’s and the test-rounds I fired are a ballistic match for the three slugs I collected from Abby Sutton’s corpse. “I’m no fingerprint expert, it’s not my field, but there’s obviously a match. I’m so sorry, Victoria.”

Victoria’s mouth opened but no words came out. From the corner of her eyes she could see Erath smiling. That smile infuriated her. Jammed a steel rod up her spine and made her eyes throw sparks.

“Fingerprint evidence can be manufactured,” she snapped, knowing that she sounded like a low-rent defense attorney, but it couldn’t be true! Val would never have stabbed Abby twenty-seven times. He might have shot her, but—

Victoria’s thoughts stopped right there. Had it reached the point where even she doubted Val’s word? God, had she ever
really
believed that he hadn’t crippled Abby? At that moment she wasn’t sure. And she had no time for soul searching. Erath was staring at her, waiting for her to continue. She got herself back on track, injecting her words with far more certainty than she felt.

“Prints can be transferred from one surface to another. Manipulated.”

Eustace shook her head and dropped her eyes again. “There are more than a half dozen legible, undistorted partial prints on surfaces of varying depths and textures. There’s no way they were all transferred from somewhere else.”

Victoria started to speak, but Erath wasn’t sticking around to listen. He plucked the gun up by the evidence tag looped through the trigger guard and placed it back in the brown bag. Victoria watched as the deputy took a fresh red evidence sticker and sealed the top of the bag closed then put the bag in front of Eustace. The ME signed and dated it.

“Where did you get that gun?” Victoria demanded.

Erath snorted. “You’ll find that out when your husband’s attorney submits the pretrial discovery motion. You know the rules, counselor. You ain’t getting special treatment, there’s been more than enough of that already.” Erath started to walk past her then paused and looked intently into her face for a protracted moment, his eyes searching hers.

“You didn’t know,” he finally said. He sighed and shook his head. “I was sure you were in on it.”

Victoria didn’t reply. She didn’t have the words. For four years she had defended Valentine at every turn, but all of her defenses were gone now, battered to ruins.

“I’m sorry about this,” Erath continued as he stepped past her, heading for the door.

Victoria almost believed him, but that changed nothing. Erath pushed through the door and was gone, carrying the gun off on its journey through the system.

Victoria stood there, glaring at Eustace but not seeing her, struggling for a way to explain away the evidence in that paper bag, but the prints couldn’t be argued with. Could Val have? Would he have—

“No!” she said, bellowing the word, startling Eustace so badly that the ME almost came off her stool. “Val wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t.”

“I don’t believe it either,” Eustace said, though Victoria could hear the lie in her voice. But Victoria didn’t care what Eustace thought. She was thinking about Erath, a cop who had already beaten her husband bloody. The deputy was probably on his way to a County judge at that very moment. With the evidence he had, he’d have a warrant for Val’s arrest within the hour.

“Oh, God,” Victoria said as she dumped her purse on the counter and dug for her cell phone. She punched up Val’s number. She knew that what she was about to do, warning a murder suspect that the cops were coming, would end her career and probably cost her her license to practice law, but that didn’t matter.

Val’s phone rang three times before it went to voicemail. She left a terse message.

“Deputy Erath brought the Abby Sutton murder weapon to the ME this afternoon. Your prints are all over it,” just saying the words chilled her. “He’s getting a warrant right now. Call me.” She almost closed with her standard, “I love you,” but the words got stuck in her windpipe. Instead she said, “Don’t kill anyone.”

She didn’t put the phone away after she hung up; she pulled up Jack’s number.

“Counselor,” he said when he answered.

“Do you still have a job?” she asked. “I heard you were meeting with Deputy Chief Ballast.”

“For the moment,” he replied but offered nothing more.

“We’ve got problems,” she began, understating the facts by a thousand percent. She quickly related the last two hours of her life, beginning with Foster and Logan, blazing through the details, and ending with Val’s fingerprints being found on the Abby Sutton murder weapon.

“Where’s Valentine now?” was all Jack said when she had finished.

Victoria’s shoulders slumped. Her eyes stung. “Out chasing Garland Sutton and Jasper Smith,” she said. “Trying to get himself killed.”

“That sounds like Valentine,” Jack agreed, deadpan.

A long moment went by with neither of them saying anything, and then a sudden thought hit Victoria.

“I’ve got to go, Jack,” she said abruptly. She briefly considered telling Jack where she was going, but rejected the idea. He’d only try to talk her out of it, and she wasn’t in a talking mood. “Find Valentine before he kills anyone,” she added and hung up. She just hoped Jack wouldn’t be too late.

Victoria snatched up her purse, turned and headed for the exit.

“Where are you going?” Eustace called after her.

“To see a lawyer,” Victoria replied as she pushed through the door. “And if I don’t get some straight answers, you’ll have another body to deal with.”

45

The
next ten minutes of Valentine’s life had passed in a fog of pain. His eyes had stuttered across the women’s bodies, refusing to focus, but he couldn’t look away. His stomach lurched then lunged up his throat. He turned away and vomited onto the basement’s dirt floor until his stomach was empty, then dry-heaved until his brain was so oxygen-deprived that black and gold spots filled his vision. It took him several minutes to get himself under control. When he did, he turned back to the women.

He had to do something for them. He couldn’t leave them like that. He crossed the room on uncertain legs and dropped to his knees beside them.

Weak from loss of blood, he felt almost disembodied. In stutters and flashes he saw himself try to put the girls back together, rearranging their limbs and torsos, getting it wrong the first time and starting over, moaning through clenched teeth, working one handed, his left arm hanging dead at his side. When he was done, he covered them with a musty tarp then turned dizzily to the stairs. He climbed toward the light, his gait a drunken shamble, each step dragging his brain further down toward the liquid darkness of unconsciousness. It took him five minutes to reach the top and stagger out into the relative brightness of the hallway. The light almost blinded him.

Placing one foot in front of the other was an effort almost beyond him. He bounced off the hallway’s walls, back and forth, leaving a staccato pattern of blood on the plaster, only the tightness of the space keeping him from collapsing. He knew that he was dying, bleeding to death. He was surprised to find that he really didn’t care that much.

A voice from behind him stopped him before he reached the end of the hall.

“Who are you?” a woman demanded in an East Texas twang. “Where’s Lamar?”

Val turned toward the voice, moving with a bone-grinding slowness, shuffling his feet to keep his balance. With eyes that barely focused, he saw Abby Sutton standing in the kitchen entry, a bag of groceries on the counter beside her. He stopped, facing her, and almost fell. The hallway’s wall saved him again, bouncing him back upright. Blood pattered from his fingertips to the floor.

Val had spoken to Abby several times before, looking for information on her brothers’ whereabouts. The girl had been less than helpful. Her replies were more profanity than nouns, but Val had never suspected her of being complicit in their crimes, of helping them. But there she was one flight up from a torture chamber full of corpses.

Val raised his pistol, the gun wavering and weaving before his eyes. He aimed it at her chest.

“Police,” he said, the word thick on his tongue. “You’re under arrest.”

Abby wasn’t listening; she turned and grabbed a sawed-off twelve-gauge pump shotgun that had been lying on the kitchen counter. She had a knowing way with the gun. It came around swiftly, its black bore turning in his direction.

“Put the gun down!” he screamed, the words erupting from his throat with surprising ferocity, almost staggering him, but the shotgun kept moving. Val started to squeeze the trigger, but he couldn’t do it, his finger refused to budge. Too many women had already died here today. And he was just too damned tired to care whether he lived or not.

Abby fired from the hip. Flame blossomed and blazing heat slapped Val in the left cheek as three double-ought pellets ripped his face open to the bone. The wall behind him disintegrated in a blizzard of plaster and splintered wood. The shotgun’s pump action went ‘click-clack’ as Abby worked the slide, chambering a fresh round. Val watched as she flung the gun to her shoulder and aimed from ten feet away. She wouldn’t miss again. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to shoot. Death was looking him square in the face, an old friend come for him at last. It was almost a relief.

Val flinched as a second gunshot boomed, but the shotgun didn’t spit fire and lead in his face. Instead, Abby buckled at the waist, bending in the wrong direction like a marionette with broken strings. Her mouth blew open in a piercing scream and the shotgun went flying. It hit the floor a split second before Abby followed it down, landing face first on the kitchen’s yellow Linoleum.

Abby flopped around like a grounded fish, her hands clawing at her lower back, at a wound that was pulsing blood. She screamed and screamed again. Her chest heaved up off the floor, but her legs remained motionless, twisted at an acute angle to her torso. It took Val a confused moment to make the connection between the shot and Abby’s wound. Someone was behind her in the kitchen!

Val shoved himself off the wall, stepped clumsily over the wounded girl and went through the kitchen entry as fast as he could, almost falling atop her in his haste. His feet felt like they were mired in concrete, his ears were buzzing from the shotgun blast and his vision was watery. He had to lean against the cabinets or go down, offering a perfect target for whoever had shot Abby, but the room was empty. Dirty dishes filled the sink to overflowing, trash was mounded around an over-stuffed plastic garbage can and fast food wrapper and Budweiser bottles cluttered the kitchen table. The door to the back yard stood open, bright sunlight spilling through the gap.

Val crossed the room in as straight a line as he could manage and fell against the door jamb. He stared out into sunlight so dazzling that it made his brain recoil. He slitted his eyes against it, but saw nothing and no one - just a yard overgrown with Johnson grass. The gate to the alley hung open. Maybe the shooter had gone that way? Val stared at the gate for a long time, but he knew there was no way he could cross the yard and give chase. He could barely stand. He needed to get back to his car and call for backup. Tell them to be on the lookout for Abby’s shooter and to send an ambulance for the wounded girl.

He turned and began the trek back across the kitchen, dripping a sticky trail of blood across the warped linoleum. He had to stop for a moment and lean on the kitchen table when the world suddenly reversed its spin. That’s when he saw a photo clipped to a DPD booking sheet lying among the castoff food wrappers and beer bottles. It was your standard mug shot and incident report. Val recognized the man in the photo; he had seen him just a few hours before, lying face-up, his torso ground to taco meat by a dozen or more jacketed rounds. He was one of the Ukrainians. Val picked up the sheet to find another booking sheet beneath it and two more under that. He recognized them as three more members of the now deceased Ukrainian crew. That wasn’t the end of it. Four more pages lay underneath the booking sheets, all neatly typed DPD surveillance logs. A list of names, times and dates. Two weeks’ worth of comings and goings at the Ukrainian’s bungalow in Pleasant grove. There was only one way that Lamar and Lemuel could have gotten these sheets: someone inside DPD had given them to them. A dirty cop. He dropped the paperwork and turned away. Someone else could handle that problem. He had done his job, had found the Suttons and killed them. He left the pages where they were, a decision he would regret for the next four years. By the time the crime scene team had reached the house an hour later, those pages had been gone.

Val released his grip on the table and headed for the door. He stepped carefully over Abby. She was still facedown and moaning, a lake of blood spreading out from her hips.

“Ambulance,” Valentine said to her, that one word all he could manage. “Ambulance,” he said again. He stumbled down the hallway, reeled across the living room, taking twenty wavering steps to cover twelve feet, and staggered out onto the porch. That was as far as he made it. He dropped to a seat on the edge of the porch, head hanging. Dimly, he was aware of a dark SUV parked across the street, but he couldn’t make his eyes stay on it; they kept drifting skyward. Val guessed, much later, that the SUV was where the guy who had taped Val kicking in the Suttons’ door with a smart phone had been located.

The last frames of the phone’s video showed Val falling face forward into the tall grass, his fingers still wrapped around the butt of the cocked 9mm.