Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1 (6 page)

Laroy smiled as he popped open his briefcase, reached inside and took out a single sheet of paper. He leaned forward and slid it onto Victoria’s desk.

“What’s that?” she asked, eyeing it like it might be infected with plague.

“That’s an address,” Hockley cryptically replied. “And it ain’t in California.”

Victoria leaned forward and turned the paper toward her using only a fingernail. ‘Axel Rankin. 207 East 12
th
Street’ was typed at the top of the page, the rest was blank. Wordlessly, she shoved the paper toward Birch who picked it up and read the single line while she stared at Laroy, trying to keep her anger in check. How the hell was Laroy staying one step ahead of them? First he’s out on the levee trying to take the case from Jack, and now he was offering up the primary suspect. Not only did it piss her off, it was damned well embarrassing.

“That’s the Syndicate dope house I told you about,” Birch said. He cocked his head at Laroy. “Who says Axel’s there?”

Laroy shrugged. “That’s not important, Jack,” he said. “But I assure you Axel
is
there. Right this minute.”

“Where you got that information is very important to me,” Victoria said, letting her anger show. “This is a murder investigation. Withholding evidence is a criminal offense.”

Laroy shrugged as he stood. “I’d lay even money that Axel isn’t even the killer,” he said. “But the sooner you find that out the sooner we can move on to a more likely suspect.” Laroy didn’t have to mention Valentine by name for her to get the implication. But she made no reply. Instead she stared at him in smoldering silence while Birch looked over her shoulder, out the window, his expression stuck in neutral.

Laroy headed for the door, his briefcase swinging at his side. He stopped on the threshold and turned back for one last shot.

“Good luck with Axel,” he said to Jack. “I hear he’s a real firecracker. Better put on a vest.” He swung the door open and left without a farewell.

“That son of a bitch,” Victoria said as the door swung closed.

Birch nodded. “That’s Laroy. But he might be right about Axel. Axel’s a doper and dopers are stupid. And LA ain’t nearly as much fun for a racist biker as Dallas is. Bastrop and I will check it out. If it looks good we’ll call SWAT and kick the doors in.” He rose and crossed to the door, but Victoria had one more question.

“What the hell is up with you and Hockley?”

Jack didn’t reply immediately; when he did he said, “We’ve met once before,” but seemed unwilling to say more. Victoria wasn’t putting up with that kind of macho crap, though she sure wasn’t volunteering her own personal history with Laroy.

“If it’s going to affect this case I want to know.”

Birch thought about it for a moment, one bony hand resting on the doorknob, before he spoke.

“About ten years ago a couple of Harris County deputies picked up a kid I had a witness warrant out on. By the time I got there, the kid was in no shape to talk. Looked like they had used him for a punching bag. Laroy was the watch commander. He and I had some words. Discussion got heated.” Birch shrugged.

“You kicked his ass,” Victoria finished. She had heard enough of Valentine’s stories to have a good idea that despite all the muscle Laroy wouldn’t have stood a chance against Jack. That thought made her smile for the first time that morning.

“Well, what goes around comes around,” Jack said with a shrug. “I’ll let you know about Axel.” He pulled the door open.

“Have you talked to Valentine yet?” Victoria asked before Jack could exit. She felt like a complete chicken-shit for not calling Val to give him the news, but the Suttons were the one subject that was taboo in their marriage, she just couldn’t make herself do it. She’d leave it to Jack.

Jack shook his head. “He’s on my list,” he said then paused, looking her straight in the eye. “You know I really do have to consider him a prime suspect. Laroy is right about that much.”

Victoria nodded. “I understand.”

“I sure hope he does too,” Birch said and then he was gone, closing the door softly behind him.

8

Valentine
paused at the entrance to BoDean’s driveway and looked south. He spotted the Range Rover three blocks down, parked on the near corner of a side street, its bumper blocking the crosswalk. That was against the law. Where was a cop when you needed one? For a long moment, Val sat there with the truck idling a bass growl, staring at Zeke Sutton’s SUV, but he wasn’t thinking about Zeke; he was thinking about Max and Kyle and about the chance he was about to take.

Val had grown up without a father, just a bunch of faded photographs, a moth eaten American flag folded into a triangle with a DPD Medal of Valor pinned to it, and his mother’s stories. Those photographs, those stories and that medal had driven Valentine. They had been the only role model he had. He joined the YMCA’s boxing program at the age of ten because his father had boxed. Ditto with the Army Rangers and then the Dallas Police Academy. He had committed himself to being the kind of man that he imagined his father had been. The kind of man who had taken a bullet because he had promised to do just that. Had sworn an oath to it. The kind of man who never shirked violence, but never perpetrated it on the innocent.

The kind of man who left a widow and a son to grieve.

That was not the life Val wanted for his children. He wanted security and safety, Cub Scouts and college educations. Daughters-in-law and grandchildren. He wanted them to be everything he was not.

Val almost turned the truck around right then, but what would he do after that? The cops couldn’t do anything about Zeke; the man hadn’t broken any laws. Val was on his own.

But so was Zeke.

Val made the turn and drove toward the Rover at School Zone speed. He had no clear-cut plan of action; but he rarely did. The Sutton brothers’ shootout had been a pretty good example of his technique: kick in the door and knock the bad guys’ teeth out. But he had no gun or tactical baton now. He did, however, have one large caliber weapon at his disposal: the tow truck itself.

Val was less than a fifty yards from the Rover when he punched the gas. The tow truck was geared low, but it gathered speed quickly. It was doing close to forty by the time it reached the corner where the Rover was parked. Val didn’t slow down as he wrenched the steering wheel hard to the right, bucking the big truck over the curb, clipping a DART bus stop sign off at the base, aiming the truck’s front end straight at the Rover. His ass bounced off the seat and his head ricocheted off the ceiling and then the truck was barreling across the sidewalk and through a flowerbed, its tires biting into the soft earth, chewing up sod and petunias. Its speed dropped dramatically, but speed really wasn’t all that important when you were driving three thousand pounds of truck.

The tow truck jounced off the far curb and hit the Rover’s front fender like a sledgehammer hitting a Dr. Pepper can. The tow truck’s steel push-bar slashed through the Rover’s engine compartment, tearing through the radiator in an explosion of boiling green steam and knocking the Rover sideways into the middle of the street before both vehicles came to shuddering halt.

Val was out of the truck before it had come to complete stop, the rebar in his right hand. He vaulted up on the truck’s hood, pounded across it, jumped to the ground and jerked the Rover’s driver’s side door open just in time to have Zeke jam a junky .25 caliber automatic in his face.

Despite Val’s ‘vicious’ reputation, he didn’t enjoy busting people’s heads, but he didn’t hesitate either. He whipped the rebar down in a short, brutal arc, slamming it into Zeke’s wrist. Bone crunched, Zeke screamed and the little automatic clattered to the pavement at Val’s feet. But Zeke wasn’t done fighting. He tried to scramble past Val and out into the street, clawing at Val’s forearm with his uninjured hand, scratching it bloody. Val put a stop to that by popping Zeke in the side of the head with the rebar.

Zeke’s eyes went wiggly, his jaw sagged and he fell face-first into the steering wheel. The horn gave one short bleat before Zeke toppled sideways into the passenger seat.

Val stepped back, stooped and picked up the gun. It was a piece of crap covered in flaking chrome, fifty bucks at any pawnshop in Dallas - the kind of gun a junkie would use to jack an old lady’s purse. He checked the safety and found it off then cracked the slide to find a copper jacketed round under the hammer. His gut clenched in an icy wad. That had been way too damned close. He was getting old and fat and slow. The first of those things was forgivable, unchangeable, but the latter two were not.

Val looked at the blood trickling down his arm. Three deep grooves that hurt like a bastard. Scratches from a junkie’s fingernails. He’d probably get tetanus and die. But not before he got some answers out of Zeke.

Val reached across the driver’s seat, grabbed Zeke by the shirtfront and jerked him sideways, spilling him out into the street. Zeke hit the asphalt with all the grace of a discarded beer can, ending up facedown. Val kicked his heels apart then dropped to one knee and frisked him. He found nothing but a wallet with a little cash and a pocket knife with a dull blade.

On to the Rover.

Val stood, placed one foot between Zeke’s shoulder blades, pinning him to the asphalt, then ducked his head inside the wrecked SUV. The interior was immaculate except for a dingy looking light bulb that was lying on the passenger side floorboard. One side of the bulb was charred black and the metal base had been removed. Val recognized it as a homemade methamphetamine pipe - an old-school junkie trick. A light bulb wasn’t considered drug paraphernalia, though the residue in it would be enough to send Zeke back to jail.

Val stepped away from the Rover and toed Zeke in the ribs. “Sit up, Zeke.”

Zeke muttered something. Val nudged him again. Zeke grunted, but still he didn’t move.

“Sit up,” Val repeated, “or the next time I kick you I’ll be going for a field goal.”

Zeke groaned then sluggishly rolled over onto his back and pushed himself up with his good arm. His hair was a mess and his clothes hung from a frame that was almost skeletal. Meth had eaten him right down to the bone. He looked like a scarecrow blown free from its post. Tentatively, Zeke touched the side of his head where Val had clocked him. His fingertips came away bloody, but that wasn’t the worst of his injuries; his right hand was hanging from the wrist joint like a flag on a windless day.

“Aw, Jesus, you broke my hand,” he said, holding it up at Val accusingly. Zeke’s beard was mangy and tangled. It curled into his mouth from all sides, bracketing teeth that looked like burnt matches. Meth-mouth, the dentists called it.

“You’re lucky I didn’t break your skull,” Val replied. “What are you doing following me? With a gun.” Val showed him the .25, put it right in his face, but Zeke wouldn’t look at it. “I had my kids in the car, Zeke.” The old familiar rage was building inside Val like a tidal wave. His temples throbbed and the color drained from his vision.

“It ain’t mine,” Zeke said sullenly. “You planted that. And you ain’t a cop no more so I don’t even know why you’re asking.” Zeke lifted his head and looked Val in the face but what he saw there only frightened him. He dropped his eyes. “Besides, you ain’t got no probable cause. It was a bad search.”

“So you’re a lawyer now?” Val dropped to a crouch beside the seated man. “Why were you following me?”

Zeke kept his eyes down and said nothing.

“I’m not going to ask you again.”

That elicited nothing from Zeke but a shake of the head.

Val pressed the little pistol’s barrel into Zeke’s ear.

Still nothing from Zeke.

Val cocked the hammer.

Zeke’s head came up and his eyes went wild. “Hey! No! Jesus!”

“Why were you following me?”

“Daddy told me to come get you! He wants to see you!”

It took Val a moment to swallow that. When he had, he shook his head, the gun still pressed to Zeke’s head.

“Garland and I have nothing to say to each other, Zeke. He said it all at the civil trial.”

“He wants to talk to you! That’s all I know! That’s all he told me.”

Val thought about that for a minute before he de-cocked the little pistol, rose and took a quick look up and down the block. Neat lawns fronted million dollar homes. No one had come outside to see the wreck yet, but someone had probably already called the cops. Time to go.

Val looked down at Zeke. “Stay right there. Understood?”

“Where am I gonna go?” Zeke replied. “You wrecked daddy’s Rover.” His eyes went past Val to the Range Rover. “Look at it,” he said. “Just look.”

Val didn’t bother. He circled the tow truck, climbed inside, threw it into reverse and eased it backward, wrenching the push bar free from the Rover’s engine compartment. Sheet metal groaned and squealed as Val bumped the tow truck back over the curb, across the sidewalk and into the street. He made a looping U-turn and backed around the corner, lining up the towing rig on the Rover’s crumpled hood, but he misjudged the distance and plowed into the Rover’s shattered grill. More crunching metal and shattered glass.

“Aw, come on, man!” Zeke yelled as Val eased the truck forward.

Before hooking up the Rover, Val checked the tow truck’s front end for damage. The push bar was smeared with black paint, but that was all. It was hard to hurt a tank. He went to the back of the truck and hit the hydraulics to lower the towing rig. He had used the tow truck to haul the Mustang so many times that he was an old hand at this. He hooked it up, put the safety chains in place then hit the lift button and raised the Rover’s front end before turning back to Zeke.

The injured man hadn’t moved; he was still sitting beside the open driver’s side door, cradling his broken hand in his lap.

“On your feet, Zeke,” Val said, “And get in the truck. We’re going to have a little chat with your daddy. And you better hope it goes well or Garland will be down one more son.”

Zeke didn’t have anything to say to that.