Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1 (7 page)

9

Victoria
sat with the serial killer Randall Rusk’s case file in front of her, open to his booking sheet. His huge bald dome and overshot brows dominated the mug shots. His eyes were deep-set, his jaw a snowplow wedge. His overdeveloped shoulders and neck gave him a hunched, simian posture that matched his brutal visage. Rusk looked like something on display at a low-rent carnival freak show, but his crimes were not carnival kicks. The man was a sadistic predator. And life in prison wasn’t going to stop him, Victoria knew. She almost pitied the convicts that Randall would be housed with. One thing was certain, thanks to the plea agreement she was being forced to offer, Randall would live to kill again.

Victoria closed the file. She still hadn’t written Rusk’s plea agreement and she had three other case files to review and annotate for her subordinates, but she just couldn’t focus. She couldn’t get her mind off her most recent meeting with Laroy Hockley.

Jack had been told to keep Laroy up to date on the investigation, and Jack had failed to do that in any substantive way, yet Laroy hadn’t protested, hadn’t pressed or demanded or threatened. He hadn’t even seemed that interested. It was obvious that he had come with one purpose in mind: to give her Axel Rankin’s name and location. Just thinking about it made her temples throb. What kind of game was Laroy playing? Whatever it was, it just fed into her nagging suspicions that there was something criminal going on at the Sheriff’s office.

Victoria’s cell phone rang from inside her briefcase. She dug it out and checked the caller ID before answering. It was Jack Birch.

“What’s up, Jack?”

“Looks like Hockley was right about Axel,” Birch yelled over the background noise of several men arguing heatedly and the squawking of a police band radio turned up to top volume. “We spotted him as soon as we rolled up, but they were waiting for us. Caught us flatfooted. They got Bastrop.”

“What?” Victoria lurched to her feet, sending her chair rocketing into the wall behind her. “How bad?”

“He’s dead, counselor,” Birch said flatly. “Bled out before the ambulance left the firehouse. The hostage negotiator is on the scene, but Axel ain’t talking and SWAT ain’t waiting. I’m going in with them. Gonna try to keep Axel alive. With one of us dead they ain’t worried about taking prisoners.”

The roar of gunshots interrupted Birch. A half a dozen rounds were fired in rapid succession, like a string of firecrackers. The voices that had been arguing started screaming and then someone was bellowing orders through a bullhorn.

“Take cover! Take cover! Move back! Move back! Jesus—”

The cell phone connection was broken just as the ratcheting roar of machinegun fire blotted out everything else.

Victoria didn’t stop to think about what she was doing, she stood, raced to her office door, jerked it open, and charged out into the hallway, almost plowing over a janitor who was pushing a carpet-sweeper down the hall. The janitor took one look at her face, muttered an apology and stepped aside as she raced past him toward the exit.

10

Val
had made the trip to the Confederate Syndicate’s clubhouse in the rural suburb of Talty six times while he was trying to track down Lamar and Lemuel Sutton, but there had been many changes since Garland Sutton had turned preacher and kicked his biker buddies to the curb. What had been a cinderblock bunker painted black, surrounded by a gravel parking lot, a confederate flag hanging in its single window, had become a full-blown compound with a ten-foot chain link fence and several smaller outbuildings that looked like temporary construction huts. The clubhouse itself had been repainted white and the Confederate flag had been replaced by the blue and gold logo of the Offender Reintegration Program, a job training and job placement program for parolees that was funded by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Feed a Crook is what the cops called it. And it looked like Garland was at the trough in a big way.

A collection of battered pickup trucks, vans and motorcycles were parked nose-in to the clubhouse, but only two men were in sight. Both were bare-chested, dressed only in faded green cargo pants and black sneakers. They stood on the inside of the closed gate and watched expressionlessly as the tow truck slowed and turned into the driveway, the wrecked Rover trailing behind.

“Stay put, Zeke,” Val said as he put the truck in park and stepped out and down. The sun bouncing off the white gravel blinded him and ratcheted the temperature up to a hundred and ten degrees. Sweat popped out on his forehead and underarms as he squinted at the two men guarding the gate.

Up close, Val could see that they were barely out of their teens. One was tall and lean, the other short and stocky, but both were heavily tatted across the chest, shoulders and arms. Neither of them spoke, they just stared, their cargo pants sagging low enough to show five inches of gray boxer shorts.

“What’s up fellas?” Val asked as he scanned the ink littering their upper bodies, a habit from his years on the force. The one on the left, the taller of the two, had a Virgin Mary filling his skinny chest. But the Madonna wasn’t cradling the baby Jesus. Instead she held a red, leering devil child with a confederate flag branded on its forehead. The other teenager’s tattoos were random jailhouse crap, roses and crucifixes and a few names in old English script. No Confederate Syndicate tags that Val could see.

Neither man replied, they just kept staring, giving him the bland, prison-yard glare that was supposed to make every male piss his pants and every female swoon. It just made Val want to climb over the fence and knock their heads together. But he kept his cool

“I’m here to see Garland. He around?”

The shorter of the two jerked his chin at the clubhouse. Val looked through the gate and up the drive then back at the kids.

“So, are you going to let me in?”

The pair shared a look. Apparently they decided that the shorter one should do the talking.

“What you want with Garland?” he asked, as his skinny friend silently looked over the wrecked Range Rover, a small smile playing across his face.

“You his social secretary?” Val asked.

The short one shrugged. “Nope. I’m just a guy getting a little sun,” he grinned and added,
“Officer.”

The skinny one glanced at Val briefly. His eyes were muddy, pupils pinpricked, his jaw slack. Obviously high on something stiffer than booze or weed.

“Copper. Flat-foot. Oink-oink,” he said, his expression never changing, then went back to looking at the Rover.

“I’m not a police officer,” Val said.

The short one chuckled. “Like I don’t know a cop when I see one? That wino disguise you’re wearing ain’t fooling nobody.”

Val looked down at himself. His hands, shirt and jeans were smeared with grease from the tow truck’s towing rig and stained by rust from the rebar. He probably had it on his face too. But he wasn’t there for fashion advice from a teenage felon.

“Call Garland and tell him Valentine Justice is here to see him,” he said. Despite pressing Zeke with more questions on the way to Talty, Val still had no idea what Garland wanted, though he doubted it was to hoist a few beers and relive old times. That made him happy for the .25 caliber pistol in his pocket. Not that he expected a shootout; Garland was cultivating the image of a reformed man. A lay preacher with a prison ministry. Of course, Garland’s conversion was absolute bullshit. Just one more con. He might just shoot Val and bury him out back. In pieces.

The kid dug a cell phone out of his hip pocket, turned his back on Val to make the call then spoke too quietly to be overheard. In less than a minute he broke the connection and turned to his buddy.

“Open the gate, Olly,” he said then looked back at Valentine. “Pull up to the clubhouse. Someone will meet you there.”

Val turned back to the truck. He was climbing up on the running board when the shorter kid called out to him.

“You have a nice day now, officer.”

“Keep up the bad work,” Val replied as he ducked behind the wheel.

“You too,” the kid said and laughed.

Val drove through the gate and across the gravel parking lot then made a tight turn in front of the clubhouse, aiming the tow truck back at the gate. He parked, and climbed down. Zeke followed without prompting.

Zeke watched morosely as Val lowered and unhooked the Rover. Val had just finished stowing the safety chains when the clubhouse door opened behind him and a tall, slender man with long, dirty-blond hair leaned out into the sun. He squinted in their direction. His gaze took in the Rover then moved past it to Val and Zeke.

“My, my, you are looking a little worse for wear, Zeke,” the man said, his lips curving into a grin, revealing tiny gray teeth. The man was tall, probably six-six in his snakeskin boots, and broad shouldered with oversized hands that were all knuckles. He had an old fashioned hearing aid wired into one ear, the amplifier clipped to his belt.

“Quit riding me, Deaf,” Zeke said petulantly. “Can’t you see this asshole wrecked daddy’s truck? Broke my hand too.” He held it up gingerly. It hung like a dead bird from his wrist, but it got no sympathy from Deaf.

“No harm meant, Zeke, I’m just funning with you,” he said cheerfully as he rotated his head toward Valentine.

Val recognized the man as Jasper ‘Deaf’ Smith, a shot caller in the Dirty White Boys prison gang. Smith had been Lamar Sutton’s cellmate in Huntsville State Prison. At the time, Smith was serving a twenty year sentence for a pair of barroom homicides that had been pled down to manslaughter in the second degree. Smith, who was openly and antagonistically homosexual, liked to prowl the goat-roper bars looking to provoke a confrontation that would leave some poor redneck maimed or dead. If the stories could be believed, he’d killed more than a dozen men, inside and outside of prison.

“Why, I recognize you!” Smith pointed a finger at Val and narrowed his eyes in thought. “Killer Christmas, right? Or is it Evil Easter?” He frowned. “Horrible Hanukah, maybe?” He threw his head back and laughed.

“What are you doing out of prison, Jasper?” Val replied, unamused. “You tunnel under the wire or rat somebody out?” Years behind a badge and gun had taught Val not to play nice with men like Jasper. True psychopaths couldn’t be treated like human beings. You’re best bargaining position with them was with your boot on their throat. Fear was the only emotion they understood. Their only motivator.

But Jasper wasn’t afraid. He cocked his head and kept grinning. “The way Garland tells it you’re lucky that you didn’t get a bus ticket to Huntsville your own self. But I guess a cop can gun down whoever he likes and walk away from it. I had to do a whole ten years for my killings. But, I got my parole six weeks ago. State of Texas says I’m rehabilitated. A changed man.”

“I never killed anyone that didn’t deserve it, Smith,” Val replied, instantly bristling at the accusation.

Jesus, now he was debating morality with a pit viper.

Jasper’s grin widened. “Let me tell you a secret,” he said. “They’re
all
asking for it. Every damned one of them, me and you included.” Typical convict psycho-shit. But Val was done listening.

“Where’s Garland?”

Jasper’s eyebrows shot up. “Why, I reckon he’s putting out the tea and cookies, Mr. Justice. It ain’t often that we receive celebrity callers.” Smith stepped out of the doorway, the silver dollar heels of his boots crunching gravel. He made a flourish at the door with one big hand. “Why’nt you step into the parlor, as the spider said to the fly,”

“Come on, Zeke,” Val said, grabbing the smaller man by the elbow. He swung Zeke around and propelled him across the gravel and through the front door, but Val didn’t follow him inside. He paused there to look Smith in the eye. “Ladies first, Jasper.”

For a split second Smith lost the smile. His eyes took on a hard shine and his tongue flicked past teeth as gray as concrete. But the moment passed and the smile came back, a big, shit-eating grin.

“You
do
have a surly mouth on you, Mr. Justice,” he said. “But I like that. I reckon you and me are going to get along just fine!” He turned abruptly and ducked through the clubhouse door. Val followed a few steps behind.

The changes inside the clubhouse were just as radical as the exterior. The last time Val had rousted the place it had looked like your typical redneck bar: neon beer signs, banged up wooden tables and rickety chairs all coated with a haze of nicotine. But all of that had been replaced with tan office cubicles, fluorescent lights and dark blue carpet. A dozen computer monitors flickered inside the cubicles, manned by a dozen men, all of whom wore the pasty prison pallor and tight haircuts of the recently paroled felon.

The hubbub of conversation died as Val’s eyes skimmed over the crew, his gaze flat and steady, the uncompromising glare of a lion tamer. He recognized three of the men as ex Confederate Syndicate members, but none of the others looked familiar. Val glanced at Jasper and raised an eyebrow.

“A passel of sinners doing the Lord’s work,” Jasper explained mockingly. He waved a hand at a row of stacked cardboard boxes lined up along the wall. “You need a bible? Some Holy Water? All of it blessed by the Reverend Sutton personally.”

Zeke was halfway across the room by then, making a beeline for a door set in the pine paneling of the back wall, cradling his broken hand against his chest. He shoved the door open without knocking and disappeared inside as Jasper continued his sales pitch.

“This here water wards off all manners of evils and sins and brings riches to the righteous. Guaranteed! And the bibles! The bibles have all the whoring and drinking parts underlined for easy reference.”

Cheap Bibles and holy tap water and all of it one hundred percent legal. But Val made no comment. It wasn’t any of his business. He just said, “Where’s Garland?”

Jasper shrugged indifferently. “I didn’t figure you for the praying sort,” he said as he turned and headed for the door that Zeke had left open behind him.

Val stuck close to Jasper as they crossed the room. A dank, feral odor drifted off the ex-con like the smell of a dog kennel. The back pockets of the man’s jeans had been cut away leaving darker blue squares, a prison punk affectation, but there was nothing feminine about the way Jasper moved. He had the swaggering, shoulder back strut of a man looking for a fight.

Zeke was talking when Val reached the door. “—son of a bitch wrecked your Rover! And look at what he done to my hand!”

The room was a small office with your standard two guest chairs, a filing cabinet and a desk, but that’s where the similarity ended. A huge bible lay open on a lectern behind the desk and the walls were covered with crucifixes in various colors and styles. There must have been hundreds of them. The spaces between the crosses held an assortment of photos. All of them were of Confederate Syndicate MC members flying their colors, sitting astride Harleys or leaning against trucks, brandishing weapons or posing with girls with fake boobs and tired eyes. Lamar and Lemuel Sutton were prominently featured in many of the photos.

“Kiss the boo-boo, daddy,” Jasper hooted as he crossed the narrow room and dropped to a seat on the corner of the desk. He cocked his left boot behind his right knee and eyed Zeke scornfully.

Garland Sutton was sitting behind the desk, his boot heels propped on top of it among a mess of plastic cups and fast food wrappers. It looked like he and Jasper had just finished lunch. The smell of greasy chicken hung in the air mixing with Jasper’s animal funk.

Garland dropped his feet to the floor, his boot heels making a hollow ring on the concrete. “Welcome, Mr. Justice, and may Jesus shine his light on your soul,” he boomed in his tent-revival voice as he rose and circled the desk, right hand outthrust. Garland was short, five-foot-six at best, with a thick head of steel-colored hair shaped into a southern-Pentecostal coiffure. Dressed in an un-tucked white dress shirt, pressed blue jeans, a gold Rolex circling his left wrist, he didn’t look like an ex-con with six felonies on his record; he looked like a very successful businessman. Maybe a used car wholesaler. A very tough one, and the cars were probably stolen, but a businessman, still.

Garland’s jovial greeting caught Val flatfooted. Without thought, he took the offered hand.

“Daddy, he wrecked your Rover!” Zeke said again.

“I heard you the first time Ezekiel,” Garland said, his hard little eyes never wavering from Valentine.