Rogue Justice (43 page)

Steiger didn't budge. "I don't know what you've got in mind here, captain, but whatever it is it ain't gonna happen." His right hand drifted toward the weapon tucked into his shoulder holster.

"I would reconsider if I were you, detective," Zora said, her eyes flashing. "Besides, this is just the first act." She then threw Chandler a murderous glance, lowered the pistol... aimed... and fired. The bullet ripped through the leather toe of his shoe.

Chandler grabbed his foot with both hands, squealing like a wild pig. A few drops of blood trickled between his fingers. "What the fuck? The woman's insane, I tell you."

Steiger ignored the plea, lowered his hands. "Okay, okay... I'm standing down here."

Mickey inched closer to Zora, his intense eyes imploring her to do the same.

Zora had known all along that a coerced confession would never stand up in court, just like Chandler had said. But she still wanted the satisfaction of hearing him talk. "Tell my friends here what you told me."

"Look, I'm bleeding and—"

"It's your big fucking toe, get over it. I said talk!"

Chandler glared back at Zora. After a long hesitation, he rattled off a list of crimes committed in his name without taking responsibility for any of them. Then, without missing a beat, he shouted, "Now, call for a goddamn ambulance."

"Sorry, no can do," Zora said. "But I do have one more surprise for you."

Chandler protested fiercely. "Detective, you need to—"

Steiger didn't move.

Zora leveled the gun at Chandler's crotch, her gaze hard and steady. "Please, do something stupid."

"Jesus, what
now
?"

"See, there's this guy named Buck Brannaman. He talks to horses."

"Well good for him," Chandler snapped.

"They call him 'The Horse Whisperer.' You're a big movie mogul, Chandler, you must know the film."

"Sure, Robert Redford and Kristin Scott Thomas. What about it?"

"Turn around."

Chandler winced, shifted sideways, and craned his neck. Mickey and Steiger followed his gaze to the rolling, gray waters. Two hundred yards offshore, they spotted Houdini. He was at the helm of the Zodiac, moving slowly east to west, framed by the snow-capped peak of Mt. Baker. On any other day, it was the stuff of postcards. But not this day.

"The guy in the boat," Zora said calmly. "His name's Houdini, like the magician. He talks to animals too... whales...
killer
whales to be precise. And they listen to him. I've seen it."

"This woman's out her mind, detective.
Do
something."

Steiger studied their faces, again said nothing.

Several tense moments passed. Then Houdini roared in on the inflatable. He beached the craft and jumped onto the sand. His eyes were filled with wonder and anticipation.

"They came, right?" Zora asked, a bit wide-eyed herself. "How did you know?"

The wild card—a critical piece of their precarious plan—had turned out to be the ace of spades. Five aces to be exact.

Houdini shrugged "I didn't. They just
knew
."

Zora reached for Houdini's hand, but froze at the sound of the earth shattering noise. She looked past Steiger as the sea came alive, infused with energy. An immense dorsal fin burst through the surface, the water boiling up and streaming over its pointed edge in sweeping, silvery waves. Four more monsters soon erupted from the depths, tails lashing, their blows echoing in an ear-popping chorus of
Kawoofs!
The mighty creatures soared upward in a stirring, choreographed spy hop, hovering at the apex, their sleek black fins reflecting the brilliant sunshine. Then, as if by silent cue, they dropped back into the sea and out of sight. The impact of their collective mass was so powerful, however, it triggered a tsunami-like wave.

In the next instant, an enormous wall of water came hurtling toward land.

"Get down!" Zora screamed. She dove head-first into the deafening rush of water, her body pummeled by the snarling foam and jagged rocks. She came out of the darkness, only to be blindsided by another foaming torrent. Again, she fought her way to the surface, her lungs screaming for oxygen. Her head hurt, her neck hurt, a searing pain knifed through her chest. She tried standing in the swirling waters, but her aching legs would not cooperate. Finally she managed to pull herself up and survey the scene.

It looked like a war zone.

The chopper was teetering on its nose, the rotor blade a twisted hunk of metal. Mickey and Steiger had been swept to higher ground, driftwood scattered around them. They were conscious and did not appear to be seriously hurt. Chandler lay sprawled out on the beach, moaning loudly. He was covered with bull kelp and eelgrass, but he too seemed okay.

Next... Houdini popped up from behind a massive bolder. He had also avoided serious injury. Zora motioned with her hand, then she and Houdini slogged their way through debris and knee-deep water to the Zodiac. It had been tossed violently against the cliff, miraculously bouncing back to its original position. The small Honda outboard was askew but still firmly attached to the wooden transom.

"You think it'll work?" Zora asked.

"Yup, it should." Houdini tilted the propeller into the water, and made a few adjustments to the fittings on the mount. After checking to make sure it was in neutral gear, he yanked the pull cord. The engine sputtered and coughed. He pulled the cord a second time. No luck. On the third try the engine jumped to life.

"Good," Zora said, staring down at Chandler. He glared back, shouted a string of expletives, and started crab-crawling along the rocky shore. She reacted quickly to overtake him, the tempest inside her now raging at full force. After securing his arms behind his back, she pulled the zip tie from her pocket, looped it around his wrists, and pulled tight. Zora was running on empty now, not exactly sure what to do next. Then she looked up, and what she saw took her breath away. The rogue whales were knifing back and forth in wide sweeping arcs a hundred yards from shore, moving closer with each rotation.

Suddenly everything came into focus.

Sensing his fate, Chandler roared, "No! You can't... you won't."

On the sandy ridge, Mickey and Steiger tried to stand, but both men were too groggy to pull themselves up. "He's right," Steiger yelled in a hoarse voice. "Don't do it, captain."

"Sorry, detective," Zora hollered back. She and Houdini then hauled Chandler to his feet. He was a load, but they managed to drag him to the boat and shove him over the side. He landed with a heavy thud.

"You'll never get away with this," he screamed, his voice now frantic.

Zora leaned down inches from his face, the sweet countenance of her mother coalescing in her mind. "Ask me if I care, Chandler. Ask me if I
fucking
care."

In that moment, their eyes locked. Chandler's face was a mask of horror. Zora held his gaze, taking a mental snapshot of a desperate man, a man decisively beaten at his own game.

It's not enough,
she thought,
not nearly enough.

Even so, sentencing this man to his own death was not in her DNA. It didn't matter how justified that decision might be, or how irresistible the urge. Zora threw Chandler a final, piercing look and then stepped over to disengage the engine. As she reached for the lever, a volley of loud shouts rang out in the distance. Spinning around, she spotted a platoon of SWAT officers, sheriff's deputies, and Port Townsend's finest hustling along the beach. They were waving weapons in the air, their handheld radios squawking incessantly.

Zora's back was turned for only a few seconds, but time enough for Chandler to make his move. Scrambling to his knees, he made a wild dive for the gear shift, engaging the boat's engine. "You really
are
an idiot, captain," he shouted.

An instant later, the inflatable craft roared out to sea. After moving a safe distance away, Chandler attempted to maneuver the Zodiac back to shore. Part way through the turn, however, a massive wave side-swiped the boat. It lurched hard to port, throwing Chandler backwards into the rubber hull.

Looking on, Zora's entire world suddenly shifted into hyper-slow motion. She heard more shouts from the approaching cops, but they were unintelligible, like the muffled, reverse-echo sound of a song played backwards on tape. A quarter-mile out to sea, the out-of-control Zodiac zigzagged wildly, motoring headlong into what was now a maelstrom of leviathans. Chandler held on for a few desperate moments before being tossed into the roiling sea. He came up for air, but his frantic screams were quickly choked off by the sharp, strident calls of the giant orcas. One creature pounced immediately, wrenching Chandler clean out of the water. The beast then flipped him upside down and flung him across fifty feet of swirling foam. A second beast snagged him in midair, spun him around like a top, and sent him flying in a different direction. Chandler's left leg was now gone, a shower of blood streaming from the stump.

"Jesus," Zora exclaimed. "What the—"

"It's how orcas teach their young to hunt and play," Houdini shouted. "And
kill
."

The other three creatures soon joined in, whipping their helpless prey from one gaping mouth to another, over and back, in a gruesome game of volleyball without the net.
The speed and force were so great, Chandler's body nearly exploded. Seconds later, there was nothing left of him at all. The whales then let loose with a final train of bellowing roars, thrust their mighty tail flukes into the air, and disappeared beneath the surface.

Silent minutes passed.

The seas calmed.

An eerie quiet descended over North Beach.

On shore everyone stood frozen in place, too stunned to even move.

And for the longest time, no one did.

Chapter 47

5 April, 11:00 AM PDT

Port Townsend, Washington

The following day, as the Courthouse clock chimed the hour, Detective Cloyd Steiger followed Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Scott Rosekrans out the front door of the grand old building and down the steps to a makeshift stage. They were joined there by the FBI Director, Washington State's attorney general, Port Townsend's mayor, the chief of police, and the local sheriff.

Steiger had a bit of a shiner, but otherwise the doctors had given him a clean bill of health. He stopped on the concrete landing for a few seconds, looking over a rolling sea of humanity. The press conference had been announced just two hours earlier in hopes of avoiding just such a spectacle, but social networking sites and frothing reporters had gone into overdrive. The three block area resembled a Bangkok market. So did the sights and sounds and smells, sharp and biting. As far as the eye could see, there were street performers, food vendors, activists, and thousands of curious onlookers, all jammed together in one big mash-up.

Of course the usual media suspects were out in full force—
Dateline, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC,
along with the big dailies led by
The New York Times
and
Washington Post
. Internet news websites and major TV networks from around the globe also joined the circus. Off to one side, harried producers, camera crews, and a dozen cable windbags jockeyed for position behind barricades manned by a contingent of sheriff's deputies, most of them awestruck by the power of celebrity.

Jia-li Han, however, was not among the masses. She had been afforded the VIP treatment and was sitting in a roped-off section adjacent to the stage. A cadre of state politicians sat on either side of her, preening for the cameras.

One person, however, was conspicuously absent: Governor Spencer Ryan.

Steiger took in the Felliniesque scene with a strange sense of detachment, thinking it was a fitting sequel to the bizarre chain of events that had transpired the previous afternoon. The images played over and over in his head, locking on the moment Mitchell Chandler had fallen back into that boat, his fate sealed by his own hand. And therein lay the greatest irony of all because Zora Flynn had never intended for Chandler to die. She'd explained to Steiger that all along her plan had been to force a confession out of the man and then—assuming the rogue whales showed up—scare the bejesus out of him. It was a masterful performance, too.