Wrongful Death (23 page)

“Who’s chicken now?” she asked, clucking like a hen. “Huh? Who’s chicken now?”

She continued to splash back until she realized Jake had stopped his return fire. He treaded water, looking up at the rock formation from which he had jumped.

“Hello, Jake.”

Tina turned, looking up, blinded by the bright sun, but seeing a shadow on the rock.

“Mr. Williams,” Jake said, shading his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

MAPLE VALLEY, WASHINGTON

M
ichael Cassidy’s story was a classic double-edged sword. If it was to be believed, somebody was covering up what actually happened the night James Ford died. But if true, it also appeared to confirm that Ford had been acting incident to his service at the time he was shot, which left Sloane without a case.

Sloane was right. He was missing something.

“We can’t help you if you lie to us, Butch,” Sloane said.

“I ain’t lying.”

“Phillip Ferguson and Dwayne Thomas were both murdered.”

The information seemed to catch Cassidy off guard. His eyes narrowed. “Now I know you’re bullshitting. I heard Fergie committed suicide.”

“You knew him. You tell me, did he seem like the type to kill himself?” Sloane asked.

“No, but I heard he was blind. I might kill myself too. You guys are making this shit up.”

“Somebody put a bullet in the back of Dwayne Thomas’s head,” Sloane added. “That was definitely not a suicide.”

Cassidy shrugged. “So? He probably deserved it. He was an asshole.” He went back to biting his nails.

Jenkins said, “Sure, Mike. It could all be just one big coincidence.”

“Except the Tacoma police don’t have
any
suspects,” Sloane said.

“And if
we’re
right, it makes him the last of the three amigos,” Jenkins added. “But he thinks using P.O. boxes and not paying taxes is going to hide him forever.”

Cassidy’s eyes shifted back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match.

“We found him. If we can, they can,” Sloane said.

“He’s definitely next on the hit parade,” Jenkins concluded.

“What about Captain Kessler?” Cassidy blurted.

“Kessler might be the guy trying to kill you,” Jenkins replied.

“What?” Cassidy shook his head. “I
know
that’s bullshit. Why would Captain Kessler want to kill me?”

“Because he doesn’t want what really happened that night to come out,” Sloane said.

“I just told you what happened. There’s nothing to hide. Hell, we were god-damned heroes.”

Sloane thought so too. “We don’t know why,” he said.

“But we just climbed a freaking mountain to get here to save your ass,” Jenkins said. “So the least you could do is be grateful.”

Cassidy turned back to Sloane. “What would I have to do? What do you want?”

“I’ll need you to come to federal court and tell a judge exactly what you just told me,” Sloane said.

“That wasn’t part of the deal.” Cassidy started to twitch again.

“We had no deal,” Sloane said. “The deal was you do what we
tell you, or you spend the next thirty to fifty becoming friendly with your cellmate.”

Cassidy closed his eyes, inhaled slowly, and blew out a burst of air. “What time?”

Jenkins groaned. “What, do you have an appointment, Michael? You need to check your BlackBerry to find out what time you’re getting your nails done? Or is there a large venture capital company looking to invest in your nifty operation here?”

Sloane put up a hand to tell Jenkins to back off. “I’d need you there next Tuesday.”

Cassidy looked pale, and Sloane didn’t think it was from the dull lighting inside the trailer. “Will it help Jimmy’s family?”

Sloane didn’t know. At present it would likely hurt his case, but the game had changed and he needed to adapt. This wasn’t about winning. It was about surviving. “It might,” he said.

“Fine. Give me an address and I’ll be there.”

Jenkins laughed. “Sure. You’re about as dependable to show as the horses I bet on.”

“You need to come with us now,” Sloane said.

“Where?”

“Someplace safe, a hotel.”

“I’m not going with you to no hotel.”

“If you stay here, or run, they’ll find you, and they’ll kill you.”

“So, much as I don’t like it either, looks like you and me are bunking together,” Jenkins said. “I hope you don’t snore.”

“After you testify, you can disappear,” Sloane said.

Cassidy looked like he might cry. “Fine,” he blurted. “Okay. Fine.”

They decided to drive Cassidy’s truck back to the quarry to retrieve the Explorer. Jenkins would drive with Cassidy to a hotel. Sloane would retrieve his laptop computer and meet them back at the room to draft an affidavit in case Cassidy got squirrelly or changed his story.

“What about the dog?” Jenkins asked.

Cassidy looked at him like he didn’t know what he was talking about. “What about the dog?”

“She doesn’t look like she’s eaten or had any water in over a day.”

“So? It ain’t my dog.”

Jenkins took a deep breath. “So? So how about I tie you to a leash in that hotel room and not feed you or give you any water?”

“Hey, I said it ain’t my dog. It’s Kroeger’s dog.”

“You have any food around here?” Jenkins asked.

“No.”

“When is Kroeger coming back?”

“He’s painting with his dad. He’s supposed to meet me at four when he gets off.”

“Fine. When we get in the car you’re going to call him and tell him to bring dog food and make sure the dog has water. Got it?”

Cassidy frowned. “Mellow out. It’s just a dog, dude.”

Jenkins lunged forward and lifted Cassidy off the ground, holding him by the neck. “So, asshole, she’s a living, breathing creature, which means she doesn’t deserve to be tortured, kicked, or starved.”

Sloane grabbed Jenkins’s forearm, but it was like grabbing a metal bar. “Put him down, Charlie! We can drive into town and get the dog food and water.”

Cassidy dropped like a bag of flour and crumpled to the floor coughing and gagging.

Jenkins pushed open the door to the trailer with such force it flung off its top hinge and slammed against the siding. He stepped down into the yard, where the dog continued to bark, and paced, blowing off steam. He turned toward the dog, and realized she wasn’t barking at him. She faced in the direction of the grass.

Cassidy had stepped out from the trailer onto the wooden step, Sloane behind him.

Jenkins rushed at them. “No!”

Cassidy’s eyes widened as Jenkins slammed into him. His head snapped back as if he’d taken an invisible punch to the face.

A split second later the retort of the rifle echoed across the valley.

SAN VICENTE VILLAGE
BAJA, MEXICO

THREE YOUNG BOYS,
their skin tanned a rich bronze, stepped into the street as Alex walked into the village. Their smudged but happy faces reminded her of her friends growing up in a suburb of Mexico City, though she had been considered relatively wealthy and these boys were dirt poor. They wore battered jeans and fraying shorts. Without shirts or shoes they rushed out to greet her, smiling and calling her “pretty lady.” One asked her if she was “The Blessed Mother.” These kids knew how to work a mark.

Alex explained that she was not interested in buying anything, but that she would pay the one who could take her to the family who owned the cattle ranch in the distance.

“Me tienes que llevar el dueño del rancho,”
she said.

The boys stepped back. “No,” their leader said, speaking Spanish and looking concerned. “He shoots trespassers.”

Alex produced several dollar bills. “Take me,” she said, “and I’ll give you each a dollar.”

The leader considered the offer, taking a moment to whisper to his compadres.
“Tres.”

“Dos,”
Alex countered.

He looked to his friends, who nodded.

They led her down the road, chattering at her, asking her where she had come from and why she did not have a car. Outside
of town, a paved road intersected the dirt path. The boys took her as far as a wooden post and barbed wire fence.
“Aquí. Aquí,”
they shouted, holding out their hands to get paid.

She handed each two dollars. The leader tried to negotiate for an additional fee, but when he realized that wasn’t about to happen, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of dollar bills, showing them off.

Alex grabbed his wrist.
“De dónde sacaste eso?”

“No. No,” he cried, trying to pull away.

No way these poor boys had that kind of money, American dollars no less. “Tell me where you got the money.”

“A man gave it to me,” he said, eyes wide, voice pleading.

Her heart pounded. “
Por qué?
Why did he give it to you? What did he ask you?”

“Es mio,”
the boy said, struggling to free his arm.

She held on. “What did he want to know? Tell me.”

“He was looking for his wife and son,” another of the boys said.

Adrenaline rushed through her.
“Que le dijiste? Que le dijiste?”

“Leave me alone,” the boy said.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him to go to the camp. I told him to talk to the gringo lady.”

Alex felt her legs go weak. “
Cuando?
When was he here?” she asked, but one of the boys rapped her across the arm with a stick, breaking her grip, and he and his friends ran off, frightened.

Alex turned and looked down the dirt road. It would take too long to get back to the camp, even if she ran the distance, and she would still have to climb the mountain and try to find the pond.

She slipped beneath the barbed wire, feeling the heat from the pavement through the thin soles of the sandals the woman at the camp had allowed her to borrow, along with a pair of shorts
and a shirt. In the near distance a two-story yellow adobe home—surrounded by palm trees, with two cars parked in a turnabout—shimmered in the heat like a desert mirage. Behind it was what had caught her attention on the way to the campground—a swath of dirt through the brown grass and scrub stretched the length of the property, leading to a barn—a landing strip for a private plane.

As she hurried toward the house, a dog ran up the road, circling and barking. A man stepped out the front door dressed in crisp blue jeans and a red cotton shirt with a bolo tie. He donned a white cowboy hat to shade his face from the sun.

“Buenos días,”
Alex said, introducing herself and apologizing for disturbing him.
“Disculpe la molestia.”

“This is private property,” the man said. The clasp of his tie was an ornate turquoise and silver design.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I need your help.”

The man asked how he could help.
“En que le puedo ayudar?”

“A woman and her son are in the mountains,” she said. “They are in grave danger.”

MAPLE VALLEY, WASHINGTON

SLOANE LAY SPRAWLED
on his back, his shirt covered in blood, Cassidy on top of him.

Jenkins scrambled to his knees, rifle in hand. Before he could get off any shots, bullets tore through the open door of the trailer, embedding in the walls with pings and tings. Outside, the rifle’s retorts echoed across the grass valley. The gutted trailer wouldn’t provide them much cover.

Sloane looked down at Cassidy. The young man’s lifeless eyes remained open, but the right side of the top of his head was a matted mess.

Jenkins pulled and dragged Sloane out from under Cassidy and behind the counter. They lay flat on the ground while the assault continued. “You all right?”

Sloane nodded.

“If a bullet hits one of those propane tanks or gas cans, this place is going to go up like a bomb. We have to get the hell out of here,” Jenkins said.

“That’s a problem,” Sloane said, “since we only have one door and they have a couple hundred yards of cover. We don’t even know where they are.”

“Just one guy,” Jenkins said. “He’s in the grass.”

“How can you be sure it’s just one guy?” Sloane ducked his head at the sound of glass bottles shattering in the cabinets above them.

“Because they couldn’t have anticipated we’d be here, and they didn’t need more than one guy to kill Cassidy. If there was more than one guy, I wouldn’t be standing here and neither would you. The first guy would have waited to get a shot at Cassidy, but the second and third would have had their scopes set on you and me. We’d all be dead. A lone shooter had to make sure he killed Cassidy first, or risk giving himself away without getting his target. Now he can pick us off one at a time.”

“We screwed this up,” Sloane said.

“No, we didn’t. He didn’t follow us. If we’d been followed, they would have brought more than one guy. And Cassidy would still be dead if we hadn’t come. We were his only chance. We did our best. Nothing we can do about it now.”

More bottles in the cabinet shattered, spraying glass and acid.

“He thinks he’s got us pinned down here,” Jenkins said.

“He does have us pinned down.”

“Wrong. He doesn’t know who he picked a fight with.” Jenkins handed Sloane what looked like a Costco-size mayonnaise jar. “Fill the jar with whatever gas you can find.”

As Sloane poured what was left of the gas from the cans into the jar, Jenkins grabbed one of the propane tanks by the handle and unleashed it like a discus through a window. Then he picked up the AR15 and sprayed several blind shots into the grass, buying them some time.

“That’s all of it.” Sloane slid forward and handed him the jar, which was about half-f with gas.

“That’ll do.”

Jenkins yanked down the stained and torn curtain, and used Cassidy’s knife to tear off a strip. He punched a hole in the lid of the jar, stuffed the fabric into the hole, and tilted the bottle so the gas wicked up the cloth. Then he crawled again to where Cassidy lay and reached into the young man’s pockets, pulling out his lighter.

“I’ll yell ‘light it’ from the bedroom. You have three seconds to get it lit. When you hear me shooting, stand and toss it.”

“Grass is too wet to catch fire,” Sloane said.

“We’re not trying to burn him out. We need a diversion. Aim for the back of the truck. If the bottle doesn’t break, shoot at it until it does, but get down if you hit it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I need to get back there.” He pointed with his thumb to the back of the trailer. It meant getting past the open door. “And get us a better fix on where the guy is. When he pokes his head up at the explosion, I’ll have him.”