Blue Heaven Part 29

Jim Hearne knew his culpability. He knew that by looking the other way he had opened the door to all of this, that his small transgression had begun a cascade of trouble and misunderstanding.

He had to warn Jess Rawlins. The ranch was just a few miles away. He would go there first.

Sunday, 8:32 P.M.

SINCE JESS and Monica had cleared Kootenai Bay and headed north, the rain had been sporadic. She had brought nothing with her except a jacket from the closet because he had told her to leave quickly. The Winchester was between them on the bench seat, muzzle down, a smear of Swann's blood on its b.u.t.t plate.

In spare, halting language, he had filled her in. How her children had shown up in his barn, defended themselves, told him their story. Where things stood now.

"What are we going to do?" she had asked. "How will we keep my children safe?"

"I don't know," he said.

She was calm, he thought, not skeptical of him from the minute he had appeared in her door. She seemed to trust him immediately. He wondered to what he owed this pleasure, since they had never met. It was almost as if she knew him somehow. He had stolen glances at her as he drove, looked at her profile. She was attractive but obviously exhausted. Her skin reflected light blue in the pa.s.sing cones of pole lights, the hollows of her eyes and cheeks were shadowed. Her voice was soft when she said, "I knew they were alive. I don't know how, but I knew it."

It made him feel good to know he was bringing her together with her children. She seemed to want nothing more than to be with them.

He thought of what Karen had said about her, that she had a bad reputation. How Fiona Pritzle had denigrated her ability as a mother by saying in the newspaper, "...But I just figured that there was no way those kids would have just taken off like that without their mother's permission and approval."

Consider the source, Jess thought. He knew nothing about the woman in the seat next to him except that she wanted to be with her kids. The rest didn't matter.

"You're familiar to me," she said, "even though we've barely met. I've always thought of you as what was old, tough, and good about this valley, before everything changed."

He looked at her, puzzled, said, "You've got the 'old' part right, anyway."

AS HE PULLED in front of his house, he told Monica to wait for a minute in the truck.

She started to protest.

"Look," he said, "Annie is sitting in there holding a shotgun. I told her not to open the door unless she was sure it was me. If she panics and something goes wrong, I don't want her to shoot her own mother."

"Annie has a gun?" Monica said, her jaw dropping.

Jess suddenly smiled.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

"I don't even want to say it," he mumbled.

"What?"

"When you asked me that I thought of Annie Get Your Gun. I don't know why I thought that was funny."

"I don't think it's very funny now," Monica said, but in a self-mocking way he liked.

Jess walked up to his door and knocked hard on it. "Annie and William," he said, "it's Jess Rawlins. I've got your mom with me."

Out of the corner of his eye, Jess saw the living room curtain pull back and William's face, cautious at first, break into a grin when he saw his mother in the cab of the pickup.

JESS STAYED out of the middle of the reunion and went into the kitchen to make coffee after he saw Monica sink to her knees, crying, and take both of her children into her arms. He heard William and Annie talking over each other, retelling the story about the murder they had witnessed and Mr. Swann, about the dark man who had come to the house that afternoon. How Jess Rawlins had taken care of them.

Halfway into measuring coffee for the pot, he remembered the shotgun in the living room and went to get it. He tried not to stare at the Taylors, who had now settled on the couch, with William clinging to his mother, his head in her lap, Annie next to her, talking a mile a minute. Boy, that girl could talk. Monica looked different, as if she were glowing from within. William looked more like a little boy, her child, and he didn't seem to care if Jess saw him hugging his mother like he'd never let go. This scene, this snapshot, Jess thought, made what he had done to Swann worth it.

Jess put the shotgun next to the Winchester on the kitchen table, wondering if Monica took her coffee with cream or sugar, lamenting that even if she did, there hadn't been any cream in the house in four years.

As their talking subsided in the living room, he noticed the silence from the roof. The rain had stopped. He parted the curtain over the sink and looked out. There were pools of rainwater in the ranch yard reflecting stars as the sky cleared. Beyond the ranch yard was the muddy ribbon of road that led into the wooded hills and the locked gate. He recalled Gonzalez standing on the porch, and Swann bloodied and stunned behind the couch in Monica Taylor's house. And there were two others involved in the shooting Annie and William had witnessed, making four in all.

That chain and lock on the front gate would mean nothing to four armed ex-cops who had already murdered and had conspired to manipulate every event since the children had seen the execution. These were men who had not only infiltrated but literally taken over local law enforcement.

Then he felt a presence next to him, his waist being squeezed, and he looked down and saw Annie, her wide-open face turned up to him.

He couldn't speak, so he didn't. Instead, he reached down and mussed her hair gently, then cupped her chin in his palm.

"I'm so glad she's here," Annie said. "Thank you for bringing her. I'm so happy it's all over."

Jess, feeling his lips purse, his own eyes sting from holding back tears, thought, It's not over, Annie. Not even close.

Sunday, 9:36 P.M.

THE SMELL inside the car was of bourbon, rain, and burning dust from the heater/defroster that hadn't been used in a while. Villatoro tried to adjust the level of the fan to keep the gla.s.s from fogging up inside. Newkirk, damp, drunk, and agitated, had fogged the gla.s.s.

After leaving Rodale's driveway, Newkirk said, "Go that way," pointing to Villatoro's left with the mouth of the open pint of Wild Turkey he'd produced from his jacket. Villatoro turned the wheel, heard the hiss of water spraying from beneath his tires on the undercarriage of the little car. He wasn't sure what road they were on, or which direction they were going. Everything looked the same to him; dark wet trees bordering the road like walls, wet asphalt, no lights. It wasn't until Villatoro recognized the same sharp corner and turnout for the second time that he realized they'd been going in circles for over two hours. It alarmed him, and he said, "Where exactly are we headed?"

"Want some?" Newkirk asked, handing over the bottle.

"No thank you."

"Better take some. You'll need it."

"You've kept me driving for half the night."

"I'm thinking."

Because the retired detective wanted Newkirk to talk, he took the bottle and sipped from it. The bourbon was sweet and fiery at the same time. It burned his lips, which were chapped from the alt.i.tude, the intense sun, and the thin air.

"Pull over here," Newkirk said.

"Here? Why?"

"Just do it and get out."

Villatoro did as he was told. Newkirk got out of the car at the same time. Both men left their doors open. What? Villatoro wondered. Does he want to drive?

"Put your hands on the hood, feet back and spread 'em," Newkirk said. "You know the drill."

"This isn't necessary...."

"Do it," Newkirk said. "What I'm going to tell you is for your ears only. I've got to make sure you're unarmed, and that you're not wearing a wire."

"I'm retired."

"So you say."

Villatoro complied, placing his palms on wet sheet metal. Newkirk stepped behind him, expertly frisked him from his collar and shoulders to his shoes. Villatoro felt Newkirk roll his socks down.

"What are you doing down there?"

"Making sure you don't have a throw-down," Newkirk said, standing up, satisfied that he was clean.

A throw-down? Villatoro thought. The fact that Newkirk had even thought of that said a lot about where Newkirk was coming from. Villatoro had never considered carrying an illegal weapon in all of his years in the department. There had been no need. Obviously, Newkirk came from a different world, where throw-downs were common.

"Sorry," Newkirk said, "I needed to be sure."

Villatoro climbed back in the car and glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard. He thought of the desk clerk at the motel. She was waiting for him, and he felt bad about that.

Newkirk raised the bottle and drank from it. "Harsh s.h.i.t, man," he said, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

Villatoro said, "So, you want to talk?"

He could feel Newkirk looking at him, staring at the side of his head.

"No. I just didn't want to drink alone. Don't be a dumb f.u.c.k."

Villatoro clamped his jaws. Just let the man talk. Don't screw it up by prompting him.

Moments pa.s.sed as they drove. Newkirk drank again, then settled back into his seat. Villatoro kept his eyes on the road.

"I wanted to be the best cop on the force," Newkirk said. "I didn't have notions like I was gonna change the world or anything, but I wanted to do my job the best I could, and take care of my family. But mainly I wanted to be a great cop. I wanted to look in the mirror every night when I got home and say, 'Man, you are a good f.u.c.king policeman.' "

Villatoro nodded as he scaled back the fan of the defroster.

"I was like everybody, I tried too hard at first. When I saw a crack baby or human beings who treated other human beings like pieces of s.h.i.t, I let it get to me. I thought I could reason with those people, show 'em somebody cared. But you know what I learned? I learned that the best thing you could do, overall, was arrest as many of 'em as you could and follow through, make sure they went to prison. I learned that maybe, maybe, ten percent of 'em might go straight, and ten percent was all I could hope for. I didn't even care what ten percent it was, or if it was five percent, as long as I was doing my job. Just fill the prisons, keep those sc.u.mbags away from the good people, that's what I wanted to do. And I did a d.a.m.ned good job of it, even though it was a war zone out on the streets. You have no idea what it was like."

"No, I don't."

"But you can't talk about this stuff with anybody except other cops," Newkirk said, talking over Villatoro. "You can't come home for dinner, and say, 'Gee, Maggie dear, how was your day? Did you go shopping? How was first grade, Josh? Dad had an interesting day today. I found the corpse of an eleven-month-old baby in a Dumpster with cigarette burns all over her body.' "

Villatoro shot him a look. Newkirk's eyes reflected green from the dashboard lights. He was staring straight ahead, talking as much to himself as to Villatoro.

"You know what it's like trying to raise a family with kids on a cop's salary. The wife had to work, and my kids were babies. Day care, the whole stupid thing. Day-care workers who were not much better than the a.s.sholes I was arresting out on the streets. In fact, some of them I saw on the street. I started thinking I needed to get my little boys and my daughter away from a place like that. So I started applying for jobs in places I thought I'd like to live-you know, Montana, Wyoming, places with s.p.a.ce. But the cop jobs out here paid less than what I was making. I started thinking I'd never get out of there, you know? That I'd turn into one of those lifers, one of those guys who can tell you how much pension they've got built up to the penny if you wake 'em up in the middle of the night."

Villatoro didn't say, You knew what the job paid when you applied for it. He wanted Newkirk to keep talking.

"So that's when I discovered the world of off-duty security work." Newkirk smiled. "I found out I could just about double my income if I was willing to wear the uniform and be a rent-a-cop. It was a lot of extra hours, but d.a.m.n, we started to swim out from under it. The debts, I mean. See, my wife likes to live beyond our means, and I can't say no when it comes to the kids. So I worked security a lot."

"At Santa Anita," Villatoro said.

"Among other places. But yeah, Santa Anita was the most steady. In the counting room, but you knew that." The way he said it made the hairs stand up on Villatoro's neck. He began to believe that Newkirk thought he knew more than he did. In order not to dispel the notion, Villatoro told himself to keep his comments to a minimum.

Newkirk took a long swallow, then rubbed his eyes. "At that point, I was still d.a.m.ned proud to be a cop. I was proud of the LAPD. Despite what you see here in front of you," he said, gesturing to himself, "I still think they're one of the best departments in the country. There are thousands of dedicated men and women, risking their lives every day they go out. They're good people, man. They're tough and honest, with a couple of exceptions. Too bad everybody points out the few bad ones and makes us all out to be f.u.c.king criminals. They say it's better now, too. That the new chief is cleaning things up. That'd be good if it's true. But the city's still a f.u.c.king cesspool, and the department needs twice as many cops. h.e.l.l, we need three times as many cops. But the taxpayers don't want to pay the bill for them."

Villatoro waited a moment, then said, "Santa Anita."

"Is that all you care about?" Newkirk sneered.

"No, it's not all," Villatoro said, trying to sound conversational. "But I've spent the last eight years trying to figure out what happened there."

Newkirk laughed. "Me too."

Villatoro started to think they were getting nowhere, when Newkirk sighed and said, "It was a pretty good gig, basically just standing around, like so much copwork. We didn't even open the doors until the security truck got there. Then we just stepped aside and guarded the perimeter while they loaded the trucks. We stuck around until all of the paying customers cleared out, then went home. A good gig, me and Rodale. We worked it all the time together. They liked us, we liked them.

"Gonzalez was our sergeant," Newkirk said. "Everybody respected and feared the guy. He used to give us a lot of s.h.i.t about working security at Santa Anita, saying we must have a couple of dollies out there to want to work it so much."

Villatoro made the connection without saying anything. Gonzalez was one of the names on the list, one of the officers of the 501(c)3, one of the volunteers helping the county sheriff.

"Gonzo was great because he didn't give a s.h.i.t about anything. He always did what was righteous, whether it was PC or not. I could tell you stories about Gonzo that would curl your hair if you had any. You ever hear of a 'guilty smile'?"

Villatoro said, "No."

"Remind me to tell you about it later. Let's just say when he took some sc.u.mbag into the Justice Ranch, the sc.u.mbag deserved whatever he got, okay?"

Villatoro had read something about an investigation into a place called the Justice House, but had never heard the results of the inquiry.

"Singer was our commanding officer, over Gonzo," Newkirk said. "Singer was the toughest motherf.u.c.ker in the department, even though he never shouts, never yells. He defended his officers to the death, though. He'd go to the mat for them, and he was so cool under pressure that the bra.s.s would always come get him whenever the situation was too hot to handle. There wasn't a guy in our division who wouldn't take a bullet for Lieutenant Singer or Gonzo. They were, like, mythical.

"So when Gonzo invited me and Rodale for beers at a cop bar one night, after we'd been working security at Santa Anita for a year or so, we thought that was pretty cool, so we went. Swann was there, too-it was the first time we met him. After a few c.o.c.ktails, Gonzo started asking us how we would rob the place if we were bad guys-you know, what the best scenario would be to take the place down."

Villatoro found himself looking over.

Newkirk curled his lip. "It's not like that, man. It was just a conversation. You know how cops do it all the time, try to figure out how bad guys would do a job, so they can prevent it, you know? Sometimes you've got to think like a criminal to stop a criminal. Besides, it wasn't like it was real money out there, like people needed it to feed their families. It was gambling losses. The idiots had already lost it, so it couldn't have been all that important to them. Gambling money, you know, like all of that cash the state collects from lotteries and s.h.i.t like that."

"But it belonged to someone," Villatoro heard himself say. "It belonged to the owners of the track."

Newkirk laughed. "Like they didn't have insurance? You expect me to give a s.h.i.t about an insurance company? Everybody hates those guys. Turn here."

"Where are we going?" Villatoro asked, taking another dark two-lane highway.

"Just driving. I told you that."

Villatoro tried not to sigh, tried not to show that he was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.

Newkirk drank. Then: "n.o.body was supposed to get hurt. s.h.i.t. That wasn't the plan."

At last, Villatoro thought. Newkirk had admitted being involved. This is what he had worked years to hear.

"Me and Rodale figured out the part about putting the gas canisters in the money bags. That way, they could be set off by remote control when the truck stopped at the intersection.

"To start out, we had this big idea that Gonzo and Singer would bust into the counting room wearing masks and make everybody get on the floor. s.h.i.t, we had even worked out a deal where Gonzo would pistol-whip Rodale or me to make it look real. But the chances of them driving off after doing that and not being seen by someone or getting caught weren't good. So Swann thought of the idea of waiting until the security truck was off the park, robbing it there away from everything. It was the best idea, and we went with it."