Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1 Read online

  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.

  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. N
ot 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.